Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake. I hope you enjoyed our season
Speaker 1: The Truth about Sarah. We'll be having a live event
Speaker 1: later this year. It's going to be a conversation between
Speaker 1: me and my co host Jess McHugh and we want
Speaker 1: to hear from you too. What questions do you have
Speaker 1: for us about this season? Send your questions to deep
Speaker 1: Cover at Pushkin dot fm. That's deep Cover All one
Speaker 1: word at Pushkin dot fm and stay tuned for more
Speaker 1: details on this event. One morning last December, my co
Speaker 1: host Jess mchughe and our producer Amy Gaines McQuaid traveled
Speaker 1: to Rhode Island sit down with a woman named Rosemarie. Coffee.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's going to mark it to mailman? Did dogs
Speaker 2: do boo?
Speaker 1: Right? All? That's Rosemary talking to her dog Boo. When
Speaker 1: Jess and Amy arrived, Rosemarie had pastries from a local
Speaker 1: bakery waiting for them and Rosemarie she likes to take
Speaker 1: care of people like this. She's sixty years old and
Speaker 1: recently retired, but before that, she spent her career supporting
Speaker 1: people when they're at their most vulnerable. She worked as
Speaker 1: a community support specialist and for a time Rosemary took
Speaker 1: care of Sarah Kavanaugh.
Speaker 2: Well, I've worked with her. I'm guessing three years, wow,
Speaker 2: So it's up to the end. So it would write
Speaker 2: exactly to the point.
Speaker 1: Sarah enrolled in the Wounded Warrior Independence program. It's designed
Speaker 1: for veterans with life changing injuries, and it was through
Speaker 1: this program that Wounded Warrior paid for Rosemary's services.
Speaker 2: What did you understand her physical injuries to be. She
Speaker 2: had the traumatic brain injury, she had a prosthetic hip supposedly,
Speaker 2: and she was also going through cancer treatment, the prosthetic,
Speaker 2: the brain injury, and the PTSD or the primary challenges.
Speaker 1: She still remembers the first time that she showed up
Speaker 1: to Sarah's house.
Speaker 2: At the time, Sarah was like curled up in a
Speaker 2: blanket in you know, on the couch in front of
Speaker 2: the window, just looking out the window, all forlorn and
Speaker 2: shy and withdrawn, and according to the case manager, she
Speaker 2: you know, she wasn't getting adjusted to the community and
Speaker 2: she really needed a lot of support. If you can
Speaker 2: just picture that person that's just not been able to
Speaker 2: do any anything, you know, or go anywhere, you know,
Speaker 2: really struggling, You know that that was the persona that
Speaker 2: she put out there.
Speaker 1: Throughout our reporting, Jess and I had heard these stories
Speaker 1: about Sarah running down mountain trails and competing in epic
Speaker 1: workout challenges. But this, this was an entirely different Sarah
Speaker 1: we were hearing about. Rose Marie worked with Sarah right
Speaker 1: up until Sarah's double life came crashing down. Throughout all
Speaker 1: that time, Sarah let rose Marie into her home, into
Speaker 1: her life, and we wondered what did rose Marie see.
Speaker 1: Turns out she saw and heard an awful lot, some
Speaker 1: of which has major implications for our story. It suggests
Speaker 1: that there may have been someone else helping Sarah with
Speaker 1: her deception, a possible accomplice.
Speaker 3: I couldn't even tell your name. I couldn't even tell
Speaker 3: you necessarily who I suspected. But there were a couple
Speaker 3: incidents when somebody had to call Sarah's caseworker at the
Speaker 3: VA when Sarah's standing in the rooms or wasn't Sarah,
Speaker 3: So who was on the other end of the phone.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Deep Cover Season six. The Truth about Sarah.
Speaker 1: This is Rosemare's story. Rose Marie has worked with people
Speaker 1: living with disabilities for decades, and if there's one thing
Speaker 1: she's learned. It's that every case is different.
Speaker 2: So there isn't a set blueprint for working with someone
Speaker 2: with brain injury. It's different in the sense of each
Speaker 2: person's injury manifests itself in different ways.
Speaker 1: Rose Marie told us that most of the people that
Speaker 1: she works with have had their worlds turned upside down
Speaker 1: and they're still trying to find their footing.
Speaker 2: So they've had pretty much a normal life leading up
Speaker 2: to this injury, and then they may have had a
Speaker 2: car accident, a stroke, a brain tumor, and then everything changes,
Speaker 2: including personality changes. So that's part of it that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't see it with other disabilities.
