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September 12, 2024 34 mins

Donielle’s idyllic midwestern life descends into chaos when the FBI raid her house, searching for her husband and two of their family friends.  

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
One of my children saw his dad dressed all in black,
and he said that it seemed like his dad was
mad at him because he yelled at him to go
back to bed. And the night before that, he had
actually told my oldest child to rap a sledgehammer that
we had that had a really bright yellow handle in

(00:24):
black electric tape and find a black raincoat for him
to wear.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
And she was like, okay, Dad, I'm Anderrea gunning. And
this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust
the most and the deceptions that change everything. One night

(00:54):
in twenty seventeen, Danielle Oliver Chauve was awoken by the
FBI in state police. They were pointing guns at her,
demanding to know where her husband was. That night, she
learned the man she had spent twenty years with was
hiding some very big secrets. This is don Yelle's first
time telling her story. She's been reluctant to share what

(01:16):
she went through because, as you'll hear in part two,
her husband has other victims. She wants to be respectful
of their experience and suffering. But this episode isn't about
her husband's crimes. It's about the twenty year marriage Donyelle
built with him, the ways he deceived and violated her,
and the shocking betrayal that ended it all. It's also

(01:39):
the story of being totally in the dark about your
partner's double life.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I used to watch Lifetime shows and I used to
be that person saying, oh, she had to know something.
So I totally understand why people say things like that.
But until you were actually walking in those shoes and
living with a person who can be completely double faced,

(02:05):
living a completely separate life, all I know is the
life that he had with me and our kids. That's
all I saw. He was able to do everything else
completely separate.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Danielle grew up in a happy, tight knit family in California.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Family is very important to me. We were just over
in my parents, all of my siblings, and we all
just get along really well. There's hardly ever any arguments
within our family, and when there is, it's results within
the day.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Growing up, Danielle's parents were her role models. They had
a respectful and happy marriage. It was an environment that
nurtured her easygoing and trusting nature.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
I had a really good childhood and so I didn't
grow up with a lot of strife or bad things
happening in my childhood where that trust was broken down.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
She was raised with a strong sense of faith. That's
still one of her core values.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
I know some religions can be like really strict, you
can do this, you can't do this. I wouldn't even
say that mine is a religion. It's a relationship with christ.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Donielle is one of those rare people who loved high school.
She was popular and she had a long time high
school boyfriend named Billy.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
When we were teenagers. Everybody thought for sure that we
were just going to be together forever, you know, we
were the thing.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Right before their senior year of high school, Billy proposed
to her and she said yes.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
But then I actually had to move to Hawaii because
my dad was working for a military and we moved there.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
She ended up spending her senior year in Hawaii. Then
she got accepted to college in Illinois. She was ready
to start a new life there without her high school boyfriend.
Giving up her first love was hard, but she wanted
to prioritize her independence. Danielle thrived in college. She loved

