April 13, 2026 • 39 mins
Wendy is a single mom with a busy job, looking for love on Maui, Hawaii.
Then, she begins dating a con artist. By accident at first.
And then, before long - out of sheer curiosity and with the help of her protective older sister - on purpose.
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The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit https://novel.audio/.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey Girlfriends, Anna here, I just wanted to give you
a quick heads up about what you're here in this
season of The Girlfriends. The series touches on themes of
coercive control, and they'll obviously be a little bit of
swearing here and there too. But the women at the
heart of this series are so funny and powerful and vivacious,
and there's a great payoff at the end. For the
(00:28):
full story, listen all the way through. If any of
the themes feel difficult, you'll find links to mental health
and support organizations. In the episode description, Wendy is sitting
Paul's side in a luxury hotel resort, listening to the
sounds of waves crashing against the nearby beach. It's twenty thirteen,
(00:52):
around the end of August, and Wendy the Lucky Devil
is in Hawaii. Wendy's in her early forties, a single
mom with a busy job. By the time she arrives,
the sun has set over the Pacific and it's dark
except for the glow of the tiki torches. Wendy's expectations
(01:16):
for the evening had been pretty low. She's wearing yoga
pants and it was too warm to bother with makeup.
But now the balmy night air is alive with the
buzz of possibility because Wendy is on a date and
it's going well. Sitting across from Wendy is a successful businessman, Derek.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
There was something about him. He was very charming, very attentive,
very very smart, and very engaging.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
He's explaining that he's on Maui for a little while
to look at investment properties. He comes over regularly from
San Francisco, hence the dating.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
He's in finance and he's a scuba diver and he
loves to travel. He sounds like the perfect match for me.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Wendy hasn't got the total hots for Derek. Looks wise,
he kind of blends into the washer faces that appear
on dating apps. Short brown hair, slightly balding. Through absolutely
no fault of Derek's. He is an entirely average, middle
aged white guy. But the conversation is flowing.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
He was talking about going scuba diving and he saw
a weal shark.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
A whale shark sighting is rare on Maui. Derek is
a lucky man. Taking his cue from Wendy's absorbed expression,
he continues his story. There he is just off the coast,
flapping his flippers on yet another unremarkable dive, when suddenly
(03:04):
this gentle speckled, flat headed sea giant glides past him.
It was amazing, amazing. As the tiki torches flicker around them,
Wendy is gripped.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I would die to see a wheel show.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
That is, until Derek ruins it. He tells Wendy that
he was scuba diving that day with a particular whale
conservation group, a local not.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
For profit Pacific Will Foundation. He didn't know this, but
my daughter's best friend parents owned Pacific Will Foundation. And
I said, I'm sure you didn't go on Pacific Will
Foundation because they only do well watching and snarkling.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
They don't have scuba diving boats.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It's such a small detail.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
And had he said, oh, you know what, I must
be confused. It must have just had Pacific in the name.
I would not have thought a second thing about it.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
But he would not let it go.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
No, it was Pacific Whale Foundation. He was adamant. So
then he said he kept swimming down to try to
spend more time with the whale shark and didn't do
a safety stop.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
A safety stop to release all the nitrogen his body
had stored up while diving. Derek, our experienced diver, forgot.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
He ended up getting the bins and he had to
go to a decompression chamber. The only decompression chamber in
Hawaii at the time was on o Wahu. They don't
have one on Maui, or they didn't at the time.
I have not known a single person that ever got
the bins or that ever had to go to a
decompression chamber. I didn't call him out on that, but
I thought, this is kind of weird, and I've been
(04:57):
scuba diving all over the world. Not to say it
couldn't happen, but it really sounded a bit fantastical.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Ever, get that feeling in your gut, like you're being
lied to. Wendy has that feeling right now.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I'm one of those people. I just can't let it go.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Whale sharks, the bens, there's such inconsequential things.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Why would you lie about that?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It'll be five years, many more first dates, a federal
investigation spanning states and decades, and a determined group of
pissed off girlfriends raising hell before Wendy gets a satisfying
answer to that question.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
My name is Wendy and I dated a carn artist
named Derek and it completely changed my life.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I'm Annisonfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart podcasts.
You're listening to the girlfriends Trust Me Babe, Episode one,
(06:38):
Shark Bait. When Wendy was young, her mum Sherry, would
share stories with her, tales from her youth about her
own dating experiences. Is a Friday night in nineteen sixty
(07:03):
four on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Sherry and her
two housemates are at home in their first floor apartment.
The smell of citrus blossom from the surrounding groves floats
in the air. They're no older than twenty two recent
college grads, and tonight one of them has a date.
(07:26):
He's here on date nights. These three friends have a
bit of a routine. One of them, tonight at Sherry
lets the suitor in distracts him with aimless conversation while
his date pretends to put the finishing touches to her hair.
The third friend, with a bag full of trash from
the kitchen, sneaks out the door and notes down the make,
(07:49):
model and license plate of their guests car safety protocol complete,
the friend on the date leaves Glamder to the nines.
Her two friends watch her cruise into the sunset with
a stranger, safe in the knowledge that while they're probably
just going to Shakey's for some dark beer and warm pizza,
(08:11):
if God forbid something bad were to happen, they're prepared.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
That was a thing, even back in the sixties, to
keep each other safe just in case.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
That's Laurie. She heard this story growing up too.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
We couldn't stand each other because, you know, sisters.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Laurie is Wendy's older sister.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Our dad told us one of these days, you girls
are gonna be best friends, and we would jag and
it bros. He was right, He was so right. Wendy
always called me her safety net, and I love that.
I loved being her safety net.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Wendy got married young to her college sweetheart, and they
did the whole nights, had a kid, got the white
picket fence, and it was a great marriage, but it
ran its course. By thirty five, Wendy is newly single
and making a home for herself on Maui with her daughter.
(09:15):
Everything feels new, especially dating.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I'd never even been to a bar to have a
guy buy me a drink. I didn't know about online dating.
