EP 23 - Dawn

Transcript

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Speaker 25 One day, I'm leaving a doctor appointment and I get a phone call from the FBI. And they just say, hey, this is so-and-so with the Dallas FBI.
Would you come in and talk to us about your husband?

Speaker 25 And I said, why? What about my husband?

Speaker 2 I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Speaker 2 As a listener note, this episode contains references to suicide suicide and suicidal ideation. Please take care while listening.

Speaker 2 About a year ago, we heard from a fast-talking Southern woman named Dawn.

Speaker 25 I'm from East Texas, born and raised.

Speaker 2 Dawn is a firecracker. Speaking your mind just runs in Dawn's family.
She gets it from her mom.

Speaker 25 My mother's just a good little four foot nine Pentecostal woman, but she also doesn't mince words.

Speaker 2 Dawn's story of betrayal betrayal is a little different. She's the first to say that her story starts when she committed a betrayal of her own.

Speaker 25 We did start as a betrayal. There was a lot of people hurting this and I was not always the innocent person.
I did a lot of hurting.

Speaker 2 In the early 2000s, Dawn was married with two young daughters. She described her first husband as a nice guy, maybe the first guy that had ever really been good to her.
But she wasn't in love.

Speaker 2 One night, Dawn decided to go out with her sister.

Speaker 25 I actually left church to meet my sister out on a Wednesday night at a bar, and there this man is.

Speaker 25 I saw him, and there was an instant attraction.

Speaker 2 His name was Wes.

Speaker 2 Wes was an oil man, as they say in Texas, and he had a smooth talking persona to match.

Speaker 25 When he walked into her room, he commanded the room. I'd never seen anything like it.
He was just one of those people and he was paying attention to me and I was like, whoa.

Speaker 25 And I had a little shirt that came right to the top of my high-waisted jeans, you know, and I moved and my belly showed and he reached and kind of like touched my belly.

Speaker 25 And I was pulling my shirt down and he's like, oh, don't pull your shirt down. That's sexy.

Speaker 2 That night, he focused intensely on her. Wes laughed hard at her jokes.
And the way he looked at her made her feel beautiful.

Speaker 25 We talked all night. We just stood in the corner of the club, like where people were dancing and drinking, just talking.

Speaker 2 Dawn told him about her husband and two daughters, but he didn't bat an eye. Honestly, she was surprised that he was single.

Speaker 25 He told me he was not married and that he didn't have any children and I didn't believe that. I was like, that's bullshit.

Speaker 25 There's absolutely no way in hell that you're not married and don't have any kids.

Speaker 2 Against her better judgment, she gave him her phone number and then they went their separate ways.

Speaker 25 From then, we just talked every day. And we would meet out once a week.

Speaker 2 That went on for about eight months. In the beginning, it was an emotional affair.
There was nothing physical going on. And he stuck to his story about being single with no kids.

Speaker 25 I just kept telling him, like, I don't believe you. Like, you might as well just tell me.
Like, I'm married. I have a ring on.

Speaker 2 After a few months, Wes finally came clean. He did have a wife and a daughter, too.

Speaker 25 I was like, I knew it. Like, I knew it.
Like, I don't know why you were lying to me. Thank you for being honest.

Speaker 2 He confessed that he'd had a few affairs before. But this time with Dawn, it was different.
They'd been talking every day for months, seeing each other once a week.

Speaker 2 And even though nothing physical had happened between them, Wes was in deep. This is what he told her.

Speaker 25 I fell in love with you and I just didn't know what to do with this situation. I didn't want to lose you, but I didn't want to disappoint my family.

Speaker 2 Wes was a preacher's son. No one in his family had ever been divorced.
And Dawn understood that pressure.

Speaker 2 But after eight months, their emotional affair turned physical and there was no going back after that.

Speaker 25 I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew then that I had to start working towards dissolving my marriage.

Speaker 2 She was the first to take the leap, to leave her marriage. She wanted to start over with Wes at her side.

Speaker 2 Not long after, Wes said he and his wife were also separating in order for him to be with Dawn.

Speaker 2 And a few months after that,

Speaker 25 we got engaged.

