Brandi | Betrayal Weekly

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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.

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

Hindsight's a powerful thing and we share the stories so that hopefully somebody will see it and the light bulb might go off.

That's Brandy Dredge.

Her story is unlike anything we've ever heard before and she's never found anyone with the same experience.

It's about a betrayal that only came into focus with hindsight.

And it's the story of a surprising legal intervention that forced Brandy to reconsider her entire life.

As you're listening, you may think you know where the story is going, but everything here is a little more complicated than it seems.

So let's start at the beginning.

When she was growing up in the 80s in Missouri.

You know, a lot of home-cooked meals, a lot of playing in the neighborhood until the streetlights came on and then you had to come home.

Growing up, her parents struggled to make ends meet.

My dad was a hunter.

I mean, he grew up real country, so you went out and got the deer deer and the rabbits and the squirrel, and that's what filled our freezer as far as meat.

As a treat, her parents would take her and her brother to Dairy Queen.

But to afford it,

we had to go out and collect night crawlers, the worms from the ground.

So we'd go out and we'd collect night crawlers and then you'd fill them up in the Folgers can.

Mom would drive us to the bait shop and then you'd watch them get weighed out and then that determined how much money you were going to get.

So it was always good if you could get like $20 because then that meant we would be able to get blizzards.

She grew up in a culture where wives served their husbands.

And that was the dynamic she observed in her own household.

My dad, by the time he got home, he, you know, expected his meals to be there.

When his tea glass would be empty, you know, you just tap the tea glass on the counter.

And then that meant I need more tea.

And then she would go fill up the tea.

She absorbed important lessons from her parents' relationship.

The biggest one was that her purpose in life was to make a man happy.

Just all that performance-based love

that isn't really love, but it is what I felt that you were supposed to do.

Most of Brandy's childhood was spent playing outside with the neighborhood kids, playing house or recreating TV shows, like the dating game.

And we'd have the boys get on the one side of the house and

be on the other corner and kind of ask them questions.

In high school, she joined the cheerleading squad.

It made her feel like somebody and like she was part of something.

Brandy had a lot of time to herself because her dad worked double shifts and her mom was busy managing the household.

Some of us were more rebellious than others and did the sneaking around behind our parents' backs.

Brandy would sneak out with her high school boyfriends.

I seem to kind of gravitate towards that bad boy image.

In her sophomore year, she met a boy who wasn't like the rest.

He was not a bad boy at all.

Man, just really treated me like I was gold and special.

I

never felt like he wanted just a body.

I felt like, wow, he really cared about me as a person.

When he left and went off to college, Randy still had another two years of high school.

And then

one day I was getting ready to go to Cheerleadia game and he had called and said that he wanted to break up with me.

And man, I was devastated.

So devastated.

Because I, yeah, I kind of thought that he's the one.

But my friends were there to pick me up for the game and they were like trying to cheer me up.

You know, it's okay.

We're going to go to this party afterwards at this apartment.

She agreed to go with her friends, even though on the inside, she was crushed about the breakup.

She felt abandoned.

The party was at an apartment where two high schoolers were living with an older guy.

I would hear about this apartment because some boys at our school had lived with this man.

And these boys had kind of rebelled from their parents.

And so they were living with him.

So I would hear these rumors about this apartment.

But up until this point, I had never been there.

The rumors were about a good-looking older guy who lived there.

And she was curious.

It was kind of almost like this celebrity.

When she got there, she met Gary Richard, a man so infamous, he had two first names.

When he walked in, I mean, he was stunning.

Yeah, black hair and it's like hung to his jawline and he was muscular and had these these blue eyes that

were very physically fit, everything.

When I saw him, like that was it.

I just wanted to keep knowing more about him and I wanted to interact with him.

The sting of her breakup was still so fresh, but all of a sudden, the prospect of this older guy made her forget the pain for a minute.

She was instantly intrigued.

Her eyes followed him.

And I could see from where I was sitting in the living room, he was in the bathroom and he was starting to shave his face.

And so I went down there and was like, I want to shave your face.

It was forward, flirtatious even.

But Brandy was reeling from the rejection of the first guy who treated her well, the one she thought she would spend the rest of her life with.

Now Gary Richard was making her feel seen and wanted.

That attraction was just

something I couldn't fight against.

I guess I didn't want to fight against it.

I mean,

I just wanted him no matter what.

