Speaker 1: It was a profound moment. It's the duality of Oh
Speaker 1: my god, what in the world, Who is this cruel?
Speaker 1: Who can pull this off? Whose friends pull it off?
Speaker 1: How do you fabricate the details like that?
Speaker 2: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
Speaker 2: the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
Speaker 2: change everything.
Speaker 1: My real name is Deborah, but typically everyone calls me Dad.
Speaker 2: Deb Proctor grew up on the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: She recently retired from her role as the senior director
Speaker 2: of her tribe's domestic violence program, and before that, she
Speaker 2: spent her entire career as a nurse.
Speaker 1: After being an rin well now it's been forty eight
Speaker 1: and a half years.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of people in the medical profession, she
Speaker 2: developed a keen sense for when someone is lying.
Speaker 1: When you mansion bullshit detectors, I can spot them a
Speaker 1: football field away or further.
Speaker 2: Deb is Cherokee and proud of her Native American heritage.
Speaker 1: My grandmother who lived until she was ninety nine years old.
Speaker 1: She is actually our family's original in Rowly, which means
Speaker 1: she is on the Dows role.
Speaker 2: The DAWs role was a list compiled by the US
Speaker 2: government in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: It named about one hundred thousand Native Americans who were
Speaker 2: allotted land.
Speaker 1: Which was pretty unusual to have an unregionally in your
Speaker 1: life for most of it.
Speaker 2: Growing up, Deb's grandmother was a constant presence and a
Speaker 2: source of inspiration.
Speaker 1: I think I thought a lot of my propter will
Speaker 1: and strength and courage from her. She was born before
Speaker 1: statehood and she was still stacking her own wood when
Speaker 1: she was in her early nineties. She was a survivor
Speaker 1: of many many situations in her life.
Speaker 2: Her grandmother experienced a lot of violence firsthand. Deb's father
Speaker 2: did too. As a child, his own father was murdered
Speaker 2: in front of him.
Speaker 1: Those life events are what gives the background and the
Speaker 1: experience to what we would call intergenerational trauma or historical trauma.
Speaker 2: She saw the impact of that on her family. There
Speaker 2: was alcoholism and emotional and when she was young, Deb
Speaker 2: struggled to process it.
Speaker 1: When you're a very sensitive nature child, your little heart's
Speaker 1: open and you're intuitive, you pick up that energy.
Speaker 2: From a young age. She experienced violence and abuse herself.
Speaker 1: The violence I experience, I truly am my heart know
Speaker 1: that it's as a result of those that could not heal.
Speaker 2: Deb believes her father's unresolved trauma led him to become
Speaker 2: a civil servant.
Speaker 1: He taught me a lot about community service. He would
Speaker 1: be in his vehicle driving through the rural areas seeing
Speaker 1: what the natives needed, and ultimately he was a councilman
Speaker 1: for their tribe, served many many years.
Speaker 2: Deb grew up quickly in more ways than one. In fact,
Speaker 2: on our sixteenth birthday, her high school boyfriend surprised her.
Speaker 1: They had a birthday party for me and he asked
Speaker 1: me to marry him, and I accepted. That was the
Speaker 1: day I turned sixteen.
Speaker 2: But her engagement didn't distract her from prioritizing education. Her
Speaker 2: father insisted that she earn an advanced degree.
Speaker 1: He was the one in the family who said you
Speaker 1: must have an education, and so at age seventeen, I
Speaker 1: did start college and I finished at nineteen with my
Speaker 1: first RN degree. That was as a result to my
Speaker 1: dad pushing me.
Speaker 2: Before she even had a chance to know herself, she
Speaker 2: was married and working as a full time nurse.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm running the hospital as a baby nurse.
Speaker 1: I'd probably turn twenty maybe twenty one, by then. It
Speaker 1: was tough, but I spent a good part of my
Speaker 1: energy on trying to achieve perfection.
Speaker 2: And her husband shared a very similar upbringing.
Speaker 1: He came from a violent background, very similar to mine,
Speaker 1: and so we just went together like peanut, butter and jelly.
Speaker 2: They had two sons together, but a few years into marriage,
Speaker 2: her husband's behavior became a problem.
Speaker 1: He struggled with drugs and drinking, and he had violent tendencies.
Speaker 1: It was really hard.
Speaker 2: She eventually left her husband and resolved to end the
Speaker 2: cycle of violence to make a safe and stable environment
Speaker 2: for her and her two sons.
Speaker 1: And so for many years I remained single and just
Speaker 1: spent time with myself and the boys. And so for
Speaker 1: the next few years after we divorced, I sought to understand.
Speaker 1: I bought books, I joined book club, anything on self understanding.
Speaker 2: She started going to therapy and joined support groups for
Speaker 2: families impacted by alcoholism. She was creating a better life
Speaker 2: for herself and for her sons. When her sons became teenagers,
Speaker 2: she looked around and realized.
Speaker 1: I did want to partner in live. You know, someone
Speaker 1: to enjoy life, that I meant something too, that I'm
Speaker 1: mad or.
