April 27, 2026 • 35 mins
Lisa finally touches down in Minnesota, and learns her friends know more than they’ve been letting on about the real identity of her unusual boyfriend.
If you’re affected by any of the themes in this show, our charity partners NO MORE have available resources at https://www.nomore.org.
To learn more about romance scams, and to access specialised support, visit https://fightcybercrime.org/
The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit https://novel.audio/.
You can listen to new episodes of The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe completely ad-free and 1 week early with an iHeart True Crime+ subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.
Open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “iHeart True Crime+, and subscribe today!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey girlfriends, Anna here just quick heads off on what
to expect in this episode of the Girlfriends. We'll be
exploring themes of coercive control, and there'll be a reference
to non consensual drug use. But it's also a story,
as always, of true friendship, and there's going to be
some cool as hell nurses. If any of the themes
feel difficult, you'll find links to mental health and support
(00:27):
organizations in the episode description, Last time on the Girlfriends,
Trust me, babe?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Are you dearck Aldridge and he goes yes.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Lisa is walking through baggage plane when two cops on
Segways arrest the man she thought was named Steel And I.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Looked at him like, what the hell?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
One?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You're good to go about barticking him? I'm like, what
the hell's going on?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Lisa and Derek formerly known as Steele, have just turn
from what should have been a romantic holiday in Hawaii.
Now they're standing face to face with two airport cops.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Time for mister steel Fins to start explaining himself.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Steele goes, Oh, it's probably my brother. He impersonates me
alad gets me in a lot of trouble, So there's
probably some warrant dead or something for him now.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Steele had told Lisa he had a good for nothing
twin brother, but that doesn't explain why he just answered
to the name Derek.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
He hands me his suit kiss He's like, here, just
take this. You know, everything's okay, babe, don't worry. I'll
see you soon.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
After a week of increasingly irritating assurances, the power of
Derek's patented don't worry babe has really begun to wane,
especially now as he's parted away by an airport cop and.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
The other cap goes your feet to go.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Lisa's left standing alone in a state of shock. She
doesn't know what to do with herself. When suddenly, rays
of light beamed down, a choir of cherubs sing. A
phone vibrates in her pocket. Stephanie texts me, her guardian
(02:19):
angel from the past week, who has stopped at nothing
to get her girl home.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
She goes, did you n edited? Yes, she says good.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It strikes Lisa in that moment. All holiday, her friends
had been calling and texting. They've been unusually persistent about
her whereabouts, her flight details, the license plate of her
jeep rental, even her boss's very chill attitude over Lisa
missing her morning shift seemed.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
A little unusual.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Suddenly, looking down at that text from Steph, it all
makes sense.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Steph knows something.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
She says, let me know when you get home. I
need to talk to you. And they said, oh, hell no,
I'm not waiting, Like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Lisa calls Steph as soon as she can.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Okay, a man on the shutter bus, what is going on?
And so she then says, well, I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Sitting on the bus with her luggage and steals carry
on briefcase. Lisa learns the truth. One, there is no
Steel Aldridge.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
No, that is not his name.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The guy Lisa thought was her boyfriend is actually Derek Aldred. Two,
She's not the only woman who screwed over. Steph tells
her he also dated a colleague's friend.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
He had swindled her out of money. She dated him
before you.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Three.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
The reason he was arrested in baggage claim has absolutely
nothing to do with a dastardly twin brother. There is
actually no twin brother.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
By the way, he wasn't supposed to be the stick
because he's a falon.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
And four, oh, that's just a casual one. Turns out,
almost ten months before their first date, Steele had been
the target of a multi agency undercover sting operation.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I want to get this Jabe because he was just
a parasite.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
But that sting operation didn't quite go to plan trap.
I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and
iHeart Podcasts. You're listening to the Girlfriends Trust Me Babe,
(05:10):
episode three, The Sting You. It's the fall of twenty fourteen,
about a year before Lisa witnessed that dramatic airport arrest.
(05:31):
Paul Meskin is sitting in the office of the US
Marshal Services Fugitive Task Force in Minneapolis. His job is
to catch people on the run from the law.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Murderers, rapists, guncases, bad people that really need to get
off the street.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
He's printing out a few documents when an assistant grabs
his attention.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Hey, can you take this call from this lady who
has concerns about and information on a guy that's wanted. Okay,
I had no problem.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
It's a concerned mum.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
She was almost in tears.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Her adult daughter, Joanne, has recently been the victim of fraud.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Her daughter was a teacher met this guy named Derek
that claimed all this stuff and built her for a
lot of money, thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Our least favorite man, Derek Aldred reportedly racks up twenty
K on her credit cards before she discovers the truth
and reports him to the police. And in a story
that's becoming depressingly familiar, she's told taking her case any
further would be a waste of time.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Any court in the country is going to say, well,
you know you did that willingly because you were in
a relationship. Yeah, well it was a relationship. It was
all a fraud. But there's no prosecutor that would ever
charge her to it's like that.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
But John's mum, Scott Hutzpur So she does some of
her own research.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
On the guy.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
She found out that in June of twenty fourteen, Derek
stayed at the swanky Saint Paul Hotel, racking up a
significant bill while pretending to be a doctor, drinks room
service the whole hog, and then when it came time
to pay the bill, he disappeared. By the time of
sentencing hearing came around, yet again, he was nowhere to
(07:22):
be found. Authorities had issued a warrant for Derek's arrest,
but was anyone actually looking for him? And that's where
Paul comes in. Juanne's mom thinks if the cops won't
catch him for defrauding her daughter, they can at least
put him in jail for a hotel scam, and she's
come armed with info.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Receipts, credit card bills, here's a business card, and what's
this business card to? Hey on don't address.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
It's not the kind of case that Paul's unit would
normally prioritize, but something about this call gets to him,
so it gets to work. First, he heads to Derek's office,
the one on that business card.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
I went to the address and showed pictures, never heard him,
met the law firm that who's listed as working forward
never existed there. In fact, the suite number that they
had never existed in this building.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Paul now even more perplex It is the help of
a financial investigator on the team who.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Comes up with an idea.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
They know that Derek still has one of Joanne's credit cards.
