From Deep Cover: The Confidante

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Speaker 2 Previously, on deep cover.

Speaker 7 She explained to me that

Speaker 7 she just got out of the Marine Corps and she needed help with some car payments because she was waiting for VA disability to kick in.

Speaker 8 She was very likable.

Speaker 9 She was very charismatic. And then on top of it, she was a veteran and badass and had these injuries.
We would kind of quietly

Speaker 9 make sure that when she was in our environment at the gym, she was protected.

Speaker 7 So, I call up our records keeper and I say, Hey, I need a copy of her DD Form 214.

Speaker 5 He says, Oh,

Speaker 7 she just left my house two hours ago. She came here to the house to come get it.

Speaker 7 That's when I start thinking something's not right here.

Speaker 1 So, like here, right, when I get up in the morning, I make it a point to go outside.

Speaker 2 This is Sarah Kavanaugh. She's the person you've been hearing about for the past two episodes.

Speaker 1 And, like, step outside by myself, see the sunrise, look at the view because the view behind overlooks the mountains, and really enjoy that and just

Speaker 1 let that be the start of my day versus

Speaker 1 some of the intrusive thoughts about the past that would come up before and I would let that dictate my day.

Speaker 1 So I've really changed how I let the past affect my moods so I don't become just a continuous repetition of them.

Speaker 2 Jess and I spent the better part of several days interviewing Sarah. We talked about her past and her life now, and a great many other things too.

Speaker 1 How we found her, where we we found her. We'll get there.
You're going to hear from her throughout the rest of the season.

Speaker 1 But for now, we just want you to hear some of the very first things that she said to us in person so that you get a read on her, just like we did.

Speaker 1 We started with small talk. Like, read any good books lately?

Speaker 1 Right now, I am reading The Secret History by Donna Tarte, which is interesting. I had read

Speaker 1 The Goldfinch, and I loved it. So now I'm reading this one, and I'm really enjoying it so far.

Speaker 2 This was just a few minutes into our first conversation. At this point, I knew a fair amount about Sarah Kavanaugh and what she'd done, about all the people she'd deceived and hurt.

Speaker 2 I had a pretty good picture in my head of who she was. And this, this was not it.

Speaker 2 This woman, well, she sounded more like a high school guidance counselor or the type of person you'd hope would be taking care of your grandma, the senior citizen home.

Speaker 2 In fact, she told us working with seniors, that was her first job.

Speaker 1 So I was in undergrad working at an assisted living. I worked there for five and a half years and I loved it.
I did everything from serving in the dining room to running activities to housekeeping.

Speaker 1 I did anything they asked me to do to

Speaker 1 basically pay my rent and pay my tuition and kind of survive undergrad at all costs. But I developed really meaningful relationships with the residents, right?

Speaker 1 As I sat there listening to her, I noticed Sarah was doing this a lot, ending a sentence by saying, right?

Speaker 1 It's kind of subtle. She doesn't yank you through her version of events.
It's more like she was feeling around for things that we might have in common. And if we nodded along, she'd say, right?

Speaker 1 A lot of people don't like older people. I remember a lot of people I worked with who who were like, she's grouchy or she's this or she's that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I thought, well, they've had 50 years to practice, right? Type thing.

Speaker 1 And also, like, I always think about our moods as a product of something else, right?

Speaker 1 I know that personally. And so I just think there was an appreciation there for me.
But I didn't really know where that was going to go.

Speaker 1 I think I thought I was going to be like an activities director or something like that.

Speaker 2 But instead, she got her master's and became a social worker. Eventually, she got a job at the local VA in Providence, Rhode Island.
That was her job, helping veterans in some pretty tough situations.

Speaker 2 And this is 100% true, by the way. Many of these people coming to Sarah for help, they showed up maybe on a Saturday, kind of reluctantly.
And it was Sarah's job. to put them at ease.

Speaker 1 I would just say, hey, how are you? Like, it's Saturday. You know, what's, how do you feel about this? How do you feel about being here?

Speaker 1 And if they were like, I really don't want to be here, I had to get up early and I had to drive to Providence. And I'd be like, yeah, I understand.

