December 29, 2025 • 52 mins
Jake sits down with his Season 6 co-host Jess McHugh at WBUR CitySpace for a live conversation. They discuss the value of trust, share some never-before-heard tape, and give an update on what’s happened with Sarah since our season ended.
If you’d like to support Patrol Base Abbate (https://www.pbabbate.org), follow this link: https://donate.pbabbate.org/give/373840/#!/donation/checkout.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey everybody, it's Jake. I hope you enjoyed our
special presentation of Snowball. We just wrapped that up with
a bonus episode, a conversation between me and Snowball's host
Ali Wards. We talked about what it was like for
(00:37):
him to make that show, to report on his own
family's experience of getting scammed by a woman they thought
they could trust, and this conversation, well, it reminded me
a lot of the victims of Sarah Cavanaugh, and we
talked about the parallels there. Today, I want to bring
you back to Sarah's story and to the stories of
(00:59):
the veterans and friends who got tangled up in all
of this. Earlier this month, I got to sit down
with Jess McHugh, my co host for season six The
Truth About Sarah, for Deep Covers second ever live event.
We met up at WBR City Space in Boston to
talk about the value of trust, to share some never
(01:21):
before heard tape, and to give an update on what's
happened with Sarah since our season ended. And in the
spirit of the holidays, we raise some money for Patrol
Base of Bate, an organization fighting back against the mental
health crisis among veterans by providing retreats and fostering community,
(01:41):
all completely free of charge. If you recall, that's the
place up in Montana in the mountains where Sarah met
Dex and Natalie in our first episode. If you'd like
to support Patrol Base of Bate, there's a link in
the episode description. I really encourage you to do that.
This is the charity of choice for the Halper and
(02:02):
Household this year. We just made our donation, and honestly,
if you're looking to give somewhere and you're looking to
support veterans, I could think of no better place. Okay,
now under the show, Thanks all for coming out. We're
(02:26):
really excited to have this live show with you. It's
gonna be fun. We are gonna play some tape that
didn't make the series, some stuff from the cutting room floor,
and some cool behind the scenes stuff, and we're also
going to try to sing the prices of an awesome
charity that was featured in the series, Patrol Base of Batte.
(02:47):
That's the place in Montana, the beautiful retreat where veterans
can go to kind of regroup and and restore themselves.
And we're gonna hope to raise some money for them. Tonight.
As we get into this, we're gonna start with basically
how this story happened, which I can take no credit for,
came from my collaborator, Jess McHugh. Jess, so tell us
(03:09):
how this comes on to your radar for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
So I've been really fascinated by female scammers, women con
artists for many years. And so I was, you know,
working on this new book that I was trying to pitch,
and I was scanning around for kind of characters stories,
and so I looked to a little place called the
New York Post, which has a very great scam section.
(03:33):
I've actually found a lot of good fodder there where
it's often, you know, not super in depth, shall we say,
five hundred word stories about various things, but a lot
of the stories that they cover they cover in a
way that I wouldn't do, but have given me ideas
for much kind of broader investigations. And so I just
saw the headline version, which was something like, you know,
(03:54):
twenty six year old social worker steals a quarter of
a million dollars pretending to be a wounded marine, and
I just felt like I have to know more about that.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
So, but how do you how do you develop that?
Where do you take that from reading that piece to yeah,
what's next?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
The thing that I I love about journalism in general
is speaking to the people involved as much and kind
of as in depth as possible. So I tracked down Sarah,
who was already in prison at the time, and I
wrote her a handwritten snail mail letter saying, Hey, this
is who I am. We come from very similar backgrounds,
small towns in New England, We're about the same age.
(04:31):
I really suspect that there is much more to your
story than this short piece that I read, and I'd
love to hear more. And she wrote back, which I
was kind of surprised by.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, I remember that's around the time that we started talking.
You'd actually been in correspondence with her, and you were
saying that maybe she'll talk. Did you feel optimistic that
this would pan out, that she would go on the
record with you.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I didn't. I'm not really an optimist in general. And
I also never want a strong arm someone into talking
and have them regret speaking to me. So I always
prefer to take it slow and to just say, hey,
let's get to know each other. Let me tell you
what it is that I'm into, and then you can
kind of make up your mind. So it was probably
a good three months of us talking on the phone,
(05:15):
going back and forth on core Links, which is the
online prison service because yes, you know, there's there's no
very limited internet access in federal prisons, so she can't
even just google who I am and kind of see
what I've done. So there was that kind of aspect
of getting to know each other as well.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Okay, so then Tom Schuman, which this is where we're
going to start with our tape that hasn't been heard
all of it. Tom Schuman is the person who founded
pp abat the retreat in Montana and that hosts Sarah
and we go there in the first episode. Tell us
about Tom. How did you connect with him?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, so we're we're both big fans of Tom. I
think I might have actually even spoken to him before
I spoke to Sarah because he had been i think
featured in a couple news articles since pibi Abat was
one of the organizations that was stolen from and he's
it's just such a likable guy. He's a marine, he's
had this like very heroic past, but he also can
(06:15):
quote very deep cuts of Shakespeare from memory, which I
think is very cool as a comparative literature major. So yeah,
we just really hit it off and got to talking
and yeah, and he founded Pipiabat in twenty twenty one,
so it's a relatively recent organization, and as you said,
it's this place for veterans of all stripes to kind
(06:36):
of rest, recharge and refuel.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Cool. We're actually to let you hear Tom describe what
it's like as you drive up the road heading towards
a pipi a bat.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
There is something that will stir in your soul from
the moment that you land at Missoula and they have
a big grizzly bear at the luggage carousel to getting
to our base. Every time you turn a river bend,
you think, well, this is the most beautiful thing I've
ever seen. And then you turn the next river bend
and you're like, oh no, this is actually the most
beautiful thing I seen. And so you do that for
an hour forty five minutes, and then you go vertical
(07:07):
up the side of the mountain and you drive up
to our base, which is a sixty acre ranch surrounded
by two hundred and fifty acres of Forest Service land.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So there's a reason that Tom has picked out this
idyllic piece of the Northwest for veterans to come together.
And you want to tell us about this.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, So the backstory of pibi Abate is also a
really kind of touching story, which is that unfortunately, one
of Tom's comrades was killed in action, this guy named
Matthew Abate, who was a Navy Cross recipient, and so
it's named in his honor, And we have a you know,
he had this idea for this place that's a little
bit different than a lot of the other kind of veterans'
(07:46):
charities that are out there. So I think we have
a clip of him talking about where this idea for
pibi Abate really started.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I lost more marines on the home front than I
had lost on the battlefield, and I just thought, you know,
you would do anything to keep your marines alive in combat.
What are you doing to keep them alive at home?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And just contexts there, he's talking about veterans that have
committed suicide and you know one of the things. So
I actually interviewed it, interviewed him for the for the podcast.
It was it was a kind of a crazy setup.
I showed up at the Quantico Marine Base on his
instructions at eight pm. We went out to his garage.
It was like thirty two degrees and we did a
(08:28):
three hour interview and he's like a tough dude. So
I'm trying to like, you know, a yeah, right, not shiver.
I'm like sitting next between the weightlifting area and the
gun vault, and finally he brings out a bottle of whiskey.
It was a it was a funny setup, but the
subject was quite serious. And what he said was combat
veterans when they come back to the States have a
suicide rate that is forty one percent higher than the
(08:51):
civilian population. And this was the really surprising thing he said.
He said, non combat veterans have a suicide rate of
sixty one percent higher than their civilian counterparts. And this
whole idea for this retreat up in the mountains in
Montana was born out of this feeling of necessity that
he out that there had to be something that he
was doing to try to try to change this.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
That's right, And one of the things that he had
said to me early on was that there was this
thirty day period where he lost three different people to
suicide over the course of just thirty days. And this
was really the moment where he said to himself, I
got to do something about this.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And a lot of what he said also is that
a lot of the charities that are set up or
dealt for, like Navy seals or combat vets, and it
actually the doors aren't open for other veterans. That was
his perception. I'll let you him explain mis tape.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
What I discovered is nearly every one of these organizations
had a barrier to entry, had a box to check,
had some kind of obstacle, and they would say, you're
not damaged enough, you're not broken enough, you're not disordered enough,
you're not special forces enough. You didn't leave a limb
on the battlefield enough. The majority of the veteran population
has not been in combat, The majority of the veteran
(10:03):
population has not lost their limb. The majority of the
veteran population was not special forces.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, and he actually he had a hard time or
a challenge convincing some of the veterans that he was
approaching saying like I want to help you, and they
would kind of push back, Well, is this am I
almost worthy of it.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
People will say like, who me, Well, I was just
an airman, I was just a sailor. It's like, yep,
actually airman, sailor soldier. This is actually your base. We
built this place for you. Oh well, how much is
it free of cost?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And this, of course is where Sarah shows up, And
this is the opening episode you remember of the podcast.
She shows up, she befriends Natalie and Dex, these two
other marines. But the place itself, I think it's like
what I found moving about. It was this idea that
when veterans came out of the service, that they were
no longer a part of anything. But Tom had this
idea that if you create this beautiful experience where you
(10:56):
have physical challenges, where you kind of rekindle the camaraderie
that we once felt, that you won't feel that isolation
that is the slippery slope into the desperate place that proceeds,
you know, thinking about taking your own life right.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
And I think it also speaks to the value of
some of the things that Sarah stole right because the
loss amount, the dollar amount, doesn't encapsulate this. The loss
amount for Pibia Bat doesn't sound like that much. But
when you think about it, there was some marine or
some airman who couldn't experience this kind of thing that
so many people we interviewed liked X. Like Natalie said,
(11:33):
it really changed their life and kept them from a
pretty dark and really dangerous place to be honest.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, So I would just say for those in the
audience and for those listening at home, this is an
amazing place and it's worthy of our support. And these
scam stories are hard sometimes, but this is like a
light so absolutely so. One of the weird things about
unusual things about the story is that after Jess brought
it to me, we kind of figured out who we
were going to interview. Some folks we interviewed together, like
(12:03):
the member, the detective from the VA. We set up
all the mics, but there were times where we had
to break up. And one of them was Justin. I
was interviewing him one day in Ryllan and you were
interviewing Sam.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Was it.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, it was this weird coincidence where two of these
super important stories Justin. You know, Sarah had stolen his
information and had also was taking his money, and Sam,
who was her girlfriend and physical therapist, both said to us,
we are only free at this date and this time,
and Jake and I said, well, actually, this is a
really good use of having two people.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, so we split and the So just a word
about Justin, because I'm the one that interviewed him. He
was the one who was basically had terminal cancer and
had been giving money out of pocket to help support
Sarah out of the belief that she too was terminally
sick with cancer. And she had taken his medical records
(12:56):
unbeknownst to him, which is just a double whammy. And
so when Justin and I were first talking about reporting
the story, we felt like we really had to reach
out to Justin and at least have his blessing that
he was all right with doing it and maybe he'd
be willing to talk to us. And it took a
while because I think the hard thing, and Jess, you
can talk about this with scam stories is that people
are reluctant to talk because of the shame that they
(13:18):
feel being scammed. And this, yeah, this came out time
and time again.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, we really did see it a lot of times
where people said, well, listeners are going to think I'm stupid,
They're going to judge me, and I've always felt like
I've interviewed a lot of people on both sides of
the sort of scam equation, and the people that I've
spoken to who have been scammed are never stupid, they're
never greedy. They're often people who are like the people
(13:44):
that we spoke to for this series, Salt of the Earth,
folks who really want help, and that unfortunately puts them
in a vulnerable place. But it's not to be shamed,
and I haven't heard that reaction from anyone who's listened
to the series.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
But it's tricky, right because you can't tell people participate
and you're going to look good or there won't be
moments where you feel, I don't know, we're not dredging
stuff up. Have It's funny you have to make your
pick which to hope they participate, but in the end
they have to make the decision because they have to
own it, and you don't want to feel responsible for
coercing them into talking, so you play this' That's why
(14:20):
I respected, honestly that just spent nine months or whatever
it was talking to Sarah before we interviewed her, because
by the time that way that interview occurred, there had
been a long runway of communication and consent and anyway.