Speaker 2: Too She was forty one and felt ready to explore
Speaker 2: a new partnership, so she made an online dating profile.
Speaker 2: This was nineteen ninety seven, back when online dating was
Speaker 2: a novel concept.
Speaker 1: Yeah this aint bumble, this a yeah, this is none
Speaker 1: of that stuff.
Speaker 2: One man piqued her interest. His name was Jeff Walton.
Speaker 1: His profile was just romantic. It was something like I'm
Speaker 1: looking for my gwinevere.
Speaker 2: Jeff said he wanted to treat his next partner like
Speaker 2: a queen. Deb wrote him an email. He lived a
Speaker 2: couple states away in Kentucky, but their conversation flowed easily
Speaker 2: and Deb quickly discovered they shared the same interests. They
Speaker 2: both loved golf, and Jeff wanted to hear more about
Speaker 2: Deb's Cherokee culture.
Speaker 1: You know, the music, a spiritual journey. He loved the
Speaker 1: Native American spiritual practices. And when I talked to him,
Speaker 1: I was just smitten with him.
Speaker 2: She looked forward to his phone calls and emails.
Speaker 1: I saved all of that. I printed everything. I had
Speaker 1: a huge three inch purple binder with all of our exchanges.
Speaker 2: As they got closer, she got to know more about
Speaker 2: his backstory.
Speaker 1: He was born in Alaska and moved to Canada.
Speaker 2: He was a dual citizen of Canada and the United States,
Speaker 2: and he had a complicated relationship with his biological family.
Speaker 1: He didn't know he's real dad. His stepdad was very
Speaker 1: violent and he would share stories like, you know, his
Speaker 1: stepdad murdered the family poodle in front of his sister
Speaker 1: and his mom and him, and I mean, it was
Speaker 1: horrible stories.
Speaker 2: Deb had seen her share of violence as well. She
Speaker 2: understood what it was like, so they bonded over their
Speaker 2: difficult childhoods. Jeff's family was still in Canada, but they'd
Speaker 2: fallen out of touch. He moved to New Orleans as
Speaker 2: a young man, and along the way he picked up
Speaker 2: the accent.
Speaker 1: So when he would talk to me on the phone,
Speaker 1: he would have that you know dialect. He would say hello,
Speaker 1: Darlin and a dory. Yeah, I can't do it. But
Speaker 1: it was definitely New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Jeff's ex wife and adult son still lived in New Orleans,
Speaker 2: but after his divorce, he'd taken a job in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: He was a project manager for a big construction company
Speaker 1: that you know, worked on Toyota plants that worked on
Speaker 1: the University of Kentucky that had done all this great work.
Speaker 2: Jeff was the kind of person who'd lived a million
Speaker 2: lives in one.
Speaker 1: He just fascinated me. He was a pilot and played
Speaker 1: football for Woody Hayes at Ohio State and was phenomenal.
Speaker 2: DEP could really see herself with this guy.
Speaker 1: We're gonna embark upon this journey together. We love music,
Speaker 1: we love golf, We're both seekers. I just was so
Speaker 1: excited about meeting this man.
Speaker 2: After a year of talking, they decided to finally meet
Speaker 2: each other in person. Jeff flew to Oklahoma. When he
Speaker 2: arrived at the airport, she was waiting for him with
Speaker 2: a gift.
Speaker 1: God had a traditional here. A medicine man gone to
Speaker 1: him and asked him to be a feather. There was
Speaker 1: a song by Robbie Robertson and the name of it
Speaker 1: was Golden Feather, My Love of Golden Feather, and if
Speaker 1: you would look it up, it's so that I never
Speaker 1: lose my way home. And I thought, what a beautiful
Speaker 1: expression of love for this new man in my life
Speaker 1: to give him a feather because he loves that Native
Speaker 1: American song so much. So I met him at the
Speaker 1: plane with that and I said, here's so you can
Speaker 1: always find your way home.
Speaker 2: And Jeff had come with the surprise of his own.
Speaker 1: Since he got off the plane and he was walking
Speaker 1: toward me. It seemed like his voice was shaking, and
Speaker 1: he said, you will marry me, won't you. You're gonna
Speaker 1: marry me right, You are marrying me right.
Speaker 2: That was Jeff's marriage proposal.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, of course, of course, yes.
Speaker 2: The weekend could not have gone better. Jeff wanted to
Speaker 2: get to know her world.
Speaker 1: You know. I drove around, showed ing the rural area,
Speaker 1: my history, some of the culture where I were. We
Speaker 1: went out to my golf course. I introduced him to
Speaker 1: a lot of my friends, met the family. It was
Speaker 1: just a really good weekend. I just loved him, just
Speaker 1: loved him.
Speaker 2: They started making arrangements for him to move to Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: And I'm a planner and an organizer in every aspect
Speaker 1: in my life. So shoot, the next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm getting busy. I'm helping him find jobs. He's getting
Speaker 1: his resumeating. Of course, we're still using facts is then,
Speaker 1: and he would send things and I would write cover
Speaker 1: letters for him to help him get relocated.
