Justice

Laura gets a call from a relative who provides insight into Sarah's past. Sarah has her day in court. Her victims have the chance to say their piece, but still struggle to make sense of what happened to them. The judge issues a surprising sentence.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Last summer, I was on vacation in New England when
I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize.
I figured it was spam. I checked the message a
little while later, expecting to hear something about my car warranty. Laura,
less call over your letter about Sarah. It was Sarah's dad.

(00:23):
I called him back and we spoke for about half
an hour. He didn't want to be recorded, but he
was okay to talk. I was finally on the phone
with someone who could tell me about Sarah's past because
he had been a part of it. He told me
he was seventy two years old and a Vietnam Vette.

(00:45):
He and Sarah's mom were married in May of three.
They divorced less than two years later, when Sarah was
just a few months old. It seemed like a messy breakup.
The more we talked, the more I got the feeling
that I had opened up a wound that had been
festering for decades. He told me something I'd heard before,

(01:07):
that he wasn't around much and Sarah's childhood. He worked
as a long haul trucker, so he was gone a lot,
but he said he didn't feel much like anyone wanted
him around either. As our conversation went on, he toggled
between anger and tears. I asked him to describe good
memories of Sarah as a young girl, like birthday parties

(01:28):
or trips to the zoo. He didn't offer any. I
asked if it had gotten together with his daughter much
as an adult. No. Again, he did help her buy
a car, the one Christine told me about. Sarah got
it when she was dating her son Zach. Sarah had
even shown her father the engagement ring. Later, he texted

(01:52):
me a few pictures. In one Sarah is five years old,
a red and white bow clipped to her short hair,
and another she looks like she's in her late teens
or early twenties. She's leaning in toward her dad. They're
both smiling. Sarah's dad called me one other time. A
few months later. I had texted him an easy question,

(02:12):
how do you say de Lashman? He called to pronounce
it for me. This time I sensed more of a
smoldering pain than anything else. His voice cracked as he
told me that Sarah was his daughter and he loved her,
and he thought she needed psychiatric care. He knew she
had gone on television. He told me he'd like to
sit down for a private talk with Dr Phil. Just

(02:38):
before we hung up, he said he wanted to ask
me something a buddy of his had mentioned seeing a
magazine article on Sarah. She's just a girl from the Midwest.
He said, why does anyone care about what she did?
Why is her story worth national attention? It was a
fair question to ask, what is it about Sarah's story

(03:00):
that speaks to anyone other than the people who once
trusted her? Why does it matter? I told him for
the sake of her family, her victims, and even Sarah herself.
It was a question I would try to answer. I'm
Laura Beale. You're listening to Sympathy Pains. This is the

(03:22):
sixth and final episode Justice. January one, two thousand twenty
was a chilly, windy Tuesday in Highland, Illinois. It was
early in the morning. An officer, David Brynes of the
Highland Police Department, was keeping warm in his squad car.
He was parked around the corner from where Sarah lived

(03:44):
with her mom. By then she was thirty five years old.
It was a single story house. I believe it was
a two or three bedroom with a basement and then
finished basement. I went down there air with it was
at least ten FBI agents. He was waiting for the

(04:04):
signal from the FBI agents to go in. We've been
preparing for this for about a week. Had been driving
by her residence. We knew that she worked at an
Amazon distribution plant nearby, and we believe she also had
a separate job here at our Walmart, so we were
trying to establish when she would be home. Her mother

(04:24):
was home too. I've heard all kinds of descriptions of
Sarah's relationship with her mom, from loving to codependent. I see,
and I can't say which of them is true. Maybe
each of them contains elements that are. Sarah's aunt told
me in a text that their mother had been killed
in a car crash when they were teenagers, and they

(04:46):
were pretty much on their own after that. She said
Sarah's mom wasn't the kind to ask for help. Once,
when her car was broadsided, she searched through an auto
salvage yard, found a door that would fit and replaced
it herself. Off. She thought her sister had a baby
for companionship, as a kind of escape from her joyless marriage.

(05:07):
On the Dr Phil show. Sarah's mother had been in
the audience. When the cameras turned to her, she said
she wasn't aware of what Sarah had been up to
all these years, that she didn't even know that her
daughter had. Her nursing license were evoked in multiple states.
That January morning, an FBI agent knocked on the door
and showed the search warrant to both of them. Officer

(05:31):
Brian's got the all clear to go inside. When he
walked in the door, he saw boxes and clutter everywhere.
A lot of the boxes were just an open boxes,
like they had ordered something from Amazon and retrieved it
and just set it in there and never opened it.

