Charged With Murdering Her Dying Mother - Rachel Waters | Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel #365

Summary

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Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel

Episode #365: Charged With Murdering Her Dying Mother – Rachel Waters

Date: March 31, 2026

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Episode Overview

This powerful episode focuses on the harrowing experience of Rachel Waters, who was arrested and charged with murdering her terminally ill mother, despite acting as her caregiver during hospice. Host Rachel Uchitel delves deeply into Rachel’s upbringing, her mother’s rapid decline, the complexities, misconceptions, and legal jeopardy surrounding end-of-life care, and the lasting impact of an accusation that changed her life. The conversation highlights the human side behind a headline-grabbing case and the structural failures that can upend lives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rachel Waters’ Background and Family History

• Rural Georgia Upbringing: Rachel describes growing up as an only child, close with her mother and maternal grandparents, learning caregiving young due to family health issues.
  • “My mom was always my steadfast defender, along with my grandparents.” [04:23]
• Close Relationship with Mother: Despite a tumultuous home life and eventual parental divorce, Rachel and her mother stayed closely connected even after Rachel relocated to New York City.
  • “Thick as thieves ... my mom and I had a lot in common as people.” [06:31]

2. Onset of Mother’s Illness

• Early Signs of Alzheimer’s: Rachel noticed subtle language and behavioral changes before any formal diagnosis, reflecting on genetic risk and early detection struggles.
  • “She was reversing pronouns a lot. All he's were she's, all she's were he's.” [09:17]
• Rapid Decline Post-Pandemic Onset: The COVID pandemic prevented in-person visits, accelerating undetected deterioration. Rachel discovers severe cognitive and physical symptoms during an eventual visit.
  • “She looked like she had aged 20 years in 8 months.” [11:49]

3. Disease Progression and End-of-Life Care

• Multiple Myeloma Diagnosis: Incidental medical findings led to a diagnosis of multiple myeloma (a cancer affecting bone marrow), complicating her mother’s Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis.
  • “Multiple myeloma eats at bone ... when those bone lesions came up ... the collapse was unstoppable.” [15:33]
• Transition to Hospice and Family Disagreement: Family conflicts arose over Rachel’s management of care, especially regarding medications and her ability to be a full-time caregiver.
  • “If she experienced a worsening, it was because of some medication that I had her on ... they felt that I did not manage her care in the way they wanted.” [18:13]
• Hospice in Practice: Rachel demystifies how home hospice works, explaining the provision of a “comfort care kit” (morphine, benzodiazepines, etc.) and the family’s role in administering end-of-life medications.
  • “These include things like sublingual morphine for difficulty breathing or pain at end of life ... so family members don’t have to have a medical professional in the home.” [23:02]

4. Clarifying Comfort Care vs. Medically Assisted Suicide

• Critical Distinction: Rachel and Rachel Uchitel delineate between legally sanctioned, patient-administered assisted suicide and the comfort measures provided for natural dying in hospice.
  • “The morphine ... is not meant to end people’s life ... hospice means people are going to die naturally ... morphine slightly extends life by easing respiratory distress.” —Rachel Waters [33:18]
• Public (and Legal) Misunderstandings: Even professionals can misunderstand the role of morphine in expected death, creating risk for caregivers.

5. The Death, Investigation, and Legal Fallout

• Mother’s Final Hours: Rachel was present as her mother died, acting on hospice company instructions with very limited morphine. The death was distressing due to lack of full comfort medications.
  • “It made no difference to her breathing ... she continued to gasp for air ... for about two and a half hours until she passed.” [44:12]
• Sudden Accusation: Hours later, Rachel learned her mother’s body was taken for forensic investigation as a potential homicide.
  • “I immediately knew that someone had implicated me in something terrible because...there’s only one reason a body is taken to the crime lab in Atlanta.” [45:26]
• Law Enforcement Response and Legal Jeopardy: Rachel describes search warrants, being treated as a murder suspect, legal limbo awaiting toxicology and official findings, and an 18-month purgatory before charges were formally filed.
  • “Waited for them to get the warrant. They came back with it about three hours later, and it had my name on it and homicide. And I knew then that I was a murder suspect.” [48:23]
• Loss of Support System: Family cut ties, believing the accusations, leaving Rachel isolated during the ordeal.

6. Arrest, Charges, and Defense

• Social Media Discovery: Rachel first learns she is indicted via a hostile Instagram comment, not law enforcement.
  • “An anonymous commenter said, shame on you for murdering your mom...and then posted an indictment...” [55:49]
• Facing the System: With the support of lawyer Brian Steele, she turns herself in, faces charges carrying the potential for the death penalty, and describes the terror, humiliation, and difficulty in mounting her defense.
  • “That 12 hours is enough to really open your eyes to what it looks like once you’re inside the system. And I didn’t know if I would be there 12 hours or four years.” [61:27]

7. How the Case Fell Apart—and Lessons Learned

• Discovery Reveals Gaps: Eventually, her legal team discovers the state’s case lacked key documents—medical records showing imminent natural death, prescriptions authorizing morphine, and evidence of her mother’s terminal state.
  • “Oh my God, it seems they didn’t even have the medical records that my mom was actively dying...there was just so many things that were missing.” [66:33]
• Medical Exam Ruling Reversal: Once provided with context and records, the medical examiner changed the cause of death; the district attorney promptly requested all charges be dropped.
  • “As soon as the DA had spoken to the medical examiner, she immediately requested that all charges be dropped...the case was fully dismissed.” [75:54]

8. Impact on Life, Next Steps, and Advocacy

• Personal Consequences: Rachel describes total life upheaval—loss of employment, reputation, and the irreparable breaking of familial bonds, even after exoneration.
  • “It’s your reputation, your ability to earn a living—like it’s an atom bomb for your life.” [76:45]
• Advocacy & Marsha’s Law: Rachel channels her experience into legislative advocacy, proposing “Marsha’s Law”—requiring formal documentation and training for family caregivers handling comfort care kits, and education for law enforcement.
  • “Marsha’s Law would effectively require that when a person goes into home hospice, the hospice company keeps a written and digital record...showing that family members have been deputized and trained...with a signed transfer.” [78:03]
• Practical Advice for Caregivers: Urges meticulous documentation, clear record-keeping, and open communication with hospice and family, to protect against misunderstanding or malicious accusations.
  • “Documentation is everything. Not just for law enforcement on down the line if it comes to that, but also for yourself.” [82:21]

9. Rachel Waters: Quotes and Reflections

• On Enduring Accusation:

  • “If it happened to me, it could definitely happen to someone else...there are not nearly enough protections in place for family caregivers.” [68:48]

• On Why She Fights:

  • “My mom is the reason I am fighting now for other caregivers and for justice in her name, because that is how she raised me.” [87:18]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I am the first person in U.S. history to be charged with the murder of an actively dying person.” —Rachel Waters [68:27]
• “Every single person, no matter how reprehensible they are or what crime they have committed, is constitutionally entitled to a robust defense...that’s what a defense attorney does.” —Rachel Waters on Brian Steele [72:06]
• “If you have a loved one at end of life and are given these medications, document everything ... for your own records and protection.” —Rachel Waters [82:21]

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Noteworthy Timestamps

• [04:23] — Rachel’s childhood and the seeds of caregiving
• [13:20] — Family in denial of mother’s symptoms; beginning of familial rift
• [18:13] — Tension over care management and hiring outside caregivers
• [23:02] — Explaining how home hospice and the comfort care kit work
• [33:18] — Difference between comfort care kit and medical aid in dying
• [44:12] — The final hours of Rachel’s mother and the morphine dosage
• [45:26] — The shocking call: her mother’s body taken for potential homicide
• [55:49] — Learning of criminal charges via an Instagram troll
• [66:33] — Legal discovery reveals holes in the case, charges start to unravel
• [75:54] — Notification that all charges are dropped; case dismissed
• [78:03] — Introduction and explanation of “Marsha’s Law”
• [82:21] — Advice for other caregivers facing end-of-life choices
• [87:18] — Reflecting on her mother’s impact and her advocacy mission

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Closing Thoughts

Rachel Waters’ story stands as a rare and cautionary tale of how misunderstandings, family rifts, and gaps in medical-legal protocols can devastate the lives of loving caregivers. The episode brings urgent attention to the need for better systems, formal documentation, and caregiver protection in the U.S. end-of-life care landscape—and highlights the resilience required to reclaim a narrative when one is “Miss Understood.”

Connect with Rachel Waters:

• Instagram & TikTok: @distinguishedheathen
• Website: rachelewaters.com (active at episode release)

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Host: Rachel Uchitel
Guest: Rachel Waters

For feedback and show ideas:
Email: [e-mail]

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(End of summary)

Transcript

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[Rachel Yukatel]

Welcome back to Misunderstood. I'm your host, Rachel Yukatel. Well, just a few months ago, if you can believe it, Rachel Waters was arrested and charged with murdering her own mother. This wasn't just some cold case or something from years ago. This literally just happened. Her mother was in hospice care suffering from Alzheimer's and cancer, and Rachel was the one taking care of her. Like many families in that situation, she was given access to end of life medication, including morphine to keep her mother comfortable in her final days. And then suddenly, everything changed. Prosecutors claim that she gave too much, and just like that, she went from caregiver to facing multiple murder charges, charges that could have put her away for life. But here's where it gets complicated, because in hospice care, morphine isn't unusual. It's expected. It's part of how people pass peacefully. So the question became, was this a crime, or was this part of the process that happens every day in end of life care? The medical ruling was later changed. The charges were dropped, but by then, her name was already out, tied to one of the most shocking accusations you can make about somebody. So today we're sitting down with her to hear exactly what happened, what it felt like to be accused of something like this, and how your life changes overnight when the headline says, you killed your own mother. Please enjoy my conversation with Rachel Waters. Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today on Misunderstood. How are you?

