Snowball 05 | Black Widow

This is an ABC podcast.

This episode contains occasional coarse language and we've used some voice actors to bring emails to life.

I've been trying to understand how my brother's ex-wife, Leslie Minoukian, thinks.

My journey so far has been like tunnelling through the Matrix.

I've been gradually digging deeper into the world Leslie lives in.

Actually, it's kind of like two worlds.

It seems like Leslie has a fantasy world where she invents characters and a Hollywood movie about her life.

But she also lives in the real world where people like my brother Greg are drawn into her spirals.

I was absolutely

like the sitting duck, mate.

Greg called me the other day, and I guess he's been thinking about that too.

Like, who's the most prime target for an American female con artist with black hair?

It's Greg Warts.

You couldn't have lightened it up better.

Honestly, I would suggest I was the most obvious target.

I was looking for

the North American accent.

It was done and dusted day one, man.

So do you think that she actually knew that as well?

And I guess it just made things easier for her.

No, she didn't know that because she didn't know who I was.

But it was the collision of

multi-fraudster versus

the other side being someone wanting to believe in the American treatment.

So far, I've found out about the trouble Leslie got into before she came to New Zealand.

But now I want to know about what happened after Leslie left Greg, the dragonfly, and New Zealand behind.

And the only way to find out more is to get closer to Leslie, literally.

I'm on her home turf in California with my other brother Simon.

It's hot and sunny like California should be.

We're doing our best detective impressions in Hawaiian shirts and a muscle car.

We're definitely more flood of the Concords than True Detective.

All right, we have the car running a gentle

rumble in the background.

It's a purr.

It's a purr.

But we've got good leads and we're determined to find out more.

We are

today heading to a Northern Californian town called Passarobles.

I'm following this trail to find answers for my family and to find Leslie.

Let's hit the road.

Sweet.

I'm Ollie Warts and this is Snowball.

We do not even call her by her name anymore, so we call her the Black Widow.

She has a laugh that could, you know, you hear it across the room.

How did she get over on you?

How did this happen?

She was just kind of reckless with everything.

I don't think she ever thought she would actually get caught.

And he basically said when I got home, there was a bong load, a martini, and a blowjob, and I just didn't think about it.

I don't think she'll talk to you.

I think she'll see you and she'll run out the back door.

I've had so many dreams of like talking to her.

I just want to ask her, like, oh, God, like why did you do this?

Where we're heading is about three and a half hours northwest of LA, driving into wine country.

There's vineyards and boozed up baby boomers everywhere.

It was only four years after Leslie left my brother Greg and the failing dragonfly NZ when she popped up here in Passarobles,

running another restaurant.

This one was called Phenomenal.

That's phenomenal with an F.

A review of Leslie's new restaurant appeared on TravelPaso.com.

The whole phenomenal concept was extremely well thought out and executed by owner Leslie Manoukian.

Her prior experience of owning and operating a burger bar in Lake Tahoe, a California cuisine fish and steak restaurant in Maui, and an artsy breakfast cafe in New Zealand taught her what is required to launch a successful business in the food and wine space.

That and eating in 47 countries in seven years.

That's only a bit cheeky.

Leslie telling people about her successful bars in Tahoe, Hawaii, and now an artsy breakfast cafe in NZ.

Lucky the journalist who wrote that didn't check any references.

So here's another grand opening: another hospitality business.

And maybe this time things turned out differently?

No.

Before we came to Passarobles, I tracked down the people involved with this restaurant and it sounds messy.

Here we are, Simon, driving through Passarobles.

The streets are really wide.

The houses look like they're made of Lego and that they have a tiny little stoop and that they're all perfectly trimmed and painted.

Hello.

Hey guys.

Hello.

We're all right to park this monstrosity of a car here, are we?

Absolutely.

This is the real owner of that restaurant, phenomenal.

He's happy to talk, but I've changed his name to Cameron.

So good to meet you in person.

He doesn't want to have any more personal or professional impact from what happened to him.

Thank you for having us.

He's a business guy.

Engineering background, big build, he's got a grey goatee.

