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The Achilles heel for many very rich and powerful people is arrogance. People who have everything, who want for nothing, are just so used to getting their way. The ones with a little self-awareness understand this on some level. They surround themselves with advisors who cover for their weaknesses, who protect them by anticipating problems, and when necessary, having the courage to speak up and say things that rich and powerful people generally don't like to hear. Difficult, incendiary things like, You're wrong, or, That's a bad idea. But plenty of our richest humans don't do this. They want what they want, and they don't want to be challenged. God forbid, even bad news. They build gilded echo chambers and surround themselves with sycophants who are paid well to say yes, which tends to create blind spots. This is what I think when I think about Andrew Ashcroft and Jasmine Harton. I think Andrew believed that, at least in Belize, his father's fiefdom, he could do whatever he wanted. And the Jasmine, especially on her own, had no recourse. Maybe it's because he was jealous of her dating other people during this period of adjacent apartment living and truly, honestly hated her.

Or maybe he was embarrassed by the shooting, which happened so soon after the opening of this glorious resort of theirs. Whatever the reason, it sure seems like he just decided to crush the mother of his children under his heel. Andrew probably thought that he could get away with it, too. Just take the kids, run away, and start over, leaving the wreckage of Jasmine's life behind in Belize. He just didn't recognize one very important thing. You don't want to get between a mother and her children.

Have you met a mama bear? Have you met a mama bear? Try to take her cups. Go for it. Soldiers don't even come close to a mama bear. It's impossible. And us all as women, we know that. We all know that. That's our kinship amongst women. We all know.

They're the flesh of my flesh. I grew them. The bond I have with my children can never be broken. And the thing is, when you've taken everything from someone, you've taken literally everything from me. I have nothing left to lose. So they've created their own monster in me. The more wrong they do to me, the more strength I have to continue this fight.

From Campside Media, this is White Devil, and I'm Josh Dean. Episode 5, War of the Roses. With everything we know now, it seems that Andrew Ashcroft responded very badly and made some surprising decisions in the aftermath of the shooting. When you rewind the story and play it back slowly, it's quite obvious. On June 11th, 13 days after Jasmine was first detained, Andrew brought the twins to see their mother at the hideout in the jungle. It was the first time Jasmine had seen her kids in two weeks, and he only gave her five hours to visit with them. Red flags were flying.

He had a gun with him. I said they wanted to see the flowers in the garden. There's not a house for Miles. It's just us. And then he served me with papers, and he's like, It was custody papers, and he wanted me to sign them. And I said, No.

The details were fuzzy, but it seemed like Andrew wanted her to sign over custody of the kids. And she, of course, refused. But even now, she still wasn't seeing exactly what was happening here.

I had to put all these pieces together. I said, No, that's the only thing I have left. I'm not giving up my kids, and I never will. And then after that, he called me and said, I think I'm going to send a shrink out to give you an evaluation.

This red flag was especially large because that would be one sure way for a father to get custody of his kids straight away.

A father can get sole custody if the mother is found unsound mind, imprisoned or dead.

Jasmine says that she then asked to go back to San Pedro to, quote, be with my children in their matrimonial home. And Andrew told her flatly that she would never be allowed back. And then he stopped answering her calls, which meant that Jasmine had no way to speak to her children. When that became clear that she was being essentially frozen out, Jasmine started to look at things differently. This is what sparked the incident we heard back in episode 2, when on June 22nd, 11 days after Andrew told her she could never go home, Jasmine went ahead and did just that. She returned to Alaia with Candice and Ted. Why don't you let me see the kids, Andrew? With the benefit of hindsight, their intention seems pretty clear.

You don't want to be on camera? It's going in the newspaper, Andrew. You're lying in my hand, Andrew.

And then Jasmine says that she got a very strange message.

I was like, This is crazy. This man is holding my kids and my belongings. And that same night is when Lord Ashcroft wrote me-Not Andrew.

Lord Ashcroft himself.

I said, Quit this charade, or I would hate to see you end up in jail on a drug charge.

This was a weird and completely random thing for Lord Ashcroft to say, and it would turn out an ominous one. But more Other than any of those things, it was menacing. Replying through his lawyer's, Lord Ashcroft denied this exchange ever happened. He says he never threatened Jasmine or had any influence in her arrest. But Candice says she saw the message, too. They were together on Keekhauker for one night when it allegedly arrived, the evening after their surprise visit to Alaia. Whether it happened or not, this hypothetical concern Jasmine says he was suddenly expressing immediately became a reality. We're here in front of the San Ignacio Police Station. We're just moments- As we heard back in episode 2, it was just two days later that Jasmine was arrested again on the two new charges. One of them related to a mysterious bag of cocaine found on the night of the shooting, which police had never mentioned before. I would hate to see you end up in jail on a drug charge. You might recall that's also when things got rapidly worse for Jasmine. When she was moved from station to station and eventually sent to the Supreme Court in San Pedro, where her original bail was revoked, and she found herself, at least temporarily, back behind bars.

