Speaker 1: This is an incredible story that sounds like it's made up,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a soap opera, It sounds like a
Speaker 1: drama movie, but it's so real and it's not the
Speaker 1: only one. There are things we might not know about
Speaker 1: somebody we live with, and there's so many stories like this.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
Speaker 2: the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
Speaker 2: change everything. About a year ago, we heard from a
Speaker 2: listener with a story that floored us. Tora Giles is
Speaker 2: a history professor in Colorado. But she grew up on
Speaker 2: the California coast with her seven siblings.
Speaker 1: And we grew up on a farm, so my life
Speaker 1: was kind of wild and crazy and great. Grew up
Speaker 1: super religious. In the Seventh Day, I'dventist church as a kid.
Speaker 2: The church was Tora's life. She went to a Christian school,
Speaker 2: her friends and after school activities were all through the church,
Speaker 2: and she assumed that her life would follow the same
Speaker 2: path that was modeled by the women around her. Graduate
Speaker 2: high school, get married, and start having kids.
Speaker 1: Funny enough, I thought as a kid that twenty years
Speaker 1: old was being a grown up, and twenty five year
Speaker 1: olds were old, and so I thought for sure that
Speaker 1: I would be married by twenty but I never really dated.
Speaker 2: After high school, Tora became a full time nanny and
Speaker 2: she tried to give dating a shot.
Speaker 1: I finally went on one date with a guy and
Speaker 1: gave him like the little peck at the end of
Speaker 1: the night and was just like, no, that was not
Speaker 1: for me. I did not like that. I don't want
Speaker 1: a date.
Speaker 2: Torra started to realize that the traditional path wasn't for her,
Speaker 2: so instead of trying to find a husband, she started
Speaker 2: planning for a new career.
Speaker 1: And decided to go to college and I studied history,
Speaker 1: which was really fun.
Speaker 2: After undergrad she moved to Colorado to pursue a pH
Speaker 2: d in history.
Speaker 1: I was living in this really cute, tiny apartment in
Speaker 1: the older section of Colorado Springs, so cute and just
Speaker 1: loving my life. I felt like I had really kind
Speaker 1: of arrived. I had a job, I was teaching, I
Speaker 1: had friends. I was very happy.
Speaker 2: She loved teaching, especially American history.
Speaker 1: It was so much fun. Keeps us in mind. January
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen, and I decided it would be a
Speaker 1: good time to teach conspiracy culture and elections in United
Speaker 1: States political history.
Speaker 2: By this time, Toro was in her mid thirties. She'd
Speaker 2: tried dating for years, but ultimately decided she didn't need romance.
Speaker 2: Her life was complete without it.
Speaker 1: Dating and romantic relationships were not going to be part
Speaker 1: of my life, and I was sort of settled into
Speaker 1: that in a very comfortable way where it didn't bother me.
Speaker 1: It wasn't something I was seeking out. I wasn't on
Speaker 1: dating apps, I wasn't looking for it, and I certainly
Speaker 1: was not looking for him.
Speaker 2: In that class, she met a student named Erin. Like her,
Speaker 2: he was also in his mid thirties.
Speaker 1: He had a service dog, this really cute English mastiff
Speaker 1: named Osa, and she had the best underbite, and she
Speaker 1: would be in the back of class chomping on a bone.
Speaker 1: So I was always very aware of his presence, partially
Speaker 1: because of her. He would come up after class and
Speaker 1: we would pet the dog and chat a little bit.
Speaker 2: Aarin was a veteran, a former Army medic who'd lost
Speaker 2: his foot in an explosion in Iraq.
Speaker 1: I knew that he had had an amputation to his leg.
Speaker 1: He talked about it fairly frequently. He had a handy
Speaker 1: cat parking past.
Speaker 2: The disability was a big part of his life, but
Speaker 2: it didn't define him, and it certainly didn't hold him back.
Speaker 2: He was finishing his bachelor's degree on his way to
Speaker 2: start nursing school. After each class, he would stay behind
Speaker 2: and chat with Tora.
Speaker 1: He had a very slow way of speaking. There was
Speaker 1: no rush for anything in life. I always had the
Speaker 1: vibe that he was one of those people that would
Speaker 1: talk forever if you let them, and so I would
Speaker 1: start to gather my things, and eventually he started walking
Speaker 1: me to my car because my class was from seven
Speaker 1: to ten pm, and it was very surface level chat
Speaker 1: throughout the whole time. I was his teacher, usually about class,
Speaker 1: usually about some interesting fact. He was like a sponge
Speaker 1: for information.
Speaker 2: Aaron shared that he was Native American talk tall, which
Speaker 2: was a big part of his identity, and she noticed
Speaker 2: that he was always immaculately put together.
