Angela | Betrayal Weekly

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Hi, everyone.

Before we get into this episode, I want to let you know that the first part discusses details of cancer symptoms and treatment.

Please listen with care.

She's ruined so many lives.

She's just broken so many hearts.

It's just left me wondering:

did she ever

have any love for any of us?

And that hearts like hell.

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Oh, it's a tale of Peter Rabbit.

That is, and I can see you've drawn a picture of me, Peter Rabbit.

That is Adam.

That's Angela MacVicker.

She's a grandmother in small-town Scotland.

The day we interviewed her, Angela was babysitting her four-year-old granddaughter.

Listen, Nana's going to ask if you will be quiet for a little while longer.

Okay.

Okay.

Be very, very good.

And you'll make me very, very happy.

Okay.

right, on you go.

Angela has lived her whole life in the Scottish countryside.

What makes Scotland, I think, are the people.

If a stranger walks into a bar, they don't leave that bar until everybody knows who they are and why they're there.

She came from a close-knit family of all girls.

When she was growing up in the 70s,

I did actually want to be a midwife, but then I fell pregnant pregnant and had my first daughter, Joanna, when I was 17.

So that kind of put a hold on anything.

And at that point, I was thrown into growing up very quickly.

Joanna was named for Angela's father, John.

And just like her mom, she would be one of four girls.

Which was hard going being a young mum and having four children.

There was rarely a quiet moment.

We always had a busy house with four girls that were always bringing friends home.

Out of all of her girls, Joanna was the most driven.

You never had to tell her to

study.

She would come home and go straight to her room, do her homework.

And she was a talented Highland dancer, which is a traditional Gaelic folk dance.

On weekends, Joanna competed in dance contests across the country.

But something changed when Joanna was 16.

Joanna started to get really tired, and I put it down to her studying so hard for her exams.

And then

she started getting little lumps and bruises.

She would come and say, Mom, look at this.

And then one time in particular,

she couldn't get her shoe on and she said, Look at my foot.

And on the bridge of her foot, there was a lump and it looked like an egg.

It was really quite a significant lump.

Angela wasn't the type to call the doctor over every scrape or sniffle.

But this time, she was genuinely alarmed.

When the first doctor dismissed it as a bug bite, she found another doctor and then another.

I knew in the back of my mind it wasn't right.

There was something going on.

One day.

Joanna came home from school with a large dark purple bruise.

It covered her whole lower leg.

And it hadn't been there in the morning when she left

and at that point

leukemia hit me between the eyes.

I knew that bruising was a symptom.

So we went to the hospital the following day and they said well we need to do a bone marrow aspirate but they told me that it was just to confirm what they already knew.

And I just, I kept having to leave her room.

I kept having to make up excuses

because I could feel myself getting panicked and upset.

And I didn't want her to feel that or see it.

It was a day that changed their lives forever.

At 16,

Joanna was diagnosed with cancer.

Just by looking through a microscope, we could tell that she had chronic myeloid leukemia.

Today, there are a variety of treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia.

But 30 years ago, there were very limited options.

Joanna's doctors were scrambling to find answers.

The doctors would say, I don't know how she's functioning.

I don't know how she can walk.

A nurse had seen Angela pacing the hallways all day.

She pulled her aside and gave her some stern advice.

Angela was going to have to be her daughter's advocate.

She wasn't giving me tea and sympathy.

She was giving me sound advice and she was being a bit of a badass with me and just telling me without saying the words, pull yourself together, you're going to have to do this.

So Angela tried to channel her fear into action.

She was willing to go anywhere in the world, do anything necessary to get Joanna treatment.

Next, she found a specialist.

He then told us that she had to have a bone marrow transplant to survive.

In order to have a successful bone marrow transplant, Joanna would need a perfect match.

It's rare, but they found a possible match on the National Registry.

It wasn't perfect, but it was close.

And it was their only shot.

But the procedure is dangerous.

So what they do is they kill off all your bone marrow.

So, you have to go into isolation.

You're in a room where everybody has to be scrubbed up, and it's very limited to how many people are in the room because an infection could kill you because you don't have any white cells to fight infection.

And then

the cells from a donor just look like a bag of blood and it's hung up on a stand, and you receive it through intravenous.

The stem cells that go through your veins find their way to your bone marrow, and they nest in your bone marrow and start to multiply and give you a new immune system.

Should your body accept it?

