Speaker 1: Novel.
Speaker 2: Hey girlfriends, Anna here just quick heads off on what
Speaker 2: to expect in this episode of the Girlfriends. We'll be
Speaker 2: exploring themes of coercive control, and there'll be a reference
Speaker 2: to non consensual drug use. But it's also a story,
Speaker 2: as always, of true friendship, and there's going to be
Speaker 2: some cool as hell nurses. If any of the themes
Speaker 2: feel difficult, you'll find links to mental health and support
Speaker 2: organizations in the episode description, Last time on the Girlfriends,
Speaker 2: Trust me, babe?
Speaker 1: Are you dearck Aldridge and he goes yes.
Speaker 2: Lisa is walking through baggage plane when two cops on
Speaker 2: Segways arrest the man she thought was named Steel And I.
Speaker 1: Looked at him like, what the hell?
Speaker 3: One?
Speaker 1: You're good to go about barticking him? I'm like, what
Speaker 1: the hell's going on?
Speaker 2: Lisa and Derek formerly known as Steele, have just turn
Speaker 2: from what should have been a romantic holiday in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: Now they're standing face to face with two airport cops.
Speaker 4: Time for mister steel Fins to start explaining himself.
Speaker 1: Steele goes, Oh, it's probably my brother. He impersonates me
Speaker 1: alad gets me in a lot of trouble, So there's
Speaker 1: probably some warrant dead or something for him now.
Speaker 2: Steele had told Lisa he had a good for nothing
Speaker 2: twin brother, but that doesn't explain why he just answered
Speaker 2: to the name Derek.
Speaker 1: He hands me his suit kiss He's like, here, just
Speaker 1: take this. You know, everything's okay, babe, don't worry. I'll
Speaker 1: see you soon.
Speaker 2: After a week of increasingly irritating assurances, the power of
Speaker 2: Derek's patented don't worry babe has really begun to wane,
Speaker 2: especially now as he's parted away by an airport cop and.
Speaker 1: The other cap goes your feet to go.
Speaker 2: Lisa's left standing alone in a state of shock. She
Speaker 2: doesn't know what to do with herself. When suddenly, rays
Speaker 2: of light beamed down, a choir of cherubs sing. A
Speaker 2: phone vibrates in her pocket. Stephanie texts me, her guardian
Speaker 2: angel from the past week, who has stopped at nothing
Speaker 2: to get her girl home.
Speaker 1: She goes, did you n edited? Yes, she says good.
Speaker 2: It strikes Lisa in that moment. All holiday, her friends
Speaker 2: had been calling and texting. They've been unusually persistent about
Speaker 2: her whereabouts, her flight details, the license plate of her
Speaker 2: jeep rental, even her boss's very chill attitude over Lisa
Speaker 2: missing her morning shift seemed.
Speaker 4: A little unusual.
Speaker 2: Suddenly, looking down at that text from Steph, it all
Speaker 2: makes sense.
Speaker 4: Steph knows something.
Speaker 1: She says, let me know when you get home. I
Speaker 1: need to talk to you. And they said, oh, hell no,
Speaker 1: I'm not waiting, Like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 4: Lisa calls Steph as soon as she can.
Speaker 1: Okay, a man on the shutter bus, what is going on?
Speaker 1: And so she then says, well, I'll tell you.
Speaker 2: Sitting on the bus with her luggage and steals carry
Speaker 2: on briefcase. Lisa learns the truth. One, there is no
Speaker 2: Steel Aldridge.
Speaker 3: No, that is not his name.
Speaker 2: The guy Lisa thought was her boyfriend is actually Derek Aldred. Two,
Speaker 2: She's not the only woman who screwed over. Steph tells
Speaker 2: her he also dated a colleague's friend.
Speaker 1: He had swindled her out of money. She dated him
Speaker 1: before you.
Speaker 4: Three.
Speaker 2: The reason he was arrested in baggage claim has absolutely
Speaker 2: nothing to do with a dastardly twin brother. There is
Speaker 2: actually no twin brother.
Speaker 1: By the way, he wasn't supposed to be the stick
Speaker 1: because he's a falon.