Speaker 2: A few months later, Jeff moved in. They spent the
Speaker 2: next year, planning a small family wedding in Theosarks.
Speaker 1: We married on April twenty third, two thousand.
Speaker 2: It was the anniversary of the day they met in person.
Speaker 2: Deb's youngest son walked her down the aisle, and Jeff's son,
Speaker 2: Little Jeff, flew in to support his dad. It was
Speaker 2: a true merging of their lives.
Speaker 1: I really thought it was meant to be.
Speaker 2: They planned their first trip together as newlyweds, a golf
Speaker 2: trip with Deb's group of friends. Deb had been golfing
Speaker 2: for her entire life. Every year she and her friends
Speaker 2: traveled the country to play. Jeff was eager to join.
Speaker 2: He'd been an avid golfer when he was younger, but
Speaker 2: he hadn't played in years.
Speaker 1: So he lost these golf clubs. Well, heck, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta go buying golf clubs, you know, because he's
Speaker 1: got to have golf clubs off a month play. So
Speaker 1: then he needed lessons because he just hadn't got to
Speaker 1: play in a while. He said, needed to brush up.
Speaker 2: But on their first golf trip with her friends.
Speaker 1: Once we got all scores in and everything, the winner
Speaker 1: was him, and I was like, well, god, oh, great job.
Speaker 2: But Deb's friends were stand offish with Jeff about his win,
Speaker 2: and one of her friends was quick to point out.
Speaker 1: A real golfer is not going to leave their clubs behind.
Speaker 1: It didn't make sense.
Speaker 2: Her friends had never acted like this before. She didn't
Speaker 2: know what happened, and neither did Jeff. But after that
Speaker 2: they weren't invited on any more golf trips.
Speaker 1: I felt like everybody was mistreating him.
Speaker 2: A year into their marriage, Jeff was still struggling to
Speaker 2: find the right job in Oklahoma. One day when Deb
Speaker 2: was helping him with an application.
Speaker 1: Well, I sound an old resume, and on this particular
Speaker 1: resume it says Vietnam veteran. I was like, my god.
Speaker 2: He'd never told her he was a veteran. But Deb
Speaker 2: had a lot of experience with the VA. While getting
Speaker 2: her Advanced Nursing degree, she worked on a program at
Speaker 2: the VA that specific studied Vietnam veterans with PTSD.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you never told me you were a veteran.
Speaker 1: You never told me you were in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: That is a significant event in life. Was flabbergasted. It
Speaker 1: had never come up, and he said, well, I don't
Speaker 1: like to talk about it. Deb I use it on
Speaker 1: my resumes, because you know that ought to tell you
Speaker 1: something I was like, But she should have told me.
Speaker 1: I should never found out here.
Speaker 2: Dev felt like he needed to talk about it, even
Speaker 2: if he didn't want to. She'd had firsthand experience with
Speaker 2: veterans and PTSD.
Speaker 1: And so over the course of time, he began to
Speaker 1: tell me what happened. It was an elaborate story, intricate details.
Speaker 2: As an eighteen year old, he'd been in the Special
Speaker 2: Forces in Vietnam. One night, he caught his senior officers
Speaker 2: using drugs. Fearing he would turn them in, the officers
Speaker 2: allowed Jeff to be captured. He was held as a
Speaker 2: prisoner of war and for months he.
Speaker 1: Was tortured and they bust at his feet with the
Speaker 1: butt of a gun so that he couldn't walk. But
Speaker 1: he got out. He escaped and he made it back
Speaker 1: to the US Forces by following the path of a stream,
Speaker 1: and it was so difficult because his feet were busted up.
Speaker 2: He was taken to a veteran's hospital.
Speaker 1: He had to have metal put in his feet because
Speaker 1: they were broken and if we flew anywhere it would
Speaker 1: trigger the metal alarms as you go in.
Speaker 2: He recovered physically and was discharged, but psychologically he was scarred.
Speaker 1: The trauma was so bad. He said, it was just
Speaker 1: so awful that sometimes he would just get in the
Speaker 1: closet and he would just hide.
Speaker 2: Deb was worried about his mental health, especially because his
Speaker 2: support system was then. He was in a new place
Speaker 2: and wasn't in touch with his biological family. So Deb
Speaker 2: was happy when his siblings reached out to reconnect. They
Speaker 2: invited him back to Canada.
Speaker 1: His siblings had said that his mother's eightieth birthday party
Speaker 1: was coming up and they wanted him to come. And
Speaker 1: he talked to him about it, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: we've got to I've never met any of your family.
Speaker 1: And absolutely.
Speaker 2: A few months later, they flew to Alberta to meet
Speaker 2: his family. They hadn't seen Jeff in decades. They were
Speaker 2: elated to welcome him home. And Deb never thought you'd
Speaker 2: get the chance to meet his siblings.
Speaker 1: I finally got to meet his family. I was just
Speaker 1: so excited to be there and to meet them. And
Speaker 1: you know, at one of the brothers' houses, we might
Speaker 1: play games and just chat and get to know each other.
Speaker 2: Deb fit right in.