But this wasn't all she was dealing with. Andrew was making other moves behind the scenes. Having failed to get Jasmine to sign over custody, he went ahead and filed for it in family court. They were set for a meeting in court on the 20th of July, just under a month later. And then, negative stories about Jasmine began to appear in the press, both in Belize and farther afield. The first arrived on July first, the day after, Elias general manager retracted Jasmine's bail. This is the picture of Jasmine Harton that is emerging tonight, a woman skilled in the use of high-powered weapons. She's seen here artfully firing a 12 gage pump action shotgun at a target 50 feet away and making a perfect bullseye. As the watermelon explodes, it sends a chill through anyone who knows what happened that night. This video of Jasmine blasting a melon is being described here in a channel 7 news clip. The timing was curious. It all felt very purposeful, and the clip flew around the media world to the Sun, the Daily Mail, and other British tabloids, as well as Fox News in the US. I've seen the video, and it's not exactly damning.

I don't like guns at all, but I've shot them. Somewhere out there, there's video of me firing a Barrett 50 cal at a propane tank in Alaska. I think I missed. Jasmine knew precisely where the video came from and why it was showing up at that moment.

That was recorded on Andrew's cell phone. That got leaked to the media.

Through his attorney, Andrew denied, quote, proactively sharing any information like videos with the media. When we asked his lawyer to elaborate on what it means to proactively share information with the media, they declined to do so. But this video was just the start. Jeti, the paparazzi, took note. There were videos of her out partying and just having a good time, certainly trying to put dirt on her name, basically. Jetai spotted the game straight away. He's part of that system. So when he saw a video of Jasmine shooting the Watermelon, he knew what he was seeing. Absolutely. It was 100% leaked to try and paint this narrative of her as she's not a capable mother. She's this party girl. There are other leaked stories, too. Another video shows her aloft in the rigging of a tatch bar's roof, mounting a saddle for some type of performance.

Okay, that was before Four kids, first of all.

I've seen photos of this, and yeah, Jasmine is absolutely doing it, riding a saddle mounted in a bar's rafters. She looks like she's having a really good time.

We were all out having fun, and Andrew attempted to do it before I did. I actually got up there, and he was too drunk to follow through. I'm actually not embarrassed by that. That was meant to embarrass me. That took a lot of stamina and balance to do what I did.

Jean Lopez was the ex-cop who, by chance, was one of the first people on the scene after the shooting. He knew Jasmine well. She was a regular at his bar, Crazy House. And yeah, she liked to party. As he told the Daily Mail, If she ever went beyond the expectations, we would say, Hey, Jazz, we know you're a Crazy House, but you don't have to be crazy. But the image of her being created by this media war, that she was a drunk, drug addled liability, it just doesn't match Jean's experience. I've never seen her hide. She comes to Crazy House, and she really relaxes. She has friends. They would entertain themselves by going over into the karaoke room, and they would sing. And her friends would dance, and they would enjoy themselves, and then leave peacefully. We've never had a problem with Jasmine being here. A few days after the Watermelon video, another video appeared, also on the very Ashcroft friendly channel 5. This one was an interview with Ray Thompson, a maintenance worker at Grand Colony, the condo complex that Jasmine and Andrew own, where they'd living in adjoining apartments, and where Andrew was still living with the kids at this time.

So this guy was his employee. Thompson told channel 5 that he'd once seen Jasmine approach a security guard cleaning his weapon.

I don't know where she came from, and she just asked if she could clean her. Weapon also. And she went back, got her weapon, came back to the unit, and they both started cleaning the weapons.

This was alleged to have happened in May 2020. That's a year before the shooting.

And all of a sudden, I heard that bang. When I heard that bang, I just lift up my head.

The bassman reached so quick.

When I look over, I just saw them standing there in shock, both of them.

This was the news story. That a year before the shooting on the pier, Jasmine had another accident with a firearms, which also accidentally discharged. This firearms was apparently her own? So they're claiming she owned a firearms but didn't know how to use it?

She said, I'm sorry, it was an accident.

That's all I heard. Jasmine says that she does not own a firearms. The only guns in their home, she says, were licensed and belonged to Andrew, a shotgun and a nine-millimetre handgun. I called Hippolito as soon as I saw the story.

I mean, I get what they were trying to do, but I don't think they executed it quite well.

That's being generous.

They were trying to paint her in a bad light and say, You know what? She has done this before. She has accidentally shot a weapon before, and it looks like she didn't learn her I sent the last time.