Speaker 1: He had kind of long hair that he kept tied
Speaker 1: back in this low knot on the back of his head,
Speaker 1: kind of slicked back low. I hesitate to call amandun
Speaker 1: because I know that was hurt Aaron's feelings, but that's
Speaker 1: what it was. And he had a cowboy Western Bible thought,
Speaker 1: not like costume, but he wore a lot of very
Speaker 1: nice button ups and jeans and leather boots, so that
Speaker 1: was pretty much his uniform. He just had this confident
Speaker 1: air about him that he knew he was smart, he
Speaker 1: knew he was good looking, but he was also kind
Speaker 1: and respectful and interesting and funny and talented. And I
Speaker 1: was a fan very quickly, just of his entire aura.
Speaker 2: Aaron and Tora kept talking every week after class for
Speaker 2: the rest of the semester.
Speaker 1: At some point in those conversations, I brought up the
Speaker 1: fact that I had been a nanny, and a few
Speaker 1: months later he came to me after class one day
Speaker 1: and said, we need to switch where my son is
Speaker 1: going to daycare. What do you know about maybe hiring
Speaker 1: a nanny. So we chatted a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: and that's how I found out he had a child.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that before. He wore a ring, so
Speaker 1: I knew he was married, but I didn't know that
Speaker 1: he had a kid who was a baby at the time,
Speaker 1: maybe four or five months old. So that was sort
Speaker 1: of our first foray into anything personal. Was just that
Speaker 1: bit of advice he was seeking about finding good childcare.
Speaker 2: After the class ended in May, Tora got a Facebook
Speaker 2: friend request. It was from Aaron. He was already Facebook
Speaker 2: friends with other teachers, so she accepted the request.
Speaker 1: Then about a week later, he sent me a message
Speaker 1: about nine to ten o'clock at night. I was already
Speaker 1: in bed, and I thought, well, that's weird, what the heck?
Speaker 1: And so rolled over and checked the message. It was
Speaker 1: from him and he just said, you know something, very casual.
Speaker 1: How are you? And I said, oh, I'm good. The
Speaker 1: whole time thinking like, what does this guy want? Keep
Speaker 1: in mind, I am very single, very happy to be single,
Speaker 1: not looking for anything. I think he's great. Hadn't really
Speaker 1: given any thought. The man's married with a baby, right.
Speaker 2: They chatted for a few minutes before Aaron revealed why
Speaker 2: he had reached out.
Speaker 1: He said, do you know that I'm going through a
Speaker 1: pretty bad divorce And I said, oh no, I had
Speaker 1: no idea. So we chatted a little bit about it.
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, actually she was arrested last night. We
Speaker 1: got into an argument and she got physical and I said,
Speaker 1: that's terrible. I'm so sorry to hear that. And then
Speaker 1: I did the nice thing which I've since learned not
Speaker 1: to do. Which is. I said, is there anything I
Speaker 1: do to help? And he said, well, I might need
Speaker 1: some help with my son.
Speaker 2: Toora read between the lines, Aarin was desperate. He was
Speaker 2: about to start in an intensive two year nursing program,
Speaker 2: and now he would likely have full custody of his
Speaker 2: infant son. She felt for his situation, and the next day,
Speaker 2: while Aaron was on campus, he's swung by Tora's office
Speaker 2: with his baby in tow. He wanted to thank Tora
Speaker 2: for the semester and for offering to help.
Speaker 1: And I sat and listened to him, and I held
Speaker 1: the baby, and oh my gosh, she was the cutest
Speaker 1: little thing. And then as we started wrapped up that conversation,
Speaker 1: it was the end of my day and I said, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if you need anything, let me know. And he said, well, actually,
Speaker 1: I have a paper I have to work on tonight.
Speaker 1: Would you be able to come over and just hang
Speaker 1: out with him while I do my homework for an
Speaker 1: hour or two and then I'll make dinner.
Speaker 2: Almost reflexively, she said yes.
Speaker 1: It was more this like Christian sense of duty that
Speaker 1: I had been trained into. Someone needs help, you show
Speaker 1: up even if it's inconvenient, or you don't really want to.
Speaker 1: And that was my first thought, is I don't really
Speaker 1: want to. I don't really want someone who's going to
Speaker 1: rely on me. I don't really want to be involved
Speaker 1: in someone else's drama. And I have a full time job,
Speaker 1: I'm teaching, I'm busy.
Speaker 2: In addition to that, she did in want errand to
Speaker 2: mistake her kindness for something else.
