The Girlfriends S3/E3: He Said, She Said

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this is matt rogers from lost culturists with matt rogers and bowen yang hey so what if you could boost the wi-fi to one of your devices when you need it most because xfiniti wi-fi can and what if your wi-fi could fix itself before there's even really a problem xfinity does that too what if your wifi had parental instincts xfiniti wi-fi is part nanny part ninja protecting your kids while they're online and finally what if your wifi was like the smartest Wi-Fi?

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This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.

Are there two sides to every story?

Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in The Girlfriend on Prime September 10th, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything.

Laura has the perfect life and a son she'd die for.

But when he brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.

Also starring Laurie Davidson, The Girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems.

Don't miss The Girlfriend, streaming exclusively on Prime, September 10th.

Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.

Hey, girlfriend, it's Anna here, giving you a quick heads up on what to expect in this episode.

We're going to talk about the night of the murder a lot and in detail.

And I want to warn you that there's going to be some mentions of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and suicide.

But we'll also get the chance to dive into the weeds of the police investigation to learn more about the case against Kelly and the holes in it.

If you feel impacted by some of the themes in this show, you can reach out to Know More.

They're a domestic violence charity with a lot of great resources to help you or your loved ones.

You can search knowmore.org, and we've also put a link to their website in the episode description.

Plus, as always, there'll be more than a few swear words.

For Kelly Harnett's brother, Ronnie, July 7th, 2010 was a totally normal day.

I was on my way back from work and I had a,

you know how like in Union Square and things like that, they had the Village Voice or whatever.

So they had a newspaper.

He picks it up and sits down.

leaving through like he would any other time.

And there, printed in black and white, is a headline that reads something like, Police arrest two individuals after a murder in Astoria, Queens.

I was looking at people next to me.

I said, you believe this?

In our neighborhood.

And I showed them and they looked at it and they just shook their heads.

They were like,

what's this world coming to?

Ronnie doesn't think any more of it.

Other than what a shame it is that the place he once knew as a safe family neighborhood seems to be going to the dogs.

So I got home, and my mother's like, Yeah, you might want to sit down.

I was like, Mom, just tell me what's going on.

And I never in a billion years did that cross my mind what I read, you know.

So she's like, Kelly, uh,

she got arrested.

I said, for what?

She said, for murder.

shocking is an understatement

i started getting dizzy i started seeing stars and i was like whoa

but i knew i said i know my sister she didn't do this

i know she didn't do it

i'm anna sinfield and from the teams at novel and i hop podcasts this is the girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer.

Yes, I've got to

get

you.

Yes, I've got to get

you.

Episode three.

He said,

She said.

it's around 4 a.m.

on July 7th, 2010, when Kelly Harnett first arrives at the 114th Precinct.

She's immediately processed as a suspect in the murder of Reuben Angel Vargas.

They took all of my clothes from me, including my bra and underwear.

They put me in a white paper suit.

Kelly can't believe what's happening to her.

She's just witnessed her boyfriend, Tommy Donovan, kill a man right in front of her before threatening that she would be next.

But no one seems to be treating her like the victim she is.

Sitting in her cell, feeling like the world is against her, Kelly decides to do something reckless.

Something that will warp and color every memory she tells me from this time.

Somehow, she's managed to smuggle in a huge amount of Xanax, and she knows she needs to get rid of them before they're discovered by the police.

But she also just wants to escape this situation somehow.

And right there, in the palm of her hand, she sees a solution.

Down the hatch they go, and there was a lot.

And I didn't care if it was a suicide attempt or what the hell it was.

Whatever happens, happens, because it sounds like my life just got ripped from under me because of something that I didn't even do.

I was like, look, if I die, I die.

From there, things just get worse for Kelly.

Not only is she now really high in police custody, but she's also withdrawing.

She tells the police she needs her methadone.

She's on that huge 170 milligram daily dose, but she's been without it for days because Tommy wouldn't let her go to the clinic.

Kelly's hoping, now she's in official police custody, that they'll give her what she needs.

But they refuse.

On top of this, Kelly suffers from what's called grand mal seizures.

She says she asked repeatedly for her seizure medication, which is in police possession.