Speaker 2 When her clients did open up, Sarah took this approach.

Speaker 1 When someone said something like,

Speaker 1 I'm, you know, I'm struggling with, I might be homeless, or my, my wife and I are fighting or something like that, I wouldn't respond with surprise.

Speaker 1 I would just be like, yeah, those things happen.

Speaker 1 Those things happen. And okay, what do you think you need right now because of that?

Speaker 2 What she never wanted to do was send veterans elsewhere to some other program, you know, push them off on someone else.

Speaker 1 I know that when I've opened up and told people things, if they've turned away from it because it makes them uncomfortable, I've then kind of thought,

Speaker 1 oh, this makes other people feel uncomfortable. I shouldn't talk about this, right? And I don't want to do that to them.

Speaker 1 But you have to be present in a way that

Speaker 1 silently says, I get it.

Speaker 1 When she talked about her old life as a social worker, I got this strange sense that I was seeing the Sarah Kavanaugh that won over everybody's hearts.

Speaker 1 Because let's be clear, the people we interviewed for this story, once upon a time, they all loved Sarah. And listening to her talk, I started to understand why.

Speaker 1 She knew, in her own words, how to be present in a way that silently says, I get it. And it's weird to say, but I found her really likable.

Speaker 1 By the time we met in person, I'd been talking to her over the phone for nearly a year. And I'd been hearing about all the terrible things she'd done for just as long.

Speaker 1 And Sarah, She seems pretty aware of her effect on people, then and now.

Speaker 1 Of all the ways big and small, said and unsaid, that people come to trust each other, to trust her.

Speaker 1 I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying, right? People,

Speaker 1 when you create space, people fill that space.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I had always been really,

Speaker 1 I had always been able to kind of keep my mouth shut and be quiet and not share anything. I'd I'd really learned that really well.

Speaker 2 Sarah went on from there, talking about her old job and who she once was, because, as you might have guessed, she's no longer a social worker.

Speaker 2 She has another life now, very different life, one in which she has a great deal of time to think about what she did and the people she hurt most.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's ever going to be easy to think about the people I hurt. And because

Speaker 1 these are people that

Speaker 1 even

Speaker 1 before they knew I hurt them, right,

Speaker 1 I was hurting them, right? Because I was lying to them.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they were people I called every day, that I spent most of my weekends with, that

Speaker 1 they were my friends, some of them my best friends. And

Speaker 1 I think about that now,

Speaker 1 and that's really hard.

Speaker 2 When Sarah says this, she's really talking about two people who trusted her deeply. In this episode, we're going to hear from both of them.
And these aren't just stories about friendship.

Speaker 2 They're about what happens when you meet someone, a confidant, who seems to get you and understand what you're going through. Someone who listens quietly with what seems like empathy.

Speaker 2 But herein lies the danger. What if that very person takes your most personal struggles and uses them to their advantage, sees them as an opportunity?

Speaker 2 Then the line between empathy and manipulation is thinner than we'd care to admit. And sometimes the people who know us best are the ones we should fear the most.

Speaker 1 I'm Jake Albert, and I'm Jess McHugh.

Speaker 2 And this is Deep Cover Season 6:

Speaker 2 The Truth About Sarah.

Speaker 2 Episode 3:

Speaker 2 The Confidant

Speaker 3 In today's super-competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that.

Speaker 3 They're now the best network, according to the experts at OOCLA Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

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Speaker 3 With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

Speaker 3 And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, Supercharged.

Speaker 4 Learn more at supermobile.com.

Speaker 3 Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky.

Speaker 3 Best business plan based on a combination of advanced network performance, coverage layers, and security features. Best network based on analysis by OOCLA of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

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Speaker 6 So, let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there, and everywhere.
But your AI can't use the data because it's here, there, and everywhere?

Speaker 6 Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data.
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Speaker 1 Last fall, Jake and I, along with our producer Amy, went on a road trip to Rhode Island.

Speaker 1 We wanted to meet the people in Sarah's inner circle, people who were closest to her, who each knew some part of the truth. One morning, Amy and I went to meet someone named Sam.