But Joanna's didn't.

It wasn't a close enough match, and her body attacked the new cells.

When

that happened, she was left with no immune system and no donor.

Before the transplant, Joanna didn't fully grasp how serious her diagnosis was.

There were a few times we thought we were going to lose her during the transplant, she was just so ill.

After the transplant transplant failed, Joanna's doctors were blunt.

So at that point, they said, if she's going to survive beyond five years, we need to find a perfect match.

That's when Angela turned to the Anthony Nolan Register, one of the first bone marrow registries in the world.

It had been founded by another mother, also desperate to save her child.

And the charity happened to be based in the UK.

So Angela scheduled a meeting with a woman there.

And she said, well, this weekend we have got a fundraising event going on in Glasgow.

Would you and Joanna like to go along?

And I said, yes, because we have to do something.

We can't sit back and just expect everybody else to build this register for us.

So they packed their bags for Glasgow.

Of course, Joanna said she had nothing to wear, which was a lot of baloney.

That weekend, they hoped to meet people who could help Joanna.

And that's where I met Lindsay McCallum.

Lindsay worked for the Anthony Nolan Trust, and she would be Angela and Joanna's ambassador, guiding them through the process of growing the registry and trying to find Joanna's match.

When we arrived at the hotel,

she greeted us so warmly and kindly, and she was caring and inviting.

That night at the fundraiser, there was an auction, and there were people up speaking.

And while Lindsay was speaking on the stage,

Joanna actually got up off her chair and walked up onto the stage and took the mic and told people

that

she needed to find a bone marrow match or she was going to die.

I saw her blossom on that stage.

She didn't cry.

She just told people she wanted to live and thanked them for being there and for helping her.

In that moment, something shifted.

Joanna was no longer just a patient.

She wanted to be an advocate.

And an idea was born.

The Anthony Nolan Trust would partner with Joanna to launch a media campaign.

They would use her story to raise awareness and get new people to donate bone marrow.

Every new donor could potentially be Joanna's match.

They got the campaign off the ground with Lindsay's help and the public immediately took notice.

When we started Joanna's campaign, The media just ate it up.

They just loved her.

She loved the camera.

The camera loved her.

Yeah, she made friends with lots of different Scottish celebrities and

they just loved her zest for life.

Joanna's story struck a chord.

Her personality, her humor, her sheer will to live, it was irresistible.

Plus, the campaign gave Joanna a larger purpose.

It sounds ridiculous, but she had a blast.

She just wanted to live.

That was a message.

I just want to live.

Even though the transplant hadn't been successful, Joanna was well enough to take her exams and get into college.

There, she discovered her love of journalism.

She used to say, when I'm better, I'm going to start a newspaper and it's going to be called Good News Only.

It's going to just be a newspaper full of good news that people will want to read and not

be drawn into doom and gloom.

Wouldn't that be a wonderful word?

As the campaign continued to grow, so did Angela's involvement.

I

started to work for the Anthony Nolan Trust.

I was a donor recruitment manager.

I then started running clinics where people could come along

and put their name down to be on the register.

everybody was coming to join the register, coming in their thousands.

It was intense work, and Angela says it couldn't have been accomplished without Lindsay's help.

The woman they met at the fundraiser was becoming an integral part of their lives.

Lindsay went above and beyond on Joanna's campaign, and she meant business.

She was ex-military, had been in the Navy, and so she had that kind of great organizational skills.

And

she was charming she attracted people she was a good fundraiser

because we were running a campaign together the relationship became pretty intense

lindsay and angela became fast friends

you know the relationship grew organically She would phone me during our work hours and then that would expand

and we wouldn't just talk work.

work we just kicked off we just kicked off really well and we laughed at the same things we talked about the same things we both had families that were very similar very close loving families they had a lot in common and lindsay made her feel less alone lindsay didn't have a child with cancer or a personal stake in growing the donor registry, but she was passionate about the work and the people she was helping she just had an aura

and

we both had a common goal in increasing the register and helping people and she cared about joanna

as the year went on lindsay became a part of their family our families quickly became intertwined.

I absolutely adored her mother and her sisters.

Lindsay and Angela started calling each other first thing in the morning, every morning.

We were both early birds.

Either she would text me or I would text her saying, are you awake yet?

And I don't know what we even spoke about.

You know, when you have a relationship and you can be in the phone for an hour and then you have to phone back in an hour's time.