Speaker 2 They made their relationship public, spent time with each other's kids, and started building a new life together. Dawn started bringing Wes around her family and spending time with his young daughter.

Speaker 2 His larger family wasn't ready to accept Wes's recent separation. Regardless, he and Dawn began envisioning a life together.
Dawn had stayed home with her kids in the past and loved it.

Speaker 2 Wes said he could give that life to her again. He could afford it.

Speaker 25 He told me, I have enough money to take care of you, so I want you to stay home. And he bought me a brand new 2004 expedition.
It was a $45,000 vehicle. So I quit my job.

Speaker 2 Dawn agreed to move to a small town outside of Dallas where Wes lived. His whole family was there too.
He wanted to stay close to his daughter.

Speaker 2 Because he and Dawn weren't married yet, he decided to live separately. Wes lived with his mom while Dawn and her daughters rented a small house in town.

Speaker 25 He moved me to this tiny little town of only a few hundred people with one grocery store.

Speaker 2 There, Wes got a new job in the steel business, and Dawn settled into her new life as a stay-at-home mom. The couple started making plans to get married.

Speaker 25 I wanted a Vegas wedding because it wasn't my first rodeo.

Speaker 25 I wanted Elvis to give me away. He wanted a minister.

Speaker 2 But in the middle of wedding planning, Dawn's cell phone got turned off. She assumed that Wes, as busy as he was, had forgotten to pay their bill.

Speaker 2 It was 2004, so she used her landline to call his office. He had been working at a place called Chaparral Steel.

Speaker 25 So I call Chaparral Steel. I got to get hold of him.
And I'm like, yeah, I need to speak to Wes. And they're like, we don't have anyone who works here by that name.

Speaker 25 And I'm like, what?

Speaker 25 Are you sure? And so Wes was his middle name. So I tell him, like, sure, you don't have a, you know, like George Wesley Harris Jr.

Speaker 25 He's like, no.

Speaker 25 And I said, let me talk to HR.

Speaker 25 They put me on the phone. Like, they're like, we don't have anyone that works here by that name.
And then everything in me just gets this pit, right?

Speaker 25 I'm like, Oh my god,

Speaker 2 he lied about where he worked, what was going on. Her gut instinct told her to call his ex-wife.

Speaker 25 I looked at the phone, and you know, when you're about to do something, you know, your whole life's about to go in a different direction, like it's going to change that the course of your life is, you know, it's kind of that moment.

Speaker 25 I called her, and she's like,

Speaker 25 Who is this?

Speaker 25 And I said, this is Dawn. This is Wes's fiancé.

Speaker 2 There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. Something wasn't right.
Before she could get an answer about the job, the conversation took a different turn.

Speaker 25 And she said,

Speaker 25 don't ever haul this house again. And I said, wait, are y'all still married? And she goes, yes, we are.
And we have been very much married for the last 10 years. Don't call this house again.

Speaker 25 She hangs up the phone. and I'm just standing there in shock because we're supposed to be getting married that month.
And he's still married, living with her, telling me he's living with his mom.

Speaker 25 So then she calls me right back and says, well, I know where his heart is because he just left the house and I'm quite certain he's probably on his way to your house. And she hangs up.

Speaker 25 Well, about five minutes later, He shows up at my door. She lived like 10 minutes from me.

Speaker 2 Dawn had moved her whole life life and her kids to this small town. She thought it was for her and Wes to start a new life together.

Speaker 2 Turns out it was so he could be closer to his wife, who he was still living with. He was never separated.

Speaker 25 He moves me to this tiny town with one grocery store.

Speaker 25 At any point in time, I could have run into his wife and daughter at the grocery store, and the daughter would have run up to me and been like, Dawn, she's a toddler.

Speaker 2 Within 10 minutes, both Wes and his wife were at Dawn's house and they were fighting.

Speaker 25 I'm like, there's a cop episode up in my house right now.

Speaker 2 With hindsight, Dawn can joke about it now. But in the moment, her relationship with Wes was over.

