December 9, 2025 • 41 mins
We’re gearing up for an all new season of Medal of Honor in 2026, but in the meantime we're sharing episodes from another Pushkin Industries podcast we think you'll like.
It’s called Deep Cover and it’s all about people who lead double lives and the lengths they’ll go to deceive others. This last season, they covered the stolen valor story of Sarah Cavanaugh. Sarah Cavanaugh is a civilian woman who claimed to be a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, and a young woman fighting cancer. She was everything people wanted her to be—until she wasn’t. Turns out, no one knew the real Sarah.
Lies tend to be fragile, wilting under their own weight as they get bigger. Not in the case of Sarah Cavanaugh. The bigger her lies grew, the more real they became. But she never served in the military, never received any awards, and defrauded veteran organizations out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jake Halpern and investigative journalist Jess McHugh unravel this epic six-year deception that upended the lives of countless people.
Here's episode 1 of Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah (00:16). Stay tuned to hear the full six-episode series on this feed throughout the next few weeks.
We’re committed to making Medal of Honor even better, and you can help! Leave your feedback for the show by filling out our listener survey at bit.ly/mohsurvey.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey listeners, JR.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Here.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
We're gearing up for an all new season of Medal
of Honor in twenty twenty six, and some special bonus
episodes before that. But in the meantime, I wanted to
share with you another Pushkin podcast I think you'll like.
It's called Deep Cover, and it's all about people who
lead double lives and the lens they'll go to deceive others.
(00:22):
This last season, they covered a story that I think
you'll find mind blowing. This is the stolen Valor story
of Sarah Cavanaugh. This was a hot topic in the
veteran community for a while, but if you haven't heard
the story, let me fill you in a bit. Sarah
Kavanaugh is a civilian woman who claimed to be a
decorated veteran, a marine who saved her comrades, and a
(00:46):
young woman fighting cancer. She was everything people wanted her
to be until she wasn't. Turns out no one knew
the real Sarah. Lies tend to be fragile, wilting under
their own way as they get bigger and not. In
the case of Sarah Cavanaugh, the bigger her lies grew,
the more real they became. But she never served in
(01:09):
the military, never received any awards, and she defrauded veteran
organizations out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. On deep Cover,
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Jake Halpern and investigative journalist Jess
McHugh unraveled this epic six year deception that up ended
the lies of countless people. They even interviewed Sarah herself.
(01:34):
We'll be sharing some episodes of deep Cover in this
feed over the coming days. Here's the first episode.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Hey, I am just recording here is that in the
car upside the English Department, And I just got this
letter which was sent to me by Sarah Cavanaugh.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Okay, October twelve, twenty four.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Dear Jake, thank you for sending me the articles and
book that you've written. You have a distinct style when
imposing questions that really makes one think about the messages
between the lines.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Jess and I have spoken twice and emailed several times
to talk about my actions and the consequences. It is
important to me that you know I know and knew
several months before my arrest what I was doing was wrong.
I could not have imagined the laws I was breaking,
but know now that I was always guilty. What is
(02:35):
your opinion about my crime? I asked this because no
matter who we are, we bring biases, and I'd like
to know what you are bringing to the conversation. Also,
I have not always thought about others before myself, and
will always be deliberately sensitive to other people for the
rest of my life. I'm looking forward to meeting you,
even if it's virtually Sincerely, Sarah.
Speaker 6 (03:02):
This letter that I just read you. It's written onlined paper,
the kind I used in grade school, and the penmanship
is flawless. When I read it for the first time,
I was in my car outside my classroom at the
university where I teach, and I found myself just sitting
there reading and rereading this letter. What is your opinion
(03:27):
about my crime?
Speaker 7 (03:28):
She asked.
Speaker 6 (03:30):
Now that was interesting to me. It was almost like,
right from the jump, this woman, Sarah Kavanaugh, had flipped
the script like she was interviewing me, and then there
was this line, I'd like to know what you are
bringing to the conversation. Funny because we weren't even having
a conversation yet. But looking back, I understand now that
(03:55):
the conversation had already started and she was already sussing
me out, tuning in to me and Sarah. She's really
really good at that. I know that now. Months before
I got that letter, I got a call from my
(04:17):
friend Jess McHugh. She's my co host this season. Jess
is a journalist and an author. In fact, you may
have noticed in Sarah's letter she makes a reference to Jess,
and that's because Jess is the one who found this story.
Speaker 8 (04:36):
I first heard about Sarah when I read a few
articles about her online, just snippets, really, But what I
read about her was so bizarre, so unusual, I had
a million questions. So I tracked her down. We started
sending emails, talking on the phone, getting to know each other,
(04:56):
and right from the start she felt familiar to me.
We have a few things in common. Actually we're about
the same age, both from small towns in New England.
But also, I've become a bit of an expert on
women like her. I've spent years digging into historical research,
reviewing court documents, and immersing myself in the world of
(05:18):
women who managed to live multiple lives. Found so much
that I'm now writing a book about it all. So yeah,
Sarah felt familiar to me. But in the most unsettling way.
I clearly remember one of the first things I wrote
to her after reading those headlines. I told her, I
(05:40):
suspect that there is so much more to your story.
I had no way of knowing just how true that
would turn out to be.
Speaker 6 (05:53):
There's so much that we've learned since we first started
talking to Sarah, so much else that she's told us,
And we've spent the last eight months trying to figure
out how much of her story is true and what,
if anything, we could trust, because this story is all
(06:13):
about trust. It's about what it means to know someone
or think you know someone, and what happens when reality
itself seems to dissolve. I'm Jake Colbern and I'm Jess
(06:44):
McHugh and this is Deep Cover, Season six, The Truth
About Sarah, Episode one, The Warrior.
Speaker 8 (07:16):
One of the first people we interviewed for this story
was Catherine Dexter. She goes by des Des initially met
Sarah Kavanaugh in the mountains in Montana at a retreat
for veterans.
Speaker 9 (07:28):
You got to see the sunrise, you got to see mountains,
and the air was like amazing and crisped and smelled
a little bit like a campfire. So you woke up
every single morning and you saw these mountains and they
were beautiful, and you were just like awestruck because you
were like, why don't I live here? And that's where
you were drinking your coffee at five am.
Speaker 8 (07:46):
Dex had served in the Marines as military police in
Japan and a couple other bases. When she got out,
she felt a bit lost.
Speaker 9 (07:57):
So I had kind of steered away from the veteran
when I got out, and I was really really isolated.
So that was one of the big things that I
struggled with because I had dealt with a lot of
life transitions.
Speaker 8 (08:09):
The retreat was organized by a nonprofit called Patrol Base
Abate also known as pb Abaate. Founder started the organization
because he was concerned about the mental health of veterans
and their difficulties readjusting to civilian life, and this was
kind of the exact crossroads Decks was at. So she
(08:29):
applied to go on one of their all expense paid
trips to Montana, and that's how she ended up drinking
her coffee in Big Sky Country with all these other
vets and meeting Sarah. What were your first impressions of
her at the time, I liked her. I liked her
a lot.
Speaker 9 (08:47):
It's all in the context of like what I know
about her now, But back then I liked her because
she put out, because she worked really hard, and she
was really humble, and she didn't walk und saying oh
I'm a woman, and I was in combat. She was
injured and everybody knew it, but she was still running.
Speaker 6 (09:10):
Part of the ethos of this retreat was you didn't
brag about the past, focused on now, and you exercised
a lot. The whole point of this retreat was actually
strength building. The Vets built a platform that became their
outdoor gym. They lifted weights here, did squats, deadlifts, power cleans,
(09:31):
and apparently they were also carrying giant slabs of rock
up a mountain. Come on, oh shit, leyam push that woman.
