Episode 70: Lucas Call Revisited

Suffer the Little Children

A few weeks ago, in episode 65, I told you the story of two-year-old Lucas Call, who died from blunt force trauma in 2018. His foster mother, Lisa Jo Vanderlinden, took a plea agreement that amounted to a slap on the wrist and was released after just nine months in county jail.
After I released that episode, I heard from a lot of listeners who expressed sympathy for and outrage on behalf of Lucas’s biological mom, Shelby Call, whose learning disability was one of the reasons the state of Utah used to justify removing her children from her care in the first place. For this episode, I was honored to speak with Shelby, who is honestly one of the sweetest people I’ve ever had the privilege of encountering. You’ll also hear my candid conversation with Shelby’s husband, Lucas’s father, David, whose arrest for possession of child pornography set off the chain of events that ultimately led to Lucas’s death.
This is the heartbreaking story of Lucas Call, revisited.
Huge thanks to today’s sponsor:
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