I didn't know about match dot com.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Will you regale me with one of your dating stories?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I have so many Broke Bone Bobbie and Jilbird Ryan
and the cuticle Picker, and I've just have so.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Many right, like, it's insane.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
As Wendy dives into the dating game headfirst, she tells
her big sister Laurie all about it over long phone
calls Wendy and Hawaii. Laurie in Texas.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
He did not look like his photos at all. He
was trying to take pictures of the sunset, and he
kept using his flash. I get a letter from the
county jail asking me to come visit him. I never
told anyone that I was remotely interested in seeing a
dick pic. Hordes of them, so many of them.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
That's when I started realizing she needs a little backup.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
So in steps big sister Laurie.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
She allowed me to have her location on Google.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
At first, it doesn't all run as smoothly as their
mother's trash run reconnaissance strategy.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I had to call her one time and say, your
w is out in a lake.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Wendy's Google map icon is surrounded by water.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I'm sorry, I forget to tell you it's a houseboat.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
The more Wendy dates, the more the sisters fall into
a kind of rhythm.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Every guy that she went out with, I'm going to
see what I can find out about him.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I told him, I said, I'm okay to come to
your but I'm having my sister look you up. And
he goes, oh, try it. She's not going to find anything.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Challenge accepted. Here's the picture of his house.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
He's got these two kids, and it looks like he
flies back and forth for these two cities.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
My god, my god. Eight years and hundreds of first
days later, Wendy has perfected her own strategies and is
even planning to turn her bizarre dating stories into a book.
It's the end of summer twenty thirteen and it's been
(11:35):
just two days since her first date with Derek the
whale shark guy. And while she's still none the wiser
as to why he'd lie about scuba diving, she's also
kind of into him. He's successful, adventurous, and attentive, perhaps
too attentive. He's been a prolific texter and emailer. Just
(12:00):
two days after their first date, Derek offers to fly
Wendy to San Francisco to meet his mother. He signs
off his message love you more than this morning with
two exclamation marks.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I said you couldn't even name ten facts about me,
and he then sent me an email one hundred.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Reasons why I love you.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Hearts of it were I love that you have to
have a coffee first thing in the morning. I don't
drink coffee. He literally didn't even read it. He just
googled a hundred reasons to love someone and then just
send it to me.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Derek is a little carried away with his feelings, sure,
but Wendy thinks maybe he's just kind of clumsy with it.
We've all been a little cringey when we've had a crush.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I was excited to meet someone that was very interested
in me and was very open to me.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
That was very refreshing.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Something just didn't feel completely right, but I wanted to
like him.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
And so Wendy picks up the phone and makes a
call to her sister in Texas.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Can you check out Derek?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Wendy and Laurie have been in the game for a while.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Now I had so many details. His name, how old he.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Was, She said, Oh, he has a daughter, same age's
my daughter? How long he said he'd been divorced. The
college that he went to, what year he graduated. She
did get the name of the company he was working for.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I don't even know that much information about some of
my close friends.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
While Laura gets to work online sleuthing, Wendy and Derek
keep seeing each other, and one of those dates is
in an upscale neighborhood where Derek is viewing a luxury condo.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
He had told me he's on Maui because he's looking
for investments.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It's been less than two weeks since they met.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
He said, do you want to go with me to
look at some of these properties? So I'm like, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
They're walking through a place Derek is considering investing in.
It's a three bed property with all the amenities, ocean views,
built in lighting fixtures for hanging your own art collection.
It's classy. Wendy's realta friend is showing them around.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Oh wow, he seems like such a great, successful, nice guy.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
But before long, Derek fumbles into weird o behavior again.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
He started acting like, oh, this could be our home,
ah home, And I'm like, I thought this was a
real estate investment thing. He started saying, you know, I
really see this as our house. He's like, let's put
both our names on it. I'm like what he goes,
I want to make sure you and your daughter are
(15:02):
taking care of him, Like, well, then put me in
your will.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
I'm never signing anything with you.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
This is the moment at which Wendy's interest in Derek
as a possible boyfriend really takes a turn. Whatever his charms,
he is coming on too strong. It's not just the
real estate business. He's sending shared calendar invites for upcoming
family visits.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Now they call it love bombing, but I didn't know
the term back then.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Wendy's big sister Laurie is starting to question Derek too.
In a small, narrow room off her bedroom, Laurie is
at a cluttered desk. She's sitting on one of those
ergonomic backlass chairs where you rest your weight on your knees.
She's looking at the website for Derek Already's real estate
investment come the one who sent Wendy scrolling to the
(16:03):
bottom of the page. She notices the site was only
created that year. Could be something, could be nothing.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I started noticing things that were static. They weren't clickable.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
It's full of testimonials, generic stock images, but the links
are dead. Are these real people? For that matter? Is
a business reel? Luri finds the company's address on the website.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
I went to Google Earth and I went down to
street level, and in that building you could see the
directory of what companies were in that building.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Derek's supposed company wasn't there. Other than the stuff Derek's
provided to Wendy himself. Lauri can't find any detail whatsoever
on the guy.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
This puzzle with missing a lot of pieces. I just
was not finding the normal things that I could find.
Why am I stuck? Why can't I find more on
this guy?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
As she sits alone at her desk, a new thought
occurs to Laurie. Maybe the lack of information, the very
existence of so many strange gaps, is the enormous, frantically
waving red flag she's been looking for. Laurie decides it's
time to call in a little backup of her own.
(17:42):
She looks up a name and number that she hasn't
thought about for years. Gives him a call.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I recognize that voice immediately.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Laurie's old college power Pat is now a private investigator,
Private investigation Pat.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
He said, of course I will do this. Of course
I will do this for you.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
PI Pat gets to work right away, pulling off his
own research tools while the two old friends sit on
the phone, and in almost no time at all, the
computer spits back some results.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
He said, just from looking at this report, Tell your
sister to run. Tell her to run.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Laurie's just got off the phone with PI Pat, who
has told her, in no uncertain terms, to get her
sister the hell out of her weird dance with Derek Allread.
With Pat's reports sitting in her inbox, Laurie reaches for
the phone again in her panic to tell Wendy the news.
She nearly falls off her chair.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
It was really disappointed that there wasn't more information about this.
