True Stories #175 - A Lot of Revenge

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
I'm Seth Andrews, and what you'reabout to hear is a true story.
There is that popular saying that hellhath no fury like a woman's scorned.
Wait a minute, that's half true, right, Why would we make it

(00:24):
exclusive to women. No, thetruth is, hell hath no fury like
a person scorned, man or woman. Somebody feels insulted or slighted or betrayed,
whoever they are, it is alwayspossible that they are going to commit
their energies to some kind of payback. That's what Brandon Prevot did to his

(00:49):
ex girlfriend two thousand nine, Chicago. Brandon had been dating a single mother,
a woman named Jennifer Fitzgerald. Thatrelation chip had gone south. Whatever
happened behind closed doors remains a privateand personal matter, but the breakup was
seen by all. It was unpleasant. The animosity was high, apparently especially

(01:15):
with Brandon. The year before,Brandon had purchased a used Chevy Monte Carlo.
He bought the car for six hundredbucks from Jennifer's uncle, but without
telling her, he had registered thatcar in her name. And then came
the nasty break up. And asthey went their separate ways, Brandon had

(01:38):
an idea. He took that oldMonty Carlo and he dumped it in a
paid parking lot at Chicago O'Hare Airports, and then the circus began. Jennifer
started getting parking tickets in her mailbox. Of course, her first thought was,

(02:00):
I got to get the car outof there, but Brandon had all
of the car keys. So shewent to the Chicago Police Department. They
said they didn't have jurisdiction. Theydidn't have access to the lot. That
was the purview of private airport security. This went on four months and then
finally a full year no luck.Jennifer had the State of Illinois revoke the

(02:23):
license plate, but those tickets continuedto arrive in the mail. A judge
then said, you need to transfertheir registration and title in the courts,
but the City of Chicago told Jenniferthat doesn't really make any difference. It's
not enough. That used Chevy MonteCarlo was not towed out of the airport

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parking lot until October twenty sixth,twenty twelve. The time elapsed three full
years. Sadly, this kind ofthing is all too common. Relationship revengers
do things like posting embarrassing intimate photosof their exes on the Internet, or

(03:15):
maybe just an unflattering picture of anunfortunate expression or a bad hair day.
Whatever. People packing up their thingsto move out will sometimes steal the possessions
of their axes or destroy them outright, or some people even hide them in
hard to find places so the searchdrives their exes crazy. It's not uncommon

(03:38):
to see someone as an ex partnercontacting their former lover's new partner with a
pile of dirty laundry. Some peoplewith access to their former partner's computer and
accounts would send fake I quit emailsto their ex's boss. There's all kinds

(03:58):
of revenge out there, involving creditcards and packages left on porches, photo
shopping. In fact, there's aphenomenon called revenge porn. It's literally inserting
your ex's image into actual pornography.This is often scary and very harmful stuff.
Now, I'm not trying in anyway to minimize the feelings of frustration

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and even helplessness that people feel whenthey are hurt by somebody that they used
to trust. Those feelings are validand legitimate and real, and we can
all understand why people so wounded mightdeal with feelings of powerlessness by showing someone
that maybe they're not that powerless.After all, they've got the power to

(04:46):
complicate your life. But so oftenit's just hurtful and petty, and it
just makes everything worse. Psychologist ofactually study the worst of revengers, and
they found trend toward sociopathy, alack of empathy, the ability to feel
the pain of others, a lackof concern about unhelpful, destructive, or

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even illegal behaviors. Now, I'mnot an expert. I'm not making a
long distance judgment about Brandon Prevoux.I don't really know what his motivations were.
I'm just saying that he kept secretthe car registration in Jennifer's name,
and he set her up for athree year nightmare of parking tickets six hundred

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eighty seven parking tickets totaling one hundredfive thousand, seven hundred sixty one dollars
and eighty one cents, the highestparking fine ever ever ever in the history
of the City of Chicago. Jenniferfiled a lawsuit her lawyer when after the

(06:00):
City of Chicago, charging how couldyou allow this fiasco in the first place,
the city policy is to tow acar after thirty days, you just
left it there. And after alegal battle, Jennifer's fines were knocked down
to forty five hundred dollars. Brandonwas only on the hook for about a
third of that, meaning Jennifer Fitzgerald'sbreakup cost her three years, almost got

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her driver's license yanked, and shewas still required to pay out of her
own pocket two thousand, nine hundredbucks. Hell hath no fury. So
make sure you check your registration papers, check all your papers, check your
whole life, and check the personthat you share it with. Most people

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do the right thing, even inthe worst of times, but some exes,
they are just a ticket to aggravation. And the story of the one
hundred and five thousand dollars parking fineis a true story. True Stories podcast dot com