The Knife: Off Record 136

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Speaker 5 Increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like TB or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some were fatal.

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Speaker 5 Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTIX or COSENTIX.com.

Speaker 4 Don't wait.

Speaker 1 Ask your dermatologist about COSINTIX.

Speaker 6 Janice Torres here.

Speaker 2 And I'm Austin Hankwitz. We host the podcast, Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks.

Speaker 6 We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners.

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Speaker 1 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 1 The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the knife or exactly right media.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the knife off record. I'm Hannah Smith.
I'm Patia Eaton. And I have no idea what we're talking about today.
But don't worry because I'm going to tell you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You just get to sit back and listen to a story that you've been researching. It's such a pleasure.
Well, this one was a pretty wild ride, and there's so much more to this story.

Speaker 1 It was one of those things where like I came across a headline, kind of filed it away, didn't find the right voices, and then got a call and was like, oh, okay, we should, we should do this. Okay.

Speaker 1 Can you tell me like the category of crime that we're talking about today? Female con artist. Oh, my favorite.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, I mean,

Speaker 1 she has caused a lot of destruction that we'll get into, but part of my motivation for talking about this story is that she's still out there. Really? So, this is ongoing.
This is ongoing.

Speaker 1 And I'll get into that more at the end. But, you know, it's like, as I'll talk about, there's the quirky aspects of a con, and then there's like the real darkness.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to play clips from an interview I did with someone who worked closely on one of her cases. And yeah, let's get into it.
Cool.

Speaker 1 So today's story begins in Nashua, New Hampshire. It's the quintessential New England city.
There's a population of about 100,000 people, but it feels much smaller in a good way.

Speaker 1 A really charming downtown area, great schools, lots of parks, really safe place. Yeah.
Unless you run into someone named Jenna Kaplan.

Speaker 1 So actually, that's not her name, but we'll get there. So in 2017, Mark Hastba was working as an an FBI agent and he had a long career in the FBI.

Speaker 1 This was sort of known to people in his social circle too, of course.

Speaker 1 And someone that his wife actually went to high school with ends up calling him on a Sunday, or maybe she called his wife and sort of left a message. I'm not really sure.

Speaker 1 But, you know, Mark wasn't working. It was a Sunday.

Speaker 1 But this woman calls and she wants to know if Mark can look into someone for her, someone that she works with at the mayor's office that she's become pretty suspicious of.

Speaker 1 This woman that she's suspicious of, her job was writing grants for the mayor's office.

Speaker 1 So grants are, you know, most people probably noted this, but it's a non-repayable financial aid awarded by a government body, in this case, the mayor's office.

Speaker 3 Nobody really knew where she came from. And, you know, she claimed to be a Harvard-educated attorney.

Speaker 3 But what caused concerns to this woman was she was really pressuring her. to get the account numbers from the citibank accounts for the grants.

Speaker 3 She said she needed it to put on the paperwork, the routing numbers and account numbers and so forth. And,

Speaker 3 you know, that was a normal protocol. You write the grant, then you pass it on to the next person who will fill in those numbers.
But she was very insistent that she get the numbers.

Speaker 1 So the person who calls our FBI agent, what's his name again? Mark. Mark.

Speaker 1 She also works in the mayor's office. She also works in the mayor's office.
And she had encountered. this person

Speaker 1 and Jenna was asking her for the routing numbers and she was like, that seems weird. Kind of.
So Jenna Kaplan is how she knows this woman. This is her name that she goes by in the mayor's office.

Speaker 1 And Jenna Kaplan's role is writing these grants. And as we hear in Mark's clip, you don't need the account numbers to write the grants.
So that's someone else's

Speaker 1 job. But this woman, I don't think that Jenna goes directly to her to ask about the account numbers.
I think she just sort of hears that Jenna's really pushing for these account numbers. Gotcha.

Speaker 1 And she's like, this feels off to me. So she leaves Mark with four pieces of information to go off of.
The name Jenna Kaplan. She says Jenna has a three-year-old daughter.

Speaker 1 She works in the mayor's office. And she's also has some volunteer role in a nonprofit called My Brother's Keeper, a local nonprofit.

Speaker 1 So Mark takes these few notes and on Monday, he does a little digging. He told me he really wasn't even thinking much of it.

Speaker 1 He figured he'd just run a quick search, you know, tell her it was like a weird coworker and move on with his life but pretty quickly things weren't looking right so he begins with a search for the name jenna kaplan

Speaker 3 when i checked out the name she was using there was only one person by that name in the entire country and it was like an elderly woman in long island new york i knew i was dealing with somebody who was you know in their late 30s so then it piqued my interest thinking well is it a possibility of having a parental kidnapping here because obviously she's using a drop foam that you can buy at, you know, the convenience store or CBS or Walgreens or whatever, any of those stores you pay as you go.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 that combined with the fact that she's got this three-year-old in tow and nobody knew anything about her.

Speaker 1 She's using a drop phone. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So one of the things that comes up in this search is that she has a lot of different addresses, phone numbers, and currently her phone number is essentially a burner phone. Interesting.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like you don't picture someone in the mayor's office using a burner phone. How bizarre.
How bizarre. So, okay, now he's like, these are some real red flags.

Speaker 1 Now I'm going to find out who this person is. So the first thing he does is he goes about finding her current address, which is nearby.
So Mark goes and talks to the landlord.

Speaker 1 And this makes so much sense. I'm like, should I be an FBI agent?

Speaker 1 He asks, you know, did you run a credit check? Because that would have a lot of very personal information about this person. And can I see it?

Speaker 1 And landlord says he actually didn't run the credit check. He had her fill out the application and never ran it because he didn't want to pay the $50, $75 it would have cost him.

Speaker 1 His rationale was like, well, she works in the mayor's office. She's got to be trustworthy.
Yeah. Good story.

Speaker 1 And so he didn't end up feeling like he had to run it, but he did have the application and he provides that to Mark. And this application has a social security number on it.