Age didn't even come into the equation.

I knew he was older,

but I didn't know what that age was.

She was 16.

And she found out later Gary Richard was 24.

At the time, the age difference didn't even cross her mind.

I mean, he just looked like he hung the moon.

He was.

But whether she thought about it in the moment or not, his age was a part of Gary Richards' appeal.

When you come across somebody that seems like they've had all these life experiences, you feel like, wow, I haven't did anything.

I haven't even made it out of my hometown.

He worked as a model for local businesses and bridal shows.

He had multiple jobs and a car.

For 16-year-old Brandy, he was the epitome of cool.

After the night they met, she and Gary Richard became an item.

It wasn't like a conversation of, hey, would you like to go out?

Would you like to be my girlfriend?

We were just together.

I would lie to my parents a lot about where I was going.

And I would end up staying the night with him.

When she was with him, she felt like a grown-up.

He DJ'd at a club in town.

He would get me in, and so I'd set up in the little DJ booth and then he'd bring me these butterscotch drinks from the bar and

we would dance and

we had so much fun dancing.

He always seemed in control.

Like he knew what to do next and how to make it happen.

I mean, he had this way about him, the way he would talk to people.

He had this charm, like he could make people do whatever he wanted them to do.

The other thing about him was he always seemed like he had wealth, like he just carried himself in a way where money never seemed to be an object for him.

And for me, as 16, coming from my home where we're eating the deer and the squirrel out of the freezer, I felt like I had struck gold.

One night, Brandy's parents found out she'd been sneaking out and lying about where she was.

So she came clean about Gary Richard.

I'm declaring, you know, that I love him.

And at this point, you know, we had only been together just a few months.

But, you know, professing my love for him, you know, and you're not going to be able to keep me from him and all these things.

Her parents disapproved, but they didn't try to stop the relationship.

What Brandy didn't tell them were the rumors she'd heard about her new boyfriend.

He had gotten locked up.

He didn't graduate from high school, got his GED in prison, had ended up being in prison a couple different times for just different things.

He told Brandy that he had spent a few months in prison, but it was on a trumped-up theft charge.

And in the same breath, he explained, he had a hard life.

His mom had abandoned him as a child, and his siblings and their grandmother raised them.

She felt for him.

Most of all, she felt like she could fix him.

And then, four months after meeting him,

I got pregnant.

She and Gary bought a pregnancy test to confirm it, and it was positive.

The whole time, he stayed calm and collected.

He just so confidently, like he always does, just knew what to do.

He just always had a plan.

His plan was to start a life together and build a family.

That's what Brandy wanted too.

I knew as long as I had him, I would be okay.

Like, I have you, I love you, this will be our family, and we're going to be okay.

As long as I have him, my life's going to be good no matter what.

Next, Brandi had to tell her parents.

She wrote them a note and left it on her nightstand.

I was scared because I thought they would disown me.

You know, my dad was scary.

Of course, they were upset,

but it wasn't the reaction that I had expected.

Her dad offered to get her on his insurance plan and help her through the pregnancy in exchange for staying at home.

But Brandy wanted to be with Gary Richard.

I wanted to move in with Gary Richard.

I just wanted this perfect little family.

We'll all be together.

And that was all I wanted anyways, was just to be with him.

So I did, but I still promised my dad I would finish high school and that I would graduate.

Brandy started her senior year while she was pregnant with her son.

The summer before my senior year, I turned in my cheerleading uniforms.

And then I turned 17.

After that, she moved in with him at his apartment.

And then a few months later,

when I was eight months pregnant, pregnant, I heard a knock at the door.

And so I went to the door and there were two detectives standing there.

They asked me if Gary Richard was home.

They were investigating Gary Richard for theft.

Not knowing what to do, Randy let them in.

where they collected evidence and thanked her for her cooperation.

You see that stuff on the movies, but to have that happening right before your eyes, it's just shocking.

And then Gary Richard

comes home and

he's not scared like I am.

He's just calm and confident.

He denied he'd stolen anything, and Brandy didn't hear from the police again about the theft.

So she assumed they closed the case and life moved on in a big way.

A few weeks later, their son son was born.

Holding him,

it's just incredible.

It's that kind of love that you can't, I can't, it's hard to describe.

It's like my heart's setting on the outside of my body, and I'm holding it.

She made her son a promise.

