Brandi | Betrayal Weekly

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart Podcast.

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Speaker 8 It's Miko Mini Plus, the AI-powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning.

Speaker 11 Hear the future of playtime.

Speaker 7 Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus, only at Costco.

Speaker 12 This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something.

Speaker 16 Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity?

Speaker 18 They may be happening to you without you knowing.

Speaker 20 If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

Speaker 21 OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.

Speaker 26 Learn more at don'tsleep on osa.com.

Speaker 17 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

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Speaker 34 Never, ever did I see that coming. Ever.

Speaker 34 I truly thought I was going in to help someone else.

Speaker 34 And then

Speaker 34 I'm the end question.

Speaker 34 What do you mean?

Speaker 34 I'm his wife. This isn't a crime.

Speaker 34 We weren't a crime.

Speaker 1 I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Speaker 34 Hindsight's a powerful thing and we share the stories so that hopefully somebody will see it and the light bulb might go off.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And it's the story of a surprising legal intervention that forced Brandy to reconsider her entire life.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So let's start at the beginning, when she was growing up in the 80s in Missouri.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 Growing up, her parents struggled to make ends meet.

Speaker 34 My dad was a hunter. I mean, he grew up real country, so you went out and got the deer and the rabbits and the squirrel and that's what filled our freezer as far as meat.

Speaker 1 As a treat, her parents would take her and her brother to Dairy Queen.

Speaker 34 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 Folger's can.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 So it was always good if you could get like $20 because then that meant we would be able to get blizzards.

Speaker 1 She grew up in a culture where wives served their husbands and that was the dynamic she observed in her own household.

Speaker 34 My dad, by the time he got home, he, you know, expected his meals to be there.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 She absorbed important lessons from her parents' relationship. The biggest one was that her purpose in life was to make a man happy.

Speaker 34 Just all that performance-based

Speaker 34 love

Speaker 34 that isn't really love, but it is what I felt that you were supposed to do.

Speaker 1 Most of Brandy's childhood was spent playing outside with the neighborhood kids, playing house or recreating TV shows, like the dating game.

Speaker 34 And we'd have the boys get on the one side of the house and

Speaker 34 be on the other corner and kind of ask them questions.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 because her dad worked double shifts and her mom was busy managing the household.

Speaker 34 Some Some of us were more rebellious than others and did the sneaking around behind our parents' backs.

Speaker 1 Randy would sneak out with her high school boyfriends.

Speaker 34 I seemed to kind of gravitate towards that bad boy image.

Speaker 1 In her sophomore year, she met a boy who wasn't like the rest.

Speaker 34 He was not a bad boy at all.

Speaker 34 Man, just really treated me like I was gold and special.

Speaker 34 I

Speaker 34 never felt like he wanted just a body. I felt like, wow, he really cared about me as a person.

Speaker 1 When he left and went off to college, Randy still had another two years of high school.

Speaker 34 And then

Speaker 34 one day, I was getting ready to go to Cheerlead game and he had called and said that he wanted to break up with me. And man, I was devastated.
So devastated.

Speaker 34 Because I, yeah, I kind of thought that he's the one. But my friends were were there to pick me up at the game and they were like trying to cheer me up.
You know, it's okay.

Speaker 34 We're going to go to this party afterwards at this apartment.

Speaker 1 She agreed to go with her friends, even though on the inside, she was crushed about the breakup. She felt abandoned.

Speaker 1 The party was at an apartment where two high schoolers were living with an older guy.

Speaker 34 I would hear about this apartment because some boys at our school had lived with this man.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 The rumors were about a good-looking, older guy who lived there. And she was curious.

Speaker 34 It was kind of almost like this celebrity.

Speaker 1 When she got there, she met Gary Richard, a man so infamous, he had two first names.

Speaker 34 When he walked in, I mean, he was stunning.

Speaker 34 Yeah, black hair and it's like hung to his jawline and he was muscular and had these blue eyes that, ah,

Speaker 34 very physically fit, everything.

Speaker 34 When I saw him, like, that was it. I just wanted to keep knowing more about him and I wanted to interact with him.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 It was forward, flirtatious even. But Brandy was reeling from the rejection of the first guy who treated her well, the one she thought thought she would spend the rest of her life with.

Speaker 1 Now, Gary Richard was making her feel seen and wanted.

