BONUS EP 3: Andrea Dunlop in Conversation

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Speaker 1 Hi, it's Andrea Gunning. Last week, we shared Andrea Dunlop's story.
On this week's episode, Andrea and I sit down for a conversation about true crime podcasting.

Speaker 1 We get into what this work means for us and how we approach these stories. We hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 1 Andrea, thank you so much for joining me. I'm a listener and also a huge fan of Nobody Should Believe Me, which is your show.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we just shared your story on Betrayal Weekly.

Speaker 1 And I'm just so so glad our two shows are collaborating because I think that Munchausen by Proxy, which is what you cover in your show, shares a lot in common with Betrayal.

Speaker 1 Earlier, we were joking that this conversation is kind of like the Andrea-Andrea True Crime Summit, but that's really what it feels like.

Speaker 1 So I'm hoping we can really compare notes about what it's like working in this space.

Speaker 15 Yeah. I'd love to start off with just your background.
How did you get into being a true crime podcaster?

Speaker 1 You know, I often joke that I'm a recovering TV executive.

Speaker 1 And so I come, I hail from the TV space, but I work for a company called Glass Entertainment Group, and we specialize in reality TV and documentaries.

Speaker 1 And for about seven and a half, eight years, I was overseeing our business department. So I was the executive in charge of production.

Speaker 1 So I did all the boring things in TV, which is like the budget, the financing, like all the hard stuff.

Speaker 1 And my colleague Ben and I were constantly working through legal deals with our development department. And we were seeing great stories getting passed by T V executives and networks.

Speaker 1 And one story that came across our desk, we were working with Kim Goldman, who is the sister of Ron Goldman, who was murdered by O.J. Simpson.

Speaker 1 And we were trying to sell something in TV with her, but a lot of TV networks weren't interested in the project unless OJ was involved or OJ was attached or we could guarantee an interview with OJ.

Speaker 1 And this was back when OJ was still living. I think he had just gotten out of prison and was living in Vegas at the time.

Speaker 1 But my colleagues and I really believed that there was a story here even without OJ's voice. So we decided to make it a podcast.

Speaker 1 And instead of telling the OJ Simpson story, we told the story of people who lived it. And so that's how we got started in the podcast space.

Speaker 15 That's a great answer. I mean, I really see like that imprint

Speaker 15 for the work you've done after that, you know?

Speaker 15 And also that just really plugs into what I think is interesting about true crime stories, which is the sort of long tale of them and the way that they impact. the people who are pulled into them.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 So one of the things you're known known for is your work on Betrayal and now Betrayal Weekly. How did you come to that story that was the first season of Betrayal?

Speaker 1 It's all kind of related. So Jen Faison is the subject of season one and her marriage and how the marriage unraveled, but she works in television.
She's a television executive producer.

Speaker 1 So we kind of are in the same universe. And Jen had heard confronting O.J.
Simpson and reached out to her agent, and her agent reached out to me and my colleague, Ben, for an initial conversation.

Speaker 1 But the universe has an interesting way of working because at this time, I was getting out of a relationship. I had moved out of my boyfriend's house.

Speaker 1 I had discovered a lot of deception, not to the magnitude that Jen had. And I was kind of recovering from understanding, like, why was I in this relationship? Why was I ignoring a lot of signs?

Speaker 1 Was I ignoring it, or was it like perpet, you know, all of these questions that were coming to the surface. So it was like I was meeting Jen at the perfect time.

Speaker 1 I couldn't relate to the magnitude of what Jen was going through,

Speaker 1 but I knew, like, as it was like, I don't even want to say as a woman, as a woman, but as a human being, I understood the pain when she pitched me her story. I understood her anger and her confusion.

Speaker 1 And I found like this emotional access.

Speaker 1 And I thought, if we could maybe do something with that,

Speaker 1 people will relate and maybe heal. And so

Speaker 1 just that relatability and that timing of it just so happened to work out.

Speaker 15 Yeah, that's amazing. And I think that that shows up in the quality of the season and just the emotional depth of it.

Speaker 15 And I'm really interested in what you said about this idea of not coming from a place of anger. This is a really complicated part of interviewing people about these stories, right? Because

Speaker 15 they have every right to be angry. You have every right to want to even go on a sort of revenge journey, but doing that on a podcast is not actually helpful to anyone, right?