What I did know then, you know, even at that young age, was that I was going to be the best mom I could be for him,

that I was always going to be there for him, and that I I just wanted him to be safe.

Sitting in that hospital room holding her new baby, Brandy was blissfully unaware of the chaos that would follow them.

A few days after they got home from the hospital, Gary Richard was charged with theft.

He told Brandy he was innocent, but he was already on probation.

So his lawyer wanted to show the judge that Gary Richard was now a family man.

They all went to the courthouse together, where he entered a not guilty plea.

The attorney then proceeds to say, if we had got married before the court date,

it would really help kind of show the judge, you know, that he's this change man, new baby, new wife can hopefully help lessen any sentence or anything.

That was the plan.

The plan was we were going to get married before he would go in front of the judge.

So the wedding planning began.

She started calling around to churches in their area.

And when I had called one of the churches, the preacher wouldn't marry anybody that's under the age of 18.

Randy was baffled.

Before this moment, she hadn't given any thought to their age difference.

That didn't make any sense to me because I'm thinking, okay, you know, you're just being kind of closed-minded and didn't want to get married at your church anyways.

I didn't realize in our state, to get married under the age of 18, you had to have parental consent.

So she went to her parents.

I begged my parents to sign.

I used all stops when I'm banging them fleeting, you know, that this is the right thing to do for my family.

So then finally, my mom gave in.

She went up there and signed the marriage license, and we got married.

Randy was 17.

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After Brandi had her son, she and Gary Richard got married.

They hadn't planned on it, but on his attorney's advice, they decided it would be the best thing for the family.

Randy also worked hard to graduate high school.

She wanted to make sure she had a degree and could make money to provide for her family.

She didn't want to become another statistic about teenage pregnancy.

She wanted to defy the odds.

It just kind of felt like this challenge of, yeah, I'm going to show you that that's not going to be me.

But despite her efforts to start a new life together, Gary Richards' old habits followed them.

He ended up taking a plea deal on the theft charge.

When it came to sentencing, their plan to get married and show that Gary Richard was a family man won favor with the judge.

The ploy worked and it did give him supervised probation, which is what we had wanted.

We didn't want him to go to prison.

So

that was a win.

And the attorney did his job.

You know, he kept him from going back to prison.

It's like, okay, this time we're done.

Now my family's done with all this and we can move forward.

But as time went on, Brandy noticed that Gary Richard was still hanging out with teenagers.

And it's like, I'm at home and what are you doing, you know, hanging out with them?

Oh, well, you know, so-and-so and they wanted to hang out after work.

And some of those kids were younger than myself at the time.

It was never people his own age.

I guess I'll say it like that.

Very few.

people were his own age.

I think you kind of believe what you

want to believe.

You know, when you're looking at somebody through the rose-colored glasses,

red flags are invisible.

For Brandy, their relationship had become bigger than the two of them.

Now it was about their son and what was best for him.

Four years into their marriage, they had saved enough money to move out of the apartment where they met and buy a house together.

I was just shy of 22 and started working at the local hospital.

That I was excited about because that kind of felt like a big girl job.

Gary Richard seemed to be growing up too.

Their new home became a place for them to host family celebrations and start traditions of their own.

We used to host Halloween parties.

We hosted New Year's parties.

He DJ'd our parties, you know, that they made the best, funnest garage.

house parties.

Everybody loved our parties and loved decorating.

You know, my mom and sister would come over and help decorate.

I mean, it was just the whole production.

Gary Richard even organized Halloween hay rides for all the kids in the neighborhood.

He would hook up the little trailer thing and we would do the bells of hay and have the hot chocolate and drive the kids around the neighborhood.

That was cool and everybody loved it.

And he really showed up as a father to their son.

like volunteering as a little league coach and teaching him how to ride a bike.

I remember watching watching him run up the road, you know, like when they do that, where they hold the back of the seat.

Or one time he built him a bunk bed.

My son had always wanted that.

And so that was, yeah.

When I saw that, like him being this dad that almost seemed picturesque, the dad liked it would be on the TV.

All I ever wanted was my family to look like that.

In those first few years, their marriage felt strong.

He would say, like, you're the only one for me and he would tell me how much he loved my family.

You know that it felt like the family he never had.

You know that's why I stayed.

That's why I loved him.

That's why because it was my family.

No matter how it looked or what else happened

you stay because that's your person and

you just do life with them.

The main struggle in their marriage was around money.