Speaker 34 That attraction was just

Speaker 34 something I couldn't fight against. I guess I didn't want to fight against it.
I mean,

Speaker 34 I just wanted him no matter what.

Speaker 34 Age didn't even come into the equation.

Speaker 34 I knew he was older, but I didn't know what that that age was.

Speaker 1 She was 16, and she found out later Gary Richard was 24.

Speaker 1 At the time, the age difference didn't even cross her mind.

Speaker 34 I mean, he just looked like he hung the moon. He was...

Speaker 1 But whether she thought about it in the moment or not, his age was a part of Gary Richard's appeal.

Speaker 34 When you come across somebody that seems like they've had all these life experiences, you feel like, wow, i haven't did anything

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 after the night they met she and gary richard became an item

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 I would lie to my parents a lot about where I was going, and I would end up staying the night with him.

Speaker 1 When she was with him, she felt like a grown-up.

Speaker 34 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

Speaker 34 we would dance and

Speaker 34 we had so much fun dancing.

Speaker 1 He always seemed in control, like he knew what to do next and how to make it happen.

Speaker 34 I mean, he had this way about him, the way he would talk to people.

Speaker 34 He had this charm, like he could make people do whatever he wanted them to do.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 I'm declaring, you know, that I love him. And at this point, you know, we had only been together just a few months.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 His mom had abandoned him as a child, and his siblings and their grandmother raised them.

Speaker 1 She felt for him.

Speaker 1 Most of all, she felt like she could fix him.

Speaker 34 And then, four months after meeting him,

Speaker 34 I got pregnant.

Speaker 1 She and Gary bought a pregnancy test to confirm it, and it was positive. The whole time, he stayed calm and collected.

Speaker 34 He just so confidently, like he always does, just knew what to do. He just always had a plan.

Speaker 1 His plan was to start a life together and build a family. That's what Brandy wanted to.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 As long as I have him, my life's going to be good no matter what.

Speaker 1 Next, Brandy had to tell her parents. She wrote them a note and left it on her nightstand.

Speaker 34 I was scared because I thought they would disown me. You know, my dad was scary.

Speaker 34 Of course, they were upset,

Speaker 34 but it wasn't the reaction that I had expected.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 So I did, but I still promised my dad I would finish high school and that I would graduate.

Speaker 1 Brandy started her senior year while she was pregnant with her son.

Speaker 34 The summer before my senior year, I turned in my cheerleading uniforms.

Speaker 34 And then I turned 17.

Speaker 1 After that, she moved in with him at his apartment.

Speaker 34 And then a few months later, when I was eight months pregnant, I heard a knock at the door.

Speaker 34 And so I went to the door

Speaker 34 and there were two detectives standing there.

Speaker 34 They asked me if... Gary Richard was home.

Speaker 1 They were investigating Gary Richard for theft. Not knowing what what to do, Brandi let them in, where they collected evidence and thanked her for her cooperation.

Speaker 34 You see that stuff on the movies, but to have that happening right before your eyes, it's just shocking. And then Gary Richard

Speaker 34 comes home and

Speaker 34 he's not scared like I am. He's just calm and confident.

Speaker 1 He denied he'd stolen anything, and Brandi 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

Speaker 1 a few weeks later their son was born

Speaker 34 holding him

Speaker 34 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 outside of my body and I'm holding it.

Speaker 1 She made her son a promise.

Speaker 34 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,

Speaker 34 that I was always going to be there for him, and that I just wanted him to be safe.

Speaker 1 Sitting in that hospital room holding her new baby, Brandy was blissfully unaware of the chaos that would follow them.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So his lawyer wanted to show the judge that Gary Richard was now a family man.

Speaker 1 They all went to the courthouse together, where he entered a not guilty plea.

Speaker 34 The attorney then proceeds to say, if we had got married before the court date,

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 The plan was we were going to get married before he would go in front of the judge. So the wedding planning began.

Speaker 1 She started calling around to churches in their area.

Speaker 34 And when I had called one of the churches, the preacher wouldn't marry anybody that's under the age of 18.

Speaker 1 Randy was baffled. Before this moment, she hadn't given any thought to their age difference.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 I didn't realize in our state to get married under the age of 18, you had to have parental consent.

Speaker 1 So she went to her parents.

