Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an incredible story that sounds like it's made up,
that sounds like a soap opera, It sounds like a
drama movie, but it's so real and it's not the
only one. There are things we might not know about
somebody we live with, and there's so many stories like this.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. About a year ago, we heard from a
listener with a story that floored us. Tora Giles is
a history professor in Colorado. But she grew up on
the California coast with her seven siblings.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And we grew up on a farm, so my life
was kind of wild and crazy and great. Grew up
super religious. In the Seventh Day, I'dventist church as a kid.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
The church was Tora's life. She went to a Christian school,
her friends and after school activities were all through the church,
and she assumed that her life would follow the same
path that was modeled by the women around her. Graduate
high school, get married, and start having kids.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Funny enough, I thought as a kid that twenty years
old was being a grown up, and twenty five year
olds were old, and so I thought for sure that
I would be married by twenty but I never really dated.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
After high school, Tora became a full time nanny and
she tried to give dating a shot.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I finally went on one date with a guy and
gave him like the little peck at the end of
the night and was just like, no, that was not
for me. I did not like that. I don't want
a date.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Torra started to realize that the traditional path wasn't for her,
so instead of trying to find a husband, she started
planning for a new career.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
And decided to go to college and I studied history,
which was really fun.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
After undergrad she moved to Colorado to pursue a pH
d in history.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I was living in this really cute, tiny apartment in
the older section of Colorado Springs, so cute and just
loving my life. I felt like I had really kind
of arrived. I had a job, I was teaching, I
had friends. I was very happy.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
She loved teaching, especially American history.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
It was so much fun. Keeps us in mind. January
of twenty seventeen, and I decided it would be a
good time to teach conspiracy culture and elections in United
States political history.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
By this time, Toro was in her mid thirties. She'd
tried dating for years, but ultimately decided she didn't need romance.
Her life was complete without it.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Dating and romantic relationships were not going to be part
of my life, and I was sort of settled into
that in a very comfortable way where it didn't bother me.
It wasn't something I was seeking out. I wasn't on
dating apps, I wasn't looking for it, and I certainly
was not looking for him.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
In that class, she met a student named Erin. Like her,
he was also in his mid thirties.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
He had a service dog, this really cute English mastiff
named Osa, and she had the best underbite, and she
would be in the back of class chomping on a bone.
So I was always very aware of his presence, partially
because of her. He would come up after class and
we would pet the dog and chat a little bit.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Aarin was a veteran, a former Army medic who'd lost
his foot in an explosion in Iraq.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I knew that he had had an amputation to his leg.
He talked about it fairly frequently. He had a handy
cat parking past.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
The disability was a big part of his life, but
it didn't define him, and it certainly didn't hold him back.
He was finishing his bachelor's degree on his way to
start nursing school. After each class, he would stay behind
and chat with Tora.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
He had a very slow way of speaking. There was
no rush for anything in life. I always had the
vibe that he was one of those people that would
talk forever if you let them, and so I would
start to gather my things, and eventually he started walking
me to my car because my class was from seven
to ten pm, and it was very surface level chat
(04:46):
throughout the whole time. I was his teacher, usually about class,
usually about some interesting fact. He was like a sponge
for information.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Aaron shared that he was Native American talk tall, which
was a big part of his identity, and she noticed
that he was always immaculately put together.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
He had kind of long hair that he kept tied
back in this low knot on the back of his head,
kind of slicked back low. I hesitate to call amandun
because I know that was hurt Aaron's feelings, but that's
what it was. And he had a cowboy Western Bible
thost not like costume, but he wore a lot of
(05:27):
very nice button ups and jeans and leather boots, so
that was pretty much his uniform. He just had this
confident air about him that he knew he was smart,
he knew he was good looking, but he was also
kind and respectful and interesting and funny and talented. And
(05:47):
I was a fan very quickly, just of his entire aura.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Aaron and Tora kept talking every week after class for
the rest of the semester.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
At some point in those conversations, I brought up the
fact that I had been a nanny, and a few
months later he came to me after class one day
and said, we need to switch where my son is
going to daycare. What do you know about maybe hiring
a nanny. So we chatted a little bit about that,
and that's how I found out he had a child.