You can hear saying push it. That's Sarah Kavanaugh. We
found this video of her on YouTube from this same retreat.
(09:53):
She's in a sweaty gray tank top, has on these
mirrored sunglasses and leather workmen's gloves. She has blonde and
a runners build, slim and athletics and that soft inspirational
music that's in there because this is a promotional video
(10:13):
for Patrol Base of Bata, And in that video we
see Sarah giving an interview with the wild Mountains of
Montana in the background.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Because there's such an open discussion about what's really happening
to veterans, right, you know, what are we going through?
How can we, you know, refit and refresh the skills
we have and the skills we learned while we were
serving and apply them to our lives and make our
lives better Now. I think I was expecting just to
come together and have some fun and work out, but
(10:44):
it was so much more than that.
Speaker 8 (10:46):
The person who started these retreats was concerned about all
the challenges that that's face as they transitioned back to
civilian life, and he wanted this time in the woods
to be healing, transformational even.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
And to the veterans her coming out here, be ready
to talk and not talk out loud, but maybe you
need to talk to yourself. Maybe you need to hear
what other people are saying and process that and come
back to yourself and work through some things.
Speaker 10 (11:12):
And I think that's happening here.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It definitely is. But I think if you can at
least be prepared to do the work. I think you'll
get a lot out of it.
Speaker 8 (11:28):
Beck says that on this retreat there were just a
few female vets. It was her, Sarah, and another former
marine named Natalie. The three of them worked out together.
Speaker 11 (11:39):
Dex has this way of like she calls it gassing
you up, of like being your biggest cheerleader, and so
she'll be like, man, look at those guns. Natalie.
Speaker 6 (11:49):
That's Natalie Markham. She was a clarinetist in the Marine
Corps band, a self described band nerd. At the time
of the retreat, Natalie was struggling. She owned a CrossFit
gym that had been hit hard during the pandemic, and
she was worried that it might go bust. So for
her to be here in Montana doing something she loved
(12:11):
under the open sky with new friends, it was like
she could breathe. She asked someone to take a picture
of her with Dex and Sarah to commemorate the moment.
Speaker 11 (12:23):
The three of us are lined up and being female
and in the military, like do you stand tough? Do
you stand feminine? And then you know we're in a
strength retreat, so we should take one that looks kind
of cute, but then we should take one that looks
kind of tough and so will flex, and Dex is
always one to be like, oh, we have to flex.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
In the picture, the three of them are standing against
the backdrop of the mountains, all flexing, biceps and triceps bulging.
Natalie and Sarah are smiling. Dex is all business, serious
as can be, and looking at the photo, I could
kind of feel their energy. I'd never guess they just met.
(13:06):
They look like they could be sisters, joking, competing, giving
each other shit, like the Three Musketeers or something. Dex
told us that this kind of camaraderie is not a given.
Speaker 9 (13:19):
When you're a woman in the military, the competition among
other women is really intense. A lot of the time.
You're all trying to be the best, not just be
the best woman, but you're trying to be the best
so that the men think you're the best, because that's
what matters. And you know, men are the ones who
are always in charge of you. It's their opinion that
gets you promoted. So if you're falling short, I mean,
(13:41):
you're already doing one thing wrong because you're a woman,
so it's like you can't do two things wrong.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Dex was especially impressed with Sarah. She was somehow doing
all these really intense workouts while also dealing with what
seemed like a pretty serious leg injury.
Speaker 9 (13:59):
She also was taking injections of some kind, some type
of medication for her hip, and she was like telling us, like,
if she doesn't, you know, put this shot in her hip,
like her leg goes numb.
Speaker 6 (14:12):
Because Sarah was so modest, because she didn't boast or
advertise about who she was and what she'd done, there
was an air of mystery about her. Sarah said she
was a crypto linguist. She'd served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
She came from a military family. Her brother had been
a marine too. He was killed in combat and buried
(14:35):
at Arlington Cemetery. In private moments, Sarah began to open
up two decks.
Speaker 9 (14:42):
She told me that she had been in a convoy
and her vehicle was hit by nid you know, the
humby blew up the door from the humphy like crushed
her hip and somehow she was able to like get
out of the humby.
Speaker 6 (14:56):
As Sarah told it, her hip never healed properly from
the knee down. Her leg was basically dying. But that's
not all.
Speaker 9 (15:05):
While sitting in the tent, she's about to leave and
we're talking and she tells me that, like, she just
got diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. And I like
remembered this because she cried because I got up to
give her a hug.
Speaker 8 (15:26):
So just a recap. Here's this woman, Sarah, who at
the time was just thirty years old, already a decorated
war veteran, strong, modest, quietly brave, sprinting down these mountain
trails and giving herself these injections to stem the pain.
And on top of it all, she also has stage
(15:48):
four lung cancer. Dex had to coax it out of
her because Sarah's story came out in dribs and drabs,
and it got more tragic incrementally, like a kettle on
a stove that heats up slowly until all of a
sudden it starts to boil. So the retreat in Montana
(16:29):
comes to an end, and the three Musketeers say goodbye
to one another. They stay in touch, and this, by
the way, is exactly the goal of this program. Veterans
forming real bonds that last long after the campfire goes out.
A few months after the Montana retreat, in December of
twenty twenty one, Dex happened to be in Virginia visiting
(16:52):
Arlington National Cemetery and suddenly Dex remembers that Sarah's brother
was a Marine who was killed action. So she sends
Sarah a text and says she'd like to lay a
wreath at his grave. Within minutes, Sarah texts back with
a plot number. But when Dex gets to the grave,
(17:14):
she notices that this marine he has a different last
name than Sarah's, and when she looks up his obituary,
she sees that they're not even the same race. When
she sends Sarah a picture of the grave, though, Sarah
confirms that yes, this is him.
Speaker 9 (17:32):
So I'm thinking, if he's not her actual physical brother,
I don't think she mentioned ever having an adopted brother.
And then I'm thinking maybe she just meant brother, like
in the colloquial where all marines were brothers type way,
and I was like, maybe that's it.
Speaker 8 (17:54):
You can hear Dex trying to make sense of this,
but she said she didn't ask Sarah too many questions
about it.
Speaker 9 (18:03):
That's kind of like if you had a friend that
told you that she'd had a miscarriage. The very last
thing that you're going to do to that friend while
she's crying about losing a baby, is ask heurage that
actually happened. Like this is so insensitive. So I was
not going to ask this woman these questions because I
didn't want to be insensitive because we were friends.
Speaker 8 (18:23):
So Dex just didn't say anything. Besides, at this point,
Sarah was fighting lung cancer and from time to time
she'd mentioned to Dex that her medical bills were piling up.
Now the VA wasn't covering everything. Dex wanted to help,
even from far away. That's when she heard about this
(18:44):
charity called Hunter seven. Hunter seven helps veterans who struggle
to pay their medical bills. The reality is many veterans
face huge gaps in the healthcare of the VA, provides
long wait times, denied claims, and charities like Hunter seven
come in as a stopgap. So Dex tells Sarah she
(19:06):
should apply for financial assistance. At first, Sarah seemed reluctant.
Maybe she was just underwater with everything she had going on,
So Dex offered to step in and submit an application
for Sarah.
Speaker 9 (19:21):
I was like this is what I would do for
my friends, like especially a friend who's like struggling at
this level. I was like, I understood really clearly, like
having a million things going on and all of them
feeling very intent. So I was like, let me help
you out because I have a minute, and it's no
skin off my back to send an email.
