Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
Speaker 1: waters that this podcast was recorded on social media influences.
Speaker 1: They can hold a lot of sway with their followers.
Speaker 1: After all, they can convince you to buy products, invest
Speaker 1: in bitcoin, adopt lifestyle changes, dress a certain way, get
Speaker 1: plastic surgery.
Speaker 2: But could an influencer make.
Speaker 1: You give up your life, reject your entire family and
Speaker 1: friendship circle, and become a sex worker to pay for
Speaker 1: her lifestyle. When journalists started to uncover the truth about
Speaker 1: Brazilian influencer Cat Torres, they would have no idea just
Speaker 1: how far her influence had spread and just how terrified
Speaker 1: those who'd been sucked into her web would be to
Speaker 1: share their stories. But a few brave women, some who
Speaker 1: would suffer the consequences of going up against self help
Speaker 1: guru and divine voice hearing Torres, would turn to the
Speaker 1: very same people who'd made Cat Torres famous to finally
Speaker 1: bring her undone. I'm Claire Murphy and this is True
Speaker 1: Crime Conversations, a podcast that explores the world's most notorious
Speaker 1: crimes by speaking to the people who know the most
Speaker 1: about them. Cat Torres was a poor girl from the
Speaker 1: favelas of Brazil, but she'd managed to leverage her beauty
Speaker 1: into a life that seemed almost too good to be true,
Speaker 1: with famous friends and a modeling career in Europe and
Speaker 1: then the US. Her social media feed portrayed a life
Speaker 1: of wealth and luxury, of a woman who really really
Speaker 1: made it. But looking behind that shiny social media facade
Speaker 1: was a much darker story, one of influence taken to
Speaker 1: the extreme of mind altering substances, contact with aliens, and
Speaker 1: a woman who took influencer to a level that he
Speaker 1: would not consider someone with a face as angelic as
Speaker 1: Cat Torres is was.
Speaker 2: Even capable of.
Speaker 1: How did an influencer become a cult leader and sex trafficker?
Speaker 2: Well, it was as easy as hitting like and follow.
Speaker 1: Gi Jo Feledi is a journalist, self confessed influencer himself,
Speaker 1: and the host of the Don't Cross Cat podcast. He
Speaker 1: sat down with us to discuss the intense tale of
Speaker 1: Cat Torres. Do you remember the first time you saw
Speaker 1: Cat Torres's face. I'm presuming you would have seen her
Speaker 1: on Instagram, but do you remember the first time you
Speaker 1: actually saw her face?
Speaker 3: And yeah, I do recall obviously it was on social media.
Speaker 3: She was an big online presence in Brazil, but she
Speaker 3: wasn't quite my niche. She wasn't my cup of tea.
Speaker 3: I think she was very endearing to young Brazilian women
Speaker 3: and people who dreamt the American dream. But I do
Speaker 3: recall running by her profile on Instagram prior to all
Speaker 3: the accusations and prior to all help breaking loose, and
Speaker 3: I remember thinking, oh, good, just another one, just another
Speaker 3: blonde influencer, looks like a Barbie, and who's trying to
Speaker 3: sell her stuff. She would try to sell everything, her lifestyle.
Speaker 3: She would try to sell quotes, she would try to
Speaker 3: sell tea, she would try to sell mystical consultations. And
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, one more seeing that, done that,
Speaker 3: and I was done with that. But then a couple
Speaker 3: of months later, I would say, a year later, I
Speaker 3: start hearing the news and start reading tweets about her
Speaker 3: possibly committing crimes, and then my stare at her, my
Speaker 3: glance at her switches a little bit to a more
Speaker 3: professional glance, which is not She's not my cup of
Speaker 3: tea as an influencer, But she might be holding a
Speaker 3: good story. She might be the person whose story I'm
Speaker 3: about to tell so.
Speaker 1: At no stage, looking at those initial shots of Cat Torris,
Speaker 1: do you think, yes, this is definitely the profile of
Speaker 1: a future cult leader, not.
Speaker 3: In a millionaires, not in a millionaires. She looked like
Speaker 3: another influencer, and we're crazy about influencers in Brazil, were
Speaker 3: wild about them. So there are so many of them.
Speaker 3: Never would I ever have suspected that one of them
Speaker 3: might be the leader of a company.
Speaker 1: Well, let's take a step back to where you decided
Speaker 1: to investigate Cat Torres. What was it about her story
Speaker 1: and about her case that made you think that there
Speaker 1: is something really interesting here.
Speaker 3: I like crimes that whole a bigger story behind them,
Speaker 3: And I do believe that when we talk about Cat
Speaker 3: Tooris and we talk about the power of influencers in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, we're talking about a game of deception.