Speaker 3 I had their social security number. I checked it on my systems and I found that it belonged to, you know, some woman in her late 50s in Western Massachusetts.

Speaker 3 And I pulled up that driver's license and had a photograph.

Speaker 3 So with that photograph now,

Speaker 3 and that social security number, I went to the police department where I formerly worked.

Speaker 1 So is this an identity theft situation? Yeah, and it expands from there. But what Mark is currently, that's the trail he's following, right? It's identity theft.

Speaker 1 Like she might have taken someone's like purse or something. Right.

Speaker 1 So why is this person who's living under an alias using a burner phone and claims to be Harvard educated, working at the mayor's office, writing grants, but nobody really can verify anything about her?

Speaker 1 There's a lot of red flags there. A lot of red flags.

Speaker 1 And I love that this woman who worked with her in some capacity trusted her intuition because had she not, you know, maybe she would have gotten those count numbers.

Speaker 1 So Mark had mentioned in an earlier clip, he's questioning, could this be a parental kidnapping?

Speaker 1 Because, you know, since those cross state lines, they can fall into the FBI's jurisdiction or whatever you call it and become their investigation.

Speaker 1 And that's just for anyone who doesn't know, like when a parent kidnaps their own child. Right.
So maybe there's another parent somewhere who doesn't know where this child is. Right.

Speaker 1 It happens with like. disputes over custody, you know, and people not wanting to give their children to their ex-partner or whatever.

Speaker 1 So he's he's questioning if it's that, because why else would she be living under an alias and have a three-year-old with her?

Speaker 1 And he has contacts in this community in law enforcement because he formerly worked in the police department there.

Speaker 1 And so he brings this identification that he's found with her photograph on it and this information for a woman in Massachusetts or someplace.

Speaker 1 He brings it to the police department because the nonprofit that Jenna Kaplan is a part of, my brother's keeper, meets at the police department once a week.

Speaker 1 So they would know her there.

Speaker 1 So he goes to the police department and he shows them this picture and he's like, do you know this person? Never seen her in my life. And,

Speaker 1 okay,

Speaker 1 so Mark kind of knew that was the answer he was going to get, but great confirmation. So they know she's lying about who she is, but they don't know why.

Speaker 1 The chief of police in Nashua, he says to Mark, I'm going to send a detective back over to her residence to see what we can find out and we'll let you know what we find so that detective goes over there and who opens the door but a criminal defense attorney weird yeah a guy named nick and the detective says i'm looking for a woman named jenna kaplan and this three-year-old girl and he says that that's his girlfriend and that's their daughter and that jenna and their daughter are actually on a bus to new york city they'd had an argument and she'd just taken off for the weekend to get some space.

Speaker 1 What is going on? What is going on? Because this is an attorney they're talking to. Did she get wind of something? Yeah.
So the boyfriend, of course, being an attorney, he knows better.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to let you inside. I don't have to let you inside and therefore I'm not going to.
We assume that he's an actual attorney. Yes.
Okay. Yes.

Speaker 1 And this further piques suspicions: like, why

Speaker 1 would she happen to be in New York that weekend? What's going on? So the detective goes back to the police chief, who then updates Mark, and they decide that, okay, Mark's with the FBI. That's scary.

Speaker 1 Not that a police detective should be taken lightly, but I think the FBI, if you're an attorney, you know, you don't want to be in trouble with the FBI.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's also just like a way to get cases actually like looked at.

Speaker 1 And an FBI agent bringing this to the police department and saying, let's look into this is different from just a random citizen bringing this in.

Speaker 1 You know, like there's totally like it's going to to get looked into more. Yeah, you at least know that multiple people are interested.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like it's not going to slip through the cracks. They're going to keep hunting this information down.

Speaker 1 So the boyfriend doesn't let the detective inside. This makes them more suspicious.
And so Mark goes down to the house and again tries to talk to the boyfriend to see if he'll tell him anything

Speaker 1 because they get the sense he knows more than he's saying.

Speaker 3 So I went down to Nashville, called the detective. He met me at the house

Speaker 3 and gave me a brief rundown.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we went over there. And to this point,

Speaker 3 the boyfriend, the attorney, had always met the detective on the front steps of this multifamily home. And the detective never had an opportunity to go inside.
So I think the game kind of changed.

Speaker 3 Instead of the police officer being there, it was the FBI knocking on the door. And this is a criminal defense attorney.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I just persuaded him that it'll be, you know, let's not talk about your business out here on the porch with all the neighbors around. Why don't we go inside and talk privately?

Speaker 3 When we got inside that house, that a lot of alarm bells started going off because the floor inside this house, well, the floor, the floor was covered with Legos. And anybody that has kids, now this

Speaker 3 woman and her kid is supposed to have been gone for four or five days. Anybody that has kids knows you're not going to leave Legos around on the floor.
You can step on it.

Speaker 1 Painful. Painful.
And, you know, I can't speak for everybody, but the moment my kid is asleep or at child care out of the house with my husband, I'm cleaning.

Speaker 1 I love her, but I don't want to see her stuff. Well, especially Legos like strewn in the walkway.
That's unrealistic. So unrealistic.
Like that would make me crazy.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's Legos all over the floor, but this kid is supposedly gone for the weekend, which he is aware of.

Speaker 1 You know, when he says they're in New York for the weekend, that means you know when they're coming back roughly. Right.
Because it's like just a train ride away, a short train ride, I assume.

Speaker 1 Right, because they're in New Hampshire. So the boyfriend sticks to his story at first and he just says, yeah, it's kind of messy.
It doesn't bother me.

Speaker 1 But he eventually consents that Mark and the detective take a look around inside the house and they go into the primary bedroom and there's a pile of papers on the bed along with multiple cell phones and computers.

Speaker 1 Why did he consent to this?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know.
It sounds like Mark's pretty persuasive. Yes, Mark is pretty persuasive.
I did love that. Like, we don't want to have this conversation out here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's pretty good tactic. Yeah.
So they go into the bedroom. They notice all the stuff.
And of course, Mark asks if he can look through it all and take it with him and make copies.