The couple was constantly under financial stress.

When they had first started dating, he'd made it seem like he had money.

But she quickly discovered that wasn't really the case.

Okay, he doesn't have the kind of money he's making it out to seem.

Their bills and loans were piling up.

Everything's robbed Peter to pay Paul.

And then he would jump jobs and there wasn't that consistent.

income always.

So then it was like me trying to kind of figure out, okay, how are we going to pay this one, this disconnect notice?

And And so then I'm trying to research and find the ways, you know, always kind of fighting to survive.

As their marriage progressed, Gary Richards started putting Brandy down, insulting her.

The snide little comments, you know, you make fun of my voice, you make fun of my stretch marks, you know, the different little jabs here and there that I accepted it as that's just who he is.

You either love him or you hate him.

That's just who he is.

You know, like he's, he's gonna make jokes about me.

This is the sacrifice that we make for the family.

This is the sacrifice that you make as his person.

This wasn't the same guy she met when she was 16, who made her feel like the center of his world.

Brandy was always trying to get that version of him back.

One day, nine years into their marriage, they were taking their son and his friend out to celebrate.

The kids had gotten straight A's in the fourth grade.

As the family van was backing out of the driveway, they were interrupted.

There was two sheriff cars blocking our drive.

And, you know, so I look at him, obviously, you know, like, what are they, you know, but you got kids in the car looking at you.

So, you know, it's like some of our communication was more like just looking at each other, you know, saying stuff without saying stuff because you're trying to now not want to scare these kids.

Gary Richard got out of the car to speak with the police while Brandy stayed with the kids.

And then he walked back towards the car and then I got out and he told me that they were serving him a restraining order and that there was some allegations made against him and they wanted him to go to the station because they needed to ask him some questions.

Gary Richard told Brandy he had no idea what this was about, but he was willing to cooperate.

He left Brandy and the kids.

and headed to the police station.

He called from the gel later and told me the teenager had accused him of touching her inappropriately and had told her mom.

Her mom went to file the restraining order against him, and then that's what started this investigation.

The allegations came from a 15-year-old girl.

Gary Richard denied it.

He told Brandy it was a misunderstanding.

He told me that he didn't know why she said it.

He said that maybe she thinks I'm cute.

Maybe she made up a story about me to look cool in front of her friends.

She believed him, even though she had a gut feeling that something was wrong.

It's not normal.

None of this is normal.

Then Thanksgiving rolled around.

They had planned to spend the holiday with Brandy's aunt.

And he acted very different.

He didn't want to come.

He didn't want to go.

That night, Gary Richard called Brandy and told her he was camping out for Black Friday deals.

So Brandy was home alone with the house to herself.

And something that I can only describe is just this divine kind of guidance.

I started to replan all the ways he didn't seem like his self.

Brandy's intuition told her to check his laptop.

I was able to get into his computer.

And when it pops up, there are communications with teenage girls and there's photos of people.

She was seeing evidence with her own eyes.

Suddenly, the allegation from the 15-year-old girl no longer seemed like a misunderstanding.

I can no longer believe him.

So at the time, I thought, okay, I'm going to print out these papers because if I have this, he can't deny it.

So I printed all those things out and knew that at that point, okay, now my exit plan is going to begin of how to

get him out of our lives.

She hid the printed pages in a cabinet.

Then she gathered up all his belongings, packed them into her car, and drove to his workplace.

And pulled up outside the dorm.

And then I unloaded his stuff.

And then I called him and told him it was starting to rain and he might want to get his stuff.

And so for me, powerful moment because usually he would have been able to talk me out of that.

And he didn't.

He didn't at all.

And I told him he wasn't coming back to our house.

You know, I was firm in it.

I was powerful.

And, you know, it felt like for one of the first times, you know, like I'm actually in control.

And she finally had the proof.

She had the pictures of what he was doing online.

But when it came time for her to bring that evidence to the police, she went to grab the pages and found that they were missing.

I don't know where the papers went.

He had came back into the house and flipped the water bed and and those papers were gone.

While she was out, Gary Richard went to the house, found the photos she'd hidden, and destroyed her bed.

She needed to figure out her next move.

Even with him out of the house, she no longer felt safe.

I come out of work one day, my tire's flat.

Later, I would find out he flattened the tire.

Another time, she was driving through a busy intersection when her car seized up and died in the middle of the road.