(04:09):
her major, which was art, and she also loved going
to Bible study on campus. That's where she met Chad.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
He was raising his hand and answering the questions like
right away, and he was answering the way I would
have answered those questions, right in line with the way
I believed.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
So I was attracted to that immediately. She knew Chad
was special the.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
First time I met him. I said to my parents
when I got back that I was going to marry him.
So it was pretty much love at first sight.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
She felt comfortable around Chad. It was easy, like they'd
known each other for years.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
We actually met at my parents' house and watched a
couple movies and I made amazagna and he changed my
oil in my car. That was her first date.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
From the start, Donielle was serious about Chad.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
When i'm dating someone that I'm deciding whether or not
this person is the person I want to marry. So
I was looking for specific things that I wanted in
a husband when I was dating him.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
And Chad checked all the boxes.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
There was lots of things. He grew up in a
Christian home, He had a good relationship with his parents.
He was business minded, like he was able to support me.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Everything about him felt right. He was pursuing a degree
in finance, he had dreams of starting his own business,
and like her, he also wanted a big family. But
most of all, she just loved being around him.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
I had fun with him, you know, we would laugh
about lots of things. I was just attracted to the
way I felt around him.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
While they were dating, he went above and beyond to
woo her.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Something about Chad, you have to know he likes to
do everything big. It always has to be the best
and the grandest and the most showy.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
It's not who she is, but Chad said she deserved
the best, and it was flattering. After about two years
of dating, he made a particularly grand gesture. He bought
her an expensive dress, rented a limousine, and took them
to a dinner theater.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
And during that intermission he excused himself. I thought he
was going to use the restroom, but he actually turns
out had set up beforehand with the theater that he
would go on stage and asked me to marry him
from the stage. And then he got down on his knee.
And yeah, it was quite the show.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
She said. Yes, he brought her out of her comfort
zone and it felt like a fairy tale.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
I was one hundred percent this is the one I
had to spend the rest of my life with.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Chad was involved in every step of the wedding planning,
which Donielle loved, and he also wanted to go to
pre marriage counseling to discuss their expectations.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
We discussed who would be the breadwinner in the home,
you know, what would be the different roles of both
husband and wife, as far as who did what in
the household. It was thoroughly discussed how our marriage would
go before we got married, I mean, as far as
you can. We did know that I wanted to be
a stay at home mom, so that was talked about.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Danielle had been managing her own money in her early twenties,
and although she was good at it, it was a
relief to be marrying someone who had expertise in finance.
It made her feel safe, and so they agreed that
while she would manage the household, Chad would manage the money.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
And I had full trust in Chad to be able
to do that too, because of his business degree. He
was really good at money, and so he went to
school for it. I didn't have any you know, worries
about him taking over the finances for the family.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
She was happy with this arrangement. She's a do it
yourself kind of person. It's an attitude that's well suited
to raising kids and the household.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
My dishwasher broke down several years ago, and I wasn't
about to pay somebody because I'm going to figure out
how to fix it. I laid all the flooring in
the house that I'm in right now. I don't know
how to do that, but I looked it up, just
went on YouTube and figured it out. So I'm that
type of person.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
After they got married, the couple decided to move to
Chad's hometown in Illinois. To call it a small town
is an understatement. The entire population could fit in one
high school football stadium.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Well, the town we live in, Erie is only nineteen hundred.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
It's small, small, but perfectly suited to the life that
they were building, a life that centered around family and community. Plus,
Chad had grown up there, so he knew nearly everyone
in town, and everyone seemed to adore him. In fact,
he'd been the high school valedictorian. Once they moved back

(08:56):
to Erie, the couple also joined Chad's church, the church
he grew up in.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
We were really involved with that church, and his parents
went to that church too, and we led a Sunday
school together. As a couple, their.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Life was falling into place. A happy marriage, a strong
foundation based on shared values, a community that supported them,
and a church they felt welcomed by. And Chad was
making progress in his career. He began the certification process
to become a financial advisor. He wanted to start his
own firm.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
He did it all online. I went through classes online
and got his certificate online and all that.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
She was proud of him, and for the time being,
she kept working too.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
I also worked for the post office for a little bit,
but that was not part of our marriage plan. I
didn't want to be a working mom. I wanted to
be a stay at home mom. Pretty much as soon
as we got married, we started trying.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
But conceiving their first baby didn't happen as quickly as
Danielle hoped. The months turned into a year, and during
that year, Chad made a shocking confession.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
He came home from work and sat me down and said,
I need to tell you something really important and just said,
I had an accounter with a guy in the bathroom,
and I think we need to go see somebody and
talk to like a counselor about it. And so I
was just like, what is going on? It just blindsided me,