I'm just going to say, the timing, the content of this randomly resurface story, it may as well have been stamped propaganda. It looks even flimsier when you consider what happened later in a Beletian custody court. When Andrew's attorney tried to use this suspicious story as evidence of Jasmine's recklessness. Only problem is, the Grand Colony Guard, who was supposedly there when this supposed misfire happened, his name is Kevin Pesch, testified in that court. Pesch said he was cleaning guns that day, including the 9mowned by Andrew, and that he doesn't recall a misfire at all. He also didn't recall Jasmine ever coming to the balcony where this supposedly transpired. She was nearby, though, poolside with the kids. Just to reiterate, We have no evidence that this media campaign was orchestrated by the Ashcrofts. But if Andrew was behind any of this, he did have quite a role model. Targeted media attacks are something of a specialty for his father. What's the great club that you have to stick your cock in a dead pig's mouth to become a. This is Paul Merton of the British Comedy Institution, Have I Got News For You? In 2015, Lord Ashcroft published a biography of then British Prime Minister, David Cameron, titled Call Me Dave.

It's not a flattering portrayal, but one passage in particular has become notorious, legendary. Ashcroft reports that while at Oxford, Cameron took part in a humiliating initiation ceremony for a secret Society. Here's our actor reading straight from that book.

During the course of our research, a distinguished contemporary of Cameron's at Oxford claimed the future PM once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at an event involving a dead pig. His extraordinary suggestion is that Cameron put his penis in the animal's mouth.

The story spread far and wide. Yes, this book actually contains a claim that David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, once put his dick in a dead pig's mouth. Look, this is just the one I see. Ashcroft also claimed that the source in question was a member of Parliament. Anyway, the so-called prosciutto affair, or piggate story, blew up in the UK and caused serious problems for Cameron. It fed into the image of the then Prime Minister as some daffy private school elite, out of touch with the regular folk. It He did real damage to him politically. The irony is, Ashcroft had been a key figure in rejuvenating the Torrey Party in the UK under Cameron, donating huge amounts of money and supporting his election campaign. He was for five years between 2005 and 2010, Deputy Chairman of the Party and its former Treasurer. But according to popular rumor, he expected to be named to a cabinet post in return. And when that didn't happen, Lord Ashcroft turned on Cameron. His book, with this Todry detail, sure seemed like payback for a failed quid pro quo, even if he denied it, which he did. Pigate reinforced the Lord's reputation as someone you don't want to cross, also someone who is ruthless in his pursuit of power and who knows how to use the media to his advantage.

And this was far from a one-off. One of the final nails in Boris Johnson's extremely sturdy and scandal-resistant coffin was a rumor that while he was Foreign Secretary, Boris had tried to get Kerry Simmons, his current wife, a government job. The source of that rumor, Michael Ashcroft, who reported it in another of his unauthorized biographies.

In his new book, First Lady, Lord Ashcroft chants the extraordinary ascent of Kerry Johnson to to introduce a fascinating portrait of one of the most talked about women in the country.

The book was published in March 2022. Boris Johnson finally resigned that September. And conveniently for the news cycle in which this episode drops, the Lord's latest biography, Red Queen, has sparked yet another UK political controversy. This one over whether the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, Angela Rehner, may owe a small amount of unpaid tax for the sale of a house many years ago. £1,500 is estimated by one tax expert. And somehow, this story has stuck in the news for weeks, generating many tabloid covers. As of this writing, it's still out there, and a probe is now underway, which is a bit silly, but I suppose it's also nice to see Lord Ashcroft help start a conversation about tax transparency. Back in Belize, it seemed like every few days during those long weeks before the custody hearing in July of 2021, some unflattering or embarrassing story or photo emerged in the media. It felt ham-fisted, but it did seem to be moving public sentiment a bit. Here's a sample of the chatter popping up on Facebook. Fucking drama queen.

Mergers don't get to be a part of any social activities after killing another human being.

They have the kids far away, too. She didn't want to spend time with them.

A lot of women are like this.

They're engaged in their own kids when they leave them with all people and run around the drink of.

That woman is a disgrace. Deport her.

Now, this is only Facebook, and these are commenters, not jurors. But Jasmine's fear was that the slew of unflattering press, which reinforced an image that she was some wild party girl unfit to mother her children, would damage her custody case, which, if we're being conspiratorial, was surely the point. We'll get into that after the break. If we take a step back and look at the facts, one of the most perplexing parts of all this was the way that Jasmine was being kept from her kids. In fact, what she was experiencing, it seemed like it had to be illegal. Belize's law seems to be on her side. Chapter 173 of the Family and Children's Act, to be more specific.

