Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, this is Jake. You're about to listen to
Speaker 1: episode five. And just a reminder, this is a six
Speaker 1: part series, so if you haven't heard all the previous episodes,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to go back and do that now
Speaker 1: before you listen to this. You'll get a lot more
Speaker 1: out of the whole series. Also, just so you know,
Speaker 1: you can hear more ad free episodes from this season
Speaker 1: of Deep Cover before they're released to the public. By
Speaker 1: signing up for Pushkin Plus. You'll also get bonus episodes,
Speaker 1: full audio books, and binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts
Speaker 1: and authors. Find Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover show
Speaker 1: page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get into it. Heads up. In this episode, there
Speaker 1: are references to suicidal ideation and so actual abuse.
Speaker 2: Previously on Deep Cover.
Speaker 3: The chief of VA Police called me and said, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I think we might have a problem with
Speaker 3: an employee.
Speaker 4: What immediately occurred to me was that as soon as
Speaker 4: I told her I cancer, even though she was telling
Speaker 4: me it was okay, in the back of her mind
Speaker 4: she was thinking I can take advantage of this.
Speaker 5: Do you realize that Sarah used to bill, one of
Speaker 5: your mother's bills from Dana Farber.
Speaker 2: And I said, no, I didn't realize that.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that.
Speaker 5: I was so afraid, right, I was so so afraid.
Speaker 5: Not because I thought it was illegal, not because I'm
Speaker 5: thinking I'm going to go to prison, but because I'm like,
Speaker 5: they are not going to be my friends anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to have.
Speaker 5: These people in my life.
Speaker 1: One detail that's often overlooked in this story, Sarah Cavanaugh
Speaker 1: was married. She had a wife, a woman named Nicole.
Speaker 6: For us, Nicole was kind of the black box in
Speaker 6: this story, the person who might hold the key to
Speaker 6: understanding Sarah, because no matter who Sarah pretended to be
Speaker 6: in public, she was coming home to Nicole most nights,
Speaker 6: to the cozy little house they shared in East Granwitch
Speaker 6: Trode Island. It's a charming cape with a steep gabled
Speaker 6: roof and dormer windows and the flowering dogwood in the
Speaker 6: front yard.
Speaker 1: And we wondered what went on in that home, what
Speaker 1: did Nicole know, when did she know it? And did
Speaker 1: she see a side of Sarah that the rest of
Speaker 1: the world didn't.
Speaker 6: Nicole is an intensely private person. She never talked to
Speaker 6: the press or investigators, never made a statement, just kept quiet.
Speaker 6: We wrote her letter, and to our surprise, she called
Speaker 6: us and invited us to her house for an interview.
Speaker 1: When we met, I did something I don't usually do.
Speaker 1: I just asked her, why did you agree to talk
Speaker 1: to us?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I asked myself that question several times before I
Speaker 7: called you. I know a lot of people are curious,
Speaker 7: and I don't have an obligation to share, but I
Speaker 7: do think that it means something to me that the
Speaker 7: story is told in whole, in full, and not part way.
Speaker 6: We're going to take a deep dive into Sarah and
Speaker 6: Nichole's house, the place where their lives converged, and the pats.
Speaker 2: They both took to get there.
Speaker 6: Sarah's path was fraught, complicated, and full of hidden struggles,
Speaker 6: struggles that would re emerge and eventually lead to the
Speaker 6: moment when Federal AI agents came knocking.
Speaker 7: Picked up the phone just to check my messages, and
Speaker 7: that she said, you need to come home. The FBI
Speaker 7: is here. That's when I knew that it was that fast.
Speaker 7: I had nothing until I had that.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Halpern and I'm Jess mchughe and this is
Speaker 1: Deep Cover Season six, The Truth About Sarah, Episode five,
Speaker 1: The Wife.
Speaker 6: Our interview with Nicole came with a disclaimer.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of things that I, frankly, I just
Speaker 7: don't know if what I was told or what I
Speaker 7: know is even true. So I can definitely speak to
Speaker 7: my perspective on things of what I understood to be
Speaker 7: true at the time that I was living in but
Speaker 7: I have found out along the way that there are
Speaker 7: things that I thought were true that just aren't.
Speaker 6: It struck me that she was basically questioning her own
Speaker 6: perception of reality, and this we came to learn is
Speaker 6: where Nicole's mind still is still spinning, still grasping for
Speaker 6: traction on the solid truth we told her.