Speaker 1: I'm worried all the time that men are going to
Speaker 1: take my presence as some sort of an invitation. And
Speaker 1: I was so anti dating and relationships that it was
Speaker 1: just something I never wanted to foster. So I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about all this is I'm driving the twenty minutes to
Speaker 1: his house, like, okay, I'm going to have to think
Speaker 1: of boundaries. I'm going to have to be careful with
Speaker 1: saying yes.
Speaker 2: When she got to his house, her anxiety dissipated. He
Speaker 2: was just erin and that made her feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: He was himself the way he always was with me
Speaker 1: after class, just very warm and friendly and kind, thoughtful.
Speaker 1: So I stayed, had dinner, and then you know, stay
Speaker 1: and we'll have an adult beverage is what he used
Speaker 1: to call them. Stay and we'll have an adult beverage
Speaker 1: after the boy goes to bed, and I didn't really
Speaker 1: have anything going on, so I not so I stayed
Speaker 1: and we had a beer, sat out on the back patio,
Speaker 1: and he told me a little bit more about what
Speaker 1: was going on, and it was pretty bad. There were
Speaker 1: holes in the wall going up the stairs. There was
Speaker 1: a hole in the wall in the dining room. And
Speaker 1: we just talked and talked and talked and talked. He
Speaker 1: shared a little bit of the emotions that came up
Speaker 1: with him. Oh, I feel bad and she is my
Speaker 1: son's mother, but also we can't keep doing this and
Speaker 1: I need to get out of his marriage.
Speaker 2: That night, they ended up talking until one am.
Speaker 1: I have work at eight am, and he said, just
Speaker 1: crash in my guest room. Here's some clean pajamas, here's
Speaker 1: a toothbrush. Just crashed downstairs. And I did, which is
Speaker 1: so out of character for me. I felt a little weird,
Speaker 1: but I was very happy to be around him and
Speaker 1: just wanted to stay there and be helpful. I love
Speaker 1: to be helpful, I love to be needed. So I
Speaker 1: stayed the night, got up in the morning, trucked off
Speaker 1: to work, and then the next day he said, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got a test coming up if you're pretty. Later on,
Speaker 1: I went back over there.
Speaker 2: Soon she was going over to Aaron's every few days
Speaker 2: to help out with his son. It felt like the
Speaker 2: right thing to do.
Speaker 1: I was always sleeping in the guest room. I made
Speaker 1: it very clear to him, I don't let people touch me.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in a romantic relationship. I am just
Speaker 1: here to help. I want to be your friend. I
Speaker 1: want you to feel supported. But that's as far as
Speaker 1: this is going to go. And I just kept telling him, like,
Speaker 1: we're just friends. I don't let people touch me. The
Speaker 1: fact that I give you hugs is kind of exceptional.
Speaker 1: You have to respect that, and he really did.
Speaker 2: After Aaron would put us on to bed, the two
Speaker 2: of them would stay up and have a drink on
Speaker 2: the back patio and just talk about life. It became
Speaker 2: their little ritual.
Speaker 1: He was a very guarded person, so a lot of
Speaker 1: what he would talk about was things that were very
Speaker 1: present right now. If he brought up the past, it
Speaker 1: always felt like kind of an honor that he trusted
Speaker 1: me with that story. And he would point that out
Speaker 1: in a very subtle way of oh, I don't really
Speaker 1: tell people this story, but you're different. We just never
Speaker 1: ran out of things to say.
Speaker 2: After about two months of this, Tora went back home
Speaker 2: to visit her family in California.
Speaker 1: The whole time I'm with my family, I'm bringing him
Speaker 1: up and I'm talking with him on the phone, and
Speaker 1: they're seeing that this person is making me kind of
Speaker 1: giddy and smiley and those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: She had never talked about a friend like this before.
Speaker 2: When she got home from that trip, she went straight
Speaker 2: to Aaron's house.
Speaker 1: He had cleaned the whole house, he had some of
Speaker 1: my favorite music on Baby was in bed. He had,
Speaker 1: you know, a bouquet of flowers and a card welcoming
Speaker 1: me home and thanking me for being his friend. And
Speaker 1: that was my first sort of inkling, like, hmm, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to keep an eye on this because here
Speaker 1: I was at home kind of being giddy about this person.
Speaker 1: Here he is bringing me flowers. So there was this
Speaker 1: undercurrent starting where I'm repeatedly saying him like, we're just friends,
Speaker 1: but we're friends who are snuggling on the couch watching
Speaker 1: a movie, not touching. He just just leaning like my
Speaker 1: head on his shoulder or something so benign, So middle school.
Speaker 1: But it was perfect for me because I wasn't ready
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 2: One night, while they were up late talking on the patio,
Speaker 2: Aaron finally said what they had both been thinking.