Oh, I forgot to tell you.

I could speak to her five times a day.

That was the kind of relationship we had.

You didn't get one without the other.

It was like cheese and pickle.

The two women founded an annual ball together as a fundraiser for the registry.

By that point, Lindsay felt like a sister.

It's hard to describe just how intense a friendship it was.

I feel it was always because we had

that goal to save Joanna's life.

Joanna herself was determined to live and she was open to trying anything.

She spoke to doctors about complementary therapies.

Should she have reflexology?

Should she have massage?

And 30 years ago, doctors scoffed and rolled their eyes and said, yeah, you could try that if you like.

But Joanna was ahead of her time.

She believed in Western medicine and she also believed in the power of rest, food, and joy.

While they kept waiting for the perfect match, Joanna decided the best treatment would be living her life to the fullest.

She was gutsy.

She would do things like skydive.

She went scuba diving.

She'd been living with cancer for almost 10 years.

When she was 24, she planned to backpack around the world.

Her doctors cleared her to go so long as she had blood work done every few weeks.

And Joanna took the chance.

She went all over.

She was in Thailand, all these kind of places, Fiji.

I mean, bear in mind, Joanna was a tiny, tiny, little thin thing.

Her backpack was almost as big as her.

It was huge.

And while she was

in Australia,

I got a phone call.

to say she had been admitted.

She started feeling short of breath and it turned out she had a collapsed lung.

Her lungs are deteriorating.

Eventually they managed to get her on a flight and get her back

to

Scotland and then we discovered that she actually needed a heart and lung transplant.

Everyone knew what it meant.

This was the beginning the end.

And she never ever got that

heart-long transplant.

Joanna died at home with her mom and sisters by her side.

She was 27.

It was just all so unfair.

Everything's unfair, though, isn't it?

You know, with disease, it's never fair.

But

she just so desperately wanted to live.

Angela immediately threw herself into planning a celebration of life for Joanna.

I remember saying to somebody, this is the last thing I get to do for my child.

The service would be joyful and vibrant, just like Joanna.

We asked

everybody not to wear black, to wear very colorful clothing.

From a tiny little girl, Joanna

loved rainbows.

As a toddler, she would scream when she saw a rainbow.

She was fascinated.

And

when

she

was very ill and she knew she was dying, she said to me,

when we can no longer be together,

I will send you a sign and we can meet in the middle of rainbow.

As they planned the service, Lindsay was there to help, just like always.

Lindsay actually asked if she could redo a eulogy.

I was like, oh my goodness,

could you do that?

And she was like, I really, yeah, I could.

I want to.

And I was like, oh,

that's beautiful.

Even in this dark time, Angela felt like she was surrounded by love, that she was supported by good good and caring people.

I thought Lindsay McCallum was one of these people.

And she wasn't.

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After Joanna passed away, Angela leaned on her family and friends, especially her best friend Lindsay.

At this point, they'd been best friends for nearly a decade.

Their daily morning calls became a lifeline for Angela.

After Joanna passed,

you know, Lindsay would be the first person

I would speak to in the morning

and she would message me and say a yup or I would if I was awake I would message a yup and we would chat and

she would just

laugh with me about the funny things Joanna would get up to and the funny things that she would say

and

it lifted my spirits and it was just she was always there.

She was so supportive.

Never heard her cry rat enough.

Never cried.

But I just thought that she was just composed.

Their friendship went on like this for another seven years.

During this time, Angela was reflecting a lot on Joanna and how she was always looking for holistic treatments, ways to make herself feel better and find joy.

She thought about how Joanna used to say, There should be a place that people go and they can just sample all these things and

find out what you can do to bring more joy, more peace, more relaxation, less stress.

One day when Lindsay and Angela were on the phone, they came up with an idea together.

A charity that would provide exactly that.

Seven years after Joanna passed away,

Lindsay and I decided, in her memory, to launch Rainbow Valley to help other people.

Rainbow Valley.

A nod to Joanna's vibrancy and her love of rainbows.

They would offer a two-day residential program for people with cancer.

The course would include coaching on mindfulness, diet, and emotional well-being.

Rainbow Valley is not a life-saving charity.

Removaly is a life-changing charity and it doesn't matter how long you have

to live.

It's what can you do to take back control of a diagnosis of cancer

and live a more joyous life.

Luckily Lindsay knew how to start a charity and she was eager to help.

