# 18: Who Killed Lauren Agee?

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 15 Jun 2023, 30 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880324/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851610-44100-2-d42e6d489d779401.mp3

Today's episode is on the unsolved mystery of Lauren Agee, originally published on YouTube in December 2018. Trigger Warning: mysterious death, drowning Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:39] Today we're going to be talking about a girl named Lauren AG,
[0:42] and this case was actually suggested to me by one of my
[0:45] channel members named Leah. So thank you so much, Leah.
[0:47] I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean
[0:50] absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
[0:53] video. This video is for educational
[0:55] purposes and everything that I say in this is just information
[0:58] that I have found on the Internet and I'm compiling into
[1:01] one video. S Lauren Taylor AG was a 21 year
[1:04] old girl born on August 19th, 1993 in Biloxi in Mississippi.
[1:09] She lived with her mother Sherry and stepfather Michael in
[1:12] Tennessee along with her three siblings, Alison, Jordan and
[1:15] Joshua. Lauren's friends describe her as
[1:17] very funny, bubbly, quick witted.
[1:19] She was very lively, always singing and dancing and
[1:23] laughing. Her mother Sherry described her
[1:25] as full of sugar and a little bit of spice.
[1:27] She lit up every room she entered with her sweet spirit,
[1:30] infectious energy and chanting smile and disarming dimples.
[1:34] Simply put, she was beautiful and hilarious.
[1:37] Lauren's main passions would dance and sports.
[1:40] She had a bunch of gymnastics medals from when she was
[1:43] younger. She always used to copy music
[1:45] video dancers and recreate them in the living room.
[1:48] She even starred in a music video once.
[1:50] When she was older she even received a dance scholarship for
[1:53] university but ended up turning that down to study criminal
[1:57] justice. Lauren had tons of friends, she
[1:59] had a boyfriend, an active social life, and just a really
[2:03] bright future. But all of that changed in July
[2:06] of 2015. Lauren's friend Hannah Palmer
[2:09] asked Lauren to attend a festival named Wakefest that
[2:12] summer, which was basically a water sports festival where they
[2:16] would do wake boarding all during the day and then get
[2:19] drunk during the night. So Lauren told her mother,
[2:21] Sherry, that Hannah had invited her to this festival.
[2:24] And immediately Sherry just kind of had a bad feeling about this.
[2:28] Sherry didn't really think that Hannah Palmer was the best of
[2:32] friends for Lauren. She would just kind of pick
[2:35] Lauren up and drop her whenever she needed.
[2:37] Like as soon as Hannah got a boyfriend, she'd forget yet that
[2:39] Lauren even existed. Hannah never really spent time
[2:42] with Lauren unless it benefited her.
[2:44] Like if she was bored she'd call Lauren, but other than that she
[2:48] wouldn't bother with her. But at the end of the day, if
[2:50] Lauren was happy, Sherry was happy.
[2:52] And so she let Lauren plan to stay in a cabin with Hannah for
[2:56] work fest. But before Lauren left, Sherry's
[2:59] bad feeling kicked in again and she made Lauren come back and
[3:02] hug her one extra time because she felt so worried.
[3:05] She squeezed Lauren extra tight, told her to be careful once
[3:08] again, and then let her go to Wakefest.
[3:11] And that was the last time she ever saw her daughter alive.
[3:14] So on Friday, July 24th, 2015, Hannah and Lauren set off to
[3:19] Wakefest. The whole time they were posting
[3:21] on social media about how excited they were, how much fun
[3:24] the festival was going to be. So once the girls got to
[3:27] Wakefest, they met up with two boys, one named Aaron Lily, who
[3:31] was Hannah Palmer's new boyfriend, and Aaron's friend
[3:34] Chris Stout, who Lauren had actually never met before.
[3:37] So the four of them spent the day thinking, watching the water
[3:40] sports and Cliff diving. Although the Cliff diving wasn't
[3:44] very well regulated, there were some rocks below.
[3:47] Obviously the visible rocks people would avoid jumping on.
[3:50] However, there were rocks that were more hidden whenever the
[3:53] waves would crash over them. So everyone was jumping off
[3:56] fine, landing in the water. And then it came to Lauren's
[3:59] girl to jump down, and she obviously avoided all the
[4:02] visible rocks underneath her. But when Lauren went to make her
[4:05] jump, another rock became visible.
