EP 8 - Torrah

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 3 You know that feeling when your alarm goes off and your first thought is, why do I feel so awful?

Speaker 5 It's like being betrayed by your own body.

Speaker 6 But here's the plot twist: it's not your fault.

Speaker 7 Dehydration and brain fog are sabotaging you beneath the surface.

Speaker 12 When I found Early Bird's morning cocktail, I felt the shift immediately.

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Speaker 20 I'm in control of my day again.

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Speaker 31 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Resess with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 32 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

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Speaker 34 This is an incredible story that sounds like it's made up, that sounds like a soap opera, sounds like a drama movie, but it's so real and it's not the only one.

Speaker 34 There are things we might not know about somebody we live with.

Speaker 34 And there's so many stories like this.

Speaker 10 I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal. A show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Speaker 36 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 34 And we grew up on a farm, so my life was kind of wild and crazy and great. Grew up super religious in the Seventh-day Adventist church.

Speaker 10 As a kid, the church was Tora's life. She went to a Christian school.

Speaker 43 Her friends and after-school activities were all through the church.

Speaker 24 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 34 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 34 but I

Speaker 34 never really dated.

Speaker 46 After high school, Tora became a full-time nanny and she tried to give dating a shot.

Speaker 34 I finally went on one date with a guy and gave him like the 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 40 Tora started to realize that the traditional path wasn't for her.

Speaker 10 So instead of trying to find a husband, she started planning for a new career.

Speaker 34 I decided to go to college and I studied history, which was really fun.

Speaker 7 After undergrad, she moved to Colorado to pursue a PhD in history.

Speaker 34 I was living in this really cute tiny apartment in the older section of Colorado Springs. So cute

Speaker 34 and just loving my life. I felt like I had really kind of arrived.
I had a job. I was teaching.

Speaker 39 I had friends.

Speaker 34 I was very happy.

Speaker 42 She loved teaching, especially American history.

Speaker 34 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 21 By this time, Toro was in her mid-30s.

Speaker 2 She'd tried dating for years, but ultimately decided she didn't need romance.

Speaker 40 Her life was complete without it.

Speaker 34 Dating and romantic relationships were not going to be part of my life. And And I was sort of settled into that in a very comfortable way where it didn't bother me.

Speaker 34 It wasn't something I was seeking out. I wasn't on dating apps.
I wasn't looking for it.

Speaker 34 And I certainly was not looking for him.

Speaker 10 In that class, she met a student named Aaron.

Speaker 43 Like her, he was also in his mid-30s.

Speaker 34 He had a service dog. this really cute English mastiff named Osa.

Speaker 34 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 34 He would come up after class and we would pet the dog and chat a little bit.

Speaker 45 Aaron was a veteran, a former Army medic who'd lost his foot in an explosion in Iraq.

Speaker 34 I knew that he had had an amputation to his leg. He talked about it fairly frequently.
He had a handy cat parking pass.

Speaker 1 The disability was a big part of his life, but it didn't define him and it certainly didn't hold him back.

Speaker 10 He was finishing his bachelor's degree on his way to start nursing school.

Speaker 35 After each class he would stay behind and chat with Tora.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 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 29 Erin shared that he was Native American, talk tall, which was a big part of his identity.

Speaker 40 And she noticed that he was always immaculately put together.

Speaker 34 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 34 I hesitate to call it a man button because I know that would hurt Aaron's feelings, but that's what it was.

Speaker 34 And he had a cowboy western vibe almost, not like costumey, but he wore a lot of very nice button-ups and jeans and leather boots. So that was pretty much his uniform.

Speaker 34 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 34 And I was a fan very quickly, just of his entire aura.

Speaker 56 Aaron and Tora kept talking every week after class for the rest of the semester.

Speaker 34 At some point in those conversations,

Speaker 34 I brought up the fact that I had been a nanny.

Speaker 34 And 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?

Speaker 34 So we chatted a little bit about that, 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 34 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 just that.
bit of advice he was seeking about finding good child care.

Speaker 51 After the class ended in May, Tora got a Facebook friend request.