Speaker 1: We didn't have any serious, meaningful conversations about life or anything.
Speaker 1: We were just doing a friendly, cordial meet the family thing.
Speaker 1: He was up be. Everyone was up be. It was
Speaker 1: a good trip.
Speaker 2: It was a good trip. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2: Deb didn't know it at the time, but everyone there
Speaker 2: was in on a secret, everyone except for her Her husband.
Speaker 2: Jeff wasn't who he said he was. In fact, everyone
Speaker 2: and his family knew Jeff by a different name.
Speaker 1: Come to find out. He met his siblings at the
Speaker 1: door and told him I'm going by Jeff Walton. Now
Speaker 1: I'll tell you later.
Speaker 2: Deb and her husband went to Canada to reconnect with
Speaker 2: his estranged family, and to her surprise, the trip was
Speaker 2: a success. Meeting his family brought the two of them closer.
Speaker 2: But one day after they returned from their trip, Jeff
Speaker 2: collapsed on the golf course.
Speaker 1: And a friend of ours founding setting up against a
Speaker 1: tree and wanted him to let him take him into
Speaker 1: the hospital, and he said, no, just take me to
Speaker 1: my car, and so he did that. He got in
Speaker 1: his car and he drove home.
Speaker 2: Deb met him at their house and forced him to
Speaker 2: go to the hospital. Jeff had suffered a major heart attack.
Speaker 2: It would require ongoing care but Jeff still hadn't nailed
Speaker 2: down a steady job, so the couple needed help covering
Speaker 2: his medical expenses. Jeb had worked at the VA years
Speaker 2: ago and insisted it was their best resource.
Speaker 1: And he absolutely said, I will not go. I don't
Speaker 1: trust the government. I'm not going. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: that's bullshit. We're going broke. We've got to get your
Speaker 1: health care.
Speaker 2: That's when Jeff explained the VA what didn't take him.
Speaker 1: He said, they don't even have a list of me
Speaker 1: because I was dishonorably discharged because I reported the officers.
Speaker 1: They won't even have me on the well, anything to
Speaker 1: do with the VA. And I said, that's bullshit. You
Speaker 1: were a soldier, you were captured. And he said, I
Speaker 1: won't go. He got up and he never talked about
Speaker 1: it again. In that moment, I was like, that is weird.
Speaker 2: Explanation just didn't add up. Deb even considered hiring someone
Speaker 2: to look into Jeff's background.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I need to get a private investigator
Speaker 1: or something. And I logged on to the internet and
Speaker 1: then I was like, God, I don't have any money
Speaker 1: to get a private detective.
Speaker 2: She didn't have the money or the time to hire
Speaker 2: a PI. Shortly after Jeff's heart attack, he had a stroke.
Speaker 2: Then his memory began to falter. All the while he
Speaker 2: was refusing to go to the VA. It financially strained
Speaker 2: the family, and Deb was at a loss.
Speaker 1: I had begun to say, I do not know what
Speaker 1: is wrong with my life. How am I going to
Speaker 1: get this guy health care? He's got to have healthcare.
Speaker 2: Deb was his primary caretaker on top of her full
Speaker 2: time nursing job. It was overwhelming.
Speaker 1: I begin to drink, and then I drink heavily, and
Speaker 1: then it was uncontrollably.
Speaker 2: Alcohol became an escape from her marriage and its problems.
Speaker 1: When I started drinking, I didn't have to be confused
Speaker 1: anymore because my brain was numb.
Speaker 2: Deb had spent so many years taking care of other
Speaker 2: people that she neglected herself.
Speaker 1: As the person that was going to alan on from
Speaker 1: the mid eighties, taking family, taking coworkers, taking friends to
Speaker 1: aa NA rehab. I was taken everybody to get help,
Speaker 1: but myself had, I guess, reached just a hard stop
Speaker 1: where I couldn't deal with it.
Speaker 2: Deb had just turned fifty and had been with Jeff
Speaker 2: for a decade, but life with him was becoming harder
Speaker 2: year after year. At first he failed to bring in
Speaker 2: a steady income. Then when he became sick, he refused
Speaker 2: resources for affordable health care. Deb turned to booze for
Speaker 2: the stress. But one day, after a long night of drinking,
Speaker 2: she found herself too shaky to put the golf ball
Speaker 2: on the tee. She checked herself into a thirty day rehab.
Speaker 1: Best move I ever made. I'm not going to tell
Speaker 1: you it was pretty. It was ugly, but there's always
Speaker 1: been a driving force within me to rise above.
Speaker 2: Being alone. In rehab gave her a lot of clarity,
Speaker 2: and with that clarity came questions, specifically about Jeff. When
Speaker 2: she left rehab, she looked at Jeff's behavior with a
Speaker 2: new set of eyes.
Speaker 1: I began to really observe he was strange. Something was
Speaker 1: not right, not right.
Speaker 2: She wasn't ready to leave the marriage. Her focus was
Speaker 2: on her new sobriety, but she did come up with
Speaker 2: a plan to get some answers out of Jeff. She
Speaker 2: gave him an assignment.
