March 13, 2025 • 44 mins
Producer Monique LaBorde comes on mic to bring Andrea some of our most common listener questions. We go behind the scenes to talk about the production process and give you a sneak peek into what’s coming up next on Betrayal.
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hey guys, it's Andrea Gunning and this is our first
bonus episode after finishing our season of Weekly stories this year.
Our team has been working hard behind the scenes to
put every weekly episode together, and the we I'm referencing
is my amazing production team, our producer Monique Leboard, our
associate producer Kaitlin Golden, and our audio engineers Matt del
(00:42):
Vecchio and Tanner Robbins. For the special bonus episode, I'm
joined by my producer to answer some of your listener questions.
Hey mo, Hi, dre.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So fun to come out from behind the scenes. My god,
I am glad to be here, and I am excited
to dive into some listener questions that we have been
receiving all season on Portrayal Weekly.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I love it. I'm so excited to jump in. I
actually want to start with a question for you.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You know, this has been an evolving journey just from
the format and how we're approaching our interviews, So I
just wanted to ask, what has it been like.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, you know, I've been a podcast producer for eight
years and I've worked on all kinds of shows. I've
produced chat shows, pop culture, news, narrative. But this show
has been a complete standout in my work experience. I
mean from the day that I came on to this team,
y'all have built this framework of doing something really unconventional
(01:44):
and trying to, i think, develop a trauma informed storytelling model,
this collaborative kind of storytelling that we're doing, where we're
working with these survivors, we're giving them a lot of
autonomy in the storytelling process. So getting to join that
in getting to connect with the people that tell their stories,
these people who've been through something really traumatic and are
(02:05):
wanting to share their experiences, has been incredibly rewarding for me.
I think it's an uncommon experience in the audio industry
to see a show work so closely with the storytellers
and to collaborate with them in the way that we do.
I want to ask you about what it has been
like for you to work on the Weekly series, because
(02:28):
you worked on three seasons, you were really a meshed
in those stories. Yeah, and then this is a totally
new format for you, So I want to talk a
little bit about what your experience has been like in
hosting the weekly series.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, so it's completely different workflow for seasons one through three.
So Jen's story, Ashley story, Stacy and Tyler's story. I'm
in these individuals' homes, I'm in their towns, I'm with them,
Like I just came back from a few weeks ago
from Colorado Springs preparing for season four, and I was
(03:01):
with her and her kids and her family and her
best friends over the course of two weeks. And you
just create this bond and this connection and you really
understand these individuals' lives. And I don't get that opportunity
on the weekly series. We don't have the opportunity of
like eight to ten episodes for us to really take
(03:22):
our time. We are really boiling down hours and hours
of interview into a linear timeline, and we want to
get it right. This is one or two episodes where
we have to like really do it in a concise
and thoughtful way, and it's just been a really interesting experience,
like making sure that we honor everything that's important to
(03:42):
the individual.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Another thing that has been so special about Betrayal and
working on Betrayal is the community that's developing. I mean,
from the people who write into us into our Gmail,
to the people who share their stories on the podcast.
They're like a part of making this with us. And
as you know, some of our storytellers choose to receive
listener mail and connect with people directly who want to
(04:07):
share their story and connect with them, you know, over
the phone. So it feels like there is a real
community around this show and.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
We're actively seeing it, Like we're seeing individuals who have
participated that are getting together in real time that live
across the country from one another. Yeah, really only know
one other person that may've experienced a betrayal like them,
Like that is so special and cool, and we've only
been able to really experience that because of the weekly series,
which is diverse stories in a short amount of time,
(04:35):
you know.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's get on to some listener questions.
I want to start with like a rapid fire around
of questions. We've gotten a lot of, Okay, So first off,
the question is why do you mostly feature stories from women?
Why are there so few men on Betrayal Weekly?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
This is one we talk about a lot. It is
we want to represent duals who experience betrayal, like all
different walks of life, right, because it's not specific to
any gender, race, religion. I don't think that men are
being deceived or betrayed less. I just think that there's
a stigma around that vulnerability and like sharing that may
(05:20):
relate more to how men process that trauma and are
willing to share that trauma. You know, we find a
lot of the stories from our own listeners, like our
audience who write in, and our primary demographic is women,
and so a lot of that's coming from the people
and our communities. So there's a little bit of that
(05:40):
going on. I'm interested to hear what hypothesis you have.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
You know, what's interesting is that sometimes we get women
writing in being like I know a man who was betrayed,
but it's not the man writing into us. Men do
write into us, and we have featured a few stories
from men on the weekly series, and some of those
we had to go looking for, like Ramon and Sosa.
We had to intentionally find him because we didn't want
(06:07):
to create a lineup of exclusively women. Yeah, but at
the same time, there is something going on that's bigger
than just our podcast and the selection for our podcast,
which is I think that maybe there's more shame.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Men have more shame.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
About saying I was deceived, that might not be as
common or as practiced for men.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
This is just like my armchair perspective. But shame is
a huge deal when it comes to betrayal, like how
did I not know? How did I not see it coming?
I should have known better, I should have this, I
should have that, and I didn't, and I put myself
into harm's way. And there's a lot of shame and
the reckoning that comes with that. And so I think
you're dead, aunt.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Not.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Everyone comes forward, and we'll always have a safe space
for men to share their story here.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Our next question is do we vet people? Or similar question,
how do we fact check these stories?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Oh my gosh. We go through such a rigorous legal
process because there's a lot of legal vetting in terms
of pulling legal support, what's in the public domain, divorce paperwork,
personal records. It gets filtered through our attorney a few times.
But before we get to that, you have initial conversations
at the very beginning. Do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, So when we get a story that comes in
through the inbox and we reach out to the person
to talk for what we call a pre interview, which
is just you know, not recorded hearing a little bit
about their story. One of the first things we ask
is for documentation, and it's not that we don't believe them.
In fact, a trauma informed approach to this work is
(07:47):
that we're approaching everyone with belief. However, we do put
all these stories through a rigorous legal process in order
for them to air. We ask our guests for documentation
like divorce records, criminal records, and throughout the process we're
checking those things against the story that they're telling us.
(08:09):
Another part of the vetting process, which is just as
big that we talk about internally, is is this person
ready to tell this story at this time?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, that's huge, And.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Generally we like to work with people who are a
few years out from their betrayal experience, so they've had
a little bit more time to process it. And so
when I'm first reaching out to someone who's written us
an email and they want to share their story, you know,
in that initial cull, we ask them about their support system,
(08:41):
if they've told this story to other people. And I
don't mean in a formal sense like writing a book,
but I mean like do people in your life, your kids,
your friends, do they know this has happened to you?
Which is not necessarily, you know, mutually exclusive of telling
your story on this show. But I think it's a
sign that this person is comfortable in this story and
(09:02):
having the story associated with who they are.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Right. Also, when we're working on an episode, we are
running initial, like broadstroke background information to the extent that
we can, just to make sure that we can kind
of corroborate certain things in people's story, just like time
and place, just make sure things are matching.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, we have a pretty conservative in house legal team
that wants to bet everything and make sure that anything
that's potentially defammatory claim has documentation behind it, and so
that is a burden on us to make sure we
get that documentation in order to run the episodes. Yep.
And something else that this brings up is we hear
from a lot of people who want to write books
(09:42):
or want to tell their story publicly and they don't
have the documentation, or let's say they were so mad
they burned it all, something like that, they threw it away.
You know, if someone's listening right now, and if you're
in a situation where you're feeling taken advantage of or
you're feeling like something's going really wrong, definitely. From where
I am right now producing these stories and getting them
(10:04):
legally vetted, I can say it's super important to keep
those receipts and keep those pieces of paper, those emails,
those interactions, those financial statements. That kind of stuff can
allow you to be able to legally tell your story
in the future. It can't be overstated how important it
is or.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
As Heather Gay once said, receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots, everything.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, maybe this is a good opportunity to talk more
about our production process.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah. I mean a lot of times, in working with
people who've experienced any kind of trauma, there is a way,
a trauma informed way you're supposed to approach what they've experienced.