Speaker 43 It was from Aaron.

Speaker 35 He was already Facebook friends with other teachers, so she accepted the request.

Speaker 34 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 rolled over and checked the message.

Speaker 34 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 34 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?

Speaker 21 They chatted for a few minutes before Aaron revealed why he had reached out.

Speaker 34 He said, Do you know that I'm going through a pretty bad divorce?

Speaker 34 And I said, Oh, no, I had no idea.

Speaker 34 So we chat a little bit about, 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 34 And then I did the nice thing, which I've since learned not to do, which is I said,

Speaker 34 is there anything I can do to help?

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 34 he said, well, I might need some help with my son.

Speaker 47 Tora read between the lines.

Speaker 16 Aaron was desperate. He was about to start in an intensive two-year nursing program.

Speaker 40 And now he would likely have full custody of his infant son.

Speaker 35 She felt for his situation.

Speaker 42 And the next day, while Aaron was on campus, he swung by Tora's office with his baby in tow.

Speaker 24 He wanted to thank Tora for the semester and for offering to help.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 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 58 Almost reflexively, she said yes.

Speaker 34 It was more this like Christian sense of duty that I had been trained into.

Speaker 34 Someone needs help, you show up, even if it's inconvenient or you don't really want to. And that was my first thought: I don't really want to.
I don't really want someone who's going to rely on me.

Speaker 34 I don't really want to be involved in someone else's drama.

Speaker 34 And I have a full-time job. I'm teaching.
I'm busy.

Speaker 47 In addition to that, she didn't want Aaron to mistake her kindness for something else.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 44 When she got to his house, her anxiety dissipated.

Speaker 37 He was just Aaron, and that made her feel comfortable.

Speaker 34 He was himself the way he always was with me after class, just very warm and friendly and kind and thoughtful.

Speaker 34 So I stayed,

Speaker 34 had dinner,

Speaker 34 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 34 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.

Speaker 34 There were holes in the wall going up the stairs. There was a hole in the wall in the dining room.

Speaker 34 And we just talked and talked and talked and talked. 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.

Speaker 34 And I need to get out of this marriage.

Speaker 59 That night, they ended up talking until 1 a.m.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 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 39 I went back over there.

Speaker 42 Soon she was going over to Aaron's every few days to help out with his son.

Speaker 55 It felt like the right thing to do.

Speaker 34 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'm just here to help.
I want to be your friend.

Speaker 34 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 34 The fact that I give you hugs is kind of exceptional. You have to respect that.
And he really did.

Speaker 9 After Aaron would put us on to bed, the two of them would stay up and have a drink on the back patio and just talk about life.

Speaker 47 It became their little ritual.

Speaker 34 He was a very guarded person. So a lot of what he would talk about was things that were very present right now.

Speaker 34 If he brought up the past, it always felt like kind of an honor that he trusted me with that story.

Speaker 34 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 34 We just never ran out of things to say.

Speaker 37 After about two months of this, Tora went back home to visit her family in California.

Speaker 34 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 22 She had never talked about a friend like this before.

Speaker 57 When she got home from that trip, she went straight to Aaron's house.

Speaker 34 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 34 And that was my first sort of inkling, like, hmm, I'm going to have to keep an eye on this because here I was at home kind of being giddy about this person. Here he is bringing me flowers.

Speaker 34 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 34 snuggling on the couch watching a movie, not touching each other, just leaning like my head on his shoulder or something.

Speaker 34 So benign, so middle school, but it was perfect for me because I wasn't ready to do that.

Speaker 44 One night while they were up late talking on the patio, Aaron finally said what they had both been thinking.

Speaker 34 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 34 And that was it. We were in a relationship after that.

Speaker 53 That day became their anniversary.

Speaker 34 I leaned in and it was

Speaker 34 the most fulfilling time of my whole entire existence.

Speaker 34 I'm getting emotional just talking about it because that part

Speaker 34 is perfect in my mind.

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Speaker 3 You know that feeling when your alarm goes off and your first thought is, why do I feel so awful?

