EP 22 - Angelique Pt. 2

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 4 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 10 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved, so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 8 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 13 That's pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 14 It starts like any other night. The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.

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Speaker 30 He took the police report and he gave it to me. And he said, One day when you're ready,

Speaker 30 you should read this.

Speaker 30 There's some stuff in here that I don't think you know.

Speaker 30 It's actually diabolical.

Speaker 31 I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Speaker 31 When Angelique Robletto was 17, she found out she was pregnant. She decided that this baby would be her second chance.

Speaker 31 She got clean from drugs and made a new friend, another pregnant teenager named Cassandra. But one day, a casual hangout with Cassandra took a sinister turn.

Speaker 31 Angelique had a gut feeling that something was wrong, but she didn't know what it was.

Speaker 31 After a fire started, Cassandra was taken away by paramedics, and Angelique was left to explain the situation to her parents and law enforcement.

Speaker 31 She suspected that Cassandra started the fire and that the proof was in her friend's bag.

Speaker 30 I take the diaper bag and I keep explaining to them. She said she had this present for me.
Like the explanation is in this bag. And as I'm doing that, I put the bag on the counter.

Speaker 30 I breach my hand in the bag and I feel these two metal objects. And when I lift them and pull them out, they're two large butcher knives.

Speaker 30 And I drop them on the counter and I just start screaming.

Speaker 31 She backed away from the bag, trembling. The cops stepped in.

Speaker 30 And they come and pull out more.

Speaker 30 They found like scissors, disinfectant, alcohol.

Speaker 31 The items painted a dark picture of what Cassandra might have been planning that night. And Angelique realized the gifts she'd been given weren't for her at all.

Speaker 30 Everything that she gave me was one of everything to take my son.

Speaker 30 To make sure my son had a newborn diaper, to make sure my son had a baby onesie, a receiving blanket to wrap him in, a blanket so he didn't get cold, a carrier to carry my baby out with.

Speaker 30 She had one of everything to take my child and to leave that house.

Speaker 31 It all finally clicked for Angelique. Cassandra had been planning to stab her and run away with her baby.

Speaker 30 I just remember sitting on the couch, staring at a wall, and I just kept repeating the same thing over and over and over again. It was like a trance.
I told you she was going to kill me.

Speaker 30 I told you she was going to kill me. I told you she she was going to kill me.
My mom said that I sat there for hours.

Speaker 31 The rest of that night was a blur. She was in shock.
She remembers the cops taping off the scene.

Speaker 30 They had blocked both of my streets off so that nobody can get in, nobody can get out.

Speaker 31 What had been a potential arson was now an attempted murder investigation.

Speaker 31 Later that night, a police investigator came to speak with Angelique.

Speaker 30 When the detective comes in, me and her very very much know each other because of my past. I've been arrested by her at least once.
It's a small town. She knew me by name.
Hi, Angelique, you know.

Speaker 31 She was surprised by how the cops spoke to her.

Speaker 30 They were laughing, they were joking. Oh, are you sure this didn't happen?

Speaker 30 And she says you guys are smoking marijuana in your room.

Speaker 30 You know, it's no shocker because Angelique has done things in the past,

Speaker 30 but it wasn't wasn't a joking situation.

Speaker 31 They hadn't been smoking weed. Angelique knew what happened.
She just couldn't prove it to the cops.

Speaker 30 They had me write it down, and then that was it for the night. They just did their investigation and they left.
So the next morning comes, I call them, and they don't have any news.

Speaker 30 They know that she left the hospital and she's not there anymore. They know that for sure.

Speaker 30 And I'm like, okay, well, what are you guys going to do? Well, we're trying to find her.

Speaker 31 She was afraid Cassandra might come back and follow through with the plan.

Speaker 30 This lady literally came to my house with butcher knife and tried to kill me.

Speaker 31 But the cops weren't necessarily convinced.

Speaker 30 Well, we can't prove that. We can't say that that's what happened.
We don't know if that's what happened.