Speaker 8 (19:41):
She couldn't know this then, but this simple act of
kindness would set something in motion, something that would forever
alter the way Decks saw Sarah.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
Remember Natalie, the third Musketeer from the Montana Retreat, the clarinetist. Yeah, well,
Natalie also stayed in touch with Sarah. In fact, right
around the time that Dex was visiting the cemetery in Arlington,
Natalie and Sarah were actually hanging out in person. A
bunch of vets, including a few from the Montana Retreat,
(20:23):
gathered at a CrossFit gym in California to have a
little competition. Well not so little, even for Natalie. It
was a lot.
Speaker 11 (20:33):
There was one workout every hour on the hour for
eight hours. Just the grueling nature of eight hours worth
of workouts is enough to make most people go, yeah, no,
I'm not doing that.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
Yeah, pretty insane. This was like an ultra marathon for weightlifters.
They broke down into teams of two. Now, at this point,
Natalie didn't know about Sarah's cancer, and this is because
Sarah had never told her. She just confided this to Decks, which,
(21:05):
as we've come to learn, is kind of how Sarah operated.
She shared details about her life one on one in
these small private moments, and so the secrets remain compartmentalized.
Natalie was aware that Sarah had some issue with her leg,
but that was about all. Then in the middle of
(21:28):
the competition, during one of the breaks, they're all kind
of just sitting around resting, Natalie, her teammate, Sarah, her teammate, All.
Speaker 11 (21:38):
Four of us are sitting on the floor together and
Sarah says that she's going to have to have her
leg amputated. And I was blown away, Like, you are
in the middle of doing an eight hour workout and
you have to have your leg amputated. It was absolutely
(22:04):
unfathomable to me. But I distinctly remember her saying, if
I'm gonna have to have my leg amputated, then I'm
gonna make this bitch give me every last ounce of
what it's got. To give.
Speaker 6 (22:19):
Natalie is looking at Sarah's leg and it's trembling, and
she thinks to herself, you are like.
Speaker 11 (22:28):
A whole other level of badassory than I have ever known.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
And the proof was Sarah's team then goes on to
beat Natalie's team in the competition, and Natalie she's in awe.
The two women went to another retreat together not long
after this, and it seemed like Sarah's leg was in
bad shape.
Speaker 12 (22:52):
We did one workout where Sarah was having a really
hard time and like at the end of the workout,
her leg was shaking so badly, and she's like, Natalie,
will you please help me?
Speaker 11 (23:06):
Can you please help me? Stretch?
Speaker 12 (23:08):
I took her shaking leg and placed it up on
my shoulder and am holding her quad in one hand
and her foot up here and kind of leaning in,
and I'm talking her through like breathe into the muscle,
Like take some breath, exhale slowly, picture your leg relaxing,
and just remember her like having this moment of her
(23:32):
leg finally relaxing and this is the leg that she's
supposed to have amputated, and feeling some sense of gratitude
that I could help somebody in that situation to have
some kind of relief.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
Looking back, Natalie still recalls the intensity of this moment
with Sarah, the tenseness of her hamstring, the tremors and
her muscles, the pain on Sarah's face. It all seems
so real. In the coming weeks, Natalie texted Sarah about
the amputation to see if it had been scheduled, and
(24:13):
Sarah eventually gave her a date, January twenty sixth. The
date sticks in Natalie's mind. She keeps thinking about it
as it draws closer, and then the night before the surgery,
Natalie can't sleep. She just keeps thinking about Sarah, and.
Speaker 11 (24:30):
Like, I'm so genuinely worried about her that in the
middle of the night, I wake up and the first
thing I think of is I must be waking up
because I've got to pray for Sarah. I should text
her and let her know that I'm praying. And so
I text out my prayer to her and send it
to her.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
I asked Natalie to read me.
Speaker 11 (24:49):
That text January twenty sixth, twenty twenty two. A prayer
for you today is what I wrote. God. Thank you
for Sarah, Thank you for her intelligence, kindness, humor, bravery, courage,
and service to the United States. And for her gift
of friendship. I pray that you will give her and
(25:11):
her family a deep sense of peace today, even as
she is under anesthesia, though she already has such a
deep sense of drive and determination, pour into her an
extra dose of perseverance and purpose. Heal her body Lord
from this and all illness and disease.
Speaker 6 (25:33):
Did she write anything back, She.
Speaker 11 (25:37):
Wrote, thank you so much. I can't tell you what
this means to me.
Speaker 6 (25:44):
The next day, Natalie shot Sarah another text to see
how the surgery went, and Sarah explained that they had
to call off the amputation.
Speaker 12 (25:55):
She said that when she was going into her so
that her blood pressure had dropped and they couldn't They
weren't able to perform the surgery because of that, and
I remember thinking at the time.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
Like, that's really weird. You would think that if you're
going to go have your leg cut off, that your
blood pressure would be sky high. The next day, I
was like trying to reach out to her, but thinking
that she's still in the hospital and it's in the
middle of me trying to get a hold of her.
Then I receive a message from Tom through WhatsApp.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
That guy, she mentions Tom, that's Tom Schumann. He's the
founder of Patrol Base ABATA, the nonprofit that organized those
retreats up in Montana. Tom also knew Sarah and now
he was texting with an urgent message.
Speaker 11 (26:52):
And he's like, Hey, Sarah is not who she says
she is.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
Tom says that Sarah has been lying about a number
of things, and that she may have lied about her
military service. Natalie didn't know who or what to believe.
Speaker 11 (27:09):
I specifically asked Tom, like how do you know this?
Because now I'm questioning him, like why would you even
say something like that, Like how do you? How do you?
How do you know for sure?
Speaker 6 (27:21):
But it turns out Tom had his reasons. In the
weeks leading up to this moment, he'd been digging into
Sarah's story and he discovered a few red flags, some
things that just didn't add up. More on that.
Speaker 8 (27:37):
After the break, Tom Schumann first met Sarah Kavanaugh in
the snowy mountains of Boulder, Colorado, at a Patrol Base
(28:01):
of Bate retreat.
Speaker 7 (28:05):
We're staying in a canvas tense. It was an intimate
setting where we're spending all day night, which is a
small group of people. We connected over our intellectual and
academic and literature interests, had read the same books, talking
about the same authors. Pretty immediately we started hitting it off.
Speaker 8 (28:27):
This retreat was similar to the one in Montana we
told you about. Hang out, workout, talk, connect. That was
the goal. That's why Tom founded pibi Abaate in the
first place. He's a marine and when he returned from
his tours overseas, he watched his comrade struggle. He told
us three of his fellow marines died by suicide over
(28:50):
the course of one month, and that is what led
him to start Pibiabaate. In Colorado, Tom and Sarah started
to get to know each other. Sarah told him she
was a professor, which appealed to him. Tom himself taught
literature at the US Naval Academy. Sarah also told him
that she had a kid who just crashed her pickup truck.
(29:12):
She seemed down to earth and genuine.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
Within the first twenty four hours, I felt like we
had bonded, and then throughout the weekend there were a
couple of experiences that solidified that bond and strengthened it.
Speaker 8 (29:28):
On the last day of this retreat, a guy named
Brian Shantosh led them on an adventure workout. Shantash is
a former marine and a leadership guru famed for his
wilderness programs, and his workouts have a reputation for pushing
people to their limits. So everyone, even Tom, was nervous.
They were told to break down into teams of two.
(29:51):
Sarah and Tom partnered.