(06:22):
I didn't know that before. He wore a ring, so
I knew he was married, but I didn't know that
he had a kid who was a baby at the time,
maybe four or five months old. So that was sort
of our first foray into anything personal. Was just that
bit of advice he was seeking about finding good childcare.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
After the class ended in May, Tora got a Facebook
friend request. It was from Aaron. He was already Facebook
friends with other teachers, so she accepted the request.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Then about a week later, he sent me a message
about nine ten o'clock at night. I was already in bed,
and I thought, well, that's weird, what the heck? And
so rolled over and checked the message. It was from
him and he just said, you know something, very casual.
How are you? And I said, oh, I'm good. The
whole time thinking like, what does this guy want? Keep
in mind, I am very single, very happy to be single,
(07:12):
not looking for anything. I think he's great. Hadn't really
given any thought. The man's married with a baby, right.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
They chatted for a few minutes before Aaron revealed why
he had reached out.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
He said, do you know that I'm going through a
pretty bad divorce And I said, oh no, I had
no idea. So we chatted a little bit about it.
He said, yeah, actually she was arrested last night. We
got into an argument and she got physical, and I said,
that's terrible. I'm so sorry to hear that. And then
(07:45):
I did the nice thing which I've since learned not
to do, which is I said, is there anything I
do to help? And he said, well, I might need
some help with my son.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Toora read between the lines, Aarin was desperate. He was
about to start in an intensive two year nursing program,
and now he would likely have full custody of his
infant son. She felt for his situation, and the next day,
while Aaron was on campus, he's swung by Tora's office
with his baby in tow. He wanted to thank Tora
(08:21):
for the semester and for offering to help.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And I sat and listened to him, and I held
the baby, and oh my gosh, she was the cutest
little thing. And then as we started wrapped up that conversation,
it was the end of my day and I said, okay, well,
if you need anything, let me know. And he said, well, actually,
I have a paper I have to work on tonight.
Would you be able to come over and just hang
out with him while I do my homework for an
hour or two and then I'll make dinner.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Almost reflexively, she said yes.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
It was more this like Christian sense of duty that
I had been trained into. Someone needs help, you show up,
even if it's inconvenient or you don't want to, And
that was my first thought is I don't really want to.
I don't really want someone who's going to rely on me.
I don't really want to be involved in someone else's drama.
And I have a full time job, I'm teaching, I'm busy.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
In addition to that, she did in want errand to
mistake her kindness for something else.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I'm worried all the time that men are going to
take my presence as some sort of an invitation. And
I was so anti dating and relationships that it was
just something I never wanted to foster. So I'm thinking
about all this is I'm driving the twenty minutes to
his house, like, okay, I'm going to have to think
of boundaries. I'm going to have to be careful with
saying yes.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
When she got to his house, her anxiety dissipated. He
was just erin and that made her feel comfortable.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
He was himself the way he always was with me
after class, just very warm and friendly and kind, thoughtful.
So I stayed, had dinner, and then you know, stay
and we'll have an adult beverage is what he used
to call them. Stay and we'll have an adult beverage
after the boy goes to bed, and I didn't really
(10:11):
have anything going on, so I thought, so I stayed
and we had a beer, sat out on the back patio,
and he told me a little bit more about what
was going on, and it was pretty bad. There were
holes in the wall going up the stairs. There was
a hole in the wall in the dining room. And
we just talked and talked and talked and talked. He
(10:31):
shared a little bit of the emotions that came up
with him. Oh, I feel bad and she is my
son's mother, but also we can't keep doing this and
I need to get out of this marriage.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That night, they ended up talking until one am.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I have work at eight am, and he said, just
crash in my guest room. Here's some clean pajamas, here's
a toothbrush. Just crashed downstairs. And I did, which is
so out of character for me. I felt a little weird,
but I was very happy to be around him and
just wanted to stay there and be helpful. I love
(11:04):
to be helpful, I love to be needed. So I
stayed the night, got up in the morning, trucked off
to work, and then the next day he said, hey, yeah,
I've got a test coming up if you're pretty. Later on,
I went back over there.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Soon she was going over to Aaron's every few days
to help out with his son. It felt like the
right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I was always sleeping in the guest room. I made
it very clear to him, I don't let people touch me.
