Episode 6: Preston Lord and The Gilbert Goons

This episode explores escalating teen violence in Arizona’s East Valley, focusing on the murder of 16-year-old Preston Lord and the “Gilbert Goons.” 

Find a complete list of all sources used here:

 https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-6-pd-1-155059053

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/gilbert/2026/04/01/preston-lord-defendant-talyn-vigil-to-remain-out-of-custody/89421641007/

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/no-plea-deal-reached-preston-lord-murder-suspect

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-iZVDspTOlA

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/preston-lord-lawsuit-arizona_n_66906037e4b0c4c9f3a76105/amp

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

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SPEAKER_01 0:31

Hi, I'm Emily. I'm Ashley. This is Reconsidered Unsolved, where we focus on unsolved cases in the pursuit of justice. You are listening to season one, Rachel Hansen. Welcome back. This is episode six of Rachel Hansen, where today we are going to be talking about the Gilbert Police Department.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

When we initially started doing research for this case, we were on all different forms of social media, news outlets, talking with our sources. And one of the things that consistently came up and questions people consistently asked was, have you talked to the Gilbert PD? Have you seen this case? Have you read this article? People had a lot of questions and concerns about the Gilbert Police Department in general.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

We're going to get into the Gilbert Police in this episode, but what we identified is that there are actually two different areas of allegations against the Gilbert Police. So in the interest of being really thorough, today we're going to talk about the Preston Lord murder and all of the controversy surrounding that case.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

We're going to have to make this episode a two-parter. We know, we know we can hear you guys. Nobody likes a two-parter, Ashley. As we started to research this case and record, there is no possible way we could make this any shorter than a two-parter. There's just no possible way.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

And really, these are two different things. Though we may find some woven interactions between the two areas of allegations, we really want to focus on the different parts of concern from the Gilbert community about the actions of the Gilbert police. So let's dive in, Ash. Let's start talking about the Preston Lorde murder.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

In October of 2023, Preston Lorde, only 16 years old, was in his junior year of high school at Combs High School in the Santana Valley, Arizona. He was described by his family as he loved his family, friends, hooping, gaming, theme parks, Marvel, MMs, The Beach, The Color Orange, Cool Fall Days, Holidays, Pizza, and Burgers, and recently discovered a joy for golf. Preston was a well-rounded kid excelling academically in school. He was on the basketball and golf teams at the high school and had many friends and a close-knit family. He especially looked up to his big sister Tatum.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

On October 28th, Preston headed to a Halloween party in a remote neighborhood in Queen Creek, Arizona, along with a lot of other teenagers. Reportedly, the party was very large, with between 100 and 200 kids estimated in attendance. Preston's friend was approached outside the party by a teenager who tried to steal his chain necklace. A conflict ensued, and a group of seven teenagers violently attacked Preston, beating him mercilessly. Police were called a number of times throughout the evening from various neighbors. According to a timeline of events posted by the town of Queen Creek, the first two calls came from the neighborhood to the non-emergency line at 9.06 p.m. and 9.12 p.m. Police were dispatched after that first call to non-emergency. These were calls that were concerns about the party. Police arrived on scene at 9.20 p.m. However, at 9.25 p.m., according to the town of Queen Creek, and I'm just going to read you exactly part of this reporting by the town of why officers didn't intervene with the party at that time. Quote, officers observed a large number of juveniles in the area. Many appeared to be leaving toward cars parked along the roadway. Although they saw a large group of juveniles and cars in the area, officers did not see any juveniles possessing or consuming alcohol. They did not see any criminal conduct or any indication that there was an emergency at the location that would take precedence over, end quote. Just to paraphrase the rest, essentially other more pressing calls that had come in at the time. At 9.49 p.m., so just 24 minutes later, the first of six 911 calls about the assault on Preston Lorde came in, and they came in in quick succession. Over the course of seven minutes, those six 911 calls came in. Police arrived on scene at 9.55 p.m. and found Preston lying on the ground.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Preston was taken to the hospital where he fought for his life for two days. On October 30th, 2023, Preston Lorde died of blunt force trauma injuries. So who were these seven teenagers between 15 and 18 years old who beat Preston Lord to death? And how did we get here?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

There is so much more to this story. We need to tell you about these teenagers who murdered Preston, who had a history of violence, and they were known as the Gilbert Goons.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

After Preston Lord's death, the Queen Creek Police Department and the Gilbert Police Department started reviewing past assaults and linking them to the Gilbert Goons, which seems to have already been well established and known by the general public. The Gilbert Goons were known in the previous years for blitz style or swarm assaults on other teens. They attacked people outside of places like fast food restaurants, mall parking lots, and house parties, and they used weapons like brass knuckles. More often than not, they would film or post videos or photos of the violence on social media, especially platforms like Snapchat. A task force was convened by the Gilbert Police Department and surrounding departments to investigate rising teen violence in the area after Preston's death. And a press release on May 2nd, 2025, by the Town of Gilbert notes: the Gilbert Goons was established in the town of Gilbert, but members of the Gilbert Goons live in various East Valley cities. In its early stages, the hybrid gang primarily consisted of individuals who attended East Valley schools who participated in underage drinking and the use of illicit drugs. The group ranged in size and initially its members participated in like a fight club type of agreement. Over time, members engaged in other criminal behaviors. They were officially designated as a hybrid gang. So, what is a hybrid gang and how is it a little bit different from a regular street gang? A hybrid gang is defined as having social media use, mixed race, no real code of conduct. Members can participate in multiple gangs and work with rival gangs. They don't have specific colors or symbols or turf. They have evolving or changing names.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

