RE-RELEASE: EP 10 - Torrah

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 3 When your alarm goes off in the morning, do you feel energized or are you tempted by the snooze button again and again?

Speaker 6 If you're dragging yourself out of bed, fighting brain fog and fatigue, I've been there too.

Speaker 9 Then I found Early Birds Morning Cocktail.

Speaker 10 It's formulated with clinically studied ingredients like clean caffeine, electrolytes, antioxidants, and adaptogens.

Speaker 13 It's a simple morning cocktail that fits seamlessly into my wake-up routine.

Speaker 8 It starts working immediately to combat grogginess, fatigue, and mental blocks.

Speaker 17 One drink, and the brain fog clears.

Speaker 18 The fatigue lifts.

Speaker 19 I'm in control of my day again.

Speaker 9 Take back your mornings.

Speaker 1 Visit clubearlybird.com and use code BETRAYAL for 20% off.

Speaker 23 That's clubearlybird.com.

Speaker 25 Time for a sofa upgrade. Introducing Anibay sofas, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices.
Every Anibay sofa is modular, allowing you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 25 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 25 Liquid simply slide right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in-feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 25 Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price.
Visit washablefas.com to upgrade your living space today.

Speaker 25 Sofas start at just $699 with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get early access to Black Friday now.
The biggest sale of the year can save you up to 60% off.

Speaker 25 Plus, free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washablesofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 26 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture Resess with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 27 This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

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Speaker 31 This is an incredible story story that sounds like it's made up. It sounds like a soap opera.
It sounds like a drama movie. But it's so real, and it's not the only one.

Speaker 31 There are things we might not know about somebody we live with.

Speaker 31 And there's so many stories like this.

Speaker 34 I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Speaker 32 About a year ago, we heard from a listener with a story that floored us.

Speaker 35 Tora Giles is a history professor in Colorado, but she grew up on the California coast with her seven siblings.

Speaker 31 And we grew up on a farm, so my life was kind of wild and crazy and great.

Speaker 31 Grew up super religious in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Speaker 38 As a kid, the church was Tora's life. She went to a Christian school.

Speaker 33 Her friends and after-school activities were all through the church.

Speaker 41 And she assumed that her life would follow the same path that was modeled by the women around her: graduate high school, get married, and start having kids.

Speaker 31 Funny enough, I thought as a kid that 20 years old was being a grown-up, and 25-year-olds were old. And so I thought for sure that I would be married by 20,

Speaker 31 but I

Speaker 31 never really dated.

Speaker 44 After high school, Tora became a full-time nanny and she tried to give dating a shot.

Speaker 31 I finally went on one date with a guy and gave him like a little peck at the end of the night and was just like, Nope, that was not for me. I did not like that.
I don't want to date.

Speaker 38 Tora started to realize that the traditional path wasn't for her.

Speaker 14 So instead of trying to find a husband, she started planning for a new career.

Speaker 31 I decided to go to college and I studied history, which was really fun.

Speaker 45 After undergrad, she moved to Colorado to pursue a PhD in history.

Speaker 31 I was living in this really cute tiny apartment in the older section of Colorado Springs. So cute

Speaker 31 and just loving my life. I felt like I had really kind of arrived.
I had a job. I was teaching.
I had friends. I was very happy.

Speaker 38 She loved teaching, especially American history.

Speaker 31 It was so much fun. Keep this in mind, it's January of 2017 and I decided it would be a good time to teach conspiracy, culture, and elections in United States political history.

Speaker 33 By this time, Toro was in her mid-30s.

Speaker 14 She'd tried dating for years, but ultimately decided she didn't need romance.

Speaker 11 Her life was complete without it.

Speaker 31 Dating and romantic relationships were not going to be part of my life. And I was sort of settled into that in a very comfortable way where it didn't bother me.
It wasn't something I was seeking out.

Speaker 31 I wasn't on dating apps. I wasn't looking for it.

Speaker 31 And I certainly was not looking for him.

Speaker 13 In that class, she met a student named Aaron.

Speaker 33 Like her, he was also in his mid-30s.

Speaker 31 He had a service dog, this really cute English mastiff named Osa,

Speaker 31 and she had the best underbite and she would be in the back of class chomping on a bone. So I was always very aware of his presence, partially because of her.

Speaker 31 He would come up after class and we would pet the dog and chat a little bit.

Speaker 40 Aaron was a veteran.

Speaker 48 a former army medic who'd lost his foot in an explosion in Iraq.

Speaker 31 I knew that had had an amputation to his leg. He talked about it fairly frequently.
He had a handy cat parking pass.

Speaker 4 The disability was a big part of his life, but it didn't define him, and it certainly didn't hold him back.

Speaker 38 He was finishing his bachelor's degree on his way to start nursing school.

Speaker 18 After each class, he would stay behind and chat with Torah.

Speaker 31 He had a very slow way of speaking. There was no rush for anything in life.
I always had the vibe that he was one of those people that would talk forever if you let them.

Speaker 31 And so I would start to gather my things and eventually he started walking me to my car because my class was from 7 to 10 p.m.

Speaker 31 And it was very surface level chat throughout the whole time I was his teacher. Usually about class, usually about some interesting fact.
He was like a sponge for information.

Speaker 11 Erin shared that he was Native American, Choctaw, which was a big part of his identity.

Speaker 32 And she noticed that he was always immaculately put together.

Speaker 31 He had kind of long hair that he kept tied back in this low knot on the back of his head, kind of slicked back, low.

Speaker 31 I hesitate to call it a man-button because I know that would hurt Erin's feelings, but that's what it was. And he had a cowboy western vibe almost, not like costumey.

