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This is White Devil.

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Today is a special day in many regards. Personally, for Jasmine and I, it marks the fulfillment of a dream to create the Alaia Resort in Belize on the official opening day today.

Thank you. This is Andrew Ashcroft. Speaking to the media in a sordid VIP at the grand opening of Alaia, the resort he and Jasmine began building four years earlier, a project that was to solidify his place as the second generation of Ashcrofts to establish a lucrative beachhead in Belize. It was May 2021, a time of hope and recovery as Belize looked to emerge from the COVID pandemic that wrecked its tourist industry.

A year ago, as the world faced an uncertain future, we and the Ashcroft family were concerned not just for the development, but for our beloved homeland. Little Until we know that a great deal of tenacity and power and willpower, Belize has begun to emerge stronger than ever with a focused outlook of making a great comeback.

Jazmin and Andrew stand poolside under swaying palms with their four-year-old twins. They're sipping champagne as they cut an enormous gold ribbon to mark the opening of the brand new 155-room hotel complex, which would be part of the Marriott Autograph Collection.

My wife Jazmin, my kids Charlie and Al, we are 100% committed to Belize. They start school here this summer. We're going to start a new project here.

For Jasmine Harton, it was surely the most exciting professional moment of her life. The start, she thought, of a new career designing and building luxury resorts in the Caribbean. But three short weeks later, almost to the day, all that would change. Police Superintendent Henry Jamat would lie dead just steps from where they stood sipping that champagne. And of course, Jasmine would be the only suspect. Jasmine's mom, Candice Constiglioni, knew instantly, as soon as she got the call, that her youngest daughter's life as she knew it, this glamorous, almost fairytale existence, it was over.

Oh, my God. I was at work. I was cleaning a lady's house when I got a call from my son.

This was back in Canada, in Kingston, Ontario, where Jasmine grew up and where Candice and the rest of her kids still lived.

I said to the lady, I got to go, and I went home. And my daughters, my other two daughters and I, and my son spent the weekend crying her eyes out because she just opened Alaia. And I'd been with her in conversation for four years as she's designing it, getting all the fabrics and all this and that, and four years of work. And she finally opened it, and I was so proud of her. And then May 28th, the accident occurred in her front yard, for God's sake.

This is almost literally true. The The place where Henry Jamat was shot is about 100 yards from the gate of the condo complex where Jasmine, Andrew, and the twins lived, directly next door to the glittery new Alaia.

I just immediately, immediately in my head, knew she just lost everything. That's what I said to myself. She just lost everything. And I was devastated, beyond devastated for her.

The perfect family Really the perfect life, all gone in one terrible, tragic moment. But that's not exactly the whole truth either. Jasmine's life blew up that night, no question about it. But what looked so perfect in that video, she and Andrew smiling alongside their adorable babies poolside at their new resort wasn't really perfect at all.

We were not together for about a year and a half.

Meaning Jasmine and Andrew. That smiley, idyllic image they were showing off It was all for the cameras. As Jasmine tells it, their romantic relationship had been on the rocks for years.

I decided, you know what? I'm just going to stick it out. We were sleeping separate, but keeping the image together for the business and for the children. Because I came from a broken home. My parents got divorced when I was four, and I just didn't want that for my kids.

Of course, compared to our own relationship, a traditional broken home with lingering bad feelings seems almost charming. From Campside Media, this is White Devil, and I'm Josh Dean. Episode 4, The Unhappy couple. The media likes to call Jasmine Harden a socialite. The stories I first read in the New York Post and in the British tabloids all use that term, and it's still the most common descriptor any journalist uses when talking about her. It implies that this attractive, well-dressed woman, whose partner is a billionaire son, comes from the same privileged circles. That she is First and foremost, just a rich lady whose primary goal in life is to have fun and be photographed doing it. In reality, Jasmine grew up poor on a farm in rural Canada, where everybody had to pitch in. Jasmine and her siblings had chores. She milked goats, and they all lived in a house with no insulation, in a place where temps could hit 30 below in winter. Candice says on especially cold mornings, they'd sometimes wake up with their hair frozen to the wall.

I did not grow up with money. I did not grow up being a snob. I'm a very down-to-earth, real person. I can't stand pretentious, snobby, stuck-up people. I can't sit and pretend with these people and think that I'm better than everyone because of money or status. I can't stand that.