So with Justin, he agreed to talk. He said a
lot of things, but one of the things that we
didn't get a chance to get into in the podcast
(14:42):
was his what his experience of being a service member,
how it impacted his wife's life. And it's a little
bit of a tangent, but it's it's powerful and I
want to share.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
It with you.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So maybe we can just play that first clip from Justin.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
They always say that it's not just a service member
that serves, it's the family, and it's really it's really true.
I don't know my wife will appreciate me saying this.
My wife got pretty sick. She had a bad reaction
to some medication, was very ill, and our neighbors, our
squadron mates, came together and totally helped out, took care
(15:25):
of the kids while she was in the hospital, while
she was in bed at home. And I can't say
how much I appreciated that.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You know, just for context here, when his wife is
sick like this, Justin is out of the picture because
he's serving in Iraq. He's like half a world away
and user going to hear In a second. He doesn't
fully understand what's going on with her, but during this time,
it's Christmas time, and I'll let him tell you what
happens next.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
For Christmas, she put together she was a teacher at
the time. She and her students put together these little
care packages for every single one of my sailors with
their name on it, and sent them sent them to us.
She did all this while being sick, and she didn't
She didn't tell me until she was after the fact
(16:14):
that she said, look, I like I almost died, but
she didn't want me to worry while I was deployed,
so she just kind of sat on it.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, The thing about this that that moves me is
you think about what Justin did for Sarah. You think
about the way that he didn't hesitate to reach into
his own pocket and pay her medical expenses. And that choice,
which in and of itself was generous, didn't exist in
a moment by itself. It was part of a greater
connectivity to a spirit of generosity that here his wife
(16:43):
is sick, like might even die, and got all the
stuff out for all the troops under him. And I
just think it was one of the more it was
one of the more beautiful parts of the story that
it's not a story about a scam entirely. It's also
a story about like a deep felt belief in the
generosity of the human spirit and the way that there's
(17:04):
a through line of when people do things for us,
that we repay them absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
And we were kind of struck by that at so
many different moments. And I think Justin is a really
potent example. You can hear the emotion in his voice,
and it's you know, he's sacrificing for his family, for
his country, and his family is trying to kind of
make that same sacrifice for him. It's it's just it's
really touching.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
We'll be right back. Let's talk about you did this
interview and Michelle really spoke so beautifully about the kind
of dynamics of betrayal and forgiveness and all that give
us some context in who Michelle was. Again.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, so Michelle is a fitness instructor. She's one of
the kind of Rhode Island set of people that we
hear from in this story. And she actually met Sarah
at the gym and they became really close friends. They
ended up you know, going out to lunch almost every week,
and as she says, both kind of when she testifies
in court and in the series, she was Sarah's primary
(18:22):
shoe tire, right.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Because a sensibly Sarah couldn't tire her own shoes. Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
So that's Michelle. And not only did she kind of
sacrifice a lot for Sarah in terms of her time,
in terms of her care, but also she gave her
her money. I think it was like twenty five hundred
dollars thinking that it was for surgery. So Michelle, safe
to say, felt this very kind of deep and intimate betrayal.
And she has some kind of interesting reflections on what
(18:50):
she takes away from that.
Speaker 6 (18:52):
Well, there was no violence. People will be like, well,
I wasn't a violent crime, but it was a crime
of I don't even know what you call it, opportunity,
but it was that deception of trust. When you break
down that circle of trust, society can't function. You need
to be to trust what people are saying for the
most part in your day to day life to make
(19:15):
those social connections and to have that or society as
a whole will fail.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, talk about that last bit, because I know you
have thoughts on that.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts because I spend
I've spent so much of the past few years thinking
about scams about cons and I often come back to
the idea that con artists comes from the term confidence.
It's about a confidence trick. Do you trust me to do? This?
Basically is how it all started. Do you trust me
(19:44):
to hold onto your watch for you? And what she
gets at is so true is that trust is the
essence of society in ways big and small. I think
people miss or really underestimate how often they're forced to
trust in day to day life, Like something as simple
as every aspect of commerce. You buy something online, you
(20:05):
pay for it before it comes, and you trust that
it's going to get to you, and you pay for
a cup of coffee. It's not a standoff in which
they're handing you the coffee at the instant that you
give your money. And so, you know, I think there's
this idea that we don't really need to trust each other,
or that's some sort of naivete but in fact, if
we don't function that way, literally all of our society
(20:27):
will collapse.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah, and you know, you look outside, maybe in other
parts of the world, you don't like I can think
of my in laws who would say growing up in
communist poll and there is minimal trust in any aspect
of society. But like in America, a lot of times
we glide through life on this kind of current of
trust that things are going to be they what they
should be. So that's one part of this. But the
(20:49):
other part of this is that what do you do
when someone who's not just the person that's selling you
something online. You expect the good the goods are going
to arrive, but your friend, the person who are like
kneeling down and tying their shoelaces and going on a
walk in the woods with them and telling them about
your kids and taking to the ballet and someone you
know intimately where all of that is not what it
(21:11):
seems and like how does that derail and your your
kind of your sense of yourself and all that. And
there's what we'll play some take from Michelle in it.
Speaker 6 (21:21):
When you're hurt, everybody handles that hurt differently, So some
people dig in and try to help. I cut off
at the knees. I need no new friends. I actually
texted all my friends. I'm like, you are who you
say you are right.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, she's like joking, but you kind of maybe she's
not joking.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
I'm also sort of a cut him off at the
knees type, so I relate to Michelle.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Oh better not cross you, Jess, watch out Jake. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
But the thing that I find so interesting and also
so sad in what she's really the heart of what
she's saying is that I think the risk with scams
is not just that you mistrust a person or that
you lose faith in an institution, but you fundamentally come
to fear your sense of reality. I think in these
(22:08):
most profound scams, or what she's really saying is is
what I see and experienced in the world. True, are
my other friends pretending to be someone entirely else?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
It's so scary, right, And actually it's do I trust myself? Right?
Because on some level we think that we're good judges
of character, So we think I know who a friend is,
I know a friend isn't. And then what happens when
your dil detector that you rely on in your head
is way off, fundamentally off, Like how do you you know?
That's what you have her saying, like, you know are
you my friend? Are you my friend? And then if
(22:41):
you feel that like, wow, my wiring was faulty on that,
how do you come to trust yourself and your own
judgment Again.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
It's like what else is wrong? What else is real?
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Right?
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Okay? So I think there's some pieces of tape that
when you hear you know, it's like tape that feels
it somehow, it speaks to a culmination of the ideas
that you've discussed, and you kind of put that in
a bucket and you sit on that tape and this
bit from Decks falls into that. But now that I
had that big preamble, tell us who Duck is, remind
(23:13):
us who she is in this story.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
And it's funny too that we immediately were like, this
is going to be the end of the show because
she was actually the first interview that we did for
the series. Amy, our producer, and I went up to
upstate New York to Dex's home and Dex herself was
a marine and she was part of the military police
also young, you know, we're all about the same age
(23:34):
and same age as Sarah, and she had this really
really ancient dog named Luigi. So we go into her
house it was all she's obsessed with Christmas, and so
it was around Thanksgiving time, but she already had the
full holiday decor. And she also let us we you know,
we had just met her. We were like, Hi, I'm Jess, Hi,
(23:56):
I'm Amy. Can we unplug your fridge? Can we like
move your whole apartment around? Can we put your dog
on my lap?
Speaker 1 (24:02):
And can we talk about the most painful moment? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (24:04):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
And she just was game from the start and really
kind of led us into her world and into her life.
And she is one of the people who met Sarah
out in Montana at Pidiabaate.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
If you recall, Dex is the one who said an
at Arlington National Cemetery and she had remembered that Sarah's
brother supposedly been buried there, and she called up Sarah
and she went to a plot and laid wreath a
wreath at this plot, which turned out to be a
kind of random plot. Right, So there's a lot to this.
(24:38):
But you asked, Dex, I think in this moment, like
how do you how do you work through a betrayal
of this magnitude? And yeah, okay, here's what she says.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
I think we struggle with forgiveness because you have to
eat the cost. There's no closure before you get to
forgive somebody. If something requires you to forgive another person,
you have to You have to fully eat the cost
whatever wrong they did you. You have to expect no repayment.
You can't expect it to be made whole. You have
(25:15):
to be okay with it not being whole. People wrong
you and you you know, if you're really going to
forgive somebody, do you have to be okay with fixing
it yourself.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
So I've thought about that a lot. You have to
eat the cost, and I'm still I don't feel like
entirely certain. I understand all the depths of what it means.
But what do you take that to me? When she
says you have to eat the cost?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
It kind of hits me like a gut punch every
time I hear it, and I've heard it a lot
of times. And I'm someone who has a really hard
time with forgiveness, like I'm a grudge holder. I get
my irish up, so to speak. And so when she
first said it to me, I think I did say
to her, like, what do you mean by that? And
she's what she said was something to the effect of,
(25:56):
like the money that you gave this person or the
time or the love, you're not getting that back. And
even if they wanted to give it back to you,
they can't because it's gone. And so the way that
I interpret that is forgiveness means not waiting around for
someone to say, I'm so sorry that I did that
to you.