There wasn't anything really big, and I kind of my
shoulders dropped.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
You see the report pipat sent over didn't really answer
Wendy's questions, just gave her more. Firstly, Derek had been
lying to Wendy about the spelling of his name. Derek
Allread was Derek Alldred. That's how Pipat had found him. Secondly,
(19:42):
Derek Aldred had a long list of previous addresses, oddly
long and across states. As well as that, a larger
than average number of evictions. And that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
I thought, for sure, we're going to find out there's
something going on here.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
For Wendy. It doesn't seem like much for Pi Pat
and Laurie. Reading between the lines, it says a law
there were no felonies, but PI Pat can explain that.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
He said, I can't see certain reports because states don't
share the information. But it was enough to know he's
not a good guy.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
But Wendy's moved beyond wanting to date Derek. She has
other ambitions.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
She has this thing. She considers herself a karma warrior, okay,
meaning in her mind, this is a guy that needs
to be put in his place. The toxic masculinity. Guys
go for it. Wendy say what she needs to say,
do what you need to do. This guy was totally different, tractive, friendly, helpful,
(21:02):
all these things. Those are the ones that you know
scare me. And I think she thought, eh, I'm just
gonna play with them. All a bit just because she could.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Wendy, with a ponchon for poking the bear and the
final chapter of a book about online dating to write,
sets out to find the truth. Wendy meets up with Derek,
armed with evidence from Pipat and Deputy PI Laurie, but
it doesn't really go according to plan because Derek cops
(21:36):
to none of it. The long list of previous addresses.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Oh, I'm in real estate investment. Those are properties I've
owned and printed the eviction notices I've had the evict
other people.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Derek even calls Maui Memorial Hospital while Wendy is on
speakerphone beside him, to prove he really was in hospital
around the time of his story about getting the bend.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
He did not own up to anything that was remotely off.
He had an answer for everything.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Without cold, hard proof. All she has is gut instinct,
and in the face of Derek's confidence, self assuredness, it's
not the satisfying confrontation she had hoped for. Wendy just
has more questions.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Why is he coming after me? I kept thinking maybe
there's something to do with buying a house, but I
don't have a lot of extra cash sitting around. It's
not like I was super wealthy or anything.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
It's only been a couple of weeks. But Wendy is
clear on one thing. Derek is not investing in the
Maui property market.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
That whole deal fell through because he didn't have money.
My friend was the realtor. She's like, there's no money
in that account. I'm a super cureious person. So I
kept agreeing to meet with him now and then I
would go with them to look at condos, and he
would talk about how much money he had. One time
(23:13):
he said, I know you don't believe me, and he
had pulled up an investment account like one point two million.
First of all, it looks like a PDF. And then
I also noticed that there was a typo in the
word checking, the most basic word.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And yet all the while he's lavishing her with attention
and more.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
One two, three dozen roses, Sherry's berries, Tiffany jewelry, prescription sunglasses,
a giant Teddy Bear.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
To give you a sense of scale. I'm four for
eleven and I'd call this bad daddy.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
If he would have been just any other person, I
would have stopped. But because I had already started writing
a book about online dating.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I kept going with it.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
She doesn't just want Derek to admit that he's a liar.
She wants him to explain why he's lying.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Who in the right mind would spend so much time
and effort trying to cont someone It just didn't make
any sense to me.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Wendy is starting to doubt whether anything Derek says is true.
Does he really have a dog named Max? Is he
even from San Francisco? And if so, where does he
actually live? In response to Wendy's questions, Derek sends Wendy
a video tour pading around the inside of a home.
(24:45):
We start off in a living room and there's some
red walls. He walks through a doorway into a kitchen,
lots of pictures, a nicely made up bed. There's a
dogbed in the living room, and the name on the
back says Maxwell. But what does a random video really
(25:09):
tell you? It's like if someone said to me, Anna,
you're not really a vegan, and to prove to them
that I am, I send them a video of a salad.
Everyone eats salads. Who's to say it's even my salad?
Who's to say I even took the video, But whenever
Wendy pushes too hard with questions or challenges about Derek's
(25:33):
metaphorical salad, he seems to find ways to derail things
in his favor.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
There was always some tragic thing that was happening. When
time he told me his dog died, he would have
drama in his life. He just wouldn't let it go.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
He still kept trying.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Wow, he just would not quit. Right, Did he like it?
You know? The rejection?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I don't know, Wendy. I've been nothing but transparent with you,
and I love you, and it really is so hurtful
that you're saying these things about me. Once I knew
he was a pathological liar, I really just wanted to
catch him in a way that he couldn't get out
of it.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
It isn't until mid October that Wendy gets her next
opportunity to try and figure out what Derek's really up to,
and this time it's on his home turf. Wendy has
to travel to San Francisco for a biopsy following a
breast cancer scare. When Derek hears about it, in classic
(26:37):
Derek's style, he makes a big fuss, offering to buy
Wendy's plane ticket and then sending details for a flight
that doesn't exist. Didn't he think you'd find out about
the flight?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
You would think so. I have no idea why he
would do some things and not others.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
She gets there anyway under her own steam. Results come
back negative within a couple of days, and Wendy's feeling good.
Then Derek pops up again. He invites her to dinner.
Wendy can't resist the opportunity to do a bit slew
thing on Derek's patch. They go for the dinner, and
(27:17):
not only does he rock up in a BMW, he
actually pays for everything. He even takes Wendy to a
Brian Adams concert, merch drinks, all paid for by this
strange man.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I'm sitting there going well, he looks like what he
told me he was. I was trying to figure out,
like where did he come into money.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Wendy looks at the man beside her and asks herself,
for maybe the hundredth time, what kind of con is this.
(28:04):
It's a Tuesday evening in the very middle of October.
Wendy's back on Maui and the prosecco is flowing. A
medley of dance pop albums play in the background. Brittany
the Donna, Lady Gaga. There are potluck snacks on Wendy's
living room table. It's been a month and a half
since Wendy's first date with Derek, and it's girls' night.
(28:29):
There are eight women crammed into Wendy's small living room,
gaping at the giant TV on the wall the show
Wendy's love Life. She's hook the TV up to her
phone and is doing a full class report of her
latest dates with supplementary screenshots and selfies.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
All my girlfriends were getting the reports about what was
going on, and they were all invested.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
There's nothing quite as intoxicating as being the headline act
at girls' Night. In the last few weeks have given
Wendy a lot of material to work with as she
regales them with her latest tales. The girls speculate about
Derek's motives.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
What is this guy's deal? What is he after?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Until finally, one of Wendy's girlfriends says the thing we've.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
All been thinking, Wendy. He does sound like he is
a psychopath. And what if he physically hurts you? What
if he hits you? What if he kidnapped you. Up
until she said that, it had never crossed my mind.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
It's the same worry Wendy's sister had quietly all those
weeks earlier.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
It really made me open my eyes.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
It's been two months of exchanges with Derek, and despite
all the evidence, all the difficult questions, Wendy is no
closer to learning the truth about who this man actually is.