[4:08] But at that point, it was too, too late and she fell into the
[4:11] water and hit the back of the head on this rock.
[4:13] Lauren was kind of out of it for a second.
[4:16] Her friends thought that she maybe had a concussion, maybe
[4:18] she passed out for a couple of seconds, but after that she was
[4:21] fine and the day carried on. That little story doesn't really
[4:24] have much to do with the case overall.
[4:27] I just kind of thought I'd tell you it just so that you could
[4:29] get an idea of how bad the regulations and supervision was
[4:33] at this place. So anyway, that night all four
[4:35] of them went drinking, Lauren, Hannah, Aaron and Chris, and
[4:39] they said that Lauren just seemed completely better, like
[4:41] she just kind of bumped ahead. She had a moment and then she
[4:44] was completely over it. And then around 2:00 AM, they
[4:47] decided to call it a night with the drinking and they they were
[4:50] going to go to bed. And that was when Lauren
[4:53] realized that plans had changed for where they were going to
[4:56] stay that night. Up until now, Lauren had been
[4:58] thinking that they were just going to stay in a cabin, all
[5:01] four of them, because this festival had cabins that you
[5:04] could like, rent out. But it was then that Hannah told
[5:06] Lauren that they were actually going to camp outside on this
[5:09] kind of higher piece of land that was across the river.
[5:13] This piece of land kind of like jutted out into the middle of
[5:16] the river where all the water sports would take place during
[5:19] the day. And it wasn't like, like an
[5:21] official place to camp for Wakefest.
[5:23] However, people would camp there every year.
[5:25] And Wakefest knew that people camped there, but it just wasn't
[5:29] an official piece of their land. And obviously, because it's not
[5:32] an official piece of land, there is nothing to deter people from
[5:37] camping there because Wakefest has no responsibility over that.
[5:41] There's no signs, there's no fencing.
[5:43] There is absolutely no safety regulations on this piece of
[5:46] land because obviously it's not their responsibility, although
[5:49] they really should be because the highest drop from this piece
[5:53] of land is 90 feet. So when Lauren found out about
[5:57] these new sleeping arrangements, she was not very happy.
[6:00] She didn't want to stay there. And so she began running around
[6:03] these bars like where they were drinking that night, trying to
[6:06] find someone else she knew to ask if she could stay with them.
[6:09] She found an old friend from high school named Cassie Franks,
[6:12] who was actually a regular attendee of Wakefest.
[6:15] She'd been for a few years in a row now, and a couple of years
[6:18] before this, Cassie had been to Wakefest and actually camped in
[6:22] the area where Lauren was supposed to be camping on this
[6:25] piece of land. And Cassie said she hated
[6:27] camping there. She felt unsafe the whole time.
[6:30] She said she'd never camp there again.
[6:31] She was always just going to get a lodge from then on.
[6:34] Obviously, the only way to be able to get to this piece of
[6:37] land because it's across the river, is by canoe.
[6:40] And they would have to do that blackout drunk every night.
[6:43] And then once you get to this piece of land, it is a really
[6:46] steep walk up the side of this hill, which again, is
[6:49] unregulated. There's no no safety, there's no
[6:51] paths or anything like that. And obviously no one's wearing
[6:54] very good footwear at this festival.
[6:56] Everyone's just kind of wearing flip flops or whatever.
[6:58] No one's taking walking boots to a water sports festival.
[7:01] So as you're kind of walking up the side of this really steep
[7:04] piece of land, there's like rocks falling down and pieces of
[7:07] earth giving way underneath you. It's so unsafe.
[7:10] Guests of the festival in the past have gone and tied up a
[7:13] piece of rope which remains there for over the years like
[7:17] this rope never moves. Now they tied it to several
[7:19] trees just so that when you walking up it in the dark and
[7:22] you're like drunk and everything, you can hold on to
[7:24] this rope and it helps you stay upright and not fall back down.
[7:28] But just imagine how many people must have fallen down it in the
[7:31] first place for them to even think to put up that rope.