The sort of three principles are I believe you, it's
not your fault what happened, and you're not alone in
this feeling. So anytime we're interacting with the storytellers, we're
(10:55):
basically trying to take those three principles and adapt them
into a media framework, so setting like an interview or
in the finished product of the podcast. That's all because
we want to give the storytellers, who are the lifeblood
of this show, autonomy and respect throughout the whole process.
A little bit about what this looks like in practice
(11:16):
is that in the pre interview, we explain what the
process is going to look like. We talk to them
about the options of keeping it anonymous or using their name,
which is every storyteller's choice. Of course, if you use
your name, your burden of documentation to provide is hire.
When we're on the pre interview, I encourage everyone to
talk with their family and friends as they're deciding if
(11:38):
they want to tell this story, and we let them
know in that first call that we're going to request
documentation as part of the legal review. And then once
they consider all of that, if they want to participate
and we think that their story is the right for
the show, then we move on with an interview. I
tell everyone basically, you're in control of what you say
(11:59):
starting from here. If I ever ask you anything that
you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer it.
In fact, what I want most is for them to
close their laptop that day feeling like they are proud
of how they represented themselves, and not feeling like they
disclose anything that they're going to stay awake good night
worrying about sometimes we do the interview in two sittings,
especially if someone is feeling really emotional. We might break
(12:22):
and come back another day. In terms of if someone's
ready to tell their story, I don't think of crying
as something that is a bad sign. I'm a crier.
I cry almost every day I am to.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So it's fine, you are I cried earlier today.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Great. So it doesn't mean that the person isn't ready
to tell their story. I really trust them when they
tell me I want to do this. And of course
most of our stories come from people who wrote in
to us, and we are never pushing anyone into telling
a story, or are not in the business of convincing
people to tell these stories. After I do the interviews,
(12:57):
then Dre you come in and we work together with
our associate producer Kaitlin Golden to shape the stories. So
do you want to you want to take it from
here and talk a little bit about what happens once
we start shaping the stories.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, So you do the hours long interviews and then
you have a really good understanding from meeting with the
storytellers and having the pre interview of like what's important
to them to share and the journey that you want
to go on. And so you present me and our
associate producer Caitlin like a ton of material for us
(13:30):
to work with, and we talk about each bite that
you've taken out of the interview and how do we
introduce it, like how do we write into it, how
do we write out of it? And we put it
in a linear fashion, and then we just write around
it and.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Then once we have the finished product. This is something
I really love about Betrayal Weekly that many mini shows
do not do. We send the episode to the guest
before it's released. Yeah, and we want them to do
a fact checking path, but we also want them to
do a red flag pass if something came out in
the interview that would really make them feel extremely uncomfortable,
(14:09):
would make a material impact in their daily life if
it were to go out and they don't want it
to run. We respect people's feedback on that and we
work with them to change it before it goes out.
Like I'm thinking of the example of stephaniepsode one right,
who was the storyteller in our first two episodes. She
(14:29):
had read out loud some of the captions her husband
or ex husband wrote online under photos of her and
when she heard it back out loud in her own voice,
she said, I don't want that out there. Yeah, and
so we revised it so that you read it in
your narration and she was okay with that. It wasn't
(14:50):
that she she didn't want it to be known. It's
that hearing her own voice say it was so uncomfortable
for her, and that was a small fix that was
easy for us to do.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, you never can really anticipate how certain things occur
to the storyteller when they hear it back. We're operating
from a place of these are individuals that have gone
through a traumatic event and their foundation of trust and
reality have been either distorted or destroyed, and they're rebuilding,
and so it's really important for us to operate in
(15:22):
a safe place of trust and transparency and sharing. That
is a huge part of it.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, and this is something that I don't see in
other podcasts. I've never worked on a show that has
allowed the storyteller to hear the episode before it goes out.
I think there's this idea that if you do that,
then the person's not going to like it. They're going
to have a bunch of changes. And I have to
say in the thirty two episodes we made that maybe
only happened once or twice, and then we worked through
(15:49):
it right, and so it actually was more rewarding than
it was difficult, because at the end of the day,
I can know the day that it goes out that
the person who's story worry this is is happy with
the story.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's actually pretty easy to give people a chance to
review the content and just at the very least to
familiarize themselves with it before it goes out and other
people start reaching out to them on strangers on the internet.
Hear it because it sounds so different when it's the
episodes all produced than what the raw interviews sounded like. Yeah,
let's take a quick break, and then when we come back,
(16:25):
I have a few more of our most commonly asked
listener questions. All Right, we're back, and I have a
few more of the most commonly asked questions we get.
(16:46):
And then a little later on we are going to
get to questions about specific episodes.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Okay, all right, Dray.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Another frequently asked question we have is how do you
decide which episodes are two parts and which are only
one part?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
This is such a good question for the two parters.
A lot of them were like, oh wow, this has
a lot of twists and turns. There's a lot going
on that we don't feel like we could pack in
in under fifty minutes, So let's just approach it like
two parts and gives us more freedom.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah. A lot of times it's dictated by how much
good tape we have, Like with a Hannah, a lot
of good tape, and it's hard to pair that down.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
But let's talk about Hannah. Sure, Yeah, because sometimes I
think it's just as much as like the twists and
the turns of the story of like, you know, understanding
someone's background, how they met the person that ultimately betrayed them,
the betrayal, and then it's ending and it's aftermath. Sometimes
there's like these incredible, beautiful scenes, like she talks about
(17:41):
being on the train from DC to Philly, and I
particularly love the fact that this guy was getting off
in Philadelphia and she was like crying and she was hysterical,
and this person was like, I'm sure there's somebody that
loves you and cares about you, like and she goes,
people are just the best, And it is this moment
of like, you know, sometimes if we're cutting a lot
(18:03):
of stuff, you're missing moments where you get to just
sit with the human experience. I just love that. Yeah,
and sometimes you just don't want to sacrifice it. And
that's why.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
And I think that's a big part of what our
audience likes about this show is that we're not just
focusing on the true crime and then this happened, and
that happened in the body buried in the basement and
the you know. But I think a big part of
the Betrayal listenership, they're here because they're getting something out
of these real people's stories. All Right. The last question
(18:38):
that we have gotten a lot of, in fact, probably
the most common question we get in our inbox in
our reviews. Do you know what it's going to be?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Uh? Ads?
Speaker 5 (18:49):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Why are there so many ads on your podcast?
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I don't know what to saying, guys. I mean, this
is how we fund the show. And there's like a
formula that we have with iHeart in terms of like
ad markers of when you know, if your episode's X
amount of time long, like forty minutes long, there's ad
breaks and they sell the ad space and we're forever
(19:17):
grateful because it keeps us in business. So that's why
we have ADS funds the show.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yes, and the show is free. That's the trade off
with ads. The show is free. But if you love
the show and you don't want to hear ads, you
can subscribe to iHeart True Crime Plus. Sorry I have
to do a plug.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Good job, mo, you do my job for me.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Thank you. I love podcasts. I listen constantly to podcasts,
and like with iHeart True Crime Plus, you also get
dozens of other great true crime shows.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
It's three ninety nine a month, and so if you
want an ad free experience, it's not just betrayal. It's
a ton of shows. You know. If that means something
to you, to help support creators, support producers, that's the
way to go.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
If you're already a subscriber, thank you. It really makes
a difference.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So much gratitude for that.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Okay. I want to move on to questions about specific episodes.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Okay, and I'm going to do a little.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Recap of each episode because I know it's been a
few months since listeners have heard some of these stories.
So our first question is about the Torah episode. Torah
was episode number eight. She was a history professor. She
met a student named Aaron in her class, an adult student.