But now she realized, really realizes.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
This is clearly an unhinged person and maybe I'm not safe.
I'm just never going to figure this out. I need
to get him out of my life before he does
do something really crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
It's only been a couple of days since Wendy's girls
told her gently to leave Derek well alone. When he
reaches out again wanting to meet up, Wendy does decide
to go. Maybe this is her chance to end it
in person.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
He asked me to come meet him because he wanted
to get his mother a birthday gift.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Wendy meets Derek at the jewelry store in a busy
shopping center, and at first she browses solo well. Derek
does his own thing.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
And then he's like, oh, hey, I think I found
the gift for my mom.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Derek shows her a pair of diamond stud earrings four
thousand dollars, and.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
He goes, would you try him on? They're just diamond studs.
Everybody knows what they look like on ears. But I
put them on, and then he goes, well, let's look
out in the light. And he was trying to pull
me outside of the store.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Wendy looks over at the salesperson for help, but they
just not. I imagine with the patients of all underpaid retail
workers who are unwillingly roped into romantic gestures outside the
jewelry store under the bright lights of the shopping mall.
Derek makes his reveal.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I've already paid for them. They're for you, not my mother.
To do it to show you that I'm committed to
this relationship.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
She comes in here to end it, and now he's
throwing earrings at.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Her, and I'm thinking, where is this coming from. I
gave him back those earrings. I said, I do think
that you are a con artist, and even though I
can't put it all together, I don't ever want you
to contact me again.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
A few weeks later, Wendy gets a text.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Hi Wendy, I'm on island. My dad doesn't want me
to contact you.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
It's from an unknown number, and the text claims to
be not Derek, but Derek's daughter.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I started laughing.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
I knew right away it wasn't her, because it's texting
like adults think teenager's text.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
No word is written out.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Wendy even shows them to her own daughter.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Do you think this is actually from a teenager? Oh gosh, no,
we don't really text like that.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
The unknown number sends a follow up.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Oh, my dad would be upset if he knew I
was reaching out to you. But he's in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Wendy resolutely broke up with Derek, but this is too
good of an opportunity to pass up.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
I call the hospital. He is registered as a patient.
I'm like, what.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Wendy's own daughter wants answers now too.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
She goes, You've got to go down there. You can
catch him, because you know his daughter's not there. I
drive to the hospital, I go in the room and
I see him and I'm thinking.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Where's your daughter.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Oh, my friend on island took her. They went to Starbucks,
and I'm like, oh, Starbucks closes in like twenty minutes.
It's MAUI. Everything closes by nine pm, if not earlier.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Derek has taken off to get a scam. Wendy sits
in his room waiting. Twenty minutes go by.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Starbucks has closed. Where's your daughter?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
He just kept saying, oh, well, they must be doing
this or that or whatever, and she just didn't come.
And so I'm like, okay, you know what, whatever, I
got to go home.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Wendy doesn't go home because it's time for a good
old fashioned steak out.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I went and I parked my car across the street.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Wendy sits in her car in the dark, eyes trained
on the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital main entrance,
and waits.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
He got discharged and I saw him come out of
the hospital in plane clothes and then just started walking
down the street. He didn't have a vehicle, he didn't
have anything. There was nobody to pick him up.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Wendy was right Darro's door. Her is nowhere to be seen,
but as she watches him retreat into the distance, she's
no closer to finding out the truth.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It really was a bummer because nothing made sense. It
killed me to not have answers, and to just say
that I'm never going to have correspondence with him again.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Back in San Francisco, Derek takes a little longer to
drop it. He keeps sending emails which Wendy doesn't reply to.
He even tries one last sympathy play, telling her that
he in fact has cancer, that she's the love of
his life, that he loves her forever, attaching copies of
(35:42):
his ultrasounds as proof.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I did a Google image search. The ultrasound picture that
he sent me was one of the first ones that
came up.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Oh wow, So he didn't even try hard.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
He wasn't trying hard, he wasn't putting in the effort
like he used to. I just felt like that was
his attempt to lure me back in, and I didn't
take the bait.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Instead, she resolves not to respond to Derek ever again.
To close the chapter without answers, she sits down at
her computer and changes her Wi Fi password to the immortal.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Words Derek sucks my one ass.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Wendy is done. Months later, Wendy is walking down Maui's
busiest street when her phone rings.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Hi, Wendy, you don't know me, but my name's Cindy
and we both dated Derek.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
And I was like and just like that, Wendy's back in.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Baby, I'm going to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Coming up on the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Something's off about this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Something's fishy.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
She was relentless. He is not going to get away with.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
This, but it sounds so familiar.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
She kept saying, can you text her and see if
you can get a picture of him? And she did.
I can tell you neither one of us had any
idea what he really was.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
A terrible, middle aged, nearly bolding boyfriend pops up in Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Bad news.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
We don't like them.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
He kind of gave me creepy vibes.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
And runs into a group of no nonsense, pokey loving
n uses.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
We still talk about it. We always say that trust
your girlfriends.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
The Girlfriend's Trust Me, Babe is produced by Novel for
iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio.
The series is hosted by me Annasinfield is produced by
Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is Valeria Rocker. Our editor
is Joe Wheeler. Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage
(38:30):
and Charlotte Wolfe, fact checking by Dania Suleman, sound design,
mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. The
Girlfriend's theme was composed by Daniel Kempson and Louisa Gerstein
and performed by Daniel Kempson with vocals by Luisa Gerstein.
Music supervision from Daniel Kempson and Anna Sinfield. The series
(38:50):
artwork was designed by Christina Lemcol. Story development by Susie
Baker and Olivia Smart. Novel's director of development is Selena mah.