Speaker 2: And four, oh, that's just a casual one. Turns out,
Speaker 2: almost ten months before their first date, Steele had been
Speaker 2: the target of a multi agency undercover sting operation.
Speaker 3: I want to get this Jabe because he was just
Speaker 3: a parasite.
Speaker 2: But that sting operation didn't quite go to plan trap.
Speaker 2: I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts. You're listening to the Girlfriends Trust Me Babe,
Speaker 2: episode three, The Sting You. It's the fall of twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: about a year before Lisa witnessed that dramatic airport arrest.
Speaker 2: Paul Meskin is sitting in the office of the US
Speaker 2: Marshal Services Fugitive Task Force in Minneapolis. His job is
Speaker 2: to catch people on the run from the law.
Speaker 3: Murderers, rapists, guncases, bad people that really need to get
Speaker 3: off the street.
Speaker 2: He's printing out a few documents when an assistant grabs
Speaker 2: his attention.
Speaker 3: Hey, can you take this call from this lady who
Speaker 3: has concerns about and information on a guy that's wanted. Okay,
Speaker 3: I had no problem.
Speaker 4: It's a concerned mum.
Speaker 3: She was almost in tears.
Speaker 2: Her adult daughter, Joanne, has recently been the victim of fraud.
Speaker 3: Her daughter was a teacher met this guy named Derek
Speaker 3: that claimed all this stuff and built her for a
Speaker 3: lot of money, thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2: Our least favorite man, Derek Aldred reportedly racks up twenty
Speaker 2: K on her credit cards before she discovers the truth
Speaker 2: and reports him to the police. And in a story
Speaker 2: that's becoming depressingly familiar, she's told taking her case any
Speaker 2: further would be a waste of time.
Speaker 3: Any court in the country is going to say, well,
Speaker 3: you know you did that willingly because you were in
Speaker 3: a relationship. Yeah, well it was a relationship. It was
Speaker 3: all a fraud. But there's no prosecutor that would ever
Speaker 3: charge her to it's like that.
Speaker 2: But John's mum, Scott Hutzpur So she does some of
Speaker 2: her own research.
Speaker 4: On the guy.
Speaker 2: She found out that in June of twenty fourteen, Derek
Speaker 2: stayed at the swanky Saint Paul Hotel, racking up a
Speaker 2: significant bill while pretending to be a doctor, drinks room
Speaker 2: service the whole hog, and then when it came time
Speaker 2: to pay the bill, he disappeared. By the time of
Speaker 2: sentencing hearing came around, yet again, he was nowhere to
Speaker 2: be found. Authorities had issued a warrant for Derek's arrest,
Speaker 2: but was anyone actually looking for him? And that's where
Speaker 2: Paul comes in. Juanne's mom thinks if the cops won't
Speaker 2: catch him for defrauding her daughter, they can at least
Speaker 2: put him in jail for a hotel scam, and she's
Speaker 2: come armed with info.
Speaker 3: Receipts, credit card bills, here's a business card, and what's
Speaker 3: this business card to? Hey on don't address.
Speaker 2: It's not the kind of case that Paul's unit would
Speaker 2: normally prioritize, but something about this call gets to him,
Speaker 2: so it gets to work. First, he heads to Derek's office,
Speaker 2: the one on that business card.
Speaker 3: I went to the address and showed pictures, never heard him,
Speaker 3: met the law firm that who's listed as working forward
Speaker 3: never existed there. In fact, the suite number that they
Speaker 3: had never existed in this building.
Speaker 2: Paul now even more perplex It is the help of
Speaker 2: a financial investigator on the team who.
Speaker 4: Comes up with an idea.
Speaker 2: They know that Derek still has one of Joanne's credit cards.
Speaker 2: She blocks it once she learned the truth, but the
Speaker 2: investigator reckons if she unblocks it and Derek uses it someplace,
Speaker 2: they'll know where he is and so.
Speaker 3: I reactivated and that's when we learned of the Amtrak ticket.
Speaker 2: Derek had used Joanne's card to buy a train ticket I.
