Speaker 1: Andrea Smith is pretty computer savvy. I won an award
Speaker 1: for computer programming in eighth grade. Okay, really computer savvy.
Speaker 1: I like to be told this is the raw data,
Speaker 1: this is the end product. I need you to produce,
Speaker 1: do it anyway you want, and then just leave me alone.
Speaker 1: She grew up in Queens, New York, but moved to
Speaker 1: rural South Carolina twenty years ago. She has long gray
Speaker 1: hair that she usually pulls back into a ponytail. She
Speaker 1: has epilepsy and doesn't drive. She's been to stay home
Speaker 1: mom since her son was born. He's nineteen now. He's
Speaker 1: the kind of kid who you know, if he sees
Speaker 1: somebody struggling, he'll help them. He'll hold doors for people.
Speaker 1: As long as he knows that he's doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: He's absolutely prepared to He's absolutely prepared to raise all
Speaker 1: kinds of holy hell. And I love that about him.
Speaker 1: In the early two thousand's, when he was still a toddler,
Speaker 1: she spent some of her free time putting around on
Speaker 1: the Internet trying to reconnect with folks back home. This
Speaker 1: was pre Facebook. She learned that one of her old
Speaker 1: friends had a child with a diagnosis she had never
Speaker 1: heard of s m A, or spinal muscular atrophy. Andrea
Speaker 1: looked it up. Baby is born with the most severe
Speaker 1: form of s m A, never sit up or feed themselves,
Speaker 1: and usually die by their second birthday. It was something
Speaker 1: I just could not stop thinking about. I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: with a fourteen month old and I'm looking at my son.
Speaker 1: Tears came to my eyes and I was just like
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with emotion, thinking, my goodness, what does this. In
Speaker 1: January of two thousand four, she sent a message to
Speaker 1: a support group for s m A and offered to volunteer.
Speaker 1: I've got some free time. I don't have money. I
Speaker 1: I can't send you cash, but I'm available to help
Speaker 1: you with whatever you need. She helped with their newsletter
Speaker 1: and organized conferences. She became their insurance bulldog fighting on
Speaker 1: behalf of families denied claims. Not long after she started volunteering,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six, a new person popped into
Speaker 1: the parent chat group. She introduced herself as Connie de Lashmant,
Speaker 1: mom to Drake. Drake had s m A. She discussed
Speaker 1: his treatment plan, she sent pictures of him, and then
Speaker 1: another woman joined the group named Megan, who was mom
Speaker 1: to Brook. There was a small subgroup of moms that
Speaker 1: sort of had this little side chat going, and they
Speaker 1: started noticing things that made them uneasy about Connie, small
Speaker 1: inconsistencies about the things that Connie was saying about Drake
Speaker 1: and his treatment, things that didn't make sense. And then
Speaker 1: at some point somebody said, well, I don't you know,
Speaker 1: Megan doesn't really sound right either, And because they came
Speaker 1: into the chat and approximately the same time, there was
Speaker 1: like this, there was this weirdness around the both of them.
Speaker 1: Both Connie and Megan used the same turns of phrase,
Speaker 1: and both were misspelling the same words in the same way,
Speaker 1: like tomorrow with an A in the middle instead of
Speaker 1: an oh. Andrea and some of the other moms decided
Speaker 1: to become amateur detectives, five or six of us that
Speaker 1: were sort of the Little Little Scooby or Little Scooby
Speaker 1: Doo Adventure group. She was Velma. We were convinced that
Speaker 1: Connie and Megan were both frauds and they were the
Speaker 1: same person. So I have a friend who is a
Speaker 1: computer whiz, and I wrote to him and said, is
Speaker 1: there any way to tell if two different emails are
Speaker 1: being generated by the same computer? And he said, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you need to look and see what the I P addresses.
Speaker 1: And he explained to me how to expand the headers
Speaker 1: on the email and look for the what they referred
Speaker 1: to as the originating Internet Protocol address. Andrea was on it.
Speaker 1: It didn't take her on to realize that both Connie
Speaker 1: and Megan had the same IP address, their emails came
Speaker 1: from the same computer, and the electronic breadcrumbs led her
Speaker 1: to a woman named Sarah Sarah Delashmant whose mother happens
Speaker 1: to be named Connie. Remember two thousand six was when
Speaker 1: Sarah was at the beginning of her friendship with Aaron
Speaker 1: Johnson in California, when she pretended to have a sister
Speaker 1: named Gabby, Gabby who had sm A make believe Gabby
Speaker 1: died in January of two thousand six. Three months later,
Speaker 1: the supposed Connie Delashman joined the s M A parent group.