[Rachel Waters]

Thank you for having me cold, but doing all right over here.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Good, good. I'm so happy to have you. Your story is absolutely incredible. I'm glad, you know, as I was doing research on you, I'm so glad that this not draw out for years and years as it could have. And so I can't wait for you to tell everybody your story and for me to be able to ask you questions, because I have so many. But I really want to start at the beginning. Can you just tell me about your childhood so we get an idea of, like, where you grew up. I know you're from Georgia, Right. And where you grew up, how many kids are in the family, what your relationship was like with your parents, all that.

[Rachel Waters]

Yeah. So I was born and raised in very rural Georgia. I mean, we grew up. I grew up in the county, which was off a dirt road, and I am an only child. I did have three half brothers. I now only have two. They were much older. They were my father's children. But I grew up with my mom and my father until they split at 11. And my grandparents, my maternal grandparents who lived next door, and, you know, the. The home life was a bit tumultuous. My. My mother and father, they had a lot of hardship together, but my mom was always my steadfast defender, along with my grandparents, too. And as much hardship as my childhood entailed with my father, it was also kind of idyllic in the sense of I grew up in the woods with this amazing, loving family, and I had the privilege that so many children don't have, which was being close to their grandparents. And so rather than conventional babysitters, growing up, my mom was incredibly busy. She was an engineer for the federal government, so she was constantly traveling on business. But if it wasn't her, it was them. And that was kind of where I got my first taste also of caregiving. Because my grandmother was a diabetic and my granddad also being old and my mom working so much, I, you know, very quickly sort of stepped into the role of taking care of my family and other loved ones. So, you know, giving her insulin injections and just, you know, also being really close to her. My grandparents passed when I was 17, my granddad and 20, respectively. So I stayed home to go to college there, and I stayed close to my mom. And my mom and I's relationship, we were kind of thick as thieves, I think, being an only child and having gone through that divorce together and also living in rural Georgia, I certainly had friends my age, but my mom and I had a lot in common as people. We were both artists. We were both very much, you know, book nerds. And so there was always a lot for us to connect on, Especially as I grew up and grew older, she ended up giving me. When I married my ex husband, My childhood home was gifted to me, so we lived next door to each other for a long time until my marriage was starting to fall apart. I was. I was done with the rural Georgia life. I had been working as a model on the side some, and I. I realized I needed to get out of Harlem. Georgia, and New York City was where I had a lot of friends, a lot of connections, and I ended up moving here when I was 29. And even though I had moved away from home, my mom and I had the type of relationship where we stayed in touch every single day. And we were seeing each other maybe four times a year. It was always the holidays. I would come there, and she would usually come, you know, once or twice a year here. So we maintained that close relationship through.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Was it her parents? Was it her parents that died?

[Rachel Waters]

Okay, it was.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So who was she with at that time? So you said your dad left when you were 11. Did he get remarried and did she.

[Rachel Waters]

She remarried. My mom died. Never did.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay. She was alone.

[Rachel Waters]

Ate here and there, but she was alone. Yeah, she. It was funny. I always encouraged her to date, but she was like, I just, I'm done. I've had two marriages. I. I don't need it anymore any. Any more of that chaos. I was like, okay, fair enough. You know, she was close to her sister. Okay, so she's still, you know, her sister had moved on the same road, same dirt road, to kind of be close to her.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So.

[Rachel Waters]

Okay, so she. She still had company. Yeah.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay. And how long did she work? Like, did she.

[Rachel Waters]

37 years. Fort Gordon. She retired. She was. God. When she retired, she. I think she was at the. The top civilian. Top ranked civilian woman at Fort Gordon, as far as I'm aware. And so she was very eager to dedicate herself full time to her art. She was a painter. And so when she retired, she ended up, you know, doing more work for Audubon, for Ducks Unlimited, teaching some art classes, and that was kind of how she kept herself busy after she retired.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So. Wow. So when did she start seeing signs of not feeling well or her mind starting to deteriorate?

[Rachel Waters]

She didn't see them. I saw them.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Wow.

[Rachel Waters]

So, you know, I learned in 2017, we did a 23andMe, and I saw that I had one of the genes for Alzheimer's, which is APOE 4. It's one of. It's not a deterministic gene in the sense that you're definitely going to get it, but it dramatically increases the risk. So it's sort of similar to BRCA for breast cancer. And when I saw the genetic result come back, I remembered growing up with my grandparents, my grandmother describing how my grandfather's mother had died of senile dementia, as they called it, back in the early 1900s. And I realized then, you know, I'm so. My profession is, you know, sort of life sciences and medical copywriter. So I'm very well versed in medicine. And, um, it was just sort of a blood run cold moment of, oh, God, I bet I inherited it from mom and I. Around that same time, I had been noticing some odd speech blips, completely isolated from any other sign of decline. But she was reversing pronouns a lot. All he's were she's, all she's were he's. And that was such an odd speech quirk to have happen over and over again.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Catch it or she didn't even hear it.

[Rachel Waters]

She would often not catch it. Sometimes she would. But it happened with such frequency, it set off a little flag. But nothing happened for a few years. She was still. She was the type of person who was doing everyone's taxes in the family and doing them right and well, like, she performed at a very high cognitive level. And so you kind of write it off at the time as, you know, maybe this is just a quirk of aging.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Maybe she's what age was she at this point?

[Rachel Waters]

At that point, she was just in her late 60s, and that's also very young. And my mom was sort of the picture of health. She was the person in the family everyone bet would live to 100. You know, she ate her veggies. She was very active outside around the house, and she was incredibly sharp. But when the pandemic came, that was when it became clear to me that there was something seriously wrong. I had made plans to come down and see her for her birthday, which was March 18th of 2020. And we all know what happened just before March 18th, so I didn't get to come see her. So I'd last seen her around the holidays in 2019.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Wow.

[Rachel Waters]

Over the course of the summer, I noticed her texts to me were getting progressively more garbled. She had immaculate grammar and spelling all her life, and suddenly she didn't. And that's when I turned to my now husband and said, oh, my God, it's happening. We have to get down there now. I think she's developing cognitive impairment at least. Whether it's full blown Alzheimer's or mild cognitive impairment, I don't know, but we need to get down and see. We got down in August, and when I arrived, she looked like she had aged 20 years and 8 months. She had lost a huge amount of weight, and her spine was completely doubled over with osteoporosis. She was frail, and even though she was still speaking mostly normally, you could see that there was something serious happening. And that's when I jumped into action and got her with a gerontologist, got her on reclass for her bones, because it was just. It was like every system had was collapsing at once. And sure enough, it did. It was from there on out, it was a really rapid decline from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's to severe osteoporosis, and then her cancer diagnosis, multiple myeloma.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So, wait, I'm confused. So when you went down there, had you been talking to her on the phone or just mostly texts?

[Rachel Waters]

Like, I had been talking to her on the phone every day. But not FaceTime when she would speak. No, she. She hated FaceTime. Got it. You had no idea. I didn't know what she looked like. That's right.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And her sister had never gone over there.

[Rachel Waters]

Her sister saw her frequently but was either in denial or didn't catch the changes because she saw her every day. Got it. But the family believed. The family had a hard time believing that there was anything wrong with my mom when I Tried to convince them, and that was sort of the start of the rift with my family. Got it.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So when you said to her, mom, I want to take you to the hospital or to the doctor. I want to see what's going on, did she fight you or did she know something was off?

[Rachel Waters]

She did not because her back pain was so bad from that collapsed spine. And that, to be honest, was my primary concern, too, because if you have that kind of pain and inflammation, whatever cognitive issue you have is going to. To really accelerate. And so that was the most critical thing, was getting her to a gerontologist who could ideally treat both. We focused on her spine, but when it came to discussing medications for her memory, my mom was very much in denial that she had any memory issues, but she knew her speech was garbled and she chalked it up to pain. That was when I began talking to the doctor about memantine or another, you know, Alzheimer's medication for my mom. And unfortunately, my family intervened at the time, especially my aunt, and said, you can't. I'm not going to allow you to give her this medication. It has all these side effects. And basically threatening to not cooperate with any of her care on down the line if I got her on an Alzheimer's medication. Which was sort of the first devastating blow. But you're still thinking at the time, the progression of Alzheimer's tends to be quite slow. Right. The doctor had said, you know, you're not going to be looking at her needing in home care or anything like that for years. You're still years away from that. She's still in very early stages. You know, this can take a decade or more. And so I sort of was like, well, that's a lot of time for the family to come around. And thinking that we had some time to process it and work through it. Unfortunately, that was not the case. My mom accelerated incredibly rapidly, in large part probably due to the cancer.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So. Okay, so were you able to fix the back issue at all?