Speaker 1: Necessarily her job helping people get back into the world,
Speaker 1: running errands, doing chores, the simple stuff, which is no
Speaker 1: longer so simple. That's where Rosemarie comes in. That's what
Speaker 1: she started doing for Sarah.
Speaker 2: At the time I met her. Supposedly, she couldn't even
Speaker 2: go into a store, she couldn't go to a target,
Speaker 2: she couldn't go grocery shopping, she couldn't, you know, take
Speaker 2: care of her household.
Speaker 1: Rose Marie believed Sarah was dealing with PTSD, so she
Speaker 1: tried to break things down make simple tasks even simpler.
Speaker 2: Okay, your first task is to try to just go
Speaker 2: into target, you know, get one item and go through
Speaker 2: the register and that's a success. Or we'd go, you know,
Speaker 2: make a grocery list, like what do I need? How
Speaker 2: what am I going to eat this week?
Speaker 1: And rose Marie was told certain things were going to
Speaker 1: be hard for Sarah.
Speaker 2: Okay, these are things emotionally she needs to address. You know,
Speaker 2: going out in the community like the DMV would have
Speaker 2: been a big trigger for her, you know, to do
Speaker 2: that by herself.
Speaker 1: So rose Marie went with her to the DMV to
Speaker 1: get special purple heart plates for her car. You might
Speaker 1: remember Sarah claimed she earned a purple heart in combat.
Speaker 1: Somehow she had the paperwork to back that claim up,
Speaker 1: and she got the plates without even realizing it or
Speaker 1: meaning to. Rose Marie had played a small role in
Speaker 1: helping Sarah deepen her deception. As they spent more time together,
Speaker 1: Rosemarie and Sarah began to form a bond.
Speaker 2: So I was supporting her. And of course when you're
Speaker 2: doing that, you want to build a rapport. You want
Speaker 2: to have the person be comfortable, so you're you're I mean,
Speaker 2: I was willing to do the things with her. Let's
Speaker 2: say she's no, she's got to do laundry. Well, I'm
Speaker 2: not just going to stand there with a clipboard, you know,
Speaker 2: and talk at her.
Speaker 1: Instead, rose Marie said, let's chat as we fold the clothes.
Speaker 1: And over time, Rosemarie became a sounding board for Sarah.
Speaker 2: She talked about things that bothered her. She talked about relationships,
Speaker 2: she talked about family. She was always talking about financial
Speaker 2: troubles that was weighing on her.
Speaker 1: The version of Sarah that we kept hearing about from
Speaker 1: other people was tough, unbreakable, always smiling through the pain,
Speaker 1: the kind of person people held up as a hero.
Speaker 1: But rose Marie saw something else, something that seemed more
Speaker 1: tender and fragile.
Speaker 2: I would say about ninety nine percent of the time
Speaker 2: when I arrived at her home, she was in tears. Wow,
Speaker 2: she was anxious, she was worked up. There was things
Speaker 2: that had happened. And then you know, we would talk
Speaker 2: and she would calm down, and then we'd say, okay
Speaker 2: with the plan, and we would you be able to
Speaker 2: move on to an activity that she orchestrated that we
Speaker 2: should do.
Speaker 1: One of these things was physical therapy.
Speaker 2: She wanted to start physical therapy and the organization was
Speaker 2: paying for it, Wounded Warrior, and so she was nervous
Speaker 2: about going to the first visit. So I took her
Speaker 2: to her first visit was.
Speaker 1: Yep. Rose Marie says she took Sarah to her very
Speaker 1: first appointment with Sam, the physical therapist she went on
Speaker 1: to become romantically involved with. At first, nothing stood out
Speaker 1: to Rosemarie, but over time she came to understand that
Speaker 1: Sarah's relationship with Sam had evolved.
Speaker 2: It took a long time before I saw evidence there
Speaker 2: was something else with Sam, and I'm trying to be professional.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to delve into like obviously. She had
Speaker 2: just got married, you know, not long.
Speaker 1: Before Rose Marie knew Nicole, Sarah's wife at the time.
Speaker 1: She spent many hours in the home that they shared,
Speaker 1: and she did her best to stay out of this
Speaker 1: whole mess and just stick to her job being a
Speaker 1: community support specialist. Well, it's tricky work. You get pulled
Speaker 1: into people's lives, the mess, the chaos. Rose Marie kept
Speaker 1: her focus, helped the person in front of you. What
Speaker 1: she didn't know was just how messy it really was.