Speaker 8 (26:16):
That was wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
It's saying, you know what, that was really messed up,
and I'm choosing to make whatever I'm going to make
of it. Maybe I learn a lesson from it, maybe
I don't, but I'm not going to sit around and
wait for someone else to make it right.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And there's like there's grief in there, and there's loss
in there right, Like she lost things, she lost time
that she could have put into other friendships, she lost
heart that she could have given to people and her family,
and I think that, like it's almost like she's saying,
you have to recognize that, like that is gone, and
you have to be at peace with that. And if
(26:51):
you're not a piece with that, you know, there's nothing else.
And it's funny because I feel like, on its face,
this story is so outlandish, it's so crazy, it's like,
who does this ever happen to? But there are moments
when we're talking, when you were talking to Dex or Justin,
which we're going to play next, do you feel like,
by god, I've been in some version of that moment,
(27:12):
a lesser version, a less dramatic version. But who in
this room has not felt betrayal by a friend or
a loved one where there's that moment of like, how
am I going to get through this? And I felt
like there's aspects of this where I would think about
Decks and think about Justin and think like it's a
pretty massive betrayal that they somehow work through. I should
(27:37):
find a way to try to channel some small bit
of that, because your hill is much smaller than theirs.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Absolutely, And I think that's I think that's what if
I might, if I may say, what kind of drew
both of us to this story was that there's so
much hard in it and there's so much kind of
pathos in it. And I think, you know, true crime
when it's done poorly, is so sordid and just not worthwhile.
(28:05):
But there's an aspect often I think in i'me stories
that just brings out the best and worst of humanity,
and you see just such a range of what human
animals are capable of and for the better with a
lot of these veterans. And that's I think why I
love that quote and why I love talking to people
(28:25):
like Dex and like Justin.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, let's some let's play this last clip from Justin.
It was a similar moment to the moment that that
just had with Decks where I was asking him like,
how do you emerge from this? This is you You
had your your medical records stolen. You gave him out
of pocket for this, Like where do you how do
you make your way back to trying to be some
(28:48):
version of who you used to be?
Speaker 5 (28:51):
I did a lot of introspection and said, well, what
gives me energy? And that's what gives me energy is
to help help people, especially fellow veterans, and so you know,
if I lose that, now what do I have?
Speaker 1 (29:05):
It's interesting because it's like his use of the word
using it, and it makes me think of the loss,
like what is Dex? She has to eat the cost? Right,
but then there's a cost at not doing that, Like
if she doesn't work through that, the cost is you're
carrying this frickin thing around with you, and like, for Justin,
it's about working his way back to that moment where
(29:27):
he can give something himself again, because if he gives
that up, then you know, then then as he says,
like so beautifully, then who is he or what is he? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Absolutely, And I think that that's what everyone we interviewed
and was working through. And people who are victims of
scams in general have to decide what, if anything, am
I going to take forward from this experience into my
other relationships with friends, strangers, et cetera, Because I think,
you know, you don't want to give people undue suspicion. Sometimes, I,
(29:59):
especially while we were reporting this story, I would meet
strangers in non journalistic context and be thinking like, hmm,
did they really go to be you like they told
me they did? And I was like, this person doesn't
deserve that, Like there's no reason that they would be
lying to me. And I'm not experiencing the level of
betrayal that these people experienced, So I think they all,
which I also found interesting, we're thinking of it really
(30:21):
consciously of how do I want to show up in
the world?
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Right right? Okay, Well, we can get more into that
with questions, but we want to share one final clip
which is just my favorite clip from the cutting room floor.
And as part of this, we're going to ask our
amazing producer Amy Gains McQuaid to come up on stage.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Let's give around applause for Amy. She did an incredible job.
Speaker 7 (30:48):
Okay, So I'm a few minutes away from Mark and
Kate's house, and now that I'm here, this is a
part of Vermont that is referred to as the Northeast Kingdom.
It's pretty remote.
Speaker 9 (31:07):
Whoa, oh, Okay, that's Amy's card the live car crash
you just heard.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
That's Amy's car going off the road into the snow
in on a Vermont road. So, and this is really
funny for anyone the old NPR reporters, Like there's this
thing we always say, like, and here we are in
the north. She's doing exactly what the good audio.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Journalis history of this region.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
There's someone reasons I love this clip, but one of
them Amy is like, it is such the metaphor for
you in the crisis, because if it had been in
my car going off the road, I would have been
dropping the F bomb. As my sons who are in
the front row can can attest to and you're like,
oh dear, and you are just always so calm under pressure.
You you can see the snow caked in your fender,
but with all seriousness, we are like so fortunate. Amy
(32:00):
is that rare person who just brings such a level
of passion and integrity to this show. And it would
not exist and I would not do it if you
weren't doing it with us. So just huge, thank you,
thank you, Jake.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
And just to give a little context for the clip,
because I live in Paris, and so I came back
and reported a lot of this on the ground with Jake.
But then there were a lot of things that we
did remotely, and so Amy volunteered to drive from Boston
all the way up to a very northernmost part of
(32:39):
Vermont in the winter so that I could zoom in
to interview Mark and Kate Feudie, who were also Jim
friends of Sarah's. And this is how I sent almost
sent Amy to an icy death.
Speaker 8 (32:52):
No, it was okay, I'm here right. The show came out.
Mark and Kate's interview was great.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
It was great.
Speaker 10 (32:56):
If it had been a bad interview, I would have
been really absolutely, but no, I mean, thank you guys
so much for having me up for this part of
the show. And uh, you know, just to kind of
get right into questions, we have a bunch of them.
But related to Mark and Kate and Justin and Sam
and Michelle, you know, why do you think all of
these people talk to you? Why do you think that
(33:17):
they were comfortable inviting you into their homes in some
cases to talk about really painful things that happened to them.
I'm curious, Jess, why you think people said yes.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I think you know, it really varied person to person,
but the overarching thing that I saw time and time
again was that these are the kind of people who
are helpers, and they really opened their arms and their
homes to Sarah for many years, and I felt like
we were receiving kind of an extension of that sort
of generosity of spirit, where people were game to talk
(33:50):
about what was a really really difficult experience and also
led us in to their houses, which is not always
easy to have a journalist in your space. And then
the other aspect was that there were a couple people
who the public had assumed were complicit in some way,
and we're kind of unfortunately smeared alongside Sarah. I'm thinking
(34:13):
of her ex girlfriend and her ex wife, who from
what we could tell, really had no idea what was
going on, but the media and the public treated them
as if of course they knew, and of course they
were also profiting, and so I think that must have
been really, really hard, especially living in these small towns,
and I think they wanted to clear their names in
(34:34):
a certain way.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yeah, what about you, Jake, Yeah, I mean I think
that I agree with everything that just said. I think
you can hear in those moments, like when Justin is
talking the kind of tremor in his voice, and you
feel like this is a guy who's still working through this,
who's still trying to figure out what this all means.
And I think that, like that's hopefully what we're trying
(34:56):
to do, and telling a story is to is to
pull some meaning out of it that is that goes
a tad deeper than the five hundred words than they
got in the post. I think that's the hope that
they that they have, and then it's on us to
try to try to honor that.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
And it was h too, to your point, Like I
think she was sentenced in twenty twenty three. I started
reporting this in twenty twenty four, I want to say, yeah,
maybe less less than a year later.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, And that has its challenge and the one way
it makes it more powerful because it's all fresh in
their memory, but also often means people don't want to
talk Why would you want it? I mean I wouldn't
want to talk to me a lot of the time.
Oh yes, you know, like let me into my house
and my family and all these things that happened. And
I think that like just trying to remember that that
there was like some serious trust, you know, putting you
So yeah.
Speaker 10 (35:42):
Yeah, So I just want to jump into the question
that I think a lot of people in this room
have that we've received. What is the latest with Sarah?
What has happened since the podcast has been released? Can
you share a little bit of detail with us, Jess
for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
So, in a very weird coincidence, shortly after the podcast
was released, Sarah was released to a halfway house.
Speaker 8 (36:04):
So she came out of prison.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah, So she was out of prison.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Just like the week that the that we wend around at.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
The same time, which was a really weird coincidence. And
within a few months though basically what happens it's a
little bit vague from the kind of court documents that
I've seen, but she was basically accused of creating a
hostile environment in her halfway house, and so she was
sent back to federal prison because when you're in a
(36:32):
halfway house, it's not like parole. You don't have to
commit a crime to be considered essentially in violation. And
she'll be out I think summer of next year.
Speaker 10 (36:43):
Okay, Yeah, talking about Sarah for another moment. One of
the questions that we got from the audience today was
Sarah's lives were so complex and multifaceted. How do you
two think she kept all that straight? So, Jake, I
want to throw that to you first.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 8 (36:59):
I think about the wedding.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean the wedding. It was interesting. So
the reason that Amy got in that car wreck was
that we were kind of obsessed with the wedding because
at the wedding there were people that knew she was
a veteran and people that knew she wasn't a veteran,
and they were hanging out and having drinks and dancing
at a summer wedding and it seemed mind blowing to me,
(37:22):
at least at first, that a lie could survive such
a delicate moment in time. But lies are curiously stubborn
and wilful things, and they can survive. And I think
that sometimes we believe what we want to believe, and
even if we have information to the contrary and get
(37:42):
dissonance about what we believe, if we really want to
believe it, we find ways to ignore it. And I
am thinking of half a dozen times that that's happened
to me. And so I don't think that that she
was some kind of mastermind who kept every single one
of these half truth straight. I think it speaks to
human nature that we're all more easily deceived and more
(38:07):
willingly deceived sometimes than we would care to admit.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, I also think it's that default to truth thing,
where we assume that other humans are telling us the truth.
And it would have been so illogical to assume that
someone who had never served had invented this vast kind
of labyrinth of lies about her service record and about
having cancer. It just would be so illogical to kind
(38:30):
of figure that out. And then I think there were
some practical things too, like Michelle told me, you know,
she had told a lot of people that she had
a brain injury. And so if she would say, oh,
I thought you were in Afghanistan at that time, you
were actually in graduate school, she would chalk it up
to the brain injury.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah. And would you really push back against someone that
you thought had traumatic brain injury and said you said
two different things on two different occasions, well, like no kidding.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
About your traumatic service history.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah, Jess.
Speaker 10 (38:59):
One question I have for you, I mean, I know
you to be this expert on con artists.
Speaker 8 (39:04):
Why do you think people are so wrapped by these stories?
