I Know Everything

When Heather Rovet met Jace Paratti, the chemistry was instant. And soon, they were making plans for the future. But when the relationship hit a rough patch, Heather wondered if maybe Jace was hiding something. What she discovered would thrust them both into international headlines and reveal that Jace Paratti wasn’t Jace Paratti at all. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
One of my friends she said, Honey, it sounds like
he's gaslighting you. I didn't know what that word was.
She goes look it up when we're off the phone,
and I look it up and I'm like, oh, like,
oh my gosh, like.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yes, Welcome to the Knife. I'm Hannah Smith. I'm Patia Eyaton.
Today we're speaking with a woman named Heather Rivet. In

(00:40):
twenty eighteen, Heather met a man that swept her off
her feet. Heather had had success in just about every
area of her life, but was still looking for that
true life partner, and Jace Peretti seemed to finally be
that guy. Over the next three years, Heather and Jace
built a life together, but one night in the summer
of twenty twenty one, learned Jace was lying to her

(01:02):
like any modern day detective. She figured out his email
password and what she discovered in his inbox. Shocked and
terrified her, Jace was not the man he claimed to be.
As a note, Heather's story appears in the documentary Who
the F Is Jason Porter, which we refer to during
the interview. Let's get into it.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well. My name is Heather Rovett and I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
I am a real estate broker. I love Toronto. It's
a pretty neat city. I have an older brother and
a younger sister. I love dogs. I have my little
rescue pup, Tommy, who came from Cairo, Egypt. My previous dog, Baxter,

(01:45):
is in a lot of the documentary and sadly I
had to put him to sleep last summer. You know,
I have to say Baxter was a huge part in
definitely the healing, but just also surviving. When you have
a dog, it forces you to get up and walk
the dog. And so even though there were some days
where I honestly felt paralyzed, I was just experiencing so

(02:07):
much anguish and I didn't know what to do. The
one thing I knew that I had to do was
walk Backster. We were already so close to start with,
but he was just my saving grace through that whole time.
Dogs are incredible.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
So can you give us a little snapshot of what
was going on in your life with you personally professionally
before you met the con artist in question.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Before I met Jase, I had a life. I have
a lot of friends, I have a career as a
real estate broker. I was quite busy. I had recently
renovated my condo and was so enjoying the process of
furnishing it and picking out light fixtures, and was really
proud of the transformation. I created. One thing that doesn't

(02:55):
get talked about in the documentary, but before I met Jason,
was actually the victim of a financial con or, a scam.
I had invested one hundred and thirty thousand dollars with
a financial investors person. You know. He showed me every
quarter we would meet and he would show me how
my money was doing. But in the fall of twenty seventeen,

(03:18):
I started to say, hey, I'm starting this renovation. I
need my money or some of my investment back. It
just turned into what most people who have been victims
of financial fraud, you know, dodging my calls. And eventually
he ended up disappearing and going on the run, and
I filed a police report, and I also was trying

(03:40):
to ssue him civilly. And it wouldn't be for probably
about six months later, and I still hadn't met Jason
at this point that he was actually caught and arrested,
and there were a few victims.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
How there was granted a restitution order of one hundred
and twenty seven thousand dollars, but to this day has
never seen a dime. In twenty twenty, she even hired
a firm to track down mister Simon how Fun aka
how Fun aka Alan Peterson, but they were unsuccessful. This
was a big hit to her financially, but still Heather

(04:13):
figured out a way to move forward with the renovation,
and so in May of twenty eighteen, she moved back
into her beautiful, newly renovated condo. This was a fresh start.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
And I'm settling back in and I started to notice
that there was some certain things in the kitchen that
weren't quite right, Like there was, you know, one of
the cupboard doors didn't quite shut properly, insane with her drawer.
So I had the people from the kitchen cabinet company
come and look at everything, and they're like, oh, okay,
well we have a new service guy. We'll get him

(04:44):
to contact you and he'll come and fix everything. And
I was like great. I didn't think much about it.
A couple weeks later, it's Monday, July ninth. I'll never
forget the day Monday, July ninth, twenty eighteen, and it's
probably about seven in the morning, and my phone pings
that I have a text message, and I thought, oh,
who's messaging me so early on a Monday, Because I'm

(05:07):
not a super early morning person. He said something like,
good morning, Heather. Sorry for the early slash late note.
I was hoping I could come by today and fix
the things that need fixing. And I replied about half
an hour later, and I was like, yeah, sure, come by.
This is my address. And I rolled out of bed
and took the dog for a walk and told my

(05:27):
concierge that I'm expecting somebody from the Kitchen Cabinet company
and she could just send him up, no need to
call me. And by nine thirty the morning, I heard
a knock, knock, knock at the door and back she
gave a little woof, and I was very taken aback
when I opened the front door and there was this
pretty cute guy, very cute guy, i'll say, standing in
front of me. He was tanned, and he had a

(05:50):
little scruff on his face with just like a little
bit of a hint of salt, but more pepper, and
he just had this cute grin, and I probably for
a minute just got lost in taking in this nice
looking guy, and so I let him in and he
got to work. I showed him what needed to be done,
and I found myself hovering around him because I just

(06:11):
was curious, and you know, when you live in a condo,
there's only so much space, so I was just being
nice and friendly. And in the back of my mind too,
I kept thinking I should ask this guy when he's
done to help me do a couple other things, because
I knew I had to hire a handyman to put
up the towel racks and the hooks in the bathroom.
So when he finished, I asked him, very poorly if

(06:32):
he wouldn't mind helping me please, and he smiled and
he said, sure, no problem. And I guess we got
so lost in talking when he was doing the second
one that by the time he left and he didn't
quite finish it, he asked me if i'd be okay
finishing and I was like, oh, yeah, how hard can
it be? I realized after he left that the whole

(06:54):
thing was on a slight angle. I think it was
because we were so caught up in chatting, and the
whole time we were chatting. It wasn't a very big bathroom.
He was sitting on the toilet hanging the towel bar,
and I was leaning in. It was a walk in shower.
I was leaning in the door jam of the shower
talking to him.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Can I ask you, what did you guys talk about? Like,
how much did you both share when he's there, you know,
working on in the shower.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, in the toower, nothing too too personal. I definitely
before he left, had learned that he really was, according
to him, a software engineer, that he had gone to
the University of Waterloo, which in Canada is the equivalent.
It's like our MIT. It's where you have to be
very smart to go there, especially for engineering computer sciences.

(07:42):
I learned that he had a little son, but him
and the ma had separated, and he made it seem
like it was an amical separation. But they were going
through the family court just to figure out parenting, time
and custody and all that stuff. But at that moment
I didn't know the gravity of the situation. He at

(08:04):
some point said something like blah blah blah, and he
dropped what I would Paula a hun. He was like, okayhun,
and I must have given him a bed of a
look and he said, oh, sorry, I just spent the
weekend at my family cottage with my aunt and my
female cousins, like a lot of estrogen. Sorry about that.
And I kind of giggled and was like, Aha, no worries.

