July 25, 2024 • 30 mins
Stephanie thinks she knows her husband. Then, she takes a look at his computer. What she finds, changes everything.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the things that I kept a screenshot of
was the one that I thought was the worst. It's
a collage. It's almost like a Christmas card. There's some
writing on the top and the bottom, and then all.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
These different photos.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
The photo in the top corner is a picture of
my face, and then the rest of the pictures are nudes,
and they become ever and ever more close up and
across the top it says something along the lines of
slut wife alert.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Do you know this woman? And that's out there and
I can't ever get it back.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Here at Betrayal, we've received hundreds of emails
messages from listeners telling us their own shocking stories, and
(01:17):
we knew we had to find a way to share them.
So I'm excited to announce that every Thursday, we will
be bringing you new, fascinating stories of resilience in the
face of devastating betrayal. Some stories may be told over
a week or two weeks, some more, and we knew
where to start. A listener who emailed us in the
(01:38):
summer of twenty twenty three, she wrote, I've been in
this betrayal club for over two years now. When I
discovered your podcast, I was intrigued. We were the couple
that all the other couples envied. We were best friends,
walking down main street, holding hands and giggling like newlyweds
after two decades together. The email explained that she didn't
(02:03):
just love her husband, she liked him. He was the
love of her life, or so she thought. It's funny
how so many of these betrayal stories start the same way, beautiful,
long term relationships that aren't what they appear to be.
This is Stephanie's story, although that's not her real name.
(02:27):
All the names you'll hear in this story have been
changed or censored to respect her privacy.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
We got married in nineteen ninety eight. It was a
second marriage for both of us. I came with four boys.
He had a boy and a girl. Our kids were
already friends and were thrilled about us being together.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Stephanie and her husband I'm gonna call him Greg, live
together in a tiny Midwestern town. It's the kind of
town where everybody knows everybody.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It's like a small calm that you would see on
a movie or a sitcom. I didn't want my husband
to go to the grocery store with me. It just
would take so long if he went with because we
knew every person at the store and everyone would have
to stop and visit with him.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Their big, blended family was well known in town. Picture
a modern day Brady bunch. At least that's the feeling
I got from a photo she shared with me. It's Stephanie,
her sons, and Greg's kids, all six of them standing
side by side on the beach, smiling. Their family takes
up the whole three by five photo across their arm
(03:40):
and arm having the best beach vacation. It's really sweet.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
He was the absolute ideal husband. He was my best friend.
He did housework, he cooked, he played with the kids,
and when the kids were little, we would go in
and volunteer at their elementary school and help with their
reading groups, which was super fun and like what their
(04:08):
dad does that? I mean back in those days, he
was the only dad who volunteered, and the kids all
loved him.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
There's another photo of Stephanie and her husband in front
of a waterfall in a forest with his arms wrapped
around her. The sun lights her face, and she looks
relaxed and blissful.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
He was very kind, very generous, very interested in hearing
what I had to say. He very much lifted me up.
He made me feel seen, and he made me feel
(04:48):
like I was smart and competent.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
They had great chemistry. They made great partners, not just
in marriage, but in business.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I just endedended up working at my husband's optometry practice,
because you know, it's a small practice, just him. He
always had three employees and one quit and I was
kind of in between jobs, so it's like, oh, could
you just fill in.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Stephanie did a lot more than just fill in. She
started managing her husband's optometry practice, pushing insurance claims through
and making the business more profitable than ever. They had
a clear vision for their future.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
We certainly were not rich, but we were very comfortable.
We had our own resort in our backyard. We had
a large in ground.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Pool, hot ub, basketball court.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Have this great photo of Greg on his giant pool
lounger watching the Master's golf tournament on our outdoor big
screen TV.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
We had just begun a plan of getting the house
absolutely perfect.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
And maintenance for when we retired of course, there were
hard moments, bumps along the way, and a twenty two
year marriage that's par for the course.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
At one point, he admitted that he hadn't been paying
the taxes at his business, and there was a possibility
we could lose the business, our house, he could go
to jail. That's a pretty big bump. It's like I've
invested everything. I've put my life and my kids' lives
(06:32):
in this man's hands.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So that was tough, but we worked through it.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
They agreed to a payment plan with the irs and
move forward as a team, back on track for a
happy retirement. As the kids got older, Stephanie and her
husband adjusted well to the empty nest.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
When the kids were grown, things were almost even better.
