April 6, 2025 • 56 mins
This week Latino USA shares episode 1 of the podcast Don't Cross Kat.
Kat Torres shows an Instagram-perfect life to her large following. She’s a Brazilian supermodel turned life coach who seems harmless but is hiding a secret. And when one of her followers goes missing in the U.S., one woman sets out to bring back her best friend. Paty won’t stop until she gets her friend out from under Kat’s spell. Listen to this special episode from a new series from Futuro Studios and Wondery and hear from the creator of “Don’t Cross Kat.”
You can listen to more episodes of Don't Cross Kat here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ola Latino USA listener, it's Mariao Hsa today the story
of Brazilian Kat Torres or if you're Brazilian Kacrres.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I never met a person like that before, just the
assertiveness and almost like being able to manifest immediately the
future that she wanted for herself.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Kat Dorris has a seemingly perfect life. She's gorgeous and
I'm talking about walks into a room and you cannot
stop looking at her kind of striking beauty. And she's
also really big on social media, with hundreds of thousands
of people following her every move. She's also well a
(00:49):
little bit out there. She posts about rituals that she
calls alien baths. But as time passes and her following grows,
she gets darker and darker and becomes more dangerous. So
one woman sets out to free her best friend from
Cat's tangled web and.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Just wanted to know if she was alive, if everything
was okay.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
This is a story of influence of control, about a
false sense of connection with people that we just follow online,
but at its core, it's really a story about friendship.
Futuro Studios, our podcast division, has been working on this
story and I have to tell you, dear listener, I
(01:35):
love it and I know you're gonna love it too.
The series is called Don't Cross Cat. It's based on
a mega hit Brazilian podcast that journalist Shiko Feliti brought
to life. So now we're gonna play episode one of
the series and then stay with us because I sit
down with Shiko to hear more about all of this
(01:57):
and about his journey creating this block buster podcast. Don't
Crosscat is a co production of Wondering and our own
Futuro Studios. Here's episode one. The witches who worked for you?
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Excuse me, how are you doing doing well?
Speaker 5 (02:16):
We're journalists from Brazil and we're writing a story about
their former name.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (02:21):
Yeah, the biggest news that's ever had this neighborhood, probably
the only one that will.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
I'm not the first Brazilian to set foot in Leander, Texas,
and the Brazilian women who came and lived here before
me made quite the impression on their neighbors. Wayne Murray
lived across the street from them.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
They said that you might know something. You might have
spoken to them.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
Wayne says that in Leander people do two things, wave
to each other and then mind their business, at least
Wayne did. Then in twenty twenty two, that's when these
new neighbors moved in right us the street.
Speaker 7 (03:01):
So they were not terribly friendly.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
We have this traffic servile right so I'd come in,
I'd wave to them. They never wave back.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
And there was something else about his new neighbors.
Speaker 7 (03:12):
Very pretty young women.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
They looked like supermodels.
Speaker 7 (03:16):
Very attractive, blonde and a pretty attractive brunette.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Tall, thin, gorgeous, right out of the latest Victoria's Secret
fashion show. I mean, I'm super gay, and even I
can see it. And it wasn't just having a house
full of gorgeous Brazilian women in a nondescript American suburb
that was unusual. One day, he just stopped seeing them.
(03:41):
The house was empty, the women were gone. Eventually a
rental company came to clear the house. They put out
the girl stuff in the front yard for anyone to take,
which was interesting.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
We got quite a bit of this stuff. We just
took them.
Speaker 7 (04:00):
Actually, look later, I did keep the voodoo dolls.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Voodoo dolls, doo dolls. I got three voodoo dolls. May
I just take a look at that? Sure, wel come
on in.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
One of the women was a social media influencer famous
in Brazil with more than a million followers. I was
there because, well, I'm kind of an influencer myself, but
that was basically an accident. I'm a journalist first, and
I've made a name for myself investigating stories in Brazil
where things aren't quite what they seem. And that's what
(04:37):
brought me to Texas because the woman who lived there
cat tourists seemed like she had a picture perfect life online.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Thank you man.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Sorry, I'm Chico, by the way, Fran Yeah, okay, that's me.
Waynne told me.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
The more he looked through the stuff the women left behind,
the more questions he had about them.
Speaker 7 (04:58):
They had an altar in their yard, not a Christian altar,
because she had I can never remember the name of
the pronounced the name of the drug, Hisca. That's it,
that Brazilian drug.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
They had packages of dried orbs and it has what
they're good for, good for romance, good for this, good
for that. Three of them were also good for exorcisms.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
And that wasn't all one thing I found. I still
have it.
Speaker 7 (05:28):
It's a leather color and like a leather plate in
these chains and there's a handle on it. When I
finally buckled it up.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
It's for a dog.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
That's why I was mental as was it the human hardness.
Speaker 7 (05:43):
Or it was a dog hard.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Wayne started to wonder if he had been getting a
little carried away, But soon he would see reports of
what was really going on in that house and he
would realize that maybe he was right to have been
because there was something troubling going on, something dark, dangerous,
even water.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Place for Hi.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
I'm calling because I would like to know if you
guys did a well nurse check on that you're missing
Brazilian girls.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
Is an obstare going to go over there and talk
to them because they really need you?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Could?
Speaker 5 (06:19):
I think with the person that's in charge of the
investigation that's going on for those.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Three girls that are from Leander.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
I'm helping a family that has a grow missing and
they didn't tax.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
It's a little bit scary, to be honest.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
From wondering, I'm Chiico Feliti and this is don't cross cat.
Like most of you and anyone else, I post on
Instagram quite often. I post pictures of the usual stuff,
(07:13):
my dog Pashocha, my travels, and my overpriced outfits. Actually,
my producer pointed out that in quite a few posts,
I don't seem to have my shirt on, but hey,
cut me some slack.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I'm Brazilian.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
I used Insta to post about my podcasts and my
books too. I've been a journalist for twenty years now.
I've reported all across Brazil, telling stories of armed conflict, homelessness,
indigenous tribes.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
You name it.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
And somewhere along the line, people started following me. I
remember when I reached one hundred thousand followers on Instagram
and an American company offered me ten grand.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
To pose with a bag of chips.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
That was the exact same amount I got for a
book that took me a year time, right, a whole year.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
I'm not proud of it.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
It's something I only tell my shrink, But nowadays I
make a living from social media as much as being
a journalist. This was not my plan. I have to emphasize,
I promise. I became an influencer by chance. So when
I came across the story, I knew I had to
know more. Because it's all about influence, the lens people
(08:25):
will go to have it and what they will do
to keep it. It all begins far from Brazil and
far from Texas. In Raimie, Vancouver, in the fall of
twenty sixteen, Patty Bertoldo was a thirty two year old
from Brazil. She had a wide smile and long, light
(08:48):
brown hair when she walked into Le Crocodile, an upscale
French restaurant in the city center.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
It was an easy job for me because I could
speak French. They are looking for someone that speaks French.
I didn't have to speak a lot to English.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
It was Patty Bertodo's first day on the job. She
looked around her for someone to talk to as the
restaurant staff bustled around her. She was not feeling great
about being there. She had just moved to Canada from
friends and needed money.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I didn't like that too much because in France I
had my life, my job and communication and marketing. I
was here not doing what I love to do.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
As she continued to walk through the restaurant, Patty came
across a young woman who said hi to her right away.
Speaker 8 (09:35):
And she was beautiful.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
She had this long blonde, beautiful her with big eyes,
with this beautiful smile and that energy that you can
see when a girl She's strong, but feminine and funny.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Her name was Decirie.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
She wanted to welcome me to the restaurant, and she
said that she was very so I was speaking Portuguese
with a friend for the first time and so long.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
Patty followed this around the restaurant as she briefed her
on her new coworkers.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
This one's really nice.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
That one's not trustworthy, this one's just okay, like most
of them, Patty was taking note.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Was like having a friend and a place that everything
was new for me.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
It felt so comforting to talk to someone from Brazil,
someone who knew that in Brazil and Portuguese we don't
have an equivalent for personal space, someone who knew that
we don't just shake hands when we get someone, of
course not we kiss twice, sometimes three times. After that
first shift at the restaurant, Patty started seeing Desirael outside
(10:51):
of work, at music festivals, the beach picnics, and soon
they started texting each other daily.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
She had a lot of friend and she was really
hard working girl. She loved life.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
That Aria was in a wonderful marriage with a man
from Germany. She and Patty became close. They talked for hours,
sharing their life stories. Desirat told Patty she had some struggles.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
She had leukemia when she was pretty young, like a kid,
and she wanted.
Speaker 8 (11:22):
To share with people how precious life is.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
One day, on their way to yoga, Desirat told Patty
about a famous Brazilian wellness influencer she just found online.
Speaker 8 (11:39):
Do you know that? A girl and Instagram?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
She's so beautiful and she has this amazing life and
she came from a real part family in Brazil and
she's also helping people.
Speaker 5 (11:54):
Her name was Cat Tourists. She had hundreds of thousand
of followers on social media. She posted inspirational quotes about
manifesting and nourishing your body and your spirit.
Speaker 8 (12:08):
And nice but also used to tell me.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
She posted hundreds of videos like this one looking beautiful
in enough to show their summertop intellage.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
My uncle daa as Haspital Sounds was a famous song.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Blessing the day with her energy. And here's the thing
about Brazilians. We love a good life coach.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
It's up there with how much we love supermodels and
soccer stars because we value happiness a balanced life. And
there are plenty of life coaches in Brazil who have
found a lot of success by telling other people how
to live their lives for a fee. Of course, Kat
(12:57):
seems successful, healthy and healthy. She posted about her designer bags,
fancy hotels, even exotic looking animals. She had a huge
old vinyl dog that looked like a wolf and the
really big cat that looked like a leopard. Dassia's eyes
lit up as she scrolled through cats posts. She told
(13:20):
Patty this life coach had helped her manifest all the
good things into her life, and the way she did
that was through a special gift.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
If I thought it was a famous.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Cat had ability she could hear the voice.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
She can communicate with the universe because she has this
light that can speak to her and she can help you.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
That phrase that cat talks to the light stuck out
to Patty.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And then I was, okay, she talks to the light
and a pretty much open mind person. But I was like, okay,
if someone say to me you talk to the light,
I will say, oh, you should just see a doctor first.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
But Desiree wasn't nothing.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
And it was now she's amazing And she also has
a website that you can have music to clean your
soul and everything.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
Desiree talked about how pretty Cat was, how insightful she was,
how she could read people's energies, how she could communicate
directly with the universe to find answers to people's questions.