Speaker 7 (29:52):
Up and one of the things that you had to
do was a weighted sled up the mountain and back.
A couple different times. You dragged this on a mile loop.
Speaker 8 (30:10):
They get to it. They start pushing this weighted sled
up the mountain and then back down the mountain on
this mile long loop, again and again and again. And
remember this is the Rockies in December, so it's freezing
and the wind is whipping them as they trudge through.
Speaker 7 (30:29):
I just really respected this, this gal who was apparently
very valorous in combat, still dealing with her injuries from combat,
toughing it out on the side of the mountain, and
so I admired that she was being what I felt like,
pretty courageous through the event.
Speaker 8 (30:48):
Tom's not a very effusive guy, so this is basically
his version of gushing. He didn't know about all of
Sarah's health issues, the cancer and the leg amputation. Sarah
had never told him about this, though he would soon
find out.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
Within a few weeks. Tom hears about Sarah's cancer, and
then he feels like he's got to do something.
Speaker 7 (31:20):
I am a guy of action. I reached out to
her and I said, hey, I didn't know you were sick.
We should meet soon to see if I can I
can help, if there's anything that I can do.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
At the time, Tom lived in Rhode Island, where Sarah
also lived, so they met up for coffee and talked
for hours. He learned how she'd seen combat in Afghanistan,
how our convoy was blown up, and how she'd been
seriously hurt in the blast, and how despite it all,
she still managed to save some of the guys in
(31:54):
her patrol, dragging them to safety even with her own
crushed hip. How she'd gotten a ron star for her bravery,
and now she had cancer in her lungs because of
the toxic chemicals and that explosion.
Speaker 7 (32:09):
It seemed incurable, that it was terminal. The VA wasn't
helping because she couldn't prove that the cancer was combat related.
I was just like, goodness, gracious, like everything that you've
been through, from your injuries to the cancer to gonna
(32:34):
lose your leg, the amount of tragedy that in trauma.
And I just resolved in that moment like I am
gonna do everything that I can do to help you.
Speaker 8 (32:48):
And what do you need?
Speaker 7 (32:50):
And she needed employment. She said she didn't have a
very good job.
Speaker 6 (32:54):
She told Tom that her plan had been to get
a PhD in English literature. She'd even been accept it
into a program at Johns Hopkins, but then the VA
delivered some shattering news. They told her that she couldn't
use her GI bill. Why because her life expectancy was
shorter than the time it would take to finish the program.
(33:16):
It was devastating, all of it. Tom, being a guy
of action, was like, maybe I can create a salaried
position for you at Patrol Base Abata. At the time,
the organization was run entirely by volunteers. There were no
paid positions, but the organization did have donors, some with
(33:38):
deep pockets, and Tom thought maybe one of them would
be willing to pay for this. Tom even had a
particular donor in mind, a woman who lived up in
New Hampshire.
Speaker 8 (33:49):
So he wants to get all his ducks in a row.
He asks Sarah for a copy of her DD two fourteen.
That's the official military discharge paper that all service members receive,
explaining how and when they left the service. Sarah sends
him the paperwork. He says he remembers vividly the moment
he received it. He was sitting in his car in
a parking lot about to get a haircut. He starts
(34:12):
scanning through the documents on his phone and something catches
his eye.
Speaker 10 (34:18):
The D two.
Speaker 8 (34:19):
Fourteen, says Sarah retired as a corporal, which is weird
because she'd made it all the way up to staff sergeant.
In fact, he'd seen a picture of her with the
staff sergeant insignia. So he calls her up.
Speaker 7 (34:33):
And so I just said, hey, Sarah, I'm going to
New Hampshire tomorrow to ask for sixty thousand dollars. Before
I do that, could you help me understand why it
says that you're a corporal here, And she's like, well,
I didn't really want to get into all that, but
(34:57):
I was sexually assaulted on on ship by the commanding officer.
He had pulled the gun during the sexual assault, and
I'm the one who got punished for reporting him. I said, like,
I'm sorry to hear that, but I am now incredulous
(35:20):
about all this.
Speaker 8 (35:23):
Suddenly, Sarah's whole story, with all its drama and all
its heroics, is feeling very shaky. Tom knew he needed
back up, so he reached out to a friend who
had access to personnel records. The friend he punches in
Sarah's DoD number, the military equivalent of a Social Security number,
(35:43):
does some more digging. That friend gets back to Tom
with what he's found.
Speaker 7 (35:49):
And he said, the DODD number for this D two
fourteen belongs to a corporal so and so, and it's
a guy. And he's like, fifty percent of this document
is his record. Then fifty percent of this document is altered.
Speaker 8 (36:09):
It looks like she'd taken someone else's records and doctorate them,
inserting her own name and other details. And this, by
the way, it's not a small thing. This isn't forging
your mom's name on a sick note. This is a
huge deal, felony level huge. Tom is in a state
of shock.
Speaker 7 (36:28):
That's like, uh, yeah, that was I mean that that
was it? Like At that point, I'm like, I've been bamboozled, hoodwinked.
Speaker 8 (36:43):
Tom goes home and tells his wife. His wife, she's pissed.
She knows how hard Tom has been working for this woman,
trying to help her, and now she seems to be
a fraud. She's like, not on my watch. So she
goes over in person and reports this whole thing to NCIS.
(37:04):
That's the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Maybe you've seen the
TV show. They're the badass investigators for the US Navy
and Marine Corps. Anyway, the NCIS folks, they're like, okay,
we'll look into this.
Speaker 6 (37:18):
Around this same time, something else very important happens. Remember
how Dex, the friend from the Montana Retreat, tried to
help Sarah with her medical bills, how she contacted a
charity called Hunter seven. Well, that charity had also started
digging into Sarah's backstory, and what they discovered prompted them
(37:41):
to alert both Tom and the FBI. But what no
one realized, not Tom or Dex or NCIS or even
the FBI, was just how deep this deception went. None
of them could begin to fathom it. Lies tend to
(38:02):
be fragile temperamental things. Small ones may flourish, but the
big ones die, wilting under their own weight. Except in
this case, the bigger it grew, the more real it became.
Speaker 8 (38:19):
This season is about a betrayal writ large, a deception
that played out over the course of more than six years,
not just in Montana, but in Colorado and Texas and Tennessee,
California and Rhode Island too.
Speaker 6 (38:37):
To this day, much of this story is shrouded in mystery.
There's no detailed public record of what really happened. What's more,
most of the people caught up in all of this
haven't spoken publicly or even to each other, so the
story itself remains compartmentalized, like rooms in a mansion with
(38:59):
no doors between them. Jess and I have spent the
last year or so finding our way into these rooms
and listening coming up this season on Deep Cover.
Speaker 9 (39:16):
I remember sitting on her couch and like me like
telling her, asking her, is this real?
Speaker 4 (39:22):
Is this real?
Speaker 7 (39:23):
Is this real? Is this real?
Speaker 9 (39:25):
I was like, wait, wait, were you ever in the military.
Speaker 13 (39:29):
I just couldn't brought my head around what kind of
person would do that to another person, especially that was
you knew was sick, that was getting treatment, that was,
you know, dying.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
I've seen a lot of stuff over thirty years, and
this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode
Island fraudsters.
Speaker 8 (39:54):
Can you introduce yourself.
Speaker 10 (39:57):
I'm Sarah Kavanaugh and I'm originally from Rhode Island. I
can see where in some ways it can fit this
aspect of like this huge plan to get all this money,
like this master plan or something, but I never thought
(40:22):
about it like that.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah was produced by Amy
Gaines McQuaid and Taly Emlyn, Additional production support by Sonya Gerwick.