[7:34] And that was done by guests as well, not by any kind of
[7:37] festival officials. And then once you're at the top
[7:39] of this piece of land, you can either camp, as most people do,
[7:42] just on ground in a tent, or you can do what the braver ones do
[7:47] and sleep in a hammock suspended over that 90 foot drop.
[7:51] Literally the only thing keeping these hammocks up was a piece of
[7:55] string on either side. But obviously, if one of those
[7:57] pieces of string breaks, you are falling straight down that 90
[8:01] feet drop. And Lauren knew that she'd be
[8:03] sleeping like that that night, and she did not want her.
[8:06] And so she tried asking Cassie if she could go back with them
[8:09] and stay in their lodge, but Cassie said that it was full.
[8:12] So anywhere around 2:00 AM on the morning of July 25th, 2015,
[8:17] all four of them, Hannah, Lauren, Aaron and Chris set off
[8:21] back to this ledge where they were staying.
[8:22] The sleeping arrangements were that Hannah and her new
[8:25] boyfriend Aaron were going to stay in a two man tent on the
[8:28] land and Chris and Lauren were going to sleep in a hammock
[8:32] together that was suspended over the edge.
[8:34] Which then sleeping in the same hammock has confused a lot of
[8:37] people that look into this case because it was clear that Lauren
[8:41] wasn't really interested in Chris.
[8:43] Lauren, if you remember I said right at the beginning, she had
[8:46] her own boyfriend back at home away from Wakefest.
[8:49] She wasn't looking for anyone else.
[8:51] And other people have confirmed that.
[8:53] Like people that saw her at Wakefest said that she wasn't
[8:56] overly friendly with Chris, like they were acting just like
[8:59] friends. There's apparently a video from
[9:01] that night, and I say apparently because I personally haven't
[9:04] seen this video. I can't find it anywhere.
[9:06] But in this video, they're in a bar, someone is videoing Lauren,
[9:09] and Chris walks by, and Lauren makes this kind of comically
[9:13] disgusted face at Chris. Obviously, to some extent this
[9:16] face was like joking and exaggerated, but a lot of people
[9:20] said that she just wasn't into Chris like that.
[9:23] Kathy says that Lauren was more just kind of Hannah's wingman.
[9:26] She was there like just to kind of get Chris away from Hannah
[9:30] and Aaron so that they could have some like alone time.
[9:33] So anyway, the four of them go up to that ledge.
[9:35] They go to bed in those sleeping arrangements, and the next
[9:38] morning when they wake up, Lauren AG is gone.
[9:41] Hannah and the boys claim that they just thought that Lauren
[9:44] had gone down to the festival by herself.
[9:46] Maybe she'd woken up early, didn't want to wake the rest of
[9:48] them up, and just started her day before the rest of them did.
[9:52] And so the three of them didn't make a fuss.
[9:54] They weren't concerned. They didn't tell anyone that
[9:56] Lauren was missing because they thought she was just down at the
[9:59] festival. But still, as the day went on,
[10:01] and as the three of them were going to different bars and
[10:04] different water sports events, they weren't seeing Lauren
[10:07] anywhere. They spoke to a couple of her
[10:09] other friends, like Cassie and people that Lauren knew at the
[10:12] festival. Just saying like have you seen
[10:13] Lauren at all today and no one had seen her at all at the
[10:17] festival? And then around 4:30 PM that day
[10:20] 2 fishermen were out named Dina and Harry Elder when they
[10:24] noticed what looked like pink shorts in the water.
[10:27] On closer inspection, they went over to look at these shorts and
[10:30] found it to be a dead body. Lauren AG's body and right from
[10:35] the off Harry said that he had a really bad feeling about this.
[10:38] He didn't touch Lauren's body, he didn't check to see if she
[10:41] was alive or anything, he just assumed that she was dead and so
[10:45] the two of them, without touching her went and got
[10:47] police. Lauren's body was laying face
[10:49] down and kind of in a curve in the land, so not somewhere where
[10:54] she could have fallen herself and had she fallen anywhere
[10:58] else. The current of the water was
[11:00] actually going the opposite way that day, meaning that it
[11:03] wouldn't have carried her there anywhere.