She blocks it once she learned the truth, but the
investigator reckons if she unblocks it and Derek uses it someplace,
they'll know where he is and so.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I reactivated and that's when we learned of the Amtrak ticket.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Derek had used Joanne's card to buy a train ticket I.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Of Saint Paul to go to Portland.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The six forty am train on November seventh, twenty fourteen.
The cops have a time and a location. Now all
they need to do is wait. It's stakeout time. Saint
(09:16):
Paul Union Depot is a big, ostentatious station, grand columns,
large vaulted ceilings, people everywhere, and dotted around the station.
Oh so casually are about a dozen undercover officers.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
We had three guys on the train platform, other guys
that were up in the train station itself, a couple
of parking lots, couple parking ramps on the streets around.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
They've been in place since four thirty five am, scanning faces,
waiting for the appearance of one balding, middle aged.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
White guy about ya tall.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Pall's in charge of the whole operation, so he's waiting
in his truck outside the station, listening in over the radio.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Any updates, any updates, any updates here anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
They could be waiting for some time, but no worry.
Paul is guaranteed to bring supplies.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Honey rolls, to peanuts, dry roast, liquorice, gum drops, crackers, skittles.
The guys on my team always called me snacks.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Then something interrupts the picnic.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
As the train approaches, Paul decides he has to see
this guy taken down with his own eyes.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I came inside kind of like I was coming to
pick somebody up, and Jenda watched the train.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Derek is due to catch.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Pulls in at the platform. Undercover officers board, searching faces
among the passengers. No sign of him. As the clock
ticks down, the train prepares to leave.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
The train pulls off. Let's just give a couple of minutes.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Maybe he'll come tearing down the station lobby, running late.
Maybe he noticed suspicious police like activity and didn't board.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Everybody, just hold your position.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And then it's gone, trundling into the distance, headed for
the West Coast.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
The only people that left the train station were those
that had gotten off the train.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
The message from surveillance is unanimous. There's no Derek in
a nearby car watching. He's not scanned his ticket at all.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
There's no way we missed him. It's like, damn that
was about his cut and dried and perfect as we
thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Next day, Paul gets a call from the financial investigator.
Paul's still not sure how it happened.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
He's on the train, which confirmed he's on the train.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Maybe Derek missed a local service, had to board the
train at a later station.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Maybe he got tipped off.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Somehow, whatever the reason, they're sure of his location.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Now he's an hour and a half out of Portland Orion.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
On the literal other side of the country from where
Paul's team is trap. But no matter, because Paul snacks
Meskan has won some friends over the years.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Paul sevin, here's my situation.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
And those friends have some of their own friends.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
And he reached out to his contact in Portland.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And they assembled a team and arrived just in time
to see the train pulling in.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Derek came walking off and they took him into custody
without incident, got shipped back to Minnesota and went to
court and got sentenced to the county workhouse.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Derek is finally sentenced for theft by swindle of the
Saint Paul Hotel on top of his sentence for skipping court.
Derek is released back into the community after a grand
total of nine months a reformed man.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
He would literally had just gotten out of prison like
a week or two before I met him, so he
wasted no time.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
So no, Derek is not a reformed man, but he's
fast becoming a man with dangerous enemies. Derek's victims are
about to find each other, and with him, I'd be very,
very nervous. Lisa spent the whole journey home from the airport,
(14:26):
all two hours of it, on the phone to her friends.
She now knows all about the Saint Paul hotel scam,
Derek's probation violation, his total and utter betrayal of her.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And I'm grateful there wasn't a lot to keep on
us because I'm barring my eyes out.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Lisa finally gets back to her car.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
By the time she makes it home, her friend's Steph
is already there waiting with open arms.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
We just embraced each other. I do think there are
some tears. She goes, I have just been a nervous
wreck since you've been gun in Hawaii. I was just
relieved that she was home safe.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
And the two of them waste no time. They start
the search immediately for anything and everything they could find
which might help them build a case against Derek.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I'm going through all his stuff, seeing his real name,
like thinking, holy crap.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Searching the luggage he handed off to Lisa.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I'm finding his phone. He had this app fort people calling,
like you could hit it and they could call you,
pretending to be somebody where if you hit him, they
would call him.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
It's all starting to click into place. None of those
calls were real. None of the text she got from
his friends and family.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
He had his roommate saying there, his sister's name there,
his mom's name there.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
So he'd be talking to no one.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Literally no one. I think he had the one friend
that was pretending to be a sister, because I would
actually hear a female voice when he was talking to
his sister, but no one else.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Looking back, his calls had seen strangely well timed.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
We'd be talking about his dad and then like two
minutes later, oh, she would.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Car Even though Derek talked to various women he dated
about sisters, brothers, a daughter. I want to make it
really clear, none of Derek's family members have ever been
implicated in any of his crimes or accused of any wrongdoing.