Speaker 1: He said something to me like, I think you're in
Speaker 1: love with me, and I said, I think you're in
Speaker 1: love with me. And that was it. We were in
Speaker 1: a relationship after that.
Speaker 2: That day became their anniversary.
Speaker 1: I leaned in and it was the most fulfilling time
Speaker 1: of my whole entire existence. I'm getting emotional just talking
Speaker 1: about because that part is perfect in my mind.
Speaker 2: After writing off Romance, Tora found a man who defied
Speaker 2: all expectations. Aarin was strikingly handsome, determined, respectful, and he
Speaker 2: was an incredible father. Tora moved into his house and
Speaker 2: their relationship deepened. That's when Aarin opened up about his
Speaker 2: traumatic childhood. He said that both of his parents were abusive.
Speaker 1: His family was incredibly complicated, incredibly damaged, incredibly dysfunctional, and
Speaker 1: these were the reasons that he's so guarded. These are
Speaker 1: the reasons that he doesn't have a relationship with them,
Speaker 1: or see them or go to visit them.
Speaker 2: When he was eighteen, he ran away from home and
Speaker 2: joined the military at the time the war in Iraq
Speaker 2: was just beginning. He worked his way up to become
Speaker 2: a Special Forces medic, but his military career ended in tragedy.
Speaker 1: He got hurt in Iraq. They were on a drive
Speaker 1: through a city of some kind and hit an id
Speaker 1: and the humpy in front of them blew up. Theirs didn't,
Speaker 1: but the impact knocked THEIRS off its balance. He got hurt.
Speaker 1: His foot was amputated because of that injury, and he
Speaker 1: was medically retired and then came home.
Speaker 2: Aaron spent weeks in the hospital recovering from his injury,
Speaker 2: and even in this time of crisis, his family turmoil continued.
Speaker 1: His dad showed up to the hospital and tried to
Speaker 1: get medical power of attorney so that he could sell
Speaker 1: Aaron's portion of land that he had been left by
Speaker 1: his grandparents on the Choctaw reservation in Oklahoma. So Aaron
Speaker 1: thought tooth and nail, to get better, to get stronger,
Speaker 1: and kicked his dad out of his life.
Speaker 2: This is one of the reasons he needed Tora's help,
Speaker 2: because he didn't have anyone his family and his ex wife,
Speaker 2: they weren't safe people. Tora realized he'd spent his entire
Speaker 2: life moving from one traumatic situation to another.
Speaker 1: The man was covered in enormous scars. Everything about him screams,
Speaker 1: I have had a hard life. I have had a
Speaker 1: physically hard life. I've been injured, I've had surgeries.
Speaker 2: Even though it had been years since Aaron was injured
Speaker 2: in the war, it was part of his everyday life.
Speaker 1: He walked with a very slight limp and kept that
Speaker 1: leg pretty stiff, but he always kept a stock on
Speaker 1: that foot, and I just figured he wanted to protect it.
Speaker 1: He had a couple of different doctors who were working
Speaker 1: on maybe a better prosthetic because he ended up injuring
Speaker 1: his knee on that same leg, and we thought maybe
Speaker 1: he needed a little bit more support from that prosthetic.
Speaker 2: And that wasn't his only injury from the war. He'd
Speaker 2: also injured his back, his shoulder, and his arm. They
Speaker 2: were constantly getting reinjured, causing Aaron to go to the
Speaker 2: doctor in pain. But despite all this, he still thought
Speaker 2: for full custody, especially because of his childhood. Aaron was
Speaker 2: determined to show up for his son.
Speaker 1: He was an incredible father. He was so attentive and
Speaker 1: so loving and so affectionate and just lit up when
Speaker 1: it came time to go get the boy out of
Speaker 1: bed or read the boy his bedtime story. We called
Speaker 1: him the Boy. I'm going to call him the Boy
Speaker 1: because I'm not going to say his name.
Speaker 2: The boy was only a few months old when Tora
Speaker 2: met him, and she was there for all of his
Speaker 2: big firsts.
Speaker 1: The boy and I were just absolutely connected at the
Speaker 1: hip from day one. When it was time for him
Speaker 1: to start eating solids, I was the one who decided
Speaker 1: how that should go, because I have twenty years childcare
Speaker 1: experience and this is his first child, and I would
Speaker 1: just light up to be around each other.
Speaker 2: The boy took his first steps to Tora. The three
Speaker 2: of them fell into a kind of domestic bliss based
Speaker 2: on a foundation of love for each other and love
Speaker 2: for Aaron's son. After a year together, Tora felt like
Speaker 2: this was her family now. She didn't want to go
Speaker 2: through the formalities of a wedding and marriage, so instead
Speaker 2: they lived as common law spouses. They just started calling
Speaker 2: each other husband and wife. With Aaron in school, Toora
Speaker 2: took on more financial responsibility.