Speaker 31 but he wore a lot of very nice button-ups and jeans and leather boots. So that was pretty much his uniform.

Speaker 31 He just had this confident air about him that he knew he was smart, he knew he was good looking, but he was also kind and respectful and interesting and funny and talented.

Speaker 31 And I was a fan very quickly, just of his entire aura.

Speaker 50 Aaron and Tora kept talking every week after class for the rest of the semester.

Speaker 31 At some point in those conversations, I I brought up the fact that I had been a nanny. And

Speaker 31 a few months later, he came to me after class one day and said, we need to switch where my son is going to daycare. What do you know about maybe hiring a nanny? So we chatted a little bit about that.

Speaker 31 And that's how I found out he had a child. I didn't know that before.
He wore a ring, so I knew he was married, but I didn't know that he had a kid.

Speaker 31 It was a baby at the time, maybe four or five months old. So that was sort of our first foray into anything personal was was just that bit of advice he was seeking about finding good child care.

Speaker 44 After the class ended in May, Tora got a Facebook friend request.

Speaker 33 It was from Aaron.

Speaker 33 He was already Facebook friends with other teachers, so she accepted the request.

Speaker 31 And then about a week later, he sent me a message about nine, 10 o'clock at night. I was already in bed and I thought, well, that's weird.
What the heck? And so I rolled over and checked the message.

Speaker 31 It was from him. And he just said, you know, something very casual.
How are you? and i said oh i'm good the whole time thinking like what does this guy want

Speaker 31 keep in mind i am very single very happy to be single not looking for anything think he's great hadn't really given any thought the man's married with a baby right they chatted for a few minutes before aaron revealed why he had reached out he said do you know that i'm going through a pretty bad divorce

Speaker 31 And I said, oh, no, I had no idea.

Speaker 31 So we chat a little bit about, he he said, yeah, actually, she was arrested last night. We got into an argument and she got physical.
And I said, oh, that's terrible. I'm so sorry to hear that.

Speaker 31 And then I did the nice thing, which I've since learned not to do, which is I said,

Speaker 31 is there anything I can do to help?

Speaker 31 And

Speaker 31 he said, well, I might need some help with my son.

Speaker 42 Tora read between the lines.

Speaker 41 Aaron was desperate.

Speaker 11 He was about to start in an intensive two-year nursing program. And now he would likely have full custody of his infant son.
She felt for his situation.

Speaker 52 And the next day, while Aaron was on campus, he swung by Tora's office with his baby in tow.

Speaker 17 He wanted to thank Tora for the semester and for offering to help.

Speaker 31 And I sat and listened with him and I held the baby. And oh my gosh, he was the cutest little thing.
And then as we sort of wrapped up that conversation, it was the end of my day.

Speaker 31 And I said, okay, well, if you need anything, let me know. And he said, well, actually, I have a paper I have to work on tonight.

Speaker 31 Would you be able to come over and just hang out with him while I do my homework for an hour or two? And then I'll make dinner.

Speaker 10 Almost reflexively, she said yes.

Speaker 31 It was more this like Christian sense of duty that I had been trained into.

Speaker 31 Someone needs help. You show up even if it's inconvenient or you don't really want to.
And that was my first thought is, I don't really want to. I don't really want someone who's going to rely on me.

Speaker 31 I don't really want to be involved in someone else's drama.

Speaker 31 And I have a full-time job. I'm teaching.
I'm busy.

Speaker 11 In addition to that, she didn't want Aaron to mistake her kindness for something else.

Speaker 31 I'm worried all the time that men are going to take my presence as some sort of an invitation. And I was so anti-dating and relationships that it was just something I never wanted to foster.

Speaker 31 So I'm thinking about all this as I'm driving the 20 minutes to his house, like, okay, I'm going to have to think of boundaries. I'm going to have to be careful with saying yes.

Speaker 11 When she got to his house, her anxiety dissipated.

Speaker 38 He was just Aaron, and that made her feel comfortable.

Speaker 31 He was himself the way he always was with me after class, just very warm and friendly and kind and thoughtful.

Speaker 31 So I stayed.

Speaker 31 had dinner

Speaker 31 and then oh you know stay and we'll have an adult beverage is what he used to call them stay and we'll have an adult beverage after the boy goes to bed

Speaker 31 and i didn't really have anything going on so why not so i stayed and we had a beer sat out on the back patio and he told me a little bit more about what was going on and it was pretty bad there were holes in the wall going up the stairs there was a hole in the wall in the dining room and we just talked and talked and talked and talked.

Speaker 31 He shared a little bit of the emotions that came up with him. Oh, I feel bad and she is my son's mother, but also we can't keep doing this and I need to get out of this marriage.

Speaker 52 That night, they ended up talking until 1 a.m.

Speaker 31 I have work at 8 a.m. and he said, just crash in my guest room.
Here's some clean pajamas. Here's a toothbrush.
Just crash downstairs. And I did, which is so out of character for me.

Speaker 31 I felt a little weird, but I was very happy to be around him and just wanted to stay there and be helpful. I love to be helpful.
I love to be needed.

Speaker 31 So I stayed the night, got up in the morning, trucked off to work. And then the next day he said, hey, I've got a test coming up.
If you're free later on,

Speaker 31 I went back over there.

Speaker 11 Soon she was going over to Aaron's every few days to help out with his son.

Speaker 39 It felt like the right thing to do.

Speaker 31 I was always sleeping in the guest room. I made it very clear to him.
I don't let people touch me. I'm not interested in a romantic relationship.
I am just here to help. I want to be your friend.

