Episode 363

26:26My husband was in the garage with her. She was fine. Okay, so nothing, she wasn't acting super crazy or upset, anything that would make you concerned that something like this was going to happen? No. Rick said in the garage she seemed perfectly normal. Thank him, calm. I mean, no idea where she got it done, when. Jenny said Mia was fine. But fine can actually be a complicated word. Fine for the moment, fine for the hour. What exactly does fine mean? Are you fine? Am I fine? I don't know. Because only weeks earlier, Mia definitely didn't seem fine. I know she's at times heard voices. That was kind of new to me three weeks ago.

27:15Whether that was happening in the last few days, I don't know. If they had a run in, I have no idea. So... You say Mia's been hearing voices? I don't know. A couple weeks ago she was, and she went into the hospital to get her meds fixed around.

27:36And she came out, but she's always been very docile around us. Aunt Jenny's call gave investigators the only version of Mia she knew. Calm enough to move her things, familiar enough with the family to sound docile, but unstable enough that she had recently checked herself into a hospital due to hearing voices. Then another witness came forward. This was someone with no family history, no context, and no reason to read danger into what she saw. But danger isn't what grabbed her attention. Something else did. My husband and I were at the old St. George temple. We just finished some ceilings and we were coming down to the first floor.

28:24And when you enter that temple, before you go to the front desk, to the left there's a, they call it a family room, like a waiting room in there. Okay. And so when we were coming out, that girl came out of the family waiting room and was starting to exit the temple. Okay. And I was behind her, and when I first saw her, I thought, oh, my gosh. She had this skirt on that was about, like, four inches above her knee, and it was, like, shooting out like a ballerina skirt, you know? Okay. But she had tall cowgirl boots on at the same time. It just got my attention. You know, I thought, okay. But I thought, it's probably a family member that's waiting.

29:16You know, maybe somebody got married or something. And so as we exited the temple, this thought came to my mind, show her the love of the Savior. Right. And because it's somebody's daughter, you want them to know, you know, they're different. with it. So I said, Hey, young lady, I love those cowgirl boots. I had a ranch for 30 years and I noticed any really cute cowgirl boots always. And she turned around and she said, why, thank you. I said, but I have to admit I'm older now and I can't wear what We used to call, and I said the letter S, S-kickers, because it kills my toes. It was the kind of trivial conversation that people forget five minutes later.

30:09A compliment. A quick laugh. Nothing that sounded like a warning. Nothing that sounded like someone was about to snap, about to flip out, and destroy the lives closest to them in a matter of hours. until she realized that what she was seeing wasn't really what she was seeing. So she raised her leg to show me, you know, it just had a little tiny square at the end of these white boots. And she says, well, you just have to learn to get them to fit a certain way. And when she did that, in my mind, I thought, this is Guy. Oh. Right then I knew, with hairy legs and Guy's legs. And, you know, she was taller than me.

31:01I'm five foot eight. She was taller. And then I just realized her voice. I mean, it wasn't like a low voice, but it was different. Okay. And anyway, I said, well, they are really cute boots. And so we started walking. I said, well, you have enjoyed this beautiful day because it was cooler that day. Right. I said, enjoy this beautiful day. They both went their separate ways, and this lady thought nothing of it until she turned on the news that night and saw a manhunt. Or should I say a womanhunt? That sounds stupid. He told me that I should call and let you guys know what happened when I talked to that guy, which I thought was a girl.

31:58It was Tuesday around 3 p.m. My son-in-law also told me you should remain anonymous because you don't ever want that guy to have your name. Okay. Back in the field, negotiators keep Mia talking. The conversation goes on for almost an hour. She asks for a prosecutor and talks about wanting the death penalty. She asks what kind of deal can be made. But eventually, the lead detective gets her to agree to a surrender plan. Mia puts the gun down, keeps her hands visible, and walks towards the tactical team. Officers take her into custody, and no one else is hurt. Mia finally gets the conversation she's been asking for.