Max O'Brien is the executive producer for novel. Katrina Norvell
and Nikki Etoor are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts,
and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to
(39:12):
Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, Julie Sansulo
and Langston, Carolyn sher Levin, Katie Gillis, Kelly Hunt, Rachel Munroe,
Tom Oldag, and Tadvesner
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey Girlfriends, Anna here, I just wanted to give you
a quick heads up about what you're here in this
season of The Girlfriends. The series touches on themes of
coercive control, and they'll obviously be a little bit of
swearing here and there too. But the women at the
heart of this series are so funny and powerful and vivacious,
and there's a great payoff at the end. For the
(00:28):
full story, listen all the way through. If any of
the themes feel difficult, you'll find links to mental health
and support organizations. In the episode description, Wendy is sitting
Paul's side in a luxury hotel resort, listening to the
sounds of waves crashing against the nearby beach. It's twenty thirteen,
(00:52):
around the end of August, and Wendy the Lucky Devil
is in Hawaii. Wendy's in her early forties, a single
mom with a busy job. By the time she arrives,
the sun has set over the Pacific and it's dark
except for the glow of the tiki torches. Wendy's expectations
(01:16):
for the evening had been pretty low. She's wearing yoga
pants and it was too warm to bother with makeup.
But now the balmy night air is alive with the
buzz of possibility because Wendy is on a date and
it's going well. Sitting across from Wendy is a successful businessman, Derek.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
There was something about him. He was very charming, very attentive,
very very smart, and very engaging.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
He's explaining that he's on Maui for a little while
to look at investment properties. He comes over regularly from
San Francisco, hence the dating.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
He's in finance and he's a scuba diver and he
loves to travel. He sounds like the perfect match for me.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Wendy hasn't got the total hots for Derek. Looks wise,
he kind of blends into the washer faces that appear
on dating apps. Short brown hair, slightly balding. Through absolutely
no fault of Derek's. He is an entirely average, middle
aged white guy. But the conversation is flowing.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
He was talking about going scuba diving and he saw
a weal shark.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
A whale shark sighting is rare on Maui. Derek is
a lucky man. Taking his cue from Wendy's absorbed expression,
he continues his story. There he is just off the coast,
flapping his flippers on yet another unremarkable dive, when suddenly
(03:04):
this gentle speckled, flat headed sea giant glides past him.
It was amazing, amazing. As the tiki torches flicker around them,
Wendy is gripped.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I would die to see a wheel show.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
That is, until Derek ruins it. He tells Wendy that
he was scuba diving that day with a particular whale
conservation group, a local not.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
For profit Pacific Will Foundation. He didn't know this, but
my daughter's best friend parents owned Pacific Will Foundation. And
I said, I'm sure you didn't go on Pacific Will
Foundation because they only do well watching and snarkling.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
They don't have scuba diving boats.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It's such a small detail.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
And had he said, oh, you know what, I must
be confused. It must have just had Pacific in the name.
I would not have thought a second thing about it.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
But he would not let it go.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
No, it was Pacific Whale Foundation. He was adamant. So
then he said he kept swimming down to try to
spend more time with the whale shark and didn't do
a safety stop.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
A safety stop to release all the nitrogen his body
had stored up while diving. Derek, our experienced diver, forgot.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
He ended up getting the bins and he had to
go to a decompression chamber. The only decompression chamber in
Hawaii at the time was on o Wahu. They don't
have one on Maui, or they didn't at the time.
I have not known a single person that ever got
the bins or that ever had to go to a
decompression chamber. I didn't call him out on that, but
I thought, this is kind of weird, and I've been
(04:57):
scuba diving all over the world. Not to say it
couldn't happen, but it really sounded a bit fantastical.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Ever, get that feeling in your gut, like you're being
lied to. Wendy has that feeling right now.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I'm one of those people. I just can't let it go.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Whale sharks, the bens, there's such inconsequential things.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Why would you lie about that?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It'll be five years, many more first dates, a federal
investigation spanning states and decades, and a determined group of
pissed off girlfriends raising hell before Wendy gets a satisfying
answer to that question.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
My name is Wendy and I dated a carn artist
named Derek and it completely changed my life.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I'm Annisonfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart podcasts.
You're listening to the girlfriends Trust Me Babe, Episode one,
(06:38):
Shark Bait. When Wendy was young, her mum Sherry, would
share stories with her, tales from her youth about her
own dating experiences. Is a Friday night in nineteen sixty
(07:03):
four on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Sherry and her
two housemates are at home in their first floor apartment.
The smell of citrus blossom from the surrounding groves floats
in the air. They're no older than twenty two recent
college grads, and tonight one of them has a date.
(07:26):
He's here on date nights. These three friends have a
bit of a routine. One of them, tonight at Sherry
lets the suitor in distracts him with aimless conversation while
his date pretends to put the finishing touches to her hair.
The third friend, with a bag full of trash from
the kitchen, sneaks out the door and notes down the make,
(07:49):
model and license plate of their guests car safety protocol complete,
the friend on the date leaves Glamder to the nines.
Her two friends watch her cruise into the sunset with
a stranger, safe in the knowledge that while they're probably
just going to Shakey's for some dark beer and warm pizza,
(08:11):
if God forbid something bad were to happen, they're prepared.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
That was a thing, even back in the sixties, to
keep each other safe just in case.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
That's Laurie. She heard this story growing up too.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
We couldn't stand each other because, you know, sisters.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Laurie is Wendy's older sister.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Our dad told us one of these days, you girls
are gonna be best friends, and we would jag and
it bros. He was right, He was so right. Wendy
always called me her safety net, and I love that.
I loved being her safety net.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Wendy got married young to her college sweetheart, and they
did the whole nights, had a kid, got the white
picket fence, and it was a great marriage, but it
ran its course. By thirty five, Wendy is newly single
and making a home for herself on Maui with her daughter.
(09:15):
Everything feels new, especially dating.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I'd never even been to a bar to have a
guy buy me a drink. I didn't know about online dating.