Speaker 25 He told me he was really living with his mom now. So that came to fruition.
He kept telling me, like, no one's ever been divorced in my family. I didn't know how to end the marriage.

Speaker 25 I want to be with you.

Speaker 25 Like, we can be together. We can fix this.

Speaker 25 But I was done with him.

Speaker 25 We separated

Speaker 25 and then he had a nervous breakdown. Then he went into his first 72-hour hold in a mental institution for a breakdown.

Speaker 2 She had sympathy for him, especially as he was going through a mental health crisis.

Speaker 25 I just thought. He's just conflicted.
He doesn't want to hurt his family. I can love him through that.
And it's going to be great once we get through this crap. And I just went to bat for him because

Speaker 25 I had given up so much.

Speaker 2 A few weeks after everything came to light, she took him back. Wes kept saying he was in the process of divorcing his wife.

Speaker 25 And finally, it was his wife that called me one day, and he was in my living room, and she said, is he with you? And I said, yes.

Speaker 25 And she said, he told me he hasn't seen you and hasn't been seeing you. I said, well, you know, we're still seeing each other.
And she said, you can have him. I'm done.

Speaker 2 The whole situation was messy, destructive, but Don and Wes could finally be together for real this time. But of course, there was still that issue of his job or the job he said he had.

Speaker 2 When she asked about it, Wes confessed that he'd been fired from a string of jobs and he was too ashamed to tell her. She pitied him.
He put so much pressure on himself to appear perfect.

Speaker 2 and it was taking a massive toll on him. So Don's strategy was to love him through this tumultuous time, to assure him that they would figure it out together.

Speaker 2 And pretty soon, he came to her with a new job prospect.

Speaker 25 He said, I have the opportunity to go back in the oil and gas business.

Speaker 2 He was working in the oil business when they met. She didn't want him to slide back into the toxic culture he'd left behind, but she knew she couldn't control him.
Plus, it was a good job offer.

Speaker 17 So he took the job.

Speaker 25 And it was that job that ended up being his his downfall.

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Speaker 5 The weight came off.

Speaker 1 But facial volume loss and dull sagging skin are making you look older?

Speaker 2 Dawn had forgiven her fiancé Wes for a number of things. He told her he was separated from his wife.
when in reality, he was still very much with her.

Speaker 2 He told Dawn he worked as a salesman at a steel company, which she found out was also a lie. Finally, with Wes coming clean, the couple could enter a new era, a sort of golden era.

Speaker 2 And it started with a wedding.

Speaker 25 We went to Little Chapel of the West, which is the historical, beautiful chapel there in Vegas.

Speaker 25 And Elvis gave me away. He said, This is your Priscilla.
And he kissed me and then he gave me away to Wes.

Speaker 25 And then we went and did tequila shots in my my wedding dress at Caesar's Palace. It was awesome.

Speaker 2 The new job Wes Gord, which this time was a real job, proved to be a natural fit for him. He was managing investor money at an oil and gas company and he was great at it.

Speaker 25 He quickly became their top producer, selling million dollars in investments a month.

Speaker 25 and their number one salesman.

Speaker 2 They moved out of the small town where his ex-wife and family lived and settled in a Fort Worth suburb to be near his job.

Speaker 25 But he's like, let's look at houses. And we were looking at houses.
And I'm like, well, what's our budget? And he's like, well, you know, we can put $100,000 down a house.

Speaker 25 And I'm like, oh, okay.

Speaker 25 That's nice.

Speaker 25 So we looked at this house on the golf course. It was beautiful.
And we bought that.

Speaker 2 The cherry on top. They joined the country club.

Speaker 25 It was like, if you were anyone, you were at Walnut Creek Country Club.

Speaker 2 They were officially somebodies. And it was around this time when she entered this life of luxury that Dawn made a new friend.
We'll call her Sandy.

Speaker 25 Her and I became fast friends. And then we got our husbands together and they became very good friends.
And they would golf together. We'd all travel together.

Speaker 2 As their personal life blossomed, so did Wes's career. The oil company was growing a lot and Wes had made friends with the right people there.