Speaker 34 I begged my parents to sign. I used all stops when I'm banging them pleading, you know, that this is the right thing to do for my family.

Speaker 34 So then finally, my mom gave in.

Speaker 34 She went up there and signed the marriage license, and we got married.

Speaker 1 Randy was 17.

Speaker 2 You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs.

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Speaker 8 It's Miko Mini Plus, the AI-powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning.

Speaker 11 Hear the future of playtime.

Speaker 7 Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus.

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Speaker 12 This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something.

Speaker 16 Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity?

Speaker 18 They may be happening to you without you knowing.

Speaker 20 If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

Speaker 21 OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.

Speaker 26 Learn more at don'tsleep on osa.com.

Speaker 17 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

Speaker 28 It starts like any other night.

Speaker 31 The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.

Speaker 28 The stain so dark, so stubborn, it might as well have been a crime scene.

Speaker 33 But this isn't your average couch.

Speaker 32 This is Anna Bay.

Speaker 35 Fully washable, unspeakably comfortable, and ready for whatever your life, your kids, or your ex throws at it.

Speaker 31 And here's the kicker. Starting at just $6.99, you can make sure your sofa isn't part of the problem.

Speaker 32 Fully washable,

Speaker 31 resistant, and built to hide even the darkest offenses. Right now, get up to 60% off in Black Friday savings because no one should have to live with a stain that won't quit.

Speaker 36 Anna Bay, the only mystery you won't be losing sleep over.

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Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Brandy 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.

Speaker 1 She didn't want to become another statistic about teenage pregnancy. She wanted to defy the odds.

Speaker 34 It just kind of felt like this challenge of, yeah, I'm going to show you that that's not going to be me.

Speaker 1 But despite her efforts to start a new life together, Gary Richards' old habits followed them.

Speaker 1 He ended up taking the 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.

Speaker 34 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

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 But as time went on, Randy noticed that Gary Richard was still hanging out with teenagers.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 I think you kind of believe what you

Speaker 34 want to believe.

Speaker 34 You know, when you're looking at somebody through the rose-colored glasses, red flags are invisible.

Speaker 1 For Brandy, their relationship had become bigger than the two of them. Now it was about their son and what was best for him.

Speaker 1 Four years into their marriage, they had saved enough money to move out of the apartment where they met and and buy a house together.

Speaker 34 I was just shy of 22

Speaker 34 and started working at the local hospital. That I was excited about because that kind of felt like a big girl job.

Speaker 1 Gary Richards seemed to be growing up too. Their new home became a place for them to host family celebrations and start traditions of their own.

Speaker 34 We used to host Halloween parties. We hosted New Year's parties.
He DJ'd our parties, you know, that made the best, funnest garage house parties. Everybody loved our parties and loved decorating.

Speaker 34 You know, my mom and sister would come over and help decorate. I mean, it was just the whole production.

Speaker 1 Gary Richard even organized Halloween hay rides for all the kids in the neighborhood.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 That was cool and everybody loved it.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 I remembered 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.

Speaker 34 And so that was, yeah.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 In those first few years, their marriage felt strong.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 That's why I loved him. That's why, because it was my family.
No matter how it looked or what else happened,

Speaker 34 you stay because that's your person and

Speaker 34 you just do life with them.

Speaker 1 The main struggle in their marriage was around money. The couple was constantly under financial stress.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 Okay, he doesn't have the kind of money he's making it out to seem.

Speaker 1 Their bills and loans were piling up.

Speaker 34 Everything's rob Peter to pay Paul.

Speaker 34 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?

Speaker 34 And so then I'm trying to research and find the ways, you know, always kind of fighting to survive.

Speaker 1 As their marriage progressed, Gary Richards started putting Brandy down, insulting her.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 This is the sacrifice that you make as his person.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 One day, nine years into their marriage, they they were taking their son and his friend out to celebrate. The kids had gotten straight A's in the fourth grade.

Speaker 1 As the family van was backing out of the driveway, they were interrupted.

Speaker 34 There was two sheriff cars blocking our drive.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 Gary Richard got out of the car to speak with the police while Brandy stayed with the kids.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 Gary Richard told Brandy he had no idea what this was about, but he was willing to cooperate.