She had 17-18 years experience as a fundraiser for a big organisation

so she was obviously well respected within the sector.

And I felt she had the expertise.

Joanna gave us the vision, Joanna gave us our mission.

I was the storyteller and

Lindsay was the expertise behind pulling it together.

They applied for charitable status and found experts to lead their courses.

And then in a twist of fate, Lindsay was was laid off from her job at the Anthony Nolan Trust.

So she became Rainbow Valley's first official employee.

It made sense that Lindsay,

you know, after being made redundant,

worked for Rainbow Valley and we

pulled a board together, a board of trustees, and we took advice from Lindsay.

We took her lead because she was the one with 20 years experience.

I was so grateful that we were able to do something like this together in Joanna's memory.

I thought it was all meant to be.

Under Lindsay's leadership, the charity really came together.

In 2012, Rainbow Valley officially began running courses.

She was the head of the charity.

She was involved in the day-to-day running of everything.

I

trusted her implicitly.

Implicitly.

A few years into managing the charity together, the friends faced their first real conflict.

Angela had started to question some of Lindsay's choices.

I felt she was spending money on something that wasn't necessary

and it was a bit of a waste of resources and I spoke to Lindsay about this

and I remember saying to her this is extremely difficult for me

because

you're my best friend and I I adore you but this is a business conversation and

I don't feel this is

the way

we should be running.

And Lindsay didn't take it well.

It was the first time I had ever seen.

I don't want to over-exaggerate and say aggression,

but it was like she was angry.

I saw it as not a fallout, but we disagreed on something, which we hadn't done before.

But it was more than a disagreement.

It was a turning point.

After that conversation, Lindsay became cold and she came to Angela with some feedback of her own.

She started telling me that people didn't like me and that I was causing upset on the course.

I was upsetting the staff and I was upsetting the attendees and I was creating a negative atmosphere.

And of course, I loved her and I didn't want to upset her.

I didn't want to upset anybody on the course,

but she had me convinced that

I was creating this negative atmosphere.

Angela was taken aback, but she trusted Lindsay's judgment.

She didn't want to be a problem or get in the way of their mission.

And she told me that I shouldn't come to the courses anymore, that I wasn't being

useful,

so

I kind of stepped back from that.

She wanted to do what was best for the charity, but Angela was hurt.

And to make matters worse, their friendship was changing.

During that time,

our relationship really deteriorated.

And I was very confused, you know, because Lindsay would turn quite nasty at times.

And it just wasn't like her you know i would try to speak to her and say what's wrong and she'd say nothing nothing

so she had me feeling

i was imagining it lindsay stopped calling in the mornings i would then be phoning her and she would ignore my calls and then when i would say to her i phoned you she would say well i'm never getting a missed call from you

then one night Angela opened her door to find all three of her daughters standing in front of her.

The girls all came to my house one evening and said,

you really need to get help.

You're not happy.

Angela knew Lindsay had something to do with this, and her daughters confirmed it.

Lindsay had approached them and raised her concerns.

She was saying to them things like, Your mom really needs help.

I know she's had a lot of trauma in her life, but she really needs help and that I was going off my nut.

And I was like,

absolutely not.

Now Lindsay was interfering in her relationship with her daughters.

It started to feel like it was orchestrated.

But to what end?

Angela couldn't figure it out.

And on top of that,

I felt she was pushing me out,

telling me that I was interfering in in the day-to-day running of the charity and that she ran the charity.

But one day, Angela stopped by a Rainbow Valley course that Lindsay was running.

She stood in the back and kept to herself.

Lindsay was giving the introduction to the group.

Typically, they shared Joanna's story at the start of every course.

But this time, Lindsay skipped over it.

I remember going to a day course,

and normally when we have our intro slides we talk about what Rainbow Valley is, the inspiration and we have picture of Joanna up and we talk about this is where it started.

This was a dream of Joanna's but this time

she didn't mention Joanna in the course.

I said to her after it

was there a reason why we stopped talking about Joanna?

And she said, because I don't really think it's relevant.

Angela was at a loss for words.

She didn't recognize Lindsay or where she was taking Rainbow Valley.

And then

in 2022,

January,

she said to me,

there's a problem.

Lindsay said COVID had taken a toll on the charity's bottom line.

And she said, we've managed to bob along because we got some grants to run the online courses, but now we're through all that and it's not viable.

We don't have enough money.