Only to find out that he had put metal shavings into the oil, which then caused the engine to cease up.

Yeah, caused our car to break down.

We could have been severely injured.

Her son was in the car with her that day.

They could have been killed.

It proved that Gary Richard would do anything to hurt Brandy.

The final straw was a night when Gary Richard came over and threatened to hurt himself in front of Brandy.

That night escalated so quickly.

Thank God my son was asleep and he slept with fans and I'm very thankful because he never ever hurt that night.

He had a box cutter in his hand.

Then he would slice his wrist

and

you know, now he's going to be back in control.

I'm going to watch him do this because I'm the reason he's doing it.

She was afraid for her life.

He took her phone and he wouldn't let her leave the house.

At one point, you know, I tried to get away.

I don't know where I was trying to run to, but I crouched down like in the corner of the couch.

And like he just coming into me when I could feel his breath nuzzling my face like with his scratchy hairs.

He was mad.

And she told herself that if she made it through the night, she'd go to the police station in the morning.

And so the next day, I did exactly what I said.

I went to the police station.

They asked me if I wanted to press charges against him for a domestic assault.

And

I said yes.

So I gave him a statement, and then they had me get a restraining order.

Because of the domestic violence charges, they were able to arrest Gary Richard again.

And this time, his bail was much higher.

After his arrest, the police reached back out to Brandy.

The investigation into the 15-year-old girl's allegation was still ongoing.

The police wanted to talk to Brandy about it.

So he asked if I would come give a statement to help.

And so I said, absolutely.

So if I could help them.

But again, never thinking anything else other than I'm just going in there to help.

At this point, I believe her and I'm going to go in and I'm going to do all I can to help.

So I go in there.

He tells me to start from from the beginning.

Ask me when I met him.

And we go through all of that.

And then he tells me that, including the teen who initially had came forward, there were five girls who were willing to testify that he had victimized them in some way.

Four more girls were willing to testify that Gary Richard had sexually assaulted them while they were underage.

But the police were struggling with the case because they didn't have any physical evidence to support their allegations.

Without those photos and online chats that had gone missing, Randy couldn't offer them much.

I leave and I didn't get very far from the station and my phone rings and he said, you know, can you come back?

You forgot to sign your statement.

Okay, yep.

And so I went back.

When I go back in there, he tells me that they spoke to the prosecutor.

and that they're going to charge him, but not for what I thought.

She thought the police would be charging him for assaulting the five underage girls,

but she was wrong.

Then he said, They're going to charge him for you.

I went white,

and then he said something that still to this day will forever stick with me.

He said,

I have something that they don't.

I have evidence of the crime.

I have a son.

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You'll love the cloud-like comfort of hypoallergenic, high-resilience foam that never needs fluffing and a durable steel frame that stands the test of time.

With modular pieces, you can rearrange anytime.

It's a sofa that adapts to your life.

Now through Labor Day, get up to 60% off site-wide at washablesofas.com.

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After nine years of marriage, Brandy went to the police to file domestic violence charges against her husband.

At the time, he was already the suspect of another investigation.

Five girls accused him of sexually assaulting them.

Gary Richard was 35.

There was no physical evidence, and the cops hoped Brandy could help their case by providing a statement.

She agreed.

Shortly after, the cops called Brandy back in.

They would be charging Gary Richard with two counts of statutory rape.

One count for one of the five girls and another for the statutory rape

When she heard this, she was in shock.

The officer's words didn't make sense to her.

Clearly, what he did to other people was wrong.

I just couldn't see it for me.

I thought, I'm not them.

You know, like,

he's my son's father.

But the police were very direct with Brandy.

Then he told me that they were charging him for me because I had evidence of the crime.

I have a son.

It's DNA.

And that with the other girls, it was their word against his.

She wanted Gary Richard to go to prison for what he'd done to the other girls and for the domestic violence against her.

But a statutory rape charge in her case didn't make sense to her.

She tried to reason with the detectives and they said.

That I could take it up with the prosecutor, but with child sex crimes like statutory rape, the state can't can't choose to prosecute without me because they don't need the victim's consent and they have up to 20 years from your 18th birthday to do so

brandy left the station with her heart pounding in her ears all she could think about was her son and those words just crime victim evidence son crime victim evidence son And then it felt like, as a mom, you're saying my son shouldn't be here.

Like you're saying my son's a crime.

And, you know, he's not evident.