(08:25):
So I learned that he had a family cottage and
in Ontario in the summer, you know, especially if you
live in a big city, it's so nice to get
out of the city and go up and spend time
on the lake. So I was like, oh, that's nice,
like him, like, it's nice to have cottages. My family,
we grew up going to a cottage. We had a cottage,
and when I was probably first year university, my parents

(08:46):
sold the cottage and they ended up buying a more
of a country property. We called it a farm.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
The charming and good looking handyman introduced himself to Heather
as Jace Peretti. His story was unexpected and they instant chemistry.
Heather felt like the universe was balancing the scales. After
she'd endured this massive financial fraud. Jay spoke Italian a
nod to his heritage, and their banter felt both easy

(09:13):
and electric. Time flew and soon he had to rush out,
but they'd been so caught up in conversation that he'd
actually left the towel rack slightly unfinished and managed to
forget his teat measure. But in the moment when Heather realized,
she felt lucky. This was door opening, a chance for
her to reach out. Maybe she hadn't seen the last
of Jace Peretti. So Heather sent him a text and

(09:35):
let him know he'd forgotten his teat measure and asked
if he might be able to help her with the
towel rack.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
And he said, Hey, I'm about ten minutes away. Why
don't I come back and I'll fix it. And I
was like, great, thank you, thank you again. Knock on
the door. He comes in and within five minutes it's boom,
boom boom, I'll fix straight. It must have been about
one thirty in the afternoon at this point, going on
two o'clock, and I asked him. I'm just like, oh,
what are you doing for the rest of the day

(10:02):
and he said, well, I was thinking of getting some lunch.
I was like, oh, I need to eat some lunch.
I said, let me as a thank you for doing this,
can I take you out for lunch. There's a place
just across the street. And he said sure. So we
ended up going out for lunch that day, and over lunch,
I'm pretty sure. I'm very sure that I did tell

(10:25):
him about the financial fraud and that it had made
the renovation a lot more stressful than it had to be.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
So right there, he's hearing that you have savings, like
that you are someone who has money in the bank.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Well, and I think you can also tell just by
the condo itself. Yeah, it's in a very nice part
of the city. And the renovation I did it was beautiful,
Like I really transformed the space with like really nice
finishes and marble. And you know, he worked at the
cabinet company. He could see just how nice it was.
Asked me about, you know, did you grow up in Toronto?

(11:01):
Where did you go to school? And I remember telling him, yes,
you know, I went here. I had gone to an
all girls private school here in Toronto. And he said,
oh my gosh, I went to the boys' school. I
was like, you did, and he goes, yes, I only
but I only went to the junior school like I
was done by the time I was in grade seven.
I was like, oh, so we would have totally missed
each other.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
It's like such a whirlwind first day, like you meet someone,
instant chemistry, he leaves his team, measure, you go to lunch,
and so how quickly, you know, does it progress from
that to let's go on like a proper date.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
It probably took us about two weeks. But in between
that first day we met and our first date, there
was a lot of back and forth, back and forth
flirtatious text banter, and I had never in my forty
some wad years ever experienced that kind of banter with somebody,

(12:01):
that kind of fun, light flirty communication at all, Like
I'd never experienced that before. So I was really already
getting swept in. And I think we had one quick
phone conversation and then he had left me a couple
of messages too, and then we ended up going on
our first date and he showed up on his motorcycle

(12:23):
and I thought, that's really quite hot and sexy. And
he came up so he could leave his motorcycle helmet
in his backpack, and we went out for dinner to
a really cute Italian place just around the corner. I
was definitely rusty on first dates, but because I don't
find it hard to talk to people, it was easy

(12:43):
to keep the conversation going. There was never really a lull,
and I felt over dinner, he shared some more big
things with me, including he told me the story of
his mom dying, and he alluded a little bit more
to the situation, you know, with the family court. And
I was very taken by the fact that I felt

(13:07):
this guy was just being so vulnerable with me and
so honest and so sincere. I remember asking him, you know,
how do you deal with that kind of lot? You know,
you lost your mom and you've gone through this now
and that, And he said, I put everything in boxes.
So he said, that's how he copes is he just

(13:28):
puts things in boxes, and when he needs to deal
with it, he'll pull out the box and deal with it.
I also thought that was pretty insightful that he had
that self awareness.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Not only did Heather feel this intense chemistry, but Jace's
openness really drew her in. He shared with Heather that
he had been a successful software engineer, and in fact,
he owned his own software company, which he'd only recently
sold to his partner. He said he wanted to get
away from that part of the world and have a
change of lifestyle. He really liked working with his hands,

(14:02):
so it was all making sense, even though it was
a little unusual. But in hindsight, Heather can see the
red flags that she missed. As Jonathan Walton notes an
anatomy of a con artist, revealing intimate details too soon
as a classic manipulation tactic, It's an easy way to
fast track trust. Most people instinctively respond to vulnerability, but

(14:23):
the danger comes when those so called confessions are built
on lies. On their very first date, Jayce shared what
sounded like raw vulnerability, the story of his own mother's death.
He then went on to explain that his modest lifestyle,
working as a repairman, living in this small apartment, it
was all by design. He claimed he had to appear

(14:44):
broke on paper because his vindictive X was trying to
bleed him dry. In the midst of a brutal custody battle.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
He had gone to a lawyer and the lawyer said,
dump yourself down, like literally, get rid of your credit cards,
go rent something that's not a lot of money, take
a lesser job, and that's what he was doing. And
the way he told the story, he told in such
a way that you're like, oh, that's like, you know,
good free. You know. I never felt like he was

(15:13):
trying to be a bad person or cheat the system
or anything. I just felt like, yeah, you know, you're right,
like or he would say things like he didn't think
it was fair that he had to pay that much
child support when his son was only also so little,
it didn't make sense. He's like, a three year old
doesn't cost that much money, Like, I don't feel I
should have to pay that, especially because she was fighting

(15:34):
him for custody, he would have had to pay a
lot more child support, he was saying. And as somebody
who's never gone through the family court system and I
never had kids, I just took him at his word.
I have some girlfriends that have gone through some pretty
high profile, intense divorces, and I know they drag out
and they drag out and they drag out. So I

(15:55):
didn't really have any personal experience, so I just took
him at his work.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Heather and Jays start dating in twenty eighteen, and in
twenty nineteen he moves into her condo. Things were going
really well. Heather's parents met Jason, everyone got along. Her
mom actually loved him. Heather's dad was a little less certain,
but we could all chalk that up to most dads
are he felt like. Jace told a lot of tall tales.