Speaker 1 We're just going to use her first name to protect her privacy. We spoke at her boyfriend's house sitting around the kitchen table.
Sam is in her 50s with short blonde hair.

Speaker 1 She's a physical therapist and for years she was Sarah's physical therapist.

Speaker 39 She was really kind.

Speaker 39 She definitely knew me and she knew,

Speaker 39 I think,

Speaker 39 what I wanted to talk about type thing, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 What was it that drew you to her, especially in those early 80s?

Speaker 21 It definitely was her intelligence.

Speaker 39 I mean, her intelligence like just sparked something in me.

Speaker 1 Sarah and Sam first met in the fall of 2018, just a few months after Sarah's wedding to Nicole. The wedding attended by all her VFW friends.

Speaker 1 By this point, Sarah was fully immersed in this veteran role.

Speaker 1 Sam told me about the moment when Sarah first came in for a consultation.

Speaker 39 She was really quiet and reserved.

Speaker 39 You know, she answered questions, but very kind of matter of fact.

Speaker 39 Definitely seemed like things were she was uncomfortable with, like she didn't want me to look at her hip.

Speaker 1 This was the Sarah who, in her own words, had always been able to, quote, keep her mouth shut and be quiet and not share anything. Someone who let the silences do the talking.

Speaker 1 But Sarah did say she had been injured in Iraq.

Speaker 39 She said they hit an IED and she got hit hit with the door that got blown in and hit her in the hip. She wasn't really limping this because this wasn't a brand new injury.

Speaker 39 This is something that happened a long time ago. So it was more like a chronic thing.

Speaker 1 Sam had worked with trauma patients before. So when Sarah didn't want to show Sam her scar, she didn't push.

Speaker 1 Plus, she already knew a little about Sarah's supposed military past because one of Sarah's gym buddies had connected them.

Speaker 1 Sarah got into a routine of twice-weekly PT with Sam, and eventually, the Wounded Warrior Project started paying for it. Sarah was part of their independence program.

Speaker 1 It's a super selective program for the most severely wounded veterans, usually people with traumatic brain injuries, which Sarah claimed she had.

Speaker 1 Over many months at these weekly appointments, these two women became friends. They talked about nature and gardening or books.
They both love reading. They also talked about more intimate things.

Speaker 1 Sam was recently divorced and Sarah told her in that way she does so well, I get it. My marriage isn't working out either.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's right. Sarah told Sam that she was also getting divorced.

Speaker 39 It was less than a year after they got married that she said that just the marriage wasn't working out and

Speaker 39 that they were separated. But they also, she also said they did have an open marriage.

Speaker 1 None of this this was true. At least, not according to Sarah's wife, Nicole.
At the time, they were still living together, still married, and not in an open marriage.

Speaker 1 But that's not what she told Sam.

Speaker 1 This, by the way, is also classic Sarah, as we've learned. And it's a pattern I've seen with women scammers in general.

Speaker 1 They often find emotional common ground with victims, even when that shared trauma is totally made up.

Speaker 1 And it worked.

Speaker 1 I think,

Speaker 39 like anything, basically, you just

Speaker 39 spend more time with someone and then you just appreciate who that person is. And then you find yourself wanting to spend more and more time.

Speaker 39 We just like enjoyed our time together and then it just turned into more.

Speaker 1 And by more, Sam means Sam and Sarah went from having a professional relationship to a friendship to a love affair, one that was really romantic. They started going on a ton of trips together.

Speaker 39 Let's see.

Speaker 1 We went to Florida.

Speaker 39 We went to Vail. We went to the Bahamas.

Speaker 39 Oh, we went to California.

Speaker 39 And then, like, you know, little driving around, New England type stuff.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't just a fling. Their lives became really entwined.
Much of this I actually learned from other interviews.

Speaker 1 Sarah would talk about Sam as her partner so much that it got really confusing for us as we reported this.

Speaker 1 There were times I would talk to someone for this story and they'd mention Sarah's significant other and I had to double check. Who did you think was Sarah's wife?

Speaker 1 A woman named Sam or a woman named Nicole? Oftentimes people said Sam.