Speaker 2: We get it.
Speaker 6: Let's start from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Nicole grew up in New Mexico, but moved to New
Speaker 1: England in her late twenties. She's outdoors, just like Sarah,
Speaker 1: so when the two of them connected online, one of
Speaker 1: their first dates was a hike. They met at Lincoln Woods,
Speaker 1: a park with rugged hills, tree line trails and a
Speaker 1: tranquil pond.
Speaker 7: I just remember it being falling, you know, the leaves
Speaker 7: here in the fall are gorgeous, and it was nice
Speaker 7: out that day, And she and I always just had
Speaker 7: really good conversation and connection. It was easy. She's very
Speaker 7: easy to talk to, you know, just made you feel
Speaker 7: like you're the only person there.
Speaker 1: Nicole says, Sarah was just very in tune. Those were
Speaker 1: her words. Sarah presented herself to Nicole as a native
Speaker 1: New Englander with a brother and two divorced parents. All true.
Speaker 1: By the way. She said she worked as a mental
Speaker 1: health professional, also true.
Speaker 7: So I understood that she was a basically a social
Speaker 7: worker at the VA.
Speaker 5: Got it.
Speaker 6: And at that point did she tell you that she
Speaker 6: was a veteran or No?
Speaker 7: No, she never told me she was a veteran. Not ever.
Speaker 6: Sarah and Nicole became close quickly, and after about a
Speaker 6: year or so, they bought a home together, that cozy
Speaker 6: little house I told you about in East Greenwich. Nicole
Speaker 6: says that moving in was a big deal and that
Speaker 6: Sarah had certain expectations.
Speaker 7: One thing that she was big on was she didn't
Speaker 7: want to be roommates forever, which can happen to people,
Speaker 7: especially same sex couples. And she was like very adamant
Speaker 7: that she didn't want that kind of relationship. She wanted
Speaker 7: a committed love relationship, not roommate relationship.
Speaker 6: So on their first night in their new home, Nicole
Speaker 6: had a little surprise waiting for Sarah.
Speaker 7: I had her, like take a bath, and then I
Speaker 7: put out a bunch of candles leading to the back
Speaker 7: deck and roses. So when she got out of the bath,
Speaker 7: I let her downstairs. So she was all relaxed and
Speaker 7: comfy and proposed at the house on the first day
Speaker 7: that we moved in. So we didn't spend any night
Speaker 7: in that house that we weren't engaged.
Speaker 6: A year later, they got married in Vermont. You may
Speaker 6: recall Sarah's Jim Buddies helped arrange the wedding. Red barn birch,
Speaker 6: pergola flowers and maple syrup buckets, the whole Eddie Bauer vibe.
Speaker 1: The pictures from that day are radiant. Nicole in her
Speaker 1: crisp white dress, looks lovingly at Sarah and her soft
Speaker 1: ivory gown. In one shot, they wave at the camera playfully.
Speaker 1: In another, they sway together on the dance floor, arms
Speaker 1: around each other, with the warmth of summer light casting
Speaker 1: soft shadows. Sarah and Nicole were now a married couple,
Speaker 1: but according to Nicole, they continued to live independent lives.
Speaker 1: They had different hobbies and different friend groups. Nicole was
Speaker 1: into softball and was in a serious travel league, off
Speaker 1: and away on the weekends, and Sarah was working for
Speaker 1: veteran organizations and had to travel for that. At least
Speaker 1: that's what she told Nicole, and yet living independent lives
Speaker 1: seemed to work for them. This doesn't seem totally weird
Speaker 1: to me, by the way. I've been together with my
Speaker 1: wife for twenty eight years, and one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons our marriage still works is that we know how
Speaker 1: to give each other space. We have our own interests,
Speaker 1: our own realms. But let's face it, marriages are rarely
Speaker 1: as tidy as we imagine. They're messy by nature, and
Speaker 1: no one stays perfectly within their own lanes, especially when
Speaker 1: children enter the picture. And for Sarah and Nicole, it
Speaker 1: was precisely this issue children that forced some very hard choices.
Speaker 6: Nicole told us that she and Sarah had been planning
Speaker 6: to have kids, but then about two years after their wedding,
Speaker 6: things took a turn. Sarah came home and told Nicole
Speaker 6: she had brain cancer, which is horrible, right, catastrophic, but
Speaker 6: initially it wasn't. Actually the doctor said it was treatable.