We would leave the office and walk hand in hand
down the street to the local cafe and go to
lunch together and sit and talk and laugh through the
whole lunch, not and scroll on our phones like other couples,
(07:12):
And then we would go back and work for the afternoon,
and then we would go home together and make dinner,
watch our favorite game shows, and play a board game.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Even during the twenty twenty pandemic, Stephanie and her husband
got along.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So you know, during COVID, I'd hop on a zoom
call with like six or seven girlfriends. We're pretty much
all empty nesters, so we're all just stuck in the
house alone with our husbands. And my friends have good marriages,
and still there.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Was a lot of like, I don't know how much
longer I can take this. I'm really bored, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Going, oh gosh, you guys, I feel bad because, you
know what, we're having a blast over here. We're trying
new recipes. We've got this whole game thing going on.
We're doing all these puzzles. We're having so much fun.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
When COVID restrictions lifted, the couple took the opportunity to
spend even more time together and enjoy a warmer climate.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Kind of on a whim, we were like, hey, things
are opening up. We didn't get to go on our
winter vacation to our time sharing Cancun.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Let's go down there. So we had gone down the
first week.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Of April and had a fabulous time as we always do.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
But on this little COVID getaway, she could tell that
something was off with Greg. She first noticed it when
they were lounging by the pool.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
One of the things that really struck me as weird
on that trip was that we had kind of sat
in this same spot a couple days and there was
someone else sitting a couple chairs down from us, another
husband and wife, and the guy made me really uncomfortable.
You know how some guys just look at you weird,
(09:02):
you know, when you're hanging out in your bathing suit whatever, And.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
The guy just kind of made me uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And I told Greg that, I said, you know, that
guy is just kind of creeping me out. Can we
sit somewhere else?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And he said no.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
That was totally out of character for him. He was
always so accommodating to me and never wanted me to
feel uncomfortable. I mean, does it matter if we sit
over on the other side of the gorgeous infinity pool
looking out at the ocean.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
So yeah, it just struck me as a little weird.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It was weird, but Stephanie didn't think much of it.
That night, the couple indulged in a long, romantic dinner.
This was always part of their vacation, a few dinners
where they could really treat.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Themselves, many many courses and lots of different drink and
wine and follow that.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The next morning, Stephanie was in a fog.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I was very out of it, like it was really
hard to wake up.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I've had this feeling.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
It was almost like I was at the bottom of
the lake and I could just see light way up ahead,
but it was so hard to try to get there,
and then I would just feel so awful, like very
cotton mull, very dehydrated, headache, miserable waking up.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Shouldn't feel like that.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
But Greg was there to help take care of her.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Last night.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
You had a lot to drink, and we were out
in the sun a lot. I'm sure you're dehydrated. Let's
get you some water, Let's get you some coffee. Let's
try to stay out of the sun a little bit today,
you know, very comforting, very kind.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And Stephanie was determined to make the most out of
the rest of a vacan.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
We got home and on the airplane, I had seen
somebody was watching you know, you can kind of see
other people's screens. I could see somebody was watching something
with Nicole Kidman, and I was like, oh, that looks
kind of intriguing.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I got to look that up and see what they're watching.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So I figured it out that they were watching this
show called The Undoing.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
The Undoing was a fictional TV mini series about a
pediatric surgeon played by Hugh Grant. The character is warm
and charming, but is ultimately suspected of a violent crime.
It's a complete odds with the man. His wife knows.
When Stephanie got home, she binge watched the show.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
In that first episode, he is just so engaged with
his child, and he's so fawning over Nicole Kidman about
you know, just how beautiful and wonderful and perfect she is.
But he doesn't want to go and like socialize with
(12:02):
other people and go to the party eerily.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
This character reminded Stephanie of Greg.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
He just wants this little bubble of his little.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Family, and he loves being adored by his patience. Just
this really engaging charismatic personality, but yet doesn't necessarily always
want to be social unless he can be the center
of attention. As it became more and more clear that
the Hugh Grant character had this tremendous secret, it just
(12:40):
made this feeling in my gut, say, you know who
else has secrets?
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Your own husband?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It's unsettling to see a depiction of a violent and
manipulative character on TV and think, hey, that reminds me
of my husband. That's exactly what happened to Stephanie. There
was a nagging feeling, a twist in her gut that
felt distantly familiar. Stephanie had felt this before. After one
(13:27):
big fight she'd had with Greg years ago in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie had found out about a secret her husband was keeping.