We know that posts on social media by the Gilbert Police Department in December of 2023, so just a couple of months after Preston's death, are the first acknowledgement of the existence of the Gilbert Goons. The community was frustrated by what they perceived as a denial or a failure on the part of the police department to recognize what was happening that felt very obvious to them. After months of investigation, which was very difficult for people to be patient waiting for, on March 6th and 7th of 2024, seven suspects were charged with Preston's murder, including William Owen Hines, Talon Renner, Dominic Turner, Tallon Vigil, Taylor Sherman, Trestan Billy, and Jacob Meisner. Each of these suspects was charged with first-degree murder, felony murder, and kidnapping, with some facing additional charges such as aggravated robbery.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

One of the things that we wanted to talk about that we immediately noticed online when we started looking at the Rachel Hansen case, were a lot of allegations being made against the Gilbert Police Department and a lot of people feeling pretty frustrated with what they felt like was potentially a lack of response, a lack of information, a lack of holding people accountable. People are very loud about it online.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

In looking at crime stats, which actually we'll talk a lot more about, it looks like Gilbert Police does solve most of the homicides that come their way. There are these unsolved, really high-profile, particularly violent crimes. And the allegations online stem from primarily these being unsolved and also some frustration about in general the teenage violence kind of epidemic that they've been seeing in Gilbert. Thinking about the Gilbert Goons case in particular, that brought a lot of attention to the Gilbert police about problematic teenagers that weren't being checked for their behavior. Some of the comments that we see very consistently are Gilbert P. D are incompetent, or of course not, Gilbert P. D. don't do their jobs. We also see a lot of allegations around that the Mormon community is protected in Gilbert, Arizona. We know there is a high proportion of the population that is Mormon, and people really feel like there's some relationship there with the Mormon church that protects people from attention or prosecution.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

We also saw a lot of allegations online that those involved with the Gilbert Goons case and others, if they were people that came from families who were reported to be wealthy or have money, that it kind of looked like they were treated less harshly or potentially not taken as seriously when people said, like, we know there's this group of kids doing these activities, and people online just kind of seem to say they didn't feel heard when it came to kids that came from families with more access to resources and money. Feels like a tale as old as time. Yes, it sure does.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

I feel like as a side note here, Ashley, we should pause and clarify that this murder occurred in Queen Creek, Arizona, not in Gilbert. So this was not in the Gilbert police jurisdiction. Why does Gilbert PD take so much flack for this case? Largely because these are two communities right next to each other. Many of the assaults prior to this did take place in Gilbert. Often these kids were at the In N Out or the Mall in Gilbert, Arizona, and there were multiple assaults that occurred in those areas. Little was done to deter those behaviors in both Gilbert and in Queen Creek. According to a retired officer we spoke with from the broader area, Queek, as a very small department, actually solicited help from Gilbert Police Department with this case, as Gilbert had more experience with homicides than Queen Creek did. In researching these allegations about the Gilbert Goons and the Gilbert PD largely ignoring things, one of those sources that we came across is a former Gilbert Goon who was interviewed to share that they did have interactions with police that they felt like were ignored in the year prior to Preston's death.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Yeah, there was an interview we watched with an anonymous source who was part of the Gilbert Goon's at one point. And he did say he felt like they were able to get away with a lot, or he was surprised with how little they were held accountable for what they were out in the world doing.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

He said they had interactions with police who would talk with them, but not actually issue any kind of citations, talk to them about their criminal behavior while they were in the process of things like underage drinking, drinking in public, fighting behavior, and the police would sort of look the other way. When Preston Lord was killed, the public response from the Gilbert Police Department, who were helping the Queen Creek police with the investigation, was that they were unaware that there was a gang problem. In speaking with one of the retired officers who worked for both Gilbert and another police department, we learned that the Gilbert PD reached out to the Mesa Police Department around 2018 to request some help around gang enforcement. So it was clear at that time they knew there was the emergence or potential emergence of some street gangs. At that point in 2018, there were rumors of a group called the Gilbert Bloods. It's unclear to us if the Gilbert Bloods and the Gilbert Goons ended up being sort of the same vein of gang, but that is what the thought was from this retired officer. The source reported that officers with experience from Mesa went to Gilbert to work with the Gilbert officers on engagement and enforcement with gangs, but that the relationship and training ended sooner than anticipated when the chief of the Gilbert police at the time didn't think that the training was aligned with how they wanted to work with and communicate with local gang members.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

I think it's important to note that Mesa is about four times larger than Gilbert in terms of officers and has an entire unit devoted to gangs, while Gilbert, prior to Preston's death, had no gang unit. According to one of the retired officers, Gilbert doesn't really want other departments, quote unquote, in their sandbox. This is actually something we have been told by various sources of current and past law enforcement in the area in various contexts that Gilbert does in some way seem to isolate from other departments.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Another consistent message from both of the retired officers that we spoke with was that Gilbert's reputation as a safe place to live was more important than labeling gangs what they were or charging people with gang-related charges because gangs make places scary to live. So both of these officers made clear to us that they understood the messaging from the town of Gilbert was not to say the word gangs, as it could solely their reputation as a safe place to live.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

So it really sounded like teenagers were able to run amok and commit assault with little to no repercussions. One of the retired officers shared with us that in Preston's jurisdiction of Queen Creek, the police were actually instructed not to arrest juveniles, that it just took too long. The officer let us know that when you process a juvenile, it can be five to six hours of paperwork and that the facility being used was the same facility where adults were being processed. So they weren't instructed because of a lack of resources, which included staffing and other items, not to arrest juveniles.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