What draws us in ugh?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
I think about that a lot. I think there are
a lot of reasons. I think in general, there are
just fewer women criminals, so anything that is an anomaly
is I think interesting to people. But I also think
Sarah's not a good example of this. I think there
are other scammers that are more glamorous, like I'm thinking
of Anna del Vi, who was you know, stealing from
(39:30):
Mantatan's elite. I think there's this sort of urge, especially
as a woman, you know, who may not be working
a great job, or who may not have the life
that they wanted to have seeing someone steal and get
away with it. There's this sort of you know, kind
of free song of something fun.
Speaker 10 (39:49):
Another question for you, Jake, Yeah, so you've hosted what
now six seasons of deep Cover season seven coming next year.
Compared to the other seasons of deep Cover, was there
anything uniquely challenging about this one?
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah? This reminded me of season three a little bit
in that there was someone of the same trip telling
half truths and you were left to think about how
you felt. It's like we said in the sixth episode,
like I feel for Sarah, I feel pathos for justs
and I both did. Like it's hard to know because
you have to take everything you hear, she says with
(40:23):
a grain of salt. But I think she went through
some hard stuff. So how do you balance that against
the kind of the pain that the other people felt
in the story. And I think that especially because and Jess,
we've talked about this con artists prey on pathos like
they pray on I'm in trouble, help me, And that
was an uncomfortable place that at least me personally like
(40:46):
lived in while working on this, Like who deserves my sympathy?
In this story, does everyone deserve my sympathy? And to
what extent does she deserve twenty five and so and so,
And that calculus of it was kind of, you know, draining,
to say the least, And so that felt uniquely kind
(41:08):
of challenging about the season.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, I agree that. I think the interviews with Sarah
were some of the most challenging of my career because
they were also very long, Like we were in the
prison with her just meet Jake and her for hours,
like I think the first day was four hours, and
you do feel a lot of different emotions. As Jake said,
there were moments we felt for her. There were moments
(41:32):
where she felt really cold. There were moments where I
couldn't tell what was true and what wasn't true. And
I remember we got out of there and I think
we went and ate like Peppi's pizza afterward and just.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Not the New Haven branch, but what we need.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
To do, just kind of staring at each other, like
what just happened.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
More from our conversation in just a moment.
Speaker 10 (42:11):
What did your collaboration look like day to day when
building a season like this, How did you resolve disagreements
about story smelling choices for pulling back. So really, how
do you work together? What were the kind of pros
and cons of the collaboration.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, it's funny. I would say this, this is all
this entire story, this season, everything, it's it's all about
trust and distrust. And what I will just say is
the one thing that I knew for Shirton I trusted
was Jess And so I think that part of trusting
someone means that if there is disagreement, and there needs
(42:45):
to be disagreement, that you say, Okay, let me think
about this, let me hit pause. And I think that
one of the hardest things about being a storyteller sometimes
is when you fillure in it alone. And so there
were definitely a bunch of times where I was like,
this is my read on this, what do you think?
And honestly, it made the whole thing doable to have
(43:05):
another person to bounce it off.
Speaker 9 (43:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah, So I would say, yeah, that underlying trust that
I had for her judgment was really what kind of
got us through this from my perspective.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Thanks Jake, I felt the same. Honestly from the start,
I really felt like this thing is going to be
good because Jake Calpern is working on it, and the
moments where I felt like we were struggling in some
way to figure what direction to go, it was always
because we felt like, how do we do justice to
this story? How do we do justice to the people
(43:39):
who have trusted us to tell it? And I think
it's so so good to have a collaborator. We're both
you know, have been longtime freelancers. I used to joke
to Amy that I feel like I'm an outdoor cat
and so it was really nice to feel like having
that support that you often don't have when you're working
on a magazine piece or a book by yourself for
(44:01):
years or months.
Speaker 10 (44:03):
There's one question from the audience that I want us
to touch on. They said, I was feeling a tiny
bit of empathy for Sarah and till the bomb about
the letters that we covered.
Speaker 8 (44:12):
In the series. The question is do you think she
felt any remorse and before?
Speaker 1 (44:17):
And Jess, you can take first crack at this, but
just for some context again, because it's been a minute.
These letters that Amy's referring to are the letters submitted
to the court at sentencing that were meant to elicit
sympathy and mercy from the judge saying basically like, this
person has been through this, but they have these redeeming values,
(44:38):
show mercy.
Speaker 8 (44:39):
I mean, just to see this up a little bit more.
Speaker 10 (44:40):
We had no idea about this, and then we went
to interview Sam, and I believe that's the first moment that.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, that's right, that became clear. Basically early on in
the reporting, I had a great contact in the county
Clerk's office who said you should really request these letters
before sentencing because there was no trial and so people
could send in these again as Jake was saying these
sort of pleas for mercy, and there were two that
really stuck out to me. One was written by Sam,
(45:08):
who was Sarah's then girlfriend and also physical therapist, and
another was written by Sam's mother, who was dying from
cancer and from whom Sarah stole a bill of a
cancer bill as part of her ruse to steal money
from a charity. And I remember thinking like, wow, the
(45:29):
just the absolute kind of magnanimity of these women to
still be pleading on this woman's behalf. I just was
so in awe of it. And I remember when we
went to interview Sam, I asked her about it and
she was like, what are you talking about. I never
wrote a letter, and I read it to her and
she said, I didn't write that.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
And that letter was like part of what drew us
into the story in the first place, because I think,
like our wonderful editor, Karen Shakerji is always saying, you
need wrinkles of complexity in a story. If someone is
a two dimensional character, they're not interesting, and these letters
were super interesting because it was like these people were
standing by her even after everything that she'd been through,
and it kind of left us feeling like, wow, let's
(46:12):
let's figure out what this is about. And then I
remember you guys called and you're like, yeah, those letters.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
And I should say Sarah denies writing those.
Speaker 8 (46:22):
And Sam admitted that she had seen the letter.
Speaker 10 (46:25):
It was almost kind of like a group project, like
you write it and I'll sign it. And so there's
a mom's letters, she claimed Sam crime she didn't know about.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
So it's tricky. I mean, that also was a moment
for me where it did it was hard to learn
and it was hard to kind of reckon with. I
still do have some empathy for Sarah, but that was
not a moment where I felt very endeared to her,
and I think I felt like I had a really
hard time with it because it's after all of these
(46:55):
crimes that she's committed, and it feels like it's the
moment for her to take some responsibility. And I think
what was tricky and also interesting about her as a
source was there were so many moments where she really
did seem to take responsibility, but then in the next
sentence there was a big butt or a I don't
remember doing that. So she's very very tricky to pin down.
Speaker 10 (47:18):
Do you feel like you got genuine remorse from her?
I mean, you both sat down with her in prison.
Did you feel like there were moments in those two
days where you felt genuine remorse.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
I don't know. I don't know. Do you do you
feel you can say.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
I feel like there were moments. There were a lot
of moments that I think were not real remorse. But
it's so hard to say, And I think that's why
part of why the series has resonated with so many
people is that she is still really really hard to
figure out. It doesn't really I don't feel like we
(47:55):
totally got to the bottom of her.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Yeah. The thing that I will say too is that
you know, we all to much lesser extent have different
versions of ourselves. So the idea of that kind of
deception doesn't strike me as wholly foreign. It's just was
taken to an extreme that that's kind of unfathomable. The
(48:20):
impulse feels actually very deeply human, that we have these
different aspects of our subs that we lean into. I
remember one day my wife is a triathlete, and I
wore her iron Man hat because it was like lying
around the house. And I went to the gym and
I was like getting the looks because that's where in
the iron Man hat. And I was like, I could
explain to everyone in the gym right now that it's
(48:42):
my wife's hat, or I could just like let this
go on a little longer, you know, And I just
felt like, that's that's this space now. Eventually I'm like,
I got a wife, she's the iron Man. I can't
swim like, you know, not really, but I think that
this idea, there's aspects of this that I actually do
feel like I could see how you could start down
this path. It's just that there were no breaks, and
(49:04):
it just accelerated in this kind of hyperbolic way.
Speaker 8 (49:08):
Okay here, he's not an ironman.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Correcting the record right now.
Speaker 10 (49:13):
That's it, so we're going to wrap up a little bit.
I have one last question for each of you. For Jess,
what have you been up to? What's next for you?
Speaker 2 (49:21):
So I'm really excited that my book is going to
be published with Simon and Schuster, and it's a book
about female scammers, women con artists of all stripes, so
there'll be some more material on Sarah. The book is
called Beg Borrow Scam and it will be coming out
in fall twenty twenty seven, so put it on your calendars.
(49:41):
Congratch ways away. Thank you very much.
Speaker 8 (49:44):
Looking forward to reading even more of your great reporting.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Jee. Yes I'm next for you. Yes, I'm busy working
on the next season of deep Cover. And actually I
was in Dallas reporting in November, and I just got
back from a week of reporting in the Ozarks. I
have a little time. I can't tell you much about it,
but I will I will tell you. I know you
Amy's here store. And I'm also that my family doesn't
(50:10):
even know yet, which is that all these docs we found,
this treasure trove of documents and audio, and the person
that found them was like, I'm going to mail them
to you, and this is just utter stupidity. I should
have on the moment said like no, no, no, no, I
got you a ups R effects number. But I was like, okay,
mailed them to my Yale address because figuring like the
(50:31):
yellingsh Department and the mail service somehow between them and
the office, it like didn't show up. And I called
and I called Yale Central Office and I call, no
one has seen this thing. It's not the university's faults.
It turns out they're like call the post office. So
I was like, yeah, right, you know. But I was
like I know, I'm want to call. And he is
(50:51):
a veteran and he's our mailman, Mitch. So I called Mitch.
I call Mitch my we all know Mitch, my family here.
And Mitch is like, brother, I am on it. He
goes down, He goes down to the central New Haven
Post Office. He found out where it scanned in and
figures out the GEO tracking on it, and he's like,
(51:13):
I'm delivering the documents to your house tomorrow afternoon. Mitchell.
Speaker 8 (51:19):
Incredible, thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Let's give it up for Mitch.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
God bless you, Mitchell. We appreciate you great well.
Speaker 8 (51:26):
Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 10 (51:27):
This was a wonderful evening thanks to our audience, and
happy holidays.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Thanks allry body, Thanks for listening everybody, and remember we're
still raising money for Patrol Basavat, so if you'd like
to contribute, and we really hope you do, you can
do that through the link and the episode description. This
(51:52):
episode was hosted by Jess Mchughe and me Jake Halburn.