Speaker 6: Nicole heard all of this, by the way, secondhand from Sarah.
Speaker 6: She didn't attend any of the oncology appointments since Sarah
Speaker 6: had been diagnosed during COVID, when patients were generally going
Speaker 6: to the hospital alone. Nicole says that Sarah tried to
Speaker 6: keep things upbeat. They nicknamed the tumor her brain buddy,
Speaker 6: and apparently the buddy didn't seem to be getting any bigger.
Speaker 6: So despite the bad news, they pressed ahead with their
Speaker 6: plans to have a baby.
Speaker 7: We were gonna like do in vitro fertilization and I
Speaker 7: was going to carry. I had been to the doctor
Speaker 7: several times. I've been through some procedures. They're checking out,
Speaker 7: you know, my my system here to make sure that
Speaker 7: we were good to go. So I had a doctor's
Speaker 7: appointment that I was going to go to, which would
Speaker 7: have been the final like sign off before the actual event.
Speaker 7: So I remember the day before the appointment, she said,
Speaker 7: I think you should pause on the appointment because I
Speaker 7: have this doctor's appointment and I don't know if it's
Speaker 7: going to go well. And I was like, okay, what's
Speaker 7: going on. She made it sound like that we need
Speaker 7: to wait because this might be really serious.
Speaker 6: Soon after this, Sarah tells Nicole that the cancer has
Speaker 6: gotten much worse, possibly terminal, which changed everything.
Speaker 7: It flips into you know, you take care of your
Speaker 7: significant other. Like now, I'm just like that's on pause
Speaker 7: and okay, we can pick that up later. What's going
Speaker 7: on with you?
Speaker 6: Their plans to expand their family were put on whole.
Speaker 6: Nicole pursued a promotion at work, thinking the extra money
Speaker 6: would help as the medical bills piled up. Meanwhile, Sarah
Speaker 6: arranged for in home support from a specialist trained to
Speaker 6: work with people with traumatic brain injuries, someone who came
Speaker 6: multiple times a week. What Nicole didn't know was that
Speaker 6: the Wounded Warrior Project was paying for this. I interviewed
Speaker 6: that person, the specialist she helped Sarah for years, thinking
Speaker 6: Sarah had a brain injury while also battling cancer.
Speaker 2: But even while taking.
Speaker 6: This help, she still kept her wife Nicole at a distance.
Speaker 7: She didn't involve me, Like, she wouldn't involve me, she
Speaker 7: wouldn't lean on me. She was like, I do this
Speaker 7: on my own. I don't want you to worry about it.
Speaker 7: Anytime I tried to talk with her about it, She's
Speaker 7: just like, I can't, I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 7: So it was very It was something that separated us.
Speaker 7: She didn't lean in to me. She leaned away.
Speaker 6: When it came time for Sarah's doctor's appointments. Even after
Speaker 6: COVID restrictions were lifted, Sarah was explicit she didn't want
Speaker 6: Nicole to be there. Nicole says she was hurt, but
Speaker 6: she didn't really feel like she had the right to
Speaker 6: express her frustration.
Speaker 7: Are you going to blame the spouse with cancer? Like,
Speaker 7: what do you you know is she's having a hard
Speaker 7: time coping with it and is choosing to withdraw, Then
Speaker 7: you know that's it's kind I chopped it up to that, like,
Speaker 7: when she's ready for me to support her, she'll allow
Speaker 7: me to support her, and I'm just going to keep
Speaker 7: being here until she's ready. That's how I rationalized it.
Speaker 1: What Nicole didn't know at the time was that, of course,
Speaker 1: Sarah was living a double life. When she traveled for
Speaker 1: veteran events. She was sometimes attending all expense paid retreats
Speaker 1: posing as a war hero. When she was out with
Speaker 1: her veteran buddies. She was playing the role of the
Speaker 1: VFW commander, and when she went away on her own
Speaker 1: sometimes she was actually with Sam, the physical therapist whom
Speaker 1: she'd become romantically involved with. The whole thing was bound
Speaker 1: to unravel, and then one day it did. When Nicole
Speaker 1: got the call, the call that the FBI was at
Speaker 1: her house, she hopped in her car and rushed home.
