EP 27 - Abby

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Speaker 1 In the meantime, we want to do something new and exciting this month. We're taking short creative essay submissions from listeners.
The theme is resilience in the face of a devastating betrayal.

Speaker 1 We want to hear the story of how you healed, scars and all. Here's the catch.
The limit is a thousand words. If your story stands out, it might be featured in a bonus episode.

Speaker 1 Please save your submission as a PDF and email it to betrayalpod at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 now on to the episode.

Speaker 17 If he can lie about that, he can lie about anything. I mean, he used his dead mother's name, he used his dead father's name, he used, I think, his aunt, he used my name, all these people.

Speaker 17 It was absolutely crazy making.

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 17 Listen, I've always craved drama,

Speaker 17 and I got it. I got it.

Speaker 1 That's Abby Ellen. She's an independent journalist for outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I'm in my 50s, and I have been a freelance writer since I'm like 22.

Speaker 1 Storytelling comes naturally to her.

Speaker 17 Even as a kid, I was interested in people's story. I was interested in gossip.
I was interested in people's lives. I just wanted to know how things work.

Speaker 17 And I also was always interested in getting to the bottom of things.

Speaker 1 To say she's curious is an understatement. When she was in elementary school, Abby was on a children's show called Romper Room.
It was popular in the 1970s.

Speaker 1 On the show, the host would hold up a magic mirror, and through it, she would pretend to see straight into living rooms across the country. She'd named dozens of children who were watching the show.

Speaker 1 Kids at home thought she was talking directly to them through the mirror. As a kid, Abby knew the magic mirror was faked.
And when she was on the show, she was determined to figure out how.

Speaker 17 Well, they would put the kids in the control room and you could see all of the monitors and you could see what was happening. And I remember pointing to that with the kid next to me.

Speaker 17 I was like, check it out. Like, there's no magic.

Speaker 17 And he was really upset. He was like, I don't want to know that, you know.

Speaker 17 And I was like, see, I got to the truth.

Speaker 1 50 years later, she's still that same person.

Speaker 17 I hate magic tricks. I hate going to magic shows.
I need to know how they do things.

Speaker 1 That dogged curiosity has motivated Abby's work for decades. When she first started her journalism career in New York City, I could have gotten a job like in the Devil Wear's Prada.

Speaker 17 I could have gotten a job as an assistant to an editor. But I thought, what am I going to learn about writing from picking up somebody's dry cleaning? Nothing.

Speaker 17 What am I going to learn about like from faxing their correspondence? Nothing. I didn't want to do that.

Speaker 1 Instead, she got her start writing for women's magazines. It was the 90s, when magazines still ruled the media landscape.
And Abby had to start at the bottom of the ladder.

Speaker 17 The women's magazines had you do like quizzes. Is he a jerk? Are you a control freak? I mean, those kind of things.
I didn't give a shit. I mean, I hated that stuff.

Speaker 17 And I just got terrified that I was going to get stuck doing that.

Speaker 1 She wanted something more hard-hitting. So she started cold-pitching stories to the New York Times.
And she finally got a story accepted.

Speaker 1 It was an expose on simulated military boot camps for civilians.

Speaker 17 And I wrote a big story about that. It was a full page in the New York Times.
I framed it and I thought, that's that. Never going to happen again.

Speaker 17 Well, the editor who I wrote that for

Speaker 17 called me up one day and he said, we're starting a column.

Speaker 1 He wanted Abby to write for it. So for the next five years, she wrote a column about young people and money for the business section of the New York Times.
She was in her late 20s.

Speaker 1 The stars were aligning for her career, and she was building a life for herself.

Speaker 17 My mother is really a super feminist and has always been profoundly independent and has always been like, what women need is their own money, no matter what. They all need their own money, you know?

Speaker 17 So she wanted me to always have my own space.

Speaker 1 On her mother's advice, Abby bought her first apartment. It was a loft in New York City.
She had everything she wanted. Even dating came easily for Abby.

Speaker 17 Oh, God, men were everywhere. Men were everywhere.

Speaker 1 In her 20s, her relationships usually ended because he was more into her than she was into him.

Speaker 17 I, you know, had my boyfriend, then we broke up, and then I had other boyfriends. And I continued to work and I continued to travel.
And I... Kind of never really wanted to

Speaker 17 get married per se. That wasn't my agenda.
I didn't want to be tethered to somebody all the time.

Speaker 1 In her 30s, she dated more seriously. But none of the guys were quite right.

Speaker 17 One was a guy I met in Peru. He was a furniture maker and he was great, but that didn't work out.
A couple guys in the theater, I mean, just different, nice, I mean, they were fine.