And around that time, Patty did have a lot on
her mind.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I was having this breakup with ex boyfriend, like made
me a little bit more fragile.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
When Desier heard about Patty's breakup, she insisted Patty tried
booking an appointment with Cat.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
She can help you go through that because she can
see his energy, if he's meant to be with you
and everything.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
What did she have to lose?
Speaker 8 (15:09):
So I was okay, why not?
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Coming up on this special episode of Latino USA. More
from Futuro and Wondering Studios new series Don't Cross Cat.
Stay with us. Hey, we're back and today, dear listener,
(15:35):
we're bringing you something really special. It's a preview of
our new series from Futuro Studios in partnership with Wondery.
It's called Don't Cross Cat Now. It's the story of
Cat Torres or Katci does if you speak Brazilian Portuguese.
She is a Brazilian supermodel turned social media influencers slash
(15:58):
life coach who then takes a dark turn and in
telling you her story, we bring you actually a story
of two young women whose friendship was tested by the
power that Kat had over one of them. Before the break, Patty,
the skeptical friend, had actually agreed to pay for a
(16:19):
consultation with Kat, because I mean, what did she have
to lose? Right, all right, We're going to get back
to episode one of Don't Cross Cat, and here's the
host and creator of the series, Shiko Feliti.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Patty went home and pulled up Kat's website. She was
curious but skeptical. She scrolled through the supermodel photos and
got the payment plans.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So I booke an appointment with Kat that was so expensive,
by the way, I was a most of more than
two hundred American dollars for one hour.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
But money wasn't everything.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I wanted to believe that someone could help me to
feel batter.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
On the day of the appointment, Patty rushed home to
get set up for the video call.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
She was a little nervous.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
I was so curious of what is she going to
say about my energy? I have a good energy. Is
she going to say something that is new about myself
that I don't know.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Patty was hoping to actually get some answers. Was she
meant to be in Canada, had her breakup in the
right decision, would she ever find happiness? So she sat
down in front of her computer, ready for this beautiful
woman with psychic abilities to tell her the answers.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
But then she wasn't there.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
She was late. I was going nut.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
I was texting and trying to call in no information.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
Then twenty minutes later, Kat finally appeared.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Then she said, I'm sorry, I had an appointment before,
so we started not a good food, I would say,
because I was a little bit upset.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
So okay, she was late, Petty thought, but Decirier had
spoken so highly of Kat that this was about to
be good, real good, right.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
She was just asking a few questions, and then she
started asking about my work up, but just really generic.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Questions, nothing special.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So far was pretty much like talking to a friend
that was not my friend.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Then Kat started talking about her guiding light.
Speaker 8 (18:37):
The light, saying that he's not a good person for you.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Patty had to hold back from rolling her eyes in
front of Cat.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
And paying two hundred bucks for that. So at this
point I was okay, let's finish with this.
Speaker 5 (18:51):
She didn't get why Deciriel was so taken with Kat,
so she decided she would gently bring it up with Desiree.
Patty wasn't thinking about how Kat would feel about all
of this. After all, Kat was just a life coach
on social media. She couldn't cause any harm right. Not
(19:23):
long after the consultation with Kat, Patty met up with
Decirae at the gym. She had a plan for how
to start a conversation with her. She was going to
keep it simple.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I didn't want to be rude to her and say
that that person that she was putting in so much
phle was a scam.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Patty waited for the right moment.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I did just say that. Oh I didn't like it.
I don't think it was helpful for me. I remember
that I say, you should just be careful.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Patty paused, waiting for Decire's reaction, but then she.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Tried to convince me to have a second man.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Desiree just didn't want to hear what Patty was telling
her about Kat. Kat's relationship with her followers seemed to
be superficial, at least from what I could see publicly,
Her fans would write comments complimenting her on her appearance
and advice. Kat's response to them would be just emojis,
(20:24):
or she would try to sell herself, saying things like, hey,
book a one on one with me. Essentially, Kat was hot, blonde,
and appeared American.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
That was the big appeal. Anyway, After the day at.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
The gym, Desiree only got more obsessed with Kat.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
It seemed Kat was all she talked about now.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
She talked about how Kat told her what to eat,
what to wear, and even what to do with her husband. Now,
Desiree was saying that she wanted her husband to be
more spiritual, to join her in working with meditation, energy
and yoga. But Patty knew the spiritual stuff wasn't his thing.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
He was more like playing video games and finance the spike.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
She wasn't too worried though he was crazy.
Speaker 8 (21:15):
In love with her.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
You could see that she was in love with him.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
They've been happily married for years. This was just normal
couple stuff, and then came the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
You were having to adapt your lives to cope with
this pandemic.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
And continue to base our response.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
A public health emergency or a state of emergency.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
As COVID brought the world to a standstill, Desire's life
changed completely. Her husband lost his job, which meant that
they would have to move back to Germany. Desire promised
to stay in touch with Patty as much as possible,
but as she began her new life in Europe, Patty
noticed that Desiray started to see more and more of Cat.
Patty says, Desiree was booking two, sometimes three consultations with
(21:59):
Kat every week, and Decier's husband noticed.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It was hard because he didn't want this here to
spend too much money. She was spending her whole money
and consultations, and.
Speaker 5 (22:12):
Of course Desiri told her life coach all about her
husband's concerns. Patty could see how this was going to
go for Desire's marriage.
Speaker 8 (22:20):
So they started fighting because of that for sure.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
It was mid twenty twenty one, about a year since
Desirier had moved away to Germany, and Patty's phone rang.
Speaker 8 (22:39):
She called me and she was crying.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
And she said, Kach told me that he was doing
black magic. He's doing black magic. It's why I can't
leave him. It's because he's far saying me to be
with him.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Leaved her husband was using supernatural forces to keep her
with him, an idea that Kat had put in her head.
Patty told Desierer that it all sounded crazy to her,
that she didn't think her husband even knew what black
magic was, but.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
That's very believed Cat.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
A couple of months later, it was all over between
Decirie and her husband.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
She deleted everything, his phone number, his family, everything. She
was like, I don't want to talk to him anymore,
and she moved to another place. Was crazy.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
Patty tried to support this Syria as much as she
could across the time zones. She texted her all the time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
It's so hard, right, she's a young age, she's twenty three,
so whenever, just a young girl making decisions and you
don't have too much power to decide for her.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
Not long after the divorce, Desirit told Patty that she
had started dating again, but to Patty, it didn't seem
like Desire's heart was in it. After one of her
first dates, Desirit called Patty in tears. She told her
she was thirty minutes late to her date and the
guy got upset and said a bunch of mean things.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
To her, and then she was like, I was trying
to explain to him that I got lost, then I
took the wrong bus and everything.
Speaker 8 (24:34):
He didn't want to listen to me.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
Patty told her to ditch the guy, it wasn't worth
her time. But when Deseret told Cat about it, she
had a very different answer. Catt told Decret that guys
like him have a strong energy, so they need women
with an energy that's a little more soft, and Desires
seemed to agree.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
So was there that I could see for the first
time that something was pretty wrong with her, that she
was giving way too much power to count in her life,
to decide for her everything. But every time that I
tried to say something, she would get so mad that
(25:17):
to me she would say, you know how much she
is important to me?
Speaker 8 (25:21):
When she would not listen.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
Patty's concerns kept growing. She decided to look at what
Kat was posting on social media, and what she found.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Was disturbing.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
When Patty looked online, she saw that Kat's social media
had changed. She wasn't the same gentle life coach that
Patty had met a few years before, when her online
presence gave more of a yoga than vibe and she
posted videos of inspirational meditations, breathing exercises, and positive affirmation.
(26:09):
Now she had become intense, angry. Even she posted long
videos rambling about paranoid conspiracy theories on COVID. She told
her followers not to self isolate if they got infected,
if they just believed hard enough, they would magically get cured.
And she had found herself a large audience, more than
(26:32):
a million followers, as well as her select group of
paying clients like Tessira. But she was getting noticed by
other people too. An influential science blogger spoke out on.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
YouTube, poor Quella Comesso.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
She warned everyone not to follow people like Kat on
Instagram and.
Speaker 8 (26:52):
One layer to pravosis sav Instagra.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
All the criticism didn't sit well with cat.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Kiss Denis.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
Comme athalogy Lynha Cat said psychologists were a bunch of
quote shits.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
She said that people were wanting to lynch her, but
she wasn't going to stop talking.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
She was saying so much stuff in her Instagram, and
every time that someone would say something that would go
against what she was saying, she would be so aggressive
and say bad words and say really mean stuff to
peoples public avenge, she would say.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
Then one day Just when Patty thought she had seen
it on, a new, more bizarre video popped up on
Cat's Instagram profile.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Tell me to come down and need to come down.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Cats said she had been kidnapped by Russians.
Speaker 8 (28:02):
I need you right now.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I'm going to die.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
They're going to kill me. She filmed herself against a
white wall. No details provided. It was honestly all very cryptic,
like how did she even have her cell phone with
her anyway? She said she needed her followers to send
money to help pay for answer.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
I don't get angry, Amy, I need help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help,
help helcome.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
A few days later, Kat posted another message she was.
Speaker 8 (28:35):
On the SPA.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh I'm okay. Thank you for everybody that helped me.
And she was on the SPA probably with the money
that people sent to her.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
Right.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
But Kat wasn't relaxed for long because there was one
of her followers who hadn't sent her any ransom money, Desiri,
so my whole gun. Kat went live on Instagram talking
to her million strong following.