Speaker 3: Of Saint Paul to go to Portland.
Speaker 2: The six forty am train on November seventh, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: The cops have a time and a location. Now all
Speaker 2: they need to do is wait. It's stakeout time. Saint
Speaker 2: Paul Union Depot is a big, ostentatious station, grand columns,
Speaker 2: large vaulted ceilings, people everywhere, and dotted around the station.
Speaker 2: Oh so casually are about a dozen undercover officers.
Speaker 3: We had three guys on the train platform, other guys
Speaker 3: that were up in the train station itself, a couple
Speaker 3: of parking lots, couple parking ramps on the streets around.
Speaker 2: They've been in place since four thirty five am, scanning faces,
Speaker 2: waiting for the appearance of one balding, middle aged.
Speaker 4: White guy about ya tall.
Speaker 2: Pall's in charge of the whole operation, so he's waiting
Speaker 2: in his truck outside the station, listening in over the radio.
Speaker 3: Any updates, any updates, any updates here anymore.
Speaker 2: They could be waiting for some time, but no worry.
Speaker 2: Paul is guaranteed to bring supplies.
Speaker 3: Honey rolls, to peanuts, dry roast, liquorice, gum drops, crackers, skittles.
Speaker 3: The guys on my team always called me snacks.
Speaker 4: Then something interrupts the picnic.
Speaker 2: As the train approaches, Paul decides he has to see
Speaker 2: this guy taken down with his own eyes.
Speaker 3: I came inside kind of like I was coming to
Speaker 3: pick somebody up, and Jenda watched the train.
Speaker 4: Derek is due to catch.
Speaker 2: Pulls in at the platform. Undercover officers board, searching faces
Speaker 2: among the passengers. No sign of him. As the clock
Speaker 2: ticks down, the train prepares to leave.
Speaker 3: The train pulls off. Let's just give a couple of minutes.
Speaker 2: Maybe he'll come tearing down the station lobby, running late.
Speaker 2: Maybe he noticed suspicious police like activity and didn't board.
Speaker 3: Everybody, just hold your position.
Speaker 2: And then it's gone, trundling into the distance, headed for
Speaker 2: the West Coast.
Speaker 3: The only people that left the train station were those
Speaker 3: that had gotten off the train.
Speaker 2: The message from surveillance is unanimous. There's no Derek in
Speaker 2: a nearby car watching. He's not scanned his ticket at all.
Speaker 3: There's no way we missed him. It's like, damn that
Speaker 3: was about his cut and dried and perfect as we
Speaker 3: thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2: Next day, Paul gets a call from the financial investigator.
Speaker 2: Paul's still not sure how it happened.
Speaker 3: He's on the train, which confirmed he's on the train.
Speaker 2: Maybe Derek missed a local service, had to board the
Speaker 2: train at a later station.
Speaker 4: Maybe he got tipped off.
Speaker 2: Somehow, whatever the reason, they're sure of his location.
Speaker 3: Now he's an hour and a half out of Portland Orion.
Speaker 2: On the literal other side of the country from where
Speaker 2: Paul's team is trap. But no matter, because Paul snacks
Speaker 2: Meskan has won some friends over the years.
Speaker 3: Paul sevin, here's my situation.
Speaker 2: And those friends have some of their own friends.
Speaker 3: And he reached out to his contact in Portland.
Speaker 2: And they assembled a team and arrived just in time
Speaker 2: to see the train pulling in.
Speaker 3: Derek came walking off and they took him into custody
Speaker 3: without incident, got shipped back to Minnesota and went to
Speaker 3: court and got sentenced to the county workhouse.
Speaker 2: Derek is finally sentenced for theft by swindle of the
Speaker 2: Saint Paul Hotel on top of his sentence for skipping court.
Speaker 2: Derek is released back into the community after a grand
Speaker 2: total of nine months a reformed man.
Speaker 1: He would literally had just gotten out of prison like
Speaker 1: a week or two before I met him, so he
Speaker 1: wasted no time.