Speaker 3: We're talking about the how much of our agency and
Speaker 3: how much of our time and how much of our
Speaker 3: energy we're giving a way to people we don't know
Speaker 3: and we're choosing to be scammed. Because it might sound
Speaker 3: a little dramatic, but I do believe that the internet,
Speaker 3: especially social media, our lives. We're lying all the time,
Speaker 3: even if not consciously We lie all the time on
Speaker 3: our social media, all of us, including myself, and I'm
Speaker 3: an influencer, so I'm shooting my own foot here. So
Speaker 3: I do think that it was about time for us
Speaker 3: as a society to start discussing what social media is
Speaker 3: doing to us and Cattorists is the ultimate example of
Speaker 3: how bad things can go if you follow someone you
Speaker 3: don't know, and you believe in someone's lives up to
Speaker 3: a point where you will give them your life basically, well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of lives, let's let's just have a little look
Speaker 1: at kattar as his life first before we get to
Speaker 1: where it led you to investigate her. What was her
Speaker 1: childhood like in Brazil? Was it a pretty standard upbringing?
Speaker 1: What do we know about her family life before all
Speaker 1: of this came to be?
Speaker 3: She was poor, And when I say poor, I mean
Speaker 3: Brazilian poor, which is so much poorer than an average
Speaker 3: Australian or an average North American. She was miserable. She
Speaker 3: was really poor. She comes from no money, really hard upbringing.
Speaker 3: She barely had food on the table. But she was
Speaker 3: graced with beauty or what people tend to find. A
Speaker 3: beautiful body, a beautiful face, a beautiful complexion, a beautiful
Speaker 3: mane of blonde hair, and she used it to get
Speaker 3: where she wanted. So she comes from a region in
Speaker 3: the Amazon Forest. She moved a lot because her father
Speaker 3: was an alcoholic and he wasn't able to keep a
Speaker 3: steady job, and she had many problems in her upbringing.
Speaker 3: She she comes from a dysfunctional family and she eventually
Speaker 3: starts working when she's fourteen or fifteen years old, always
Speaker 3: using her body and her looks in order to obtain
Speaker 3: what she wants, whether that is money, whether that is power,
Speaker 3: whether that is influenced. She it was her way out,
Speaker 3: I'd have to say, And many of her childhood friends
Speaker 3: say so. Her sister says, so she was one that
Speaker 3: used what nature had given her to get somewhere, and
Speaker 3: she did got somewhere.
Speaker 2: So modeling was her ticket out of there.
Speaker 3: Right, but first modeling, but she wouldn't quite be a
Speaker 3: fashion model. She wouldn't be in fashion shows. She wouldn't
Speaker 3: be She moved to Milan at a very young age
Speaker 3: when she turned eighteen, but she wouldn't get the prestigious gigs.
Speaker 3: So she would do laning reef photo shoots. She would
Speaker 3: do swimsuit photo shoots, all that sort of stuff. And
Speaker 3: she started having relationship with relationships with elder men when
Speaker 3: she was about nineteen or twenty years old, richer and
Speaker 3: older men who would provide for her.
Speaker 1: There was a rumor that those older men might be
Speaker 1: connected to Russian mafia. Wasn't it like that Potentially one
Speaker 1: of those men that she was I guess they call
Speaker 1: it a sugar baby for sugar Daddy was maybe even
Speaker 1: friends with Vladimir Putin. Do we even know if that
Speaker 1: was proven or was that just discussion amongst her friend group.
Speaker 3: That's that's what's very peculiar about kat story story. I mean,
Speaker 3: many of the facts that are circling around and seemed
Speaker 3: like rumors turned out to be close to truth. So
Speaker 3: her former husband, which I met in the US, Cobra
Speaker 3: Bell says, she stated herself that she had dated someone
Speaker 3: very powerful in Russia that was in the petrial industry,
Speaker 3: and she knew about geopolitics of the Middle East, of
Speaker 3: Russian and Russian well kept secrets that weren't in the
Speaker 3: New York Times. So she had access to classified information
Speaker 3: about Russian politics. So that shows that's what is very
Speaker 3: astonishing for me in cattorists in her case that many
Speaker 3: things that seem outrageous seemed impossible Semeida turned out to
Speaker 3: be true. And this is one of the facts that
Speaker 3: couldn't be verified. But many people who lived with her
Speaker 3: and were friends with her, or even her former husband,
Speaker 3: say that she had access to information that no one
Speaker 3: outside of the clothes circles of Russian oligarchs would know.