It clearly states the mother with children born out of wedlock is the sole custodian until proven otherwise in a court of law. You need to have a social service inquiry report that deems me unfit to be a mother, and that was never done. You have to have that. You have to prove that I'm I'm an unfit mother and the kids would not be safe with me. They didn't do that. He just went ahead and took them from me.

Was this a sense of entitlement on Andrew's part that he should get what he wants despite the law? Wendy Ogjalou, the lawyer who posted Jasmine's bail, ultimately ended up as a legal advisor to Jasmine, and she had an idea. Jasmine could go to the family court and ask for something called a single mother's letter. It's a letter the court can write upon request for mothers of children born out of wedlock that would allow Jasmine to go under police escort to her home to get her children and her belongings. So unless she was in prison and unable to care for them, Jasmine should have been eligible for the letter, and the kids, it should have been a fairly routine matter. She put in the request, only to be told by a clerk at the Family Court that a request had been denied. So Jasmine printed a copy of the Family and Children's Act and went to the Family Court to confront its director. Hi.

Sorry, what was your name? Dale Caetano. Hi. Oh, sorry. Yes, no handshakes.

All right. This is a recording Jasmine made of that meeting with Dale Caetano. It's still COVID times, so no handshakes. The magistrate in his mid-50s was seen as one of the top guys for custody cases.

Yeah, I came by yesterday because I was advised to get the single mother letter, and I was told that I'm not able to get it.

Caetano told Jasmine he was denying her request for the letter because she was not a Belizean citizen, and neither were the children. Yeah, you're Belizean?

No, but you don't need to be, according According to the laws that I printed from the Family and Children's Act. What is it? So it says, A child means anyone unless... Okay, here, right now. It says, A parent means anyone biological mother or father or an adopted mother of the child, and that I to be able to maintain the child.

That's the-Yeah, it doesn't say anything in here about domicile or having to be Belizean or non-belizean.

And I know there's been cases where people weren't even citizens of Belize. They're from Guatemala, and they were able to get the letter, and they were legally in this country.

All right, so what do you need to do? She left empty-handed.

I needed that letter so that I could take it to the police and have a police escort to gather my things from my home and to get my kids. And he denied me my letter.

If you're Andrew, you probably think that everything is going to break your way. On June 29th, the day after Before Jasmine was granted bail, he quietly boarded a plane with their children and took them to Turks, Caicos. Leaving the country with the kids at that point, with the case unsettled, was wildly improper and should not have been allowed. Both parents need to sign off on international travel with minors. Plus, on paper anyway, in theory, there was no reason Jasmine shouldn't have had sole custody. She should at least have to approve any trip that took them out of the country. Andrew went anyway. And When Jasmine reported it to police as a kidnapping, citing the Hague Convention, she was stonewalled.

He said, We're not acting on this. There's no grounds for Ms. Horton's allegations. I'm video calling my children, and they're like, We're not in Belize, Mom. And I'm like, There's a nanny, there's a cleaning lady, and that's not my house. I'm telling you, they're not at home.

I've seen the flight log. Andrew and the kids, plus a nanny, left Belize City for providenciales at 3:40 PM on June 29th and returned July 19th. July 19th? That's the day before the couple were due to appear in court for their custody hearing. This would determine who the kids would live with and whether Jasmine would be able to spend time with them. That hearing was held in the family court near the Port in Belize City. There is nothing judicial seeming about the place. It's up some stairs above a cafe. The case Andrew laid out in custody court is quite something. It paints a picture of Jasmine as a raging drug abuser who slept around and was largely absent, dependent on nannies. He even alleges that a boyfriend's children were bullying the twins, and that her dog would chase them, on one occasion, causing injury. When the former couple emerged from court, they found a small crowd of eager reporters, including Hippolito.

Do you have anything to say for the cameras?

Andrew was characteristically silent, masked up and wearing aviator shades. He walked and climbed expressionless into a waiting SUV. Jasmine did stop to comment, briefly.

I don't know what I'm allowed to say, what I'm not allowed to say, but that was a very In my opinion, a very unfair outcome, but I don't think I can speak right now.

Wendy was also there by Jasmine's side, and she, too, was reluctant to say much. I don't want to give.

I'm hesitant to give because we don't want it to become a media forensic. It's a matter that involves children.

We have to take every care. Andrew's lawyer, Roberta Usher, did share some news. Does Mr. Andrew be in custody for an hour? Yes, he does.

That's interim custody, though.

That's interim custody.

Because I will speak to you after the matter is finished.

The unfair result Jasmine mentioned, she lost custody of her twins, at least temporarily. Later that evening, she had changed her mind. She sat down again with channel 7 and tried to spend things optimistically.