When Lisa goes through her credit card statements, she finds
that she isn't just out of pocket for the stuff
(16:26):
Derek or Steele had asked her to pay for. It
was everything, all their flights, their hotel stays, their meals,
all of it, unbeknownst to Lisa, had been charged to
her own card.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Howard did, I don't know because I always had my
credit card and me and my Boddy. It was in
my purse attached to me. Then I start going through
a brief kiss and I'm finding these usb poort.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
She opens one on her laptop.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
It's just her my bank account, my AMEX stuff, my
Wells far Ago account, anything that I had used on
my computer, and then my social Security number.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Going through his phone, Lisa realizes that steal okay, Derek
wasn't volunteering at the homeless shelter.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I found like he lived there, the hotels, the resort,
the jeep and the er, visit this vision, that visit,
the dinner cruise. I think it was close to almost
ten grand.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Bombarded by all this new information, Lisa thinks back on
her relationship, casting memories into a new light. She remembers
the time she blacked out in Hawaii.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I really think he drugged me and brought me upstairs
because I don't remember any of that. It just makes
you feel so it's just I don't know, just used
and just upset that someone can do that to a
human being.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Derek says this allegation is completely untrue, but it's a
suspicion as Starckward Lisa.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
For years, I was just furious at him and furio
set myself for trusting him all these times.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Lisa feels angry, but also like she's somehow to blame,
which of course she isn't. It's a sort of moment
when you want to regain some control, but Lisa doesn't
get that. Normally, when you go through a breakup, you
have a bit of time to process it on your own.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
But in a way, Lisa is the last to know.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I just felt like the most stupidest person in the world, Like,
how could I let this human do this to me
when I'm not a stupid woman. I'm all educated. I thought,
you know, I thought I knew him, but then looking
back at like, oh, here's the spread flake, here's that
red flake, here's that one, and here's that one, but
I didn't listen. My heart was just broken, Like, how
(19:09):
can I ever trust anybody again? Like he just got
into my heart. I trusted everything you said and he
just ripped it out.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
But it's more than just heartbreak and angry ban worries.
It's time for Derek to be held accountable. It's like
November and it's cold out in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It's
been just one day since Lisa learned the truth about Derek,
(19:36):
and two officers are pulling into her driveway. The cops
want Lisa to provide a statement. She tells them everything,
the first date, the Hawaii trip, the credit card stuff.
They confiscate Derek's belongings, a black smartphone, three USB sticks,
one gray, one white, one black, a phone charger, but
(19:58):
really they don't seem hopeful.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
He's kind of like, WHOA, I'm sorry this happened to you.
But if he doesn't admit to it, we really can't
do anything, and more or less, we have more important
things to do.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
The investigators explained to Lisa that the county's attorneys won't
prosecute a case like this of all the theft that
took place over the holiday. It's only really the initial
flight purchases that land within their jurisdiction, and Derek brought
those on her laptop, so he can just claim that
she was well aware of the charges.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
With me Henley Love on my laptop and saying sure
you can use it. You know, I smari or less
my help that I allowed him to do that, so.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Worth mentioning she gave steel Aldridge permission to use her
laptop a man who does not actually exist. It's not
exactly informed consent.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
It's not like he broke in and took this information
from me. I let him in my house. So I
just feel like they think, oh, another super woman get
swindled by a guy. I wasn't killed. I wasn't and beat.
It was just money taken by somebody I dated.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
The investigators tell Lisa she could try contacting local police
in Hawaii, but otherwise he.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Mar or last just said, you know, I'm sorry. You know,
if we don't have any more evidence against him, we
can't do anything.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Then she says they offered her some off the record advice.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
You can call him in prison and try to get
him to confess, and the phone.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
It's November twenty fifteen, Lisa is back from Hawaii, grappling
with the news that her boyfriend is a con man
and it doesn't seem like the cops can or will
do much about it. And Derek he's back in prison
over his robation violation, serving out the remainder of his sentence.
Lisa has been informed that in just a few weeks time,
(22:08):
Derek is due to be back out on the street.
So if Lisa can find some evidence that Derek didn't
actually have her permission to buy those flights, maybe the
prosecutors can actually do something about it.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
So I bought a little recorder and I would, you know,
call him and I would try to, you know, make
him confess.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Lisa speaks to Derek over the phone from prison. It's
the first time she's spoken to him as Derek, not
a steal the man she thought she'd been building a
life with, and.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Like, well, you bought these tickets. He's like, no, I
told you I was putting him on your card and
I'd pay you back. He would never confess to anything
he did. I honestly believe he knew I was trying
to record him, but he just he would not. I
would fight with him on the phone and like you
were lying to me, like you took my card. You
said you pay me back, and he'd be like, Lisa,
I didn't that, and he kind of would get angry
in the phone. You misheard me. I never said that.
(23:02):
He even sent me a handwritten letter saying how much
he'd loved me and how much he forgave me for
accusing him.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
And you do the same on phone calls.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
You know, I still love you. This is just a
mistake and not this person that you think I am.
He was getting out Christmas Day. He wanted me to
go out to the prison and pick him up and
you know, start over again.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Needless to say, Lisa doesn't pause the present unwrapping to
pick Derek up from prison, but she does continue to
call and text trying to get him to admit what
he did.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I was so upset and so help better on getting him.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
A couple of weeks after Derek's release, Lisa is at
work when someone approaches her, asks her name, and hands
her an envelope.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I remember opening an up point. Are you freaking kidding me?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
It's a restraining order? Derek has taken one out against.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Her, and I start and I think I went home.
How on earth did this happen?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Having already had ten grands stolen from her, Lisa now
needs to hire a lawyer. She challenges the restraining order,
and by February she is sitting in court. The park
bench where Lisa and Steele had their first date just
six months ago, is a five minute walk down the
(24:26):
street from the courthouse. Lisa anxiously watches the door for
a familiar face to appear.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
And their attend The door opened, my heir, Just like Stab,
he never shows up.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
The judge dismisses the case cancels the restraining order.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I spent more money on him and this lawyer. You
know I'd get this restraining order he had sold and
then he doesn't shop up.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Not only was the justice system ignoring her, it was
also being used against her by the man who'd lies
and stolen from her.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Then she gets some news.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
My niece texts me and says, I was googling him
and found he had done this with this girl in California.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
A woman in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
That night I found her on Facebook, connecting with her
and talking her. I was a holy cult.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Cindy, you heard about an episode two hadn't seen Derek
in two years, but she had spent her time wisely.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
She was hell bent on getting this guy. Sydney had
started this big file going on him about his past women.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
It's Cindy who puts Lisa in touch with all the
other women who'd had the misfortune of dating Derek Aldred.