Speaker 15 It's not helpful for the listener. It's not really ethical to sort of try and get someone in that energy, even if it can be compelling in its own right.

Speaker 15 And I have the same sort of thing when I talk to folks who are often dealing with really extreme betrayals.

Speaker 15 And then on top of that, you know, the abuse to them or abuse to their children or children that they care about. And it's...

Speaker 15 I think really important to make sure that someone is ready to have that conversation. It was important to me.

Speaker 15 You know, I started off with telling my own story in the first two seasons of the show, kind of bit by bit. And I sort of revisited pieces of it from time to time, but like

Speaker 15 I had to wait, you know,

Speaker 15 a decade until I was ready to talk about it. I was like, it's such a vulnerable thing and it's such a vulnerable thing to put out there and then have people react to.

Speaker 15 There are so many points along this journey where getting on a mic would have been the absolute wrong choice for me. Right.

Speaker 15 And I think there's also like the expectation setting, because if you're talking about a case where it's either an unsolved case or it's a case where there wasn't a good outcome or it's a case where like the person you're talking to wants some action to be taken by authorities, that's not something that we can make happen.

Speaker 1 Can't always guarantee. Right.

Speaker 15 And like, so I think that that's also like a really tricky part of it of making sure that who I'm talking to, like, yes, we're going to put all this out there. And I think people are going to care.

Speaker 15 I think people are going to get something out of it. They're going to learn something important.
They're going to relate with this experience.

Speaker 15 I hope you get a deep personal catharsis from sharing this, but like the cavalry is unlikely to mount up because unfortunately, that's just not often how it works. And this may not end with answers.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that was my worry producing There and Gone, which came out this past summer in 2024.

Speaker 1 And I have to give iHeart a lot of credit because we pitched them this story and there wasn't an ending and we couldn't guarantee that we would find or solve this case.

Speaker 1 And so you're taking a lot of risk. And then the partnerships that you make with distributors are also taking a lot of risk for

Speaker 1 what's the payoff? You know, what's the audience going to leave thinking? Are they going to walk away feeling satisfied? And,

Speaker 1 you know, these are people. Like we're studying and we're exploring stories of people and their loss and their trauma and their grief.

Speaker 1 And so we're not always going to get a payoff that makes sense to everybody. You know, I like telling stories that really show the complexity of the human experience.
And I think there and gone

Speaker 1 is an example of that.

Speaker 15 Yeah, can you, can you kind of give us a, give us an intro to the case and how you got interested in it?

Speaker 1 Sure. It's the story of Richard Patrone and Danielle Imbo.

Speaker 1 20 years ago, two 30-somethings just literally vanished off of South Street in Philadelphia, which is basically like the bourbon street of Philadelphia, the busiest place for nightlife.

Speaker 1 They were seen leaving a bar and then never seen again. And until this day, no one knows what happened.
Was it an accident? Was it murder for hire?

Speaker 1 And so I remember this because I was, I think, a senior in high school, and it was terrifying because one of the victims, his parents, have a bakery that I grew up going to.

Speaker 1 And both of their families look so much like mine in different ways. They do Sunday dinner.
I come from an Italian family. We do Sunday dinner.
You know, they gamble on Sunday over football bets.

Speaker 1 Like I'm wearing my Eagles jersey. Like this feels like this could be my own cousin this happened to.
So it was very personal to me.

Speaker 1 And so it was just this loss that kind of reverberated throughout our entire community and continues. because how do two people in their mid-30s just vanish, just literally into thin air?

Speaker 1 And when we were exploring

Speaker 1 doing the story,

Speaker 1 I thought the families would be very interested, but we would struggle with law enforcement.

Speaker 1 But then I soon realized that the FBI really needed our help because The FBI knows that the more coverage they can get of this case, more people will be able to like call in and feel like, let me just do my part.

Speaker 1 Let me, 20 years later, I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to make the phone call.
I'm going to say what I know and be done with it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 15 I live in this city.

Speaker 1 And there are parts of this city where this crime isn't a big question mark.