[Rachel Waters]

Like, what was your. For a time, we did. We were able to. So we got her on Reclast, which is a bisphosphonate drug. We got her on hormone therapy, which stopped the loss until the cancer diagnosis, because multiple myeloma eats at bone. And so those. When those bone lesions came up in her spine, at that point, the collapse was unstoppable. And that was in the last year of her life.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So was it an accidental diagnosis or you guys were. She didn't feel well and you were looking for cancer?

[Rachel Waters]

No, we it was incidental. We had started noticing on her blood work, because, of course, when you have complex medical issues like cognitive impairment and osteoporosis, you're getting that regular blood work. And we were noticing her blood cells, her red blood cells were quite large, something called macrolytic anemia. And they tried B12 correction. And then they were like, we don't think this is a B12 issue. And they did an MRI and they saw the lesions on her bones. And then she went on to test for multiple myeloma and got the biopsy and came back positive. And at that point.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Is multiple myeloma a bone cancer?

[Rachel Waters]

It's technically a blood cancer, but it does start in the bone marrow and eats at the bone lesions. It is what lay people would think of as a bone cancer in the sense that it causes excruciating bone pain and broken bones. Yeah.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Oh, wow. No way. Okay. And is there. Was it stage four at the time that you found it?

[Rachel Waters]

So it was not stage four. It was. So she was stage one or two at that point. And we were able. Because of her cognitive impairment. You don't want to put the full court press out for chemotherapy. It was A, not something she was going to tolerate, and B, it would have. It would have impaired her quality of life further without really any real benefit. So we got her on one of the new biologic treatments, which is much gentler, but it's typically like a third, second or third line treatment. And so the remission that she experienced from that was only a few months. And by the time she came out of remission, she'd already advanced to the end, close to the end stages. And that's when her oncologist said, I think it's time we put her on hospice. I don't really see her having more than about six months. And that was in December of 2022. So just about to go into 2023.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay. So I want to set the stage. So December 2022.

[Rachel Waters]

Yeah.

[Rachel Yukatel]

She has cancer. She has more full blown. Like, have they actually diagnosed her now with Alzheimer's?

[Rachel Waters]

Yes.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And how is your family? They are agreeing with you now or they're still giving you.

[Rachel Waters]

They agree that she is very sick with Alzheimer's and cancer. And they unfortunately blame me for just about everything in the sense of, like, if she experienced a worsening, it was because of some medication that I had her on, or it was because I didn't have the right doctor that they liked. And if it wasn't blame for her decline, it was feeling that I did not manage her care in the way they wanted, which was for me to quit my job, leave my marriage completely, move down to Georgia and be a full time caregiver rather than hiring caregivers. When my mom did not really want to accept care for me, I was certainly a caregiver to my mom. But when it came to activities of daily living, like changing her underwear or diapers, she still thought of me as her child. And she would have a lot of angry outbursts because she didn't like to feel babied by her child. Whereas when we had outside caregivers come in, it was much easier for her to accept care from them. And it enabled me to still be her daughter for as long as I could and participate. And certainly I showered her and fed her. But I tried to outsource some of the care that she was least comfortable with to other qualified caregivers also who are trained to deal with people with dementia, because I wanted to preserve our relationship too, as long as we could in home. And we maintained in home care for as long as we could until the home was no longer a safe place for her as her dementia advanced. And that was early 2023.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right. So at the end of 2022, had you moved full time to Georgia or you were still going back and forth?

[Rachel Waters]

Oh, no, I was still going back and forth, but I was there half the month.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right.

[Rachel Waters]

So I was like two weeks in New York, two weeks in Georgia. My aunt was stopping by daily, but she didn't stay with my mom for more than about an hour or so. She wasn't comfortable with a lot of the, the ADL's or activities of daily living. So I also had a caregiver that we hired, but me, my husband, we all alternated coming down. They would come down to assist.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And was, were you married at the time or you got married after?

[Rachel Waters]

I, I, I was married at the time. I actually, yeah.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So he, so he was helpful?

[Rachel Waters]

Oh, more than helpful, yeah.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And your family at this time, I mean, I understand that you said they're upset about the drugs and your doctor, but at any time did they say, listen, this seems to be getting worse, let's try something else. I have a different doctor or.

[Rachel Waters]

No, they didn't offer different doctors, but we all agreed at that point that it was bad enough she needed to be moved into care. The problem was they didn't understand why it couldn't happen overnight. So there was a lot of impatience around it as I was looking for a facility that would take my mom My mom was also. She was difficult in the sense that she had a lot of strong behavioral issues that took a very special touch, kind of calm. And because her dementia presented, because her Alzheimer's presented as aphasia, which is problems with speech, she was harder to comprehend than many other people with Alzheimer's because she would use replacement words for everything. So for her Alzheimer's presented, her memory was better than her speech, let me put it that way. So it's a lot.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And that must have been frustrating that she couldn't get what was in her head out of her mouth.

[Rachel Waters]

Oh. And then that was, I think, the source of a lot of the behavioral issues. Got it was this inability to convey what she felt or thought to other people. It was really torture for her and everyone else, frankly, because did she resort

[Rachel Yukatel]

to writing notes or that she could

[Rachel Waters]

no longer write at that stage? So it was, you know, just a lot of, A lot of breakdowns were, you know, the one only word that could come out was, you know, how angry she was and how she wanted to die. Or like, I'm just. Sometimes you tell caregivers, I'm going to kill you, you know, if you don't get out my anger. It was the anger because everything was deteriorating and everything was painful.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Wow. So at some point in the beginning of 2023, you do move down full time. Is that what happened?

[Rachel Waters]

So I did not move down full, but I did come down for like non stop for months on end and just stayed there in her home.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And you said that the home was no longer a place where she was safe. So did you actually move her to?

[Rachel Waters]

I did.

[Rachel Yukatel]

People don't understand hospice. And I don't even know if I understand hospice because my grandmother died. She had hospice, but they came and stayed with her. So can you explain hospice?

[Rachel Waters]

Absolutely. So where she moved was not affiliated with hospice in any way. That's important to note. So when she went on hospice, it was what we call home hospice, which is what close to 50 million Americans will rely on, which is Medicaid or Medicare hospice. Right. So a nurse. And you select your hospice company. They can be for profit, nonprofit, and a nurse will come to your home and they will set you up with everything you need to support a person at end of life. And that includes, you know, a hospital bed if you need oxygen, toilet, razors, you know, for people to use the bathroom more easily. But it also includes something called a comfort care kit, and that is prescribed to the family and. Or any caregivers you've hired. And the Caregivers, whether they are family or hired, are then deputized by hospice to use these medications as instructed at end of life. And these include things like sublingual morphine for difficulty breathing or pain at end of life, benzodiazepines like lorazepam for anxiety. There are suppositories for constipation, things to help manage secretions. So all of this is designed so family members don't have to have a medical professional in the home to administer these meds if their loved one begins to transition or experiences distress. You're typically hospice companies, they'll. They vary from their protocol, varies from company to company, but and probably state to state.

[Rachel Yukatel]

I can imagine it depends.

[Rachel Waters]

It's funny, it's largely been managed just by companies. Right. There are overarching rules, but in general, how people manage the comfort care kit at end of life, the companies have a lot of discretion in that. So sometimes people just get prescribed it and you know, you follow the instructions on the prescription without a lot of guidance. Other times, people are trained on the use and they're given educational materials. Some companies say, hey, before you administer these meds, you need to call us and ask for instruction. Others they don't give that guidance at all. It really varies quite widely.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay, wait, that's good to know, but I do want to go back to hospice for one second. So people that are listening to understand hospice could be something you do at your own home or at the home of the person who's sick.

[Rachel Waters]

That's right.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Or it could be in the hospital too. I mean, do they bring.

[Rachel Waters]

So there are inpatient hospices that can take place in inpatient hospice facilities, but that's actually quite uncommon.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Got it.

[Rachel Waters]

The most common hospice is home.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay. Or I would imagine that maybe when people go away, their kids put them in like a old folks home or

[Rachel Waters]

whatever, which is what happened. In my mom's case, she went into assisted living, which was a memory care facility that is still considered your home because you are effectively you paying rent there. It is not a medical facility. It's essentially like moving someone into an apartment, but with extra supportive care. It's where the caregivers work full time for activities of daily living. But you as the power of attorney and as the caregiver, you maintain all the responsibilities and rights and they actually stay on home hospice. So the same company, when I moved her into the memory care facility, when it was no longer safer to stay in her house, they still manage the care, the, the comfort kit. Nothing was taken away from me. I assumed it was also prescribed to the facility, unfortunately wrongly at the time. But it's just a transition to a different residence and it's legal classification in Georgia is different from something like skilled nursing, which would be a nursing home. It's the same legal status effectively as an apartment building.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Got it? Okay. That clarifies a lot of stuff.

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[Rachel Yukatel]

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[Rachel Waters]

End of life.

[Rachel Yukatel]

I want to talk about what that means and how someone knows that they are in the end of life.