Speaker 17 They were fine people. But I wanted something that

Speaker 17 mattered. I wanted something that mattered.

Speaker 1 Abby had traveled the world, reported for prestigious publications, and made friends in every corner of the city. But there was one thing she still hadn't experienced.

Speaker 17 Again, I didn't care if I got married, but I wanted to be madly in love.

Speaker 1 She wanted to be madly in love.

Speaker 1 By the time she was 40, she started looking for love in new places.

Speaker 17 If you've been single though a while, you know, sometimes you're just like, oh, God, maybe I should go out with somebody who I never thought I'd be with just because maybe I've been parking up the wrong tree all this time.

Speaker 1 After a string of relationships with struggling artists, she thought she'd try something more traditional. First, she went with the conservative Wall Street type.
Then she thought, I'm Jewish.

Speaker 17 I was brought up Jewish. I thought I've always dated non-Jewish guys.

Speaker 17 Maybe I need to be with somebody who's Jewish. Maybe that's what I need.

Speaker 1 On a lark, her friend recommended a psychic. Apparently, she had great insights on love.

Speaker 17 Oh, God, Carmella, the psychic from youngers. That's what she sounded like.

Speaker 1 But Carmella saw something in Abby's future. A man.

Speaker 17 And she was like, you're going to meet somebody. You're going to move.
His first initial is going to be R, P, B, or D.

Speaker 17 And oh, well, he's going to wear a uniform. And I said, I don't know anybody in uniform other than the FedEx guy.

Speaker 17 And she was like, no, it's not the FedEx guy.

Speaker 1 Around the same time, Abby was working on a piece for the Times.

Speaker 17 I was working on an article for the New York Times about detox diets and whether or not they had any validity or whether they were just kind of bullshit.

Speaker 17 And somebody suggested I call this guy who worked in Beverly Hills, California, who was a doctor there. He had written some articles or studies about detox diets.

Speaker 1 This Beverly Hills doctor gave Abby a great quote for her article. We're going to call him Richard.

Speaker 17 I quoted him and we had a nice conversation and that was the end of it.

Speaker 1 A few months later, she had to call Richard again to fact check the article.

Speaker 17 And I said, are you still in Beverly Hills? And he said, no, I'm in the Navy. I'm a Navy doc.

Speaker 1 Richard had been a Navy SEAL in his 20s, then left to go to medical school. After decades of private medical practice, he rejoined the Navy to work on special projects.

Speaker 17 He was working on opening up a hospital for kids with cancer in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 At the time, Abby wanted a new beat. She wanted to report on international relations.

Speaker 17 I was looking to do something different to expand my career. I wanted to do international reporting and even if possible, I wanted to do war correspondence.

Speaker 1 Richard was a good source, someone who might have stories and connections she would need.

Speaker 17 I said, well, tell me about, you know, keep me posted on how this goes. This is right up my alley.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 he did. He kept keeping me posted.
He kept telling me what was going on.

Speaker 1 At first, it was regular updates about his job in the Middle East.

Speaker 17 And then we began talking more and more.

Speaker 1 They started writing to each other every day and she learned more about Richard's personal life.

Speaker 17 Apparently he had been divorced since I met him. His two kids lived in California and he was living in Jacksonville and he was going to move to Washington.
And I thought, well, isn't that ironic?

Speaker 17 Because I was going to move to Washington too to go to grad school.

Speaker 1 Abby had just been accepted to an international relations master's program. It was in Washington, D.C., where Richard was headed next.

Speaker 1 By this point, their conversations veered into flirtations. So when they found out they were both moving to the same city,

Speaker 17 it seemed almost, you know, there's a word in Hebrew, beshert, which means meant to be.

Speaker 17 And I thought, okay, this is meant to be.

Speaker 1 Their flirtation expanded into late-night phone calls and surprise deliveries.

Speaker 17 And he... Called when he said he would, and he sent flowers, and he wasn't like a suffering artist in paint-splattered jeans.
You know, he was really a good guy.

Speaker 1 Richard was mature and accomplished. He was a doctor.
Maybe this was the guy she'd been waiting for.

Speaker 17 I was 42, so I wasn't a kid. And he was 58, so he wasn't a kid.
But it didn't matter because he was nice to me and he was good to me.

Speaker 1 After months of talking, Abby emailed him a poem.

Speaker 17 So I thought, all right, I can woo.

Speaker 17 I'm going to send it to him.

Speaker 1 She knew this poem was his favorite.

