Speaker 1: This episode contains references to suicide. You can find links
Speaker 1: in our show notes to support services. Let me start
Speaker 1: in December twenty ten. It's a Monday morning in Auckland,
Speaker 1: New Zealand's largest city, and a cluster of young people
Speaker 1: are waking to a nightmare. A young woman, Laura Jane West,
Speaker 1: has been killed overnight in a car crash. She was twenty,
Speaker 1: survived by a five year old daughter, Caylee. This was
Speaker 1: devastating news for Laura's family, but the shock the grief
Speaker 1: of losing Laura went much further. Laura was bright, bubbly, vivacious,
Speaker 1: and like her sister's very pretty and popular, particularly online.
Speaker 1: When it came to Facebook, Laura and her three sisters
Speaker 1: and their friends at times were a swirling whirlwind of
Speaker 1: excitement to the first generation to truly raise social media.
Speaker 1: Distance disappeared and they connected with people across the country. Laura,
Speaker 1: dead at twenty, was barely sixteen when she joined Facebook,
Speaker 1: and the years that followed she built friendships and even
Speaker 1: discovered love online. So when his sister Abby announced Laura's
Speaker 1: death on Facebook, the impact the grief went far beyond
Speaker 1: her immediate family.
Speaker 2: Last night, at three am, Laura and May opt into
Speaker 2: a car with a guy they trusted and know really
Speaker 2: well who told them he was sober to stand out
Speaker 2: to be alive. He was five times over the limit.
Speaker 2: My particle sister just wanted to forget and have a
Speaker 2: good night out. On the way home, the driver of
Speaker 2: the car checked the corner at great speed and lost
Speaker 2: control of the car, heading into the lamppost rap.
Speaker 1: Babeger, there have been tragedy enough in Laura Wes's family.
Speaker 1: Just weeks earlier, the sisters Rachel, Abby and Becker shared
Speaker 1: through Facebook that they'd lost their dad. He was one
Speaker 1: of the twenty nine men killed when the Pike River
Speaker 1: mine on the West Coast exploded. And now Laura dead too.
Speaker 1: A young life cut short just when it was getting going.
Speaker 1: The daughter Kaylee left without a mother. It's a tragedy
Speaker 1: in every sense of the word, and the Facebook post
Speaker 1: was filled quickly with tributes from those who counted her
Speaker 1: as a friend, even if they had never met in
Speaker 1: real life.
Speaker 3: Rap baby girl, you were there for me always when
Speaker 3: Amy passed, and fuck, I'm going to miss you like
Speaker 3: I do Amy every fricking day. I love you the rest, easy,
Speaker 3: little one. Always missed, never far from her heart. Hey,
Speaker 3: my sys fucking miss you like crazy. Love you so much,
Speaker 3: Never going to forget you in my heart forever. Love
Speaker 3: you bud.
Speaker 4: R P.
Speaker 1: Baby girl, I'm going to miss your big times.
Speaker 5: See you my God.
Speaker 6: I can't believe this is true, mate, I miss you.
Speaker 3: Remember the time when I saw you jis and my
Speaker 3: heart goes out to you and wee Kaylee.
Speaker 1: Then there were those who learned more directly. In the
Speaker 1: South Island, in a small town not far from christ Church,
Speaker 1: a grandmother called Bernie received a phone call when her
Speaker 1: teenage daughter Emma had started making friends online. Bernie had
Speaker 1: got on the phone to check them out, and that's
Speaker 1: how she came to know Laura and Abby, discovering through
Speaker 1: them a distant family connection. They called her Auntie when
Speaker 1: they called or connected on a messenger. Emma was the
Speaker 1: new founder cousin. So that day, December sixth, twenty ten,
Speaker 1: remains fixed in their memory for the impact it had.
Speaker 1: When a broken, distraught Abby rang to break the news
Speaker 1: to Bernie.
Speaker 6: Abby wrung, Mum and I are a mess. So Laura
Speaker 6: is dead and my mom was like she was like no.
Speaker 6: She had a car crash and she did. They took
Speaker 6: the ICU, but she didn't make it. Yeah, we got
Speaker 6: the message, and then I got a message or a
Speaker 6: phone call at the home saying she dead. Your cousins did,
Speaker 6: and you know that sent both of us spiraling.
Speaker 7: It was a.
Speaker 1: Crushing blow for the mother and daughter, but especially for Emma.
Speaker 1: She had lost a friend, a close friend, to suicide
Speaker 1: just months earlier, and a friend who died before that
Speaker 1: at a car crash that was very similar to that
Speaker 1: which killed Laura.
Speaker 6: That's what I went on a big bender because I yeah, no,
Speaker 6: I want a big bender. Then you know, I broke
Speaker 6: my sobriety. We just sat there numb and grieving, and
Speaker 6: we were trying to, you know, help planning the funeral.
Speaker 6: We were we were like trying to make the trip
Speaker 6: up north apparently too, that's where it was happening.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 6: Yeah everything, oh nine yards just to get up there,
Speaker 6: because I was made to carry of the casket.
Speaker 1: All these years down the track. They can't shake the
Speaker 1: horror of losing so suddenly, such a bright spark of
Speaker 1: life and a thoughtless drink drive death.
Speaker 7: Early that Monday morning.
Speaker 1: For Sam Baker, who was dating Abbie, he remembers the
Speaker 1: distress and wanting to console Laura's boyfriend.
Speaker 8: I heard from my friend and he was very very upset.
Speaker 8: He just read about it on Facebook. I think one
Speaker 8: of the sisters had gotten in contact with him, or
Speaker 8: it might have even been I don't know. I'm really
Speaker 8: scratching my fourteen year old memory here, but there may
Speaker 8: have been a mother Facebook page that was involved as well,
Speaker 8: that reached out to my friend and said that, yeah,
Speaker 8: very very sorry to tell you, but Laura's tragically passed away.