32:48She is taken to an interview room with detectives and a prosecutor to explain. I'm not so much curious as far as what happened, but I'm kind of curious what led up to it. Well, let's see. a whole bunch of backlash of the community. I can't go anywhere. I can't go on walks without people saying trap to Heartbreaker to a bunch of nasty other stuff. Mia, born Colin Bailey, was obviously leaving out the kindness of the woman from the St. George Temple, who complimented her boots and treated Mia like the woman she wanted to be. Let's see, uh, being homeless after my family's abuse several times. Okay.

33:44Uh, being 20 grand dead. What does that come from? Well, it comes from our loans, because my brother's list comes from credit cards. it's expensive to be a single woman and trans atop of that. So what kind of expenses, like you said, I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but what kind of expenses do you have doing that? Well, it's like$512 a month just doing the trial stuff, so that's like getting laser treatments and medication. It was getting expensive, being the woman she wanted to be, that is. Laser treatments for hair removal, hormone replacement therapy, who knows what else. As for homelessness, Mia's cousin kicked her out because he was afraid she was crazy.

34:40She made an allegation saying a neighbor pointed a gun at her. Emotions apparently escalated and Mia said her cousin just didn't understand. That allegation, by the way, wasn't verified. We brought in Dr. Stephen Levine, a psychiatrist in the Cleveland, Ohio area, to talk about gender dysphoria, mental illness, and surgery as a last hope. Dr. Levine is also a professor at Case Western University. He's known for his thesis that gender dysphoria is usually caused by psychological issues that should be treated as such, rather than with gender-affirming care. Dr. Levine was among the earliest in his field to recognize the need for research in this area.

35:25In 1974, he co-founded a gender identity clinic through Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine. Dr. Levine has obviously had a lot of pushback given his research in the field and his unwillingness to bend to the current politics surrounding this ever-changing issue. The social cultural shift has to do with the human need to reinterpret how to live one's life, how to combine the male and female interests that all of us have into a way of being a man and woman. So we are redefining the ways of being a man and woman. But the Internet has led to a lot of young people who are having distress in their lives, thinking that the problem, the cause of their distress is not the ordinary psychiatric causes of distress, of family dysfunction and personal difficulties.

36:26but it's due to the fact that they didn't understand that they were a trans person. And some authority figure, some process on the internet seems to have influenced young people dramatically into thinking that maybe they're trans. And so adolescents are now experimenting a great deal with differences in orientation and differences in gender expression. When someone is already depressed, isolated, autistic, suicidal, or desperate, the internet can sometimes hand them a simple answer. This is why you hurt. You are trans. But for Levine, this is not the same as a stable transgender person living an ordinary life.

37:17That person, he says, is not a psychiatric patient. The real concern is when the identity is tied to serious suffering. When the person isn't just saying, this is who I am, but I can't survive unless my body changes. Mia was a perfect example of someone who not only had pre-existing mental health conditions, but her desperation became dangerous. And the detective wanted to know how she got to that point. What led up to it was, well, I got a call from my social worker from the hospital. And I could apparently kind of broken hip up in a way. They shared the details of the hospital, but the worst one was all was my mother contacting them to say no on the surgery.

38:15And, well... So your mother contacted the hospital? Yep. and so I know I can probably appeal it with just if that, but she wouldn't. Just say I was very furious and I asked her, I don't want to hear her explain, you know, the excuses. I want to hear, you know, my explanation and I'm sorry and I'll do something about it. Okay. Anyway,

38:42she can't say sorry to save her life, apparently. Whether Mia meant it this way or not, this was a literal statement. Her resentment was palpable. Her mother was dead by Mia's own hand. Because her mother wouldn't say, sorry? Mia felt like she was holding on by a thread. During the standoff, she repeatedly shouted, this was my last hope, meaning the final surgery to remove her male genitalia. And she placed all the blame on her parents, especially her mother. So you might be thinking, oh, those mean parents, that unwoke mom who ruined her child's life. But according to everyone except Mia, the family was as supportive as they could be.