Speaker 1: After she got caught, Sarah was kicked out, Andrea might
Speaker 1: have let the whole thing go had her Scooby Doo
Speaker 1: group not made one more discovery. Sarah had worked her
Speaker 1: way into a separate s M A nonprofit, this time
Speaker 1: pretending she herself had the condition there's a charity out there,
Speaker 1: cold Cole's Quilts, that makes these beautiful handmade quilts for
Speaker 1: children with s m A or families of deceased children
Speaker 1: with SMA, and you have to apply for the quilt.
Speaker 1: You have to send some kind of proof of your diagnosis.
Speaker 1: In the s m A community, Coal's Quilts are hallowed ground.
Speaker 1: Sarah had duped the charity and gotten one. We were
Speaker 1: outrage at the violation of one of our most sacred groups.
Speaker 1: Cole's Quilt makers ask just one thing in return for
Speaker 1: their labor, that you send a photo of you and
Speaker 1: your quilt they can post on their website. Sarah did.
Speaker 1: In the picture, she's lying on her bed, just her
Speaker 1: arms and head peeking out from under the quilt. Her
Speaker 1: hands are bent down at the wrists, back towards her body,
Speaker 1: like someone who doesn't have a lot of muscle control,
Speaker 1: something you see in pictures of people who actually have
Speaker 1: s m A. She used her real name because a
Speaker 1: lot of times people will stitch the child's name onto
Speaker 1: the quilt, and she didn't want somebody else's name on
Speaker 1: her quilt. When Andreas saw the photo, that's when we
Speaker 1: were like enough with this girl. We need to do
Speaker 1: something about her. We need to get that quilt back.
Speaker 1: Something to know about Andrea. She's not exactly a timid person.
Speaker 1: She once fought off a would be rapist. At nine point.
Speaker 1: She campaign door to door for Bernie Sanders in the
Speaker 1: reddest neighborhoods of South Carolina. She regularly takes insurance companies
Speaker 1: to the wood shed. When she vowed to get the
Speaker 1: quilt back, she was getting the quilt back. I had
Speaker 1: her address, I had her phone number, I had a
Speaker 1: picture of her house. Thank you Google Maps. I knew
Speaker 1: everything about this girl. She was ready to go get
Speaker 1: it herself. Instead, she called the FBI. The agent didn't
Speaker 1: seem that interested just a quilt, you know, but said
Speaker 1: she could call back. So Andrea did every week, to
Speaker 1: the point that the agent seemed to be getting a
Speaker 1: little annoyed. My voice was catching, I was I had
Speaker 1: tears in my eyes when I said, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: you did say I can call whenever I wanted, So
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sorry. I will not bother you again.
Speaker 1: Shortly afterwards, she got a message from a local police
Speaker 1: officer in Highland, Illinois, Sarah's hometown. He had heard from
Speaker 1: the FBI. The officer brought Sarah into the station, he
Speaker 1: got the quilt and sent it back. Nobody filed charges.
Speaker 1: The value of the theft seems small, and local police
Speaker 1: thought that she was just a board and lonely college
Speaker 1: student who didn't realize the seriousness of her actions. Andrea
Speaker 1: had grown up watching cop shows. I was sort of
Speaker 1: raised on Hill Street Blues and Barney Miller and NYPD Blue.
Speaker 1: She knew there needed to be a record. Do some
Speaker 1: thing wrong in your name needs to be in a
Speaker 1: file somewhere, and that documentation about the stolen quilt would
Speaker 1: sit buried in the Highland p D, largely forgotten until
Speaker 1: the day fifteen years later in a courtroom when it
Speaker 1: would come back into Sarah's life. I'm Laura Beale. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Sympathy Pains. This is episode four Andrea. After
Speaker 1: Sarah's surfaced in the s m A group after the
Speaker 1: officer returned the quilt, she tried to slip back into
Speaker 1: the organization again. That was enough for Andrea to fear
Speaker 1: that she would never go away. She began tracking Sarah
Speaker 1: year after year as she moved around the Internet. I
Speaker 1: have a spreadsheet with all of her known elias Is.
Speaker 1: One of her posts goes back to two thousand one,
Speaker 1: when Sarah was in high school, writing on a chatboard
Speaker 1: that she was the mother of two children with muscular dystrophy.
Speaker 1: Andrea found that Sarah would assume whatever identity matched the
Speaker 1: group she was trying to slip into. If it was
Speaker 1: a cancer group, she had acute lymphastic leukemia. If it
Speaker 1: was a breast cancer group, she had breast cancer. She
Speaker 1: became an experienced chameleon. If it was a group where
Speaker 1: they were talking about fertility issues, then she was wondering
Speaker 1: about people's experiences with Cloe mid If it was a
Speaker 1: group where there were moms of multiple she was expecting quintuplets.
