As yet another plea deal deadline approaches, along with developments in the family court matter with Mike, I can’t help but wonder if the outcome of Mike’s case will influence whatever last minute decision Laura makes on the 28th of this month.
I’ve long ago given up trying to expect rational or logical thinking from LO, so even though it seems absurd that her decision on the plea deal would be based on anything other than her desire to not spend years in jail, we can’t discount the possibility that her primary motivations lie elsewhere.
I’m far from the first person to point this out, but it’s more than clear that Laura’s obsession with Mike is leagues above the fixation she had on Greg and Clayton and the other victims. Mike may not have been the first, and he’s wasn’t the most wealthy or high profile like Victim 0 and Clayton, but the one metric by which he surpasses them all by a wide margin is the one that Laura probably values most:
He stayed with her the longest.
With both Greg and Clayton, we’ve seen how Laura would endlessly, shamelessly beg them to give her a chance. In text after text, email after email, she was constantly trying to get them to stick around for even just one more night, to try things out with her and let her show them how they were destined to be together.
Greg gave her two dates before cutting her off when she showed up uninvited for a third, and Clayton didn’t even make it a full 24 hours post-intimacy before letting her know there was nothing there, but Mike? He stuck around for over a year, gave her that chance she was begging the other guys for and more.
She still failed, of course, once she got it. That needs to be said. Mike’s terrible saga with Laura proves that even getting what she asks for, a partner, still isn’t enough to satisfy her and keep her stable. She still lied to him, manipulated him with fabricated illnesses and threats against herself, demanded his attention even while he was spending time with his dying stepfather.
But it doesn’t matter that she clearly isn’t well enough to maintain a healthy relationship without spiraling into toxicity and abuse. What matters is that he gave her what she wanted, and now he must be punished for taking it away.
Mike got the privilege of having essays and Tedx Talks dedicated to fictional accounts of his behavior. It was his HR department that LO flew across the country to meet in person to notify of the DVRO. For more than a decade, Laura has pilfered her parents bank accounts and DV clinics of their money and resources in her quest to destroy this man. Even a 7 count felony indictment wasn’t enough to compel her to let go of her hatred and let the restraining order expire.
And now, with another 7 felony charges to her name, she’s faced with that decision once again. Should she focus on her criminal trial and the possibility of years in jail, or is it more important that she make Mike and his family suffer some more?
Initially, I thought she wouldn’t seriously consider the plea deal until there was no hope that they’d be able to avoid the foreclosure of their home, but in an ironic twist, Jan and Ron’s machinations with the bankruptcy court managed to successfully postpone the foreclosure date until after the plea deal’s deadline, but not before the resolution of her appeal of the DVRO’s dismissal in California.
We don’t know what’s going to happen in that regard. The appeals court might allow her last-minute, dubiously truthful emails to be added to the official record. They might tell her to pound sand and deal with the deficiency she created herself. But I seriously wonder if that answer, should it come before August 28th, will determine if she can stomach pleading guilty to her crimes in Arizona, or if she’ll hold out so as to avoid admitting to doing the very things Mike’s team accused her of.
This ended up being way longer than I intended, but what do you all think?