Speaker 8 (40:54):
Our show is edited by Karen Chakerjee. Our executive producer
is Jacob Smith, mastering by Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 6 (41:02):
Original scoring in our theme were composed by Luis Gara.
Our show art was designed by Sean Carney, fact checking
by Anika Robbins.
Speaker 8 (41:13):
Special thanks to Sarah Nis, Izzy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake
Flanagan and Greta Cone. Additional thanks to Vicky Merrick. I'm
Jess McHugh and I'm Jake Halpert.
Hey listeners, JR.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Here.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
We're gearing up for an all new season of Medal
of Honor in twenty twenty six, and some special bonus
episodes before that. But in the meantime, I wanted to
share with you another Pushkin podcast I think you'll like.
It's called Deep Cover, and it's all about people who
lead double lives and the lens they'll go to deceive others.
(00:22):
This last season, they covered a story that I think
you'll find mind blowing. This is the stolen Valor story
of Sarah Cavanaugh. This was a hot topic in the
veteran community for a while, but if you haven't heard
the story, let me fill you in a bit. Sarah
Kavanaugh is a civilian woman who claimed to be a
decorated veteran, a marine who saved her comrades, and a
(00:46):
young woman fighting cancer. She was everything people wanted her
to be until she wasn't. Turns out no one knew
the real Sarah. Lies tend to be fragile, wilting under
their own way as they get bigger and not. In
the case of Sarah Cavanaugh, the bigger her lies grew,
the more real they became. But she never served in
(01:09):
the military, never received any awards, and she defrauded veteran
organizations out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. On deep Cover,
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Jake Halpern and investigative journalist Jess
McHugh unraveled this epic six year deception that up ended
the lies of countless people. They even interviewed Sarah herself.
(01:34):
We'll be sharing some episodes of deep Cover in this
feed over the coming days. Here's the first episode.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Hey, I am just recording here is that in the
car upside the English Department, And I just got this
letter which was sent to me by Sarah Cavanaugh.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Okay, October twelve, twenty four.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Dear Jake, thank you for sending me the articles and
book that you've written. You have a distinct style when
imposing questions that really makes one think about the messages
between the lines.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Jess and I have spoken twice and emailed several times
to talk about my actions and the consequences. It is
important to me that you know I know and knew
several months before my arrest what I was doing was wrong.
I could not have imagined the laws I was breaking,
but know now that I was always guilty. What is
(02:35):
your opinion about my crime? I asked this because no
matter who we are, we bring biases, and I'd like
to know what you are bringing to the conversation. Also,
I have not always thought about others before myself, and
will always be deliberately sensitive to other people for the
rest of my life. I'm looking forward to meeting you,
even if it's virtually Sincerely, Sarah.
Speaker 6 (03:02):
This letter that I just read you. It's written onlined paper,
the kind I used in grade school, and the penmanship
is flawless. When I read it for the first time,
I was in my car outside my classroom at the
university where I teach, and I found myself just sitting
there reading and rereading this letter. What is your opinion
(03:27):
about my crime?
Speaker 7 (03:28):
She asked.
Speaker 6 (03:30):
Now that was interesting to me. It was almost like,
right from the jump, this woman, Sarah Kavanaugh, had flipped
the script like she was interviewing me, and then there
was this line, I'd like to know what you are
bringing to the conversation. Funny because we weren't even having
a conversation yet. But looking back, I understand now that
(03:55):
the conversation had already started and she was already sussing
me out, tuning in to me and Sarah. She's really
really good at that. I know that now. Months before
I got that letter, I got a call from my
(04:17):
friend Jess McHugh. She's my co host this season. Jess
is a journalist and an author. In fact, you may
have noticed in Sarah's letter she makes a reference to Jess,
and that's because Jess is the one who found this story.
Speaker 8 (04:36):
I first heard about Sarah when I read a few
articles about her online, just snippets, really, But what I
read about her was so bizarre, so unusual, I had
a million questions. So I tracked her down. We started
sending emails, talking on the phone, getting to know each other,
(04:56):
and right from the start she felt familiar to me.
We have a few things in common. Actually we're about
the same age, both from small towns in New England.
But also, I've become a bit of an expert on
women like her. I've spent years digging into historical research,
reviewing court documents, and immersing myself in the world of
(05:18):
women who managed to live multiple lives. Found so much
that I'm now writing a book about it all. So yeah,
Sarah felt familiar to me. But in the most unsettling way.
I clearly remember one of the first things I wrote
to her after reading those headlines. I told her, I
(05:40):
suspect that there is so much more to your story.
I had no way of knowing just how true that
would turn out to be.
Speaker 6 (05:53):
There's so much that we've learned since we first started
talking to Sarah, so much else that she's told us,
And we've spent the last eight months trying to figure
out how much of her story is true and what,
if anything, we could trust, because this story is all
(06:13):
about trust. It's about what it means to know someone
or think you know someone, and what happens when reality
itself seems to dissolve. I'm Jake Colbern and I'm Jess
(06:44):
McHugh and this is Deep Cover, Season six, The Truth
About Sarah, Episode one, The Warrior.
Speaker 8 (07:16):
One of the first people we interviewed for this story
was Catherine Dexter. She goes by des Des initially met
Sarah Kavanaugh in the mountains in Montana at a retreat
for veterans.
Speaker 9 (07:28):
You got to see the sunrise, you got to see mountains,
and the air was like amazing and crisped and smelled
a little bit like a campfire. So you woke up
every single morning and you saw these mountains and they
were beautiful, and you were just like awestruck because you
were like, why don't I live here? And that's where
you were drinking your coffee at five am.
Speaker 8 (07:46):
Dex had served in the Marines as military police in
Japan and a couple other bases. When she got out,
she felt a bit lost.
Speaker 9 (07:57):
So I had kind of steered away from the veteran
when I got out, and I was really really isolated.
So that was one of the big things that I
struggled with because I had dealt with a lot of
life transitions.
Speaker 8 (08:09):
The retreat was organized by a nonprofit called Patrol Base
Abate also known as pb Abaate. Founder started the organization
because he was concerned about the mental health of veterans
and their difficulties readjusting to civilian life, and this was
kind of the exact crossroads Decks was at. So she
(08:29):
applied to go on one of their all expense paid
trips to Montana, and that's how she ended up drinking
her coffee in Big Sky Country with all these other
vets and meeting Sarah. What were your first impressions of
her at the time, I liked her. I liked her
a lot.
Speaker 9 (08:47):
It's all in the context of like what I know
about her now, But back then I liked her because
she put out, because she worked really hard, and she
was really humble, and she didn't walk und saying oh
I'm a woman, and I was in combat. She was
injured and everybody knew it, but she was still running.
Speaker 6 (09:10):
Part of the ethos of this retreat was you didn't
brag about the past, focused on now, and you exercised
a lot. The whole point of this retreat was actually
strength building. The Vets built a platform that became their
outdoor gym. They lifted weights here, did squats, deadlifts, power cleans,
(09:31):
and apparently they were also carrying giant slabs of rock
up a mountain. Come on, oh shit, leyam push that woman.
You can hear saying push it. That's Sarah Kavanaugh. We
found this video of her on YouTube from this same retreat.
(09:53):
She's in a sweaty gray tank top, has on these
mirrored sunglasses and leather workmen's gloves. She has blonde and
a runners build, slim and athletics and that soft inspirational
music that's in there because this is a promotional video
(10:13):
for Patrol Base of Bata, And in that video we
see Sarah giving an interview with the wild Mountains of
Montana in the background.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Because there's such an open discussion about what's really happening
to veterans, right, you know, what are we going through?