Speaker 17 I'm gonna read it. It's very short.
This is just to say by William Carlos Williams. I had eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast.
Forgive me.

Speaker 17 They were delicious, so sweet, and so cold.

Speaker 17 And I sent it to him and he wrote me back three words.

Speaker 17 I love you.

Speaker 17 And I thought, all right, it's a little fast, but okay.

Speaker 1 She'd only been talking to Richard Richard for a few months. But when she got his reply, she smiled.

Speaker 1 Richard was scheduled to be in New York the following month. Abby hadn't started school yet and was still in town.
So they decided to meet in person for the first time.

Speaker 17 He said, I've got to be in New York to give his talk at the EUN. So I'm going to be wearing my outfit, my Navy uniform.
And he said, let's go somewhere celebratory.

Speaker 1 He made a reservation for them at the Four Seasons restaurant. It's now closed, but in the early 2000s, it was one of the most glamorous date spots in New York.

Speaker 17 It was a very CNB scene kind of place. There was a giant pool in the middle of it, and it was just very expensive and swanky and ritzy.
And it was just kind of the place to be.

Speaker 1 On the night of their date, Richard met her in the lobby, wearing his white Navy officer uniform. As he walked towards her, she realized this was the man in uniform, the one the psychic had foreseen.

Speaker 1 Richard even brought her a gift.

Speaker 17 He brings what is called a cover, but it's a navy cap. You know, it's the hat.
I brought you one, he said.

Speaker 1 They walked into dinner hand in hand. Abby wearing his white navy cap.

Speaker 17 And at dinner, he was so funny and he was charming and he was good to me and he was charismatic and, you know, he kind of wooed me. He was wooing me.
And I liked that.

Speaker 17 It was after dating all sorts of shitheads. It was nice to be with somebody who, you know, seemed to be

Speaker 17 who they said they were.

Speaker 1 That was the beginning of Richard's regular visits to New York to take Abby out on romantic dates.

Speaker 17 He comes to visit for a weekend or maybe overnight. I mean, he always greeted me with a big kiss and he'd tell me how beautiful I was.

Speaker 1 When he met Abby's friends, he impressed them too.

Speaker 17 He cared about people. He cared about the world.

Speaker 17 He was always picking up tabs. He was always doing things that made people really like him.

Speaker 1 Richard had two kids by his first wife. And even though he lived apart from them, he was still a family man.

Speaker 17 He was very close to his son, so that was nice. And daughter.
He talked to his kid, his son, all the time.

Speaker 1 And then there was his illustrious military career. He was constantly traveling for work.

Speaker 17 He always said that he had certain things that he did that he wouldn't be able to tell me about.

Speaker 17 And then he would often go off on these sort of secret missions and he couldn't tell me what he was doing.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 I was kind of intrigued by that.

Speaker 1 Abby was the kid who needed to know how the magic mirror worked. And now with Richard, She wanted to know about his classified military projects.

Speaker 17 It kind of drove me mad that I didn't didn't know what he was doing. And a friend of mine said, well, that's obviously a lesson you need to learn that you can't know everything.

Speaker 1 Her intrigue turned to concern when Richard began having horrible nightmares.

Speaker 17 He would just have these screaming nightmares. And so he had to sleep with the lights on and the TV on.

Speaker 1 When she asked, he brushed it off. All he would say is that he had bad memories, things from the military that he couldn't talk about.

Speaker 17 I felt badly and I thought something must have happened. But I didn't know.
I didn't know what it was.

Speaker 1 Before long, his career began bumping up against their relationship.

Speaker 17 Anytime he broke any plan, which we began to do pretty regularly, it was,

Speaker 17 it's a secret mission. I can't tell you anything more about it.
That's it.

Speaker 1 Abby nicknamed him the commander. It was a joke at first, but it stuck.
Because Richard couldn't seem to escape his career.

Speaker 17 The commander told me that we were being followed by the Secret Service.

Speaker 1 This was jarring for Abby, and she demanded a reason why they were being followed. To her surprise, the commander began revealing some details about his career.

Speaker 17 He said that he had been a doctor at Guantanamo.

Speaker 1 He had been recruited to be the head doctor for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. This was the mid-2000s, at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 The commander explained, but there was intense infighting with personnel at Guantanamo. It had to do with classified information that wasn't being delivered up the chain.

Speaker 1 That's why he was being protected by men and black SUVs.

Speaker 17 And he said, when I was at Guantanamo, all these guys are after me. They hate me.
And they threaten me and my family.

Speaker 17 So my loved ones are being followed by the Secret Service.

Speaker 1 Abby tried to play it down, to act casual, but this was a big disclosure.