Speaker 1 There are parts of this city and neighborhoods in this city where people know exactly what happened or they feel like it's a fact. They communicate it like it's a fact.
I know who did it.

Speaker 1 I know why it's done.

Speaker 15 Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like how a whole neighborhood in one city, there's like this understood rumor of what happened to two random people that have no connection.

Speaker 9 And that was the neighborhood in which I lived.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 to me, it was like, I just want to help these families. You know, we didn't solve the crime yet, but there was enough people that actually wrote into the FBI for them to reopen and assign new agents.

Speaker 1 So I feel like I did my job.

Speaker 15 Hell yeah. I mean, that's amazing.

Speaker 15 And I think this is one of the most interesting parts of working in the true crime sphere and why it's so important to like take this job seriously and be really responsible is because it does have real world impacts.

Speaker 15 And yeah, I mean, this question of law enforcement, it's like, so I, the, the case that I'm working on right now for our next season is one that I am hoping that some action will happen on.

Speaker 15 How realistic that is, who knows? But I do think that it is and can be a powerful tool to getting law enforcement involved.

Speaker 15 And that can be the kind of thing where you get, you know, political will for a local prosecutor to actually file charges on something where they might not otherwise.

Speaker 15 You can, you know, get people who are making those decisions at the police department to assign some extra muscle to it. You can, you know, flush out some new information from the community.

Speaker 1 Well, the first thing that just to interject, I think one of the biggest things that I feel like we both, you know,

Speaker 1 betrayal trauma and deception is one thing. Your show covers factitious disorder.

Speaker 1 And although they're very different, there's so many commonalities between people who, you know, live through or have a relationship with Munchausen's and Munchausen's by proxy and people who experience deception and betrayal.

Speaker 1 The topics we cover on betrayal are extreme, but sadly, they're not uncommon.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And in season three, we really focus on male sexual abuse. And we learn that one in six men have experienced this issue.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 1 the really scary reality is

Speaker 1 it actually is probably more.

Speaker 1 But it just goes unreported because of the stigma around it. And I just feel like

Speaker 1 these are two taboo issues, you know, Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

Speaker 1 And to take that seriously and talk about it to help dismantle that stigma, it's such a large hurdle.

Speaker 15 Yeah. No, that's a really good point.
And we've definitely learned a lot from the progress that has been made around child sex abuse, which I think it still is underreported.

Speaker 15 I think most people accept that child sex abuse is real and not rare. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Certainly anybody that's informed on the topic knows that, but I think that did not always used to be that way, right? And it was seen as this like

Speaker 15 stranger danger type of aberration, you know, one in a million sort of thing that happened. And then our society grappling with it sort of went through some interesting hurdles along the way.

Speaker 15 A major one being the satanic panic, where you have all these stories about, you know, daycare workers and underground, you know, the McMartin case and all these like underground tunnels, which my take on it is that that was

Speaker 15 society grappling with something that we really, really didn't want to look at, which is child sex abuse.

Speaker 15 And that actually it was easier and more comforting to think that it was satanic daycare workers

Speaker 15 because that's a problem that you can ostensibly solve.

Speaker 15 But I think it's more comforting to think that there's some evil system that you can kind kind of shut down than it is to confront the reality, which is that this is

Speaker 15 Boy Scout leaders, priests, coaches, dads, uncles who are doing this, right? It's it's most likely to be someone that that child knows.

Speaker 15 And it's not going to be someone who is an obvious creep all the time. And it's so similar with Munchhausen.

Speaker 15 And that's where we get into kind of the hullabaloo that happened around the Maya Kowalski case with the film Take Care of Maya and a lot of the coverage that really followed in lockstep with that, where they presented it as a medical kidnapping case.

Speaker 15 Medical kidnapping is our satanic panic, essentially. It's like, you know, this idea that doctors are just separating families, right? Like doctors don't make those decisions.
Doctors evaluate abuse.

Speaker 15 It's a legitimate subspecialty. There's just so much disinformation around that.
And the Maya Kowalski case was sort of the most high-profile one.

Speaker 15 But I think that there is a similar dynamic going on there. And certainly with Munchausen by proxy, it's not a one in a million thing.