How can we, you know, refit and refresh the skills
we have and the skills we learned while we were
serving and apply them to our lives and make our
lives better Now. I think I was expecting just to
come together and have some fun and work out, but
(10:44):
it was so much more than that.
Speaker 8 (10:46):
The person who started these retreats was concerned about all
the challenges that that's face as they transitioned back to
civilian life, and he wanted this time in the woods
to be healing, transformational even.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
And to the veterans her coming out here, be ready
to talk and not talk out loud, but maybe you
need to talk to yourself. Maybe you need to hear
what other people are saying and process that and come
back to yourself and work through some things.
Speaker 10 (11:12):
And I think that's happening here.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It definitely is. But I think if you can at
least be prepared to do the work. I think you'll
get a lot out of it.
Speaker 8 (11:28):
Beck says that on this retreat there were just a
few female vets. It was her, Sarah, and another former
marine named Natalie. The three of them worked out together.
Speaker 11 (11:39):
Dex has this way of like she calls it gassing
you up, of like being your biggest cheerleader, and so
she'll be like, man, look at those guns. Natalie.
Speaker 6 (11:49):
That's Natalie Markham. She was a clarinetist in the Marine
Corps band, a self described band nerd. At the time
of the retreat, Natalie was struggling. She owned a CrossFit
gym that had been hit hard during the pandemic, and
she was worried that it might go bust. So for
her to be here in Montana doing something she loved
(12:11):
under the open sky with new friends, it was like
she could breathe. She asked someone to take a picture
of her with Dex and Sarah to commemorate the moment.
Speaker 11 (12:23):
The three of us are lined up and being female
and in the military, like do you stand tough? Do
you stand feminine? And then you know we're in a
strength retreat, so we should take one that looks kind
of cute, but then we should take one that looks
kind of tough and so will flex, and Dex is
always one to be like, oh, we have to flex.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
In the picture, the three of them are standing against
the backdrop of the mountains, all flexing, biceps and triceps bulging.
Natalie and Sarah are smiling. Dex is all business, serious
as can be, and looking at the photo, I could
kind of feel their energy. I'd never guess they just met.
(13:06):
They look like they could be sisters, joking, competing, giving
each other shit, like the Three Musketeers or something. Dex
told us that this kind of camaraderie is not a given.
Speaker 9 (13:19):
When you're a woman in the military, the competition among
other women is really intense. A lot of the time.
You're all trying to be the best, not just be
the best woman, but you're trying to be the best
so that the men think you're the best, because that's
what matters. And you know, men are the ones who
are always in charge of you. It's their opinion that
gets you promoted. So if you're falling short, I mean,
(13:41):
you're already doing one thing wrong because you're a woman,
so it's like you can't do two things wrong.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Dex was especially impressed with Sarah. She was somehow doing
all these really intense workouts while also dealing with what
seemed like a pretty serious leg injury.
Speaker 9 (13:59):
She also was taking injections of some kind, some type
of medication for her hip, and she was like telling us, like,
if she doesn't, you know, put this shot in her hip,
like her leg goes numb.
Speaker 6 (14:12):
Because Sarah was so modest, because she didn't boast or
advertise about who she was and what she'd done, there
was an air of mystery about her. Sarah said she
was a crypto linguist. She'd served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
She came from a military family. Her brother had been
a marine too. He was killed in combat and buried
(14:35):
at Arlington Cemetery. In private moments, Sarah began to open
up two decks.
Speaker 9 (14:42):
She told me that she had been in a convoy
and her vehicle was hit by nid you know, the
humby blew up the door from the humphy like crushed
her hip and somehow she was able to like get
out of the humby.
Speaker 6 (14:56):
As Sarah told it, her hip never healed properly from
the knee down. Her leg was basically dying. But that's
not all.
Speaker 9 (15:05):
While sitting in the tent, she's about to leave and
we're talking and she tells me that, like, she just
got diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. And I like
remembered this because she cried because I got up to
give her a hug.
Speaker 8 (15:26):
So just a recap. Here's this woman, Sarah, who at
the time was just thirty years old, already a decorated
war veteran, strong, modest, quietly brave, sprinting down these mountain
trails and giving herself these injections to stem the pain.
And on top of it all, she also has stage
(15:48):
four lung cancer. Dex had to coax it out of
her because Sarah's story came out in dribs and drabs,
and it got more tragic incrementally, like a kettle on
a stove that heats up slowly until all of a
sudden it starts to boil. So the retreat in Montana
(16:29):
comes to an end, and the three Musketeers say goodbye
to one another. They stay in touch, and this, by
the way, is exactly the goal of this program. Veterans
forming real bonds that last long after the campfire goes out.
A few months after the Montana retreat, in December of
twenty twenty one, Dex happened to be in Virginia visiting
(16:52):
Arlington National Cemetery and suddenly Dex remembers that Sarah's brother
was a Marine who was killed action. So she sends
Sarah a text and says she'd like to lay a
wreath at his grave. Within minutes, Sarah texts back with
a plot number. But when Dex gets to the grave,
(17:14):
she notices that this marine he has a different last
name than Sarah's, and when she looks up his obituary,
she sees that they're not even the same race. When
she sends Sarah a picture of the grave, though, Sarah
confirms that yes, this is him.
Speaker 9 (17:32):
So I'm thinking, if he's not her actual physical brother,
I don't think she mentioned ever having an adopted brother.
And then I'm thinking maybe she just meant brother, like
in the colloquial where all marines were brothers type way,
and I was like, maybe that's it.
Speaker 8 (17:54):
You can hear Dex trying to make sense of this,
but she said she didn't ask Sarah too many questions
about it.
Speaker 9 (18:03):
That's kind of like if you had a friend that
told you that she'd had a miscarriage. The very last
thing that you're going to do to that friend while
she's crying about losing a baby, is ask heurage that
actually happened. Like this is so insensitive. So I was
not going to ask this woman these questions because I
didn't want to be insensitive because we were friends.
Speaker 8 (18:23):
So Dex just didn't say anything. Besides, at this point,
Sarah was fighting lung cancer and from time to time
she'd mentioned to Dex that her medical bills were piling up.
Now the VA wasn't covering everything. Dex wanted to help,
even from far away. That's when she heard about this
(18:44):
charity called Hunter seven. Hunter seven helps veterans who struggle
to pay their medical bills. The reality is many veterans
face huge gaps in the healthcare of the VA, provides
long wait times, denied claims, and charities like Hunter seven
come in as a stopgap. So Dex tells Sarah she
(19:06):
should apply for financial assistance. At first, Sarah seemed reluctant.
Maybe she was just underwater with everything she had going on,
So Dex offered to step in and submit an application
for Sarah.
Speaker 9 (19:21):
I was like this is what I would do for
my friends, like especially a friend who's like struggling at
this level. I was like, I understood really clearly, like
having a million things going on and all of them
feeling very intent. So I was like, let me help
you out because I have a minute, and it's no
skin off my back to send an email.
Speaker 8 (19:41):
She couldn't know this then, but this simple act of
kindness would set something in motion, something that would forever
alter the way Decks saw Sarah.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
Remember Natalie, the third Musketeer from the Montana Retreat, the clarinetist. Yeah, well,
Natalie also stayed in touch with Sarah. In fact, right
around the time that Dex was visiting the cemetery in Arlington,
Natalie and Sarah were actually hanging out in person. A
bunch of vets, including a few from the Montana Retreat,
(20:23):
gathered at a CrossFit gym in California to have a
little competition. Well not so little, even for Natalie. It
was a lot.