(05:51):
They had at least four small dogs. What I remember
most was the smell, overwhelming inch of pet urine. He
went into the kitchen, the counters were just it was
just filled with clutter and junk, old food. I mean,
you couldn't really see the kitchen table because it was

(06:12):
buried under stuff. Just it seemed like anything that had
ever came into that house stayed in that house. Officers
spent the next few hours searching the house for evidence.
The triathlon bikes were in the garage in the basement.
Officer Brian's found the racing bibs should save from the

(06:34):
charity events, fourteen items of evidence were collected and seized
from the residents. I know at some point during our search,
Sarah was taken from the residents up to the Highland
Police Department and she was interviewed. I tried for months
to obtain a tape of this interview. I wanted to

(06:55):
hear Sarah telling her own story in her own voice,
but the US Justice Department said no. On March third, twenty,
Sarah was officially charged with eight felony counts, including wire
fraud and mail fraud. She was also charged with aggravated
identity theft from using her mother's credit card to order

(07:15):
one of the bikes. The other bike had been donated
to her by y s C, the Young Survival Coalition
for Women with Breast cancer. Prosecutors said she had fraudulently
received financial aid from Camp Summit. I found out about
the charges from a phone call. Hi, Laura is this calling? Wow? Okay,

(07:37):
So I just heard that Sarah was invited. I'm just
shaking time, just waiting here from Bethany. She's in the meeting,
but I just cannot wait to share this with her.
It's been just about a year to the day that
she was living at our house with my parents and
we discovered this, and I just I on without words.

(08:00):
A year earlier, Liz had wanted to help Sarah, feeling
an overwhelming sympathy for a dying young woman. Now Liz
was in a very different place. You know, after twenty years,
this woman who has defrauded countless hundreds of people, her
own family, to see it come to an end of

(08:21):
justice is just such a good feeling. Three months later, Lukewisler,
the federal prosecutor, arrived early in a brightly lit a St.
Louis courtroom. A short time later, Sarah entered with her attorney.
She was in a mass like all of us. I

(08:42):
think that she had her hair pulled back. I mean,
she was dressed for court son a in a pretty
conservative way. The judge came in and spoke to her.
She is advised of different rights. She is also advised
of the charges against her. She responded that she was
aware of the charges. I think that she she was
soft spoken and and her voice was a little bit shaky,

(09:05):
which you know, kind of made it seem like she
might be nervous, or or just kind of the gravity
of what was happening, might be sinking in. The public
couldn't be there because of COVID, but could listen in
on a phone line. Liz and Bethany dialed in. When
it was over, I gave them a call and asked
them what they were doing while all this was going on.
Bethany listened at home. I was sitting here on my

(09:28):
couch with my eyes closed, trying to imagine her facial expression.
She didn't feel any sense of finality. She thought Sarah
would just revel in the attention. She thinks she's going
to show up at this courthouse today, she's gonna get
her fifteen minutes of fame again. And she's already onto
the next thing. At the beginning, when they're talking about,
you know, if you've been under psychic evaluation, if you
are you on drugs, I'm just waiting for that Sarah

(09:51):
moment where she just slipped away again. She's going to
say something, She's going to manipulate this to benefit her.
And then at the very end, I was just hearing
this monotone voice that you notice when he said, well,
we'll need to confiscate your passport. She said, okay as
she was exhaling, and I thought that was really weird. Interesting.
I did pick up on that, Bethany. That's what I

(10:12):
was thinking was she's already coached this in her head,
that all she's going to say is yes, I do, Yes,
I do, Yes, I do. Because she's trying so hard
to stay in that whatever that personality, that mindset, or
whatever it is. I would have loved to see her
face to face, just for her to know that me
and Liz aren't giving this up. I asked how they
would feel if the case settles and there's no trial.