I'm not interested in a romantic relationship. I am just
here to help. I want to be your friend. I
want you to feel supported. But that's as far as
this is going to go. And I just kept telling him, like,
we're just friends. I don't let people touch me. The
fact that I give you hugs is kind of exceptional.
(11:47):
You have to respect that, and he really did.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
After Aaron would put us on to bed, the two
of them would stay up and have a drink on
the back patio and just talk about life. It became
their little ritual.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
He was a very guarded person, so a lot of
what he would talk about was things that were very
present right now. If he brought up the past, it
always felt like kind of an honor that he trusted
me with that story. And he would point that out
in a very subtle way of oh, I don't really
tell people this story, but you're different. We just never
(12:27):
ran out of things to say.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
After about two months of this, Toro went back home
to visit her family in California.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
The whole time I'm with my family, I'm bringing him
up and I'm talking with him on the phone, and
they're seeing that this person is making me kind of
giddy and smiley and those kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
She had never talked about a friend like this before.
When she got home from that trip, she went straight
to Aaron's house.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
He had cleaned the whole house, he had some of
my favorite music on Baby was in bed. He had,
you know, a bouquet of flowers and a card welcoming
me home and thanking me for being his friend. And
that was my first sort of inkling, like, hmm, I'm
gonna have to keep an eye on this because here
I was at home kind of being giddy about this person.
(13:15):
Here he is bringing me flowers. So there was this
undercurrent starting where I'm repeatedly saying him like, we're just friends,
but we're friends who are snuggling on the couch watching
a movie, not touching. He just just leaning like my
head on his shoulder or something so benign, So middle school.
(13:37):
But it was perfect for me because I wasn't ready
to do that.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
One night, while they were up late talking on the patio,
Aaron finally said what they had both been thinking.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
He said something to me like, I think you're in
love with me, and I said, I think you're in
love with me. And that was it. We were in
a relationship after that.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
That day became their anniversary.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I leaned in and it was the most fulfilling time
of my whole entire existence. I'm getting emotional just talking
about because that part is perfect in my mind.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
After writing off Romance, Tora found a man who defied
all expectations. Aarin was strikingly handsome, determined, respectful, and he
was an incredible father. Tora moved into his house and
their relationship deepened. That's when Aarin opened up about his
traumatic childhood. He said that both of his parents were abusive.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
His family was incredibly complicated, incredibly damaged, incredibly dysfunctional, and
these were the reasons that he's so guarded. These are
the reasons that he doesn't have a relationship with them,
or see them or go to visit them.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
When he was eighteen, he ran away from home and
joined the military at the time the war in Iraq
was just beginning. He worked his way up to become
a Special Forces medic, but his military career ended in tragedy.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
He got hurt in Iraq. They were on a drive
through a city of some kind and hit an id
and the humpy in front of them blew up. Theirs didn't,
but the impact knocked THEIRS off its balance. He got hurt.
His foot was amputated because of that injury, and he
was medically retired and then came home.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Aaron spent weeks in the hospital recovering from his injury,
and even in this time of crisis, his family turmoil continued.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
His dad showed up to the hospital and tried to
get medical power of attorney so that he could sell
Aaron's portion of land that he had been left by
his grandparents on the Choctaw reservation in Oklahoma. So Aaron
fought tooth and nail to get better, to get stronger,
(16:16):
and kicked his dad out of his life.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
This is one of the reasons he needed Tora's help,
because he didn't have anyone his family and his ex wife,
they weren't safe people. Tora realized he'd spent his entire
life moving from one traumatic situation to another.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
The man was covered in enormous scars. Everything about him screams,
I have had a hard life. I have had a
physically hard life. I've been injured, I've had surgeries.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Even though it had been years since Aaron was injured
in the war, it was part of his everyday life.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
He walked with a very slight limp and kept that
leg pretty stiff, but he always kept a stock on
that foot, and I just figured he wanted to protect it.