Here's what happened back then.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
On this particular weekend in twenty sixteen. It was just
a weekend trip with another couple. The guys had been
golfing all day, as girls had been hiking and sightseeing,
and we got back to the hotel and got ready
and went out for dinner, the four of us. And
after dinner, I wanted to take a picture of the
(13:59):
fur of us, and I was like, Oh, my phone
is somewhere in the bottom of my purse.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Just give me yours. So I grabbed.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
His phone and I opened the camera.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
In the bottom corner.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
It showed the last photo he had taken, And the
last photo he had taken was of me getting ready
in our hotel room.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Nude from the waistep I had no idea it had
been taken.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So I see this photo of.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Me on his phone, and I don't want to say
anything in front of our friends, So we take the picture.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I say, I'm not feeling well. We go back to
the room.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
I hold onto his phone the whole time until we
get up there, and I'm like, what is this?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
What the hell?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Stephanie enjoyed the physical intimacy of her marriage. She thought
it was in a healthy place. There were boundaries.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I did not ever consent to that. I did not
ever say I would do that. And he also knew
that there had been a few times throughout the years
when he had asked about taking pictures and I very
adamantly said no and talked with him about things like
what if the kids open to your phone. I just
(15:23):
don't want to take the chance that anything would ever
get out there.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
And here's the thing, I told him, I'm live and
in person.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You see me, you see my body every day, and
I wanted to have sex with my husband. I felt
like that was an important part of our love and
our marriage.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Shouldn't that be enough.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Instead of respecting her boundary around pornography and nude photos,
Greg had used it against her, twisted it to explain
away his own indiscretions.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
He knew that I was adamantly opposed to pornography, and
the reasoning he gave for taking pictures of me was
he felt that he shouldn't look at pornography and instead
(16:20):
he would create his own just for himself. He ended
up telling me, I've only ever done it a couple times.
There's only a few pictures. I wanted it to make
sense because I couldn't breathe without him.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
When they got home from that vacation back in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie moved into the guest bedroom. She was mad. It
stayed that way for a few weeks. They still worked
together and kept the same routine, but they slept in
separate bedrooms. Greg worked hard to earn her forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
One evening in early September, you know, after this had
been going on for a few weeks, that I was
in the other bedroom. I was sitting in the family
room watching TV, and he came over and he knelt
in front of me and he sobbed. I mean just
(17:29):
the tears and the snot and the whole thing, just
poured his.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Heart out at how terrible.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
He felt that he had ever done anything like that,
and that he would never do anything to jeopardize our
relationship because I'm the most important thing in the world.
Our marriage is the most important thing in the world.
He can't live without me, and there's nothing he wouldn't
do for my.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Forgiveness, and so.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I forgave him under a few conditions.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
The one thing that I made him agree to was
that I had access to all of his devices anytime
I wanted, all his passwords, everything, and I could check
them whenever I wanted without question.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
He absolutely agreed to that, and she lived like that.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
For six years, checking his phone and devices three times
a week.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So the trust was in a really tenuous place after
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
But now balance that with everything else is perfect.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
She believed her husband when he said it began and
ended with that photo he took of her on vacation,
Like she says, everything else about their life was fantastic.
So slowly they worked through it. During hardships, trust, love
and bonds are often forged even stronger.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It just was this very grounding feeling that as long
as I had that relationship, as long as we were together,
there really wasn't anything that I couldn't handle, that I
couldn't get through.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
And as much.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
As I talk about how great and how content and
how wonderful everything felt, I always had an eye and
an ear out for anything to be off.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
The couple resumed their normal routine. Every night. Stephanie went
to bed early to read, while her husband would stay
up late fiddling around with his guilty pleasure fantasy sports.
And I mean a lot of fantasy sports.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
He would participate in ten or twelve fantasy.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Football leagues every year.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
He would do.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Fantasy baseball and golf, and so he would spend a
tremendous amount of time. Sometimes I'd wake up at one
two in the morning and be like, are you coming
to bed? Because he was still on his computer doing
fantasy football. But he wasn't, That's not what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
After the break, Stephanie makes a life shattering discovery. There
is a photo of Stephanie on vacation with her husband.
(21:08):
She is staring into his eyes. The two look madly
in love, infatuated, almost smiling so big. It's like they
just started dating, not twenty two years into their marriage.