Speaker 1: If it was talking about muscular dystrophy, then she had
Speaker 1: s n A. There was actually a post on a
Speaker 1: costume board where she was looking for costumes to look pregnant.
Speaker 1: As Andreas silently followed Sarah from Afar, she warned as
Speaker 1: many nonprofits as she could. I said, watch out for
Speaker 1: this girl. She's a problem. She is a scam artist.
Speaker 1: By thousand nineteen, Sarah had been juggling multiple cons in
Speaker 1: multiple places. Liz and Bethany didn't know Sarah's long history.
Speaker 1: They were more concerned about where she might go in
Speaker 1: the future. They tried to think of a solution that
Speaker 1: would go beyond trying to warn charities one by one.
Speaker 1: Here's Liz and I recognized that she was really sick,
Speaker 1: and this is a very serious scenario. That mental health
Speaker 1: is an illness. They not only wanted to expose her,
Speaker 1: they wanted her to get treatment. Dr Phil seemed a
Speaker 1: way to do both. Liz sent an email to the
Speaker 1: Doctor Phil producers. I asked her to read some of it.
Speaker 1: She contacted me sometimes a hundred times a day, needing
Speaker 1: someone to listen or help with a panic attack. She
Speaker 1: called after treatment to share how six she was, or
Speaker 1: how she needs to be rushed to the hospital again
Speaker 1: for blood transfusion. He seemed whenever informed Sarah had plans
Speaker 1: with a friend or workman and scheduled she needed me
Speaker 1: to which, of course I complied every time. Please help
Speaker 1: us get Sarah that helps she needs, prevent her from
Speaker 1: purtting others into frauding worthy charities, and the closure we
Speaker 1: need from this unfortunate event. Days later, Liz and Brian
Speaker 1: were at the gym when the phone rang. It was
Speaker 1: a producer from the show, and I said, can we
Speaker 1: call you back in about ten minutes and let me
Speaker 1: get my wife, and we would definitely like to talk
Speaker 1: to you. So the ball started and started rolling Friday morning.
Speaker 1: By Friday afternoon, they made the decision that yes, we
Speaker 1: want to do this, and we are going to try
Speaker 1: to get Sarah to participate. Sarah's family was willing to
Speaker 1: help convince her. Sitting at home that evening, Liz and
Speaker 1: Brian thought, what are we doing? Not a month earlier
Speaker 1: they had been taking Sarah out for a ride in
Speaker 1: their boat. She had been in their hammock looking at
Speaker 1: the stars, and now they were catching a Monday morning
Speaker 1: flight to Los Angeles for a confrontation on national television.
Speaker 1: It was March. That day, they told their stories on
Speaker 1: tape for the show's producers. The next day, Brian and
Speaker 1: I had to go for a walk in the canyon
Speaker 1: to kind of get her head clear and like dial
Speaker 1: down some of the nerves and feelings and emotion. And
Speaker 1: on that day we found out later that Sarah and
Speaker 1: her mother went to the Santa Monica peer like tourists,
Speaker 1: took all kinds of pictures and had a really great
Speaker 1: day Bethany had also flown in. We knew Bethany was
Speaker 1: staying the same hotel, and we said, hey, why don't
Speaker 1: we why don't we meet before we get in the
Speaker 1: show and talk. So we did. We all met in
Speaker 1: the hot tub and one of those giant ones at
Speaker 1: a hotel that maybe twenty people could be in. Liz
Speaker 1: and Brian got there first and soon saw Petite Brunette
Speaker 1: making her way across the pool deck. She was carrying
Speaker 1: a six pack of beer, and that actually made me
Speaker 1: feel good. I think that we were we really to
Speaker 1: see that she was, you know, calm, and she seemed kind.
Speaker 1: It's like we found a kindred soul. So it actually
Speaker 1: really felt good to find some on who had been
Speaker 1: in a similar situation. So she had gone beyond all
Speaker 1: the shock and horror and betrayal feelings that I was feeling,
Speaker 1: and which is angry. She was about to get even angrier.
Speaker 1: After a few days of filming their story and hanging
Speaker 1: out in l A, Brian, Liz, and Bethany were backstage
Speaker 1: at Dr Phil perhaps a hundred people that are just
Speaker 1: either moving rocks of clothes or carrying recording equipment. It's
Speaker 1: it's really busy, really busy. They knew Sarah was somewhere
Speaker 1: in the building, but they didn't know where. She and
Speaker 1: her mom had stayed in a different hotel. The show
Speaker 1: staff took pains to make sure that they didn't accidentally
Speaker 1: bump into her. After hair and makeup, they waited in
Speaker 1: the green room. We could hear the other show they
Speaker 1: were taping. I guess they taped two in the same day.