Speaker 2 People who wanted to take him all the way to the top of the company. In fact, they gave him the opportunity to buy the company.
He did. And he took over as CEO.

Speaker 25 All of a sudden, you know, Wes was the president and owner, and then all of a sudden, I'm the wife of a man who owns the company. And I just was like, okay, here we go.
This is awesome.

Speaker 2 The sale of the company happened fast and under kind of weird circumstances. But Wes didn't seem concerned about it and the money was good.

Speaker 25 I never really had to want for anything. Like if I wanted something, I would just say, hey, do you care if I get this? Or, hey, I'm going to go to lunch today with some ladies.

Speaker 2 And the couple got to spend a lot of time doing something they both loved. Partying.

Speaker 25 We were drinking a lot, partying. You know, my kids were with their dad every other weekend and we're at the country club five nights a week.

Speaker 2 It was a whirlwind, great Gatsby style, but set in the 2006 Texas suburbs. Dawn and Wes were still in their 30s, and they made it big.

Speaker 2 She knew her husband was a charmer, but there were two sides to that coin. On one side, he was a natural leader and salesman.
But on the other side, Wes was still the same old ladies' man.

Speaker 2 Early on, Dawn found evidence that Wes might be cheating on her. Instead of confronting him, she decided to take a different approach.

Speaker 25 I decided that if he could do it in front of my face, at least I'd have control over it. So we started going to swingers clubs.

Speaker 2 I had to know a little more about the Dallas swinger scene.

Speaker 25 There are actual bars in Dallas.

Speaker 25 And they have their own little language. So you can know if other people go to these places.
You just slip in some little language that only other people know.

Speaker 25 And then you know who you're talking to.

Speaker 2 The couple would agree on their boundaries beforehand.

Speaker 25 We can at least just be free. We can dance with each other and make out and do whatever we want to do.
We don't have to talk to other people. And I would go and be like, okay, I trust you.

Speaker 2 Dawn says she was, quote, in the lifestyle for about a year and a half until the party started feeling off to her. It stopped being fun.

Speaker 2 But Wes pressured her to keep going with him. Those nights would always end in drunken blackouts.
Fights.

Speaker 25 I got to where I would wake up in the morning and be like, I can't do this. I'd be on my knees in prayer.
You know, because we're like part of a church community too. We have this double life.

Speaker 25 And so I would be like, I can't do this.

Speaker 2 They stopped going to swingers clubs together and for a while everything seemed normal. That was until years later, when Wes began spending more and more time at work.

Speaker 2 Dawn was becoming suspicious about his work travel and the long hours he was putting in. Plus, he became guarded with his phone.
Whenever Dawn tried to confront him, they got into an argument.

Speaker 25 After one particularly bad fight, I lied to Wes and told him that I went and got coffee and was just trying to cool off.

Speaker 2 In reality, she drove to a friend's house to vent about Wes.

Speaker 25 And the coffee place I did not know was not open at that hour. So Wes was like, you're lying to me.
And everything just blew up.

Speaker 2 It was a lie that gave him a reason to leave her. And he took it immediately.

Speaker 25 When he came back home to pack a bag, he said, this is over. I want a divorce.

Speaker 25 And I remember begging him, like, please don't do this. We can figure this out.
Like, don't do this.

Speaker 2 Dawn couldn't understand why he was so eager to walk out on her, so she turned to her friend Sandy. And Sandy had recently seen Wes.

Speaker 25 And she's like, he took his ring off. Yes, I want you to know he was not wearing his ring.

Speaker 2 Dawn was devastated, and Sandy was there to comfort her.

Speaker 25 And I remember my head was in her lap, and I'm crying. And she's like, Dawn, this relationship, it's just too much.

Speaker 25 It's like a bomb fuse,

Speaker 25 and it was bound to burn out.

Speaker 2 Soon Soon after, Wes went on a work trip. Dawn got a weird feeling about it.
Call it intuition. So she decided to do a little investigating.

Speaker 25 I found out where he was staying.

Speaker 2 She called the hotel front desk and she found out that there were two people staying in Wes's room. The other person was Sandy, Dawn's friend.

