Tracie | Betrayal Weekly

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The person that sent these letters out was saying, I have proof.

Unless you confess your sins and repent, then I'm going to release some tapes.

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

A few months ago, we got an email from a listener we're going to call Tracy.

She grew up in the South in the 80s.

Her mom was a free spirit.

She is a wonderful, hippie-like woman.

We would just have goats running around.

They would jump on the porch.

But Tracy wasn't like her mom.

She was always more buttoned up.

When I was growing up, my mom would lay on top of the roof to get some sun, and she would not have her clothes on.

And when I was young, I would be just so horrified by that.

And my mom would always say, Tracy, just loosen up.

It's okay.

And I'm always like, no.

When Tracy was 14, her mom met a new guy and decided to move with him to Africa.

She hadn't fully worked out where Tracy would stay.

but she had some ideas.

She said, you can move to New York with your grandma or you can move to California with your aunt, or you can move to Africa with me, or you can move in with your dad.

Whatever you decide.

Now, I was 14 at the time,

and my dad, I applaud this, he stepped in and said, No, these are children.

They are not deciding which state and whom they live with.

They are coming to live with me.

So she moved in with her dad and his new wife.

So a very happy, wholesome childhood, except that my dad did drink too much, and occasionally that would cause a little problem.

Things at home could feel out of control, and at times that made her feel really lonely.

That was until her stepmom invited her into a new community, her church.

The first time Tracy went for a Sunday service, it was just so warm and welcoming.

and something I'd never experienced before.

It was a big Southern Baptist church, one that loomed large in their small town.

And after a few Sundays there, everyone knew her name.

That was something that I had been searching for because my family is a very small unit and I didn't grow up with cousins.

So it just felt like the place I wanted to be.

I wasn't even related to these people, but they felt like family just automatically.

The church quickly became Tracy's second home.

She started volunteering and joined the youth group choir.

Her dad didn't understand the appeal, but Tracy did.

She saw it as a way to break a cycle.

Seeing my dad struggle with alcoholism, I definitely felt like if I stay in church, I'm going to end up serving the Lord with someone who doesn't struggle with alcoholism.

It felt very safe.

By the time she was 17, Tracy was taking notes during Sunday sermons.

I just was one of those teenagers that didn't get into trouble because everything that was preached, I practiced.

And the person doing the preaching?

He was funny.

He was charismatic.

He seemed to care about people.

His name was Keith, or at least that's what we're going to call him in this episode.

And when she was sitting in the pew on Sunday, Tracy looked up to him.

I just remember feeling the energy that came from his preaching and his dedication to serving the Lord.

I really admired that.

A lot of other people admired Keith too.

He'd built his church into a huge community.

It wasn't like 30 people in our church.

It wasn't this little church where everybody has beehive hair.

We had a thousand people in our church.

It was principals.

It was the mayor.

It was the police chief.

Very well-viewed citizens of our town.

The church was popular, but it also had rules, strict ones.

And Tracy was a rule follower.

I am wearing skirts all the time.

I don't even wear pants.

I don't listen to rock music.

I don't listen to any secular music.

That's how deeply entrenched I was.

And the strictest rules were around dating.

It was very much praised if you made it to the altar and had never kissed.

You don't live together.

You don't have premarital sex.

You don't go to the movie theaters.

Tracy's favorite part of the church was the youth group choir.

It was a group of nearly 100 teenagers who would travel all around the south to perform.

Our youth group would sing and then Keith would preach.

We would go to churches all around, far and wide.

I mean, we actually made tapes and like sold them.

It wasn't a typical teenage experience.

Instead of sneaking alcohol with her friends, she joined the church's campaign against it.

Our county was a dry county.

And when there was a vote to bring alcohol in, our church was one of the biggest adversaries to that and made it very loud, took out billboards, had preaching on the corners about the evils of alcohol.

The message resonated with Tracy.

It was personal, but it also felt like she was part of something bigger.

For me, being from a small town, it felt like a movement of positivity.

After high school, Tracy enrolled in a college about an hour away.