Speaker 5 It's like being betrayed by your own body.

Speaker 6 But here's the plot twist. It's not your fault.

Speaker 8 Dehydration and brain fog are sabotaging you beneath the surface.

Speaker 12 When I found Early Bird's morning cocktail, I felt the shift immediately.

Speaker 2 It's this blood-orange mimosa drink that you mix the night before and you keep on your nightstand.

Speaker 18 When the alarm goes off, you drink and it's like flipping a switch.

Speaker 19 Clean energy, no brain fog, no crash.

Speaker 20 I'm in control of my day again.

Speaker 21 Early Bird is clinically engineered to target morning fatigue from all angles.

Speaker 14 There's clean, natural caffeine, mood-lifting nootropics, and a supercharged electrolyte blend to combat dehydration.

Speaker 1 This is more than just a morning drink.

Speaker 16 It's a science-backed tool to help you take control of your mornings and own your potential.

Speaker 15 It gives me the energy to show up as the best, most accomplished version of myself.

Speaker 26 Discover how good it feels to rise and grind on your own terms.

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Speaker 62 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?

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A good job, loving husband, and two kids.

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Speaker 7 After writing off romance, Tora found a man who defied all expectations.

Speaker 54 Aaron was strikingly handsome, determined, respectful, and he was an incredible father.

Speaker 35 Tora moved into his house and their relationship deepened.

Speaker 45 That's when Aaron opened up about his traumatic childhood.

Speaker 59 He said that both of his parents were abusive.

Speaker 34 His family was incredibly complicated, incredibly damaged, incredibly dysfunctional. And these were the reasons that he's so guarded.

Speaker 34 These are the reasons that he doesn't have a relationship with them or see them or go to visit them.

Speaker 25 When he was 18, he ran away from home and joined the military.

Speaker 36 At the time, the war in Iraq was just beginning.

Speaker 42 He worked his way up to become a special forces medic, but his military career ended in tragedy.

Speaker 34 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 34 He got hurt. His foot was amputated because of that injury.
And he was medically retired and then came home.

Speaker 24 Aaron spent weeks in the hospital recovering from his injury.

Speaker 45 And even in this time of crisis, his family turmoil continued.

Speaker 34 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 34 So Aaron fought tooth and nail to get better, to get stronger. and kicked his dad out of his life.

Speaker 53 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 46 Tora realized he'd spent his entire life moving from one traumatic situation to another.

Speaker 34 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 34 I've been injured. I've had surgeries.

Speaker 43 Even though it had been years since Aaron was injured in the war, it was part of his everyday life.

Speaker 34 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 34 He had a couple of different doctors who were working on maybe a better prosthetic 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 21 And that wasn't his only injury from the war.

Speaker 48 He'd also injured his back, his shoulder, and his arm.

Speaker 35 They were constantly getting re-injured, causing Aaron to go to the doctor in pain.

Speaker 41 But despite all this, he still fought for full custody, especially because of his childhood.

Speaker 37 Aaron was determined to show up for his son.

Speaker 34 He was an incredible father.

Speaker 34 He was so attentive and so 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 we called him the boy i'm going to call him the boy because i'm not going to say his name

Speaker 34 the boy was only a few months old when tora met him and she was there for all of his big firsts the boy and i were just absolutely connected at the hip from day one

Speaker 34 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 34 He and I would just light up to be around each other.

Speaker 25 The boy took his first steps to Tora.

Speaker 22 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 45 After a year together, Tora felt like this was her family now. She didn't want to go through the formalities of a wedding and marriage.

Speaker 59 So instead, they lived as common-law spouses.

Speaker 51 They just started calling each other husband and wife.

Speaker 49 With Aaron in school, Tora took on more financial responsibility.

Speaker 34 He's a retired veteran, so he gets some money, but

Speaker 34 life is expensive. So

Speaker 34 we were always a little bit stressed on money.

Speaker 34 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 34 So I started doing things like pitching in on groceries and I took over the Wi-Fi and the trash bills.

Speaker 51 Aaron had to make a monthly home equity payment to his ex-wife and the expenses just kept coming.