Cameron invited Simon and I round to his really nice house.

It's on a hill with a view of trees and other big villas in the neighborhood.

To get up to his front door, we climbed a rock staircase through a terraced garden.

It's a blue sky day, is it always like this?

Yes, pretty much.

So we're sitting out on the balcony.

Cameron says that when he first met Leslie, he had just been through a divorce.

One night he was having dinner with his mum and Leslie was their waiter.

She seemed to indicate that she was worldly, adventurous and wanted to have the zest for life and just enjoy life.

So they start dating.

They were only together a few months when things jumped to the next level.

Next thing I know she was just there a lot more and she's like well hey I shouldn't be paying rent when I'm here a lot anyway so I'll just move in and it just kind of happened.

It wasn't like a discussion it just kind of unfolded.

Cameron was okay with that though.

He thought it'd be fun to have Leslie around and it sounds like he was right

Cameron's friends remember Leslie joining their crew we instantly became friends I mean she was easy to talk to she was interesting and interested in everyone

I mean it was just so so easy to get along

and she always had fun things you know she always came up with fun things to do and you definitely had the sense that she like came from money but another of Cameron's friends I spoke to reckons Leslie wasn't his usual type.

She seemed very nice.

I did think that she was

an odd match.

Didn't seem his you know his typical cup of tea for a relationship.

In what way?

But you know, very outgoing.

Just different differences, even in her appearance.

She's loud.

She has

large hair, long nails painted.

So I think that it was a of an out-of-character relationship for him.

Cameron's mate asked him what he saw in Leslie.

How did she get over on you?

How did this happen?

And he basically said when I got home, there was a bong load, a martini and a blowjob.

And I just didn't think about it.

I just said yes and I signed.

Leslie was also adventurous.

With all her worldly experience, she encouraged Cameron's desire to travel and they started planning a trip down under.

I've never been to Australia, so I thought that would be great.

Let's go to Australia.

I was in the process of actually getting scuba dive certified.

So the goal was to go down there, do some wine tasting with Barosa, go see Melbourne, make sure I see all the sights and just make a trip out of it.

So flights were booked, hotels are booked.

But Leslie's checkered past was about to interfere with their plans.

Because back in New Zealand, my dad was still trying to figure out what had happened and where Leslie had gone.

Dad was reading about book deals, movie stars and boats in Leslie's emails, like you heard last episode.

He thought it all might be real, and he was wondering how Leslie could get away from New Zealand and her guarantee of the Dragonfly Bank loan without paying a cent.

So Dad arranged for a private investigator to find Leslie.

to see if all the glitz and glamour was legit and to see if she would forfeit her boat to help pay off the loan.

And this American PI, he found her at Cameron's house.

We know what happened next from Leslie's perspective because she emailed a friend about it.

A private investigator showed up at my door.

Dave Wards hired him to find me.

I kindly invited him in and we had a long talk about all the accusations that they have made against me.

The PI found Leslie so convincing that from the report he sent back and her emails, it seems like she managed to flip him to her side.

Leslie even refers to him as my PI at the end of her email to her mate.

Even though the PI was working for my dad, he ended up giving her information, including one crucial piece of intel.

The PI told me I have a warrant for my arrest in NZ.

It wasn't a warrant for arrest, but the cops told me that they would be alerted if Leslie set foot in New

And those flights that Leslie and Cameron had to Australia only a week later, they were connecting through New Zealand.

If they went on their holiday, Leslie might have had to have a little chat with the Kiwi cops.

So she panicked.

Leslie had to come up with an excuse as to why they couldn't get on that plane.

Next thing I know,

She says there was,

she came up with a couple different stories.

But the final story that we landed on was that

there were so many major storms happening in Australia at the time.

There's that the Great Barrier Reef was going to be cloudy.

We weren't going to be able to scuba dive there because you wouldn't see anything.

So, the whole purpose of, you know, one of the purposes to go there is to enjoy the scuba diving and snorkeling and stuff.

So, it was based on weather at the time.

They were meant to be meeting some friends in Australia, and they copped a different excuse from Leslie in an email.