She went for a teaching degree, but she was still active in Keith's church.

She went on weekend trips to perform with her youth choir.

After one of those weekend trips, when I returned back to my college dorm, dorm, it was about two o'clock in the morning

and my answer machine is flashing.

So I push it and it's Keith's voice.

And all he's doing is asking, did I get home safely?

And could I please call him at his home to let him know I got home safely?

Keith, the head pastor, was like a celebrity.

Even though she dedicated so much time to his church, she'd never talked to him directly.

To talk to Keith one-on-one, he needed an appointment.

And now he was calling her in the middle of the night.

I really felt like that was super odd.

That had never happened before.

Actually, I didn't even know if he really even knew me.

Of course, he saw me, but we never spoke.

But this was the leader of her church.

So she called him right back.

I mean, this is now 2.30 in the morning and gave him a call.

And he said, I just really wanted to check on you, make sure you got there safely.

And then the conversation switched to,

hey, I was just wondering if you would ever consider going out on a date with me.

Tracy felt a rush of emotion.

When he asked me out, I just started crying.

I felt like it was

all that I could ever wish for.

In Keith's church, asking someone on a date signaled a very serious intention, a holy intention, with marriage as the end goal.

I felt immediately

very complimented that someone who's serving the Lord in such a way would even consider asking me out.

This was someone who not only shared her values, but preached them.

He's always going to be serving people and caring for others.

He's never going to hurt people.

I could have a man that's never going to drink too much.

He's never going to cheat on me.

It made her feel safe, but it was still so surprising.

Tracy had never thought of Keith romantically.

He was 35 and she had just turned 20.

She didn't really know much about him.

I didn't pay any attention to him other than being the pastor that was energetic, charismatic.

It never even crossed my mind to think of him in that way.

One One thing she did know about him was that his wife had recently walked out of their marriage.

He was open about this journey with his congregation.

She left suddenly and moved in with a younger man and left the kids.

Keith had three daughters that he was now parenting on his own.

The youngest was only a year old.

It was hard on him emotionally.

He really preached a lot about his wife leaving him and how he stays up at night with the baby crying and you know the girls cry for someone to be in their lives.

A lot of women in the church felt sorry for him.

He wanted a partner.

So when he asked Tracy out on a date, she knew what it meant.

Keith had chosen her.

I thought, what better opportunity would I have for a man that could be good in my life?

Like, this has got to be it.

It's like being offered the best.

What else could there be?

That's what it felt like to me.

They decided to meet for a picnic.

On the date, she expected Keith to be strict and chaste.

No handholding, absolutely no kissing.

She'd been following those rules for the last five years.

But on the day of their date,

we met and went to a scenic area that was alone.

And

he actually pushed me down and kissed me.

Keith could see that Tracy was taken aback.

He tried to explain.

Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry I did this.

I was just overcome because I just really care about you.

It felt like an impulse that couldn't be controlled.

I felt elated.

I must be the person he really cares about in order for him to cross that line.

A line that I so carefully for the past four years never crossed.

After that, they spent hours sitting in Keith's car just chatting.

Because he had been my pastor for four years,

him talking and me listening was just a natural part of our relationship.

And he just told me how much he cared for me.

It just felt very safe and I felt very special.

It was the beginning of a relationship.

From there, we continued to date in a secretive way for about a year and a half.

Tracy knew that if her parents found out about the relationship, they would have

like burned the college down to keep me from being with Keith.

My mom and my dad, who did not go to church with his wife, was very much against it.

In my mind, that would be the most horrible thing that I could tell them would be that I was dating a very conservative pastor.

And for Keith, part of the secrecy was because he wasn't ready to talk to his girls about it yet, even though he wanted to remain somewhat stable to them looking.

So that really played a huge part in me feeling sorry for him and trying to be what he needed to be.

They were both willing to do whatever it took to be together, even if it meant being discreet.

We'd often drive an hour or two hours to meet, like at a rest stop or pick up some food and eat at a scenic spot.

And we did that for a long time.

They fell hard for one another.

