Speaker 1: Toyota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special of
Speaker 2: The Front Page. The Ends at Herald's daily news podcast.
Speaker 2: While The Front Page is on summer break, we're taking
Speaker 2: a look back at some of the biggest news stories
Speaker 2: and top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: New episodes will return on January thirteenth. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: Herald on Sunday journalist David Fisher reported on what the
Speaker 2: paper dubbed the Facebook Predator, an adult woman who had
Speaker 2: been caught catfishing dozens of teenage boys in the South Island.
Speaker 2: She would be named as Natalia Burgers. Fisher covered the
Speaker 2: Burgess case for months before she eventually went to prison
Speaker 2: for two years as a result of her behavior. He
Speaker 2: thought that was the end of it until two years ago,
Speaker 2: an email at The Blue revealed that Burgess returned to
Speaker 2: her catfishing once she was free from prison. In the
Speaker 2: latest series of The Herald's true crime series, Chasing Ghosts,
Speaker 2: Fisher went back to re examine the case, see what
Speaker 2: he missed back in twenty eleven and trying to get
Speaker 2: Burgers to front up again on what she had done.
Speaker 2: You can Listen to half of the first episode of
Speaker 2: Chasing Ghosts the Puppeteer now and find the full series
Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: This episode contains references to suicide. You can find the
Speaker 1: links in our show notes to support services. Let me start.
Speaker 1: In December twenty ten. It's Monday morning in Auckland, New
Speaker 1: Zealand's largest city, and a cluster of young people are
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Laura went much further.
Speaker 1: Laura was bright, bubbly, vivacious, and like her sister's, very
Speaker 1: pretty and popular, particularly online. When it came to Facebook,
Speaker 1: Laura and her three sisters and their friends at times,
Speaker 1: were a swirling whirlwind of excitement to the first generation
Speaker 1: to truly embrace social media. Distance disappeared and they connected
Speaker 1: with people across the country. Laura, dead at twenty, was
Speaker 1: barely sixteen when she joined Facebook, and the years that
Speaker 1: followed she built friendships and even discovered love online. So
Speaker 1: when her sister Abby announced Laura's death on Facebook, the
Speaker 1: impact the grief they went far beyond her immediate family.
Speaker 4: The last night, at three am, Laura and May hopped
Speaker 4: into a car with a guy they trusted and know
Speaker 4: really well, who told them he was sober to stand
Speaker 4: out to be alive. He was five times over the limit.
Speaker 4: My party gole sister just wanted to forget and have
Speaker 4: a good night out. On the way home, the driver
Speaker 4: of the car chocked the corner at great speed and
Speaker 4: lost control of the car, heading into the lamp post
Speaker 4: rap be Begger.
Speaker 3: There have been tragedy enough in Laura West's family.
Speaker 1: Just weeks earlier, the sisters Rachel, Abby and Becker shared
Speaker 1: through Facebook that they had lost their dad. He was
Speaker 1: one of the twenty nine men killed when the Pike
Speaker 1: River mine on the West Coast exploded. And now Laura
Speaker 1: dead too. A young life cut short just when it
Speaker 1: was getting going. A daughter, Kaylee left without a mother.
Speaker 1: It's a tragedy in every sense of the word, and
Speaker 1: the Facebook post was filled quickly with tributes from those
Speaker 1: who counted her as a friend if they'd never met
Speaker 1: in real life.
Speaker 5: R p.
Speaker 3: Baby girl.
Speaker 6: You were there for me always when Amy passed, And fuck,
Speaker 6: I'm going to miss you like I do Amy every
Speaker 6: fricking day.
Speaker 5: I love you, Rest easy, little one, always missed, never
Speaker 5: far from my heart.
Speaker 6: Hey, my sirs, fucking miss you like crazy.
Speaker 1: Love you so much.
Speaker 6: Never going to forget you in my heart forever, Love you, bud.
Speaker 7: R P.
Speaker 3: Baby girl, I'm going to miss your big time.
Speaker 6: See my God, I can't believe this is true. I
Speaker 6: miss you, rest peace. Remember the time when I saw
Speaker 6: your face.
Speaker 3: I know you watch.
Speaker 6: And my heart goes out to you and weekle.