Speaker 1: In early twenty twenty two, as Sarah's lies were falling apart,
Speaker 1: Rose Marie arrived at Sarah's house to help with an
Speaker 1: errand the moment she got there, she sensed it and
Speaker 1: on settling tension in the air, like everything was on edge.
Speaker 2: I show up. She's outside, She's not even in the house.
Speaker 2: She's outside, she's anxious. She's got the plates in her hands,
Speaker 2: she's got the paperwork. She was just like, we have
Speaker 2: to go to the DMV. I have to return these plates.
Speaker 2: They're causing so much problems. I just want to get
Speaker 2: rid of them.
Speaker 1: Sarah was desperate to return those purple heart license plates.
Speaker 1: It was a request that seemed to baffle the DMV staff,
Speaker 1: but Sarah just wanted those plates gone.
Speaker 2: The staff at the DMV were like so nice, and
Speaker 2: they were trying to get at what was going on,
Speaker 2: like why why do you want to return these? Is
Speaker 2: somebody harassing you? Like because we can help you, you know,
Speaker 2: we'll get contact whoever we need to to help you
Speaker 2: with this. If you know, you should feel like you
Speaker 2: you earn these And she's like, no, no, I just
Speaker 2: have to get rid of it. I don't want to
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 1: Soon after this, reports about Sarah's fraud started circulating. Rose
Speaker 1: Marie was at home when her husband showed her an
Speaker 1: article that revealed Sarah's deception.
Speaker 2: My husband came to me and said, is this Sarah
Speaker 2: Sarah in the news is showing me on my phone.
Speaker 2: I was just like, oh my god. They really have,
Speaker 2: you know, gone out of their way to hurt her.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, poor Sarah. What's my first response? I
Speaker 2: was like reaching out to her and be like, are
Speaker 2: you okay? But so initially it sounds like your reaction
Speaker 2: is disbelief. Oh yes, yeah. I had no reason to
Speaker 2: doubt her, and I was just like, what are these
Speaker 2: people doing to her? Oh my god? Is she okay?
Speaker 2: You know, call her right away? And I just said
Speaker 2: to her, are you okay? And she's like, well no,
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, if it's not true, you
Speaker 2: have to defend yourself, Sarah, you know, And she's like
Speaker 2: I can't. She said I can't. I was like, what
Speaker 2: do you mean. She's like, I can't defend myself. And
Speaker 2: then I was like, well, tell me what's going on
Speaker 2: and she's like, I can't talk. I'll call you right back.
Speaker 2: I'm getting another call, and then she hung up. And
Speaker 2: that was it.
Speaker 1: Rose Marie soon learned about the investigation into Sarah's fraud
Speaker 1: and what the FEDS had begun to discover, and she
Speaker 1: came to the unsettling realization that she had been deceived
Speaker 1: for years. In some ways, rose Marie knew Sarah so intimately,
Speaker 1: but in other ways she didn't know her at all.
Speaker 1: We asked rose Marie if she knew whether Sarah had
Speaker 1: a job, and turns out she had no idea. Sarah
Speaker 1: was a social worker at the VA in Providence. Now,
Speaker 1: granted she did only work for Sarah part time, roughly
Speaker 1: six hours a week, she knew that Sarah visited the
Speaker 1: VIA pretty often, and she knew this because sometimes she
Speaker 1: drove Sarah there.
Speaker 2: I've taken her to the VA, so I I mean,
Speaker 2: I have no idea what I took what I took
Speaker 2: her to, but you know, definitely dropped her off and
Speaker 2: waited in the car in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Part of what made Sarah's story so convincing to rose
Speaker 1: Marie and others we interviewed was the fact that someone
Speaker 1: from Sarah's healthcare team was in contact with them. This
Speaker 1: person's name was Ivy. Supposedly, Ivy was a social worker
Speaker 1: at the VA assigned to managing Sarah's care.
Speaker 2: She had a lot of talks about the social worker
Speaker 2: Ivy at the VA. So that's what I thought was
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 1: But what was really going on with Ivy, Well that's
Speaker 1: something we're all still trying to figure out more on that.
Speaker 1: After the break, a few people we've interviewed, including Rosemarie,
Speaker 1: say they spoke with someone claiming to be Ivy. Rose
Speaker 1: Marie told us about one conference call in particular. It
Speaker 1: was a check in with Sarah's healthcare team. Rose Marie
Speaker 1: was on the line, as was a case manager from
Speaker 1: the Wounded Warrior Project, and then there was Ivy from
Speaker 1: the VA, offering updates on Sarah's care.