Speaker 15 I think the behavior is along a spectrum, but I think it's far more common and getting worse because of social media, because of which I would assume actually some of the behaviors that y'all talk about on betrayal and this sort of more male deception and cheating and that kind of thing, like you talk in the Spencer Heron case, like social media has given people

Speaker 15 unfettered and unlimited access to attention.

Speaker 15 And, you know, I think it was Dr. Romani says in the TV series, like, oh, that's the dangerous combination, right? Attention seeking plus lack of empathy.

Speaker 15 I mean, that is exactly how you describe Munchausen by proxy behaviors. And so I think there's every reason to believe that it's getting worse.
And that is a scary world to live in.

Speaker 15 I hate to be the one to break this to you, but like, the world is not what you thought. That mom of the sick child who's raising money on GoFundMe and seems like the most heroic mother you've ever met

Speaker 15 could be the scariest person you've ever met. And so I think that's why

Speaker 15 these conspiracy theories around medical kidnapping get traction because the reporting on it is very thin. Child abuse professionals do not make good money.

Speaker 15 Child abuse pediatrics is a highly trained and not well-paid subspecialty. They get trashed in the media.
They get accused of snatching babies. I mean, it's not for the faint of heart.

Speaker 15 And also just like that work, like doing that frontline work of rushing to the hospital to see a child that's been abused is obviously emotionally grueling work.

Speaker 15 There isn't any scenario where you could make it make sense that doctors just want to do that.

Speaker 15 It's a nightmare for the hospitals. The hospitals can get sued.
You know, it's like there's no motivation.

Speaker 15 But I think the reason those stories still take off in the media is that people's discomfort around the reality of this abuse is so, so deep.

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Speaker 2 It starts like any other night. The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.

Speaker 5 The stain so dark, so stubborn, it might as well have been a crime scene.

Speaker 4 But this isn't your average couch.

Speaker 8 This is Anna Bay.

Speaker 11 Fully washable, unspeakably comfortable, and ready for whatever your life, your kids, or your ex throws ahead of.

Speaker 6 And here's the kicker.

Speaker 12 Starting at just $6.99, you can make sure your sofa isn't part of the problem. Fully washable, stain-resistant, and built to hide even the darkest offenses.

Speaker 10 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 6 Anna Bay, the only mystery you won't be losing sleep over.

Speaker 2 Shop washable sofas.com today.

Speaker 10 That's washable sofas.com.

Speaker 16 Ah, greetings for my bath, festive friends. The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money.

Speaker 18 Getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 17 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 19 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 20 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body. Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 17 Save the offer and the app.

Speaker 21 NS1231, see paypal.com slash promo terms points to your renewed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 22 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.

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Speaker 1 Something that we're constantly confronting in true crime is having to tell these hyperbolic versions of true crime stories when in reality, the more relatable and important ones are the ones that are kind of in the everyday.

Speaker 1 I remember when we were covering Ashley Lytton's case in Riverton, Utah for Betrayal Season 2,

Speaker 1 you reached out to ICAC,

Speaker 1 which is an Internet Crimes Against Children task force that every state has.

Speaker 1 And I remember one of the task force members asked, why are you covering this case? Like, I deal with, you know, perpetrators that are 10 times worse than Jason Linton.

Speaker 1 Why this one? And my response was, I don't want the hyperbolic virgin CSAM case. You know, I want to meet people in a very average everyday story because that's actually what's happening.

Speaker 15 And so

Speaker 1 I feel like that's the same for a lot of these mothers who are, if they're on the news, it's like this monster of a mother that did this.

Speaker 1 And it's like, you know, we have to hear about the extremes instead of leaning into the reality of what's happening.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 I mean, I became a media outlet because I was so fed up with the way that media was covering this case. Right.
And it's been interesting over the last few years as I've kind of jumped first, I guess.

Speaker 15 I've noticed that awareness is increasing, especially because of the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case, which was so high profile.

Speaker 15 I do think that there's more of a conversation happening than there was five years ago, but you know, there was like so much reticence to talking about it.

Speaker 15 Like, I remember when my novel came out, and like, I had written like an essay for it, and that got killed at the last minute. And there was just like a lot of like, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 15 If there's not a conviction, you can't talk about it. And I was like, if we're not talking about the cases where there aren't convictions, then we're not talking about the problem.
Right.