Speaker 8 (29:02):
She got crazy.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
My best seal, Desira is so fucking arrogant, Kat said,
She's an idiot.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
I tell you a mora.
Speaker 8 (29:14):
She's saying to her followers.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Desiree was not grateful for everything that she did for her,
and she blocked Desire.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Soon after, Patty got a frantic voice message from Desirie.
She couldn't believe Kat would do that after everything she
had done to show her loyalty. This is not the
person I knew, Desire said on the voice note. I'm
not going to waste my time. Patty saw her chance.
This was the moment she'd be waiting for, so she
(29:47):
sent her a message.
Speaker 8 (29:48):
Back that girl, she's just a crazy girl.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
She needs megical help, not people sending money, so she
needs someone to.
Speaker 8 (29:58):
Go to the hospital with her.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
In the zero was yeah, she's crazy.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
Finally, this was the fork in the road, the point
when Desiree would see Kat for the scammer Patty saw.
A week later, Patty noticed a new post on Kat's Instagram.
Kat said she was making some changes around her house
in Texas. She was expanding her business and from now on,
(30:27):
Kat wouldn't be the only one providing the coaching services.
She had some assistants living with her. The post read
meet the Witches who work for you, and there in
the photo was a familiar face.
Speaker 8 (30:43):
And this area wasn't the team.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
Patty realized the truth. Her best friend hadn't left Cat
at all. Instead, Desiree had gone all in on what
Kat had to offer.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
So I Textedviseirel and I was like, what is going on?
What she's talking about? Are you going to work with
that crazy girl? And I used you word crazy.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
Four or five days went by and nothing. Patty texted again.
This time Testi red did.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Reply stop saying mean stuff about Cat. You know how
much he is important to my life and if you
can't accept that, I prefer not to talk to you anymore.
Was really sad for me to hear that from her,
and I remember that I told her, how can you
say that I'm your friend for years now and I'm
(31:37):
always here for you, I'm always listening to you. You
know me, you come to my place, you was lept
in my bed and so I know you.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
How can you.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
Put an Instagram influencer ahead of the friendship we have?
Patty wrote, someone you're paying to give you attention. After that,
Testierate disappeared.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
She was not on what'sapp anymore. I texted her and
she was not engating the text, so I went to
an Instagram and she has no Instagram anymore and Facebook
no Facebook anymore. Okay, that's is really weird. So I
brought her an emails everything.
Speaker 8 (32:25):
It's okay.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
If you don't want to talk to me anymore, it's okay.
Just let me know if you're okay. Weeks went by
and still no reply, so I started being really worried
about her.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
Patty started looking for other people who may have been
in touch with this siery.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
I can maybe a friend that know her from somewhere,
so I texted people e Vancouver that knew her.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
She even called Desire's former school in Brazil, hoping to
find a contact for her parents.
Speaker 8 (32:58):
So no one know news.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
I just wanted to know if she was alive.
Speaker 8 (33:04):
Everything was okay.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
True friendships are often at the core of our lives,
which are innermost secrets with our friends. They are the
people we turn to when we need help, the people
we would drop everything for. But in an online world,
it's easy to have a sense of closeness with the
(33:34):
people we see on Instagram every day. So when a beautiful,
rich influencer gives you attention, even if you're paying for
your time with them, it could feel like a real connection,
like you really know them and they really know you.
Kat had more than a million followers, but she was
(33:54):
showing desiraye one on one attention, And if you're a
real life friend like Patty, how could you ever compete
with that? Patty was about to find out and that
search for her missing friend was going to cost her
a lot more than she had imagined.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Still to come.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
I can be pretty much dangerous, and I'm angry, but
I think the police in America has more dangerous people
to catch. Why she's talking about suicide?
Speaker 8 (34:30):
Maybe she was going to kill her.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
It's the most stupid thing I've ever heard in my life.
That Kat was as kN kidnapped to grown women.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
No one's being held against her will, no signs of distress.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Everybody seems to be okay, no mercy, Sorry.
Speaker 8 (34:48):
What don't tell?
Speaker 3 (34:50):
She's in my mouth?
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Don't tell?
Speaker 6 (34:52):
Haters?
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Dotted pages on Instagram.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
With millions and millions of people.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
I am a famous person. Do you want to get you?
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Fucking when people cross me?
Speaker 8 (35:03):
How do I behave?
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Very scarious?
Speaker 5 (35:10):
That's all coming up on this season of Don't Cross Cat.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
All right, Well, that is a cliffhanger for season one
I'm gonna be binging on a dear listener, I bet
you will do stay with us, because after the break
I sit down with Schiko Feliti, the host and creator
of Don't Cross Cat, will be right back. Hey, we're back,
(35:42):
and today, dear listener, we brought you a special preview
of our new podcast. It's called Don't Cross Cat. It's
a production of our very own Futuro Studios and Wondery,
and it's based on a massive hit podcast in Brazil,
which is called a Coach. It's about a supermodel influencer
(36:02):
turned sort of dark manipulator who ended up taking young
women and isolating them from their loved ones. So now
that we've played you episode one of the series, which
just dropped, we're going to bring you a conversation with
Shiko Filiti. He is the man who created the series.
I just want to say thank you so much for
(36:23):
joining us on Latino USA.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Thanks for having me, Maria. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
I just listened to episode one as I was driving
up to the studio and I am estoy hooked in
Brazilian Portuguese hooked. How do you say it?
Speaker 5 (36:42):
Uh, piz Goda oscada. We would go with obsessedda.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Obsca el obscada right now with don't cross cat tell
us like the first time that you heard about this
influencer Kat Dorris, and what was it that you said,
Oh my god, this story.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
I have to tell this story.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
I think this story it's quite peculiar because it started
as a jest, started.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
As a joke, at least to me.
Speaker 5 (37:11):
I was one of millions of people who were following
Kattories online because she was so quirky and she had
such a weird internet persona. I think she really wanted
to make it and she really wanted to be Internet famous.
In one of the ways she started doing so was
creating memes with her own face, and they were surprisingly
(37:33):
successful in Brazil. They were dead jokes. They weren't like
dark humor or anything. But she would use a picture
of her and writing Portuguese, would you like to kiss
under the moonlight and say, darling, I'm not even kissing
in the ring?
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Let alone, and.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
Like bad jokes, really bad bad jokes. But they were
really successful on Facebook. So she crafted an image of
herself as a meme.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
So she was.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Making fun of herself. She was making memes of herself
and then she just began to take herself ridiculously seriously.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
That was her first step as an Internet persona to
then become this lifestyle influencer as they call them on Instagram,
that someone who portrays wealth in the US and like
posing in a ferrari and posing with Gucci bags. And
then from that from a lifestyle influencer, was this gorgeous
supermodel who had moved to the US, who claimed to
(38:29):
have had an affair with Leonardo DiCaprio and started selling
coaching sessions. But they were so weird, they were so
peculiar that people started following her just for the joke
of it, just for the sake of it. But little
did I know that there were thousands, maybe tens of
thousands or hundreds of thousands of mostly young women, Brazilian women,
(38:51):
who followed her and believed the things she said and sold.
And she will have those alien bags, she would call them,
in which she would put through stuff into a tub
like razor blades and stuffed animals and confetti, and said
that that could cure all the disease and that could
bring prosperity to someone, so that it was a jewel.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
Wait wait, yeah, okay, hold on, I know razor.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
Blades, razor blades and stuff, stuffed animals into a tub
with like rose patals and cologne and all of the Okay,
what she had, this witch persona that was funny to
someone who would like me, did not believe her. But
little did I know that some people really followed her
and believed the stuff she was selling.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
When did you, she goes say, like, okay, wait a second,
this is crossed into another line, and therefore I'm obsessed.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
I think that things started getting dark by early twenty
twenty one, when nameless people anonymously would say on the
Internet that followers of cat Stories were disappearing after being
invited by her to live with her in the US.
She was also selling all this mystical mumbo jumbo, but
(40:04):
she was also selling this image of self made woman
in the US. She had made it in the US,
so she had a big appeal to people. So yeah
that when I started reading tweets about followers of cat
Stories that had supposedly disappeared, then something in me shifted
and it was like, no, this is maybe this is
no joke. If there is any truth to these allegations,
(40:28):
maybe we do have a serious story here, in a
complex story, And it turned out it was even more
complex than I could have imagined.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
I mean, as a journalist and you're an investigative journalist,
there's something in you that just said, wait a second,
could people actually be disappearing here?
Speaker 5 (40:46):
At first, on the first few days, I was like, no,
this is just Internet gasa, this is not But then
tens of Twitter profiles and then hundreds of Twitter profiles
would claim that they knew people who followed katories and had.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
This appear here in the past months.
Speaker 5 (41:02):
So then I started taking it a tet seriously and
started digging into the story and found out not only
the women had vanished from Brazil and contact with their
relatives had been secluded, and that I also discovered that
Katsori's life story and trajectory was unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
It was almost fictional. It looked made up.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
So did kat Torres kind of represent this like an
American dream appeal? Because she's blonde, right, she's light skinned,
she's living in the US, she's making it in the
United States? Is that something that actually really appealed to people?
Speaker 5 (41:52):
Definitely, it resonates a lot with the Brazilian youth. I
do think we hold the United States of America as
a mecca in Brazil as a place where you can
go to make money, you can go to get rich.
I mean, we're a third world country and we're not
even geographically close to the US. It's an eight hour flight.
But even with such hardships, people will try to make
(42:15):
life in the US.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Okay, So I'm kind of I'm getting the feel that
katoris represented multiple things for a lot of different people,
but specifically young women. But why do you think that
this story is going to resonate with US audiences. I
know nothing about the stories, but I'm already like, okay,
I need episode two.