(16:24):
Then in the fall of twenty nineteen, the first incident
occurred that made Heather realize, looking back, this was all sinister.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
At that point, my mom thought he was incredible. My dad,
in the first year or so, still liked him, like
he thought he was interesting. Jace had tall tales of
living in China and living in Japan, and his Italian
grandfathers who both fought in World War Two for the Allies,
and he just had some crazy, big stories, and he
always seemed to want to, you know, engage my dad

(16:53):
and try and be helpful in some way, shape or form.
So my parents come into the city and my mom
goes off to get her nails done and she messages
me she said, have you seen my engagement ring? My
diamond ring? And I was like, no, I haven't. She
goes it's interesting because when she goes away for a weekend,
she'll just throw some of her jewelry in one of
those little Tiffany blue sash bags. She goes, well, the

(17:15):
bag's there, but there's no ring there. She goes, I
just I don't know. I don't know where it is.
And they ended up going to the wedding. They left,
and when they left, Jason and I literally like tore
the condo apart, like looked under the sofa, looked under
the bed looking for this ring. And I was like, God,
I hope it didn't fall down the train, like then
it would be long gone. So my mom chopped up

(17:37):
that missing ring to a loss, and she ended up
going through her insurance and getting, you know whatever, some
insurance money. But nobody really thought twice about it.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Jace confided in Heather about how distraw he was over
this ongoing custody battle and how little he got to
see his son. Heather watched him leave the house twice
a week for supervised visitation with his son, who she
was really eager to meet, but it just never seemed
like the right time. Then, in November of twenty nineteen,

(18:14):
Jase had even more bad news. He said that he
and his ex could not come to an agreement and
now their custody battle was headed to trial. Heather stepped
into help and.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
I was like, this is terrible. You need to lawyer
up because he didn't have a lawyer at this point.
He had fired the other one allegedly, and I was like,
you know, I'm going to ask my friend, knowing that
his ex had a very prominent family lawyer who some
of my girlfriends had used, and he's a shark. So
I'm like, we have to get you a lawyer. So

(18:49):
I arranged for him to meet with a family lawyer
in January of twenty twenty. And I went to that
meeting and asked a whole bunch of questions and and
Jase told her what was going on. We know now
he was sitting there lying to everyone. But the lawyer
that day said, you've planted distrust in the other side.
You know, you've got this big degree and you've got

(19:12):
all this like corporate experience, and now you've been working
at a kitchen cabinet company. She's like, yeah, you need
to like get back into the real world if you
want to get this, so it's going to be balanced.
She goes, that's the first thing you need to do.
She's like, you need to go find a real job,
and he was like okay. And then I asked her
about me meeting his son, because I hadn't met a
son yet, and she said, you know what, Jace, you

(19:32):
have every right to introduce your son to Heather. The
proper way to do it is to tell your son's
mom that you're in a relationship, and if she wants
to meet Heather, I would encourage that. But she did say,
seeing as the trial is just a couple months away,
maybe it's best we just keep it as is and
not rock the boat. She goes. In my opinion, I
have seen women who can go hysterical over these things,

(19:55):
So let's just keep it as is and once we
have the decision, than you know, Heather, if you're okay waiting,
I would suggest you wait. And I was like, okay, yeah,
it's cool. It's just a little couple months away. So
then about a week later, I'm getting it blowout and
I get text messages from Jase Won. I'm getting my
blood that he quit his kitchen job. I was like, great,

(20:15):
the lawyer's name happened to be Heather as well. I said, well,
that's what Heather told you to do, so great start
working startling for a job. So you know, it looked
like he was working his connections and whatever, and he
started apparently going for interviews and probably by sometime in March,
end of March, maybe he had gotten an offer and
he was going to start working for Oracle.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Jace landing this new job at Oracle made perfect sense.
He had a prestigious education and a background as a
software engineer. His new job felt like a win for
both of them, and they started planning an international vacation.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
We were going on a trip to Dominican Republic. I
had booked us a holiday and used all my MX
travel points and I booked us this holiday. We were
supposed to be leaving on a Saturday and Friday. I'm down.
This is around Valentine's Day in February. So just a
few weeks after the lawyer, I'm downtown showing condos and

(21:13):
he calls and I send him to voicemail and he's like,
call me as soon as you can. And so as
soon as I was finished with my clients, I called
him and he said, maybe you're never going to believe
what happened. My passport hasn't arrived and it's not at
the passport office, and I'm like, what what are you saying?
He's saying I don't have a passport. I ended up
going on this all inclusive, romantic getaway to an adults

(21:35):
only resort by myself. I was so upset. It was awful.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
I do love that you still went.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, well, because I didn't read, you know, typical of me.
I didn't read the fine print and it was non
transferable and non refundable. And half the time we were
down there, he was apparently like trying to book another flight,
and he sent me a picture of him waiting at
the passport office, which, for some reason and probably even
just as early as like a year ago, I was like,

(22:03):
I should put this through Google Image, and I put
the Passport picture office through Google Image, in which you know,
it's a stock photo. So all of that was lies.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yes, Heather knows now that this was all lies, none
of it was true, but at the time she believed
Jase's story about his passport just not showing up. It
was hugely disappointing, but what could she do. So this
was the spring of twenty nineteen. Heather was happy. She
believed that Jace had this great job at Oracle and
that eventually everything would be resolved with the custody of

(22:38):
his son. She had visions of getting married and being
a stepmom, but the custody situation just continued to drag
on with no resolution in sight.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
For my birthday in twenty nineteen, which is in October,
he gave me plane tickets for Italy. We were going
to go to Italy in early March of twenty twenty.
I was so excited. I was like, Oh my god,
I can't imagine a better person to go to Italy
with than you. Like, this is going to be amazing.
So life is really good as far as I'm concerned.

(23:10):
I'm in love. I'm living my best life with him.
Things are amazing. To back it up to March twenty nineteen,
when the trial was supposed to happen for his family
ort stuff, something happened and it got pushed, and this
would be the thing in our relationship that we really
only thought about was the family court because it just

(23:31):
seemed like it was always getting delayed and pushed and
delayed and pushed. Or they'd have a date and something
would happen and then they were going to meet again
in two months, and I was like, this is like crazy,
and I, like I said, didn't have anything to compare
it to because I've never gone through family court. So
finally it looks like we're heading towards the end of

(23:52):
twenty nineteen, and he gets his next trial date, which
is supposed to be in January of twenty twenty, and then,
of course something happens in January twenty twenty and it
gets pushed again, and he's waiting to get the new date.
In early February, he came home one day from his

(24:12):
visit with his son and he was really upset and
he said, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry, Like, I
just found out that the trial has been pushed to
March eighth, and I'm thinking we're supposed to be in
Italy then, so how's that going to work. I was like,
oh gosh, that sucks. But of course, at this point,
I'm so invested in the Family Court. I'm like, don't

(24:33):
worry about it. I'll cancel the hotel reservation I've made.
We'll go to Italy another time, Like, it's far more
important that you get this sorted out with family Court.
So he goes to Family Court early March and he
comes home and he seems a little optimistic, and he's like,
I think things are good. We have to go back
in two weeks and the judge is going to make

(24:54):
her decision, and I'll know exactly where things stand. I'm like,
that's amazing. Well, in that two week window, COVID happened,
and so the whole world got shut down. If COVID
hadn't have happened, I think we probably would have perhaps
broken up sooner, because I don't know if I could
have kept living that way, because it was a real