Speaker 8: You know, she loved you dearly. She wanted to build
Speaker 8: this big life with you and everything. It's really really sad,
Speaker 8: but feel free to keep in contact with us, because
Speaker 8: you know, you're like family to us. Like my mate,
Speaker 8: he liked he was going to buy a ring for
Speaker 8: her and stuff like. They were really really locked in.
Speaker 8: So whendn't he found the news? When I found the
Speaker 8: news out from him, you know, I went up to
Speaker 8: console him, but he was beside himself.
Speaker 5: It was really quite horrible.
Speaker 1: But there's a catch to this story, and that catch
Speaker 1: is that Laura never existed. Her daughter Kayley didn't exist.
Speaker 1: There was no car, no car crash, there was no
Speaker 1: death at all. Abby didn't exist. None of the sisters existed.
Speaker 1: They were all characters created by one woman, a woman
Speaker 1: who joined in the Facebook grief posting with a heartfelt
Speaker 1: message that she knew wasn't true.
Speaker 3: At twenty, you have not even lived yet, my sweet girl.
Speaker 3: Why is all I am asking?
Speaker 9: You know?
Speaker 3: Getting into a car with a drunk hass driver is wrong? Babe,
Speaker 3: Rip Laura Jane West, you are going to be missed
Speaker 3: and loved.
Speaker 1: That post was written by Natalia Burgess. My name's David Fisher.
Speaker 1: I'm an investigative journalist with the New Zealand Herald. I
Speaker 1: first heard about Natalia a few months after this post
Speaker 1: bent up back in twenty eleven. I've written thousands of
Speaker 1: stories over thirty five years in journalism, thousands of lives
Speaker 1: that have touched mine and carried on into the future.
Speaker 1: In my life, people come and go with the stories
Speaker 1: they have to tell, and then there are those stories
Speaker 1: and people that come back. This is one of those stories.
Speaker 1: This is a story about Natalia Burgess, also known as
Speaker 1: Laura West or Amy West or Kaylie Rose Becker, Julienne
Speaker 1: Abby William, Rachel Drent, and so many other names. There
Speaker 1: were so many false identities Natalia Burgess created online and
Speaker 1: infused with life.
Speaker 7: And histories and friendships.
Speaker 1: The problem with Natalia's fancy world was how imaging it became.
Speaker 1: For those whose identities she used and for those who
Speaker 1: believe she was real. Hearts were broken, trust was betrayed,
Speaker 1: someone died, and Natalia went to prison. I never thought
Speaker 1: I'd be thinking of this case again, But here I
Speaker 1: am in twenty twenty four, thirty years after all this happened,
Speaker 1: and Natalia is back in my life. Back then, she
Speaker 1: called herself the puppeteer, and after all these years, she's
Speaker 1: still pulling all the strings, and I'm looking for a
Speaker 1: way to cut her loose. My journey with Natalia started
Speaker 1: in early twenty eleven. Back then, I was working as
Speaker 1: the chief reporter for the Herald on Sunday, a twenty
Speaker 1: two year veteran reporter and quite a bit more veteran.
Speaker 1: Now it's easy to forget how much has changed and
Speaker 1: just thirteen years, and how different technology was then.
Speaker 7: Let me take you back to that time.
Speaker 1: This was a time when MySpace and Bebo had just
Speaker 1: passed the use by days as the big players and
Speaker 1: online social media Twitter hadn't really taken off in the mainstream,
Speaker 1: and Facebook was still young enough and still quirky enough
Speaker 1: that a biopic about its creation was a big player
Speaker 1: in Hollywood's Ward season that year. There was no zoom
Speaker 1: and Skype. Conversations were often about how I can see you,
Speaker 1: but I can't hear you all the other way around.
Speaker 1: We were only up to the iPhone four and the
Speaker 1: first generation iPad. The idea of smartphones as an everyday
Speaker 1: part of life had yet to be embedded in the mainstream.
Speaker 1: The Internet and social media may have started to infiltrate
Speaker 1: our lives, but not in the all consuming way they
Speaker 1: do now. The reason all this matters is the herold
Speaker 1: on Sunday where I worked was people had said it
Speaker 1: was crazy to launch a newspaper when the whole news
Speaker 1: industry was going to shift online. But it worked, and
Speaker 1: one reason for that was we worked harder and smarter,
Speaker 1: finding every advantage that we could. One of those things
Speaker 1: we got really good at very early in the piece
Speaker 1: was mining these new social media sites like Facebook for
Speaker 1: information about the people using it and the connections they had.
Speaker 1: That meant when the Press newspaper in christ Church reported
Speaker 1: that a woman was using false Facebook identities to scam
Speaker 1: teenage boys. I was perfectly placed to dig below the surface.
Speaker 1: It took a week to identify in Natalian Burgess as
Speaker 1: that woman. It was a week of building evidence and
Speaker 1: developing sources to the point where we could name her
Speaker 1: and run her photograph on the front page of the
Speaker 1: next edition. Over a year, Burgess used her multiple online
Speaker 1: personalities to form Internet relationships with dozens of teenage boys
Speaker 1: and men across the country. Almost forty boys at Saint Thomas,
Speaker 1: at Canterbury School and Cristchurch were caught up, along with
Speaker 1: dozens of others. Many believed they were in relationships with
Speaker 1: attractive girls their own age. She would arrange to pay
Speaker 1: for some to have their mobile phones topped up with
Speaker 1: credit and they would spend hours through the night talking
Speaker 1: to her. I'd later learn that Natalie was not just
Speaker 1: focused on one school. There were dozens of young people
Speaker 1: and adults around the country that fell into her orbit.
Speaker 1: One of those people was Sam Baker, he heard earlier
Speaker 1: talking of his shock over Laura's death. He was just
Speaker 1: thirteen when drawn into Natalia's world. All the way from
Speaker 1: tiny Murchison near the top of New Zealand South Island.
Speaker 7: It was once a gold mining town.