Speaker 15 Like, when you get into

Speaker 15 the extremes, it allows people to put it at arm's length. That person is a monster.
That person is a psychopath that like I would see coming and this would never happen to me. And that's not reality.

Speaker 15 And I think that was why for me, it was so important to talk about my own experience because the other thing that we do with perpetrators of crimes, especially if it's something where it just feels so like deeply, deeply, deeply wrong.

Speaker 15 We often say, oh, well, that person must have had a horrible childhood. That person must have been abused as a child.
There must be some like dots I can connect. And I think that that's part of the

Speaker 15 let me tell myself a story about this that makes me feel safe, right? Where like, as long as XYZ doesn't happen in my family, we won't end up with one of these perpetrators in our family.

Speaker 15 And that's just not the case, right? I mean, my sister did not buy anybody else's, you know, nobody else witnessed anything traumatic happening to her. You were not raised in an abusive household.

Speaker 15 Like, it's not something where, oh, there's some straight line that you can draw and i think that's really uncomfortable for people i think people really want to believe that something awful has to happen to a person to make them like this and i don't think that's true i think it is that combination of lack of empathy and need for attention that really can supercharge these behaviors Totally.

Speaker 1 I think one of the things that I also felt was really relatable and the circumstances are so different, but

Speaker 1 just knowing your sister's story and having to go in front of the judge in family court, like you're dealing with family court and criminal court are two separate things.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 15 the

Speaker 1 issues that I've seen a lot of the women that I deal with on betrayal having to navigate the criminal side.

Speaker 1 And once that's over and you know, the father of their children are released, then they're dealing with family court, either in their divorce or child support or dealing with visitation.

Speaker 1 It is a whole other ball of wax where parents have a ton of rights, rightfully so, but they're in situations where kids are at risk. It's a really scary system because they are two separate entities.

Speaker 15 Yeah. And I think that that's that's something that the vagaries of that like really is lost on people that have not had to interact with these systems.

Speaker 15 And I think people here, and a lot of this, again, when I'm talking about like, you know, Mike Hicksenbog's work for NBC and his whole Do No Harm series, like a lot of this is, I, I think, intentionally created a confusion where it'll be like, courts said doctors disagree.

Speaker 15 Like courts said, you know, this and that. Right.
And you're like, okay, which court under what circumstances, like give me more information, right? Yep.

Speaker 15 And everything goes to the family court first because those are less, you know, those investigations take less time than the criminal investigation.

Speaker 15 So we end up in a lot of situations where the family court gives the children back during an active criminal investigation, which just I think sounds insane, but that happens all the time.

Speaker 15 Likewise, you know, there's this thing of like, well, doctors at this hospital said this, but other doctors disagree without ever mentioning that those other doctors are people who were hired as expert witnesses by the parent defending themselves, right?

Speaker 15 Important information.

Speaker 15 And like, I think people don't realize that the courts don't take the steps that you would think in the face of a criminal conviction to like limit that person's access to their own children.

Speaker 15 Like, for instance, you know, we just had a case that we were talking about on the show, the Jessica Jones case in Texas, where she got a 60-year prison sentence and the courts did not terminate her parental rights.

Speaker 15 And so now the dad has to pay to do that.

Speaker 15 So just the onus that ends up on a protective parent in any child abuse situation, I think people have no idea what that looks like, or just people don't realize how easy it is actually to get access to children again.

Speaker 1 Yeah. In the case of Stacey Rutherford and

Speaker 1 Tyler from season three of Betrayal, I think the courts got it right.

Speaker 1 So for people that don't know, Stacey was married to a man named Justin, and he was a doctor in Rudding, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 She had two children in a previous marriage and then met Justin and they got married. They had two kids of their own.

Speaker 1 And he was, by all accounts, a great husband, an incredible doctor, beloved by his community. Turns out that he was abusing Stacy's son from her first marriage, his stepson, since he was 11.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Tyler didn't disclose until he was, I want to say, 17.

Speaker 1 So a long time.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Justin also tried to hire a hitman while he was in prison to murder Tyler so that he wouldn't testify in court,

Speaker 1 which is what we cover in season three of Betrayal.