[Rachel Waters]

So typically it's a doctor that's Going to make that determination where someone has been diagnosed with a progressive, incurable, terminal dise. In my mom's case, this was more the multiple myeloma than the Alzheimer's, although the Alzheimer's was a significant contributor, so no longer responsive to treatment. And at that point, a doctor had determined my mom had six months or less to live. So hospice in this country operates on that timeline. Someone being given six months or less is typically when they're eligible.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay, so this is interesting. So is this the same thing as medically assisted suicide when they give?

[Rachel Waters]

Absolutely not. And thank you for asking that.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay, I want to clarify the difference and what we're talking about because I have done an episode where I had a death doula on who is hired in the state of California to be with a family when the medicine is being administered. And I heard about all the laws. I think it's legal now in 10 states. And you have to be given this terminal illness diagnosis. You have six months or less to live. But the thing is, you have to have two doctors sign off on it. You get a medication that you can keep in your bathroom or wherever for up to six months. But the thing is, the person going through it has to give it to themselves. They have to be well enough to themselves. Okay, so for people listening, that is what this medically assisted suicide medication. That's the background on that. Okay, Rachel, take it away. Tell me the difference between what we're going to get into, which is this hospice care kit, right?

[Rachel Waters]

Yes, the comfort care kit.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Comfort care kit and the medically assisted suicide.

[Rachel Waters]

Absolutely. And I'm so glad that you point that out, because a lot of people don't understand the difference. Even people who have loved ones on hospice, they think that the morphine is meant to end people's life. And we know medically that this is not true. The morphine, it's first of all morphine in terminally ill dying patients, in studies across the board, has actually been found to slightly extend life, in part because it does such a good job at easing respiratory distress and something we call agonal breathing that will happen as a person is undergoing the active dying process. So hospice means that people are going to die naturally. And that comfort care kit is just so you can help minimize the suffering that comes with a natural death. And the morphine, specifically, in that comfort care kit, aside from reducing pain, it is very useful at reducing the air hunger that comes when the muscles that would enable us to take a deep breath, these intercostal muscles, stop working. And at that Point. People start because they can't take a deep breath as they're dying. The body starts to experience these agonal respirations where you're basically chewing on air. And it's something like, you know, my mom began displaying that. Where it's like this hard shutting where the jaw is almost like gulping down air. It's extremely distressing, not only to watch as a person is naturally dying, but also for that person to experience in their final moments. You don't want people to experience air hunger. And so morphine is what eases that breathing and prevents that intense air hunger as people are dying. And you can also. So, you know, at end of life, you can use lorazepam, although combining those medications is not ideal, especially in high doses. But the assumption with hospices is that these medications are used while a person is actively naturally dying. They would die with or without the morphine. The only difference the morphine's gonna make is it will ease that transition. And it's what people in hospitals are given as they die, too. Some people think that because someone dies, that it's the morphine, but it's not. They were dying.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Got it. That's what I was gonna say. So it's a misunderst. It's not the morphine process of dying. Okay, so what's interesting about this, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember when my grandmother died and my mother went and stayed. She was telling us on the phone that the woman from hospice was very knowledgeable in this, what you say, the act of dying process. Meaning that I think it's a couple days before they can call it. They're like, oh, yeah. And apparently the day after, she's like, she. She's. She's probably gonna die in the next six hours.

[Rachel Waters]

That's right.

[Rachel Yukatel]

These people are so well trained in knowing the signs that the body goes through in naturally dying that they could literally, by an hour, say, if someone is going to be passing away. So I'm assuming these kits are made leading up to that, but then also going through it, correct?

[Rachel Waters]

That's right. That is right. And while no one can be super precise down to the hour, you do have an idea of the days. Right. And. And you're absolutely right that they are trained to recognize those signs. That is exactly what happened with my mom. Okay.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Did she talk within the day before? Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

Oh, no. So my mom. I had gone back to New York very briefly, only for, like, a week and a half, because we were thinking about moving my mom to A different facility. Anyway, we had some concerns about some of the care at the facility. So I was gonna come back down and assist when I got a call from hospice as well as the facility. They were both on the line and they said, you, mom has been found doubled over. She is non responsive. Her oxygen saturation is in the 70s and we think she has hours to days left. You need to get down here immediately. So the hospice nurse had determined that she was actively dying. And that was charted and documented. And at that point, my husband and I moved heaven and earth to get down there. There was a huge storm here that had canceled all the flights. So we took an Amtrak to D.C. and then flew out of. Raced from the station to the airport and flew from D.C. to Augusta to get down by my mom's side. And when we arrived, she was non responsive. Appeared essentially paralyzed. Her eyes were already starting to dry out because her advance directive had stated comfort measures only, which just means oxygen and medications from things like a comfort care kit. But no fluids and no food, no feeding tubes, no I've no drip of fluid.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And was that something that she had chosen or you.

[Rachel Waters]

That was something that she chose, yes.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

She wanted to die a natural death with comfort measures. That was something she chose for her advance directive when she also named to me her power of attorney. Okay.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And again, for people listening with comfort measures is not something that is going to make you die. It's just too comfortable.

[Rachel Waters]

That's right.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay, go ahead.

[Rachel Waters]

And at that point, we set up shop in her room. We learned at the time that the facility did not have a comfort kit there. So my husband, you know, you're not thinking anything of it, he's like, well, I can at least have the one from the house. So while I have something on hand. And we'll just hope that the hospice company gets it to the facility in time, knowing that she's about to die. And so you don't think anything of it. You've been trained to use it. The hospice company, everyone knows that you have it. It's her residence. The main concern is you don't want it getting in the hands of other residents there. So we kept it in the car, you know, where no one's going to access it, but we would be able to run out and get it if we needed it. And, and I just.

[Rachel Yukatel]

You were talking about before that certain companies do it certain ways. So what was your training with it? What did they.

[Rachel Waters]

So my training with it, when it was prescribed was just the explanation. The nurse sat down, explained what it was for said, here's the number you can call, you know, if you can't get anybody. You know, the instructions are very clear on the prescription. You know, you don't want to use this liberally. This is really for, you know, when we start to get to end of life or if there's. There's, you know, real distress, whether it's pain or difficulty breathing. But that was kind of the extent of it. It wasn't super in depth. I think she also knew that I had a medical background, so I was educated. You know, there's sort of an assumption, too. I knew that it wasn't going to terminally overdose or I'd been managing my mom's medications for a long time. So it was just.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And what was it? It was a pill or.

[Rachel Waters]

No, it's a. It's just a liquid morphine solution is what's contained in it. And it's a little dropper that goes under the tongue because people, they can't swallow pills if they're dying. And so, you know, it's not a particularly high dose either. The prescribed dose is not something that would even kill you or me. Right. It's especially for my mom, who had a fentanyl patch because of her cancer. So she was not opioid, naive. We went and picked that up because we knew. Or my husband went and picked that up from the house as we knew we might need it. And. And we're just. We're not thinking anything of that. At the time, however, I was getting increasingly desperate for the hospice company to prescribe it to the facility because I didn't want to be responsible for administering medication at this facility, especially, you know, coming up.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Well, can't they do it through an IV and make it.

[Rachel Waters]

No, it's. It's. If it had been prescribed to her as a drip, I hoped that they would. I didn't quite know what it looked like in a facility. I. You. In my dreams, she was going to be put either on a drip or someone would just come in and administer it regularly. That is a responsibility that no one wants because there's always this fear of, like, God, what if I, you know, mess up or, you know, you don't want. I think that to, you know, especially if you're in a. You know, luckily that wasn't the case. But you would prefer not to have to give it yourself.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rachel Waters]

You want a trained medical professional to do it.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah.

[Rachel Waters]

And unfortunately, my request for that prescription were denied repeatedly. I didn't understand why at the Time. It was pretty upsetting. I certainly had some words for hospice

[Rachel Yukatel]

about it, but did they give you a reason?

[Rachel Waters]

They did not. Not at the time. They only said, well, she just appears comfortable to us. And I'm like, you see her for five minutes out the day. You're not watching the agony on her face when she's turned. And this was when I started documenting my mom's breathing and signs of pain because I was desperate to prove to them she needs comfort measures. She has bone cancer, and she's not getting adequate pain management, which is.

[Rachel Yukatel]

But I'm confused. Isn't it the same time that hospice was the one telling you she's at the end of life? So we've only got. That's right, a day.

[Rachel Waters]

So I was also confused. Okay. That did not make sense to me. She's actively dying and yet. And I had another friend who was a hospice nurse who was also coming in at the time. She was very confused. She was like, I don't understand why they're refusing morphine for her at end of life. You know, we assumed maybe it was some concerns with the facility. We didn't know. All we knew was, well, thank God, at least we have this comfort kit, so if she starts to actively die and has distress, we can respond to it. It. And sure enough, early in the morning of July 12, at around 4 in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of teeth smashing together. And it was that air hunger. And I woke up my husband, and we realized that now was the time to definitely try and get morphine. So we immediately. I immediately went to the front desk to see if that prescription had come through because I was still holding out hope it had not. So my husband got the comfort kit, and I followed the instructions. I called hospice to get directions and guidance and administered just the single dose of some Ligamorphine to my mom. And it made no difference to her breathing, unfortunately. She continued to gasp for air until. For about two and a half hours until she. She. Yeah, she passed. And it was incredibly painful to watch her die like that because I had seen my grandparents passing in hospitals with the benefit of a morphine drip where it was a lot calmer and more peaceful. And my mom's death was not. And I was devastated. But I was also. I had been mentally preparing for this because I knew she'd been dying for days, and I knew how immense her suffering was. And so after she passes, you know, we have the family come. Hospice comes and declares her. They bathe her, they change her. We're not thinking anything is awry until as we are heading back to the house because the funeral home said it would be several hours before they could pick her up. So they were like, just go home and rest. Hadn't slept all night. On the way home, I get a call from the funeral home, and they said, there's been a problem. We can't pick up your mom's body because it's been taken to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Atlanta.