Speaker 1 And oddly, and I don't know why, but the boyfriend consents to this. So Mark takes everything with him.
And he says, you know, why is all this here?

Speaker 1 And the boyfriend's response is that Jenna just threw it all on the bed before she left.

Speaker 1 I'm not a neat freak, but I'm not going to sleep in a bed that's like got a bunch of stuff all over it for a whole weekend. Yeah, but you know, people do weird things.
Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Speaker 1 I don't know, but it is, it is strange. Right.
And it's strange that he allowed them to take it. Although maybe since he's an attorney, he's thinking if I say no, I'll look like I'm hiding something.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay, so Mark takes everything with him and he's pretty happy with this haul.
And it's a lot to look through. But within 15 minutes of leaving their home, the boyfriend calls him.

Speaker 3 And the attorney calls me up and tells me that he'd been lying to me the whole time, that she'd been hiding in the basement with a baby behind the boilers.

Speaker 3 We never had a reason to go into the basement, right? It's a multifamily home and whatnot. But that was probably the delay in him coming to the front door so she could go down the back stairwell.

Speaker 3 He told me that she was down on Main Street trying to get her stuff back, her paperwork. So I immediately called the detective.

Speaker 3 They arranged for a police officer to pick her up on the street and give her a ride to the police department. And I turned around on the highway and went back.

Speaker 3 And by the time I got there, she was there. She signed into the police department under her fake name.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah, Mark.
It's all coming together. Yeah, we jump in time a little bit in this clip.
But what Mark is saying is, so he leaves the house.

Speaker 1 Shortly after, like within 15 minutes, he says, the boyfriend calls him. Hey, I've been lying.
She was at the house with

Speaker 1 her daughter. She was hiding.
But now she knows that you took all her stuff and she wants it back. So she left and she's trying to get to the police department and say, Give me my stuff back.

Speaker 1 So she came upstairs, probably, and was like, Why is all my stuff gone?

Speaker 1 So this explains the toys being out and also all the stuff in the bed that he may or may not have known what it was or why it was there.

Speaker 1 Maybe she was in the bedroom with it whenever they arrived and then she rushed into the basement. Why wouldn't she grab that stuff? I don't know.
Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 of course, this is kind of great for Mark. He's like, here's the person I've been wanting to talk to.
And you're right here at the police department.

Speaker 1 And you have this little girl, and we don't know who you are.

Speaker 1 So he asks if she will speak with him.

Speaker 3 So she comes into the interview room, agrees to speak to us, whatnot. And I'm not sure she knew how much of the stuff of her stuff I had with me that the fiancé had given me.

Speaker 3 so she was sticking to her story until I started pulling out documents

Speaker 3 and one was like one that really stood out was there was an application for a birth certificate out of Denver Colorado

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 up until this point you know the person originally called it in the boyfriend and even her during the interview kept referring to this little girl as Isabella

Speaker 1 so I left the name in there because it's actually not her name which we'll get into later. But of course, she's, you know, a minor.

Speaker 1 But that's not her name. So my.
The birth certificate had a different name on it, essentially. Right.

Speaker 1 And I'm curious, I don't know if you went into this, but the name on the birth certificate, the mother's name and the father's name, did that match up with her and the attorney?

Speaker 1 Or were you going to get into that later? I'm definitely going to get into that. Okay, these are great questions.
I'm glad you asked.

Speaker 1 I'm just so curious what he finds with these papers and everything. So, okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So he knows she's lying and now he has all these papers, but he didn't have like a bunch of time between getting all of these documents and realizing, oh, she's here. To even look at what he has.

Speaker 1 Right. So he's just kind of doing a quick scan of everything.
Yeah. And it's already not checking the boxes, but she agrees to talk to him.
So he confronts her with these discrepancies.

Speaker 1 And she tells him, well, I'm running from an abusive relationship and my real name is Dana Lawrence. And this is true.
This is her name, Dana Lawrence. Okay.

Speaker 1 But she's been lying about her identity using someone else's social security number. She has multiple fake pieces of identification or pieces of identification that are stolen and not hers.

Speaker 1 And notably, because we're going to come back to this, Mark has located this birth certificate for the little girl that they're referring to as Isabella. And the father is listed as unknown.

Speaker 1 So Dana is arrested at this point because they know she's falsifying her identity and they don't know exactly what the extent of it is, but she's arrested on this alone, which for this little girl, super sad.

Speaker 1 She has to go into state custody at this point because her birth certificate shows that the father is unknown, which means it's not, she's not legally, you know, related to this boyfriend either, even though she's clearly been living with him and under his care.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's rough. Really rough.
So the boyfriend comes down to the police department in the midst of all this and he's very upset because this little girl clearly means a lot to him.

Speaker 1 So he he tries to tell Mark that he's the little girl's father. So Mark's like, okay, we'll take a DNA test.
Then his story changes again.

Speaker 3 And that's when he changed his story to, well, I'm not the birth father. I'm the adopted father.

Speaker 3 And again, we hit him up with, well, you know, we'll have agents at the courthouse in Baltimore tomorrow morning to get the adoption paperwork.

Speaker 3 And once we get verification that you have legally adopted her, you can take your daughter and be on your way.

Speaker 3 And then yet again, he changes his story to say, well, I don't know if she, meaning Dana, ever turned the paperwork into the courthouse.

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Speaker 1 yeah so it's it's really sad um the boyfriend clearly cares for this little girl but he and dana were never married he's not related to this child so now mark needs to find out who her father is because you know nobody wants her to be in state custody yeah So Mark continues the conversation with the boyfriend, and he did say the boyfriend was really never that cooperative, but they did speak on a few occasions where he gave up a little bit more.

Speaker 1 Mark is trying to understand why a criminal defense attorney would get into a relationship with someone like who we now know as Dana Lawrence and also continue to lie for her because as an attorney, there are consequences for that.

Speaker 1 So apparently, shortly after this guy and Dana had met, she'd told him she was pregnant, pregnant. But shortly after that, she'd run off to Texas.