Speaker 2: So no, Derek is not a reformed man, but he's
Speaker 2: fast becoming a man with dangerous enemies. Derek's victims are
Speaker 2: about to find each other, and with him, I'd be very,
Speaker 2: very nervous. Lisa spent the whole journey home from the airport,
Speaker 2: all two hours of it, on the phone to her friends.
Speaker 2: She now knows all about the Saint Paul hotel scam,
Speaker 2: Derek's probation violation, his total and utter betrayal of her.
Speaker 1: And I'm grateful there wasn't a lot to keep on
Speaker 1: us because I'm barring my eyes out.
Speaker 4: Lisa finally gets back to her car.
Speaker 2: By the time she makes it home, her friend's Steph
Speaker 2: is already there waiting with open arms.
Speaker 1: We just embraced each other. I do think there are
Speaker 1: some tears. She goes, I have just been a nervous
Speaker 1: wreck since you've been gun in Hawaii. I was just
Speaker 1: relieved that she was home safe.
Speaker 2: And the two of them waste no time. They start
Speaker 2: the search immediately for anything and everything they could find
Speaker 2: which might help them build a case against Derek.
Speaker 1: I'm going through all his stuff, seeing his real name,
Speaker 1: like thinking, holy crap.
Speaker 4: Searching the luggage he handed off to Lisa.
Speaker 1: I'm finding his phone. He had this app fort people calling,
Speaker 1: like you could hit it and they could call you,
Speaker 1: pretending to be somebody where if you hit him, they
Speaker 1: would call him.
Speaker 2: It's all starting to click into place. None of those
Speaker 2: calls were real. None of the text she got from
Speaker 2: his friends and family.
Speaker 1: He had his roommate saying there, his sister's name there,
Speaker 1: his mom's name there.
Speaker 4: So he'd be talking to no one.
Speaker 1: Literally no one. I think he had the one friend
Speaker 1: that was pretending to be a sister, because I would
Speaker 1: actually hear a female voice when he was talking to
Speaker 1: his sister, but no one else.
Speaker 2: Looking back, his calls had seen strangely well timed.
Speaker 1: We'd be talking about his dad and then like two
Speaker 1: minutes later, oh, she would.
Speaker 2: Car Even though Derek talked to various women he dated
Speaker 2: about sisters, brothers, a daughter. I want to make it
Speaker 2: really clear, none of Derek's family members have ever been
Speaker 2: implicated in any of his crimes or accused of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 2: When Lisa goes through her credit card statements, she finds
Speaker 2: that she isn't just out of pocket for the stuff
Speaker 2: Derek or Steele had asked her to pay for. It
Speaker 2: was everything, all their flights, their hotel stays, their meals,
Speaker 2: all of it, unbeknownst to Lisa, had been charged to
Speaker 2: her own card.
Speaker 1: Howard did, I don't know because I always had my
Speaker 1: credit card and me and my Boddy. It was in
Speaker 1: my purse attached to me. Then I start going through
Speaker 1: a brief kiss and I'm finding these usb poort.
Speaker 4: She opens one on her laptop.
Speaker 1: It's just her my bank account, my AMEX stuff, my
Speaker 1: Wells far Ago account, anything that I had used on
Speaker 1: my computer, and then my social Security number.
Speaker 2: Going through his phone, Lisa realizes that steal okay, Derek
Speaker 2: wasn't volunteering at the homeless shelter.
Speaker 1: I found like he lived there, the hotels, the resort,
Speaker 1: the jeep and the er, visit this vision, that visit,
Speaker 1: the dinner cruise. I think it was close to almost
Speaker 1: ten grand.
Speaker 2: Bombarded by all this new information, Lisa thinks back on
Speaker 2: her relationship, casting memories into a new light. She remembers
Speaker 2: the time she blacked out in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: I really think he drugged me and brought me upstairs
Speaker 1: because I don't remember any of that. It just makes
Speaker 1: you feel so it's just I don't know, just used
Speaker 1: and just upset that someone can do that to a
Speaker 1: human being.
Speaker 2: Derek says this allegation is completely untrue, but it's a
Speaker 2: suspicion as Starckward Lisa.