Jasmine finished high school, and at age 19, fell in love with an older guy who went to med school. When he finished, they moved to Calgary together and lived well. For the first time in her life, she had money. She was comfortable.

We had a beautiful house, big seven bedroom house in Aspen woods in Calgary, a gorgeous area. He was the doctor. I worked at the dental office. We had the picture perfect relationship on the outside, but he was 35. I was 25. I was getting bored in my life, in my job. I was thinking about going back to school to be a dentist, but I didn't want to commit to school and invest time and money if his plan was to maybe propose and one day marry me and have kids.

But it didn't happen, and the relationship broke down.

I was lonely. We started drifting, and I was not happy. At the end of our relationship, I started doing real estate. His comment, when I tried to do real estate, said, If you think that you're ever going to make more money than me, you won't. I don't know what this independent woman thing you're doing is, but cut it out. And I thought, You selfish jerk. I supported you during your residency. I was right there beside you. How do you know I don't want to take you on a trip or buy you a nice gift for your birthday? I want to be able to make money. And it's not just about that. It's more about my mental boredom in my job right now in my life.

So Jasmine bailed, leaving the cars, the $4 million house, the holidays at the Lake College. She was 25. Her life was a blank slate.

So I just came down to Belize because my half brother was here at the time. He owned the RE/MAX in San Pedro. So I had just finished my real estate license, and I wanted to come down and try something different.

I think it was just a change of pace. I mean, a new start. It'd be exciting, don't you think? Like, Hey, I have an opportunity to go to a foreign country. It's warm there. There's no snow. And the worst case scenario is you hate it and you leave. But at least try it. And so she did.

Things initially went well for Jasmine. She was spending time with her brother and building her own client base. San Pedro is a small place with a tight expat community. So it was pretty likely that she and Andrew Ashcroft, this rich social Englishman, would eventually cross paths. They met first through a job.

My initial reaction was he's arrogant and full of himself and a spoiled a little rich boy. And I was turned off by him immediately. And he tried to contact me, and I did not write him back. It was months. I just pushed him off. I pushed him off, and he kept messaging me, messaging me. And the one night, I was I'm pretty lonely. I had a really hard day at work, and the message came through, and it was, Stop thinking about me. It made me laugh because I was like, Who does this jerk think he is? I've never written you back in months, and now you're writing me and saying, Stop thinking about me. So it made me laugh, and he got me at a vulnerable moment, and so I decided to have a drink with him.

Much to her surprise, they hit it off.

We met at the rooftop of a restaurant, and one drink turned into six hours of conversation, and I actually felt bad for prejudging him because I saw a different side. I actually enjoyed the conversation. So then After that, it progressed quickly. By December, we were a couple living together. So that was around September 2014.

And for a while, things went well. The rich British bachelor and this ambitious young Canadian. They were from very different backgrounds, and Andrew was much older, but it seemed they were a pretty good match.

He was funny. And the thing I liked about him is the very first night when we were talking, he said, I love that you're a businesswoman. He's If I ever got married, my wife would have to be a businesswoman. That's all I ever wanted was to have a true partnership in a marriage. He said all the right things. It was something that for six years, I couldn't have. That conversation with my ex.

Andrew and Jasmine set out to build that partnership, which included the development of a valuable stretch of beachfront villas called Banyan Bay, a property that was in receiver ship and in the hands of Belize Bank, which happened to be owned by Andrew's father, Michael Ashcroft. It seemed improper, Jasmine says, for Andrew to get this valuable property from his father's bank. So she secured the loan and signed the papers to purchase it, along with another woman who was a close friend of the family. And they decided to build a luxury resort there, which they named Alaia. Thank you.

Alaia just sounded... I don't know. I was drawn to it, and then I saw joyous, sublime, and I thought, Yeah, I like it. So we went with Alaia.

It was exciting the thoughts of, growing the company and doing Banion Bay and all that. I mean, for a young lady, that's coming from Canada. She was raised on a farm. We were poor. So I was pretty proud of her.

Candice had no idea who Andrew really was or of the luxury that was now available to her daughter.

Actually, it was Andrew that slipped out because we were on the phone. I think he had a few drinks. And he said to me, Do you know she has a private chef, right? I said, Pardon? And then he says, Yeah. And then she started opening up a little bit. Yeah, well, I didn't want to brag, but yeah, I have a private chef, and we have this, and we have that. I went, Wow, okay. Well, this is interesting. How did this happen?