Speaker 1: He's a retired veteran, so he gets some money, but
Speaker 1: you know, life is expensive, so we were always a
Speaker 1: little bit stressed on money. He really liked being a
Speaker 1: provider and making sure that the baby had everything he needed,
Speaker 1: but that usually meant that there was no food in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator for adults. So I started doing things like
Speaker 1: pitching it on groceries, and I took over the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi and the trash bills.
Speaker 2: Aaron had to make a monthly home equity payments his
Speaker 2: ex wife, and the expenses just kept coming.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, it was just never ending. We needed a
Speaker 1: new roof, but we didn't have any money. We needed
Speaker 1: to pay off five thousand dollars in credit cards in
Speaker 1: order to get a refinance on the mortgage, so we
Speaker 1: didn't lose the house.
Speaker 2: Despite the stress of loving paycheck to paycheck, Tora was
Speaker 2: filled with love for her family. Everything was precariously perfectly balanced.
Speaker 2: That was until Aaron got sick. One day, he woke
Speaker 2: up in excruciating pain with a very high fever. Tora
Speaker 2: had to go to work, so Aaron went to see
Speaker 2: their family doctor by himself, and when he got there,
Speaker 2: his fever was so high he needed to go to
Speaker 2: the er right away.
Speaker 1: One of the things that they thought might be going
Speaker 1: on when he was in the er was that he
Speaker 1: was having some kind of an infection from his amputation.
Speaker 2: He called Torah from the hospital and she rushed over,
Speaker 2: but when she got there, he wasn't in a hospital
Speaker 2: room erin was just sitting by the hospital entrance in
Speaker 2: a wheelchair.
Speaker 1: He said that they ended up accusing him of being
Speaker 1: pain med seeking, and he said that was racist, that
Speaker 1: was because he was brown. He literally ripped the ivy
Speaker 1: out of his arm and stormed out of the hospital
Speaker 1: and I kind of yelled at him all the way home,
Speaker 1: like what were you thinking? You obviously need help. Something
Speaker 1: is going on. He had a very high fever. He
Speaker 1: was in a lot of pain. I could see that
Speaker 1: he was miserable and has been a long awful day
Speaker 1: sitting in the are getting to tests done on him
Speaker 1: and all of them coming back negative.
Speaker 2: In addition to the fever, Aaron was in excruciating pain,
Speaker 2: debilitating chronic pain from his old combat injuries. But this
Speaker 2: time his doctors weren't able to figure out what was
Speaker 2: going on, so Torra stepped in to take care of him.
Speaker 1: This whole time, I'm icing his back, I'm getting the
Speaker 1: ice packs for his knee. He had special equipment for
Speaker 1: icing his shoulder and driving him around to doctor's appointments
Speaker 1: because he's in too much pain to drive. I can
Speaker 1: see the pain on his face. I can see him
Speaker 1: changing and drawing into this pain in his life of
Speaker 1: being in chronic pain. He stopped going to the gym,
Speaker 1: and then he stopped working out in the garage, and
Speaker 1: then he stopped moving. Eventually, he just sat around all
Speaker 1: day and the house stopped getting cleaned. And this is
Speaker 1: all because he's in excruciating pain and he's miserable.
Speaker 2: He spent weeks on the couch, unable to function. To
Speaker 2: keep his spirits up, he showed Torah his favorite YouTube videos.
Speaker 1: You mentioned have you ever heard of stolen valor? Soon
Speaker 1: he pulled up YouTube and we spent I would say,
Speaker 1: probably an hour watching YouTube videos of people being exposed
Speaker 1: for stolen valor.
Speaker 2: Stolen valor is the term for people who impersonate military
Speaker 2: service members and veterans, and so.
Speaker 1: There's lots of videos on YouTube of people going up
Speaker 1: to a person wearing a uniform, insay a mall and saying,
Speaker 1: your bars are on the wrong side of your collar,
Speaker 1: your patches upside down, you are not supposed to be
Speaker 1: in this uniform, you know, shaming them for this act
Speaker 1: of stolen valor. And this was something that he was
Speaker 1: very amused by, that these people are getting caught and
Speaker 1: shamed publicly. He loved it. He thought it was so entertaining.
Speaker 2: It was a welcome distraction from his pain, especially considering
Speaker 2: the price he was paying for his military service. She
Speaker 2: understood why he liked the stolen valor videos so much.