Speaker 1: For years, I was just furious at him and furio
Speaker 1: set myself for trusting him all these times.
Speaker 2: Lisa feels angry, but also like she's somehow to blame,
Speaker 2: which of course she isn't. It's a sort of moment
Speaker 2: when you want to regain some control, but Lisa doesn't
Speaker 2: get that. Normally, when you go through a breakup, you
Speaker 2: have a bit of time to process it on your own.
Speaker 4: But in a way, Lisa is the last to know.
Speaker 1: I just felt like the most stupidest person in the world, Like,
Speaker 1: how could I let this human do this to me
Speaker 1: when I'm not a stupid woman. I'm all educated. I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought I knew him, but then looking
Speaker 1: back at like, oh, here's the spread flake, here's that
Speaker 1: red flake, here's that one, and here's that one, but
Speaker 1: I didn't listen. My heart was just broken, Like, how
Speaker 1: can I ever trust anybody again? Like he just got
Speaker 1: into my heart. I trusted everything you said and he
Speaker 1: just ripped it out.
Speaker 2: But it's more than just heartbreak and angry ban worries.
Speaker 2: It's time for Derek to be held accountable. It's like
Speaker 2: November and it's cold out in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It's
Speaker 2: been just one day since Lisa learned the truth about Derek,
Speaker 2: and two officers are pulling into her driveway. The cops
Speaker 2: want Lisa to provide a statement. She tells them everything,
Speaker 2: the first date, the Hawaii trip, the credit card stuff.
Speaker 2: They confiscate Derek's belongings, a black smartphone, three USB sticks,
Speaker 2: one gray, one white, one black, a phone charger, but
Speaker 2: really they don't seem hopeful.
Speaker 1: He's kind of like, WHOA, I'm sorry this happened to you.
Speaker 1: But if he doesn't admit to it, we really can't
Speaker 1: do anything, and more or less, we have more important
Speaker 1: things to do.
Speaker 2: The investigators explained to Lisa that the county's attorneys won't
Speaker 2: prosecute a case like this of all the theft that
Speaker 2: took place over the holiday. It's only really the initial
Speaker 2: flight purchases that land within their jurisdiction, and Derek brought
Speaker 2: those on her laptop, so he can just claim that
Speaker 2: she was well aware of the charges.
Speaker 1: With me Henley Love on my laptop and saying sure
Speaker 1: you can use it. You know, I smari or less
Speaker 1: my help that I allowed him to do that, so.
Speaker 2: Worth mentioning she gave steel Aldridge permission to use her
Speaker 2: laptop a man who does not actually exist. It's not
Speaker 2: exactly informed consent.
Speaker 1: It's not like he broke in and took this information
Speaker 1: from me. I let him in my house. So I
Speaker 1: just feel like they think, oh, another super woman get
Speaker 1: swindled by a guy. I wasn't killed. I wasn't and beat.
Speaker 1: It was just money taken by somebody I dated.
Speaker 2: The investigators tell Lisa she could try contacting local police
Speaker 2: in Hawaii, but otherwise he.
Speaker 1: Mar or last just said, you know, I'm sorry. You know,
Speaker 1: if we don't have any more evidence against him, we
Speaker 1: can't do anything.
Speaker 2: Then she says they offered her some off the record advice.
Speaker 1: You can call him in prison and try to get
Speaker 1: him to confess, and the phone.
Speaker 2: It's November twenty fifteen, Lisa is back from Hawaii, grappling
Speaker 2: with the news that her boyfriend is a con man
Speaker 2: and it doesn't seem like the cops can or will
Speaker 2: do much about it. And Derek he's back in prison
Speaker 2: over his robation violation, serving out the remainder of his sentence.
Speaker 2: Lisa has been informed that in just a few weeks time,
Speaker 2: Derek is due to be back out on the street.
Speaker 2: So if Lisa can find some evidence that Derek didn't
Speaker 2: actually have her permission to buy those flights, maybe the
Speaker 2: prosecutors can actually do something about it.