Basically, we came to an interim decision where I do get to see the children. Was it the most ideal outcome to my favor? No, I don't think it was. I'm not exactly happy with it. But again, it's very interim. So this is only something that will be until the next court hearing.

Jasmine's defense attorney for the criminal case, Dickey Bradley, discussed the judgment with a reporter.

I should say to you, because a lot of mothers and a lot of women in Belize are very concerned and they are supportive of Ms. Harding's position, she is the mother of those children. Nothing can change them. Rich man, poor man, bigger man, teeth, nothing can change them. Under the laws of this country, a mother who is an unmarried mother has custody of the children.

When Jasmine decided to speak after that court case, she was getting her side of the story to the press, sure, defending herself against the accusations thrown at her in the fight for her kids. But there's something else here as to why she chose to do a formal interview at what felt like a precarious moment. And there was a reason, too, that she was filming as she strode into the alaya to confront Andrew. Did she really think she'd just waltz in and wouldn't run into trouble? Unlikely. The truth? Jasmine had come to a realization that she was not entirely helpless. She had one very powerful weapon at her disposal, the media. In that first interview on channel 7 was just the start of a new strategy. How do you respond to that perception of the Jasmine that's been painted in the public?

I wouldn't say I'm a wild party girl, but I definitely do have fun with my friends. I like to dance. I always like to do big dinners. I like to treat people. I like to host events at the house. I am the social person, so people are always talking. It's police. Right now, it's just coming out with, he says this and I say that. I'm not going to play that back and forth game. I think this is a family matter. This is something that it's very slanderish Chris on his side. I think it's very immature, and it shows his true character.

She had stories, too, and she wasn't just going to sit back and take the lumps in the press.

It will all come out very soon. A lot of evidence against the plaintiff, actually.

Unlike Unlike Andrew, who stayed silent throughout those months, Jasmine saw media as one battlefield where she could mount a fair fight. Attack, in this case, could be her best defense.

So he has what? One DUI from 2013 in Florida. There's also a public intoxication where he was kicked off of an airplane in Dallas in 2019 because he was so incoherent.

We've heard this airplane thing already, of course, but at the time, the story was not widely known. Remember, Before all this, Andrew was famous mostly for being Michael Ashcroff's son.

It was behavior such as that, which is why I left with my children in 2018. I only came back to Belize with my children because he promised to stay sober, which lasted three weeks.

A day after the custody hearing, a large piece about this incident appeared in the British Press. The Daily Mail published an investigative piece which dug up court documents detailing both the 2013 DUI charge and the incident on the plane in Dallas. The other story The story was that in May 2013, Andrew was arrested on suspicion of speeding and being under the influence. The speeding fine was dismissed, but Andrew pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor DUI. He was fined $1,001 in order to do 50 hours of community service, which he actually avoided by paying an additional $500 fine. I don't know for sure that Jasmine was the one to leak this, but I suspect she did. I asked her at one point what she was thinking at the time.

So I met with someone and I said, Listen, I've received I received a threat that I will go to jail if I don't stop talking to the media, but it seems to be the best thing I can do right now. We have to shed light because they own this country.

Jasmine was getting bolder, now talking openly about the Ashcrofts and what she felt they were up to with channel 7.

From what I've been told by the family, they were instructed to distance themselves from me immediately, that they couldn't have bad press associated with their reputation.

Jasmine speaking to the press so freely feels like this extremely guarded family's worst nightmare. These are not the people who like public attention unless it's positive. And and they are not used to having so little control of the narrative. It's pretty undeniable in retrospect that the Ashcrofts tried to distance themselves from Jasmine almost as soon as the shooting occurred. It feels like a cold and clinical PR decision directed by lawyers, but it backfired. Jasmine, with her back to the wall, simply didn't have the resources that Andrew did. She was desperate, and talking to the media to make her case as loudly and publicly as possible felt like the only option. Her approach was scattershot and opportunistic, but it seemed to work. The Ashcroft name is spray-painted all over the story now, and it's largely because of Jasmine, who felt cornered and decided to do what she could to keep the world's focus on her precarious situation. And the Ashcrofts. And she was potentially drawing attention to other things the family would rather keep hidden. When it came to the custody case, though, Jasmine had an extremely uphill battle, and not just because of the accusations thrown her in the courtroom, also because of the machinations going on behind the scenes.

We've seen in court documents that Jasmine was having issues with a director of family court.

That director is Dale Caetano, the exact same guy we heard earlier denying Jasmine's request for the mother's letter.

She basically accused him of being biased.

Rumor had it the two men, Andrew and Caetano, were seen outside court socializing.

Allegedly, and I have to say allegedly, because those people here in Belize are very litigious and you're dealing with the court. From what I know, I've been told that he has been seen having lunch with the director of Family Court.