Speaker 34 He left Brandy and the kids and headed to the police station he called from the jail later and told me the teenager had accused him of touching her inappropriately and had told her mom

Speaker 34 her mom went to file the restraining order against him and then that's what started this investigation

Speaker 1 the allegations came from a 15 year old girl

Speaker 1 Gary Richard denied it. He told Brandy it was a misunderstanding.

Speaker 34 He told me that he didn't know why she said it.

Speaker 34 He said that maybe she thinks I'm cute.

Speaker 34 Maybe she made up a story about me to look cool in front of her friends.

Speaker 1 She believed him, even though she had a gut feeling that something was wrong.

Speaker 34 It's not normal. None of this is normal.

Speaker 1 Then Thanksgiving rolled around. They had planned to spend the holiday with Brandy's aunt.

Speaker 34 And he acted very different.

Speaker 34 He didn't want to come. He didn't want to go.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 And something that I can only describe is just this divine kind of guidance.

Speaker 34 I started to replan all the ways he didn't seem like his self.

Speaker 1 Brandy's intuition told her to check his laptop.

Speaker 34 I was able to get into his computer.

Speaker 34 And when it pops up, there are communications with teenage girls and there's photos of people.

Speaker 1 She was seeing evidence with her own eyes. Suddenly, the allegation from the 15-year-old girl no longer seemed like a misunderstanding.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 And she finally had the proof. She had the pictures of what he was doing online.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 I don't know where the papers went.

Speaker 34 He had came back into the house and flipped the water bed, and those papers were gone.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Even with him out of the house, she no longer felt safe.

Speaker 34 I come out of work one day, my tire's flat.

Speaker 34 Later, I would find out he flattened the tire.

Speaker 1 Another time, she was driving through a busy intersection when her car seized up and died in the middle of the road.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The final straw was a night when Gary Richard came over and threatened to hurt himself in front of Brandy.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 He had a box cutter in his hand.

Speaker 34 Then he would slice his wrist.

Speaker 34 And,

Speaker 34 you know, now he's going to be back in control. And I'm going to watch him do this because I'm the reason he's doing it.

Speaker 1 She was afraid for her life.

Speaker 1 He took her phone and he wouldn't let her leave the house.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 And I could feel his breath nuzzling my face, like with his scratchy hairs, he was mad.

Speaker 1 And she told herself that if she made it through the night, she'd go to the police station in the morning.

Speaker 34 And so the next day, I did exactly what I said. I went to the police station.

Speaker 34 They asked me if I wanted to press charges against him for a domestic assault. And

Speaker 34 I said yes. So I gave him a statement and then they had me get a restraining order.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The investigation into the 15-year-old girl's allegation was still ongoing. The police wanted to talk to Brandy about it.

Speaker 34 So he asked if I would come give a statement to help.

Speaker 34 And so I said, absolutely. So I could help them.
But again, never thinking anything else other than I'm just going in there to help.

Speaker 34 At this point, I believe her and I'm going to go in and I'm going to do all I can to help.

Speaker 34 So I go in there. He tells me to start from the beginning.
Ask me when I met him. And we go through all of that.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 Four more girls were willing to testify that Gary Richard had sexually assaulted them while they were underage.

Speaker 1 But the police were struggling with the case because they didn't have any physical evidence to support their allegations.

Speaker 1 Without those photos and online chats that had gone missing, Randy couldn't offer them much.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 She thought the police would be charging him for assaulting the five underage girls,

Speaker 1 but she was wrong.

Speaker 34 Then he said, they're going to charge him for you.

Speaker 34 I went white.

Speaker 34 And then he said something that still to this day will forever stick with me.

Speaker 34 He said,

Speaker 34 I have something that they don't.

Speaker 34 I have evidence of the crime.

Speaker 34 I have a son.

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Speaker 21 OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.

Speaker 26 Learn more at don'tsleeponosa.com.

Speaker 17 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

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Speaker 1 After nine years of marriage, Brandi went to the police to file domestic violence charges against her husband. At the time, he was already the suspect of another investigation.

Speaker 1 Five girls accused him of sexually assaulting them. Gary Richard was 35.

Speaker 1 There was no physical evidence, and the cops hoped Brandi could help their case by providing a statement. She agreed.

Speaker 1 Shortly after, the cops called Brandy back in. They would be charging Gary Richard with two counts of statutory rape.

Speaker 1 One count for one of the five girls, and another for the statutory rape of Brandy.