Speaker 17 And I remember I said to him, well, you know,

Speaker 17 next time, why don't you ask them if they can give me a ride so I don't have to call taxis? I mean, I was just like, this is absurd.

Speaker 1 She wasn't even sure if she believed his story about the Secret Service.

Speaker 1 But then one day, his son called from California.

Speaker 17 And there was a car outside and said, Dad, is that your guys?

Speaker 17 Why are they outside the house? So I remember I thought something really must have happened.

Speaker 1 Now, Abby needed answers. What had really happened at Guantanamo?

Speaker 17 I need to know everything.

Speaker 1 Eventually, Richard confided in her.

Speaker 17 And he said that one of his patients was a very high-level terrorist.

Speaker 17 And I said, who? And he said, Osama bin Laden. And I said, that's insane.

Speaker 17 And he said,

Speaker 17 no, it's not. And he began to list all the physical problems that bin Laden had.

Speaker 1 This was 2008. At the time, the military claimed to be actively searching for bin Laden.
So him being held at Guantanamo just didn't make sense.

Speaker 17 And I said to him, that is a stupid thing to tell a person. And I said, that's also...

Speaker 17 not possible because the president, it was Bush at the time, that he would never let this happen without getting it out because it was a big deal. And it would have helped Republicans.

Speaker 17 So he would never have been quiet about that if he knew where Bin Laden was. And he said,

Speaker 17 No,

Speaker 17 the president doesn't know.

Speaker 17 I said, That's impossible. He said, There's a lot of things that they don't know.

Speaker 17 And I remember thinking, Okay,

Speaker 17 this is insane,

Speaker 17 but

Speaker 17 maybe

Speaker 17 there's a story here.

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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's so dark, so stubborn, it might as well have been a crime scene.

Speaker 4 But this isn't your average couch.

Speaker 9 This is Anna Bay.

Speaker 10 Fully washable, unspeakably comfortable, and ready for whatever your life, your kids, or your ex throws ahead it.

Speaker 4 And here's the kicker.

Speaker 13 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 14 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 8 Anna Bay, the only mystery you won't be losing sleep over.

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Speaker 1 Abby's new boyfriend Richard made some pretty surprising claims. Biggest of all, that Osama bin Laden was being held at Guantanamo.
and that he had treated bin Laden for medical issues.

Speaker 1 This was the early 2000s, and bin Laden was one of the biggest fugitives on the planet. So Richard's story was hard to believe.

Speaker 1 But Abby knew for a fact that the commander worked in the Navy with a very high security clearance at that. She'd met some of his colleagues.

Speaker 1 So like a good journalist, she wanted to verify the commander's claim.

Speaker 17 I was trying to do my own checkups because I was feeling

Speaker 17 crazy and I couldn't call up the CIA and say, hey, do you have this guy on your payroll? I mean, you can't do that.

Speaker 1 So she started asking around, using vague details.

Speaker 17 My brother-in-law said that doesn't make sense because he was in the Navy and he said he wouldn't tell you about that. I had another friend who said the same thing.
They're not supposed to tell you.

Speaker 1 She doubted the story, but wasn't prepared to write it off entirely. Even if there was a remote possibility it could be true, it would be the biggest story in the world.

Speaker 1 And as someone who wanted to be a war reporter, that was undeniably enticing. She hit a dead end trying to fact-check the bin Laden story.
So instead, she decided to fact-check Richard.

Speaker 17 She started with one time when he said that he had a vault full of medals for operations that didn't really exist.

Speaker 17 They were unofficial, you know, like homeland-y kind of things that you're not supposed to know about.

Speaker 1 Abby asked her new professors if this could be true.

Speaker 17 I would ask my teachers, you know, is that possible? They said, yeah, absolutely it is.

Speaker 1 If that checked out, Richard's other classified projects could exist as well. Abby realized she couldn't fact-check the bin Laden story.
And after Richard shared that, he never talked about it again.

Speaker 1 He wanted a relationship separate from work. After all, the rest of his life was pretty tame.

Speaker 17 I met his family. I met his son.
I met his brother. I met his aunt.
I met some friends. I met everybody, you know?

Speaker 17 So it just seems kind of normal.

Speaker 1 And he met her family. Abby introduced him to her mom.

Speaker 17 He was a Jewish doctor. What's not to like?

Speaker 1 As their lives began to merge, Abby was ready to bring up a big topic of her own.

Speaker 17 I wanted to adopt. And I had said to him at some point, listen, I'm going to want a kid.

Speaker 1 When she told Richard this.