Speaker 1: Now it's sought after for whitewater adventure sports, and it
Speaker 1: is a tiny town. The last census put the population
Speaker 1: at fewer than five hundred people. Small as it was,
Speaker 1: the internent made Sam's world feel so much bigger, and
Speaker 1: that's how he got mixed up in this.
Speaker 8: I was up visiting a friend of mine who was
Speaker 8: speaking to a girl that he'd been talking to quite
Speaker 8: a while over online, and from what I was under
Speaker 8: the impression of they were in an online relationship.
Speaker 5: At the time, I just assumed that he had known.
Speaker 8: Who previously and they were just communicating on an online platform.
Speaker 8: But I didn't really that didn't occur to me to
Speaker 8: press any to do that. I was thirteen at the
Speaker 8: time and he was a good friend of mine, so
Speaker 8: I just thought really nothing of it. Bear in mind,
Speaker 8: when I was living he was sixteen. It was I'm
Speaker 8: from a small town, so people from varying age groups
Speaker 8: just tend to hang out with each other, I guess.
Speaker 8: But anyway, I was talking to this girl who name
Speaker 8: happened to be Laura, and I started yearning to all
Speaker 8: I was up to seeing my mate, and we just
Speaker 8: I don't know. I just said, hey, hey you Gan,
Speaker 8: you're good.
Speaker 5: Thanks. She asked me what my name was, asked what
Speaker 5: her name was?
Speaker 8: Asked her, you know how long they guys have been
Speaker 8: friends talking to each other. She said maybe like a
Speaker 8: year or so. And he's like, yeah, I've met her online.
Speaker 8: When we get along great, I was like, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 5: Sweet as I thought nothing of it. He ended the call.
Speaker 8: We played a few games of Xbox, as you do
Speaker 8: when you're thirteen years old, and then I just Sweet
Speaker 8: Home and Sweet Home for dinner and then to do
Speaker 8: homework and stuff. But anyway, I log into my Facebook
Speaker 8: and I noticed that I have a frame request from
Speaker 8: a random girl who name. The full name eludes me nowadays,
Speaker 8: but it was Rachel. I think her name was Rachel.
Speaker 8: And I accepted it and messaged to her. I was like, hello,
Speaker 8: who are you. It was a bit more colorful that
Speaker 8: I was like hello, who are you? She's like, hello,
Speaker 8: my name is Rachel. I believe you were talking to
Speaker 8: my sister earlier and Laura. I was listening to the
Speaker 8: conversation and I thought you had a cute voice. I
Speaker 8: was wondering, would you be keen to I don't know
Speaker 8: develop her friendship, and I was like.
Speaker 5: Okay, cool.
Speaker 8: Bearing in mind, I was thirteen years old and a
Speaker 8: town of five hundred people.
Speaker 5: In my school.
Speaker 8: There are one hundred and twenty kids in my classroom.
Speaker 8: I would have been probably year seven, year eight at
Speaker 8: the time.
Speaker 5: Out of thirty of.
Speaker 8: Us, I think there were three girls, so to be
Speaker 8: getting this sort of female attention, I didn't really think
Speaker 8: twice about it. I just thought, oh my god, there's
Speaker 8: a very attractive girl heading me up.
Speaker 1: Natalia knew her target demographic well. Her primary false personality
Speaker 1: was a young woman called Laura West. Laura entered Facebook
Speaker 1: age sixteen, and at that time Natarmi was.
Speaker 7: Around twenty six.
Speaker 1: Laura West was pretty with a bright and engaging smile.
Speaker 1: She also seemed to be very popular where she went
Speaker 1: On Facebook, she traveled with an engaging social circle who
Speaker 1: liked Laura were young and attractive women, and it seemed
Speaker 1: that they, like any teenager, were trying to work out
Speaker 1: how they fitted into the world and with others their
Speaker 1: own age, so many came under their spell. One of
Speaker 1: those boys was Ethan Williams, whose story is pretty similar
Speaker 1: to Sam's. Years older, around fifteen, when he first met Laura,
Speaker 1: and he too was a small town boy raised in
Speaker 1: Monteweka and Nelson, the same general area where Sam lives.
Speaker 9: So I think initially I met a girl called Laura online,
Speaker 9: and I think this is this is probably in the
Speaker 9: early days of Facebook or kind of towards the tail
Speaker 9: end of the old Bebo social network when that existed,
Speaker 9: and it was just one of those kind of random
Speaker 9: ads on Facebook. She haded me, and I thought, yeah, oh,
Speaker 9: why not? You know, but there were there were about
Speaker 9: three or four different people that you know, that were
Speaker 9: family of this this Laura West that her last name
Speaker 9: was West, That's right. That added me as well. And
Speaker 9: I didn't want much of it. And I guess as
Speaker 9: I probably said to you, well, I wouldn't have set
Speaker 9: you at the time. But as I said, just a
Speaker 9: moment ago, being quite a naive Asia, I didn't think
Speaker 9: much of it. And I think also because catfishing wasn't
Speaker 9: particularly a well known phenomenon back then, it wasn't something
Speaker 9: that ever crossed my mind.
Speaker 1: Could you tell me how Laura presented herself? I mean,
Speaker 1: who did you think you were communicating with online?
Speaker 9: Yeah? I so it's a very good question. If we
Speaker 9: think about an answer she presented as kind of an
Speaker 9: attractive I think she was seventeen eighteen or something around
Speaker 9: that sort of age, kind of a little bit older
Speaker 9: than me, but you know, quite an attractive young woman,
Speaker 9: you know, short blonde here and someone that I thought,
Speaker 9: you know, she's she's quite attractive. I'll talk to her
Speaker 9: if she's gonna talk to me. And yeah, it's kind
Speaker 9: of ret snowballs. I suppose.
Speaker 1: Ethan was fifteen when you started talking Tonalia, or as
Speaker 1: he knew Laura West, and Sam was just thirteen when
Speaker 1: he started dating her sister Rachel.