They've got to shared Facebook group chat. By the time
Lisa joins, they had already started plotting out Derek's moves.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Okay, show me when you dated him, Just keeping our
chronological order of his little steps that he was doing
where he was at. He gets at a prison, gets
settled wherever he's standing, and then at the next person.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
By now, it's a familiar story. Women who'd been targeted
by Derek all seemed to be falling through a particular
crack in the justice system, a crack that Derek appears
to be taking full advantage of. Over only two years,
Derek strikes three more times with three different women in
the Minneapolis area alone.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
My heart broker them thinking he's doing it again.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Lisa read's allegations that he'd opened credit cards, stolen jewelry,
and even drained a retirement savings account of nearly two
hundred thousand dollars in the space of a few months.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
This was just his power trip of doing this to
women because he just for some reason headed us.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Two of those women, once they learned of each other's existence,
actually teamed up to try and stop him, and initially
it works. An arrest warrant is issued for Derek Aldred
on August eighth, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
Words spreads through the group.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Chat that Derek has been arrested in Minnesota by local cops.
It says at the top Wouldbury Public Safety Police Services
incident report name Derek Mylan or Dread check forgery redacted.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Told me that at the end the.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Report describes how woman files a report against Derek and
the cops.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Go to a house to arrest him.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
He was handcuffed using plastic cuffs in front of his
body due to having a wrist brace on his left wrist.
They're made using standard handcuffs impractical.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Also on this police report, Derek Aldread's long and complicated
arrests history.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
It's a long list and it's broken down by year,
and we start in two thousand and five forgery, felony, burglary,
obtain controled, substances by fraud, felony, impersonate fireman misdemeanor, and
I'm sure that's not as a stripper burglary, second degree felony,
(28:18):
false worker compensurance claim. What's frustrating is the list doesn't
really tell us much about what happened in between all
of these arrests. So we did a bit of digging
into some of the statements women have made to investigators
to journalists over the years about their experiences with Derek
(28:39):
and discovered even more stories, like one allegation from twenty eleven.
An ex wife of Derek's alleges that he convinced her
to briefly move into a hotel whilst I'm wiring in.
Her home is being fixed, but when her mother in
law visits, there are.
Speaker 6 (28:55):
Men moving out all of their belongings and the house
has been foreclosed.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Producer le owner of fills me in on the details.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
The woman that he married loses the house.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
That's crazy.
Speaker 6 (29:09):
There's another story about a woman who she's dating Derek.
She loses her job and she can't afford the rent.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
She'll explain to the investigators.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
He told her that he was taking care of the
rent at a new place one he had encouraged them
to move into, but he wasn't. Not only that he'd
put the property in her name, and once she learned
the truth, she was evicted.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
She goes on to lose her entire life savings because
he's strained her bank accounts.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
He's a proper, proper con man.
Speaker 6 (29:43):
At the end of twenty thirteen, after Wendy, After Cindy,
he meets another woman from Hawaii, and she's a doctor.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
The two gone a holiday to Puerto Rico together, where
Derek's charming facade seems to drop.
Speaker 6 (29:58):
He takes her license, her passport. He basically holds her hostage.
He re routes all of her calls and texts to
his phone. At one point, she tries to run away
and even flags a car down, and he chases her down.
By the time she makes it home, she learns that
(30:20):
he's wiped all her financial accounts of more than thirty
five thousand. He's made sixty thousand dollars in fraudulent credit
card payments. He's taken a twenty eight thousand dollar advance
out from her job in like unworked shifts, so she's
basically fucked. Her business goes bankrupt, she's deeply traumatized, and
(30:48):
he's disappeared.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
Wow, that one feels scary.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
All of these women are skilled, professional, smart educator women.
One of them is a nuclear scientist. And it shouldn't matter. Obviously,
it doesn't matter if they're not any of those things,
or if they were manipulated into handing over money.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
But it's not even that. What he's done is.
Speaker 6 (31:14):
Convince them to be in a relationship with him and
then stolen their money.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Yeah, they're not aware about what's going on.
Speaker 6 (31:27):
So I just want you to a picture in your
mind Derek standing out front of a house in Minnesota,
plastic handcuffs on, and now the Woodbury police have arrested him.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
When I first read the arrest thing, I was like, Oh,
I'm struggling to get that excited because it just feels
like this man gets away with everything. But having all
of this information, it makes it feel like Derek's time
is up.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
But don't get too excited. My suspicions were right.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Earlier Woodbury Pude had released Derek while they built a case,
and in a move right out of the Derek Alldred playbook,
he simply disappeared again. Lisa was trying to move on
with her life.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I'd forget about it for a while, and then another
text had come.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
An update from one of the girlfriends in the group chat,
will bring all the pain back for Lisa.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Who he did this to?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Who? This and that?
Speaker 1 (32:25):
And it just would make me cry. And let's just
like this has got it and I need to let
it go, needs to come out of my life.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
And just when Lisa resolves to put this whole thing
behind her, a new message pings into her inbox, an
update so irresistible that Lisa is drawn right back in.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I vowed I will be his last target.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
Next time.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
On the Girlfriends Trust to Be Babe, Derek sets his
sights on a new target in Texas.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
I realize that I can stab him.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
And he learns the hard way that you don't mess
with Texas.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
I moved my bookcase in front of my door. I
went upstairs and I got my gun, and I just waited.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
If you found any of the themes explored in this
episode difficult and you need support or advice, please reach
out to our charity partners No More at No More
dot org. We'll add some useful links to the episode
description look after Yourself. The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe is
(34:00):
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.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Our editor is Joe Wheeler.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage, 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 Luisa Gerstein and performed by
Daniel Kempson with vocals by Luisa Gerstein. Music supervision from
(34:38):
Daniel Kempson and Anna Sinfield. The series artwork was designed
by Christina Lemcol. Story development by Susie Baker and Olivia Smart.