Let me lay that out a little more plainly. Hippolito was told that Andrew Ashcroft had been seen, again, allegedly, eating lunch with Dale Caetano, the director of the court in which his children's fate would be decided, a court in which decisions were regularly breaking in Andrew's favor. We have no evidence that Andrew was corrupting Caetano, and maybe this was just two lads talking about cricket. But if the lunch did happen, it's surely inappropriate, given the circumstances. For the record, we asked Andrew for comment on this through his lawyer, but he didn't address it.

It It's not supposed to happen. I don't care if both are friends, but it's not supposed to happen, worse in public. Especially, we know there's a case before you, and he is one of the parties in that case. So this supposed lunch compounded the belief that she had that something is happening behind closed doors against her.

Something's happening behind closed doors. Remember what Dickey Bradley said back in episode 2? That It's frightening that there is a possibility of manipulating the system all the way up the top.

That is most disturbing.

Dickey wasn't talking about this incident specifically, but rather about the feeling of some dark force or forces pulling strings. Plenty of people in Belize stayed angry with Jasmine about Henry Jamat. To this day, you'll find comments under stories about the case that call her a killer and complain that she deserves no sympathy. But others watched this custody battle unravel and had a change of heart. Audrey Matura, for instance. We heard from her back in episode three, recounting some of her tussels with Lord Ashcroft in her prior roles as a UDP Senator and Union Leader. Like much of Belize, Audrey was at first quite skeptical of this Canadian who ran with the Ashcrofts and supposedly shot a cop.

When I met Jasmine, I had to make sure that she's not a bullshitter and she's not a person who's out to just be evil. I had to make sure that I believe her because then I couldn't represent her. So as I got to know her as a person, I found that she genuinely loved her kids, and her kids adore her. She's young and energetic, and she's a very charismatic people's person. She knows how to make people feel comfortable no matter what walk of life.

So Audrey not only befriended Jasmine, she offered to help by joining the legal team to assist in the custody battle. But her official involvement didn't last long. Around that time, Jasmine was admitted to the hospital. What had started as a weird pain in her abdomen turned out to be serious. She needed surgery. Her attorneys, Audrey included, asked the court to postpone a scheduled custody hearing until Jasmine was well enough to attend, and Caetano denied it. He went ahead with a hearing without Jasmine even being there. Audrey quit on the spot. She walked out of the courtroom right there so she could file a separate suit against Caetano on Jasmine's behalf.

I withdrew because I have to sue the magistrate at another level of court.

Having seen the fight from the inside, Audrey got a close-up view of exactly what Jasmine was facing.

I think part of Jasmine's personality is that she's still so young. She's only in her 30s, so she still has that level of naivety. She's passionate about things, but she's not strategic. I think that they know that, and so they know how to push her buttons.

Audrey has a point. In a custody case, which was consuming so much energy over the summer of 2021 was a separate thing from the criminal charges, even if the media was happy to play along and lump it all under the same circus tent. But also, the cases are linked in a way that's so critical to this whole story.

Manslotted by negligence does not a track of custodial sentence.

Typically, she means that this charge in Belize would commonly result in only a fine.

If she gets it, it would be a shocker. But if she gets a custodial sentence, then she can't have her kids, and that's what Andrew is banking on. One hinges on the other because in the family court matter, he was already trying to use evidence that she'll be locked away, which we don't know that she'll be locked away. When it comes to the cost of the matter, she should have won that a long time ago. Our law says that once the child is not born in in wedlock, which her kids are not born in wedlock. She's entitled to them by law. That magistrate could not take away those kids from her. They would have to prove that she's a prostitute, a habitual drunkard, that she has abused them. The law is clear.

This isn't even really controversial. It's just true. And yet, Jasmine couldn't do anything about it, even with the law on her side.

I think in the long term, if Jasmine has the tenacity and the ability to endure this, she will win back her kids at the highest appeal level. There's nothing to discredit her. That is why all these scandalous things.

This seems sensible that at some point, on some level, the law here will become undeniable, and Jasmine will prevail. Trial, but it hasn't yet. And Audrey, as much as she wants to believe that will happen, she has concerns.

She should be watching her back more than anything because ultimately, if she makes it to the Court of Appeal or the Caribbean Court of Justice, I'm almost sure Jasmine would win. The trash that's behind the scene that we can't talk about in that custody case, it's amazing. Some heads will roll, but if she dies, her estate can't sue for custody.

That may sound a bit far-fetched, but Audrey knows Belize and its dangers as well as anyone we spoke to. And she thinks that Jasmine, who was making enemies all over Belize, could be in real physical danger. Audrey's not saying it will happen. She just believes it could. More after the break.

White Devil will return just after this. You're listening to White Devil from Campside Media.

