'She Looked Like a Witch’
While saving money for a divorce attorney, Vernon began dating Ray, a nurse’s aide and single mom to 3-year-old Scotton. In July 1999, the trio moved in together.
“I remember feeling happy and safe,” Scotton says.
But her sense of security was shattered the morning of September 9, 1999.
Vernon left for work, and Scotton and her mother were home alone when Vicki and her two accomplices, niece Autumn Pauls, then 15, and Pauls’ ex-boyfriend, Mathew Pearson, then 17, coaxed Ray into letting them into her apartment.
Once inside, Pearson and Pauls held Ray at gunpoint while Vicki injected her with insulin and meth.
Ray “begged Jensen not to inject her with methamphetamine because she was allergic to it,” according to court records. “Despite the victim's pleas for mercy, Jensen injected the victim with insulin and methamphetamine. Jensen then watched the victim suffer for almost an hour.”
As she lay dying on her bed, Ray asked to see her little girl one last time to tell her she loved her.
“She had to have been in so much pain and so scared, and in that last moment, all she could think about was how much love she had for me and my siblings,” Scotton says. “That's my favorite memory, and I hold on to that.” (At the time, Scotton’s siblings lived with their dad. Scotton says she currently has no relationship with them.)
Once Vicki and her accomplices were certain Ray was on the brink of death, they left her alone with her little girl.
“I thought she was just sleeping, and it was really scary. But I decided to just lay next to her and wait for her to wake up, and then I remember the phone ringing, and it was Vern,” Scotton explains. “He was asking to talk to her, and I told him that people came over and now she won't wake up, and that her face was really purple and scary, and she looked like a witch.
“And I think that was enough for him to say he was coming home immediately.”
Vernon raced home to find Ray dead and called 911.
'The Big Boys Did It’
Dan Lewin was a detective with the Twin Falls Police Department when he was assigned the case.
It wasn’t long before he realized he recognized Ray.
“I went to high school with this girl,” Lewin tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “I remember this pretty girl, I remember her friends. I remember them standing by their lockers as I walked by in the hall, and had no thoughts other than, ‘Oh my God, she was she was one of the nice girls. She was friendly.’”
But history aside, he had to remain laser focused on the investigation.
He says although it appeared Ray died from a drug overdose, citing puncture marks on her arm and drug paraphernalia recovered at the scene, investigators were suspicious of her cause of death given Vernon’s allegations about Vicki and Ray’s lack of history of drug use.
“He was adamant that his wife was involved somehow, some way in the death of Diane [Ray],” Lewin says.
Still, at just 3 years old, Scotton’s eerie statements also raised red flags for detectives.
“She said she had been at home with her mom, and her mom was now dead, and she had made a comment that ‘the big boys did it,’” Lewin recalls.
But they needed solid evidence—and that took months to reveal itself.
The case was finally cracked wide open in February 2000, when Pauls bragged about the murder to a friend, who in turn notified police.
“Vicki was very meticulous and methodical about planning this out,” Lewin explains. “She bamboozled her niece and her niece's ex-boyfriend into doing this.”
According to court records, Vicki was “distraught and became obsessed with winning her husband back” so she “cold-bloodedly devised a plan to kill the victim.”
Plea Agreements
All three perpetrators struck plea agreements and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.
In exchange, the state agreed to drop its conspiracy to commit murder charges and withdrew its intent to seek the death penalty against the trio.
Pearson was sentenced to up to life in prison and remains incarcerated, according to the Idaho Department of Corrections, while Vicki was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Gone, But Not Forgotten
Now a married mom of two young children, Scotton has ensured her kids know of their late, loving grandmother.
“We talk about how there's some bad people out there, and we talk about loss,” she says. “We're open about it, and I think that's a really good way to memorialize her to make sure that that they know her name and how amazing she was.”
For other reasons, Ray’s cold-blooded murder is one case Lewin says he’ll never forget.
“It stuck with me that the nurse’s creed is ‘do no harm,’ and yet you have this nurse who is impulsive and emotionally reactive—this is psychopathic-type of behavior. It was calm and calculated and methodical,” Lewin reflects. “And then to leave Jade [Scotton] alone with her deceased mom—I think they’re probably some of the most diabolical, horrible types of people that I've ever encountered.”