He was a veteran. He told her that he had
(20:34):
had his foot blown off in an explosion while he
was serving in Afghanistan, and that he wore a prosthetic,
but his death began the process of her learning that
the amputation was a lie, that he actually had both
of his feet. So a listener wrote into us and said,
how could anyone live with a person and have a
(20:56):
sexual relationship with them for three years and never see
their foot.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I have a lot of opinions on this great I mean,
I don't judge Dora, but it's fair to just understand
like the mechanics of it. But one of the things
that Tora shared in her episode is she had very
specific boundaries around her intimacy and her physical intimacy. And
she also shared that he was really embarrassed by this
(21:28):
part of his body. He always wore a sock and
he covered it up. And I think just you know,
we talked about this a lot. Like perpetrators, they'll find
the right person, the people that are understanding and trusting.
You know, it works because she honored his boundaries physically.
You know, when you trust someone, when you're coming from
a place of believing someone, it starts there. And he
(21:52):
was embarrassed by it, and he wanted to cover it up.
And she's already coming from a place of respecting intimate
boundaries and physical boundaries because she has her own I
can see it. It didn't seem crazy to me. It didn't.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, I mean, there are the practical elements, like he
not only wore a sock, but he also wore a
hard plastic brace underneath the sock, so when he walked
it sounded like a prosthetic. And I mean he always
used a different shower that he said was easier for
him to get into. So there are logistics of how
he actually pulled off the deception. But then there's I
(22:25):
think a deeper level too that it's more important to
understand than the logistics of how he covered this up,
is that he said it was an injury from a
traumatic experience, an explosion that killed one of his friends
in the war, which didn't happen. And there is a
larger pattern about how these people who are manipulating others
(22:47):
often work. There's this research psychologist doctor Jennifer Fried who
we talk a lot about yeah, and her work is
foundational to understanding betrayal trauma. She coined the term betrayal trauma.
She also coined this acronym DARVO DARVO, which is a
manipulation technique and it stands for deny, attack and reverse
(23:07):
victim and offender. It's super powerful and effective. We see
this tactic all the time in the world, but in
a case like Torah, Aaron was claiming that he had
this very sympathetic and very traumatic victim narrative of how
he lost his foot, And so oftentimes people who are
(23:31):
doing darvo are basically flipping the script of who the
victim is, and their victim narrative is compelling and is
powerful and emotional, right, and it's the kind of thing
that no sympathetic, reasonable person would say, I don't believe
you that you had a injury in the war, like
you don't want to push someone on that. And the
victim narratives can be so effective. I mean, we saw
(23:53):
it also with Tammy McCrary in that episode where her
husband was a fake doctor. He had said that he
had two children, and the reason that Timmy could never
talk to his parents is that his children and his
parents all died in a car accident. Right, That's not
the kind of story you are going to force someone
(24:14):
you love to go into details about. You know, it's
a very effective manipulation tool. Yeah, okay. Our next question
about a specific episode is about John Yelle's story. John Yelle,
just as a reminder for listeners, she was married to
a man named Chad. They had a big family. Chad
was a financial advisor. She did all the homeschooling and
(24:38):
all the labor in the house, and he did basically
the money making. But over time he's behaving strangely. Weird
things are happening, and one night when she wakes up
in the middle of the night, he's not there and
the car is gone, but you know, when she tries
to press him on it, he just gets mad at her.
Then years pass and nothing big happens. You know, things
(24:58):
are a little weird, and he's pulling away from her
and sleeping oftentimes in his office in the basement. And
then one night she wakes up to the FBI and
the state police having raided her house because it turns
out Chad has kidnapped two of their family friends, an
elderly couple that they actually went to church with and
(25:20):
he had put them in a dungeon that he had built.
He's not actually a financial advisor. He was planning on
having them go into a bank and wire him a
check for multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, and thankfully
the FBI was called in very quickly, and then they
found the couple alive. So a listener wrote to us
(25:41):
and said, Chad leaves his home regularly at night, even
on vacation. But why to go, where to do? What?
Is there no other info on this disturbing habit other
than that it happened.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
I wish we had these answers. I mean, Danielle's a
mom of six that's homeschooling and managing all of those
children every day and is just focused on keeping the
family afloat and is like just trying to keep her
head above water. I don't think she even knows the
(26:18):
extent of what he was doing. I genuinely I don't
get the sense that she knows the full extent.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
No, she doesn't, Like, she doesn't know where he actually
was that night, And even if she were to ask
him after the fact, you know, call him in jail,
which she does not communicate with him. But like, even
if she were to ask him, I don't think she
believes she would get an honest answer, right. But you know,
I think this question of how did someone not know
(26:47):
comes up a lot in our inbox and in our reviews,
and we often hear about these scenarios where something happens
like I wake up in the night and my partner's
out here, m h and it's off, but they don't
know how off it really is. And it's important to
remember that in these episodes, we're hearing the whole story
told at once. We're hearing all the red flags strunk
(27:08):
together in a row.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
It's true, but of course this was happening.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
You know, there were years, years exactly yours that were
totally fine, and they took family vacations and nothing went wrong.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I mean, before we even started producing season one, my
producer for the Narrative limited run seris Carrie Hartman, and
I were reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell and
we went to go see him speak at the University
of Pennsylvania and we were both really interested in this
whole concept of default truth, which is a concept that
(27:41):
you're more likely to believe someone is telling you the
truth than assuming that they're lying to you. And then,
especially when it comes to strangers, people are generally bad
at detecting when someone's lying to you, and I think
sometimes we often worry about how did you not know
than the reality of this person did a bad thing.
(28:04):
There are bad people, people like Donielle's husband that are
doing bad things, and I think your assumption is my
husband isn't capable of kidnapping to elderly people from our
church and putting them in a dungeon, Like we're not
necessarily wired to do that line of thinking. Even if
your husband is out late, it's like maybe worst case scenario,
(28:27):
he's blowing off seam in the car and driving around,
and you're not going to my husband's kidnapping somebody, Like,
let's really talk about the reality here that's is not
just more often than not, you're rationalizing, and you're bringing
in your historical information of the person that you think
that they are based on a lifetime of experience and
(28:49):
just evidence, and then you're making assumptions. And so it
was important for us when we did this show, especially
when we started Jen's season, to really explore this because
these stories are born out of the scenarios where people
didn't see it, people didn't see red flags.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah. I think default truth is really important, and I
think people want to believe that they are good at
detecting liars.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Because it makes makes you feel safe, Yes, makes you
feel safe.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
That feeling of I would have known is a self
soothing feeling of it couldn't happen to me because I
can tell, and I can tell when I hear this story.
But we're producing this story, and if you're living it,
it's a different experience, right. Scary, it's really scary. Yeah,
all right, moving on to another question. We got about
(29:38):
a specific episode, and it's the episode with doctor Carrie.
Carrie macvoy. She is a clinical psychologist. Her husband of
twenty five years, Brad, dies of cancer and she's devastated.
She's experiencing this grief trying to find a way to
move on. She decides she wants to throw herself back
(30:00):
into dating. She meets a guy online who we in
the episode call Caesar, and he is a Mexican American
dual citizen. He brings her into this world essentially of
like Mexican real estate development, and she puts a lot
of Brad's life insurance money into developing a real estate
company with Caesar, they get married, all of these things happen.
(30:24):
There are so many deceptions. You have to go listen
to both the parts to really get the full picture.
But we got quite a lot of comments on this
episode that there was one specific thing listeners were seeing
that we did not say explicitly, but they wanted to
point out. And I think you know what I am
(30:44):
referring to.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
I know exactly what you're talking about. During Doctor carry
McAvoy's episode, there's a part in her story where she's
getting really sick. She's really ill, and the listeners heard it,
picked up on it and noted something very specif. I
don't even know if I can mention it here, just
for legal reasons, right, So.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Let me just play the section from the episode that
we're referring to.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
And then she began noticing other symptoms.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
I have really severe diarrhea, real strange diarrhea that I'd
never seen before. It's water, it's clear water. It frightens
me because I've never seen this before. And I had
white lines like you hit your fingernails as a hammer.
I was searching for what causes white lines across all
the fingernails. They're called niche lines.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
And it only got worse.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
My toenails were falling off, and my year and was
now dark like tea and frothing.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
And like we said earlier in the episode, we go
through a rigorous legal process and all we could report
on was what she was experiencing, what her symptoms were,
But we couldn't necessarily name what the audience is basically
flirting with because we didn't have any evidence to show.