We definitely expressed great love for each other very early on.

And I was deeply, deeply, deeply committed to him.

Even though it was against church rules, their relationship progressed physically.

We did not cross all the boundaries, but we certainly did cross a lot of them.

He just told me that the reason that he couldn't control his impulses with me was because he already felt like I was his wife.

She felt like she was breaking the rules, but Keith was the one who made the rules.

He knows God.

And if God is telling him that I'm the person, who am I to try to figure that out when I don't know?

Like, I don't know what God says.

Like, he runs a church, and I can see God answering prayers for him every week at church.

How could I know better?

Keith had direct communication with God, and that came with a lot of power.

He wasn't God, but he was the closest thing in our church to God.

Meaning, if he said it, it went.

If he thought it, it happened.

If he wanted it, it was going to be worked through by all the people in the church to make it happen

there was no questioning his authority there was no checks and balances in our church we had deacons but the deacons were to do good to the widows and they just followed keith

if you did question him you were quickly moved out of the church by others

Two years into their relationship, Keith said he was ready to make their commitment public.

That's when he sat down and talked to the deacons about it.

Of course, the deacons approved.

And after that, they started going out together in public.

She would join him and his children for lunch after church on Sundays.

When we went public, I was proud because it felt like I was no longer a secret and it felt like he was taking a stand on our future together.

One Saturday, Keith was determined to take Tracy to the beach for a date.

Shortly after we got to the beach, you know, I heard the plane and I could see that it was dragging one of those signs behind it saying, Tracy, will you marry me?

Love Keith.

And then he just pulled out a ring and he said, will you marry me?

It didn't actually feel like a question.

It felt like the decision had already been made.

I felt immediately honored that I could be his wife and we could do this movement together.

And at the same time, I felt like, oh no,

is this exactly what I think it is?

But it had gone too far.

And he had already spoken to the deacons and it was already public in the church.

I just felt like, who am I to question this?

If he feels like this is what has to happen and I love him very much,

then this is what we're going to do.

Before the proposal, Keith hadn't talked to Tracy's dad.

So when word got back to her father,

my dad was very frustrated and he felt that there was an imbalance of power and that Keith was taking advantage of his daughter.

So my dad had tried to talk to him, but he would not.

Since Keith wouldn't meet with him, Tracy's dad decided to go to Keith.

And there was one place he knew he'd be.

My dad actually showed up at our church during one of the services and he walked inside and he said, Keith, we need to talk.

And I mean, there's hundreds of people there.

And Keith said, what are you doing?

You're interrupting the service.

Tracy's dad confronted Keith in the middle of his sermon while hundreds of parishioners watched in confusion.

It was a spectacle.

Immediately, the deacon surrounded my dad and rushed him out of the church.

Later, my dad told me, he said, Tracy, I want you to know that that was difficult for me, but it was the only way that I knew to try to get his attention and try to let people know how bad I think this is.

He said, I actually had a gun in my car and I locked it in my car, so I could not run back and get it because if I had my way, I would have used it that day.

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Tracy was determined to marry Keith.

They set a date for right after she graduated college.

And despite her dad's public outburst, he showed up for the wedding.

My dad walked me down the aisle, and that was one of the hardest things he's ever done, he said.

But in support of his daughter, regardless of who she was marrying, he wanted to be there for me.

The wedding was on a Sunday night with hundreds of people in attendance, from parishioners to family and friends.

Everything was always done over the top.

And of course, our wedding would also be over the top.

I mean, this was a big wedding, big, big wedding.

I had like eight bridesmaids, he had like eight groomsmen, and my little brother was dressed just like Keith, little white tux and everything.

While they were standing at the altar, Keith surprised her with a personal rendition of a Johnny Mathis song.

Keith got the guitar from behind and surprised me singing the 12th of Never, I'll Love You Till the 12th of Never.

And they actually cut a hole in the ceiling of the church and dropped all these balloons down on top of us when they announced that we were husband and wife.

After the honeymoon, Tracy moved into the house Keith and his daughters already lived in.