Speaker 31 She didn't feel like they were taking her seriously. And now Cassandra was out of the hospital roaming free.

Speaker 31 Angelique decided to take matters into her own

Speaker 30 I think when people think of survivors and they think of people that are victims, they think that we go into this weird moment of poor me or like I'm scared, it's not like that.

Speaker 30 It's quite the opposite. We go into this moment that we need to figure out what happened.

Speaker 30 I was ready to investigate. I was very much, I've watched way too much SVU.
I know what to do. That's how I felt.

Speaker 31 She got to work online.

Speaker 30 So I started Googling my little heart out and found things about her. I found this news article on her and I found out that they stated that she was a danger to herself and society.

Speaker 30 So that was like a little clue.

Speaker 31 And then she found a surprising connection.

Speaker 30 Her cousin is somebody that I knew from middle school. And I called the cousin.

Speaker 31 Cassandra's cousin had a lot to say.

Speaker 30 Found out from the cousin. She said, my cousin's crazy.
My cousin is very dangerous. That's when everything started to click.

Speaker 31 After the fire, Cassandra was brought to the hospital because she was having contractions.

Speaker 31 Angelique had a friend who worked at that hospital at the time, a friend who was willing to break the rules to help Angelique get some answers.

Speaker 31 And what her friend saw in Cassandra's medical record was a bombshell.

Speaker 30 She actually saw the tests that she took at the hospital and they were able to confirm that she was not pregnant.

Speaker 31 Up until that moment, Angelique fully believed her friend was pregnant. In fact, that had been the basis of their entire relationship.

Speaker 31 But now she had confirmation that it was all a lie. She felt like this information was important to her case.

Speaker 30 I gave it to the cops and they were like, oh, how did you find this? And I'm like, are you serious right now? It felt like they were not taking my case seriously and it was extremely frustrating.

Speaker 31 For the cops to move forward, Angelique would need to get Cassandra on the record, contradicting her original statement to police.

Speaker 30 Because her story was that we were in the room, we were smoking marijuana, we ashed out my pipe, and it set my closet on fire.

Speaker 31 So they asked Angelique to do a recorded phone call.

Speaker 30 My goal was to get her to admit that she was in the room alone before the fire started. So I had to call her and ask her, how are you doing? How did everything go at the hospital?

Speaker 30 I had to pretend like I had no idea what was happening because she didn't know what was happening. She has no idea that I found the butcher knives.
So she admits it. Yes.

Speaker 30 Yeah, I remember when I was in the room. Yeah, you were in there by yourself.
Yeah, I was in there by myself. And that was the goal, to get her to say all of those words.

Speaker 31 Then Cassandra started to catch on.

Speaker 30 I could tell that she wasn't alone. There was somebody in that house with her because we all heard a man say, hang up the phone, and then click.

Speaker 31 Angelique got what she needed, but it was anticlimactic. The police basically thanked her and sent her on her way.

Speaker 30 But almost immediately, from that moment, I had went into labor.

Speaker 31 She went straight to the hospital. Because Cassandra still hadn't been arrested, the hospital took precautions to keep Angelique safe.

Speaker 30 They have police outside my room. They have me down as Jane Doe.
You have to have a code to get inside my room.

Speaker 31 She spent four days in labor.

Speaker 30 I probably should have had a C-section, but I think they were trying to be mindful of the whole situation that I had just gone through.

Speaker 31 After all, someone had wanted to steal her baby and brought a butcher knife to do it. So she was adamant about not having a C-section.

Speaker 30 As much as I wanted my son to be born, I felt like the only safe place was inside of me.

Speaker 30 But at the same time, I was feeling like, okay, well, inside of me isn't safe because someone just tried to kill me. So I was going through all of these emotions.

Speaker 31 The stress had led to high blood pressure, and now Angelique had preeclampsia. It was a high-risk birth.

Speaker 30 Finally, my water broke, and

Speaker 30 it was just an intense birth.

Speaker 30 His heart rate had dropped at some point.

Speaker 30 It was honestly, it was scary.

