In jailhouse interview, mother of slain Spokane toddler said jury’s acquittal of ex-boyfriend failed her daughter

Dressed in a faded dark green jail jumpsuit, and with eyes full of tears, the mother of slain 2-year-old Adalynn Hoyt said the jury got it wrong June 21 when they acquitted her ex-boyfriend of first-degree murder.

“I think the law failed Adalynn,” she said during a jailhouse interview conducted Thursday.

The 29-year-old said she’s had plenty of time to reflect on everything that happened the night Adalynn was killed on or around Sept. 11. In a letter she sent to The Spokesman-Review this week and during the interview, Rainey expressed remorse for her actions, writing that she hoped she could help others with drug addiction once she’s released from jail.

“I’ve had the ability to step back and take responsibility (for) my actions,” she wrote. “As I sit here in jail and reflect on the last 9 months, how much pain I feel daily for choices I made in my parenting and who I choose to leave my children with and allowing my addiction to become most important in my life.”

During the murder trial of Jason Obermiller, both prosecutors and defense attorneys described a less-than-ideal household for the young children as they scrutinized and questioned Rainey’s parenting skills, drug addiction and responsibility as a single mother of four children. Rainey would often leave them in the care of drug users while she was away at work or out partying, and multiple witnesses admitted to having done drugs near or in front of the children.

The night Adalynn was killed, Rainey left the 2-year-old in the care of Obermiller while she smoked meth with a man she had met less than 48 hours earlier. She didn’t return until about 6:30 a.m. the next morning, about seven hours before Adalynn was found dead in bed. Obermiller had left the house around midnight.

“The pain will never go away,” she wrote. “I (now) have the ability to mourn the loss of my beautiful, amazing, wonderful, soul of a gypsy daughter Adalynn Lena Kay Ann Hoyt, my little Addy Fatty Patty who was the light of my life, (and) will forever be missed and never forgotten.”

Despite the jury’s decision, Rainey said she was certain Obermiller killed her daughter, since he was the last person with her. She said she couldn’t move past Obermiller’s actions after he was told Adalynn was dead, which was to turn off his phone and go into hiding.

“He was the only person who ran,” she said. “Who gives a (expletive) about your warrants. How could he show zero emotion for someone who was so close to her?”

Defense attorneys argued Obermiller ran because of several outstanding felony warrants. Obermiller testified himself that he was scared and didn’t know what to do, so he turned his phone off and stayed away from the South Hill residence where Rainey was living and where Adalynn was killed.

Rainey, who is jailed as she awaits trial on multiple charges of conspiring to distribute drugs, hopes to be out of jail by as soon as September. She said she’s been clean since she was arrested in September, and plans to remain clean once she’s out.

The first thing she’ll do, she says, is visit Adalynn’s grave at Fairmount Memorial Park.

“It’s hard,” she said. “I haven’t been able to get to her grave, and I wasn’t able to go to her funeral.”

Then, she plans on gaining custody of her three children, two of whom are in foster care, and putting Spokane in the rearview mirror as she makes her way east, toward Pennsylvania to be near her brother. She said Spokane has nothing left for her.

“Everybody I know here, they’re not family,” she said. “I want to start over.”