Speaker 34 Oh gosh, it was just never ending. We needed a new roof, but we didn't have any money.

Speaker 34 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 10 Despite the stress of living paycheck to paycheck, Tora was filled with love for her family.

Speaker 44 Everything was precariously, perfectly balanced.

Speaker 38 That was until Aaron got sick.

Speaker 52 One day, he woke up in excruciating pain with a very high fever.

Speaker 53 Tora had to go to work, so Aaron went to see their family doctor by himself.

Speaker 43 And when he got there, his fever was so high, he needed to go to the ER right away.

Speaker 34 One of the things that they thought might be going on when he was in the ER was that he was having some kind of an infection from from his amputation.

Speaker 24 He called Tora from the hospital and she rushed over.

Speaker 35 But when she got there, he wasn't in a hospital room.

Speaker 36 Aaron was just sitting by the hospital entrance in a wheelchair.

Speaker 34 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 34 And I kind of yelled at him all the way home. I'm like, what were you thinking? You obviously need help.
Something Something is going on. He had a very high fever.
He was in a lot of pain.

Speaker 34 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 29 In addition to the fever, Aaron was in excruciating pain, debilitating chronic pain from his old combat injuries.

Speaker 46 But this time, his doctors weren't able to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 10 So Tora stepped in to take care of him.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 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 34 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 60 He spent weeks on the couch, unable to function.

Speaker 35 To keep his spirits up, he showed Tora his favorite YouTube videos.

Speaker 34 He mentioned, have you ever heard of stolen valor?

Speaker 34 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 37 Stolen Valor is the term for people who impersonate military service members and veterans.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 that these people are getting caught and shamed publicly. He loved it.
He thought it was so entertaining.

Speaker 53 It was a welcome distraction from his pain, especially considering the price he was paying for his military service.

Speaker 52 She understood why he liked the stolen Valor video so much.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 You know that feeling when your alarm goes off and your first thought is, why do I feel so awful?

Speaker 5 It's like being betrayed by your own body.

Speaker 6 But here's the plot twist. It's not your fault.

Speaker 9 Dehydration and brain fog are sabotaging you beneath the surface.

Speaker 12 When I found Early Bird's morning cocktail, I felt the shift immediately.

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Speaker 62 Maybe it's because it could happen to anyone.

Speaker 63 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 62 Listen to Scamfluencers Now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 31 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

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Speaker 37 Tora's new life with Aaron was thrown off balance when his chronic pain took a sharp turn for the worse.

Speaker 54 Aaron eventually started pain management therapy, and Tora felt helpless.

Speaker 34 He was taking oxycodone, I believe. Perkins said.
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 35 He said he knew what he was doing.

Speaker 53 He was in nursing school and had years of training as an army medic.

Speaker 47 One night before he came to bed.

Speaker 34 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 34 And he said, oh, it's fentanyl. It's great.
I'm not in any pain. It's amazing.

Speaker 34 And I said, but you took your meds today? He said, yeah. And I said, isn't that how people overdose?

Speaker 34 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 34 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 37 In the morning, Aaron was unresponsive.

Speaker 34 So I grabbed my phone

Speaker 34 and I called 911,

Speaker 34 hysterical, said,

Speaker 34 my husband's not breathing.

Speaker 34 He was asleep and he's not waking up.

Speaker 49 The 911 operator instructed her to begin chest compressions until the paramedics arrived.

Speaker 34 And the whole time I'm doing chest compressions, I'm like, he's cold. He's gone.
This man is not alive.

Speaker 34 The whole time in the background, the boy is just screaming my name.

Speaker 39 The paramedics arrived and confirmed what she already knew.

Speaker 47 There was no bringing Aaron back.

Speaker 35 She called friends to come over and together they waited for the coroner.

Speaker 26 Not knowing what else to do, she fixated on the boy.

Speaker 53 He was three.

Speaker 7 Tora tried to distract him, play with him, but he wanted to know what was going on.

Speaker 34 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 45 Before the coroner came, Tora and their friends took turns saying goodbye.