Speaker 7: There was a ton of black SUVs and an ambulance
Speaker 7: and cop cauars and all kinds of vehicles road, so
Speaker 7: I like, park down the street. You have to do
Speaker 7: like a walk of shame to get to my house.
Speaker 7: Everybody's like looking, and I'm like, I don't know, guys,
Speaker 7: I don't know what's happening.
Speaker 6: Nicole arrived home to find an FBI agent standing on
Speaker 6: her doorstep. The agent explained that Sarah had threatened to
Speaker 6: harm herself and needed to be taken to the hospital,
Speaker 6: but Sarah had refused to go without Nicole, so Nicole
Speaker 6: hopped back in her car and followed the ambulance to
Speaker 6: the hospital.
Speaker 7: It doesn't matter what else is happening in that moment.
Speaker 7: I don't really know, but I'll get the facts. Whatever
Speaker 7: I'll get home later and we'll figure it out. You
Speaker 7: just go into like take care of your significant other mode.
Speaker 7: The most important thing is, like she's getting into an ambulance.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go.
Speaker 6: After a long way to the hospital. They cleared Sarah,
Speaker 6: determining she wasn't an immediate danger to herself. Sarah was
Speaker 6: allowed to leave the coal and the two returned home
Speaker 6: together in Nicole's car.
Speaker 7: It was silent. It was just silent. I said, what's
Speaker 7: going on? It was quiet for a long time. I
Speaker 7: just waited for her to answer. I don't have answers.
Speaker 7: I'll wait until you answer.
Speaker 6: Eventually, Sarah vaguely admitted to lying about some things mentioned
Speaker 6: she might be in trouble understatement of the century. By
Speaker 6: the way, Nicole's head was spinning.
Speaker 7: I'm trying to be gentle in the way of you
Speaker 7: have somebody who's struggling with some mental health stuff in
Speaker 7: this moment right now. But I also need to know
Speaker 7: what's going on, and I need her to talk to me.
Speaker 7: I said directly to her, do you have cancer? And
Speaker 7: she said yes, And I was like okay.
Speaker 1: When they arrived back home, the cop car are all gone.
Speaker 1: The neighbors are back in their homes and their quiet
Speaker 1: New England Street is once again a quiet New England Street.
Speaker 7: We walk in the house and the house as a disaster.
Speaker 7: The drawers are all pulled out and things are knocked
Speaker 7: over and things like that. They didn't break anything, but
Speaker 7: it's a mess, and we didn't keep our house messy.
Speaker 7: So it's like was startling.
Speaker 1: As they're picking up the mess, Nicole's mind keeps returning
Speaker 1: to the cancer, because if there's one thing that she
Speaker 1: needs to be true, it's that It's why she took
Speaker 1: the promotion, worked the extra hours, built up their savings,
Speaker 1: and it was the cancer that in a way helped
Speaker 1: explain why Sarah had been struggling so much, why she'd
Speaker 1: been so distant, and most of all, it was the
Speaker 1: cancer that prompted them to postpone their plans to have kids.
Speaker 1: And so as they're cleaning up, she asks Sarah again
Speaker 1: about the cancer, and once more Sarah insists, yes, it's true.
Speaker 1: But Nicole, she can't let it go, this question. It
Speaker 1: plays on her exhausted mind.
Speaker 7: So then we laid down to sleep that night and
Speaker 7: in the dark, lay laying in bed in the dark,
Speaker 7: kind of like pillow talkue. I asked her one more time,
Speaker 7: do you have cancer?
Speaker 1: And then she just waited, somehow sensing that maybe under
Speaker 1: the cover of darkness, the truth might finally emerge.
Speaker 6: One of the many questions that we had was how
Speaker 6: did Sarah get to this moment lying in her bed
Speaker 6: in the dark, next to her spouse being asked this
Speaker 6: terrifyingly simple question, have you been lying to me about
Speaker 6: having cancer? In order to understand how she got here
Speaker 6: to this moment, we actually have to go back to
Speaker 6: much earlier in Sarah's story, because the way Sarah sees it,
Speaker 6: her double life wasn't initially Sarah the social worker and
Speaker 6: Sarah the war hero. Her first double life began as
Speaker 6: a little girl.
Speaker 5: I think this feeling of like always wanting a different
Speaker 5: life had been really persistent for me for some time,
Speaker 5: or for most of my life.