Speaker 5 (42:36):
I do think that it's a story with many universal
strings to touch the heart. For instance, it's a story
about friendship because, differently from many other true crime cases
I investigated, this case was solved, or was at least
helped to be solved by armchair detectives by friends of
(42:56):
the women who had disappeared. One of the most characters
in the story is Patti Bertodo, who was one of
the ci Freita's best friends, and her friend disappears. So
this woman who lives in Vancouver in Canada, but is
also Brazilian. Starts a big investigation to find out where
her friend is, and eventually this investigation is gathering thousands
(43:18):
of people, thousands of people who are at their homes
trying to find out whatever happened to these young women
who went missing, and they were successful.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
I was asking so much to the universe to help
me to find her, just to find if she was okay.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
That's when we started playing detectives ourselves.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Everybody was so involved, no one was sleeping who We're
talking twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
I'm totally fascinated by Patty and I'm at the point
where she's like, wait a second. Somebody that I liked disappeared.
This is a friend of mine. I'm going to call everybody.
She's like, I'm going to find out remember remember what
grammar school she went to to try to get in
touch with the parents. I was like, Oh, check out
this armchair investigative journalist that it's going to be unveiled right,
(44:10):
how important they are. Let me ask you a couple
of questions about you. She coul sure, you have been
a journalist in Brazil for about two decades. You've covered
a lot of stories. You have actually obviously hosted a
lot of podcasts in Portuguese. In Brazil. You actually you
(44:30):
speak really good English, clearly, but when you host a
podcast you actually have to get behind a microphone and
read a script. Look at you, you're already shaking your eyes.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
Have no idea.
Speaker 5 (44:42):
I was so nervous about doing this in English that
I just loved What did you do?
Speaker 4 (44:47):
I mean faked? So you make it? It's like cats or.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Is it just how do you say that in Portuguese?
Speaker 4 (44:52):
And we don't have it.
Speaker 5 (44:54):
It's not a Brazilian value, so don't we don't have
something similar to it. So I have to learn an
American value, which is faked. So you make it. That
was my approach to it.
Speaker 4 (45:04):
It was so hard, It was so hard.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
You have no idea. It was the hardest job I
had in twenty years. I guess we're always questioning ourselves.
We're always as non native English speaking people were always
double thinking. I mean, it's such a burden. We always
have to think twice or three times before speaking. But
that also related me a lot to the people we interviewed,
(45:27):
because most of the people are not American and they
don't speak English as a primary language, so I guess
that also established a connection, and that's also in the story.
That's also part of the story that these people have
a hard time communicating with the.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Police in Texas.
Speaker 5 (45:42):
For instance, they want to call the police and they
want to ask if their friends are okay, but they
do not master the language well enough to do so.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
So that becomes part of the narrative.
Speaker 5 (45:52):
I mean, how are you going to help someone who's
in a country where you cannot communicate? Wow, Department, yesterday
I message because of a girl her family in Ze
is not able to look sorry for.
Speaker 7 (46:07):
The person that's in charge of the investigation for those
three girls that are from Leander.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
I believe her name.
Speaker 8 (46:13):
Is kat Letitia.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
And this aread that you're missing Brazilian girls and Leander.
Speaker 8 (46:18):
Yeah, they are lots and all the leading social media
right now.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
It's a really scary.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
All right, Yeah, let me go ahead and get the
Senate has to to give you a call.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Okay, okay, And this is happening in the state of Texas.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 5 (46:31):
They had tens of calls a day asking about missing
young women and I don't know if the calls were
quite taken seriously enough, had been one call from an
American citizen asking about the whereabouts of an American citizen,
maybe the Texan police or the Leander police would have
dealt in a different way.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
I'm also wondering what it was like for you to
get really deep into doing a story that looks into
the power of online influencers, because you know that's how
it starts out. You're like, look, we're gonna talk about
online influencers, and you're like, I'm not a critic because
I am one myself.
Speaker 5 (47:16):
I'm the first person to point at myself and say
I won't be a hypocrite. I'm doing it myself. I'm
making money out of the Internet. But we're all selling lice.
Every influencer is a salesperson of lives. I know that's
a harsh Yeah, I know that's a harsh take, but
that's what I've learned from not only this story. I've
been covering the Internet for ten years or so, and
(47:37):
I do think it's time for us to actually discuss
what social media is and the parasocial relations and the
kind of relations we nourish online right because they are
putting us in danger. Not only danger, of being kidnapped
or trafficked, like it happens in this story. This story
is like a peculiar case. I mean, it's the worst
(47:59):
that could happen if you start following the wrong person online.
But I do think we're being scammed all the time
by influencers.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, because there's this thing that happens, let's say, like
on Instagram, where you really feel like you're close to
the person who you're watching online, right, And those of
us who are doing this, like you or myself, actually
part of what we try to do is to show
our more real side of ourselves. And so I'm wondering
(48:30):
how did that part of the story come up for
you when you were working on a story about a
social media influencer who obviously took it to a whole
other level.
Speaker 5 (48:41):
I mean, it made me look a little bit at
myself and my life and rethink some things. For instance,
I'm going to get a little personal now. I'm going
through a divorce after a fifteen year old marriage. I'm
so sorry. Yeah it's okay. I mean, O, we're good,
we're friends, were we're transitioning into something else. But I
haven't said that online. And I get people asking me
(49:05):
every day, where is your husband?
Speaker 4 (49:07):
Why?
Speaker 5 (49:08):
Why aren't you showing your husband anymore? Are you divorced?
Whatever's happening in that actually hurts me. Every time I
get a message of someone asking are you getting a divorce?
Are you no longer together? I get hurt and I
have to intentionally and rationally remind myself that I showed
my life to these people, so they feel entired, They
(49:30):
feel like as if they are my friends. So they're
not being brude or anything. They're talking to an imaginary friend.
So I sort of created this whole situation, and now
I don't get to suffer from it because I was
the one who led these people to believe they were
close enough to me to ask me if I'm getting
(49:52):
a divorce. Because I was the one showing my life
for three hundred and fifty people, I have to take
accountability for what I've done in the past few years.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Three hundred and fifty thousand people. Yeah, you said three
hundred and fifty people, fifty.
Speaker 5 (50:08):
Wish I wish, and fifty people that would be that
would be easy to manage.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
So I want to say, going back to episode one,
I loved the you know something's going to be uncovered.
What's going to be uncovered. But something that stuck with
me was when the neighbor, the Texas neighbor, says, well,
you know, here, we just say hello to everybody, we wave,
and then we don't really interact a whole lot after that.
(50:37):
But he said that when he waved at the women
who were living with Catoris in this mansion, that they
didn't wave back. And that is the part where I'm like, what.
Speaker 5 (50:51):
Is Something's funky y weird, right, that's not Presilian at all.
You could go to jail for not waving back in Brazil.
That's a falony. That's a felony.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
So okay, you're not going to do a spoiler alert,
but I mean, give me a hint. What were they drugged?
Were they warned that they could not interact with the
outside world.
Speaker 5 (51:14):
They were really under the influence of someone who they
met on Instagram. They were beyond the influence. I mean,
they would follow each and every word of this person
they had chosen to follow. So maybe Paris who are
answered without spoiling the narrative.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
So anybody who's listening will just be like, Okay, well,
I'm going to look up she goes. Also, I'm going
to look up Cat Torris, and if you look up
Cat Torris you will see, okay, something of a spoiler
alert here she is in a federal prison in Brazil.
So I don't want to know that part of it.
We're going to figure out how that ends up happening.
(51:57):
And by the way, is a Cat Torres or is
a cat?
Speaker 5 (52:00):
How we would say catch catchy because we always end
with a knee Catci Dorris catchys.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
So, so have you been in touch with Catchy?
Speaker 5 (52:14):
I've been with her family and her lawyers. She keeps
on changing lawyers. And they weren't against this investigation. They
weren't against the first version of the podcast that was
published almost two years.
Speaker 4 (52:25):
Ago in Brazil. They didn't oppose to it.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Oh, but give us some highlights about what we can expect,
and this way we can tantalize our listeners to go
and download Don't Cross Cat, which is how we're calling
the podcast here in the United States. So give us
a little bit of a hint of what we can expect.
Speaker 5 (52:46):
Sure, I think there are two major narratives in this podcast.
The first one is the power of a friendship. Paddy
Berthold with this terrific young woman from Brazil who starts
an investigation to find out where her friend who disappeared is.
There's also a deep profile on cat Tourist to find
out how can someone who came from poverty, who came
(53:09):
from nothing in Brazil become the alleged affair of Leonardo
DiCaprio and ended up making.
Speaker 4 (53:17):
It in America.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
She is the personification of the American dream and it
wasn't easy getting there, as it's not easy for any
of us Latino to make it in the US, and
she did make it in the US prior to being
accused of crimes. So there's the fascinating story of this
person who came from nothing, from rags to riches. And
(53:38):
there's also the story that follows of two friends who fight.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
For each other.
Speaker 5 (53:44):
So yeahs, buy one, get one free.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
I am so glad she could that you became obsessed
with this story because of course all of Brazil has
heard your podcast and now we get to hear it
here in the United States. And tonsas muta brigada for
your work and for bringing us this wonderful podcast.
Speaker 4 (54:08):
Okay, so thank you very much, Mada.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
That's it for today. The episode you Heard from Don't
Cross Cat was hosted by Shiko Filiti. Fernanda Chawari was
the senior producer Andres Cavairo was the producer. Don't Cross
Cat is a production of Wondery and Futuro Studios. Sound
design and mixing by Stephanie Lebau, Production assistants by Giovanna
(54:48):
Romano Sanchez and Ottavio Bomfa. Fact checking by Zoe Sullivan.
Executive producers for Futuro Studios for Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia.
Executive producers for are Russell Finch, George Lavender, Marshall Louis
and Jen Sergent. On the production management side, Jessica Ellis
and Nancy Trujillo for Futuro, and Heather Bologa for wonder Now.
(55:12):
For our weekly Latino USA show. The rest of our
team includes Roxanna Guire, Julia Caruso, Felicia ro Miguez, Victoria Strada,
Dominiquine Strosa, Renaldo Lanos Junior, Andrea Lopez Cruzado Greece, Luna
Marta Martinez, Dasha Sandoval, Nursaudi and JJ Carubin, Bennie Ramirez,
Marlon Bishop, Marie Gracia and I are co executive producers
(55:36):
and I'm your host, Brienno Posa. Join us again on
our next episode. In the meantime, I'll see you on
social media and as always, Chao xigo no te bayaz.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation,
working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide,
the John D. And Catherine T.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
MacArthur Foundation, and the Heising Simons Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity
and possibilities.