I didn't know about match dot com.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Will you regale me with one of your dating stories?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I have so many Broke Bone Bobbie and Jilbird Ryan
and the cuticle Picker, and I've just have so.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Many right, like, it's insane.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
As Wendy dives into the dating game headfirst, she tells
her big sister Laurie all about it over long phone
calls Wendy and Hawaii. Laurie in Texas.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
He did not look like his photos at all. He
was trying to take pictures of the sunset, and he
kept using his flash. I get a letter from the
county jail asking me to come visit him. I never
told anyone that I was remotely interested in seeing a
dick pic. Hordes of them, so many of them.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
That's when I started realizing she needs a little backup.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
So in steps big sister Laurie.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
She allowed me to have her location on Google.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
At first, it doesn't all run as smoothly as their
mother's trash run reconnaissance strategy.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I had to call her one time and say, your
w is out in a lake.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Wendy's Google map icon is surrounded by water.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I'm sorry, I forget to tell you it's a houseboat.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
The more Wendy dates, the more the sisters fall into
a kind of rhythm.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Every guy that she went out with, I'm going to
see what I can find out about him.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I told him, I said, I'm okay to come to
your but I'm having my sister look you up. And
he goes, oh, try it. She's not going to find anything.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Challenge accepted. Here's the picture of his house.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
He's got these two kids, and it looks like he
flies back and forth for these two cities.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
My god, my god. Eight years and hundreds of first
days later, Wendy has perfected her own strategies and is
even planning to turn her bizarre dating stories into a book.
It's the end of summer twenty thirteen and it's been
(11:35):
just two days since her first date with Derek the
whale shark guy. And while she's still none the wiser
as to why he'd lie about scuba diving, she's also
kind of into him. He's successful, adventurous, and attentive, perhaps
too attentive. He's been a prolific texter and emailer. Just
(12:00):
two days after their first date, Derek offers to fly
Wendy to San Francisco to meet his mother. He signs
off his message love you more than this morning with
two exclamation marks.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I said you couldn't even name ten facts about me,
and he then sent me an email one hundred.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Reasons why I love you.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Hearts of it were I love that you have to
have a coffee first thing in the morning. I don't
drink coffee. He literally didn't even read it. He just
googled a hundred reasons to love someone and then just
send it to me.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Derek is a little carried away with his feelings, sure,
but Wendy thinks maybe he's just kind of clumsy with it.
We've all been a little cringey when we've had a crush.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I was excited to meet someone that was very interested
in me and was very open to me.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
That was very refreshing.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Something just didn't feel completely right, but I wanted to
like him.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
And so Wendy picks up the phone and makes a
call to her sister in Texas.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Can you check out Derek?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Wendy and Laurie have been in the game for a while.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Now I had so many details. His name, how old he.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Was, She said, Oh, he has a daughter, same age's
my daughter? How long he said he'd been divorced. The
college that he went to, what year he graduated. She
did get the name of the company he was working for.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I don't even know that much information about some of
my close friends.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
While Laura gets to work online sleuthing, Wendy and Derek
keep seeing each other, and one of those dates is
in an upscale neighborhood where Derek is viewing a luxury condo.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
He had told me he's on Maui because he's looking
for investments.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It's been less than two weeks since they met.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
He said, do you want to go with me to
look at some of these properties? So I'm like, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
They're walking through a place Derek is considering investing in.
It's a three bed property with all the amenities, ocean views,
built in lighting fixtures for hanging your own art collection.
It's classy. Wendy's realta friend is showing them around.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Oh wow, he seems like such a great, successful, nice guy.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
But before long, Derek fumbles into weird o behavior again.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
He started acting like, oh, this could be our home,
ah home, And I'm like, I thought this was a
real estate investment thing. He started saying, you know, I
really see this as our house. He's like, let's put
both our names on it. I'm like what he goes,
I want to make sure you and your daughter are
(15:02):
taking care of him, Like, well, then put me in
your will.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
I'm never signing anything with you.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
This is the moment at which Wendy's interest in Derek
as a possible boyfriend really takes a turn. Whatever his charms,
he is coming on too strong. It's not just the
real estate business. He's sending shared calendar invites for upcoming
family visits.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Now they call it love bombing, but I didn't know
the term back then.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Wendy's big sister Laurie is starting to question Derek too.
In a small, narrow room off her bedroom, Laurie is
at a cluttered desk. She's sitting on one of those
ergonomic backlass chairs where you rest your weight on your knees.
She's looking at the website for Derek Already's real estate
investment come the one who sent Wendy scrolling to the
(16:03):
bottom of the page. She notices the site was only
created that year. Could be something, could be nothing.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I started noticing things that were static. They weren't clickable.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
It's full of testimonials, generic stock images, but the links
are dead. Are these real people? For that matter? Is
a business reel? Luri finds the company's address on the website.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
I went to Google Earth and I went down to
street level, and in that building you could see the
directory of what companies were in that building.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Derek's supposed company wasn't there. Other than the stuff Derek's
provided to Wendy himself. Lauri can't find any detail whatsoever
on the guy.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
This puzzle with missing a lot of pieces. I just
was not finding the normal things that I could find.
Why am I stuck? Why can't I find more on
this guy?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
As she sits alone at her desk, a new thought
occurs to Laurie. Maybe the lack of information, the very
existence of so many strange gaps, is the enormous, frantically
waving red flag she's been looking for. Laurie decides it's
time to call in a little backup of her own.
(17:42):
She looks up a name and number that she hasn't
thought about for years. Gives him a call.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I recognize that voice immediately.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Laurie's old college power Pat is now a private investigator,
Private investigation Pat.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
He said, of course I will do this. Of course
I will do this for you.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
PI Pat gets to work right away, pulling off his
own research tools while the two old friends sit on
the phone, and in almost no time at all, the
computer spits back some results.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
He said, just from looking at this report, Tell your
sister to run. Tell her to run.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Laurie's just got off the phone with PI Pat, who
has told her, in no uncertain terms, to get her
sister the hell out of her weird dance with Derek Allread.
With Pat's reports sitting in her inbox, Laurie reaches for
the phone again in her panic to tell Wendy the news.
She nearly falls off her chair.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
It was really disappointed that there wasn't more information about this.