He had a couple of different doctors who were working
on maybe a better prosthetic because he ended up injuring
(17:15):
his knee on that same leg, and we thought maybe
he needed a little bit more support from that prosthetic.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
And that wasn't his only injury from the war. He'd
also injured his back, his shoulder, and his arm. They
were constantly getting reinjured, causing Aaron to go to the
doctor in pain. But despite all this, he still thought
for full custody, especially because of his childhood. Aaron was
determined to show up for his son.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
He was an incredible father. He was so attentive and
so loving and so affectionate and just lit up when
it came time to go get the boy out of
bed or read the boy his bedtime story. We called
him the Boy. I'm going to call him the Boy
because I'm not going to say his name.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
The boy was only a few months old when Tora
met him, and she was there for all of his
big firsts.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
The boy and I were just absolutely connected at the
hip from day one. When it was time for him
to start eating solids, I was the one who decided
how that should go, because I have twenty years childcare
experience and this is his first child. He and I
would just light up to be around each other.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
The boy took his first steps to Tora. The three
of them fell into a kind of domestic bliss based
on a foundation of love for each other and love
for Aaron's son. After a year together, Tora felt like
this was her family now. She didn't want to go
through the formalities of a wedding and marriage, so instead
they lived as common law spouses. They just started calling
(18:52):
each other husband and wife. With Aaron in school, Tora
took on more financial responsibility.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
He's a retired veteran, so he gets some money, but
you know, life is expensive, so we were always a
little bit stressed on money. He really liked being a
provider and making sure that the baby had everything he needed,
but that usually meant that there was no food in
the refrigerator for adults. So I started doing things like
(19:23):
pitching it on groceries, and I took over the Wi
Fi and the trash bills.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Aaron had to make a monthly home equity payments his
ex wife, and the expenses just kept coming.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Oh gosh, it was just never ending. We needed a
new roof, but we didn't have any money. We needed
to pay off five thousand dollars in credit cards in
order to get a refinance on the mortgage, so we
didn't lose the house.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Despite the stress of loving paycheck to paycheck, Tora was
filled with love for her family. Everything was precariously perfectly balanced.
That was until Aaron got sick. One day, he woke
up in excruciating pain with a very high fever. Tora
had to go to work, so Aaron went to see
their family doctor by himself, and when he got there,
(20:11):
his fever was so high he needed to go to
the er right away.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
One of the things that they thought might be going
on when he was in the er was that he
was having some kind of an infection from his amputation.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
He called Torah from the hospital and she rushed over,
but when she got there, he wasn't in a hospital
room erin was just sitting by the hospital entrance in
a wheelchair.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
He said that they ended up accusing him of being
pain med seeking, and he said that was racist, that
was because he was brown. He literally ripped the ivy
out of his arm and stormed out of the hospital
and I kind of yelled at him all the way home,
like what were you thinking? You obviously need help. Something
is going on. He had a very high fever. He
was in a lot of pain. I could see that
(20:57):
he was miserable. It's been a long, awful day sitting
in the ear are getting tests done on him and
all of them coming back negative.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
In addition to the fever, Aaron was in excruciating pain,
debilitating chronic pain from his old combat injuries. But this
time his doctors weren't able to figure out what was
going on, so Tora stepped in to take care of him.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
This whole time, I'm icing his back, I'm getting the
ice packs for his knee. He had special equipment for
icing his shoulder and driving him around to doctor's appointments
because he's in too much pain to drive. I can
see the pain on his face. I can see him
changing and drawing into this pain in his life of
being in chronic pain. He stopped going to the gym,
(21:41):
and then he stopped working out in the garage, and
then he stopped moving. Eventually, he just sat around all
day and the house stopped getting cleaned. And this is
all because he's in excruciating pain and he's miserable.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
He spent weeks on the couch, unable to function. To
keep his spirits up, he showed Torah his favorite YouTube videos.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
You mentioned have you ever heard of stolen valor? Soon
he pulled up YouTube and we spent I would say,
probably an hour watching YouTube videos of people being exposed
for stolen balor.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Stolen valor is the term for people who impersonate military
service members and veterans, and so.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
There's lots of videos on YouTube of people going up
to a person wearing a uniform, insay a mall and saying,
your bars are on the wrong side of your collar,
your patches upside down, you are not supposed to be
in this uniform, you know, shaming them for this act
of stolen valor. And this was something that he was
(22:47):
very amused by, that these people are getting caught and
shamed publicly. He loved it. He thought it was so entertaining.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It was a welcome distraction from his pain, especially considering
the price he was paying for his military service. She
understood why he liked the stolen valor videos so much.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So as he withdraws into this chronic pain, I'm pushing
harder and harder to make sure that bills are paid,
to make sure that the house is taking care, to
make sure the baby has everything he needs, to make
sure the baby got to go to the park today
and play outside. I just started picking up more and
more of the slack as he withdrew into being miserable.