Speaker 1: Sarah admits she lied a lot growing up about all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. At first, some of the lies we
Speaker 1: heard about seemed to us like they'd fall in the
Speaker 1: category of just stuff that kids do. She'd tell her
Speaker 1: parents she was at school when she wasn't. Sometimes she'd
Speaker 1: lie to other kids. We spoke to her best friend
Speaker 1: her name is Ariel. They met as teenagers and the
Speaker 1: two of them remained very close. Ariol gave us a
Speaker 1: window into Sarah's world back in high school. Ariol remembers
Speaker 1: Sarah spinning wise that didn't even really make sense, like
Speaker 1: when Sarah would tell people that she was adopted. According
Speaker 1: to Ariel, Sarah's mom called her out on this, saying
Speaker 1: stop it, You're not adopted, but Sarah would keep on
Speaker 1: saying it. Ariol always found this strange and never quite
Speaker 1: understood why Sarah did it.
Speaker 6: But as we dug deeper into Sarah's story, we uncovered
Speaker 6: another set of lies that she told as a teenager
Speaker 6: that did seem out of the ordinary. We tracked down
Speaker 6: a few other people who knew Sarah back then. They
Speaker 6: told us that they knew Sarah not as a new Englander,
Speaker 6: but as a Southern girl, and more specifically as a
Speaker 6: victim of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 2: This was just after that.
Speaker 6: Hurricane, so it was still really fresh in people's minds.
Speaker 6: Sympathy for Katrina victims was running high. Our sources said
Speaker 6: that Sarah talked in detail about the ordeal of surviving Katrina.
Speaker 2: Told people she.
Speaker 6: Was rescued from the roof of her house just barely
Speaker 6: made it out alive. Apparently, Sarah told some people that
Speaker 6: her father died during the flooding. These lies earned her
Speaker 6: sympathy and friendship.
Speaker 2: To me, it seems like a test.
Speaker 6: Run of what she'd do with veterans, and it happened
Speaker 6: ten years prior. I asked Sarah about all this, by
Speaker 6: the way, and she denied it. Told me I never
Speaker 6: told people that. I don't know why they think that.
Speaker 1: Sarah told us that things happened to her as a
Speaker 1: child that made her want to live a different life,
Speaker 1: be someone else, lie escape.
Speaker 5: When you live two separate lives for so long, it
Speaker 5: feels normal, right. I had to be someone else in
Speaker 5: front of other people when I was a child, and
Speaker 5: that was normal.
Speaker 1: Sarah says that there was a man who sexually abused
Speaker 1: her for years when she was a girl. Her mother
Speaker 1: attested to this in official documents. Nicole also confirmed us
Speaker 1: that this abuse was something that Sarah had shared with her.
Speaker 6: According to Sarah, this abuse kind of split her life
Speaker 6: in two.
Speaker 5: When I go to school, I'm able to just like
Speaker 5: excel and act like everything is fine, and play a
Speaker 5: sport and play an instrument and do all of these things,
Speaker 5: and no one knew anything was going on for a
Speaker 5: very long time.
Speaker 6: That included her high school friend Ariel, who he told
Speaker 6: you about. Ariel says she had no idea that Sarah
Speaker 6: had been sexually abused. To Ariel, Sarah came across as
Speaker 6: funny and friendly, always up for an adventure. She played
Speaker 6: on the high school's basketball team. She was openly gay,
Speaker 6: and she even helped Ariol come out of the closet herself.
Speaker 6: She seemed so confident, but Sarah says, the truth is
Speaker 6: she was unraveling.
Speaker 5: It began to drink really young. I was like thirteen
Speaker 5: when I started drinking. I definitely overused alcohol right and
Speaker 5: when I started to get into therapy finally, when I
Speaker 5: was like fourteen, fifteen sixteen, my symptoms were really really
Speaker 5: like I could barely get through school certain days, or
Speaker 5: I would just leave.
Speaker 6: At first, things seemed to get somewhat better. When Sarah
Speaker 6: got to college. She was stable enough that she was
Speaker 6: able to help others. Her best friend Ariol had ended
Speaker 6: up homeless, and Sarah was the one to say, come
Speaker 6: live with me. She even let Ariol sleep on her
Speaker 6: couch for a whole year to this day, Ariel is
Speaker 6: deeply grateful and loyal to Sarah, and sure Sarah was
Speaker 6: still drinking a lot, but wasn't everyone in college.