Andrew Ashcroff's parents split in the mid-1980s when he was still a kid. Michael married Susan Anstee, his personal assistant, and then moved to the States to run his companies. His ex-wife, Wendy and the kids, Andrew, plus his brother and sister, moved to the US, too. Andrew went to school in Florida and later studied business at the University of Montana. His early career was very much shaped by his dad, who he's worked with pretty much since graduation in a variety of roles. In the early 2000s, Andrew landed in Turks and Caicos, where his father had several businesses going. Eventually, he handed one of them, a bank, to Andrew to run. Things did not go well. The bank had financed a lot of building work on the islands, but many loans had to be written off as the effects of the 2008 financial crash took hold, and the tourism industry crashed, all while the country became imbroiled in a corruption scandal that led to the British imposing direct rule on its former colony. Andrew stepped down from his role at the bank after just a few months. So then he was shipped off to Belize, which made sense.

It's where his dad based a large chunk of his business empire, and where his family had a long history, of course.

Belize was his last chance to prove to his father that he had grown up and that he's a man now. And the best way to do that is to have a wife and children that you prove that you've grown up.

He was handed a position at another of his dad's companies, serving as COO of Waterloo Investment Holdings, as well as Head of Marketing at Waterloo Hospitality. This experience set Andrew up for his next move as a resort developer with Jasmine Harton, who had become his partner in business and life.

I just found out I was pregnant July of 2016. I think I was actually six weeks pregnant. I went to Canada because Zika virus was going around, and everyone's freaking out about microcyphalus Hopefully, the shrunken head thing with the babies. So I took off and I went to Canada.

Andrew stayed behind in Belize.

He was planning to propose to me. I didn't know that. He booked a property on Alexandra Bay, the Thousand Islands, which is about a 30, 40 minute drive from my hometown.

After the break, Andrew flies north to pop the question, and a fairytale romance does not ensue. Thank you for listening to White Devil, a podcast about A Power and Privilege in a Fragile Paradise. You can hear new episodes released weekly on Amazon Music. You're listening to White Devil from Campside Media. In 2016, apparently ready to settle down, Andrew rented a beautiful beach house in Alexander Bay, which is in upstate New York, but just a short drive from Jasmine's hometown across the border in Canada. Why not just go to her in Canada? He couldn't. A DUI arrest in Florida meant that Andrew was not allowed to cross the border. So instead, they met in Alexander Bay, and Andrew officially proposed to Jasmine, who was six weeks pregnant at the time. She said yes, but it wasn't long before the crack started to show.

During the course of the pregnancy, he just was never there, and he was just getting drunk every single day, parties at the house while I'm pregnant alone in Canada.

And when Andrew finally got a temporary exemption from that travel ban and was able to visit his pregnant fiancé in Canada.

He basically used me as a designated driver, so he could just get completely wasted. He was there at the hospital, once, and he was supposed to come in for my ultrasound, and he said he didn't want to come in. I asked him to please rub my feet the one day, and he said, Don't we pay someone to do that?

And that's not all.

He wasn't there for the birth. No, he missed the birth of the kids because he wanted to go back and party for New Year's. And I told him, Please don't go. I know these babies are coming. So I had 11 pounds of baby. I was 2 centimeters dilated. I was ready to go. So I begged him to not leave, and he left anyways.

As I've mentioned, we gave Andrew an opportunity to provide his version of events about his heavy drinking, his abuse of tendencies, his absence during the pregnancy, all of it. But through his attorney, Andrew declined to comment, asserting that ongoing court proceedings prevent him from addressing these claims, and that the relevant courts would, take a very dim view of our client providing information to the media in advance of the hearing about those matters relevant to the proceedings. Anyway, at the time, Jasmine was pragmatic, realistic. She wanted to make it work, even if deep down, she knew it never would.

At this point, I had given up on true love, to be honest. I thought I thought, all these people that say they're happily married and they've been happily married 30 years, I don't believe it. I think that it's a business arrangement or they each have boyfriends or girlfriends on the side, or they have some … I just didn't think it was true. I didn't believe in it. I thought, you just settle. I'm like, You know what? We get along most of the time. He leaves me alone. I have my freedom. He has his freedom. So maybe I just do this thing with the kids. I knew I wasn't going to be with him.