Speaker 31 Finally, her son was born. He was healthy and in her arms.

Speaker 30 I went through such a traumatic event that seeing him alive was just a blessing. I could not imagine him being with with anybody else.

Speaker 31 She hoped that after he was born, she'd find some relief.

Speaker 30 And finally, once everything is okay, I still can't sleep because,

Speaker 30 A, I'm freaking out on nurses, making them show me their badges. Two, I think I'm destined to die, and I just want to spend whatever moments I can with my son.

Speaker 30 And that's all I remember actually being in the hospital is I was worried about someone coming to steal him or me dying.

Speaker 31 While she was in the hospital, her family worked to renovate her bedroom, to repaint it and make it livable again.

Speaker 31 But after she was discharged, she struggled to relax at home.

Speaker 30 Coming home is such a blur.

Speaker 30 I didn't go back in my room. I refused to go to my room.
So I slept on the couch.

Speaker 31 Josh, her son's father, stepped up to help. He wanted to be a safe place for Angelique.
So every night, he stayed with her on the couch, next to their new baby.

Speaker 30 He helped me feel safe when nobody else made me feel that way.

Speaker 31 But even with him by her side, she couldn't let her guard down.

Speaker 30 I just wasn't myself. There was nothing that was right or okay about me.

Speaker 31 When Josh or her family tried to talk to her about how she was doing, Angelique shut down.

Speaker 30 I pushed everybody away.

Speaker 30 Josh would say something and I would be like, I'm fine. But really, I'm dying inside.

Speaker 31 She wanted Cassandra arrested, but the cops weren't sharing any information about the case.

Speaker 30 I felt like I was completely in the dark when it came to my investigation. Anytime I would try to talk to somebody, nobody could give me answers.

Speaker 30 And it was just super discouraging because I had gotten out of the hospital and I expected to feel safe and I didn't feel safe. I expected for her to be caught.
She wasn't caught.

Speaker 31 She didn't even feel safe taking a walk around her neighborhood.

Speaker 30 I just never left my house. I stayed inside of my house and never left.

Speaker 31 One night, about a month after her son was born.

Speaker 30 I fell asleep one night, and I remember my mom coming into the room. It had to have been like midnight.
And she woken me up and she said,

Speaker 30 Here. And she like hands me the phone.
And I'm like, who is it?

Speaker 31 It was the lead detective on her case.

Speaker 30 And she was like,

Speaker 30 we got her.

Speaker 31 Cassandra had been arrested.

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Speaker 8 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 13 That's pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 14 It starts like any other night.

Speaker 23 The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.

Speaker 17 The stain so dark, so stubborn, it might as well have been a crime scene.

Speaker 20 But this isn't your average couch.

Speaker 21 This is Anna Bay.

Speaker 24 Fully washable, unspeakably comfortable, and ready for whatever your life, your kids, or your ex throws at it.

Speaker 14 And here's the kicker.

Speaker 19 Starting at just $6.99, you can make sure your sofa isn't part of the problem. Fully washable, stain-resistant, and built to hide even the darkest offenses.

Speaker 27 Right now, get up to 60% off in Black Friday savings because no one should have to live with a stain that won't quit.

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Speaker 16 Shop washable sofas.com today.

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Speaker 32 Ah, greetings for my bath, festive friends.

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Speaker 31 After weeks of waiting, Angelique was losing faith that Cassandra would ever be held responsible. But then she got the call.

Speaker 31 Law enforcement was finally able to make an arrest. Cassandra was facing multiple charges.

Speaker 30 She is being charged with attempt to first degree murder, which means that it was plotted, it was planned out. So, attempt to first degree murder, arson, burglary.

Speaker 30 She said she's going to go away for a very, very long time.

Speaker 31 Cassandra had made a full confession.

Speaker 30 And I started crying and I said, she admitted it. And they said, yeah, she admitted it.

Speaker 31 She admitted that she'd planned to murder Angelique in order to steal her baby. Cassandra was now behind bars and she would stay there until there was a trial.