Speaker 5: I thought I pretty much had it under control. Where
Speaker 5: I was going to school, I had an apartment. Things
Speaker 5: felt okay, so to speak.
Speaker 6: But then in her senior year of undergrad her mental
Speaker 6: health took a turn.
Speaker 5: I was hospitalized for a suicide attempt and then I
Speaker 5: was referred to like this outpatient program at one of
Speaker 5: the local hospitals.
Speaker 1: Sarah started taking medications for her anxiety after this, and
Speaker 1: she says she really even doubt but then her her
Speaker 1: insurance stop covering her medical provider, so she went off
Speaker 1: her meds. It was a rough time. She says that
Speaker 1: she tried to take her own life on multiple occasions.
Speaker 1: All of this is to say, Sarah told us she
Speaker 1: faced some pretty difficult moments in her life from a
Speaker 1: young age.
Speaker 6: Then in twenty sixteen, when Sarah was twenty five, two
Speaker 6: things happened, two really important things. The first was that
Speaker 6: she met Nicole, who would eventually become her wife. The
Speaker 6: second was that in this same year, she joined the VFW,
Speaker 6: where she found a community of veterans.
Speaker 1: These two things. Her wife and her veteran buddies would
Speaker 1: become Sarah's pillars, her support, but they were also destined
Speaker 1: to push against one another and create tension in a
Speaker 1: way that would ultimately bring everything rushing down.
Speaker 6: The community that Sarah found at the VFW seemed to
Speaker 6: be so meaningful to her, She says, everyone there seemed
Speaker 6: to get that she was working through a trauma from her.
Speaker 5: Past, Like you don't have to hide like that you're
Speaker 5: uncomfortable or that like people talking loudly or yelling makes
Speaker 5: you feel like triggering, Like you don't have to hide
Speaker 5: those things. Those are like socially acceptable for veterans. And
Speaker 5: like I remember being out of work thing once in
Speaker 5: like a colleague, like a male colleague, like coming in
Speaker 5: for a hug and be like oh my gosh, and
Speaker 5: like awkwardly like turning and like my somebody I worked
Speaker 5: with at the time, like being like are you okay
Speaker 5: and being like, oh my god. That never happens to veterans.
Speaker 5: It's like the socially accepted thing, Like we're not going
Speaker 5: to question them. They have a good reason to be there.
Speaker 1: What Sarah is describing here are symptoms of PTSD, which
Speaker 1: she says stemmed from her trauma, the sexual abuse from
Speaker 1: her past, and she says that veterans seem to understand
Speaker 1: this kind of trauma innately, almost like it was part
Speaker 1: of their shared memory and their unspoken language. She told
Speaker 1: us she felt safe with them, like for once, no
Speaker 1: one was judging her because they understood.
Speaker 5: I think that I had kept a lot of secrets
Speaker 5: in my life from my childhood, and so I don't
Speaker 5: think I had ever let anybody really know who I was.
Speaker 8: Out of.
Speaker 5: I don't know, maybe that selfishness, right, but also maybe
Speaker 5: that's for protection.
Speaker 1: Sarah told us she always felt different, but when she
Speaker 1: was posing as a veteran, she felt like she belonged.
Speaker 5: I didn't always think like I'm going to go out
Speaker 5: and lives. I'm just going to go out and drink
Speaker 5: with my friends and try to feel better and like
Speaker 5: be around people I care about.
Speaker 1: Around the people that she cared about. And that right
Speaker 1: there was the problem because these people, the people she
Speaker 1: cared about, were the same people that she was deceiving
Speaker 1: and manipulating and taking money from. Sarah says that what
Speaker 1: she did stem from a deep need and some seriously
Speaker 1: flawed thinking.
Speaker 2: I just think like.
Speaker 5: When you feel inadequate for so long that it manifests
Speaker 5: in irrational ways. Right, and lying to that extent was irrational, right,
Speaker 5: it was deliberate. I deliberately lied, right. No one can
Speaker 5: say that someone forced me to tell those lies. No
Speaker 5: one did, but they were absolutely irrational.
Speaker 6: Sarah says she used the lies that she'd constructed about herself,
Speaker 6: the whole tragic war hero story, to distract herself from
Speaker 6: her real problems. But of course what she was doing
Speaker 6: by lying and taking money that wasn't going to fix anything.