The charity's going to close.

She announced this at a board meeting

and

They all kind of looked at the figures and were like, we're in trouble here.

It was bleak.

Lindsay explained that the best option was to wind down the charity at the end of the year.

I said, wait a wee moment.

We cannot make this decision and walk out of the room saying that's it, we're folding.

Give us three weeks.

Let's reconvene in three weeks.

And if we all go away and speak to

everybody and anybody and see if we can find a company, a trust fund, somebody that will save us, somebody that will give us a big donation.

Angela started working the phones.

Within a week, someone found a donor willing to help get Rainbow Valley back on track.

I was so relieved and so excited.

I met Lindsay before

the board meeting,

and

I thought she would have been

elated,

but

she was like,

oh, that's great.

Instead of celebrating, Lindsay announced that she would be stepping down from the charity for good.

She said, I'm leaving Rainbow Valley.

I don't want to do fundraising anymore.

I'm going to resign.

On her last day, the staff took her out to lunch and bought her flowers.

She and Angela said a cordial goodbye.

Angela felt like it was a new chapter for the charity.

The only thing left to do was close the accounts Lindsay used.

Years ago, she set up a separate bank account for their annual gala.

Angela knew about the account, but she wasn't involved in managing it.

I had mentioned this other account that was for the ball, which Lindsay had advised that we set up as a friend's account.

I knew that she had done this when she was with the Anthony Nolan Trust previously.

So I just thought, well, that's how it's done.

The bank account Lindsay set up was called the Friends of Rainbow Valley.

And the

treasurer said, oh, that account, is it closed?

And I was like, well, I don't know.

And she said, well, it needs closed or the name changed.

So Angela went to the bank and got hard copies of the account statements to take back to the office and reconcile.

Angela's adult daughter Kendall was working for Rainbow Valley at the time, helping close out the books for the end of the year.

And she said, Mum, come back and look at this.

Why is all this getting paid out to Lindsay?

Why?

Why is all these payments going out to Lindsay?

Angela went to look and she saw dozens of transfers.

Small transfers, a few hundred dollars each.

But the closer they looked, they realized it quickly totaled a huge sum of money.

And it was all made out to one person,

Lindsay McCallum.

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You've got images that matter.

Whether you're a photographer, a business updating your followers, or just someone who wants to share life's moments the right way.

So why hand them over to Big Tech's One Size Fits All Cloud?

Big Tech companies are the fast food of photo sharing.

Quick, easy, but not exactly gourmet.

And what about your data integrity?

jalbum.net is the photo sharing solution that puts you in control.

Want to host images on your own server?

You can.

Want a layout that actually reflects your brand or style?

JAlbum's customizability is unmatched.

And if you're a business sharing regular photo updates with your audience, this tool was built with you in mind.

But don't just take our word for it.

Over 230 million web pages have been created with JAlbum, and it's got stellar reviews on TrustPilot to prove it.

So head to jalbum.net to download your free software and try it out.

When you're ready to upgrade, use the code PODCAST for 20% off.

Your photos, your layout, your rules.

JAlbum.net.

Get Family Fresh Favorites for just $5 all week long in the Safeway Deli.

This week in the Safeway Deli, members get items like Chicken Tender's original or Nashville Hot for just $5 per pound and 20 count chicken nuggets for $5 each.

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And get All-American foot-long sandwiches or 48-ounce Reeser's American Classic salads like original potato or macaroni salad for $5 each.

Visit Safeway.com or head in store for more deals.

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As Angela and her daughter Kendall were going through the end-of-year finances for Rainbow Valley, they found something alarming:

dozens of payments to Lindsay from a bank account that only she used.

And she said,

Why is all this getting paid out to Lindsay?

And I said, it'll be expenses.

And she said, no, look at the dates.

Why would she have expenses March, April, May, June?

It's every month and sometimes it's twice a day.

I was really confused and Kendall just looked at me and I was like, no, she's been horrible to me.

But she's not a thief.

I know that our family are very wealthy.

She's very comfortable.

And she's not a thief.

No,

not a chance.

It's true that Lindsay's husband came from a wealthy family and she'd been collecting a salary from Rainbow Valley.

She didn't need money.

Angela felt like there had to be another explanation.

So she reached out to Lindsay to clear it up.

I had sent in a message saying, I'm confused.

Why all these payments are going out to you?

And are they expenses?

And the amounts don't add up.