Looking at that picture, I think good for them. They
persevered through a tough financial crisis with their business, but
(21:28):
made it out the other side. They were coasting into retirement,
and they even worked through a major trust issue, the
fallout after Stephanie found a naked photo of her on
her husband's phone. But intuition is an interesting thing, that
twist of the gut. Six years had come and gone,
(21:51):
she had forgiven her husband, they had a happy life,
yet something still churned inside Stephanie. On an unseasonably warm
day in April twenty twenty one, she was home alone
while Greg was out golfing with his friends.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
I had that feeling.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
I was like, I got to check all his stuff
while he's gone. I saw his laptop was sitting there
by his recliner. I picked it up and I took
it over to the kitchen counter and that was where
I was sitting, and I literally just lifted it up
and it was there. The pages were open. He had
(22:36):
a Flicker account filled with nude photos of me, Hundreds
of pictures, lots and lots of them that were like
the one I saw him take me getting ready shower, bathtub,
(23:02):
that kind of stuff. Lots of photos taken when we
were at our time, sharing Cancun from angles that I
would never have agreed to.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
To make it even more disturbing, there were captions under
the photos of Stephanie, disgusting captions. It's uncomfortable for me
to even read this, but it shows just how degraded
Stephanie felt. One caption read made your wife eat my comb.
These photos were live posted on the Internet for anyone
(23:41):
to access. In the moment, Stephanie was panicked.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I'm in the account and I'm deleting, deleting, deleting, deleting,
and then something in me went, I gotta have evidence
of this at that point, not even thinking it was illegal, like,
I can't even believe.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
This, No one is ever going to believe me.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So I took some screenshots and then deleted, so that
I deleted all the naked pictures out of his account.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
She was in reaction mode, horrified and angry. She confronted
him right away.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I texted him a screenshot of that picture of me
in the bikini, and.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
With that picture she typed out a message. In that message,
she called Greg by his online alias you see on
all of his accounts. He didn't use his real name. Instead,
he used the name of one of his patients, a
patient who was a mentally disabled adult.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
So on the morning of the eleventh I sent this text,
we need to talk. You better come home so he
knows he's busted. He comes flying home and it's all
there on the computer. There's no backing his way out
of it. This time, his reaction is one hundred percent
(25:10):
of her than it was the time before.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
He readily confessed to all of it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
No tears, no remorse, no regret, no care whatsoever. He
talked to me like he was telling me I went
to the store and got a gallon of milk.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
In addition to the photos of herself, there were photos
of other women. What was this and why did he
have these photos?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
He said, I have those pictures of those other women
because I trade.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Like kids trade Pokemon cards, I would trade your image.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Stephanie is usually a very calm person. She can count
on one hand the times she's ever raised her voice
at her family, But on this day she lost it.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I was screaming, taking pictures off the wall and just
smashing them. I took the kitty litter box and dumped
it in his bed. I mean, I broke a.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Lot of stuff completely out of character.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I was screaming and breaking things to the point where
it set off the house alarm because we had glass
break sensors, and because there were so many things being
smashed and so much screaming, the sensors went off.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
On the day she found out, she was so mad
she couldn't even process the bigger question.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I mean, it really took me about twenty four hours
to get to the point of looking at that and going,
I don't understand how he could take those pictures without
me knowing.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
She squinted at the photos, trying to remember when and
where they were taken.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
There was a series of photos of me.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
On the bed at our time share, and I'm fully naked,
spread eagle on the bed, and.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
There's close ups.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
There's no way you can get that angle on a
person without them knowing you're there.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
There was only one way it could have happened.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I know what happened. He drugged me. Yeah, he drugged me.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
There was twenty two years of marriage, the vows they'd taken,
the business they'd grown together, the children they'd raised, their
plans for retirement, and then there was this stranger, this man.
She slept beside, a man who was drugging her, hosting
(28:08):
photos of her nude body on the internet, photos with
her face in them, photos captioned with her real first name,
all for his own enjoyment. On the next episode of Betrayal,
(28:32):
Stephanie runs for her life.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
At five am. They were on the phone and said,
get out, get out. We are afraid he is going
to kill you. This is a huge secret. He is
not going to want anyone to know you are in danger.
Get out, don't take anything, just get out right now.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Next time, Stephanie starts her own investigation, she finds out
what her husband was really doing online, and what she
discovers is worse than she could have ever imagined. If
(29:17):
you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team
or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us
at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at
gmail dot com. Also, please be sure to follow us
at Glass Podcasts on Instagram for all Betrayal content, news
and updates. We're grateful for your support. One way to
(29:39):
show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple
Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal five
star reviews, go a long way, a big thank you
to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of
Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. The show was executive produced by Nancy
(30:00):
Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Associate producers are Kristin Melcurie and Grace Bollinger. Our iHeart
team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Special thanks to Stephanie.