Speaker 2 She suddenly understood why Wes had been so quick to walk out of their marriage and why Sandy was feeding her information about wes's infidelity even advising her that the relationship was too much she was supposed to be my brand but she's screwing my husband when wes came back from that business trip his affair with sandy was outed it was a big scandal you know we were all members of the country club her and i were on the committee at the country club together so now that's outed they're up there holding hands to the country club and everybody's talking talking talking it was humiliating infuriating but it was nothing compared to what came next

Speaker 25 he comes and tells me that he filed for divorce and he put a restraining order on me to keep me out of his company a restraining order she didn't have anything to do with his company i think i walked in the doors of his company maybe

Speaker 25 three, four times like I could count it on one hand. I didn't have anything to do with it.
So telling me to stay out of the company like that pissed me off.

Speaker 2 So Wes offered to make her a deal to buy her off.

Speaker 25 He said, I will give you enough money that you can buy a house cash. I'll give you enough money for that.
And I said, you were nothing when I met you.

Speaker 25 You were borrowing money from your mother living in my rent house.

Speaker 25 If you think you're going to replace me and my two girls with her and her two boys and you're going to give me money for a house and you're operating a multi-million dollar company, you can go fuck yourself.

Speaker 25 I go, that's happening.

Speaker 2 When she didn't take the first deal he offered, Wes tried another one.

Speaker 25 He tried to start calming me down. He's like, We can work this out together.
We'll use my attorney. He's like, I will sit down with my accountant.
I will let you look at all the books.

Speaker 25 He goes, If you just calm down, he goes, You don't even have to come to the hearing. I'll take care of it.
The restraining order will go away.

Speaker 2 She took that deal and she believed him. She didn't even know what day the divorce hearing was set for for

Speaker 2 until.

Speaker 25 I was at my second graders field day and one of the country club members, a man, came up to me and said, I need you to know Wes is going around telling everybody that he got everything and that you're going to be out on your ass.

Speaker 25 In a couple of weeks, he's just going to put you out and he has everything. Like you didn't show up to a trial.
What he did was he walked in there and told the judge, my wife is a raging alcoholic.

Speaker 25 She's violent and abusive. She did not even care to be here today.
And the judge gave him everything,

Speaker 25 everything,

Speaker 25 and I didn't know it.

Speaker 7 Now she was ready to burn it all down.

Speaker 25 I called him and I say, I'm getting an attorney. I don't trust you anymore.

Speaker 2 She didn't just hire any attorney. She hired the mayor of their town.

Speaker 25 I remember Wes going, you hired the mayor of Manceville. And I'm like, you're fucking right, I did.

Speaker 2 And that's when Wes let something slip.

Speaker 25 He starts freaking out. And in his panic, he did say to me,

Speaker 25 Dawn, don't get an attorney. He goes, Right now, things are in the gray at work.

Speaker 16 I'm trying to pull it up out of the gray area.

Speaker 25 He goes, I could go to prison.

Speaker 25 I should have stopped on that and double-tapped into that statement

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Speaker 2 Dawn discovered her husband Wes had been cheating on her with her close friend. And in the divorce that followed, he filed a restraining order to keep Dawn out of his multi-million dollar business.

Speaker 2 He crossed her one too many times. And now she needed to know the extent of his wrongdoing.

Speaker 25 And then I'm starting to go on the internet looking up stuff about his company.

Speaker 25 The things that people are saying about his company, I'm like, I cannot get over this. Like, this is crazy.
They're saying it's a scam and there's no return.

Speaker 2 She saw posts from people who'd invested in Wes's oil company saying they'd been promised returns, but those returns never came.

Speaker 2 Dawn was also finding records of properties in her husband's name, properties she didn't know anything about, that all led back to Wes.

Speaker 25 I have a friend who works for the SEC.

Speaker 25 And so I called her one day and I said, I just need to vent about the stuff I'm finding out about his company.

Speaker 25 And she said, you're on my government issued phone. So anything you say.

Speaker 25 And I said, well, if your government oath trumps our friendship, so be it. But I think I need to tell you the stuff I'm finding out.
What I didn't know is he was already under investigation.