Speaker 3: So she holds truth. It's such an unbelievable whole cautionary tale,
Speaker 3: but it holds so many truths. Like dating Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 3: She was reported to date Leonardo DiCaprio, and Leo's people
Speaker 3: of course denied that, but then against they were photographed
Speaker 3: together in can in Con Film Festival, so that's undeniable.
Speaker 3: I mean she was in the same room as Leonardo
Speaker 3: DiCaprio and they exchanged glances, and they touched each other
Speaker 3: and they had some physical contact. So many of the
Speaker 3: things that helped her become an influencer and famous and
Speaker 3: on social media were based on truth. If they were
Speaker 3: not altogether truth, they were pretty much based on accurate events.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about her early Instagram life, because in
Speaker 1: the beginning, it was about ensuring people believe that she
Speaker 1: was living that rich and fast lifestyle, that she was
Speaker 1: actually in that crowd and was earning that kind of money.
Speaker 1: And her husband told you about like having to quickly
Speaker 1: take photos of her up against rich people's cars, which
Speaker 1: obviously not hers, like ferraris, et cetera, but like having
Speaker 1: to get the shop really quick before anyone busted them.
Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, she was faking it until she made it.
Speaker 3: She was pretending she was a millionaire in the US,
Speaker 3: which is something that holds a lot of value in Brazil.
Speaker 3: In Brazilia and the whole Latin America would look up
Speaker 3: to the US, especially people who don't have many opportunities here,
Speaker 3: who couldn't go to college and who couldn't get a
Speaker 3: new job. They see moving to America as a potential
Speaker 3: to get rich and to have accessed to a wealth
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have in Latin America. And she was playing
Speaker 3: downright for those people. She was acting as if she
Speaker 3: was shopping Gucci in Prada, and so she was taking
Speaker 3: pictures with Gucci bags over her badge. She was taking
Speaker 3: pictures lying down in the hood of a Ferrari, which
Speaker 3: wasn't hers. She would just go out and street and
Speaker 3: act as if she had a writ she didn't. She
Speaker 3: would go into five star hotels and ask to see
Speaker 3: a room, and then you have several pictures taken inside
Speaker 3: that room and said, yeah, I'm staying here at the Marriott,
Speaker 3: I'm staying here at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. And
Speaker 3: she actually wasn't. But the fact is she was actually
Speaker 3: getting somewhere in the US. Her projection of image on
Speaker 3: Instagram and social media wasn't completely fath I mean she
Speaker 3: made it to a music video of a fast and
Speaker 3: furious song that was on the franchise of the movies.
Speaker 3: I mean that is big for someone who came from
Speaker 3: South America with nothing and had no parents and no
Speaker 3: relations in the US. I mean, she achieved things, but
Speaker 3: of course she would showcase on the Internet a larger
Speaker 3: version of those things she had achieved, or a misperception
Speaker 3: of those things she had achieved. She would act as
Speaker 3: if she was Angelina Julie or something, whereas she was
Speaker 3: I he will be an actress who was struggling, who
Speaker 3: was hustling a lot in the US.
Speaker 1: So that does evolve over time, that Instagram presence. Do
Speaker 1: we know what started that shift from trying to live
Speaker 1: that life to trying to be more of.
Speaker 3: A guru once again. I think there's some players of
Speaker 3: truth to her change, because she started going to aauasca
Speaker 3: rich wolfs, which is the root of the tree in
Speaker 3: the Amazon in Brazil that has psychedelic effects, and it's
Speaker 3: a religion in Brazil. It's an ancient religion which is
Speaker 3: used by indigenous communities. But then she started hanging out
Speaker 3: with some people in Hollywood who would drink the tree
Speaker 3: the tea, but they were not related to the Brazilian
Speaker 3: tradition at all. It was more of a party, was
Speaker 3: more of a new vibe thing. People close to her
Speaker 3: and even herself told me that she actually believed in
Speaker 3: the tea, and the tea changed her mind, and she
Speaker 3: did become more spiritualized to the point of thinking she
Speaker 3: was able to talk to God saying out loud. She
Speaker 3: was able to have conversations with Jesus and aliens. So
Speaker 3: I do believe there was a fruitful winner change in
Speaker 3: her prior to changing her niche on Instagram. I don't
Speaker 3: think it was just a business plan. Now I'm going
Speaker 3: to serve new age and I'm going to sell yoga
Speaker 3: clothes and I'm going to sell I do tend to believe,
Speaker 3: And we have learned that she actually changed herself. Prior
Speaker 3: to changing her online personace.
Speaker 1: She wrote a book called The Voice, which she did
Speaker 1: do an interview with the Brazilian talk show host about
Speaker 1: and admitted that she'd written the entire thing whilst in
Speaker 1: a trance. But what was this book about and what
Speaker 1: is this voice that she's referring to?