Speaker 7: This was in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: At this time, Natalia, being twenty six years old, is
Speaker 1: literally twice the age of Sam. I remember being told
Speaker 1: once that the guide for age suitability is to take
Speaker 1: your age, split it into add seven and the results
Speaker 1: at the youngest end of the sliding scale that you
Speaker 1: should be on. You've probably heard something similar. It's one
Speaker 1: of those unwritten rules of humanity. We will just seem
Speaker 1: to know. By that measure, Natalia shouldn't be talking to
Speaker 1: anyone younger than twenty, or at least not in the
Speaker 1: way she spoke with Sam and others his age. But
Speaker 1: There's really only one equation that matters here, and that
Speaker 1: is back in twenty ten, Sam is a child and
Speaker 1: Natalia as an adult. And another thing to think on
Speaker 1: is that Sam had no idea the girl who contacted
Speaker 1: him online was twice his age. The voice he heard,
Speaker 1: the photographs he saw were of a teenage girl, while
Speaker 1: Laura West herself didn't exist. The photos belonged to a
Speaker 1: real person. The photographs Natalia used.
Speaker 7: Where of a real woman? Could Natalie?
Speaker 1: This was someone Natalia did not know, but, as Ethan says,
Speaker 1: she knew the effect she could have with the photographs.
Speaker 7: She had chosen.
Speaker 1: Those boys at Saint Thomas and Canterbury, Sam Ethan, their friends, none.
Speaker 7: Of them stood a chance.
Speaker 1: At the age of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and some a
Speaker 1: few years older. They were confronted with bright, vivacious Laura
Speaker 1: and a coterie of friends who were intent on forming
Speaker 1: bonds and exploring relationships. By the time I came along,
Speaker 1: Natalia's on line personas were well advanced, brought to life
Speaker 1: with other stolen photographs taken from other people's social media pages.
Speaker 1: Those characters were so well advanced that they had time
Speaker 1: to form relationships. Speak of love, contemplate marriage, and all
Speaker 1: those other things teenagers do when they first fall head
Speaker 1: over heels. Each of her characters was fully realized. Along
Speaker 1: with photographs harvested online. Natalia had given them family connections
Speaker 1: and personalities, breathing life and credibility into every false persona.
Speaker 1: With some of them, she created family. Laura's sisters, as
Speaker 1: we've heard, were Rachel Becker and Abby. It wasn't all
Speaker 1: playing out online either. As Natalia's characters formed online friendships
Speaker 1: with schoolboys, she worked to take it to the real world.
Speaker 8: I think I had the first voice called with her,
Speaker 8: maybe like a week into the relationship. It was weird,
Speaker 8: it was I don't know how she pulled it off.
Speaker 8: Thinking back, I spoke to her Laura, and there was
Speaker 8: another sister. I can't remember her name, but she was
Speaker 8: a blonde girl and she worked at Packing Save And
Speaker 8: I had a threewey.
Speaker 5: Chat with all three of these girls, and they told
Speaker 5: me how much of the nice boy I think I
Speaker 5: am and how.
Speaker 8: I'm going to be so perfect for the sister, And
Speaker 8: they asked me like, will you be my sister's boyfriend?
Speaker 8: Like these two girls sort of asked on her behalf
Speaker 8: like I've taken into the back room sort of thing
Speaker 8: and given the fifth degree, and I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 8: all right, sweet, let's do it.
Speaker 1: There were phone calls and long conversations. Evidence emerged of
Speaker 1: Natalia paying to top up phones so she could speak
Speaker 1: for longer as Laura or Abby or Becka or any
Speaker 1: of the other identities she manufactured, and even occasionally as
Speaker 1: herself as the real Natalia Burgess in the shadow cast
Speaker 1: by her younger, glamorous friends. As I said earlier, Natalia
Speaker 1: wasn't a teenager when she was talking with all these kids,
Speaker 1: and it kind of reminds me of Hollywood's tendency to
Speaker 1: cast old when casting teenagers like Greece or nine O
Speaker 1: two zero will Glee. Every generation has some example of
Speaker 1: a grown adult playing young, and Natalia was bringing that
Speaker 1: fantasy to life in her own way. This was real life, though,
Speaker 1: and not a Hollywood set. As I dug deeper, there
Speaker 1: was seriously disturbing aspects to her interaction with those she
Speaker 1: met online. As she built her fictional world and populated it,
Speaker 1: she started to develop it with whatever came to hand.
Speaker 1: Natalia even attached real life people to false personas. After
Speaker 1: the Pike of a mind disaster. Laura West posted a
Speaker 1: memorial message with a photograph of one of the miners
Speaker 1: who was killed.
Speaker 3: I miss you and I will never stop loving you,
Speaker 3: Rip Daddy.
Speaker 1: It's one part of the story that Sam Baker remembers
Speaker 1: all too well.
Speaker 5: I grew up in Murchison.
Speaker 8: The tragedy happened, I believe in Greymouth, So Murchison and
Speaker 8: Graymouth for about two hours away from each other.
Speaker 5: And what happened was is I remember there was a
Speaker 5: whole lot.
Speaker 8: Of like this was way before crowdfunding and go fund
Speaker 8: me were a thing. People used to sort of reach
Speaker 8: out for donations and help via Facebook pages and groups.
Speaker 5: And there was a Facebook page called the Pipe.
Speaker 8: River Mind twenty nine and it was people that could
Speaker 8: come together that were affected by the tragedy, that could
Speaker 8: share photos and memories and maybe like people that had
Speaker 8: a bit of money they wanted to donate to a
Speaker 8: family that had been displaced because their father a peerish
Speaker 8: they could you know, put down their bank account details
Speaker 8: and receive donations. Laura started fabricating making these big, giant
Speaker 8: like Facebook murals. I guess, like with this Paul Blokes
Speaker 8: photo and then like the name up in lights, and
Speaker 8: then the born day, the death day, and then like
Speaker 8: your kids mess you dearly, we love you, daddy, like
Speaker 8: from Laura, from Rachel, from the other daughter and stuff.
