She spoke briefly to a few of her children before driving by herself to the Peoria police station.
"We really didn't want her to speak to the cops anymore," recalls Lisa's oldest child, Jared, a firefighter in Sun City. "It was clear to us by then that they thought she was a baby killer, but she just wanted to help them."
courtesy of the Randall Family
Lisa Randall feeds one of her seven grandchildren.
Lisa Randall's mug shot after her November 2007 arrest.
At the meeting, Detectives Moran and Krause ask Randall yet again to rehash the details of April 18, 2007.
"What do you think happened?" Moran inquires.
"I don't know," she says. "I mean, SIDS? That's all I can think of, or his shots he had 10 days prior because he had a fever like non-stop . . . I keep rethinking, is there something I missed? Is there something I could have done to prevent it? Is it because I laid him on his stomach."
Randall repeats for the umpteenth time that Dillon was "fine. He was smiling, he was so happy" that day.
Moran asks Randall whether she is religious.
"I used to be," she tells him. "You know what, I'm not feeling very religious right now."
She blurts that she's not sure whether she would keep working in daycare.
Why, Detective Moran asks.
"Because I'm so scared," Randall says.
"I mean, if it wasn't your fault . . ."
"I won't take my eyes off them I'm so scared."
"Why are you scared if you think it's not your fault?"
"I swear to God I know I couldn't do anything different, but you're still responsible. And I couldn't live through that happening again. You think, even if it's not my fault and it's proven, do you think that makes me feel any better? It doesn't."
Moran tries a different tack, telling Randall that "sometimes bad things happen. They happen to all of us, okay?"
"I would give everything, anything, just to change it," Randall says, apparently not picking up on the detective's thread.
"I know he's in a better place, but he was in a good place here. And that's why I'm having such problems with it. [His parents] loved him."
More pointedly, Moran asks her if there was "an accident" of some sort.
"Oh, God, no! I would tell you. Like what?"
Detective Moran now proposes something in the interest of "closure."
He asks Randall if she would be willing to take a voice-stress analyzer test.
(Many police departments utilize the tests, but their reliability has come under serious attack from many corners. "There is little or no evidence — scientific or otherwise — for the application of voice-stress analysis in the detection of deception," a Defense Department study recently concluded. Results of voice tests are inadmissible in Arizona courts.)
Randall says she would be willing to take the test, then and there.
Moran leaves the room for a few minutes and returns to tell her that, unfortunately, the department's voice-stress "detective" isn't immediately available.
The subject of Dillon's autopsy comes up.
"Dillon has some severe trauma to his head," Moran tells her.
"No way."
"Yes."
"From what?"
"That's what we're trying to find out."
"Oh, my God!"
"Lisa, if there's something that you need to tell us."
"I swear on my grandkids, on my life, on my mother's grave, I swear to God, no!"
"Here's the problem we're having, Lisa . . . In a case like this, we are totally at the mercy of the doctors and the medical experts."
Those "several" medical experts, Moran tells her, are saying "it happened at your house . . . This is why we want to offer you [voice-stress analysis] because, like I say, the doctors are telling us we have to point the finger at you."
No, Randall says over and over, there was no accident — no fall off the couch, no bang of the head on the edge of the counter, no nothing.
Detective Moran then tries this one:
"They're going to bury their son on Mother's Day, Lisa. On Mother's Day! And you're telling me that nothing happened in there."
Randall doesn't budge.
She leaves the police station in tears, finally realizing that the cops believe she is a murderer.
Despite her stated reticence, Randall stayed in the daycare business after Dillon Uutela's death, in part because most of the parents whose children were at her home that day reaffirmed their trust in her.
Her sister came onboard to help her, because no one in the family wanted her to be alone with the kids in case, God forbid, something else went wrong.
Months passed.
Dr. Horn of the Medical Examiner's Office issued his damning postmortem report in October 2007, calling Dillon's death a homicide.
Soon after that, a county grand jury indicted Lisa Randall on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.
Randall was feeding breakfast to her daycare kids on the morning of November 29, 2007, when someone knocked on the door.
Several Peoria police cars were parked in front.
An officer handcuffed Randall and led her out of her front door, for a trip to the Maricopa County Jail.
Andrew Thomas, the Maricopa County Attorney at the time, announced the arrest at a press conference.
Thomas said no decision yet had been made about seeking the death penalty.