Novel's director of development is Selena Metta. Max O'Brien is
the executive producer for Novel. Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etoor
are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing
(34:59):
lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to Carrie Lieberman and
Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts. Julie Sansulo and Langston, Carolyn
sher Levin, Katie Gillis, Kelly Hunt, Rachel Munroe, Tom Oldag
and Tad Wesner.
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey girlfriends, Anna here just quick heads off on what
to expect in this episode of the Girlfriends. We'll be
exploring themes of coercive control, and there'll be a reference
to non consensual drug use. But it's also a story,
as always, of true friendship, and there's going to be
some cool as hell nurses. If any of the themes
feel difficult, you'll find links to mental health and support
(00:27):
organizations in the episode description, Last time on the Girlfriends,
Trust me, babe?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Are you dearck Aldridge and he goes yes.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Lisa is walking through baggage plane when two cops on
Segways arrest the man she thought was named Steel And I.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Looked at him like, what the hell?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
One?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You're good to go about barticking him? I'm like, what
the hell's going on?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Lisa and Derek formerly known as Steele, have just turn
from what should have been a romantic holiday in Hawaii.
Now they're standing face to face with two airport cops.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Time for mister steel Fins to start explaining himself.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Steele goes, Oh, it's probably my brother. He impersonates me
alad gets me in a lot of trouble, So there's
probably some warrant dead or something for him now.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Steele had told Lisa he had a good for nothing
twin brother, but that doesn't explain why he just answered
to the name Derek.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
He hands me his suit kiss He's like, here, just
take this. You know, everything's okay, babe, don't worry. I'll
see you soon.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
After a week of increasingly irritating assurances, the power of
Derek's patented don't worry babe has really begun to wane,
especially now as he's parted away by an airport cop and.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
The other cap goes your feet to go.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Lisa's left standing alone in a state of shock. She
doesn't know what to do with herself. When suddenly, rays
of light beamed down, a choir of cherubs sing. A
phone vibrates in her pocket. Stephanie texts me, her guardian
(02:19):
angel from the past week, who has stopped at nothing
to get her girl home.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
She goes, did you n edited? Yes, she says good.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It strikes Lisa in that moment. All holiday, her friends
had been calling and texting. They've been unusually persistent about
her whereabouts, her flight details, the license plate of her
jeep rental, even her boss's very chill attitude over Lisa
missing her morning shift seemed.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
A little unusual.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Suddenly, looking down at that text from Steph, it all
makes sense.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Steph knows something.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
She says, let me know when you get home. I
need to talk to you. And they said, oh, hell no,
I'm not waiting, Like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Lisa calls Steph as soon as she can.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Okay, a man on the shutter bus, what is going on?
And so she then says, well, I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Sitting on the bus with her luggage and steals carry
on briefcase. Lisa learns the truth. One, there is no
Steel Aldridge.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
No, that is not his name.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The guy Lisa thought was her boyfriend is actually Derek Aldred. Two,
She's not the only woman who screwed over. Steph tells
her he also dated a colleague's friend.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
He had swindled her out of money. She dated him
before you.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Three.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
The reason he was arrested in baggage claim has absolutely
nothing to do with a dastardly twin brother. There is
actually no twin brother.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
By the way, he wasn't supposed to be the stick
because he's a falon.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
And four, oh, that's just a casual one. Turns out,
almost ten months before their first date, Steele had been
the target of a multi agency undercover sting operation.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I want to get this Jabe because he was just
a parasite.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
But that sting operation didn't quite go to plan trap.
I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and
iHeart Podcasts. You're listening to the Girlfriends Trust Me Babe,
(05:10):
episode three, The Sting You. It's the fall of twenty fourteen,
about a year before Lisa witnessed that dramatic airport arrest.
(05:31):
Paul Meskin is sitting in the office of the US
Marshal Services Fugitive Task Force in Minneapolis. His job is
to catch people on the run from the law.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Murderers, rapists, guncases, bad people that really need to get
off the street.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
He's printing out a few documents when an assistant grabs
his attention.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Hey, can you take this call from this lady who
has concerns about and information on a guy that's wanted. Okay,
I had no problem.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
It's a concerned mum.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
She was almost in tears.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Her adult daughter, Joanne, has recently been the victim of fraud.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Her daughter was a teacher met this guy named Derek
that claimed all this stuff and built her for a
lot of money, thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Our least favorite man, Derek Aldred reportedly racks up twenty
K on her credit cards before she discovers the truth
and reports him to the police. And in a story
that's becoming depressingly familiar, she's told taking her case any
further would be a waste of time.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Any court in the country is going to say, well,
you know you did that willingly because you were in
a relationship. Yeah, well it was a relationship. It was
all a fraud. But there's no prosecutor that would ever
charge her to it's like that.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
But John's mum, Scott Hutzpur So she does some of
her own research.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
On the guy.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
She found out that in June of twenty fourteen, Derek
stayed at the swanky Saint Paul Hotel, racking up a
significant bill while pretending to be a doctor, drinks room
service the whole hog, and then when it came time
to pay the bill, he disappeared. By the time of
sentencing hearing came around, yet again, he was nowhere to
(07:22):
be found. Authorities had issued a warrant for Derek's arrest,
but was anyone actually looking for him? And that's where
Paul comes in. Juanne's mom thinks if the cops won't
catch him for defrauding her daughter, they can at least
put him in jail for a hotel scam, and she's
come armed with info.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Receipts, credit card bills, here's a business card, and what's
this business card to? Hey on don't address.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
It's not the kind of case that Paul's unit would
normally prioritize, but something about this call gets to him,
so it gets to work. First, he heads to Derek's office,
the one on that business card.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
I went to the address and showed pictures, never heard him,
met the law firm that who's listed as working forward
never existed there. In fact, the suite number that they
had never existed in this building.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Paul now even more perplex It is the help of
a financial investigator on the team who.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Comes up with an idea.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
They know that Derek still has one of Joanne's credit cards.