It was awful to watch the person that you're so
(23:31):
in love with falling apart in front of me.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Tora's new life with Aaron was thrown off balance when
his chronic pain took a sharp turn for the worst.
Aaron eventually started pain management therapy, and Tora felt helpless.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Making oxy cotone. I believe perkiste anyway, he was taking
one of those, and he was supposed to take like
one a day, and he was taking like two or
three because he was in so much pain.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
He said he knew what he was doing. He was
in nursing school and had years of training as an
army medic. One night, before he came to bed.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
He went took a shower and he came back into
the room and he had a patch on his shoulder.
I said, what's that and he said, oh, it's final.
It's great. I'm not in any pain. It's amazing. And
I said, but you took your beds today. He said yeah,
And I said, isn't that how people overdose? And he
kind of poo pooed me, like, I know what I'm doing.
(24:39):
I'm not an idiot. It's fine, I'm going to bed.
Good night. I've had a bad day. We're not going
to have a fight about this. I was so uncomfortable
and I just sat there staring at his back, wanting
to rip them off, but trusting him at the same time.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
In the morning, Aaron was unresponsive.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
So I grabbed my phone and I called nine to
one one hysterical, said, my husband's not breathing. He was
asleep and he's not waking up.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
The nine one one operator instructed her to begin chest
compressions until the paramedics arrived.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
And the whole time I'm doing chess compersions, I'm like,
he's cold, he's gone. This man is not alive. The
whole time, in the background, the boy is just scurreaming
my name.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
The paramedics arrived and confirmed what she already knew. There
was no bringing Aaron back. She called friends to come
over and together they waited for the coroner. Not knowing
what else to do, she fixated on the boy. He
was three. Tora tried to distract him, play with him,
(26:01):
but he wanted to know what was going on.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
He loved as the little Prince, and we started saying,
you know, Daddy went to hang out in the stars
with the little Prince in the fox.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Before the coroner came, Torah and their friends took turns
saying goodbye.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
We all went up and sat with Aaron, and I
sat down and I told him I will miss you
every day for the rest of my life. And then
he was gone.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
But his death would reveal an avalanche of discoveries. It
began on that very day, but his ex wife showed
up at the front door. The police had notified her
of Aaron's death, and his ex wife called his family,
his estranged family.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
About ten o'clock and knock on my door, and the
boy's mom showed up and insted on sitting down and
talking to me. I don't know this person at all,
other than the reputation that I have been very carefully
spoonfed for three years, which is that she is awful
and a horrible person. And she came in like a
(27:09):
blast of cold air, sat down in my living room
and said, if you want to be in my son's life,
there's some things you need to know. First of all,
Aaron's not chok taw Erin's black. And I kind of
laughed at her. I'm like, okay, lady, like really, we're
going to do this right now.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Given the circumstances, this comment seemed absurd and irrelevant, but
his ex wife insisted that there were truths about Aaron
that Tora needed to know before she could share more.
Aaron's biological family arrived. They were surprised to meet Tora.
They didn't know she existed.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
It was Aaron's mom and Ern's brother who was very
much a black man. They came in, they sat down
in my living room, and I told them about me
and my life with Aaron and how long we've been together.