Speaker 31 I want you to feel supported, but that's as far as this is going to go. And I just kept telling him, like, we're just friends.
I don't let people touch me.

Speaker 31 The fact that I give you hugs is kind of exceptional. You have to respect that.
And he really did.

Speaker 45 After Aaron would put us onto bed, the two of them would stay up and have a drink on the back patio and just talk about life.

Speaker 46 It became their little ritual.

Speaker 31 He was a very guarded person. So a lot of what he would talk about was things that were very present right now.

Speaker 31 If he brought up the past, it always felt like kind of an honor that he trusted me with that story.

Speaker 31 And he would point that out in a very subtle way of, oh, I don't really tell people this story, but you're different.

Speaker 31 We just never ran out of things to say.

Speaker 14 After about two months of this, Tora went back home to visit her family in California.

Speaker 31 The whole time I'm with my family, I'm bringing him up and I'm talking with him on the phone and they're seeing that this person is making me kind of giddy and smiley and those kinds of things.

Speaker 42 She had never talked about a friend like this before.

Speaker 45 When she got home from that trip, she went straight to Aaron's house.

Speaker 31 He had cleaned the whole house. He had some of my favorite music on.
Baby was in bed. He had, you know, a bouquet of flowers and a card welcoming me home and thanking me for being his friend.

Speaker 31 And that was my first sort of inkling: like, hmm, I'm gonna have to keep an eye on this because here I was at home kind of being giddy about this person, and here he is bringing me flowers.

Speaker 31 So there was this undercurrent starting where I'm repeatedly saying to him, like, we're just friends, but we're friends who are

Speaker 31 snuggling on the couch watching a movie, not touching each other, just leaning like my head on his shoulder or something.

Speaker 31 So benign, so middle school, but it was perfect for me because I wasn't ready to do that.

Speaker 11 One night while they were up late talking on the patio, Aaron finally said what they had both been thinking.

Speaker 31 He said something to me, like, I think you're in love with me. And I said, I think you're in love with me.

Speaker 31 And that was it. We were in a relationship after that.

Speaker 32 That day became their anniversary.

Speaker 31 I leaned in and it was

Speaker 31 the most fulfilling time of my whole entire existence.

Speaker 31 I'm getting emotional just talking about it because that part

Speaker 31 is perfect in my mind.

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Speaker 3 When your alarm goes off in the morning, do you feel energized or are you tempted by the snooze button again and again?

Speaker 6 If you're dragging yourself out of bed, fighting brain fog and fatigue, I've been there too.

Speaker 9 Then I found Early Birds Morning Cocktail.

Speaker 10 It's formulated with clinically studied ingredients like clean caffeine, electrolytes, antioxidants, and adaptogens.

Speaker 13 It's a simple morning cocktail that fits seamlessly into my wake-up routine.

Speaker 8 It starts working immediately to combat grogginess, fatigue, and mental blocks.

Speaker 17 One drink, and the brain fog clears.

Speaker 18 The fatigue lifts.

Speaker 19 I'm in control of my day again.

Speaker 9 Take back your mornings.

Speaker 1 Visit clubearlybird.com and use code BETRAIL for 20% off.

Speaker 23 That's clubearlybird.com.

Speaker 25 Time for a sofa upgrade. Introducing Anibay sofas, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices.
Every Anibay sofa is modular, allowing you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 25 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 25 Liquids simply slide right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 25 Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price.
Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your living space today.

Speaker 25 Sofas start at just $699 with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get early access to Black Friday now.
The biggest sale of the year can save you up to 60% off.

Speaker 25 Plus free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washable sofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

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Speaker 29 Maybe it's because it could happen to anyone.

Speaker 53 Or maybe it's because we're all so deeply fascinated by the psyche of someone who can lie with ease, cheat with no guilt, and convince the world that they are who they say they are, even when they're not.

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Speaker 53 Like the recent episode of Natalie Cochran, the pharmacist femme fatale. It seemed like she had it all.
A good job, loving husband, and two kids.

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Speaker 29 Listen to Scamfluencers Now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 36 After writing off romance, Tora found a man who defied all expectations.

Speaker 14 Aaron was strikingly handsome, determined, respectful, and he was an incredible father.

Speaker 11 Tora moved into his house and their relationship deepened.

Speaker 47 That's when Aaron opened up about his traumatic childhood.

Speaker 11 He said that both of his parents were abusive.

Speaker 31 His family was incredibly complicated, incredibly damaged, incredibly dysfunctional. And these were the reasons that he's so guarded.

Speaker 31 These are the reasons that he doesn't have a relationship with them or see them or go to visit them.

Speaker 2 When he was 18, he ran away from home and joined the military.

Speaker 7 At the time, the war in Iraq was just beginning.

Speaker 40 He worked his way up to become a special forces medic.

Speaker 11 But his military career ended in tragedy.

Speaker 31 He got hurt in Iraq. They were on a drive through a city of some kind and hit an IED, and the humve in front of them blew up.
Theirs didn't, but the impact knocked theirs off its balance.

Speaker 31 He got hurt. His foot was amputated because of that injury.
And he was medically retired and then came home.

Speaker 35 Aaron spent weeks in the hospital recovering from his injury.

Speaker 1 And even in this time of crisis, his family turmoil continued.

Speaker 31 His dad showed up to the hospital and tried to get medical power of attorney so that he could sell Aaron's portion of land that he had been left by his grandparents on the Choctaw Reservation in Oklahoma.

Speaker 31 So Aaron fought tooth and nail to get better, to get stronger, and kicked his dad out of his life.

Speaker 21 This is one of the reasons he needed Tora's help because he didn't have anyone.