But they say they'll only give it to her if she writes a statement.

She has multiple seizures while in custody.

She also gets her period.

She asks the cops for some sanitary products, but they refuse those too.

They leave her bleeding into her white paper suit.

It soaks right through and is visible to anyone who sees her.

And because she hasn't got anything on underneath, every time she goes to the bathroom, she has to strip down, completely completely naked.

Kelly says male staff gather around to watch, making comments about her body.

I'm bleeding everywhere, but you're talking about my breasts

and calling your friends in because it's a free show.

Disgusting pigs.

I have absolutely no

respect for them.

I'm sorry, but they were disgusting to me.

I didn't even fucking commit this crime.

How dare you?

How fucking dare you?

It should be clear to anyone that Kelly is in no fit state to give a reliable account of what's happened.

And yet, four hours after her arrest, the cops take down an oral statement.

Here's a quick reminder of how Kelly described the night of the murder, back in episode one.

Kelly and Tommy met Angel, and they decided to drink together.

While Tommy went off to buy the three of them beers, Kelly says Angel sexually assaulted her.

When Tommy returned, Kelly told him what happened.

Tommy then attacked and choked Angel.

Kelly tried to get him to stop, but Tommy pushed her away and threatened that she would be next.

After that, Tommy forced Kelly to hand over her shoelace.

He then attempted to use it to strangle Angel, but it snapped.

Next, Kelly witnessed Tommy put his belt around Angel's neck and finally

kill him.

That's what Kelly said to me in 2024, but it's not what she told the police back in 2010.

I was woken up frantically.

by my boyfriend Tommy Donovan stating, we got to get out of here now.

And then then they put in parentheses.

Kelly is reading from her original oral statement, which was taken at around 8 a.m.

on July 7th.

In it, Kelly says that she didn't witness the crime at all.

Instead, she's woken up by Tommy, who tells her that he'd seen a guy who'd stolen his shoes the previous day and choked him unconscious.

He then tells her, Start packing your crap up.

Kelly starts gathering her things.

And while she's doing that, Kelly says Tommy takes the shoelace out of of her sneaker and takes it over to the guy who's on the ground.

A male Hispanic wearing a dark-colored shirt was lying down, not moving, and that Tommy grabbed him from behind around the neck and choked him again for approximately 10 seconds.

Kelly states that Tommy told her to kick said male Hispanic and that she didn't.

Kelly states that Tommy let said male Hispanic go and he fell to the ground lifeless.

You doing okay?

Yeah, it was just the part that started because, you know, the beginning is what I told the detectives because I was just afraid.

You know, there was no truth to it.

But the part that got me was when it became truthful that he had the mail and that he fell lifeless.

That

gets me.

Yeah, of course.

You know, because no matter what he tried.

Meaning the sexual assault.

That's still life at the end of the day.

He's still someone's brother.

He's someone's son.

Possibly father.

You know, so.

It's terrible.

In a written statement she gives about an hour or so later, at about 9.30am,

Kelly sounds like she's really grappling with the horrors of the previous night.

It honestly does read like she's high.

In a disjointed stream of consciousness where she veers from talking about her mum's back injury to her college scholarships to how religious she is, Kelly writes about how putrid she feels about all of this and how going down for Tommy's stupidity is such an awful feeling.

I take all of that into account and I really do feel for the Kelly of 2010.

I can't pretend that all the inconsistencies between the story Kelly told me and the story in these statements don't give me pause.

Especially this one detail she's never told me before, that Tommy ordered her to kick Angel.

In the statements from 2010, she says she didn't do it, so I don't really understand why she left it out when she told me her version years later.

For the first time, I'm grappling with the possibility that Kelly isn't being fully open with me.

We both have stories to tell here, but I do have this fear that they're not the same one.

Before I can go any further, I need to understand more about what happened that night.

This time, from Tommy's perspective.

There's a lot going on in Hollywood.

How are you supposed to stay on top of it all?

Variety has the solution.

Take 20 minutes out of your day and listen to the new Daily Variety podcast for breaking entertainment news and expert perspectives.

Where do you see the business actually heading?