(10:29):
Like what just happened.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
She asked him point blank if he was gay. He
said no, he wasn't. She wanted more details about what
actually happened, who it was with, and what they did.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
But he never really gave a straight answer. It was
just we need to go talk to somebody, like a
counselor about it.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Donielle was shaken and confused about her husband's confession to
a one time playing but at the same time, Chad
was doing everything he could to make it right. He
confessed to it immediately, he wanted to get help, and
most importantly, he was coming to her with sincere remorse.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
He was crying, I was crying. He was saying sorry.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Chad wanted to get help quickly, and so the next
day they did.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
We actually went to the pastor and asked for advice
about who we should see as a marriage counselor for us.
We were given a name of a Christian counselor.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
They had multiple sessions with the counselor, some sessions together
as a couple and some separately. During a one on
one meeting, the counselor gave Danielle some advice.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
He advised me, you should really think carefully about this marriage.
You know, you actually have a right to end this
marriage if he is being unfaithful to you.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
The counselor said he'd seen a situation like this before,
and he wanted Danielle to know that divorce was an option.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
I understood that. I knew that that's something that it's
perfectly fine for me to file for a divorce, but
I didn't want to. I wanted to make this marriage work.
I didn't even want the word divorce to come up
in our marriage. Like when I made a commitment in
our marriage at the wedding ceremony, My promise was a promise.

(12:35):
I didn't take my vows lightly in sickness and in health,
or Richard for poorer. I was going to walk through
it with him. I wanted to help him resolve whatever
it was that he was going through because I loved
him and I wanted our marriage to work.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
This one infidelity it felt small and manageable, especially compared
to the years they'd spend together getting to know each other,
studying the Bible together and building a life. She really
trusted Chad.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
I felt like I could trust him even though he
had done whatever he had done. I believed him one
hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
They got a workbook on overcoming infidelity and even did
the homework together, and they decided to lean on their
faith to help them rebuild their relationship. Church became an
even bigger part of their lives.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
He was an elder in the church. We jointly were
leaders for kids Christian camps. We were very involved in
our faith.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Their marriage began looking up, especially when a year later
they welcomed their first baby, a baby girl.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
She was an amazing first child, super easy baby, smiling
all the time, happy, alert. It was a great, great
first mom experience.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Donielle was on top of the world, so filled with
love for her first daughter and her young family. It
confirmed to her that she really did want to be
a stay at home mom. She just felt whole.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
People that we would meet walking through a mall always
stop and say, oh, you have the cutest baby. She's
the cutest thing I've ever seen, and your family is
so cute.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
The difficulties she and Chad faced in the first year
of marriage started to feel like they were in the
rear view mirror.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
At that point, I felt totally in love with him
and close to him. I felt like I had the
perfect life.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
That baby would be the first of six.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
I knew that you could get pregnant even when you
were still nursing, and before you had your first cycle
after pregnancy. I didn't think it was going to happen
to me, but it did.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Soon. Donielle's life became consumed by full time childcare. As
their kids got older, she started homeschooling them, and she
loved every minute of it.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
I wouldn't have it any other way. And a lot
of people are like, wow, sixth kids, that's a lot,
but you know, each one of them is unique and
has their own personality. Each of them is just amazing.
I love it. I absolutely love it.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
With a growing family came more financial demands, but luckily
Chad's business was taking off. They even had the ability
to upgrade their house.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
He had been starting to look at this property that
he really wanted. It was a huge house, way bigger
than we needed. Enormous, huge living room, huge family, a
huge dining room, huge huge master bedroom. You know basement
that looked like a bowling alley, and so he started
looking at it and dreaming about it and eventually decided
that he was going to try to purchase it.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Danielle didn't think it was the most practical choice, but
the house made him happy. After they moved in, he
tried to tell her how to run the house, but
she stood her ground. She trusted him to handle the finances,
so when it came to the housework, he needed to
trust her.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
He wanted me to do things a certain way, like
do laundry on a certain day, do the dishes on
a certain day, or you know, do dusting on a
certain day. And I was like, no, I will do
it when it needs to be done. When I see
that it needs doing, I'll do it, you know.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
And there were a lot of things that needed dusting.
Chad was a collector. It was a quirk that Danielle accepted.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Precious moments, figurines, and he was very much in a
Hallmark fan, so he had millions of Hallmark ornaments, tons
of DVDs. I mean we had two huge walls full
of DVDs.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
They loved watching movies as a family, and after the
kids went to bed, the couple would watch their favorite TV.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Shows, Dexter and Breaking Bad.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Every summer, Danielle, Chad and their six kids would take
family road trips.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, we had all the
tourist places in the United States. We had a lot
of really fun times as family.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
On these trips, they'd stay in huge rental homes. Chad
always wanted the best of the best for the family, and.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
They were very nice, very nice rented houses. Some of them.
I was like, okay, guys, don't touch anything, you know,
like expensive paintings on the walls and glass decorations.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
One summer, about fifteen years into their marriage, the family
was on one of their regular road trips, and on
this trip, their rental home was in a remote area.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
I woke up around between the morning, I know, it
was the middle of the night. All the kids were asleep,
and I got up to go to the bathroom or
something and turned over and he was not in bed
with me. I looked around the house to see if
he was just up somewhere. He was not there. I