Speaker 46 His family and his ex-wife, they weren't safe people.

Speaker 11 Tora realized he'd spent his entire life moving from one traumatic situation to another.

Speaker 31 The man was covered in enormous scars. Everything about him screamed, I have had a hard life.
I have had a physically hard life.

Speaker 31 I've been injured. I've had surgeries.

Speaker 33 Even though it had been years since Aaron was injured in the war, it was part of his everyday life.

Speaker 31 He walked with a very slight limp and kept that leg pretty stiff, but he always kept a sock on that foot. And I just figured he wanted to protect it.

Speaker 31 He had a couple of different doctors who were working on maybe a better prosthetic.

Speaker 31 because he ended up injuring his knee on that same leg and we thought maybe he needed a little bit more support from that prosthetic.

Speaker 52 And that wasn't his only injury from the war.

Speaker 1 He'd also injured his back, his shoulder, and his arm.

Speaker 43 They were constantly getting re-injured, causing Aaron to go to the doctor in pain.

Speaker 34 But despite all this, he still fought for full custody, especially because of his childhood.

Speaker 47 Aaron was determined to show up for his son.

Speaker 31 He was an incredible father. He was so attentive and so loving loving and so affectionate and just lit up when it came time to, you know, go get the boy out of bed or read the boy his bedtime story.

Speaker 31 We called him the boy. I'm going to call him the boy because I'm not going to say his name.

Speaker 33 The boy was only a few months old when Tora met him, and she was there for all of his big firsts.

Speaker 31 The boy and I were... Just absolutely connected at the hip from day one.

Speaker 31 When it was time for him to start eating solids, I was the one who decided how that should go because I have 20 years of childcare experience and this is his first child.

Speaker 31 He and I would just light up to be around each other.

Speaker 20 The boy took his first steps to Tora.

Speaker 11 The three of them fell into a kind of domestic bliss based on a foundation of love for each other and love for Aaron's son.

Speaker 14 After a year together, Tora felt like this was her family now.

Speaker 7 She didn't want to go through the formalities of a wedding and marriage.

Speaker 35 So instead, they lived as common-law spouses.

Speaker 44 They just started calling each other husband and wife.

Speaker 14 With Aaron in school, Tora took on more financial responsibility.

Speaker 31 He's a retired veteran, so he gets some money, but, you know, life is expensive. So

Speaker 31 we were always a little bit stressed on money.

Speaker 31 He really liked being a provider and making sure that the baby had everything he needed, but that usually meant that there was no food in the refrigerator for adults.

Speaker 31 So I started doing things like pitching in on groceries and I took over the Wi-Fi and the trash bills.

Speaker 44 Aaron had to make a monthly home equity payment to his ex-wife and the expenses just kept coming.

Speaker 31 Oh gosh, it was just never ending. We needed a new roof, but we didn't have any money.

Speaker 31 We needed to pay off $5,000 in credit cards in order to get a refinance on the mortgage so we didn't lose the house.

Speaker 15 Despite the stress of living paycheck to paycheck, Tora was filled with love for her family.

Speaker 11 Everything was precariously, perfectly balanced.

Speaker 41 That was until Aaron got sick.

Speaker 39 One day, he woke up in excruciating pain with a very high fever.

Speaker 33 Tora had to go to work, so Aaron went to see their family doctor by himself.

Speaker 55 And when he got there, his fever was so high, he needed to go to the ER right away.

Speaker 31 One of the things that they thought might be going on when he was in in the ER was that he was having some kind of an infection from his amputation.

Speaker 47 He called Tora from the hospital and she rushed over.

Speaker 21 But when she got there, he wasn't in a hospital room.

Speaker 52 Erin was just sitting by the hospital entrance in a wheelchair.

Speaker 31 He said that they ended up accusing him of being pain bed seeking and he said that was racist. That was because he was brown.
He literally ripped the IV out of his arm and stormed out of the hospital.

Speaker 31 And I kind of yelled at at him all the way home. I'm like, what were you thinking? You obviously need help.
Something is going on. He had a very high fever.
He was in a lot of pain.

Speaker 31 I could see that he was miserable. It had been a long, awful day sitting in the ER getting tests done on him and all of them coming back negative.

Speaker 42 In addition to the fever, Aaron was in excruciating pain, debilitating chronic pain from his old combat injuries.

Speaker 21 But this time, his doctors weren't able to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 33 So Tora stepped in to take care of him.

Speaker 31 This whole time I'm icing his back. I'm getting the ice packs for his knee.
He had special equipment for icing his shoulder.

Speaker 31 I'm driving him around to doctor's appointments because he's in too much pain to drive. I can see the pain on his face.

Speaker 31 I can see him changing and drawing into this pain, his life of being in chronic pain. He stopped going to the gym and then he stopped working out in the garage and then he stopped moving eventually.

Speaker 31 He just sat around all day and the house stopped getting cleaned. And this is all because he's in excruciating pain and he's miserable.

Speaker 52 He spent weeks on the couch unable to function.

Speaker 39 To keep his spirits up, he showed Tora his favorite YouTube videos.

Speaker 31 He mentioned, have you ever heard of stolen valor?

Speaker 31 And he pulled up YouTube. And we spent, I would say, probably an hour.
watching YouTube videos of people being exposed for stolen valor.

Speaker 35 Stolen valor is the term for people who impersonate military service members and veterans.

Speaker 31 And so there's lots of videos on YouTube of people going up to a person wearing a uniform in, say, a mall and saying, your bars are on the wrong side of your collar. Your patch is upside down.

