Josh & Kaydee

Josh and Kaydee met in Austin, Texas in 2016. They began dating after meeting online and getting to know each other through long phone calls and texts. Kaydee went on a day trip to Schlitterbahn with Josh and his daughter in the summer of 2016. This trip sealed the deal for all of them. Kaydee and Josh soon fell in love and his daughter started feeling like Kaydee’s own. They began intertwining their lives and spent holidays, birthdays, and vacations together. In 2017 they began making plans to move in together at Josh’s home. His daughter began discussing her strong desire to live full time with Josh and  Kaydee so they began planning out the best way to go about gaining more time with her. This became a challenge because her mother did not want Kaydee to be close with their daughter and had no intention of sharing her with Josh.

In May of 2017, they went to Cancún and spent an amazing week together to celebrate Kaydee’s birthday. Upon arriving home, however, the struggle of their lives began. Josh was called into the sheriff’s office for questioning and soon realized his ex-step-daughter was making accusations against him. His soon-to-be ex-wife decided to put her finger on the scale in their custody battle and make sure that Josh would not be able to have his biological child in his life. She withheld his daughter from them for months. They hired attorneys and cooperated with the police and CPS to try and clear Josh’s name. However, in January of 2018, he was arrested at work. Kaydee quickly bailed him out and they began working on how to stay above water and survive the wild ride they had been put on. 

On April 28th, 2018 their house burned down. Kaydee and Josh both escaped the fire and paramedics informed them that if they had not evacuated when they did, they would have died from smoke inhalation. Everything was a total loss, including both of their vehicles. This would feel convenient to them as his ex-wife’s birthday was April 29th and they were set to have a pre-trial hearing in the week following the fire. For the next two weeks, they lived out of a hotel. Thanks to the kindness of one local landlord, they were able to rent a new home and begin rebuilding what they had lost. 

In January of 2019, the trial began. Josh’s attorneys did not do any work to prove his innocence, alibi, or character. They did not have any character witnesses testify on Josh’s behalf and allowed the prosecution to edit his police interview video before showing it to the jury. These factors ultimately resulted in him being convicted of an inconceivable crime and was given 25 years in prison. Kaydee and Josh have remained a strong team together through the five years he has already served in prison. They continue fighting to prove his innocence, clear his name, and ultimately get him back home to Kaydee and his baby girl.