I have the worst news ever.

Cameron and I are not going to make it to Australia.

As you know, Cameron uses air miles for travel to Australia.

Well, we were printing down all of our arrangements, and Cameron noticed that our names were spelled wrong on our ticketing information.

I'm so upset, I do not even know where to begin.

I have been on the phone all night, cancelling and changing bookings.

So their tickets were void because Cameron got their names wrong on the booking.

It's a testament to how doggedly Leslie can tell a story.

That everyone just let it slide.

Leslie was spinning an even more important story for Cameron.

It was Leslie's greatest hit story of being a successful restaurateur.

And predictably, it wasn't long before Leslie started suggesting that Cameron should invest a ton of money in a new restaurant.

And like a lot of people before him, Cameron was keen.

So I thought between the two of us, you know, if she's already done it four or five times, this would be an easy situation.

I can invest in this, I can do this and make a nice, successful business in the local area here.

Eventually, Cameron agreed and they launched Phenomenal.

The restaurant started strongly.

The headline of that review you heard before was, The Phenomenal Story of a Great New Pasarobles restaurant.

Love a pun title.

Cameron says, Leslie wasn't actually employed at the restaurant, but as his girlfriend, she was helping out with a bunch of stuff.

She went and basically told everybody that it was her restaurant, and most people found out much later that she didn't even put a penny in there, not a dime, not a dollar.

She did spend time in there, but she was just kind of reckless with everything, including when we were purchasing equipment.

We were buying equipment, and

all of a sudden, next day I know, she was returning something and then going and getting some other piece of equipment, the same piece of equipment with the lease.

And so the money flow would just be crazy in the fact that, like, wait, I just bought a a new 10 burner stove and now all of a sudden i'm leasing one where'd that money go and so it was it was things like that where it just didn't make sense as cameron talks about how leslie was involved at his restaurant i've got deja vu cameron says strange stuff was going on with the accounting phenomenal was a tapas joint but it sounds like it was the books that were getting cooked

or at least a bit scrambled.

One time PG ⁇ E called me and said, by the way, we're shutting your electric off.

And I'm like, what are you talking about?

I haven't paid it.

And they're like, no, you're like six grand in the hole.

And I'm like, no, I have these receipts.

I sent them the receipts and they said, these are fraudulent.

She took the logo from their website, put it onto a blank piece of paper, wrote it out, this is your receipt for this dollar amount for this account, and had that in the books as if she had paid it.

It wasn't just the electricity bill that wasn't getting paid.

Quite early on, someone stuck a flyer on the windows of the restaurant saying, shame on you, phenomenal restaurant.

You are doing doing business at the expense of local subcontractors pay your bills

when i ask cameron if i can see some of this stuff he takes me inside

cameron goes to the filing cabinet and comes back arms full he dumps his papers on the polished wood dining room table

you've got a couple of red folders here one of them's got black widow written on it

so um most of my friends we do not even call her by her name anymore.

She's not worthy of being named.

So we call her the Black Widow.

And of course, the Black Widow famously eats its romantic partner after a little while.

Right, exactly.

Cameron spreads out a bunch of papers on the table in front of us and starts to take me through what happened.

So what I have in front of me here are a bunch of bank documents.

And, you know, the thing is that, you you know, when you're running a business, you don't typically run it through a lot of cash-based things.

You want to make sure there's a paper trail.

But for whatever reason, she chose to go and withdraw cash.

So I can't prove that she's taking this cash and put it in her pocket or her bank accounts.

But all I can do is say, well, here, okay, this month alone, there was $6,000 withdrawal by cash.

$5,000, $5,000.

There's another $5,000.

There's another $3,000.

That's in 30 days.

Withdrawal of cash.

Cameron could keep going.

And he does.

$2,000, $3,000.

While all this was happening, Leslie wasn't being paid like she was on the phenomenal staff.

Cameron says the deal was until the business started making money, he was covering everything, like food, rent, and overseas holidays.

But maybe Leslie thought she was entitled to some money in the meantime.

It's just the next thing he shows me looks like a murky way for Leslie to sort herself out with cash.