Speaker 31 You are not supposed to be in this uniform. you know, shaming them for this act of stolen valor.
And this was something that he was very amused by:

Speaker 31 that these people are getting caught and shamed publicly. He loved it.
He thought it was so entertaining.

Speaker 1 It was a welcome distraction from his pain, especially considering the price he was paying for his military service.

Speaker 51 She understood why he liked the Stolen Valor video so much.

Speaker 31 So as he withdraws into this chronic pain, I'm pushing harder and harder to make sure that bills are paid, to make sure that the house is taken care of, make sure the baby has everything he needs, to make sure the baby got to go to the park today and play outside.

Speaker 31 I just started picking up more and more of the slack as he withdrew into being miserable. It was awful to watch the person that you're so in love with falling apart in front of me.

Speaker 3 When your alarm goes off in the morning, do you feel energized or are you tempted by the snooze button again and again?

Speaker 6 If you're dragging yourself out of bed, fighting brain fog and fatigue, I've been there too.

Speaker 9 Then I found Early Birds Morning Cocktail.

Speaker 10 It's formulated with clinically studied ingredients like clean caffeine, electrolytes, antioxidants, and adaptogens.

Speaker 13 It's a simple morning cocktail that fits seamlessly into my wake-up routine.

Speaker 8 It starts working immediately to combat grogginess, fatigue, and mental blocks.

Speaker 17 One drink, and the brain fog clears.

Speaker 18 The fatigue lifts.

Speaker 19 I'm in control of my day again.

Speaker 9 Take back your mornings.

Speaker 22 Visit clubearlybird.com and use code BETRAYAL for 20% off.

Speaker 23 That's clubearlybird.com.

Speaker 25 Life gets messy. Spills, stains, and kid chaos.
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Speaker 29 Scams are everywhere. On your phone, in your inbox, even on your television screen.
Looking at you, Tinder Swindler. What is it about scams that has pop culture so obsessed?

Speaker 29 Maybe it's because it could happen to anyone.

Speaker 53 Or maybe it's because we're all so deeply fascinated by the psyche of someone who can lie with ease, cheat with no guilt, and convince the world that they are who they say they are, even when they're not.

Speaker 29 Scamfluencers is a weekly podcast that takes you into the world of deception, sharing the stories of today's most notorious scams.

Speaker 53 Like the recent episode of Natalie Cochran, the pharmacist femme fatale. It seemed like she had it all.
A good job, loving husband, and two kids.

Speaker 53 But behind the scenes, Natalie was scamming friends and family using fake contracts, fake government emails, and she even faked cancer.

Speaker 53 But when the walls start closing in, she'll do anything to keep the lie alive until someone ends up dead.

Speaker 29 Listen to Scamfluencers Now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 26 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 27 This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 26 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can. Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online.

Speaker 24 We've all been there.

Speaker 27 And what if your Wi-Fi could proactively fix issues before they even happen?

Speaker 26 Xfinity Wi-Fi does that too.

Speaker 24 It's like having a little holiday helper.

Speaker 27 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in so your kids are always protected online?

Speaker 26 It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart. It's brilliant.
And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use.

Speaker 27 Xfinity, imagine that.

Speaker 17 Tora's new life with Aaron was thrown off balance when his chronic pain took a sharp turn for the worse.

Speaker 14 Aaron eventually started pain management therapy, and Tora felt helpless.

Speaker 31 He was taking oxycodone, I believe. Perkinset.
Anyway, he was taking one of those. And he was supposed to take like one a day.
He was taking like two or three because he was in so much pain.

Speaker 33 He said he knew what he was doing.

Speaker 32 He was in nursing school and had years of training as an Army medic.

Speaker 15 One night before he came to bed.

Speaker 31 He went and took a shower. He came back into the room and he had a patch on his shoulder.
I said, What's that?

Speaker 31 And he said, Oh, it's fentanyl. It's great.
I'm I'm not in any pain. It's amazing.

Speaker 31 And I said, but you took your meds today? He said, yeah. And I said, isn't that how people overdose?

Speaker 31 And he kind of poo-pooed me. Like, I know what I'm doing.
I'm not an idiot. It's fine.
I'm going to bed. Good night.
I've had a bad day. We're not going to have a fight about this.

Speaker 31 I was so uncomfortable. And I just sat there staring at his back, wanting to rip them off, but trusting him at the same time.

Speaker 35 In the morning, Aaron was unresponsive.

Speaker 31 So I grabbed my phone

Speaker 8 and I called 911,

Speaker 31 hysterical, said,

Speaker 31 my husband's not breathing.

Speaker 31 He was asleep and he's not waking up.

Speaker 11 The 911 operator instructed her to begin chest compressions until the paramedics arrived.

Speaker 31 And the whole time I'm doing chest compressions, I'm like, he's cold. He's gone.
This man is not alive.

Speaker 31 The whole time in the background, the boy is just screaming my name.

Speaker 43 The paramedics arrived and confirmed what she already knew.

Speaker 32 There was no bringing Aaron back.

Speaker 33 She called friends to come over and together they waited for the coroner.

Speaker 48 Not knowing what else to do, she fixated on the boy.

Speaker 33 He was three.

Speaker 47 Tora tried to distract him, play with him, but he wanted to know what was going on.

Speaker 31 He loved the little prince, and we started saying, you know, Daddy went to hang out in the stars with the little prince and the fox.

Speaker 7 Before the coroner came, Tora and their friends took turns saying goodbye.

Speaker 31 We all went up and sat with Aaron, and I sat down and I told him, I will miss you every day for the rest of my life.

Speaker 31 And then he was gone.

Speaker 11 But his death would reveal an avalanche of discoveries.

Speaker 33 It began on that very day when his ex-wife showed up at the front door.