Speaker 34 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 34 And then he was gone.

Speaker 52 But his death would reveal an avalanche of discoveries.

Speaker 45 It began on that very day when his ex-wife showed up at the front door.

Speaker 51 The police had notified notified her of Aaron's death and his ex-wife called his family, his estranged family.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 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.

Speaker 34 First of all, Aaron's not Choctaw, Aaron's black.

Speaker 34 And I kind of laughed at her. I'm like, okay, lady, like, really, we're going to do this right now.

Speaker 10 Given the circumstances, this comment seemed absurd and irrelevant.

Speaker 45 But his ex-wife insisted that there were truths about Aaron that Tora needed to know.

Speaker 42 Before she could share more, Aaron's biological family arrived.

Speaker 50 They were surprised to meet meet Tora.

Speaker 51 They didn't know she existed.

Speaker 34 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 34 And she said, he wasn't a good person.

Speaker 34 And I thought, well, that's a really weird thing to say to a grieving widow.

Speaker 2 Tora had seen pictures of Aaron's mother, father, and brother.

Speaker 36 but these people in her house, they weren't the same ones she'd seen photos of.

Speaker 2 Nothing made sense from Aaron's sudden death to the arrival of this family she didn't recognize.

Speaker 53 But they were his family.

Speaker 59 And now they wanted the house back right away.

Speaker 34 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 34 And my friend, the lawyer, said, take what's yours, what you bought together, and nothing else.

Speaker 22 Tora packed her car with a few boxes and prepared to leave.

Speaker 46 She'd also be leaving the boy she'd raised from infancy to nearly age four, but she knew she wasn't part of his biological family.

Speaker 40 It was clear that with Aaron gone, Tora just didn't have a place in the boy's life.

Speaker 34 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 amazing and that will never change.

Speaker 34 And she fell out of the road and drove away and I never saw him again.

Speaker 44 Before walking out of the house for the last time, she decided to take Aaron's laptop with her. Her brother came to meet her and together they drove back to their parents' house in California.

Speaker 34 I fell apart. I fell apart.

Speaker 34 I wasn't getting out of bed. I wasn't taking care of myself.
I wasn't eating. I was a disaster.

Speaker 28 At first, she fixated on his death, how and why it happened.

Speaker 42 She got a copy of his autopsy report.

Speaker 34 When I got his autopsy, it was very much an overdose. He had on

Speaker 34 double the dose

Speaker 34 and he had taken

Speaker 34 double the dose of oxycodone at the same time to go to bed.

Speaker 37 And there was something else on his autopsy that stood out.

Speaker 34 On his autopsy,

Speaker 34 it said he had a brace on his leg. It said a brace on his left leg.
And I thought, well, that's a really weird way to say prosthetic.

Speaker 34 And that was the last I thought of it.

Speaker 10 The questions that came up right after his death about his family, his race.

Speaker 40 She just didn't have the capacity to think about all of that at the time.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 And then after two months, I opened his computer and everything changed instantly.

Speaker 34 So I opened the computer. got right in on the first try, knew the password.

Speaker 34 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 34 immediately, within 20 seconds, I realized that he was in a relationship with somebody long distance.

Speaker 34 I spent an hour combing through their text messages, which were

Speaker 34 graphic

Speaker 34 and filthy.

Speaker 34 And the worst part of all of it, there were two things that were just devastating.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 So that was a lot to realize that like he was manipulating her and me to keep us both on the hook back and forth.

Speaker 34 But then the worst thing I found in everything I found was him saying, nobody has ever loved me.

Speaker 34 Nobody, except for you.

Speaker 34 And that is the biggest lie he ever told. And just the most infuriating, devastating, cruel thing he could have said was that nobody had ever loved him.

Speaker 34 And here I had just spent eight weeks

Speaker 34 bottomed out, devastated, flatlined because this man had died.

Speaker 34 And I had given him everything.

Speaker 40 She kept looking through his texts and found more women.

Speaker 34 He was texting four other girls, 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 34 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 34 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 56 Aaron was talking to these women up until the week he died, making plans with them and inviting them over.