She got a job teaching at a Christian school run by Keith's church.

And I just dove right in.

So our life, seven days a week, revolved around church, whether it was visitation or bus ministry or running to this church on a Friday night so that the youth choir could sing.

Everything revolved around church and that was our entire life.

After the wedding, Keith's life didn't change that much, but Tracy's did because now she was the stepmother to Keith's three young daughters.

I instantly loved the kids because I felt like they were just being tossed about.

given the situation with their mom not living with them.

So I was happy to to take that on.

And I actually thought, I am okay with not having children of my own.

I'm just going to raise his.

Tracy also became the first lady of the church, which had some upsides.

You are his wife.

You drive the best cars.

You live in the big house on the hill.

You have inner workings of what his life is, and you are privy to all of it.

And you should be very, very grateful that you're in it.

And for the first couple years, that's exactly how how it went.

I had a lovely time with his family.

She even loved the little moments, the everyday tasks of parenting.

I would get the kids up for school and they would travel with me.

I taught at the same school that they went to.

Then after school, I would bring them home.

They would play and do and I would cook dinner or make something for dinner and then we'd get ready for church.

So it was just a very busy time, but I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be.

plus she was able to continue serving the community it felt like she had a larger purpose i really thrived in the position as a preacher's wife i enjoyed teaching in a christian school i enjoyed working with people where i could go visit them and bring them groceries and help them figure out how to do their child care or whatever they needed I was able to help people and live for other people.

That was something that I really wanted.

Keith treated her like a prize.

He gushed about their happy marriage in his Sunday sermons.

I felt very much like he was as devoted to me as I was him.

And he would make that very apparent.

He would talk about me in his messages.

He would use humor about our relationship.

He would always brag on me being his wife.

As time went on, Tracy started noticing some odd behavior from Keith.

We would pull up and get gas, and somebody would pump our gas, and they would say, Hey, what y'all been doing all day?

And Keith would make up something that we weren't even doing.

Like, it just, I started seeing that not telling the truth was something that came very easily to him.

And that surprised me over and over.

And behind the scenes, she was seeing how he ran the church.

And at times, it was off-putting.

At first, it was little things.

The very movies that he would talk against from the pulpit, we would watch at home.

And he would say that he was studying it.

She saw that Keith could be materialistic.

So for Pastor Appreciation Day, he would be like, whatever you want.

But behind the scenes, he was like, I want this color car made of this model with this kind of seat and I want this kind of trim and it needs to have XYZ on it.

So, I was constantly questioning in my heart, how does this work?

Because as you know, I wasn't raised in a church environment.

He's the only pastor I've ever had.

It just was contradictory to what I expected life to be with him sometimes.

There were other times where his actions really gave her pause.

When a church member would call and say their child was in a car wreck, could he go to the the hospital to visit them and pray with them?

He would say he was busy and he would hang up the phone and he would say, Tracy, let's go jump in the pool.

And I would say, Keith,

that church member just asked if you could go see their son who just was in a terrible car wreck.

And he would say, Tracy, I can't do everything everybody wants.

I can't be on 24/7.

And here I am, 15 years younger than him, going, That doesn't make sense, but what do I know?

Every time she had questions about Keith's behavior, this is what she came back to.

He knows more about how to run the church.

And all was good until about 1996.

Four years into their marriage, Tracy and Keith's life was well established.

They ran a few businesses through the church, like a summer camp and a bookstore.

It was at that bookstore where Tracy began to notice another strange pattern in Keith's behavior.

There was a young lady that worked there who was in high school, and

she

was very friendly, very sweet, and I enjoyed her company.

However, if I walked in and Keith was there, they would instantly move apart.

Like they would be close together, like a foot apart from each other, and then they would step away.

And I remember that catching my attention because

that's exactly how he and I did it when we were secretly meeting.

So I just started paying attention.

She watched for a few weeks and she saw Keith behaving strangely every time he was in the same space as the girl.

Eventually, Tracy decided to address it with him.