There wasn't anything really big, and I kind of my
shoulders dropped.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
You see the report pipat sent over didn't really answer
Wendy's questions, just gave her more. Firstly, Derek had been
lying to Wendy about the spelling of his name. Derek
Allread was Derek Alldred. That's how Pipat had found him. Secondly,
(19:42):
Derek Aldred had a long list of previous addresses, oddly
long and across states. As well as that, a larger
than average number of evictions. And that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
I thought, for sure, we're going to find out there's
something going on here.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
For Wendy. It doesn't seem like much for Pi Pat
and Laurie. Reading between the lines, it says a law
there were no felonies, but PI Pat can explain that.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
He said, I can't see certain reports because states don't
share the information. But it was enough to know he's
not a good guy.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
But Wendy's moved beyond wanting to date Derek. She has
other ambitions.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
She has this thing. She considers herself a karma warrior, okay,
meaning in her mind, this is a guy that needs
to be put in his place. The toxic masculinity. Guys
go for it. Wendy say what she needs to say,
do what you need to do. This guy was totally different, tractive, friendly, helpful,
(21:02):
all these things. Those are the ones that you know
scare me. And I think she thought, eh, I'm just
gonna play with them. All a bit just because she could.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Wendy, with a ponchon for poking the bear and the
final chapter of a book about online dating to write,
sets out to find the truth. Wendy meets up with Derek,
armed with evidence from Pipat and Deputy PI Laurie, but
it doesn't really go according to plan because Derek cops
(21:36):
to none of it. The long list of previous addresses.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Oh, I'm in real estate investment. Those are properties I've
owned and printed the eviction notices I've had the evict
other people.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Derek even calls Maui Memorial Hospital while Wendy is on
speakerphone beside him, to prove he really was in hospital
around the time of his story about getting the bend.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
He did not own up to anything that was remotely off.
He had an answer for everything.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Without cold, hard proof. All she has is gut instinct,
and in the face of Derek's confidence, self assuredness, it's
not the satisfying confrontation she had hoped for. Wendy just
has more questions.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Why is he coming after me? I kept thinking maybe
there's something to do with buying a house, but I
don't have a lot of extra cash sitting around. It's
not like I was super wealthy or anything.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
It's only been a couple of weeks. But Wendy is
clear on one thing. Derek is not investing in the
Maui property market.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
That whole deal fell through because he didn't have money.
My friend was the realtor. She's like, there's no money
in that account. I'm a super cureious person. So I
kept agreeing to meet with him now and then I
would go with them to look at condos, and he
would talk about how much money he had. One time
(23:13):
he said, I know you don't believe me, and he
had pulled up an investment account like one point two million.
First of all, it looks like a PDF. And then
I also noticed that there was a typo in the
word checking, the most basic word.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And yet all the while he's lavishing her with attention
and more.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
One two, three dozen roses, Sherry's berries, Tiffany jewelry, prescription sunglasses,
a giant Teddy Bear.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
To give you a sense of scale. I'm four for
eleven and I'd call this bad daddy.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
If he would have been just any other person, I
would have stopped. But because I had already started writing
a book about online dating.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I kept going with it.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
She doesn't just want Derek to admit that he's a liar.
She wants him to explain why he's lying.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Who in the right mind would spend so much time
and effort trying to cont someone It just didn't make
any sense to me.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Wendy is starting to doubt whether anything Derek says is true.
Does he really have a dog named Max? Is he
even from San Francisco? And if so, where does he
actually live? In response to Wendy's questions, Derek sends Wendy
a video tour pading around the inside of a home.
(24:45):
We start off in a living room and there's some
red walls. He walks through a doorway into a kitchen,
lots of pictures, a nicely made up bed. There's a
dogbed in the living room, and the name on the
back says Maxwell. But what does a random video really
(25:09):
tell you? It's like if someone said to me, Anna,
you're not really a vegan, and to prove to them
that I am, I send them a video of a salad.
Everyone eats salads. Who's to say it's even my salad?
Who's to say I even took the video, But whenever
Wendy pushes too hard with questions or challenges about Derek's
(25:33):
metaphorical salad, he seems to find ways to derail things
in his favor.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
There was always some tragic thing that was happening. When
time he told me his dog died, he would have
drama in his life. He just wouldn't let it go.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
He still kept trying.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Wow, he just would not quit. Right, Did he like it?
You know? The rejection?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I don't know, Wendy. I've been nothing but transparent with you,
and I love you, and it really is so hurtful
that you're saying these things about me. Once I knew
he was a pathological liar, I really just wanted to
catch him in a way that he couldn't get out
of it.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
It isn't until mid October that Wendy gets her next
opportunity to try and figure out what Derek's really up to,
and this time it's on his home turf. Wendy has
to travel to San Francisco for a biopsy following a
breast cancer scare. When Derek hears about it, in classic
(26:37):
Derek's style, he makes a big fuss, offering to buy
Wendy's plane ticket and then sending details for a flight
that doesn't exist. Didn't he think you'd find out about
the flight?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
You would think so. I have no idea why he
would do some things and not others.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
She gets there anyway under her own steam. Results come
back negative within a couple of days, and Wendy's feeling good.
Then Derek pops up again. He invites her to dinner.
Wendy can't resist the opportunity to do a bit slew
thing on Derek's patch. They go for the dinner, and
(27:17):
not only does he rock up in a BMW, he
actually pays for everything. He even takes Wendy to a
Brian Adams concert, merch drinks, all paid for by this
strange man.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I'm sitting there going well, he looks like what he
told me he was. I was trying to figure out,
like where did he come into money.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Wendy looks at the man beside her and asks herself,
for maybe the hundredth time, what kind of con is this.
(28:04):
It's a Tuesday evening in the very middle of October.
Wendy's back on Maui and the prosecco is flowing. A
medley of dance pop albums play in the background. Brittany
the Donna, Lady Gaga. There are potluck snacks on Wendy's
living room table. It's been a month and a half
since Wendy's first date with Derek, and it's girls' night.
(28:29):
There are eight women crammed into Wendy's small living room,
gaping at the giant TV on the wall the show
Wendy's love Life. She's hook the TV up to her
phone and is doing a full class report of her
latest dates with supplementary screenshots and selfies.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
All my girlfriends were getting the reports about what was
going on, and they were all invested.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
There's nothing quite as intoxicating as being the headline act
at girls' Night. In the last few weeks have given
Wendy a lot of material to work with as she
regales them with her latest tales. The girls speculate about
Derek's motives.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
What is this guy's deal? What is he after?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Until finally, one of Wendy's girlfriends says the thing we've.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
All been thinking, Wendy. He does sound like he is
a psychopath. And what if he physically hurts you? What
if he hits you? What if he kidnapped you. Up
until she said that, it had never crossed my mind.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
It's the same worry Wendy's sister had quietly all those
weeks earlier.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
It really made me open my eyes.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
It's been two months of exchanges with Derek, and despite
all the evidence, all the difficult questions, Wendy is no
closer to learning the truth about who this man actually is.