(25:14):
problem for me. Like I felt, on one hand, awful
for him that he wasn't getting to be the father
that he claimed he wanted to be. But I just
felt that while that was so unresolved, it was really
hindering us from moving forward and living our best life.
But COVID happened, family court gets indefinitely delayed. We are
living in this condo and the walls start to feel

(25:36):
like they're closing in, and he's pretty much his entire
time working for Oracle, worked a lot from home because
apparently they didn't have room at Oracle for him and
his team. And I believed that and they were looking
for exterior office space. I sold the condo in I
think May or June of twenty twenty, and we decided

(25:56):
we were going to rent, and I agreed to try
living outside to the city so he could be closer
to his son. And so when this adorable house came
up for lease an Aurora, which is about forty five
minutes north to Toronto, I was like, this is our house.
I just knew it right away. This was going to
be our house, because as a city girl, the idea

(26:17):
of living in a subdivision where everybody's houses looked the same,
I was not going to do that. But I was
okay living outside of the city if it was a
bit more rural ish, more country, more like the farm.
And this house came up for lease, and it was
on five acres of property, and it was just so
private and special and affordable, and I was like, this

(26:39):
is our house. This is the one.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
While Jace had been living with Heather in her condo,
he'd been paying her fourteen hundred dollars a month, which
was only a small fraction of her mortgage, but Heather
didn't necessarily need the money. She also knew that Jase
was going through an expensive legal battle with his ex,
so in the spring of twenty twenty, they decide to
move into this charming country home and put both their

(27:04):
names on the lease. Jase told Heather at that point
that he wanted an additional job just to get out
of the house, so he got a job in construction,
which he worked during the day and then did his
work for Oracle at night. Everything was fine until Heather
got an alarming message from a trusted friend of hers.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Around May twenty twenty, when we're in lockdown and he's moonlighting.
One day, I get a phone call from a girlfriend
and she was like, heay, I have to tell you something,
and I'm like what. She goes, I just saw Jason Bumble.
I saw his picture on Bumble with a profile, but
he's not using his name, He's using a different name.
I was like, what, that's impossible. Like he's with me

(27:46):
all the time, like I'm the love of his life.
Like I'm so confident in my relationship. I said, send
me the pictures, and she sent me the pictures. I'm like, well, yeah,
that is him. But like, as somebody who has been capfished,
I was like, this is impossible and so right away.
I get off the phone with her and I send
the screenshots to Jace and I'm like, what the fuck
is this? And of course it was probably the worst

(28:07):
thing I could have done. I probably should have calmed
down and like thought about it. But he right away
calls me and he's like, I'm coming home. I'm like, well,
it's only like one in the afternoon, don't bother, Like
it's not a big deal, Like we'll talk about it today.
He's like, no, no, no, I'm coming home. And he
was like, it's not me. Like you've got to know
it's not me. He goes, I know who's doing this
to me. I'm like, okay, and he claimed it was

(28:28):
his ex's brother in law that was probably doing this
to fuck up family court. And of course, you know,
when I say it now, it sounds so trite and stupid,
but I believed him at the time. But at the
same time, that friend, I guess she did a reverse
image search of Jace and she did find some stuff

(28:52):
from way back, and she sent me this email and
I opened one of the attachments she sent me, and
it was a family court document from his divorce with
his first wife, which had a different name it was
Jason Porter and so I asked, like that was one
of the things. I'm like, I don't understand what this
family court document is. Jas like, first of all, it

(29:13):
says you're Jason, and second ball it says you have
two kids. And he said, those aren't my kids. When
I met her, she already had them and I adopted
them as my own. That's what that's referring to. And
he said, yes, my name legally is Jace Paroti, but
it really is meant to be Paretti. When my parents
came over from Italy, immigration messed up the spelling and

(29:35):
that's why it's like that on my ID in their system.
But I really am a Paretti, not a PARATEI. I
was like, okay, but what about Porty? He said, When
I was going through the corporate world, I just wanted
a very Anglo name. Does that make sense to you?
And I was like, I guess so. I mean people
change their names all the time. Look at Hollywood, right Like,
I was like, okay, again, it's twenty twenty and I'm

(29:58):
just so into my life in my relationship. Of course,
he's become my world and I'm being unbeknownst to me
emotionally abused, so I just I took him at his word.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
When do things really start going sideways?

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Things really started going sideways around July twenty twenty one,
but there were a couple things that led up to that.
Around April of twenty twenty one, my mom would call
and ask me, you know, have you seen this bracelet?
Have you seen this necklace? Did you borrow it? I'm
like no, She goes, oh, maybe I left it at

(30:34):
the condo. My grandmother, my mom's mom, died of dementia.
And while my mom is a child psychologist neuroscientist, and
she's very smart and very alert, I was like, oh gosh,
I wonder if my mom's starting to get dementia because
she seems really forgetful, Like how can she be misplacing
all her things.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
By the summer of twenty twenty one, the world was
starting to open back up after the COVID nineteen lockdowns,
and Heather said Jase was gone a lot. Mostly. He
said he was in Toronto working, which was about a
forty five minute drive away from their rural home and Aurora.
In July, it would be their three year anniversary. Heather

(31:20):
said Jace came home from his construction job to celebrate,
but had to go right back to work afterwards. It
wasn't exactly romantic.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
And so we went out that afternoon. He came home
a bit early. We went out, We took the car
to get it washed, he got a haircut, you know.
He came home, he took a bath, and I helped
him pick out it like a nice outfit to go
meet these people, and off he goes. And he doesn't
end up coming home till really really late. I'm already asleep.
And so then the next day we're having this conversation

(31:49):
and I was trying to get him to commit to something.
The following weekend, my cousins, whose dad actually lives in Aurora,
they were having a pool barbecue and I was like,
what time do you think you'll be finish with your
son so I can let them know when we're going
to come. And I just couldn't get a straight answer
out of him, and he said, I don't know, I
don't know, And I guess I just must have. At

(32:11):
this point, you know, the world's opening up. He's never home.
When he is home, I feel like we're not doing anything,
like I just was starting to feel very isolated, very
alone board. You know, I was trying to get him
to talk about rebooking Italy. The family court still hadn't

(32:32):
been decided, and I just said something to the effect of,
you know what, don't worry about it. Jay's you do
your family, I'll do mine. And he used that comment
essentially to provoke an even bigger fight with me, which
led to us taking a little bit of space apart.
I went down to the city for a week and

(32:52):
then I came home, and then I went the next
week to go visit a friend. But I will say this,
that Friday night he came home from quoting the job.
That was the last night we ever slept in the
same bed. So August is here and he's barely around
and barely communicating with me. He did agree to go
to couple's therapy, and we went to a couple two

(33:15):
hour therapy sessions that I paid for with this therapist.
I think he is a good therapist. I think it's
just impossible he didn't even know the length of what
was happening. Nobody did. And then I just I remember
talking to a couple of friends and one of my
friends when I was telling her what was going on.
She said, honey, it sounds like he's gaslighting you. I

(33:36):
didn't know what that word was. She goes look it
up when we're off the phone, and I look it
up and I'm like, oh, like, oh my gosh, yes,
this is how I feel. I feel like I'm kind
of spinning my wheels and going crazy in that everything's
my fault. And one day I just decided to try
and crack the code to his computer. We shared a computer.