Speaker 1 Sarah was living a full-on double life with Sam, a second double life, because she was still living with her actual wife at the time, Nicole.

Speaker 1 Still, Sarah found a way to spend lots of time with Sam.

Speaker 1 In fact, Sarah and Sam would socialize with Sarah's VFW pals.

Speaker 1 Sam met Sarah's mom and a brother.

Speaker 1 Sarah told Sam she was really close with her five siblings and talked about them all the time.

Speaker 39 She told me that she had a twin who was also Marine and died in combat. And then she had two older brothers and they were all like in the military.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 39 And she said that her dad was a a two-star general.

Speaker 1 Sarah would show Sam pictures of her five brothers with their wives and kids. Brody, Joel, Oliver.

Speaker 1 She'd tell her about their marriage spats or what they were dealing with at work, about their childhood growing up in Georgia. One brother in particular was worrying Sarah, Joel.

Speaker 1 She told Sam that he was also a vet who now did private military contracting.

Speaker 39 He decided that he was going to do this mission because they would make a lot of money for these missions.

Speaker 1 Sarah told Sam that while Joel was on this mission, he got shot and ended up in a coma. And that her mom flew to the Middle East to bring him back to the U.S.

Speaker 1 But the doctors couldn't revive him. They told Sarah that he would never wake up.

Speaker 1 One day, Sarah tells Sam, I need to fly to Georgia now.

Speaker 1 I have to be the one to take him off of life support.

Speaker 39 I said, I'll go with you. This is going to be a really hard thing.
I'll go with you. You know, we can fly down there and I can support you.
And she's like, no, no, it's fine. I'll do it.

Speaker 39 And she called me at two o'clock in the morning. I'll never freak.
She called me at two o'clock in the morning and said that it's done.

Speaker 39 And he was gone.

Speaker 1 Sam was devastated for Sarah.

Speaker 1 Here was this woman dealing with all of these injuries. And now this.

Speaker 1 And just to zoom out for a second, because it can be easy to get lost in Sarah's world. The people in those photos that Sarah shared, they were real people with real lives of their own.

Speaker 1 They just weren't Sarah's brothers. This version of Sarah, the person with the big military family from Georgia, it's someone...
only a few people saw.

Speaker 1 And my take is that maybe it's because she couldn't really let Sam into her family life because her whole family had watched her marry Nicole. They'd been to the home that she and Nicole still shared.

Speaker 1 But I think it's deeper than that.

Speaker 1 Sarah seems to have understood something fundamental. Tragedy brings us together, whether it's a friendship or a romantic partnership.

Speaker 1 Being vulnerable enough with another person to let them help you through a crisis, to stand by you at a funeral funeral or a hospital bed. This is where real intimacy is created.

Speaker 1 And Sarah seems to have taken this idea and just run with it.

Speaker 1 Sam, of course, didn't know any of this at the time. She continued bringing Sarah deeper into her world, her real world.

Speaker 39 She was very, very meshed into my life. She knew my family intimately.

Speaker 1 Sam's mother has been battling stage three ovarian cancer for years. So while Sam drove her mother up to Boston for treatment at Dana Farber, Sarah would help out.

Speaker 1 She'd help Sam's kids with their homework, plan meals for the family, walk her mother's dog, and get this.

Speaker 1 While Sam was taking care of her mother's illness, holding her hand through chemo, she was also doing the same for Sarah. Sarah had told her the cancer lie too, said she had lung cancer.

Speaker 1 Sarah told Sam, I'm terrified, overwhelmed with medical results. I just can't take any more bad news.

Speaker 1 So Sam started receiving Sarah's test results, and then she would be the one to relay those results to Sarah.

Speaker 1 More than once, Sam remembers sitting anxiously in her PT practice, refreshing her email, waiting for results to come in.

Speaker 39 I remember crying in my practice, getting bad in bad news, but then I remember getting really, really great news and then being able to tell her and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 It was a big roller coaster.

Speaker 5 It was awful.

Speaker 39 It was awful. Yeah, there was a lot of emotional strife on my part, you know, a lot.

Speaker 1 As both Sarah's partner and her caregiver, Sam was in Sarah's world twice over, totally enmeshed.