Of all the apparent injustices around this case, it was the battle for the kids that got to Wendy O'Oxaloo. She has no doubt that the additional charges, the sudden discovery of a bag of white powder that nobody mentioned for a month, and the Alaia manager suddenly revoking his bail. It all favors Andrew taking custody of the kids, and that's precisely why she got involved.

As a mother, the worst thing anyone could ever do to me is to deny me access to my kids and have to see it in a public domain, them doing that to her. That was just atrocious and outrageous to me.

Candice, Jasmine's mom, sensed that something wasn't right from the jump. She had rushed to Belize to help her daughter, knowing she was in trouble, and not just with the police over the shooting. But Candice never anticipated exactly what that trouble would look like from inside Belize. It wasn't in Jasmine's nature, Candice says, to fight, but everyone has a breaking point.

You try to control it, right? But it got to that point of no return.

It turns out it was Candice's idea to film the encounter to Alaia and post it on Facebook. The reaction to that film emboldened her and her daughter. They may have had no money or power, and even the courts and cops seem to be actively undermining Jasmine. But as she and her mom were learning, this guerrilla media war seemed like their best bet.

In my opinion, this is absolutely war. This is absolutely gloves her off.

Jasmine was now saying yes to the journalist knocking on her door. In a CBS 48 Hours documentary really brought her to the attention of the international press.

People perceive me as being a billionaire and this entitled, spoiled, rich girl. This wild, crazy party girl that's hanging from rafters. That's not it at all.

Whereas the incident at the Alaia and her comments after the custody trial can be seen in the context of news reporting, the 48 Hours special really attempted to place Jasmine's plight in a wider context. Context. It was splashy and sensational and had a focus on the criminal case that clearly imagined a wider international reach. The Ashcrofts may have hoped to silence Harten, but she wasn't going to go easily. You have admitted shooting and killing Henry Chamat. Was it an accident or was it murder?

It was absolutely not murder. Henry was my friend.

And yet, even in her darkest moments, feeling like an entire nation has turned against her, Jasmine is willing to cave. She wants to stop.

The fact that he's been so vicious, I do find it hard to believe he would be able to stop all of a sudden. But if I signed an NDA, maybe it should be the kids come first, and none of this should have happened. It's torturing me. I can handle it, but I miss my kids so much. I'm watching them. Just watching them suffer is what crushes me. He's so evil. This man is so evil. He doesn't see what he's doing. Keep my shares in the company. Keep the money. I don't care. Keep it. Just give me my kids.

She's made this point on more than one occasion. I believe it's genuine. The battle for custody had grown so bitter, so fast, that Jasmine was now thinking the worst of Andrew. And yet, she was willing to choke back that hatred for peace.

I'm like, Guys, I'll let you. I won't take the kids you, even though you're an evil human being with no soul. But you're still their father, unfortunately. So let's just do joint custody. I'll sign an NDA. No more of your family secrets need to come out. Lord Ashcroft was like, None of them should have ever come out.

The custody arrangement set out by the court was brutal. Two visits a month, six hours each, and supervised by a babysitter of Andrew's choosing. Typically, he sent an off-duty cop. Candice finds it hard to understand the motivation behind it Even the police asked me, they said, Why wouldn't he very discreetly just separate from her?

Give her her kids, give her things, keep it all low key.

The thing Joe, my producer, he didn't understand was the underlying menace of it all. It just felt so vindictive.

Why does Andrew...

Why the hate?

We don't understand. There's no answer. We don't know. We keep reaching out to him asking him to stop this. Just be fair. They have lots of money, so what are you worried about? So keep all the money. Just give us our babies back.

So many things about this part of it don't make sense to me. I can see the Ashcroft's aspiration to preserve their bloodline or whatever Game of Thrones nonsense drives these families with generational wealth, I guess. And I can even understand why Andrew might hate Jasmine, might want to keep their dealings is cold and business-like at this point. That's divorce. But if he's a good dad, truly, how can he possibly want his children to only see their mother 12 hours a month? Or for her to be locked away in prison? Honestly, it's hard to know. As I said earlier, we requested an interview, and he declined via his father's spokesman, and later a lawyer. He responded to only select questions via that lawyer. One of those answers you heard in episode 2, and it strikes It makes me as pretty telling as to how Andrew sees the mother of his children in the wake of a tragedy that set all kinds of drama in motion. It cannot come as a surprise to anyone that he chose to distance himself from a woman who had inexplicably killed a much respected local figure. During this period when Jasmine was battling on multiple fronts, Andrew was barely even seen in public, just arriving at or leaving family court.

It seemed like he was purposely hiding out.