39:31The surgery was canceled, but our impression was that it was not canceled because her parents were simply not supportive of her transitioning or her being transgender or how she chose to identify, but because they were concerned more broadly about her mental health. From what I understood, her family was very supportive of her and her decision to transition. And she also struggled with other diagnoses. and I'm not a medical expert, so I don't want to get into those, but I believe that they were supportive of her in those as well. There was a prior protective order where I think the family just at one point just had to act to protect themselves because they felt that she was a danger and a threat to them, but I think that was a last resort.

40:29I do think they tried to support her as much as they could. Mia didn't just suffer from gender dysphoria. She had a host of other mental health disorders and diagnoses, ranging from ADHD to autism to potential schizophrenia. So her parents didn't feel like it was wise to go ahead with such a serious and life-altering surgery. Because the fact was, this was not going to cure her mental illness. And it may just make it worse. Dr. Levine says this is often the danger. When somebody is already carrying serious depression, anxiety, instability, or other psychiatric issues, surgery might change the body without touching the deeper source of suffering.

41:17His evidence comes from a recent Finnish study, if you want to look that up. So we have some evidence that even the permanent care for the vast majority of people, two-thirds in this case, do not solve their unhappiness. You see, the unhappiness is usually presented as suicidality, depression, anxiety, sometimes drug addiction, sometimes suicidal thoughts. So we realize that among the majority of people who are seeking a trans solution to their unhappiness, the majority of those people may still be unhappy after they make all these changes to their body. And so people like me are saying to people before they have these kind of medical interventions, let's pay attention to what is troubling you.

42:14What is the source of your depression, anxiety, your eating disorders, whatever, whatever the situation is. And let's pay attention to that. You're in charge of your gender, not me. I'm not trying to change your gender. What I'm trying to do is improve your mental health. And that doesn't have to do with gender, it has to do with his overwhelmed symptoms of self-harm, suicidality, repression, anxiety, eating disorders, and sometimes the drug dependence. For Mia, every aspect of her mental suffering was blamed on being in the wrong body. But you know that old chicken and egg analogy, which came first?

42:56Mia thought that everyone was against her. Her parents didn't support her, and she was bullied by the community at large. I would say that Mia probably subjectively felt bullied and harassed, but I couldn't, and I don't have all the facts, I don't know her life story. From what I observed, I don't know that the objective harassment was to the degree that maybe she believed. Dr. Levine says there's another layer to all of this. Beyond diagnosis, beyond treatment, there is the social question. How do the people around someone respond when that person's identity changes? We gave him an analogy. Is it like an agitated schizophrenic, for example, who might try to convince you that you're under immediate attack based on his own delusion?

43:51Do you go along with it just to be safe? And is it kindness to use the name and pronoun someone wants you to use? Or is it an obligation? And what happens when people feel pushed to accept something they don't believe is true? That's a political question. That's a self-managed question. If I think I am some other gender, some atypical gender, and I prefer to be called they rather than he or she, do I have the right to impose upon you my sense of reality that I'm a they? even though you who don't have gender dysphoria or trans identity, you have learned all the days in your life that they is a plural and this is a senior person and that's the wrong language.

44:47So the question is, if I consider myself to be something that offends your sense of reality, Do I have a right to demand that you conform to my sense of reality? And so that's the social debate that's going on. The only thing I could say about that is that when one transitions, either in a binary or non-binary fashion, your sense of reality is different than the common person. and so this is the price that one pays for being a trans or either a gender diverse person, we can use that phrase, the price that these people have to pay is that their sense of reality is different than the majority of human beings that they interact with.

45:45Mia was upset because her surgery had been scheduled for September 9th and she managed to move it up to July 9th. That would have been two weeks from the time of the murders. But remember, Mia had just checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. She knew she wasn't stable. But in the interview, Mia was vague about the hospitalization. She claimed it was more or less a prerequisite that her mom had made for them to feel okay about her getting the surgery. Mia reluctantly agreed to that, and to some therapy. If, and only if, her parents would help her go through with the sex change. But something went wrong.