Speaker 2: So she would go on and talk about her medical situation,
Speaker 2: the cancer, what they were trying to do there. So
Speaker 2: I'd be there with Sarah and then the other two
Speaker 2: were in conference call, and so Sarah was in the
Speaker 2: room with yes, so she couldn't have been the one
Speaker 2: on the phone right right, And that was the case
Speaker 2: as well another time some other woman was speaking and
Speaker 2: as Ivy.
Speaker 1: The question that now comes up, the one that Rose
Speaker 1: Marie still thinks about and the one that we still
Speaker 1: think about a lot. Is this Who's on the phone
Speaker 1: pretending to be Ivy offering these made up details about
Speaker 1: how Sarah's treatment was going. It wasn't Sarah because on
Speaker 1: that particular call, Sarah was sitting in the room with Rosemarie.
Speaker 1: So it had to be someone else, someone who was
Speaker 1: complicit in Sarah's lies.
Speaker 2: So there had to be other people involved. There absolutely
Speaker 2: had to be, because I clearly remember at least two
Speaker 2: times when Ivy was on the phone. But yeah, there
Speaker 2: had to be another person.
Speaker 1: We talked to Tom Donnelly about this. If you recall,
Speaker 1: he's the in house investigator at the VA's Office of
Speaker 1: Inspector General. Donnelly's thought about this a lot.
Speaker 3: We could never prove that another person was involved, but
Speaker 3: it's evidence that leads me to believe that one hundred
Speaker 3: percent somebody else was involved.
Speaker 1: Donnelly told us there really is someone named Ivy who
Speaker 1: works for the Providence VA, but investigators had interviewed her
Speaker 1: over the course of their investigation and they felt convinced
Speaker 1: that she was not in on this in any way.
Speaker 1: We actually got in touch with the real Ivy and
Speaker 1: she told us, quote, I knew Sarah from the time
Speaker 1: she was a social work intern. We would eat lunch together,
Speaker 1: and although she never pretended to be a veteran with
Speaker 1: me or other coworkers, she would tell us story after
Speaker 1: story about her large military family. I was shocked to
Speaker 1: learn that they never existed, and was appalled when I
Speaker 1: was questioned by federal agents investigating whether or not I
Speaker 1: was involved in her schemes. She went on to say,
Speaker 1: more appalling than her using my name was the grift
Speaker 1: that she had been running for years, duping many organizations
Speaker 1: and betraying the trust of so many veterans, like the
Speaker 1: ones that she was receiving a salary to help. All
Speaker 1: of this has led investigators to believe there had to
Speaker 1: have been someone else, someone impersonating Ivy on a series
Speaker 1: of phone.
Speaker 3: Calls, Like we figured out who who Ivy's phone number was.
Speaker 3: Ivy's phone number was Sarah's VA issued government cell phone.
Speaker 3: So I don't know where that phone was or who
Speaker 3: had it, but we do know that.
Speaker 1: It was used. In other words, Donnelly thinks someone was
Speaker 1: using Sarah's work phone to fake the whole thing, calling
Speaker 1: people pretending to be Ivy. But if it wasn't Sarah,
Speaker 1: well then who was it. That question has yet to
Speaker 1: be answered. Maybe one day we'll find out. Before rose
Speaker 1: Marie learned about Sarah's lies, she says she was never
Speaker 1: really suspicious. She felt nothing but empathy for Sarah.
Speaker 2: You see, this person has been impacted and her life
Speaker 2: has been so impaired, and she's so young. I mean,
Speaker 2: it really pull on your heart. There's no question about it.
Speaker 2: Everybody who met her felt sorry for her every time,
Speaker 2: everyone wanted to help her.
Speaker 1: Rosemary became so attached to Sarah that even after retiring
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, she continued to help her, volunteering
Speaker 1: her time for free.
Speaker 2: I just knew I had to be there for her,
Speaker 2: like I felt when she reacted that she wasn't going
Speaker 2: to have my contact, and she felt so lost and
Speaker 2: there was just so much going on that I wanted
Speaker 2: to be there for her. I wanted to be able
Speaker 2: to say you can call me anytime. I'm here for you.
Speaker 2: And she was like, great, okay. You know, ever said,
Speaker 2: oh you don't have to do that, or you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want, you know, she definitely let me do it.
