Speaker 1: Hey, it's Stephanie. In this bonus episode, I wanted to
Speaker 1: share some parts of the June tenth trial we didn't
Speaker 1: get to in episode seven. Ultimately, you know how this
Speaker 1: trial ends. Judge Mata ruled in Clayton's favor and referred
Speaker 1: the matter to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for review
Speaker 1: of Laura Owens's actions. This family court trial was jam
Speaker 1: packed because there was a two hour time limit, So
Speaker 1: in this bonus episode, I wanted to go back to
Speaker 1: the experts testimonies. Laura Owens's team brought in doctor Michael Medchill,
Speaker 1: a retired OBGYN who said he had delivered over twenty
Speaker 1: thousand babies before the trial. Doctor Medschill reviewed medical records
Speaker 1: provided by David Jingris and reached a notable conclusion.
Speaker 2: Doctor Medschill, based on your review of Laura's medical records
Speaker 2: that you've identified in your report, did you form any
Speaker 2: opinions at all regarding whether or not she was pregnant
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three at any time?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I believe she was pregnant with over ninety nine
Speaker 3: percent probability.
Speaker 1: But the validity of the medical records doctor Medschell reviewed
Speaker 1: were a point of contention.
Speaker 3: You understand, Laura has admitted to faking medical records in
Speaker 3: this case.
Speaker 1: Yes, this became a central point of dispute during cross examination,
Speaker 1: especially because Laura had already admitted under oath both at
Speaker 1: her deposition and again on June tenth, to doctoring medical records.
Speaker 1: But there was something even more stunning about doctor Medschell's testimony,
Speaker 1: a moment that became infamous in coverage of the case.
Speaker 1: Here's David Jingers.
Speaker 2: During the trial, mister Eckert has said that he doesn't
Speaker 2: believe that a pregnancy was possible here because there was
Speaker 2: no intercourse. Do you have an opinion about that? Uh,
Speaker 2: regarding general, not regarding him or her, but in general.
Speaker 3: Well, it's said that men are like basketball players. They
Speaker 3: dribble before they shoot. They also dribble afterwards. And if
Speaker 3: you are rubbing genitalia together, it is possible to get pregnant.
Speaker 1: After this moment that later became etched into the lore
Speaker 1: of this trial, Jingers asked doctor Medschill to address the
Speaker 1: elephant in the room head on, and he doubled down.
Speaker 2: How much weight would you assign to the fact that
Speaker 2: mister Ecker denied sexual intercourse. Is that significant to the
Speaker 2: question of whether she was pregnant or is it a
Speaker 2: minor point.
Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with whether she was pregnant.
Speaker 1: This testimony gave me pause. I always understood penetrative sex
Speaker 1: to be a near universal precursor to conception, so I
Speaker 1: called my own expert.
Speaker 4: My name is doctor Marissa Weiss. I'm a board certified OBGIN.
Speaker 4: I currently am practicing in the space of infertility, which
Speaker 4: into so specialty fellowship in.
Speaker 1: Doctor Weiss specializes in infertility which means she works with
Speaker 1: the science of conception every day.
Speaker 4: Probably the most common comment I get from my patients
Speaker 4: again who are patients who are actively trying to conceive,
Speaker 4: is how surprised people are at the likelihood of conception
Speaker 4: on any given month. You know, when we are given
Speaker 4: kind of sex at in middle school, we're led to
Speaker 4: believe that if you have untregeted intercourse, there's basically a
Speaker 4: one hundred percent chance you're getting pregnant. But in reality,
Speaker 4: even with intentional, well timed intercourse around the time of ovulation,
Speaker 4: your odds of pregnancy on any good month or twenty percent.
Speaker 4: Contrary to kind of what we're told in middle school,
Speaker 4: and high school on any given month, it's more likely
Speaker 4: that you won't get pregnant.
Speaker 1: Importantly, what doctor Weiss is talking about here is vaginal intercourse,
Speaker 1: not oral sex, and there is a huge caveat that.
Speaker 1: Penetrative sex also has to occur at the time of ovulation,
Speaker 1: which means there's a small window on any given month
Speaker 1: that a person can conceive. Another part of trial that
Speaker 1: was stuck in my head was the detail about Laura
Speaker 1: running to the bathroom after the blowjob?
Speaker 2: Where did you complete our mouth both times?
Speaker 3: What happened the same second time?
Speaker 2: She ran straight to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Wouldn'tick told me he always found it to be a
Speaker 1: suspicious detail in the chain of events. Would Nick said
Speaker 1: he never ruled out a kind of spit maneuver. But
Speaker 1: I wondered if it was even possible for someone to
Speaker 1: impregnate themselves this way. So I asked doctor Weiss if
Speaker 1: sperm could even survive that long.