Speaker 11 (20:33):
There was one workout every hour on the hour for
eight hours. Just the grueling nature of eight hours worth
of workouts is enough to make most people go, yeah, no,
I'm not doing that.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
Yeah, pretty insane. This was like an ultra marathon for weightlifters.
They broke down into teams of two. Now, at this point,
Natalie didn't know about Sarah's cancer, and this is because
Sarah had never told her. She just confided this to Decks, which,
(21:05):
as we've come to learn, is kind of how Sarah operated.
She shared details about her life one on one in
these small private moments, and so the secrets remain compartmentalized.
Natalie was aware that Sarah had some issue with her leg,
but that was about all. Then in the middle of
(21:28):
the competition, during one of the breaks, they're all kind
of just sitting around resting, Natalie, her teammate, Sarah, her teammate, All.
Speaker 11 (21:38):
Four of us are sitting on the floor together and
Sarah says that she's going to have to have her
leg amputated. And I was blown away, Like, you are
in the middle of doing an eight hour workout and
you have to have your leg amputated. It was absolutely
(22:04):
unfathomable to me. But I distinctly remember her saying, if
I'm gonna have to have my leg amputated, then I'm
gonna make this bitch give me every last ounce of
what it's got. To give.
Speaker 6 (22:19):
Natalie is looking at Sarah's leg and it's trembling, and
she thinks to herself, you are like.
Speaker 11 (22:28):
A whole other level of badassory than I have ever known.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
And the proof was Sarah's team then goes on to
beat Natalie's team in the competition, and Natalie she's in awe.
The two women went to another retreat together not long
after this, and it seemed like Sarah's leg was in
bad shape.
Speaker 12 (22:52):
We did one workout where Sarah was having a really
hard time and like at the end of the workout,
her leg was shaking so badly, and she's like, Natalie,
will you please help me?
Speaker 11 (23:06):
Can you please help me? Stretch?
Speaker 12 (23:08):
I took her shaking leg and placed it up on
my shoulder and am holding her quad in one hand
and her foot up here and kind of leaning in,
and I'm talking her through like breathe into the muscle,
Like take some breath, exhale slowly, picture your leg relaxing,
and just remember her like having this moment of her
(23:32):
leg finally relaxing and this is the leg that she's
supposed to have amputated, and feeling some sense of gratitude
that I could help somebody in that situation to have
some kind of relief.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
Looking back, Natalie still recalls the intensity of this moment
with Sarah, the tenseness of her hamstring, the tremors and
her muscles, the pain on Sarah's face. It all seems
so real. In the coming weeks, Natalie texted Sarah about
the amputation to see if it had been scheduled, and
(24:13):
Sarah eventually gave her a date, January twenty sixth. The
date sticks in Natalie's mind. She keeps thinking about it
as it draws closer, and then the night before the surgery,
Natalie can't sleep. She just keeps thinking about Sarah, and.
Speaker 11 (24:30):
Like, I'm so genuinely worried about her that in the
middle of the night, I wake up and the first
thing I think of is I must be waking up
because I've got to pray for Sarah. I should text
her and let her know that I'm praying. And so
I text out my prayer to her and send it
to her.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
I asked Natalie to read me.
Speaker 11 (24:49):
That text January twenty sixth, twenty twenty two. A prayer
for you today is what I wrote. God. Thank you
for Sarah, Thank you for her intelligence, kindness, humor, bravery, courage,
and service to the United States. And for her gift
of friendship. I pray that you will give her and
(25:11):
her family a deep sense of peace today, even as
she is under anesthesia, though she already has such a
deep sense of drive and determination, pour into her an
extra dose of perseverance and purpose. Heal her body Lord
from this and all illness and disease.
Speaker 6 (25:33):
Did she write anything back, She.
Speaker 11 (25:37):
Wrote, thank you so much. I can't tell you what
this means to me.
Speaker 6 (25:44):
The next day, Natalie shot Sarah another text to see
how the surgery went, and Sarah explained that they had
to call off the amputation.
Speaker 12 (25:55):
She said that when she was going into her so
that her blood pressure had dropped and they couldn't They
weren't able to perform the surgery because of that, and
I remember thinking at the time.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
Like, that's really weird. You would think that if you're
going to go have your leg cut off, that your
blood pressure would be sky high. The next day, I
was like trying to reach out to her, but thinking
that she's still in the hospital and it's in the
middle of me trying to get a hold of her.
Then I receive a message from Tom through WhatsApp.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
That guy, she mentions Tom, that's Tom Schumann. He's the
founder of Patrol Base ABATA, the nonprofit that organized those
retreats up in Montana. Tom also knew Sarah and now
he was texting with an urgent message.
Speaker 11 (26:52):
And he's like, Hey, Sarah is not who she says
she is.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
Tom says that Sarah has been lying about a number
of things, and that she may have lied about her
military service. Natalie didn't know who or what to believe.
Speaker 11 (27:09):
I specifically asked Tom, like how do you know this?
Because now I'm questioning him, like why would you even
say something like that, Like how do you? How do you?
How do you know for sure?
Speaker 6 (27:21):
But it turns out Tom had his reasons. In the
weeks leading up to this moment, he'd been digging into
Sarah's story and he discovered a few red flags, some
things that just didn't add up. More on that.
Speaker 8 (27:37):
After the break, Tom Schumann first met Sarah Kavanaugh in
the snowy mountains of Boulder, Colorado, at a Patrol Base
(28:01):
of Bate retreat.
Speaker 7 (28:05):
We're staying in a canvas tense. It was an intimate
setting where we're spending all day night, which is a
small group of people. We connected over our intellectual and
academic and literature interests, had read the same books, talking
about the same authors. Pretty immediately we started hitting it off.
Speaker 8 (28:27):
This retreat was similar to the one in Montana we
told you about. Hang out, workout, talk, connect. That was
the goal. That's why Tom founded pibi Abaate in the
first place. He's a marine and when he returned from
his tours overseas, he watched his comrade struggle. He told
us three of his fellow marines died by suicide over
(28:50):
the course of one month, and that is what led
him to start Pibiabaate. In Colorado, Tom and Sarah started
to get to know each other. Sarah told him she
was a professor, which appealed to him. Tom himself taught
literature at the US Naval Academy. Sarah also told him
that she had a kid who just crashed her pickup truck.
(29:12):
She seemed down to earth and genuine.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
Within the first twenty four hours, I felt like we
had bonded, and then throughout the weekend there were a
couple of experiences that solidified that bond and strengthened it.
Speaker 8 (29:28):
On the last day of this retreat, a guy named
Brian Shantosh led them on an adventure workout. Shantash is
a former marine and a leadership guru famed for his
wilderness programs, and his workouts have a reputation for pushing
people to their limits. So everyone, even Tom, was nervous.
They were told to break down into teams of two.
(29:51):
Sarah and Tom partnered.
Speaker 7 (29:52):
Up and one of the things that you had to
do was a weighted sled up the mountain and back.
A couple different times. You dragged this on a mile loop.
Speaker 8 (30:10):
They get to it. They start pushing this weighted sled
up the mountain and then back down the mountain on
this mile long loop, again and again and again. And
remember this is the Rockies in December, so it's freezing
and the wind is whipping them as they trudge through.
Speaker 7 (30:29):
I just really respected this, this gal who was apparently
very valorous in combat, still dealing with her injuries from combat,
toughing it out on the side of the mountain, and
so I admired that she was being what I felt like,
pretty courageous through the event.
