Laura's Emails | BONUS

**Stephani Young** (0:04)
Hey, it's Stephani, back with a bonus episode. We talked in episode 3 about the many emails Clayton received from Laura Owens during the summer of 2023 He compiled the emails into a Google Drive that he calls the LO File. There was so much more about the LO File and these emails that we didn't have time to get to in episode 3 So, I sat down with Clayton to hear a bit more. We're going to start with their back and forth about the paternity test. Laura claimed that Clayton was refusing to take one. He says that wasn't the case, and the emails seemed to corroborate his account.
In the last episode, we talked about the paternity testing and who was paying for it. Now, the whole conversation gets messy as the months drag on, but I mentioned that you agreed to pay for the whole thing yourself, so let's get into that a little bit deeper. In the email from Laura to you on June 24th, about three weeks after she told you she was pregnant, she says, I wanted to let you know that I will not be paying for the paternity test. It's of no use to me because I know I wasn't physically involved with anyone else, and therefore no one else could be the father. I promise that if it came back any other way, I will fully reimburse you, but trust me, it won't. I haven't lied to you yet, and I don't need to pay several hundred or a thousand dollars for information that I already have. Okay, so what was your response to that email?

**Clayton Echard** (1:34)
So my response to her was, I will pay for 100 percent of it. You have my word, let this message serve as the proof. Just schedule it and let me know where you scheduled and I'll pay.

**Stephani Young** (1:47)
Throughout this entire LO File, I don't see one email of you refusing to take a paternity test. I know you really wanted to take the paternity test based on what I was seeing in the emails. So I found something in the emails that might explain why Laura said you were refusing to take it. Can you read that for me?

**Clayton Echard** (2:06)
So she had sent me an email saying, just confirming that you are refusing a paternity test. No answer equals refusing it.

**Stephani Young** (2:14)
Okay. So it's my understanding, and I came to this conclusion by reading the emails and you telling me about how no response equals a response, that that's what's happening here. You weren't responding to her emails, and she was taking your lack of response as a no.

**Clayton Echard** (2:31)
Yeah. It's ridiculous in nature, but I mean, you've heard even from a societal standpoint, people say silence speaks volumes, and I think that's what she was trying to lean into is, and I know you're reading this because I have the mail trackers. And if you're choosing not to respond, that is still a response. I obviously didn't agree with that. I just didn't want to communicate with her. But she was just looking for ways to manipulate and gaslight me, and eventually the people that were going to see these emails and messages.

**Stephani Young** (3:00)
You just mentioned something that I want to talk about. You mentioned the mail trackers, which we do talk about in the episode with the emails. How did you know that she had those trackers on?

**Clayton Echard** (3:11)
Eventually, she had told me. But I also just knew because whenever I had opened them and I'd read them, she had to send over another one right away. But if I was ever just busy and I couldn't get around to my emails, then yeah, nothing would come through.

**Stephani Young** (3:24)
Then she eventually told you that she had a tracker on.

**Clayton Echard** (3:27)
Yeah, and she eventually then told me that she had the trackers. I'm like, OK, this makes sense to me why she continues to send them. I thought I was able to trick her by not responding and to thinking that I had her in a block folder and I wasn't paying attention. Again, what I wanted her to believe was that I wasn't looking at these emails. I had way better things to do. She had no power over me and eventually she would just give up.

**Stephani Young** (3:53)
All right, let's move on to another one. Here's another email. This one's dated July 5th. So this is about a month after she told you she was pregnant, but she had already hinted to you that she might be pregnant with twins. This is the email. I had an idea. What do you think about hanging out tonight and seeing if this is something you want to try out for a couple of weeks before we make a decision about what to do. If either of us decide that we don't want to explore something more serious, then at least we will know and we will both have clarity. With you not responding about the possibility of twins or me giving you the chance to make a different decision about the abortion pills because of that new prospect, things feel unresolved and my anxiety is through the roof. I'm sure yours is as well. With my stress levels being where they are at now, if the baby or babies are born with any issues, I would blame you for not trying to help me reduce those by supporting me, as you said you would. If you just pursued something romantic for a night, you have no idea how much it would help me emotionally. And I definitely would not blame you for any problems the child or children would have. This was still pretty early on when I believe you still thought that there might be that 0.01% chance that she could actually be pregnant. So how did this email make you feel? And were you concerned for her mental health at the time?