We didn't have medical records, Like to say that that
(32:05):
happened is defamatory, and there are certain things like that
like we just cannot do. I mean, he was never arrested.
And so for doctor Carrie McAvoy's episode, you know, she
thought that something was happening to her. Our audience thought that,
but we couldn't specifically name it for legal reasons.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah, exactly. That comes up in many of our episodes,
almost a half of them. We have a situation where
there's something we want to include, but for legal reasons,
we can't. Okay, Dre, I have one more question that
(32:53):
is about a specific episode, and this one is something
that we heard from quite a few listeners, and I
think there's a few things we need to say. So
this comes from the Chelsea episode. The Chelsea episode that
was one of our.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Most intense ones, really intense m M.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
She had been dating a guy named James.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
And James was having issues with who she was talking to,
even at work, and so it was seeming like the
walls were kind of closing in, like he was really
controlling every aspect of her communication with people, and there
was this moment where things really escalated. She took his phone.
She saw things in a hidden folder, very similar to
(33:37):
Ashley from season two, and she saw what she would
assume is illegal material on the phone that she felt
like was see Sam child sexual abuse material. She found
a photo. I don't really want to go into too
much detail, but it was disturbing to her and she
couldn't get the picture out of her head and she
felt like there was something familiar to this photo and
(34:02):
she like woke up in the middle of the night,
so like, I know who these children are. James had
friends who had children and it could be their daughters.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yeah, she did a Facebook deep dive. She was never
one hundred percent sure, but she was feeling like it
probably was, and that's ultimately what led her to go
to the police and report it. So let me share
one of the questions that we got after the Chelsea episode.
This is from a listener who said in episode sixteen
(34:32):
about Chelsea, she mentions discovering that she thought she knew
who the girl in the picture was. Was the girl
found and taken out of the home. So this is
just one that's representative of I want to say ten
questions we got to the same effect, which is what
happened to this little girl?
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Is she safe? Is she okay?
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I wish we had the answer to that, and I
wish that it was yes, she's safe.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
There's so much we don't know about the photo. First
and foremost, Yeah, this could a photo he found on
social media and cropped, you know, because they were wearing
bathing suits. So we don't really know. What we do know,
and what we discussed with Chelsea is that when she
ultimately went to law enforcement, she reported the photo and
(35:17):
let them know this is who I think could be
the family who has children, and she left it in
their hands. And that was something that we didn't include
in the show, which.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Looking back on it, we should have You're definitely right
that we should have included that information that she did
tell the police who she thought the child was. I mean,
the day the episode came out, we were starting to
get these questions in from listeners, and we frantically went
back to the script and we realized immediately, like, oh
my god, this one piece of tape didn't make the cut,
(35:52):
and that would have clarified so much. And we had
been so focused on Chelsea's experience and Chelsea's story that
when we ended up recounting that moment when she finally
goes to the police, here's the piece of tape that
we did include in the episode.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
I met with the detective and we had a three
hour recorded interview. I showed him everything, told them the
same story that I'm telling you now. He was so validating,
and he said he told me, he's like, this isn't contraband,
but it is absolutely wrong, and you were doing absolutely
(36:27):
the right thing by reporting it. But I want to
manage your expectations. There are things I can try to do,
but this by itself isn't enough. And I was like,
I know, that's why it's taken me so long to
get here.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
But then there was this one critical piece of information
and tape that we should have put in the episode.
It's in that same scene where she's reporting to the
police officer, finally reporting James, and this is the piece
of tape we should have include in this episode.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
But I told him, I'm like, this is who I
think this child is. And he took all that down
and he said he would look into it.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, that would have been that would have helped a
lot of people. Yes, when hearing the episode, definitely lesson
learned column, Lesson learned column.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
And I know a lot of people who wrote in
about this episode are just concerned and they want something
more to be done. They want to make sure the
girl is okay. And so did Chelsea, you know, and
some idea of her, like going directly to James or
going directly to those friends' house, like that is not
a safe option, That is physically not a safe option
(37:44):
for her.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
And I know that, you know, Chelsea was fearful of
retaliation from James. He threatened her with legal action.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
He also threatened that he would release nude photos of
her that she had consentually sent him and that he
said he had deleted, but he had kept he threatened
to send those to her colleagues. So she was feeling
pretty scared of this person.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Right, and so I think she felt safest letting law
enforcement do what they needed to do, and she did
the right thing by reporting it.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
She did everything she could have while also keeping herself safe. Yeah,
all right, those are all of the questions I have.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Great. It's always so good to see and hear feedback
from the listeners, no matter what it looks like, good, bad,
the ugly, like, we really do want to know, you know,
especially if they are like gaps in history where people
were asking we either have an answer or you just
taught us something that we didn't think about. So we
really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, we love engaging with listeners. We love it when
people send in questions and they send in commentary. One
of my favorite emails we got this year with someone
who wrote in with feedback. And then I'm just going
to read from I think one of the most salient
points quote one pain point from you and listening is
when you focus on survivors who quote bound Love Again.
(39:12):
Donielle's story is case in point. Then she goes on
to say it frustrates me when others tell me I'll
find love again or I should date again. I want
to heal and build my self esteem, and I want
to hear more stories about people who come back from
this and build a business, or go find an incredible
and satisfying hobby, start traveling, or anything other than jump
(39:33):
into another relationship and hope for the best with a
new person. I hope you'll keep this in mind when
making future episodes.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I've thought about that feedback from that listener every episode
since me too, And we can't necessarily editorialize people's life
path or where they are when we meet them. Yeah,
but what I really thought was fascinating is being careful
about the language.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yes, and I think she was writing into us to
bring our attention to language, like, you know, so and
so found love again, and it's like, well, what do
you call that first relationship?
Speaker 5 (40:11):
Love?
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Using the right language is really important. So I'm very
grateful for that person to write in.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah. All this to say in bringing up this email
we got is that you know, we're real people making
this show, and we are grappling with these big questions
every day, and we love hearing from listeners who have
you know, thoughtful and constructive commentary about the way we
present these stories. I think it makes the show better.
So we're finished with these weekly episodes for the next
(40:40):
few months. We are going to be back in August
with new weekly episodes. What is coming up next on
the Feed? Do you want to talk about it?
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Drey, I can't believe we've wrapped the weekly series. I
think it's been really successful and I absolutely love this show.
We air season five of Betrayal the limited run on
May twenty second. It's about a woman and her family
of Colorado Springs. You know, we're gonna hear that story
(41:10):
over eight to ten weeks, and then shortly after that
we'll go back into the weekly series, where it's a
different story every week or every other week, but in between,
So from now through May twenty second, we have a
ton of really exciting bonus material that we've been working on.
You've been working really hard on mo. We have a
(41:31):
great bonus episode with a woman named doctor Kate Truett,
and she explains the neuroscience of storytelling and how storytelling
can be healing after experiencing trauma. We have listener essays
that people have submitted based on our prompt, which is
resilience in the face of devastating betrayal, and we have
(41:55):
a woman named Andrea dunlop her story. It's kind of
like a regular weekly episode, but a little bit shorter
to kind of satiate our listeners. So I'm really excited
to see what people think of the content that I'll
be coming out in the next few weeks.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Well, Dre, I'm gonna scurry back behind the curtain.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I'm so glad everyone got to meet you though. You're
the nuts and bolts of this and so it's really
great for the listeners to hear the people that make
the show work, and you do great work. Mo, so
thank you.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Thanks stray. I feel honored to get to work with
a team that is this thoughtful and mission driven and talented,
and also to get to work with individuals who are
trusting us with some of the worst experiences of their
life and trusting us to tell those with respect and care.
It's really an honor.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Oh all right, bye bye.
Speaker 5 (42:53):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email
us at Betrayal Pod at gmailed that's Betrayal Pod at
gmail dot com We're grateful for your support. One way
to 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
(43:15):
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 is executive produced by
Nancy 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 Mercury and Caitlin Golden.