Speaker 8 (30:48):
Tom's not a very effusive guy, so this is basically
his version of gushing. He didn't know about all of
Sarah's health issues, the cancer and the leg amputation. Sarah
had never told him about this, though he would soon
find out.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
Within a few weeks. Tom hears about Sarah's cancer, and
then he feels like he's got to do something.
Speaker 7 (31:20):
I am a guy of action. I reached out to
her and I said, hey, I didn't know you were sick.
We should meet soon to see if I can I
can help, if there's anything that I can do.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
At the time, Tom lived in Rhode Island, where Sarah
also lived, so they met up for coffee and talked
for hours. He learned how she'd seen combat in Afghanistan,
how our convoy was blown up, and how she'd been
seriously hurt in the blast, and how despite it all,
she still managed to save some of the guys in
(31:54):
her patrol, dragging them to safety even with her own
crushed hip. How she'd gotten a ron star for her bravery,
and now she had cancer in her lungs because of
the toxic chemicals and that explosion.
Speaker 7 (32:09):
It seemed incurable, that it was terminal. The VA wasn't
helping because she couldn't prove that the cancer was combat related.
I was just like, goodness, gracious, like everything that you've
been through, from your injuries to the cancer to gonna
(32:34):
lose your leg, the amount of tragedy that in trauma.
And I just resolved in that moment like I am
gonna do everything that I can do to help you.
Speaker 8 (32:48):
And what do you need?
Speaker 7 (32:50):
And she needed employment. She said she didn't have a
very good job.
Speaker 6 (32:54):
She told Tom that her plan had been to get
a PhD in English literature. She'd even been accept it
into a program at Johns Hopkins, but then the VA
delivered some shattering news. They told her that she couldn't
use her GI bill. Why because her life expectancy was
shorter than the time it would take to finish the program.
(33:16):
It was devastating, all of it. Tom, being a guy
of action, was like, maybe I can create a salaried
position for you at Patrol Base Abata. At the time,
the organization was run entirely by volunteers. There were no
paid positions, but the organization did have donors, some with
(33:38):
deep pockets, and Tom thought maybe one of them would
be willing to pay for this. Tom even had a
particular donor in mind, a woman who lived up in
New Hampshire.
Speaker 8 (33:49):
So he wants to get all his ducks in a row.
He asks Sarah for a copy of her DD two fourteen.
That's the official military discharge paper that all service members receive,
explaining how and when they left the service. Sarah sends
him the paperwork. He says he remembers vividly the moment
he received it. He was sitting in his car in
a parking lot about to get a haircut. He starts
(34:12):
scanning through the documents on his phone and something catches
his eye.
Speaker 10 (34:18):
The D two.
Speaker 8 (34:19):
Fourteen, says Sarah retired as a corporal, which is weird
because she'd made it all the way up to staff sergeant.
In fact, he'd seen a picture of her with the
staff sergeant insignia. So he calls her up.
Speaker 7 (34:33):
And so I just said, hey, Sarah, I'm going to
New Hampshire tomorrow to ask for sixty thousand dollars. Before
I do that, could you help me understand why it
says that you're a corporal here, And she's like, well,
I didn't really want to get into all that, but
(34:57):
I was sexually assaulted on on ship by the commanding officer.
He had pulled the gun during the sexual assault, and
I'm the one who got punished for reporting him. I said, like,
I'm sorry to hear that, but I am now incredulous
(35:20):
about all this.
Speaker 8 (35:23):
Suddenly, Sarah's whole story, with all its drama and all
its heroics, is feeling very shaky. Tom knew he needed
back up, so he reached out to a friend who
had access to personnel records. The friend he punches in
Sarah's DoD number, the military equivalent of a Social Security number,
(35:43):
does some more digging. That friend gets back to Tom
with what he's found.
Speaker 7 (35:49):
And he said, the DODD number for this D two
fourteen belongs to a corporal so and so, and it's
a guy. And he's like, fifty percent of this document
is his record. Then fifty percent of this document is altered.
Speaker 8 (36:09):
It looks like she'd taken someone else's records and doctorate them,
inserting her own name and other details. And this, by
the way, it's not a small thing. This isn't forging
your mom's name on a sick note. This is a
huge deal, felony level huge. Tom is in a state
of shock.
Speaker 7 (36:28):
That's like, uh, yeah, that was I mean that that
was it? Like At that point, I'm like, I've been bamboozled, hoodwinked.
Speaker 8 (36:43):
Tom goes home and tells his wife. His wife, she's pissed.
She knows how hard Tom has been working for this woman,
trying to help her, and now she seems to be
a fraud. She's like, not on my watch. So she
goes over in person and reports this whole thing to NCIS.
(37:04):
That's the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Maybe you've seen the
TV show. They're the badass investigators for the US Navy
and Marine Corps. Anyway, the NCIS folks, they're like, okay,
we'll look into this.
Speaker 6 (37:18):
Around this same time, something else very important happens. Remember
how Dex, the friend from the Montana Retreat, tried to
help Sarah with her medical bills, how she contacted a
charity called Hunter seven. Well, that charity had also started
digging into Sarah's backstory, and what they discovered prompted them
(37:41):
to alert both Tom and the FBI. But what no
one realized, not Tom or Dex or NCIS or even
the FBI, was just how deep this deception went. None
of them could begin to fathom it. Lies tend to
(38:02):
be fragile temperamental things. Small ones may flourish, but the
big ones die, wilting under their own weight. Except in
this case, the bigger it grew, the more real it became.
Speaker 8 (38:19):
This season is about a betrayal writ large, a deception
that played out over the course of more than six years,
not just in Montana, but in Colorado and Texas and Tennessee,
California and Rhode Island too.
Speaker 6 (38:37):
To this day, much of this story is shrouded in mystery.
There's no detailed public record of what really happened. What's more,
most of the people caught up in all of this
haven't spoken publicly or even to each other, so the
story itself remains compartmentalized, like rooms in a mansion with
(38:59):
no doors between them. Jess and I have spent the
last year or so finding our way into these rooms
and listening coming up this season on Deep Cover.
Speaker 9 (39:16):
I remember sitting on her couch and like me like
telling her, asking her, is this real?
Speaker 4 (39:22):
Is this real?
Speaker 7 (39:23):
Is this real? Is this real?
Speaker 9 (39:25):
I was like, wait, wait, were you ever in the military.
Speaker 13 (39:29):
I just couldn't brought my head around what kind of
person would do that to another person, especially that was
you knew was sick, that was getting treatment, that was,
you know, dying.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
I've seen a lot of stuff over thirty years, and
this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode
Island fraudsters.
Speaker 8 (39:54):
Can you introduce yourself.
Speaker 10 (39:57):
I'm Sarah Kavanaugh and I'm originally from Rhode Island. I
can see where in some ways it can fit this
aspect of like this huge plan to get all this money,
like this master plan or something, but I never thought
(40:22):
about it like that.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah was produced by Amy
Gaines McQuaid and Taly Emlyn, Additional production support by Sonya Gerwick.
Speaker 8 (40:54):
Our show is edited by Karen Chakerjee. Our executive producer
is Jacob Smith, mastering by Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 6 (41:02):
Original scoring in our theme were composed by Luis Gara.
Our show art was designed by Sean Carney, fact checking
by Anika Robbins.
Speaker 8 (41:13):
Special thanks to Sarah Nis, Izzy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake
Flanagan and Greta Cone. Additional thanks to Vicky Merrick. I'm
Jess McHugh and I'm Jake Halpert.
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!