And And that engagement never turned into wedding plans.

He kept asking over the years when we'll get married. I stopped wearing my ring years ago. In 2018, I stopped wearing my ring.

This is not the impression anyone would have gotten at that opening of the Alaia you heard at the top of the episode. The public perception was that Jasmine and Andrew were a couple. That was better for the business and the kids. Hippolito, our local stringer, says this isn't exactly an unusual thing.

It's one of those common things in Belize, whereby you have a common relationship. Things don't work out, but to share children. So you stay together for the children.

But it was a tricky relationship. In 2018, Jasmine moved back to Canada for a bit. She alleges that Andrew drank too much and that there was abusive behavior. She thought very seriously about leaving him and says that Michael Ashcroft himself was in favor of the idea. He even engaged a lawyer on her behalf. Candice also remembers this time, and not fondly.

I mean, the man was so cruel to her. He did so many bad things. Apparently, when she would confront him about it, the next day, he would say things like, Oh, that was yesterday. It's a new day. It's a new day.

And yet she decided to give him a second chance. Andrew seemed to be making progress and was committed to improving himself. I've seen texts and emails between them where he's promising to change his ways. So Jasmine gave him another shot at being a father to keep the family together, even if she'd basically given up on the romance.

He was really trying to prove that he learned his lesson and he was going to do the right thing. So we just basically put a hole in the wall with a barn door, like a sliding door, so that we could sleep separate, but it would still be attached for the kids.

The partnership would continue in business and as parents, even if they both privately lived their own lives.

In turks, we would actually have our own places. He said at first we might have to get one house until we can afford to get the second house. Because Andrew and I didn't have that much money. It was his dad that had all the money. So I said no problem, but I think it's... I've outgrown Belize. I think it's time maybe we move on and give the kids a better life in turks.

This was the arrangement between them. Alaia Belize was just step one. In a partnership, they planned to continue in turks. Andrew had big dreams.

He He decided to prove to his father that he was a capable adult and could actually follow through on something for once in his life because he had always been a screw up.

Andrew is very powerful, and he's quite well known in Belize on his own, but especially because of his father. And that offers him a fair amount of protection. I would hear rumors of people who had issues with him, but no one seemed to want to say anything on the record that might backfire. And Jasmine was speaking to us after feeling abandoned by him and his family. She had basically nothing to lose, which makes her, if not an unreliable narrator, then at least a pretty pissed off narrator. Obviously, she can only tell us her side of the story. And Andrew, as we've said a few times now, declined to be interviewed. So I cast a wider net for people who knew him. Finally, a contact put me in touch with someone who knew Andrew back when he lived in Turks and Caicos. So it's good morning there, I guess. Is it when Is it Wednesday there?

It is Wednesday. It is just coming up to 10 past 9:00.

Michael Bailey is in Eastern Australia, 300 miles south of Sydney, but he's lived all over. He's got Canadian, British, Australian passports, as well as once having permanent residence in the Turks, where he lived from 1996 until 2011. So you're a resident of the Commonwealth, basically.

Well, yeah. It's easy once you're a member of one of those countries to... I just collect them. I put them on my mantelpiece.

We chatted, and he told me about his time there.

I built and developed a condominium hotel. I think we went there in '96, and we opened a hotel in 2001.

In the course of doing this, Bailey met the Ashcrofts.

I encountered them because our loan came through what was the Belize Bank at the time, and that was owned by Michael Ashcroft. I was very grateful, actually.

He also met Andrew around 2005, when he must have been about Andrew was then working at one of the island's main banks, British Caribbean Bank, also owned by his father.

Things were a bit slow around the 2005, 2006. So we started putting up employees of the bank into the condominium just to have some revenue coming in. So they approached me to take Andrew Ascroft, who I didn't know, never met. And so he was sent there, really as a trainee, in in the bank. He was there 15 months. So obviously, I had lots of times to interact with him. We had beers. Yeah, so I got to know him very well.

Did you have trouble with him as a tenant or no, he was fine?

I personally didn't, but I know my staff did. They were tired of picking up used condoms from the floor.

So he was... Pig. Entertaining a lot of women?

I don't know how many. I mean, I didn't I didn't spy on him. I wasn't that interested.