Speaker 5: It just all looked very very legit, very polished.
Speaker 8: And then she had people from the community who they
Speaker 8: had lost family members in the mind tragedy that were
Speaker 8: like getting behind her, like, oh my god, we feel
Speaker 8: so bad for you, as you know, who can help
Speaker 8: you out. And then I believe she may have been
Speaker 8: putting down a bank account and receiving donations from these
Speaker 8: people as a like, I don't know, contributing to helping
Speaker 8: her get back on her feet because she just lost
Speaker 8: her dad.
Speaker 7: That feels pretty cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at the time, what did you make of it?
Speaker 1: Because this was the girl that you were dating, this
Speaker 1: her sister Rachel.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8: So I was dating Laura's sister Rachel. So at the
Speaker 8: time I felt horrible for them. I was like, you,
Speaker 8: poor girl, that's horrible. So yeah, So to get the
Speaker 8: time frame together, the Pipe River disaster happen, and then
Speaker 8: Laura died in the car crash. So between Laura between
Speaker 8: the Pipe River and Laura died in the car crash,
Speaker 8: quotation marks. I felt absolutely horrible for these poor girls.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the only time Natalia created false links to
Speaker 1: a high profile death. When christ Church woman Emma Agney
Speaker 1: was murdered, Natalia even went as far as setting up
Speaker 1: a memorial page in her personas, linking people she had
Speaker 1: invented to people she had never met. In the relationships
Speaker 1: she was forming, they were becoming increasingly serious. Sam and
Speaker 1: Ethan were far from the only ones caught up in this.
Speaker 1: There were dozens of teenage boys who believed they were
Speaker 1: in a romantic relationship with one of Natalia's personas, and
Speaker 1: each one was smitten. Some thought they'd found the love
Speaker 1: of their life, and when that was taken away, the
Speaker 1: consequences were devastating.
Speaker 10: My name is Raven Gear and I live out a
Speaker 10: Birdling slat. Beforehand, I was Raven Ford, and I lived
Speaker 10: in christ Church all my life until my son tragically
Speaker 10: took his own.
Speaker 1: Life around twenty ten. One man who fell in love
Speaker 1: with Natalia was Peter Russell. He was from christ Urge,
Speaker 1: like many of Natalia's other targets, and he was a
Speaker 1: little older than the others. He was twenty one, But
Speaker 1: if you look at the photographs of him. He's really
Speaker 1: still just a boy looking for love and finding it online.
Speaker 7: What was the name that Peter knew? Who by.
Speaker 4: Laura? Laura West. She was a stunning, beautiful, blonde haired girl.
Speaker 4: He actually talked to Laura's cousins, which I've since found
Speaker 4: out with the same person. All along. Peter went out
Speaker 4: and bought close for this child. No, but there never
Speaker 4: was a child. This child would talk to Peter on
Speaker 4: the phone saying, Daddy, mummy's doing drugs. I need help.
Speaker 6: She obviously facebooked them off, you know, off another you know,
Speaker 6: fake Facebook, and I knew something was up, but I
Speaker 6: never quested him, you know, because he was that a
Speaker 6: little bit older than me, so I just, you know,
Speaker 6: I thought it was a friend, and you know how
Speaker 6: yeah it was. And then we just started drifting away.
Speaker 6: And then he said to me and I was like,
Speaker 6: what's up? And he goes, I think I'll fall in
Speaker 6: love with this girl. And I was like, you need
Speaker 6: to follow your heart, you need to do what you
Speaker 6: need to do.
Speaker 1: That was Emma, Peter's girlfriend at the time and an
Speaker 1: online friend of Laura's. You heard her at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this episode talking about helping arrange Laura's supposed funeral.
Speaker 1: Not only did Peter leave Emma for Laura, he proposed
Speaker 1: to her.
Speaker 4: Well, I knew at that time when Peter was talking
Speaker 4: to a young sexy girl on Facebook, and that's all
Speaker 4: I know. He was talking to her a lot. He
Speaker 4: was talking to me about her and her child and
Speaker 4: how he was going to marry her. He actually even
Speaker 4: proposed to her on the internet. If you look up
Speaker 4: on YouTube, you can actually see my son asking this
Speaker 4: lady to marry her.
Speaker 1: I love you, and Laura accepted, and then short while
Speaker 1: later she dumped them.
Speaker 4: It was heartbroken, and.
Speaker 1: It's it's a difficult thing for parents to see their
Speaker 1: childlike that.
Speaker 4: The game she played with that boy and the mental
Speaker 4: anguish that she put him through was just unbelievable. One
Speaker 4: minute she'd should be in contact with him, and then
Speaker 4: next minute she'd be in hospital when something had happened.
Speaker 4: And then she went overseas and she remarried somebody else,
Speaker 4: and then she come back and wanted to be with
Speaker 4: my son again and just dup a game. Who was
Speaker 4: the best kid you could ever ask for. It's twenty
Speaker 4: one years old, still gave his mum kuss and cuddles.
Speaker 4: Good night was always family first with him. He'd go
Speaker 4: out of his way to do anything. Boy you it
Speaker 4: was just a really, really good kid, but unfortunately got
Speaker 4: caught up with the wrong person.
Speaker 1: I'll talk some more about this in a later episode,
Speaker 1: but there's something I need to make clear now. In
Speaker 1: their opinion, ravend and Emma struggle to look past Natalia
Speaker 1: for Peter's death, but as I've learned over the years,
Speaker 1: suicide almost always has multiple stresses. We can't delve into
Speaker 1: the details of the Currenter's inquiry because of court orders
Speaker 1: that prohibit details from being made public. I will say though,
Speaker 1: that in my opinion, there was a lot going on
Speaker 1: in Peter's life at the time he died, and that
Speaker 1: no one then really appreciated the extent of Natalia's mind games. Certainly,
Speaker 1: Peter died believing Laura was real, and raevend Io believed
Speaker 1: that to be the case until I started reporting what was.
Speaker 7: Really going on about six months later.