(43:39):
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt Delvechio, Additional editing.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Support from Tanner Robbins.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by
Mob Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey guys, it's Andrea Gunning and this is our first
bonus episode after finishing our season of Weekly stories this year.
Our team has been working hard behind the scenes to
put every weekly episode together, and the we I'm referencing
is my amazing production team, our producer Monique Leboard, our
associate producer Kaitlin Golden, and our audio engineers Matt del
(00:42):
Vecchio and Tanner Robbins. For the special bonus episode, I'm
joined by my producer to answer some of your listener questions.
Hey mo, Hi, dre.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So fun to come out from behind the scenes. My god,
I am glad to be here, and I am excited
to dive into some listener questions that we have been
receiving all season on Portrayal Weekly.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I love it. I'm so excited to jump in. I
actually want to start with a question for you.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You know, this has been an evolving journey just from
the format and how we're approaching our interviews, So I
just wanted to ask, what has it been like.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, you know, I've been a podcast producer for eight
years and I've worked on all kinds of shows. I've
produced chat shows, pop culture, news, narrative. But this show
has been a complete standout in my work experience. I
mean from the day that I came on to this team,
y'all have built this framework of doing something really unconventional
(01:44):
and trying to, i think, develop a trauma informed storytelling model,
this collaborative kind of storytelling that we're doing, where we're
working with these survivors, we're giving them a lot of
autonomy in the storytelling process. So getting to join that
in getting to connect with the people that tell their stories,
these people who've been through something really traumatic and are
(02:05):
wanting to share their experiences, has been incredibly rewarding for me.
I think it's an uncommon experience in the audio industry
to see a show work so closely with the storytellers
and to collaborate with them in the way that we do.
I want to ask you about what it has been
like for you to work on the Weekly series, because
(02:28):
you worked on three seasons, you were really a meshed
in those stories. Yeah, and then this is a totally
new format for you, So I want to talk a
little bit about what your experience has been like in
hosting the weekly series.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, so it's completely different workflow for seasons one through three.
So Jen's story, Ashley story, Stacy and Tyler's story. I'm
in these individuals' homes, I'm in their towns, I'm with them,
Like I just came back from a few weeks ago
from Colorado Springs preparing for season four, and I was
(03:01):
with her and her kids and her family and her
best friends over the course of two weeks. And you
just create this bond and this connection and you really
understand these individuals' lives. And I don't get that opportunity
on the weekly series. We don't have the opportunity of
like eight to ten episodes for us to really take
(03:22):
our time. We are really boiling down hours and hours
of interview into a linear timeline, and we want to
get it right. This is one or two episodes where
we have to like really do it in a concise
and thoughtful way, and it's just been a really interesting experience,
like making sure that we honor everything that's important to
(03:42):
the individual.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Another thing that has been so special about Betrayal and
working on Betrayal is the community that's developing. I mean,
from the people who write into us into our Gmail,
to the people who share their stories on the podcast.
They're like a part of making this with us. And
as you know, some of our storytellers choose to receive
listener mail and connect with people directly who want to
(04:07):
share their story and connect with them, you know, over
the phone. So it feels like there is a real
community around this show and.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
We're actively seeing it, Like we're seeing individuals who have
participated that are getting together in real time that live
across the country from one another. Yeah, really only know
one other person that may've experienced a betrayal like them,
Like that is so special and cool, and we've only
been able to really experience that because of the weekly series,
which is diverse stories in a short amount of time,
(04:35):
you know.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's get on to some listener questions.
I want to start with like a rapid fire around
of questions. We've gotten a lot of, Okay, So first off,
the question is why do you mostly feature stories from women?
Why are there so few men on Betrayal Weekly?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
This is one we talk about a lot. It is
we want to represent duals who experience betrayal, like all
different walks of life, right, because it's not specific to
any gender, race, religion. I don't think that men are
being deceived or betrayed less. I just think that there's
a stigma around that vulnerability and like sharing that may
(05:20):
relate more to how men process that trauma and are
willing to share that trauma. You know, we find a
lot of the stories from our own listeners, like our
audience who write in, and our primary demographic is women,
and so a lot of that's coming from the people
and our communities. So there's a little bit of that
(05:40):
going on. I'm interested to hear what hypothesis you have.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
You know, what's interesting is that sometimes we get women
writing in being like I know a man who was betrayed,
but it's not the man writing into us. Men do
write into us, and we have featured a few stories
from men on the weekly series, and some of those
we had to go looking for, like Ramon and Sosa.
We had to intentionally find him because we didn't want
(06:07):
to create a lineup of exclusively women. Yeah, but at
the same time, there is something going on that's bigger
than just our podcast and the selection for our podcast,
which is I think that maybe there's more shame.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Men have more shame.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
About saying I was deceived, that might not be as
common or as practiced for men.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
This is just like my armchair perspective. But shame is
a huge deal when it comes to betrayal, like how
did I not know? How did I not see it coming?
I should have known better, I should have this, I
should have that, and I didn't, and I put myself
into harm's way. And there's a lot of shame and
the reckoning that comes with that. And so I think
you're dead, aunt.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Not.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Everyone comes forward, and we'll always have a safe space
for men to share their story here.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Our next question is do we vet people? Or similar question,
how do we fact check these stories?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Oh my gosh. We go through such a rigorous legal
process because there's a lot of legal vetting in terms
of pulling legal support, what's in the public domain, divorce paperwork,
personal records. It gets filtered through our attorney a few times.
But before we get to that, you have initial conversations
at the very beginning. Do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, So when we get a story that comes in
through the inbox and we reach out to the person
to talk for what we call a pre interview, which
is just you know, not recorded hearing a little bit
about their story. One of the first things we ask
is for documentation, and it's not that we don't believe them.
In fact, a trauma informed approach to this work is
(07:47):
that we're approaching everyone with belief. However, we do put
all these stories through a rigorous legal process in order
for them to air. We ask our guests for documentation
like divorce records, criminal records, and throughout the process we're
checking those things against the story that they're telling us.
(08:09):
Another part of the vetting process, which is just as
big that we talk about internally, is is this person
ready to tell this story at this time?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, that's huge, And.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Generally we like to work with people who are a
few years out from their betrayal experience, so they've had
a little bit more time to process it. And so
when I'm first reaching out to someone who's written us
an email and they want to share their story, you know,
in that initial cull, we ask them about their support system,
(08:41):
if they've told this story to other people. And I
don't mean in a formal sense like writing a book,
but I mean like do people in your life, your kids,
your friends, do they know this has happened to you?
Which is not necessarily, you know, mutually exclusive of telling
your story on this show. But I think it's a
sign that this person is comfortable in this story and
(09:02):
having the story associated with who they are.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Right. Also, when we're working on an episode, we are
running initial, like broadstroke background information to the extent that
we can, just to make sure that we can kind
of corroborate certain things in people's story, just like time
and place, just make sure things are matching.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, we have a pretty conservative in house legal team
that wants to bet everything and make sure that anything
that's potentially defammatory claim has documentation behind it, and so
that is a burden on us to make sure we
get that documentation in order to run the episodes. Yep.
And something else that this brings up is we hear
from a lot of people who want to write books
(09:42):
or want to tell their story publicly and they don't
have the documentation, or let's say they were so mad
they burned it all, something like that, they threw it away.
You know, if someone's listening right now, and if you're
in a situation where you're feeling taken advantage of or
you're feeling like something's going really wrong, definitely. From where
I am right now producing these stories and getting them
(10:04):
legally vetted, I can say it's super important to keep
those receipts and keep those pieces of paper, those emails,
those interactions, those financial statements. That kind of stuff can
allow you to be able to legally tell your story
in the future. It can't be overstated how important it
is or.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
As Heather Gay once said, receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots, everything.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, maybe this is a good opportunity to talk more
about our production process.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah. I mean a lot of times, in working with
people who've experienced any kind of trauma, there is a way,
a trauma informed way you're supposed to approach what they've experienced.