And she said he wasn't a good person, and I thought, well,
that's a really weird thing to say to agree.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Being widow, Toura had seen pictures of Aaron's mother, father,
and brother. But these people in her house they weren't
the same ones she'd seen photos of. Nothing made sense,
from Aaron's sudden death to the arrival of this family
she didn't recognize. But they were his family, and now
(28:26):
they wanted the house back right away.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I gave it a lot of thought, and I called
my family on a zoom call and I still cay,
I'm going to make eat the house. I don't own it,
name's not on it. I don't have any right to it.
And my friend, the lawyer, said, take what's yours, what
you bought together, and nothing else.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Toura packed her car with a few boxes and prepared
to leave. She'd also be leaving the boys she'd raise
from infancy to nearly age four, but she knew she
wasn't part of his biological family. It was clear that
with Aaron gone, Tora just didn't have a place in
the boy's life.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
And I reached down and I picked him up, and
I held him really close, and I said, never forget.
I love you and I'm your ama, and that would
never changed. And she fell out of the road sway.
I never saw him against me.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Before walking out of the house for the last time,
she decided to take Aaron's laptop with her. Her brother
came to meet her, and together they drove back to
their parents' house in California.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I fell apart. I fell apart. I wasn't getting out
of bed, I wasn't taking care of myself, I wasn't eating.
I was a disaster.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
At first, she fixated on his death, how and why
it happened. She got a copy of his autopsy report.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
When I got his autopsy, it was very much an overdose.
He had on double the dose and he had taken
double the dose of oxycodone at the same time to
go to bed.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
And there was something else on his autopsy that stood out.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
On his autopsy, had said he had a brace on
his leg, said a brace on his left leg. And
I thought, well, that's a really weird way to stay prosthetic,
and that was the last I thought of it.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
The questions that came up right after his death about
his family, his race, she just didn't have the capacity
to think about all of that at the time.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
I stayed very much in grieving widow mode for two months,
and it wasn't until after the second month that I
opened my eyes finally. So I just let a lot
of this stuff slide and thought like, either I'll deal
with it later, or it's not true, or it's a misunderstanding.
And then after two months, I opened his computer and
every thing changed instantly. So I opened the computer, got
(31:05):
right in on the first try. I knew the password,
and I opened his pictures and I started looking through
and there were some screenshots in there that sent me
to his text messages. All of his text messages are
on his computer, and immediately, within twenty seconds, I realized
that he was in a relationship with somebody long distance.
(31:29):
I spent an hour coming through their text messages, which
were graphic and filthy, and the worst part of all
of it, there were two things that were just devastating.
The first was that the things he said to her
while they were having this like fantasy relationship is the
(31:52):
same stuff he would say to me when we were intimate.
Verbade them and he would tell her, well, I have time,
I won't have the boy on these dates because I
was going to be gone for a conference on those dates.
So that was a lot to realize, like he was
manipulating her and mean to keep us both on the
(32:14):
hook back and forth. But then the worst thing I
found in everything I found was him saying, nobody has
ever loved me, nobody except for you. And that is
the biggest lie he ever told, And just the most infuriating, devastating,
(32:38):
cruel thing he could have said was that nobody had
ever loved him. And here I had just spent eight
weeks bottomed out, devastated, flat lined because this man had
died and I had given him everything.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
She kept looking through his text and found more women.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
He was texting four other girls, a couple from tender,
couple from school. One of my favorites was a girl
he had been in school with who had been to
our house and knew me, and they were talking about
how she could move in and her teenager could live
in the basement bedroom to three bedroom house, and his
son lives in one of those bedrooms, so presumably I'm
(33:24):
not living there as she's moving in. So that was like,
what the heck is he just going to kick me out?
Like this is resent.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Aaron was talking to these women up until the week
he died, making plans with them and inviting them over.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
And he was saying, well, you know, I don't ever
have anything going on Tuesday nights, so you could come
over for dinner, we could watch a movie, but then
I have to go to bed around ten because I
was teaching. I was at class seven to ten on Tuesdays,
so he knew I would stay at work and go
to So that was like, I guess, kind of opening
(34:02):
that box of like, okay, so he's been doing stuff
behind my back. I don't know what. I still don't.