He pulls out some scans of checks he reckons Leslie forged his signature on.

Oh, look at that!

It happens to be to her father, Andrew Minoukian, for $650.

Minimum credit card payment is what it's showing here.

Not my signature.

Then there's a real big boy.

Cameron says he made the mistake of leaving a blank check around for emergencies.

You know, this is something that is the most disturbing:

$30,000.

$30,850

made out to cash.

I have no idea where the money went.

I mean, I'm an idiot for allowing that to happen.

I mean, that's actually probably physically quite a lot of paper.

Like, I would imagine going up to the bank teller and handing that check across, and they would sort of have to go into the vault and, you know, get a bag and manager approval and all that kind of stuff.

So it goes on and on and on.

I mean, did you think about going to the police when you found this?

Yes, it's too painful to go through that.

Part of it was the survivability piece is that, you know, I still had to move on in my life.

I didn't lose my house, but I was close.

I did lose my car.

I had to let that go, you know, and so there's been so many things along that way that I'm like, you know what?

I just need to figure out a way to survive.

And not only that, it's a small town.

So, you know,

it was better for me to just suck it up.

understand that I made a mistake with who I partnered with and chalk it up as a life experience and move on.

So it all happens again: allegations of fake documents, forged checks, mysterious lumps of cash going missing.

Then Leslie gets to walk away.

Only this time, it was Cameron's conscious choice not to pursue her.

Even if he wanted to change his mind now, it's probably too late.

There's a statute of limitations on fraud in California of three years.

We We sit around the dining room table talking for ages and Simon starts to wonder, if Cameron didn't talk to the cops, then why us?

Obviously you decided not to kind of approach anyone else about it.

What made you talk to Ollie and what leads us to be sitting here together?

So I guess first and foremost I think the fact that I had it bad but your brother Greg had it way worse and your parents.

So for me at that point in time, it was kind of like, well, you know what?

If there's a way that I can somehow help, and whether it's help this be successful or help her to be stopped or to somehow help someone else have closure

that was pretty important to me but it turns out it wasn't that easy inviting us to come over cameron's partner has been sitting with us this whole time nodding her head to what she already knows and at times looking pretty shocked as she finds out more when cameron told me about it initially

I could just see this black cloud above his head and he was just for a few days there.

He He didn't know if he wanted to do it or not.

And I was excited about the possibility of this happening because I knew, just from the outside looking at Cameron,

that he needed to process it.

Because, in my opinion, he kind of put a lot of things, just shoved it under the rug, and just wanted to pretend it didn't ever happen.

And I knew that.

I just kept putting it in a file cabinet.

It's like, you know what?

Let's just look at this 10 years from now.

Let's laugh about this in in 10 years.

No, I mean he did have an inkling that maybe someday, you know, he would be happy that he didn't throw away some of these papers.

But I knew he needed to process

all that that had happened to him.

And once that happens with any trauma, once you are able to actually finally process it all, you can really then go on with your life.

That's when Simon and I start to realize this stuff is still present for them.

They've got this nice house on a hill and they're doing doing well, but the betrayal of your trust, that kind of thing takes longer to get past.

Did this kind of change the way you'd look at kind of going into business or even going into relationships after that?

Like, do you, did it negatively affect you like that?

Unfortunately,

the bad part of that is, you know, it's, it's like, trust your employees, trust your people, but verify.

And

I definitely don't have as much trust for the people in my lives.

And so therefore, I definitely have to verify them a lot more.

I mean, I think I appreciate the things that you have around you a lot more than I did before because, you know, I was fat, dumb, and happy or whatever.

And just, you know, I was doing well and I was making my bills.

And, you know, after that, it's kind of like, well, wait, what makes you happy?

And I truly was not happy during that period of my life because it was probably the highest stress level I've ever had in my life.

So this whole experience did have a lasting effect.

There's that phrase, it's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.

With this relationship, Cameron definitely lost, but was there love?

You were with Leslie for a couple of years.

Did your relationship get to that point where you think she loved you?

No, not at all.

I don't think she was ever in love with me.