Speaker 3: She says in the book and in the interview with
Speaker 3: Amaldis Junior that she had a connection with a voice
Speaker 3: that could be God eventually could be Aliens. She changes
Speaker 3: her version quite a bit, that would tell her things
Speaker 3: about the future, would predict the future, would let her
Speaker 3: read other people's minds. And she said she drifted apart
Speaker 3: from the voice when she was at an early age,
Speaker 3: but after starting having ayahuasca, she got in touch again
Speaker 3: with a voice. She restated this contact with the voice
Speaker 3: she heard in her mind, which is hard to define
Speaker 3: because she herself is not able to define it very well.
Speaker 3: But I would say it's a voice that sometimes it's
Speaker 3: God and sometimes it's Aliens. It's fishy. It's hard to
Speaker 3: try to make sense out of it because it's very nonsensical,
Speaker 3: but that's what she says in the book. It's a
Speaker 3: memoir book in which she narrates her life with changes
Speaker 3: and facts that are not verifiable and things that are
Speaker 3: bluntly why. But it's her version of her own story.
Speaker 3: The book is her version of her own story. And
Speaker 3: it was really successful in Brazil. It wasn't a bestseller
Speaker 3: or anything, but it did reach many young women who
Speaker 3: looked up at Kat and who admired her, and who
Speaker 3: started believing she was a guru, believing she could help
Speaker 3: them out with her superpowers.
Speaker 1: So through this time, her online following goes from like
Speaker 1: a couple one hundred thousand to more than a million,
Speaker 1: and so she's really starting to influence a significant amount
Speaker 1: of people. And she's utilizing this voice that you described
Speaker 1: to have these one on one consultations with women about
Speaker 1: a myriad of things, their career choices, their families, about
Speaker 1: their relationships. But what are we finding out that she's
Speaker 1: actually telling these women in these consultations, Because you did
Speaker 1: speak to some women who'd had those consultations and who
Speaker 1: had friends who'd had these consultations. What was she doing
Speaker 1: and telling these people to do during those one on ones, she.
Speaker 3: Was pretty much advising young women to be submissive and
Speaker 3: to look for rich men and to act very girl
Speaker 3: like around them, and to pretend to be more frail
Speaker 3: than they actually were, and to drop out of college
Speaker 3: and to try to get pregnant with someone who was
Speaker 3: richer than them. So it was very I would say
Speaker 3: it would Dwelve a little misogyny. They were very misogynistic advices.
Speaker 3: And I've heard from tens of people who had consultations
Speaker 3: with her and who followed her advice. And she would
Speaker 3: even tell people who were in an abusive relationship who
Speaker 3: were better women, who were actually better not to look
Speaker 3: for the police, not to call the police, not to
Speaker 3: break up with the boyfriend, not because that was male energy.
Speaker 3: So it's a little surprising that a self made woman
Speaker 3: would She was almost like a rad Piel in that sense.
Speaker 1: When does it start to change from having these one
Speaker 1: on one consultations and giving women advice like that to
Speaker 1: her kind of flipping to wanting women to come and
Speaker 1: physically join her and live with her because she's moved
Speaker 1: to Texas by this stage with another man, not the
Speaker 1: husband that you referred to earlier. She's divorcing him, but
Speaker 1: then she wants to create essentially a witch's coven.
Speaker 3: It's not quite clear because she wouldn't tell it outright
Speaker 3: the to her clients, to her followers, she would always
Speaker 3: ask for help for the first at least for the
Speaker 3: first couple of them. Referretas always. One of the main
Speaker 3: characters of from Crosscat. The podcast was told that Kat
Speaker 3: was in a bad place and she was having suicidal
Speaker 3: thoughts and she needed someone to be around her, so
Speaker 3: she didn't quite invite desire to live with her to
Speaker 3: work with her. She was like, I'm not feeling good.
Speaker 3: I'm in a bad place. I'm afraid I might hurt myself.
Speaker 3: Can you come here and keep me company? And Kat
Speaker 3: buys her plane ticket to go to Texas and live
Speaker 3: with her, allegedly to help her out through dark times.
Speaker 3: When desire gets there, Kat starts proposing her a business partnership,
Speaker 3: and she says they will have a holistic clinic together.
Speaker 3: They will open up ASPA, a place of well being,
Speaker 3: but they would need the resources for that, so Desiree
Speaker 3: should get that money somehow, and she suggests Desi. Ray
Speaker 3: starts dancing in street clubs and THATSI, Ray starts doing
Speaker 3: sex work.
Speaker 1: She's not the only one, right. There were several women
Speaker 1: who waded up going to Texas with I, all essentially
Speaker 1: forced in domestic labor or sex work whilst living with Can.