(33:59):
We had a big desktop Mac that I had bought
for us, and he was the primary user. And I
asked him what his password was because we shared everything,
and he told me what it was and it wouldn't work.
Then I was on my computer and I went to
a website and it said do you want to save
this password? I said okay, and then this whole other
sheet pops up, and I didn't really pay attention. I'm
not super computer savvy, but I guess Chrome saves all

(34:21):
your passwords. So I went in and he was always
using my computer, and so I found a theme in
his password, so I typed it into the desktop Mac
and boom, I'm in and I get in the computer
and I'm like, oh my god, what am I seeing?
Like it was just so crazy in one of his
several Gmail accounts, and it's like, you're a match, You're

(34:42):
a match. You're a match, You're a match.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
I'm like, what, So you're logging on You're now on
the desktop that you guys share under his username. You're
saying many Gmail accounts and many emails that you can
tell her from online dating websites.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Well, yeah, I keeped them, and I went and I
went right to the dating site. It takes you right there,
and so I'm in his profile on this one. I
think it was bad dude, be a do. Oh, I
don't know it. I know the big ones, even though
you know I know Tinder bumble Match. Yeah, I'm like,
bad dude, what's bad do? And I'm in there and
it's not like he's talking to a handful of women.

(35:18):
There's hundreds of women he's talking to. And I'm like
what I'd asked him like a couple weeks prior, I'm like,
are you cheating on me? And he would say things
like how dare you say that to me? Like you thinking, well,
I s day of mind right now. I could be
with anyone, like I'm better off just being alone, Like no.
And then this one time, the first time I've asked him,

(35:40):
he actually said to me, and I say this in
the documentary, is like, do you want to smell my dick?
And I was like, I don't want to smell your dick?
Like ros He just made me so confused all the time,
and he made me feel like it was all in
my head and it was all my fault. But now
I'm in the computer and I'm seeing he's on every
dating platform there is, and it's not like this just started.
It went back and it went back and it went back,

(36:03):
and I was like, holy.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Shit, And what kind of messages were you seen? Were
you seen like uh, chat boxes or like messages between
him and other women?

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yes, And some of them they were exchanging photos, and
some were like here's my number, here's my number, let's
take this offline. I remember there was ones from Valentine's
Day where he was sending messages to some women just
saying how he wishes he had somebody he could kiss. Meanwhile,
he's so creepy. I'm sound asleep in the bed with
like a silk eyemask and Baxter by my side, and

(36:35):
he comes and he puts a single rose and my
Valentine's Day card on the pillow beside me and takes
a picture of it.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Well, he's messaging all of these other women on all
of these other apps, yes.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Or it's Christmas, and he's saying to women how he
just spent you know, Christmas with his family at the
family farm. I'm like, that's my family, that's my family farm.
He even like sent messages to a woman in French
in Italian and they were all full with lies. They
were all filled with lies, these messages, and I don't know,
there was that portion of the emails, and then I

(37:06):
just kept scrolling and scrolling through the emails, and then
I started seeing things like Tiffany necklace for sale. I'm like,
oh my god, that's my mom's necklace.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
When I first got into the computer, it's like my
stomach came up to my throat, and then my throat
went back to my stomach, and the like, I think
at that point the room was almost kind of spinning,
And I'm sure that's like the early stages of some
sort of shock, because I just honestly really couldn't make
sense of what I was dealing with, Like what I

(37:43):
was looking at this was just crazy.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
I mean, that makes so much sense. It's so much
information that you're trying to take in in a matter
of moments. That's very contradictory to all of the information
that you've had over the past three years about who
you thought he was and all of the ways that
he'd reinforced that idea that he was this really nice
guy that in fact, you know, he was going to
take you to Italy someday, he was gonna you know,

(38:08):
you talking to Doc about you were gonna get married,
like you weren't engaged, but you had talked about that.
You know, you believed that this was your life partner,
and obviously things had started to go downhill. But I
think that's really strong, and that there's so much time
and so much evidence in your life that shows you
that he is this good person, And even though that's eroding,

(38:29):
it still must be incredibly shocking to suddenly have all
this evidence in front of your face that actually, oh
my gosh, he's been talking with all these other women
the whole time, And not only that, but he's stolen
your mother's jewelry. Even though he helped you look for
your mother's jewelry, and you guys had talked about that
so many times. I mean, I don't know how a
person takes in that information and is able to process it.

(38:53):
What are some of the first things that you learn
about Jase that come out right away as far as
like KOI is or what lies he's told to you.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
I'm in the computer and i go back and open
that friend's email because I'm like, oh shit, what did
I miss? Like what did I not look at? And
then I googled Jason Porter. And if you google Jason
Porter or Toronto, fraud because it is a pretty common name,
right sad to say, there's actually a couple of really

(39:23):
bad Jason Porters out there in the world. But I
googled Jason Porter Toronto. I didn't even google fraud at
that point. I just googled Jason Porter Toronto and up
comes all these It's like Jace was all over the
six o'clock news because there was a warrant out for
his arrest in twenty eleven citing you know, online romeo.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
At this point, Heather had known the name Jason Porter
for about six months, since her friend had tipped her off,
but until this moment she had trusted him, so she'd
never googled his name. When she finally did, his face
appeared in old news reports going all all the way
back to twenty twelve. Jason Porter, dubbed the Online Romeo,

(40:04):
had been sentenced to thirty months in prison after pleading
guilty to fifteen different criminal charges. The stories, though, all
sounded eerily familiar. Women who'd met him on dating sites.
One off of Plenty of Fish and twenty ten described
how he'd move in under the pretense of finding his
own place and then defraud them allegations including stolen credit

(40:26):
cards and identity theft. It turns out Jason Porter had
served his time and then gotten right back to his
old tricks.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
He was doing things like taking out credit cards in
their name. He would like go on a date with
them and I guess steal their idea or take pictures
of their idea. So he was able to open these accounts.
One woman he just all right out stole from her.
He stole a car, He did some breaking, like he
had all these charges, but they were all little amounts.
They were in Canada. It's like there's zero to five
thousand is one kind of level of crime, and then

(40:56):
five thousand and above is more serious. So there were
all these charges for things under five thousand dollars. So
he was caught in late twenty eleven, and there were
a couple news articles and even like an interview with
the woman who came forward, although she's blacked out, like
her face is all fogged out, and I'm just like,