Speaker 1 And what the judge did is not only did he get

Speaker 1 he'll be basically in jail for the rest of his life. I don't want to misquote what a sentencing was, but

Speaker 1 he isn't allowed to speak to his biological children or have any contact with the family until he's done his probation,

Speaker 1 basically

Speaker 1 for the rest of his life.

Speaker 1 And so I remember talking to Stacey and Tyler and them feeling like really complicated emotions because they deeply love Justin, like the person that they they knew as a human being, like Tyler loved his stepdad.

Speaker 1 But then there was the monster, the abuser. They were two different people to him.
And

Speaker 1 that was a scenario where the court really contemplated a lifetime of abuse and grooming and narcissistic behavior and just got it and knocked it out of the park.

Speaker 1 And I was like, heck yeah, like this is a Pennsylvania.

Speaker 15 Like I was really proud.

Speaker 1 So yeah, like sometimes we talk about things getting wrong. Like, that was a scenario where I think the courts got it right.

Speaker 15 And it's, you know, it's so complicated. And I think it kind of goes back to this question of once you have identified a person as

Speaker 15 this type of abuser, where it has so much in common, my toes and my proxy with child sex abuse, where it is, you know, an extremely compulsive behavior.

Speaker 15 It's one of those things where, again, I think like, and I think we can more easily recognize it in child sex abuse cases, where it's like, okay, if you cross that line with a child, you're not a safe adult, period.

Speaker 15 Like, if you're capable of doing that, like, you know, whether or not you should be thrown in jail for the rest of your life or we should do something else with you is sort of a separate question.

Speaker 15 But, like, you are not a, that's why we put people on registries. That's why we say they can't go near schools.
Like, we have no such attitude towards mentasm by proxy perpetrators. Yeah.

Speaker 15 There is this idea that it is like some mental illness that people are sort of, quote, suffering from.

Speaker 15 And much like child sex abuse, there is an underlying psychiatric disorder, a fectitious disorder imposed on another.

Speaker 15 It's very similar to pedophilic disorder, which is also in the DSM, also very challenging to treat.

Speaker 15 Also very, you know, unlikely that a perpetrator will take enough accountability to be treated for it. And it doesn't reduce someone's culpability.

Speaker 15 And it's like a very complicated thing that happens when like children always want their parents. That's such a biological drive for kids.
That's a survival mechanism.

Speaker 15 Even if their parent is not not capable of loving them or being safe with them, like they will always kind of have this longing.

Speaker 15 So you can have a situation where someone is separated from their parent and then they really, really, really idealize that parent and don't then protect themselves.

Speaker 15 So I mean, it's really complicated. And then for survivors that have fully processed the abuse, so are not going that direction of saying this didn't happen to me, right?

Speaker 15 Fully understand, fully process the abuse.

Speaker 15 I mean, you know, we saw Joe in our fourth season really struggling with this with their mom of like, they totally recognize what their mom did to them and they understand a lot about the dynamics, and they still love that person.

Speaker 15 And I mean, I would say most of the survivors I know are either low contact or no contact, but it's really complicated to navigate that relationship.

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Speaker 1 We're working on a case for season four of Betrayal about this woman out of Colorado Springs.

Speaker 1 She was with her husband for 20 years. She lived like a typical American life.
She thought that she was just basically living like the suburban dream.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 1 I won't give all the details because we Aaron May, but

Speaker 1 things unravel and the family is torn apart. And she has to look back on 20 years and basically

Speaker 1 readjust her sense of reality because

Speaker 1 he shares things, discloses things that

Speaker 1 completely alters core memories in her life where she's living and thinks one thing is happening, where there's another almost like parallel universe where he's operating and she has to hold both realities at the same time.

Speaker 1 She often says perception is my reality and that really is true.

Speaker 1 And I remember

Speaker 1 because I had listened to your first season so long ago, I was like, let me listen to this again.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, Hope's family and then your family, I was thinking about you guys and and like you having to look back, like once things became clearer to you or things were coming into focus.

Speaker 1 How are you looking back on that time? And how painful was it to kind of merge what you thought you were experiencing and then the reality that you now learn?

Speaker 1 It's just, it feels like those memories start to hold on to you in a way that you're like, I don't even know what to do.