Speaker 1 Fast forward to January 2022, the the moment when everything started to spiral out of control.

Speaker 1 News was getting around that Sarah may have lied about a great many things,

Speaker 1 including her service in the Marines, her medals, possibly even her claims of having cancer.

Speaker 1 When the news first reached Sam, she was in total disbelief. She'd seen a pile of proof over the years.

Speaker 1 Her enrollment in the Wounded Warrior Independence Program, years of blood work that she'd received directly from the VA.

Speaker 1 Sam was trying to wrap her head around this, so she hopped on the phone with one of Sarah's VFW buddies, a guy named Justin. They'd gotten to know each other over the years.

Speaker 1 She wanted his perspective.

Speaker 39 Can you believe this? This is crazy. Someone's making this up.
You know, like, why would they do this? Why would they make this up about her? This is insane.

Speaker 1 Sam told Justin, I've seen years of medical documents, even her cancer diagnosis. There's no way Sarah's lying.

Speaker 1 How would someone even make that up?

Speaker 1 More.

Speaker 1 After the break.

Speaker 3 In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that.

Speaker 3 They're now the the best network, according to the experts at UCLA Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

Speaker 3 With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

Speaker 3 With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

Speaker 3 And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, supercharged.

Speaker 4 Learn more at supermobile.com.

Speaker 3 Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky.

Speaker 3 Best business plan based on a combination of advanced network network performance, coverage layers, and security features.

Speaker 3 Best network based on analysis by Ookla of SpeedTest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

Speaker 15 Hi, it's Eva, and I think it's about time you discovered the world's first luxury hospitality brand at sea, the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection.

Speaker 17 Imagine setting sail on an all-inclusive voyage where every moment is entirely yours.

Speaker 20 Explore the Amalfi coasts, the islands of Thailand, or Alaska's glacial fjords and the lagoons of French Polynesia.

Speaker 17 Or maybe just stay aboard and indulge in a spa day, dining from Michelin-starred chefs and kayaking directly from the exclusive marina platform.

Speaker 12 There are so many possibilities and so much time to relax.

Speaker 10 Every journey, unlike the rest, the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection.

Speaker 11 Learn more at RitzCarltonYacht Collection.com.

Speaker 25 This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something.

Speaker 26 Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity?

Speaker 31 They may be happening to you without you knowing.

Speaker 28 If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

Speaker 36 OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.

Speaker 37 Learn more at don'tsleeponosa.com.

Speaker 31 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

Speaker 6 So, let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there, and everywhere.
But your AI can't use the data because it's here, there, and everywhere.

Speaker 6 Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data.
IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives to change how you do business.

Speaker 6 Let's create Smarter Business, IBM.

Speaker 2 While Jess was meeting with Sam, I was just a few miles away meeting with Justin. He's the guy that Sam called to get a reality check when the rumors first started.

Speaker 2 Justin was one of Sarah's buddies from the VFW.

Speaker 2 And initially, like Sam, he was very much in disbelief. Even now, knowing everything he knows about Sarah, Justin still struggles to wrap his head around everything that happened.

Speaker 5 I'll be honest, I was a little hesitant to kind of relive this,

Speaker 5 but I think

Speaker 5 if we're going to tell a story, I think

Speaker 5 it needs to be told fully. And so that's why I'm here.

Speaker 2 Justin is in his early 50s. He's fit.
He looks like he could be part of a marketing campaign for Peloton or something.

Speaker 2 And he has this really disarming, gentle energy about him. He feels like an old soul to me.

Speaker 2 I wanted to talk to Justin for a whole bunch of reasons, but mainly because Justin's story, it's really compelling in its own right, which is probably why Sarah was drawn to it.

Speaker 2 Justin spent most of his career as an officer in the Navy, as an aviator.

Speaker 2 And when he looks back on his life, on all the dangers, all the near misses, all those moments that quietly changed the of things.

Speaker 2 He often thinks back to 2008 when he was in his mid-30s, stationed in Iraq.

Speaker 2 And what he remembers is the fog. The fog came every night, thick and heavy with the wind.
It got so bad some nights they could barely breathe.