Speaker 1: For emotionally charged teenagers, connections to Laura West and her
Speaker 1: circle of attractive friends was like basking in the sun.
Speaker 1: That became especially the case when there was a sexual
Speaker 1: element to the relationships. Natalia twenty seven was engaging in
Speaker 1: phone sex with boys as young as thirteen. It was
Speaker 1: a heady brew, an intoxicating mess, impossible to resist for
Speaker 1: teenagers trying to work out who they were and what
Speaker 1: sex was about. Forgive me if this is too personal,
Speaker 1: but was there a sexual element to it?
Speaker 9: There was we had, you know, not like explicitly, but
Speaker 9: there was certainly that kind of you know, it's a
Speaker 9: little bit too intimate.
Speaker 1: And Natalia played them like an instrument. Caustic treatment from
Speaker 1: Laura and her friends was like being shut out in
Speaker 1: the cold. Natalia built these worlds and she ruled them.
Speaker 1: I spoke to people who described getting into online spats
Speaker 1: with Laura. I need to have her entire social network
Speaker 1: of false characters pile on with emotional abuse.
Speaker 8: She had a very very very heavy presence on my
Speaker 8: social media profiles, and she would interact with a lot
Speaker 8: of the females on my social media sort of as
Speaker 8: like a very territorial girlfriend. And she would also interact
Speaker 8: with a lot of the boys that are on my
Speaker 8: social media also as a very territorial girlfriend. She would
Speaker 8: try and start fights with them that would end up
Speaker 8: spilling into like my school, like lunch breaks and stuff.
Speaker 8: I'd be getting hit up from people that were a
Speaker 8: couple of years older than me, being like, who is
Speaker 8: this crazy bitch that is claiming to be your girlfriend?
Speaker 8: She's messaging me or like comment and all my stuff
Speaker 8: at all hours of the night telling me to stay
Speaker 8: the eype away from you and this, that and the other,
Speaker 8: and I just remember thinking like, oh no, because I'm
Speaker 8: a pretty easy gown chill dude. I remember thinking like,
Speaker 8: this is gettn to the point where it's sort of
Speaker 8: getting out of hand.
Speaker 1: The supporting cast of characters would turn on whoever had
Speaker 1: caused the upset, attacking the boy who had fallen out
Speaker 1: of favor. That was the stick. The carrot was being
Speaker 1: showered with attention from the group, led by whoever was
Speaker 1: courting the boy or whoever the boy was courting. Natalia's
Speaker 1: world creation included devising voices for the characters She spoke
Speaker 1: on the phone often, and that even included creating Kayleie,
Speaker 1: a daughter for Laura who was about five years old.
Speaker 1: Kaylie would also talk to people like Ethan on the phone.
Speaker 1: Did you ever wind up talking to Kaylee the the child?
Speaker 5: Yes? I did?
Speaker 7: How did that?
Speaker 1: How did that play itself out because that was the
Speaker 1: Talia too, right, So how did Kaylee present herself?
Speaker 9: I can't remember how old she was, she would have
Speaker 9: been maybe five six something like that, and you know,
Speaker 9: she sounded like a five or six year old. You know,
Speaker 9: that's that's the best I can attribute it to her.
Speaker 9: She sounded the way I would pick for a five
Speaker 9: or six year old to sound, you know. And as
Speaker 9: someone now that has two kids, one of whom has
Speaker 9: gone through that five and six year old, you know,
Speaker 9: age age reigned, It's like, yeah, I can see why
Speaker 9: I thought that that was a child.
Speaker 1: And finally came the big twist, Laura's death. But I
Speaker 1: first spoke to Ethan when all this happened. He said
Speaker 1: it was like an episode of chiltlund Street, New Zealand's
Speaker 1: longest running soap opera. As the drama builds, it envelops
Speaker 1: all those who are part of the show, and then,
Speaker 1: like an end of season soap opera cliffhanger, the character
Speaker 1: is killed off. Talking to me thirteen years later, he
Speaker 1: still compares it to the soap opera, and you can
Speaker 1: see why Natalia was showrunner, writer, director, actor all in one.
Speaker 1: It was a one woman show she created, and all
Speaker 1: these people couldn't help but tune in day after day,
Speaker 1: And for many of those caught in Natalia's fantacy world,
Speaker 1: the first time they learned it wasn't true was when
Speaker 1: I began telling the story and began with identifying and
Speaker 1: naming Natalia as the Facebook predator. Then it turned to
Speaker 1: tracking down and interviewing those she had manipulated into believing
Speaker 1: the world she created was real. Many of those people
Speaker 1: you'll hear from in the episodes to come from the
Speaker 1: time I worked out and Natari was behind these false profiles,
Speaker 1: I sought to engage with her, and that men stepping
Speaker 1: into the place she was most comfortable, the online world. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I wanted to meet Natalia in the real world, and
Speaker 1: it quickly became clear that was not something Natalia wanted
Speaker 1: at all. Hi, Natalia, ring me please, I'm writing about
Speaker 1: you in the Herold on Sunday tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Ring the lawyer if you want to know anything.
Speaker 1: The lawyer wasn't able to answer any questions for me.
Speaker 7: It's you I want to talk to.
Speaker 3: Well, the lawyer is dealing with it now and I
Speaker 3: can't say anything to you.
Speaker 1: You've gone quiet I almost thought you wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to me the other night.
Speaker 3: Nice story, even more lies, I see, I was going
Speaker 3: to talk to you, but then I worked out you
Speaker 3: just make up your own story without me, as you've
Speaker 3: already done. I'm loving it like apple Bye. You know,
Speaker 3: people are starting to pick up on your mistakes and
Speaker 3: your stories about me and have started to not trust
Speaker 3: a word you say. I read six different stories about
Speaker 3: me and things I've done, and only one has been
Speaker 3: the truth and what has actually come out of my mouth?
Speaker 3: Start getting your facts right because my dad has wrung
Speaker 3: the police on you.