Speaker 1: So as he withdraws into this chronic pain, I'm pushing
Speaker 1: harder and harder to make sure that bills are paid,
Speaker 1: to make sure that the house is taking care, to
Speaker 1: make sure the baby has everything he needs, to make
Speaker 1: sure the baby got to go to the park today
Speaker 1: and play outside. I just started picking up more and
Speaker 1: more of the slack as he withdrew into being miserable.
Speaker 1: It was awful to watch the person that you're so
Speaker 1: in love with falling apart in front of me.
Speaker 2: Tora's new life with Aaron was thrown off balance when
Speaker 2: his chronic pain took a sharp turn for the worst.
Speaker 2: Aaron eventually started pain management therapy, and Tora felt.
Speaker 1: Helpless taking oxy cotone. I believe perkiet anyway, he was
Speaker 1: taking one of those, and he was supposed to take
Speaker 1: like one a day, and he was taking like two
Speaker 1: or three because he was in so much pain.
Speaker 2: He said he knew what he was doing. He was
Speaker 2: in nursing school and had years of training as an
Speaker 2: army medic. One night, before he came to bed, he.
Speaker 1: Went took a shower and he came back into the
Speaker 1: room and he had a patch on his shoulder. I said,
Speaker 1: what's that and he said, oh, it's final. It's great.
Speaker 1: I'm not in any pain. It's amazing. And I said,
Speaker 1: but you took your beds today. He said yeah, And
Speaker 1: I said, isn't that how people overdose? And he kind
Speaker 1: of poo pooed me, like, I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm not an idiot. It's fine, I'm going to bed.
Speaker 1: Good night. I've had a bad day. We're not going
Speaker 1: to have a fight about this. I was so uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and I just sat there staring at his back, wanting
Speaker 1: to rip them off, but trusting him at the same time.
Speaker 2: In the morning, Aaron was unresponsive.
Speaker 1: So I grabbed my phone and I called nine to
Speaker 1: one one hysterical, said, my husband's not breathing. He was
Speaker 1: asleep and he's not waking up.
Speaker 2: The nine one one operator instructed her to begin chest
Speaker 2: compressions until the paramedics arrived.
Speaker 1: And the whole time I'm doing chess compersions, I'm like,
Speaker 1: he's cold, he's gone. This man is not alive. The
Speaker 1: whole time, in the background, the boy is just scurreaming
Speaker 1: my name.
Speaker 2: The paramedics arrived and confirmed what she already knew. There
Speaker 2: was no bringing Aaron back. She called friends to come
Speaker 2: over and together they waited for the coroner. Not knowing
Speaker 2: what else to do, she fixated on the boy. He
Speaker 2: was three. Tora tried to distract him, play with him,
Speaker 2: but he wanted to know what was going on.
Speaker 1: He loved as the little Prince, and we started saying,
Speaker 1: you know, Daddy went to hang out in the stars
Speaker 1: with the little Prince in the fox.
Speaker 2: Before the coroner came, Torah and their friends took turns
Speaker 2: saying goodbye.
Speaker 1: We all went up and sat with Aaron, and I
Speaker 1: sat down and I told him I will miss you
Speaker 1: every day for the rest of my life. And then
Speaker 1: he was gone.
Speaker 2: But his death would reveal an avalanche of discoveries. It
Speaker 2: began on that very day, but his ex wife showed
Speaker 2: up at the front door. The police had notified her
Speaker 2: of Aaron's death, and his ex wife called his family,
Speaker 2: his estranged family.
Speaker 1: About ten o'clock and a knock on my door, and
Speaker 1: the boy's mom showed up and insisted on sitting down
Speaker 1: and talking to me. I don't know this person at all,
Speaker 1: other than the reputation that I have been very carefully
Speaker 1: spoonfed for three years, which is that she is awful
Speaker 1: and a horrible person. And she came in like a
Speaker 1: blast of cold air, sat down in my living room
Speaker 1: and said, if you want to be in my son's life,
Speaker 1: there's some things you need to know. First of all,
Speaker 1: Aaron's not chalk, taw Erin's black. And I kind of
Speaker 1: laughed at her. I'm like, okay, lady, like really, we're
Speaker 1: going to do this right now.
Speaker 2: Given the circumstances, this comment seemed absurd and irrelevant, but
Speaker 2: his ex wife insisted that there were truths about Aaron
Speaker 2: that Tora needed to know before she could share more.
Speaker 2: Aaron's biological family arrived. They were surprised to meet Tora.
Speaker 2: They didn't know she existed.
Speaker 1: It was Aaron's mom and Ern's brother who was very
Speaker 1: much a black man. They came in, they sat down
Speaker 1: in my living room, and I told them about me
Speaker 1: and my life with Aaron, how long we've been together.
Speaker 1: And she said he wasn't a good person, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's a really weird thing to say to agree.