Speaker 1: Then there were those who learned more directly. In the
Speaker 1: South Island, in a small town not far from christ
Speaker 1: a grand mother called Bernie received a phone call when
Speaker 1: her teenage daughter Emma had started making friends online. Bernie
Speaker 1: had got on the phone to check them out, and
Speaker 1: that's how she came to know Laura and Abby, discovering
Speaker 1: through them a distant family connection. They called her Auntie
Speaker 1: when they called or connected on a messenger. Emma was
Speaker 1: the 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 8: Abby rung Mum and are a mess. So Laura is
Speaker 8: dead and my mom was like, she was like, no,
Speaker 8: she had a car creation and she dead. They took
Speaker 8: it the ICU, but she didn't make it. Yeah, we
Speaker 8: got the message. If only I got a message or
Speaker 8: a phone call at the home saying she's dead. Your
Speaker 8: cousin's dead and no you know that sent both of
Speaker 8: us spiraling.
Speaker 1: It was a crushing blow for the mother and daughter,
Speaker 1: but especially for Emma. She had lost a friend, a
Speaker 1: close friend, to suicide just months earlier, and a friend
Speaker 1: who had died before that at a car crash that
Speaker 1: was very similar to that which killed Laura.
Speaker 8: That's what I went on a big bender because I yeah, no,
Speaker 8: I want a big bender. Then I broke my sobriety.
Speaker 9: We just sat there numb and grieving, and we were
Speaker 9: trying to help plan the funeral. We were we were
Speaker 9: like trying to make the trip up north apparently too,
Speaker 9: that's where it was happening.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Yeah, everything, oh nine yards just to get
Speaker 8: up there because I was made to carry the casket.
Speaker 3: All these years down the track.
Speaker 1: They can't shake the horror of losing so suddenly, such
Speaker 1: a bright spark of life and a thoughtless drink drive
Speaker 1: death early that Monday morning. For Sam Baker, who was
Speaker 1: dating Abby. He remembers the distress and wanting to console
Speaker 1: Laura's boyfriend.
Speaker 7: I heard from my friend and he was very very upset.
Speaker 7: He just read about it on Facebook. I think one
Speaker 7: of the sisters had gotten in contact with him, or
Speaker 7: it might have even been I don't know. I'm really
Speaker 7: scratching my fourteen year old memory here, but there may
Speaker 7: have been a mother Facebook page that was involved as well,
Speaker 7: that reached out to my friend and said that, yeah,
Speaker 7: very very sorry to tell you, but Laura's tragically passed away.
Speaker 7: You know, she loved you dearly. She wanted to build
Speaker 7: this big life with you and everything. It's really really sad,
Speaker 7: But feel free to keep in contact with us because
Speaker 7: you know, you're like family to us. Like my mate,
Speaker 7: he like he was going to buy a ring for
Speaker 7: her and stuff, like they were really really locked in.
Speaker 7: So when't he found the news. When I found the
Speaker 7: news out from him, you know, I went up to
Speaker 7: console him, but he was beside himself. It was really
Speaker 7: quite horrible.
Speaker 1: But there's a catch to the story, and that catch
Speaker 1: is that Laura never existed. Her daughter Kaylee 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 6: At twenty you have not even lived yet, my sweet girl.
Speaker 6: Why is all I am asking?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 6: I'm getting into a car with a drunk ass driver?
Speaker 6: Is Wrongbabe? Rip Laura Jane West. You are going to
Speaker 6: be missed 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: went up, back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: I've written thousands of stories.
Speaker 1: Over thirty five years in journalism, thousands of lives that
Speaker 1: have touched mine and carried on into the future.
Speaker 3: In my life, 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.
Speaker 3: 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 Becka, 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 3: And histories and friendships.
Speaker 1: The problem with Natalia's fancy world was how damaging it
Speaker 1: became for those whose identity she used and for those.
Speaker 3: Who believed she was real.
Speaker 1: Hearts were broken, trust was betrayed, someone died, and Natalia
Speaker 1: went to prison. I never thought I'd be thinking of
Speaker 1: this case again, but here I am in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: thirty years after all this happened, and Natalia is back
Speaker 1: of my life. Back then, she called herself the puppeteer,
Speaker 1: and after all these years, she's still pulling all the strings,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking for a way to cut her loose.
Speaker 1: My journey with Natalia started in early twenty eleven. Back then,
Speaker 1: I was working as the chief reporter for the Herald
Speaker 1: on Sunday, a twenty two year veteran reporter and quite
Speaker 1: a bit more veteran now. It's easy to forget how
Speaker 1: much has changed in just thirteen years and how different
Speaker 1: technology was then.