Speaker 1: Hi, Natalia, nice to hear from you. If you'd really
Speaker 1: like to get to the truth of what has gone on,
Speaker 1: would you be willing to sign a privacy waiver that
Speaker 1: would allow me to access first hand, genuine information about you?
Speaker 7: How about it? There'd be no question about any facts
Speaker 7: being wrong.
Speaker 3: Then no, you know my number. You want anything, ring
Speaker 3: me and go check out your own background about me.
Speaker 1: And when I look at those messages now it was
Speaker 1: a game of cat and mouse, with Natalia often confused
Speaker 1: about who was playing which role. There were insights into
Speaker 1: her life her upset that Appearent had seen reporting in
Speaker 1: the newspapers and on television about her online behavior that
Speaker 1: you felt anxiety attending church on Sunday the same day
Speaker 1: to hear it. On Sunday came out with my stories
Speaker 1: about her involvement with teenage boys. How long until you
Speaker 1: give up? She would ask, And then eventually.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm over this now. I will talk to you,
Speaker 3: but I want to see the story before you print it,
Speaker 3: and no recent photo of me is.
Speaker 6: To be used.
Speaker 1: And that's how we met outside muffin break in the Monaco. More.
Speaker 1: You created a fake PERSONO to have a romantic relationship
Speaker 1: with an eighteen year old boy and then killed her.
Speaker 7: That's second. That's really awful.
Speaker 11: I was that caught up in my own little, fancy
Speaker 11: world that the rest of the world like this around
Speaker 11: me didn't exist, right, didn't exist me. I didn't really care.
Speaker 1: You'll hear more of this conversation later in the series, though.
Speaker 1: I should note that we never made any agreements with
Speaker 1: Natalia before I sat down to talk to her. That's
Speaker 1: standard journalistic practice. But by the time I had got
Speaker 1: her on the record, other media would joined the hunt.
Speaker 1: For a period in twenty eleven, Natalia Burgess was on
Speaker 1: the front page of newspapers, leading radio bulletins, and on
Speaker 1: television news and current affairs shows. On sixty minutes, speaking
Speaker 1: to journalist Paula Penfold, she promised again that she had stopped.
Speaker 12: They were the puffets and I was the puffetier and
Speaker 12: I was just pulling the strings and sitting back and
Speaker 12: watching the show.
Speaker 6: Are you now getting the help that you need to
Speaker 6: not do it anymore?
Speaker 9: Yeah, lots of people don't believe in you. But as
Speaker 9: where I go.
Speaker 12: To be myself, to learn to be myself, to learn
Speaker 12: to be Natalia, to learn that I don't need to
Speaker 12: be Abbie or a bigger amy because I'm good enough
Speaker 12: as man.
Speaker 1: From what Natalia told me, she considered she was doing
Speaker 1: fine in her community in the real world, which centered
Speaker 1: around faith. Back then, what troubled Natalia was the loss
Speaker 1: of the community she created online.
Speaker 7: She was grieving.
Speaker 1: By now, the bizarre world of Natalia Burgess was too
Speaker 1: well known. Her online friends had ditched her and were
Speaker 1: now weary. Over a few months, I spoke to Natalia
Speaker 1: off and on. I even met up with her again
Speaker 1: at a truck stop south of Auckland. I actually drove
Speaker 1: her there. We spent an hour in the car there
Speaker 1: and back. That's how involved I've become in her life.
Speaker 1: We went there because I introduced her to the woman
Speaker 1: whose image she had stolen to use as the face
Speaker 1: of Laura West.
Speaker 7: The idea was to.
Speaker 1: Confront Natalia with the impact of what she had done,
Speaker 1: and it seemed to have worked. Natalia told the woman
Speaker 1: who was the face of Laura West that she had stopped,
Speaker 1: and she told me she had stopped. Not so long
Speaker 1: after that she was in the Monaco District Court, and
Speaker 1: again she promised that she had stopped, that there would
Speaker 1: be no more impersonations. This was back in twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: when she pleaded guilty to and has the technical name
Speaker 1: a charge of interfering with a computer system and two
Speaker 1: charges of obtaining by deception. Those were the gifts she
Speaker 1: had received through the false personas. It's important to note
Speaker 1: that neither of these charges relate to creating false identities
Speaker 1: online or catfishing. The details that emerged in court confirmed
Speaker 1: just how awful Natalie's deceit had become. The key complainant
Speaker 1: was a thirteen year old boy. Natalia had told him
Speaker 1: she was somewhere around sixteen or seventeen, when really she
Speaker 1: was easily ten years older, and there was phone sex
Speaker 1: or what should really be called abuse given their differing ages.
Speaker 1: The judge tow the court of another victim, aged sixteen,
Speaker 1: who had friendships destroyed, his family life shattered and emotional
Speaker 1: and mental health rocked.
Speaker 7: As a result of her lives.
Speaker 1: If it was not for the strong support of his parents,
Speaker 1: this young man would have taken his own life as
Speaker 1: a result of your deceptions against him. It was a
Speaker 1: court hearing that laid out the manipulation and the cavalier
Speaker 1: disregard that she had for others. The judge saw clearly
Speaker 1: how serious it was, and so for Natalia it was
Speaker 1: jail for two years and two months. To be honest,
Speaker 1: at that stage, I thought my time at Natalia was over.
Speaker 1: Should do her time and come out, then go straight.
Speaker 1: I'd followed the story for about two years at this point,
Speaker 1: which is a long time to be involved in one case.
Speaker 1: When she was sent away, it seemed like a natural
Speaker 1: endpoint to the story.
Speaker 7: I moved on.
Speaker 1: Other tip offs came my way, and how other stories
Speaker 1: were written, and as the years passed, Natalia faded into
Speaker 1: the background like a ghost from investigations past. I never
Speaker 1: expected to find myself looking for her again, or trying
Speaker 1: to understand why she lived a life of fantasy and manipulation.