Speaker 17 Basically, he was willing to do it. He said, I love you.
I'm in love with you. I'll do anything you want.
I'm going to ask you to marry me. So whatever makes you happy makes me happy.

Speaker 1 That conversation brought their relationship to a new level. It was like an unspoken marriage proposal.

Speaker 17 I'm 42. He's 58.
We're not kids anymore. And we would discuss that.
He said, you know, his father always said, when you know, you know.

Speaker 17 And I've heard that before.

Speaker 17 So then he began, he would visit me in New York and he would come and he would say, oh, I just went to De Beers

Speaker 17 and I was looking, I was looking at rings there. And I thought, okay, great, that's cool.
But one day he says to me, you know, Abby, I'm really upset. I can't afford a $30,000 ring, $40,000 ring.

Speaker 17 You know, I said, I don't need a $40,000 ring, which is true, I didn't.

Speaker 1 After six months together, Richard officially proposed.

Speaker 1 She said yes. It's true, the ring was nothing extravagant, but they both knew they wanted to be together.

Speaker 1 And in keeping with their low-key attitude, Abby began planning for a small wedding, maybe the next year. They weren't in a rush.

Speaker 17 I had never really expected to get married. That wasn't my goal.
So it was very odd buying a dress. I decided I would just do something very small, like a dinner or something, just something chill.

Speaker 1 They made plans to move in together in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 17 Eventually, we found a place at the Watergate, which, you know, was obviously very famous.

Speaker 1 The apartment was being paid for by the Navy. But even still, Abby didn't like the Watergate or D.C.

Speaker 17 It was just sort of bleak and the Watergate was empty. And I didn't find Washington to be an especially hospitable town.

Speaker 1 It didn't help that the commander was always traveling for work.

Speaker 17 Sometimes going to Afghanistan, sometimes going to Iraq, sometimes he's doing all these things that I can't, you know, know about. I'll tell you when there's a secure line is what he would say.

Speaker 1 And when he came home, he struggled to keep his eyes open.

Speaker 17 He's a drag. Like falling asleep early.
He'll fall asleep at dinner. We're at dinner at like six o'clock and he's at the table like falling asleep.

Speaker 1 She chalked it up to him being a bit older and traveling so much for work.

Speaker 1 But Abby still had her mindset on the future.

Speaker 17 Well, I had put down money to adopt by myself, so I was all gonna do that.

Speaker 1 As time went on, Richard wasn't so into the idea.

Speaker 17 Anytime he talked about adoption, he always would say,

Speaker 17 You know, I'll do it if that's what you really want to do, but a lot of those kids really have problems. And I thought that was a really callous thing to say.

Speaker 17 I thought that was awful because I knew a lot of kids who were not adopted, who had problems.

Speaker 1 He was changing. He wasn't the accommodating and doting man she'd met.
That guy was rarely around.

Speaker 1 And one day,

Speaker 17 I was talking about something about getting married and we didn't even have a date, but he started breaking down. He's like, I'm so overwhelmed.
We have to push the wedding back.

Speaker 1 Maybe he was stressed out with work or maybe he was having cold feet. Shortly after this conversation, Abby confided in her mom.

Speaker 17 And I told her about the bin Laden thing.

Speaker 17 And she said, something's not right there, Abby. She said, that doesn't make sense.
I said, and I got mad at her.

Speaker 17 I said, Why isn't it possible that there are things that you don't know that we don't know and we don't know the answer yet? And I got so mad at her. I was like, You're so suspicious.

Speaker 1 Abby was defensive in the moment, but her mom's suspicion rubbed off on her.

Speaker 17 So then I kind of went back and would ask him questions, you know, more targeted.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 he would get mad at me.

Speaker 1 One night at dinner with Abby's parents, the commander made a big show of complimenting Emil.

Speaker 17 We're at a restaurant and he raves about the Brussels sprouts.

Speaker 17 These are the best Brussels sprouts ever. Okay, my parents, that's nice.
They didn't make it. They don't care.

Speaker 1 But as soon as they were alone, he told Abby the exact opposite.

Speaker 17 And he said, that's, I think, the worst meal I've ever eaten. And I just thought to myself, what? I said, why did you lie? Why did you lie? They didn't care.

Speaker 17 He said, I wanted it to make them feel good. It just was too discordant.
You can't verify the CIA. You can't verify Navy SEAL.
You can't do that. But that was something tangible that I could verify.

Speaker 17 And I just thought, I can't do this anymore. I just can't, I can't do this.
This is insane. If he can lie about that, he can lie about anything.