(41:17):
oh my god. And he ended up doing a plea deal.
So he gets out of federal prison in twenty fourteen
and starts all over again. And that's where he met
this woman who ended up becoming the mother of his child.
He met her on match dot com.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
Wow, you're finding this out, Like he's not at home,
you have logged in, You've figured out his password, and
now there's just like a series of things that you're
finding out. And then you google him and you find
out his criminal history as well.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yeah, yeah, I start looking through all this and I'm
just like, oh my god. But the crazy thing is
when I first, first first got in and I started
seeing all these you're a match, you're a match, and
I'm taking screen I'm taking hundreds of screens. The very
first thing I did was I actually called him because
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And I was like,

(42:07):
this is impossible. And I called him and he didn't answer,
and hours went by, and I just kept taking screenshot
after screenshot after screenshot. I did manage to get a
whole bunch off on a little thumb drive thing. But
then my friend Kristen called me, probably around eight on Friday,
and I don't even know how to begin explaining what

(42:30):
is going on. And she's like, holy shit. And then
we're talking. I'm like, oh my god, it's him calling.
Let me take I'm going to take his call and
I'll call you right back. There were so many things. Now,
if I could travel back in time and redo differently,
I would have done things a lot differently. But anyhow,
I end up talking to him, and I must have

(42:53):
in my voice. I don't know given something away, but
I do remember two things from that conversation. I remember
hearing crickets in the background, and he claimed he was
in Toronto. He had just finished you know, it's nine
o'clock on a Friday of a long weekend. He just
finished his kitchen job, this renovation job. He'd just gotten
back to the office and I was like, that's weird.

(43:14):
You know, I grew up in Toronto, Like I don't
ever recall hearing crickets in the city, but whatever, and
then we talked a bit more about what we were
going to do that weekend, and he said he would
come by on Sunday and we could have a talk,
and I was like okay, and then I just probably
said something like, you know, Jace, I just feel like
I don't even know who you are anymore. And he goes, well,

(43:36):
what do you mean, and he got defensive, and I said, well,
you know, I went from spending every day, day and
day out of my life with you being told I'm
the love of your life, and now it's like we
haven't done anything together, and like since July, like this,
I just I missed my life. And he said, oh,
don't worry, it'll be over soon. I said over soon,
like you're coming home or we're breaking up, and he said, no, no,

(43:59):
I'll be home. Don't worry. I'll come by Sunday. Well,
you know, we'll make dinner and we'll talk about stuff.
I'm like okay, and then we hung up, and I
kid you, not within minutes, I'm still in the dating
app site, and all of a sudden, it pops up
on the window. We're sorry to see you, go, sorry
to see you, shut down your profile and I'm kicked

(44:21):
out of all the gmails. So he somehow, I don't know,
maybe he was able with the dating app to see
when he was last logged in or something, and that's
how he figured out I was onto him. But all
of a sudden, I'm like shut out of everything.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
It was almost like this digital game of cat and mouse.
The more Heather discovered, the more quickly Jason was working
to shut her out of everything. Heather's friend Kristen came
to stay with her and Aurora, and Heather's sister had
already planned to come visit her as well, so while
they were all together, they collectively decided Jason's fraud needed
to be reported to authorities.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
So we called nine one one and the local police came,
and I proceeded to tell them basically almost exactly what
I've told you, and I'm showing them these screenshots, and
the police look at me and go, what do you
want us to do? I'm like, what do you mean?
What do I want to do? I'm like, I want
a restraining order. I don't want this guy ever coming

(45:22):
back here again. They're like, but ma'am, he hasn't hurt you,
or has he hurt you? And I said, do you
mean physically and they said yes, and I was like, well, no,
not on purpose. At that point, I wasn't even thinking
of any of those crazy tickling videos that are throughout
the documentary, which he literally used to sit on me,

(45:42):
right on my esophagus and torture tickle me, and he
would always grab my phone and record it.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Those are so disturbing to watch. Really, they're so disturbing
you can't breathe, and like your face is turning red
and he's laughing the whole time.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
It's so crazy. But this truth is, even if I
told the police, yeah he was hurting me, look at
these videos, I don't think that would constitute for abuse.
So the cops come on Saturday, we tell them everything.
They just look at me like I'm a crazy girlfriend.
And I said, what about my mom, Like she's missing

(46:23):
all her jewelry and I can show you he like,
this is her jewelry, and they said, well, she'll have
to go to her own police station, because that's how
it works. Here like you go to your local police station.
I was like, okay, well, you know he hasn't been here,
he hasn't slept in this house in like over a month.
I'm going to change all the locks. And they're like, ma'am,
you really shouldn't do that. He is your co tenant.
And I was like, is he though? Like his name's

(46:45):
not real and the name he signed on the lease
isn't real. And they're like, we can't tell you what
to do in that respect to what you want. So
they left a locksmith's comes I changed the lock, and
there must have been at least twelve of them at
that house. It was so big. I was like, well,
what if he shows up, Like what do I do?
They're like, well, if he shows up and you feel
scared or unsafe, just call nine one one and we'll

(47:06):
come over. So they leave. I'm just distraught, and I
look at my sister and I'm like, Jenny, you have
to tell him Mom, Like I can't tell her. I
can't tell her it's Jase that's stolen all her stuff
like that, Oh my god. My sister calls my mom,
and my mom, who is so compassionate, she pops in
her car and comes and drives. It's almost an hour

(47:28):
drive from her house to my house. And I'm at
that point I think lying down in bed because I
just don't know what to do. And she crawls into
bed and just holds me, and I start bawling, and
it's just my whole family is kind of now in
this chaos.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
The very next day, Heather's parents filed a police report
for the missing jewelry with the Ontario Provincial Police. Jace
had also been driving Heather's dad's car, a Mercedes SUV,
but Jase had never paid for it or bothered to
transfer the title. No one knew exactly how Jace would react,
but Heather's dad was advised to still go ahead and

(48:05):
ask for the car to be returned.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Send him a message and say you want your car
back by such and such a day and time, and
if you don't get it back, you're going to call
the police. So my dad sends that note to Jace,
and right away Jace's messages me. And keep in mind,
he said he was supposed to be coming home Sunday
night for a visit. It's now Sunday night and he
hasn't called or anything. I get this text message from
him saying, like, what the hell's going on? I'll be

(48:30):
home in twenty minutes.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Heather and her friend Kristen are terrified. Jace has a
lot to lose by being exposed. Heather and Kristen race
through the house, locking every window, every door, and then
they go and hide in the closet and call nine
one one. The call is in the documentary. Heather's voice
is frantic. She sounds genuinely afraid for her safety. The

(48:52):
man with complete access to her life isn't who he
said he was, and he's angry that Heather knows it.
The only thing bringing Heather any sense of safety in
this moment is that she'd had the locks changed.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
At this point, I don't know what he's capable of,
and we all know you hear those awful stories like
you push somebody just one step too far and you
don't know. And in the nine one one call, she
at one point asked us like does he have weapons?
We're like, how the fuck are we supposed to? Like?
We are freaking out? And where I lived in Aurora,
it was semi rural. My next door neighbors were another

(49:29):
five avre piece of property right, So if I were
to stand on my front door and scream as loud
as I could scream, no one's going to hear me.
And I'm feeling okay because I know I've changed the locks,
like he can't get in. So we hear him pull
up and he goes to the door closest to the
garage that leads into the mudroom, and I can hear