Speaker 1: Around the time Natalia Burgess killed off Laura West, nobody
Speaker 1: really had a name for what it was she was doing.
Speaker 1: In twenty ten, when Ethan, Sam, Peter, Emma all these
Speaker 1: people that were being drawn into Natalie's fantasy, There was
Speaker 1: a documentary that came out in American cinemas. It was
Speaker 1: called Catfish and it was the story of Neve Shulman
Speaker 1: and his online relationship with a young woman called Meghan.
Speaker 9: Hey Meghan, Hi, your voice is not at all what
Speaker 9: I expected. I mean, she must be pretty awsome unless
Speaker 9: from Facebook.
Speaker 1: Except Meghan wasn't really Meghan. Meghan was a fiction created
Speaker 1: by Angela, who was an aspiring artist approaching middle age.
Speaker 1: With her days drifting away. Spent caring for two severely
Speaker 1: disabled step children, Angela sought escape online, creating false Facebook
Speaker 1: profiles for her alter ego Meghan and Meghan's friends and
Speaker 1: family all false characters controlled by Angela, and the name
Speaker 1: of the movie, Catfish, that came from Something's husband said
Speaker 1: during the movie. He told Neve that in days gone by,
Speaker 1: cod was shipped from Alaska to China and vants. By
Speaker 1: the time it arrived, it tasted awful. The flesh was
Speaker 1: mush because the cod had just sat in the vans
Speaker 1: the entire way to China, and then someone put catfish
Speaker 1: in with the cod, and the cod they swam all
Speaker 1: the way to China to avoid being eaten by the catfish.
Speaker 9: There are those people who are catfish in life, and
Speaker 9: they keep you on your toils.
Speaker 5: They keep your gas, and they keep you think, and
Speaker 5: they keep you.
Speaker 1: Freshnes documentary took the term and turned it into a
Speaker 1: verb to describe being pulled into Angela's web of lies.
Speaker 1: She was the catfish that kept them thinking and guessing.
Speaker 1: That documentary did really well, so well that it spawned
Speaker 1: a show called Catfish, which her Neve is still fronting
Speaker 1: more than a decade later. Oddly enough, it's a show
Speaker 1: that Natalia has listed in her YouTube favorites. The word
Speaker 1: catfish went on to enter the public consciousness, used to
Speaker 1: describe people who adopt false online personas to ensnare others,
Speaker 1: whether it be for love, money, or something else. We
Speaker 1: didn't call Natalia a catfisher. She didn't just keep people
Speaker 1: on their toes. She broke hearts, and she caused so
Speaker 1: much to stress that it remains raw all these years later.
Speaker 1: Now I'm deep in the world she created. Natalia's deceits
Speaker 1: and manipulation are on a scale far beyond any catfisher
Speaker 1: I've read about, and it makes me think it didn't
Speaker 1: really matter back in twenty eleven that we didn't call
Speaker 1: her a catfisher. We called her the Facebook predator, and
Speaker 1: Natalia is now as she was then, a predator never stopped.
Speaker 13: I am sorry to bother you, but the article you
Speaker 13: recently published in the above subject was sent to me
Speaker 13: by a friend. As Natalia Burgess has been using my
Speaker 13: images since twenty fourteen till current to catfish multiple people, both.
Speaker 2: Men and women.
Speaker 13: I've had four men and one woman contact.
Speaker 5: Me in the last four months.
Speaker 1: That email dropped into my inbox in March twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: eleven years after I started investigating Natalia Burgess, nine years
Speaker 1: after she'd gone to prison, was from a woman called
Speaker 1: Crystal Jenna, a New Zealander living on the Gold Coast
Speaker 1: in Australia. To be honest, for year, Crystal and I
Speaker 1: were ships passing in the night. She was busy with
Speaker 1: work and accustomed to no one caring about the havoc
Speaker 1: Natalia was causing in her life, and me, well, I
Speaker 1: had other stories to work on. Then, over the months
Speaker 1: we emailed, I came to realize Natalia hadn't just started again,
Speaker 1: but that she's never actually stopped. After two years in prison,
Speaker 1: Natalia came straight back out to keep on doing it,
Speaker 1: and this time she looked overseas where she's not known,
Speaker 1: where her secret worlds can trap the unwearing. Now, for
Speaker 1: the last year, I've been going back over my original
Speaker 1: investigation and realized just how much I missed, how much
Speaker 1: we all missed at the time. Over the next four episodes,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I learned, take you inside the
Speaker 1: fancy worlds Natalia has created, and speak to the people
Speaker 1: whose lives she infiltrated, the people she has treated as puppets.
Speaker 1: I'll take you inside by Chase to track Natalia down again,
Speaker 1: to try and find out why she's been able to
Speaker 1: get away with this for so long.
Speaker 7: And what happened.
Speaker 1: When people complain to the police, we'll hear about the
Speaker 1: efforts to try and stop people like Natalia from creating
Speaker 1: more victims. Because and here's a spoiler alert. Natalia has
Speaker 1: been doing this since two thousand and one's The Dawn
Speaker 1: of Social Media. Natalia has been playing the puppeteer for
Speaker 1: twenty three years, living a lie for more than half
Speaker 1: her life, and all that time, no one has found
Speaker 1: a way to stop her. You've been listening to Chasing
Speaker 1: Ghosts the Puppeteer, follow the podcast and the Chasing Ghost
Speaker 1: Feed on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: you can find more in this case at inzidherld dot
Speaker 1: co dot mzed ethanselves is by producer with audio engineering
Speaker 1: by nzme's Sounded Vision.
Speaker 7: Thanks to my colleagues for lending their voices to this episode.
Speaker 1: If you have a story about this case, contact me
Speaker 1: at David dot Fisher at zherld.
Speaker 7: Dot co dot MZ.
Speaker 1: And if you believe you've encountered behavior online that matches
Speaker 1: what we've discussed in this series, you can find help
Speaker 1: at netsafe dot org dot mzed. But if you feel
Speaker 1: at risk, don't hesitate, contact police