Speaker 15 Yeah. I mean, it's a really profound part of the experience.
And I think when people, you know, people like to throw the word gaslighting

Speaker 15 as like a, you know, it's sort of this like pop psychology term.

Speaker 15 But I think like when you really have gone through like gaslighting, to my mind is like someone is systematically making you doubt your perception of reality.

Speaker 15 And, you know, it's extremely disorienting and it's sort of its own whole thing to recover from.

Speaker 15 And certainly for me, you know, given that my sister is in my whole life growing up and is in my earliest memories and it was a huge part of my childhood. I mean, we're very close in age.

Speaker 15 She's my only sibling.

Speaker 15 It really breaks your brain for a while.

Speaker 1 Right. And now you're estranged.
You guys haven't talked in over a decade.

Speaker 15 Yeah. This is now 14 years that this has been in my life.
And I've really gone through different stages of processing it.

Speaker 15 And it was like very clear that like this, okay, this is permanent. And then I sort of started to think about it as a death.

Speaker 15 I started to think about it as there was a person that I grew up with, that I loved, that I had these experiences with, and she died.

Speaker 15 I came to a new understanding of it,

Speaker 15 which is

Speaker 15 that that person that I thought I knew was probably never there, and that it was always a mask.

Speaker 15 And that the parts of her that I experienced as being loving and being connected

Speaker 15 were just a person

Speaker 15 like mimicking those behaviors.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 that was a really painful revelation. It was much easier to think of her as a person that I loved and was there and died.

Speaker 15 But I think it was a really necessary one. So then there's the question of like, what do you do with all those memories?

Speaker 15 And the way that I frame it, and when I see other people struggling with this, what I hope people can come to eventually is a place that I think I finally arrived at after a lot of work, which is

Speaker 15 my experiences were still real.

Speaker 15 Like, I loved my sister. I had fun with her growing up.
I had a happy childhood with her. You know, those memories are my memories.

Speaker 15 And at the end of the day, it was real. It was real for me.
So I get to keep them.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm a twin. And so, you know, my relationship with my sister, next to having my own children, that's the most important relationship in my life always will be.

Speaker 1 Like, I entered the world with her. I did every fundamental first with her.
I could imagine losing my sister or not being able to share in critical moments.

Speaker 1 It's a profound loss, that relationship with a sister.

Speaker 15 It is. And I think like,

Speaker 15 I'm sure that you get so many emails and messages from people listening to the betrayal shows that like relate with that experience and see themselves in that.

Speaker 15 And I think there can be such, there's healing in making that content. There's healing in listening to it.

Speaker 15 Listening to the betrayal shows has helped me.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Again, it's the complexity of the human experience.
That's kind of like our driving force at Glass Podcasts and what we do with betrayal. You guys have that in your DNA too.

Speaker 1 Like I, I've heard, I've heard it and it's been evident in every season that you guys have done.

Speaker 15 Well, I really appreciate that. Means a lot coming from you.
And I similarly really respect what you guys do over there at Glass. And I think,

Speaker 15 you know, I know how much

Speaker 15 this can mean to people as listeners and navigating the pitfalls of how exploitative true crime can be is a huge job. Yeah.

Speaker 15 I know y'all take it seriously because I know you're behind the scenes process. And I hope that we together can set a new standard in this industry because I think it really needs to happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was giving iHeart credit. I got to give Hulu and ABC so much credit.
I mean, this is like a big platform and some of these stories are really hard to tell.

Speaker 1 And a time where people are like afraid to go there, I'm like really impressed. I mean, season three is tough, but they saw a landscape.

Speaker 1 I mean, this past year, the Menendez brothers were all over the place.

Speaker 15 I was thinking about that when you were saying you guys are tackling this. I was like, this is a really good time because we.

Speaker 15 We did like a little thing on our Patreon about that case because I was like, oh, this just feels so germane to like, especially talking about, you know, because obviously the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case, there's a lot of parallels there, right?

Speaker 15 Where you have someone who's an abuse victim who commits a crime and, like, how do you talk about that? How do you think about that?