46:30The hospital only kept her for three days. Beyond admitting ADHD and autism, she was vague about her other issues, like psychosis. Have you been diagnosed with schizophrenia? No, that's what I was going to the hospital for. So is there any mental illness diagnosis you'd never have anything to like full on diagnose with? One was like, they were diagnosed, but I knew what it saw that day. The guys were in there. Nobody said, but nobody believed me. I can't remember. It's something to do with like seeing auditory illusions. Oh, gotcha. Like hallucinations or something like that? Yeah, something like that.

47:13It's not quite, you know, schizophrenia. Okay. So, some form of psychosis. Regardless, one topic the detective wanted to clear up was premeditation. You could tell in the interview that Mia was pretty lucid. That has to do with being oriented to person, place, and time. Do they know who they are? Do they know where they are? And do they know what time it is? Mia seemed very oriented and grounded. She knew exactly what she did and why. If you could go back to yesterday, would you change the outcome with your mom and dad? I don't think there's any way of changing their minds, so no. If they change their mind, which I know they're not because they're so narcissistic, I mean, it would be played out completely differently.

48:08their answer was on them they had their chance when they changed their answer to no that was pretty much solidified their outcome at least in your mind yeah and you know basically it's no we won't do anything about it no we won't apologize even and all this stuff so I mean this was like my one last attempt after so many times but I tried I mean I gave them so many chances all my family, my friends and I can't even count and I just did it to myself. I just, you know, destroyed myself by giving them too many chances and that was enough. Did you say anything to your mom when you walked in? No. That was actually a question I had because if you if that was, so if you walked through the door to see your mom there was no option for her to be to say, okay, yeah, I'll change my mind.

49:06No, because I knew if I knew if I hesitated and we went to sleep, I would have done it. And then I'd just regret my life more and more and more, get more angrier, and then it wouldn't be just my mom and dad. So that decision was made to not have any conversation when you walked through the door? No, that was a decision made to kill. Yeah, my decision was done. I'm done with this crap. Yeah, that makes sense. Are you seeing a pattern yet? Mia's parents were the narcissists, not her. She gave them every chance. Except the one that mattered most, of course. The one that might have kept her from pulling the trigger on them.

49:48The detective asked, Did your mom have any last words? The answer was no. Because Mia didn't give her a chance. And the next thing she remembered was her dad walking down the hall towards the living room. asking what was going on. So, she took him out, too. It was all about Mia, and all about what Mia wanted. And she had absolutely no remorse. And so I just want to clarify as far as any remorse that you have. Well, the remorse was I didn't want to become the monster that they made me to be. I really wanted to be good. I really didn't. Yeah. But like I said, that was a last resort, a last draw.

50:44She says, I didn't want to become the monster they made me to be. It goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway, because I'm Mike. Hi, nice to meet you. No one can make you a monster. You see, there's this thing called choices. It's part of a greater thing called personal responsibility. Should I send that out for you libtards out there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, leave it in the comments, try to get me banned, whatever, fuck off. But if you're honest with yourself about the very obvious pattern we keep seeing over and over again, a pattern of always looking outwards, blaming others whenever anything goes wrong, Mia's only remorseful feelings were still about what others had done to her.

51:39They made her into a monster, and she regretted that. Which, by the way, I'd hate to be one of those trans surgeons who now has a perpetual target on their back because they made non-reversible changes to multiple human beings, many of which are unstable and have a perspective of blaming outwards? Some of them might change their mind in a few years and fuck around and find out, I guess. At another point when Mia was questioned again about whether there was anything else they should know, she turned the whole conversation on its head. I can tell you what, I could have done a lot better and I knew all of it ahead of time, but it still wouldn't have got better.