(30:21):
Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Betrayal's theme composed
by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by my Music and
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
One of the things that I kept a screenshot of
was the one that I thought was the worst. It's
a collage. It's almost like a Christmas card. There's some
writing on the top and the bottom, and then all.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
These different photos.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
The photo in the top corner is a picture of
my face, and then the rest of the pictures are nudes,
and they become ever and ever more close up and
across the top it says something along the lines of
slut wife alert.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Do you know this woman? And that's out there and
I can't ever get it back.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Here at Betrayal, we've received hundreds of emails
messages from listeners telling us their own shocking stories, and
(01:17):
we knew we had to find a way to share them.
So I'm excited to announce that every Thursday, we will
be bringing you new, fascinating stories of resilience in the
face of devastating betrayal. Some stories may be told over
a week or two weeks, some more, and we knew
where to start. A listener who emailed us in the
(01:38):
summer of twenty twenty three, she wrote, I've been in
this betrayal club for over two years now. When I
discovered your podcast, I was intrigued. We were the couple
that all the other couples envied. We were best friends,
walking down main street, holding hands and giggling like newlyweds
after two decades together. The email explained that she didn't
(02:03):
just love her husband, she liked him. He was the
love of her life, or so she thought. It's funny
how so many of these betrayal stories start the same way, beautiful,
long term relationships that aren't what they appear to be.
This is Stephanie's story, although that's not her real name.
(02:27):
All the names you'll hear in this story have been
changed or censored to respect her privacy.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
We got married in nineteen ninety eight. It was a
second marriage for both of us. I came with four boys.
He had a boy and a girl. Our kids were
already friends and were thrilled about us being together.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Stephanie and her husband I'm gonna call him Greg, live
together in a tiny Midwestern town. It's the kind of
town where everybody knows everybody.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It's like a small calm that you would see on
a movie or a sitcom. I didn't want my husband
to go to the grocery store with me. It just
would take so long if he went with because we
knew every person at the store and everyone would have
to stop and visit with him.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Their big, blended family was well known in town. Picture
a modern day Brady bunch. At least that's the feeling
I got from a photo she shared with me. It's Stephanie,
her sons, and Greg's kids, all six of them standing
side by side on the beach, smiling. Their family takes
up the whole three by five photo across their arm
(03:40):
and arm having the best beach vacation. It's really sweet.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
He was the absolute ideal husband. He was my best friend.
He did housework, he cooked, he played with the kids,
and when the kids were little, we would go in
and volunteer at their elementary school and help with their
reading groups, which was super fun and like what their
(04:08):
dad does that? I mean back in those days, he
was the only dad who volunteered, and the kids all
loved him.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
There's another photo of Stephanie and her husband in front
of a waterfall in a forest with his arms wrapped
around her. The sun lights her face, and she looks
relaxed and blissful.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
He was very kind, very generous, very interested in hearing
what I had to say. He very much lifted me up.
He made me feel seen, and he made me feel
(04:48):
like I was smart and competent.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
They had great chemistry. They made great partners, not just
in marriage, but in business.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I just endedended up working at my husband's optometry practice,
because you know, it's a small practice, just him. He
always had three employees and one quit and I was
kind of in between jobs, so it's like, oh, could
you just fill in.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Stephanie did a lot more than just fill in. She
started managing her husband's optometry practice, pushing insurance claims through
and making the business more profitable than ever. They had
a clear vision for their future.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
We certainly were not rich, but we were very comfortable.
We had our own resort in our backyard. We had
a large in ground.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Pool, hot ub, basketball court.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Have this great photo of Greg on his giant pool
lounger watching the Master's golf tournament on our outdoor big
screen TV.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
We had just begun a plan of getting the house
absolutely perfect.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
And maintenance for when we retired of course, there were
hard moments, bumps along the way, and a twenty two
year marriage that's par for the course.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
At one point, he admitted that he hadn't been paying
the taxes at his business, and there was a possibility
we could lose the business, our house, he could go
to jail. That's a pretty big bump. It's like I've
invested everything. I've put my life and my kids' lives
(06:32):
in this man's hands.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So that was tough, but we worked through it.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
They agreed to a payment plan with the irs and
move forward as a team, back on track for a
happy retirement. As the kids got older, Stephanie and her
husband adjusted well to the empty nest.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
When the kids were grown, things were almost even better.