Speaker 15 And I think just the, we were talking about how the discomfort around male sexual abuse in particular weighed so heavily on that court case. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And for them to see that people are actually open

Speaker 1 to hearing about that and discussing that and just really sitting with that

Speaker 1 and taking Tyler and Stacey's story and pursuing that for the Hulu documentary is really exciting because it's only going to help dismantle the stigma around this issue.

Speaker 1 And I'm really proud to work with partners like that. I truly am.

Speaker 15 Yeah, that's, that's incredible. I'm so, I'm glad that they're supporting it.
Something that is very special about podcasting. Like podcasting feels like a medium where you can take a lot of risks.

Speaker 15 Someone has to go first. So I think like having a proof of concept with the podcast, like that certainly helps TV folks make good decisions of like, okay, there's an audience for this.

Speaker 15 So maybe it is worth taking a little bit more of a risk.

Speaker 1 It's a safer landing.

Speaker 15 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
It's all, it all works, works together.

Speaker 1 So your book that just came out, this is your first

Speaker 1 like intro to nonfiction, right? Or did I have that wrong?

Speaker 15 No, this, yep, this is my my first nonfiction book, the other four are novels. And it's very funny because people are always like, with the book or with the show, they're like,

Speaker 15 oh my God, I love your show. I mean, not because like, you know, I know it's like, like, they're trying to tell me like, oh, not because I love child abuse.

Speaker 15 I'm like, it's, no, I know, I understand what you're saying. And it's like, right.
Of course, like, I want people to be engaged with the storytelling. I want them to connect to that.

Speaker 15 They're not going to care about it unless they are connecting. to the story and unless they are staying engaged with the story.
Right. And like, obviously we take it really seriously.

Speaker 15 Obviously, we do the utmost to tell things ethically, but like, you also have to have a good story. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 15 Well,

Speaker 15 this was amazing. We just got like straight in the deep end, which I love.

Speaker 15 I could talk to you for hours.

Speaker 1 Andrea, thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing your story with us.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening. Next week, we're sharing the first episode in Andrea's latest season of Nobody Should Believe Me.
It's about Sophie Hartman, a mother who adopted two girls from Zambia.

Speaker 1 But the story takes a tragic turn when one of her daughters becomes terribly ill. So stay tuned, and we'll be back next week with that episode.

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. That's betrayalpod at gmail.com.
We're grateful for your support.

Speaker 1 One way to show support 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning. Written and produced by Monique Laborde.
Also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristen Mel Curie and Caitlin Golden.

Speaker 1 Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.
Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.

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

Speaker 21 What up, y'all?

Speaker 25 It's your boy, Kev on Stage.

Speaker 25 I want to tell you about my new podcast called Not My Best Moment, where I talk to artists, athletes, entertainers, creators, friends, people I admire who've had massive success about their massive failures.

Speaker 25 What did they mess up on? What is their heartbreak? And what did they learn from it?

Speaker 1 I got judged horribly. The judges were like, you're trash.
I don't know how you got on the show.

Speaker 25 Check out Not My Best Moment with me, Kev on Stage, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 26 A new true crime podcast from Tenderfoot TV in the city of Mons in Belgium. Women began to go missing.

Speaker 26 It was only after their dismembered remains began turning up in various places that residents realized a sadistic serial killer was lurking among them. The murders have never been solved.

Speaker 26 Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence. Le Monstre, Season 2, is available now.
Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 On this podcast, Incels, we unpack an emerging mindset.

Speaker 15 I am a loser.

Speaker 18 If I was a woman, I wouldn't pay me either.

Speaker 20 A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point.

Speaker 10 Tomorrow is the day of retribution.

Speaker 20 The day in which I will have my revenge.

Speaker 1 This is...

Speaker 2 Incels.

Speaker 1 Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal, and I'm excited to bring you a brand new season of Betrayal Weekly.

Speaker 1 I'm also excited to tell you that you can now get access to all episodes of Betrayal Season 1, 2, 3, and Betrayal Weekly, and every single episode of Betrayal Season 4 ad-free and one week early through the iHeart True Crime Plus subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 Plus, you'll you'll get access to other char-topping true crime shows you love, like The Real Killer, The Girlfriends, American Homicide, There and Gone South Street, Burden of Guilt, Murder on Songbird Road, The Idaho Massacre, Paper Ghosts, and more.

Speaker 1 So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart Podcast.