Speaker 4: Sperm motility decreases within minutes in the saliva, and most
Speaker 4: sperm are kind of immobilizer dead within fifteen to thirty minutes,
Speaker 4: So in some extent, it kind of depends on how
Speaker 4: long is you know, elapsing between the ejaculation and then
Speaker 4: the collection. In theory, if you did it within seconds
Speaker 4: or minutes, even I guess there's a slight chance. But
Speaker 4: again then you also run into all the other things
Speaker 4: has to be around the time, bobulation and everything else,
Speaker 4: so it's kind of a Swiss cheese model. A lot
Speaker 4: of things have to line up in order for it
Speaker 4: to happen. But theoretically, if within a couple minutes of
Speaker 4: ejaculation into someone's mouth, they to collect the sperm and
Speaker 4: put it in the vagina, either you know, via some
Speaker 4: ki badginal insemination or elsewise, and they happened to be
Speaker 4: on a tomicvogulation, there's still a small chance of pregnancy,
Speaker 4: but again the odds are I would say, probably less
Speaker 4: than one percent.
Speaker 1: So it seems unlikely that a spit maneuver would have
Speaker 1: resulted in a pregnancy at all.
Speaker 3: But hang on for a second.
Speaker 2: She came over to your house, she gave you oral
Speaker 2: sex twice. The next day you told her you weren't
Speaker 2: interested in her. That's correct, I rejected her. Yes, And
Speaker 2: then four days later what happened. Four days later she
Speaker 2: started making claims that she could possibly be pregnant.
Speaker 1: And then eleven days after they hooked up, Laura claimed
Speaker 1: she'd taken a positive pregnancy test. She was taking one
Speaker 1: of those at home tests where you pee on the stick.
Speaker 1: Laura's was positive, and as we know, Laura later went
Speaker 1: to an urgent care and had another test which confirmed
Speaker 1: she had an elevated hCG level. I asked doctor Weiss
Speaker 1: to explain more about how hc works and why it's
Speaker 1: often used as an early pregnancy test.
Speaker 4: HGG levels rise exponentially in early pregnancy and then generally
Speaker 4: half every forty eight hours once a pregnancy has ended,
Speaker 4: so you're in pregnancy test to text the pregnancy hormone,
Speaker 4: which is hCG. Depending on what type of test you have,
Speaker 4: there's somewhat of a range of detection. The early response
Speaker 4: tests can detect at a lower level of HDG, which
Speaker 4: lets you detect kind of earlier in pregnancy, or put
Speaker 4: another way, sooner after ovulation. But they're detecting HGG in
Speaker 4: the urine, so the HGG level has to achieve a
Speaker 4: certain amount in the bloodstream before reaching the urine. If
Speaker 4: you're testing with your in pregnancy test. For most people,
Speaker 4: it's kind of most reliable within twelve to fourteen days
Speaker 4: after ovulation. Obviously, after a mis period, which is generally
Speaker 4: fourteen days plus after ovulation, is even more accurate.
Speaker 1: Doctor Weiss explained that hCG is a hormone you can inject,
Speaker 1: and if someone did inject it, they could test positive
Speaker 1: for pregnancy on a urine test, even if they weren't pregnant.
Speaker 4: There's medication specifically that we use in fertility treatment in
Speaker 4: which we give patients synthetic HDG. So if they were
Speaker 4: to take that injection as prescribed by their fertility doctor
Speaker 4: and then do your own pregnancy test, it would come
Speaker 4: back positive.
Speaker 1: Doctor Weiss sometimes sees false positives with her patients who
Speaker 1: take at home tests. Some other medications that have been
Speaker 1: known to raise hCG levels can produce a false positive,
Speaker 1: and then there are anomalies ways in that home test
Speaker 1: can fail.
Speaker 4: There's something called evaporation lines, which if you kind of
Speaker 4: the instructions on your pregnancy test tell you exactly how
Speaker 4: long to wait before interpreting the result. If you wait
Speaker 4: longer than that period of time, you can get something
Speaker 4: called an evaporation line, which is a faint line that can,
Speaker 4: you know, oftentimes fool people to, you know, look initially
Speaker 4: on the bathroom counter, see it to negative, and then
Speaker 4: leave it there and then come back and be falsely
Speaker 4: either positively or negatively.
Speaker 1: Doctor Weiss stressed that conception is more difficult than we
Speaker 1: were led to believe in high school sex set, and
Speaker 1: that the most reliable way to test for pregnancy is
Speaker 1: having an ultrasound in person with the doctor.
Speaker 4: You'd ask me the hot tum question. I was ready
Speaker 4: for that one.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. Stay tuned for new
Speaker 1: episodes and bonus content on the Love Trapped Feed