I think she was in love with the opportunities and the lifestyle.

No, I never really felt any love from her.

You know, there was at times some respect.

That was about the only thing, like, hey, you're successful in your career.

But for the most part, no, it was more like, you know, two people just going out and having fun at times.

When we go places, it was more about like, let's go have fun.

It wasn't about any kind of a romantic situation.

There's one other perspective I wanted to get from this time in Cameron's life.

Cameron's daughter was living with them when Leslie moved in.

She was around 10 at the time.

Now she's 18 and off at college.

I wanted to hear how all this went for her.

Cameron suggested I give her a call.

Like when I met her, I thought she was fun.

She's really like kind of tough and like unlike other women that I had met or other like female like

I don't know figures in my life.

So I thought she was kind of cool at first.

She like would always like wrestle with me in like rough house and like you know talk about like being tough and all this stuff.

Cameron's daughter says that Leslie was sort of a playmate rather than a parent figure.

Like I remember one time like when we were playing basketball like I threw the basketball at her and it hit her in the boobs and she just like got so mad at me like she started yelling you did that on purpose you fucking manipulative bitch like what the fuck are you doing and like she just would just go off suddenly and I just like would be totally freaked out and like not know what I did.

And my dad would always like say like, oh, she's just, she's never been around kids.

She just doesn't really like know that you're not supposed to do that.

As time went on, it sounds like their interactions became became more hurtful.

She was like, oh my God, honey,

you must get made fun of so much in school for your mustache

and

for your body hair.

Like, I remember I did.

And she was like being relate, like, trying to be relatable.

Like, I remember I did.

And, like, you know, I didn't have like a mother who would like help me with that kind of stuff.

Like, your mother, you know, like your mother, or your mother obviously, like, isn't talking to you about this, but I can like help you and teach you how to shave shave your legs and i can give you this cream that you can just put on your lip and it'll get rid of the hair um and at the time like i was like 10 so i didn't even have any like not like i didn't even notice it i had never been made fun of it and i like was just

like i don't know kind of like suddenly like self-conscious about this thing

Cameron's daughter has thought a lot about it since.

Okay, this is really hard to say because I've actually, like, in the aftermath of her,

like, leaving and whatever, like, I've had so many dreams of, like, like, talking to her just because, like, I felt like there was never any closure there.

But

I, oh, God, like, why did you do this?

Like, I, like, a part of me believes that she's just, like,

a really broken person that just has a lot of issues and

just can't help but to wreak havoc wherever she goes.

I always wonder, I mean, all of the time and effort that she put into creating scams and creating all these things, if she just took the brains of that and did something right with her life, she could probably be successful.

It's unreal because our dad had just sold his business just before they bought the dragonfly and he invested sort of 200 grand cash and then guarantored the loan for them.

She didn't invest a single cent in the whole thing,

yet she had this opportunity.

We were talking about it today, where like it was a beautiful place, and it was in a nice part of New Zealand, and it had a great start.

And everyone, she could have, if she ran it well, it could have been a great life.

So, again, I don't understand why Leslie seems to mess up these great opportunities in her life.

By now, I sort of expected to find a bigger purpose, a master plan, some kind of reason for all this.

Like, you'd think there would be a bigger payoff for Leslie.

Even if these tens of thousands of dollars are going into her own pockets, is it worth it?

In the end, Leslie doesn't seem to end up with much.

She's not a master criminal.

Some of these fake documents look like she's made them with real-life scissors and glue.

Her deceptions always seem to catch up with her.

And then Leslie's whole world gets turned upside down yet again.

And she has to move to a new place.

So, why does she do it?

Cameron does mention one thing I've heard before, something that might explain some of what she does.

I know her parents helped her and supported her.

There was definitely one credit card that I remember that she had said something about, like, she ran up a credit card and her parents paid it off for her.

And so, therefore, she had to give them money at various times to help pay off the credit card that she ran up.

And it was a big number, but I just remember she would sometimes have to make payments to her parents.

This kind of thing was going on when Leslie was in New Zealand, too.

There's an email her mum Betty sent, warning Leslie about using their credit card.