Speaker 3: Let me take you back to that time.
Speaker 1: This was a time when MySpace and Bebo had just
Speaker 1: passed their 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 topic about its creation was a big player in
Speaker 1: Hollywood's Ward season that year. There was no zoom and Skype.
Speaker 1: Conversations were often about how I can see you, but
Speaker 1: I can't hear you all the other way around. We
Speaker 1: were only up to the iPhone four and the first
Speaker 1: generation iPad. The idea of smartphones as an everyday part
Speaker 1: 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 a startup. People had
Speaker 1: said it was crazy to launch a newspaper when the
Speaker 1: whole news industry was going to shift online. But it worked,
Speaker 1: and 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 Natali Burgess as
Speaker 1: that woman. It was a week of building evidence in
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 christ Church were caught up.
Speaker 3: Along with dozens of others. Many believed they were.
Speaker 1: In relationships with attractive girls their own age. She would
Speaker 1: arrange to pay for some to have their mobile phones
Speaker 1: topped up with credit and they would spend hours through
Speaker 1: the night talking to her. I'd later learn that Natali
Speaker 1: was not just focused on one school. There were dozens
Speaker 1: of young people and adults around the country that fell
Speaker 1: into her orbit. One of those people was Sam Baker.
Speaker 1: He heard earlier talking of his shock over Laura's death.
Speaker 1: He was just thirteen when drawn into Natalia's world, all
Speaker 1: the way from tiny Murchison, near the top of New
Speaker 1: Zealand and South Island. 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 incident made Sam's world feel so much bigger, and
Speaker 1: that's how he got mixed up in this.
Speaker 7: I was up visiting a friend of mine who was
Speaker 7: speaking to a girl that he'd been talking to quite
Speaker 7: a while over online, and from what I was under
Speaker 7: the impression of they were in an online relationship. At
Speaker 7: the time, I just assumed that he had known who
Speaker 7: previously and they were just communicating on an online platform.
Speaker 7: But I didn't really that didn't occur to me to
Speaker 7: press any do that. I was thirteen at the time
Speaker 7: and he was a good friend of mine, so I
Speaker 7: just thought really nothing of it. Bear in mind, when
Speaker 7: I was thirty, he was sixteen. I'm from a small town,
Speaker 7: so people from veering age groups just tend to hang
Speaker 7: out with each other, I guess. But anyway, I was
Speaker 7: talking to this girl who name happened to be Laura,
Speaker 7: and I started yearning to all I was up to
Speaker 7: seeing my mate and we just I don't know. I
Speaker 7: just said, hey, hey, you gn you're good. Thanks. She
Speaker 7: asked me what my name was, asked what her name was?
Speaker 7: Asked her, you know how long they guys have been
Speaker 7: friends talking to each other? She said maybe like a
Speaker 7: year or so. And he's like, yeah, I met her online.
Speaker 7: Can we get along?
Speaker 8: Great?
Speaker 7: It was, that's pretty cool, sweet as thought nothing of it.
Speaker 7: He ended the call. We played a few games of Xbox,
Speaker 7: as you do when you're thirteen years old, and then
Speaker 7: I Sweet Home and Sweet Home for dinner, and then
Speaker 7: to do homework and stuff. But anyway, I log into
Speaker 7: my Facebook and I noticed that I have a free
Speaker 7: request from a random girl who name. The full name
Speaker 7: eludes me nowadays, but it was Rachel. I think her
Speaker 7: name was Rachel. And I accepted it and messaged her.
Speaker 7: I was like, hello, who are you? It was a
Speaker 7: bit more colorful and that I was like hello, who
Speaker 7: are you? She's like, hello, my name is Rachel. I
Speaker 7: believe you were talking to my sister earlier and Laura.
Speaker 7: I was listening to the conversation, and I thought you
Speaker 7: had a cute voice. I was wondering, would you begin to,
Speaker 7: I don't know, develop her friendship? And I was like, okay, cool.
Speaker 7: Bearing in mind, I was thirteen years old in a
Speaker 7: town of five hundred people. In my school, there were
Speaker 7: one hundred and twenty kids in my classroom. I would
Speaker 7: have been probably year seven, year eight at the time,
Speaker 7: out of thirty of us. I think they were three girls,
Speaker 7: So to be getting this sort of female attention, I
Speaker 7: didn't really think twice about it. I just thought, oh
Speaker 7: my god, there's a very attractive girl heading me up.