I don't need to, it doesn't matter. He offered it.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
In the two months since Aaron died, these women had
been trying to get in touch with him. So Tora
messaged them back to let them know he was gone.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
The girlfriend messaged me back, what, No, this isn't real.
What's going on? Who are you really? Did you steal
his phone? Just total disbelief, which is fair, It is
completely fair and I said, yeah, no, real, here's the
pictures of us. We've been together for this amount of time,
three years, and she said, we've been together for longer
(34:42):
than that. They've been together when he was married to
he's an other wife.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Tora kept digging through his laptop and that's when she
saw the photo that changed everything.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
His computer were all these pictures of his honeymoon, including
his two fully attacked feet on the beach, much much
after he was supposedly injured, and just stared at his feet, like,
these are his feet. I recognized one of them. I
(35:17):
seeing one of them without a sock.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
On the entire time they were together, Aaron kept a
sock and a brace on his prosthetic foot. She had
never actually seen his amputation site.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
He didn't ever like pop off a prosthetic or anything
like that in front of me. And he needed to
shower downstairs because it was really hard for him to
step into the shower upstairs and it was a tub
shower combo, so he basically had his own bathroom in
the downstairs part of the house. So I never saw
(35:54):
him fully unclothed because he kept a sock on it
when we were sleeping, So I never questioned it. It
was his private business, that's his medical history, and there
was nothing for me to say, well, that seems off.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
She saw the monthly checks coming in from the military,
she heard the hard prosthetic foot hitting the ground when
he walked. Plus he was self conscious about his injury.
She never pressed him further.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Why would I question that? Who would that make me?
Speaker 2 (36:28):
But after she saw the photo of Aaron's two feet
in the sand on his honeymoon, Tora called their family doctor,
the doctor who'd done physical exams on her and Aaron
in the past year.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I said, did you ever look at his prosthetic or
looked at his amputation site? And she said, o'h make
sure I did. Well, maybe not actually let me think, hey,
maybe I didn't. And I just at there flabbergasted. And
at that point that was what was finally like, Yeah,
(37:06):
this man did not have an amputated foot. I don't
know what he was wearing. I don't know why he
was wearing it, but it wasn't a prosthetic foot.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
This shocking revelation caused her to question the whole story
she'd been told about his military career.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Found his D two fourteen, which is like his exit
paperwork from the military, and it didn't add up with
what he told me on.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
His discharge papers. It said he did join the military
at eighteen, and he did go to combat once, not
four times like he'd said. He wasn't a Special Forces
medic like he'd claimed. She doesn't know why he left
the Army, but it wasn't because of an injury. Her
entire understanding of Aaron changed.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And I went out into the kitchen and I poured
myself I am not joking it out tequila down to
that my dad lives in the country. Thinking this, walked
out way out into the hills and just screamed and
screamed and screamed and till I lost my voice. The
(38:13):
person I had just spent three years loving and caring
for and two months devastated over his loss didn't exist.
And I came to this point that day where I said,
at the end of the day, he took everything from me,
(38:37):
and when there was nothing left to take, he took
himself from me. The person I had loved and been
in a relationship with disappeared, and with him went three
years of my life into a black hole.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Who was Aaron? And what was his real life story.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
I was googling everything. I'm a historian. I can research
like nobody's business. So I'm just googling everything I can
think of to try to find out who this person is.
I'm looking on Facebook, I'm looking on Instagram, social media.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
She started reaching out to people who were connected to Aaron.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
You know, now, I'm asking questions, right, what about these people?
It's not real. Grandparents were not those people. Those people
didn't exist at all. I mean, it was an entirely
crafted life. His family is fake, his military experience was
not his, and I don't know how he kept it
(39:34):
all straight.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
She found out that the family who showed up at
Aaron's house, those people she didn't recognize. They were his
biological family, and they were very different from what Aaron described.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
So I didn't know about his real mom, even though
she's a real person who lives in a real place.