[11:05] And this leads some people to theorize that maybe Lauren was
[11:08] killed and then taken to that curve intentionally, which is a
[11:12] theory that we'll talk about later.
[11:14] So the two policemen, Dina and Harry Elder, all went back out
[11:18] to the body, Dina and Harry showing these policemen where it
[11:21] was. And at this point, those four
[11:23] people were the only people that knew that there was a body in
[11:26] the water. But before they could even get
[11:28] to Lauren's body, they actually encountered a man paddling in a
[11:32] canoe in the same direction that they were going towards the
[11:35] body. And so they told him to stop and
[11:37] turn around and go away, to which this man told police.
[11:40] But that could be one of our friends over there.
[11:43] This man in the canoe turned out to be Aaron Lilly, Hannah
[11:46] Palmer's boyfriend. But like I said, those two
[11:49] policemen and the two fishermen, Harry and Dina, were the only
[11:53] people that knew that there was a body.
[11:54] This hadn't been broadcasted to the festival.
[11:57] It wasn't public news yet. The police hadn't even seen the
[12:00] body yet, so how did Aaron know that there was a body over
[12:04] there? First of all, how did he know
[12:05] there was a body there? But presuming that he did
[12:07] somehow know, maybe someone told him on land, maybe someone else
[12:10] knew, maybe someone had seen it. Why did he assume that it was
[12:14] Lauren? And why was he trying to get to
[12:16] it before police? So Lauren's body was removed
[12:19] from the water and taken for an autopsy.
[12:21] And this is where things just get even more suspicious.
[12:25] There were marks on the top of her back and on her shoulders
[12:29] from kind of bruising, very early bruising where it's kind
[12:32] of bloody. It looks like blood underneath
[12:34] the skin. But not only that, not only on
[12:36] her back and shoulders, there also seem to be some of this
[12:39] blood bruising on Lauren's breast in the shape of a bite
[12:43] mark. But this bite mark, and this is
[12:45] a little bit strange, wasn't like vertical how you would
[12:48] imagine a bite mark if someone was being sexually assaulted.
[12:52] This bite mark had actually been done sideways, so as if someone
[12:56] had kind of reached over her body and bit her.
[12:58] And because of this kind of bite shaped looking mark, the police
[13:02] that recovered her body suggested to the police that
[13:05] took it for all tops say that maybe they should do a rape kit
[13:08] because a bite mark on the breast is a common sign of rape.
[13:13] But no rape kit was ever done on Lauren AG.
[13:16] No swabs were taken, no DNA tests, anything like that was
[13:20] ever done on her despite having a mark on her breast that looked
[13:25] like a bite mark. So the reason that police gave
[13:27] for not doing the rape kit on Lauren at the time was because
[13:31] she was wearing a tampon. And if she's wearing a tampon,
[13:33] she can't possibly have been sexually assaulted, which is
[13:37] just not true. A rapist is probably not going
[13:39] to care if she's on a period or not, which she actually wasn't
[13:43] at the time. And that's another weird thing.
[13:45] Yes, she could have been wearing the tampon as more of like a
[13:47] preventative measure because she was at a water sports festival.
[13:51] It's better to be safe and wear one rather than come on while
[13:54] you're doing all these sports and whatever.
[13:56] Oh, I've read the theory that it could possibly be a decoy from a
[14:01] rapist. They could have possibly put it
[14:03] there so that police would think exactly what they thought.
[14:06] She wasn't sexually assaulted because she's wearing a tampon.
[14:09] And this gets even more believable when you find out
[14:11] that the clothes that Lauren was found in actually weren't hers.
[14:16] Her mother, Sherry, had never seen those clothes before.
[14:18] And she also didn't look as if she'd dressed herself.
[14:22] So, for example, her bra or whoever's bra she was wearing, I
[14:25] don't even think that was Lauren's.
[14:27] The strap on the bra that she was wearing was all tangled up.
[14:30] And if you wear bras, you know how uncomfortable that is.
[14:33] If you strap is tangled, you fixing it straight away.
[14:35] You don't walk around uncomfortable like that all day.
[14:38] So surely Lauren would have fixed it if she would have
[14:40] dressed herself but also the clasps on the back of her bra.
[14:44] So she had three clasps. Only the top one was actually
[14:48] fixed. The other two were wide open.