With wanting to ensure that the Queen Creek officers really focused their attention on areas of greatest need, booking a juvenile taking almost an entire shift felt like something that wasn't worth focusing on. Addressing juvenile delinquency basically got overlooked in the area at that time, according to this former officer.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Both officers believe, although they admit they will never know, that if gangs had been dealt with prior to Preston Lord's murder, the crime may have never occurred. When you look at some of the teenagers who were eventually charged with crimes related to Preston Lord's murder, some of them have criminal histories that you do have to wonder if they were held accountable sooner, would it potentially have not escalated to this point?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yes. And I will give you a very specific one. One of the first people who was sentenced for his part in the murder of Preston Lord pled guilty to manslaughter, and he's serving 12 years in prison. His name is William Hines. He was also sentenced at the same time that he was sentenced for the manslaughter of Preston Lord. He was sentenced for two unrelated attacks that occurred in the year prior to Preston Lord's death, and a drunk driving crash in the same year. The charges included an aggravated assault for a group attack at a different party in Queen Creek in 2022, an aggravated assault for a group attack in a restaurant parking lot in Gilbert in 2022, and an aggravated assault when he caused a car crash in Gilbert in 2023. These are all three incidents within about a year prior to the murder of Preston Lord. If he had been held accountable for those three things, maybe, maybe, and we can't know, it could have been a deterrent for his engagement in this behavior in an ongoing way. According to Kevin Reagan with 12 News, Gilbert Police Department announced on December 22nd of 2023 that they reopened four criminal cases involving teen assaults after Preston Lord's death in Queen Creek. This does suggest that there were cases that could have been resolved prior to this, but maybe weren't given any kind of priority by the department.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

It also suggests to me, and this is just completely an opinion and something I just thought about, that they knew that the eyes were on them. And as soon as you start releasing the names of some of these teenagers involved with it, people are going to recognize other times that they were abusive, harmful to others, and not held accountable. Do you know what I mean? Like, do you reopen these cases because now you know the eyes are are on you?

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Maybe, or maybe you just really weren't willing to take them seriously until there was a death. I I think there could be a little of both, like the head in the sand. I don't want to admit that my town has any kind of potential for this to escalate further than like there being bad kids fighting. Right. Although I am gonna say this it is clear from various news articles and reports that many of these assaults that they're talking about were not run-of-the-mill typical teenage fights. They were more violent and they had more intention of entertainment for others. They included the use of brass knuckles, that people were kicked, that people were hit in the back of the head, that people were beaten in very extremely violent ways, and that most people left these with relatively serious injuries like broken bones, broken jaw, broken nose, those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

It also seems clear, and we don't have any videos to prove this, but in comments we have seen on social media, Reddit, Facebook, other platforms, that it seems like the community knew that these things were happening. And there were Snapchat videos and other videos of these types of beatings taking place and people trying to alert the police before it came to this tragic ending for Preston.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yes, the news has widely reported that these incidents were videotaped, including the night of Preston Lord's assault, and that those videotapes that were shared on social media and between other teenagers were a big part of the case, and also that those were identified in many of these assaults prior to Preston Lord's death. Things in Gilbert actually reached national level attention.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

On June 21st, 2024, a news article was released by Rachel Monroe in The New Yorker titled How a Homegrown Teen Gang punctured the image of an upscale community. And it's really a long-form journalistic article about how the authorities in Gilbert did not seem to pay attention to the Gilbert Goons until Preston was murdered, and then seven others were charged with murder. The top half of the article really gets into the Gilbert Goons, and then the second half of the article gets into another gang that was prominent in the 90s called the Devil Dogs. And there was actually a news article in a different publication about the Devil Dogs in 2000.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

The mention of the Devil Dogs demonstrates that this was not Gilbert PD's first rodeo. They had dealt with a street-style gang before. So, Ashley, tell us more about the Devil Dogs.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

The Devil Dogs were a homegrown white supremacy gang and were described by a retired officer from the area as a loosely organized gang of mostly teenage boys, many of whom attended Highland High School. The group became known for extremely aggressive behavior, including group assaults where they would jump victims, usually targeting people based on race or sexual orientation. Some attacks were so severe that victims required extensive medical treatment, and the group reportedly even filmed certain fights, including so-called fight club type brawls that were filmed in empty swimming pools. One of these violent attacks really reminded us of the Preston Lorde attack. The attack we are talking about happened to a boy named Jordan Jarvis, who was 16 at the time he was attacked. According to reporting in the Los Angeles Times on October 26, 2000, by Julie Hart, Jordan had never heard of the Devil Dogs the night that he and a friend dropped off some people at a party in Gilbert. Jarvis just went into the house really briefly to tell somebody that they were leaving. As soon as he got inside, a young woman approached him and asked him his name. After he answered, she called for her boyfriend, and within moments, this situation completely escalated. According to police and witness accounts, a group of young men rushed toward Jarvis, accusing him of assaulting one of their friends. Jarvis was totally confused and insisted they absolutely had the wrong person. He backed away, went outside, got into his friend's jeep, even buckled his seatbelt, which actually ended up trapping himself. According to this reporting, this is when things got very violent. Members of the Devil Dogs, along with dozens of other teens from the party, surrounded the vehicle, and Jarvis was beaten, kicked, and choked. Witnesses reported hearing shouts of white power along with Barking noises, and these barking noises were like a signature intimidation tactic associated with this group. By the time his friend managed to break free and drive him to the hospital, Jarvis was barely recognizable. His injuries were so severe that even his own mom and his brother didn't recognize him when they passed him in the emergency room. That night, doctors could do little beyond stitching him up due to the massive swelling, and in the months that followed, he underwent multiple surgeries to repair damage to his nose, remove bone spurs from his skull, and treat injuries around his eyes. Authorities later determined that this attack was a case of mistaken identity. Five members of the Devil Dogs ultimately pled guilty or were convicted in connection with this beating. But as the investigation unfolded, authorities uncovered deeper layers to the group's activity, including connections between some members and a drug operation linked to the former mob figure, Sammy the Bull Gravano. He was living in Arizona at the time under witness protection. It was reported to us that Gilbert was uninterested in really looking into the Devil Dogs until the feds came in and forced their hand. By the end of the decade, multiple members of the Devil Dogs had been arrested and prosecuted, bringing national attention to Gilbert and challenging Gilbert's image as this like safe, family-friendly community. In the aftermath, local schools and leaders implemented anti-harassment policies and diversity initiatives to try to address underlying issues that allowed the Devil Dogs to form in the first place. Today, the Devil Dogs is remembered as a troubling chapter in the town's history and is sometimes referenced in discussion about more recent youth violence in the area, like the Gilbert Goons. Interestingly enough, in the article, there is a quote from the prosecutor. It said, not only were the Devil Dogs cool and popular athletes, but they had public support. After Jordan Jarvis was beaten, prosecutor Hugo Zettler did not try the case as gang-related. To the New York Times, he explained his approach this way: Look, the kid's nose was broken, which is not earth-shattering in and of itself. It's a stretch to think of them as a gang. Maybe technically they were kind of wannabe gang members. All of these guys were wrestlers and football players. Bullies is just what they were. Five of Jarvis's attackers were athletes at Highland High School. Teachers, coaches, and city officials even wrote letters vouching for the boys' character. They called the behavior basically boys being boys and jocks just acting how they should. A former officer named Mike Sanchez eventually quit out of frustration with the handling of the gangs in Gilbert and said, quote, they're white. They don't fit the stereotype of a gang member. That was the whole issue. That's where the blinders were. Officials didn't want to see it as gang behavior because of race. So as we talk about the Devil Dogs and the Gilbert Goons, it does seem like within Gilbert, there has always been this resistance or hesitation to use the word gang because they want to have this shiny, pretty, safe city image.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