She blocks it once she learned the truth, but the
investigator reckons if she unblocks it and Derek uses it someplace,
they'll know where he is and so.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I reactivated and that's when we learned of the Amtrak ticket.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Derek had used Joanne's card to buy a train ticket I.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Of Saint Paul to go to Portland.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The six forty am train on November seventh, twenty fourteen.
The cops have a time and a location. Now all
they need to do is wait. It's stakeout time. Saint
(09:16):
Paul Union Depot is a big, ostentatious station, grand columns,
large vaulted ceilings, people everywhere, and dotted around the station.
Oh so casually are about a dozen undercover officers.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
We had three guys on the train platform, other guys
that were up in the train station itself, a couple
of parking lots, couple parking ramps on the streets around.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
They've been in place since four thirty five am, scanning faces,
waiting for the appearance of one balding, middle aged.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
White guy about ya tall.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Pall's in charge of the whole operation, so he's waiting
in his truck outside the station, listening in over the radio.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Any updates, any updates, any updates here anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
They could be waiting for some time, but no worry.
Paul is guaranteed to bring supplies.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Honey rolls, to peanuts, dry roast, liquorice, gum drops, crackers, skittles.
The guys on my team always called me snacks.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Then something interrupts the picnic.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
As the train approaches, Paul decides he has to see
this guy taken down with his own eyes.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I came inside kind of like I was coming to
pick somebody up, and Jenda watched the train.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Derek is due to catch.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Pulls in at the platform. Undercover officers board, searching faces
among the passengers. No sign of him. As the clock
ticks down, the train prepares to leave.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
The train pulls off. Let's just give a couple of minutes.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Maybe he'll come tearing down the station lobby, running late.
Maybe he noticed suspicious police like activity and didn't board.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Everybody, just hold your position.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And then it's gone, trundling into the distance, headed for
the West Coast.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
The only people that left the train station were those
that had gotten off the train.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
The message from surveillance is unanimous. There's no Derek in
a nearby car watching. He's not scanned his ticket at all.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
There's no way we missed him. It's like, damn that
was about his cut and dried and perfect as we
thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Next day, Paul gets a call from the financial investigator.
Paul's still not sure how it happened.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
He's on the train, which confirmed he's on the train.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Maybe Derek missed a local service, had to board the
train at a later station.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Maybe he got tipped off.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Somehow, whatever the reason, they're sure of his location.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Now he's an hour and a half out of Portland Orion.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
On the literal other side of the country from where
Paul's team is trap. But no matter, because Paul snacks
Meskan has won some friends over the years.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Paul sevin, here's my situation.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
And those friends have some of their own friends.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
And he reached out to his contact in Portland.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And they assembled a team and arrived just in time
to see the train pulling in.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Derek came walking off and they took him into custody
without incident, got shipped back to Minnesota and went to
court and got sentenced to the county workhouse.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Derek is finally sentenced for theft by swindle of the
Saint Paul Hotel on top of his sentence for skipping court.
Derek is released back into the community after a grand
total of nine months a reformed man.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
He would literally had just gotten out of prison like
a week or two before I met him, so he
wasted no time.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
So no, Derek is not a reformed man, but he's
fast becoming a man with dangerous enemies. Derek's victims are
about to find each other, and with him, I'd be very,
very nervous. Lisa spent the whole journey home from the airport,
(14:26):
all two hours of it, on the phone to her friends.
She now knows all about the Saint Paul hotel scam,
Derek's probation violation, his total and utter betrayal of her.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And I'm grateful there wasn't a lot to keep on
us because I'm barring my eyes out.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Lisa finally gets back to her car.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
By the time she makes it home, her friend's Steph
is already there waiting with open arms.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
We just embraced each other. I do think there are
some tears. She goes, I have just been a nervous
wreck since you've been gun in Hawaii. I was just
relieved that she was home safe.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
And the two of them waste no time. They start
the search immediately for anything and everything they could find
which might help them build a case against Derek.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I'm going through all his stuff, seeing his real name,
like thinking, holy crap.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Searching the luggage he handed off to Lisa.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I'm finding his phone. He had this app fort people calling,
like you could hit it and they could call you,
pretending to be somebody where if you hit him, they
would call him.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
It's all starting to click into place. None of those
calls were real. None of the text she got from
his friends and family.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
He had his roommate saying there, his sister's name there,
his mom's name there.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
So he'd be talking to no one.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Literally no one. I think he had the one friend
that was pretending to be a sister, because I would
actually hear a female voice when he was talking to
his sister, but no one else.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Looking back, his calls had seen strangely well timed.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
We'd be talking about his dad and then like two
minutes later, oh, she would.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Car Even though Derek talked to various women he dated
about sisters, brothers, a daughter. I want to make it
really clear, none of Derek's family members have ever been
implicated in any of his crimes or accused of any wrongdoing.
When Lisa goes through her credit card statements, she finds
that she isn't just out of pocket for the stuff
(16:26):
Derek or Steele had asked her to pay for. It
was everything, all their flights, their hotel stays, their meals,
all of it, unbeknownst to Lisa, had been charged to
her own card.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Howard did, I don't know because I always had my
credit card and me and my Boddy. It was in
my purse attached to me. Then I start going through
a brief kiss and I'm finding these usb poort.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
She opens one on her laptop.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
It's just her my bank account, my AMEX stuff, my
Wells far Ago account, anything that I had used on
my computer, and then my social Security number.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Going through his phone, Lisa realizes that steal okay, Derek
wasn't volunteering at the homeless shelter.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I found like he lived there, the hotels, the resort,
the jeep and the er, visit this vision, that visit,
the dinner cruise. I think it was close to almost
ten grand.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Bombarded by all this new information, Lisa thinks back on
her relationship, casting memories into a new light. She remembers
the time she blacked out in Hawaii.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I really think he drugged me and brought me upstairs
because I don't remember any of that. It just makes
you feel so it's just I don't know, just used
and just upset that someone can do that to a
human being.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Derek says this allegation is completely untrue, but it's a
suspicion as Starckward Lisa.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
For years, I was just furious at him and furio
set myself for trusting him all these times.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Lisa feels angry, but also like she's somehow to blame,
which of course she isn't. It's a sort of moment
when you want to regain some control, but Lisa doesn't
get that. Normally, when you go through a breakup, you
have a bit of time to process it on your own.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
But in a way, Lisa is the last to know.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I just felt like the most stupidest person in the world, Like,
how could I let this human do this to me
when I'm not a stupid woman. I'm all educated. I thought,
you know, I thought I knew him, but then looking
back at like, oh, here's the spread flake, here's that
red flake, here's that one, and here's that one, but
I didn't listen. My heart was just broken, Like, how
(19:09):
can I ever trust anybody again? Like he just got
into my heart. I trusted everything you said and he
just ripped it out.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
But it's more than just heartbreak and angry ban worries.