[14:50] And if you're going out drinking and doing water sports and
[14:52] stuff, you want to make sure that your brow's not going to
[14:55] come off. Of course, she would have
[14:56] fastened all three clasps. So one of the theories I saw is
[15:00] that maybe someone dressed her in someone else's clothes and
[15:03] put a tampon in, all to make it look like she hadn't been
[15:07] sexually assaulted. Did however do a blood test on
[15:16] Lauren Agee and found that her blood alcohol level was twice
[15:20] the legal limit, which is expected.
[15:22] She was at a festival where everyone was drinking at night,
[15:25] and a common misconception of this case is that there were
[15:28] drugs going around the festival. There were drugs going around
[15:31] the festival and around Lauren's camp, but in her system there
[15:34] were no drugs. So she was just on alcohol and
[15:37] she wasn't drinking that much. Like yes, she was two times over
[15:42] the legal limit. She was clearly drunk, but she
[15:44] wasn't and blackout drunk. She could handle her alcohol
[15:47] well, according to her friends. However, when Lauren's body was
[15:51] looked over by proper pathologists during the autopsy,
[15:54] they concluded that the marks on her back, her shoulders, and
[15:57] even the mark on her breast that looked like a bite mark were
[16:00] actually not from foul play. They believed that these marks
[16:04] were consistent with her maybe falling from the ledge and
[16:07] hitting herself on these rocks on the way down.
[16:10] They didn't think that anyone had done this to her.
[16:13] There was also some crushing to Lauren Agee's throat, which a
[16:17] lot of people think could have been from strangulation before
[16:20] her fall. However, pathologists do believe
[16:23] that maybe she just fell on a rock on her throat.
[16:26] Of course, all of this that I'm saying is down to your
[16:29] interpretation. Whether you believe that the
[16:31] pathologists are correct or not is a completely different thing.
[16:34] Come to your own conclusion. I'm just kind of giving you all
[16:37] the information for you to make your own decision.
[16:39] And as well, with this crushing on her throat, there wasn't
[16:42] enough done for that to be her cause of death, death anyway.
[16:45] That's fact. Her cause of death was not from
[16:49] the crushing to her throat. But a lot of people think that
[16:51] maybe that was a part of maybe the sexual assault, if there was
[16:55] 1. Lauren did also have like
[16:57] scratches and scrapes on her knees and elbows and stuff like
[17:00] that, which would have been consistent with her falling down
[17:03] this ledge to her death. Although again, a lot of people
[17:06] say that despite her having some scrapes and scratches, a lot of
[17:11] people say that she had nowhere near enough to say that she fell
[17:15] down because the side of this ledge was very rocky.
[17:18] It was a 90 feet drop. It was very rocky.
[17:21] It had twigs and trees and rocks.
[17:23] A lot of people believe that if she had fallen and tumbled down
[17:27] the edge, she would have had a lot more visible kind of scrapes
[17:30] and stuff on her. Lauren also had some other
[17:33] injuries including a broken nose and broken fingers, which yes,
[17:37] she could have done as she fell down the side of this ledge, but
[17:41] she also could have done them trying to fight off an attacker.
[17:44] And something else that backs up the theory that there was an
[17:46] attacker is that Lauren was found with two huge bruises on
[17:50] her thighs. And the family private
[17:52] investigator believes that maybe these bruises came from maybe
[17:55] someone kneeling on Lauren's legs to try and pin her down,
[17:59] possibly during a sexual assault.
[18:02] So Lauren AG's cause of death was officially ruled as
[18:06] accidental by drowning, although obviously that isn't widely
[18:10] believed, otherwise I wouldn't be sat here doing this video on
[18:13] it. A lot of people don't believe
[18:14] that Lauren drowned and a lot of people don't believe that it was
[18:17] accidental. A lot of people believe that
[18:20] this is a homicide. So the first piece of evidence,
[18:23] and I say evidence lightly, as to why people think that Lauren
[18:26] didn't drown to death is because her body was found floating and
[18:31] people that drown don't float. As the person is gasping for
[18:35] air, their lungs begin to fill with water and the person sinks.