One of the allegations that we talked about that we see consistently is that the Mormon community is protecting their own, and that the reason that some of these boys haven't been brought to trial and justice hasn't been served for Preston Lord is because they are Mormon and they're being protected by the church. We actually looked into this pretty extensively and identified that the majority of the Gilbert Goons, which by the way, there are apparently 40 to 50 people at any given point who have identified themselves as part of the Gilbert Goons or have been identified as people who run around with the Gilbert Goons. So this is a large number of teenagers, and the majority are not affiliated with the Mormon church. The seven people that were indicted in the Preston Lord murder are not Mormon.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

So why do these allegations keep coming up? We understand this cause for concern because we do know that a number of people in positions of leadership in Gilbert, in the city council, are affiliated with the LDS church. We also understand in talking to retired police officers and other sources that within the LDS community, it is well known that sometimes people go to their bishops before they go to the police department to report various crimes or to talk about causes of concern. So it is reasonable that people could jump to this conclusion and think that there was some sort of a relationship or a tie when it came to the Gilbert Goons case.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

One of the men awaiting trial in the Preston Lord murder is Talon Renner, and we believe some of the frustration with the police response is around this family in particular. Talon reportedly delivered the first blow to Preston in the fight. And according to the police report, and warning here, this is graphic, but I think it's necessary to demonstrate his level of violence. It was reported from multiple sources in the police report that he quote unquote curb-stomped Preston. He also reportedly hammer punched him four times in the face and kicked him in the head. I don't even want to talk about these violent acts. Reading the police report made me absolutely sick, but it also really pisses me off. So actually, we're gonna have to circle back to this.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yeah, we're gonna have to come back to that. It's horrifying. But to close the loop on Talon, Talon's dad's name was Travis. Travis is a well-known wealthy businessman in the Gilbert, Arizona area. There are some allegations made in the police report by people who knew Travis Renner well that he actually had made previous statements about being immune to responsibility because he could pay anybody off. Obviously, we can't verify these allegations, but many people have informed us that there's a general sentiment that the Renner family gets away with whatever they want. There also seems to be some history reportedly of Talon's dad, Travis, enabling delinquent behavior. Just a quick example. In an interview in the police report, it's alleged that Travis gave Talon marijuana gummies for his 14th birthday. 14th, that that is a child. That's horrible. We know the beating of Preston took place on October 28th and he was hospitalized. Then on October 30th, Preston died. According to the police report, on October 30th, a person only noted by initials AR, who worked for Travis and his business partner, was brought an NDA to sign because Talon was implicated in a murder. An NDA is a non-disclosure agreement that you signed to agree not to speak on a specific topic. And if you do speak on it, you can be held legally responsible financially. AR signed the NDA, but after consulting an attorney, came forward to police because they were advised the NDA did not hold the weight the source thought it did because the source was coerced to sign it under duress. According to multiple sources in the police report and other people in the community, Talon's father, Travis, transported Talon to their cabin near Sholo, Arizona, about three hours from their home after Preston's death. This reportedly was to allow Talon's hands to heal. According to an article in the New York Post, Renner's attorney allegedly actually advised this action to take him to the cabin to allow his hands to heal before bringing him home. That is messed up. Is this standard? Do attorneys do that? Try to help cover up evidence? I have never heard of this, nor do I think it's standard nor legal. I also know in speaking with someone whose son was a classmate of Talon's that it was well known that he was there, and it wasn't until public pressure to get him to come home that he returned from the cabin. I'm flabbergasted.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Just in keeping of the vein of wealthy people getting away with whatever they want, I'm gonna tell you one other thing that a source from the police report AR that worked for Travis and his business partner reported to police. Allegedly, Travis sold his businesses to his business partner Adam Kiefer for one dollar on the agreement that it would be sold back to him later after all of this had settled.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