Speaker 1: Natalia knew who had targeted demographic well. Her primary false
Speaker 1: personality was a young woman called Laura West. Laura entered
Speaker 1: Facebook age sixteen, at that time that Tari was.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: Who liked Laura were.
Speaker 1: Young and attractive women, and it seemed that they, like
Speaker 1: any teenager, were trying to work out how they fitted
Speaker 1: into the world and with others their own age.
Speaker 3: So many came under their spell.
Speaker 1: One of those boys was Ethan Williams, whose story is
Speaker 1: pretty similar to Sam's. He was a few years older,
Speaker 1: around fifteen when he first met Laura, and he too
Speaker 1: was a small town boy raised in Montweka and Nelson,
Speaker 1: the same general area where Sam lives.
Speaker 5: So I think initially I met a girl called Laura online,
Speaker 5: and I think this is probably in the early days
Speaker 5: of Facebook or kind of towards the tail end of
Speaker 5: the old Bebo social network when that existed, and it
Speaker 5: was just one of those kind of random ads on Facebook.
Speaker 5: She haded me, and I thought, yeah, oh why not,
Speaker 5: you know, but there were there were about three or
Speaker 5: four different people that you know, that were family of
Speaker 5: this this Laura West that her last name was West.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 5: That added me as well. And I didn't want much
Speaker 5: of it. And I guess as I probably said to you, well,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have set you at the time, but as
Speaker 5: I said, just a moment ago, being quite a naive Asia,
Speaker 5: I didn't think much of it. And I think also
Speaker 5: because catfishing wasn't particularly a well known phenomenon back then,
Speaker 5: it wasn't something that ever crossed my mind.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me how Laura presented herself.
Speaker 1: I mean, who did you think you were communicating with online?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I so it's a very good question. Let me
Speaker 5: let me think about an answer. She presented as kind
Speaker 5: of an attractive I think she was seventeen eighteen or
Speaker 5: something around that sort of age, kind of a little
Speaker 5: bit older than me, but you know, quite an attractive
Speaker 5: young woman. You know, short blonde here and someone that
Speaker 5: I thought, you know, she's she's quite attractive. I'll talk
Speaker 5: to her if she's going to talk to me. And yeah,
Speaker 5: that's kind of word snowballs. I suppose.
Speaker 1: Ethan was fifteen when he started talking to Natalia, or
Speaker 1: as he knew her, Laura West, and Sam was just
Speaker 1: thirteen when he started dating her sister, Rachel. This was
Speaker 1: in twenty ten. At this time, Natalia been twenty six
Speaker 1: years old, is literally twice the age of Sam. I
Speaker 1: remember being told once that the guide for age suitability
Speaker 1: is to take your age, split it in two, add seven,
Speaker 1: and the results at the youngest end of the sliding
Speaker 1: scale that you should be on. You've probably heard something similar.
Speaker 1: It's one of those unwritten rules of humanity. We all
Speaker 1: just seem to know by that measure. Natalia shouldn't be
Speaker 1: talking to anyone younger than twenty, or at least not
Speaker 1: in the way she spoke with Sam and others his age.
Speaker 1: But there's really only one equation that matters here, and
Speaker 1: that is back in twenty ten, Sam is a child
Speaker 1: and Natalia as an adult. And another thing to think
Speaker 1: on is that Sam had no idea the girl who
Speaker 1: contacted 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 wherever real woman could not.
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 3: She had chosen.
Speaker 1: Those boys at Saint Thomas and Canterbury, Sam, Ethan, their friends,
Speaker 1: none of them.
Speaker 3: 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 online personas were well advanced, brought to life with
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: It wasn't all playing out online either. As Natalia's characters
Speaker 3: formed online friendships with schoolboys, she worked to take it
Speaker 3: to the real world.
Speaker 7: I think I had the first voice called with her,
Speaker 7: maybe like a week into the relationship, and it was weird.
Speaker 7: It was I don't know how she pulled it off.
Speaker 7: Thinking back, I spoke to her Laura, and there was
Speaker 7: another sister. I can't remember her name, but she was
Speaker 7: a blonde girl and she worked at Pack and Save.