Speaker 3: We've got in touch with three women who were able
Speaker 3: to prove they labeled her in Texas, and two of
Speaker 3: them report that they were cohers to dance in strip
Speaker 3: clubs and to do sex work. And the third one
Speaker 3: of them, Jamila, who was a yoga teacher already in
Speaker 3: the US. She was living in the US in the
Speaker 3: Boston region. She moved to Texas because she was about
Speaker 3: to be affected. She was about to become homeless, and
Speaker 3: she moves to Texas to teach yoga to Cat and
Speaker 3: two Cat's followers. She gets there, there's no yoga classes,
Speaker 3: and she has to drive Kat around to be Cat's chauffeur,
Speaker 3: Cat's driver and to clean the house up. But she
Speaker 3: refuses to dance at a strip club, and she refuses
Speaker 3: to do sex work, so she only stays there for
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks and leaves, whereas the other two
Speaker 3: eventually so come eventually agree with Cat's requests and Cat's
Speaker 3: orders and start working in the sex business in the US.
Speaker 1: Do these women ever see any of the money that
Speaker 1: they are generating for Cat?
Speaker 2: Like, how are they surviving?
Speaker 3: I mean they were staying at Cat's house if one
Speaker 3: of them had a room. But it's a classic case
Speaker 3: of human traffickings. She would say she needed to pay
Speaker 3: for the groceries, she needed to pay for the guests
Speaker 3: to drive them to the strip club. She needed to
Speaker 3: pay for all of her basic needs. So Cat toorists
Speaker 3: would keep all the money they would make doing sex
Speaker 3: work or dancing at strip clubs, and she would keep
Speaker 3: keep it pretty much out to herself. So they would
Speaker 3: make thousands of dollars a night and they would not
Speaker 3: see this money. They would come home and they would
Speaker 3: have to hand out each and every dollar bill to Cat,
Speaker 3: who put it away and said she was saving that
Speaker 3: money so she could invest in the business they would
Speaker 3: eventually open up together, which wasn't quite true. She was
Speaker 3: spending that money in her lavish lifestyle. She then would
Speaker 3: show on Instagram to get more followers and get more
Speaker 3: people to live with.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Chicho Feliti, host of the Don't Cross
Speaker 1: Cat podcast. Up next, we uncover what Cat was telling
Speaker 1: women to keep them from leaving once they'd realized that
Speaker 1: they weren't there for the reason she'd claimed. How did
Speaker 1: she convince these women to stay after they realized that
Speaker 1: they're not there for the purposes that Cat has drawn
Speaker 1: them in? As like, cult leaders employ lots of different
Speaker 1: tactics to keep people believing in what they're telling them.
Speaker 1: What was Kat telling them and what was she doing
Speaker 1: to make sure that these women didn't up and leave?
Speaker 3: I do think it's a complicated issue because human trafficking
Speaker 3: and cult leaders employ different forms of coercion, which are
Speaker 3: not specifically locking a door kicking someone at gunpoint. But
Speaker 3: these people who went to live with her, not Jamila Jamila.
Speaker 3: I think that's why Jamila was able to get away
Speaker 3: so quickly, because she wasn't a follower of cats. She
Speaker 3: did not buy the kool aide, She did not believe
Speaker 3: in anything. She thought it was all mumbo jumbo in
Speaker 3: her words. But the other two women who ended up
Speaker 3: living with her in Texas, they really believed in her.
Speaker 3: They had paid her thousands of dollars for counseling, and
Speaker 3: they really saw her as an idol and a friend.
Speaker 3: So at first there's a flattering sense of this person
Speaker 3: I admire so much. I know from the internet she's
Speaker 3: so famous. She actually wants to live with me, so
Speaker 3: that's almost like an awarding feeling. And they also believed,
Speaker 3: or claimed they believe in her superpowers, so they were
Speaker 3: afraid that she would manage them. She would threaten them
Speaker 3: by saying, I can do bad things to you and
Speaker 3: to your family. I can use the voice to make
Speaker 3: your life miserable. And there are recordings of her saying
Speaker 3: she's able to make someone have butt cancer, and that's
Speaker 3: the term she uses, but canser, I'm giving you butt
Speaker 3: cancer with my words. So they actually believed in the
Speaker 3: witchcraft and all of the domestical stuff Kat was selling online.
Speaker 3: So I do think that was part of what led
Speaker 3: them to stay in the US, even though they were
Speaker 3: being clearly abused. They have been traffic.
Speaker 1: This is something that seems to be a thread throughout
Speaker 1: all of this in your podcast and every other thing
Speaker 1: that I've seen about Kat Toros is that people are
Speaker 1: genuinely terrified of her. Like the people who have since
Speaker 1: spoken out after everything happened, a lot of them want
Speaker 1: to remain anonymous because they don't want to be targeted.