We would leave the office and walk hand in hand
down the street to the local cafe and go to
lunch together and sit and talk and laugh through the
whole lunch, not and scroll on our phones like other couples,
(07:12):
And then we would go back and work for the afternoon,
and then we would go home together and make dinner,
watch our favorite game shows, and play a board game.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Even during the twenty twenty pandemic, Stephanie and her husband
got along.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So you know, during COVID, I'd hop on a zoom
call with like six or seven girlfriends. We're pretty much
all empty nesters, so we're all just stuck in the
house alone with our husbands. And my friends have good marriages,
and still there.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Was a lot of like, I don't know how much
longer I can take this. I'm really bored, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Going, oh gosh, you guys, I feel bad because, you
know what, we're having a blast over here. We're trying
new recipes. We've got this whole game thing going on.
We're doing all these puzzles. We're having so much fun.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
When COVID restrictions lifted, the couple took the opportunity to
spend even more time together and enjoy a warmer climate.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Kind of on a whim, we were like, hey, things
are opening up. We didn't get to go on our
winter vacation to our time sharing Cancun.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Let's go down there. So we had gone down the
first week.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Of April and had a fabulous time as we always do.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
But on this little COVID getaway, she could tell that
something was off with Greg. She first noticed it when
they were lounging by the pool.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
One of the things that really struck me as weird
on that trip was that we had kind of sat
in this same spot a couple days and there was
someone else sitting a couple chairs down from us, another
husband and wife, and the guy made me really uncomfortable.
You know how some guys just look at you weird,
(09:02):
you know, when you're hanging out in your bathing suit whatever, And.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
The guy just kind of made me uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And I told Greg that, I said, you know, that
guy is just kind of creeping me out. Can we
sit somewhere else?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And he said no.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
That was totally out of character for him. He was
always so accommodating to me and never wanted me to
feel uncomfortable. I mean, does it matter if we sit
over on the other side of the gorgeous infinity pool
looking out at the ocean.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
So yeah, it just struck me as a little weird.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It was weird, but Stephanie didn't think much of it.
That night, the couple indulged in a long, romantic dinner.
This was always part of their vacation, a few dinners
where they could really treat.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Themselves, many many courses and lots of different drink and
wine and follow that.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The next morning, Stephanie was in a fog.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I was very out of it, like it was really
hard to wake up.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I've had this feeling.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
It was almost like I was at the bottom of
the lake and I could just see light way up ahead,
but it was so hard to try to get there,
and then I would just feel so awful, like very
cotton mull, very dehydrated, headache, miserable waking up.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Shouldn't feel like that.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
But Greg was there to help take care of her.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Last night.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
You had a lot to drink, and we were out
in the sun a lot. I'm sure you're dehydrated. Let's
get you some water, Let's get you some coffee. Let's
try to stay out of the sun a little bit today,
you know, very comforting, very kind.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And Stephanie was determined to make the most out of
the rest of a vacan.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
We got home and on the airplane, I had seen
somebody was watching you know, you can kind of see
other people's screens. I could see somebody was watching something
with Nicole Kidman, and I was like, oh, that looks
kind of intriguing.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I got to look that up and see what they're watching.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So I figured it out that they were watching this
show called The Undoing.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
The Undoing was a fictional TV mini series about a
pediatric surgeon played by Hugh Grant. The character is warm
and charming, but is ultimately suspected of a violent crime.
It's a complete odds with the man. His wife knows.
When Stephanie got home, she binge watched the show.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
In that first episode, he is just so engaged with
his child, and he's so fawning over Nicole Kidman about
you know, just how beautiful and wonderful and perfect she is.
But he doesn't want to go and like socialize with
(12:02):
other people and go to the party eerily.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
This character reminded Stephanie of Greg.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
He just wants this little bubble of his little.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Family, and he loves being adored by his patience. Just
this really engaging charismatic personality, but yet doesn't necessarily always
want to be social unless he can be the center
of attention. As it became more and more clear that
the Hugh Grant character had this tremendous secret, it just
(12:40):
made this feeling in my gut, say, you know who
else has secrets?
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Your own husband?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It's unsettling to see a depiction of a violent and
manipulative character on TV and think, hey, that reminds me
of my husband. That's exactly what happened to Stephanie. There
was a nagging feeling, a twist in her gut that
felt distantly familiar. Stephanie had felt this before. After one
(13:27):
big fight she'd had with Greg years ago in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie had found out about a secret her husband was keeping.