[Rachel Yukatel]

How did you react to that phone call?

[Rachel Waters]

I said, oh, my God, and hung up. I immediately knew that someone had implicated me in something terrible because I. I wasn't born yesterday. There's only one reason a body is taken to the crime lab in Atlanta. That's if someone has alleged cowplay.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right. Well, was this a shock to you or you had been getting a lot of pushback from different people up until.

[Rachel Waters]

It was a shock. But I immediately had my suspicions of who might have implicated me. And I was, you know, and there were a lot of. And mind you, there's like, there's like a few candidates in my mind that I can't really speak of now, but I certainly. So it's a shock, but half expected.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

Because things were so, so tense. And I knew that they were tense, but it was amazing that it had ever gone to that point. And also it blew my mind because everyone knew I was there because she was dying. And. And I immediately googled the first criminal attorney I could find in the area. I wanted someone who understood the county. And I found a man, Robert Hommler, and called him. And I gave him the 5 minute rundown or 10 minute rundown of the story as we were getting home. And I said, I'm afraid that I've been accused of murder. And he said, it sounds like it. And.

[Rachel Yukatel]

But you hadn't heard from the police station yet, right?

[Rachel Waters]

Absolutely not.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

He was. And. And so he was telling me possible charges, and he's saying, well, in the state of Georgia, you have felony murder. You have all this. And I had never heard of felony murder. So I'm starting to Google all this stuff on my phone while he's talking to me. And he tells me to be prepared because we're going back to my mom's old home, which of course was where we were staying. And he says, you know, you can expect a visit from investigators and from law enforcement any moment now once you arrive. And sure enough, about 30 minutes after we got back to the house, five Columbia County Sheriff's cars pull up two plainclothes investigators at the door, demanding my phone, wanting to talk to me. And I said, you can talk to my attorney. This is his number, and you can get a search warrant. And they said, you know how this looks, right? And I said, yes, it looks like I know my rights and why they

[Rachel Yukatel]

were saying, it looks like you're guilty because you knew how to.

[Rachel Waters]

That seemed to be the implication.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

Because I was prepared, and I'm a prepared person. Again, I wasn't born yesterday, you know, and I. I've also worked in criminal legal reform. I was an investigator for the federal government for years. I, you know, I used to read people their rights, so I. I understood what was going on, and I knew that now was the time to hand it over to my attorney and not myself, because I am volatile. I am emotional, I am angry.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Sure.

[Rachel Waters]

That is, you know, first of all, like, you don't want to talk to the police if you've been suspected of a crime in general without an attorney present, but certainly not just hours after your mom died when you are feeling every emotion under the sun. And I waited for them to get the warrant. They came back with it about three hours later, and it had my name on it and homicide. And I knew then that I was a murder suspect.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Wow. So did they take you in that day? Did they question you?

[Rachel Waters]

Absolutely not.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay. No.

[Rachel Waters]

Couldn't question me because I handed them over to my attorney.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

And the assumption was, despite all the fear and the horror and the pain of having known that I was implicated in my mom's death, it was so obvious. Like, we knew that there was an abundance of records out there that I had not. Not killed my mom. Right.

[Rachel Yukatel]

We had. So you weren't. You couldn't have been that nervous that they were going to find something. But at the same time, if you're accused of murder, I think anything.

[Rachel Waters]

Oh, yeah, It's. It's being nervous that you've been accused, but not nervous that it's going to go anywhere. Right. It's the. It's the agony of, like, they've taken away my phone just days before my mom's funeral. What kind of. What am I going to tell people? Like, I told people I lost my phone, you know, like, what's going to happen with the family, with her state. Like, all of the. These moves that you have been anticipating for closure and healing, they just stop. Everything freezes in place because you also can't get a death certificate. And that's important for the estate. It's important for Life insurance. You need it for all of those things. And so your ability to move through those processes of grieving is put on hold. And so we had hope, though, that it would be quickly resolved. A. Because she got so little morphine, we're like, well, toxicology. If toxicology doesn't clear us, then, you know, we couldn't imagine a world in which it didn't. I'll say that I had even started calling medical examiners, telling them the dose, asking about. And they were like, we've never heard of anyone being charged with murder. After sublingual morphine. You don't need a worry. This is when people push a lot of. They're like, morphine redistribution is definitely a thing, but just never heard of anyone being charged with murder. I don't think you have to worry about it. I spoke to the former medical examiner for the state of Tennessee. Like, I called everybody that did, like, consulting to try and understand what timeline I could expect, what findings. I was aware of postmortem redistribution of morphine being unpredictable just from my own research through the medical literature. So that was the only thing I had some concern about. But I was also assured they were like, you know, they're gonna. A good medical examiner is gonna take that into account. Also, by all accounts, everyone knows that you're called down, that your mom had been declared actively dying. You had witnesses to her death. You know, you had a legally prescribed comfort care kit.

[Rachel Yukatel]

What was the accusation of motive like? I don't get it. Was it just because you. You had overdosed her to get her to die, to get her out of agony, or was it worse?

[Rachel Waters]

So. So we. That's a great question, because you can only infer in some of the interviews given to investigators, in just. Actually just one of the interviews that I know of, the implication was that I wanted her to die sooner. And there wasn't a reason really given other than there was a lot of harsh language like get rid of her or hassle, didn't want her to recover. Which was very odd language considering that she was not going to recover cover.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Well, were they suggesting that you wanted a life insurance or you wanted her home?

[Rachel Waters]

Not that I know of. Now, there was certainly. It seems to have been that there was some implication of money at one point, because the da, what she latched onto was, well, we need to pull the bank records. And she brought it up as a. You know, not everything necessarily makes it into the file, into the discovery file, but that seems to have been a possible allegation. Of course, when the da, you know, when she pulled those bank records, she deduced, well, this had nothing to do with money, probably because she saw that I had been supporting my mom and, you know, this was. My mom was not. My mom had home, but my mom was not wealthy. She had a good retirement pension, which helped. But that pension ends with death. That's not something a survivor or that I would get. It did help support her time and memory care along with my income, which was why we were able to have her in a nice facility. Is basically, I channeled my entire income while my husband supported me into caring for my mom.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah. At what point were you. Were you ever taken into custody?

[Rachel Waters]

I was. So after 18 months of absolutely nothing, of, you know, just waiting for a death certificate.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

Waiting for the certificate. Waiting to find out what they were.

[Rachel Yukatel]

If they were going to charge you or had they charged you.

[Rachel Waters]

They had not charged me.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

And. Which was also unusual. And lawyers that I spoke to kept saying, if you haven't been charged now, toxicology has been back for ages. If they're not making a move now, it's. We don't think they're ever going to make a move.

[Rachel Yukatel]

You're probably stuck in limbo because with still stuck in limbo, where they end up on it, you can't get the death certificate. Take. You can't move forward in the meantime. Are you speaking to your family?

[Rachel Waters]

No. My family stopped speaking to me about a month or two after. After I became a suspect. And I had no idea why. They just completely cut off contact. So no response to text, no response to calls blocked on all social media. I. I still don't know the exact answer. The only thing I can assume, because when sympathy cards came in the mail, they were all addressed to my mom's siblings and not to me. Even though people had known me for my entire life. My only assumption is that my aunt probably informed everybody that I was either a suspect or I killed my mom. My mom. My aunt would sometimes allege that I was trying to kill my mom. Of note, as far as I'm aware, my aunt was not a primary accuser, but she was involved with law enforcement early on, so she was.

[Rachel Yukatel]

You didn't put it to rest and get you off the hook. She. No, she let that narrative play out.

[Rachel Waters]

Whether that's right.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Started it.

[Rachel Waters]

That's right.

[Rachel Yukatel]

You don't know. Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

That's right. And it seems the rest of the family fell in line and I was just sort of dead to them.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And so you weren't able to contact Them and say, this is crazy. You guys know that I have nothing to do with it.

[Rachel Waters]

No, I couldn't contact them. I was reaching out to them, telling them I loved them and missed them. I mostly wanted to grieve because they were the last repository of memories of my mom when she was cognitively intact and of my childhood. Like, these were people I grew up with. They were my last remaining family, aside from my mom. My aunt was the person I was closest to. And I had hoped that after my mom's death, we could kind of let bygones be bygones in terms of our disagreements around her career and hopefully become closer. That was not to be.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So in the meantime, or not in the meantime, after 18 months, I'm assuming they act. Did you get a phone call? Did they accuse you of murder? How does that go down?