I talked to Keith about it and I said, Keith, if you feel an attraction to this girl, I want you to remember that she is a young girl and just move on, pray about it and be done with it.

I was conditioned to believe that men cannot help their impulses.

And I just felt like I need to remind him to check himself.

Tracy thought that conversation would be the end of it.

But Keith didn't react well.

He would instantly put me in my place and say, I don't know what you're talking about.

You're crazy.

It was a very direct, accusatory flip the script to how dare you to where you're apologizing to him at the end of it, like, oh, I'm so sorry.

Like, how could I ever think that?

And Keith made it clear he didn't take orders from Tracy.

I'm God's man.

It's none of your business.

God will keep me in check.

That was his answer.

Talking directly with the girl at the bookstore wasn't an option because Tracy didn't have any proof.

She only had a gut feeling.

I never said anything to her.

Of course, you know, it was, I would never, I would never say anything because I wasn't sure, right?

I was just seeing it.

Maybe I wasn't seeing it.

So that's how the next two years went.

During that time, Tracy's gut feeling grew into a certainty.

Something was going on.

I knew he had an attraction for that young lady.

I could feel it.

I could even feel when he dressed differently because he was going to be around her.

So I would bring those fears or those thoughts to him as rationally as I could and say,

Keith,

I know you're going to see this young lady today.

And he'd say, how do you know that?

And I'd say, because you're doing this, this.

You're wearing this cologne or you put on these clothes.

I could tell the difference because I knew him and I just watched him.

So, for four years before I even dated him, I observed him every week, many times a week, and I knew his patterns.

And then, most disturbing of all,

when we would have intimacy, there was often times that he would call me her name.

And she's 16, 17, and he's 44.

The first time that happened, Tracy was horrified and embarrassed.

She felt sick to her stomach.

When I realized that he

actually had a true attraction for someone that was so young, it was devastating to me.

It was such a contradiction between what was being preached and what I saw happening.

I actually considered just walking away, walking into the woods and just disappearing because I had no power.

I had no credit card.

I thought everyone would hate me

and blame me.

Yet I was just completely powerless.

And so the only way to get away would be to just walk away and just disappear.

Leaving would mean abandoning everything she built, the kids she'd helped raise, the congregation she loved.

The only way she'd be able to walk away is if she had concrete proof of Keith's actions.

It had been very clear that things had gotten out of control, but up until that point, no proof had been put in front of me.

She knew it would take a lot more than her word to bring down God's right-hand man.

Tracy felt so trapped that she considered taking her own life.

I felt so alone, so ostracized, and I was so doubting my own understanding of exactly what I was seeing and unable to find help.

To give herself a purpose, she became laser focused on things she could control, like raising the kids and supporting the congregation.

I just started throwing myself into what the good was and trying to just ignore the other stuff.

And I felt literally crazy.

And yet I needed to hold the church together.

I needed to not fall apart.

I needed to be acting like I was completely behind Keith and saw nothing wrong.

And that worked until Nathan came into the picture.

One of the deacons came up to me and told me that he had been receiving letters from someone who called himself Nathan.

It was a pseudonym, one that anyone in the church would recognize.

It came from a Bible story about a prophet named Nathan who was sent by God to confront King David.

King David had committed adultery and he was using his power to hide it.

So God sent Nathan to confront the king.

Whoever wrote this letter was sending a clear message.

that even the most powerful leaders are not above God's law.

The person that sent these letters out was saying to Keith, what would you do if someone's committing adultery in your church?

And then it said, you are that person, and I know you are.

I have proof.

In the Bible story, King David immediately acknowledged his own actions and repented for his sins.

I feel like Nathan used that parable specifically to give Keith the chance to correct and not make it public.

This letter writer also had some leverage.

Then it said, unless you confess your sins and repent,

I'm going to release some tapes.

Letters had been sent to the church deacons and to Keith himself.

But after Keith read the letter, he threw it away.

Well, Keith did not take that seriously.

He didn't believe that this person that called themselves Nathan really had anything.

Tracy saw her whole life on the brink of collapse.