It's time for Derek to be held accountable. It's like
November and it's cold out in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It's
been just one day since Lisa learned the truth about Derek,
(19:36):
and two officers are pulling into her driveway. The cops
want Lisa to provide a statement. She tells them everything,
the first date, the Hawaii trip, the credit card stuff.
They confiscate Derek's belongings, a black smartphone, three USB sticks,
one gray, one white, one black, a phone charger, but
(19:58):
really they don't seem hopeful.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
He's kind of like, WHOA, I'm sorry this happened to you.
But if he doesn't admit to it, we really can't
do anything, and more or less, we have more important
things to do.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
The investigators explained to Lisa that the county's attorneys won't
prosecute a case like this of all the theft that
took place over the holiday. It's only really the initial
flight purchases that land within their jurisdiction, and Derek brought
those on her laptop, so he can just claim that
she was well aware of the charges.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
With me Henley Love on my laptop and saying sure
you can use it. You know, I smari or less
my help that I allowed him to do that, so.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Worth mentioning she gave steel Aldridge permission to use her
laptop a man who does not actually exist. It's not
exactly informed consent.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
It's not like he broke in and took this information
from me. I let him in my house. So I
just feel like they think, oh, another super woman get
swindled by a guy. I wasn't killed. I wasn't and beat.
It was just money taken by somebody I dated.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
The investigators tell Lisa she could try contacting local police
in Hawaii, but otherwise he.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Mar or last just said, you know, I'm sorry. You know,
if we don't have any more evidence against him, we
can't do anything.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Then she says they offered her some off the record advice.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
You can call him in prison and try to get
him to confess, and the phone.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
It's November twenty fifteen, Lisa is back from Hawaii, grappling
with the news that her boyfriend is a con man
and it doesn't seem like the cops can or will
do much about it. And Derek he's back in prison
over his robation violation, serving out the remainder of his sentence.
Lisa has been informed that in just a few weeks time,
(22:08):
Derek is due to be back out on the street.
So if Lisa can find some evidence that Derek didn't
actually have her permission to buy those flights, maybe the
prosecutors can actually do something about it.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
So I bought a little recorder and I would, you know,
call him and I would try to, you know, make
him confess.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Lisa speaks to Derek over the phone from prison. It's
the first time she's spoken to him as Derek, not
a steal the man she thought she'd been building a
life with, and.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Like, well, you bought these tickets. He's like, no, I
told you I was putting him on your card and
I'd pay you back. He would never confess to anything
he did. I honestly believe he knew I was trying
to record him, but he just he would not. I
would fight with him on the phone and like you
were lying to me, like you took my card. You
said you pay me back, and he'd be like, Lisa,
I didn't that, and he kind of would get angry
in the phone. You misheard me. I never said that.
(23:02):
He even sent me a handwritten letter saying how much
he'd loved me and how much he forgave me for
accusing him.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
And you do the same on phone calls.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
You know, I still love you. This is just a
mistake and not this person that you think I am.
He was getting out Christmas Day. He wanted me to
go out to the prison and pick him up and
you know, start over again.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Needless to say, Lisa doesn't pause the present unwrapping to
pick Derek up from prison, but she does continue to
call and text trying to get him to admit what
he did.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I was so upset and so help better on getting him.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
A couple of weeks after Derek's release, Lisa is at
work when someone approaches her, asks her name, and hands
her an envelope.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I remember opening an up point. Are you freaking kidding me?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
It's a restraining order? Derek has taken one out against.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Her, and I start and I think I went home.
How on earth did this happen?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Having already had ten grands stolen from her, Lisa now
needs to hire a lawyer. She challenges the restraining order,
and by February she is sitting in court. The park
bench where Lisa and Steele had their first date just
six months ago, is a five minute walk down the
(24:26):
street from the courthouse. Lisa anxiously watches the door for
a familiar face to appear.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
And their attend The door opened, my heir, Just like Stab,
he never shows up.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
The judge dismisses the case cancels the restraining order.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I spent more money on him and this lawyer. You
know I'd get this restraining order he had sold and
then he doesn't shop up.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Not only was the justice system ignoring her, it was
also being used against her by the man who'd lies
and stolen from her.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Then she gets some news.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
My niece texts me and says, I was googling him
and found he had done this with this girl in California.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
A woman in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
That night I found her on Facebook, connecting with her
and talking her. I was a holy cult.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Cindy, you heard about an episode two hadn't seen Derek
in two years, but she had spent her time wisely.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
She was hell bent on getting this guy. Sydney had
started this big file going on him about his past women.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
It's Cindy who puts Lisa in touch with all the
other women who'd had the misfortune of dating Derek Aldred.