Speaker 6: It was only going to cause more problems, more damage,
Speaker 6: not just for her, but also for those close to her,
Speaker 6: like Nicole.
Speaker 1: The odd part about all of this is that Sarah
Speaker 1: did have this other life, with a pretty home and
Speaker 1: a caring spouse, a life that seemed pretty good. Even now,
Speaker 1: when Sarah talks about Nicole, you can hear a tenderness
Speaker 1: in her voice. She calls her Nicky, and as far
Speaker 1: as we can tell, Nicky was a lifeline for Sarah.
Speaker 1: It was Nicky who took Sarah and walks and Lincoln Woods.
Speaker 1: It was Nicky who lay rose petals through their house
Speaker 1: to show Sarah just how much she cared it was
Speaker 1: Nicky who wouldn't let Sarah spend one single night at
Speaker 1: their new house without the promise of a wedding. Even now,
Speaker 1: Sarah gets really emotional when she talks about what it
Speaker 1: meant when Nicole came into her life.
Speaker 5: She really stabilized me. She brought so much to my life,
Speaker 5: and she really saw me for who I was, and
Speaker 5: I didn't have to like be ashamed of where I
Speaker 5: came from, or who my parents were, or anything that
Speaker 5: had happened.
Speaker 2: And I was okay.
Speaker 5: I was stable.
Speaker 2: But that stability was short lived.
Speaker 6: As Sarah went deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole
Speaker 6: posing as a veteran, she pulled further and further away
Speaker 6: from Nicole.
Speaker 2: Sarah says that.
Speaker 6: After work she'd walk the dogs and then race off
Speaker 6: to various meetings or events with veteran groups. Sometimes she'd
Speaker 6: tell Nicole she was seeing Dave or the VFW guys,
Speaker 6: and other times she just invents something else entirely. As
Speaker 6: she went through the motions, she was constantly preparing for
Speaker 6: the next round of deception, just trying to keep her
Speaker 6: story straight, and when she was at home, she was
Speaker 6: often emotionally unavailable.
Speaker 5: My relationship with Nicole had disintegrated so much because of
Speaker 5: my lies as a veteran, and because I was involved
Speaker 5: in all of these events and things like that.
Speaker 2: Even so, Nicole was not ready to give up on her.
Speaker 5: She really wanted to reconnect and wanted us to get
Speaker 5: through this moment and was really trying to kind of
Speaker 5: pull me back. And I did not respond. I put
Speaker 5: no effort. I did not return those emotions. I was
Speaker 5: consumed with what I was doing right with my lie
Speaker 5: and how I was feeling, and she was so unhappy,
Speaker 5: and I was so unhappy because we were just like
Speaker 5: strangers in the night for so long at our house. Right.
Speaker 6: I always thought there must be a true version of Sarah,
Speaker 6: Sarah without masks, living out there somewhere, showing her true
Speaker 6: face to someone. And for a while I thought that
Speaker 6: person was Nicole, that we would find a true version
Speaker 6: of Sarah in their house, like an artifact we could excavate.
Speaker 2: But that just wasn't the case.
Speaker 6: Maybe because there's an unknowability about Sarah, an invisible wall
Speaker 6: she puts between herself and the world.
Speaker 1: For Sarah and Nicole, the weight of their marriage and
Speaker 1: the years of secrets and lies came to a head
Speaker 1: in February of twenty twenty two. After they returned from
Speaker 1: the hospital and cleaned up the mess from the search,
Speaker 1: they went to their bedroom and with the lights out,
Speaker 1: they lay silently side by side. The room itself had
Speaker 1: once been their inner sanctum, the cocoon of their intimacy.
Speaker 1: Nicole had always seen this home as the start of something.
Speaker 1: Years before, she had carefully scattered rose petals and glowing candles,
Speaker 1: creating a trail that led Sarah towards the future that
Speaker 1: they'd imagined. But now there was no light, just darkness
Speaker 1: and quiet. Until Nicole finally spoke.
Speaker 7: I asked her a one more time, do you have cancer?
Speaker 7: And she said no, I don't. I think she needed
Speaker 7: the darkness, like the anonymity of that space. I don't
Speaker 7: think she could honestly, I don't think she could have
Speaker 7: looked me in the eye and say it. I think
Speaker 7: she needed to be in the dark kind of I
Speaker 7: guess hidden, I would say.