Speaker 30 And I just remember crying and being so happy. That was the first night that I actually slept.

Speaker 31 The news brought a lot of relief. Angelique could breathe a little easier, but the arrest didn't take away the trauma.

Speaker 30 As a mom, you imagine you're going to be this happy family. You're going to teach them how to say mama.
You're going to teach them how to walk.

Speaker 30 You're going to teach him, you know, figure out if his first food is going to be peaches or carrots. All of these things are things that I thought about.

Speaker 30 I don't remember any of them. It's like it was all stolen from me.

Speaker 31 She recently saw a video that was taken when her son was one. He was learning how to walk for the first time.

Speaker 30 And I say it, oh my gosh, it's his first first steps.

Speaker 30 I can't, I don't remember that video. I don't remember where that video was taken, what time, like I, I,

Speaker 30 and I was standing right there talking in the video.

Speaker 31 In the wake of everything, she wasn't living. She was surviving.

Speaker 30 My family, my friends, they distracted me. I can't tell you how because I don't remember, but I know that I survived.

Speaker 31 When everything went down, Angelique had to fight for her case to be taken seriously by the cops.

Speaker 31 And after Cassandra was arrested, she didn't hear anything from law enforcement or prosecutors for 12 months.

Speaker 30 I just remember thinking, like, when is this going to happen? Like, what's going to happen? Maybe I should just be thankful that she's in jail, but nobody has communicated anything with me.

Speaker 31 That was until she got a call from the district attorney's office.

Speaker 30 They tell me, we're going to be completely honest with you. We don't think this should go to trial.
And I was completely thrown back. Like, what do you mean this shouldn't go to trial?

Speaker 30 They said, well, through our investigation and through everything that we've done, the cops did not read her her Miranda rights at the time of the confession.

Speaker 30 And I was like, wait, what, what?

Speaker 30 Like, what do you mean that he didn't read her her Miranda rights?

Speaker 31 The full confession police got out of Cassandra wouldn't be admissible in court.

Speaker 30 If we go to trial, her whole confession is thrown out and we can lose this case

Speaker 30 because it's not illegal to carry butcher knives around the city. Technically, it's not against the law.
And we cannot pinpoint everything in here without her confession.

Speaker 31 But Angelique knew there was physical evidence from the fire.

Speaker 30 And I was like, well, what about her fingertips on the candle? And they said, yes, they said, we want to try to do a plea bargain.

Speaker 31 The DA's office informed Angelique of Cassandra's defense strategy. She was going to plead insanity.

Speaker 30 The picture that they painted for me was that she was there to take my child because she was mentally ill and believed that my baby was her baby, that she was pregnant and this was her child.

Speaker 31 And in that moment, Angelique almost felt bad for her.

Speaker 31 The prosecutor said that Angelique could decide.

Speaker 30 Do you think she should go to prison or do you think she should go to like a mental hospital? And I asked if they can give me some time to think about that.

Speaker 31 She slept on it and realized that without the confession, the prosecution's hands were tied.

Speaker 30 I didn't feel good about this whole thing, but I really trusted, like, they're the professionals. This is their job.
Like, who am I to tell them what's right and what's wrong?

Speaker 31 The state offered eight years in a psychiatric hospital.

Speaker 30 And so that was our plea bargain.

Speaker 31 At the sentencing hearing, Angelique was able to read a victim impact statement.

Speaker 30 I wrote this long letter to her. I said,

Speaker 30 I don't want to live my life hating you. I don't want to have hate in my heart.
I don't think I can live my life that way. And so I'm going to tell you that I forgive you because you're mentally ill.

Speaker 30 I ended it that way, just for my conscience for me.

Speaker 30 The judge told her, Cassandra, is there anything that you would like to say to this woman? She stood up, put her hands together, she looked at me and said, no, Your Honor, and sat back down.

Speaker 30 No remorse.

Speaker 30 That felt like a slap in the face. That felt like, I want to take back everything that I said to you.

Speaker 30 That was the last interaction I had with her.