It really sounds to me like the Gilbert community is on to something here with their concerns about protecting wealthy people and just letting them get away with everything.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

It sure does. Hopefully, Talon is held accountable for his violent attack that left a 16-year-old dead. And also for any other assaults that he engaged with during his reign, terrorizing people as a Gilbert goon. Talon showed little remorse after the incident. According to the police report, he said on Snapchat to another kid, I got in a fight, a big fight, and I accidentally killed a kid. I guess I don't know my own strength. He reportedly also made similar statements to other kids, bragging about how strong he was. As of right now, Talon Renner has a trial date set for October 2026. However, his attorneys filed new paperwork just recently stating they don't believe they'll be ready until April of 2027, so we could see the trial date pushed out for another year from now. There are some things I want to just talk through in terms of considerations for our rights to a jury trial. Our Sixth Amendment of the Constitution gives us a right to a speedy trial. As with much of the Constitution, speedy here is open to interpretation. Speedy trial can mean, obviously to us, we probably think of that as like, well, within the month. But we actually also want the trial to be well done and we want our attorneys to have the opportunity to present a fair defense, which we are also entitled to have a defense in order to get that. Sometimes it takes some time for them to compile all of the evidence, to go through discovery, to make sure that just everything is really ready to have the best possible outcome in terms of a trial and the most fair trial. The Sixth Amendment also gives us the right to an impartial jury of our peers. This is where I can see there being sort of an issue with having a trial right now in Gilbert. So the first person who was sentenced, William Hines, pled guilty. So there was no jury trial. When you plead guilty, you bypass the jury system and you go straight to sentencing with a judge. When people are pleading not guilty and going through the jury system, it does take a longer time. One of the things about an impartial jury that courts can do is they can actually have a change of venue. They could move this trial to a different county where there might have been less press. However, you'd probably have to get pretty far outside of Arizona for people to not know a lot about the Gilbert Goons case, and particularly Preston Lorde. Also, with all of these defendants being tried at the same time, it's probably hard for the public to try these kids very separately from one another. So they kind of mash them all together. Another thing they can do, you know, is expanded what's called vour deer, which is the jury selection process. So if you get called for jury duty, they might call 500 people for a 12-person trial because they're gonna excuse people who know too much about the case already or already have made up their minds, things like that. One other tactic for getting an impartial jury is time. I don't know if his attorneys may think, you know what, let's give this another year for the press on this to die down and public sentiment to move on to other things, but it may be part of their technique. We're gonna find a less angry jury if we just wait a little bit longer. More frustration has arisen for the Gilbert community around others involved with the Preston Lord murder. Palin Vigil, according to sources in the police report, allegedly delivered the final blow and possibly fatal blow to Preston. He bonded out on a million-dollar bail. So you have to pony up 10% to bond out to $100,000, and he is currently on house arrest awaiting trial. Since he has been out on bail, he has been arrested twice. Once for violating a protection order against him and once for reckless driving. These were in September and February, respectively. According to his attorney, these are easily explained. For example, this most recent arrest in February, he's a motorcycle mechanic and fixes motorcycles in the driveway, and this causes issues for his neighbors because it can be loud. He appeared back in court, but a judge decided not to revoke his bail. So he is being allowed to remain on house arrest despite these two incidents. And this is extremely frustrating to the Gilbert community. It feels to them like this kid is getting away with whatever he wants. And he's also still continuing to take resources from the Gilbert community by having police have to respond to these calls.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

It was also recently revealed around three months ago in January through court documents that there were text messages between Jacob Meisner and his father. And the text messages read, quote, So we are all on the same page. The plan is to cover this up and say we had a little fight. That was from Meisner's dad. And Jacob then wrote back Also, didn't hear or see anything, got it.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