Speaker 2 This fog, it would stay with Justin in the years to come. In ways that he could never have foreseen, it would lead him right into the haze of Sarah Kavanaugh's deceptions.

Speaker 2 The fog in Iraq, it started like this.

Speaker 5 We were

Speaker 5 on a base called Taji, which is outside of Baghdad. And

Speaker 5 where we lived, we had this kind of compound area. It was about 50 yards from a burn pit.

Speaker 5 And at night, the wind would shift and

Speaker 5 our whole living area was enveloped in

Speaker 5 what was a fog.

Speaker 5 You could barely see in front of you. A fog of what smelled like burning plastic every night.

Speaker 2 This fog that Justin's talking about, it's really a miasma of smoke and fumes. It came from a burn pit, which is how the military disposed of waste in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaker 5 Like when you eat,

Speaker 5 there's no water to do dishes. So when you go eat, everything is off plastic

Speaker 5 and that all gets thrown away. They dig a big pit.
They throw all this stuff, plastic, medical waste, batteries, whatever, into this giant pit. They throw jet fuel on it and they light it on fire.

Speaker 2 Justin was responsible for nearly 500 service members. Their safety was on his shoulders.
And he and his leadership team were worried about the long-term effects of the fog.

Speaker 5 We knew this wasn't going to be good.

Speaker 5 And the contractor kept claiming that they did air tests and

Speaker 5 it was okay, but I didn't buy that for a second.

Speaker 2 Then, one day, it all kind of came to a head.

Speaker 5 My master chief and I actually drove out there to the burn pit because we just saw this thick black smoke coming out and we're like, what the hell's going on?

Speaker 5 And we went out there and

Speaker 5 just like yelled at the guy, basically like, what the hell are you doing?

Speaker 2 Justin says the contractor just shrugged and said, that's what I was told to do. No explanations, just business as usual.

Speaker 2 It would be more than a decade later before Justin learned the real consequences of those burn pits. By then, he was living in Rhode Island with his wife and three kids.

Speaker 2 He was happily retired from the military. All was good until he started to feel this small ache.

Speaker 5 I felt like what it was a slightly pinched nerve in my left chest. And, you know, I exercise, so I get pinched nerves and stuff every once in a while.
So I'm like, oh, it'll just go away.

Speaker 2 But it didn't go away. And eventually, Justin's doctor at the VA suggested that he get a CT scan, just to be safe.

Speaker 2 That's when they found the mass in his lungs.

Speaker 2 At first, the doctors told him not to worry. It probably wasn't anything too serious.
I mean, he was so young, so healthy, so fit.

Speaker 2 But then he went to see a pulmonologist at the VA and learned he had stage four lung cancer.

Speaker 5 It was a huge shock. I'm working out.
I'm healthy. Everything's going great.
And then someone tells you you're about to die. I just like, I couldn't wrap my brain around it.
My wife was with me.

Speaker 5 I just kind of like broke down.

Speaker 2 Justin says his wife had always been his lifeline. Even so, this cancer diagnosis was uncharted territory for Justin and his family.

Speaker 5 When you know you're dying, it's a very lonely thing. I mean, it's very comforting that I have a family around me and a wife to support me and everything.

Speaker 5 But at the same time, you're the one that's dying. And you're the one going through this personally.
And

Speaker 5 it feels like you're very much alone.

Speaker 2 But he did have someone who seemed to get it on a personal level. And that was Sarah Kavanaugh.
Sarah and Justin knew each other from the VFW.

Speaker 2 They'd been close for several years, ever since Justin joined the post back in 2017.

Speaker 2 And that whole time, Sarah herself claimed that she had been fighting cancer, lung cancer. Sarah claimed the cancer came from her military service.

Speaker 2 claimed her vehicle had been hit by an IED and she'd inhaled the metal particles in the blast.

Speaker 2 For some people, cancer is now a chronic condition, something you can manage and live with.

Speaker 2 And that seemed to be the case with Sarah.

Speaker 5 So I immediately went to Sarah thinking, okay, well, there's someone going through the same experience I am. I don't feel so lonely anymore.