Speaker 1: For Nicole, this moment sliced through everything.
Speaker 7: She can lie to me about that straight to my face.
Speaker 7: For how long we've been doing this, I mean that
Speaker 7: lie was over and over and over as we worked
Speaker 7: through and built upon. You know, there's layers to that lie,
Speaker 7: and it if she could build that lie to me directly,
Speaker 7: I didn't feel like I could be, you know, connected
Speaker 7: with this person ever again. I left the next day
Speaker 7: and I never lived in that house again.
Speaker 1: Our interview with Nicole it happened in a new place
Speaker 1: where she lives, a tidy townhouse at the edge of
Speaker 1: a busy commercial strip. We had to turn off the
Speaker 1: heat for the interview so our mike wouldn't pick up
Speaker 1: any extra noise. The point is it had gotten kind
Speaker 1: of cold in the room and dark too. The sun
Speaker 1: had gone down, and for a moment we just kind
Speaker 1: of sat there, and then Nicole said this.
Speaker 7: The hardest thing to reconcile for me personally was finding
Speaker 7: out your perception of reality isn't true and accepting that
Speaker 7: I won't know. I won't know from this point on
Speaker 7: forever what was real and what wasn't real as it
Speaker 7: relates to your spouse right. Making peace with that was
Speaker 7: the journey for me following all of the aftermath.
Speaker 6: And there are things that Nicole is still figuring out
Speaker 6: without realizing it. We were the ones who broke the
Speaker 6: news to her about Sarah having an affair with Sam.
Speaker 6: We didn't even mean to do this. We just mentioned
Speaker 6: Sam and then realized that Nicole still didn't know, so
Speaker 6: we turned off the tape recorder and explained seemed like
Speaker 6: the right thing to do. Things like this kept happening as.
Speaker 2: We reported this story.
Speaker 6: There were a bunch of times when the people we
Speaker 6: were interviewing kind of turned the tables and started asking
Speaker 6: us questions like what did we know about Sarah?
Speaker 2: Was this true?
Speaker 6: Or was that true? And in a way, the whole
Speaker 6: thing that Nicole said to us about not trusting her
Speaker 6: perception of reality, it kind of pertained to almost everyone
Speaker 6: in this story. Everyone was and is grasping for answers.
Speaker 1: For Sarah, the aftermath was something else entirely. She was
Speaker 1: now in the house alone, with hardly anyone to rely on.
Speaker 1: She'd been outed, The media was buzzing with stories of
Speaker 1: her lies. The authorities had seized many of her personal possessions.
Speaker 1: She had no phone, no wife, no heroic backstory to
Speaker 1: fall back upon. Whether she realized it or not, there
Speaker 1: was nothing left to do but wait for the arrest
Speaker 1: and a much more public reckoning. Next time. On the
Speaker 1: finale of Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah.
Speaker 8: I didn't necessarily have many second thoughts about representing missus
Speaker 8: Galana and anything. It is more of intrigue as to
Speaker 8: how she ended up in the situation that she was in.
Speaker 1: Every defendant comes before court having had some sort of loss.
Speaker 2: Or trauma in their life. Every human has such things,
Speaker 2: but not every human goes out and mixed crime.
Speaker 4: She came in like behind me, Like I turned around
Speaker 4: and she was there, and that was kind of it
Speaker 4: was almost like getting hit by lightning, kind of like
Speaker 4: just kind of like this fight or flight response.
Speaker 5: I knew his last name, I knew he was enrolled
Speaker 5: in care there. Those aren't excuses, that's not right, but
Speaker 5: those are facts that I knew, which made it reliable
Speaker 5: to go to that document.
Speaker 1: Deep Covered the Truth About Sarah was produced by Amy
Speaker 1: Gaines McQuaid and Tally Emlin, additional production support by Sonya Gerwitd.
Speaker 2: Our show is edited by Karen Shakerjee.
Speaker 6: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith, mastering by Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 1: Original scoring in our theme were composed by Luis Gara.
Speaker 1: Our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Anica Robbins.
Speaker 6: Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Izzy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake Flanagan,
Speaker 6: and Greta Cohne.
Speaker 2: Additional thanks to Vicky Merrick.
Speaker 1: I'm Jess mceugh and I'm Jake Halpern. Hey it's Jake,
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