Bailey did spend enough time with Andrew to draw some conclusions.

He's entitled, he's privileged, but he's not terribly bright. That was my impression. I never met Jasmine. I met some of his girlfriends on the island, and they all look like Jasmine.

He fit, Bailey says, a profile we're all familiar with. It's a character we see all the time in movies. A person, a man, most of us have met at one point or another, like Kendall in succession. Just fuck her up, bitch, and go kiss the ring.

Out to the old she. A typical, spoiled, billionaire son who thought he could get away with everything and anything. I mean, yeah, he was drinking, nightclubbing. So he gave his father probably a worse reputation than he already had. And then, of Of course, he became the manager of the bank, probably in, I don't know, around 2010, 2011.

As we heard earlier, this bank management role did not go well.

He was far too young for the job, but they gave it him, and he made a hash of it.

We don't use that term in the United States, but that means he did not do a very good job as the manager of the bank.

Exactly.

And did you ever have any interactions with Michael?

Just once. I was introduced to him at a party. But the night that I met him briefly, his big yacht was more there, just steps away from where the party was being held. So I asked Andrew, I always remember, I said, well, how What happens if I try and get on board his boat and he says, You'll find out if you're still alive.

Really?

Yeah. He was such a twit. I mean, just a twit. I mean, a real twit.

Bailey moved away from the Turks, but he never stopped thinking about the Ashcrofts. That family, it made an impression. He's now retired and has recently written a book, an entirely fictional account of a British engineer living in Australia who heads back to a Caribbean Island. Two key characters, Jeffrey Elm, a ruthless 73-year-old businessman lacking the slightest semblance of a moral compass who had used his tremendous wealth and influence to purchase a peerage, and his brash and less capable son, Michael. Jasmine says that the behavior Bayly is talking about, that never stopped. She alleges Andrew drank heavily and used drugs. For the record, he makes the same accusations about her, and I've read them in legal documents. They're ugly. Anyway, Jasmine says that Andrew's behavior really put a strain on their relationship.

It was the 18th of December of 2018, and then he promised to be sober for at least two years while we were finishing Alaya, and that didn't happen. So then it was January 29th of 2019 that he was arrested for public intoxication and kicked off the flight in Dallas. He was on an overnight flight, and he called me about seven o'clock in the morning, and he was wasted. And he had been up all night, and he was belligerent, really, really bad. And I was begging him, Andrew, please. This is Dallas to Belize. We will know people on this flight. Please stop drinking. Go to sleep. I said, Please get some rest. And he wouldn't.

Andrew did not, in fact, make that flight back to Belize.

I called Dallas Airport and I said, If somebody was quite wasted, is there a jail that they would possibly go to? That's literally, I knew it. I say, You don't by chance have somebody in there named Andrew Ashcroft, do you? And they said, Yes, ma'am, we were just about to call you. And I said, You've got to be kidding me.

Andrew was so drunk that he told the cops When we met him in Dallas, that he was in Belize. But what actually happened was that the flight had returned to Dallas, where he was forcibly removed.

And at that point, I realized I just made the biggest mistake. I was set up in Canada. I had the kids in school. I had a cute little apartment around the corner from my friends. I had the gym that I was going to, right by my grocery store. I was in a really good routine. I was learning my way around this area. I had my hairdresser, my nail place. Everything was set up. And I left to give him another chance, and he just got arrested for public intoxication when he promises to be sober. I just felt like the biggest idiot. I felt so foolish. It was embarrassing. I almost didn't even want to tell anyone because they would have said, I told you so. All my friends said, Jasmine, don't go back. My lawyer said, Don't do this. Stay in Canada. This guy's dangerous. And I just thought I owed it to my kids and my family to try one more time. And look how that's gone. If I would have stayed, it would have been very, very different. I think about that all the time. Like, what would have happened if I just stayed?

Jasmine probably should have stayed in Canada, but she didn't. Instead, she returned to Belize to give her baby daddy one more chance. And I don't think she'd argue much if I called this the single worst decision she's ever made. Certainly, the most consequential decision. Because without that, none of what's transpired since would have happened. Henry would almost certainly still be alive, and she might well be happy and free in Canada instead of a desperate, distraught pariah in Belize, looking at jail time for accidentally shooting her friend. It's a mind boggling sliding doors type situation if you think about it too long. We'll get into that more after the break. You're listening to White Devil from Campside Media. It seems like a pretty good time to recap the twist that got us here. So remember this?