Speaker 25 So when she said that to me, that was her little under-the-table warning because there was really something going on.

Speaker 2 Her friend couldn't tell her about the investigation, but someone else was about to.

Speaker 25 I'd gone to your doctor appointment and I was leaving the doctor's office and I get a phone call and it was, is this Dawn Harris? And I said, yes, it is.

Speaker 25 And they said, this is so-and-so with the Dallas FBI office. We'd like for you to come in.

Speaker 25 And I was like, excuse me. And they said, we have some questions for you.
And I said, what kind of questions? What's this about?

Speaker 25 And they said, it's about your husband, Wes Harris. And I said, what about my husband? And they said, well, it's about his company.
And I said, what about his company?

Speaker 25 Like, I don't know what I can tell you about his company. I don't have anything to do with this company.

Speaker 2 She might not be involved with the company, but she did know Wes was always up to something. And if she could help expose more of his lies, she was in.

Speaker 25 I called my attorney's office. The paralegal there answered the phone, and I told her the FBI had just called me.
And she said, you're probably being tapped. Don't talk to anyone.
Come straight here.

Speaker 2 But almost immediately, Wes started calling.

Speaker 25 My phone's blowing up. Where are you? Where are you? So he tells me he's going to come by the house.

Speaker 25 And later that evening, he came by the house and he kept doing this really weird thing where he would talk to me and tell me he wanted to get back together.

Speaker 25 And then he'd drop drop his eyes and he'd get real close to me.

Speaker 25 And then he'd snap out of it and start talking again. And it was making me very nervous.
And so we went from the kitchen into the living room and we both sat down.

Speaker 25 And that's when he looked at me and goes, why did the FBI call you today?

Speaker 25 And I went, I don't know. And he said, what do they want? I said, I don't know.
They said they wanted to talk about you.

Speaker 25 And he said, well, you're not going to talk to them. I said, no, I'm going in to talk to them.
And he wanted to send me with one of his attorneys. And I declined that.
I said, absolutely not.

Speaker 25 I said, I'm not going with an attorney. I have nothing to hide.
I don't need an attorney. I'm going to go in there and answer their questions.
And he was trying to get me not to talk to them.

Speaker 2 But Don did talk with the feds.

Speaker 25 And she learned he had misappropriated $2 million.

Speaker 2 That $2 million was just the beginning. In total, Wes's company illegally raised $13 million through what's known as a boiler room scheme.

Speaker 2 Salespeople like Wes duped hundreds of everyday people to invest their savings in the company's oil drilling projects.

Speaker 2 But they were doing it using fake data, falsified information about the company's profits, and empty promises about their expected returns.

Speaker 2 And a lot of those investor funds weren't being used to expand the company's profits.

Speaker 25 He was ballsy. He had a stripper on the payroll he paid monthly.
Which, I mean, you don't steal millions of dollars at like 35 years old without being super ballsy.

Speaker 2 And where did all that money go? Well, Wes used it to fund their family's lavish lifestyle.

Speaker 25 I would look at things and be like, I was bought with stolen money. You know, like, that's kind of hard to stomach and your whole life is bought with stolen money.

Speaker 2 Money stolen from regular people who'd invested in Wes's oil and gas company. who were told they'd see massive returns.

Speaker 25 Investors were calling me saying, I know your daughter's names, where they go to school. I know where you live.

Speaker 25 I gave him three quarters of a million dollars and he ruined my life and I'm going to ruin his. And then I was so panicked, I'm like, he doesn't even live here.
Like, we're separated.

Speaker 25 So now they know I'm alone.

Speaker 2 She was scared for her own safety. But more so, she was devastated when she heard from the victims of Wes's fraud.

Speaker 25 I had one woman who was really sweet. She called me and she goes, we're a mom and pop place in New Mexico.
She goes, we gave him all of our life savings.

Speaker 2 Even though Don wasn't responsible for Wes's crimes, she was still financially entangled with him.

Speaker 25 His LLC that he was laundering money through,

Speaker 25 he had put me as the president. So I was the president of that until we split up.