Speaker 1 And since he truly believed that she was pregnant with his child, he hired a private investigator to go and find her. Okay, this is all so wild.

Speaker 1 Wait, can you clarify at what point in their relationship did she say, I'm pregnant and run off to Texas?

Speaker 1 Basically, at some point after meeting Nick and beginning to date him on the East Coast, Dana takes off again with Isabella, who's very little.

Speaker 1 So Dana runs off to Texas with Isabella and calls Nick from Texas. And she's like, I'm in Texas.
I'm here with my mom. She has Isabella with her.

Speaker 1 And so Nick goes to Texas and he's like, what's going on? And he talks to Dana's sister, Billy, who tells Nick her real name is Dana Lawrence.

Speaker 1 Well, Nick is really confused at this point because somewhere along the way, Dana had also told Nick that she might be pregnant with his biological child. Okay.
So, but she's not.

Speaker 1 But she's not and never was. Got it.
Yeah. So Nick then hires a PI firm back in New Jersey because that's where Dana says she's running from.

Speaker 1 And he says, I want you to find out everything you can about Dana Lawrence and tell me what's going on here.

Speaker 1 Well, this PI firm said that Dana had defrauded a family and a rabbi in New Jersey, both different versions of a faked pregnancy.

Speaker 1 So she was on the run because her whole MO with this fake pregnancy was financial support.

Speaker 1 And so they had been providing that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Interesting. But she was never pregnant.
And it also said, yeah, it's not the first time that she had pretended to be pregnant. So, okay, well, that clarifies a lot.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So the whole thing was a fraud. She was never pregnant that time around at all.
Gotcha. But that is why Nick was so invested, even after she ran off to Texas, came back, finds out she's a criminal.

Speaker 1 You know, I think I had also mentioned a conversation where he did tell Mark or tell someone that he had always wanted a family. And so that was big for him.

Speaker 3 So now he knows, but yet, given all that, he moves her from Texas to Philly and sets her up in an apartment that's owned by a former client of his.

Speaker 3 And he's, you know, bouncing back and forth between Philly and Baltimore. because she's wanted nationwide at this point.
And he knows she's wanted nationwide.

Speaker 3 But he's hiding her out until she has some problems in Philadelphia, neighborhood dispute, neighbors calling the police on her and whatnot. So she's got to get out of Dodge quick again.

Speaker 3 So now the attorney has to move her again. And he complained to the landlord, who he knew, because he's represented them in a civil case, that it was like the sixth or seventh time he had to move her.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, they probably went up to Maine and to Vermont. You know, they wandered around for a little bit, but they did end up settling in Nashua.

Speaker 1 So when he says she's wanted nationwide, there's an arrest warrant out for her, essentially, for like identity theft or fraud or something.

Speaker 1 Various identity theft and fraud charges. Okay.

Speaker 1 And they're in multiple states. A lot of them are on the East Coast, but there's multiple places where she's wanted.
Gotcha. So for a while, this kind of works and they fly under the radar.

Speaker 1 This criminal defense attorney, his practice was in Baltimore, but he would

Speaker 1 return on the weekends to this little apartment that they had rented.

Speaker 1 Now, this chapter of Mark sort of unraveling things is really where we see how methodical Dana Lawrence is and get a sense of how many times she must have done this. Because

Speaker 1 while her boyfriend is working in Baltimore during the work week, even though he's rented them an apartment there, she goes to a women's shelter with her daughter.

Speaker 1 And she says that I'm running from an abusive relationship and I need shelter here. So she does this and she really weaves herself into this community.

Speaker 1 And part of the way that this shelter works is you do volunteer work because, of course, you know, you're not paying rent to be there. It's for your safety.

Speaker 1 And she really immerses herself in this community of volunteers. And at first, it's on a very part-time basis.
And through this volunteer work, Dana cozies up to people who work in the mayor's office.

Speaker 1 So, okay, back to the police station. Dana's arrested.
And we know the little girl's taken and she's sent to live with the foster family.

Speaker 1 So, Mark's really his first priority is: I need to find out who her dad is and get her out of this situation. He needs the full story.

Speaker 1 So, he's got the birth certificate, and he's seen that the child's father is listed as unknown. So, from that birth certificate, Mark is able to locate a nurse that helped deliver the baby.

Speaker 1 And the delivery happened in Colorado. That's where the baby was born.
So he calls up this nurse.

Speaker 3 And I got a hold of her in Colorado, and she remembered the birth because when the baby was born, she had certain things in her stool sample that triggered an alert to

Speaker 3 child protective services. And she also had a conversation with the dad, who she never got his name, but

Speaker 3 she knew he was from

Speaker 3 originally from Massachusetts. They had that conversation because that nurse, Mary is her name, she was from Massachusetts, and she remembered he was either from North or South Carolina.

Speaker 3 So I knew I was looking for Matt. Well, I should back up.
The landlord never met him, but knew that the boyfriend was named Matt. I was able to identify.

Speaker 3 two individuals that fit that profile living in that general vicinity where she was during that three-month timeframe. And the very first one I was able to reach was a guy in South Carolina.

Speaker 3 And he says, Well, look at, I don't know Isabella. My daughter's name is.

Speaker 3 My girlfriend left with my daughter, you know, two, three years ago and never came back.

Speaker 3 And I've been looking for her ever since, but I don't think that's my daughter because, you know, we were in Colorado at the time. Then we were in South Carolina.
Last I knew, she was in Florida.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But is this him? I mean, it sounds like it could be him. It's him.

Speaker 1 So we know now this little girl's name is not Isabella. Obviously, we're not going to reveal her actual name, but she has a dad who's been out there looking for her since her birth.

Speaker 1 And he had been looking for her by checking arrest records in every place that he thought Dana might be. Oh my gosh.
And the child, aka Isabella, not her real name. She's three years old at this time.

Speaker 1 At this time, she's three years old. Oh, yeah.
This is three years of him doing this. Totally.
I mean, it's just heartbreaking, like so much time lost.

