Criminal paternity case tied to Ronn Owens’ daughter heads to podcast

Nearly three years after Laura Owens went on her one and only date with former “Bachelor” star Clayton Echard, her pursuit of paternity claims against him are the subject of a new investigative podcast.

The first two episodes of “Love Trapped” drop Thursday, and the 10-episode series promises to explore the public court fight and “shocking real life paternity scandal” that culminated with Owens, the daughter of Bay Area radio legend Ronn Owens, being charged with multiple felony counts, alleging that she falsely claimed to be pregnant with Echard’s twins in order to force him into a relationship.

Owens, 35, was charged last year in Maricopa County, Arizona, with a total 14 felony counts including fraud, forgery, perjury, tampering with physical evidence, theft by extortion and taking the identity of another. The counts involve allegations related to Echard and to a second man, whom she also accused of getting her pregnant.

Owens has pleaded not guilty and maintained in previous interviews and in a 2025 press release that she has proof she became pregnant by Echard but suffered a miscarriage. “I intend to meet these accusations head-on — and I will defend myself, fully and relentlessly, through every step of this process,” her release said.

The Owens v Echard case began in May 2023 when the two met in Scottsdale, Arizona. Owens and her parents moved there in in 2021, after her 80-year-old father retired from his decadeslong National Radio Hall of Fame career at KGO-810, where he was known as the Bay Area’s “voice of reason.”

Ronn Owens and his wife, Jan Black, a former KCBS reporter, purchased a home in Scottsdale where their equestrian daughter could live in a separate casita and have space to care for her horses. Meanwhile, after Echard appeared in Season 18 “The Bachelorette” and Season 26 of “The Bachelor,” he began working as a realtor in Scottsdale. Shortly thereafter, Owens contacted him about looking at property for real estate deals, according to a Maricopa County Attorney’s Office investigator’s report.

Owens and Echard met at his home on May 20, 2023, where there was sexual contact. Echard has maintained that there was no sexual intercourse, only oral sex, while Owens had said the contact was sufficient to get her pregnant, according to the investigator’s report and court testimony,

After their date, Echard told her he couldn’t represent her professionally and that he didn’t want to see her romantically, according to the investigator’s report and documents in the paternity case. Twelve days later, Owens emailed to tell him she was pregnant and showed him an image of a positive pregnancy test.

Echard later told police that Owens inundated him with some 500 text and emails from multiple phones, according to the investigator’s report. He also said she suggested a “dating contract,” wherein she would get an abortion if he dated her for one week, and she sent him an email touting the benefits of them being intimate, court records show.

Owens’ eventual decision to publicize her paternity claims against Echard in The Sun tabloid brought their court fight to the attention of “Bachelor” fans, where its sensational details began to play out on popular YouTube channels and online sleuths began to make their own discoveries about the case.

According to a media release about “Love Trapped,” the podcast will investigate the high-profile nature of the case, following a “roller coaster of digital harassment” and “a livestream courtroom showdown” between Owens and Echard, while exploring “the broader societal questions about public perception.”

The podcast, a co-production of iHeartPodcasts and Glass Entertainment Group, will feature interviews with Echard, his family, another alleged victim of Owens, the attorneys involved and YouTube personalities Dave Neal and Reality Steve, who covered the case extensively.

It was not immediately clear if Owens or her parents participated in the podcast. That information will be revealed in the series, a producer told this news organization. The reporter who wrote this article also was interviewed for this podcast but had no role in its production.

The charges against Owens were filed in Maricopa County, where the case began to unfold in the summer and fall of 2023. Owens initially sued Echard for paternity on Aug. 1. He filed an injunction against her alleging harassment after she threatened to go to the media, while she sought a protective order against him for sending “threatening messages,” according to the investigator’s report.

During court hearings in October and November 2023, Owens said she was 24 weeks pregnant and appeared with a noticeable pregnancy belly, as seen in video of the hearings. But by the end of 2023, she filed a court request to dismiss her paternity suit, saying she believed she had miscarried at some point earlier without knowing it. Echard pushed for a court ruling on paternity, telling police that his reputation had been attacked and he wanted to clear his name, according to the investigative report.

Following a June 2024 hearing, Maricopa County Judge Julie Mata said Owens lacked “good faith” in pursuing paternity claims against Echard. The judge noted that Owens was never seen by an obstetrician or gynecologist, though she said she had a high-risk pregnancy. The judge also cited “serial fabrications” that Owens made in her court declarations, deposition and testimony, and referred the case to Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for potential criminal prosecution.

Owens was initially indicted on seven felony counts in May 2025, which included allegations that she falsely claimed in a deposition and court testimony that a sonogram image and a video of a pregnant belly were hers. She was indicted on seven more felony counts in November, related to pregnancy claims she made against a second Scottsdale man, whom she briefly dated in the summer of 2021.

During Owens’ court battle with Echard, a third man, from San Francisco, came forward to say that she had accused him of getting her pregnant when they dated in 2016. The investigative report said Owens also accused a fourth man of getting her pregnant in 2014 or 2015.

 

The podcast begins airing following news that the Owens family’s Scottsdale home is in foreclosure, as Ronn Owens lives with Parkinson’s disease and other health issues, according to a notice of a trustee’s sale. The home will be sold at auction in May.

Last month, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge dismissed Ronn Owens and Jan Black’s efforts, via a Chapter 13 filing, to keep creditors from trying to collect on their reported $2.3 million in liabilities, which includes their home and more than $511,000 they reported owing to banks, credit card companies and other creditors.

Owens, too, has filed for bankruptcy and had to sit for a Feb. 9 examination by a U.S. Justice Department attorney over statements she made in her Chapter 7 filing about having zero income, including from a self-help podcast and a horse-training business she started with her mother.

Audio of the examination reveals Owens admitting that, at age 35, she has never earned any income on her own to pay her bills, saying her parents always covered the cost of her housing, food and car payments. “I’ve been the face of my parents’ businesses so they’ve paid my living expenses in exchange for me helping them,” Owens testified.

For the purposes of her criminal defense, Owens has been declared indigent by Maricopa County and is represented by a court-appointed attorney as she is scheduled to go on trial this summer.