Here's what happened back then.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
On this particular weekend in twenty sixteen. It was just
a weekend trip with another couple. The guys had been
golfing all day, as girls had been hiking and sightseeing,
and we got back to the hotel and got ready
and went out for dinner, the four of us. And
after dinner, I wanted to take a picture of the
(13:59):
fur of us, and I was like, Oh, my phone
is somewhere in the bottom of my purse.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Just give me yours. So I grabbed.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
His phone and I opened the camera.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
In the bottom corner.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
It showed the last photo he had taken, And the
last photo he had taken was of me getting ready
in our hotel room.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Nude from the waistep I had no idea it had
been taken.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So I see this photo of.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Me on his phone, and I don't want to say
anything in front of our friends, So we take the picture.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I say, I'm not feeling well. We go back to
the room.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
I hold onto his phone the whole time until we
get up there, and I'm like, what is this?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
What the hell?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Stephanie enjoyed the physical intimacy of her marriage. She thought
it was in a healthy place. There were boundaries.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I did not ever consent to that. I did not
ever say I would do that. And he also knew
that there had been a few times throughout the years
when he had asked about taking pictures and I very
adamantly said no and talked with him about things like
what if the kids open to your phone. I just
(15:23):
don't want to take the chance that anything would ever
get out there.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
And here's the thing, I told him, I'm live and
in person.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You see me, you see my body every day, and
I wanted to have sex with my husband. I felt
like that was an important part of our love and
our marriage.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Shouldn't that be enough.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Instead of respecting her boundary around pornography and nude photos,
Greg had used it against her, twisted it to explain
away his own indiscretions.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
He knew that I was adamantly opposed to pornography, and
the reasoning he gave for taking pictures of me was
he felt that he shouldn't look at pornography and instead
(16:20):
he would create his own just for himself. He ended
up telling me, I've only ever done it a couple times.
There's only a few pictures. I wanted it to make
sense because I couldn't breathe without him.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
When they got home from that vacation back in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie moved into the guest bedroom. She was mad. It
stayed that way for a few weeks. They still worked
together and kept the same routine, but they slept in
separate bedrooms. Greg worked hard to earn her forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
One evening in early September, you know, after this had
been going on for a few weeks, that I was
in the other bedroom. I was sitting in the family
room watching TV, and he came over and he knelt
in front of me and he sobbed. I mean just
(17:29):
the tears and the snot and the whole thing, just
poured his.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Heart out at how terrible.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
He felt that he had ever done anything like that,
and that he would never do anything to jeopardize our
relationship because I'm the most important thing in the world.
Our marriage is the most important thing in the world.
He can't live without me, and there's nothing he wouldn't
do for my.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Forgiveness, and so.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I forgave him under a few conditions.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
The one thing that I made him agree to was
that I had access to all of his devices anytime
I wanted, all his passwords, everything, and I could check
them whenever I wanted without question.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
He absolutely agreed to that, and she lived like that.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
For six years, checking his phone and devices three times
a week.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So the trust was in a really tenuous place after
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
But now balance that with everything else is perfect.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
She believed her husband when he said it began and
ended with that photo he took of her on vacation,
Like she says, everything else about their life was fantastic.
So slowly they worked through it. During hardships, trust, love
and bonds are often forged even stronger.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It just was this very grounding feeling that as long
as I had that relationship, as long as we were together,
there really wasn't anything that I couldn't handle, that I
couldn't get through.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
And as much.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
As I talk about how great and how content and
how wonderful everything felt, I always had an eye and
an ear out for anything to be off.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
The couple resumed their normal routine. Every night. Stephanie went
to bed early to read, while her husband would stay
up late fiddling around with his guilty pleasure fantasy sports.
And I mean a lot of fantasy sports.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
He would participate in ten or twelve fantasy.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Football leagues every year.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
He would do.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Fantasy baseball and golf, and so he would spend a
tremendous amount of time. Sometimes I'd wake up at one
two in the morning and be like, are you coming
to bed? Because he was still on his computer doing
fantasy football. But he wasn't, That's not what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
After the break, Stephanie makes a life shattering discovery. There
is a photo of Stephanie on vacation with her husband.
(21:08):
She is staring into his eyes. The two look madly
in love, infatuated, almost smiling so big. It's like they
just started dating, not twenty two years into their marriage.