Speaker 1: But like, she's one pretty blonde lady with an Instagram account,
Speaker 1: Like what are they so scared of?
Speaker 3: I do think there are two things to fear there.
Speaker 3: The first of them is the mystical powers, which is
Speaker 3: not very rational, and I don't think that we who
Speaker 3: stand from an outside perspective are quite able to understand.
Speaker 3: But there's a very palpable one, which is she was famous,
Speaker 3: and she would dis people on the internet. She dogs Patty,
Speaker 3: who's Desert's best friend, and who starts an investigation to
Speaker 3: try to find her friend. Once Desires disappeared, she actually
Speaker 3: posted pictures of Patty and her kids online and said
Speaker 3: that Patty made her infants, made her small children do
Speaker 3: sex work, and that was seen by hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of people. So she actually had the power to ruin
Speaker 3: someone's reputations. She actually and that is not a mystical power,
Speaker 3: that's an actual power. She was able to destroy your
Speaker 3: life if she wanted to. She docked Patty's address, Patty's
Speaker 3: phone number. Patti started receiving hundreds or thousands of calls
Speaker 3: after Catturists published her phone number on Instagram. So there
Speaker 3: was the mystical site to be feared by the ones
Speaker 3: who believed in it, But there was also a potential
Speaker 3: of destruction and influence she held online and that was
Speaker 3: very palpable and very objective.
Speaker 1: You speak to Patty throughout the Don't Crosscat podcast and
Speaker 1: she really put herself on the line to try and
Speaker 1: help her friend get out of the clutches of Kat Torres.
Speaker 2: But Kat really tried.
Speaker 1: Very hard to get rid of Patty, right, So you
Speaker 1: mentioned that she docks her, but also she got desiraate
Speaker 1: to record messages to tell her to go away and
Speaker 1: tell her everything was fine. But was it Patty and
Speaker 1: that group of people who started to investigate things themselves
Speaker 1: because police seemed very reluctant to get involved in this investigation.
Speaker 1: Was it their motivation to expose is that finally did
Speaker 1: bring Kat undone?
Speaker 3: I think that for people who are close to Desiree
Speaker 3: and Letisia, the two young women who actually stayed in
Speaker 3: the house for months in Texas, it was a search
Speaker 3: based on friendship and love and concern. But then when
Speaker 3: it started getting traction on social media, there were so
Speaker 3: many armchair detective zimbers all over the country who started
Speaker 3: investigating this case by their own not making a penny,
Speaker 3: and they were able to help, which is something I
Speaker 3: also find fascinating about the story. It's interesting that of
Speaker 3: armchairs detective as incompetent people who were standing on the
Speaker 3: way of police or the justice system. Know in this case,
Speaker 3: the armchairs detective saved the day, which is something I
Speaker 3: had never heard of. And they were young women, young
Speaker 3: women who many of them followed Cat as well when
Speaker 3: believed in Kat for a while prior to turning against
Speaker 3: her and to taking her to justice. That's why it's
Speaker 3: such a fascinating story to me, in the sense that
Speaker 3: we usually tend to think of the tops as the
Speaker 3: good guys, or the justice or the prosecutors. In this case,
Speaker 3: had not been the armchair detectives in the network of
Speaker 3: fens or hundreds of Brazilian young women who are on
Speaker 3: the internet obsessed with this case, I don't think Atturis
Speaker 3: would have been arrested and afforded.
Speaker 1: So it's the best and the worst of the Internet
Speaker 1: all combined. Social media influencer gone bad. Chair detectives come
Speaker 1: to the rescue.
Speaker 3: Very well, said the.
Speaker 1: FBI does eventually get involved after Kat is exposed and
Speaker 1: she flees. What happens to Kat after she's arrested in Maine.
Speaker 3: First, the American authorities have to check on her on
Speaker 3: her status because she was married to an American man,
Speaker 3: so if she had the right to have a green card,
Speaker 3: she could have been there legally, but she never requested
Speaker 3: a green card, so she was illegal there and that
Speaker 3: based on that, the American authorities decides to deport her
Speaker 3: to Brazil so she can be judged by her crime
Speaker 3: in Brazil. She's not an American citizen and all of
Speaker 3: the victims were Brazilians as well. None of the victims
Speaker 3: who came to public were American. They decide to deport
Speaker 3: her in Brazil and she gets to Minajette Eyes and
Speaker 3: is immediately arrested by the Brazilian federal police since she
Speaker 3: was in the interval wanted list. She was at an
Speaker 3: international wanted list already, so she goes straight to jail
Speaker 3: as soon as she lands in Brazil.