You're on video. I'm trying to come in to get my things and to see the children. Why won't you let me see the kids, Andrew? Why won't you let me see the children? There's nothing in writing, and you're stopping me from coming into my own home.

This is the same moment you back in episode 2, when Jasmine Harton and her mom attempted to go to Alaya to see her children, only to be turned away.

Open this gate. I want to see my kids. Open this gate. His goal is to literally bleed me dry. That's what the family does. They want you to have zero finances and means to fight back. They want your hands tied behind your back so they can punch you in the face. I have nothing on me. This is ridiculous.

This is how Jasmine was feeling about Andrew and his family in the aftermath of the shooting, when in the summer of 2021, he did the opposite of what everyone expected. He began to distance himself, icing out the mother of his children and making moves to wall her off from everything, including the kids.

He wants to take all this and go. He wants to take the kids, go to turks. His family, they have a horrible reputation in Belize. So his goal in doing this to me is to ultimately get sole custody so he can take the kids and go. His father really only cares about lineage. They don't care about my children, but they care about having the fourth generation Ashcrofts in the Caribbean. I was basically an incubator, and I didn't realize it until recently.

This assertion, I mean, who knows? I have to imagine Andrew Ashcroft does love his children and that Michael Ashcroft loves his grandchildren. But it did seem, as this story developed, that they weren't acting in the twin's best interest. Jasmine just wanted to be a mom, to be with her kids, and Andrew seemed to be doing everything in his power to keep them away from her. If you really care about your three-year-old kids, it seems cruel to separate them from their mother.

The accident came at such a perfect time for him because here I am hanging by my fingertips on the edge of a cliff, and he could have reached down and helped me up.

That being the outcome everyone expected.

Or he could have said, Wait a second, do we really want to help her? Or is this a perfect time to bury her and save 30 to 50 million that we'd have to pay her out?

Meaning the share is in Alaia and the Grand Colony complex conflicts. Jasmine is estimating what her stake in those things should be worth.

So they chose to save the money and to completely cut me off, but the world saw that.

Remember the mystery person who came forward in one of Jasmine's bleakest moments to put up bail when it was rescinded at the worst possible time on a Friday at 3:00 PM? This was massive at the time, a true answered prayer, and a huge shock to everyone involved in the case or following it. This act of kindness basically saved Jasmine from being locked away, again, at the Hattieville Prison for a long time. Well, here's that Good Samaritan.

My name is Wendy Oaxaloo. I call myself a barefoot lawyer because I'm an attorney, but I was born and raised and run around barefoot on the island of Kecogar for most of my life.

Wendy Oxylu didn't know Jasmine at all prior to that day in June 2021. She came forward and laid out what amounted to 30,000 Belizeian dollars in bail because of what she'd been seeing from afar, the single mother having her life destroyed in public view.

So I think the hearing where they went through, the original person, withdraw the surety that I was keeping her out of jail, which is the Ashcroft employee. When they did that, immediately at that hearing, we presented my property as part of the surety for the bail, and they still had to put her back in prison because it took four days. It took until the following Tuesday, I think, to have that complete lip process where she could be released again.

So Jasmine did spend four more nights in that terrible place with a bucket for a toilet, but it would have been much longer, if not for Wendy, a total stranger. Jasmine She's husband was broke and did not have a lot of allies. Her mom certainly didn't have $30,000 to put up. So unless someone had stepped up, she might still be stuck in prison.

Why did I support her? Because I'm a feminist, and I could see it was very glaring to everyone who had eyes to see that she was being intimidated by this very rich, powerful family. Yes, she was in a bad situation.

The situation with Henry, whatever happened that led to his death.

But they used I see that as an excuse, taking away her home, her money, her kids. And it irked me. It just upset me. These are powerful people, powerful players that are doing this in the public domain. I mean, this is happening before our eyes in the news. And no one, not no politician, none of the local women's groups, no one was coming out to support this poor woman who I felt was fending off all these lions by herself.

This is an important point, and I think one that is lost in most of the media coverage of the Harton case. It's certainly not a thing the public or those people who tend to write in comments under stories were noticing in the aftermath of the shooting. Jasmine Harton did not get special treatment. Quite the opposite, If you ask Dickey Bradley, her chosen attorney. In the whole world she had lived in prior to May 28th, that was close to her. She was in almost every way alone, with no allies in the government or the judiciary. And not only that, Those forces seemed to be slowly squeezing her. That's what Wendy couldn't abide.