The last time you had it was for two days, and you ran up $2,000 on it, of which although I was promised a payback, it never came.

As usual.

So maybe Leslie is constantly in debt, and maybe the one debt that she can never really run away from is the one she owes to her parents.

Cameron spent a fair bit of time with Leslie's parents.

They even moved up to Passarobles for a while when things were going well.

By the time Cameron was trying to figure out the phenomenal financials, kind of surprisingly, Leslie's mum Betty came to help with the books.

One night, Betty was in the restaurant office when Cameron was realizing how bad things were.

And Betty said something that stuck with him.

At some point in time, we were discussing something and I said, well, this is unacceptable.

We can't be running a business in this way.

And then Betty was like, what's going on?

Because I don't raise my voice very often.

And I was like, this is just insane.

How can this be happening?

And then she's like, oh, shit.

She's done it again.

And it was just this revelation, like all of a sudden she just knew what had happened and where we are.

And Betty picked up her purse and left, never to be seen again.

Cameron had seen enough.

He kicked Leslie out and he warned the bank what he suspected was going on.

And she went in the day that I shut it off and was trying to withdraw a large sum of money.

And they said, nope, you're off the account.

She apparently started crying and saying, that's not fair.

That's my business.

This is my company.

This is all these things right there.

So the president of that bank told me all this whole story.

So Leslie was gone from another restaurant, another mess.

This time, Leslie didn't go far.

Cameron has a clue for us about where Leslie might be now.

He's actually been kind of getting running updates about where Leslie is from a pretty strange source.

For some reason, when they were together, his email address got added to her loyalty account with a big American pharmacy chain.

And so somehow I get these emails that says every time she makes a purchase, I get a receipt for what she purchased.

And at first, it was kind of comical.

I'm like, oh, great.

So she's buying gummy worms, some Nyke wool, some crazy mascara or whatever.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So she must have a cold this weekend.

And oh, hey, you know, now she's got the munchies because she's buying all these snack things.

And

it was quite comical

to know that she was still in the area and at the same time going, she hasn't changed a thing.

Cameron tells Simon and I the receipts have been coming from a place called San Luis Obispo.

San Luis Obispo?

How far is that from here, Cameron?

It's about 30 minutes from here.

That's us.

So Simon and I jump back in the car.

Next stop on Road Trip to Snowball.

It's an easy drive through a valley.

San Luis Obispo is a tidy little town, mostly one and two storey buildings, surrounded by green hills.

But there is something about this place that starts to freak me out.

We are entering what is probably Leslie's town.

So she might see us.

Nervous again,

imagine feeling nervous for like weeks on end and that's me.

I

have

this knot in my stomach because we could be busted at any time and I don't know what that would mean.

I don't know what it it would feel like for Leslie to see us and go, whoa, Simon and Ollie, I've always known that somebody was going to come looking for me.

Or would has it been long enough and she's got no idea and we're just a couple of Americans, one in a Detroit Tigers hat and one in a Yankees hat,

cruising through town in a muscle car.

Well the thing is I think the amount of people that she's duped like we're not the only people that she's kind of wary of seeing you know imagine the the list of people that potentially could be coming to look for her.

The thing is, we still don't know where to find her.

And we can't just hang out on street corners until she walks past or something.

But Cameron has given us another lead.

He knows someone else who lives in San Luis Obispo.

It's the former wine manager from Phenomenal.

Apparently, she had been friends with Leslie.

She's up for having a chat with us, so we head over to her place.

She doesn't want to have her real name used either.

It's another small town.

So I'm going to call her Sarah.

Here we are.

I'm just pulling into the driveway, a beautiful garden.

I think she's there

in the garden doing some weeding and stuff.

This is my brother Simon.

Hi, Simon.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

You're not Craig.

No, I'm not.

Greg couldn't get me.

Greg's one brother in between us.

Got it.

Okay.

Yeah, he's got a little girl to look after.

The job is to be able to get away from it.

Probably been a bit too emotional for him coming out.

Yeah, potentially.

Oh, we can go and say.

Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah's place is right on a golf course.