Speaker 2: Being widow, Toura had seen pictures of Aaron's mother, father,
Speaker 2: and brother. But these people in her house they weren't
Speaker 2: the same ones she'd seen photos of. Nothing made sense,
Speaker 2: from Aaron's sudden death to the arrival of this family
Speaker 2: she didn't recognize. But they were his family, and now
Speaker 2: they wanted the house back right away.
Speaker 1: I gave it a lot of thought, and I called
Speaker 1: my family on a zoom call and I still cay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make eat the house. I don't own it,
Speaker 1: name's not on it. I don't have any right to it.
Speaker 1: And my friend, the lawyer, said, take what's yours, what
Speaker 1: you bought together, and nothing else.
Speaker 2: Toura packed her car with a few boxes and prepared
Speaker 2: to leave. She'd also be leaving the boys she'd raise
Speaker 2: from infancy to nearly age four, but she knew she
Speaker 2: wasn't part of his biol logical family. It was clear
Speaker 2: that with Aaron gone, Tora just didn't have a place
Speaker 2: in the boy's life.
Speaker 1: And I reached down and I picked him up, and
Speaker 1: I held him really close, and I said, never forget.
Speaker 1: I love you and I'm your ama, and that will
Speaker 1: never changed. And she fell out of the road sure away.
Speaker 1: I never saw him against.
Speaker 2: Before walking out of the house for the last time,
Speaker 2: she decided to take Aaron's laptop with her. Her brother
Speaker 2: came to meet her, and together they drove back to
Speaker 2: their parents' house in California.
Speaker 1: I fell apart. I fell apart. I wasn't getting out
Speaker 1: of bed, I wasn't taking care of myself, I wasn't eating.
Speaker 1: I was a disaster.
Speaker 2: At first, she fixated on his death, how and why
Speaker 2: it happened. She got a copy of his autopsy report.
Speaker 1: When I got his autopsy, it was very much an overdose.
Speaker 1: He had on double the dose and he had taken
Speaker 1: double the dose of oxycodone at the same time to
Speaker 1: go to bed.
Speaker 2: And there was something else on his autopsy that stood out.
Speaker 1: On his autopsy, had said he had a brace on
Speaker 1: his leg, said a brace on his left leg. And
Speaker 1: I thought, well, that's a really weird way to stay prosthetic,
Speaker 1: and that was the last I thought of it.
Speaker 2: The questions that came up right after his death about
Speaker 2: his family, his race, she just didn't have the capacity
Speaker 2: to think about all of that at the time.
Speaker 1: I stayed very much in grieving widow mode for two months,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until after the second month that I
Speaker 1: opened my eyes finally. So I just let a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff slide and thought like, either I'll deal
Speaker 1: with it later, or it's not true, or it's a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: And then after two months I opened his computer. Thing
Speaker 1: changed instantly. So I opened the computer, got right in
Speaker 1: on the first try. I knew the password, and I
Speaker 1: opened his pictures and I started looking through and there
Speaker 1: were some screenshots in there that sent me to his
Speaker 1: text messages, all of his text messages around his computer,
Speaker 1: and immediately, within twenty seconds, I realized that he was
Speaker 1: in a relationship with somebody long distance. I spent an
Speaker 1: hour coming through their text messages, which were graphic and filthy,
Speaker 1: and the worst part of all of that, there were
Speaker 1: two things that were just devastating. The first was that
Speaker 1: the things he said to her while they were having
Speaker 1: this like fantasy relationship is the same stuff he would
Speaker 1: say to me when we were intimate verbadeim and he
Speaker 1: would tell her, well, I have time, and I won't
Speaker 1: have the boy on these dates because I was going
Speaker 1: to be gone for a conference on those dates. So
Speaker 1: that was a lot to realize, like he was manipulating
Speaker 1: her and mean to keep us both on the hook
Speaker 1: back and forth. But then the worst thing I found
Speaker 1: in everything I found was him saying, nobody has ever
Speaker 1: loved me, nobody except for you. And that is the
Speaker 1: biggest lie he ever told, And just the most infuriating, devastating,
Speaker 1: cruel thing he could have said, was that nobody had
Speaker 1: ever loved him. And here I had just spent eight
Speaker 1: weeks bottomed out, devastated, flat lined because this man had
Speaker 1: died and I had given him everything.
Speaker 2: She kept looking through his tech and found more women.
Speaker 1: He was texting four other girls, a couple from tender,
Speaker 1: couple from school. One of my favorites was a girl
Speaker 1: he had been in school with who had been to
Speaker 1: our house and knew me, and they were talking about
Speaker 1: how she could move in and her teenager could live
Speaker 1: in the basement bedroom to three bedroom house, and his
Speaker 1: son lives in one of those bedrooms, so presumably I'm
Speaker 1: not living there as she's moving in. So that was like,
Speaker 1: what the heck is he just going to kick me out?