[Rachel Waters]

Oh, boy. I. It was leading up to my birthday, and I made an Instagram post about the last birthday gift my mom had ever given me, which was teaching me how to paint. And it was just a post grieving my mom. And an anonymous commenter said, shame on you for murdering your mom. This is why your family has disowned you. And then posted an indictment that was very official looking. And it was Rachel Waters with the indictment number. Two counts of murder in the state of Georgia, felony murder and malice murder. It had the judge, Barry Fleming's name on it. And my blood ran cold because I had seen court documents before in my time as an investigator, and. And it looked like a court document. It looked real. I took a screenshot of it and sent it to the attorney who had been advising me, Robert Humler. And I said, is this real? Am I about to be arrested? And he just wrote back, yes, but

[Rachel Yukatel]

what a way to find out. I don't understand. Nobody was going to call you and tell you, oh, hell no.

[Rachel Waters]

You don't get. You don't get a courtesy call. The cops come and pick you up and take you to jail just from

[Rachel Yukatel]

anywhere that you are.

[Rachel Waters]

That's right. Right.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Okay.

[Rachel Waters]

And in fact, I had just flown home from Georgia, where I was caring for my mom's house, just days before the warrant for my arrest was issued across the country. And if I had flown when I had planned to fly, I came home early because my Kitty was actually diagnosed with cancer. So I rushed home to be with him. I would have been caught at TSA in Augusta, Georgia, and I might still be jailed to this day, but because this person, who was meaning to be hostile, tipped me off on Instagram. I was able to reach out to Robert, who is the person who got me. Brian Steele. He said, rachel, you know, we got on the phone. He said he was on vacation with his family, and he was, like, drinking in the hot tub, right? And he says, it's a Friday night, just before my 42nd birthday party. And he's like, rachel, if this happened to me, I would have the only man in the country jump in to defend me, and that's Brian Steele. And of course, I'd heard of Brian Steele because he was the young thug attorney. Anyone from Georgia kind of knows who he is. And I was like, there's no way Brian's going to take my case. He's like a celebrity attorney. I'm a nobody. And he said he will. I have him on the phone.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Wow.

[Rachel Waters]

And I immediately got on the phone with Brian and his wife while they are driving down the highway in Atlanta, and it was like a deus ex machina. You know, he. He was like, listen, I stand with you. We are one. We are going to make arrangements so you can get out on bond and you can build your case, and we are going to. To beat this. And. And from there, I mean, you have this. Oh, absolutely. Okay.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So did you go back down to. To Georgia?

[Rachel Waters]

I had to, yeah. With Brian. I mean. I mean, you have all this terror because, you know, those charges in the state of Georgia are subject to the death penalty, Georgia being a death penalty state. And you're. And right now, I'm. I'm trying to fathom how this even happened, how I even ended up charged. This was wild to me. There was no precedent for it that I could find anywhere in the country or that any lawyer could find of someone being charged with murder for arriving at the deathbed of someone who'd been declared actively dying.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right.

[Rachel Waters]

And none of that was relevant to Brian. The only thing that was relevant was getting me out on bond, because you cannot build a very effective case while you were jailed. You want to be able to make bond. And so he immediately worked with the DA and the judge to make arrangements for me to turn myself in. In. I think it was like a little less than a week and a half after. And so I went forward with my birthday party the next night and made the announcement to my friends about what was gonna happen to me and. And kind of what my future might hold. And also for their, you know, saying, you know, if you want to speak for me or vouch for me, because part of what's important with a bond hearing is for the Judge. To know that you're embedded in a community. You're not someone who's going to flee. You're not someone who poses a danger to society.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Of course, yeah.

[Rachel Waters]

And they were very eager to, you know, they were like, we'll do whatever it takes. We'll travel to Georgia, you know, whatever you need. I've been really lucky to have a, a very strong community both in Georgia and here in New York.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And how did your husband take it? This must be difficult.

[Rachel Waters]

Absolute horror. Horror, terror. Disbelief. Utter confusion as to how I ended up charged. And this is also confusing because my husband was the one who brought the E kit. He was the one who was in the room. So you would have thought he would have been interviewed, right? We thought if there was going to be something, someone would have at least tried to speak to him. That never happened. So it was just like, charge him

[Rachel Yukatel]

as an accomplice, maybe, or, or a charge.

[Rachel Waters]

Exactly. It would just, it just didn't make any sense to us, you know, like, like, if something was going to happen, like, wouldn't they have spoken to the direct witness, you know, and the, the person who was with me?

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah. Was it just the two of you in the room?

[Rachel Waters]

When it was just the two of us in the room, yeah. And, and we, my, you know, I was driven down to Georgia like a fugitive because I was. You can't fly when there's an active warrant for your arrest. You certainly can't drive. You don't want to get pulled over. But we made it luckily, and I turned myself into the jail on the day of my bond hearing at like, five in the morning.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And was Brian with you?

[Rachel Waters]

No, no one was with me in, in person except for my husband. I, I, they were still coming down from Atlanta, and I had another local attorney. They were prepping at the courtroom, our courthouse, and we had originally thought I was going to be in holding, so I dressed, you know, for a court appearance. No, I, Yeah, I went through the full, the strip search, the, the shower, the mug shot, the orange jumpsuit and the cell. And I was in long custody for 12 hours. Luckily, just 12 hours. But that 12 hours is enough to really open your eyes to what it looks like once you're inside the system. And also I didn't know if I would be there 12 hours or four years, because.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right, because you don't know if they're

[Rachel Waters]

going to actually, you don't know if you're going to make bond. Traditionally, a DA will fight bond, and then the judge makes the determination. I was Extremely lucky that the DA in my case, she was not the one who had presented my case to the grand jury. Of note, it was the lead investigator. There was a change in leadership at the district attorney's office between the time my murder investigation took place and my indictment. So there was no sitting DA to present my case or even to really evaluate it, it seemed. So she comes on after I've been indicted, and she seems to have some doubts. Now. I can't say for certain, but she certainly seemed to. And that was evident when my bond hearing came. And, you know, you don't go into the courthouse for it. You are sitting, you know, in a room with cameras and screens. And when she came on, she. She sort of telegraphed out about the malice murder charge. She's like, there doesn't seem to have been any malice. Spoke to the brother and sister. Her mom was in terrible pain, had attempted suicide. And so she said, well, if anything, it seems like it was mercy, not malice. But there were other odd things to me that she started mentioning, like, she googled possible charges as evidence. And I was like, no one knew that I was tipped off. It was something that I assumed the investigation would have revealed. And so I started to get a hint that some of the evidence was, like, not especially strong and also easily explained. There was also. I kept seeing in news articles, right, because the. The news articles after my indictment, before I turned myself in, kept alleging that morphine had been stolen. And I was like, wait a minute. I had a prescription. My mom had a prescription, and I have proof of this prescription because I photographed it before I handed it over to law enforcement. And that was odd. So I, as she was sniffing out that there was something awry with the case. I was also realizing there was something awry with the evidence, which, of course, you feel in the first place, but you have no idea what that evidence is. You're in a black box until then. But you start to feel that little bit of rising hope at the realization of, wait a minute. There's a lot here that can be explained. And now you're in a position because you've been charged for your attorney to clarify this. The other thing that brought a lot of hope to me was seeing the courtroom fill up with people who had traveled from all over the country to be there for me and to stand for.

[Rachel Yukatel]

For me.

[Rachel Waters]

And so I saw Brian on camera and him presenting and proffering witnesses, and I just held my breath. And when the judge said $200,000 bond, I was relieved because it was just Enough of what we had left after legal fees, the percentage, right. You don't pay 200,000. You pay, you know, 15% of that.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah.

[Rachel Waters]

And I knew that if I made bond, when I made bond, realizing the evidence and how. How we can explain literally everything that seemed to have been flagged as a doubt was when I had hope that we could get through this, especially with Brian.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah.

[Rachel Waters]

And I was released that evening, you know, after the bondsman had been paid, and. And that is when we began the fight, because we knew it was just a matter of getting discovery and being able to answer to it. And luckily, the DA Natalie Payne, she is very good about turning over discovery quickly because sometimes they can withhold it to the day of trial. You can actually spend years waiting on discovery. She didn't do that. It's very odd to speak favorably of the D.A. i realize, in this case, but I didn't fault her for anything that happened to me. And I do have a deep respect for how professionally and decisively she moved, because we got that full discovery. And when we did, we realized, oh, my God, it seems they didn't even have the medical records that my mom was actively dying.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right.

[Rachel Waters]

There were just so many things that were missing. There seemed to have been no context for her death.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So did it seem like there was a misunderstanding, or do you think it seems like it wasn't. Wasn't. The police didn't do their jobs, and then therefore, in. In the grand jury, they were presenting things that. That they didn't have a full context about.

[Rachel Waters]

I cannot make a judgment call either way. Beyond the fact that it seems that many things went wrong, there certainly seems to have been misunderstandings. There certainly seems to be missed things. There certainly seems to be an.

[Rachel Yukatel]

There's. There's no misunderstanding that somebody accused you of this or somebody.