They've got to shared Facebook group chat. By the time
Lisa joins, they had already started plotting out Derek's moves.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Okay, show me when you dated him, Just keeping our
chronological order of his little steps that he was doing
where he was at. He gets at a prison, gets
settled wherever he's standing, and then at the next person.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
By now, it's a familiar story. Women who'd been targeted
by Derek all seemed to be falling through a particular
crack in the justice system, a crack that Derek appears
to be taking full advantage of. Over only two years,
Derek strikes three more times with three different women in
the Minneapolis area alone.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
My heart broker them thinking he's doing it again.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Lisa read's allegations that he'd opened credit cards, stolen jewelry,
and even drained a retirement savings account of nearly two
hundred thousand dollars in the space of a few months.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
This was just his power trip of doing this to
women because he just for some reason headed us.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Two of those women, once they learned of each other's existence,
actually teamed up to try and stop him, and initially
it works. An arrest warrant is issued for Derek Aldred
on August eighth, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
Words spreads through the group.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Chat that Derek has been arrested in Minnesota by local cops.
It says at the top Wouldbury Public Safety Police Services
incident report name Derek Mylan or Dread check forgery redacted.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Told me that at the end the.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Report describes how woman files a report against Derek and
the cops.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Go to a house to arrest him.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
He was handcuffed using plastic cuffs in front of his
body due to having a wrist brace on his left wrist.
They're made using standard handcuffs impractical.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Also on this police report, Derek Aldread's long and complicated
arrests history.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
It's a long list and it's broken down by year,
and we start in two thousand and five forgery, felony, burglary,
obtain controled, substances by fraud, felony, impersonate fireman misdemeanor, and
I'm sure that's not as a stripper burglary, second degree felony,
(28:18):
false worker compensurance claim. What's frustrating is the list doesn't
really tell us much about what happened in between all
of these arrests. So we did a bit of digging
into some of the statements women have made to investigators
to journalists over the years about their experiences with Derek
(28:39):
and discovered even more stories, like one allegation from twenty eleven.
An ex wife of Derek's alleges that he convinced her
to briefly move into a hotel whilst I'm wiring in.
Her home is being fixed, but when her mother in
law visits, there are.
Speaker 6 (28:55):
Men moving out all of their belongings and the house
has been foreclosed.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Producer le owner of fills me in on the details.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
The woman that he married loses the house.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
That's crazy.
Speaker 6 (29:09):
There's another story about a woman who she's dating Derek.
She loses her job and she can't afford the rent.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
She'll explain to the investigators.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
He told her that he was taking care of the
rent at a new place one he had encouraged them
to move into, but he wasn't. Not only that he'd
put the property in her name, and once she learned
the truth, she was evicted.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
She goes on to lose her entire life savings because
he's strained her bank accounts.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
He's a proper, proper con man.
Speaker 6 (29:43):
At the end of twenty thirteen, after Wendy, After Cindy,
he meets another woman from Hawaii, and she's a doctor.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
The two gone a holiday to Puerto Rico together, where
Derek's charming facade seems to drop.
Speaker 6 (29:58):
He takes her license, her passport. He basically holds her hostage.
He re routes all of her calls and texts to
his phone. At one point, she tries to run away
and even flags a car down, and he chases her down.
By the time she makes it home, she learns that
(30:20):
he's wiped all her financial accounts of more than thirty
five thousand. He's made sixty thousand dollars in fraudulent credit
card payments. He's taken a twenty eight thousand dollar advance
out from her job in like unworked shifts, so she's
basically fucked. Her business goes bankrupt, she's deeply traumatized, and
(30:48):
he's disappeared.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
Wow, that one feels scary.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
All of these women are skilled, professional, smart educator women.
One of them is a nuclear scientist. And it shouldn't matter. Obviously,
it doesn't matter if they're not any of those things,
or if they were manipulated into handing over money.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
But it's not even that. What he's done is.
Speaker 6 (31:14):
Convince them to be in a relationship with him and
then stolen their money.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Yeah, they're not aware about what's going on.
Speaker 6 (31:27):
So I just want you to a picture in your
mind Derek standing out front of a house in Minnesota,
plastic handcuffs on, and now the Woodbury police have arrested him.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
When I first read the arrest thing, I was like, Oh,
I'm struggling to get that excited because it just feels
like this man gets away with everything. But having all
of this information, it makes it feel like Derek's time
is up.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
But don't get too excited. My suspicions were right.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Earlier Woodbury Pude had released Derek while they built a case,
and in a move right out of the Derek Alldred playbook,
he simply disappeared again. Lisa was trying to move on
with her life.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I'd forget about it for a while, and then another
text had come.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
An update from one of the girlfriends in the group chat,
will bring all the pain back for Lisa.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Who he did this to?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Who? This and that?
Speaker 1 (32:25):
And it just would make me cry. And let's just
like this has got it and I need to let
it go, needs to come out of my life.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
And just when Lisa resolves to put this whole thing
behind her, a new message pings into her inbox, an
update so irresistible that Lisa is drawn right back in.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I vowed I will be his last target.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
Next time.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
On the Girlfriends Trust to Be Babe, Derek sets his
sights on a new target in Texas.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
I realize that I can stab him.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
And he learns the hard way that you don't mess
with Texas.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
I moved my bookcase in front of my door. I
went upstairs and I got my gun, and I just waited.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
If you found any of the themes explored in this
episode difficult and you need support or advice, please reach
out to our charity partners No More at No More
dot org. We'll add some useful links to the episode
description look after Yourself. The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe is
(34:00):
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.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Our editor is Joe Wheeler.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage, 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 Luisa Gerstein and performed by
Daniel Kempson with vocals by Luisa Gerstein. Music supervision from
(34:38):
Daniel Kempson and Anna Sinfield. The series artwork was designed
by Christina Lemcol. Story development by Susie Baker and Olivia Smart.
Novel's director of development is Selena Metta. Max O'Brien is
the executive producer for Novel. Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etoor
are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing
(34:59):
lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to Carrie Lieberman and
Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts. Julie Sansulo and Langston, Carolyn
sher Levin, Katie Gillis, Kelly Hunt, Rachel Munroe, Tom Oldag
and Tad Wesner.
Popular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
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.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.