Speaker 1: I could hear them screaming in the room next to us.
Speaker 1: Liz where worried about what Dr Phil might say to her.
Speaker 1: She's like, are you gonna judge me? Is he gonna
Speaker 1: turn this story some hours from my fault? And I
Speaker 1: was terrified that he was going to lamb based me
Speaker 1: publicly on stage and somehow make me an enabler. Liz
Speaker 1: was on the verge of backing out. Even the producers
Speaker 1: knew that I was a basket case and and Bethany
Speaker 1: was not. She was really composed, and that that brought
Speaker 1: me a level of calm that I really needed. She's like,
Speaker 1: this is okay. She's like, You're gonna be okay. Just
Speaker 1: tell your story. With Bethany's help, Liz got ahold of
Speaker 1: herself at this point, what outcome are you hoping for
Speaker 1: with this whole thing. I wanted to get mental health treatment,
Speaker 1: and so this was to help her. This was absolutely
Speaker 1: to help her. And it was almost concerning for the producers.
Speaker 1: And up to about thirty seconds before we went on
Speaker 1: the show, they were coaching me. They were like, remember
Speaker 1: how remember how mad she made you. It's like they
Speaker 1: were taking a hot poker and sticking into my side
Speaker 1: before they released me on the stage, because they knew
Speaker 1: I was just sad and I felt bad. I remember
Speaker 1: one of the producers trying to kind of hype me
Speaker 1: up for it. I said, you know, I don't mean
Speaker 1: to be offensive or disrespectful or anything. This is not
Speaker 1: something that I want to do. I'm not here for myself.
Speaker 1: I'm not here, you know, to get any sort of
Speaker 1: accolade or anything. I think that's the only thing that
Speaker 1: got me on that stage. I was thinking about how
Speaker 1: she had violated all of those women. They heard the
Speaker 1: introduction to their stories, segments from the tape that they
Speaker 1: had filmed on Monday, and then the booming voice of
Speaker 1: Dr Phil He's like, now we have you know, Brian,
Speaker 1: Liz and Bethany. Then the curtain opens up, and we
Speaker 1: just walked down the aisle to the stage. She shakes
Speaker 1: your hand and introduces himself and it's the first time
Speaker 1: you meet him and you you take your seat. Brian
Speaker 1: held my hand. I know I was shaking. I was
Speaker 1: will be wide as a ghost. We wanted to play
Speaker 1: a little of the audio from this, but couldn't work
Speaker 1: things out with a show anyway. Here's how things went down.
Speaker 1: After their introduction, Liz and Brian walked out first. They
Speaker 1: took their seats on stage and oversized wooden bar chairs
Speaker 1: so high that their feet couldn't touch the ground. Liz
Speaker 1: was wearing a dark blue dress that should bought a
Speaker 1: few days before. Then Bethany joined and told her story.
Speaker 1: The stage lights, their own bright little sons, bore down
Speaker 1: on them. They felt the curious stairs of the audience.
Speaker 1: It felt like an out of body experience, you know,
Speaker 1: being there on that stage looking at this television personality
Speaker 1: you see every once in a while, hearing his voice,
Speaker 1: and you know, seeing cameras all around you. This was
Speaker 1: three years in the making of me. To have a
Speaker 1: one hour window to get some sort of closure, if
Speaker 1: that was the goal, or to tell my story if
Speaker 1: that was the goal, or to expose her, you know,
Speaker 1: it just it felt very surreal. They methodically recounted their
Speaker 1: experiences with a giant Sarah slide show behind them. Sarah
Speaker 1: in her wig and scarf, Sarah in her wheelchair, Sarah smiling,
Speaker 1: gripping the handlebars of her bike. We were all sitting
Speaker 1: side by side with each other. It was me and
Speaker 1: then Brian and Bethany, and I was in the chair
Speaker 1: that was empty across from me. It was very obvious
Speaker 1: that it was going to be Sarah. Dr Phil said
Speaker 1: to Bethany, will know, you've never seen Sarah walk and
Speaker 1: she said, you know, that's that's correct. She was always
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair. And then Liz, you've only seen you know,
Speaker 1: you've never seen Sarah with hair, and of course we
Speaker 1: had not, so, you know, there was something to the
Speaker 1: effect of, well, you know, we're going to see her
Speaker 1: for the first time or something, and he said, are
Speaker 1: you ready to see her? And then I said, I
Speaker 1: don't even know who the real Sarah is. He looked
Speaker 1: at one side of the room. A door opened, and
Speaker 1: there's she stood in a burgundy sweater, black slacks, and
Speaker 1: gold earrings. Her dark hair sleekly styled. If we had
Speaker 1: had happened to pass her on the street while we
Speaker 1: are yelling California, we would not have known. We would
Speaker 1: not have recognized her for a split second. Like I
Speaker 1: kind of looked at Brian, thinking like one of us
Speaker 1: is going to say, this isn't her right, But I
Speaker 1: was kind of waiting for that validation from Brian and Liz.