(10:34):
Bethany thinks for a second and then isn't even sure
she wants Sarah to go in front of a jury.
It doesn't get to be told by her sitting on
a stand and crying and trying to win people over.
So honestly, at this moment, I don't even know that
I would care. A few months later, Sarah was back

(10:56):
at the federal courthouse. She entered her plea, her guilty plea.
On October two thousand twenty. She pled guilty to four
counts of wire fraud and one kind of mail frond
Sarah appeared in court for the last time on January nine,
two thousand twenty one. The nation was deeply mired in

(11:16):
the pandemic, so everyone participated virtually on a checkerboard of
screens that we've all gotten used to. She was at
a table, just kind of a standard conference table, and
she was a little bit further back from the screen.
Luke Wiseler worked at a deal with Sarah's attorney. He
asked for a reduced sentence in exchange for a guilty

(11:37):
plea on five of the eight charges. This is a
case where on paper, the dollars at stake are very minimal,
so minimal in fact that in another situation everyone might
have settled for probation. But this was hardly an ordinary case.
From our perspective, some amount of prison time was important.

(11:58):
The judge asked the victims to read their statements. I
wanted the judge to to know that you know, these
are organizations that are in the world to do such good,
and that the defendant in this case violated almost every
aspect of them. Bethany went first. In a halting voice,

(12:19):
she said she wanted to represent the disability community. Sacred
communities like Camp Summit. I wasn't allowed to take the
statement as she read it in court, but asked her
to read what she had written later that day over
the phone. She started by talking about Sarah at Camp
Summit when Bethany was a counselor. Sarah that I knew

(12:41):
at camp was very kind. She was thoughtful, giggly, friendly
and intelligent. Sarah told me that she had zero mobility.
The typical wheelchair transfer or assistance only requires one, maybe
two caregivers. Sarah was unique and that she was difficult
to lift because of her stature and her lack of movement.
It took three of us for the transfers. She told

(13:03):
the court how their friendship blossomed after camp was over.
At one point, Sarah told me she'd consider moving in
with me so we could be roommates and she could
help me with the child and vice first I could
help her. For a moment, I truly considered it. I
considered her a very good friend at the time, and
I thought she understood that life is it's perfect. And
the day she learned the truth, she got up out

(13:26):
of the wheelchair and walked away into a van, never
to be seen again. The grief that I felt in
that moment from the grief that we have victims continue
to speak it as if someone's died, the fields, as
though we're watching a car crash. We know it's about
to happen, but we can't stop it. We also know

(13:48):
that we have to stick around and pick up there
is pieces. Victim Anthony asked the judge if she could
read a statement written by Aaron Johnson, who wasn't in
court that day. My parents cared for her, for Sarah

(14:08):
as a disabled person more than once. The second time
that had happened, she was supposedly paralyzed from a cancerous
tumor in her spine. No, but I realized almost eleven
years later, there was so much that was fake. She
was full of fake diseases, births, deaths, friendships, family members
who weren't real. When I first found out that was real,

(14:32):
I questioned everyone in my life. I was devastated someone
who was supposed to be my best friend I had
taken my life, wasted my time, and made me feel
so dumb for eleven, almost twelve years, She wrote about
her lingering pain. I feel pains for those who gave

(14:56):
time and money too, gives her things she didn't need
making their struggles seem easy, as if they did not run.
Bethany ended by telling the judge that even with all
that Aaron had been through, Aaron was still everything that
Sarah was not. Every time that I've approached her with

(15:16):
my pain, She's welcomed it with open arms and absorbed
it with unconditional love. We're asking today, but these communities
find justice so that people like me can go back
out into the world and love people back the same
way that Aaron does. Then it was Liz's turn. Here.

(15:36):
She is recounting her statement to me later that day. Sarah,
you are here today facing sentencing to pay for stealing
a bike, a helmet, and camps reserved for adults with
real disabilities and illnesses. While these are hantous acts that
are fall under the current definition of a crime, the
irreparable pain and a measurable damage you have paused so

(16:01):
much more. With Liz and Bethany finished, Luke Wiseler asked
the judge for a punishment of eight months in prison.
Sarah's defense attorney told the court that his client regretted
what she had done and that admitting to it on
television meant that there were YouTube links and news stories
that would follow her for the rest of her life.