Speaker 25 I had written checks out of that account, but just because he would tell me, like write a check, and then he took me off of it. Thank God.

Speaker 2 But of course, everything he'd bought for the couple, from their house to Dawn's shoes, could now be seized by the feds.

Speaker 25 I was told that federal marshals were going to show up at my house and I would be able to pack a bag for me and my children.

Speaker 2 Dawn's life was on pause as she waited for the financial and legal reckoning.

Speaker 25 We could not have our divorce trial until the SEC

Speaker 25 was done because what was left over was community property, what they left me, basically. So I had to fight for that.
He made me fight for that.

Speaker 2 That's when Don got another unexpected call from, of all people, a new woman Wes had started dating. She wanted to meet Dawn in person.

Speaker 25 She ended up finding me and reaching out to me because she had suspicions about him.

Speaker 25 She told me he had taken her to this seedy little place.

Speaker 25 Then there was like other couples that were like rubbing her back.

Speaker 25 And she goes, and then I blacked out. And I don't remember the rest of the night.

Speaker 25 And she said, and Dawn, I don't drink, not that much. She goes, I maybe had two drinks.

Speaker 25 And she goes, I think you probably drugged me.

Speaker 25 And I burst into tears. And I said, you just described the last year and a half of my life because that's what I would do.
I wouldn't have that much to drink.

Speaker 25 But all of a sudden, I'm coming in and out of consciousness. And I'm seeing all this stuff around me, but you can't move.

Speaker 2 It wasn't until that moment when someone else described her same experiences that Dawn realized what was really happening the last few times she went to the swingers club with Wes.

Speaker 6 Those nights she'd blacked out.

Speaker 25 When I was saying that I couldn't do it anymore,

Speaker 25 that's when he started drugging me.

Speaker 2 This was more than a betrayal. It was a crime.
He drugged and sexually assaulted her.

Speaker 2 She was still processing this while in the middle of an SEC investigation, or the government could be justified in seizing everything she had. It left her feeling overwhelmingly empty and alone.

Speaker 25 There was times I pulled in my garage and shut the garage door and leaned the seat back because I knew that the government was about to come in and take my home and take all of my things.

Speaker 25 And I was going to have to tell everyone and I was going to have to. uproot my daughters and scare the shit out of them, right? And so

Speaker 25 I just wanted to die. I'm like, if I could just go to sleep right now, I I wouldn't have to deal with this.

Speaker 25 I can remember shutting the garage door and leaning that seat back and sitting there. But I would see my daughter's little faces.
They were like eight and ten.

Speaker 25 And I would turn the car off. I'd wipe my face.
I'd go in the house and get it together.

Speaker 2 Every day felt excruciatingly long. Dawn says she got through it for her daughters.
And Wes, well, he had already moved on, to say the least.

Speaker 25 He had met a girl in Sunday school and he had convinced all of his family that he was innocent. If I was guilty, I'd be in prison by now.

Speaker 25 I'm going to sue the government and the SEC and all of them for falsely accusing me. I was told his mom had like second mortgaged her house.

Speaker 25 I was told that he had gone through this poor woman's savings or whatever. These are things, of course, I was told.
But what I do know is that was starting to unravel.

Speaker 2 He might have been telling his family that he was innocent, but that's not what Wes told the government. He agreed to a plea deal with the FBI.
Now he was awaiting sentencing.

Speaker 2 Finally, they could move forward with their divorce.

Speaker 25 Our divorce was a trial because he was trying to fight me for everything the government left me with. So I had to get up on stand and testify.
And of course, he pleaded the fifth to everything.

Speaker 2 Dawn was relieved to keep the modest half of what the government left her, but Wes still wasn't done with her. Despite it all, he still kept reaching out to Dawn.

Speaker 2 She didn't reply until finally,

Speaker 25 he called me one day. He was really confused and sounded just really out of it.

Speaker 25 I'm like, just go serve your sentence. Go do your time.
And in one breath, he said, I'm not going to prison. What do you mean? I'm innocent.

Speaker 25 And in the next breath, he'd say, you know what happens to men like me in prison, Dawn? What am I going to do when I come out?