It was produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Isaac Carter,
mastering by Eleanor Osborne. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Thanks to Amy McDonald, stephen A, Candice Springer, Chris Barrios,
Taylor Bettison and Jeff Fishon from w b R City
(52:15):
Space for hosting special Thanks to Jane Miliotis, Amy Hagidorn,
Karen Schakerji Morgan Rattner, Eric Sandler, and Greta Cohen. I'm
Jake calpurn
Pushkin. Hey everybody, it's Jake. I hope you enjoyed our
special presentation of Snowball. We just wrapped that up with
a bonus episode, a conversation between me and Snowball's host
Ali Wards. We talked about what it was like for
(00:37):
him to make that show, to report on his own
family's experience of getting scammed by a woman they thought
they could trust, and this conversation, well, it reminded me
a lot of the victims of Sarah Cavanaugh, and we
talked about the parallels there. Today, I want to bring
you back to Sarah's story and to the stories of
(00:59):
the veterans and friends who got tangled up in all
of this. Earlier this month, I got to sit down
with Jess McHugh, my co host for season six The
Truth About Sarah, for Deep Covers second ever live event.
We met up at WBR City Space in Boston to
talk about the value of trust, to share some never
(01:21):
before heard tape, and to give an update on what's
happened with Sarah since our season ended. And in the
spirit of the holidays, we raise some money for Patrol
Base of Bate, an organization fighting back against the mental
health crisis among veterans by providing retreats and fostering community,
(01:41):
all completely free of charge. If you recall, that's the
place up in Montana in the mountains where Sarah met
Dex and Natalie in our first episode. If you'd like
to support Patrol Base of Bate, there's a link in
the episode description. I really encourage you to do that.
This is the charity of choice for the Halper and
(02:02):
Household this year. We just made our donation, and honestly,
if you're looking to give somewhere and you're looking to
support veterans, I could think of no better place. Okay,
now under the show, Thanks all for coming out. We're
(02:26):
really excited to have this live show with you. It's
gonna be fun. We are gonna play some tape that
didn't make the series, some stuff from the cutting room floor,
and some cool behind the scenes stuff, and we're also
going to try to sing the prices of an awesome
charity that was featured in the series, Patrol Base of Batte.
(02:47):
That's the place in Montana, the beautiful retreat where veterans
can go to kind of regroup and and restore themselves.
And we're gonna hope to raise some money for them. Tonight.
As we get into this, we're gonna start with basically
how this story happened, which I can take no credit for,
came from my collaborator, Jess McHugh. Jess, so tell us
(03:09):
how this comes on to your radar for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
So I've been really fascinated by female scammers, women con
artists for many years. And so I was, you know,
working on this new book that I was trying to pitch,
and I was scanning around for kind of characters stories,
and so I looked to a little place called the
New York Post, which has a very great scam section.
(03:33):
I've actually found a lot of good fodder there where
it's often, you know, not super in depth, shall we say,
five hundred word stories about various things, but a lot
of the stories that they cover they cover in a
way that I wouldn't do, but have given me ideas
for much kind of broader investigations. And so I just
saw the headline version, which was something like, you know,
(03:54):
twenty six year old social worker steals a quarter of
a million dollars pretending to be a wounded marine, and
I just felt like I have to know more about that.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
So, but how do you how do you develop that?
Where do you take that from reading that piece to yeah,
what's next?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
The thing that I I love about journalism in general
is speaking to the people involved as much and kind
of as in depth as possible. So I tracked down Sarah,
who was already in prison at the time, and I
wrote her a handwritten snail mail letter saying, Hey, this
is who I am. We come from very similar backgrounds,
small towns in New England, We're about the same age.
(04:31):
I really suspect that there is much more to your
story than this short piece that I read, and I'd
love to hear more. And she wrote back, which I
was kind of surprised by.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, I remember that's around the time that we started talking.
You'd actually been in correspondence with her, and you were
saying that maybe she'll talk. Did you feel optimistic that
this would pan out, that she would go on the
record with you.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I didn't. I'm not really an optimist in general. And
I also never want a strong arm someone into talking
and have them regret speaking to me. So I always
prefer to take it slow and to just say, hey,
let's get to know each other. Let me tell you
what it is that I'm into, and then you can
kind of make up your mind. So it was probably
a good three months of us talking on the phone,
(05:15):
going back and forth on core Links, which is the
online prison service because yes, you know, there's there's no
very limited internet access in federal prisons, so she can't
even just google who I am and kind of see
what I've done. So there was that kind of aspect
of getting to know each other as well.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Okay, so then Tom Schuman, which this is where we're
going to start with our tape that hasn't been heard
all of it. Tom Schuman is the person who founded
pp abat the retreat in Montana and that hosts Sarah
and we go there in the first episode. Tell us
about Tom. How did you connect with him?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, so we're we're both big fans of Tom. I
think I might have actually even spoken to him before
I spoke to Sarah because he had been i think
featured in a couple news articles since pibi Abat was
one of the organizations that was stolen from and he's
it's just such a likable guy. He's a marine, he's
had this like very heroic past, but he also can
(06:15):
quote very deep cuts of Shakespeare from memory, which I
think is very cool as a comparative literature major. So yeah,
we just really hit it off and got to talking
and yeah, and he founded Pipiabat in twenty twenty one,
so it's a relatively recent organization, and as you said,
it's this place for veterans of all stripes to kind
(06:36):
of rest, recharge and refuel.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Cool. We're actually to let you hear Tom describe what
it's like as you drive up the road heading towards
a pipi a bat.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
There is something that will stir in your soul from
the moment that you land at Missoula and they have
a big grizzly bear at the luggage carousel to getting
to our base. Every time you turn a river bend,
you think, well, this is the most beautiful thing I've
ever seen. And then you turn the next river bend
and you're like, oh no, this is actually the most
beautiful thing I seen. And so you do that for
an hour forty five minutes, and then you go vertical
(07:07):
up the side of the mountain and you drive up
to our base, which is a sixty acre ranch surrounded
by two hundred and fifty acres of Forest Service land.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So there's a reason that Tom has picked out this
idyllic piece of the Northwest for veterans to come together.
And you want to tell us about this.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, So the backstory of pibi Abate is also a
really kind of touching story, which is that unfortunately, one
of Tom's comrades was killed in action, this guy named
Matthew Abate, who was a Navy Cross recipient, and so
it's named in his honor, And we have a you know,
he had this idea for this place that's a little
bit different than a lot of the other kind of veterans'
(07:46):
charities that are out there. So I think we have
a clip of him talking about where this idea for
pibi Abate really started.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I lost more marines on the home front than I
had lost on the battlefield, and I just thought, you know,
you would do anything to keep your marines alive in combat.
What are you doing to keep them alive at home?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And just contexts there, he's talking about veterans that have
committed suicide and you know one of the things. So
I actually interviewed it, interviewed him for the for the podcast.
It was it was a kind of a crazy setup.
I showed up at the Quantico Marine Base on his
instructions at eight pm. We went out to his garage.
It was like thirty two degrees and we did a
(08:28):
three hour interview and he's like a tough dude. So
I'm trying to like, you know, a yeah, right, not shiver.
I'm like sitting next between the weightlifting area and the
gun vault, and finally he brings out a bottle of whiskey.
It was a it was a funny setup, but the
subject was quite serious. And what he said was combat
veterans when they come back to the States have a
suicide rate that is forty one percent higher than the
(08:51):
civilian population. And this was the really surprising thing he said.
He said, non combat veterans have a suicide rate of
sixty one percent higher than their civilian counterparts. And this
whole idea for this retreat up in the mountains in
Montana was born out of this feeling of necessity that
he out that there had to be something that he
was doing to try to try to change this.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
That's right, And one of the things that he had
said to me early on was that there was this
thirty day period where he lost three different people to
suicide over the course of just thirty days. And this
was really the moment where he said to himself, I
got to do something about this.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And a lot of what he said also is that
a lot of the charities that are set up or
dealt for, like Navy seals or combat vets, and it
actually the doors aren't open for other veterans. That was
his perception. I'll let you him explain mis tape.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
What I discovered is nearly every one of these organizations
had a barrier to entry, had a box to check,
had some kind of obstacle, and they would say, you're
not damaged enough, you're not broken enough, you're not disordered enough,
you're not special forces enough. You didn't leave a limb
on the battlefield enough. The majority of the veteran population
has not been in combat, The majority of the veteran
(10:03):
population has not lost their limb. The majority of the
veteran population was not special forces.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, and he actually he had a hard time or
a challenge convincing some of the veterans that he was
approaching saying like I want to help you, and they
would kind of push back, Well, is this am I
almost worthy of it.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
People will say like, who me, Well, I was just
an airman, I was just a sailor. It's like, yep,
actually airman, sailor soldier. This is actually your base. We
built this place for you. Oh well, how much is
it free of cost?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And this, of course is where Sarah shows up, And
this is the opening episode you remember of the podcast.
She shows up, she befriends Natalie and Dex, these two
other marines. But the place itself, I think it's like
what I found moving about. It was this idea that
when veterans came out of the service, that they were
no longer a part of anything. But Tom had this
idea that if you create this beautiful experience where you
(10:56):
have physical challenges, where you kind of rekindle the camaraderie
that we once felt, that you won't feel that isolation
that is the slippery slope into the desperate place that proceeds,
you know, thinking about taking your own life right.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
And I think it also speaks to the value of
some of the things that Sarah stole right because the
loss amount, the dollar amount, doesn't encapsulate this. The loss
amount for Pibia Bat doesn't sound like that much. But
when you think about it, there was some marine or
some airman who couldn't experience this kind of thing that
so many people we interviewed liked X. Like Natalie said,
(11:33):
it really changed their life and kept them from a
pretty dark and really dangerous place to be honest.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, So I would just say for those in the
audience and for those listening at home, this is an
amazing place and it's worthy of our support. And these
scam stories are hard sometimes, but this is like a
light so absolutely so. One of the weird things about
unusual things about the story is that after Jess brought
it to me, we kind of figured out who we
were going to interview. Some folks we interviewed together, like
(12:03):
the member, the detective from the VA. We set up
all the mics, but there were times where we had
to break up. And one of them was Justin. I
was interviewing him one day in Ryllan and you were
interviewing Sam.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Was it.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, it was this weird coincidence where two of these
super important stories Justin. You know, Sarah had stolen his
information and had also was taking his money, and Sam,
who was her girlfriend and physical therapist, both said to us,
we are only free at this date and this time,
and Jake and I said, well, actually, this is a
really good use of having two people.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, so we split and the So just a word
about Justin, because I'm the one that interviewed him. He
was the one who was basically had terminal cancer and
had been giving money out of pocket to help support
Sarah out of the belief that she too was terminally
sick with cancer. And she had taken his medical records
(12:56):
unbeknownst to him, which is just a double whammy. And
so when Justin and I were first talking about reporting
the story, we felt like we really had to reach
out to Justin and at least have his blessing that
he was all right with doing it and maybe he'd
be willing to talk to us. And it took a
while because I think the hard thing, and Jess, you
can talk about this with scam stories is that people
are reluctant to talk because of the shame that they
(13:18):
feel being scammed. And this, yeah, this came out time
and time again.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, we really did see it a lot of times
where people said, well, listeners are going to think I'm stupid,
They're going to judge me, and I've always felt like
I've interviewed a lot of people on both sides of
the sort of scam equation, and the people that I've
spoken to who have been scammed are never stupid, they're
never greedy. They're often people who are like the people
(13:44):
that we spoke to for this series, Salt of the Earth,
folks who really want help, and that unfortunately puts them
in a vulnerable place. But it's not to be shamed,
and I haven't heard that reaction from anyone who's listened
to the series.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
But it's tricky, right because you can't tell people participate
and you're going to look good or there won't be
moments where you feel, I don't know, we're not dredging
stuff up. Have It's funny you have to make your
pick which to hope they participate, but in the end
they have to make the decision because they have to
own it, and you don't want to feel responsible for
coercing them into talking, so you play this' That's why
(14:20):
I respected, honestly that just spent nine months or whatever
it was talking to Sarah before we interviewed her, because
by the time that way that interview occurred, there had
been a long runway of communication and consent and anyway.