52:21I could have put a silencer on it. I could have cleaned the rounds. So is that gun allowed for a sancer? Yeah, you put a threaded barrel on it, yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. And I could have, you know, like I said, cleaned the rounds, picked up the rounds. I could tell you how I skipped you guys' geese all last night. Yeah. Three helicopters. I would be more than happy to have how you dodged our canine guy last night. in that subdivision by where the golf course is. Not to state the obvious or anything, but she's laughing. I mean, he's laughing. Sorry, Mia, you don't deserve my respect. Yeah. So when you passed over that wall last night.

53:10Bush is hopping over fences, and then it's taking breaks, and then there's his endurance. Yeah. And then you've got to watch the helicopters and they're on all that stuff. So they're waiting for backup. so it's it's taking on the main route you're taking a bunch of different routes off-road all the time sometimes main road just stay fun where you're at and then off-road again and hopping through i am so sorry to all the people on plants probably destroyed on accident or rocks yeah i was like i'm sorry i don't want to be here for a moment more i don't want anything yours are or you know and it's like i apologize but uh drops up there won't leave me quite yet and then the reason you guys caught me is because it's daytime and um i saw your guys's drums up there but the people there yeah and uh i was gonna wait till night time and then go to uh I cry to do that fun dance again, and then I get to squirt into my house to give me one bullet.

54:22Nothing like having a chuckle with police about hiding from helicopters after you've murdered your parents. What a cunt. Mia said the surgery was her last hope, and that was taken from her. She said she was trying to get one more bullet to use on herself. But in the standoff, she already had options. She was the one holding the gun. She had armed officers around her. She had already talked about the death penalty and specified wanting a firing squad. But according to the police summary about the negotiation, Mia also said she could have killed herself and didn't. Because then they would have won.

55:06Instead, she wanted to take everyone down with her. And when detectives asked if there was anything else they should know, Mia didn't talk about mom or dad. She talked about how much better she could have done it. Remorse shows up in the interview, but it never seems to land on her parents. She shows more concern for strangers who passed by, for damage that she may have caused to shrubbery, for the mechanics of the chase, anything other than her own family. in her interview when she started to talk about how she was able to evade the police for so long. So she was not remorseful. She was bragging about how well her plan worked.

55:55And that was very telling and something we definitely considered when we discussed whether or not we should seek the death penalty. Before prosecutors could decide whether to seek death, there were other voices they had to hear. Gail and Joseph Bailey were gone. One son barely escaped. And the rest of the Bailey sons still had to decide what they wanted the state to do with their youngest brother, Colin, the one who had murdered their parents because he wanted to be a woman. The End

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57:2828-year-old Colin Bailey, the youngest of four boys, believed he was special. Not special like artistically gifted or mathematically brilliant. Special like, I was born with a dick, and I think I should have a vagina, and that's my whole personality. Colin legally changed his name to Mia to match what he thought his gender should be. Mia was newly homeless, living in storage units, relatives' houses, and hotel rooms in Washington County, Utah. On June 18, 2024, she intruded into her parents' home in Washington City, despite a restraining order against her. She gave no opportunity for discussion.

58:11She pulled out her 9mm and opened fire. When she heard noises in the basement, she shot at her brother and sister-in-law through a locked door. She then went back upstairs to finish off her dying mother. Her father was already dead. So when you walked through, she sat in the chair, and you fired the first round at her. Her gun and she moved up. Oh, she got up from the chair? Yeah. So then you shot her, and then as far as that, how did you approach your mom from that point? I just shot her, and then I saw my dad, and he came out, and I shot her. So you were basically just moving along and shooting at your mom until she went down, and then your dad comes out?

58:53Yeah, and I go downstairs, shoot one round, and I go down because I was going to do my brother interfering, and go back upstairs and do one more round on dad just in case. mom gets shot a bunch I do remember actually coming up just in case because I heard her like bleeding quite a bit like choking so I meant to shoot her again do you remember standing up close to her do you remember it was about six feet away so never any closer than six feet no about them okay and then dad comes around what's up what's going on yep and I ran his head and it was instant and he just fell backwards. Okay, so you shot him and then, so just one round with that?