Looking at that picture, I think good for them. They
persevered through a tough financial crisis with their business, but
(21:28):
made it out the other side. They were coasting into retirement,
and they even worked through a major trust issue, the
fallout after Stephanie found a naked photo of her on
her husband's phone. But intuition is an interesting thing, that
twist of the gut. Six years had come and gone,
(21:51):
she had forgiven her husband, they had a happy life,
yet something still churned inside Stephanie. On an unseasonably warm
day in April twenty twenty one, she was home alone
while Greg was out golfing with his friends.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
I had that feeling.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
I was like, I got to check all his stuff
while he's gone. I saw his laptop was sitting there
by his recliner. I picked it up and I took
it over to the kitchen counter and that was where
I was sitting, and I literally just lifted it up
and it was there. The pages were open. He had
(22:36):
a Flicker account filled with nude photos of me, Hundreds
of pictures, lots and lots of them that were like
the one I saw him take me getting ready shower, bathtub,
(23:02):
that kind of stuff. Lots of photos taken when we
were at our time, sharing Cancun from angles that I
would never have agreed to.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
To make it even more disturbing, there were captions under
the photos of Stephanie, disgusting captions. It's uncomfortable for me
to even read this, but it shows just how degraded
Stephanie felt. One caption read made your wife eat my comb.
These photos were live posted on the Internet for anyone
(23:41):
to access. In the moment, Stephanie was panicked.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I'm in the account and I'm deleting, deleting, deleting, deleting,
and then something in me went, I gotta have evidence
of this at that point, not even thinking it was illegal, like,
I can't even believe.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
This, No one is ever going to believe me.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So I took some screenshots and then deleted, so that
I deleted all the naked pictures out of his account.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
She was in reaction mode, horrified and angry. She confronted
him right away.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I texted him a screenshot of that picture of me
in the bikini, and.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
With that picture she typed out a message. In that message,
she called Greg by his online alias you see on
all of his accounts. He didn't use his real name. Instead,
he used the name of one of his patients, a
patient who was a mentally disabled adult.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
So on the morning of the eleventh I sent this text,
we need to talk. You better come home so he
knows he's busted. He comes flying home and it's all
there on the computer. There's no backing his way out
of it. This time, his reaction is one hundred percent
(25:10):
of her than it was the time before.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
He readily confessed to all of it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
No tears, no remorse, no regret, no care whatsoever. He
talked to me like he was telling me I went
to the store and got a gallon of milk.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
In addition to the photos of herself, there were photos
of other women. What was this and why did he
have these photos?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
He said, I have those pictures of those other women
because I trade.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Like kids trade Pokemon cards, I would trade your image.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Stephanie is usually a very calm person. She can count
on one hand the times she's ever raised her voice
at her family, But on this day she lost it.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I was screaming, taking pictures off the wall and just
smashing them. I took the kitty litter box and dumped
it in his bed. I mean, I broke a.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Lot of stuff completely out of character.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I was screaming and breaking things to the point where
it set off the house alarm because we had glass
break sensors, and because there were so many things being
smashed and so much screaming, the sensors went off.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
On the day she found out, she was so mad
she couldn't even process the bigger question.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I mean, it really took me about twenty four hours
to get to the point of looking at that and going,
I don't understand how he could take those pictures without
me knowing.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
She squinted at the photos, trying to remember when and
where they were taken.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
There was a series of photos of me.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
On the bed at our time share, and I'm fully naked,
spread eagle on the bed, and.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
There's close ups.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
There's no way you can get that angle on a
person without them knowing you're there.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
There was only one way it could have happened.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I know what happened. He drugged me. Yeah, he drugged me.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
There was twenty two years of marriage, the vows they'd taken,
the business they'd grown together, the children they'd raised, their
plans for retirement, and then there was this stranger, this man.
She slept beside, a man who was drugging her, hosting
(28:08):
photos of her nude body on the internet, photos with
her face in them, photos captioned with her real first name,
all for his own enjoyment. On the next episode of Betrayal,
(28:32):
Stephanie runs for her life.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
At five am. They were on the phone and said,
get out, get out. We are afraid he is going
to kill you. This is a huge secret. He is
not going to want anyone to know you are in danger.
Get out, don't take anything, just get out right now.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Next time, Stephanie starts her own investigation, she finds out
what her husband was really doing online, and what she
discovers is worse than she could have ever imagined. If
(29:17):
you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team
or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us
at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at
gmail dot com. Also, please be sure to follow us
at Glass Podcasts on Instagram for all Betrayal content, news
and updates. We're grateful for your support. One way to
(29:39):
show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple
Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal five
star reviews, go a long way, a big thank you
to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of
Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. The show was executive produced by Nancy
(30:00):
Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Associate producers are Kristin Melcurie and Grace Bollinger. Our iHeart
team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Special thanks to Stephanie.
(30:21):
Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Betrayal's theme composed
by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by my Music and
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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