(49:51):
him putting his key in and it's not working. I've
also double bolted the locks. And then I hear him
come to the front door and hear the key going
in and he can't get in. And next thing I know,
he's come in through a window. Somehow he managed to
pry open one of those crank windows that cranks from
the inside. I don't know how he did it because

(50:12):
everything was locked down. So he's coming in through the
window and I'm I'm not even on the phone. I
think Kristen's in the closet still giving the play by play,
and I go running out of the bedroom hysterical like
I'm in full surging adrenaline terror. And you hear a
little bit in the nine to one one call, like

(50:34):
you can hear the screaming and I'm basically, I think,
screaming at him, saying, I know everything. I know you're
Jason Porter. I know what you've been doing. Da da
da da da da da. And he looks at me
and is like so and goes and makes a coffee
and he makes himself a coffee, and I'm like, the
cops are going to be here any minute. So the
cops come. It's a male cop and a female cop,

(50:55):
and the mail cop takes Jase outside and the female
cop talks to me, and I'm hysteric, like I'm out
of my mind, and I'm trying to like just like
tell her what's going on. I'm like, you guys were
here yesterday, just read the report. Read the report. He's
Jason Port. And next thing I know, the two cops
are talking. He's outside still I'm inside. Kristin and I
are both freaking out. And the female cop comes back

(51:18):
in and she's like, we're just waiting for the sergeant.
I'm like, oh, he was here yesterday, Great, he knows
exactly what's going on. And she's like, well, no, Jason
is now saying you assaulted him. That's why he hasn't
been coming home. I'm like what I'm like, Am I
getting a rest like this? It was so crazy. So
now you know, Kristen's off nine one one, but she's
on the phone with my parents. She's giving them a

(51:40):
play by play, and they're like, what the f is?
This is crazy? So I don't know. Within five minutes,
somehow I'm now talking to a criminal lawyer because thanks
to my family being you know, my dad was a lawyer,
my cousin, we have lawyers in the family, were able
to get a criminal lawyer on the phone on a
Sunday night of a long weekend, and I'm talking to

(52:03):
Laura and like, none of this is making sense, like
the fact that the cops were even thinking of pressing
charges against me. Apparently he had some sort of evidence,
but we all know that Jason is a master at
photoshopping and editing, so who knows what he had concompted
and probably had thought this through at some point in

(52:25):
time and had this already ready to go.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Heather and Jace both spoke to the cop separately, and
ultimately the cop decided that because Jace's name was on
the lease, he was allowed to re enter the house,
and Jay said as long as Heather gave him McKee
he wouldn't press charges. Heather was afraid of him, and
she had good reason to be. She'd found a document
from his criminal past that had even shown he'd once

(52:51):
been physically aggressive.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
When I said I can't stay here. I don't feel safe,
they said, ma'am, if you don't feel safe, we suggest
you leave. And I'm like, but why should I leave.
I'm the one who's been paying the rent. If not me,
it's my company that's paying the rent. My business is
downstairs and there's about three hundred thousand dollars worth of
furniture down there that I'm trying to sell. Like, how
am I supposed to if I leave? Feel safe that

(53:14):
he's not going to pull up with a U haul
truck and just rob me blind. And the sergeant said,
you can only take in and out of the house.
What is yours? I was like, what anyway? I had
to give him a key to the house, and he
said he'd be back the next day. But the cops leave.
They don't even ask him about my dad's car. And
then the cops leave, and within minutes of them leaving,

(53:37):
Jase goes into the front room, which was an office
again closes the two French doors, takes a phone cord,
wraps it around so I can't get in, and he
proceeds to erase the computer. And I hadn't gotten all
the screenshots off yet, so the computer's erased, the cops
are gone, and then he just looks at me and
he's like, I'll be back tomorrow early and leaves. So

(53:58):
that night, I stayed up all night and packed as
much as I could into boxes and suitcases and like
loaded it into my car and left, like I'm just
in this data shock. And a couple days later, I
talked to the detective who was assigned to my case,
and I said, I really want a restraining order, like
this is crazy. Meanwhile, the opp for my mom's stuff

(54:21):
feels comfortable that there's enough stuff that he can arrest Jase.
So within a week of all this, Jase is arrested
for stealing my mom's stuff. But because he erased all
those screenshots, I'll say like twenty things were stolen from
her and we only had evidence for two, so they

(54:41):
were able to press charges. But he wasn't kept on,
like he didn't have to post bail, he didn't have
to do anything, but that would have been around September
thirteenth of twenty twenty one, and that's when he would
begin going through the criminal justice system for my mom.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Legal battle just to get Jace Peretti aka Jason Porter
actually prosecuted for stealing Heather's mother's jewelry would be long
and it would be draining. Today, Heather believes that almost
everything Jason Porter told her was a lie. She doesn't
believe that he's Italian, or that he speaks Italian, or

(55:20):
that he's ever even been to Italy. She doesn't believe
he was ever an employee Oracle, and she certainly doesn't
believe that he has the prestigious educational pedigree that he
claimed to. Throughout their three year relationship, Jace said he
was in the midst of a custody battle. Heather had
decorated a room for their home for Jace's son, and

(55:40):
after he was arrested, she went back to the house
to clear it out. Under the bed that she had
bought for his son, she found legal documents regarding this
parental custody battle, and there was no trial. The custody
arrangement had already been settled. He'd been lying to her
for years. She'd also discovered why he kept delaying the

(56:01):
Italy trip and failed to join her on their romantic
getaway to the Dominican Republic.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
So hidden under the bed was a plastic bag filled
with stuff, and then a stack of all these family
court documents. And one of the things inside the plastic
bag was a letter from the Family Responsibility Office basically
saying he's denied a passport because what I didn't know
then though, he was denied his passport because he was

(56:29):
behind in child's port. The fact that for over three
years I thought I was in a loving, committed relationship
with Jace Peretti, but he really, in fact was by
birth Jason Porter, who when he got out of federal prison,
changed his name and the name Parati. He literally took
his mom's maiden name and added an eye. Jace is

(56:50):
short for Jason. It was his first wife's nickname for him, Jace.
So he wasn't even that creative, and I guess he
had time in prison to come up with this whole persona.
He never stopped online dating. I think what he realized
when he got out of prison is it's great to
have a home base and a long term relationship which
looks to the outside world and his son and his

(57:12):
son's mom that you're a decent guy, or that you've
changed your ways, but behind our backs, he never stopped
online dating because he was posted in that one Facebook
group a few times.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Did you ever speak with the mother of his son? Yes,
and what you know, what did you learn?