59:38Yeah, and then I... And then you went downstairs? Shot one round down there. Do you remember where you shot that round downstairs? Middle, that top door. Middle of the door? Yeah, a little bit middle, but lower towards the left. Okay, was the door closed? It was, it was locked. Could you hear him inside? Yeah, he barged the door and stuff and I just like, fuck him. He's not my main target. So what was the route for him? A message. Just a message? More so, yeah. What would it be like if you would have hit him? Well, he's an asshole. That's just a little glimpse of what the world would be like if we all just decided to shoot everyone who we thought was an asshole.

1:00:22A lot of people would be dead. That's why we have morals. That's why we have self-restraint and laws. Mia was arrested the next morning after an hours-long manhunt and taken to an interview room where she told detectives that the sex change surgery had been her last hope, and losing it was the final straw. But Utah is one of 27 states that employs the death penalty, and the prosecutors still had to decide whether Mia Bailey should live or die. During the interview with detectives, Mia was calm and oriented. She never shed a tear and never showed remorse for ending the lives of her parents. Her brother Corey was there and lived to tell about it.

1:01:07So Corey, I know this is the fucking hardest thing you've ever done, right? I need you to tell me what happened today. So me and my wife were downstairs watching the show. My mom was upstairs arguing with my grandma about some family drama or whatever, but apparently it pissed off my brother. He's a schizophrenic. He's been going through a lot of issues lately and transitioning.

1:01:39But he's been having a lot more issues lately. Do you know what they were talking about? Just bits and pieces, arguing about money and getting help, taking care of them. Okay. Okay. Apparently he was supposed to do some surgery or something. I haven't been keeping up on what's going on with him too much. But it got canceled and he thinks it was their fault. And this is the first time he's been to the house in a minute? Yeah, we have a protective order against him. Me and my wife. Okay, does that include that house? Yes. Okay. Because the house, me, my wife, and my kids. Okay. All I know is I heard shooting upstairs and then my mother yelling and screaming.

1:02:33And then I locked the door to our room and I started opening the window and I tried, got her out and got myself out. By the time we were climbing out the window, he was pounding on my door trying to open it. Then I heard gunshots at my door. Take a minute to just ask yourself honestly. Would your brain work that fast? because some people run towards action. Some people panic, and then some people panic so hard that they can't make a decision at all. Corey had seconds to figure out what was happening, move, and make the right choice before Mia reached the door. At this point, Mia isn't in custody yet, and the shooting has just occurred less than 30 minutes before.

1:03:18The Bailey family still doesn't even have the worst answer yet. Corey knows what he heard. He knows his parents were upstairs. He knows he and Amanda barely got out. But he doesn't know if his parents are still alive. And neither do his brothers. This is my brother. I just called him. Does he know where, does your brother who did this know where he was? Can you please tell me what's going on with my parents? I'm going to have a seat, man. I'm going to have a seat. Here, hold on. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. I don't think they're deceased. Okay. This is my brother. I know, and that's the reason I put him on mute.

1:04:08I'm going to let you deal with that, okay? Do you need something right now? I mean, we have a victim's advocate we can call out for you. I don't even know where to begin with this. No, I know. Until he's found, I don't know where to go that will be safe at this point. Corey, how long ago did this happen? Like 20 minutes ago. For Corey, the shock is still immediate. The fear has barely worn off, and the adrenaline is still in his body. The grief is only beginning to catch up. But the legal process moves a hell of a lot slower. Mia confessed that night. In fact, she detailed exactly what she did and why.

1:04:50But she didn't immediately plead. For more than a year, prosecutors weighed what kind of case this was. Not just whether Mia was guilty. Was this straightforward? Or were mitigating factors strong enough to take the death penalty off the table? In Utah, we as prosecutors have a small time frame to decide whether or not to seek the death penalty. We have to declare it at the outset. Some of the factors that we have to consider are past cases where we sought the death penalty. And the facts of the cases need to be similar. So we looked at the two most recent cases, which, again, we don't have very many murders.