Featuring the iconic journalists of Variety and hosted by co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton.

The only constant in Hollywood is change.

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Hey, it's Anna Sinfield here, host of The Girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer, which is out right now.

You can listen to this brand new season, plus all episodes of the Girlfriend Season 1, Season 2, and The Girlfriend Spotlight ad-free and one week before everyone else by signing up to an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

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Can I just read you this statement from Tommy?

There's some stuff that's really horrible.

I'm sat with my producer Jake in our Midtown Airbnb.

Tommy Donovan's statement in front of us.

It's one of a few that he gave that day.

This one is an oral statement taken, according to the police documents, at around 4.30pm on July 7th, the day of the murder.

It looks like it was typed up the next day, on the 8th.

With all of this confusion swirling around in my mind, I want to look at what Tommy had to say about what happened in the park that night.

Believe me when I say that I am not predisposed to trust this man, but I'm working with what I've got.

And what immediately stands out to me is the weird and colourful context Tommy seems to add to that night in the park.

So this is obviously written from the perspective of the cop.

Right.

Noting it down.

Mr.

Donovan informed me that over the past few nights they had had problems with perverts trying to watch them having sex and that they had even named them night crawlers.

Yeah, Mr.

Donovan informed me.

It goes on to talk about how Tommy and Kelly were attempting to fool around on a makeshift bed under Hellsgate Bridge when Kelly noticed one of these night crawlers.

She stormed up and slapped him around the face, which then prompted Tommy to chase him 70 feet across the park.

On the way back, he spotted a Hispanic man sitting on a park bench who said, That's not right that they try to watch you sit and have a beer.

So can we just stop there for a minute?

Because it feels very made up.

Yeah, that's like somebody trying to write like a bad script of what this kind of moment could be like.

And I'm like really trying to keep in mind that this is what he's saying hours after all this just happened.

Yeah, I think like Kelly also told me about how she had to translate between Tommy and Angel who spoke Spanish.

But there's no language barrier problem in this retelling.

Mr.

Donovan states that he accepted the man's offer and took a Morello beer.

Kelly then walked over and the man offered her a beer as well, which she accepted.

Mr.

Donovan informed me that the three of them had a beer or two each while discussing different types of beers and agreeing on how Morello is much better than Corona.

I don't have a lot to say about that, but it's weird.

The only other thing I was thinking is like, it's really hard for me to wrap my mind around whether the fact that there is so much detail makes it more or less plausible.

Mr.

Donovan further states that the man they had just met introduced himself as Angel and was now asking him to run to the Bodega and buy some more beer and had stated, don't worry about it, I have money and you can take my bike.

Mr.

Donovan states that he jumped on Angel's bike and quickly rode up to the Bodega where he purchased six loco beers.

So that's where the Loco comes in.

He then quickly rode back.

Tommy Statement then says that when he returned, Kelly and Angel were in the same spot he had left them in.

He says he asked Kelly if she was okay.

She stated that she was fine and they went on to drink the beers they bought while chatting about various topics.

Mr.

Donovan states that after a while, according to Tommy's statement, he and Kelly decided they wanted to get back to falling around under the bridge.

But Angel wouldn't leave them alone.

He's begging them not to go.

and offering to buy more drinks and food, eventually following them to their makeshift bed.

So Tommy told Kelly to pretend she was sleeping while he went to pee on the wood chip pile nearby.

While he was peeing, he heard Kelly's voice and she sounded upset.

He stopped peeing in midstream and walked back over to Kelly.

Once there, Kelly informed him that Angel had just offered her money for sex and he had stated to her, I want to lick your pussy, I'm good at it.

Kelly further stated that Angel had said to her, I have money and a job, I can take care of you.

Kelly informed him that Angel had just grabbed her crotch and was visibly upset.

Just a warning that the next section talks about the murder itself.

Mr.

Donovan states that he became very angry, walked over to him and pushed him.

The two of them...

The statement then goes on to say that Tommy and Angel started wrestling on the ground, throwing and not landing punches.

Eventually, Tommy gets Angel into a chokehold with his right arm, but it wasn't working.