Speaker 1: And I began to say to him, Jeff, every day
Speaker 1: while I'm at work, I want you to work on
Speaker 1: your life story because I don't understand it. You told
Speaker 1: me you were born in Alaska and you moved to Canada,
Speaker 1: but I don't know where you even went to school.
Speaker 1: I don't even know when you moved to Canada. If
Speaker 1: something happens, I'm going to be honest with you. I
Speaker 1: can't even write an obituary.
Speaker 2: She thought it would be a good exercise for both
Speaker 2: of them, and she hoped it could help her understand
Speaker 2: why he was the way he was.
Speaker 1: And so every day I would come home and I
Speaker 1: would we'll share your story with me. Oh, I couldn't
Speaker 1: work on it today.
Speaker 2: After his stroke, Jeff's memory was worse than ever.
Speaker 1: He began to claim that he just didn't have much
Speaker 1: of a memory, but the neurologist at the time of
Speaker 1: his stroke had already advised me that the stroke was
Speaker 1: not going to impact his memory. Then he wanted me
Speaker 1: to get in checked for possible early dementia.
Speaker 2: He needed more care than she could provide a home,
Speaker 2: so she applied for him to be in a funded
Speaker 2: outpatient care facility and he was accepted.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful program that where you stay in your home,
Speaker 1: but they basically have a center that's opened during the
Speaker 1: day and there's activities and transportation. There's clinic on side,
Speaker 1: everything that you could need, and if you need something outside,
Speaker 1: they'll take you.
Speaker 2: He started going to the center every day.
Speaker 1: That was until the program called me and they said,
Speaker 1: have you talked to Jeff? Because nobody confining he's gone.
Speaker 2: Deb was at work. She didn't know where he was.
Speaker 2: With his memory issues, she worried he could have gotten lost,
Speaker 2: so they called the police.
Speaker 1: Come to find out. He had left the group and
Speaker 1: the care team to go to the bank.
Speaker 2: When Deb got there, Jeff seemed confused about what was happening.
Speaker 2: The whole said situation confirmed that he really needed this facility.
Speaker 2: His memory must be worse than she thought. But shortly
Speaker 2: after Jeff's incident at the bank, Deb received another phone call.
Speaker 2: Only this one would change her life forever.
Speaker 1: It was a number I didn't recognizing. I typically didn't
Speaker 1: pick those up in the office.
Speaker 2: It was an international call, but Deb had a strange feeling.
Speaker 2: When she picked up. There was a police officer on
Speaker 2: the other line, and.
Speaker 1: I was like, what is this about.
Speaker 2: The officer was Canadian and he was investigating a cold
Speaker 2: case from thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: That's when he began to say that they were looking
Speaker 1: for ron Stan, and they had believed that they're tracking
Speaker 1: down through social media.
Speaker 2: But Deb didn't know a ron Stan. The officer continued,
Speaker 2: explaining that Canadian police had been looking for a man
Speaker 2: named ron Stan for over thirty years. He disappeared during.
Speaker 1: A There was a fire in his barn at night,
Speaker 1: and initially he was presumed to have been in that fire,
Speaker 1: and he had left a wife, infant, and another child.
Speaker 2: Deb's blood ran cold. She knew what the officer was
Speaker 2: about to say before he said it. The man she
Speaker 2: was married to, who she knew as Jeff Walton.
Speaker 1: Was actually the complete fraud. He was ron Stan, who
Speaker 1: was dismissing person.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing about ron Stan. He was originally declared dead,
Speaker 2: but in reality he'd been on the run ever since
Speaker 2: that barnfire. Eleven years into her marriage, Deb Proctor got
Speaker 2: a phone call out of the blue from a Canadian
Speaker 2: police officer. They were looking for ron Stan, a Canadian
Speaker 2: man who'd been missing and later declared dead after an
Speaker 2: arson fire in nineteen seventy seven, and they believed they'd
Speaker 2: found him in the United States. He was hiding out
Speaker 2: in a rural part of the Cherokee Nation using the
Speaker 2: name Jeff Walton. When the police explained this to.
Speaker 1: Deb, initially I thought it was perhaps just a cruel joke.
Speaker 2: So she asked the officer for proof, for details.
Speaker 1: The more I push for dates, times, names, locations, the
Speaker 1: more I realized, oh ugh.
Speaker 2: She didn't see much on the phone. She just listened,
Speaker 2: writing down everything the police told.
Speaker 1: Her, every detail, dates, times, information. I still have that notepad.
Speaker 2: Canadian officials wanted to speak to Jeff or Ron directly.
Speaker 2: Deb explained that he was in a care facility during
Speaker 2: the day because of his memory problems. She confirmed their
Speaker 2: home address, thanked the officer and hung up the phone
Speaker 2: in disbelief.
Speaker 1: I was sitting there when there was a nurse that
Speaker 1: looked at me from an office door and she said,
Speaker 1: are you okay. I remember saying, I don't know. I've
Speaker 1: just had the most bizarre phone call. So I went
Speaker 1: to talk to my director of nursing and she said,
Speaker 1: get out of here. What in the world.