[18:39] Normally that doesn't happen in every single drowning case,
[18:42] although it is most. That is our first red flag, and
[18:46] the fact that Lauren's lungs weren't filled with water
[18:49] suggests that she wasn't gasping for air and that maybe she was
[18:53] killed before she hit the water. Another concerning thing that
[18:57] was found in Lauren's autopsy was a mark on her stomach in the
[19:01] shape of a triangle, and many people have pointed out that
[19:04] this triangle seems to eerily line up to the edge of a canoe,
[19:10] although that does have a couple of floors.
[19:13] Not floors exactly, but it would suggest that Lauren was half in,
[19:17] half out of the canoe. So like her head was inside the
[19:21] canoe, but her legs and the rest of her body were outside.
[19:25] And although Lauren wasn't heavy, she was 105 lbs, it would
[19:29] still cause tipping. That is a whole other human
[19:32] being right on the edge of the canoe.
[19:33] So unless there were two other people in that canoe with
[19:36] Lauren, one right on the other edge to kind of balance it out,
[19:39] and then one person paddling in the middle, the boat would have
[19:43] tipped. And Lawrence family and private
[19:45] investigators have done over 50 test drops with dummies that
[19:50] were the same high weight shape as Lauren.
[19:52] And they've dropped these dummies off of different points
[19:55] on this ledge where Lauren was camping.
[19:57] And none of them reached the water below.
[20:00] They all kind of landed on ledges or on rocks or anything.
[20:03] None of them actually went into the water to be able to be like
[20:07] moved to that curve where Lauren was found.
[20:10] But who, if anyone, did this to Lauren, if this was a homicide
[20:15] and. And I'm sure you can guess who
[20:16] our main 3 suspects are, Hannah Palmer, Aaron Lilly and Chris
[20:20] Stout. They were never suspects in the
[20:23] eyes of the law because in the eyes of the law, this was never
[20:26] a suspicious death. It was very quickly ruled as
[20:28] accidental drowning. They were questioned right after
[20:31] Lauren's body was found just to kind of get a bit more
[20:33] information about who Lauren was, how she maybe fell to her
[20:36] death. But they were never questioned
[20:39] as suspects. And all three of them weren't
[20:41] shy with offering up any theories that they might have in
[20:44] this case. So Hannah told police that she
[20:47] saw Lauren with an older man that night on a boat, So maybe
[20:50] he had something to do with it. Aaron told police that he
[20:53] believed that Lauren was going to speak to one of her ex
[20:56] boyfriends that night. And then Hannah changed her
[20:58] story and said she thought that maybe Lauren fell down as she
[21:02] was going to the bathroom on the side of the kind of piece of
[21:05] land. Because obviously it was all out
[21:07] in the open. There were no toilets.
[21:08] So the way that they would go to the toilet is by kind of holding
[21:11] onto a tree and leaning backwards.
[21:14] And so Hannah said that maybe she fell while she was doing
[21:16] that. And just a side note, the
[21:17] bathroom theory has been completely discounted.
[21:20] The area where Hannah said that they would all go to the
[21:23] bathroom where they would all hold onto this tree and like
[21:25] lean back, they've thrown dummies off of there and none of
[21:28] them have landed in the water. They've all kind of landed on a
[21:31] ledge a bit lower down South. Had Lauren fallen while she was
[21:35] going to the bathroom, she would have still survived.
[21:37] She would have had a lot of injuries, but she wouldn't have
[21:40] fallen to the water. But my point is that the group
[21:43] were trying to come up with as many theories as they possibly
[21:46] could as to how Lauren died, but by doing that they just made
[21:50] themselves look even more suspicious since their stories
[21:52] kept changing over and over again.
[21:54] Like Hannah said she saw her with an older man and said maybe
[21:57] you should look into that older man, maybe he did something.
[22:00] And then she suddenly changed her story and she was crying
[22:03] saying, well, she probably went to the toilet.
[22:05] She probably fell down the hill. Like there is such a lack of
[22:08] consistency in their accounts. And once Aaron and Chris
[22:11] returned to the festival, which by the way, all three of them
[22:14] completely returned to Wakefest, fine, for the next two days,
[22:18] they just carried on partying as they were when Lauren was there.