No, I'm thinking it's coming down.

This is the hammer's falling, is what I'm thinking.

And she believed Nathan, whoever he was.

Nathan meant what he said when he said, I will make it public if you don't correct yourself.

And so, when Keith blew off Nathan's demands,

our phone had been tapped

and the tapes were released.

released.

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Tracy and Keith's life was hanging in the balance when someone in their church mailed out anonymous letters.

The letter writer called himself Nathan.

He said he had evidence of Keith committing adultery.

The letter first came to Keith, and then the letters were sent to the deacons to try to put their King David in line.

And nothing seemed to have been done.

And so then the tapes were released.

Whoever Nathan was, he had tapped Keith and Tracy's home phone.

He'd been recording the line and making tapes of Keith's private conversations.

The day the tapes were sent out, Keith was nowhere to be found.

It happened all so quickly.

At this point, Keith is now somewhere in the woods praying.

Like he's gone to a quiet place to go pray.

But Tracy was in the eye of the storm.

She found out about the tapes when a member of their congregation, a friend of hers, came speeding into the church parking lot.

He's like, Tracy, I need to talk to you.

His wife, Michelle, was also a friend of theirs and a member of the congregation.

Michelle was actually around my age.

She would hang around.

We all hung around each other.

We would play volleyball after church on Wednesday nights.

And, you know, it was just all fun and games.

Tracy had noticed something funny about her husband, Keith, and Michelle.

He and this woman would back away from each other.

And then I started noticing that they would wear the same colors, like on Sunday mornings.

Now, Michelle's husband was in front of her with a cassette tape in his hand.

He had received a tape at his office.

It was from Nathan.

He opened it up.

You know, he was like, what is this?

Let me, you know, there was no markings on it whatsoever.

Nothing, it said nothing.

And he just popped it into the recorder.

He's horrified because he's literally hearing his wife on these tapes

and Keith in very intimate situations.

And so he turned it off real quick.

And that is when he came to find me.

And he told me what was on the tape.

The tapes exposed that Keith and Michelle had a secret routine, one that they kept from their spouses for months.

It would happen as soon as I I would leave to go to work in the morning, I would take the girls to school and I would go to my class to teach.

And Keith and Michelle would get on the phone and that's when they would do this, is when the kids were in school and the spouses were at work.

The tapes were recordings of Keith and Michelle having phone sex.

On this tape was many, many weeks of...

spliced discussions between Keith and Michelle.

Michelle's husband was horrified at what he'd heard.

He's crying.

He's embarrassed.

It's very clear that he's as shocked about it as I am.

He wanted to listen to the tapes together with Tracy.

I just refused.

I said, I'm not interested in listening to it.

I don't need to hear it, but I do want to talk to you about what was going to happen from there.

Before they confronted their spouses, Michelle's husband wanted to investigate for himself.

He needed to know how far this affair went.

And it didn't take long for him to find an answer.

He personally had seen the ledgers of Keith's signature signing in to hotels.

This proved Keith's affair went far beyond phone conversations.

It was life-altering for Tracy and also for Michelle's husband.

But it had huge implications for the church.

I just could not bear it.

I mean, we had the most beloved congregation of people that I knew this was going to absolutely devastate.

It was time to face the music.

But as word began spreading through the community,

Keith was missing.

It became a very real fact to everyone that Keith was cheating on me.

And it was someone that was within the church.

It was just full,

like a firestorm across our town.

Everyone was shocked to find out that Keith was living a double life.

Everyone except Tracy's dad.

He still lived in town.

For years, he'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

My dad owns the pool hall across the street from the church, so he literally has a front row seat to the chaos that is ensuing.

Tracy's dad decided to make the most of Keith's public humiliation.

My dad bought 500 bumper stickers that he had printed up that said in bright bold letters,

I am Nathan

and proud of it.

And he handed them out to the patrons of his business and his friends.

Tracy's dad wasn't Nathan.

He was just thrilled someone was exposing Keith.

But for Tracy, the public humiliation was more complicated because the night she found out about the tapes, I get a call from the young lady.