Speaker 8 (56:06):
More at hsfoundation dot org.
Ola Latino USA listener, it's Mariao Hsa today the story
of Brazilian Kat Torres or if you're Brazilian Kacrres.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I never met a person like that before, just the
assertiveness and almost like being able to manifest immediately the
future that she wanted for herself.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Kat Dorris has a seemingly perfect life. She's gorgeous and
I'm talking about walks into a room and you cannot
stop looking at her kind of striking beauty. And she's
also really big on social media, with hundreds of thousands
of people following her every move. She's also well a
(00:49):
little bit out there. She posts about rituals that she
calls alien baths. But as time passes and her following grows,
she gets darker and darker and becomes more dangerous. So
one woman sets out to free her best friend from
Cat's tangled web and.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Just wanted to know if she was alive, if everything
was okay.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
This is a story of influence of control, about a
false sense of connection with people that we just follow online,
but at its core, it's really a story about friendship.
Futuro Studios, our podcast division, has been working on this
story and I have to tell you, dear listener, I
(01:35):
love it and I know you're gonna love it too.
The series is called Don't Cross Cat. It's based on
a mega hit Brazilian podcast that journalist Shiko Feliti brought
to life. So now we're gonna play episode one of
the series and then stay with us because I sit
down with Shiko to hear more about all of this
(01:57):
and about his journey creating this block buster podcast. Don't
Crosscat is a co production of Wondering and our own
Futuro Studios. Here's episode one. The witches who worked for you?
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Excuse me, how are you doing doing well?
Speaker 5 (02:16):
We're journalists from Brazil and we're writing a story about
their former name.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (02:21):
Yeah, the biggest news that's ever had this neighborhood, probably
the only one that will.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
I'm not the first Brazilian to set foot in Leander, Texas,
and the Brazilian women who came and lived here before
me made quite the impression on their neighbors. Wayne Murray
lived across the street from them.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
They said that you might know something. You might have
spoken to them.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
Wayne says that in Leander people do two things, wave
to each other and then mind their business, at least
Wayne did. Then in twenty twenty two, that's when these
new neighbors moved in right us the street.
Speaker 7 (03:01):
So they were not terribly friendly.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
We have this traffic servile right so I'd come in,
I'd wave to them. They never wave back.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
And there was something else about his new neighbors.
Speaker 7 (03:12):
Very pretty young women.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
They looked like supermodels.
Speaker 7 (03:16):
Very attractive, blonde and a pretty attractive brunette.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Tall, thin, gorgeous, right out of the latest Victoria's Secret
fashion show. I mean, I'm super gay, and even I
can see it. And it wasn't just having a house
full of gorgeous Brazilian women in a nondescript American suburb
that was unusual. One day, he just stopped seeing them.
(03:41):
The house was empty, the women were gone. Eventually a
rental company came to clear the house. They put out
the girl stuff in the front yard for anyone to take,
which was interesting.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
We got quite a bit of this stuff. We just
took them.
Speaker 7 (04:00):
Actually, look later, I did keep the voodoo dolls.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Voodoo dolls, doo dolls. I got three voodoo dolls. May
I just take a look at that? Sure, wel come
on in.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
One of the women was a social media influencer famous
in Brazil with more than a million followers. I was
there because, well, I'm kind of an influencer myself, but
that was basically an accident. I'm a journalist first, and
I've made a name for myself investigating stories in Brazil
where things aren't quite what they seem. And that's what
(04:37):
brought me to Texas because the woman who lived there
cat tourists seemed like she had a picture perfect life online.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Thank you man.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Sorry, I'm Chico, by the way, Fran Yeah, okay, that's me.
Waynne told me.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
The more he looked through the stuff the women left behind,
the more questions he had about them.
Speaker 7 (04:58):
They had an altar in their yard, not a Christian altar,
because she had I can never remember the name of
the pronounced the name of the drug, Hisca. That's it,
that Brazilian drug.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
They had packages of dried orbs and it has what
they're good for, good for romance, good for this, good
for that. Three of them were also good for exorcisms.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
And that wasn't all one thing I found. I still
have it.
Speaker 7 (05:28):
It's a leather color and like a leather plate in
these chains and there's a handle on it. When I
finally buckled it up.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
It's for a dog.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
That's why I was mental as was it the human hardness.
Speaker 7 (05:43):
Or it was a dog hard.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Wayne started to wonder if he had been getting a
little carried away, But soon he would see reports of
what was really going on in that house and he
would realize that maybe he was right to have been
because there was something troubling going on, something dark, dangerous,
even water.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Place for Hi.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
I'm calling because I would like to know if you
guys did a well nurse check on that you're missing
Brazilian girls.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
Is an obstare going to go over there and talk
to them because they really need you?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Could?
Speaker 5 (06:19):
I think with the person that's in charge of the
investigation that's going on for those.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Three girls that are from Leander.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
I'm helping a family that has a grow missing and
they didn't tax.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
It's a little bit scary, to be honest.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
From wondering, I'm Chiico Feliti and this is don't cross cat.
Like most of you and anyone else, I post on
Instagram quite often. I post pictures of the usual stuff,
(07:13):
my dog Pashocha, my travels, and my overpriced outfits. Actually,
my producer pointed out that in quite a few posts,
I don't seem to have my shirt on, but hey,
cut me some slack.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I'm Brazilian.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
I used Insta to post about my podcasts and my
books too. I've been a journalist for twenty years now.
I've reported all across Brazil, telling stories of armed conflict, homelessness,
indigenous tribes.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
You name it.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
And somewhere along the line, people started following me. I
remember when I reached one hundred thousand followers on Instagram
and an American company offered me ten grand.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
To pose with a bag of chips.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
That was the exact same amount I got for a
book that took me a year time, right, a whole year.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
I'm not proud of it.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
It's something I only tell my shrink, But nowadays I
make a living from social media as much as being
a journalist. This was not my plan. I have to emphasize,
I promise. I became an influencer by chance. So when
I came across the story, I knew I had to
know more. Because it's all about influence, the lens people
(08:25):
will go to have it and what they will do
to keep it. It all begins far from Brazil and
far from Texas. In Raimie, Vancouver, in the fall of
twenty sixteen, Patty Bertoldo was a thirty two year old
from Brazil. She had a wide smile and long, light
(08:48):
brown hair when she walked into Le Crocodile, an upscale
French restaurant in the city center.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
It was an easy job for me because I could
speak French. They are looking for someone that speaks French.
I didn't have to speak a lot to English.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
It was Patty Bertodo's first day on the job. She
looked around her for someone to talk to as the
restaurant staff bustled around her. She was not feeling great
about being there. She had just moved to Canada from
friends and needed money.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I didn't like that too much because in France I
had my life, my job and communication and marketing. I
was here not doing what I love to do.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
As she continued to walk through the restaurant, Patty came
across a young woman who said hi to her right away.
Speaker 8 (09:35):
And she was beautiful.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
She had this long blonde, beautiful her with big eyes,
with this beautiful smile and that energy that you can
see when a girl She's strong, but feminine and funny.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Her name was Decirie.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
She wanted to welcome me to the restaurant, and she
said that she was very so I was speaking Portuguese
with a friend for the first time and so long.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
Patty followed this around the restaurant as she briefed her
on her new coworkers.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
This one's really nice.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
That one's not trustworthy, this one's just okay, like most
of them, Patty was taking note.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Was like having a friend and a place that everything
was new for me.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
It felt so comforting to talk to someone from Brazil,
someone who knew that in Brazil and Portuguese we don't
have an equivalent for personal space, someone who knew that
we don't just shake hands when we get someone, of
course not we kiss twice, sometimes three times. After that
first shift at the restaurant, Patty started seeing Desirael outside
(10:51):
of work, at music festivals, the beach picnics, and soon
they started texting each other daily.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
She had a lot of friend and she was really
hard working girl. She loved life.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
That Aria was in a wonderful marriage with a man
from Germany. She and Patty became close. They talked for hours,
sharing their life stories. Desirat told Patty she had some struggles.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
She had leukemia when she was pretty young, like a kid,
and she wanted.
Speaker 8 (11:22):
To share with people how precious life is.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
One day, on their way to yoga, Desirat told Patty
about a famous Brazilian wellness influencer she just found online.
Speaker 8 (11:39):
Do you know that? A girl and Instagram?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
She's so beautiful and she has this amazing life and
she came from a real part family in Brazil and
she's also helping people.
Speaker 5 (11:54):
Her name was Cat Tourists. She had hundreds of thousand
of followers on social media. She posted inspirational quotes about
manifesting and nourishing your body and your spirit.
Speaker 8 (12:08):
And nice but also used to tell me.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
She posted hundreds of videos like this one looking beautiful
in enough to show their summertop intellage.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
My uncle daa as Haspital Sounds was a famous song.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Blessing the day with her energy. And here's the thing
about Brazilians. We love a good life coach.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
It's up there with how much we love supermodels and
soccer stars because we value happiness a balanced life. And
there are plenty of life coaches in Brazil who have
found a lot of success by telling other people how
to live their lives for a fee. Of course, Kat
(12:57):
seems successful, healthy and healthy. She posted about her designer bags,
fancy hotels, even exotic looking animals. She had a huge
old vinyl dog that looked like a wolf and the
really big cat that looked like a leopard. Dassia's eyes
lit up as she scrolled through cats posts. She told
(13:20):
Patty this life coach had helped her manifest all the
good things into her life, and the way she did
that was through a special gift.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
If I thought it was a famous.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Cat had ability she could hear the voice.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
She can communicate with the universe because she has this
light that can speak to her and she can help you.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
That phrase that cat talks to the light stuck out
to Patty.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And then I was, okay, she talks to the light
and a pretty much open mind person. But I was like, okay,
if someone say to me you talk to the light,
I will say, oh, you should just see a doctor first.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
But Desiree wasn't nothing.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
And it was now she's amazing And she also has
a website that you can have music to clean your
soul and everything.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
Desiree talked about how pretty Cat was, how insightful she was,
how she could read people's energies, how she could communicate
directly with the universe to find answers to people's questions.