1:05:37So we don't have a lot to compare it to. But the cases that we did seek the death penalty on, they involved like a torture aspect. We felt this case was different in that these were quick, clean shots, especially with Joseph, who was shot in the head, that there wasn't that that torturous aspect. On the flip side, we did consider this to be premeditated. It was planned out. she had been practicing and that that's an aggravating factor that would incline us to seek the death penalty. A lot of our discussion focused on mental health issues and ultimately we decided not to seek the death penalty because of one the mental health issues and two the fact that in her interview she said she wanted the death penalty and we felt like giving her that what she wanted was the wrong thing to do.

1:06:37We didn't want to reward her decision to murder her parents. In fact, she made a motion later on in court asking the judge to impose the death penalty against the advice of her defense attorney, but that's not her decision to make. That's a prosecuting decision and a judge's decision. It was still all about Mia. She wanted to skip the part of due process that says the judge and jury of your peers get to decide your fate, Mia already got to decide who lived and died because she didn't get her way. And now she wanted the easy way out. And she wanted it now. But that's just not how it works. And this is the part Mia never seemed to be able to understand.

1:07:27A diagnosis might explain suffering and instability. But it doesn't turn murder into self-defense. Mia had grievances and a whole list of people she thought had failed her. In Mia's version of the story, she was still the victim. Not her mom, not her dad, not her brothers, or her nephews or nieces. Just Mia. That's the ugly logic of narcissistic violence. The pain always points inwards. The blame outwards. And the people who get hurt are treated just like obstacles, not human beings. Mia Bailey was not just someone with gender dysphoria. She was a person who made narcissistic and violent choices that ended lives, And none of her explanations changed what prosecutors were looking at.

1:08:26Two dead parents, a brother and a sister-in-law who barely escaped. Target practice, a gun, a confession, and a defendant who talked about death like it was one more thing she could control. Not going for the death penalty was, of course, controversial. But I do believe, based on the factors that we have to abide by, it was the right decision and the mental health issues. one of the challenges as a prosecutor is working with victims and working with victims families especially in a situation where one family member has victimized the rest of their family so the defendant is a family member of the victim which is what we have here and Mia had three brothers and all of them wanted different things out of this so Some were seeking more of like punitive measures and others were seeking more of mercy and saying that their parents wouldn't want Mia to be punished so harshly for these crimes.

1:09:37So as a prosecutor, we have to take into account the victims and what they want. But we also have a responsibility to the community and we have to take into account the community as well. So trying to find where to land on the justice versus mercy scale was difficult for our team. Aggravated murder carries a minimum of 25 years per count. So we had two aggravated murders, one for Joseph, one for Gail, each with a sentence of 25 to life. One of the decisions that we had to make was whether to pursue those sentences concurrently so that they would run at the same time and Mia could potentially be out of prison in 25 years or to ask them to be ran consecutively so that means stacked on top of each other.

1:10:29So Mia would serve 25 years for the murder of Joseph and then 25 years minimum for the murder of Gail, potentially longer up to life, meaning that that would be a minimum of 50 years. we chose and it wasn't necessarily an easy decision but because we did want to be respectful of the family and of the mental health circumstances but we chose to pursue consecutive sentences I do think at the end of the day we did get the family to see where we were coming from and agree with consecutive sentencing but it was a challenge to get there. And the reason we went consecutive is because we as an office viewed that as two separate lives, two separate people that needed justice.

1:11:18And so we wanted each victim to be represented. Mia confessed in the interview room, but it wasn't until a year later after she passed a competency evaluation that prosecutors offered a plea. On November 6th, Mia Bailey changed her plea from not guilty to guilty, but mentally ill. And on December 19th, she returned to court for sentencing. Spalien case 2415-01193 to the charge of aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, or hereby sentenced to serve 25 years to life. Count two, aggravated murder, first-degree felony, or hereby sentenced to serve 25 years to life. count three aggravated assault a third degree felony you are hereby sentenced to serve zero to five years always at the utah state prison to run consecutive one with the other and at sentencing the focus finally moved away from mia and her selfishness her surgery and her blame back to the people she left behind her brothers your honor we sit before this court as the children, grandchildren, sister, brother, mother, extended family, and friends.