Speaker 1: She is eventually convicted, sentenced to eight years in jail,
Speaker 1: and then she gives that unhinged interview to the Babas.
Speaker 2: From jail, there is no way.
Speaker 4: I sent a message to a person saying, come to
Speaker 4: live with me in America. I'm going to slave you
Speaker 4: or are you going to work for me my house?
Speaker 4: Nobody worked.
Speaker 5: I think the messages that we've seen from absolutely yes.
Speaker 5: What about the bank transfers from Desiree where she's depositing
Speaker 5: money into your account.
Speaker 2: The same thing.
Speaker 1: What do you make of that interview, because she's asked
Speaker 1: about whether she could influence people to do the things
Speaker 1: that they did, and she basically claims she's completely innocent.
Speaker 3: She does, and it's how the trial goes as well.
Speaker 3: During trials, she denies acts that are easily verifiable, and
Speaker 3: she denies having those women over at her house. And
Speaker 3: there are pictures, there are videos, there's I mean they
Speaker 3: weren't there. There's a neighbors saying there's everyone saying there's
Speaker 3: the police find them there, and she lately denies it upright,
Speaker 3: And then she also gets some hints with the judge
Speaker 3: and she starts bossing the judge around, and she starts
Speaker 3: asking the judge to be quiet, something I don't think
Speaker 3: many lawyers would advise on. So I haven't got the
Speaker 3: chance to be face to face with her, but we
Speaker 3: did exchange letters, and she showed another side of her
Speaker 3: in which she denied the crimes, but she admitted to
Speaker 3: having relations with those young women who moved to Texas,
Speaker 3: but also having a big expectation of her followers saving
Speaker 3: her from jail. She actually says, and that's where badim.
Speaker 3: If they know I'm here, they will destroy this prison
Speaker 3: and they will get me out because they love me.
Speaker 3: So there is something there. There's a sense of grandeur
Speaker 3: and there's a sense of importance which might not be
Speaker 3: persons which might not correspond to the reality.
Speaker 1: Next, I asked Tejo what he thought of Kat after
Speaker 1: he got the opportunity to speak with her one on one.
Speaker 1: From your interactions with her, would you say that she
Speaker 1: was corrupted by the power that she managed to achieve
Speaker 1: with her millions of followers, or does she seem genuinely
Speaker 1: mentally unhealthy? Like, what's your take on where she's coming from?
Speaker 3: Now? It's hard as someone who's seen the story from outside,
Speaker 3: it's hard to tell. Well. What I can say that
Speaker 3: she's been assessed by psychiatrists, she's been medicated, she's been diagnosed,
Speaker 3: she's been deemed healthy enough to serve time in jail,
Speaker 3: not to serve time in a psychiatric ward. And I
Speaker 3: do think there's something deeper there in which her behavior
Speaker 3: is a reprodution of what life has made to her.
Speaker 3: She was advising these women to act well exactly like
Speaker 3: she had acted all her life and had achieved the
Speaker 3: things she had achieved by acting that way. By acting
Speaker 3: submits that by going out with older, richer men who
Speaker 3: would provide you, by getting pregnant of someone who was
Speaker 3: very powerful, I do think there's a level of trauma there,
Speaker 3: and there's a level of someone who had very little
Speaker 3: chance in life and made it. One of her friends
Speaker 3: says that she was honestly trying to help this She
Speaker 3: believed Catories was actually trying to help this women by
Speaker 3: giving her her roadmap, the roadmap of her life, And
Speaker 3: that makes a lot of sense to me. I don't
Speaker 3: think because she it wasn't a big scam. She didn't
Speaker 3: got rich with as she We're not talking about millions
Speaker 3: of dollars. We're talking about a lot of money. But
Speaker 3: had she married someone who was a millionaire or a
Speaker 3: billionaire in the US and she had the opportunity to
Speaker 3: she dated a big movie director in Los Angeles, who
Speaker 3: was a millionaire by hundreds of millions. She could have
Speaker 3: made more money acting in a different way than trafficking
Speaker 3: her followers. So I do think there is something there
Speaker 3: which we might not never reach on her psyche is
Speaker 3: why has she done this? She could have made money
Speaker 3: if it was for the money itself, She could have
Speaker 3: made money in different ways. Why would she choose to
Speaker 3: traffic her followers to the US and put herself in risk?
Speaker 3: And she knew she was committing a crime where she
Speaker 3: could have made money in many other different ways which
Speaker 3: were not necessarily getting diego. So I do think there's
Speaker 3: something there that speaks to her so which is hard
Speaker 3: for us to define.
Speaker 2: There's definitely less in this for all of us.