Speaker 44 The police had notified her of Aaron's death, and his ex-wife called his family, his estranged family.

Speaker 31 About 10 o'clock, there was a knock on my door, and the boy's mom showed up. and insisted on sitting down and talking to me.

Speaker 31 I don't know this person at all other than the reputation that I have been very carefully spoon-fed for three years, which is that she is awful and a horrible person.

Speaker 31 And she came in like a blast of cold air, sat down in my living room and said, if you want to be in my son's life, there's some things you need to know. First of all, Aaron's not Choctaw.

Speaker 31 Aaron's black.

Speaker 31 And I kind of laughed at her. I'm like, okay, lady, like, really, we're going to do this right now.

Speaker 32 Given the circumstances, this this comment seemed absurd and irrelevant.

Speaker 46 But his ex-wife insisted that there were truths about Aaron that Tora needed to know.

Speaker 43 Before she could share more, Aaron's biological family arrived.

Speaker 33 They were surprised to meet Tora.

Speaker 54 They didn't know she existed.

Speaker 31 It was Aaron's mom and Aaron's brother, who is very much a black man. They came in, they sat down in my living room, and I told them about me and my life with Aaron, how long we'd been together.

Speaker 31 And she said, he wasn't a good person.

Speaker 31 And I thought, well, that's a really weird thing to say to a grieving widow.

Speaker 41 Tora had seen pictures of Aaron's mother, father, and brother.

Speaker 32 But these people in her house, they weren't the same ones she'd seen photos of.

Speaker 10 Nothing made sense.

Speaker 51 From Aaron's sudden death to the arrival of this family she didn't recognize.

Speaker 20 But they were his family.

Speaker 40 And now they wanted the house back right away.

Speaker 31 I gave it a lot of thought and I called my family on a Zoom call and I said, okay, I'm going to vacate the house. I don't own it.
My name's not on it. I don't have any right to it.

Speaker 31 And my friend, the lawyer, said, take what's yours, what you bought together, and nothing else.

Speaker 21 Tora packed her car with a few boxes and prepared to leave.

Speaker 33 She'd also be leaving the boy she'd raised from infancy to nearly age four.

Speaker 18 But she knew she wasn't part of his biological family.

Speaker 33 It was clear that with Aaron gone, Tora just didn't have a place in the boy's life.

Speaker 31 I reached down and I picked him up and I held him really close and I said, never forget I love you and I'm your Ama and that will never change.

Speaker 31 And she fell out of the road and drove away and I never saw him again.

Speaker 21 Before walking out of the house for the last time, she decided to take Aaron's laptop with her.

Speaker 35 Her brother came to meet her and together they drove back to their parents' house in California.

Speaker 31 I fell apart. I fell apart.

Speaker 31 I wasn't getting out of bed. I wasn't taking care of myself.
I wasn't eating. I was a disaster.

Speaker 50 At first, she fixated on his death, how and why it happened.

Speaker 38 She got a copy of his autopsy report.

Speaker 31 When I got his autopsy, it was very much an overdose. He had on

Speaker 31 double the dose,

Speaker 31 and he had taken double the dose of oxycodone at the same time to go to bed.

Speaker 35 And there was something else on his autopsy that stood out.

Speaker 31 On his autopsy,

Speaker 31 it said he had a brace on his leg. It said brace on his left leg.
And I thought, well, that's a really weird way to say prosthetic.

Speaker 31 And that was the last I thought of it.

Speaker 52 the questions that came up right after his death about his family his race she just didn't have the capacity to think about all of that at the time

Speaker 31 i stayed very much in grieving widow mode for two months and it wasn't until after the second month that i opened my eyes finally so i just let a lot of this stuff slide and thought like either i'll deal with it later or it's not true or it's a misunderstanding and then after two months i opened his computer and everything changed instantly.

Speaker 31 So I opened the computer, got right in on the first try, knew the password.

Speaker 31 And I opened his pictures and I started looking through and there were some screenshots in there that sent me to his text messages. All of his text messages are on his computer.
And

Speaker 31 immediately within 20 seconds, I realized that he was in a relationship with somebody long distance.

Speaker 31 I spent an hour combing through their text messages, which were

Speaker 31 graphic

Speaker 31 and filthy.

Speaker 31 And the worst part of all of it, there were two things that were just devastating.

Speaker 31 The first was that the things he said to her while they were having this like fantasy relationship is the same stuff he would say to me when we were intimate, verbatim.

Speaker 31 And he would tell her, Well, I have time, and I won't have the boy on these dates because I was going to be gone for a conference on those dates.

Speaker 31 So that was a lot to realize, like he was manipulating her and me to keep us both on the hook back and forth.

Speaker 31 But then the worst thing I found in everything I found was him saying, Nobody has ever loved me.

Speaker 31 Nobody, except for you.

Speaker 31 And that is the biggest lie he ever told.

Speaker 31 And just the most infuriating, devastating, cruel thing he could have said was that nobody had ever loved him.

Speaker 31 And here I had just spent eight weeks

Speaker 31 bottomed out, devastated, flatlined, because this man had died.

Speaker 31 And I had given him everything.

Speaker 35 She kept looking through his texts and found more women.

Speaker 31 He was texting four other girls, a couple from Tinder, couple from school. One of my favorites was a girl he had been in school with who had been to our house and knew me.

Speaker 31 And they were talking about how she could move in and her teenager could live in the basement bedroom. It's a three-bedroom house.
And his son lives in one of those bedrooms.

Speaker 31 So presumably I'm not living there as she's moving in. So that was like, what the heck is he just going to kick me out? Like, this is recent.