Speaker 2 (57:32):
She actually knew he was Jason Porter, and she had
found stolen stuff all through their house, and I think
she was in her own state of shock and survival
and she had a child to care for, so I
do remember. It was a few weeks after the arrest.
I messaged her on Facebook and I just said, you know,
I don't know what you know about me or my relationship,

(57:56):
but I told her a little bit and she's like,
i'll call you in an hour. So she called me.
We talked, and she did say to me, we thought
he changed with you, which on one hand makes me
think when he would show up for his kid visits,
he was probably being a great dad because I would
make sure he would go off with snacks and like
all the things that the lawyer told him to do,
like be a good dad, and you show up with

(58:17):
a backpack with a change of clothes and snacks and
da da da. So I can see where she might
have thought he maybe had changed. But the truth is
people like him don't change, and he never will change,
and he never did change. So when we spoke that
fall of twenty twenty one, it was a little cathartic
because I could tell her what I experienced, and she

(58:38):
would share with me what she went through, and she'd
be like, you're just at the beginning, believe me, like
you're still going to learn more, And so we were
able to kind of give each other a little comfort,
because the only people who are going to understand what
you truly went through are other people. But her story,
except for the fact that they'd met on match and
it wasn't an organic meetup, just there's a lot of similarities.

(59:02):
And it's the same with like Leslie and even Tiffany.
And it's like he has a playbook. I call it
the Jase Playbook, and he knows his moves and he
knows his lines, and he knows who he can play
who's going to work on and those are like nice, empathetic,
caring women who just want love, and he uses that

(59:25):
as a weapon. He's perfected it. He's done it over
and over.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
The criminal proceedings against Jase took about two years, and
he tried over and over again to delay them even further,
but eventually, in April of twenty twenty five, he was
sentenced to almost two years in prison, followed by three
years of probation after his release. Additionally, one of the
things that happened is he tried to frame Heather and

(59:53):
he placed flyers on the cars belonging to the jurors,
but it all came back to him and he was
just given an additional charge of jury tampering.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
He ended up getting arrested about five weeks after that
for obstruction of justice, jury tampering, and some other charge
which I'm not exactly sure what it is. But the
opp detective, the same one who my parents went to
that first day, said, compared to theft and crime, these
are very serious charges. So I hope this is where

(01:00:25):
I feel like I have a little window of opportunity
to expose him for the coresion for that fraudulent behavior
because he lied to a superior court judge, a crown
attorney like that has nothing to do with stealing my mom. Well,
its results from stealing her jewelry. But that's pretty twisted

(01:00:48):
criminal behavior.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
And it's like, we hear this a lot with victims
of scams like this, where they have to go seeking
the justice they want through these other sort of you know,
maybe more peripherally related wrongdoings or crimes, because it's like
you're saying, you know, you you were in an intimate

(01:01:11):
relationship with someone, Yeah, but they had light about every
aspect of themselves, so were you No? Not really, there
needs to be more more of a place for this
in our justice system where we can really name it
and call in what it is because we're seeing it
all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
It's interesting you say that because my mom, when all
this first started happening, she was like, it's kind of
like in vain and I say this and I hope
it doesn't rub anyone the wrong way. But like when
the Me Too Light movement came to light and all
these women started talking about their experiences. Since the documentary
came out, I have received I can't even tell you

(01:01:48):
how many messages through Facebook and Instagram and personal emails
from women and men around the world sharing stories with
me about what they went through. So it's you're right,
it's happening. It's like, right now, intimate partner violence is
very big in the news here and they're passing acts
to make it they're calling it at epidemic, like it's awful.

(01:02:12):
But we need to recognize the coersion and the emotional
abuse of all this. And you know, I remember so
clearly one day in Aurora. You know, every time I
had to go back to the house after I was
forced out, I had to be escorted him by police,
and that was traumatizing. But this one cop, he was
so nice actually, and he said, you know, it's it's

(01:02:33):
just unfortunate, Heather. It's not against the law and a
lie and be an asshole. You're right, And that's essentially
what he does though, right, Like I guess there is
a big difference. This is a whole other conversation, but
there is a difference between like deception and fraud versus
just lying right and his deception of fraud.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
So I first heard Heather's story because you recommended this
documentary to me. I did. Yeah, I actually came across
it just by chance. I hadn't heard of it or
I didn't read about it. I was just like, ooh,
romance scam documentary. Yes, I'll absolutely be watching that and
I did, and I was blown away. And you know,
like documentaries, it's hard to do everything in a matter

(01:03:20):
of two episodes to really fully cover a story. And
I reached out to Heather because I just had a
feeling like we could really dive in and Heather was
game to do that, and I just so enjoyed hearing
it directly from her. Yeah, and she definitely was able
to dive into similar details that they probably just had

(01:03:41):
to cut out of the documentary for the sake of time,
as well as there's more voices in the documentary. We
don't really talk too much about that in this interview,
but there are other women interviewed in the documentary who
also were victims of Jay slash Jason Porter. So definitely
it's worth going and watching. Yeah, totally mean. One thing
that I just kept thinking about learning about Jason Porter,

(01:04:04):
Jace Parati, whatever you preferred to call him, is you
know this started for him back and at least I
was able to track it from like research back to
two thousand and nine where he was dating women and
you know, stealing from them, and I imagine like when
the online dating landscape really took shape. It was like

(01:04:24):
this oh wow, this aha moment, Like, now I don't
have to go on a dozen different coffee dates to
like start these new relationships. I can just fire off
messages and like that had to just really ramp things up. Yes,
Like when Heather said she opened up his email, she
said he was chatting with like hundreds of women at

(01:04:45):
the same time. Obviously, that's so much easier to do
digitally than back in you know, two thousand and nine,
when I imagine he was probably just meeting people in person.
I don't know exactly how he was, but that would
be my guess. But also probably easier to be caught
nowadays than previously, because there is a digital trail for everything,

(01:05:09):
and it's probably easier for like Heather to want discover
this is happening, and also to connect with other victims
than maybe it was in the past. So it's like
both probably easier to perpetuate these crimes and also potentially
easier to get caught. Yeah. Absolutely, so you know, he

(01:05:29):
uh maybe got a little too big for his breeches. Yeah,
And such a bone chilling moment when she finally confronts
him and he just says so, and then goes and
makes a coffee that just says it all. You know,
it's like, oh, wow, he was playing a part. Yeah,

(01:05:51):
so confident, so brazen, and you're just like, oh, that's
even scarier that, like you don't care that, I know,
you'll just move on to the next person. Yeah, And
you know, Heather obviously doesn't understand that yet, and so
she is reacting like anyone would if you think that
you're in a relationship with someone who's like reasonable and
has been telling you the truth. Like there's that instinct

(01:06:13):
to argue your case and be like hey, no, no,
like this is really wrong, and he is just like
so so wild. Yeah, he's just on another planet, like unreachable. Yeah, emotionally. Yeah.
So totally recommend this documentary. It's called Who the F
Is Jason Porter and it's available on Amazon Prime or

(01:06:34):
at least that's where I watched it. So yeah, great
to hear from Heather, and we'll see you guys next week.
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia
dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram at
The Knife Podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

(01:06:55):
This has been an exactly right production. Hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith and Patia Ety. Our producers are
Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi. This episode was mixed by
Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme
music is by Birds in the Airport. Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.