Speaker 1 And so even though he's checking all of these arrest records in every place that he thinks there's even a possibility she could have been, he doesn't know her name is Dina Lawrence.

Speaker 1 He knows her by the name Genevieve Morgan. A different name.
A different name. So interesting that what is her name, Jenna? So at first it was Jenna Kaplan.
Jenna Kaplan. Now it's Genevieve Morgan.

Speaker 1 Yeah. She had a lot of different names.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So they go ahead, they do a DNA test. They confirm that he's the father.
And so now they need to get Isabella into her father's custody.

Speaker 1 So Dana's in jail, but they have a custody hearing for Isabella coming up. And so they fly him up there and they're at this hearing.
Dana's trying to talk her way out of this.

Speaker 1 She wants her criminal defense attorney boyfriend to get custody. She's trying to argue that point because they're in a relationship.
The daughter's comfortable with him, supposedly.

Speaker 1 But meanwhile, Mark's been in contact with this actual father of the child, and he's flown up to New Hampshire for this hearing.

Speaker 3 Deanna kept insisting she didn't know who the father was until all of a sudden the doors swing open, and here comes the dad. And then she's like, oh, yeah, now I remember he is the father.

Speaker 3 Now, mind you, they've been living together on and off for a couple years.

Speaker 3 So the court eventually gave Matt custody of his daughter. But from jail,

Speaker 3 she was calling him, calling Matt, trying to persuade him not to take Isabella away from her and her boyfriend, that they could all live under one roof, the three adults and raised her.

Speaker 1 Bananas. So when he says they've been living together a couple of years, he means the boyfriend.
He is actually referring to the father of this child. It was not some fling.

Speaker 1 This was like another relationship that she had been in. They were living together for multiple years, off and on.
They were in a relationship. She had the baby and then what just disappeared?

Speaker 1 She disappeared. She listed unknown on the paternity side of the birth certificate and jetted.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think I can speculate a reason why she does this, but we'll get into that later. But yeah, so then she has this like wild idea that, okay,

Speaker 1 father of Isabella, first name Matt, just come and live with us. We'll be one big happy family.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Matt's like wild.
Absolutely not. So, yeah, that was maybe one of the crazier little moments in this interview, actually, is that she even thought that was a possibility.

Speaker 1 But Matt returns to South Carolina with his daughter, which I'm sure was a massive adjustment for both of them. And Dana Lawrence is in jail and they're trying to decide what to charge her with.

Speaker 1 They eventually land on identity fraud, which is because she was using a social security number that wasn't hers on various rental applications and other sort of forms.

Speaker 1 So in September of 2017, Dana was convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison.

Speaker 3 She got 18 months federal time for using the social security number on that rental application.

Speaker 3 I credit her daughter Kennedy for a lot of that because Kennedy actually took the stand against her mother in the sentencing. And she hit the nail on the head.

Speaker 3 She told the judge, if you let her go, she's just going to go do this to other people. Kennedy's like, she destroyed my life, my siblings' lives, and every person she touched.

Speaker 1 Who is Kennedy? So, Dana Lawrence is sentenced to prison. And part of why she got an 18-month sentence is because another daughter of hers actually showed up to testify against her.

Speaker 1 And now is where I learned that Dana Lawrence has six children

Speaker 1 with six different men, which, of course, like I don't have any judgments on that as an isolated fact. Yeah.
But given her pattern of deceiving people, I think it's very telling.

Speaker 1 How old is Dana Lawrence? Dana Lawrence, I think, now is in her early 40s. Okay.
So she got charged. So she's charged with fraud.
All of these people come out of the woodwork. Right.

Speaker 1 And had they all been looking for her? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So as Mark is putting together this like case against her and helping the prosecutors get everything they need together, he's unraveling her past, which I'm now going to get into.

Speaker 1 And part of that is this daughter Kennedy.

Speaker 1 So we find out Dana has a lot of children with different fathers and that she uses pregnancy to, you know, manipulate and deceive people and defraud them of money in certain instances.

Speaker 1 So real pregnancies. Real pregnancies and fake pregnancies.
Right. And she is always leaving the father as unknown because on every birth certificate.
Right.

Speaker 1 On every birth certificate, except for her first birth certificate of her first daughter, Brittany, who I'm going to talk about. But we learned that Dana is from St.
Augustine, Florida.

Speaker 1 Her first child, a girl, is placed for adoption, and she's a teenager at the time. So until recently, no one's a teenager at the time of her first daughter's birth.
Oh, Dana's a teenager. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So she's placed for adoption, and no one really knows anything about this baby girl or her life, but we'll come back to that. Then Dana gets married a few years later to a man who lives in Utah.

Speaker 1 So she moves to Utah. She tells him that she's from a very wealthy family associated with Kentucky fried chicken.

Speaker 1 Not true. The marriage ended and Dana went to Illinois and then to New York.

Speaker 1 In New York, she met a very wealthy man and entered into a relationship with him, but then he broke up with her and she began stalking him. Oh, wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So his family hires an attorney, kind of gets rid of her. She tried to tell him she was pregnant with his child.
She wasn't. How much time has passed? You know, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 I think this is over the course of like less than 10 years. Okay.
All of this. Wow.
So she, I'm just like trying to track all the movements. And then she gets to New York.

Speaker 1 She's in a relationship with someone and then stalks him. Like, what was going on with that relationship? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So she learned that he was very wealthy and she started behaving in a way that was strange to him. And so he broke things off, which really upset her.
And so she

Speaker 1 got pregnant in New York and put no name on the father side of the birth certificate. So this is her second daughter.
Her first was placed for adoption when she was a teenager back in Florida.

Speaker 1 So, this is her second daughter, Kennedy. We're in the late 90s in New York.
Dana is keeping herself afloat with essentially credit card fraud.

Speaker 1 She's spending a lot on credit cards that she has no business being in the possession of.

Speaker 1 And she's leaving really generous tips at a local bar, really getting to know the staff there, and ends up sleeping with someone who works at the bar. And she then conceives a second daughter.