Like, her windows occasionally get smashed by shanked shots.

She met Leslie soon after everything went down in NZ, when Leslie came back to the States.

An instant friendship.

We had both just moved to the area.

We didn't know a ton of people.

And we were part of this opening team.

I was new.

I was nervous.

I didn't know.

I only knew one other person.

And so the charm definitely drew me in.

She just, you know, she has this very charismatic quality about her that

she can just introduce herself and instantly want to try and make a connection with you.

And it's like she uses her wide range of, as she said it, of worldly experience and uses it to kind of become a little bit of a, like an older sister.

It will get better.

Everything's okay.

You are amazing.

You've got so much going for you.

And that was just, that was her way.

I've got one thing on my mind that I can't help but ask.

You know, please tell us what you heard about what happened in New Zealand.

Well, I heard your family's pretty terrible.

Pretty terrible.

Simon's laughing.

Sounds a bit right.

Yeah.

No, I remember

because I was going to New Zealand, she told me, never fall in love with a Kiwi.

They're the worst men.

The worst men.

You never want to fall in love with a Kiwi.

But about your family, she basically distilled it down to was your parents were after her parents' money.

But as far as we can tell, Leslie might have actually transferred my parents' money to her mum and dad.

Anyway, while she was away from the US, Sarah stayed in touch with Leslie.

And when Phenomenal was opening, Leslie wanted Sarah to move back and be part of it.

Yeah, I was a restaurant person and I always wanted to be a sommelier.

And so she presented the opportunity.

She's like, you know what?

If you're ready to come home, just come home and be...

be my wine director, be the person that

buys the wine for the restaurant.

You can make all the selections.

And with that, Sarah became another person drawn into Leslie's restaurant dreams.

But then once kind of the honeymoon period was over, I guess, for the restaurant and

more rumors started getting, going around about town that maybe a vendor hadn't been paid, then, you know, more seats sat empty, fewer people were coming in and

Leslie really started disappearing.

She just wouldn't show up and she's like, I just can't.

I'm too stressed out.

Eventually, Sarah started to realize what was going on.

She started asking questions about all the things that didn't add up with Leslie.

So I became public enemy number one in the restaurant.

I was feeling the rest of the staff treating me differently and that's basically because she was just trashing me, badmouthing me

because I wasn't her little number one worker bee anymore.

Sarah says that Leslie tried to make her a scapegoat for some of the chaos at Phenomenal.

It was heartbreaking.

It was quite frankly heartbreaking and absolutely confidence shaking because I had always prided myself as being someone a good friend, a loyal friend, and really damn good at my job.

The whole experience left Sarah feeling like she needed to get away.

She quit.

But after Leslie was kicked out of Cameron's house and Phenomenal, Leslie didn't move country or even state.

She moved to the same town as Sarah.

And being a pretty small town, they eventually ran into each other about a year ago.

This might be the final lead I need to find Leslie.

It turns out that after running at least four different bars and restaurants around the world, Leslie was working in a supermarket.

Sarah heard her laugh from another aisle.

Yeah, I...

Heard the laugh and I was like surely not.

Absolutely not.

No way.

And then I got to the end of the aisle and I froze and she was like restocking something.

And she looked over and just says, hello, Sarah.

And

like half an aisle away.

Like she knew it was me.

She saw it was me.

And I was just like, oh my gosh, hi.

They chatted for a bit.

Leslie even acknowledged she couldn't get away with much in a small town.

Well, it was like calling out the elephant in the room.

We couldn't not talk about what had happened.

But then it's like she checked herself and realized, oh, this person knows some of the things I've tried to get away with in a small town despite everything that happened between them Leslie almost talked it away I think this is just like a testament to her and her charm when I ran into her at the grocery store and listening to her just like spin and spin and spin and spin like I felt empathy for her and I really had a hard time stopping myself from inviting her over to that gathering I was having at my house that night.

Even though like it's it was the wildest thing and

I'm very grateful that I did not open that Pandora's box again.

Well that's exactly what I'm going to try and do.

I'm here to open Pandora's box.