Speaker 7: And I had a freeway chat with all three these girls,
Speaker 7: and they told me how much of the nice boy
Speaker 7: I think I am, and how I'm going to be
Speaker 7: so perfect for the sister and they asked me like,
Speaker 7: will you be my sister's boyfriend? Like these two girls
Speaker 7: asked on her behalf like I've taken into the back
Speaker 7: room so that they can give them the fifth degree,
Speaker 7: and I was just like, yeah, all right, sweet, let's
Speaker 7: do it.
Speaker 3: There were phone calls and long conversations.
Speaker 1: Evidence emerged of Natalia paying to top up phones so
Speaker 1: she could speak for longer as Laura or Abby or
Speaker 1: Becka or any of the other identities she manufactured, and
Speaker 1: even occasionally as herself as the real Natalia Burgess in
Speaker 1: the shadow cast by her younger, glamorous friends. As I
Speaker 1: said earlier, Natalia wasn't a teenager when she was talking
Speaker 1: with all these kids, and it kind of reminds me
Speaker 1: of Hollywood's tendency to cast old when casting teenagers like
Speaker 1: Greece or nine O two and oer will Glee. Every
Speaker 1: generation has some example of a grown adult playing young,
Speaker 1: and Natalia was bringing that fantasy to life in her
Speaker 1: own way. This was real life, though, and not a
Speaker 1: Hollywood set. As I dug deeper, there was seriously disturbing
Speaker 1: aspects to her interaction with those she met online as
Speaker 1: she built her fictional world and populated it. She started
Speaker 1: to develop it with whatever came to hand. Natalia even
Speaker 1: attached real life people to false personas. After the Pike
Speaker 1: Rivermind disaster, Laura West posted a memorial message with a
Speaker 1: photograph of one of the miners who was killed.
Speaker 4: I miss you and I will never stop loving you,
Speaker 4: Rip Daddy.
Speaker 3: It's one part of the story that Sam Baker remembers
Speaker 3: all too well.
Speaker 7: I grew up in Murchison. The tracity happened, I believe
Speaker 7: in Greymouth. So Murchison and Greymouth for about two hours
Speaker 7: from each other. And what happened was is I remember
Speaker 7: there was a whole lot of light. This is way
Speaker 7: before crowdfunding and go fund me were a thing. People
Speaker 7: used to sort of reach out for donations and help
Speaker 7: y Facebook pages and groups, and there was a Facebook
Speaker 7: page called the Pipe Rivermind twenty nine and it was
Speaker 7: people that could come together that were affected by the tragedy,
Speaker 7: that could share photos and memories and maybe like people
Speaker 7: that had a bit of money they wanted to donate
Speaker 7: to a family that had been displaced because their father
Speaker 7: a peerish they could you know, put down their bank
Speaker 7: account details and receive donations. Laura started fabricating, making these
Speaker 7: big giant like Facebook murals, I guess, like with this
Speaker 7: Paul Bloke's photo, and then like the name up and lights,
Speaker 7: and then the born day, the death day, and then
Speaker 7: like your kids miss you dearly, we love you daddy,
Speaker 7: like from Laura, from Rachel, from the other daughter and stuff.
Speaker 7: It just all looked very very legit, very polished. And
Speaker 7: then she had people from the community who they had
Speaker 7: lost family members and the mind tragedy that were like
Speaker 7: getting behind her, like, oh my god, we feel so
Speaker 7: bad for you. You know who can help you out?
Speaker 7: And then I believe she may have been putting down
Speaker 7: a bank account and receiving donations from these people as
Speaker 7: a like, I don't know, contribute into helping her get
Speaker 7: back on her feet because she just lost her dad.
Speaker 3: That feels pretty cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at the time, what did you make of it?
Speaker 3: Because this was the girl that you were dating, This
Speaker 3: was her sister, Rachel.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I was dating Laura's sister Rachel.
Speaker 7: So at the time I felt horrible for them. It
Speaker 7: was like, you, poor girl, that's horrible. So yeah, So
Speaker 7: to get the time frame together, the Pipe River disaster
Speaker 7: happen and then Laura died in the car crash. So
Speaker 7: between Laura between the Pike River and Laura dying in
Speaker 7: the car crash quotation marks I felt absolutely horrible for
Speaker 7: 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 2: You've just heard the first half of episode one of
Speaker 2: Chasing Ghosts the Puppeteer. You can listen to the full
Speaker 2: episode and the rest of the series on iHeartRadio or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts.