Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
He took the police report and he gave it to me,
and he said, one day, when you're ready, you should
read this. There's some stuff in here that I don't
think you know. It's actually diabolical.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. When Angeliqe Robletto was seventeen, she found out
she was pregnant. She decided that this baby would be
her second chance. She got clean from drugs and made
(00:51):
a new friend, another pregnant teenager named Cassandra. But one day,
a casual hangout with Cassandra took a sinister. Angelique had
a gut feeling that something was wrong, but she didn't
know what it was. After a fire started, Cassandra was
taken away by paramedics, and Angelique was left to explain
(01:12):
the situation to her parents and law enforcement. She suspected
that Cassandra started the fire and that the proof was
in her friend's bag.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I take the diver bag and I keep explaining to them.
She said she had this present for me, like the
explanation is in this bag, and as I'm doing that,
I put the bag on the counter. I breached my
hand in the bag and I feel these two metal objects,
and when I lift them and pull them out, they're
two large butcher knines, and I dropped them on the
(01:44):
counter and I just start screaming.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
She backed away from the bag, trembling. The cops stepped
in and they come and pull out.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
More They found, like scissors, disinfectant, alcohol.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
The items painted a dark picture of what Cassandra might
have been planning that night, and Angelique realized the gifts
you'd been given weren't for her at all.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Everything that she gave me was one of everything. To
take my son, to make sure my son had a
newborn diaper, to make sure my son had a baby onesie,
a receiving blanket, to wrap him in a blanket so
he didn't get cold, a carrier to carry my baby
out with. She had one of everything to take my
child and to leave that house.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
It all finally clicked for Angelique. Cassandra had been planning
to stab her and run away with her baby.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I just remember sitting on the couch staring at a wall,
and I just kept repeating the same thing over and
over and over again. It was like a trance. I
told you she was going to kill me. I told
you she was going to kill me. I told you
she was going to kill me. My mom said that
I sat there for hours.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
The rest of that night was a blur. She was
in shock. She remembers the cops taping off the scene.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
They had blocked both of my streets off so that
nobody can get in, nobody can get out.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
What had been a potential arson was now in the
attempt of murder investigation. Later that night, a police investigator
came to speak with Angelique.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
When the detective comes in, me and her very much
know each other because of my past. I've got arrested
by her at least once. It's a small town that
she knew me by name, Hi Angelique.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
You know, she was surprised by how the cops spoke
to her.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
They were laughing, they were joking, Oh, are you sure
this didn't happen, And she says, you guys are smoking
marijuana in your room. You know it's no shocker because
Angelique has done things in the past, but it wasn't
a joking situation.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
They hadn't been smoking weed. Angelique knew what happened. She
just couldn't prove it to the cops.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
They had me write it down and then that was
it for the night. They just did their investigation and
they left. So the next morning comes I call them
and they don't have any news. They know that she
left the hospital and she's not there anymore. They know
that for sure, and I'm like, okay, well, what are
you guys going to do? Well, we're trying to find her.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
She was afraid Cassandra might come back and follow through
with the plan.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
This lady literally came to my house with butcher knife
and tried to kill me.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
But the cops weren't necessarily convinced.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Well, we can't prove that. We can't say that that's
what happened. We don't know if that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
She didn't feel like they were taking her seriously. And
now Cassandra was out of the hospital roaming free, Angelique
decided to take matters into her own hands.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I think when people think of survivors and they think
of people that are victims, they think that we go
into this weird moment of poor me, or like I'm scared.
It's not like that. It's quite the opposite. We go
into this moment that we need to figure out what happened.
I was ready to investigate. I was very much I
(05:15):
watched way too much SVU. I know what to do.
That's how I felt.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
She got to work online, so I.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Started googling my little heart out and found things about her.
I found this news article on her, and I found
out that they stated that she was a danger to
herself and society. So that was like a little clue.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
And then she found a surprising connection.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Her cousin is somebody that I knew from middle school,
and I called the cousin.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Cassandra's cousin had a lot to say.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Found out from the cousin. She said, my cousin's crazy.
My cousin is very dangerous. That's when everything started to click.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
After the fire, Cassandra was brought to the hospital because
she was having contractions. Angelique had a friend who worked
at that hospital at the time, a friend who was
willing to break the rules to help Angelique get some answers,
and what her friend saw in Cassandra's medical record was
a bombshell.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
She actually saw the test that she took at the
hospital and they were able to confirm that she was
not pregnant.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Up until that moment, Angelique fully believed her friend was pregnant.
In fact, that had been the basis of their entire relationship.
But now she had confirmation that it was all a lie.
She felt like this information was important to her case.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
I gave it to the cops and they were like, oh,
how did you find those? And I'm like, are you serious?
Right now? It felt like they were not taking my
case seriously, and it was extremely frustrating.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
For the cops to move forward, Angelique would need to
get Cassandra on the record contradicting her original statement to police, because.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Her story was that we were in the room, we
were smoking marijuana, we asked out my pipe and it
set my closet on fire.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
So they asked Angelique to do a recorded phone call.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
My goal was to get her to admit that she
was in the room alone before the fire started. So
I had to call her and ask her, how are
you doing? How did everything go at the hospital? I
had to pretend like I had no idea what was happening,
because she didn't know what was happening. She has no
idea that I found the butcher knives. So she admits it. Yes, yeah,
I remember when I was in the room. Yeah, you
(07:31):
were in there by yourself. Yeah, I was there by myself.
And that was the goal to get her to say
all of those words.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Then Cassandra started to catch on.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I could tell that she wasn't alone. There was somebody
in that house with her, because we all heard a
man say, hang up the phone and then click.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Angelie got what she needed, but it was anti climactic.
The police basically thanked her and sent her on her way,
but almost immediately from.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
That moment, I had went into labor.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
She went straight to the hospital. Because Cassandra still hadn't
been arrested. The hospital took precautions to keep Angelique safe.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
They have police outside my room. They had me down
as Jane Doe. You have to have a code to
get inside my room.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
She spent four days in labor.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I probably should have had a sea section, but I
think they were trying to be mindful of the whole
situation that I had just gone through.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
After all, someone had wanted to steal her baby and
brought a butcher knife to do it. So she was
adamant about not having a sea section.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
As much as I wanted my son to be born.
I felt like the only safe place was inside of me.
But at the same time I was feeling like, okay,
well inside of me isn't safe because someone just tried
to kill me. So I was going through all of
these emotions.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
The stress had led to high blood pressure, and now
Angelique had pre eclampsia. It was a high risk birth.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Finally, my water broke and it was just an intense birth,
as heart rate had dropped at some point. It was honestly,
it was scary.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Finally her son was born. He was healthy and in
her arms.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I went through such a traumatic event that seeing him
alive was just a blessing. I could not imagine him
being with anybody else.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
She hoped that after he was born she'd find some relief.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And finally, once everything is okay, I still can't sleep
because a I'm freaking out on nurses, making them show
me their badges too. I think I'm destined to die,
and I just want to spend whatever moments I can
with my son. And that's all I remember. Actually being
in the hospital is I was worried about someone coming
to steal him or me dying.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
While she was in the hospital, her family worked to
renovate her bedroom to repaint it and make it livable again,
but after she was discharged, she struggled to relax at home.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Coming home is such a blur. I didn't go back
in my room. I refused to go in my room,
so I slept on the couch.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Josh, her son's father, stepped up to help. He wanted
to be a safe place for Angelique, so every night
he stayed with her on the couch next to their
new baby.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
He helped me feel safe when nobody else made me
feel that way.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
But even with him by her side, she couldn't let
her guard down.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I just wasn't myself. There was nothing that was right
or okay about me.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
When Josh or her family tried to talk to her
about how she was doing, Angelique shut down.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I pushed everybody away. Josh would say something and I
would be like, I'm fine, but really up dying inside.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
She wanted Cassandra arrested, but the cops weren't sharing any
information about the case.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I felt like I was completely in the dark when
it came to my investigation. Anytime I try to talk
to somebody, nobody give me answers and It was just
super discouraging because I had gotten out of the hospital
and I expected to feel safe, and I didn't feel safe.
I expected for her to be caught. She wasn't caught.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
She didn't even feel safe taking a walk around her neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I just never left my house. I stayed inside of
my house and never left.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
One night, about a month after her son was born.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I fell asleep one night and I remember my mom
coming into the room. It had to have been like midnight,
and she woken me up and she said here, and
she like hands me the phone, and I'm like, who
is it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
It was the lead detective on her case, and she
was like, we got her. Cassandra had been arrested. After
(12:01):
weeks of waiting. Angelique was losing faith that Cassandra would
ever be held responsible, but then she got the call.
Law enforcement was finally able to make an arrest. Cassandra
was facing multiple charges.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
She is being charged with attempted first degree murder, which
means that it was plotted. It was planned out, so
tempted first grea murder, arson burglary. She said She's going
to go away for a very very long time.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Cassandra had made a full confession.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And I started crying and I said she admitted it,
and they said, yeah, she admitted it.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
She admitted that she'd planned to murder Angelique in order
to steal her baby. Cassandra was now behind bars and
she would stay there until there was a trial, and I.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Just remember crying and being so happy. That was the
first night that I actually slept.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
The news brought a lot of relief. Angelie could breathe
a little easier, but the arrest didn't take away the trauma.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
As a mom, you imagine they're going to be this
happy family. You're going to teach him how to say mama.
You're going to teach them how to walk. You're going
to teach him, you know, figure out if his first
food is going to be peaches or carrots. All of
these things are things that I thought about. I don't
remember any of them. It's like it was all stolen
from me.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
She recently saw a video that was taken when her
son was one. He was learning how to walk for
the first time.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
And I say it, Oh my gosh, it's his first steps.
I can't I don't remember that video. I don't remember
where that video was taken. What time, like I and
I was standing right there talking in the video.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
In the wake of everything, she wasn't living.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
She was surviving my family, my friends. They distracted me.
I can't tell you how because I don't remember, but
I know that I survived.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
When everything went down and League had to fight for
her case to be taken seriously by the cops. And
after Cassandra was arrested, she didn't hear anything from law
enforcement or prosecutors for twelve months.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I just remember thinking, like, when is this going to happen?
Like what's going to happen? Maybe I should just be
thankful that she's in jail, But nobody has communicated anything
with me.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
That was until she got a call from the District
Attorney's office.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
They tell me, we're going to be completely honest with you.
We don't think this should go to trial. And I
was completely thrown back, like what do you mean this
shouldn't go to trial? They said, well, through our investigation
and through everything that we've done, the cops did not
reader her Miranda rights at the time of the confession,
and I was like, wait, what, Like, what do you
(14:47):
mean that they didn't reader her Miranda rights?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
The full confession police got out of Cassandra wouldn't be
admissible in court.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
If we go to trial, her whole confession is thrown
out and can lose this case because it's not illegal
to carry butcher knives around the city. Technically, it's not
against the law, and we cannot pinpoint everything in here
without her confession.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
But Angelique knew there was physical evidence from the fire.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
And I was like, well, what about her fingertips on
the kiunt the candle, and they said yes, they said,
we want to try to do a plea bargain.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
The DA's office informed Angelique of Cassandra's defense strategy. She
was going to plead insanity.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
The picture that they painted for me was that she
was there to take my child because she was mentally
ill and believed that my baby was her baby, that
she was pregnant and this was her child.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And in that moment, Angelique almost felt bad for her.
The prosecutor said that Angelique could.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Decide do you think she should go to prison or
do you think she should go to like a mental hospital,
And I asked if they can give me some time
to think.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
About it up, she slept on it and realized that
without the confession. The prosecution's hands were tied.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I didn't feel good about this whole thing, but I
really trusted, like they're the professionals. This is their job,
Like who am I to tell them what's right and
what's wrong.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
The state offered eight years in a psychiatric hospital.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
And so that was our plea bargain.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
At the sentencing hearing, Angelique was able to read a
victim impact statement.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I wrote this long letter to her. I said, I
don't want to live my life hating you. I don't
want to have hate in my heart. I don't think
I can live my life that way, and so I'm
going to tell you that I forgive you because they're
mentally ill. I ended it that way just from my
conscience for me. A judge told her, Cassandra, is there
(16:55):
anything that you would like to say to this woman?
She stood up, put her hands together. She looked at
me and said, no, your honor, and sat back down.
No remorse. That felt like a slap in the face.
That felt like I want take back everything that I
said to you. That was the last interaction I had
(17:17):
with her.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Almost immediately it became a media circus.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Everybody was outside my door, I had every single news station.
I had people calling me. I had Andrewson Cooper calling me.
I don't even know how they got my number.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Everyone wanted to run with the story. Angelique became reduced
to a headline. It felt like something was being taken
from her and not on her terms.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
If I could take back some of the shows that
I did, like doing the Doctor Phil show, I would
have not done that. Absolutely. He used me for my
trauma to get views.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
A few years after sentencing, a local journalist came over
to interview Angelique the story and he was the first
one to ask her.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Have you ever read the police report? And I was
like no. At the end of our interview, he took
the police report and he gave it to me and
he said, there's some stuff in here that I don't think.
You know, you should read this.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
But at the time Angelique wasn't ready to hear it.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
So I know I did. I shredded it. I shredded
it all. I shredded everything. That is what trauma does.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
It wasn't until eight years later, when Cassandra was released
from the psychiatric hospital, that Angelique finally revisited the case.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And that intrigued me to open everything back up because
I felt like I was in a better state of mind.
I was older. I feel like I'm ready to start digging.
So I went deep. I went deep down this rabbit hole.
I went to the police station. I pulled all the
police reports, I pulled the tapes, I pulled anything that
they would give me, and I sat in my car
for hours listening to these CDs, listening to me like
(19:00):
Me Talk, listening to all, listening to everything. It took
like four to five hours.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
She started with Cassandra's taped confession and on it she
learned Cassandra's story what Cassandra was really doing the night
the fire started.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
The fire was never meant to happen. It was an accident.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Her plan was to kill Angelique with a butcher knife
and steal her baby. That's what she was preparing to
do when she sat Angelique on her bed in the
dark and counted to three.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
She said that she felt a moment of weakness when
she was going to stab me. When she had me
bent over, she had her hand on my shoulder, she
had the knife physically to my back, and she was
ready to push the knife inside of me.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
But then Cassandra got cold feet.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
When she started counting. She started to feel guilt, and
she says, I started to second guess it if I
could actually do it.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
When Angelique stood up, the initial plan fell apart, so
Cassandra moved on to Plan B.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
She said the fire was supposed to be a distraction,
and she was hoping that I would be overcome with
smoke and I would pass out, and then she'd be
able to perform the C section with me being passed
out on the ground.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Cassandra thought it would be easier to kill Angelique if
she were unconscious. The whole thing was like a horror movie.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
It's actually diabolical. It's almost unbelievable though, that an eighteen
year old can come up with this.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It turns out the plan wasn't entirely hers, or at
least that's what Cassandra stated in her confession.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
At the very end before they cut the tape, she
talks about how she was a part of a.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Gang, and in this gang, Cassandra confessed that she worked
for one man in particular.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
She was his like his possession basically, and she had
to do what he told her to do, and it
was all his plan. And she was just doing what
he asked.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Cassandra claimed that she was part of a gang operation
and her boss had a plan to sell Angelique's baby.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
She says he has done this before, that they sold
babies in Mexico, and that they were going to get
a certain cut. She talked about how much they would
get for the baby, and that they were going to
stay and live in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
This was all news to Angelique. These tapes suggested an
alternate motivation for why Cassandra did what she did, and
it didn't match up with what Angelique heard from prosecutors
back when they offered a plea deal. At the time,
her understanding was that Cassandra was mentally ill and thought
the baby was hers.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
But in the confession, not once did I ever hear
her say that she wanted the baby for herself.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
And there was something else in Cassandra's confession another thing
Angelique heard that didn't square with what the prosecutors told her.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
I heard them reader her miranda writes.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Prosecutors had told Angelique that Cassandra's confession wasn't admissible in
court because no one had read Cassandra her miranda rights.
While reviewing the case file. Years later, Angelique discovered that
wasn't true. They had read her her Miranda rights.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I even had it circled where it says they read
her rights and then it goes on to her telling
her confession.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
This supposed procedural error was the reason why Angelique was
okay with the plea deal. So why did the prosecutors
tell her this story? Well, Angelique has a theory.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I think that we were used as a plea bargain
to help catch bigger fish. I don't think anybody will
ever be able to confirm that for me, But if
she had more information to help them catch bigger people,
they don't have to necessarily tell me all the information
on what they're working on.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
If Cassandra was telling the truth, maybe she could help
law enforcement catch higher ups in her gang. Angelique got
back to all the phone calls. Cassandra had taken the
ones in Spanish, and she'd taken a call in the
middle of the attempted murder. Angelique had believed she was
talking with Edwin, her husband. So was Edwin the mastermind,
(23:29):
the gang leader? The cops met with Edwin and they
were very surprised to hear he.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
States, Yeah, she's someone I dated. No, we haven't talked
in years, and we're not together. So this guy Edwin,
who she told all of us was her husband, was
not actually her husband.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Edwin was a real guy that Cassandra had dated, that
he hadn't talked to her in years. So who was
actually on the other end of the phone? In her confession,
Cassandra does name someone besides Edwin, but the cops couldn't
find a record of this other guy, and that's where
the police file ends. For Angelique, it felt like they
(24:10):
gave up. She's had to make peace with the fact
that she might never know who Cassandra was working with,
she might never get the full story.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I think about it a lot. I contemplate all the
time if I want to know the truth, and I
always go back and forth with yes, no, yes, no.
The thing is, it's not going to do anything except
for maybe piss me off. So I just stopped looking
for answers.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
She's come to accept that the police report may just
be another version of the story, and can she even
trust Cassandra's taped confession. After all, Cassandra was clearly unwell
by the time Angelique heard the tapes. Cassandra had served
her entire sentence. Angelique felt like reopening the case against
Cassandra would be a dead end.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I found out way too late. We're talking about nine
years now. I can't go back and bring them all this.
I just thought every person there was doing their job
for me. I thought this was a big case. I
thought this was abnormal. I've never heard of fetal abduction.
Like I just figured that everyone was in my best
interest for her.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Reopening the case would only bring back bad memories. The
damage was already done.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
She stole my first few years between me and my son,
and I'm never going to get those back. There's no
money in the world that could pay for that. She
stole that away from me.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Her healing process wasn't linear.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
There were moments in my life where I remember being like,
I'm healed, I feel so much better. I'm going to
be just fine, and then like five weeks to go
by and I would be like, I'm so triggered right now.
And it's just been a cycle. It's been a vicious cycle,
and that's what healing is. It's been almost fourteen years
(26:03):
since my trauma, and I feel like I just had
an epiphany just a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
She recently drove past the house where the crime happened
for the first time in years, and instead of feeling
overwhelmed and triggered, she felt a powerful calm.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
I realized, it's just a house. That's all it is.
It's just a house that something bad happened to me in.
But I'm here, I'm alive, I'm okay, and I have
my son. You can't push or rush healing.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Josh, her son's father, has been a constant in her
life and in her healing.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
If you were to ask me where my safe place is,
it's with him. I am scared of everything. It can
be as simple as I don't want to get into
a lake because I'm scared of their drown I'm scared
of life because something traumatic happened to me when I
had no idea that it could happen. So because of that,
my husband has been there to push me into different
(26:57):
directions that I don't think I could have done without him.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
They dated throughout their first few years as parents.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And come twenty twenty, we decided why not. So we
actually got engaged in twenty twenty and we got married.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
She and Josh had two more children together.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
We live a happy life altogether. We're a very big
sport family. We do football, softball, soccer, rine quads, go hiking,
go to the lake.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
The sun she nearly lost is now thirteen.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
When I look at my son, I just think about
how lucky we are and how blessed we are, because
not everybody gets this happy ending. I always tell him,
you were absolutely meant to be here. I don't know
what life has to offer you, but I just know
you were meant for greatness.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Angelique's also become an advocate for preventing fetal abduction.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
When I was seventeen years old, I didn't know that
this was even a crime that could happen. I didn't
know that because it was never talked about.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Feudal abduction is incredibly rare. There have been less than
twenty documented cases in the US in the last decade,
and of those cases, very few of the victims survived.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
My motivation is not just to get my story out
so that other mothers can understand that this is something
that happens. I feel like it's an opportunity for me
to be a voice for not myself and my son,
but also for the mothers that are not here that
didn't get to survive this crime.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
She's also done something astounding. She wanted to help others
grow their own families, so she became a surrogate.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Carrying a baby who wasn't mine and allowing that baby
to leave my body and go to somebody else was
a huge step for me and absolutely healed me in
ways that I didn't know that I needed to be
healed in.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
why are you telling your story?
Speaker 1 (28:54):
You think about how that one second that it took
for me to turn around is literally what saved my life.
I would not be here if I did not listen
to that gut feeling. It's okay to be naive. It's natural,
it's who we are. We're only human. Just listen to yourself,
trust yourself a little bit more, sit there and start
to learn what that intuition feeling is and listen to it.
(29:17):
Maybe it'll help save somebody's life.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
I get a phone call and it was is this
Dawn Harris and Astidy as it is? And they said,
this is so and so with the Dallas FBI office.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
We'd like for you to come in.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
If 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. 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 views go a long way. A big thank
(30:02):
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.
(30:26):
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Kriinchech. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing support
from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music
library provided by Mob Music and for more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
(30:46):
your podcasts.