Speaker 31 Almost immediately, it became a media circus.

Speaker 30 Everybody was outside my door. I had every single news station.
I had people calling me. I had Anderson Cooper calling me.
I don't even know how they got my number.

Speaker 31 Everyone wanted to run with the story. Angelique became reduced to a headline.
It felt like something was being taken from her, but not on her terms.

Speaker 30 If I could take back some of the shows that I did, like doing the Dr. Phil show, I would have not done that.
Absolutely. He used me for my trauma to

Speaker 30 get views.

Speaker 31 A few years after sentencing, a local journalist came over to interview Angelique about the story. And he was the first one to ask her, Have you ever read the police report?

Speaker 30 And I was like, No.

Speaker 30 At the end of our interview, he took the police report and he gave it to me. And he said, There's some stuff in here that I don't think you know.

Speaker 30 You should read this.

Speaker 31 But at the time, Angelique wasn't ready to hear it.

Speaker 30 So, you want to know what I did? I shredded it. I shredded it all.
I shredded everything.

Speaker 30 That is what trauma does.

Speaker 31 It wasn't until eight years later, when Cassandra was released from the psychiatric hospital, that Angelique finally revisited the case.

Speaker 30 And that intrigued me to

Speaker 30 open everything back up because I felt like I was in a better state of mind. I was older.
I feel like I'm ready to start digging. So I went deep.
I went deep down this rabbit hole.

Speaker 30 I went to the police station. I pulled all the police reports.
I pulled the tapes. I pulled anything that they would give me.
And I sat in my car for hours listening to these CDs, listening to my

Speaker 30 me talk, listening to the all, listening to everything. It took like four to five hours.

Speaker 31 She started with Cassandra's taped confession. And on it, she learned Cassandra's story.
What Cassandra was really doing the night the fire started.

Speaker 30 The fire was never meant to happen. It was an accident.

Speaker 31 Her plan was to kill Angelique with a butcher knife and steal her baby. That's what she was preparing to do when she sat Angelique on her bed in the dark and counted to three.

Speaker 30 She said that she felt a moment of weakness when she was going to stab me. When she had me bent over, she had her hand on my shoulder.

Speaker 30 She had the knife physically to my back and she was ready to push the knife inside of me.

Speaker 31 But then Cassandra got cold feet.

Speaker 30 When she started counting, she started to feel guilt. And she says, I started to second guess it, if I could actually do it.

Speaker 31 When Angelique stood up, the initial plan fell apart. So Cassandra moved on to plan B.

Speaker 30 She She said the fire was supposed to be a distraction, and she was hoping that I would be overcome with smoke, and I would pass out.

Speaker 30 Then she'd be able to perform the C-section with me being passed out on the ground.

Speaker 31 Cassandra thought it would be easier to kill Angelique if she were unconscious. The whole thing was like a horror movie.

Speaker 30 It's actually diabolical.

Speaker 30 It's almost unbelievable, though, that an 18-year-old can come up with this.

Speaker 31 It turns out the plan wasn't entirely hers. Or at least that's what Cassandra stated in her confession.

Speaker 30 At the very end before they cut the tape, she talks about how she was a part of a gang.

Speaker 31 And in this gang, Cassandra confessed that she worked for one man in particular.

Speaker 30 She was his, like his possession, basically. And she had to do what he told her to do.
And it was all his plan. And she was just doing what he asked.

Speaker 31 Cassandra claimed that she was part of a gang operation. And her boss had a plan to sell Angelique's baby.

Speaker 30 She says he has done this before, that they sold babies in Mexico and that they were going to get a certain cut.

Speaker 30 She talked about how much they would get for the baby and that they were going to stay and live in Mexico.

Speaker 31 This was all news to Angelique. These tapes suggested an alternate motivation for why Cassandra did what she did.

Speaker 31 And it didn't match up with what Angelique heard from prosecutors back when they offered a plea deal. At the time, her understanding was that Cassandra was mentally ill and thought the baby was hers.