Speaker 2: It's really generous of you. I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 2: you can't work in this career, in this field and
Speaker 2: not care you know what, you can't. That's just, you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't make me any kind of a special person.
Speaker 2: It's just that's where I was at, you know, at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: The last time rose Marie saw Sarah was on the
Speaker 1: day of the sentencing in March of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Rose Marie was there in the courtroom, surrounded by people
Speaker 1: who were angry and demanding justice.
Speaker 2: You know. By that time, you know, sympathy had worn off,
Speaker 2: and everybody just wanted to see her be held accountable.
Speaker 2: You know. So basically it was Sarah and her attorney
Speaker 2: and then a whole bunch of other people just you know,
Speaker 2: rooting for her to go to jail.
Speaker 1: At sentencing, rose Marie connected with many other people in
Speaker 1: Sarah's orbit, like Michelle the Jim Buddy and Dave the
Speaker 1: VFW commander. Rosemarie had felt hurt and embarrassed that she'd
Speaker 1: fallen for Sarah's schemes, but when she looked around, she
Speaker 1: started to see the bigger picture and it put things
Speaker 1: into perspective.
Speaker 2: So many people got scammed. I mean, that's where I
Speaker 2: stopped beating myself up with people smarter than me got scammed,
Speaker 2: you know, in a lot larger ways. All the times
Speaker 2: all of us could have intersected somehow we didn't, you know,
Speaker 2: and then but it just didn't happen. Oh God, I
Speaker 2: just wish I got to save some grief for people.
Speaker 1: I just wish I could have saved some grief for people.
Speaker 1: It felt like Rosemarie was basically saying, if only I
Speaker 1: had figured this out, maybe we could have avoided this
Speaker 1: whole mess. The fallout from Sarah's actions was far reaching,
Speaker 1: but one of the cruelest outcomes is that someone like
Speaker 1: Rosemarie would be left feeling even a little bit responsible,
Speaker 1: blaming herself for her own generosity, wondering if that very
Speaker 1: kindness did more harm than good. Of course she's not
Speaker 1: to blame, but sometimes it's not so easy for her
Speaker 1: to see it this way. At the very end of
Speaker 1: this interview, our producer Amy asked rose Marie a final
Speaker 1: question about Sarah.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that you would want to ask her
Speaker 2: or like, do you think that you'll connect with her?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I think everybody just probably wants to know why, But
Speaker 2: you'd never get an answer that we could trust. If
Speaker 2: I asked her why, I wouldn't get a real honest
Speaker 2: you know, so what do what I really ask? You know,
Speaker 2: just a part of my past and time to move on.
Speaker 1: So many people in this story were to see Rosemarie
Speaker 1: saw this for herself at the sentencing hearing. But the
Speaker 1: human mind, it's a curious thing. It's not always governed
Speaker 1: by rationality or self love. Our friends may tell us
Speaker 1: we did no wrong. We may yearn to believe them,
Speaker 1: and perhaps we should. But in quiet moments, late at night,
Speaker 1: the mind often wrestles with guilt, regret, and recriminations, feelings
Speaker 1: that defy logic, but hard as we may try, prove
Speaker 1: impossible to quiet. And in this way, Sarah's story lives on.
Speaker 2: I don't think it ends. That's what I worry about.
Speaker 2: I guess the biggest thing I wonder is like what
Speaker 2: she's going to do after, because how do you come
Speaker 2: out of jail and having done this and have some
Speaker 2: kind of a normal life. She's going to have to
Speaker 2: create another set of lies. She's not going to just
Speaker 2: come out and say, yeah, I just went to prison
Speaker 2: because I scandal these people and I stole valor, and
Speaker 2: you know, so I don't think it stops. That's what
Speaker 2: I'm afraid of.
Speaker 1: These last words, they've stayed with me. I find them haunting.
Speaker 1: As storytellers were always chasing after the elusive perfect endings,
Speaker 1: looking for that final note of closure. But as long
Speaker 1: as people remember, and as long as they're willing to
Speaker 1: ask that most human of questions, what if, then there
Speaker 1: is no end, not really, only more questions that spin
Speaker 1: into the night. This episode was produced by Amy Gains McQuaid,
Speaker 1: Jesse m Hugh Taly Emlin, and Sonya Gurwit. It was
Speaker 1: edited by Karen Chakerji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Original music from Luis Gera, mastering by Sarah Bruger. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Owen Miller, Lucy Sullivan, Jake Flanagan, Sarah Nix,
Speaker 1: and Greta Cone. I'm Jake halpern