All seven of the defendants in this case were charged with first degree murder, as we previously noted, which comes with a life sentence with the possibility of parole. William Hines was the first to take a plea deal that was offered to all of the defendants, which would be 12 years. So they would serve a minimum of 25 years and then be up for parole, which is not at all guaranteed. A parole board has a hearing to see if you seem like someone who should be reintegrated into society at that point. It can be approved or denied after those 25 years. William Hines took the deal for a 12-year sentence. He also got five years. So he'll serve a total of 17 years for his crimes. Jacob Meisner recently made headlines for declining the plea deal. Instead, his attorney is arguing for that culpability should play a role here. When you are engaged in any kind of felony, you don't have to pull the trigger. You don't have to be the person who actually delivers any of the punches. Jacob was involved in the felony murder of Preston Lord. Along with the Preston Lord case, in the police report, there are a whole lot of other accountings of previous assaults by the Gilbert Goons in parking garages, at the mall, in the in-and-out parking lot. Lots of disturbing information here about the level of violence these teenagers were inflicting on their victims. Ashley, I know you know about one specific, very disturbing case.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Would you tell us about it? I will. And yeah, it's very disturbing. So morning, you're gonna hear some upsetting information about a beating that took place at the hands of the Gilbert Goons. In an article in the New York Times by Matthew Scher on December 15th, 2025, a father named Rick shared his personal experience with the Gilbert Goons about his son Tristan. Rick and Tristan chose to live in Gilbert, Arizona, specifically because of its reputation of being a safe place. In the article, Rick says he is so confident that the Gilbert police and other authorities had some awareness of the goons because of his personal experience with his son Tristan. He says that he and other parents in the area reported assaults, contacted schools and police, and stated it was really well known that certain teens were going around attacking others, but people were just too afraid to speak up. In the article, Rick said that Tristan told his dad what the experience was like up close. He told them about planned meetups, ambush-style beatings, and social media posts. According to what Tristan told his dad, none of this was random. It was all organized, recurring, and he felt like it was escalating. Tristan would later say that these fights had been happening for months before Preston's death and that authorities hadn't stepped in in any sort of meaningful way. One specific incident happened to Tristan in August of 2023. So this was just a couple months before Preston. Another warning, this will be graphics. So, in a screenshot from a bystander's phone, on August 18th, 2023, Tristan is seen on the ground as members of the Gilbert Goons brutally attack him near Santan Village. Sometime after 10 p.m., Tristan arrived at the In N Out Burger in Santan. It seems like that's where a lot of these instances took place. When he got there, he says that teenagers were kind of in small circles, laughing, parked his car, got out, headed towards the entrance. And Tristan said he remembered barely having any time to figure out what was happening, but he all of a sudden just knew there was a truck behind him and a bunch of kids were piling out. An 18-year-old named Eris said he had been summoned to the In N Out by Tristan's schoolmate Mason, who Ares understood was kind of feuding with Tristan. Eris actually admitted to exchanging a few heated words with Tristan, but claimed that he backed off after Tristan began retreating from the In N Out. The rest of the horrific incident was captured on camera. We also know that was kind of a mark of the Gilbert Goons was to videotape these things, upload them to social media. Someone is heard saying, which one of y'all homies want it too? A few of the boys aim kicks right at Tristan's head, while two others try to pull his sneakers off of his feet. You can see Tristan being surrounded and thrown to the ground. Then Mason Landers enters the frame. It's unclear from the footage if he's trying to break up the fight, as he later claimed in a police interview, or get in on the beating. Tristan then says, somehow I got up, crawled back to my car, drove half a mile to his house, and fell through the door with a crash. It startled his dad. His dad said he couldn't even see his face. It was so covered in blood. His dad immediately took a few photos of Tristan's injury and told him he was calling the police. Tristan jolted upright and said, No, they'll kill me and they'll kill you too. Rick ended up choosing to move his son to Europe after this incident because he felt so unsafe keeping him there. So even though Tristan begged his dad not to go to police, his dad did. Let's talk about this timeline because I think it's really important. Tristan was attacked in August of 2023, immediately went to authorities. Preston was attacked and killed in October of 2023. The boys who attacked Tristan were not arrested and indicted until January of 2024. The boys arrested were Daleon Haynes, Christopher Fantastic, and Eris Arodondo. From what we can see in public records, all three of the boys pled out and were charged with some form of assault around May of 2024. During this period of time, also, in February of 2024, Tristan's dad filed a lawsuit against 20 people associated with the Gilbert Goons. He said in the lawsuit that his son missed out on college scholarships, a potential to qualify for the Olympics, and had $14,000 in medical bills. In the lawsuit, he also claimed that the young and completely innocent victims like his son of these assaults suffered skull fractures, facial fractures, broken and missing teeth, concussions, and other serious injuries. And even after the assaults, the Gilbert Guns continued terrorizing their victims by texting threats of further violence, even death threats, contacting the victims' family members, driving by their homes, and knocking on their doors. This lawsuit includes the names of 20 people associated with the gang, as well as 30 parents of those who were minors at the time of the assaults. This is a quote from the article. Rick said, I truly believe that if parents had gotten a grip on what was going on through 2022 and 2023, if the schools had, if the police had, that Preston Lord would still be alive. If you've had arrests, that would have been a deterrent. It would have sent a message. Instead, sort of the opposite things happened. A kid died, and then everybody woke up. Rick said the underlying issue was one of reactivity versus proactivity, a phrase that he often used. And he said, you had the city and the schools essentially sweeping this stuff under the rug, hoping it would go away, saying it was just kids being kids. This really does lead to one of the questions when it comes to Gilbert and not wanting to talk about having gangs. These boys were not arrested and indictments were not made until after Preston Lord was attacked and murdered.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Yes, Ashley. I think a lot of the complaints that the public have about unsolved cases or where cases are have a lot to do with the protections that we have for citizens against false accusations and against being wrongfully convicted in crimes. We have a Fifth Amendment constitutional right that gives us a whole lot of rights that are really important. The Fifth Amendment prevents us from being brought to a trial without the indictment of a grand jury. What this basically means, a grand jury is the collection of your peers are brought together dependent on the state. It can be six, it can be 12 people, but it is people who are jury eligible, so 18 years old and U.S. citizens, they are brought together to review the facts of a case from a prosecutor. This is not a full trial. This is a prosecutor will bring forward all of the evidence that they have and they will say, Do you think this is sufficient for us to actually charge this person with this crime? It's called an indictment. If a grand jury looks at the evidence and says, no, then no indictment will be filed. It is our constitutional right to have a jury of our peers look at evidence and decide if there's enough to even bring us to court. There's one thing. Lots of times, police may have a lot of evidence, and a prosecutor takes all of that evidence, and police will spend a long time gathering it. And the grand jury says it's not enough. You can't, you can't bring someone and convict them on this. The second thing that is really critical here that the Fifth Amendment provides us as a constitutional right is that we shall never be held in double jeopardy. That means tried twice for the same crime. Here's why. Here's why this is really important. The police decide, the Gilbert police are mad at me, and they decide that I committed a crime. They're pissed off and they've had enough of me and they have a little bit of evidence for it. So they take it forward and the jury says, No, she's not guilty. And they go, Well, we don't really like that answer. So we're gonna do it again. So we're gonna go back to court and we're gonna try her again and again for murder. And the jury says, again, no, we don't think so. And the police are gonna go, Well, we think she did it. So we're just gonna go ahead and do it again. That could absolutely happen. This is our protection against that happening. Once a jury has decided you didn't do it, you cannot be tried again for it. O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the crimes of murder against his ex-wife and another person, Ron Goldman. He could never be tried again for those crimes. That feels like a miscarriage of justice when we feel like maybe he did it. But the reality is that protection is there for our benefit as citizens of the United States. It's really important. Why is that relevant here? Because police will never take something, or prosecutors will never take something forward for prosecution unless they're sure they've got everything they possibly could need to make this stick. You are not going to go unprepared into trial. You are not going to arrest someone until you have dotted every I and crossed every T. The wheels of justice move really slowly because of this. People are very frustrated. And this is the thing is I have seen over the last few years, even on social media, people weigh in on cases and they're so mad that an arrest hasn't been made in specific cases. I'm going to give you another example. Idaho 4, where Xanna, Ethan, Kaylee, and Maddie were murdered brutally by the now convicted Brian Koberger in Idaho in the middle of the night. People were enraged that nobody had been caught in this case. How have they not found anybody? How have they not arrested anybody? Months went by before they arrested Brian Koberger. Well, guess what? That doesn't mean that they're not actively working on the case or they don't know that Brian Koberger did it. They have to compile every single possible piece of evidence. Every eye, again, I'll I won't say that again. That will annoy everybody. They have to have every piece of that perfect before they can issue an arrest for this person. And they have to get an indictment from a grand jury. That doesn't happen in 10 seconds. You can't just say, oh, this guy did it. Here's all the evidence. It's been two days. They have to run DNA. They have to run fingerprint analysis. They have to go and they did things like follow Brian Koberger across the country to his parents' home to try to collect DNA evidence from a discarded item that was put into the trash and then get that to the lab and have it tested. I mean, you really have to think about how much they have to do to make sure this investigation is thorough. Here's the other thing they have to do. They have to make sure they've run down every other lead and they're not just getting police focus effect where they are focusing on one specific criminal and focusing all their evidence there. It does happen, right? But they have to make sure that they have also checked off all of these other leads. There you go. There's there's a big part of my rant of why people get frustrated quickly about cases. Gilbert Goons is recent. There are more charges coming. It is happening now. And we have to be careful not to judge the pace of these things as part of our is it happening or not?