She says it was expenses.

I was just paying things in drips and drabs.

And I wanted to believe that.

And I came back into the office and I said to Kendall, it's fine.

It's just expenses.

And Kendall said,

bullshit.

Bullshit.

She says, open your eyes and look at her properly.

She needed answers.

So she called Lindsay back.

And

she was just coming up with, you know, lots of different excuses.

And then she said, well, I should have told you this.

But a good few years ago, Rainbow Valley was in financial trouble.

And

I put a lump sum in to dig us out a hole.

And I should have told you about it.

And I said, how much?

How much did you put in?

And she said, oh, I can't remember.

But that was me trying to claw the money back.

And I said, No, I says, That's not transparent.

You cannot do that.

Bring in all your statements, bring in all your bank accounts, and you and I will sit at this table and we will go through everything and we'll make everything transparent so that every penny is accounted for.

And she said,

I can't.

So Angela ended the call.

She needed time to think.

And at that point, you know,

I'm disgusted.

We packed up and we drove home.

And the whole way home, my head was just spinning.

And I said to my daughter, just let's keep this low-key just now because I need to work out.

what my next steps are.

Before she could wrap her head around this, Lindsay called again,

this time with a new tactic.

She phoned and she said, please, Angela, don't take this any further.

And she said, look,

I'll give you £20,000.

Just go to the bank and close it.

And I said, how long has this been going on?

And she said, oh, no, no, no, it was just that year.

It was just that one year.

That was it.

That was it.

You know, it was okay.

It's okay.

There's nothing else.

Angela didn't believe her.

As far as I was concerned, she was trying to bribe me.

This wasn't sloppy bookkeeping.

It was theft.

So then I phoned my daughter and I said,

we're going to the police.

I had to go to the police.

They wanted to gather all the evidence they could.

So they searched every page of their financial records, starting with the year the charity was founded.

And my two daughters went through it highlighting everything and kind of trying to get a tally.

I could hardly chew my own fingernails.

I was in such a state.

The bank statements revealed: Lindsay had been stealing money from Rainbow Valley for years.

She had taken it bit by bit: 300 here, 200 there.

And slowly, those little numbers started adding up.

In the end, they discovered Lindsay stole 86,000 pounds.

That's 116,000 US dollars.

The reason nobody had noticed was because Lindsay was soliciting donations straight to the Friends of Rainbow Valley account.

And she never reported those donations to the organization.

So of course, the donors thought their money was going to the charity.

In reality, It was going to Lindsay's slush fund.

Nobody else would know that thousand pounds ever existed

because she would be the one that would be writing a letter of thanks.

So she was so deceitful.

And these are people, this is money from people that she would know.

Lindsay had robbed their donors.

She'd robbed cancer patients and their families.

She'd even tried to close Rainbow Valley forever.

It was like a jigsaw all coming together.

It was making sense why she was treating me the way she was, why she had to get rid of me, why she wanted to leave Rainbow Valley, why she was gaslighting me.

She had hoped that the charity would fold and all the bank accounts would be closed and it would be all gone and she would have got away with it.

Angela realized her best friend of 20 years wasn't the person she thought she was.

When it all came to light,

I was breathed.

The person

I thought she was for me had died.

She no longer existed.

And

that was extremely difficult and intense.

Angela walked into the police station with hundreds of papers in hand.

And I have to say the detective was so good because I was on there.

I was just a wreck when he would come in.

You know, I was just a blubbering wreck.

And he was just very calm and kind and explained everything as he was going along.

And he warned me, he said, this will take about two years to get to court.

And I was like, no way, how can that be?

He was right.

It took the police a year to investigate the case.

A week after Angela confronted her, Lindsay paid £25,000 into the Rainbow Valley account in an attempt to cover up what she'd done.

She didn't know that Angela had already gone to the police.

So she thought she had got away with it.

You know, time was passing and she was living her best life.

Their son was getting married.

They went away to Cyprus for this big laughish wedding,

as if there was nothing wrong.

For Angela, the year of the investigation was an emotional and unsettling time.

Sometimes she had to remind herself that this was really happening.

I would get into a panic sometimes and think, oh my god, have we got this wrong?

And I would have to go back into the office and take out all the evidence and look at it

to remind me

and say, no, it really happened.

It really has happened.

On October 30th, 2023, it got very real for Angela and for Lindsay.

I remember the day she was arrested.