[Rachel Waters]

So there's no misunderstanding that someone implicated me. Got it. So accusation. I'm being very precise in. In legal terms here. Right. Because even words like innocent are. Are charged legal terms. But an implication was certainly made that would lead investigators to believe that that could potentially lead investigators belief that I had hastened my mom's death. Right. It also appeared that implications were made that my mom was in a recoverable state rather than declared actively dying. It appears that implications were made. And actually, we have no idea by whom, but we know it was made to media that this was an unauthorized morphine bottle, that it was stolen and was not prescribed. Right. So we are. I'm actually still working with attorneys to fully ascertain the scope of what happened, because that's not something you're able to do until you're cleared of charges because you're a hot potato.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And by the way, it's so important because I can imagine that this is not the first time this has happened. I would think that this is something that people have been accused of, or

[Rachel Waters]

it is the first time, as far as we are aware.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Wow.

[Rachel Waters]

I am precedent setting. I am the first person in U.S. history to be charged with the murder of an actively dying person. Person.

[Rachel Yukatel]

That's enormous and an enormous weight. But what I mean, do you think that somebody had a witch hunt against you, or you think that this is something that you need to call shed light on because of how easy it is to get the facts incorrect?

[Rachel Waters]

It's that second point. You know, I think it's very dangerous to attribute malice, whether you know it or not. But what I do know is if it happened to me, it could definitely happen to someone else. Because there are not nearly enough protections in place for family caregivers, especially when it comes to the management and use of controlled substances for their loved ones at end of life, that if someone doesn't know how hospice works, say they work in law enforcement, they could even be a medical examiner. A lot of people. One of the things that really shocked me is how many people don't realize that family caregivers are prescribed and entrusted with controlled substances. They think of that as something that medical professionals can use. I don't know if investigators thought that in my case, but it wouldn't be surprising if they did. It wouldn't be surprising if they thought that you giving morphine to another person is automatically illegal. Right. Because it's a natural assumption. I can't walk up to you and squirt morphine in your mouth. That is definitely illegal to do. But there's a whole system that is. Is not very well documented. In many cases, when family members are verbally deputized, there's not necessarily a record of that. Right. There is no universal law showing that the family member has been deputized and authorized to use morphine for their loved one at end of life. And so if you have a murder investigation or a family member that accuses someone of using morphine to overdose a loved one, and law enforcement comes in, the assumption, the default assumption is gonna be, well, if there's morphine and the person had morphine, it must be illegal, because they don't understand necessarily how hospice works. And there's no official record of it. Which is why after I Was charged. I began speaking to my friends who are hospice nurse professionals, as well as contact with others saying, you know, what does the protocol look like at your company? Other people have been through hospice. Like, what was your experience with getting morphine and administering it? And most people, there was no record whatsoever, official record that they had been authorized to use this morphine. But we know all the time that when someone dies. Your point is correct. It does happen all the time that people blame and accuse other people of killing loved ones on hospice. It just doesn't go as far as my case did. And it often doesn't go as far because you'll have, like, a family accuser. It's not necessarily gonna be a mandated reporter. You might have law enforcement that goes. I don't know, they're on hospice. It's up the. At every level, it's people's discretion. And all it takes is, you know, someone convincing a person in a position of authority for it to go really far.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah. So I want people to hear this for a second, because Brian Steele's name, who's famously. He's famous for defending young thug, but he now has become even more famous because he's been added to puff daddy's defense. And he is one of the active Right lawyers on his case. I'm just curious now that people have heard this, I'm curious your opinion of him, Because I'm sure a lot of people would question how somebody could defend a criminal like that, Right?

[Podcast Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Rachel Waters]

I am not altered in my opinion of him in any way whatsoever, because every single person, no matter how reprehensible they are or no matter what crime they have committed, is constitutionally entitled to a robust defense and trial by jury in a court of law in this country. And so when it comes to defense attorneys, they are upholding the constitution when they defend people, no matter what we think of them and their crimes. And that is a civic duty that is vitally important. And I think that it takes a lot of grit to be able to do that, because they do face a lot of personal judgment. But I don't look at it as them supporting the type of person that they're defending. They are supporting a person's constitutional rights at the end of the day, and I have immense respect for that. So Brian is one of those people that, from the moment I met him, it became very clear to me that he was someone who was dedicated to upholding the rights of every single person, no matter who they were. And of course, when you see now, I did not know that he was Diddy's attorney when he took on my case. I found that out kind of in the midst of it. And you have this like, panic attack because you're like, oh, God. You know. But then I caught. Checked myself and I was like, no, he's doing his job. What he's supposed to do is defending, you know, the constitution and these people's rights. And so it doesn't change my opinion of him in any way. And I think it's important for people to keep that in mind that it's not about the individual they're defending. It's about the right that we have under the constitution as Americans, no matter who we are as people.

[Rachel Yukatel]

That's a really special, smart and well spoken answer, I will say. Where were you when you found out the charges were dismissed?

[Rachel Waters]

I was at home. It was, you know, we had a suspicion they might be coming because Brian had given me a call, you know, a couple of weeks prior, about a week and a half prior, to let me know that after we turned over all of our records, as well as recordings of my mom, as well as the documentation of my. The prescription for her and all of the medical records for her, which I had obtained about a year prior by sending a demand letter to the facility that he had revised her cause of death and it was no longer determined to be a homicide. And when a medical examiner overturns a ruling in light of new evidence, because medical examiners, they do not make these decisions for cause of death in a vacuum. Right. They take into consideration the condition of the person leaving, whether or not she had food or fluids. As far as we know, he didn't even have context for that. He didn't have context, as far as we know, for a morphine prescription. But we were able to provide all this context for him that he didn't have. Certainly things he had never seen, like video of my mom in her final hours, as well as eyewitness affidavits and testimony. And when he received that, that cause of death changed. And even though the state could theoretically decide to continue to pursue the case, it would be unlikely. It makes it much harder. Right. Because the state itself determined it wasn't a homicide. And so at that point, it was just a matter of waiting. And of course, I don't have a job anymore. I lost everything when I was charged. Your life gets obliterated. You lose your job, your career, you can't earn unemployment. You know, my Life was basically 247 case research and going to the gym just to keep Myself sane.

[Rachel Yukatel]

I can imagine.

[Rachel Waters]

And I had woken up in the morning, saw a text from Brian to give him a call, and he let me know that as soon as the DA had spoken to the medical examiner, she immediately requested that all charges be dropped and had put in the request with the judge and the case was fully dismissed on August 28th.

[Rachel Yukatel]

I mean, it's pretty incredible because that's what, August, September, October, November.

[Rachel Waters]

It was like six months.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Six months ago. I mean, you were facing death, essentially, and you have been found to. What are they? It's called. They dropped the charges. So it's not declared in a case.

[Rachel Waters]

The case dismissed. Case dismissed. So essentially brings me back to the status of if I had never been a suspect at all.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right. Except for your credibility has been completely tarnished.

[Rachel Waters]

Oh, your reputation, it's less, you know, it's funny. It's. It's your reputation, your ability to earn a living like it's an atom bomb for your life.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Have you gotten a job since then?

[Rachel Waters]

No, no, I'm, you know, even though the record is restricted in Georgia, the they do not seal records. And so depending on the type of background check software, it will still show that I've been charged with two counts of murder.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Murder, by the way, with no context. It's crazy.

[Rachel Waters]

And who would want to hire you from somewhere else? And I, you know, I was working with pharmaceutical, major pharmaceutical clients, representing them. And that it was a relatively high profile position in the sense that, you know, they don't want to take on that kind of legal risk when you're in, you know, pharmaceutical writing. And this career that I built, that I loved was obliterated overnight. So I was just taking cat sitting gigs in the neighborhood. I couldn't even, like, get on Rover because they run a background check and you would get, you know, turned down. And so I realized then that my only option was to really dedicate myself full time to passing Marsha's Law in.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Help tell people what that is, please.

[Rachel Waters]

So Marsha's Law Law. The best laws, I will start by saying, are the most narrowly written. Right. You can expand them out with time, but the goal is to achieve the maximum beneficial impact with the minimal amount of things that lawmakers or voters might quibble over. Rather. And Marsh's Law would effectively require, at the bare minimum, that when a person goes into home hospice, that that hospice company keeps a written and digital record alike. And that written record would be on transfer paper, right. So those copies can be given physically to family members, showing that these family members and or caregivers who have been hired by the family have been deputized and trained to use the medications in the comfort care kit. And a copy of that would be kept not just with the hospice company, but also with. With the individual family. That is signed and witnessed by the hospice professionals acknowledging that they have been deputized so that in the event that there is a search warrant or, you know, someone has accused them of misuse or of theft, or saying they're not authorized to use it because they're not a medical professional, when that kit is handed over to law enforcement, it has that transfer paper showing like, this person was authorized to use this and they were trained on its use. And that alone could probably cut off a lot of issues at the pass. Now, in my perfect world, it would also mandate training for law enforcement departments and coroner's offices to understand hospice and how end of life looks and the use of morphine and how it's managed. So they would have some training and context.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right.