And around that time, Patty did have a lot on
her mind.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I was having this breakup with ex boyfriend, like made
me a little bit more fragile.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
When Desier heard about Patty's breakup, she insisted Patty tried
booking an appointment with Cat.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
She can help you go through that because she can
see his energy, if he's meant to be with you
and everything.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
What did she have to lose?
Speaker 8 (15:09):
So I was okay, why not?
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Coming up on this special episode of Latino USA. More
from Futuro and Wondering Studios new series Don't Cross Cat.
Stay with us. Hey, we're back and today, dear listener,
(15:35):
we're bringing you something really special. It's a preview of
our new series from Futuro Studios in partnership with Wondery.
It's called Don't Cross Cat Now. It's the story of
Cat Torres or Katci does if you speak Brazilian Portuguese.
She is a Brazilian supermodel turned social media influencers slash
(15:58):
life coach who then takes a dark turn and in
telling you her story, we bring you actually a story
of two young women whose friendship was tested by the
power that Kat had over one of them. Before the break, Patty,
the skeptical friend, had actually agreed to pay for a
(16:19):
consultation with Kat, because I mean, what did she have
to lose? Right, all right, We're going to get back
to episode one of Don't Cross Cat, and here's the
host and creator of the series, Shiko Feliti.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Patty went home and pulled up Kat's website. She was
curious but skeptical. She scrolled through the supermodel photos and
got the payment plans.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So I booke an appointment with Kat that was so expensive,
by the way, I was a most of more than
two hundred American dollars for one hour.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
But money wasn't everything.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I wanted to believe that someone could help me to
feel batter.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
On the day of the appointment, Patty rushed home to
get set up for the video call.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
She was a little nervous.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
I was so curious of what is she going to
say about my energy? I have a good energy. Is
she going to say something that is new about myself
that I don't know.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Patty was hoping to actually get some answers. Was she
meant to be in Canada, had her breakup in the
right decision, would she ever find happiness? So she sat
down in front of her computer, ready for this beautiful
woman with psychic abilities to tell her the answers.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
But then she wasn't there.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
She was late. I was going nut.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
I was texting and trying to call in no information.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
Then twenty minutes later, Kat finally appeared.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Then she said, I'm sorry, I had an appointment before,
so we started not a good food, I would say,
because I was a little bit upset.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
So okay, she was late, Petty thought, but Decirier had
spoken so highly of Kat that this was about to
be good, real good, right.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
She was just asking a few questions, and then she
started asking about my work up, but just really generic.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Questions, nothing special.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So far was pretty much like talking to a friend
that was not my friend.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Then Kat started talking about her guiding light.
Speaker 8 (18:37):
The light, saying that he's not a good person for you.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Patty had to hold back from rolling her eyes in
front of Cat.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
And paying two hundred bucks for that. So at this
point I was okay, let's finish with this.
Speaker 5 (18:51):
She didn't get why Deciriel was so taken with Kat,
so she decided she would gently bring it up with Desiree.
Patty wasn't thinking about how Kat would feel about all
of this. After all, Kat was just a life coach
on social media. She couldn't cause any harm right. Not
(19:23):
long after the consultation with Kat, Patty met up with
Decirae at the gym. She had a plan for how
to start a conversation with her. She was going to
keep it simple.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I didn't want to be rude to her and say
that that person that she was putting in so much
phle was a scam.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Patty waited for the right moment.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I did just say that. Oh I didn't like it.
I don't think it was helpful for me. I remember
that I say, you should just be careful.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Patty paused, waiting for Decire's reaction, but then she.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Tried to convince me to have a second man.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Desiree just didn't want to hear what Patty was telling
her about Kat. Kat's relationship with her followers seemed to
be superficial, at least from what I could see publicly,
Her fans would write comments complimenting her on her appearance
and advice. Kat's response to them would be just emojis,
(20:24):
or she would try to sell herself, saying things like, hey,
book a one on one with me. Essentially, Kat was hot, blonde,
and appeared American.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
That was the big appeal. Anyway, After the day at.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
The gym, Desiree only got more obsessed with Kat.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
It seemed Kat was all she talked about now.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
She talked about how Kat told her what to eat,
what to wear, and even what to do with her husband. Now,
Desiree was saying that she wanted her husband to be
more spiritual, to join her in working with meditation, energy
and yoga. But Patty knew the spiritual stuff wasn't his thing.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
He was more like playing video games and finance the spike.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
She wasn't too worried though he was crazy.
Speaker 8 (21:15):
In love with her.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
You could see that she was in love with him.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
They've been happily married for years. This was just normal
couple stuff, and then came the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
You were having to adapt your lives to cope with
this pandemic.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
And continue to base our response.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
A public health emergency or a state of emergency.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
As COVID brought the world to a standstill, Desire's life
changed completely. Her husband lost his job, which meant that
they would have to move back to Germany. Desire promised
to stay in touch with Patty as much as possible,
but as she began her new life in Europe, Patty
noticed that Desiray started to see more and more of Cat.
Patty says, Desiree was booking two, sometimes three consultations with
(21:59):
Kat every week, and Decier's husband noticed.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It was hard because he didn't want this here to
spend too much money. She was spending her whole money
and consultations, and.
Speaker 5 (22:12):
Of course Desiri told her life coach all about her
husband's concerns. Patty could see how this was going to
go for Desire's marriage.
Speaker 8 (22:20):
So they started fighting because of that for sure.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
It was mid twenty twenty one, about a year since
Desirier had moved away to Germany, and Patty's phone rang.
Speaker 8 (22:39):
She called me and she was crying.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
And she said, Kach told me that he was doing
black magic. He's doing black magic. It's why I can't
leave him. It's because he's far saying me to be
with him.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Leaved her husband was using supernatural forces to keep her
with him, an idea that Kat had put in her head.
Patty told Desierer that it all sounded crazy to her,
that she didn't think her husband even knew what black
magic was, but.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
That's very believed Cat.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
A couple of months later, it was all over between
Decirie and her husband.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
She deleted everything, his phone number, his family, everything. She
was like, I don't want to talk to him anymore,
and she moved to another place. Was crazy.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
Patty tried to support this Syria as much as she
could across the time zones. She texted her all the time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
It's so hard, right, she's a young age, she's twenty three,
so whenever, just a young girl making decisions and you
don't have too much power to decide for her.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
Not long after the divorce, Desirit told Patty that she
had started dating again, but to Patty, it didn't seem
like Desire's heart was in it. After one of her
first dates, Desirit called Patty in tears. She told her
she was thirty minutes late to her date and the
guy got upset and said a bunch of mean things.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
To her, and then she was like, I was trying
to explain to him that I got lost, then I
took the wrong bus and everything.
Speaker 8 (24:34):
He didn't want to listen to me.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
Patty told her to ditch the guy, it wasn't worth
her time. But when Deseret told Cat about it, she
had a very different answer. Catt told Decret that guys
like him have a strong energy, so they need women
with an energy that's a little more soft, and Desires
seemed to agree.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
So was there that I could see for the first
time that something was pretty wrong with her, that she
was giving way too much power to count in her life,
to decide for her everything. But every time that I
tried to say something, she would get so mad that
(25:17):
to me she would say, you know how much she
is important to me?
Speaker 8 (25:21):
When she would not listen.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
Patty's concerns kept growing. She decided to look at what
Kat was posting on social media, and what she found.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Was disturbing.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
When Patty looked online, she saw that Kat's social media
had changed. She wasn't the same gentle life coach that
Patty had met a few years before, when her online
presence gave more of a yoga than vibe and she
posted videos of inspirational meditations, breathing exercises, and positive affirmation.
(26:09):
Now she had become intense, angry. Even she posted long
videos rambling about paranoid conspiracy theories on COVID. She told
her followers not to self isolate if they got infected,
if they just believed hard enough, they would magically get cured.
And she had found herself a large audience, more than
(26:32):
a million followers, as well as her select group of
paying clients like Tessira. But she was getting noticed by
other people too. An influential science blogger spoke out on.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
YouTube, poor Quella Comesso.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
She warned everyone not to follow people like Kat on
Instagram and.
Speaker 8 (26:52):
One layer to pravosis sav Instagra.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
All the criticism didn't sit well with cat.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Kiss Denis.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
Comme athalogy Lynha Cat said psychologists were a bunch of
quote shits.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
She said that people were wanting to lynch her, but
she wasn't going to stop talking.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
She was saying so much stuff in her Instagram, and
every time that someone would say something that would go
against what she was saying, she would be so aggressive
and say bad words and say really mean stuff to
peoples public avenge, she would say.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
Then one day Just when Patty thought she had seen
it on, a new, more bizarre video popped up on
Cat's Instagram profile.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Tell me to come down and need to come down.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Cats said she had been kidnapped by Russians.
Speaker 8 (28:02):
I need you right now.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I'm going to die.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
They're going to kill me. She filmed herself against a
white wall. No details provided. It was honestly all very cryptic,
like how did she even have her cell phone with
her anyway? She said she needed her followers to send
money to help pay for answer.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
I don't get angry, Amy, I need help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help,
help helcome.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
A few days later, Kat posted another message she was.
Speaker 8 (28:35):
On the SPA.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh I'm okay. Thank you for everybody that helped me.
And she was on the SPA probably with the money
that people sent to her.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
Right.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
But Kat wasn't relaxed for long because there was one
of her followers who hadn't sent her any ransom money, Desiri,
so my whole gun. Kat went live on Instagram talking
to her million strong following.
Speaker 8 (29:02):
She got crazy.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
My best seal, Desira is so fucking arrogant, Kat said,
She's an idiot.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
I tell you a mora.
Speaker 8 (29:14):
She's saying to her followers.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Desiree was not grateful for everything that she did for her,
and she blocked Desire.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Soon after, Patty got a frantic voice message from Desirie.