It was the girl who used to work in the bookstore.

She was now in her early 20s, but she was calling Tracy because she just heard the news about Keith and Michelle's affair.

She is as hurt as I am

because she thought she was the only one.

And now she realizes that he has done this with another woman.

This phone call validated Tracy's suspicions from years before.

Even though Keith had vehemently denied it, the truth was coming out.

He had been romantically involved with this girl back when she was a teenager.

She read to me the poetry that Keith had written to her, and she validated everything.

She said, yes, we did this, we did that, he wrote me this, And she was telling me because she was so hurt that he had done this with Michelle.

Which is so ironic that I am the wife they all did it to.

Tracy could finally put together a timeline.

After this girl graduated high school and went off to college, Heath picked up with Michelle.

He spun a complicated web of betrayals.

one that damaged and devastated many people.

And he left Tracy to pick up the pieces.

She was coming to me from a place of deep hurt saying that she should have told me, you know,

two years prior.

I really couldn't console her at that point.

I was so shocked that I don't remember what I said to her, but I did end up throwing the phone across the room.

Since then, I have reached out to her to tell her that she was a young lady that was also manipulated and I've tried to help her realize that I have no hurt toward her at all.

After the tapes were set out, the girl told her parents about how Keith pursued her, and they went to the police.

The young lady's parents learned of the affair between her and Keith, and they brought a lawsuit against him.

But it turned out that the age of consent in that state, she had just reached that age, so the lawsuit could not go any further.

When Keith came back from his time praying in the woods, he resumed his position as head of the church.

The church still let Keith preach every Sunday.

And the reason they did that was because a manipulator, when they're caught, they don't just come clean.

They blame everyone else and they say that it's been twisted and turned and they continue to manipulate.

And that's exactly what happened.

These people did not want to believe that Keith was doing this, even though they were faced with it.

Many people in town had the motivation to do what Nathan did, especially the teenage girl and her parents.

But they weren't behind the Nathan letters.

So it left a question hanging over the whole congregation.

Who was Nathan?

At the time, I had no idea.

There was a lot of speculation of who it could be and a lot of blaming, like this person's probably doing it.

In fact, Keith was trying to bring a lawsuit against whoever Nathan was for tapping his phone lines because it would be illegal to do that.

Instead of sitting through Keith's first sermon back at the pulpit, Tracy got a one-way ticket to California.

I felt so much shock and hurt that I didn't stick around for the fallout of it.

I flew to San Diego and I was on the other side of the country with my head in the sand, just trying to breathe.

Back at church, Heath had started preaching a lesson in forgiveness about how Tracy needed to forgive him.

During that time, Keith actually announced my phone number from the pulpit and told everyone to give me a call and just beg me to come back.

It was the most bizarre and ridiculous thing ever.

Hundreds of phone calls, just over and over, just people saying, we love you, Tracy.

We're praying for you.

Other people would say, how dare you do this to God's man?

How can you betray him?

You need to get back over there and fight the good fight.

Just on and on.

And finally, the pressure was so much that I decided for his kids' sake and for those people that were hurting, that I could give him another chance.

So

after about four months, I ended up going back to Keith, not because I felt like it was necessarily the best thing for me, but I felt like it was the best thing for the church and the people.

And I was their preacher's wife, and I felt like I needed to heal all the hurt that had happened through this.

Keith also promised Tracy something she really wanted if she came back.

If you remember, I had agreed that I would raise his children and not have any of my own.

But as I grew through the decade, I started wanting children.

But I just kept pushing it back, saying, you know, it's okay.

I'll just raise, you know, I'll raise his.

I love them.

Well, when I left him, that was one of his buying points is we can have a child of our own if you come back.

So she went back.

But this time, Tracy drew a firm boundary.

I told Keith, I am back.

However,

If you ever do this to me again, you will have zero access to me and I will not look back

and so she went on optimistic that keith would change

but six months later some people came up to me and said keith is having another affair

i said put proof in my hands and i will leave him and that will be it and i ended up getting proof put in my hands that he was doing marriage counseling with a woman and her husband.