[Rachel Waters]

Rather than relying on lay people saying, oh, morphine is proof it's used to kill him. Like people see Saving Private Ryan, where it's like, put me out of my misery, and they jam the morphine into the thigh. And that's how people think of morphine. And unfortunately, that carries over to anyone, whether they're law enforcement or, you know, just a well meaning civilian. And so having that kind of training for law enforcement bodies that could be involved could be tremendously helpful. But that's a much bigger ask and something that, you know, I am still working with hospice professionals as well as lawmakers planning to go state by state, starting with Georgia. So that is underway now. I'm already talking to people in offices to help craft the law and the language so that when I travel down to meet with folks, we have really clear, comprehensible, short legal language of saying, you know, hey, can. Would you sign on to this for your constituents? And so you start building momentum inside states, especially in the south, things that have felony murder on the books, where it's a lot easier for someone to be charged even. So felony murder means that if you committed any felony, such as theft of morphine and someone dies during the commission of the crime, you can still be charged with murder.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Got it.

[Rachel Waters]

And so it's important to work in those states first, and then you build federal momentum or momentum for the federal level at that point.

[Rachel Yukatel]

I mean, I wish you the best of luck with it. It's so important, and I can't imagine that people would be against it.

[Rachel Waters]

So.

[Rachel Yukatel]

So it's shocking to me to think that people wouldn't understand it, but unless they've been through it, they probably don't get why it needs to be there in the first place.

[Rachel Waters]

That's right, yeah.

[Rachel Yukatel]

And listen, I have a friend, I was on the phone with her this morning and explained that I was interviewing you because I've been talking to her for a while and they have just decided to put their mother in hospice. And how painful it is, is for, you know, it's her mother. So for her to watch her mother go through this pain and she doesn't know what to do. She's not. She doesn't feel qualified to make certain decisions. She doesn't, you know, she doesn't understand this end of life, what it looks like, like, you know, how a hospice person would. And she's in pain herself because I think she doesn't know what to do. And it's terrible watching her mother in pain. So what would your suggestion be for people that are. Are going to experience this soon, thinking of getting hospice involved, knowing a loved one is coming to the end of life? What do you suggest that someone does?

[Rachel Waters]

I think that a. It's really important to understand that these medications serve a really critical purpose that is not one that is going to hasten your loved one's death when used appropriately and correctly. And that hospital hospice in most instances is a really wonderful service for people to be able to pass comfortably in their own home. What I would suggest for people though, because my story, of course is terrifying and it could happen to anyone, is documentation is everything. Not just for law enforcement on down the line if it comes to that, but also for yourself. I think that when hospice is instructing you on how to use the comfort kit, just ask, hey, can I record this for my records and myself? Most states require, in fact maybe all for a video recording. Both parties consent, but I'm sure that most would consent to, like, okay, I want to be able to record this and document you deputizing me, you training me on this for your own reference so you know what to do. Because there's a lot of panic that can take over when your loved one starts to experience distress at end day of the life. And also making a documentation of like, you know, I would keep a record of, you know, what the medication management uses just for yourself. Also, you know, ensuring that you're keeping in close contact and in lock step with the hospice company that you're with and making sure you have the same ideas about where your loved ones at in the process that you're in agreement on the correct comfort measures and that you don't potentially run into conflicts there. And also the understanding that you can change hospice companies at any time if the service is not working for you and your family. We were in an unfortunate situation in which we, you know, when those tensions started to arise as my mom was actively dying, there was no time for that and we didn't really know what was going on. But. But for most people, you can get an idea of things that might be an issue early on and make sure you're on the same page and then just document everything you know. If you do have conflicts, it is worth documenting. And this is where one party recording laws can also be important. So for audio recording, many states you need to check. Your state laws only require the consent of one party, and that party can be you. So if you're finding that there's conflict or something seems really off about the standard of care that your loved one is receiving, you can document these things because you don't know if they're going to come in handy. If, God forbid, you're accused or if you decide to pursue legal action or anything at a later date, you go out, you have that record available to you.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah.

[Rachel Waters]

And it also just helps kind of keep you calm and grounded to know that you have reference points as you move through this process because it's an incredibly distressing and disorienting thing to endure. Or my mom dying. It felt like your brain's sort of dissolving. You're running on very little sleep, you're racked with grief. But if you can at least have the presence of mind to track everything, to record what's going on, it can provide you a lot of peace of mind moving forward, Especially if there's conflict with someone and they might, God forbid, implicate you in wrongdoing.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Right. Two more questions that I'm sure our listeners will want to know. Do you have any contact with your family now?

[Rachel Waters]

I do not. I reached out to my cousins in hopes of them talking to family, but my cousins also did not respond. And that was after the case was dismissed. I. I am hoping to eventually write a letter when more coverage comes out about my. My story, because I don't think my family believes much of anything that I say. I don't think that they didn't have a lot of trust in me from the start, from the moment I moved to New York, as they called it, Sodom and Gomorrah, you know, a very Religious evangelical family that, you know, sort of diverged in some ways about, you know, who I am and how, you know, how I live. So I think that sowed some distrust anyway, but having, you know, being able to get the story out more, I think there will come a time where I have the presence of mind that I can sit down and at least write them a letter. Better.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Yeah.

[Rachel Waters]

Expressing everything. But, no, I. I may not ever have contact with them ever again.

[Rachel Yukatel]

I'm so sorry that you're going through that. That makes me really sad for you. But thank you. You know, just because they don't agree with your life or the choices you've made doesn't make you a murderer, obviously. No, obviously. If you could speak to your mom and tell her what her life and her death meant to you, changed in you, like, what. What would your. What would that be?

[Rachel Waters]

It would be about her life and not her death. My mom is the reason I am fighting now for other caregivers and for justice in her name, because that was how she raised me. No matter how daunting those odds seem, no matter how terrifying it is to put myself out there and make the news of what happened even bigger and face that scrooge. My mom was one of those people who always fought for the right thing, no matter what it cost her. And this was true. When I was a child and growing up through custody battles with my father, that was the person she was. And I am deeply, deeply dedicated to living up to the type of person she was in her life and. And after her death, because that is the greatest way I can remember and honor her legacy, is to continue that in the world.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Amazing. Well, you need to write a book. We need to get you a book publisher, because this is a great story.

[Rachel Waters]

We're thinking about that. I think there's a lot to teach people, too, about how they can defend themselves in this situation and just resilience through this kind of thing.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Absolutely. Rachel, it has been an honor. You know what, what is next, besides getting this proposal of Martha's Law? You're now. You've now gotten the death certificate, I can imagine. And you're going to close the estate and move on and try and start over, I'm assuming.

[Rachel Waters]

Yeah. So the next steps are getting Marsha's Law passed and also just continuing to raise awareness of the need for that. That reform for end of life and how hospice is managed and help educate the public a bit more on what they can do when they're up against power asymmetries like this because one of the reasons this was resolved in six months was because I knew my rights throughout. I was, you know, I knew what to document, I knew what to record, I knew how to move through these systems. And most people do not have that privilege. And I think that there is a lot, especially in this day and age, that people could stand to learn about what to do when they're up against something that's potentially life shattering. So that's sort of the secondary mission after Marshall's Law is helping people know how they can navigate these huge systems, whether it's corporate or government, once they have been accused of something that they did not do and how they can move out of that. And so I'm working to build out that, that, that message and speaking to attorneys and doing research now on, you know, flushing that out for other people so I can continue to hopefully help folks navigate not just end of life with their loved ones, but also these impossible and terrifying situations should they find themselves caught in the criminal legal system or, or some other system that that threatens to up in their life.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Rachel, you've been through so much and you have such an incredible story. I really do help hope that it gets the coverage that it deserves. Story needs to be told for sure. If people are interested in contacting you or following you, where should they find you?

[Rachel Waters]

So right now I am very easily reachable on social media. Both my TikTok and my Instagram as distinguished heathen, I do read messages on there. I am currently in the process of getting my website set up and that will have a contact form too. And that's going to be rachelewaters.com so that should be live by the time this podcast is published. So racheleewaters.com will have a contact link for people as well if they want to reach me there or via social media. But you can also see a little bit of my story on social media and learn a little bit more about who my mom was. I have a lot of photos and videos and stories of her there too.

[Rachel Yukatel]

I love that. Rachel, there's something about you that is bigger than this. So I feel like this is going to be your mission and I feel like people are going to hear your voice. I mean, I don't, like, I'm not intuitive like that usually, but like I. You're just such a good communicator and I feel like you've been through this for a reason and I hope that it helps people. So good luck to you.

[Rachel Waters]

Thank you. Yeah, I'm, I'm hoping to I think that if it was going to happen to anybody, I was the best person for it to happen to. So. So yeah, good luck.

[Rachel Yukatel]

Thank you so much for listening to Misunderstood. I'm your host Rachel Yukatel. Please be sure to subscribe to the show and give us a five star rating and review. You can support the show by joining Our [e-mail] Misunderstood with Rachel Ukatel do you have have ideas for the show or want to reach out? Email [e-mail] that's spelled M I S S. Understood. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time. With Vrbo's last minute deals, you can save over $50 on your spring getaway. So whether it's a mountain escape city break or a week at the beach, there's still time to get Great. This is discounts Book your next day Now. Average savings $72 select homes only let's be honest.

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