(18:17):
went out into the garage area. The car was gone,
so I started being like, where did he go? There
was no note as far as he left somewhere. He
didn't leave a message on my phone. He was just gone.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
It was the early two thousands, so she didn't have
a smartphone to look at his location. She started to
worry that something terrible happened.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
So I started calling around to the hospital around the
area and is there any child skipper admitted into this hospital? No, ma'am,
thank you, call the next hospital.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Around three am, the phone rang. It was Chad.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
And he said he was at law and I was like, okay,
why are you at Walmart? I just thought I would
pick up some stuff. But you know, you can kind
of tell when somebody's calling from the middle of a store.
You can hear the hum of everything. There was no
shopping cart sounds, no like cashier beeping and stuff. There

(19:19):
was none of that. It did not sound like he
was in a shopping area. I hung up the phone
and just was like, how what is happening? I don't understand.
Says he's are in Walmart, but it's hours away. That
doesn't make any sense. And I just sat in confusion,
shaking until he got home.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
When Chad got back, he tried to explain it away and.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
He apologized and said I'm sorry I didn't tell you
where I was going. You know, everything's fine, You're good,
the kids are good, I'm back, We're safe. He blew
it over.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Whenever they got in a disagreement. This is what he'd
tell her.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
His favorite phrase was, don't make a mountain out of
a mole hill. You know, you just get really emotional
about things. It's okay, you know, calm down. Always made
me feel like.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
I was crazy abandoning the family in a rental house
in the middle of the night with no good explanation.
It just didn't sit right with her, so Donielle called
her mom.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
She was like, oh, wow, yeah, that is really weird.
I'm glad you're okay. You know, I'm glad it all
worked out, but that is really weird.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Donielle was the full time caretaker for six children under fifteen.
She didn't have the energy to fight with her husband.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
I didn't confront him. That's one of my personality quirks
is I don't like confrontation. I would rather just not
talk about it than have a huge argument about something,
which is not healthy. I think it's much healthier to
communicate and work it out. But at that point, I

(21:02):
just didn't want to deal with it.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Plus, whenever she did question him, it always ended up
coming back on her.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
On the rare occasions when I would ask questions, I
would be shut down and told I was crazy or
that is totally not how it went. You have blown
this out of proportion and you don't remember the actual
fact that actually happened. This is how it actually happened.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
When Donielle woke up on a family vacation to find
her husband missing, he said he was picking up something
for work at a Walmart in the middle of the night.
She didn't quite buy the story, but she knew Chad
was busier than ever growing his financial advising firm. Around
the same time, he decided to start making passive income