Speaker 1 That small lie about the Brussels sprouts broke something inside of Abby. It was proof that he felt the need to compulsively lie.

Speaker 1 She was disgusted with him, but she wasn't prepared to call off the wedding. That was until a few weeks later.

Speaker 17 It was Christmas, and we were spending it with his brother and sister-in-law in their big house in Georgetown, and his son and daughter were there.

Speaker 17 And I overheard the son saying, what's that ring on Abby's finger? Is that from you?

Speaker 17 And I didn't hear the response, but I remember thinking to myself, This kid doesn't know that we're getting married?

Speaker 17 The son had no idea that he had proposed to me.

Speaker 1 Richard had told Abby that his kids knew and that they were happy about it.

Speaker 17 The commander told me that when he told his son that he had proposed to me, his son said, well, what took you so long?

Speaker 1 And now she had proof of a very consequential lie.

Speaker 17 You're lying to me and I can't, there's something, I'm done. I'm out of here.

Speaker 1 That night, she called off the engagement, and the timing turned out to be pretty convenient.

Speaker 17 About two weeks later, he came over and he said, listen, the Navy, who was apparently paying for the apartment, needs the apartment. And they're shipping me out somewhere else.
I'm leaving Washington.

Speaker 17 So we have to pack up everything and get out.

Speaker 1 So Abby packed up and moved back to New York.

Speaker 17 And I didn't know what I was going to do because I, again, was going to school. I ended up commuting to Washington.
from New York City and I finished my degree.

Speaker 1 In the wake of the breakup, Abby second-guessed herself.

Speaker 17 I felt bad. I felt maybe I overreacted.
You know, every time I would interrogate him, he'd be like, well, that's why you're single, because you always question and you don't trust and you interrogate.

Speaker 17 That's why. That's why you've been single all this time.
And I thought, well, maybe that's right. You know, maybe that's right.

Speaker 1 A few months after the breakup, she was in DC for school. And one night, she was in a cab driving by the Watergate.

Speaker 17 And the light was still on in the apartment. And i i called him i said are you

Speaker 17 you in the apartment

Speaker 17 he said you know it was a comedy of errors i got everything moved and everything was in storage and everything was great and i was ready to be relocated and then the navy said nope you got to move back into the apartment you got to stay in washington we're keeping you here

Speaker 17 so remember i'm nancy drew I'd said, well, I need to pick up my cookbooks that are in the apartment. I left the cookbooks.

Speaker 1 So she told the cab driver to pull over. She wanted to investigate.

Speaker 17 I didn't have a key. And I said to the doorman, I'd like to go up to the apartment.
And the doorman said, you're not allowed up. I have a note.
Abby Ellen is not allowed up. So I called the commander.

Speaker 17 I said, why? What's up with that? Like, why was I, there was specifically a note. Hannie said, oh, somebody was assaulted in the building.
So they're being really careful about who they let in.

Speaker 17 I said, I don't believe you.

Speaker 1 She told Richard she needed to get a few things she left behind. So we let her up.

Speaker 17 I looked in the house and the cookbooks were exactly where I had left them.

Speaker 1 It wasn't just the cookbooks.

Speaker 17 His baseball glove was exactly where it had been when I left. And there was a sliver of soap in exactly the same place, the same sliver that had been there when I left.

Speaker 17 And I looked at him and I said, you didn't move. And he said, oh yes, I did.

Speaker 1 There was no way he moved out of the apartment and put a tiny, used up sliver of soap back in the exact same place, stuck to the same bathtile.

Speaker 17 And I thought, you're nuts. And that was it.
That was it. I didn't really talk to him after that.

Speaker 17 She knew he was a liar, but how big of a liar?

Speaker 1 She wouldn't find out for another year and a half.

Speaker 17 And then I got a phone call.

Speaker 17 It's a 202 area code.

Speaker 17 The only 202 area code I knew was the commander's. So I thought, okay,

Speaker 17 I don't know why he's calling. And I picked it up.
And it was Special Agent Dan Ryan with NCIS.

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Speaker 1 Abby hadn't talked to Richard in over a year. When a DC number cold called her, she assumed it was him.
But to her surprise, it was a special agent with NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Speaker 17 And he says there's a doctor who's writing prescriptions for narcotics for Vicodin.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 your

Speaker 17 name is one of the names he's been using.

Speaker 1 Abby's name had shown up on a list of falsified narcotics prescriptions. Scripps, written by a Navy doctor named Richard.

Speaker 17 I said, what?

Speaker 17 And he said, yeah, he's been writing prescriptions for drugs. Do you know him via prescription? And I said, no, I know him and I do not have a prescription for Vicodin.
You know, I prefer Valium.