The supermarket Sarah is talking about is just round the corner.

If Leslie still works there, I'll be able to find her.

How do you think she would react when we turn up?

Well, it'll be just me really.

Simon's a bit intimidating to roll up with as well.

I keep saying that, but

I just find you intimidating, mate.

Yeah, yeah, that's because you used to get beaten up when you were little.

What do you think she would say to all of this stuff that's happened now?

I don't think she'll talk to you.

I really don't think she'll talk to you.

I think she'll see you and she'll run out the back door.

She might confront you.

I don't know.

So this might be it.

We might have found Leslie.

Simon and I figure we'll scope out the supermarket later.

What we need to do now is call mum, dad, and Greg back home.

They're hanging for updates.

So we find a place to stay and call a family Skype meeting.

It starts the way they always do.

Have we got our video on?

Does it look like we have?

Once the tech stuff is sorted, it's down to business.

How are you guys?

Yeah, good.

Hey, tell us what have you done today, for goodness sake.

I tell them everything you've heard.

Just mum wants more detail about what we've been eating and if we're looking after ourselves.

After hearing Cameron's story and how similar it was to ours, mum has some thoughts.

I have no hatred for her.

I don't really have any anger for her.

She just leaves me

gobsmapped.

It's beyond reason, isn't it, that she could do these things.

Tonight we've learned from you that it's a pattern, so she knows very well what she's doing and what works.

Then I tell them about where Leslie's been working.

She works in a supermarket.

Yeah, bro.

Yeah, man.

What do you make of that?

She'll be planning her way to climb out of it by burning someone else.

She'll have more mascara on now than ever before, trying to trap someone else.

And

what do you think of everything we've told you so far, man?

Just

ticking like lots of bells are going in my head, and I just think she needs to be stopped more than ever before.

What we're going to do is stake out the place tomorrow and try and figure out what time she's working and be there for either the start or end of her shift.

It's very important that we don't intimidate her or physically

threaten or get in any sort of altercation.

I'm really going in palms open, trying to be friendly.

I'm important.

Greg, what do you think she's going to say?

Firstly, I wouldn't probably expect too much.

She's

the mechanics in her head will work pretty fast and she'll be, this is not good for Leslie Manoukian,

what's an escape route.

So what will I do if I've got this one shot,

one opportunity?

to talk to Leslie.

I want to know what everyone would want me to say.

So we go around the room.

Just to basically turn a life around.

That would be my thought for her.

I would say she needs to know what a hell of a lot of life she's missed out on.

Yes.

That she could have had a really nice life here in New Zealand.

That's a great point, mum.

My desire for her would be that she understands the issues that she's dealt out to a lot of people around the world.

That she genuinely seeks

to

rehabilitate herself into some sort of normality.

I don't know how that could be.

Maybe Dr.

Phil could help her at long last.

There it is again.

Dad getting a plug-in for Dr.

Phil.

Yeah.

Simon and I are laughing so hard we have to turn our mic off.

Greg has been really courageous letting me tell this story.

I've been hoping that this whole thing will bring him some sort of closure.

So I ask him what he would say to Leslie.

That's a tough, tough question,

but it would be along the lines that her behaviour

has to come to an end

and

chaps from New Zealand are going to help bring that end of behaviour about.

Sorry.

Sorry, what would I want you to say to her right now?

I'll just say

it's over because we're going to make it that way.

Kia Kaha, bro.

You have been real brave through all this, man.

We've...

As we wrap up sharing some love, there's another message that gets repeated.

Be safe.

Be safe.

Love you guys, man.

Love you guys.

Leave well.

Okay.

Love you.

See ya.

Be good.

After our family meeting, I lie awake in the cheap motel bed rehearsing what I'm going to say.

I've been working on this thing for months, but my family has been dealing with the fallout for years.

And all this time later, it could all come to some sort of culmination.

I have no idea what I'm in for.

She's walking just in front of you, bro.

Where?

In the middle.

Walking just down the middle, straight down the aisle.

Halfway between me and you.

Okay.

Oh, yeah, I see her.

I see her.

That's next time on Snowball.

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