Speaker 1: So I bought a little recorder and I would, you know,
Speaker 1: call him and I would try to, you know, make
Speaker 1: him confess.
Speaker 2: Lisa speaks to Derek over the phone from prison. It's
Speaker 2: the first time she's spoken to him as Derek, not
Speaker 2: a steal the man she thought she'd been building a
Speaker 2: life with, and.
Speaker 1: Like, well, you bought these tickets. He's like, no, I
Speaker 1: told you I was putting him on your card and
Speaker 1: I'd pay you back. He would never confess to anything
Speaker 1: he did. I honestly believe he knew I was trying
Speaker 1: to record him, but he just he would not. I
Speaker 1: would fight with him on the phone and like you
Speaker 1: were lying to me, like you took my card. You
Speaker 1: said you pay me back, and he'd be like, Lisa,
Speaker 1: I didn't that, and he kind of would get angry
Speaker 1: in the phone. You misheard me. I never said that.
Speaker 1: He even sent me a handwritten letter saying how much
Speaker 1: he'd loved me and how much he forgave me for
Speaker 1: accusing him.
Speaker 4: And you do the same on phone calls.
Speaker 1: You know, I still love you. This is just a
Speaker 1: mistake and not this person that you think I am.
Speaker 1: He was getting out Christmas Day. He wanted me to
Speaker 1: go out to the prison and pick him up and
Speaker 1: you know, start over again.
Speaker 2: Needless to say, Lisa doesn't pause the present unwrapping to
Speaker 2: pick Derek up from prison, but she does continue to
Speaker 2: call and text trying to get him to admit what
Speaker 2: he did.
Speaker 1: I was so upset and so help better on getting him.
Speaker 2: A couple of weeks after Derek's release, Lisa is at
Speaker 2: work when someone approaches her, asks her name, and hands
Speaker 2: her an envelope.
Speaker 1: I remember opening an up point. Are you freaking kidding me?
Speaker 2: It's a restraining order? Derek has taken one out against.
Speaker 1: Her, and I start and I think I went home.
Speaker 1: How on earth did this happen?
Speaker 2: Having already had ten grands stolen from her, Lisa now
Speaker 2: needs to hire a lawyer. She challenges the restraining order,
Speaker 2: and by February she is sitting in court. The park
Speaker 2: bench where Lisa and Steele had their first date just
Speaker 2: six months ago, is a five minute walk down the
Speaker 2: street from the courthouse. Lisa anxiously watches the door for
Speaker 2: a familiar face to appear.
Speaker 1: And their attend The door opened, my heir, Just like Stab,
Speaker 1: he never shows up.
Speaker 2: The judge dismisses the case cancels the restraining order.
Speaker 1: I spent more money on him and this lawyer. You
Speaker 1: know I'd get this restraining order he had sold and
Speaker 1: then he doesn't shop up.
Speaker 2: Not only was the justice system ignoring her, it was
Speaker 2: also being used against her by the man who'd lies
Speaker 2: and stolen from her.
Speaker 4: Then she gets some news.
Speaker 1: My niece texts me and says, I was googling him
Speaker 1: and found he had done this with this girl in California.
Speaker 4: A woman in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: That night I found her on Facebook, connecting with her
Speaker 1: and talking her. I was a holy cult.
Speaker 2: Cindy, you heard about an episode two hadn't seen Derek
Speaker 2: in two years, but she had spent her time wisely.
Speaker 1: She was hell bent on getting this guy. Sydney had
Speaker 1: started this big file going on him about his past women.
Speaker 2: It's Cindy who puts Lisa in touch with all the
Speaker 2: other women who'd had the misfortune of dating Derek Aldred.
Speaker 2: They've got to shared Facebook group chat. By the time
Speaker 2: Lisa joins, they had already started plotting out Derek's moves.
Speaker 1: Okay, show me when you dated him, Just keeping our
Speaker 1: chronological order of his little steps that he was doing
Speaker 1: where he was at. He gets at a prison, gets
Speaker 1: settled wherever he's standing, and then at the next person.