(22:06):
by buying rental properties in town. It started with one
small house, then two, then an apartment building in their hometown.
He was so busy that he often worked from home
at nights. He renovated their basement to become his home office.
He even put in a king sized bed.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
I didn't understand why you would need a bed in
your office, but he insisted on having it, and his
reasons were that if he needed a nap, he could
just hop in the bed and take a quick nap
and then get back to work.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
It bothered her him staying up late like this and
sleeping in his office. It also bothered her that he
locked the door. He said it was a security measure
because he had important financial documents in there.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, well,
how do you work at night? If you are a
financial advisor, you can't meet with clients at night. So
it was just it was very confusing to me, and
I do remember one time just crying my eyes out
to him, saying, I really want you to sleep with me.
You know, at night, I just feel closer to when
we're sleeping together. I feel like we're more like roommates.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
He started coming to bed with her until she fell asleep,
then he would slip out and go back to work.
She would only realize it when she woke up and
found him gone.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
One night, I actually got up out of bed and
was knocking on his basement door, and I heard no answer,
And so I actually got in the car and was
driving around and thinking maybe I would see his car somewhere.
I never did, but I got to that point where
I was like starting to look to see if I
could find anything.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
She never found any proof that her husband was cheating
or having an affair. She didn't have the energy to
start a fight with him. He insisted on sleeping in
the basement. Eventually she became resigned to the fact she
couldn't change his mind.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
At that point in our marriage, I felt very distant
from him. I felt like there was a wall up
and we never would discuss anything. If I ever wanted
to talk about anything, it was always I'm too tired,
or can we talk about this tomorrow, or let's talk
about this this weekend. But nothing ever got talked about.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
In this period where Chad was sleeping in the basement
office and they were bickering, Danielle knew that their marriage
needed to improve, so she saw it help for herself.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
I actually went and saw a counselor a couple times
on my own because I felt like me having these
issues with our marriage was kind of my fault. I
felt like there was something wrong with me not feeling
close to him. But I wanted our marriage to be
a really good marriage, and I didn't feel that it
was a good marriage.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
She even suggested they try counseling again as a couple
but this time Chad resisted.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
He refused to go to more than one or two
sessions with me. He felt like it was useless or
he didn't want to tell somebody else our problems.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
With each passing month, Chad spent more and more time
out of the house renovating the rental properties, and some
nights tenants would call with emergencies.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
There would be nights where he would say, Oh, I
got to go there's a sewage leak. I have to
go really quick and fix the sewage leak.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Despite their rocky few years, she still trusted him. She
had to.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
You can't have a marriage without trust. It doesn't work.
You know, if one of the partners say I'm going
to go do this outside the home, you have to
trust that they're actually doing what they're saying they're doing.
Like if I say I'm going to go shopping, he
has to trust that I'm actually shopping. If he says
I'm going to go to, you know, fix the sewage

(25:58):
system in his apartments, I have to trust that he's
actually doing that. Otherwise there's no relationships.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Plus, the rental properties added financial security to their lives.
She believed that at the end of the day. He
was working so hard in order to provide for the family.
She often overheard him practicing conversations he needed to have
for work.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
He had this weird quirk where if he was going
to have a conversation with somebody, he would write down
the conversation that he was going to have and then
memorize it. And then I would often see him like
pacing and doing weird things with his hands and with
his mouth. I think he was like rehearsing in his
mind how the conversation would go and what he would

(26:42):
say in response to their responses.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
There was one big meeting in particular Chad was preparing for.
It was with an older couple that went to their church,
a couple that taught Sunday school. They had known Chad
for nearly his whole life, and they were wealthy. Chad
set up a meeting with them to pitch his financial
advising services.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
He was trying really hard to get them to be
one of his clients.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
In the end, they decided not to use him. He
was dejected. He'd been counting on their business. After that
meeting didn't go as planned, he started talking about selling
his financial advising business and instead getting into the storage industry.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
There's a little plot of land that would be perfect
for storage units. So he had said that, you know,
we're going to buy this land over here and I'm
going to start building storage units, and so we need
to set up this LLC.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
He wanted Danielle to sign paperwork to help set up
the business.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
If we have he as a president, then it's better
for taxes because you're a woman.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
He asked her to go to the bank with him
that day to get it set up, and there out
in public, she noticed that her husband looked disheveled.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
He was not bathed. I was surprised that he went
to the bank in the state that he was in.
I just thought, well, he must be so tired. He's
trying to sell his financial business, and he's trying to
get these storage units ready, and he's not getting much sleep,