Speaker 17 I mean,

Speaker 1 the phone call didn't upset Abby. In fact, she was excited because maybe she was finally going to get answers about Richard.

Speaker 17 I thought maybe this is the culmination. Everything's kind of coming to a head.
CIA and Navy SEAL and all the, you know, everything is just coming together.

Speaker 1 It turned out Richard wasn't working with special forces on secret missions. He was actually a Navy doctor working at the Pentagon.

Speaker 1 But while he was there,

Speaker 17 people he worked with at the Pentagon, he had used their names to

Speaker 1 forge drugs.

Speaker 1 He forged hundreds of opioid prescriptions using the names of his coworkers and his family.

Speaker 17 He used his dead mother's name. He used his dead father's name.
He used, I think, his aunt. He used my name.
All these people.

Speaker 1 He'd been caught filling scripts at the Pentagon's pharmacy. It was a brazen scheme.
What was he doing with all those painkillers?

Speaker 17 I asked if he was selling, selling, and Dan Ryan said, No, we have no evidence of that.

Speaker 1 Presumably, Richard was taking the pills himself.

Speaker 1 At least, that's what he later claimed to a judge.

Speaker 1 Abby thought back to dinners with the commander, the ones where he was falling asleep at the table. In hindsight, that was her only clue that Richard could have been taking opioids.

Speaker 17 So, I kicked into journalist mode.

Speaker 1 She tracked down Richard's ex-wife and gave her a call. His ex-wife knew Richard had a girlfriend, but it wasn't Abby.

Speaker 17 She was one who told me about the girlfriend.

Speaker 1 Abby would call one woman who told her about another. It was like a phone tree of Richard's ex-girlfriends.
That's how she found a woman who'd been engaged to Richard.

Speaker 1 At the same time, Abby started dating him.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 her name was Christine. She was a doctor.
She was awesome. And he proposed to her right around the time he started beginning corresponding with me.

Speaker 17 And he one day said to her, I've got to go off on a secret mission. I'll call you when I come back.
And he never came back.

Speaker 1 Christine never knew why Richard disappeared. Abby had the other half of the story.

Speaker 17 And the secret mission was Operation Abby.

Speaker 1 But Richard's romantic con took an even darker turn. The last woman he'd been seeing was named Gail.
Richard had been her college boyfriend.

Speaker 1 When Gail was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 60s, he reappeared.

Speaker 17 She was getting a divorce. He had reached out to her and,

Speaker 17 you know, I never stopped loving you after 30 years, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.

Speaker 1 He swept Gail off her feet. He even claimed he could help her beat cancer.
After all, he was a doctor.

Speaker 17 He was helping manage her cancer, but she was one of the names he was using to get narcotics as well.

Speaker 1 Gail was the last woman Richard conned before he got caught.

Speaker 17 And then I called up Gail, who was

Speaker 17 basically dying at the time. She had cancer.
She had breast cancer.

Speaker 1 When NCIS informed Gail about the fraudulent prescriptions in her name, She was so angry she flipped on Richard immediately.

Speaker 17 She wore a wire and he admitted that he had been forging signatures and everything. He admitted to her and she got him in trouble.

Speaker 1 Gail passed away shortly after that. Her story is the one Abby still thinks about.
If there is a hero here, she says it's Gail.

Speaker 1 Richard ultimately pled guilty to two felony charges of prescription fraud.

Speaker 1 In his sentencing hearing, he told a judge that he'd become addicted while he struggled to cope with his girlfriend's terminal cancer diagnosis.

Speaker 1 Between that and his history of military service, the judge went easy on him.

Speaker 17 He was sentenced to,

Speaker 17 I think, two years and one day.

Speaker 1 After Abby found out about Richard's crimes, she began parsing out every lie he ever told her. Bin Laden, Richard never treated him at Guantanamo.
The Secret Service wasn't following him or his kids.

Speaker 1 He had never been a Navy SEAL because Abby found a Navy SEAL impersonation expert who checked military records and confirmed it. And those screaming nightmares Richard had?

Speaker 1 Well, the SEAL expert said fake nightmares are a common feature of con artists like Richard. Abby had been duped.

Speaker 17 After this happened, I was like, now I got a book. Thank you.

Speaker 1 She titled her book duped. Once she got started on it, she realized it was about much more than just her own experience.
It was about the experience of being lied to.

Speaker 17 It's not a straight-out memoir. It is really an investigation.
We decided to focus on the victims. What is it like to be deceived? What is it like to be duped?