Speaker 2 He couldn't wrap his mind around the reality that he was going to prison. Considering what he'd done, Dawn was losing patience for him.

Speaker 2 She knew he was reaching out for sympathy, maybe for help processing, or maybe because he just didn't have anyone else left.

Speaker 25 And then he texted me one more thing, which is what we used to say to each other that meant I love you. We would always say one more thing.
And he texted me one more thing.

Speaker 25 And I reached out to his first wife again and she said, Don, he keeps doing this. Go to bed, turn your phone off.

Speaker 25 The next morning, he killed himself.

Speaker 25 He was supposed to turn himself in that next day. He had come to an agreement with the FBI and he was only going to serve like, I don't know, five to seven years.
I mean, this was 2012.

Speaker 25 He'd have been way out of prison by now.

Speaker 25 I went to the funeral. His grandmother, who I loved and she loved me, she came up to me and she asked me about the house and about me selling the house.

Speaker 25 I said, Dino, you don't understand.

Speaker 25 The government took everything. The government took that house.
Like, I didn't sell any, like, I have, I don't have anything.

Speaker 25 And she kind of looked at me confused.

Speaker 2 He'd been lying to everyone, including his family. He'd also been stealing from his grandmother.

Speaker 25 Well, he stole the money out of her account to buy the gun to kill himself.

Speaker 2 It's been over a decade since the end of their relationship and since Wes passed away.

Speaker 25 I try to say I don't have any regrets.

Speaker 25 I got a couple. I got a couple.

Speaker 25 Hard lessons for sure.

Speaker 2 Dawn endured so much in this relationship. We asked what the hardest part was for her.

Speaker 25 What gets me the most is the betrayal to myself. Like, I don't know that woman.
And thank God I don't know her anymore. I look back and how in the world,

Speaker 25 for 10 years of my life, this man was able to lie and manipulate.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 25 I would lie and manipulate, you know, because again, we started out as an affair.

Speaker 25 But the biggest thing is just how I let myself get so wrapped up in that and the things that my children had to go through. They were

Speaker 25 18 months and four when I met him.

Speaker 25 That's probably the hardest thing.

Speaker 2 Part of Dawn's healing process is being honest, taking accountability for her actions.

Speaker 25 Being able to talk to other people and just be honest has been very healing. Like, I don't hold back the fact we were in an affair.
I don't hold back the people that I've hurt.

Speaker 25 You know, there was a lot of people hurting this, and I was not always the innocent person. I did a lot of hurting.

Speaker 2 Dawn found happiness in starting a new career.

Speaker 25 I always wanted to be an esthetician, so now I own my own spa. It looks what I'm sitting in.
My little spa.

Speaker 2 She also found love again, this time with a man who was honest with her and treats her well. In fact, while we were on our call.

Speaker 25 Hi, honey. My husband brought me flowers.
Oh,

Speaker 25 so sweet.

Speaker 25 Thank you, babe.

Speaker 2 We end all of our episodes with the same question.

Speaker 2 Why did you want to tell your story?

Speaker 25 To reach other people and let them know that, you know, There's a whole network of people out here that

Speaker 25 have been hurt, but that you can go through these horrible things and it's not over

Speaker 25 and you can rebuild as many times as it takes. Just be honest with yourself.
Like, I like who I am today, and I think it's because I didn't try to hide all of those mistakes.

Speaker 2 On the next episode of Betrayal.

Speaker 25 I just remember it was a profound moment.

Speaker 39 Who is this cruel?

Speaker 39 Who can pull this off?

Speaker 25 Whose family pulls it off? Whose friends pull it off?

Speaker 25 What in the world?

Speaker 39 How do you fabricate the details like that?

Speaker 2 If you would like to reach out to the betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com. That's betrayalpod at gmail.com.
We're grateful for your support.

Speaker 2 One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Speaker 2 Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison.

Speaker 2 Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Speaker 2 Written and produced by Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Associate producers are Kristen Mel Curie and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.

Speaker 2 Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Additional editing support from Nico Aruka and Tanner Robbins.
Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MIBE Music.

Speaker 2 And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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