I mean, it's not surprising. The tactic is that I'm not going to say anything until everything dies out. That's what he does. I think he's a very controlling person, and he wants to put out a narrative out there. I think he decided that it was for his best interests, and his name and his brand, that he say nothing.

I'm so disappointed in his behavior as a man. To me, a real man doesn't act this way. They just don't. Every man knows babies need their mom, right? It's not about the kids. It's all about ego. It's ego. He's so arrogant because the ashcross never lose, right? That's what they say. I think he's been trained well by his father to be devious, manipulative, clever? Not particularly.

Jasmine and Candice both think Andrew is doing what he thinks his father would want, trying to make an embarrassing problem just go away.

A hundred %. Because he was on the bad list with his dad for a long time. And so Everything's the dad. Everything's to please Daddy. Daddy calls the shots. And that's why Jasmine contacts Daddy to get him to try to stop this whole thing. Of course, he kept keep saying, Oh, I have nothing to do with it. And we all know he does. We all know.

Jasmine has tried reaching out many times. One afternoon, she pulled out her phone and read me some text she'd sent to Lord Ashcroft during this fight.

I said, Michael, I said, This is the beginning. I said, I truly want it to be the end. I will continue to fight for my children and my rightful ownership. I said, That said, it's my children that are suffering, and I want this to end. I want you and Andrew to speak and settle the matter of custody, corporate dealings. You claim you're not involved, but that's a complete bullshit. We both know it. So let's not play I will never stop. Ever. You need to know this. You've taken everything from me. It's all been well-documented and recorded. Just give me my kids. Give me something fair for the years that I worked for my shares and the holdings that I have.

Lord Ashcroft, unsurprisingly, did not reply. She turned her phone around to show me a photo of herself with the twin.

Then I sent him this picture. I said, My children belong with their mother, not being raised by nannies and an absent father. Evidently, history repeats itself. Andrew is a 43-year-old man that's terrified of his father. He He would never cross the street without asking his father's permission. So there's no way Andrew's doing anything without a team of his father's lawyers advising him and his dad's permission. 100%.

I want to be very clear here that I have no evidence that Michael Ashcroft has personally played any role in what has happened to Jasmine, or that he's directing Andrew's behavior in any way. But when I first reached out to Andrew to respond to some of the allegations in this show, the person The one who responded was Michael Ashcroft's longtime PR man. Honestly, though, whether or not Michael is directing his son behind the scenes, it also doesn't really matter because he does exist as an archetype, as a ghost who haunt Andrew's mind. Lord Ashcroft rarely talks about his family publicly, but we did find one interesting thing recorded on April 21st, 2021, one month and eight days before the shooting. Michael was holed up in Belize during the heat of the pandemic, and he sat for an hour long interview, on channel 5, naturally. And at one point, the host brings up the imminent opening of Jasmine and Andrew's Resort, Alaia.

I could see the pride on your face when you speak about the project for your son. Have you been the pusher behind the scene?

No. I mean, I will share something which he'll probably kill me for sharing. But when COVID hit, he said to me, Dad, I may have a problem here. It's because part of the business plan is selling the condos as part of the financing, but these are going to slow up during COVID, and I may have a cash crunch. I may need some help, to which I said, Good luck. He said, What do you mean? I said, Well, I know what you want me to do. You'd like me to buy some of the condos and put them in your rental program? And he said, You know this project cannot fail. I said, Yes, that's correct. But if I have to come in help. The world will not know a failure, but between you and me, you won't have been able to do it, and you won't like the terms and conditions that I will impose if I have to help when I have liquidity issues in all my other businesses around the world. I said, I will probably offer you a half price for your condos, and I may even want some of your equity.

Can't you just feel the love?

I won't repeat the expletives that he said at the time. But where I'm proud is not just that he completed it, but he did it without coming to me for any financing and found a way through it. Secondly, that he is totally committed to the nation of Belize, and even his kids start schooling on San Pedro in August. I'm proud that those kids are the fourth generation of Ashcross with a connection to Belize. My father came here, myself, Andrew, and his kids. And now his children. I was saying to somebody, I'm so fit. And he punched me with venom. No, it was so fit, it didn't matter. It was that nasty, cruel side to him. When you hear him now, he seems to be mellowed. I don't know. But not in those days.

Who's this guy? That's the question we try to answer next time when White Devil goes to Jolly Old England in search of the real Michael Ashcroft. The only man I've met that I feel totally inferior to.

And that is true. And I met some very powerful people over the years.

Under the shade I flourish. Under the rocks and storms 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 Lytromuen. Our closing theme is Under the Shade, I Flourish by Chris Halton and New Manhattan, including Eli Carvahal, Hava Carvahal, and Louis Chernyovski. This episode was fact-checked by Sarah Ivry. The voice of Michael Ashcroft is Richard Croft. 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.