Speaker 2: She debated whether this phone call was real, if the
Speaker 2: person on the phone was even a police officer. A
Speaker 2: coworker who was afraid for Deb suggested another possibility, he.
Speaker 1: Probably is in witness protection and you just blew it,
Speaker 1: so you're probably not safe, nor is he. And they said,
Speaker 1: we'll go with you to the Cherokee Nation Marshals and
Speaker 1: we will get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 2: So Deb went straight there. She wanted to know if
Speaker 2: the call she'd received was real or if Jeff could
Speaker 2: be in witness protection. An investigator took Deb's concern seriously
Speaker 2: and started making calls.
Speaker 1: I gave her the sale number, the badge number, and
Speaker 1: everything from the officer that called. And she did call,
Speaker 1: and she confirmed every last detail.
Speaker 2: She verified that Jeff Walton didn't exist. Her husband of
Speaker 2: eleven years was a missing person, a man named Ronald
Speaker 2: Stan who'd faked his death in an arson fire and
Speaker 2: had been on the run for thirty years.
Speaker 1: I was just heartsick, gut sick, heartsick, my whole body responded,
Speaker 1: and all I could think of was, who are you?
Speaker 1: How could you do this?
Speaker 2: When Ronald Stan disappeared from his farm in rural Ontario
Speaker 2: andnineteen seventy seven, he abandoned his wife and two young sons.
Speaker 2: In order to escape, He had lit his barn on fire,
Speaker 2: killing all the animals. His family watched the blaze helpless,
Speaker 2: fearing that ron was trapped inside.
Speaker 1: That poor wife and those two sons that he walked
Speaker 1: away from in this barn far in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night. What horror, what pain, what trauma that they
Speaker 1: must have endured, thinking that they were watching him burn
Speaker 1: up in front of their eyes.
Speaker 2: Why he'd faked his death. Deb wouldn't find out until
Speaker 2: much later. In that moment, she just knew she couldn't
Speaker 2: go home, not to the house she shared with him.
Speaker 2: He was a criminal, a fraud, a total stranger. So
Speaker 2: the Cherokee Marshals helped her come up with an immediate plan.
Speaker 1: Go to an attorney, go to the bank, and get protection.
Speaker 1: So that's what I did.
Speaker 2: She made an appointment with a divorce attorney for the
Speaker 2: following day, and a friend offered to let Deb stay
Speaker 2: at her place while she figured out her next move.
Speaker 1: I just was in a state of robot just trying
Speaker 1: to put one foot in front of the other and
Speaker 1: then formulate a plan on how to tell the family.
Speaker 2: She met with her sons to break the news, and
Speaker 2: with all of their support, she called Jeff's son, the
Speaker 2: one he'd had in America after he went on the run.
Speaker 2: After all, he was the only child Deb knew about.
Speaker 1: I loved that boy. He was my son too, you know,
Speaker 1: he was a third son, So my heart hurt for him,
Speaker 1: just like it did for my boys. To tell him.
Speaker 2: Everyone in the family called him Little Jeff. He was
Speaker 2: named after his father, or rather his father's alias.
Speaker 1: And gives respec The box was, you know, silent initially
Speaker 1: as you could imagine, and then just struggling. We both
Speaker 1: needed some time to just deal.
Speaker 2: The one person she didn't want to speak with was Jeff.
Speaker 1: I really did not have any communication with him whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I just had nothing to say.
Speaker 2: When the authorities finally got ahold of Jeff, they questioned
Speaker 2: him and asked to see his proof of identity.
Speaker 1: He admitted to everything.
Speaker 2: In fact, he seemed amused. He made a joke to
Speaker 2: police officers asking what took them so long? Because the
Speaker 2: arson had happened so long ago, the statute of limitations
Speaker 2: had expired in Canada, and authorities in the US couldn't
Speaker 2: charge him either.
Speaker 1: There was no charges to be made here. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a scam, but there's no charges that I could file.
Speaker 2: The only legal action deb could take was filing for divorce.
Speaker 1: The domestic Violence Service of the tribe helped me and
Speaker 1: just took the papers and when they served in the papers,
Speaker 1: he just signed it. He didn't even question it.
Speaker 2: The news got wind of the story and it was
Speaker 2: a media frenzy.
Speaker 1: Media showed up, some Canada and some Oklahoma from the UK.
Speaker 1: I just didn't have any peace. I could rarely go home.
Speaker 1: My phone ranking constantly. I was just completely overwhelmed.
Speaker 2: Debsnye's drafted a statement to send to the press on
Speaker 2: her behalf, and deb kept tabs on the news. That's
Speaker 2: how she learned Jeff's real life story, the one he
Speaker 2: claimed he couldn't remember. A journalist with the Toronto Star
Speaker 2: had been reporting on it. Through their investigation, they uncovered
Speaker 2: a possible motivation for why he faked his death.
Speaker 1: Evidently, he was messing with young college girls and he
Speaker 1: was getting ready to get in trouble.