Speaker 1: Absolutely soulless expression, and I will never forget that absolutely soulless.
Speaker 1: Slowly staring straight ahead, she marched towards the stage, toward
Speaker 1: the one empty chair on the set, her arms barely swinging.
Speaker 1: There's a long pathway. Um, if you've ever seen the show,
Speaker 1: you can usually see they kind of use this pathway
Speaker 1: where they open a door and somebody comes out, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of in between the crowd, and you could have
Speaker 1: heard a pin drop in that whole place for about
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, not a single sound as she took the
Speaker 1: ten seconds to walk to the chair. She had the
Speaker 1: stage makeup on, but it still just didn't look like
Speaker 1: her Her eyes were black. What I remember most about
Speaker 1: her were her eyes. They were honestly just black. It
Speaker 1: was like she didn't have a color to her eyes,
Speaker 1: and she looked right through me as if there was
Speaker 1: honestly nothing behind it. Her brow did not move at all,
Speaker 1: her eyelids were heavy, and she just stared right at me.
Speaker 1: And I'm just looking in her, into her eyes, like
Speaker 1: trying to find some of the Sarah that I knew,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking at her just an absolute disbelief, like
Speaker 1: who are you? Sarah scooted into her seat, her eyes
Speaker 1: darted around like she wasn't sure where to look. I
Speaker 1: was a surprise to her that she came with the
Speaker 1: understanding knowing that Brian and Liz were going to be there,
Speaker 1: but she didn't know I was going to be there.
Speaker 1: Dr Phil kind, I guess. One on his he said,
Speaker 1: I believe you know these people, and she said I do,
Speaker 1: And he said, do you have anything to say to them?
Speaker 1: And that's when she said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for
Speaker 1: what I've done and it didn't mean to hurt She
Speaker 1: didn't mean to hurt you. She kind of just looks
Speaker 1: like I had this very kind of pathetic, sad puppy face,
Speaker 1: I guess, and just tried to offer an apology, saying
Speaker 1: she didn't mean to hurt anyone. As soon as she
Speaker 1: started in with her apology, I jumped in and cut
Speaker 1: her off because I just thought that this is not real.
Speaker 1: This is not a real apology, This is not how
Speaker 1: this is going to go. Dr Phil was very quick
Speaker 1: to point out that that's not a real apology. There's
Speaker 1: not any empathy behind that statement. I said, Sarah, you
Speaker 1: don't understand you ruined our life. I'm was the first
Speaker 1: thing I said to her, with a stony expression. Sarah
Speaker 1: turned to Dr Phil throughout the show should respond, offering
Speaker 1: wandering explanations for what she had done. She talked about
Speaker 1: the mental fortitude necessary to keep all her stories straight.
Speaker 1: It was a very strange way that she phrased it.
Speaker 1: It was something about playing hockey and wanting to hit
Speaker 1: the puck but not being able to. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: really too clear exactly what she was saying, But I
Speaker 1: think the meaning behind that is she would be in
Speaker 1: scenarios in situations where she wants to be able to
Speaker 1: say something but she can't because she's been lying about
Speaker 1: who she is. I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: Talking Phil was trying to get with that was how
Speaker 1: proud she was about all of the lies, and he
Speaker 1: led her down this this road on the stage that
Speaker 1: I don't think she realized she was getting led to.