Speaker 1 When she heard this, she was in shock. The officer's words didn't make sense to her.

Speaker 34 Clearly, what he did to other people was wrong. I just couldn't see it for me.

Speaker 34 I thought, I'm not them. You know, like,

Speaker 34 he's my son's father.

Speaker 1 But the police were very direct with Brandy.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 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 choose to prosecute without me because they don't need the victim's consent.

Speaker 34 They have up to 20 years from your 18th birthday to do so.

Speaker 1 Brandy left the station with her heart pounding in her ears. All she could think about was her son.

Speaker 34 And those words, just crime, victim, evident son, crime, victim, evident son.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 She said it was the most destabilizing moment she's ever experienced.

Speaker 34 This is my life that they're playing playing with. You know, this is my life.
It's not a game.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 It just felt like, man, you just erased like my whole life and that it was all wrong.

Speaker 1 It reduced her identity to a simple story, a crime, something that was done to her by him.

Speaker 1 She'd lost control of the narrative of her life.

Speaker 1 Brandy called the prosecutor to ask why she and her son had to be at the center of Gary Richard's case.

Speaker 1 The prosecutor explained that her son's DNA evidence was the only way to guarantee a conviction against Gary Richard.

Speaker 1 If Brandy wasn't willing to give her son's DNA voluntarily, they could get a warrant for it. By the end of the call, Brandy had agreed to work with with the police.

Speaker 34 They were going to send a sheriff out to do the swab, and I said I didn't want to do it at my house, so I had arranged to meet them at my brother and sister-in-law's. And so we did.

Speaker 1 Her son was nine at the time. Brandy felt like he was too young to hear the facts of the case.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 After they processed the evidence, they were able to get two counts of statutory rape, one with me 16 when he was 24.

Speaker 1 In the end, that second charge wasn't for the 15-year-old's case, the one that started the investigation into Gary Richard.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That meant it happened two years into Brandy's marriage.

Speaker 1 The case brought shock after shock. The local news got a hold of the story, making it even worse for Brandy.

Speaker 34 Our local news did a broadcast when he was going to court,

Speaker 34 and they even said

Speaker 34 he would be going to court today for charges on statutory rape with a 16-year-old whom he later married.

Speaker 1 Facing the two counts and the DNA evidence, Gary Richard took a plea deal.

Speaker 34 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

Speaker 34 counts.

Speaker 1 He was sentenced to seven years and had to register as a sex offender.

Speaker 1 As for the domestic violence charge, he got 15 days.

Speaker 1 Randy's divorce was expedited. It happened at the same time as his criminal proceedings.

Speaker 34 Our divorce hearing was right the day before he was scheduled to be sentenced.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 She understood that he was her abusive ex-husband and that he was a predator who had sexually assaulted teenage girls.

Speaker 1 But when it came to her own experience of statutory rape, my mind just could not go there.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 And I think part of that is the survival mechanism. You know, it is survival.

Speaker 1 The tipping point for Brandy came later when she received a letter Gary Richards sent her from prison.

Speaker 34 So then I got this letter from him.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 And then it starts clicking that, like, if you think all people think this, this is not right. And it's like,

Speaker 34 no,

Speaker 34 no,

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 With Gary Richard in prison, she became the sole provider for her household.

Speaker 34 At this point, you got to really buckle up your bootstraps.

Speaker 1 She trained to get a better job at the hospital where she worked and relied on her community for support.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 It was a little tiny half-bedroom house, and we turned it into three. And we

Speaker 34 all worked on that. It was a labor of love.

Speaker 1 Even though he was in prison, she struggled to escape Gary Richard.

Speaker 1 His voice was still in her head, telling her that this was all her fault.

Speaker 34 I was listening to Brene Brown.

Speaker 34 She was saying, Guilt is,

Speaker 34 I did something bad, and shame is I am bad.

Speaker 34 And man, when I heard that,

Speaker 34 I was like, ah,

Speaker 34 yeah,

Speaker 34 it is shame.

Speaker 34 Psychological abuse, particularly, is so hard to

Speaker 34 overcome.

Speaker 34 You don't realize it's happening.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 She needed more emotional support.

Speaker 1 So she started going to a women's group at her church.

Speaker 34 The ladies that I thought had these perfect lives because of what they're wearing or just you think they have it all together.