So with Justin, he agreed to talk. He said a
lot of things, but one of the things that we
didn't get a chance to get into in the podcast
(14:42):
was his what his experience of being a service member,
how it impacted his wife's life. And it's a little
bit of a tangent, but it's it's powerful and I
want to share.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
It with you.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So maybe we can just play that first clip from Justin.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
They always say that it's not just a service member
that serves, it's the family, and it's really it's really true.
I don't know my wife will appreciate me saying this.
My wife got pretty sick. She had a bad reaction
to some medication, was very ill, and our neighbors, our
squadron mates, came together and totally helped out, took care
(15:25):
of the kids while she was in the hospital, while
she was in bed at home. And I can't say
how much I appreciated that.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You know, just for context here, when his wife is
sick like this, Justin is out of the picture because
he's serving in Iraq. He's like half a world away
and user going to hear In a second. He doesn't
fully understand what's going on with her, but during this time,
it's Christmas time, and I'll let him tell you what
happens next.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
For Christmas, she put together she was a teacher at
the time. She and her students put together these little
care packages for every single one of my sailors with
their name on it, and sent them sent them to us.
She did all this while being sick, and she didn't
She didn't tell me until she was after the fact
(16:14):
that she said, look, I like I almost died, but
she didn't want me to worry while I was deployed,
so she just kind of sat on it.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, The thing about this that that moves me is
you think about what Justin did for Sarah. You think
about the way that he didn't hesitate to reach into
his own pocket and pay her medical expenses. And that choice,
which in and of itself was generous, didn't exist in
a moment by itself. It was part of a greater
connectivity to a spirit of generosity that here his wife
(16:43):
is sick, like might even die, and got all the
stuff out for all the troops under him. And I
just think it was one of the more it was
one of the more beautiful parts of the story that
it's not a story about a scam entirely. It's also
a story about like a deep felt belief in the
generosity of the human spirit and the way that there's
(17:04):
a through line of when people do things for us,
that we repay them absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
And we were kind of struck by that at so
many different moments. And I think Justin is a really
potent example. You can hear the emotion in his voice,
and it's you know, he's sacrificing for his family, for
his country, and his family is trying to kind of
make that same sacrifice for him. It's it's just it's
really touching.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
We'll be right back. Let's talk about you did this
interview and Michelle really spoke so beautifully about the kind
of dynamics of betrayal and forgiveness and all that give
us some context in who Michelle was. Again.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, so Michelle is a fitness instructor. She's one of
the kind of Rhode Island set of people that we
hear from in this story. And she actually met Sarah
at the gym and they became really close friends. They
ended up you know, going out to lunch almost every week,
and as she says, both kind of when she testifies
in court and in the series, she was Sarah's primary
(18:22):
shoe tire, right.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Because a sensibly Sarah couldn't tire her own shoes. Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
So that's Michelle. And not only did she kind of
sacrifice a lot for Sarah in terms of her time,
in terms of her care, but also she gave her
her money. I think it was like twenty five hundred
dollars thinking that it was for surgery. So Michelle, safe
to say, felt this very kind of deep and intimate betrayal.
And she has some kind of interesting reflections on what
(18:50):
she takes away from that.
Speaker 6 (18:52):
Well, there was no violence. People will be like, well,
I wasn't a violent crime, but it was a crime
of I don't even know what you call it, opportunity,
but it was that deception of trust. When you break
down that circle of trust, society can't function. You need
to be to trust what people are saying for the
most part in your day to day life to make
(19:15):
those social connections and to have that or society as
a whole will fail.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, talk about that last bit, because I know you
have thoughts on that.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts because I spend
I've spent so much of the past few years thinking
about scams about cons and I often come back to
the idea that con artists comes from the term confidence.
It's about a confidence trick. Do you trust me to do? This?
Basically is how it all started. Do you trust me
(19:44):
to hold onto your watch for you? And what she
gets at is so true is that trust is the
essence of society in ways big and small. I think
people miss or really underestimate how often they're forced to
trust in day to day life, Like something as simple
as every aspect of commerce. You buy something online, you
(20:05):
pay for it before it comes, and you trust that
it's going to get to you, and you pay for
a cup of coffee. It's not a standoff in which
they're handing you the coffee at the instant that you
give your money. And so, you know, I think there's
this idea that we don't really need to trust each other,
or that's some sort of naivete but in fact, if
we don't function that way, literally all of our society
(20:27):
will collapse.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah, and you know, you look outside, maybe in other
parts of the world, you don't like I can think
of my in laws who would say growing up in
communist poll and there is minimal trust in any aspect
of society. But like in America, a lot of times
we glide through life on this kind of current of
trust that things are going to be they what they
should be. So that's one part of this. But the
(20:49):
other part of this is that what do you do
when someone who's not just the person that's selling you
something online. You expect the good the goods are going
to arrive, but your friend, the person who are like
kneeling down and tying their shoelaces and going on a
walk in the woods with them and telling them about
your kids and taking to the ballet and someone you
know intimately where all of that is not what it
(21:11):
seems and like how does that derail and your your
kind of your sense of yourself and all that. And
there's what we'll play some take from Michelle in it.
Speaker 6 (21:21):
When you're hurt, everybody handles that hurt differently, So some
people dig in and try to help. I cut off
at the knees. I need no new friends. I actually
texted all my friends. I'm like, you are who you
say you are right.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, she's like joking, but you kind of maybe she's
not joking.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
I'm also sort of a cut him off at the
knees type, so I relate to Michelle.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Oh better not cross you, Jess, watch out Jake. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
But the thing that I find so interesting and also
so sad in what she's really the heart of what
she's saying is that I think the risk with scams
is not just that you mistrust a person or that
you lose faith in an institution, but you fundamentally come
to fear your sense of reality. I think in these
(22:08):
most profound scams, or what she's really saying is is
what I see and experienced in the world. True, are
my other friends pretending to be someone entirely else?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
It's so scary, right, And actually it's do I trust myself? Right?
Because on some level we think that we're good judges
of character, So we think I know who a friend is,
I know a friend isn't. And then what happens when
your dil detector that you rely on in your head
is way off, fundamentally off, Like how do you you know?
That's what you have her saying, like, you know are
you my friend? Are you my friend? And then if
(22:41):
you feel that like, wow, my wiring was faulty on that,
how do you come to trust yourself and your own
judgment Again.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
It's like what else is wrong? What else is real?
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Right?
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Okay? So I think there's some pieces of tape that
when you hear you know, it's like tape that feels
it somehow, it speaks to a culmination of the ideas
that you've discussed, and you kind of put that in
a bucket and you sit on that tape and this
bit from Decks falls into that. But now that I
had that big preamble, tell us who Duck is, remind
(23:13):
us who she is in this story.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
And it's funny too that we immediately were like, this
is going to be the end of the show because
she was actually the first interview that we did for
the series. Amy, our producer, and I went up to
upstate New York to Dex's home and Dex herself was
a marine and she was part of the military police
also young, you know, we're all about the same age
(23:34):
and same age as Sarah, and she had this really
really ancient dog named Luigi. So we go into her
house it was all she's obsessed with Christmas, and so
it was around Thanksgiving time, but she already had the
full holiday decor. And she also let us we you know,
we had just met her. We were like, Hi, I'm Jess, Hi,
(23:56):
I'm Amy. Can we unplug your fridge? Can we like
move your whole apartment around? Can we put your dog
on my lap?
Speaker 1 (24:02):
And can we talk about the most painful moment? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (24:04):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
And she just was game from the start and really
kind of led us into her world and into her life.
And she is one of the people who met Sarah
out in Montana at Pidiabaate.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
If you recall, Dex is the one who said an
at Arlington National Cemetery and she had remembered that Sarah's
brother supposedly been buried there, and she called up Sarah
and she went to a plot and laid wreath a
wreath at this plot, which turned out to be a
kind of random plot. Right, So there's a lot to this.
(24:38):
But you asked, Dex, I think in this moment, like
how do you how do you work through a betrayal
of this magnitude? And yeah, okay, here's what she says.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
I think we struggle with forgiveness because you have to
eat the cost. There's no closure before you get to
forgive somebody. If something requires you to forgive another person,
you have to You have to fully eat the cost
whatever wrong they did you. You have to expect no repayment.
You can't expect it to be made whole. You have
(25:15):
to be okay with it not being whole. People wrong
you and you you know, if you're really going to
forgive somebody, do you have to be okay with fixing
it yourself.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
So I've thought about that a lot. You have to
eat the cost, and I'm still I don't feel like
entirely certain. I understand all the depths of what it means.
But what do you take that to me? When she
says you have to eat the cost?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
It kind of hits me like a gut punch every
time I hear it, and I've heard it a lot
of times. And I'm someone who has a really hard
time with forgiveness, like I'm a grudge holder. I get
my irish up, so to speak. And so when she
first said it to me, I think I did say
to her, like, what do you mean by that? And
she's what she said was something to the effect of,
(25:56):
like the money that you gave this person or the
time or the love, you're not getting that back. And
even if they wanted to give it back to you,
they can't because it's gone. And so the way that
I interpret that is forgiveness means not waiting around for
someone to say, I'm so sorry that I did that
to you.