Speaker 1: And that's when he went to a clip showing her
Speaker 1: being interviewed in which she's smiling talking about them. In
Speaker 1: that clip, she said she didn't tell her first big
Speaker 1: lie until she was twenty five years old. She said
Speaker 1: that was the first time she lied about having cancer,
Speaker 1: which would have been news to her college it's friends,
Speaker 1: and she is kind of smiling back on stage at
Speaker 1: Dr Phil. There was one time in particular that Sarah
Speaker 1: said that I've decided, uh song to the effect I've
Speaker 1: decided to tell the truth now. And I responded to her,
Speaker 1: when did that happen? And I didn't mean it to
Speaker 1: be a joke or funny, but the audience, you know,
Speaker 1: laughed at that. The truth has only come out to
Speaker 1: us for a couple of days. Bethany looked straight at Sarah,
Speaker 1: steely eyed. She wouldn't make eye contact with me unless
Speaker 1: I was speaking directly to her, and almost had to
Speaker 1: kind of force her to look at me, and even
Speaker 1: then I could tell she was looking beyond me. I
Speaker 1: remember one of the claims that Sarah made was that
Speaker 1: she had a hard time making friends, and Bethany was
Speaker 1: very quick to say, well, that's not true, because you
Speaker 1: know they became friends quickly. As he walked around the set,
Speaker 1: Dr Phil looked at Sarah and asked her if she
Speaker 1: realized when she was lying and was unable to stop it.
Speaker 1: He framed it as an irresistible impulse versus an impulse
Speaker 1: not resisted. She said she couldn't stop it, that she
Speaker 1: feels an urge to lie and it just takes over
Speaker 1: an irresistible impulse. So Dr Phil answered, you have no
Speaker 1: ability to choose right and wrong. You are a total sociopath. No,
Speaker 1: I think, I don't know, She stammered, she did know
Speaker 1: right from wrong. So he said, it is a choice
Speaker 1: and not an irresistible impulse. Yeah, she said quietly. He
Speaker 1: said she lacked empathy for others, that she didn't realize
Speaker 1: how much she had broken people like Liz and Bethany.
Speaker 1: Toward the end, they cut to one last commercial break.
Speaker 1: I remember when when it came back, he said, I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you what I think you need, not
Speaker 1: what I think you deserve. I've lined up treatment facility
Speaker 1: for you. I think that you need to get some help.
Speaker 1: The intensive impatient care had lined up. Was in Calabasas,
Speaker 1: a tony Los Angeles suburb. The facility was on tranquil
Speaker 1: wooded grounds that looked like a luxury resort. He said
Speaker 1: he considered it the best care in the country, but
Speaker 1: added they do not mess around. The show was done,
Speaker 1: the camera's shut off. Brian, Liz, and Bethany were ushered
Speaker 1: off in one direction and Sarah in the other. The
Speaker 1: show pays for a treatment, and you know, she readily agreed,
Speaker 1: and I believe that she left neiately from the show
Speaker 1: to go there. I do remember walking off the stage
Speaker 1: with Lizzie and and there were a lot of the
Speaker 1: audience members that I did make eye contact with, and
Speaker 1: there are there are some tears I could see in
Speaker 1: eyes and also um kind of that those gestures of
Speaker 1: you know, like we're really sorry this happened to you.
Speaker 1: Did you go to the nearest bar in order of
Speaker 1: martini after that? Yes, that's exactly what we did. And
Speaker 1: I remember that conversation just feeling like we had one
Speaker 1: little moment of success with this that you know, we
Speaker 1: could all fly home feel good about what we were
Speaker 1: able to say, feel good about Dr Phil's responses and
Speaker 1: how it was going to be, so for her to
Speaker 1: actually leave set, grab her suitcase and go straight to
Speaker 1: treatment in southern California was a big deal. We all
Speaker 1: sat and we really just exhaled because at that point
Speaker 1: we thought we had taken care of the problem. We
Speaker 1: thought we we accomplished what we had, you know, come
Speaker 1: to do. But that feeling of accomplishment was about to
Speaker 1: be shattered. The show aired in April two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: Shortly afterwards, Andreas Smith was at home in South Carolina
Speaker 1: sitting at her computer scrolling through Facebook. She saw that
Speaker 1: she had been tagged in a post by someone she
Speaker 1: knew from her work with s m A. I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: doesn't this sound like our old friend Sarah? And it
Speaker 1: was a link to the Doctor Phil show. And as
Speaker 1: soon as she came on the screen, I said, holy crap,
Speaker 1: that's her. The show hadn't revealed anyone's last names, but
Speaker 1: Andrea had no doubt. She immediately dived into the comments
Speaker 1: section and I started writing and said, everybody beware sour
Speaker 1: Delashman this woman. I started writing the story in in
Speaker 1: in the comments, and as soon as I wrote that,
Speaker 1: the minute I had sent Liz Hiccox's responded to me,
Speaker 1: and then Bethany Turner responded to me saying, you know, Sarah,
Speaker 1: like what happened? She said, I've been tracking her for
Speaker 1: twenty years. And then we really started piecing together a
Speaker 1: lot of the details where Andrea was talking about family
Speaker 1: members she had talked to and how she had the
Speaker 1: FBI involved back in two thousand six. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: camp summit or breath cancer charities. The common thread I
Speaker 1: found was that she always infiltrated groups of women, and
Speaker 1: that it was always in a place where you would
Speaker 1: never you would never walk into like a breast cancer conference,
Speaker 1: for example. You would never walk into a camp for
Speaker 1: adulty disabilities. You would never walk into certain scenarios and
Speaker 1: feel like you need to question anyone. The most striking
Speaker 1: thing about the Dr Phil episode for me was the
Speaker 1: section where they were talking just to her, like in
Speaker 1: the green room. I guess it was not when she
Speaker 1: was on stage where she was discussing her activities, and
Speaker 1: the look in her eye when she's talking about it
Speaker 1: and she's almost glowing. She's talking about it like it's
Speaker 1: her life's work. When I visited Andrea, we sat down
Speaker 1: at her computer and she walked me through her Sarah
Speaker 1: Google drive, which by the way, is named fuck Sarah.