(16:21):
He mentioned mitigating factors in her childhood. He didn't specify
what they were though. Finally came Sarah's turn. She started
by apologizing for all she had done. She said she changed,
telling the judge I no longer need to seek unhealthy
behaviors to seek the approval of others. I could only

(16:43):
listen on a dial in line, but all the participants
of the hearing were on zoom watching Sarah's face. The
victims who were on the screen were still emotional. They
were emotional throughout really the whole hearing. As Sarah spoke,
there didn't see to be a lot of emotion behind
her words, and so especially after the victims had spoken

(17:09):
and had so much emotion what they were saying, you know,
there was just a very clear difference in what was
being said, or at least how it was being said,
and they were just shaking their head kind of almost
denying the sincerity of what was being said. As as
it was being said, they just weren't buying it. The

(17:29):
court went into recess so the judge could consider all
she had heard. Everyone waited when court resumed. Judge Stacy
Yandal started by acknowledging the unusual nous of the case
and how the damage Sarah inflicted on the hearts and
souls of those who befriended her was not technically a

(17:53):
matter for a court of law. It didn't take long
in listening to to what the judge was saying to
to see that she really did recognize the emotional impact.
She pointed out that the goal of sentencing is not
just punishment, but deterrence. In a time when the Internet

(18:14):
makes it easy for people to pray on the generosity
of others, just like Sarah did. The judge pointed out
that Sarah had been scamming people for a long long time,
back to two thousand and six. There was documentation of it.
I think she meant the quilt. I couldn't record the
judge because of federal rules. But here's another journalist reading

(18:36):
from the court transcript. Mr Lashmidt began her fraudulent s
free many many years ago, and she has yet to
be deterred. As the government pointed out in its sentencing memorandum,
this defendant has gone from one fraudulent charade to the
next for years. The loss of her Illinois nursing license

(18:57):
in two thousand fourteen for faking pregnancies and miscarriages. Did
not deter her from pretending to have muscular dystrophy at
Camp Summit in two thousand fifteen and two thousand sixteen,
and being confronted by her pastor and family and having
to rise up from her wheelchair and walk out of

(19:19):
Camp Summit in two thousand sixteen did not deter her
from attending ysc events as a breast cancer survivor in
two thousand seventeen and two thousand eighteen. So the question
is what will deter her. I listened closely, Mr de
lashmant to your statement, and I paid attention, and I'm
frankly not persuaded that there is genuine remorse here or

(19:42):
that there is genuine shame. Judge Yandal acknowledged that Sarah's
behavior could be the result of untreated mental illness, but said,
I will point out that this court has been presented
with no evidence of that. I have no records, there
has been no diagnosis. Finally, the judge pointed out the
limits of the law in this case and said that

(20:04):
standard sentencing guidelines just don't capture or reflect the nature
or the range of Miss de Laschmidt's conduct, or her crime,
or the impact of her crimes on the victims. And
with that, Judge Stacy Yandell more than doubled the sentence
the prosecution had requested. And so where is she today?

(20:27):
She is imprisoned. When the judge handed down Sarah's prison sentence,
citing her history going back to the time of the quilt,
Andrea Smith, who was listening in, was elated. It was
absolute vindication. It felt like she was getting sentenced for

(20:51):
what she did to us, even though we were unable
to press charges at the time. Andrea had been chasing
Sarah across the Internet for years, hoping to warn her
next potential mark. So as we sat at her computer
in South Carolina, I wanted to know, now, what do
you think she'll stop? No, I don't. I don't think

(21:12):
that she will stop. I think this is a compulsion.
I think that she has mentally ill. I'm not a
psychiatric professional, but there's something missing from her life. I
don't know. I'm not I'm not well versed enough, but
there's something wrong that she needs to seek satisfaction through

(21:33):
feigning illness. Sarah never answered any letters I wrote to
her in prison, but in a text message, Sarah's aunt
told me that she's doing well. She wrote that Sarah
started attending a Bible study group and one of the
inmates is teaching her to crochet. Sarah's mom is having
a hard time with her being gone. We're just praying

(21:55):
that she can get through this. Sarah will be fine.
Her aunt wrapped up the message by texting in ending,
I just want to say we all miss her and
pray for peace for the people who made it their
life's purpose to punish her. Sarah's prison sentence was supposed

(22:20):
to end in July, but she got out early on
March four, something that Luke Wisler says isn't all that
unusual for federal sentences. In late January, only weeks before
her full release, she changed her Facebook profile picture. In
the photo, her brunette hair has blonde highlights. She's holding
a chocolate chip cookie and smiling. Wherever Sarah went, she

(22:45):
left people shaken. Sympathy was both her great need and
her powerful weapon. The victims I talked to are still
not the same. This is a story where justice was served,
but a tidy ending is not possible. Do you feel
like you have been able to have the closure that

(23:08):
you need? In a way, yes, but in a wing
this is Aaron again. I kind of feel closer in
a way, but I don't because I don't feel like

(23:28):
she's really being punished for what she did to so
many other people, because there are people that she did
money and equipment from, and then there's people like me
and Bethani and so many other people who she didn't
really take money from, but mess of our hearts and
our motion, our families and everything that money can't buy.