Speaker 2: By now, it's a familiar story. Women who'd been targeted
Speaker 2: by Derek all seemed to be falling through a particular
Speaker 2: crack in the justice system, a crack that Derek appears
Speaker 2: to be taking full advantage of. Over only two years,
Speaker 2: Derek strikes three more times with three different women in
Speaker 2: the Minneapolis area alone.
Speaker 1: My heart broker them thinking he's doing it again.
Speaker 2: Lisa read's allegations that he'd opened credit cards, stolen jewelry,
Speaker 2: and even drained a retirement savings account of nearly two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars in the space of a few months.
Speaker 1: This was just his power trip of doing this to
Speaker 1: women because he just for some reason headed us.
Speaker 2: Two of those women, once they learned of each other's existence,
Speaker 2: actually teamed up to try and stop him, and initially
Speaker 2: it works. An arrest warrant is issued for Derek Aldred
Speaker 2: on August eighth, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: Words spreads through the group.
Speaker 2: Chat that Derek has been arrested in Minnesota by local cops.
Speaker 2: It says at the top Wouldbury Public Safety Police Services
Speaker 2: incident report name Derek Mylan or Dread check forgery redacted.
Speaker 4: Told me that at the end the.
Speaker 2: Report describes how woman files a report against Derek and
Speaker 2: the cops.
Speaker 4: Go to a house to arrest him.
Speaker 5: He was handcuffed using plastic cuffs in front of his
Speaker 5: body due to having a wrist brace on his left wrist.
Speaker 5: They're made using standard handcuffs impractical.
Speaker 2: Also on this police report, Derek Aldread's long and complicated
Speaker 2: arrests history.
Speaker 5: It's a long list and it's broken down by year,
Speaker 5: and we start in two thousand and five forgery, felony, burglary,
Speaker 5: obtain controled, substances by fraud, felony, impersonate fireman misdemeanor, and
Speaker 5: I'm sure that's not as a stripper burglary, second degree felony,
Speaker 5: false worker compensurance claim. What's frustrating is the list doesn't
Speaker 5: really tell us much about what happened in between all
Speaker 5: of these arrests. So we did a bit of digging
Speaker 5: into some of the statements women have made to investigators
Speaker 5: to journalists over the years about their experiences with Derek
Speaker 5: and discovered even more stories, like one allegation from twenty eleven.
Speaker 5: An ex wife of Derek's alleges that he convinced her
Speaker 5: to briefly move into a hotel whilst I'm wiring in.
Speaker 5: Her home is being fixed, but when her mother in
Speaker 5: law visits, there are.
Speaker 6: Men moving out all of their belongings and the house
Speaker 6: has been foreclosed.
Speaker 4: Producer le owner of fills me in on the details.
Speaker 6: The woman that he married loses the house.
Speaker 4: That's crazy.
Speaker 6: There's another story about a woman who she's dating Derek.
Speaker 6: She loses her job and she can't afford the rent.
Speaker 4: She'll explain to the investigators.
Speaker 2: He told her that he was taking care of the
Speaker 2: rent at a new place one he had encouraged them
Speaker 2: to move into, but he wasn't. Not only that he'd
Speaker 2: put the property in her name, and once she learned
Speaker 2: the truth, she was evicted.
Speaker 6: She goes on to lose her entire life savings because
Speaker 6: he's strained her bank accounts.
Speaker 5: He's a proper, proper con man.
Speaker 6: At the end of twenty thirteen, after Wendy, After Cindy,
Speaker 6: he meets another woman from Hawaii, and she's a doctor.
Speaker 2: The two gone a holiday to Puerto Rico together, where
Speaker 2: Derek's charming facade seems to drop.
Speaker 6: He takes her license, her passport. He basically holds her hostage.
Speaker 6: He re routes all of her calls and texts to
Speaker 6: his phone. At one point, she tries to run away
Speaker 6: and even flags a car down, and he chases her down.