SPEAKER_00 47:43

Well, and I will just say, as someone who does have a propensity to armchair expert when these things are happening, now that the whole dateline has come out about the Idaho murders, you see everything the police were doing while people were just complaining online about what are they not doing. And you see every single piece of information that they needed to gather before they could say, okay, this is our guy. We're going to prosecute. So during this entire time, we all thought they were doing nothing. They were doing a ton. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

And just to bring up another relevant case, Nancy Guthrie, all of the armchair experts out there are like, look at them, they're doing nothing. Why haven't they figured this out? How can they not have solved this? Well, maybe they have. We don't know. Also, what we don't know is about these cases, about Rachel Hansen, about Nick Cordova, about the Gilbert Goons. The police may know a whole lot of answers, but they don't have the evidence yet to actually prosecute somebody.

SPEAKER_00 48:38

They also have the moral, ethical, and maybe it's literally part of their job description, like to do no harm. And you and I have had conversations about information that we literally have about the case we are doing this podcast on that we have chosen not to make public because it's not our job to put anybody else in harm's way. So what does that mean? The police know that they're just not sharing because it's not relevant to actually solving the case, but it is relevant to keeping people around the case safe. Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

It seems to me like the pacing of these indictments being handed down and when we're getting to trial is really on par with how the justice system works. This seems appropriate. And I get that it can be frustrating. But the reality is, I actually think they've done really an amazing job here. They've indicted all seven of these people on very serious charges. First degree murder, that's the most serious murder charge that you can assign to a case. These indictments are not going away. The trials will happen, and these boys will be brought to justice through a jury trial, through a judge, or through plea deals.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

I think two things also we haven't really talked about. One is that it's also not just the police department when it comes to doing this behind the scenes work because they're working with prosecutors. So it's a whole system that's in place. And I feel like we place a lot of blame as outsiders on what the police are doing or not doing, but it takes a whole team of people to move towards these indictments and towards these trials. So at some point we have to cut them a little slack. And I also just think from living in a smaller community, and we have a high school, a middle school, and an elementary school all within two miles of us. And unfortunately, teenagers do fight, and teen violence is a thing. It's kind of easy to look back when you when we talk about what happened with Tristan and we talk about what happened with Preston and say, well, there was a gang problem. But it also sounds like from the sources we talked with, a lot of these one-off issues with teen violence were being kind of dealt with in-house with teachers and with community members, which often is a first step, or school resource officers. So that unless the Mesa Police Department and Queen Creek and Gilbert were all kind of talking because schools had informed them of what was going on, they actually may not have really known. So the whole valley is kind of being blamed for a problem that potentially they actually didn't have as much information as now looking back. It seems like we think that they did. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 51:06

Yeah, and I think I think you're right. I mean, teenagers have always fought. They they do fight, they make bad decisions. So I think it's a lot to ask of a police department to be like, there was a fight. We should investigate if there's the consistent players that might be intersectional, you know, here that create a hybrid gang problem. That's probably not very realistic and probably not the kind of resources we want the police using. And next episode, we're gonna talk about where we want the police to be focusing attention on these homicide cases that are unsolved. So we can't also be on the other side of the coin being like, you should have known everything. Okay, I'm gonna say this. I'm gonna say this. School resource officers would be a good place to identify like, what are the kids talking about? If they have good relationships with the school community, they could talk to each other. Hey, what's going on at your school? What's going on here? Okay, there's this Gilbert Goons thing that kids are talking about. They're sharing fight videos. That'd be a good place to really be thinking about could those resources be utilized in a way that, I don't know, captured this better.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Right. And I do think we also have to understand that police can only act on the information they're given. So from some of our sources, it does seem like school members and community members were really trying to alert one another about this, but unless you were having direct communication with the police, they can't just act on things they're hearing in the community that are not official. And I don't want police that do that.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