It doesn't specify where Kelly is, but it must be right next to them, as it then says Tommy tells Kelly to kick Angel, then to kick him harder, which it says she does numerous times in the groin.

This is where it gets kind of crazy.

Mr.

Donovan further stated that he then told Kelly to give him her shoestring.

He stated that she removed her shoestring from her shoe and wrapped it around his neck, pulling it tight and handing it to him.

He then choked him with it until he became limp.

Once Angel was unconscious, and again, this is coming from Tommy's typed-up oral statement, Tommy told Kelly that they needed to get the hell out of there and started gathering up his things.

Then he walked away, and when he looked back, he saw that Kelly was on top of Angel.

strangling him to death.

He ran over and yelled at her to go.

And on their way out of the park, Donovan says he noticed Kelly took Angel's wallet and cash.

Mr.

Donovan stated that he did not want to get arrested for robbery, really small concern there.

So he grabbed the wallet from her, threw it on the rocks, and put the money in his pocket.

They both then crossed the street towards the water, where they were immediately stopped by the police, resulting in them getting arrested.

Wow.

Okay,

let's digest all of that properly, because it was a lot.

The inconsistencies between Kelly and Tommy's 2010 statements range from minor to glaring.

Both Tommy and Kelly's statements mention the shoelace, although he says she handed it over and she says he took it from her.

And both of them mention Tommy telling Kelly to kick Angel, although they again differ on whether Kelly actually did or didn't do it.

Kelly says she was woken by Tommy after he admitted choking out Angel, but Tommy says Kelly was not only awake for the attack, but that she physically put her own shoelace around Angel's neck, pulled it tight, and handed it to Tommy.

Tommy also says that while he choked Angel, it was only to the point of unconsciousness.

Then he walked away.

And when he looked back, he saw that Kelly was on top of Angel, strangling him to death.

And then there's the differences in Kelly's accounts, which I understand, thinking about the mindset that 2010 Kelly was in.

Traumatised, scared, not to mention high.

I can totally get why she would lie to the police to protect herself, why she'd want to distance herself from terrible crime.

But I'm also...

confused about what the truth is, sure, but also why Kelly isn't opening up to me.

Could I ask you some questions about

Donovan's statement?

Sure.

I've been reading through it.

There are a couple of things that stood out to me that seemed to be kind of parallels.

Some stuff that came up in your original statement that seemed to match and haven't come up in our previous conversations.

One of them being

he

asked you to kick Reuben.

Reuben being Reuben Angel Vargas, the victim.

And then in his original statement, you do that.

In your original statement, you also say that he asked you to, but you didn't do it.

And then since we've spoken, there hasn't been any mention of the kicking.

And so I just want to figure out.

Oh, okay.

Clarification.

Yeah.

Okay.

So.

I remember the detective kept saying to me, now just write that he told you to kick the victim and and that you did.

Like, nobody kicked him, not even my co-defendant.

What really happened when I was speaking to the Spanish man, the decedent, he told both of us that he got thrown out of the house because he was drinking too much and that his brother beat him up and threw him out.

So when you beat someone up, clearly there's going to be bruising.

So they wanted to implicate me just for me to take the blame on doing something.

And

he yelled at me to the point where

I wrote the words just for them to stop.

I remember thinking, this is how confessions come about.

I think Kelly means false confessions here.

The fact that I'm writing, he told me to kick him, that was a lie.

That was a complete lie.

But I felt like since the word kick is in there, they'll lay off a little bit.

And they did.

The reason I ask about the kicking is because

to me,

if somebody did what is said in Tommy's statement, kicking someone to get them away is not at all a bad thing.

And so I'm just saying, like, if that had happened, no, no, I would be like, fair the fucking up, you know?

No, no, I get it.

This is what I'm trying to say.

If I kicked him a hundred percent, I would tell you, I kicked him.

But if I didn't kick him, I didn't kick kick him.

I almost wished I kicked him at this point.

I didn't kick him.

You know why?

I was too fucking scared to kick him.

I was not going back there.

You have to think of the domestic violence aspect and not the truth-finding aspect.

The domestic violence aspect of the matter is that I was afraid of Tommy.