Speaker 34 And he was saying, well, you know, I don't ever have anything going on on Tuesday nights.

Speaker 34 We could come over for dinner, we could watch a movie, but then I have to go to bed around 10 because I was teaching. I was at class 7 to 10 on Tuesdays.

Speaker 34 So he knew I would stay at work and go to class.

Speaker 34 So that was like,

Speaker 34 I guess, kind of opening that. 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 35 In the two months since Aaron died, these women had been trying to get in touch with him.

Speaker 12 So Tora messaged them back to let them know he was gone.

Speaker 34 The girlfriend messaged me back.

Speaker 34 What? No, this isn't real. What's going on? Who are you really?

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 They'd been together when he was married to his other wife.

Speaker 51 Tora kept digging through his laptop.

Speaker 60 And that's when she saw the photo that changed everything.

Speaker 34 On his computer were all these pictures of his honeymoon, including his two fully attacked feet on the beach.

Speaker 34 Much, much after he was supposedly injured,

Speaker 34 I just stared at these feet like, these are his feet. I recognized one of them.
I'd seen one of them without a sock on.

Speaker 35 The entire time they were together, Aaron kept a sock and a brace on his prosthetic foot.

Speaker 40 She'd never actually seen his amputation site.

Speaker 34 He didn't ever like pop off a prosthetic or anything like that in front of me

Speaker 34 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 34 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 34 It was his private business. That's his medical history.
And there was nothing for me to say, well, that seems off.

Speaker 59 She saw the monthly checks coming in from the military.

Speaker 44 She heard the hard prosthetic foot hitting the ground when he walked.

Speaker 40 Plus, he was self-conscious about his injury.

Speaker 10 She never pressed him further.

Speaker 34 Why would I question that? Who would that make me?

Speaker 12 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 34 i said did you ever look at his prosthetic or look at his amputation site

Speaker 34 and she said oh i'm sure i did well

Speaker 34 maybe not actually let me think

Speaker 34 yeah maybe i didn't

Speaker 34 and i just sat there flabbergasted

Speaker 34 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 he was wearing.

Speaker 34 I don't know why he was wearing it, but it wasn't a prosthetic foot.

Speaker 25 This shocking revelation caused her to question the whole story she'd been told about his military career.

Speaker 34 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 35 On his discharge papers, it said he did join the military at 18.

Speaker 51 And he did go to combat once, not four times, like he'd said.

Speaker 42 He wasn't a special forces medic, like he'd claimed.

Speaker 52 She doesn't know why he left the army, but it wasn't because of an injury.

Speaker 45 Her entire understanding of Aaron changed.

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 34 I

Speaker 34 went out into the kitchen and I poured myself, I am not joking, eight ounces of tequila, downed that.

Speaker 34 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 34 The person I had just spent three years loving and caring for

Speaker 34 and two months devastated

Speaker 34 over his loss didn't exist.

Speaker 34 And I

Speaker 34 came to this point that day where I said at the end of the day, he took everything from me.

Speaker 34 And when there was nothing left to take, he took himself from me.

Speaker 34 the person i had loved and been in a relationship with disappeared

Speaker 34 and with him went three years of my life into a black hole

Speaker 34 who was aaron and what was his real life story i was googling everything i could i'm a historian i can research like nobody's business

Speaker 34 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 35 She started reaching out to people who were connected to Aaron.

Speaker 34 You know, now I'm asking questions, right? What about these people? Not real.

Speaker 34 Grandparents were not those people. Those people didn't exist at all.
I mean, it was an entirely crafted life.

Speaker 34 His family is fake. His military experience was not his.

Speaker 34 And I don't know how he kept it all straight.

Speaker 47 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 49 And they were very different from what Aaron described.

Speaker 34 So I didn't know about his real mom, even though she's a real person who lives in a real place.

Speaker 34 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 34 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 I always did

Speaker 34 he very carefully curated my life

Speaker 54 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 anyone who would contradict the narrative he was telling her

Speaker 34 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 and then he would move on in some way.