Speaker 34 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

Speaker 34 hearing that come out of their mouth that was so

Speaker 34 eye-opening and freeing at the same time.

Speaker 34 Like, wow, we're just human beings trying to figure this out.

Speaker 1 It took years 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 She now sees this from an adult lens as unhealthy and inappropriate.

Speaker 1 She became grateful for the prosecutor and police officers who decided to include her in the charges.

Speaker 34 Now I applaud them because I think they 100% did the right thing because

Speaker 34 that took him off the street. That protected other girls.
And I am so thankful that they could see what I couldn't.

Speaker 1 And she's become an advocate. She works on raising the minimum age required for marriage.

Speaker 34 I'm part of the National Coalition to End Child Marriage as a survivor ally.

Speaker 34 I'm actually getting ready to go speak at Jeff City at our capital 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.

Speaker 1 Looking back on her decision to get married at 17, she sees how that legitimized their relationship and made her legitimize it too.

Speaker 1 Gary Richards' attorney suggested that if they got married, the judge might go easier on him. To Brandy, that looks different today.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 1 In 2025, Missouri changed the state laws to require all parties to be over 18, regardless of parental consent.

Speaker 34 So had that law been on the books at the time, my marriage would have never been able to happen.

Speaker 1 She started using new words when talking about her experience.

Speaker 34 It took me a long time. First of all, to say that I'm child marriage, sex crime, and domestic violence survivor.

Speaker 34 Like to even say those words took a long time because I felt like I didn't have the right to call myself that.

Speaker 34 When I'm going to go speak next week, I'll say that I married my rapist.

Speaker 34 Hindsight's a powerful thing.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 34 And then I just thought, you know what, life's too short. This is an investment I want to make into myself.

Speaker 1 She found the perfect copy editor for the job.

Speaker 34 And then I ended up working with Jinder 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.

Speaker 34 And she was right. Best advice ever.

Speaker 1 She connected with She Writes Press, an independent publisher that focuses on women's stories. Her book was published in fall 2024.

Speaker 34 And it's titled Girl Uncoded.

Speaker 1 This is the last passage from her book.

Speaker 34 I was no longer ashamed of my life, my home, or the choices I had made. I saw the happy ending from the beginning.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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

Speaker 34 I'm proud of it. Proud of me.

Speaker 1 We end every weekly episode with the same question.

Speaker 1 Why do you want to share your story?

Speaker 34 It's to help somebody see what I couldn't.

Speaker 34 To help somebody see sooner, to be able to change their circumstances.

Speaker 34 If this can help one person see abuse

Speaker 34 in a different way,

Speaker 34 manipulation in a different way,

Speaker 34 grooming in a different way,

Speaker 34 to help somebody see what I could not see,

Speaker 34 what has taken me so long to see.

Speaker 34 That's why.

Speaker 1 On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly,

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 he is not a mentor. He's pretty much a monster.
I probably should shut the studio down immediately.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So if you have a question for us, please email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com with the subject line listener question.

Speaker 1 And if you want to join us on the Caribbean cruise, there are still spots available. Search virginvoyages.com slash true crime.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's betrayalpod at gmail.com or follow us on Instagram at betrayalpod.

Speaker 1 To access our newsletter, view additional content, and connect with the betrayal community, join our substack at betrayal.substack.com.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Associate producers are Caitlin Golden, Olivia Hewitt, and Kristen Melcurie. Casting support from Curry Richmond.
Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchek.

Speaker 1 Audio editing by Matt Delvecchio. Mixing and mastering on this episode by Dave Saya.
Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Speaker 1 Music library provided by My Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean.

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Speaker 12 This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something.

Speaker 16 Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity?

Speaker 18 They may be happening to you without you knowing.

Speaker 20 If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

Speaker 21 OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.

Speaker 26 Learn more at don't don'tsleeponosa.com.

Speaker 17 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

Speaker 1 Did a GLP-1 help you lose weight, but now you're noticing unwanted facial changes? The weight came off, but facial volume loss and dull sagging skin are making you look older.

Speaker 1 That's where the next phase of your weight loss journey comes in. There's before weight loss, after weight loss, and the after after.

Speaker 1 Help restore and refresh your facial skin and reclaim your natural-looking youthful glow. To learn more, visit faceafterweightloss.com.
That's faceafterweightloss.com.

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