Speaker 1: I mean, you personally have reflected on the fact that
Speaker 1: you are actually an influencer yourself, and you have to
Speaker 1: take into account the power that being an influencer holds.
Speaker 1: But do you think there's a lesson in us maybe
Speaker 1: having to stop and remember that a lot of what
Speaker 1: we see on social media platforms is essentially a lie,
Speaker 1: a lie.
Speaker 3: There's an example in the Portuguese version of the podcast,
Speaker 3: which didn't make the cut to the US version. One
Speaker 3: of our friends is when you go to a beach,
Speaker 3: do you take a picture with the crowd and the
Speaker 3: crowded beach, or do you try to go to a
Speaker 3: specific point of the beach where in this right angle
Speaker 3: with the right light, it would look like you're alone
Speaker 3: in the beach. And we do it all the time.
Speaker 3: Everyone's lying all the time on social media. I lie
Speaker 3: all the time on social media, and it was somewhat
Speaker 3: difficult for me to realize that I was also part
Speaker 3: of it, mistigating this case. I mean, if I have
Speaker 3: an advertising today for let's say a pop company, a
Speaker 3: soda company, and I've got bad man migrainar had a
Speaker 3: huge fight with my husband and I'm feeling like shit,
Speaker 3: I'll smile nonethe less and I'll say, this is a
Speaker 3: delicious soda, you should have it, and it's alive. It's
Speaker 3: an up, it's a job. I think we should first
Speaker 3: of all, always be aware that the Internet does not
Speaker 3: correspond to the reality this. People with hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: or millions or tens of millions of followers are not
Speaker 3: your friends, and that they're they're working, which is legit,
Speaker 3: which is okay. It's a job like anything else. We
Speaker 3: do not expect Drew Barrymore or merrow Street to be
Speaker 3: your friend. They're there work, even though we admired them
Speaker 3: and we feel close to them. But there's a sense
Speaker 3: of proximity which exists in social media, which is very
Speaker 3: the siffing. People who are influencers tend to act as
Speaker 3: if everyone who's following them as their friends is their
Speaker 3: friend or has access to their personal life, and it's
Speaker 3: part of their enter rush. You're not, you're not. It's
Speaker 3: just maybe we should see them as we see narrow
Speaker 3: free and that would be a healthier decision. And I
Speaker 3: guess we would give less away our agency. WI would
Speaker 3: give less away our time and our money for people
Speaker 3: who are acting as if they are friends. They're not
Speaker 3: our calls.
Speaker 1: They're not to know what happens to Kattaras when she
Speaker 1: finishes her sentence, like will she be allowed to go
Speaker 1: back and be an influencer?
Speaker 2: Was she allowed to have another Instagram account?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Is she bard from doing any of that? Once she
Speaker 2: gets out, she will.
Speaker 3: Come back, and she'll come back stronger, especially knowing Brazilian
Speaker 3: social media landscape like I do. People will be so
Speaker 3: interested on her she will make it to Big Brother Brazil,
Speaker 3: which is our biggest TV show. I know Big Brother
Speaker 3: is kind of small in some countries, and it's huge here.
Speaker 3: It's our biggest television show. And she doesn't make it
Speaker 3: to Big Brothers. She will make it to which is
Speaker 3: the second one. I think it's more probable because they
Speaker 3: do like people who have been involved in the problems
Speaker 3: and controversy in their cast. But she will come back
Speaker 3: stronger because that's what the Internet lives on the Internet
Speaker 3: rereads on trouble, breads on novelty, breeds on beef, and
Speaker 3: she brings the beef. But she says she wants to
Speaker 3: be a country singer. According to her onward, the Internet
Speaker 3: is for idiots. I want to be a country singer.
Speaker 3: So that's the official version. But I'm doing a little
Speaker 3: projection here. I'm doing a little I think she will
Speaker 3: come back stronger in Brazil specifically, it has happened. I mean,
Speaker 3: we I've created menda stars or one a young woman
Speaker 3: who killed her parents became one of our biggest stars
Speaker 3: on socially wow or killing her.
Speaker 1: Pan watch this space. I guess when she hops out
Speaker 1: of jail. Keep an eye on Instagram or the country
Speaker 1: music charts whichever way she decides to go. Chito, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for sharing your insights with us on
Speaker 1: Kat Toys today. We really appreciate it and you're giving
Speaker 1: us some of your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you all.
Speaker 1: Michael Answer, Thank you to Chito for helping us tell
Speaker 1: this story. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me Claire
Speaker 1: Murphy and produced by Charlie Blackman, with audio design by
Speaker 1: Jacob Brown. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be
Speaker 1: back next week with
Speaker 2: Another True Crime Conversation