Speaker 1: This is all Sarah. This is all Sarah's stuff, This
Speaker 1: is everything. Here is Sarah. This is all Sarah, all
Speaker 1: of this, all of this, all of this. So these
Speaker 1: are pictures and posts and and full web pages that
Speaker 1: I downloaded. This is just a terrifying amount of stuff.
Speaker 1: You would still google her every now and then. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not an idiot. I knew she was still out there,
Speaker 1: given her long history with Sarah. I thought Andrea might
Speaker 1: know the answer to a question I've been asking myself
Speaker 1: for a while, the question on everyone's mind. Really, who
Speaker 1: is Sarah. I don't even think she knows. Sarah makes
Speaker 1: herself up as goes along. Sarah is an empty shell Sarah.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened to her. She showed me
Speaker 1: the picture of Sarah with her coals quilt, green quilt
Speaker 1: with a care Bears theme, Cara, bears and frogs. That's
Speaker 1: what she wanted. There's a profile on caring Bridge, a
Speaker 1: site for people with illnesses to share their stories. She
Speaker 1: created a post for her pretend son Drake, the one
Speaker 1: from the s m A support group. When Drake was
Speaker 1: born in November of two thousand two. I thought I
Speaker 1: had the perfect although Drake surprised us by coming five
Speaker 1: weeks early. He scored nine at one minute from the
Speaker 1: get go. Drake was an easy going, happy and in
Speaker 1: May of two thousand and three, I noticed Drake wasn't
Speaker 1: standing up or sitting like most kids. On another website,
Speaker 1: it wasn't enough for Drake to be gravely ill. He
Speaker 1: was kidnapped too, And it says Sarah, how is Drake
Speaker 1: after the kidnapping? And then if you go down a
Speaker 1: little bit, you'll see here where she says he's fine.
Speaker 1: It's not as serious as it first sounded when they
Speaker 1: called me about a kidnap. About a kidnapping? Yeah. The
Speaker 1: posts on a cancer board when Sarah was in college, Hi,
Speaker 1: every when. My name is Sarah and I was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with a l L that's acute lymphositic leukemia two months ago.
Speaker 1: I was just looking for another teens that have gone
Speaker 1: or going through a similar thing. I would love to
Speaker 1: hear about how this. On this tour through her Google drive,
Speaker 1: Andreas stops on one other photo. This is supposedly Gabby
Speaker 1: Gabby who Aaron Johnson. Believed was Sarah's real sister. But
Speaker 1: it's not Gabby, it's this girl. Andrea pulls up a
Speaker 1: picture of a blonde girl in a red sweater smiling
Speaker 1: for the camera. Sarah Schwegel, who was the m d
Speaker 1: A Goodwill ambassador for like two thousand and one. So
Speaker 1: she stole a picture of somebody with Spota muscular atrophy
Speaker 1: and used it and claim this was her sister. Sarah
Speaker 1: Schwegel was from the St. Louis area, near Sarah's hometown.
Speaker 1: Off and on, there were photos ever in the newspaper.