1:12:38The majority of the remaining family that hasn't spoken today of Joseph Blue Bailey and Gail Bailey, two real people whose lives were defined not by how they died, but how they lived. We also stand here as a family to Mia. That dual reality is not something we choose, but it's something that we must carry honestly. Our father, Joseph Blue Bailey, spent most of his working life as a maritime engineer on tugboats. He was gone for months at a time, doing physically demanding and often dangerous work so his family would be stable and secure. He believed in responsibility, not excuses. Our mother, Gail, was a homemaker, but advocacy was her life's work.

1:13:25She spent years navigating schools, doctors, and systems that resisted accommodation, particularly when it came to mental illness. She did that work without a title, without pay, and without recognition. Because her children mattered more than anything else. Long before most people understood what autism or schizophrenia meant, she was fighting school systems, attending IEP meetings, researching, calling, pushing, and insisting that her child not be written off because she was difficult or complicated. The consequences we are asking for are not rooted in hatred or revenge. They are rooted in responsibility, safety, and the reality that you required structure and treatment to survive.

1:14:12What happened cannot be undone, but pretending you are someone you were never capable of being does not serve justice and it does not honor our parents.

1:14:35I cannot imagine what this family has gone through. And to be honest, I can't imagine what someone who legitimately thinks they were born in the wrong body feels like either. It must be awful. Always needing external validation to feel normal. It's got to be hell. And unfortunately, I have to say this because there's a lot of really ignorant people out there. But just because you consider yourself trans doesn't mean you're a homicidal maniac. I've interacted with plenty of trans people, some even in this industry, that are perfectly normal, nice, and a pleasure to be around. Shout out Annie or Ryan from Who Are These Podcasts.

1:15:15But let's stop pretending. Like, wanting to cut your dick off doesn't mean you're not fucked up. Guess what? We're all fucked up. We all have issues. We all have trauma. We're all doing the best we can. You're free to make whatever decisions you want to make yourself okay enough to carry on. And unless you're a complete bag of shit, you'll address people by how they want to be addressed. With the same politeness you would use if you had mispronounced their name. I don't have a problem with any of that. I don't think anyone I know has a problem with that. The problem comes when you start amplifying your so-called solution.

1:15:53You start normalizing it. Get every media talking head to perpetuate your dick removal miracle cure. In movies, TV, social media. You get dumb celebrities to chant your mantras. And create a social contagion that envelops the most vulnerable. Those with severe psychological issues and literal confused children. who already feel out of place, not due to sex, but to that magical awkward age where we all feel like social rejects and are doing just about anything to feel special, to feel normal. Then you start attacking anyone who gets in your way. That's where the problem is. When you stop asking if they'll address you by your pronouns and you start demanding that they do.

1:16:43You start demanding that the collective pool of government money funded by all of our tax dollars pays for it. For you to have your little cure. And then you demonize, threaten, and cancel anyone that says otherwise. That is where the problem is. Mia Bailey wanted the world to validate her identity, her pain, and her version of reality. But the law doesn't exist to affirm delusion, excuse narcissism, or turn grievance into permission to kill. No name change, no diagnosis, no surgery, and no amount of suffering could change what this was. Two parents executed in cold blood, a brother nearly killed, and a family torn apart and forced to carry the cost of Mia's self-obsession.

1:17:41Mia Bailey doesn't deserve my or anyone else's politeness, so I will not address it by its pronouns. And if you're listening and you have a problem with that, well, you can suck my dick, because I still have one. It is not a woman. It is not a man. It is a monster. And it will be about 88 years old when it finally gets out of prison.

1:18:40The End Can't wait to see what my redneck buddies think of this one. Us being all ignorant and cis and whatnot here in Texas. I'm really looking forward to the comments over at swordandscale.com, so head on over there and leave one. Would you mind? Would you? Stay safe, guys.

1:19:35Outro Music

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