Speaker 5 I was still scared, but when she was sharing what her experience was, someone who's already started this journey is telling me, you know,

Speaker 5 things are going to be be okay.

Speaker 5 That definitely helped.

Speaker 2 Sarah had always been a friend, but in this moment, their friendship seemed to take on a deeper meaning.

Speaker 5 No one really was in my shoes except her.

Speaker 5 At least that's what I thought. Here's another veteran that's going through the same thing I'm going through.
So at least she knows we can like support each other.

Speaker 5 And then we started actually opening up more about our treatments and how our treatments were going.

Speaker 2 Sarah told Justin she was on an experimental dose of an immunotherapy drug, and it was working. But according to Sarah, the VA was cutting back on her treatment.
This story hit home for Justin.

Speaker 2 He'd faced his own bureaucratic roadblocks within the VA.

Speaker 2 In fact, he'd eventually gone outside the system to Dana Farber in Boston to get the experimental treatment that he needed. And it seemed to be working, which gave Justin an idea.

Speaker 5 I thought, well, Dana Farber's this amazing place,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I know that they can help her. And I said, well, do you have private health insurance? Because you need to go to someplace like Dana Farber

Speaker 5 and get real help because the VA is not going to help you. And she said, well, I don't have or I can't afford it.
She just kept saying like she couldn't. That was too much for her.

Speaker 2 The whole thing was frustrating for Justin, and he felt like he couldn't just sit there and do nothing.

Speaker 5 We veterans look out for each other and

Speaker 5 I'm not going to sit here and let a fellow, what I thought at the time was a fellow veteran, die from lack of treatment when I know

Speaker 5 there's an alternative

Speaker 5 if I can help it.

Speaker 5 So I said, look, I will at least begin by paying for

Speaker 5 this insurance for you to be able to go to Dana Farber.

Speaker 2 It was an incredibly generous offer, which Sarah turned down.

Speaker 5 She initially said, no, I can't ask you to do that. No, no, no.

Speaker 5 But then she kept telling me that, you know, she wasn't doing well.

Speaker 5 And eventually, you know, I said, look,

Speaker 5 I don't want you to die.

Speaker 2 At last, Sarah agreed. In the months that followed, Justin gave her money to pay for private insurance, over $5,000 in total, all in the hope that it would keep her alive.

Speaker 2 Then one day, Justin gets a call from Dave Ainslie at the VFW.

Speaker 2 You know, the guy with the handlebar mustache. He was the previous commander at the post, before Sarah.

Speaker 5 Dave

Speaker 5 told me like, hey, you know, like, I got to tell you something about Sarah and she's, you know, she's fake. She's she's not a veteran.

Speaker 5 And I was just in shock and trying to just like wrap my brain around it.

Speaker 2 Dave explained how he tried to retrieve Sarah's discharge papers, her DD-214, and how Sarah had been one step ahead of him, absconding with the paperwork before Dave could get his hands on it.

Speaker 2 Justin says that he believed Dave, but part of him resisted, part of him was in denial.

Speaker 2 He kept asking himself, who would do something like this? And why?

Speaker 2 Around this exact same time, rumors began to swirl about Sarah being a fraud.

Speaker 2 And then Justin heard from Sam. Her head was also spinning, trying to make sense of all this.

Speaker 5 Sam and I talked on the phone, and Sam was still in, I think still in denial and said, this is not true. She actually does have cancer.
I've seen the record, her medical records.

Speaker 2 Because, remember, Sam, she'd seen all the proof. The wounded warrior enrollment forms, stacks of medical records.

Speaker 2 Someone claiming to be Sarah's VA caseworker had even sent Sam official documents, blood work, diagnoses, intake forms. It all looked legit.
It was enough to give Justin a moment of pause.

Speaker 5 There was a little bit of a question in my mind. I'd say if she's actually seen medical records, what does that mean?

Speaker 2 Like, was there there some other explanation here? A story that made sense of it all, that turned the world right side up again, and somehow transformed Sarah back into Sarah.

Speaker 2 And if not,

Speaker 2 well then, so many other questions bubbled to the surface. Like, where did that stack of medical records come from? And what if the rumors were true? What did that mean for Justin?