Speaker 34 He would leave town, he would start a new school program, something like that. He'd get married.

Speaker 34 So he was coming to the end of that, and his stories were getting a little thin.

Speaker 61 The amputation, the chronic pain from combat wounds, even his Native American ancestry.

Speaker 43 It was all a lie.

Speaker 3 The one thing that was real is that he was sick.

Speaker 52 He had an opioid addiction.

Speaker 40 She sees that clearly now.

Speaker 55 And she sees that as a part of a larger pattern of behavior.

Speaker 34 He's an addict. So he's always looking for kind of that next better hit of whatever it was.
And sometimes it was a partner. And sometimes it was becoming a parent.

Speaker 34 And sometimes it was a new degree in school.

Speaker 34 But, you know, he's tying things together, trying to make himself a life that he would have been happy with.

Speaker 34 So he just kept shifting it into this story that he liked a little better and a little better, a little better.

Speaker 34 and it still didn't satisfy him

Speaker 34 he still needed narcotics

Speaker 34 i feel very strongly that he

Speaker 34 wanted to stay in our life but wasn't sure how to do that

Speaker 34 do i think that he put the patches on and hoped he would fall asleep and never wake up

Speaker 34 Yeah,

Speaker 34 I do.

Speaker 51 You can probably tell that Tora's been through years of therapy to understand and heal from what happened to her.

Speaker 34 My doctor had me talk to the therapist in her office.

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 34 I owe everything to his methods.

Speaker 34 He gave me terminology, and that terminology completely changed how I was going through this.

Speaker 34 He was the first person to say, you have PTSD.

Speaker 34 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 34 he was really good about

Speaker 34 this is what i think might be going on read it let's talk about it next time

Speaker 34 he was providing me information to heal myself

Speaker 43 It's been four years since Erin died, and she discovered that the man she was building a life with was a fraud.

Speaker 34 I'll still be driving down the road and have a random memory and go, oh, yeah, that's probably what happened.

Speaker 34 I'm still less and less and less and less putting things together and making the pieces fit.

Speaker 34 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 34 It's really not. It's going to help, but it's not necessary.

Speaker 44 Instead, she's tried to find understanding for the real person Aaron was.

Speaker 53 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 34 He was broken. He was broken by a world that breaks people and spits them out.
I think he grew up feeling inadequate, grew up feeling unloved. And he wanted to write himself a better story than that.

Speaker 34 And instead of becoming someone who would be loved, he became someone who he thought

Speaker 34 was lovable

Speaker 34 and adjusted it for each person as he met them.

Speaker 50 Tora moved back to Colorado where she still teaches history, but she says that this time around, she's a different person.

Speaker 55 She's forever changed by the love she had with Aaron and the pain he put her through.

Speaker 51 We end every episode with the same question.

Speaker 52 Why did you want to tell your story?

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 And there's so many stories like this. 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 34 have to understand them.

Speaker 34 We have to assign terminology to the disorders that cause them to act in these ways.

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 34 we have to support people who've been through it. And my mission through all of this became sort of explaining to more and more people that you can heal, you will heal.

Speaker 34 What you're experiencing is valid. Something that I say so often to this day is: my story was true, and my experiences were valid.

Speaker 34 My story was true,

Speaker 34 even if his wasn't, mine was.

Speaker 10 On the next episode of Betrayal.

Speaker 34 I went out into the garage area. The car was gone.
Like,

Speaker 34 where did he go?

Speaker 56 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 46 That's betrayalpod at gmail.com.

Speaker 50 We're grateful for your support.

Speaker 1 One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 17 And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.

Speaker 41 Five-star reviews go a long way.

Speaker 1 A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Speaker 48 Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

Speaker 1 The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison.

Speaker 56 Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Speaker 1 Written and produced by Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Speaker 16 Associate producers are Kristen Melcurie and Caitlin Golden.

Speaker 21 Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchek.

Speaker 1 Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.

Speaker 21 Additional editing support from Nico Aruka. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Speaker 56 Music library provided by MIBE Music.

Speaker 38 And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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