Speaker 8 (26:16):
That was wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
It's saying, you know what, that was really messed up,
and I'm choosing to make whatever I'm going to make
of it. Maybe I learn a lesson from it, maybe
I don't, but I'm not going to sit around and
wait for someone else to make it right.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And there's like there's grief in there, and there's loss
in there right, Like she lost things, she lost time
that she could have put into other friendships, she lost
heart that she could have given to people and her family,
and I think that, like it's almost like she's saying,
you have to recognize that, like that is gone, and
you have to be at peace with that. And if
(26:51):
you're not a piece with that, you know, there's nothing else.
And it's funny because I feel like, on its face,
this story is so outlandish, it's so crazy, it's like,
who does this ever happen to? But there are moments
when we're talking, when you were talking to Dex or Justin,
which we're going to play next, do you feel like,
by god, I've been in some version of that moment,
(27:12):
a lesser version, a less dramatic version. But who in
this room has not felt betrayal by a friend or
a loved one where there's that moment of like, how
am I going to get through this? And I felt
like there's aspects of this where I would think about
Decks and think about Justin and think like it's a
pretty massive betrayal that they somehow work through. I should
(27:37):
find a way to try to channel some small bit
of that, because your hill is much smaller than theirs.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Absolutely, And I think that's I think that's what if
I might, if I may say, what kind of drew
both of us to this story was that there's so
much hard in it and there's so much kind of
pathos in it. And I think, you know, true crime
when it's done poorly, is so sordid and just not worthwhile.
(28:05):
But there's an aspect often I think in i'me stories
that just brings out the best and worst of humanity,
and you see just such a range of what human
animals are capable of and for the better with a
lot of these veterans. And that's I think why I
love that quote and why I love talking to people
(28:25):
like Dex and like Justin.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, let's some let's play this last clip from Justin.
It was a similar moment to the moment that that
just had with Decks where I was asking him like,
how do you emerge from this? This is you You
had your your medical records stolen. You gave him out
of pocket for this, Like where do you how do
you make your way back to trying to be some
(28:48):
version of who you used to be?
Speaker 5 (28:51):
I did a lot of introspection and said, well, what
gives me energy? And that's what gives me energy is
to help help people, especially fellow veterans, and so you know,
if I lose that, now what do I have?
Speaker 1 (29:05):
It's interesting because it's like his use of the word
using it, and it makes me think of the loss,
like what is Dex? She has to eat the cost? Right,
but then there's a cost at not doing that, Like
if she doesn't work through that, the cost is you're
carrying this frickin thing around with you, and like, for Justin,
it's about working his way back to that moment where
(29:27):
he can give something himself again, because if he gives
that up, then you know, then then as he says,
like so beautifully, then who is he or what is he? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Absolutely, And I think that that's what everyone we interviewed
and was working through. And people who are victims of
scams in general have to decide what, if anything, am
I going to take forward from this experience into my
other relationships with friends, strangers, et cetera, Because I think,
you know, you don't want to give people undue suspicion. Sometimes, I,
(29:59):
especially while we were reporting this story, I would meet
strangers in non journalistic context and be thinking like, hmm,
did they really go to be you like they told
me they did? And I was like, this person doesn't
deserve that, Like there's no reason that they would be
lying to me. And I'm not experiencing the level of
betrayal that these people experienced, So I think they all,
which I also found interesting, we're thinking of it really
(30:21):
consciously of how do I want to show up in
the world?
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Right right? Okay, Well, we can get more into that
with questions, but we want to share one final clip
which is just my favorite clip from the cutting room floor.
And as part of this, we're going to ask our
amazing producer Amy Gains McQuaid to come up on stage.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Let's give around applause for Amy. She did an incredible job.
Speaker 7 (30:48):
Okay, So I'm a few minutes away from Mark and
Kate's house, and now that I'm here, this is a
part of Vermont that is referred to as the Northeast Kingdom.
It's pretty remote.
Speaker 9 (31:07):
Whoa, oh, Okay, that's Amy's card the live car crash
you just heard.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
That's Amy's car going off the road into the snow
in on a Vermont road. So, and this is really
funny for anyone the old NPR reporters, Like there's this
thing we always say, like, and here we are in
the north. She's doing exactly what the good audio.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Journalis history of this region.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
There's someone reasons I love this clip, but one of
them Amy is like, it is such the metaphor for
you in the crisis, because if it had been in
my car going off the road, I would have been
dropping the F bomb. As my sons who are in
the front row can can attest to and you're like,
oh dear, and you are just always so calm under pressure.
You you can see the snow caked in your fender,
but with all seriousness, we are like so fortunate. Amy
(32:00):
is that rare person who just brings such a level
of passion and integrity to this show. And it would
not exist and I would not do it if you
weren't doing it with us. So just huge, thank you,
thank you, Jake.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
And just to give a little context for the clip,
because I live in Paris, and so I came back
and reported a lot of this on the ground with Jake.
But then there were a lot of things that we
did remotely, and so Amy volunteered to drive from Boston
all the way up to a very northernmost part of
(32:39):
Vermont in the winter so that I could zoom in
to interview Mark and Kate Feudie, who were also Jim
friends of Sarah's. And this is how I sent almost
sent Amy to an icy death.
Speaker 8 (32:52):
No, it was okay, I'm here right. The show came out.
Mark and Kate's interview was great.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
It was great.
Speaker 10 (32:56):
If it had been a bad interview, I would have
been really absolutely, but no, I mean, thank you guys
so much for having me up for this part of
the show. And uh, you know, just to kind of
get right into questions, we have a bunch of them.
But related to Mark and Kate and Justin and Sam
and Michelle, you know, why do you think all of
these people talk to you? Why do you think that
(33:17):
they were comfortable inviting you into their homes in some
cases to talk about really painful things that happened to them.
I'm curious, Jess, why you think people said yes.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I think you know, it really varied person to person,
but the overarching thing that I saw time and time
again was that these are the kind of people who
are helpers, and they really opened their arms and their
homes to Sarah for many years, and I felt like
we were receiving kind of an extension of that sort
of generosity of spirit, where people were game to talk
(33:50):
about what was a really really difficult experience and also
led us in to their houses, which is not always
easy to have a journalist in your space. And then
the other aspect was that there were a couple people
who the public had assumed were complicit in some way,
and we're kind of unfortunately smeared alongside Sarah. I'm thinking
(34:13):
of her ex girlfriend and her ex wife, who from
what we could tell, really had no idea what was
going on, but the media and the public treated them
as if of course they knew, and of course they
were also profiting, and so I think that must have
been really, really hard, especially living in these small towns,
and I think they wanted to clear their names in
(34:34):
a certain way.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yeah, what about you, Jake, Yeah, I mean I think
that I agree with everything that just said. I think
you can hear in those moments, like when Justin is
talking the kind of tremor in his voice, and you
feel like this is a guy who's still working through this,
who's still trying to figure out what this all means.
And I think that, like that's hopefully what we're trying
(34:56):
to do, and telling a story is to is to
pull some meaning out of it that is that goes
a tad deeper than the five hundred words than they
got in the post. I think that's the hope that
they that they have, and then it's on us to
try to try to honor that.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
And it was h too, to your point, Like I
think she was sentenced in twenty twenty three. I started
reporting this in twenty twenty four, I want to say, yeah,
maybe less less than a year later.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, And that has its challenge and the one way
it makes it more powerful because it's all fresh in
their memory, but also often means people don't want to
talk Why would you want it? I mean I wouldn't
want to talk to me a lot of the time.
Oh yes, you know, like let me into my house
and my family and all these things that happened. And
I think that like just trying to remember that that
there was like some serious trust, you know, putting you
So yeah.
Speaker 10 (35:42):
Yeah, So I just want to jump into the question
that I think a lot of people in this room
have that we've received. What is the latest with Sarah?
What has happened since the podcast has been released? Can
you share a little bit of detail with us, Jess
for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
So, in a very weird coincidence, shortly after the podcast
was released, Sarah was released to a halfway house.
Speaker 8 (36:04):
So she came out of prison.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah, So she was out of prison.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Just like the week that the that we wend around at.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
The same time, which was a really weird coincidence. And
within a few months though basically what happens it's a
little bit vague from the kind of court documents that
I've seen, but she was basically accused of creating a
hostile environment in her halfway house, and so she was
sent back to federal prison because when you're in a
(36:32):
halfway house, it's not like parole. You don't have to
commit a crime to be considered essentially in violation. And
she'll be out I think summer of next year.
Speaker 10 (36:43):
Okay, Yeah, talking about Sarah for another moment. One of
the questions that we got from the audience today was
Sarah's lives were so complex and multifaceted. How do you
two think she kept all that straight? So, Jake, I
want to throw that to you first.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 8 (36:59):
I think about the wedding.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean the wedding. It was interesting. So
the reason that Amy got in that car wreck was
that we were kind of obsessed with the wedding because
at the wedding there were people that knew she was
a veteran and people that knew she wasn't a veteran,
and they were hanging out and having drinks and dancing
at a summer wedding and it seemed mind blowing to me,
(37:22):
at least at first, that a lie could survive such
a delicate moment in time. But lies are curiously stubborn
and wilful things, and they can survive. And I think
that sometimes we believe what we want to believe, and
even if we have information to the contrary and get
(37:42):
dissonance about what we believe, if we really want to
believe it, we find ways to ignore it. And I
am thinking of half a dozen times that that's happened
to me. And so I don't think that that she
was some kind of mastermind who kept every single one
of these half truth straight. I think it speaks to
human nature that we're all more easily deceived and more
(38:07):
willingly deceived sometimes than we would care to admit.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, I also think it's that default to truth thing,
where we assume that other humans are telling us the truth.
And it would have been so illogical to assume that
someone who had never served had invented this vast kind
of labyrinth of lies about her service record and about
having cancer. It just would be so illogical to kind
(38:30):
of figure that out. And then I think there were
some practical things too, like Michelle told me, you know,
she had told a lot of people that she had
a brain injury. And so if she would say, oh,
I thought you were in Afghanistan at that time, you
were actually in graduate school, she would chalk it up
to the brain injury.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah. And would you really push back against someone that
you thought had traumatic brain injury and said you said
two different things on two different occasions, well, like no kidding.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
About your traumatic service history.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah, Jess.
Speaker 10 (38:59):
One question I have for you, I mean, I know
you to be this expert on con artists.
Speaker 8 (39:04):
Why do you think people are so wrapped by these stories?
What draws us in ugh?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
I think about that a lot. I think there are
a lot of reasons. I think in general, there are
just fewer women criminals, so anything that is an anomaly
is I think interesting to people. But I also think
Sarah's not a good example of this. I think there
are other scammers that are more glamorous, like I'm thinking
of Anna del Vi, who was you know, stealing from
(39:30):
Mantatan's elite. I think there's this sort of urge, especially
as a woman, you know, who may not be working
a great job, or who may not have the life
that they wanted to have seeing someone steal and get
away with it. There's this sort of you know, kind
of free song of something fun.