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Speaker 1 So Dana and her two daughters move to Florida. That's where she meets another man who is, I think, a pilot.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so with this pilot, they then all move, Dana, the pilot, the two daughters to Indiana.

Speaker 1 In Indiana, during their relationship, she has an idea for a small business and he gives her $5,000. As soon as she's got that five grand, she's gone again.

Speaker 1 Okay, she's not using it to start a business. No.
Okay. She's just taking the money.
Sounds like she's already kind of running

Speaker 1 fraud like all the time. All the time, these like small-time scams.
Scams. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So she takes her two daughters to Massachusetts, but eventually, for whatever reason, calls this pilot back up and says, actually, I'm pregnant. So he then.

Speaker 1 leaves Indiana and goes to Massachusetts to be with her. He's now moved from Florida to Indiana for her and then now to Massachusetts.
Right.

Speaker 1 And Dana, shortly after that, so this is in the early 2000s, gives birth to a son. Okay.
And from what I understand, that son is the pilot's son. Gotcha.
So that is his dad.

Speaker 1 But once again, she leaves his name off of the birth certificate. Wild.
Yeah. And then the whole family, all of them, moved to Rhode Island in 2003.
She tells people she's Harvard educated.

Speaker 1 She has custody of her nieces.

Speaker 1 And she starts telling her daughters to tell people that they are her nieces, that she has gained custody of them after a family tragedy. Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And so she also starts telling people that she's going to inherit millions of dollars.
And she's just, her inheritance keeps getting held up.

Speaker 1 So she's running in these wealthy social circles, kind of pretending that she's this wealthy Rhode Island mom slash aunt with custody of her nieces. I mean, it's wild.

Speaker 1 This reminds me of the Peggy Fulford story we did where she was Dennis Rodman's financial manager, and she was telling people her son was her brother. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think I remember she said she did that because she wanted to look younger. Like she, he would, you know, she didn't want to be like aged by that.

Speaker 1 She had him very young, but she was similarly like, lying about your kids' identity is so strange. And I can't imagine asking your kid to lie.
Yeah. Like horrible.

Speaker 1 Like to think that you don't want to identify to people that you're their mom would be like so sad. So sad.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And so she tells her friends in Rhode Island that she's having a lot of trouble getting her inheritance.
I'm not exactly sure what her stories consisted of, but she steals from her friends.

Speaker 1 They loan her money. They loan her credit cards.
She takes them for a ride. That's what she does.
And she knows she's going to get found out in Rhode Island.

Speaker 1 So she flees to Canada with her three kids. Leaves the pilot.
I don't know where. Pilot's not coming with them.
Pilot's gone. Okay.
Not even

Speaker 1 the ability to fly a plane will get him there with her. So while in Canada, Dana gives birth to another child.
Whose child is this? I don't know. Okay.
And then she comes back to the United States.

Speaker 1 But since she's wanted, she has multiple arrest warrants at this point all over the East Coast. She stopped at the border.
With her four kids. With her four kids.

Speaker 1 So she puts the son that she gave birth to in Canada. She places him for adoption.
In Canada?

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.
I don't know if he actually would have been placed for adoption in Canada or the U.S., but she gave birth to him in Canada. Yeah.
And conceived him, I think, in the U.S.

Speaker 1 And so he doesn't come across the border with them. I don't know exactly how that pans out, but she places him for adoption.
Interesting. yeah.
And so she goes to New York and she faces charges.

Speaker 1 And in the process of that, she loses custody of the two daughters that she has in tow, as well as the son that belonged to the pilot. And what happens to the son?

Speaker 1 So the son goes to be with his dad, who we know is the pilot. And the daughters, they have to go somewhere.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So the youngest daughter, they locate her dad, who was the person who worked at the bar. And she's now sent to live with this family as a young kid she's never met before.
That's so wild.

Speaker 1 And also, she's been raised with these siblings and now they're all being separated. That's got to be so hard.
Yeah, it was really hard.

Speaker 1 Kennedy was interviewed about it at one point and talked about just how hard it was. And she was actually sent to live with Dana's sister, Billy.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Dana asked even her own children to lie for her. So sometime around 2010, when Kennedy is 12 or 13 years old, Dana begins dating another attorney, and they're living with him in Boston.

Speaker 1 And then she tells him, I need to go to Florida. I'm going to be arrested if we stay here.
He's like, okay. And they all go to Florida.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Because whenever she was initially arrested after coming back into the U.S., and then her son gets sent to live with his father, her daughter goes to live with her father, and then the other daughter goes to live with her sister.

Speaker 1 She's sent to prison, but I'm guessing for a very short amount of time because it's for fraud or. credit card theft or something.
So she's probably out in like a year or less.

Speaker 1 And then it sounds like she gets right back into her old tricks. Yeah.
And she regains custody of Kennedy because Kennedy was with her sister. Wow.

Speaker 1 So they go to Florida, Dana, 12 or 13-year-old Kennedy and this new attorney she's dating.

Speaker 1 And then just like always, she then does something in Florida and has to leave. Well, this time she does something pretty unimaginable and leaves Kennedy behind.

Speaker 3 You know, when he and Dana left Miami Beach, she had stolen somebody's identity at her place of employment and got credit cards in that woman's name. That's horrible.
That all started unraveling.

Speaker 3 The police called her in for an interview. She told her, hey, I can't make it now.
Today, I'll be in there tomorrow after work at four o'clock. Who would believe that?

Speaker 3 Well, North Miami Beach police gave her that courtesy. And she went home that night and told Kennedy, we're on the run, we're moving again.
Because she used to say, the boogeyman's coming.

Speaker 3 She was a boogeyman's coming. And and kennedy's a small kid at that time

Speaker 3 yeah she grew up with it but at 13 years old now yeah kennedy's like i'm done i have friends here i'm not going good for her her mother and um jonathan boyfriend gave her 20

Speaker 3 and left her in an apartment by herself in miami a 13 year old girl right so she's but you know what give that kid credit she survived for about two weeks And she went to school every day because that was important to her, taking a city bus.