Speaker 6: By the time she makes it home, she learns that
Speaker 6: he's wiped all her financial accounts of more than thirty
Speaker 6: five thousand. He's made sixty thousand dollars in fraudulent credit
Speaker 6: card payments. He's taken a twenty eight thousand dollar advance
Speaker 6: out from her job in like unworked shifts, so she's
Speaker 6: basically fucked. Her business goes bankrupt, she's deeply traumatized, and
Speaker 6: he's disappeared.
Speaker 5: Wow, that one feels scary.
Speaker 6: All of these women are skilled, professional, smart educator women.
Speaker 6: One of them is a nuclear scientist. And it shouldn't matter. Obviously,
Speaker 6: it doesn't matter if they're not any of those things,
Speaker 6: or if they were manipulated into handing over money.
Speaker 4: But it's not even that. What he's done is.
Speaker 6: Convince them to be in a relationship with him and
Speaker 6: then stolen their money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're not aware about what's going on.
Speaker 6: So I just want you to a picture in your
Speaker 6: mind Derek standing out front of a house in Minnesota,
Speaker 6: plastic handcuffs on, and now the Woodbury police have arrested him.
Speaker 2: When I first read the arrest thing, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm struggling to get that excited because it just feels
Speaker 2: like this man gets away with everything. But having all
Speaker 2: of this information, it makes it feel like Derek's time
Speaker 2: is up.
Speaker 4: But don't get too excited. My suspicions were right.
Speaker 2: Earlier Woodbury Pude had released Derek while they built a case,
Speaker 2: and in a move right out of the Derek Alldred playbook,
Speaker 2: he simply disappeared again. Lisa was trying to move on
Speaker 2: with her life.
Speaker 1: I'd forget about it for a while, and then another
Speaker 1: text had come.
Speaker 2: An update from one of the girlfriends in the group chat,
Speaker 2: will bring all the pain back for Lisa.
Speaker 1: Who he did this to?
Speaker 3: Who? This and that?
Speaker 1: And it just would make me cry. And let's just
Speaker 1: like this has got it and I need to let
Speaker 1: it go, needs to come out of my life.
Speaker 2: And just when Lisa resolves to put this whole thing
Speaker 2: behind her, a new message pings into her inbox, an
Speaker 2: update so irresistible that Lisa is drawn right back in.
Speaker 1: I vowed I will be his last target.
Speaker 4: Next time.
Speaker 2: On the Girlfriends Trust to Be Babe, Derek sets his
Speaker 2: sights on a new target in Texas.
Speaker 1: I realize that I can stab him.
Speaker 2: And he learns the hard way that you don't mess
Speaker 2: with Texas.
Speaker 1: I moved my bookcase in front of my door. I
Speaker 1: went upstairs and I got my gun, and I just waited.
Speaker 2: If you found any of the themes explored in this
Speaker 2: episode difficult and you need support or advice, please reach
Speaker 2: out to our charity partners No More at No More
Speaker 2: dot org. We'll add some useful links to the episode
Speaker 2: description look after Yourself. The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe is
Speaker 2: produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel,
Speaker 2: visit novel dot Audio. The series is hosted by me
Speaker 2: Annasinfield is produced by Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is
Speaker 2: Valeria Rocker.
Speaker 4: Our editor is Joe Wheeler.
Speaker 2: Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolfe.
Speaker 2: Fact checking by Dania Suleman, Sound design, mixing and scoring
Speaker 2: by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. The Girlfriend's theme was
Speaker 2: composed by Daniel Kempson and Luisa Gerstein and performed by
Speaker 2: Daniel Kempson with vocals by Luisa Gerstein. Music supervision from
Speaker 2: Daniel Kempson and Anna Sinfield. The series artwork was designed
Speaker 2: by Christina Lemcol. Story development by Susie Baker and Olivia Smart.
Speaker 2: Novel's director of development is Selena Metta. Max O'Brien is
Speaker 2: the executive producer for Novel. Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etoor
Speaker 2: are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing
Speaker 2: lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to Carrie Lieberman and
Speaker 2: Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts. Julie Sansulo and Langston, Carolyn
Speaker 2: sher Levin, Katie Gillis, Kelly Hunt, Rachel Munroe, Tom Oldag
Speaker 2: and Tad Wesner.