Speaker 32 Aaron was talking to these women up until the week he died, making plans with them and inviting them over.

Speaker 31 And he was saying, well, you know, I don't ever have anything going on on Tuesday nights. So you could come over for dinner.
We could watch a movie.

Speaker 31 But then I have to go to bed around 10 because I was teaching. I was at class 7 to 10 on Tuesdays.
So he knew I would stay at work and go to class.

Speaker 31 So that was like,

Speaker 31 I guess, kind of opening that box of like, okay, so he's been doing stuff behind my back. I don't know what.
I still don't. I don't need to.
It doesn't matter. He offered it.

Speaker 40 In the two months since Aaron died, these women had been trying to get in touch with him.

Speaker 2 So Tora messaged them back to let them know he was gone.

Speaker 31 The girlfriend. messaged me back

Speaker 31 what no this isn't real what's going on who are you really

Speaker 31 Did you steal his phone? Just total disbelief, which is fair. It was completely fair.
And I said, yeah, no, real. Here's some pictures of us.

Speaker 31 We've been together for this, you know, amount of time, three years. And she said, we've been together for longer than that.

Speaker 31 They'd been together when he was married to his other wife.

Speaker 46 Tora kept digging through his laptop.

Speaker 11 And that's when she saw the photo that changed everything.

Speaker 31 On his computer, were all these pictures of his honeymoon, including his two fully attacked feet on the beach.

Speaker 31 Much, much after he was supposedly injured,

Speaker 31 I just stared at these feet, like these are his feet. I recognized one of them because I'd seen one of them without a sock on.

Speaker 32 The entire time they were together, Aaron kept a sock and a brace on his prosthetic foot.

Speaker 33 She'd never actually seen his amputation site.

Speaker 31 He didn't ever like pop off a prosthetic or anything like that in front of me.

Speaker 31 And he needed to shower downstairs because it was really hard for him to step into the shower upstairs and it was a tub shower combo.

Speaker 31 So he basically had his own bathroom in the downstairs part of the house. So I never saw him fully unclothed because he kept a sock on it when we were, you know, sleeping.
So I never questioned it.

Speaker 31 It was his private business. That's his medical history.
And there was nothing for me to say, well, that seems off.

Speaker 52 She saw the monthly checks coming in from the military.

Speaker 38 She heard the hard prosthetic foot hitting the ground when he walked.

Speaker 11 Plus, he was self-conscious about his injury.

Speaker 17 She never pressed him further.

Speaker 31 Why would I question that? Who would that make me?

Speaker 7 But after she saw the photo of Aaron's two feet in the sand on his honeymoon, Tora called their family doctor, the doctor who'd done physical exams on her and Aaron in the past year.

Speaker 31 I said, Did you ever look at his prosthetic or look at his amputation site?

Speaker 31 And she said, I'm pretty sure I did.

Speaker 31 Well,

Speaker 31 maybe not, actually. Let me think.

Speaker 31 Yeah, maybe I didn't.

Speaker 31 And I just sat there flabbergasted.

Speaker 31 And at that point, that was what was finally like, yeah, this man did not have an amputated foot. I don't know what he was wearing.
I don't know why he was wearing it, but it wasn't a prosthetic foot.

Speaker 21 This shocking revelation caused her to question the whole story she'd been told about his military career.

Speaker 31 I found his DD-214, which is like his exit paperwork from the military, and it didn't add up with what he told me.

Speaker 39 On his discharge papers, it said he did join the military at 18, and he did go to combat once, not four times, like he'd said.

Speaker 11 He wasn't a special forces medic, like he'd claimed.

Speaker 5 She doesn't know why he left the army, but it wasn't because of an injury.

Speaker 42 Her entire understanding of Aaron changed.

Speaker 31 And

Speaker 31 I went out into the kitchen and I poured myself, I am not joking, eight ounces of tequila, downed that.

Speaker 31 My dad lives in the country, thank goodness, walked out way out into the hills and just screamed and screamed and screamed until I lost my voice.

Speaker 31 The person I had just spent three years loving and caring for,

Speaker 31 and two months devastated

Speaker 31 over his loss, didn't exist.

Speaker 31 And I I

Speaker 31 came to this point that day where I said, at the end of the day, he took everything from me.

Speaker 31 And when there was nothing left to take, he took himself from me.

Speaker 31 The person I had loved and been in a relationship with disappeared.

Speaker 31 And with him went three years of my life into a black hole.

Speaker 41 Who was Aaron?

Speaker 33 And what was his real life story?

Speaker 31 I was googling everything I could. I'm a historian.
I can research like nobody's business.

Speaker 31 So I'm just googling everything I can think of to try to find out who this person is. I'm looking on Facebook.
I'm looking on Instagram, social media.

Speaker 11 She started reaching out to people who were connected to Aaron.

Speaker 31 You know, now I'm asking questions, right? What about these people? Not real.

Speaker 31 Grandparents were not those people. Those people didn't exist at all.
I mean, it was an entirely crafted life.

Speaker 31 His family is fake. His military experience was not his.

Speaker 31 And I don't know how he kept it all straight.

Speaker 11 She found out that the family who showed up at Aaron's house, those people she didn't recognize, they were his biological family.

Speaker 7 And they were very different from what Aaron described.

Speaker 31 So I didn't know about his real mom, even though she's a real person who lives in a real place.

Speaker 31 I knew about some other version of someone that he could completely control that narrative. And I'm never going to look her up and say, is this the truth?

Speaker 31 I was the perfect person for him because I chose to trust him and he practiced different things. He tried out different things to test me to see if I would trust him.
And I did. I always did.