The sort of three principles are I believe you, it's
not your fault what happened, and you're not alone in
this feeling. So anytime we're interacting with the storytellers, we're
(10:55):
basically trying to take those three principles and adapt them
into a media framework, so setting like an interview or
in the finished product of the podcast. That's all because
we want to give the storytellers, who are the lifeblood
of this show, autonomy and respect throughout the whole process.
A little bit about what this looks like in practice
(11:16):
is that in the pre interview, we explain what the
process is going to look like. We talk to them
about the options of keeping it anonymous or using their name,
which is every storyteller's choice. Of course, if you use
your name, your burden of documentation to provide is hire.
When we're on the pre interview, I encourage everyone to
talk with their family and friends as they're deciding if
(11:38):
they want to tell this story, and we let them
know in that first call that we're going to request
documentation as part of the legal review. And then once
they consider all of that, if they want to participate
and we think that their story is the right for
the show, then we move on with an interview. I
tell everyone basically, you're in control of what you say
(11:59):
starting from here. If I ever ask you anything that
you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer it.
In fact, what I want most is for them to
close their laptop that day feeling like they are proud
of how they represented themselves, and not feeling like they
disclose anything that they're going to stay awake good night
worrying about sometimes we do the interview in two sittings,
especially if someone is feeling really emotional. We might break
(12:22):
and come back another day. In terms of if someone's
ready to tell their story, I don't think of crying
as something that is a bad sign. I'm a crier.
I cry almost every day I am to.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So it's fine, you are I cried earlier today.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Great. So it doesn't mean that the person isn't ready
to tell their story. I really trust them when they
tell me I want to do this. And of course
most of our stories come from people who wrote in
to us, and we are never pushing anyone into telling
a story, or are not in the business of convincing
people to tell these stories. After I do the interviews,
(12:57):
then Dre you come in and we work together with
our associate producer Kaitlin Golden to shape the stories. So
do you want to you want to take it from
here and talk a little bit about what happens once
we start shaping the stories.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, So you do the hours long interviews and then
you have a really good understanding from meeting with the
storytellers and having the pre interview of like what's important
to them to share and the journey that you want
to go on. And so you present me and our
associate producer Caitlin like a ton of material for us
(13:30):
to work with, and we talk about each bite that
you've taken out of the interview and how do we
introduce it, like how do we write into it, how
do we write out of it? And we put it
in a linear fashion, and then we just write around
it and.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Then once we have the finished product. This is something
I really love about Betrayal Weekly that many mini shows
do not do. We send the episode to the guest
before it's released. Yeah, and we want them to do
a fact checking path, but we also want them to
do a red flag pass if something came out in
the interview that would really make them feel extremely uncomfortable,
(14:09):
would make a material impact in their daily life if
it were to go out and they don't want it
to run. We respect people's feedback on that and we
work with them to change it before it goes out.
Like I'm thinking of the example of stephaniepsode one right,
who was the storyteller in our first two episodes. She
(14:29):
had read out loud some of the captions her husband
or ex husband wrote online under photos of her and
when she heard it back out loud in her own voice,
she said, I don't want that out there. Yeah, and
so we revised it so that you read it in
your narration and she was okay with that. It wasn't
(14:50):
that she she didn't want it to be known. It's
that hearing her own voice say it was so uncomfortable
for her, and that was a small fix that was
easy for us to do.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, you never can really anticipate how certain things occur
to the storyteller when they hear it back. We're operating
from a place of these are individuals that have gone
through a traumatic event and their foundation of trust and
reality have been either distorted or destroyed, and they're rebuilding,
and so it's really important for us to operate in
(15:22):
a safe place of trust and transparency and sharing. That
is a huge part of it.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, and this is something that I don't see in
other podcasts. I've never worked on a show that has
allowed the storyteller to hear the episode before it goes out.
I think there's this idea that if you do that,
then the person's not going to like it. They're going
to have a bunch of changes. And I have to
say in the thirty two episodes we made that maybe
only happened once or twice, and then we worked through
(15:49):
it right, and so it actually was more rewarding than
it was difficult, because at the end of the day,
I can know the day that it goes out that
the person who's story worry this is is happy with
the story.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's actually pretty easy to give people a chance to
review the content and just at the very least to
familiarize themselves with it before it goes out and other
people start reaching out to them on strangers on the internet.
Hear it because it sounds so different when it's the
episodes all produced than what the raw interviews sounded like. Yeah,
let's take a quick break, and then when we come back,
(16:25):
I have a few more of our most commonly asked
listener questions. All Right, we're back, and I have a
few more of the most commonly asked questions we get.
(16:46):
And then a little later on we are going to
get to questions about specific episodes.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Okay, all right, Dray.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Another frequently asked question we have is how do you
decide which episodes are two parts and which are only
one part?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
This is such a good question for the two parters.
A lot of them were like, oh wow, this has
a lot of twists and turns. There's a lot going
on that we don't feel like we could pack in
in under fifty minutes, So let's just approach it like
two parts and gives us more freedom.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah. A lot of times it's dictated by how much
good tape we have, Like with a Hannah, a lot
of good tape, and it's hard to pair that down.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
But let's talk about Hannah. Sure, Yeah, because sometimes I
think it's just as much as like the twists and
the turns of the story of like, you know, understanding
someone's background, how they met the person that ultimately betrayed them,
the betrayal, and then it's ending and it's aftermath. Sometimes
there's like these incredible, beautiful scenes, like she talks about
(17:41):
being on the train from DC to Philly, and I
particularly love the fact that this guy was getting off
in Philadelphia and she was like crying and she was hysterical,
and this person was like, I'm sure there's somebody that
loves you and cares about you, like and she goes,
people are just the best, And it is this moment
of like, you know, sometimes if we're cutting a lot
(18:03):
of stuff, you're missing moments where you get to just
sit with the human experience. I just love that. Yeah,
and sometimes you just don't want to sacrifice it. And
that's why.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
And I think that's a big part of what our
audience likes about this show is that we're not just
focusing on the true crime and then this happened, and
that happened in the body buried in the basement and
the you know. But I think a big part of
the Betrayal listenership, they're here because they're getting something out
of these real people's stories. All Right. The last question
(18:38):
that we have gotten a lot of, in fact, probably
the most common question we get in our inbox in
our reviews. Do you know what it's going to be?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Uh? Ads?
Speaker 5 (18:49):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Why are there so many ads on your podcast?
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I don't know what to saying, guys. I mean, this
is how we fund the show. And there's like a
formula that we have with iHeart in terms of like
ad markers of when you know, if your episode's X
amount of time long, like forty minutes long, there's ad
breaks and they sell the ad space and we're forever
(19:17):
grateful because it keeps us in business. So that's why
we have ADS funds the show.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yes, and the show is free. That's the trade off
with ads. The show is free. But if you love
the show and you don't want to hear ads, you
can subscribe to iHeart True Crime Plus. Sorry I have
to do a plug.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Good job, mo, you do my job for me.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Thank you. I love podcasts. I listen constantly to podcasts,
and like with iHeart True Crime Plus, you also get
dozens of other great true crime shows.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
It's three ninety nine a month, and so if you
want an ad free experience, it's not just betrayal. It's
a ton of shows. You know. If that means something
to you, to help support creators, support producers, that's the
way to go.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
If you're already a subscriber, thank you. It really makes
a difference.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So much gratitude for that.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Okay. I want to move on to questions about specific episodes.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Okay, and I'm going to do a little.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Recap of each episode because I know it's been a
few months since listeners have heard some of these stories.
So our first question is about the Torah episode. Torah
was episode number eight. She was a history professor. She
met a student named Aaron in her class, an adult student.
He was a veteran. He told her that he had
(20:34):
had his foot blown off in an explosion while he
was serving in Afghanistan, and that he wore a prosthetic,
but his death began the process of her learning that
the amputation was a lie, that he actually had both
of his feet. So a listener wrote into us and said,
how could anyone live with a person and have a
(20:56):
sexual relationship with them for three years and never see
their foot.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I have a lot of opinions on this great I mean,
I don't judge Dora, but it's fair to just understand
like the mechanics of it. But one of the things
that Tora shared in her episode is she had very
specific boundaries around her intimacy and her physical intimacy. And
she also shared that he was really embarrassed by this
(21:28):
part of his body. He always wore a sock and
he covered it up. And I think just you know,
we talked about this a lot. Like perpetrators, they'll find
the right person, the people that are understanding and trusting.