But now she realized, really realizes.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
This is clearly an unhinged person and maybe I'm not safe.
I'm just never going to figure this out. I need
to get him out of my life before he does
do something really crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
It's only been a couple of days since Wendy's girls
told her gently to leave Derek well alone. When he
reaches out again wanting to meet up, Wendy does decide
to go. Maybe this is her chance to end it
in person.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
He asked me to come meet him because he wanted
to get his mother a birthday gift.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Wendy meets Derek at the jewelry store in a busy
shopping center, and at first she browses solo well. Derek
does his own thing.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
And then he's like, oh, hey, I think I found
the gift for my mom.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Derek shows her a pair of diamond stud earrings four
thousand dollars, and.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
He goes, would you try him on? They're just diamond studs.
Everybody knows what they look like on ears. But I
put them on, and then he goes, well, let's look
out in the light. And he was trying to pull
me outside of the store.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Wendy looks over at the salesperson for help, but they
just not. I imagine with the patients of all underpaid retail
workers who are unwillingly roped into romantic gestures outside the
jewelry store under the bright lights of the shopping mall.
Derek makes his reveal.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I've already paid for them. They're for you, not my mother.
To do it to show you that I'm committed to
this relationship.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
She comes in here to end it, and now he's
throwing earrings at.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Her, and I'm thinking, where is this coming from. I
gave him back those earrings. I said, I do think
that you are a con artist, and even though I
can't put it all together, I don't ever want you
to contact me again.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
A few weeks later, Wendy gets a text.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Hi Wendy, I'm on island. My dad doesn't want me
to contact you.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
It's from an unknown number, and the text claims to
be not Derek, but Derek's daughter.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I started laughing.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
I knew right away it wasn't her, because it's texting
like adults think teenager's text.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
No word is written out.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Wendy even shows them to her own daughter.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Do you think this is actually from a teenager? Oh gosh, no,
we don't really text like that.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
The unknown number sends a follow up.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Oh, my dad would be upset if he knew I
was reaching out to you. But he's in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Wendy resolutely broke up with Derek, but this is too
good of an opportunity to pass up.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
I call the hospital. He is registered as a patient.
I'm like, what.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Wendy's own daughter wants answers now too.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
She goes, You've got to go down there. You can
catch him, because you know his daughter's not there. I
drive to the hospital, I go in the room and
I see him and I'm thinking.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Where's your daughter.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Oh, my friend on island took her. They went to Starbucks,
and I'm like, oh, Starbucks closes in like twenty minutes.
It's MAUI. Everything closes by nine pm, if not earlier.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Derek has taken off to get a scam. Wendy sits
in his room waiting. Twenty minutes go by.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Starbucks has closed. Where's your daughter?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
He just kept saying, oh, well, they must be doing
this or that or whatever, and she just didn't come.
And so I'm like, okay, you know what, whatever, I
got to go home.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Wendy doesn't go home because it's time for a good
old fashioned steak out.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I went and I parked my car across the street.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Wendy sits in her car in the dark, eyes trained
on the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital main entrance,
and waits.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
He got discharged and I saw him come out of
the hospital in plane clothes and then just started walking
down the street. He didn't have a vehicle, he didn't
have anything. There was nobody to pick him up.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Wendy was right Darro's door. Her is nowhere to be seen,
but as she watches him retreat into the distance, she's
no closer to finding out the truth.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It really was a bummer because nothing made sense. It
killed me to not have answers, and to just say
that I'm never going to have correspondence with him again.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Back in San Francisco, Derek takes a little longer to
drop it. He keeps sending emails which Wendy doesn't reply to.
He even tries one last sympathy play, telling her that
he in fact has cancer, that she's the love of
his life, that he loves her forever, attaching copies of
(35:42):
his ultrasounds as proof.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I did a Google image search. The ultrasound picture that
he sent me was one of the first ones that
came up.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Oh wow, So he didn't even try hard.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
He wasn't trying hard, he wasn't putting in the effort
like he used to. I just felt like that was
his attempt to lure me back in, and I didn't
take the bait.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Instead, she resolves not to respond to Derek ever again.
To close the chapter without answers, she sits down at
her computer and changes her Wi Fi password to the immortal.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Words Derek sucks my one ass.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Wendy is done. Months later, Wendy is walking down Maui's
busiest street when her phone rings.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Hi, Wendy, you don't know me, but my name's Cindy
and we both dated Derek.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
And I was like and just like that, Wendy's back in.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Baby, I'm going to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Coming up on the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Something's off about this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Something's fishy.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
She was relentless. He is not going to get away with.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
This, but it sounds so familiar.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
She kept saying, can you text her and see if
you can get a picture of him? And she did.
I can tell you neither one of us had any
idea what he really was.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
A terrible, middle aged, nearly bolding boyfriend pops up in Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Bad news.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
We don't like them.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
He kind of gave me creepy vibes.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
And runs into a group of no nonsense, pokey loving
n uses.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
We still talk about it. We always say that trust
your girlfriends.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
The Girlfriend's Trust Me, Babe is produced by Novel for
iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio.
The series is hosted by me Annasinfield is produced by
Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is Valeria Rocker. Our editor
is Joe Wheeler. Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage
(38:30):
and Charlotte Wolfe, fact checking by Dania Suleman, sound design,
mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. The
Girlfriend's theme was composed by Daniel Kempson and Louisa Gerstein
and performed by Daniel Kempson with vocals by Luisa Gerstein.
Music supervision from Daniel Kempson and Anna Sinfield. The series
(38:50):
artwork was designed by Christina Lemcol. Story development by Susie
Baker and Olivia Smart. Novel's director of development is Selena mah.
Max O'Brien is the executive producer for novel. Katrina Norvell
and Nikki Etoor are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts,
and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to
(39:12):
Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, Julie Sansulo
and Langston, Carolyn sher Levin, Katie Gillis, Kelly Hunt, Rachel Munroe,
Tom Oldag, and Tadvesner
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