Speaker 3 And then when the money ran out, she turned herself. She called the police and says, Hey, can somebody come take care of me? My mother abandoned me.

Speaker 3 So the police came, put her in foster care until her aunt Billy could come down and lay claim to her.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Since the beginning of really her late teenage years, she's had this pattern of being on the run from state to state in different relationships and having children and taking them along with her. So

Speaker 1 Kennedy goes back into Billy's care at that point.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we still don't know much about this first daughter that Dana had as a teenager, but all of the other siblings that can be in touch are in touch.

Speaker 1 So the two younger daughters and then the son that she had with the pilot. And so Mark didn't know anything about this first daughter.

Speaker 1 And then when all of this came out about Dana's arrest and her 18-month prison sentence in New Hampshire, Mark was asked to do a TV interview and he got in the car to go to the interview and he got a call from a guy in Maryland.

Speaker 3 I got a call from a guy in Townsend, Maryland, who the weekend before was at a bar with his wife.

Speaker 3 They had just flown in from out of town, stopped to get a bite to eat, a drink, and who do they run into but Dana Lawrence in the bar. She had now finished her sentence.

Speaker 3 She was done her parole or probation, I should say.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 she had business cards with her true name this time, Dana Lawrence Social Justice Center or something.

Speaker 3 But she told them that she worked for ABC developing new reality shows and wanted to know if he and his wife would be interested in being in this new reality show that ABC was putting together.

Speaker 3 And, you know, if they were, you know, could they provide their information to her and she would get them a casting call the wife was all excited by this was ready to jump on board but the husband's like yeah if it sounds too good to be true let's just hold off a little bit you know as soon as she got out of prison in new hampshire she was right back at it new scheme new reality tv show yeah

Speaker 1 and this person who reached out to mark actually found him the same way i did which was at this point dana's case is googleable And so Mark's name comes up because he's interviewed about it.

Speaker 1 And he reached out to him on LinkedIn. So that's how he got in touch with Mark.
So this is all still happening.

Speaker 1 And at this point, Mark doesn't know anything about the first daughter that Dana ever had.

Speaker 1 And actually, just before our interview, like the weekend before, he heard from her on LinkedIn and then they got on the phone.

Speaker 3 Brittany was the first of Dana's kids. She was born in like 1991, the very beginning of the stuff.
Dana was very, very young. And

Speaker 3 nobody knew what ever happened to Brittany. Nobody could tell you.
You know, her sister couldn't tell me. The kids couldn't because Brittany was gone before any of them were born, right?

Speaker 3 According to Billy, the sister, yeah, they knew she went for adoption. But,

Speaker 3 you know, as luck would have it, Brittany's adopted family gave her a 21 in me kit,

Speaker 3 and she took it submitted it and she sat on those results for a while and never hit the link like who you might be related to she got the data back but never hit it until very recently and she hit like who you might be connected to and it was through that she was connected to Dana as her birth mother so

Speaker 3 she reached out for Dana not knowing any of this stuff and you know Dana's tried to suck her into her her same scheme,

Speaker 3 telling her that, you know, that she's heir to some lumber mill or sawmill fortune, that she travels down to the Dominican Republic every year during the holidays to give gifts to the underprivileged down there, that she spends most of her time in Spain.

Speaker 3 You know, it's the same type of stuff she told. other people in the past, you know, being connected to the royal family or to Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 3 And she was, you know, sucking Britney in. Now, Britney is not Britney anymore.
Brittany's kid now, her adopted family gear.

Speaker 3 So something just didn't sit well recently with her about these conversations with her mom. And her mom sent her a picture of her when she was a kid.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 she

Speaker 3 was doing her research online and saw this story. It saw the mug shots of Dana and noticed that there was a mole on Dana's mugshot between her eyes.

Speaker 3 The same mole as on the picture Dana sent to Brittany from years ago. So she started digging.
You know, she found my name. I didn't know, like, this was just this past Sunday.
You know,

Speaker 3 I get a message on LinkedIn. First, I get a request on LinkedIn to be a contact.
So when Brittany called me,

Speaker 3 she's like, you know, this is a story.

Speaker 3 that I'm being told. And she says, my parents adopted me.
I've been living in Tennessee. I obviously never met like birth parents.
And I'm an only child.

Speaker 3 But putting the pieces together, because Dana is back in, I guess, Washington, D.C. area.

Speaker 1 Okay, so it's a lot. But Mark is basically saying that Dana's first child is reaching out to him.
And she's learning on her own through Googling that her mom. is a con woman and that she's been

Speaker 1 just so horrible.

Speaker 1 I mean, also thinking about like like this child you haven't talked to in so long reaching out to you. And then she just starts spitting these lies to her.

Speaker 1 It's just hard sometimes to understand how someone could be such a pathological liar and just also be

Speaker 1 only thinking about how she can use people. Totally.
And it's like, there's no big buildup to a prison sentence here. She's out.
I mean, at least when I talked to Mark, what, two weeks ago?

Speaker 1 She wasn't in prison.

Speaker 1 I think the longest sentence she had was the New hampshire one um she's likely still doing this can i ask a question about the daughter who's we're calling brittany but that's not her name right you know it's got to be such a disappointing thing maybe i mean to understand that your mother is a sort of serial scammer but was she able to connect with any of her siblings yeah so mark has stayed in touch with definitely the two girls now young women that he got to know over the course of her trial and conviction and he did put them in touch and I don't know what that resulted in, but I know that he was able to connect them.

Speaker 1 And maybe they'll have a relationship of some kind. And yeah, it's just got to be so disappointing if you're someone who is looking for a biological parent.

Speaker 1 And then you find out that the first thing they do is lie to you. The first thing.
Yeah. Horrible.
Horrible. So.
Brittany's only interactions with her mom have just been her lying again.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I was asking Mark, like, how is it possible that she's not serving more time for the kind of crimes she's committing?

Speaker 1 And I think it kind of goes back to something we see a lot of in these sort of small time scams. You convince someone that you're pregnant, but how do you prove that you were not pregnant?