I know. We've also seen through this investigation just the things that people allege or believe just online. Oh my gosh, I I hate to keep bringing up the same case, but the Idaho Ford case that we just mentioned, right? In that case, people are online saying all of these theories and blaming people. And I mean, it is so outlandish. This couldn't have been one person who committed these crimes. Have you not heard of the history of the way that people engage in criminal behavior? One person in Norway stopped like 75 people at a summer camp. But you think it's impossible for one man to have killed four people. It's just people are a little bit out there with their ideas and they get really dogged on them and they don't have any evidence, but they create a conspiracy around something. And guess what? Those people are also going to the police. And the police are having to filter through for every 1,000 tips that they get, one that's actually meaningful. So, you know, they there's also that, like sort of the element of like, okay, yes, teenagers fight. Thank you for telling us that there's just a gang of teenagers out there.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

Who knows? Right. I guess one other thing I've been thinking a lot about with having a teenager in high school and a middle schooler is that I wouldn't want to jump to conclusions when there is a fight with teenagers that automatically associate them with gangs or being bad kids. I do think people deserve second chances. And I have personally seen kids who have been able to turn it around because of a positive impact from police who are a part of the community, who do have conversations, who work with families. I also respect having police officers, at least within my community, who are willing to do that work with people and not jump to conclusions. In the same breath, it does seem like there was a lot of information being fed to them that this wasn't just one-off fights and it did seem a little more organized. So it's just really, it's really tricky and it makes me very glad I'm not a police officer.

SPEAKER_01 54:26

I know, same. Totally. Of course, the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy, and this is huge in police work and in research around policing. When you treat somebody like they're a criminal, they're going to behave like a criminal. We we know that's true, and we have really solid evidence for it. So it's also understandable that Queen Creek and Gilbert maybe wouldn't have wanted to be treating their teenagers like criminals, even if they were engaging in sort of petty criminal activity. Like, look, these are teenagers at a party. We're not seeing them engaging in the criminal behavior. We're not going to treat them like, hey, what are you doing? And then they start to behave more like criminals. I can see that concept as well. And I think back to when I was in high school. And if we were treated like we were criminals by the cops all the time, that could have actually escalated some situations. I am going to say this though. And now I know this is going to turn because I do want to acknowledge the complaints against the Gilbert PD and some of the things that are frustrating. I just wonder if there weren't, as they look back, missed opportunities by these police departments to go, wow, this was a really serious fight and a serious assault.

SPEAKER_00 55:32

I really thought about this last night, Emily, after I read that New York Times article with Tristan and his dad, where there's a lawsuit and there are 30 parents listed in the lawsuit because the kids were minors. And I know I live in a very special and small community, but our police officers, when they do see teenagers engaging in risky behavior, will talk to the parents and the kids. And it does make me wonder if there had been early interventions, including arresting some of these kids or having some sort of consequences. And I don't know exactly what that looks like for their parents. Could some of this have not escalated as quickly and as violently, especially with what now looks like evidence? And by evidence, I mean videotapes and social media posts, that it's not like these were just one-off things that were rumors. Like there was hard evidence that this was a problem. And it does feel like there is a critical point where there's something could have potentially at least slowed this down.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Right. And if not a one-on-one fight. This was not a one, this was not a this person and this person are beefing. And that's the fights that we knew about in high school. There were no fights where an entire group of people were jumping other people because they were trying to rob them often. Not infrequently. This wasn't a one-off them trying to steal this chain necklace. That feels to me too, the second that you see that a group has jumped another person and used brass knuckles and video recorded it and shared it, I do think that merits a little bit more attention by police or school resource officers or somebody.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

And as the retired officer we spoke with told us, there was a big enough problem that officers were encouraged not to arrest juveniles. So if you have such a problem within the community that you're worried about spending that much time, to me, that's kind of a red flag. If there are that many juveniles that are getting into risky behavior, violent behavior, that feels like a whole community and not just these one-off fights that we sometimes see within our own communities.

SPEAKER_01 57:40

Yeah, it just seems like the kind of thing where it's like, yeah, maybe you don't arrest a juvenile every single night because, you know, some there are people are underage drinking. But maybe you do make a point to be like, we're gonna respond pretty seriously now and again to a party and try to make sure there's precedent set there.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

Yeah. And I mean, it's a whole bigger conversation, too, we can have about the influence of money and power and all the things that we got a little bit into in this episode when it comes to dealing with parents of minors who are making violent choices.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

That is it for us today, but we are not done with the Gilbert Police Department. There are other allegations and there are more unsolved homicides in Gilbert, Arizona, besides Rachel's. So we're gonna talk about some of those next week, and we're gonna continue our discussion of Gilbert Police Department. We have homework for you. We are actually going to be talking about the case of Nick Cordova, Crime Junkie podcast, just released a really great synopsis of Nick's story. We'll give you a brief overview of Nick's story next episode, but you might go listen to that case first on Crime Junkie and then join us next week when we talk about that case as it relates to the Gilbert Police. Thank you for listening. If you have any tips on the Rachel Hansen case, please call the Gilbert, Arizona Police Department or head to silentwitness.org to submit your tip. Visit our Patreon at the Creepy Book Club for early release, ad-free, extra episodes, and behind the scenes content. Music by Craig Rieber. Editing, production, research, and writing by the Greek Book.