Speaker 31 He very carefully curated my life.

Speaker 10 When she started looking back on it, she realized that Aaron had slowly isolated her from anyone who'd known him for more than four years.

Speaker 36 Anyone who would contradict the narrative he was telling her.

Speaker 31 When I finally learned everything and could sort of lay out a life timeline for him, there's about a three to five year capacity on the stories he was telling people.

Speaker 31 And then he would move on in some way. He would leave town, he would start a new school program, something like that.
He'd get married.

Speaker 31 So he was coming to the end of that. And his stories were getting a little thin.

Speaker 11 The amputation, the chronic pain from combat wounds, even his Native American ancestry. It was all a lie.

Speaker 55 The one thing that was real is that he was sick.

Speaker 11 He had an opioid addiction. She sees that clearly now.

Speaker 21 And she sees that as a part of a larger pattern of behavior.

Speaker 31 He's an addict, so he's always looking for kind of that next better hit. of whatever it was.

Speaker 31 And sometimes it was a partner and sometimes it was becoming a parent and sometimes it was a new degree in school.

Speaker 31 But, you know, he's tying things together, trying to make himself a life that he would have been happy with.

Speaker 31 So he just kept shifting it into this story that he liked a little better and a little better, a little better.

Speaker 31 And it still didn't satisfy him.

Speaker 31 He still needed narcotics.

Speaker 31 I feel very strongly that he

Speaker 31 wanted to stay in our life, but wasn't sure how to do that.

Speaker 31 Do I think that he put the patches on and hoped he would fall asleep and never wake up?

Speaker 31 Yeah,

Speaker 31 I do.

Speaker 44 You can probably tell that Tora's been through years of therapy to understand and heal from what happened to her.

Speaker 31 My doctor had me talk to the therapist in her office,

Speaker 31 and

Speaker 31 I owe everything.

Speaker 31 to his methods.

Speaker 31 He gave me terminology and that terminology completely changed how I was going through this.

Speaker 31 He was the first person to say, you have PTSD.

Speaker 31 And I thought, no, no, no, PTSD is for soldiers, which is a really common thought, that PTSD is for people who've been to war or through war.

Speaker 31 He was really good about, this is what I think might be going on, read it, let's talk about it next time.

Speaker 31 He was providing me information to heal myself.

Speaker 11 It's been four years since Erin died and she discovered that the man she was building a life with was a fraud.

Speaker 31 I'll still be driving down the road and have a random memory and go, oh yeah, that's probably what happened.

Speaker 31 I'm still less and less and less and less putting things together and making the pieces fit.

Speaker 31 But I'll never know everything and I'll never have closure. And I think that's probably the most important thing.
It's like closure isn't necessary for you to move on and heal.

Speaker 31 It's really not. It's gonna help, but it's not necessary.

Speaker 1 Instead, she's tried to find understanding for the real person Aaron was.

Speaker 52 With him gone, she's been able to access a kind of empathy, not to excuse his behavior, but to make peace with it.

Speaker 31 He was broken. He was broken by a world that breaks people and spits them out.
I think he grew up feeling inadequate.

Speaker 31 He grew up feeling unloved, and he wanted to write himself a better story than that. And instead of becoming someone who would be loved, he became someone who he thought

Speaker 31 was lovable

Speaker 31 and adjusted it for each person as he met them.

Speaker 45 Tora moved back to Colorado where she still teaches history.

Speaker 11 But she says that this time around, she's a different person.

Speaker 36 She's forever changed by the love she had with Aaron and the pain he put her through.

Speaker 44 We end every episode with the same question.

Speaker 21 Why did you want to tell your story?

Speaker 31 This is an incredible story that sounds like it's made up. It sounds like a soap opera.
It sounds like a drama movie. But it's so real and it's not the only one.
And there's so many stories like this.

Speaker 31 The more we talk about it, the more out in the open we bring these people who exist in the shadows and want to operate from the shadows. We

Speaker 31 have to understand them. We have to assign terminology to the disorders that cause them to act in these ways.

Speaker 31 And

Speaker 31 we have to support people who've been through it.

Speaker 31 And my mission through all of this became sort of explaining to more and more people that you can heal, you will heal, what you're experiencing is valid.

Speaker 31 Something that I say so often to this day is: my story was true, and my experiences were valid.

Speaker 31 My story was true,

Speaker 31 even if his wasn't, mine was.

Speaker 11 On the next episode of Betrayal.

Speaker 31 I went out into the garage area. The car was gone.
Like,

Speaker 31 where did he go?

Speaker 13 If you would like to reach out to the betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com.

Speaker 33 That's betrayal, p-od at gmail.com.

Speaker 37 We're grateful for your support.

Speaker 38 One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 55 And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 4 The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Speaker 13 Written and produced by Monique Laborde.

Speaker 55 Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Speaker 49 Associate producers are Kristen Mel Curie and Caitlin Golden.

Speaker 38 Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.

Speaker 13 Audio editing and mixing by Matt Selvecchio.

Speaker 21 Additional editing support from Nico Aruka.

Speaker 20 Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Speaker 11 Music library provided by MIBE Music.

Speaker 49 And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 22 You know that feeling when your alarm goes off and your first thought is, why do I feel so awful?

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Speaker 58 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus NEO's Gentleman's Gaming.

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Speaker 58 Season 0 of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 59 Head over to globalgamingleague.com.

Speaker 56 Hey guys, it's Aaron Andrews from Calm Down with Aaron and Carissa. So as a sideline reporter, game day is extra busy for me, but I know it can be busy for parents everywhere.

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You can't go wrong with the little crunchies.

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Speaker 12 This is an iHeart podcast.