The fiancé of Rebecca Park, a young woman in northern Michigan who'd been stabbed to death, her unborn baby cut from her womb, testified at a preliminary examination on Friday, Sept. 18, in 84th District Court as prosecutors asked him about text messages between him and one of the prime suspects: Cortney Bartholomew, the woman's estranged biological mother.
And in those text messages, the fiancé, Richard Falor, appears to be poking holes in her story in the days following Park's disappearance.
Park, 22, was reported missing from Wexford County at 38-weeks pregnant on Nov. 4, 2025. Her body was found 11 days later in the Huron-Manistee National Forest, her unborn baby cut from her womb and gone. As for the suspects, authorities charged Bartholomew,
Park's biological mother, and her husband, Bradly Bartholomew, with eight crimes in the killing, including first-degree murder, torture and assault of a pregnant woman with the intention to cause miscarriage or stillbirth.
Wexford County Prosecutor Johanna Carey previously said in court that the pair did their research and created a plan before they lured the young woman into their home with money, put her into a car and then took her to the woods behind the Bartholomew home, where they forced her on the ground and stabbed her as they cut the unborn baby out of her womb.
Friday was the first day of what is expected to be a lengthy preliminary examination, in which prosecutors are tasked with proving to a judge there's enough evidence against the suspects for the case to proceed to trial. Much of the day was the defense and the prosecution going back and forth about what the the media can and cannot record in the courtroom and whether the prosecution has legal basis to admit the texts between Falor and Cortney Bartholomew into evidence because they were screenshots rather than phone records.
84th District Court Judge Corey Wiggins ruled against restrictions on the media, citing the First Amendment, and allowed the texts to be shown in court.
In those messages, which begin on Nov. 4, 2025, Cortney Bartholomew first tells Falor that a man in a Black SUV picked up her daughter. And as the messages go on, Falor begins to question Bartholomew.
He questioned why she didn't have surveillance video of the black SUV when she previously spoke of other videos she had. And when Cortney Bartholomew told Falor they discussed a baby shower for Park's baby boy, Falor pointed out that Park didn't want one. He also asked how Bartholomew knew that Park had an ex-boyfriend that was trying to get her to leave Falor for him, to which Bartholomew responded: "my source."
Cortney Bartholomew also repeatedly told Falor to keep quiet about the case and to not give the police Park's phone logs because then they'd think he's "covering something up."
Falor questioned why, then said:
"I got a really good gut feeling that somebody's lying to me. I just can't figure out who."
Court adjured for the day after Falor's testimony on the text messages. The preliminary examination is scheduled to continue Nov. 9.
'Becca's Army'
In small town Wexford County in northern Michigan, everybody knows everybody. So when she went missing and after her body was found, the community rallied together to bring Park and her baby justice, organizing search parties and protests outside the Bartholomew home.
That hasn't stopped.
Most of those watching in the courtroom on Friday wore shirts honoring Park, like Falor, who wore a shirt that read "Justice for Rebecca Kay Park" and urged those reading to remember the young mother for who she was.
Stephanie Park, Rebecca Park's adoptive mother, wore a black shirt that labeled her among "Becca's Army."
The brutal killing had also triggered a frenzy of citizen sleuths and true-crime influencers jumping on the case, going on TikTok live to dissect the evidence and timeline, some even live-streaming in court. Like Jessica Coleman, who had to leave the courtroom on Friday because she was named as a potential witness.
"Fu--," she whispered, then obliged. She later told the Free Press she was in tears as she drove home to Grand Rapids.
Prior to being charged, even Cortney Bartholomew appeared to join the TikTok livestreams too, taking the online attention to new levels by fielding questions from TikTok users who were suspicious of her. Just one day before authorities discovered Park's body near the Bartholomew home, on Nov. 24, 2025, Cortney Bartholomew was seen on a TikTok livestream outside of her home speaking to protesters:
"Here's the dillio," she says, and admitted that she and her husband had been taken that night for questioning. But then she throws her other daughter, Kimberly Park, under the bus.
"Kimberly is implicating me as hitting my daughter and hiding the body. She's implicating my husband of murder. Before my daughter went missing, Kimberly asked about the trails behind my house," she's heard in the video.
"She put her on a bus, and sent her to Tennessee."
Prior to Friday's hearing, the Bartholomews gave detectives several different accounts of how and why Park was killed, including pointing to alternative suspects before ultimately blaming each other in the pregnant woman's killing and death of her unborn baby, according to an affidavit describing law enforcement interviews with the suspects.
Cortney Bartholomewtold detectives her husband planned the killing as part of a revenge plot against Park's fiancé, who allegedly triggered an investigation that put Bradly Bartholomew back in jail on a sex offender registration violation, according to the affidavit. Meanwhile Bradly Bartholomew told detectives that "Cortney was mad because Rebecca was always bad mouthing her and wouldn't give her a chance to be a mom," and that "Cortney wanted the baby for herself."
But the one thing they agreed onwas this:
That the unborn boy, who authorities say also died, was disposed of in a blue lunch cooler thrown into a trash bin, the documents say. The baby's body has yet to be found.
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her at asahouri@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rebecca Park's fiancé testifies in court on text messages with suspect