Speaker 1: After the Doctor Phil episode aired, her victims watched one
Speaker 1: by one in disbelief. Aaron had known for almost three
Speaker 1: years that Sarah wasn't disabled, that she didn't have multiple
Speaker 1: children or sister named Gabby, but she had held onto
Speaker 1: the hope that no matter how twisted everything else was,
Speaker 1: Sarah's affection was real. But then it was a Doctor Phil,
Speaker 1: so that made me sit up and go, okay, there
Speaker 1: was no love in my friendship with her. On her side,
Speaker 1: she was just a very very good actress. It was
Speaker 1: the first time in years I was able to actually
Speaker 1: see her eyes when she talked about all this and
Speaker 1: explained all the people that she didn't so non tauntly
Speaker 1: after Dr Phil, this story might have ended right here
Speaker 1: with Sarah getting the psychiatric care she needed, but even
Speaker 1: he seemed to doubt whether that would happen. On the show,
Speaker 1: Sarah said she was ready to change her life. He shrugged,
Speaker 1: we'll see about that. A few days after the show
Speaker 1: was over, Liz was talking to Sarah's aunt. At the time,
Speaker 1: they were still friendly, and she said, well, she's coming
Speaker 1: home for Easter, so I guess we'll see her. Then
Speaker 1: I said, what do you mean, she's coming home? Sarah
Speaker 1: was already planning to leave treatment and the show hadn't
Speaker 1: even aired yet. This was a turning point for Liz.
Speaker 1: She had been willing to bear her humiliation in front
Speaker 1: of a national television audience as a way to get
Speaker 1: Sarah the help she needed. Help Sarah said she wanted,
Speaker 1: and it had all been for nothing. And at that
Speaker 1: point I was just furious because again she either had
Speaker 1: checked herself out or she was kicked out, and either way,
Speaker 1: at that point I said, I'm done. Now, I'm done
Speaker 1: being compassionate, and now I'm piste off. And that's when
Speaker 1: I turned the corner and said no, I'm not done
Speaker 1: with this yet. I'm not letting this go. It became
Speaker 1: an obsession because she she in my mind, she got
Speaker 1: me one more time. She managed to defraud me, deceive me,
Speaker 1: betray me, but she still managed to win me over
Speaker 1: one more time and still get some compassion for me.
Speaker 1: And that's when I said, no, I'm no, I can't.
Speaker 1: This is no, I'm done with this. There's something you
Speaker 1: should know about Liz. She's a native New Yorker who
Speaker 1: worked in the Lower Manhattan financial district and lost friends
Speaker 1: and colleagues. On nine eleven, she discovered her father at home,
Speaker 1: dead of a heart attack when he was only fifty
Speaker 1: one years old. The first man she intended to marry,
Speaker 1: an America's Cup Racer, was killed in a sailing accident.
Speaker 1: So if she seems enraged that someone would fake their
Speaker 1: impending death, it's because her life has known far too
Speaker 1: much real loss. On May three, two, nineteen, Bethany, Liz
Speaker 1: and Andrea formed a group chet If Sarah wasn't going
Speaker 1: to stop, neither were they. Liz told Andrea were very
Speaker 1: interested in pursuing any avenue possible. She's checked herself out
Speaker 1: of the facility and is already back in action with
Speaker 1: a local cancer charity. The next day they got together
Speaker 1: on a call. Andrea told them the story of the
Speaker 1: quilt and that she had been in touch with the
Speaker 1: Highland Police in two thousand and six and now she
Speaker 1: was ready to call the cops again. They all were
Speaker 1: at the Highland Police Department. Detective David Brynes was the
Speaker 1: one on the other end of that phone. And what's
Speaker 1: going through your mind when you're hearing this? Kind of
Speaker 1: thinking this is, lady's a pretty good actor at this point,
Speaker 1: and kind of also thinking that if if she is
Speaker 1: pulling off all these I guess elaborate ruses like she is,
Speaker 1: What's what's running through this lady's head? What's you know,
Speaker 1: what's her motivation? Why would you do all this? Buddy
Speaker 1: had a problem. She had done something probably morally wrong,
Speaker 1: but probably not criminally wrong at that point until the
Speaker 1: day he learned that she had committed actual crimes. Starting
Speaker 1: was stolen racing bikes. At that point we had a
Speaker 1: federal crime and they started the process of learning more
Speaker 1: about who Sarah really was. I want to say we
Speaker 1: executed the search warrant between seven and seven thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning, and so we were there, I mean roughly
Speaker 1: four to five hours that's coming up on Sympathy Pains.
Speaker 1: Sympathy Paines is a production of Neon Hum Media and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. I'm your host Laura Beale. I wrote
Speaker 1: and reported the episodes. Natalie Wrinn is the lead producer.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Katherine st. Louis. Associate producer is Rufaro Mazzarua.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Samantha Allison is our
Speaker 1: production manager. Fact checker is Jacqueline Colletti. Jesse Perlstein composed
Speaker 1: the theme song and music heard throughout the series. Additional
Speaker 1: tracks are by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Scott
Speaker 1: Somerville is our engineer and sound designer. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Stephanie Serrano from I Heart Radio. Special thanks to Carrie
Speaker 1: Lieberman and Bethan Macaluso. Executive producer at I Heeart Radio
Speaker 1: is Dylan Fagin.