I think every right-thinking woman that's looking at this is thinking, I've lived through that before. This is a very patriarchal society that we live in. We've all been victims like this. We need to start a chorus and have our voices heard. This is not okay. I felt like if there was one voice that came forward to say, enough, this is a woman that needs protection, that it might start a rolling stone that would gather some strength with other voices. And you know what? It did.

Public sentiment was mostly against Jasmine after the shooting, understandably. But that sentiment began to turn as the case went on, especially after the video of Jasmine attempting to confront Andrew about the kids appeared on Facebook. Wendy played a part in this.

My initial reaction was to put a post out saying, On my Facebook timeline, and this country operates on Facebook. I have to say that.

She's not kidding, as we've already seen. Wendy understands the power of this forum and regularly posts her opinions about local news and events.

I put out a post saying that it should be called out for what it is, and from there people started commenting. I think it was more like a social movement versus a financial movement thing.

Eventually, Wendy did make contact with Jasmine after finding her sister on Facebook, naturally. She sent a message of support. Her sister told Jasmine, who then messaged Wendy herself.

When she was released out of prison again because of the surety that I had provided for her bail, she got in contact with me, and she and her mom showed up at my law office. They came to say thank you, which I thought was very gracious.

Wendy has remained close with Jasmine ever since and has sometimes acted as an informal legal counsel. And as a friend. Jasmine trusts her.

She sent She's an amazing person. I love her to death. I think she's misunderstood in many ways. She's this gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, glamorous, glitzy person, but that's so down to earth that she can just mingle with people from every strata of life, and she does it so easily. She's so charismatic. She's just humble and well-grounded that people can't help but like her. She's just a really likable person, and you're drawn to her.

Hibalito remembers people starting to see Jasmine's side of things.

We see the emotional tide turning towards in or in favor of Jasmine Harding, especially when it comes to her maternity side, in terms of dealing with her children, in terms of being a mother. Here's a wealthy man who is trying to control her and take away her kids. That is what some of the women here in Belize looked at. Not necessarily that the crime happened, but now she's being victimized, and her children are now being taken away from her.

A key to understanding so much about this case, in its twists and turns, is being able to draw a line to distinguish between the tragedy of Henry Jamat's death, which Jasmine Harton was having to own up to, and all the things that happened to her as a result of it, not because of the legal case, but because her former partner and his family seemed to want to use that legal case to ruin her.

I mean, you still have the public split because she did kill this man. She did kill Henry Jamal, and people want her to face justice. But we saw that the public sympathized with her a bit more than at complaint.

This story, remember, was about a tragic shooting, the death of a cop. But it changed, evolved, got much uglier as powerful forces aligned against Jasmine, especially in the media. This is because a second battle broke out for Jasmine, this one against Andrew, for custody of her children.

Have you met a mama bear? Have you met a mama bear? Try to take her cubs. Go for it.

That's next week on White Devil.

Under the shade I flourish.

Under the rocks and stones White Devil is a production of Campside Media in Association with Olive Bridge Entertainment. The show was written and reported by me, Josh Dean, with the series producer, Joe Barrett.

The story editor and sound designer is Mark McAdam, who also provided original music.

Additional sound design by Joe Barrett. Studio Engineering by Ewen Lytrom-Ewen. Our closing theme is Under the Shade, I Flourish by Chris Halton and New Manhattan, including Eli Carvahal, Ava Carvahal, and Louis Chernyovski. This episode was fact-checked by Sarah Ivry. Additional research by Emma Simenoff and Reporting in Belize by Hippolito Navello. Artwork by Anthony Garace. A special thanks to our operations team, Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, Emma Simenoff, Destiny Dingle, and David Eichler. Campside Media's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriades, Adam Hoff, Matt Sher, and me, Josh Dean. At Olive Bridge, the executive producer is Will Gluck. If you enjoyed our show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. It really does help other people find the show. Here's a thought, maybe tell a friend to check out White Devil while you're at it. Anyway, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to White Devil, a podcast about power and privilege in a fragile paradise. You can hear new episodes released weekly on Amazon Music.