I'll never forget it as long as I'll live.

I remember it because I was driving home from my mother's, and the detective phoned me and asked me to pull in.

And he said,

I've brought her in for questioning and I've charged her.

And he said, Are you okay?

And I said, Yeah.

But I was shaking.

She thought she'd feel a sense of justice.

But really, she just felt heartbreak.

Bear in mind, I still loved her.

Love is not like a light switch.

You don't ever switch it off.

I love the bones of her.

She was a fabulous friend.

She was there for me in some of my darkest, darkest hours.

And then I was confused.

She stood and read a eulogy at Joanna's funeral.

How could you do that?

How could you do that?

But Angela's heartbreak turned to rage when the police uncovered new information.

It turned out, Lindsay's fraud didn't start with Rainbow Valley.

She had also stolen from the Anthony Nolan Trust, the place where Angela and Lindsay first met.

And the police charged her with that fraud, too.

I think that was the point where I felt angry

then because I thought,

you're a serial thief.

And it's just left me wondering,

did she ever have any love for

any of us?

she worked for the Anthony Nolan Trust when I met her, and Joanna needed a bone marrow transplant.

And I questioned: Did she see Joanna could raise a lot of money?

Were we just a meal ticket for her?

And that hurts like hell.

Not because she did that to me, but because she maybe did that with Joanna.

It's an unanswerable question, but they'd been friends for decades.

Angela knew Lindsay, and what really motivated her?

Her husband's family are extremely wealthy and

elderly.

So he is in for a big, big, big inheritance.

Personally, I just don't think it was coming quick enough to her.

And her vanity

and greed took over.

On the day of Lindsay's Lindsay's sentencing hearing,

the court opened and she

had to walk past us

and she stuck her head in the air, stuck her nose in the air and looked in the opposite direction.

You know, she was very close, had to walk right past me.

And I recognised her fully,

but felt I didn't know her.

Lindsay ended up pleading guilty to two fraud charges.

She knew that you get a a third of your sentence, so she got four years reduced to three years for pleading guilty.

Lindsay was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to repay both charities.

She did make that repayment, but she only served a quarter of her sentence.

But justice looks different for Angela.

She wanted honesty and remorse, but that never came.

I'll never, ever, ever get over it.

I'll never

understand it.

I would love to sit in a room with her and just say, please be honest.

Tell me why and tell me what was going through your head.

I would love to have a conversation with her.

Not for me to call her names or to call her out on anything, but just to try and unjumble my brain.

I miss the person I thought she was.

I really do.

Even though Lindsay's deception devastated Angela, she isn't willing to let it change her values.

I refuse to live my life not trusting people.

With what I've been through with Joanna,

I know there are more good people in the world than there are bad.

And

that's what I hang on to.

I've got seven beautiful grandchildren.

None of them met Joanna, but they all know her and they talk about her.

When they see rainbows,

if there's a reflection comes into the house and it's bouncing off, they'll say, oh, Auntie Jo's here.

Angela lost her best friend, but she didn't lose Rainbow Valley.

And her decision to bring Lindsay's crime to light in some ways has been a positive.

Today, Rainbow Valley has more interest and support than ever.

And Angela dreams of building a permanent center for the charity.

Joanna's legacy has become part of Angela's legacy too.

I want this to have longevity and

be meaningful for people

way after I've gone.

I want it to keep growing and flourishing and being there to help people through, you know, a very difficult period of their life.

We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question: Why do you want to share your story?

I'm telling this story mainly because you asked.

But

Rainbow Valley was Joanna's dream.

Lindsay tried to turn it into a nightmare.

And I wanted the world to know what she had done and who she really was.

But I also want people to realize that they can survive the worst times of their life.

And

Joanna taught me to stand tall

because that's what she did.

If she could do it, I've got to.

You know, when you have a rainbow, it's guaranteed the sun will come out

eventually.

On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly,

never,

ever did I see that coming.

Ever.

I truly thought I was going in to help someone else.

And then

I'm being questioned.

What do you mean?

I'm his wife.

This isn't a crime.

We weren't a crime.

If you would like to reach out to the betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com.

That's betrayal, p-od at gmail.com.

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A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison.

Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Written and produced by Monique Laborde.

Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Associate producers are Kristen Melcuri and Caitlin Golden.

Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.

Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.

Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins.

Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Music library provided by MIBE Music.

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This is an iHeart podcast.