You know, it works because she honored his boundaries physically.
You know, when you trust someone, when you're coming from
a place of believing someone, it starts there. And he
(21:52):
was embarrassed by it, and he wanted to cover it up.
And she's already coming from a place of respecting intimate
boundaries and physical boundaries because she has her own I
can see it. It didn't seem crazy to me. It didn't.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, I mean, there are the practical elements, like he
not only wore a sock, but he also wore a
hard plastic brace underneath the sock, so when he walked
it sounded like a prosthetic. And I mean he always
used a different shower that he said was easier for
him to get into. So there are logistics of how
he actually pulled off the deception. But then there's I
(22:25):
think a deeper level too that it's more important to
understand than the logistics of how he covered this up,
is that he said it was an injury from a
traumatic experience, an explosion that killed one of his friends
in the war, which didn't happen. And there is a
larger pattern about how these people who are manipulating others
(22:47):
often work. There's this research psychologist doctor Jennifer Fried who
we talk a lot about yeah, and her work is
foundational to understanding betrayal trauma. She coined the term betrayal trauma.
She also coined this acronym DARVO DARVO, which is a
manipulation technique and it stands for deny, attack and reverse
(23:07):
victim and offender. It's super powerful and effective. We see
this tactic all the time in the world, but in
a case like Torah, Aaron was claiming that he had
this very sympathetic and very traumatic victim narrative of how
he lost his foot, And so oftentimes people who are
(23:31):
doing darvo are basically flipping the script of who the
victim is, and their victim narrative is compelling and is
powerful and emotional, right, and it's the kind of thing
that no sympathetic, reasonable person would say, I don't believe
you that you had a injury in the war, like
you don't want to push someone on that. And the
victim narratives can be so effective. I mean, we saw
(23:53):
it also with Tammy McCrary in that episode where her
husband was a fake doctor. He had said that he
had two children, and the reason that Timmy could never
talk to his parents is that his children and his
parents all died in a car accident. Right, That's not
the kind of story you are going to force someone
(24:14):
you love to go into details about. You know, it's
a very effective manipulation tool. Yeah, okay. Our next question
about a specific episode is about John Yelle's story. John Yelle,
just as a reminder for listeners, she was married to
a man named Chad. They had a big family. Chad
was a financial advisor. She did all the homeschooling and
(24:38):
all the labor in the house, and he did basically
the money making. But over time he's behaving strangely. Weird
things are happening, and one night when she wakes up
in the middle of the night, he's not there and
the car is gone, but you know, when she tries
to press him on it, he just gets mad at her.
Then years pass and nothing big happens. You know, things
(24:58):
are a little weird, and he's pulling away from her
and sleeping oftentimes in his office in the basement. And
then one night she wakes up to the FBI and
the state police having raided her house because it turns
out Chad has kidnapped two of their family friends, an
elderly couple that they actually went to church with and
(25:20):
he had put them in a dungeon that he had built.
He's not actually a financial advisor. He was planning on
having them go into a bank and wire him a
check for multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, and thankfully
the FBI was called in very quickly, and then they
found the couple alive. So a listener wrote to us
(25:41):
and said, Chad leaves his home regularly at night, even
on vacation. But why to go, where to do? What?
Is there no other info on this disturbing habit other
than that it happened.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
I wish we had these answers. I mean, Danielle's a
mom of six that's homeschooling and managing all of those
children every day and is just focused on keeping the
family afloat and is like just trying to keep her
head above water. I don't think she even knows the
(26:18):
extent of what he was doing. I genuinely I don't
get the sense that she knows the full extent.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
No, she doesn't, Like, she doesn't know where he actually
was that night, And even if she were to ask
him after the fact, you know, call him in jail,
which she does not communicate with him. But like, even
if she were to ask him, I don't think she
believes she would get an honest answer, right. But you know,
I think this question of how did someone not know
(26:47):
comes up a lot in our inbox and in our reviews,
and we often hear about these scenarios where something happens
like I wake up in the night and my partner's
out here, m h and it's off, but they don't
know how off it really is. And it's important to
remember that in these episodes, we're hearing the whole story
told at once. We're hearing all the red flags strunk
(27:08):
together in a row.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
It's true, but of course this was happening.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
You know, there were years, years exactly yours that were
totally fine, and they took family vacations and nothing went wrong.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I mean, before we even started producing season one, my
producer for the Narrative limited run seris Carrie Hartman, and
I were reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell and
we went to go see him speak at the University
of Pennsylvania and we were both really interested in this
whole concept of default truth, which is a concept that
(27:41):
you're more likely to believe someone is telling you the
truth than assuming that they're lying to you. And then,
especially when it comes to strangers, people are generally bad
at detecting when someone's lying to you, and I think
sometimes we often worry about how did you not know
than the reality of this person did a bad thing.
(28:04):
There are bad people, people like Donielle's husband that are
doing bad things, and I think your assumption is my
husband isn't capable of kidnapping to elderly people from our
church and putting them in a dungeon, Like we're not
necessarily wired to do that line of thinking. Even if
your husband is out late, it's like maybe worst case scenario,
(28:27):
he's blowing off seam in the car and driving around,
and you're not going to my husband's kidnapping somebody, Like,
let's really talk about the reality here that's is not
just more often than not, you're rationalizing, and you're bringing
in your historical information of the person that you think
that they are based on a lifetime of experience and
(28:49):
just evidence, and then you're making assumptions. And so it
was important for us when we did this show, especially
when we started Jen's season, to really explore this because
these stories are born out of the scenarios where people
didn't see it, people didn't see red flags.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah. I think default truth is really important, and I
think people want to believe that they are good at
detecting liars.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Because it makes makes you feel safe, Yes, makes you
feel safe.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
That feeling of I would have known is a self
soothing feeling of it couldn't happen to me because I
can tell, and I can tell when I hear this story.
But we're producing this story, and if you're living it,
it's a different experience, right. Scary, it's really scary. Yeah,
all right, moving on to another question. We got about
(29:38):
a specific episode, and it's the episode with doctor Carrie.
Carrie macvoy. She is a clinical psychologist. Her husband of
twenty five years, Brad, dies of cancer and she's devastated.
She's experiencing this grief trying to find a way to
move on. She decides she wants to throw herself back
(30:00):
into dating. She meets a guy online who we in
the episode call Caesar, and he is a Mexican American
dual citizen. He brings her into this world essentially of
like Mexican real estate development, and she puts a lot
of Brad's life insurance money into developing a real estate
company with Caesar, they get married, all of these things happen.
(30:24):
There are so many deceptions. You have to go listen
to both the parts to really get the full picture.
But we got quite a lot of comments on this
episode that there was one specific thing listeners were seeing
that we did not say explicitly, but they wanted to
point out. And I think you know what I am
(30:44):
referring to.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
I know exactly what you're talking about. During Doctor carry
McAvoy's episode, there's a part in her story where she's
getting really sick. She's really ill, and the listeners heard it,
picked up on it and noted something very specif. I
don't even know if I can mention it here, just
for legal reasons, right, So.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Let me just play the section from the episode that
we're referring to.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
And then she began noticing other symptoms.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
I have really severe diarrhea, real strange diarrhea that I'd
never seen before. It's water, it's clear water. It frightens
me because I've never seen this before. And I had
white lines like you hit your fingernails as a hammer.
I was searching for what causes white lines across all
the fingernails. They're called niche lines.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
And it only got worse.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
My toenails were falling off, and my year and was
now dark like tea and frothing.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
And like we said earlier in the episode, we go
through a rigorous legal process and all we could report
on was what she was experiencing, what her symptoms were,
But we couldn't necessarily name what the audience is basically
flirting with because we didn't have any evidence to show.