Speaker 31 But in the confession,

Speaker 30 not once did I ever hear her say that she wanted the baby for herself.

Speaker 31 And there was something else in Cassandra's confession. Another thing Angelique heard that didn't square with what the prosecutors told her.

Speaker 30 I heard them read her Hermiranda rights.

Speaker 4 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 10 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved, so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 8 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 13 That's pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 14 It starts like any other night. The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.

Speaker 17 The stains so dark, so stubborn, it might as well have been a crime scene.

Speaker 20 But this isn't your average couch.

Speaker 24 This is Anna Bay, fully washable, unspeakably comfortable, and ready for whatever your life, your kids, or your ex throws ahead of.

Speaker 14 And here's the kicker.

Speaker 19 Starting at just $6.99, you can make sure your sofa isn't part of the problem. Fully washable, stain-resistant, and built to hide even the darkest offenses.

Speaker 27 Right now, get up to 60% off in Black Friday savings because no one should have to live with a stain that won't quit.

Speaker 18 Anna Bay, the only mystery you won't be losing sleep over.

Speaker 26 Shop washable sofas.com today. That's washable sofas.com.

Speaker 33 Ah, greetings for my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 34 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 32 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 35 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 36 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 37 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal. Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 38 N1231, see paypal.com slash promoter terms. Points can be redeemed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 39 PayPal Inc. at NMLS 910-457.

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Speaker 31 Prosecutors had told Angelique that Cassandra's confession wasn't admissible in court because no one had read Cassandra Her Miranda rights.

Speaker 31 While reviewing the case file years later, Angelique discovered that wasn't true. They had read her her Miranda rights.

Speaker 30 I even have it circled where it says they read her rights, and then it goes on to her telling her confession.

Speaker 31 This supposed procedural error was the reason why Angelique was okay with the plea deal. So why did the prosecutors tell her this story? Well, Angelique has a theory.

Speaker 30 I think that we were used as a plea bargain to help catch bigger fish. I don't think anybody will ever be able to confirm that for me.

Speaker 30 But if she had more information to help them catch bigger people, they don't have to necessarily tell me all the information on what they're working on.

Speaker 31 If Cassandra was telling the truth, maybe she could help law enforcement catch higher-ups in her gang.

Speaker 31 Angelique thought back to all the phone calls Cassandra had taken, the ones in Spanish, and she'd taken a call in the middle of the attempted murder.

Speaker 31 Angelique had believed she was talking with Edwin, her husband. So was Edwin the mastermind? The gang leader? The cops met with Edwin and they were very surprised to hear.

Speaker 30 He states, yeah, she's someone I dated. No, we haven't talked in years and we're not together.

Speaker 30 So this guy, Edwin, who she told all of us was her husband, was not actually her husband.

Speaker 31 Edwin was a real guy that Cassandra had dated, but he hadn't talked to her in years.

Speaker 31 So who was actually on the other end of the phone?

Speaker 31 In her confession, Cassandra does name someone besides Edwin, but the cops couldn't find a record of this other guy, and that's where the police file ends. For Angelique, it felt like they gave up.

Speaker 31 She's had to make peace with the fact that she might never know who Cassandra was working with. She might never get the full story.

Speaker 30 I think about it a lot. I contemplate all the time if I want to know the truth, and I always go back and forth with yes, no, yes, no.

Speaker 30 The thing is, it's not going to do anything except for maybe piss me off.

Speaker 30 So I just stopped looking for answers.

Speaker 31 She's come to accept that the police report may just be another version of the story. And can she even trust Cassandra's taped confession? After all, Cassandra was clearly unwell.

Speaker 31 By the time Angelique heard the tapes, Cassandra had served her entire sentence. Angelique felt like reopening the case against Cassandra would be a dead end.

Speaker 30 I found out way too late. We're talking about nine years now.
I can't go back and bring them all this.

Speaker 30 I just thought every person there was doing their job for me. I thought this was a big case.
I thought this was abnormal. I've never heard of fetal abduction.

Speaker 30 Like, I just figured that everyone was in my best interest.