He's my son.

She said it was the most destabilizing moment she's ever experienced.

This is my life that they're playing with.

You know, this is my life.

It's not a game.

Brandy's whole world was built around her role as a mother, a wife.

So for the origin of those roles to be deemed a crime completely shattered her sense of reality.

It just felt like, man, you just erased like my whole life and that it was all wrong.

It reduced her identity to a simple story.

A crime.

Something that was done to her by him.

She'd lost control of the narrative of her life.

Brandon called the prosecutor to ask why she and her son had to be at the center of Gary Richard's case.

The prosecutor explained that her son's DNA evidence was the only way to guarantee a conviction against Gary Richard.

If Brandi wasn't willing to give her son's DNA voluntarily, they could get a warrant for it.

By the end of the call, Brandi had agreed to work with the police.

They were gonna send a sheriff out to do the swab, and I said I didn't wanna do it at my house, so I had arranged to meet them at my brother and sister-in-law's.

And so we did.

Her son was nine at the time.

Randy felt like he was too young to hear the the facts of the case.

I told my son that his dad was sick at the jail and that they just needed to swab him to make sure that he wasn't sick too.

After they processed the evidence, they were able to get two counts of statutory rape, one with me 16 when he was 24.

In the end, that second charge wasn't for the 15-year-old's case, the one that started the investigation into Gary Richard.

It It was for one of the other girls, a 14-year-old, who said Gary Richard groomed and sexually assaulted her when he was 26.

That meant it happened two years into Brandy's marriage.

The case brought shock after shock.

The local news got a hold of the story, making it even worse for Brandy.

Our local news did a broadcast when he was going to court

and they even said

he would be going to court today for charges on statutory rape with a 16-year-old whom he later married.

Facing the two counts and the DNA evidence, Gary Richard took a plea deal.

With the DNA evidence, that was kind of the plea.

If you do that, we'll roll the two up into one and then give you the seven year for the two

counts.

He was sentenced to seven years and had to register as a sex offender.

As for the domestic violence charge, he got 15 days.

Brandy's divorce was expedited.

It happened at the same time as his criminal proceedings.

Our divorce hearing was right the day before he was scheduled to be sentenced.

That was the first time Brandi had seen him since the charges.

And when he walked into the courtroom, She felt a pang of guilt.

She understood that he was her abusive ex-husband and that he was a predator who had sexually assaulted teenage girls.

But when it came to her own experience of statutory rape, my mind just could not go there.

And I think in some ways, yeah, it's probably your, you know, trauma and your body trying to just protect, you know, you're trying to rationalize a lot of bad things.

And I think part of that is the survival mechanism, you know, it is survival.

The tipping point for Brandy came later when she received a letter Gary Richards sent her from prison.

So then I got this letter from him.

And in it, it was a five-page letter, but the first page, he said that there isn't a man that doesn't look at a teenage girl and want to have sex with her.

And then it starts clicking that, like, if you think all people think this, this is not right.

And it's like,

no.

No.

No letters.

And I'm not accepting the calls from, you know, the prison and just, I'm done.

I'm done.

There's no contact and there's, you know, never been since then.

With Gary Richard in prison, she became the sole provider for her household.

At this point, you got to really buckle up your bootstraps.

She trained to get a better job at the hospital where she worked and relied on her community for support.

But once he went away, just amazing things unfolded as far as like the kindness of people.

My sister and brother-in-law found a place that we could fix up.

It was a little tiny half-bedroom house, and we turned it into three.

And we

all worked on that.

It was a labor of love.

Even though he was in prison, she struggled to escape Gary Richard.

His voice was still in her head, telling her that this was all her fault.

I was listening to Brene Brown.

She was saying, guilt is, I did something bad, and shame is, I am bad.

And man, when I heard that,

I was like, ah,

yeah,

it is shame.

Psychological abuse, particularly, is so hard to.

overcome.

You don't realize it's happening.

You don't realize how slowly pieces of yourself are fading out and you're losing pieces little by little until there's not really a you left.

She needed more emotional support.

So she started going to a women's group at her church.

The ladies that I thought had these perfect lives because of what they're wearing or just you think they have it all together And when they would open up and share about the common threads that run through us all, the ways they feel insecure, the way they feel like not enough, it just

hearing that come out of their mouth, that was so

eye-opening and freeing at the same time.

Like, wow, we're just human beings trying to figure this out.