She couldn't believe Kat would do that after everything she
had done to show her loyalty. This is not the
person I knew, Desire said on the voice note. I'm
not going to waste my time. Patty saw her chance.
This was the moment she'd be waiting for, so she
(29:47):
sent her a message.
Speaker 8 (29:48):
Back that girl, she's just a crazy girl.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
She needs megical help, not people sending money, so she
needs someone to.
Speaker 8 (29:58):
Go to the hospital with her.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
In the zero was yeah, she's crazy.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
Finally, this was the fork in the road, the point
when Desiree would see Kat for the scammer Patty saw.
A week later, Patty noticed a new post on Kat's Instagram.
Kat said she was making some changes around her house
in Texas. She was expanding her business and from now on,
(30:27):
Kat wouldn't be the only one providing the coaching services.
She had some assistants living with her. The post read
meet the Witches who work for you, and there in
the photo was a familiar face.
Speaker 8 (30:43):
And this area wasn't the team.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
Patty realized the truth. Her best friend hadn't left Cat
at all. Instead, Desiree had gone all in on what
Kat had to offer.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
So I Textedviseirel and I was like, what is going on?
What she's talking about? Are you going to work with
that crazy girl? And I used you word crazy.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
Four or five days went by and nothing. Patty texted again.
This time Testi red did.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Reply stop saying mean stuff about Cat. You know how
much he is important to my life and if you
can't accept that, I prefer not to talk to you anymore.
Was really sad for me to hear that from her,
and I remember that I told her, how can you
say that I'm your friend for years now and I'm
(31:37):
always here for you, I'm always listening to you. You
know me, you come to my place, you was lept
in my bed and so I know you.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
How can you.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
Put an Instagram influencer ahead of the friendship we have?
Patty wrote, someone you're paying to give you attention. After that,
Testierate disappeared.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
She was not on what'sapp anymore. I texted her and
she was not engating the text, so I went to
an Instagram and she has no Instagram anymore and Facebook
no Facebook anymore. Okay, that's is really weird. So I
brought her an emails everything.
Speaker 8 (32:25):
It's okay.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
If you don't want to talk to me anymore, it's okay.
Just let me know if you're okay. Weeks went by
and still no reply, so I started being really worried
about her.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
Patty started looking for other people who may have been
in touch with this siery.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
I can maybe a friend that know her from somewhere,
so I texted people e Vancouver that knew her.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
She even called Desire's former school in Brazil, hoping to
find a contact for her parents.
Speaker 8 (32:58):
So no one know news.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
I just wanted to know if she was alive.
Speaker 8 (33:04):
Everything was okay.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
True friendships are often at the core of our lives,
which are innermost secrets with our friends. They are the
people we turn to when we need help, the people
we would drop everything for. But in an online world,
it's easy to have a sense of closeness with the
(33:34):
people we see on Instagram every day. So when a beautiful,
rich influencer gives you attention, even if you're paying for
your time with them, it could feel like a real connection,
like you really know them and they really know you.
Kat had more than a million followers, but she was
(33:54):
showing desiraye one on one attention, And if you're a
real life friend like Patty, how could you ever compete
with that? Patty was about to find out and that
search for her missing friend was going to cost her
a lot more than she had imagined.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Still to come.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
I can be pretty much dangerous, and I'm angry, but
I think the police in America has more dangerous people
to catch. Why she's talking about suicide?
Speaker 8 (34:30):
Maybe she was going to kill her.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
It's the most stupid thing I've ever heard in my life.
That Kat was as kN kidnapped to grown women.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
No one's being held against her will, no signs of distress.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Everybody seems to be okay, no mercy, Sorry.
Speaker 8 (34:48):
What don't tell?
Speaker 3 (34:50):
She's in my mouth?
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Don't tell?
Speaker 6 (34:52):
Haters?
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Dotted pages on Instagram.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
With millions and millions of people.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
I am a famous person. Do you want to get you?
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Fucking when people cross me?
Speaker 8 (35:03):
How do I behave?
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Very scarious?
Speaker 5 (35:10):
That's all coming up on this season of Don't Cross Cat.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
All right, Well, that is a cliffhanger for season one
I'm gonna be binging on a dear listener, I bet
you will do stay with us, because after the break
I sit down with Schiko Feliti, the host and creator
of Don't Cross Cat, will be right back. Hey, we're back,
(35:42):
and today, dear listener, we brought you a special preview
of our new podcast. It's called Don't Cross Cat. It's
a production of our very own Futuro Studios and Wondery,
and it's based on a massive hit podcast in Brazil,
which is called a Coach. It's about a supermodel influencer
(36:02):
turned sort of dark manipulator who ended up taking young
women and isolating them from their loved ones. So now
that we've played you episode one of the series, which
just dropped, we're going to bring you a conversation with
Shiko Filiti. He is the man who created the series.
I just want to say thank you so much for
(36:23):
joining us on Latino USA.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Thanks for having me, Maria. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
I just listened to episode one as I was driving
up to the studio and I am estoy hooked in
Brazilian Portuguese hooked. How do you say it?
Speaker 5 (36:42):
Uh, piz Goda oscada. We would go with obsessedda.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Obsca el obscada right now with don't cross cat tell
us like the first time that you heard about this
influencer Kat Dorris, and what was it that you said,
Oh my god, this story.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
I have to tell this story.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
I think this story it's quite peculiar because it started
as a jest, started.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
As a joke, at least to me.
Speaker 5 (37:11):
I was one of millions of people who were following
Kattories online because she was so quirky and she had
such a weird internet persona. I think she really wanted
to make it and she really wanted to be Internet famous.
In one of the ways she started doing so was
creating memes with her own face, and they were surprisingly
(37:33):
successful in Brazil. They were dead jokes. They weren't like
dark humor or anything. But she would use a picture
of her and writing Portuguese, would you like to kiss
under the moonlight and say, darling, I'm not even kissing
in the ring?
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Let alone, and.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
Like bad jokes, really bad bad jokes. But they were
really successful on Facebook. So she crafted an image of
herself as a meme.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
So she was.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Making fun of herself. She was making memes of herself
and then she just began to take herself ridiculously seriously.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
That was her first step as an Internet persona to
then become this lifestyle influencer as they call them on Instagram,
that someone who portrays wealth in the US and like
posing in a ferrari and posing with Gucci bags. And
then from that from a lifestyle influencer, was this gorgeous
supermodel who had moved to the US, who claimed to
(38:29):
have had an affair with Leonardo DiCaprio and started selling
coaching sessions. But they were so weird, they were so
peculiar that people started following her just for the joke
of it, just for the sake of it. But little
did I know that there were thousands, maybe tens of
thousands or hundreds of thousands of mostly young women, Brazilian women,
(38:51):
who followed her and believed the things she said and sold.
And she will have those alien bags, she would call them,
in which she would put through stuff into a tub
like razor blades and stuffed animals and confetti, and said
that that could cure all the disease and that could
bring prosperity to someone, so that it was a jewel.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
Wait wait, yeah, okay, hold on, I know razor.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
Blades, razor blades and stuff, stuffed animals into a tub
with like rose patals and cologne and all of the Okay,
what she had, this witch persona that was funny to
someone who would like me, did not believe her. But
little did I know that some people really followed her
and believed the stuff she was selling.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
When did you, she goes say, like, okay, wait a second,
this is crossed into another line, and therefore I'm obsessed.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
I think that things started getting dark by early twenty
twenty one, when nameless people anonymously would say on the
Internet that followers of cat Stories were disappearing after being
invited by her to live with her in the US.
She was also selling all this mystical mumbo jumbo, but
(40:04):
she was also selling this image of self made woman
in the US. She had made it in the US,
so she had a big appeal to people. So yeah
that when I started reading tweets about followers of cat
Stories that had supposedly disappeared, then something in me shifted
and it was like, no, this is maybe this is
no joke. If there is any truth to these allegations,
(40:28):
maybe we do have a serious story here, in a
complex story, And it turned out it was even more
complex than I could have imagined.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
I mean, as a journalist and you're an investigative journalist,
there's something in you that just said, wait a second,
could people actually be disappearing here?
Speaker 5 (40:46):
At first, on the first few days, I was like, no,
this is just Internet gasa, this is not But then
tens of Twitter profiles and then hundreds of Twitter profiles
would claim that they knew people who followed katories and had.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
This appear here in the past months.
Speaker 5 (41:02):
So then I started taking it a tet seriously and
started digging into the story and found out not only
the women had vanished from Brazil and contact with their
relatives had been secluded, and that I also discovered that
Katsori's life story and trajectory was unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
It was almost fictional. It looked made up.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
So did kat Torres kind of represent this like an
American dream appeal? Because she's blonde, right, she's light skinned,
she's living in the US, she's making it in the
United States? Is that something that actually really appealed to people?
Speaker 5 (41:52):
Definitely, it resonates a lot with the Brazilian youth. I
do think we hold the United States of America as
a mecca in Brazil as a place where you can
go to make money, you can go to get rich.
I mean, we're a third world country and we're not
even geographically close to the US. It's an eight hour flight.
But even with such hardships, people will try to make
(42:15):
life in the US.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Okay, So I'm kind of I'm getting the feel that
katoris represented multiple things for a lot of different people,
but specifically young women. But why do you think that
this story is going to resonate with US audiences. I
know nothing about the stories, but I'm already like, okay,
I need episode two.
Speaker 5 (42:36):
I do think that it's a story with many universal
strings to touch the heart. For instance, it's a story
about friendship because, differently from many other true crime cases
I investigated, this case was solved, or was at least
helped to be solved by armchair detectives by friends of
(42:56):
the women who had disappeared. One of the most characters
in the story is Patti Bertodo, who was one of
the ci Freita's best friends, and her friend disappears. So
this woman who lives in Vancouver in Canada, but is
also Brazilian. Starts a big investigation to find out where
her friend is, and eventually this investigation is gathering thousands
(43:18):
of people, thousands of people who are at their homes
trying to find out whatever happened to these young women
who went missing, and they were successful.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
I was asking so much to the universe to help
me to find her, just to find if she was okay.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
That's when we started playing detectives ourselves.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Everybody was so involved, no one was sleeping who We're
talking twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
I'm totally fascinated by Patty and I'm at the point
where she's like, wait a second. Somebody that I liked disappeared.