(28:17):
so he just must be really stressed out.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Later that day, one of Donille's kids came to her.
He said that last night he'd seen something strange in
the driveway of their house.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
One of my children said that he got up and
saw his dad dressed all in black, and he said
that it seemed like Chad was mad at him because
he yelled at him to go back to bed.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
This was alarming because another one of her kids had
confessed something bizarre.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
The night before that he had actually told my oldest
child to wrap a sledgehammer that we had that had
a really bright yellow handle in black electric tape and
find a black raincoat for him, and she was like, okay, Dad.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Immediately, she tried to get in touch with Chad, but
he wasn't answering his phone. After they went to the bank,
he'd left the house to work on a rental property.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
There were several rental places that he owned that he
was either renovating or was currently renting. I texted him
asking if he could call me as soon as possible.
I was starting to feel like, Okay, what's going on.
I hope he's okay. I hope he's not in an accident.
He called shortly after and explained that he had accidentally

(29:37):
fallen asleep at the rental and that he was still
feeling a little disoriented, but reassured me that he was fine.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
If it sounds like Danielle is reading off of a
piece of paper, it's because she is. She's reading from
a written statement documenting this day.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Nothing is as it seems, absolutely nothing. This is my
living nightmare and what I can remember that has happened
in the last few days. At four to twenty two pm,
I texted him asking if he was okay. No response.
I texted again at five six pm and his response
was yep you. I told him I was just wondering

(30:19):
what happened, and he texted what do you mean? And
then around five point thirty he called and said he
was sorry he didn't see my text and that he
must have been in the basement and hadn't gotten it
right away.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
That night, Chad didn't come home for dinner. At the time,
she assumed he'd fallen asleep at the rental property again,
but she couldn't leave her six small children to go
check on him, so around eleven pm, after putting the
kids to bed, she went to sleep herself.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Next thing I heard was banging and branking glass and
then yelling state police, state police, hands in the air.
I came out in my bedroom with no glasses on,
hands in the air, wondering if they were actually police
because I can't see very vaconly see about a foot
in front of me without it being blurry In my mind,

(31:10):
I was thinking, well, either I'm being robbed and they're
posing as state police, or something's happening and I have
no idea why there's state police in my house with
a gun pointed at me.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
It was becoming very clear, very quickly, this was actually
the state police and the FBI. There wasn't a mistake.
They were looking for Chad, and they were incredibly serious.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
They asked if anyone else was in the house, and
I said, yes, just me and the kids, assuming Chad
was at the rental. My whole mouth got super dry.
I could not hardly even talk. I asked them if
I could go back into the bedroom to get some water.
I kept water by my bed, and they're like, no,
you can't go anywhere. You have to stay right here.

(31:57):
I wasn't even allowed to wake up my kids. They
actually went boke up all of my kids. They were
asking if there was hiding places in the house, and
it threw me for a loop because I'm like, I mean,
my kids hide in little places when they play hide
and seek.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Then the police asked her about the elderly couple that
went to their church, the ones Chad wanted as clients.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Why are you asking me questions about them and where
is my husband.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
On the next episode of Betrayal.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
He walled it off with cement blocks and soundproofing. The
only entry and exit to that room was through a
steel trap door with a walk on the outside in
a closet hidden under I think it was a dresser
or something. You would only know it was there if
you knew it was there.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
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 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 reviews go a long way. A

(33:20):
big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment
Group and 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

(33:42):
and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Jessica Krinchech. Audio editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio,
additional editing support from Nico Aruka. Betrayal's theme composed by
Oliver Bains. Music library provided by Mob Music and For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(34:05):
or wherever you get your podcasts
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Host

Andrea Gunning

Andrea Gunning

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