[22:21] It was as if their friend hadn't just died, like they just didn't
[22:25] care. Anyway, when Aaron and Chris
[22:26] returned to the campsite, witnesses up on that ledge
[22:29] recalled there being a campfire lit, which of course could have
[22:33] just been a campfire because that's what people do when they
[22:36] camp. They like campfires, but often
[22:39] in true crime cases, people like campfires to dispose of things
[22:43] that they don't want other people to find out about.
[22:47] But of course, there's no way of telling whose campfire this was
[22:50] or what the intentions with it were on their way to the first
[22:53] questioning, however. So police had to come over to
[22:56] this ledge where Aaron and Chris and that were to be able to pick
[22:59] them up to take them for questioning.
[23:01] So the first two people taken for questioning were Aaron Lilly
[23:04] and Chris Stout, and the person driving this boat back to the
[23:07] police station said he heard a lot of suspicious things from
[23:11] Aaron and Chris. Aaron Lilly allegedly said to
[23:14] Chris Stout in the back of this boat, he told him to shut up and
[23:17] that he would tell police everything.
[23:19] And he told Chris not to say a single word.
[23:21] Later on, Chris made multiple comments about how he wanted to
[23:25] get off of that boat. He also said to Aaron a few
[23:28] times that he would have to get the gun off of the police
[23:31] officer that was driving the boat.
[23:32] He could hear them the whole time.
[23:34] Chris was saying that he was going to try and get off the
[23:36] boat, but he would have to steal the police officer's gun 1st and
[23:39] then get off the boat. Obviously he never tried, but he
[23:43] was saying all of that to Aaron. So months after Lauren's death
[23:46] was officially ruled an accident, her family wanted to
[23:49] look into it with private investigators because they
[23:51] believed there was so much more to this than what police were
[23:55] saying there was. So private investigators began
[23:58] questioning people that knew the three friends, people that knew
[24:01] Hannah, Aaron and Chris. So if you remember Cassie Franks
[24:05] that that Lauren went up to and asked if she could stay with
[24:07] that night. Cassie just so happened to be
[24:10] Aaron, Lily's ex-girlfriend and so she was questioned.
[24:14] Cassie told police that Aaron was a very violent individual
[24:19] and he had abused her during their relationship.
[24:21] He'd been very aggressive, very violent and that was actually
[24:24] the reason that they eventually broke up.
[24:26] She also showed police a bunch of pictures of her injuries that
[24:30] she received during that relationship, and these included
[24:33] bruises and bite marks, which if you believe that that mark on
[24:37] Lauren's breast was a bite mark, that is a possible link to say
[24:41] that maybe Aaron did both. But like I said earlier, that
[24:44] mark on Lauren's breast is officially considered to be from
[24:48] her falling. But whether you believe that or
[24:50] not is up to you. Another person questioned was
[24:52] Lauren's friend Jade, who wasn't actually in attendance at
[24:55] Workfest at the time. She was at home texting Lauren.
[24:59] And on that night, Lauren texted Jade multiple times saying she
[25:02] wasn't having fun, she wanted to go home, and she even had asked
[25:05] Jade to come and pick her up. Jade said no because it was very
[25:08] late, it was very dark, and she didn't really know her way to
[25:11] work first. It had a lot of windy roads, so
[25:13] understandably she didn't want to come and pick her up.
[25:16] And Hannah Palmer actually told police in her initial
[25:19] questioning that Lauren was debating dragging herself home
[25:23] drunk that night because she just didn't want to be there.
[25:25] She didn't want to be at work first.
[25:27] And because of this, Hannah, Aaron, and Chris took Lauren's
[25:30] car keys from her. Well, that's why they claimed
[25:33] they took her car keys from her for her own sake.
[25:35] However, Lauren had told multiple people at Wakefest that
[25:39] the reason she wanted to leave was because the group were being
[25:42] mean to her. So I don't know if they took the
[25:44] car keys as part of teasing Lauren, whether Lauren was
[25:47] actually going to drive herself home drunk that night, or
[25:49] whether they just took the keys as part of teasing her as part
[25:53] of trying to annoy her and then claimed they did that because
[25:55] she said she was going to drive home drunk.