It took years of of meetings and conversations like this for Brandy to fully understand and accept what she had gone through.

She had to go back to when she first met Gary Richard.

Now looking back even from the very beginning, the fact that kids from my high school lived with him, that very first thing, you know what I mean?

It's not normal.

She now sees this from an adult lens as unhealthy and inappropriate.

She became grateful for the prosecutor and police officers who decided to include her in the charges.

Now I applaud them because I think they 100% did the right thing because that took him off the street, that protected other girls.

And I am so thankful that they could see what I couldn't.

And she's become an advocate.

She works on raising the minimum age required for marriage.

I'm part of the National Coalition to End Child Marriage as a survivor ally.

I'm actually getting ready to go speak at Jeff City at our Capitol for the ending of child marriage because they're going to put that on the bill.

So I'm going to go next week and give a testimony.

Looking back on her decision to get married at 17, she sees how that legitimized their relationship and made her legitimize it too.

Gary Richards' attorney suggested that if they got married, the judge might go easier on him.

To Brandy, that looks different today.

I can see the manipulation now.

Even when the attorney suggested getting married.

I can see grooming.

That is a form of forced marriage that I would have never seen until literally now that I've been doing this work.

It's like, ah, kind of light bulb moment of, you know, I can see the manipulation.

In 2025, Missouri changed the state laws to require all parties to be over 18, regardless of parental consent.

So had that law been on the books at the time, my marriage would have never never been able to happen.

She started using new words when talking about her experience.

It took me a long time.

First of all, to say that I'm child marriage, sex crime, and domestic violence survivor.

Like to even say those words took a long time because I felt like I didn't have the right to call myself that.

When I'm going to go speak next week, I'll say that I married my rapist.

Hindsight's a powerful thing.

Brandy wanted to reclaim her story and tell it publicly.

So she started reaching out to publishers to find a way to write a book about her life.

And then I just thought, you know what, life's too short.

This is an investment I want to make into myself.

She found the perfect copy editor for the job.

And then I ended up working with Jendra Colbaba.

She agreed to copy edit and she said, we'll go chapter by chapter because if we don't, you'll quit, you know, just because it's going to get real.

And she was right.

Best advice ever.

She connected with She writes press an independent publisher that focuses on women's stories her book was published in fall 2024 and it's titled girl uncoded

this is the last passage from her book i was no longer ashamed of my life my home or the choices i had made i saw the happy ending from the beginning I saw how the DNA of my son was the indisputable evidence to hold Gary Richard accountable for his actions and bring justice to all the survivors of his crimes, including me.

I leaned into the pool of sunlight on the windowsill, closed my eyes as a smile splashed across my face, and flooded my body with joyful thoughts of being free.

I'm proud of it.

Proud of me.

We end every weekly episode with the same question:

Why do you want to share your story?

It's to help somebody see what I couldn't,

to help somebody see sooner, to be able to change their circumstances.

If this can help one person see abuse in a different way,

see manipulation in a different way, grooming in a different way,

to help somebody see what I could not see,

what has taken me so long to see.

That's why.

On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly,

he would tell some of them that he was their soulmate and that they were twin flames and they had a deeper connection.

And then I realized, wow,

he is not a mentor.

He's pretty much a monster.

I probably should shut the studio down immediately.

Before we end the episode, I have some exciting news.

Betrayal will be doing our first ever live show as part of the Virgin Voyages True Crime Cruise.

We'll be answering listener questions and discussing them live on stage with Stacey and Tyler from Betrayal Season 3, as well as Caroline from Season 4.

So if you have a question for us, please email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com with the subject line listener question.

And if you want to join us on the Caribbean cruise, there are still spots available.

Search virginvoyages.com/slash true 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 betrayalpod at gmail.com.

Or follow us on Instagram at betrayalpod.

To access our newsletter, view additional content, and connect with the betrayal community, join our substack at betrayal.substack.com.

If you love the show, one way to support it is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts.

And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.

Five-star reviews go a long way.

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 was 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 Caitlin Golden, Olivia Hewitt, and Kristen Mel Curie.

Casting support from Curry Richmond.

Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchek.

Audio editing by Matt Dalvecchio.

Mixing and mastering on this episode by Dave Saya.

Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins.

Betrayal scene composed by Oliver Baines.

Music library provided by MyMusic.

And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Drew and Sue and Eminem's Minis.

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