Speaker 2: At the time of the arson, Ron was working at
Speaker 2: a college in Canada. He was having a relationship with
Speaker 2: a local girl who was much younger. The day he
Speaker 2: went missing, it seemed this information was about to be revealed.
Speaker 2: It's not clear how old the girl was, but the
Speaker 2: threat of being discovered prompted him to go on the
Speaker 2: run for three decades. Deb also learned how he pulled
Speaker 2: it off.
Speaker 1: When he left Canada in the fire in Cana, New Orleans,
Speaker 1: he said, I've got to find a woman with money.
Speaker 2: He did. In fact, he had two other marriages he'd
Speaker 2: never told deb about. And after he found a woman
Speaker 2: with money, he needed papers to validate his new identity.
Speaker 1: He got a social Security from somebody that had died
Speaker 1: in the seventies, a girl, so he took over her
Speaker 1: social security.
Speaker 2: He used his stolen identity to find work and even
Speaker 2: collect Social Security benefits.
Speaker 1: That's how he worked in the decades that he came
Speaker 1: to the United States. He used this social security and
Speaker 1: false name. I don't know how anybody pulls this off.
Speaker 1: It's so elaborate.
Speaker 2: When the story broke, Jeff himself spoke to the media
Speaker 2: about how and why he faked his death, and he
Speaker 2: seemed to revel in it.
Speaker 1: He sought that attention. He wanted to be a star.
Speaker 2: He said. He chose the name Jeff because it was
Speaker 2: the name of his infant son he abandoned in Canada,
Speaker 2: and the last name Walton was inspired by the TV
Speaker 2: show The Waltons. It sounded like a classic American last name.
Speaker 2: As for the documents he used to marry Dub, they
Speaker 2: appeared to be forged.
Speaker 1: I had seen his birth certificate and I still have it.
Speaker 1: But when you look there are things that have been changed.
Speaker 2: Like the arson. Too much time had passed for him
Speaker 2: to be charged in the US with identity fraud. And
Speaker 2: what about his elaborate stories like being a prisoner of
Speaker 2: war in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: It's all made up.
Speaker 2: That's why he was so resistant to using the VA.
Speaker 2: He never fought in the Vietnam War. He wasn't even
Speaker 2: an American citizen. The POW story, well, he ripped those
Speaker 2: details straight out of a movie called Platoon starring Charlie Sheen.
Speaker 2: And his football career at Ohio State with Woody Hayes.
Speaker 1: There was never anybody that played football, so Woody Hayes
Speaker 1: by his name.
Speaker 2: Ever, Deb was left wondering if anything he'd ever told
Speaker 2: her was true. Today she doubts if he'd even swung
Speaker 2: a golf club before she met him. After all his
Speaker 2: lies were exposed, one of Deb's friends finally came clean
Speaker 2: about something. Remember the golf trip where Deb's friends iced
Speaker 2: them out. Well, back then the group had discovered that.
Speaker 1: He cheated all day, he never counts the strokes, and
Speaker 1: when he was out of bounds, he never counted it.
Speaker 2: He cheated and basically stole a pot of money from
Speaker 2: Deb's friends. That's why they were never invited to play
Speaker 2: with the group again. Even his memory issues were alie.
Speaker 2: When he talked to the press after the fact, he
Speaker 2: seemed to remember every detail just fine. So what was
Speaker 2: really going on that day when he went missing from
Speaker 2: the facility and was found at the bank. Deb suspects
Speaker 2: he was planning an escape. She also wonders if he
Speaker 2: targeted her because she lives in a rural part of
Speaker 2: the Cherokee Nation.
Speaker 1: It's very possible because look, this is rule, this is
Speaker 1: a dead end road. Maybe he did think, hey, I
Speaker 1: can get out in the woods and rule Oklahoma and
Speaker 1: continue the hide.
Speaker 2: One of the most baffling aspects of his deception is
Speaker 2: that visit to Canada a few years into their marriage.
Speaker 2: Back then, the reunion seemed completely normal, but behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: Jeff had asked all of his family members to use
Speaker 2: his new name instead of calling him Ron. They said
Speaker 2: they were so happy to see him again that they obliged.
Speaker 1: They did it because they'd lost him once and they
Speaker 1: didn't want to lose him again. And I think they
Speaker 1: were just so happy to have him back in their lives.
Speaker 2: There's clearly so much more to his family dynamics than
Speaker 2: she'll ever know. It still doesn't sit right with her.
Speaker 1: What makes it okay that you support this kind of deception.
Speaker 2: In the beginning, she didn't even know how to refer
Speaker 2: to him, what name to call him by, whether to
Speaker 2: call him Ron or Jeff.
Speaker 1: But I had a really dear friend. She nicknamed him Raf,
Speaker 1: and so for a while when I referred to him,
Speaker 1: it was ref But now I usually just say Jeff.
Speaker 2: In the weeks after his double life was revealed, Deb
Speaker 2: was emotion destroyed. It all happened in her first year
Speaker 2: of sobriety. Jeff moved back to New Orleans with his son,
Speaker 2: and Deb was left alone in the house they shared.