You think I'm going to be busy trying to kick a man when I'm trying to figure out how the hell am I going to get out of this one?

Will I live to see the next minute?

No, I'm not going to worry about going to kick someone.

I adopted what they stated just to write it so they leave me the fuck alone.

So I'm gonna be really honest here about a couple of things.

Number one is that I'm not proud of the tape that you just heard.

Then I nearly didn't include it.

Number two is that I feel so fucking out of my depth right now.

In all the years I've spent making this show, speaking to countless survivors of domestic and gendered violence, I've never upset someone like that.

But then, I've never dealt with someone as complicated as Kelly.

And I have absolutely no idea where to go from here.

There's a lot going on in Hollywood.

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I spend a lot of time running back that conversation between me and Kelly in my head.

When she spoke about hoping that the police would leave her the fuck alone, I can't help but feel like she was also talking to me.

Which feels like

shit.

The last thing I want Kelly to feel is attacked or judged.

Because for me, so much of this job of interviewing people, of getting them to share their experiences with me, it's a relationship.

One based around mutual respect and trust.

One that I honestly tend to find pretty easy to build.

I'm struggling to build that mutual trust with Kelly.

Sometimes I feel like she's telling me exactly what I want to hear.

And then other times I can feel like she's keeping me at arm's length.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I do not, in any way, believe the part of Tommy's statement where he says Kelly physically strangled Angel.

I think this was nothing more than him trying to shift some of the blame for his crime.

But I can't ignore the fact that it is possible that Kelly could have kicked Angel.

It's mentioned in both statements, so I feel like I have to at least consider it.

But even if she did kick Angel, for me, it would just be another sign of the terrible situation she was in, and of the power Tommy had over her.

Not proof that she killed anyone.

I do think Kelly has a point about the police pushing her to write what they wanted.

Because when I start looking into things a little deeper, it does feel like there's something funny going on in these statements.

This next section gets into the weeds a little bit, but stay with me.

Remember how I said Tommy gave multiple statements to the police?

Well, one of them is a handwritten statement, which was made at about 6pm on July 7th.

In that statement, he isn't as certain about the details.

He says he couldn't remember if Kelly said Angel tried to touch her or did touch her.

But in the officer's typed-up version, you've just heard me and producer Jake reading, that uncertainty is nowhere to be found.

Also, in the typed version, it says Kelly kicked Angel on Tommy's orders and then robbed Angel's dead body for good measure.

But in the written version by Tommy himself, there's no mention of the kicking or of the robbery, which seems like a pretty big omission to me.

Two pretty big omissions.

I know these might seem like small details, but I do think it's worth examining how statements can become,

let's just say, refined by police who are trying to build an airtight case.

The more I look into it, the more confused I become.

The awkward truth is, you either believe Kelly's story now or you don't.

For me, it comes down to that trust again.

I can't ignore the possibility, however uncomfortable it is to face, that Kelly could be hiding things.

Things she doesn't want to say because she thinks it makes her look bad.

Less like a victim, more like a villain.

Maybe because she doesn't trust that I'm able to understand, doesn't think I can extend my compassion to someone who's done a bad thing in the name of survival, even though that's at the heart of what I'm trying to do with this series.

But I can't say I really blame her after the way our last conversation went down.

I feel like this story is exposing all of my blind spots.

I don't know how to tell Kelly's story.

I don't know who she is in the story.

Who's the victim?

I think everybody's the victim.

Yeah.

Like they're all the victim.

You could put everybody in a different role.

You could like make it whatever you want it to be, but

everyone's a victim.

Everyone's a villain.

How do you like that, I heart?

End of series.

End of series.

Raps.

And not just yet.

I'm not going to throw in the towel that easy.

So let's go back to July 2010.

Kelly's not sure exactly how long she'd been at the 114th Precinct for.

Things must be hazy as she comes down from the fistful of Xanax she swallowed when she first arrived.

But she has a rough idea.

I figured out how long I was there by touching my legs and judging by the length of the hair on my legs, because I shave every single day.

And I could tell I was like, I've been here for a little bit over two days now.

Using leg hair as clock hands is honestly ingenious.