We didn't have medical records, Like to say that that
(32:05):
happened is defamatory, and there are certain things like that
like we just cannot do. I mean, he was never arrested.
And so for doctor Carrie McAvoy's episode, you know, she
thought that something was happening to her. Our audience thought that,
but we couldn't specifically name it for legal reasons.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah, exactly. That comes up in many of our episodes,
almost a half of them. We have a situation where
there's something we want to include, but for legal reasons,
we can't. Okay, Dre, I have one more question that
(32:53):
is about a specific episode, and this one is something
that we heard from quite a few listeners, and I
think there's a few things we need to say. So
this comes from the Chelsea episode. The Chelsea episode that
was one of our.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Most intense ones, really intense m M.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
She had been dating a guy named James.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
And James was having issues with who she was talking to,
even at work, and so it was seeming like the
walls were kind of closing in, like he was really
controlling every aspect of her communication with people, and there
was this moment where things really escalated. She took his phone.
She saw things in a hidden folder, very similar to
(33:37):
Ashley from season two, and she saw what she would
assume is illegal material on the phone that she felt
like was see Sam child sexual abuse material. She found
a photo. I don't really want to go into too
much detail, but it was disturbing to her and she
couldn't get the picture out of her head and she
felt like there was something familiar to this photo and
(34:02):
she like woke up in the middle of the night,
so like, I know who these children are. James had
friends who had children and it could be their daughters.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yeah, she did a Facebook deep dive. She was never
one hundred percent sure, but she was feeling like it
probably was, and that's ultimately what led her to go
to the police and report it. So let me share
one of the questions that we got after the Chelsea episode.
This is from a listener who said in episode sixteen
(34:32):
about Chelsea, she mentions discovering that she thought she knew
who the girl in the picture was. Was the girl
found and taken out of the home. So this is
just one that's representative of I want to say ten
questions we got to the same effect, which is what
happened to this little girl?
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Is she safe? Is she okay?
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I wish we had the answer to that, and I
wish that it was yes, she's safe.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
There's so much we don't know about the photo. First
and foremost, Yeah, this could a photo he found on
social media and cropped, you know, because they were wearing
bathing suits. So we don't really know. What we do know,
and what we discussed with Chelsea is that when she
ultimately went to law enforcement, she reported the photo and
(35:17):
let them know this is who I think could be
the family who has children, and she left it in
their hands. And that was something that we didn't include
in the show, which.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Looking back on it, we should have You're definitely right
that we should have included that information that she did
tell the police who she thought the child was. I mean,
the day the episode came out, we were starting to
get these questions in from listeners, and we frantically went
back to the script and we realized immediately, like, oh
my god, this one piece of tape didn't make the cut,
(35:52):
and that would have clarified so much. And we had
been so focused on Chelsea's experience and Chelsea's story that
when we ended up recounting that moment when she finally
goes to the police, here's the piece of tape that
we did include in the episode.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
I met with the detective and we had a three
hour recorded interview. I showed him everything, told them the
same story that I'm telling you now. He was so validating,
and he said he told me, he's like, this isn't contraband,
but it is absolutely wrong, and you were doing absolutely
(36:27):
the right thing by reporting it. But I want to
manage your expectations. There are things I can try to do,
but this by itself isn't enough. And I was like,
I know, that's why it's taken me so long to
get here.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
But then there was this one critical piece of information
and tape that we should have put in the episode.
It's in that same scene where she's reporting to the
police officer, finally reporting James, and this is the piece
of tape we should have include in this episode.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
But I told him, I'm like, this is who I
think this child is. And he took all that down
and he said he would look into it.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, that would have been that would have helped a
lot of people. Yes, when hearing the episode, definitely lesson
learned column, Lesson learned column.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
And I know a lot of people who wrote in
about this episode are just concerned and they want something
more to be done. They want to make sure the
girl is okay. And so did Chelsea, you know, and
some idea of her, like going directly to James or
going directly to those friends' house, like that is not
a safe option, That is physically not a safe option
(37:44):
for her.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
And I know that, you know, Chelsea was fearful of
retaliation from James. He threatened her with legal action.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
He also threatened that he would release nude photos of
her that she had consentually sent him and that he
said he had deleted, but he had kept he threatened
to send those to her colleagues. So she was feeling
pretty scared of this person.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Right, and so I think she felt safest letting law
enforcement do what they needed to do, and she did
the right thing by reporting it.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
She did everything she could have while also keeping herself safe. Yeah,
all right, those are all of the questions I have.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Great. It's always so good to see and hear feedback
from the listeners, no matter what it looks like, good, bad,
the ugly, like, we really do want to know, you know,
especially if they are like gaps in history where people
were asking we either have an answer or you just
taught us something that we didn't think about. So we
really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, we love engaging with listeners. We love it when
people send in questions and they send in commentary. One
of my favorite emails we got this year with someone
who wrote in with feedback. And then I'm just going
to read from I think one of the most salient
points quote one pain point from you and listening is
when you focus on survivors who quote bound Love Again.
(39:12):
Donielle's story is case in point. Then she goes on
to say it frustrates me when others tell me I'll
find love again or I should date again. I want
to heal and build my self esteem, and I want
to hear more stories about people who come back from
this and build a business, or go find an incredible
and satisfying hobby, start traveling, or anything other than jump
(39:33):
into another relationship and hope for the best with a
new person. I hope you'll keep this in mind when
making future episodes.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I've thought about that feedback from that listener every episode
since me too, And we can't necessarily editorialize people's life
path or where they are when we meet them. Yeah,
but what I really thought was fascinating is being careful
about the language.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yes, and I think she was writing into us to
bring our attention to language, like, you know, so and
so found love again, and it's like, well, what do
you call that first relationship?
Speaker 5 (40:11):
Love?
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Using the right language is really important. So I'm very
grateful for that person to write in.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah. All this to say in bringing up this email
we got is that you know, we're real people making
this show, and we are grappling with these big questions
every day, and we love hearing from listeners who have
you know, thoughtful and constructive commentary about the way we
present these stories. I think it makes the show better.
So we're finished with these weekly episodes for the next
(40:40):
few months. We are going to be back in August
with new weekly episodes. What is coming up next on
the Feed? Do you want to talk about it?
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Drey, I can't believe we've wrapped the weekly series. I
think it's been really successful and I absolutely love this show.
We air season five of Betrayal the limited run on
May twenty second. It's about a woman and her family
of Colorado Springs. You know, we're gonna hear that story
(41:10):
over eight to ten weeks, and then shortly after that
we'll go back into the weekly series, where it's a
different story every week or every other week, but in between,
So from now through May twenty second, we have a
ton of really exciting bonus material that we've been working on.
You've been working really hard on mo. We have a
(41:31):
great bonus episode with a woman named doctor Kate Truett,
and she explains the neuroscience of storytelling and how storytelling
can be healing after experiencing trauma. We have listener essays
that people have submitted based on our prompt, which is
resilience in the face of devastating betrayal, and we have
(41:55):
a woman named Andrea dunlop her story. It's kind of
like a regular weekly episode, but a little bit shorter
to kind of satiate our listeners. So I'm really excited
to see what people think of the content that I'll
be coming out in the next few weeks.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Well, Dre, I'm gonna scurry back behind the curtain.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I'm so glad everyone got to meet you though. You're
the nuts and bolts of this and so it's really
great for the listeners to hear the people that make
the show work, and you do great work. Mo, so
thank you.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Thanks stray. I feel honored to get to work with
a team that is this thoughtful and mission driven and talented,
and also to get to work with individuals who are
trusting us with some of the worst experiences of their
life and trusting us to tell those with respect and care.
It's really an honor.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Oh all right, bye bye.
Speaker 5 (42:53):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email
us at Betrayal Pod at gmailed that's Betrayal Pod at
gmail dot com We're grateful for your support. One way
to 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
(43:15):
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 is executive produced by
Nancy 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 Mercury and Caitlin Golden.
(43:39):
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt Delvechio, Additional editing.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Support from Tanner Robbins.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by
Mob Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Andrea Gunning
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