Speaker 1 How does someone else prove that you were never pregnant? Or like

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 run a bunch of cons,

Speaker 1 but they're not violent. You know, this is not violent crime.
So, you know, she's up in the East Coast, like stealing from her friends.

Speaker 1 And then she does get a conviction, but it's, what was it, like 18 months or something?

Speaker 1 And so then she's just out again. And a lot of times also good behavior, maybe she doesn't even serve those 18 months.

Speaker 1 And, you know, so she has a record, but it's not like she's done anything that legally could put her behind bars for a very long amount of time. Right.
Yeah. Totally.

Speaker 1 It's like all small enough that she can skip town and not be at the top of someone's list.

Speaker 1 This is like the essential problem with serial scammers: that we see all the time is that, you know, if I'm meeting someone like Dana, like, I want to know because, like, you know, she's going to probably try to scam me or whatever.

Speaker 1 She comes into a community, it's like they probably want to know, but it's so difficult to actually stop people like this because they just continue to move and do the same thing over and over again.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. And she probably does gain the trust of people by saying she's a mom and she's a single mom.
And I can see how someone might fall for that. Like, who would suspect it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't. All the way back in the beginning, when Mark was contacted about her behavior in the mayor's office,

Speaker 1 you know, he at least intercepted the case before she got those account numbers. Yeah.
And the fact that.

Speaker 1 he did something about it and that it actually led to some charges is pretty amazing because i feel like that's actually kind of rare when it comes to scams yeah and some press so now she's more Google-able.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Which I'm sure Brittany's not the first person to Google her with suspicions and now find out the truth.

Speaker 1 So yeah, Dana has also told people that she's the heir to the Estee Lauder fortune, that she works for George Lucas at a film company. I mean, she has all kinds of stories.

Speaker 1 She's conned wealthy businessmen. the pilot, a rabbi, her own family and friends, all manner of romantic partners, a lot of people who didn't ever know who she really was.

Speaker 1 And, you know, female con artists, I think it is less talked about in how violating it is.

Speaker 1 But if you're in a relationship with someone and they've completely lied to you about everything and there's intimacy there, it's like, have you consented really to anything? No.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's really horrible. It's really horrible.
And so she's probably out there and still

Speaker 1 doing this. And, you know, I also wanted to mention that the attorney, the criminal defense attorney that Mark interacted with, he was actually disbarred.
Wow. Because of this, because of his lies?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he can no longer practice law there because he lied. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah.
I mean, that makes sense. Can't do that.
Yeah. Can't be doing that.
What a story.

Speaker 1 I can't believe she's still just out there. I mean, I can, but it's just like, it is mind-blowing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I know that got so confusing in the middle of trying to explain her history, but I think that's by design. Truly.
Like truly.

Speaker 1 Trying to figure out, if you're a person who meets her and then trying to like sort through her history or past, it would be incredibly confusing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like all of these different fathers of different children, none of them on their birth certificates, different locations,

Speaker 1 different identities and careers. Everything about her is like, she's a chameleon.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And what about her family? Did you ever learn anything about them? I didn't.

Speaker 1 I heard sort of a rumor from someone I called that didn't interview that she had a very difficult upbringing, but I can't verify that. And yeah.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Well, thanks for telling me that story. Yeah.
Thanks for sticking with it. Yeah.
Lots of twists and turns. So many twists and turns.
So much travel. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, listen, I don't have a great true crime recommendation right now. But you have a medium recommendation? I have a recommendation.

Speaker 1 It's just not, it's not true crime, but I have sort of been loving, I've been loving it.

Speaker 1 I got on the the train later there's three seasons it's called the gilded age it's on hbo so this is a show this is a tv show okay scripted not documentary and it's like following families in the late 1800s like

Speaker 1 1895 like very close to the turn of the century in brooklyn New York. Okay.
And it's just like about like society and it's like the new money versus the old money.

Speaker 1 Families that are like, well, we've been around since the American Revolution and you just got here. here.
And they're like constructing brownstones.

Speaker 1 And it's sort of like Downton Abbey, except it's in New York. And,

Speaker 1 you know, there's a lot of historical parts. Like the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge happens.
And it's just really fun. Cool.
And sort of an easy, entertaining

Speaker 1 watch.

Speaker 1 When you see them building the Brownstones, do you want to reach for the TV and say, just buy them all. Just buy them all.
Yeah. Someone please invest that I'm related to in the future.

Speaker 1 It is fun. Like they're living in the Brownstones, but it's still horse and buggy.
Love that. So they're like pulling up to the Brownstone

Speaker 1 in the carriage. So Ben and I started watching this as just like a relax at the end of a stressful day, put on a couple episodes of this.

Speaker 1 But there's one storyline and I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's three seasons out, like, and they've been out for a while, but there's a storyline of one of the characters who meets this woman who, like,

Speaker 1 everyone's like, who's her family? And we're not sure. We're not sure.
And then she sort of of surreptitiously gets him in on this like investment deal. And I was like, it's a scam.
It's a scam.

Speaker 1 And Ben was like, what? Are you sure? I was like, 100%. All the red flags are there.
This is a scam. Just you wait.
And it was.

Speaker 1 It all played out. And he was like, wow, you really spotted that.
And I was like, even in this

Speaker 1 show, you're like, I can spot a scam. I spend too much time.
Or maybe the right amount because it's not going to happen to you. You're interviewing the people who scam you.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm very on alert for all the red flags, even in escapist TV. Better safe than sorry.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So there was a little bit of a scam in there, but not a true crime show. Well, I'll have to check it out.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, that's our episode for today. Thanks for listening.
We'll be back next week.

Speaker 1 If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it. Our email is thenife at exactlyrightmedia.com, or you can follow us on Instagram at theKnife Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

Speaker 1 This has been an exactly right production, Hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith, and me, Patia Eaton. Our producers are Tom Breifogel and Alexa Samurosi.
This episode was mixed by Tom Breifogel.

Speaker 1 Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

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