He ended up having an affair with her.

And

that night, I drove out of town.

And on Valentine's Day, 2000, I joined the military.

I walked into a recruitment office and I said, can I take the ASFAB right now?

That's the entrance exam for the military.

They were like, who are you?

And yes, yes, come sit down.

And I took it.

And because I'd been a school teacher for middle school math at that point, I aced it.

She was sent to basic training.

Straight from being a school teacher and a preacher's wife to putting my head in the duffel bag and low crawling to go get my food.

I joined the military because that was the only way to break away.

It was the only way that I knew how to get away from Keith and to do it in a way where I was financially independent.

Because

being a good preacher's wife, I didn't save a rainy day fund because that means you're halfway out.

After basic training, Tracy was offered a position as an officer, but she wanted something more short-term.

Because I was 31, I said, you know what?

I don't want to do any of that.

I just want a short-term enlistment period because I know that I want to have a family one day.

So I just joined for three years and I spent my whole time in Kaiserslautern, Germany at Landstoh Regional Medical Center.

It's actually an air ambulance, 236 air ambulance, and I had a ball and totally restarted my life.

Met a wonderful man there and we had a son together.

Today, Tracy works as a boat captain in a small southern town where she lives with her son.

It's been 25 years since the Nathan tapes were sent out and Keith's betrayals were exposed.

But what remains a mystery is Nathan's true identity.

No one has ever stepped up and said that they are Nathan.

Now I feel like I have a very good idea

and other people have, we've talked about it and we feel like it could be this person.

So I feel 99% sure that I know who it was.

At the end of the day, Tracy's never needed to know.

It doesn't matter to her who Nathan really was.

She's just grateful to him for breaking the silence.

It wasn't just me, it's all of these people that went through this and have never been told the truth.

And I did not stand up and tell the truth for several reasons because I didn't want to hurt them.

I didn't want to expose things.

And I've been,

I would say,

brainwashed, manipulated into thinking that I am partaking in part of the guilt and the shame if I do speak.

Now it's been 24 years and I can speak.

After Tracy left for the final time, Keith kept right on preaching.

She got worried about how he addressed it with the congregation.

He did not address anything.

He did not say what had happened.

He did not explain anything.

He didn't say why I left.

All he said was, don't believe everything you're going to hear.

I've heard from other people that he said directly that, oh, Tracy left because she wanted a baby and we couldn't have one.

Keith is still preaching to this day.

He's built a new building.

He has a new congregation.

He's remarried.

They know nothing about me

or all that has happened.

The lawsuit, the three women finding his name on a hotel roster, the tapes that were sent out of him having phone sex.

They know nothing about that stuff.

And Tracy hasn't been back to church since.

For me, going into a church and sitting,

I can see what could could be happening in the background, and that's really distracting to me.

I wish I had that innocence again of just walking in,

but I don't have that anymore.

We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question.

Why do you want to share your story?

I've actually thought about it for a very long time.

How to ever tell the truth in the story that I have because I felt like it needed to be told.

I always felt manipulated and guilted to stay quiet.

Even now, there's a lot of pressure to do that.

But I understand that the pathway to peace and understanding is by claiming your experiences and dealing with them.

It turned my life upside down, but you move forward.

And I've definitely learned that I'm stronger than I thought I could be.

And I believe the truth sets us free.

So that's why I decided to tell this.

On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly.

If this could be true about my brother and I could have

no

idea,

how on earth would I ever know who the monsters were?

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

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

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

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

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

Search virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

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

That's betrayalpod at gmail.com.

Or follow us on Instagram at betrayalpod.

You can also connect with me on Instagram at it's Andrea Gunning.

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

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.

A big thank you to all of our listeners.

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

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

Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Written and produced by Monique Laborde.

Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Associate producers are Caitlin Golden, Olivia Hewitt, and Kristen Mel Curie.

Casting support from Curry Richmond.

Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchek.

Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.

Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins.

Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Music library provided by MIBE Music.

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

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