Speaker 31 For her, reopening the case would only bring back bad memories. The damage was already done.

Speaker 30 She stole my first few years between me and my son, and I'm never going to get those back. There's no money in the world that could pay for that.
She stole that away from me.

Speaker 31 Her healing process wasn't linear.

Speaker 30 There were moments in my life where I remember being like, I'm healed. I feel so much better.
I'm going to be just fine. And then like

Speaker 30 five weeks would go by and I would be like, I'm so triggered right now.

Speaker 30 And it's just been a cycle. It's been a vicious cycle.
And that's what healing is.

Speaker 30 It's been almost 14 years since my trauma. And I feel like I just had an epiphany just a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 31 She recently drove past the house where the crime happened for the first time in years.

Speaker 31 And instead of feeling overwhelmed and triggered, she felt a powerful calm.

Speaker 30 I realized it's just a house. That's all it is.
It's just a house that something bad happened to me in. But I'm here.
I'm alive. I'm okay.
And I have my son.

Speaker 30 You can't push or rush healing.

Speaker 31 Josh, her son's father, has been a constant in her life and in her healing.

Speaker 30 If you were to ask me where my safe place is, it's with him. I am scared of everything.
It can be as simple as, I don't want to get into a lake because I'm scared I'm going to drown.

Speaker 30 I'm scared of life because something traumatic happened to me when I had no idea that it could happen.

Speaker 30 So because of that, my husband has been there to push me into different directions that I don't think I could have done without him.

Speaker 31 They dated throughout their first few years as parents.

Speaker 30 And come 2020, we decided why not. So we actually got engaged in 2020 and we got married.

Speaker 31 She and Josh had two more children together.

Speaker 30 We live a happy life all together. We're a very big sport family.
We do football, softball, soccer, run quads, go hiking, go to the lake.

Speaker 31 The son she nearly lost is now 13.

Speaker 30 When I look at my son, I just think about how lucky we are and how blessed we are because not everybody gets this happy ending.

Speaker 30 I always tell him, you were absolutely meant to be here. I don't know what life has to offer you, but I just know you were meant for greatness.

Speaker 31 Angelique's also become an advocate for preventing fetal abduction.

Speaker 30 When I was 17 years old, I didn't know that this was even a crime that could happen. I didn't know that because it was never talked about.

Speaker 31 Fetal abduction is incredibly rare. There have been less than 20 documented cases in the U.S.
in the last decade. And of those cases, very few of the victims survived.

Speaker 30 My motivation is not just to get my story out so that other mothers can understand that this is something that happens.

Speaker 30 I feel like it's an opportunity for me to be a voice for not myself and my son, but also for the mothers that are not here that didn't get to survive this crime.

Speaker 31 She's also done something astounding. She wanted to help others grow their own families.
So she became a surrogate.

Speaker 30 Carrying a baby who wasn't mine and allowing that baby to leave my body and go to somebody else was a huge step for me and absolutely healed me in ways that I didn't know that I needed to be healed in.

Speaker 31 We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question.

Speaker 31 Why are you telling your story?

Speaker 30 I think about how that one second that it took for me to turn around is literally what saved my life. I would not not be here if I did not listen to that gut feeling.
It's okay to be naive.

Speaker 30 It's natural. It's who we are.
We're only human. Just listen to yourself.
Trust yourself a little bit more. Sit there and start to learn what that intuition feeling is and listen to it.

Speaker 30 Maybe it'll help save somebody's life.

Speaker 31 On the next episode of Betrayal,

Speaker 30 I get a phone call. And it was, is this Dawn Harris? And I said, yes, it is.
And they said, this is so-and-so with the Dallas FBI office. We'd like for you to come in.

Speaker 31 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 betrayal, P-O-D at gmail.com.
We're grateful for your support.

Speaker 31 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 A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Speaker 31 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 31 Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Speaker 31 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 Kreinchek.

Speaker 31 Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins.
Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MIBE Music.

Speaker 31 And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1 This is an iHeart Podcast.