Speaker 10 (39:49):
Another question for you, Jake, Yeah, so you've hosted what
now six seasons of deep Cover season seven coming next year.
Compared to the other seasons of deep Cover, was there
anything uniquely challenging about this one?
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah? This reminded me of season three a little bit
in that there was someone of the same trip telling
half truths and you were left to think about how
you felt. It's like we said in the sixth episode,
like I feel for Sarah, I feel pathos for justs
and I both did. Like it's hard to know because
you have to take everything you hear, she says with
(40:23):
a grain of salt. But I think she went through
some hard stuff. So how do you balance that against
the kind of the pain that the other people felt
in the story. And I think that especially because and Jess,
we've talked about this con artists prey on pathos like
they pray on I'm in trouble, help me, And that
was an uncomfortable place that at least me personally like
(40:46):
lived in while working on this, Like who deserves my sympathy?
In this story, does everyone deserve my sympathy? And to
what extent does she deserve twenty five and so and so,
And that calculus of it was kind of, you know, draining,
to say the least, And so that felt uniquely kind
(41:08):
of challenging about the season.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, I agree that. I think the interviews with Sarah
were some of the most challenging of my career because
they were also very long, Like we were in the
prison with her just meet Jake and her for hours,
like I think the first day was four hours, and
you do feel a lot of different emotions. As Jake said,
there were moments we felt for her. There were moments
(41:32):
where she felt really cold. There were moments where I
couldn't tell what was true and what wasn't true. And
I remember we got out of there and I think
we went and ate like Peppi's pizza afterward and just.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Not the New Haven branch, but what we need.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
To do, just kind of staring at each other, like
what just happened.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
More from our conversation in just a moment.
Speaker 10 (42:11):
What did your collaboration look like day to day when
building a season like this, How did you resolve disagreements
about story smelling choices for pulling back. So really, how
do you work together? What were the kind of pros
and cons of the collaboration.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, it's funny. I would say this, this is all
this entire story, this season, everything, it's it's all about
trust and distrust. And what I will just say is
the one thing that I knew for Shirton I trusted
was Jess And so I think that part of trusting
someone means that if there is disagreement, and there needs
(42:45):
to be disagreement, that you say, Okay, let me think
about this, let me hit pause. And I think that
one of the hardest things about being a storyteller sometimes
is when you fillure in it alone. And so there
were definitely a bunch of times where I was like,
this is my read on this, what do you think?
And honestly, it made the whole thing doable to have
(43:05):
another person to bounce it off.
Speaker 9 (43:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah, So I would say, yeah, that underlying trust that
I had for her judgment was really what kind of
got us through this from my perspective.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Thanks Jake, I felt the same. Honestly from the start,
I really felt like this thing is going to be
good because Jake Calpern is working on it, and the
moments where I felt like we were struggling in some
way to figure what direction to go, it was always
because we felt like, how do we do justice to
this story? How do we do justice to the people
(43:39):
who have trusted us to tell it? And I think
it's so so good to have a collaborator. We're both
you know, have been longtime freelancers. I used to joke
to Amy that I feel like I'm an outdoor cat
and so it was really nice to feel like having
that support that you often don't have when you're working
on a magazine piece or a book by yourself for
(44:01):
years or months.
Speaker 10 (44:03):
There's one question from the audience that I want us
to touch on. They said, I was feeling a tiny
bit of empathy for Sarah and till the bomb about
the letters that we covered.
Speaker 8 (44:12):
In the series. The question is do you think she
felt any remorse and before?
Speaker 1 (44:17):
And Jess, you can take first crack at this, but
just for some context again, because it's been a minute.
These letters that Amy's referring to are the letters submitted
to the court at sentencing that were meant to elicit
sympathy and mercy from the judge saying basically like, this
person has been through this, but they have these redeeming values,
(44:38):
show mercy.
Speaker 8 (44:39):
I mean, just to see this up a little bit more.
Speaker 10 (44:40):
We had no idea about this, and then we went
to interview Sam, and I believe that's the first moment that.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, that's right, that became clear. Basically early on in
the reporting, I had a great contact in the county
Clerk's office who said you should really request these letters
before sentencing because there was no trial and so people
could send in these again as Jake was saying these
sort of pleas for mercy, and there were two that
really stuck out to me. One was written by Sam,
(45:08):
who was Sarah's then girlfriend and also physical therapist, and
another was written by Sam's mother, who was dying from
cancer and from whom Sarah stole a bill of a
cancer bill as part of her ruse to steal money
from a charity. And I remember thinking like, wow, the
(45:29):
just the absolute kind of magnanimity of these women to
still be pleading on this woman's behalf. I just was
so in awe of it. And I remember when we
went to interview Sam, I asked her about it and
she was like, what are you talking about. I never
wrote a letter, and I read it to her and
she said, I didn't write that.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
And that letter was like part of what drew us
into the story in the first place, because I think,
like our wonderful editor, Karen Shakerji is always saying, you
need wrinkles of complexity in a story. If someone is
a two dimensional character, they're not interesting, and these letters
were super interesting because it was like these people were
standing by her even after everything that she'd been through,
and it kind of left us feeling like, wow, let's
(46:12):
let's figure out what this is about. And then I
remember you guys called and you're like, yeah, those letters.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
And I should say Sarah denies writing those.
Speaker 8 (46:22):
And Sam admitted that she had seen the letter.
Speaker 10 (46:25):
It was almost kind of like a group project, like
you write it and I'll sign it. And so there's
a mom's letters, she claimed Sam crime she didn't know about.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
So it's tricky. I mean, that also was a moment
for me where it did it was hard to learn
and it was hard to kind of reckon with. I
still do have some empathy for Sarah, but that was
not a moment where I felt very endeared to her,
and I think I felt like I had a really
hard time with it because it's after all of these
(46:55):
crimes that she's committed, and it feels like it's the
moment for her to take some responsibility. And I think
what was tricky and also interesting about her as a
source was there were so many moments where she really
did seem to take responsibility, but then in the next
sentence there was a big butt or a I don't
remember doing that. So she's very very tricky to pin down.
Speaker 10 (47:18):
Do you feel like you got genuine remorse from her?
I mean, you both sat down with her in prison.
Did you feel like there were moments in those two
days where you felt genuine remorse.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
I don't know. I don't know. Do you do you
feel you can say.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
I feel like there were moments. There were a lot
of moments that I think were not real remorse. But
it's so hard to say, And I think that's why
part of why the series has resonated with so many
people is that she is still really really hard to
figure out. It doesn't really I don't feel like we
(47:55):
totally got to the bottom of her.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Yeah. The thing that I will say too is that
you know, we all to much lesser extent have different
versions of ourselves. So the idea of that kind of
deception doesn't strike me as wholly foreign. It's just was
taken to an extreme that that's kind of unfathomable. The
(48:20):
impulse feels actually very deeply human, that we have these
different aspects of our subs that we lean into. I
remember one day my wife is a triathlete, and I
wore her iron Man hat because it was like lying
around the house. And I went to the gym and
I was like getting the looks because that's where in
the iron Man hat. And I was like, I could
explain to everyone in the gym right now that it's
(48:42):
my wife's hat, or I could just like let this
go on a little longer, you know, And I just
felt like, that's that's this space now. Eventually I'm like,
I got a wife, she's the iron Man. I can't
swim like, you know, not really, but I think that
this idea, there's aspects of this that I actually do
feel like I could see how you could start down
this path. It's just that there were no breaks, and
(49:04):
it just accelerated in this kind of hyperbolic way.
Speaker 8 (49:08):
Okay here, he's not an ironman.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Correcting the record right now.
Speaker 10 (49:13):
That's it, so we're going to wrap up a little bit.
I have one last question for each of you. For Jess,
what have you been up to? What's next for you?
Speaker 2 (49:21):
So I'm really excited that my book is going to
be published with Simon and Schuster, and it's a book
about female scammers, women con artists of all stripes, so
there'll be some more material on Sarah. The book is
called Beg Borrow Scam and it will be coming out
in fall twenty twenty seven, so put it on your calendars.
(49:41):
Congratch ways away. Thank you very much.
Speaker 8 (49:44):
Looking forward to reading even more of your great reporting.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Jee. Yes I'm next for you. Yes, I'm busy working
on the next season of deep Cover. And actually I
was in Dallas reporting in November, and I just got
back from a week of reporting in the Ozarks. I
have a little time. I can't tell you much about it,
but I will I will tell you. I know you
Amy's here store. And I'm also that my family doesn't
(50:10):
even know yet, which is that all these docs we found,
this treasure trove of documents and audio, and the person
that found them was like, I'm going to mail them
to you, and this is just utter stupidity. I should
have on the moment said like no, no, no, no, I
got you a ups R effects number. But I was like, okay,
mailed them to my Yale address because figuring like the
(50:31):
yellingsh Department and the mail service somehow between them and
the office, it like didn't show up. And I called
and I called Yale Central Office and I call, no
one has seen this thing. It's not the university's faults.
It turns out they're like call the post office. So
I was like, yeah, right, you know. But I was
like I know, I'm want to call. And he is
(50:51):
a veteran and he's our mailman, Mitch. So I called Mitch.
I call Mitch my we all know Mitch, my family here.
And Mitch is like, brother, I am on it. He
goes down, He goes down to the central New Haven
Post Office. He found out where it scanned in and
figures out the GEO tracking on it, and he's like,
(51:13):
I'm delivering the documents to your house tomorrow afternoon. Mitchell.
Speaker 8 (51:19):
Incredible, thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Let's give it up for Mitch.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
God bless you, Mitchell. We appreciate you great well.
Speaker 8 (51:26):
Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 10 (51:27):
This was a wonderful evening thanks to our audience, and
happy holidays.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Thanks allry body, Thanks for listening everybody, and remember we're
still raising money for Patrol Basavat, so if you'd like
to contribute, and we really hope you do, you can
do that through the link and the episode description. This
(51:52):
episode was hosted by Jess Mchughe and me Jake Halburn.
It was produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Isaac Carter,
mastering by Eleanor Osborne. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Thanks to Amy McDonald, stephen A, Candice Springer, Chris Barrios,
Taylor Bettison and Jeff Fishon from w b R City
(52:15):
Space for hosting special Thanks to Jane Miliotis, Amy Hagidorn,
Karen Schakerji Morgan Rattner, Eric Sandler, and Greta Cohen. I'm
Jake calpurn
Host
Jake Halpern
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