Speaker 2 If the one person who got it, who'd been through it, what if that person was just performing, mimicking his own pain?

Speaker 2 Where did that leave him?

Speaker 1 In the days after that phone conversation with Justin, Sam still held on to the hope that maybe

Speaker 1 this was just some terrible misunderstanding. Sarah kept maintaining her innocence, saying she had the paperwork to prove it.
Sam says she believed it, maybe because she wanted to believe it.

Speaker 1 At one point, Sam was driving to work and talking to Sarah on the phone about all of this. She got frustrated.
She asked Sarah, begged her, really,

Speaker 39 where's the paperwork? And she's like, I can't find it.

Speaker 40 I'm like, what?

Speaker 39 What do you mean you can't find it? You're the most organized person I know.

Speaker 39 And she's like, then she said, it's all a lie. And I was like, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 Were you ever in the military

Speaker 1 and that's when sarah finally said it a one-word confession no

Speaker 1 she'd never been in the military

Speaker 39 i i literally turned around and i was going to my work i turned around and i went right to her house what was that drive like i don't even remember I don't even remember like that drive.

Speaker 39 I don't remember walking into her house. I remember sitting on her couch and like me like telling her,

Speaker 39 asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

Speaker 39 You know, and she was like, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 It was an avalanche of betrayals. The cancer, the military service, the family down in Georgia, the brother she'd taken off life support.

Speaker 1 None of it was true.

Speaker 1 Sarah had been lying to her every single day for years.

Speaker 1 about nearly everything, even things unrelated to her stolen valor scam, like still being married to nicole and in doing so she had made sam the other woman we actually talked to sarah about this very moment i remember her coming to my house and having that conversation and her sitting on the couch across from me and telling her the truth like watching it hit her you know watching it overcome her It was like watching her heart break, you know, and she started to cry and

Speaker 1 told me she couldn't do this, and

Speaker 1 how could I do it? And all of those things.

Speaker 1 Sarah had spent hours and hours with Sam and her family in their home, nursed the wounds of Sam's divorce, helped her find happiness again.

Speaker 1 Sarah hurt Sam in all of these intimate, profound ways, and then she made that pain dirty, shameful.

Speaker 39 I'm still coping with it.

Speaker 8 Um, I don't don't want to be upset.

Speaker 1 Memories will come up and I'll be like, oh, did that really happen?

Speaker 1 And I think, probably not. It was probably a lie.

Speaker 2 Because I'll still like be like driving or whatever.

Speaker 40 And then memory will come.

Speaker 1 And I'll say, I'll be like, oh, I wonder how Brody's doing. Like, things like that.
You know, like, it's so crazy to me.

Speaker 1 Brody, one of Sarah's fake brothers. Memories like this come back to Sam, even now.

Speaker 1 And then there was the fact that Sarah was also Sam's patient. She'd been getting physical therapy from her for years.

Speaker 1 And some of those bills had been paid for by a wounded warrior. That meant that the very basis of their relationship was a theft, a crime.

Speaker 1 As she sat on the couch confronting Sarah, the implications became crystal clear.

Speaker 8 I was like, oh my God.

Speaker 1 I was like,

Speaker 39 you basically stole money. And I said to her, I go, you're going to go to jail, Sarah.

Speaker 39 And she's like, you think?

Speaker 1 Next time, on deep cover.

Speaker 2 And I said, like, hey,

Speaker 2 we are at your house.

Speaker 1 It's the police.

Speaker 2 Are you in the house? We need you to come to the door.

Speaker 2 Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah, was produced by Amy Gaines-McQuaid and Tali Emlin. Additional production support by Sonia Gerwit.

Speaker 1 Our show is edited by Karen Shikurji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Mastering by Jake Gorski.

Speaker 2 Original scoring and our theme were composed by Luis Guerra.

Speaker 2 Our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins.

Speaker 1 Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Izzy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake Flanagan, and Greta Cohn.

Speaker 1 Additional thanks to Vicki Merrick. I'm Jess McHugh.

Speaker 2 And I'm Jake Halpern.

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