This is a friend of mine. I'm going to call everybody.
She's like, I'm going to find out remember remember what
grammar school she went to to try to get in
touch with the parents. I was like, Oh, check out
this armchair investigative journalist that it's going to be unveiled right,
(44:10):
how important they are. Let me ask you a couple
of questions about you. She coul sure, you have been
a journalist in Brazil for about two decades. You've covered
a lot of stories. You have actually obviously hosted a
lot of podcasts in Portuguese. In Brazil. You actually you
(44:30):
speak really good English, clearly, but when you host a
podcast you actually have to get behind a microphone and
read a script. Look at you, you're already shaking your eyes.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
Have no idea.
Speaker 5 (44:42):
I was so nervous about doing this in English that
I just loved What did you do?
Speaker 4 (44:47):
I mean faked? So you make it? It's like cats or.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Is it just how do you say that in Portuguese?
Speaker 4 (44:52):
And we don't have it.
Speaker 5 (44:54):
It's not a Brazilian value, so don't we don't have
something similar to it. So I have to learn an
American value, which is faked. So you make it. That
was my approach to it.
Speaker 4 (45:04):
It was so hard, It was so hard.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
You have no idea. It was the hardest job I
had in twenty years. I guess we're always questioning ourselves.
We're always as non native English speaking people were always
double thinking. I mean, it's such a burden. We always
have to think twice or three times before speaking. But
that also related me a lot to the people we interviewed,
(45:27):
because most of the people are not American and they
don't speak English as a primary language, so I guess
that also established a connection, and that's also in the story.
That's also part of the story that these people have
a hard time communicating with the.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Police in Texas.
Speaker 5 (45:42):
For instance, they want to call the police and they
want to ask if their friends are okay, but they
do not master the language well enough to do so.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
So that becomes part of the narrative.
Speaker 5 (45:52):
I mean, how are you going to help someone who's
in a country where you cannot communicate? Wow, Department, yesterday
I message because of a girl her family in Ze
is not able to look sorry for.
Speaker 7 (46:07):
The person that's in charge of the investigation for those
three girls that are from Leander.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
I believe her name.
Speaker 8 (46:13):
Is kat Letitia.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
And this aread that you're missing Brazilian girls and Leander.
Speaker 8 (46:18):
Yeah, they are lots and all the leading social media
right now.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
It's a really scary.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
All right, Yeah, let me go ahead and get the
Senate has to to give you a call.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Okay, okay, And this is happening in the state of Texas.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 5 (46:31):
They had tens of calls a day asking about missing
young women and I don't know if the calls were
quite taken seriously enough, had been one call from an
American citizen asking about the whereabouts of an American citizen,
maybe the Texan police or the Leander police would have
dealt in a different way.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
I'm also wondering what it was like for you to
get really deep into doing a story that looks into
the power of online influencers, because you know that's how
it starts out. You're like, look, we're gonna talk about
online influencers, and you're like, I'm not a critic because
I am one myself.
Speaker 5 (47:16):
I'm the first person to point at myself and say
I won't be a hypocrite. I'm doing it myself. I'm
making money out of the Internet. But we're all selling lice.
Every influencer is a salesperson of lives. I know that's
a harsh Yeah, I know that's a harsh take, but
that's what I've learned from not only this story. I've
been covering the Internet for ten years or so, and
(47:37):
I do think it's time for us to actually discuss
what social media is and the parasocial relations and the
kind of relations we nourish online right because they are
putting us in danger. Not only danger, of being kidnapped
or trafficked, like it happens in this story. This story
is like a peculiar case. I mean, it's the worst
(47:59):
that could happen if you start following the wrong person online.
But I do think we're being scammed all the time
by influencers.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, because there's this thing that happens, let's say, like
on Instagram, where you really feel like you're close to
the person who you're watching online, right, And those of
us who are doing this, like you or myself, actually
part of what we try to do is to show
our more real side of ourselves. And so I'm wondering
(48:30):
how did that part of the story come up for
you when you were working on a story about a
social media influencer who obviously took it to a whole
other level.
Speaker 5 (48:41):
I mean, it made me look a little bit at
myself and my life and rethink some things. For instance,
I'm going to get a little personal now. I'm going
through a divorce after a fifteen year old marriage. I'm
so sorry. Yeah it's okay. I mean, O, we're good,
we're friends, were we're transitioning into something else. But I
haven't said that online. And I get people asking me
(49:05):
every day, where is your husband?
Speaker 4 (49:07):
Why?
Speaker 5 (49:08):
Why aren't you showing your husband anymore? Are you divorced?
Whatever's happening in that actually hurts me. Every time I
get a message of someone asking are you getting a divorce?
Are you no longer together? I get hurt and I
have to intentionally and rationally remind myself that I showed
my life to these people, so they feel entired, They
(49:30):
feel like as if they are my friends. So they're
not being brude or anything. They're talking to an imaginary friend.
So I sort of created this whole situation, and now
I don't get to suffer from it because I was
the one who led these people to believe they were
close enough to me to ask me if I'm getting
(49:52):
a divorce. Because I was the one showing my life
for three hundred and fifty people, I have to take
accountability for what I've done in the past few years.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Three hundred and fifty thousand people. Yeah, you said three
hundred and fifty people, fifty.
Speaker 5 (50:08):
Wish I wish, and fifty people that would be that
would be easy to manage.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
So I want to say, going back to episode one,
I loved the you know something's going to be uncovered.
What's going to be uncovered. But something that stuck with
me was when the neighbor, the Texas neighbor, says, well,
you know, here, we just say hello to everybody, we wave,
and then we don't really interact a whole lot after that.
(50:37):
But he said that when he waved at the women
who were living with Catoris in this mansion, that they
didn't wave back. And that is the part where I'm like, what.
Speaker 5 (50:51):
Is Something's funky y weird, right, that's not Presilian at all.
You could go to jail for not waving back in Brazil.
That's a falony. That's a felony.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
So okay, you're not going to do a spoiler alert,
but I mean, give me a hint. What were they drugged?
Were they warned that they could not interact with the
outside world.
Speaker 5 (51:14):
They were really under the influence of someone who they
met on Instagram. They were beyond the influence. I mean,
they would follow each and every word of this person
they had chosen to follow. So maybe Paris who are
answered without spoiling the narrative.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
So anybody who's listening will just be like, Okay, well,
I'm going to look up she goes. Also, I'm going
to look up Cat Torris, and if you look up
Cat Torris you will see, okay, something of a spoiler
alert here she is in a federal prison in Brazil.
So I don't want to know that part of it.
We're going to figure out how that ends up happening.
(51:57):
And by the way, is a Cat Torres or is
a cat?
Speaker 5 (52:00):
How we would say catch catchy because we always end
with a knee Catci Dorris catchys.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
So, so have you been in touch with Catchy?
Speaker 5 (52:14):
I've been with her family and her lawyers. She keeps
on changing lawyers. And they weren't against this investigation. They
weren't against the first version of the podcast that was
published almost two years.
Speaker 4 (52:25):
Ago in Brazil. They didn't oppose to it.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Oh, but give us some highlights about what we can expect,
and this way we can tantalize our listeners to go
and download Don't Cross Cat, which is how we're calling
the podcast here in the United States. So give us
a little bit of a hint of what we can expect.
Speaker 5 (52:46):
Sure, I think there are two major narratives in this podcast.
The first one is the power of a friendship. Paddy
Berthold with this terrific young woman from Brazil who starts
an investigation to find out where her friend who disappeared is.
There's also a deep profile on cat Tourist to find
out how can someone who came from poverty, who came
(53:09):
from nothing in Brazil become the alleged affair of Leonardo
DiCaprio and ended up making.
Speaker 4 (53:17):
It in America.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
She is the personification of the American dream and it
wasn't easy getting there, as it's not easy for any
of us Latino to make it in the US, and
she did make it in the US prior to being
accused of crimes. So there's the fascinating story of this
person who came from nothing, from rags to riches. And
(53:38):
there's also the story that follows of two friends who fight.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
For each other.
Speaker 5 (53:44):
So yeahs, buy one, get one free.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
I am so glad she could that you became obsessed
with this story because of course all of Brazil has
heard your podcast and now we get to hear it
here in the United States. And tonsas muta brigada for
your work and for bringing us this wonderful podcast.
Speaker 4 (54:08):
Okay, so thank you very much, Mada.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
That's it for today. The episode you Heard from Don't
Cross Cat was hosted by Shiko Filiti. Fernanda Chawari was
the senior producer Andres Cavairo was the producer. Don't Cross
Cat is a production of Wondery and Futuro Studios. Sound
design and mixing by Stephanie Lebau, Production assistants by Giovanna
(54:48):
Romano Sanchez and Ottavio Bomfa. Fact checking by Zoe Sullivan.
Executive producers for Futuro Studios for Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia.
Executive producers for are Russell Finch, George Lavender, Marshall Louis
and Jen Sergent. On the production management side, Jessica Ellis
and Nancy Trujillo for Futuro, and Heather Bologa for wonder Now.
(55:12):
For our weekly Latino USA show. The rest of our
team includes Roxanna Guire, Julia Caruso, Felicia ro Miguez, Victoria Strada,
Dominiquine Strosa, Renaldo Lanos Junior, Andrea Lopez Cruzado Greece, Luna
Marta Martinez, Dasha Sandoval, Nursaudi and JJ Carubin, Bennie Ramirez,
Marlon Bishop, Marie Gracia and I are co executive producers
(55:36):
and I'm your host, Brienno Posa. Join us again on
our next episode. In the meantime, I'll see you on
social media and as always, Chao xigo no te bayaz.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation,
working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide,
the John D. And Catherine T.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
MacArthur Foundation, and the Heising Simons Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity
and possibilities.
Speaker 8 (56:06):
More at hsfoundation dot org.
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