I knew about some other version of someone that he
could completely control that narrative. And I'm never going to
look her up and say, is this the truth? I
was the per person for him because I chose to
trust him, and he practiced different things. He tried out
different things to test me to see if I would
(40:09):
trust him, and I did. I always did. He very
carefully curated my life.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
When she started looking back on it, she realized that
Aaron had slowly isolated her from anyone who'd known him
for more than four years, anyone who would contradict the
narrative he was telling her.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
When I finally learned everything and could sort of lay
out a life timeline for him, there is about a
three to five year capacity on the stories he was
telling people. And then he would move on in some way.
He would leave town, he would start a new school program,
something like that. He'd get married. So he was coming
(40:50):
to the end of that, and his stories were getting
a little thin.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
The amputation, the chronic pain from combat wounds, even his
native American ancestry, it was all a lie. The one
thing that was real is that he was sick. He
had an opioid addiction. She sees that clearly now, and
she sees that as a part of a larger pattern
of behavior.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
He's an addict, so he's always looking for kind of
that next better hit of whatever it was. And sometimes
it was a partner, and sometimes it was becoming a parent,
and sometimes it was a new degree in school. But
you know, he's tying things together, trying to make himself
a life that he would have been happy with. So
he just kept shifting it into this story that he
(41:38):
liked a little better, and a little better, a little better,
and it still didn't satisfy him. He still needed narcotics.
I feel very strongly that he wanted to stay in
our life but wasn't sure how to do that. Do
(42:00):
I think that he put the patches on and hoped
he would fall asleep and never wake up. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
You can probably tell that Tour has been through years
of therapy to understand and heal from what happened to her.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
My doctor had me talk to the therapist in her office,
and I owe everything to his methods. He gave me terminology,
and that terminology completely changed how I was going through this.
(42:35):
He was the first person to say, you have PTSD,
and I thought, no, no, No. PTSD is for soldiers, which
is a really common thought that PTSD is for people
who've been to war. Through war. He was really good
about this is what I think might be going on.
Read it, let's talk about it next time. He was
(42:57):
providing me information to heal myself.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
It's been four years since Aaron died, and she discovered
that the man she was building a life with was
a fraud.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
I'll still be driving down the road and have a
random memory and go, oh, yeah, that's probably what happened.
So I'm still less and less and less and less,
putting things together and making the pieces fit. But I'll
never know everything, and I'll never have closure, and I
think that's probably the most important thing. It's like, closure
(43:29):
isn't necessary for you to move on and heal. It's
really not help, but it's not necessary.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Instead, she's tried to find understanding for the real person
Aaron was. With him gone, She's been able to access
a kind of empathy, not to excuse his behavior, but
to make peace with it.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
He was broken. He was broken by a world that
breaks people and spits them out. I think he grew
up feeling inadequate. He grew up feeling unloved, and he
wanted to write himself a better story than that. And
instead of becoming someone who would be loved, he became
someone who he thought was lovable and adjusted it for
(44:13):
each person as he met them.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Tora moved back to Colorado, where she still teaches history,
but she says that this time around, she's a different person.
She's forever changed by the love she had with Aaron
and the pain he put her through. We end every
episode with the same question, why did you want to
(44:38):
tell your story?
Speaker 1 (44:41):
This is an incredible story that sounds like it's made up,
that sounds like a soap opera, sounds like a drama movie,
but it's so real and it's not the only one,
and there's so many stories like this. The more we
talk about it, the more out in the open we
bring these people who exist in the shadows and want
to operate from the shadows. We have to understand them,
(45:07):
we have to assign terminology to the disorders that caused
them to act in these ways, and we have to
support people who've been through it. And my mission through
all of this became sort of explaining to more and
more people that you can heal, you will heal. What
(45:27):
you're experiencing is valid. Something that I say so often
to this day is my story was true and my
experiences were valid. My story was true, even if his wasn't.
Mine was.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
On the next episode of Betrayal, I.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Went out into the garage area the car was gone,
like where did he go?
Speaker 2 (45:59):
I'd 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
(46:19):
reviews go a long way. A big thank you to
all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts,
a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
The show 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
(46:43):
are Kristin Mercury and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is
Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and mixing by
Matt Delvecchio, additional editing support from Nico Aruka. Betrayal's theme
composed by Oliver Bains. Music library by mob Music and
for more podcasts from iHeart Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(47:06):
or wherever you get your podcasts.