And Kelly's probably about right, because according to New York law, generally you're only allowed to hold someone for up to 72 hours before you either charge them or release them.

Unfortunately for Kelly, it's the former.

Kelly's taken to be formally charged in Queen's Court.

She's still in that blood-stained paper suit.

Paper.

Nothing more than paper, not even shoes, shoes.

And my own blood coming everywhere.

She's being arraigned alongside Tommy.

The first thing I notice, which is unbelievable, and the 114th Priestins should be absolutely ashamed of themselves, is that he was wearing his own clothes.

The admitted murderer had his own clothes on while they took me, the female's clothes.

How dare they?

Tommy is brought up to the stand next to Kelly.

They're now side by side.

She takes a moment to look him up and down, and that's when she realizes something.

Not only did he get to keep his own clothes, he had his belt on.

The belt that, according to Kelly, Tommy used to strangle Angel to death.

They let him in

with the weapon that killed someone,

that took someone's life.

Kelly's fuming, and I get it.

The indignities she's suffered for the past few days in the police precinct would be hard for anyone to bear.

And for the record, I find it supremely fucked up how differently Kelly says she and Tommy are being treated.

It isn't right under any circumstances, whether or not you believe that Kelly kicked Angel.

I swear on my mother's ashes, I really did not kick that man.

May I go to hell for all of eternity.

I did not kick that man.

But even if I did,

he admittedly strangled him.

Why wouldn't you take his clothing?

Even if I kicked him, what does that have to do with my bra and panties?

It's such a violation of every civil right.

Like you're treating me less than a human being.

That's what they put me through.

This is the justice system.

In God we trust.

No, you don't.

You don't trust in God if you do that to people.

There is no God there.

Once Kelly and Tommy are arraigned, they're taken out of the courtroom and walked towards a jail transfer bus.

One that is hauntingly familiar to Kelly.

When Kelly was a little girl, she and her brother Ronnie used to play around at their aunt's house.

She lived the house right there where you turned and went to the bridge to go to Rikers.

As in Rikers Island Jail.

And I would be playing in the front.

The Rikers Island buses used to pass by all the time and then curve right into where Rikers is.

As the buses crept past the two children, the passengers' eyes turned to them.

They would be watching Ronnie and I, and I would see those buses pass all the time.

And I was like, what's those buses?

Why do they have cages?

Now, decades on, Kelly's an adult stepping onto one of those buses.

It was all men and just me.

And Tommy was on the bus.

And

all the men were calling me a dirty bitch.

Not that I look dirty because I take showers every day, but because of my female issue.

The blood-stained paper suit.

Dirty bitch, smelly bitch.

You smell like fish, this and that.

I'm just waiting for Tommy to say something.

he never did.

The bus winds through the city, passing the same garden Kelly and her brother Ronnie played in as children.

Except now it's Kelly who's looking out through a caged window on her way to Rikers Island jail.

Rikers had seriously dangerous people,

and it scared the hell out of me.

next time on the girlfriend's jailhouse lawyer kelly fights to prove her innocence and to survive life in rikers

this was the survival of the fittest only the strong survive our sisterhood called ourselves the shodies i'm not guilty i plan on taking this to trial Don't go to trial.

Please don't go to trial.

She goes, Harnette, you gotta start fighting your case.

It became the love of my life.

Oh, God, Harnett, jailhouse lawyer.

The Girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer is produced by Novel for iHeart podcasts.

For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

The show is hosted by me, Anna Sinfield, and is written and produced by me and Lee Meyer, with additional production from Jay Ko Tayvich and Michael Ginnow.

Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr.

The editors are Georgia Moody and me, Anna Sinfield.

Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage and Charlotte Wolfe.

Our fact checker is Dania Suleiman.

Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander.

Music supervision by me, Alice Infield, Lee Meyer, and Nicholas Alexander.

Original music composed by Nicholas Alexander, Daniel Kempson, and Louisa Gerstein.

Story development by Nell Gray Andrews and Willard Foxton, creative director of Novel.

Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are our executive producers for Novel.

And Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.

And the marketing lead is Alison Cantor.

Thanks also to Carrie Lieberman and the whole team at WME.

This is an iHeart podcast.