Speaker 17 What is it like to not have all the facts?

Speaker 17 And that the life you've been living is not the life you thought you were living. So that was my book.

Speaker 1 Abby never blamed herself for believing Richard's lies.

Speaker 17 You know,

Speaker 17 what's the worst thing you did? The worst thing is you trusted somebody.

Speaker 17 And we have to trust. Society works on trust.
You have to stop at the red light. You have to stop at the stoplight.
You have to trust that the pilot knows how to fly the plane.

Speaker 17 You have to trust that that cop is really a cop. You have to.
And if you don't, society will fall apart.

Speaker 1 Working on her book, she researched experts on deception, like Dr. Jennifer Freid, who coined the term betrayal blindness.

Speaker 17 And it was just about, you know, how when children are being abused by their caretakers,

Speaker 17 they don't see it because they need that caretaker.

Speaker 17 They can't believe that that person is working against them. And it's the same thing in any relationship.

Speaker 17 Whether it's somebody a business colleague or your romantic partner, you don't want to believe that someone's going to do this to you. You can't believe it.

Speaker 17 And it's to your benefit not to see it because of your life that you built up.

Speaker 1 And she even explored the stigma around being deceived, that feeling of self-blame and stupidity when we've been lied to.

Speaker 17 So then I found this study that said actually smarter people are more susceptible to being duped because they don't think it would happen to them. So actually people who've been duped are smarter.

Speaker 17 They tend to be smarter, specifically because of fatal overconfidence. It would never happen to me.

Speaker 1 Abby turned Richard's betrayal into a story. A story for herself and for the world.

Speaker 3 I never felt ashamed.

Speaker 17 I never felt embarrassed. To me, it was a story, and it was a great story.

Speaker 1 Instead of covering international relations, today she mostly reports on fraud.

Speaker 17 I think it's fair to say that it changed the trajectory of my career. I began reporting on different things.
I became somewhat of an expert on fraud.

Speaker 17 I guys read a book about white color fraud, and I did a podcast, which led into a documentary that I did with the New York Times called To Live and Die in Alabama. So it did change my life.

Speaker 1 And thanks to her experience with Richard, she's learned a few things about herself.

Speaker 17 I always knew I was resilient. I always knew I was strong.
But I don't know that I realized just how capable I was.

Speaker 17 That's nice to know.

Speaker 1 We end all of our episodes with the same question.

Speaker 1 Why are you sharing your story?

Speaker 17 I think it's very important for people to know that they're not alone and that this happens to other people. It's very easy for it to happen now with technology.
You're not a terrible person.

Speaker 17 You're not a stupid person. Lots of people are in this situation and don't feel like an idiot.
Because, again, what's the worst thing you did? You trusted.

Speaker 17 That's okay.

Speaker 1 On the next episode of Betrayal,

Speaker 17 I said, said, well, I'm not a suspicious person.

Speaker 17 And he said,

Speaker 17 maybe you should be more suspicious.

Speaker 17 You should ask me questions. At this point, my heart dropped and I feel like I'm in a vomit.
The betrayal felt so intentional and possibly like it was a long time coming.

Speaker 1 If you would like to reach out to the betrayal team, email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com. That's betrayal, p-od at gmail.com.
And be sure to follow us on Instagram at betrayalpod.

Speaker 1 We're grateful for your support. 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.

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 is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunny.
Written and produced by Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Speaker 1 Associate producers are Kristen Melcuri and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.
Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.

Speaker 1 Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines.
Music library provided by Mybe Music.

Speaker 1 And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you've got your podcasts.

Speaker 17 I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money.

Speaker 17 And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people.

Speaker 17 Horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Used Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to Fight Its Way Into the Airlines.

Speaker 17 The most Texas story ever. Listen to business history on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 17 What up, y'all? It's your boy, Kev on Stage.

Speaker 17 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 had massive success about their massive failures.

Speaker 17 What did they mess up on? What is their heartbreak? And what did they learn from it? I got judged horribly. The judges were like, you're trash.
I don't know how you got on the show.

Speaker 17 Check out Not My Best Moment with me, Kept on Stage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 17 On this week's episode of the next chapter, I, DD Jakes, get to sit down with Oprah Winfrey, a media mogul, philanthropist, and global trailblazer.

Speaker 17 I could feel inside inside myself at four or five years old looking through the screen on the back porch that this is not going to be my life.

Speaker 17 Listen to the next chapter on the iHeart Radio Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 17 Episodes drop weekly.

Speaker 1 The Big Take Podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day.

Speaker 17 My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.

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Impact politics, change businesses.

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Speaker 1 Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.