Speaker 1: I just remember it was a profound moment. It's the
Speaker 1: duality of oh, my god, what in the world along
Speaker 1: with you have to live, you have to deal with
Speaker 1: this and go on. And I remember just laying in
Speaker 1: the floor, just face down and just solvely and saying,
Speaker 1: my god, how does another human do this to a human?
Speaker 1: And the guise of love.
Speaker 2: In that moment, she couldn't get up. It felt like
Speaker 2: her world had ended.
Speaker 1: I just had so much pain and confusion. I got
Speaker 1: on my knees, I leaned into a chair, and I
Speaker 1: just kept praying and asking for help, and just if
Speaker 1: you can get me on my feet, I will go forward.
Speaker 1: I will keep my sobriety. I promise a promise. I
Speaker 1: made a commitment to live life, to help others, to
Speaker 1: be the best person I can, to be loving, kind.
Speaker 1: I mean, those were the things I'd always been, but
Speaker 1: I was not going to let this make me harsh
Speaker 1: and hateful.
Speaker 2: In the throes of despair, she gained vivid clarity.
Speaker 1: You know, we often talk of spiritual awakenings. I feel
Speaker 1: like I've had a few in my life. But that
Speaker 1: was profound, profound, And when I stood up, you know,
Speaker 1: I was still crying, but I wasn't suffering as much.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel the pain as deep at the betrayal
Speaker 1: or shock, and I knew that when I stood up,
Speaker 1: that it was something great later than me. It said,
Speaker 1: get up, you got work to do.
Speaker 2: Go on. She got up that day, and she's stayed
Speaker 2: on her feet ever since.
Speaker 1: I made a commitment to do that in that moment,
Speaker 1: and I've never turned back, and I've never tried to
Speaker 1: rewrite the story, and I don't want to live in bitterness.
Speaker 1: I still wanted to be open hearted and help others,
Speaker 1: and that's what set the tone for the years to
Speaker 1: where we are today.
Speaker 2: She's now eleven years sober.
Speaker 1: I maintained sobriety. I was dedicated to my meetings, and
Speaker 1: I was dedicated to the spiritual journey and dealing with
Speaker 1: my loss and grief and shock.
Speaker 2: She took on a leadership role in her tribe as
Speaker 2: director of a program providing resources and support to victims
Speaker 2: of domestic violence.
Speaker 1: I would say, you've still got to stay working on
Speaker 1: your emotional health because it's a tough service. What I
Speaker 1: know for sure is that we can't help others adequately
Speaker 1: or appropriately if we haven't begun our own work to hear.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm more effective in these last years
Speaker 1: because of all the work I've done.
Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, she got a call from Jeff's son,
Speaker 2: Jeff had passed away.
Speaker 1: It was a sense of relief, but also all the
Speaker 1: emotions that flood into that moment, you.
Speaker 2: Just have to hold them in the last few years,
Speaker 2: her life has taken an unexpected turn.
Speaker 1: I've just recently married on September seventh, and I never
Speaker 1: saw it come in both of us or never's And
Speaker 1: it was the most beautiful wedding outdoors, overlooking the lake.
Speaker 1: It was just beautiful, romantic, just wonderful.
Speaker 2: After all, she did make a commitment to being open hearted.
Speaker 2: Her new husband meets her at her level, and he's
Speaker 2: put in the work too.
Speaker 1: He is also sober, him forty something years. Both of
Speaker 1: us love golf, both of us love music. It's just
Speaker 1: a blessing for us both. We feel so grateful. It's
Speaker 1: too bad we're meeting each other at seventy and sixty seven,
Speaker 1: but here we are.
Speaker 2: We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
Speaker 2: why did you want to share your story?
Speaker 1: If my story could help others identify lies from their
Speaker 1: partner earlier, that's one part. The real part is we
Speaker 1: can hear, and we can have a good lie, and
Speaker 1: we can live well the trauma and the pain and
Speaker 1: the suffering and the sorrow. We have the potential to
Speaker 1: just be an amazing human. On the other side, leave
Speaker 1: your heart open, love others, help others learn boundaries set limits.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 3: My mom was the first one to be like, does
Speaker 3: this seem off at all to you? It was really
Speaker 3: the first time someone said something that made me think,
Speaker 3: what do you mean off? Like I had never considered
Speaker 3: doubting it.
Speaker 2: If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
Speaker 2: team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
Speaker 2: us at Betrayal pod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal
Speaker 2: pod at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support.
Speaker 2: One way to show us it is by subscribing to
Speaker 2: our show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate
Speaker 2: and review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way.
Speaker 2: A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal
Speaker 2: is a production of.
Speaker 4: Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership
Speaker 4: with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy
Speaker 4: Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
Speaker 4: written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Speaker 4: Associate producers are Kristin Melcuriy and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart
Speaker 4: team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and
Speaker 4: mixing by Matt Delvecchio.
Speaker 2: Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by
Speaker 2: Oliver Bains.
Speaker 4: Music library provided by Mob Music and For more podcasts
Speaker 4: from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 4: you get your podcasts