[25:57] There is no kind of concrete proof that Lauren was going to
[26:00] drive herself home that night, only Hannah's word.
[26:03] And obviously, Hannah is one of the more questionable people in
[26:06] this video. And the fact that Lauren asked
[26:09] multiple other people to take her home first proves that she
[26:12] knew that she couldn't drive herself.
[26:14] She knew that someone else would have to drive her.
[26:16] Or maybe on the other side of things, maybe Lauren was drunk.
[26:19] Maybe she was threatening to drive herself home and they took
[26:22] her keys off her for her own safety.
[26:24] And then Lauren maybe in this drunk state of mind, maybe she
[26:27] thought that they were just being mean to her, that they
[26:29] weren't letting her drive home even though it was for her own
[26:31] safety. Another person that was
[26:33] interviewed by private investigators actually has no
[26:36] connection to the group at all. He was just another person that
[26:39] happened to be there that night who believes he saw something
[26:42] suspicious. This man was named Chris Brown.
[26:45] He was staying at the lake with his family, his wife and kids,
[26:49] so he wasn't in attendance at Wakefest.
[26:51] He just happened to be staying by that same body of water where
[26:55] Wakefest was. He said at midnight on the night
[26:58] of Lauren's death, he was outside on the dock when he saw
[27:01] a man swimming towards him. Chris Brown's exact quote was I
[27:05] saw or a young man climb up on the dock.
[27:07] The young man appeared extremely distraught and worn out.
[27:10] He was fitting up water for several minutes.
[27:12] The young man told me that he almost drowned when he swam back
[27:15] from the camping ledge to the dock.
[27:17] And this young man that Chris Brown believes he saw was Aaron
[27:21] Lily. Partly because of his physical
[27:23] appearance, obviously, but also because of the swimming shorts
[27:27] that he was wearing that night. A rather common pair of swimming
[27:30] shorts, admittedly. But Aaron Lily was seen that day
[27:33] at Workfest wearing kneeling 10th American flag print shorts,
[27:38] and these were also the shorts that the man swimming towards
[27:40] the dock was wearing. Although Chris Brown's account
[27:43] isn't widely believed, some people believe it, some people
[27:46] don't because of time differences.
[27:49] Chris says that this all took place at midnight, whereas other
[27:52] people claim that they saw all four of them with Lauren still
[27:55] alive at 2:00 AM. OK, so just before I kind of
[27:59] round this case off, I just want to give you a couple of little
[28:01] facts about those three friends Hannah, Aaron and Chris.
[28:04] Like I said, they carried on at the festival completely fine for
[28:08] two more days after Lauren died and after the festival when they
[28:12] got home, Chris posted a photo from Wakefest on Instagram with
[28:16] the caption best weekend ever. Also, none of the three of them
[28:21] attended Lauren ages funeral. None of them, not even Hannah,
[28:25] who was a long term friend of Lauren's.
[28:27] And despite all three of them being the last people to ever
[28:30] spend time with her, none of them went.
[28:32] And a couple of months after Lauren's death, Aaron and Hannah
[28:35] moved in together. They moved to Florida, got a
[28:38] house together, whatever. And around that same time, a lot
[28:41] of meme comments started arising online, both about Lauren, about
[28:46] her death, the circumstances surrounding her death.
[28:49] A lot of untrue statements were surfacing online.
[28:52] And so the family's private investigator tracked down the IP
[28:55] address that was posting these things online and it tracked
[28:59] back to the exact same St. where Hannah and Aaron now live in
[29:04] Florida. So I'll let you decide if that
[29:07] is a coincidence or not. So right now, Lauren's case is
[29:10] closed. It is officially believed to be
[29:12] an accident. Lauren is believed to have
[29:14] fallen from that ledge and drowned that night, although
[29:18] obviously her family believe otherwise.
[29:20] And I really, really do hope that they reopen this case
[29:22] because it is far too suspicious for it to just have been ruled
[29:26] an accident so quickly as well. Like it's barely even like they
[29:30] looked over any evidence. They were just like, Yep, she
[29:32] drowned. That's that's enough.
[29:37] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[29:39] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[29:42] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[29:45] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[29:48] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[29:57] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[29:59] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[30:03] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[30:06] See you next time.

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