(23:57):
And I'm still left thinking about the question her dad
asked me. If you didn't know Sarah, if you were
never caught in her net, why does any of this matter?
To be honest with you, I've heard that question myself.
I've even had people come to me and say, why
are you putting this much energy towards something that was
so traumatic for Bethany. The answer comes back to something

(24:17):
that Dr Phil said that Sarah was able to do
what she did because she had no empathy. Empathy is
at the core of why all this matters, because it's
at the core of humanity. For the world to function,
we must be able to see ourselves in others. Without that,
we can't comprehend their pain, their motivation, the drivers behind

(24:41):
the decisions they make every day. Sarah was able to
wall herself off from the damage she was causing people
like Bethany or Aaron or Liz or anyone she conned.
Either Sarah in her mind couldn't comprehend how she was
hurting them, or she did comprehend it and just didn't care.
Are And here's the reason Bethany and other people Sarah

(25:04):
knew wanted to tell this story. They look around and
see plenty of people who destroy the trust and spirit
of those around them, too many people who are either
passively or willfully numb to the suffering of others. I
can open up any of my social media's right now
and pull up videos of adults screaming and fighting, like,

(25:26):
how am I supposed to teach my child? We're supposed
to be kind when those are the things that she's
going to experience. And that's it's it's deep. It's troubling.
Every day we see people hide behind online personas to
demean other people. We see people dismissing the basic human

(25:48):
nous of others because they have a different set of
problems than we do. Maybe they assure themselves that their
actions can't be cruel because they're not cruel people. Psychologists
have called it America's crisis of empathy, and the societal
fractures caused by the pandemic have only made things worse.
Bethany knows how destructive that can be. I know what

(26:10):
it feels like to feel degraded. I know what it
feels like to feel like to feel worthless. Sarah's behavior
was an outlier, but when Bethany distills her actions down
to their core, she sees a lack of empathy from

(26:31):
other kinds of Sarah's that leave hidden wounds everywhere. The
reason why the story is so important for me to
get out there is what are we all doing with
our trauma? You know, Sarah can go to prison, someone
can lock her up for a crime, but where is
the law? She was technically locked up because she stole

(26:54):
goods and services from these organizations, but the law doesn't
account for the trauma. And there's one other question, how
do you have empathy for someone who has none for you?
How do we have empathy for someone like Sarah? She

(27:14):
left others broken because she was broken herself, and in
that case, I don't know what justice really looks like.
I can understand that she needed to be punished for
the hurt she caused, but she needs more than that.
Dr Phil told her that people who don't have empathy
can't fake it. Maybe one day, with how she'll find it,

(27:38):
maybe the rest of us will too. Sympathy Pains is
a production of Neon Hum Media and I Heart Radio.
I'm Your Host Laura Beale I wrote and reported the episodes.
Natalie Wrinn is lead producer. Our editor is Katherine st. Louis.

(27:59):
Associate producer is Rufaro Mazzarua. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch.
Samantha Allison is our production manager. Fact checker is Jacqueline Colletti.
Jesse Perlstein composed the theme song and music heard throughout
the series. Additional tracks are by Blue Dot Sessions and
Epidemic Sound. Scott Somerville is our engineer and sound designer.

(28:23):
Reporting consultants are Liz Hiccocks and Bethany Turner. Special thanks
to Stephanie Serrano, Renee, Michael Pruitt, and Aaron Brown from
I Heart Radio. Special thanks to Carrie Lieberman and Bethan Macaluso.
Executive producer at I Heart Radio is Dylan Fagan. If
you or someone you know is struggling with mental illness,

(28:46):
you can call the National Alliance on Mental Illness at
eight hundred nine five oh six two six four. That's
eight hundred nine five oh n a m I. If
you like our podcast, would love for you to leave
a review. It helps people find our show and thank
you for listening. H