Speaker 1: Like this is resent.
Speaker 2: Aaron was talking to these women up until the week
Speaker 2: he died, making plans with them and inviting them over.
Speaker 1: And he was saying, well, you know, I don't ever
Speaker 1: have anything going on Tuesday nights, so we could come
Speaker 1: over for dinner, we could watch a movie, but then
Speaker 1: I have to go to bed around ten because I
Speaker 1: was teaching. I was at class seven to ten on Tuesdays,
Speaker 1: so he knew I would stay at work and go
Speaker 1: to So that was like, I guess, kind of opening
Speaker 1: that box of like, okay, so he's been doing stuff
Speaker 1: behind my back. I don't know what. I still don't.
Speaker 1: I don't need to, it doesn't matter. He offered it.
Speaker 2: In the two months since Aaron died, these women had
Speaker 2: been trying to get in touch with him. So Tora
Speaker 2: messaged them back to let them know he was gone.
Speaker 1: The girlfriend messaged me back, what, No, this isn't real.
Speaker 1: What's going on? Who are you really? Did you steal
Speaker 1: his phone? Just total disbelief, which is fair, It is
Speaker 1: completely fair. And I said yeah, no, real, here's the
Speaker 1: pictures of us. We've been together for this amount of time,
Speaker 1: three years, and she said we've been together for longer
Speaker 1: than that. They've been together when he was married to
Speaker 1: he's an other wife.
Speaker 2: Tora kept digging through his laptop and that's when she
Speaker 2: saw the photo that changed everything.
Speaker 1: His computer were all these pictures of his honeymoon, including
Speaker 1: tw you fully attacked feet on the beach, much much
Speaker 1: after he was supposedly injured, and just stared at his feet, like,
Speaker 1: these are his feet. I recognized one of them, I
Speaker 1: seeing one of them without a sock.
Speaker 2: On the entire time they were together, Aaron kept a
Speaker 2: sock and a brace on his prosthetic foot. She had
Speaker 2: never actually seen his amputation site.
Speaker 1: He didn't ever like pop off a prosthetic or anything
Speaker 1: like that in front of me. And he needed to
Speaker 1: shower downstairs because it was really hard for him to
Speaker 1: step into the shower upstairs and it was a tub
Speaker 1: shower combo, so he basically had his own bathroom in
Speaker 1: the downstairs part of the house. So I never saw
Speaker 1: him fully unclothed because he kept a sock on it
Speaker 1: when we were sleeping. So I never questioned it. It
Speaker 1: was his private business, that's his medical history, and there
Speaker 1: was nothing for me to say, well, that seems off.
Speaker 2: She saw the monthly checks coming in from the military,
Speaker 2: she heard the hard prosthetic foot hitting the ground when
Speaker 2: he walked. Plus he was self conscious about his injury.
Speaker 2: She never pressed him further.
Speaker 1: Why would I question that? Who would that make me?
Speaker 2: But after she saw the photo of Aaron's two feet
Speaker 2: in the sand on his honeymoon, Tora called their family doctor,
Speaker 2: the doctor who'd done physical exams on her and Aaron
Speaker 2: in the past year.
Speaker 1: I said, did you ever look at his prosthetic or
Speaker 1: looked at his amputation site? And she said, oh, make
Speaker 1: sure I did? Well, maybe not actually let me think, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't. And I just sat They're flabbergasted, And
Speaker 1: at that point that was what was finally like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this man did not have an amputated foot. I don't
Speaker 1: know what he was wearing. I don't know why he
Speaker 1: was wearing it, but it wasn't a prosthetic foot.
Speaker 2: This shocking revelation caused her to question the whole story
Speaker 2: she'd been told about his military career.
Speaker 1: Found his D two fourteen, which is like his exit
Speaker 1: paperwork from the military, and it didn't add up with
Speaker 1: what he told me on.
Speaker 2: His discharge papers. It said he did join the military
Speaker 2: at eighteen, and he did go to combat once, not
Speaker 2: four times like he'd said. He wasn't a Special Forces
Speaker 2: medic like he'd claimed. She doesn't know why he left
Speaker 2: the Army, but it wasn't because of an injury. Her
Speaker 2: entire understanding of Aaron changed.
Speaker 1: And I went out into the kitchen and I poured
Speaker 1: myself I am not joking it out tequila down to
Speaker 1: that my dad lives in the country. Thinking this, walked
Speaker 1: out way out into the hills and just screamed and
Speaker 1: screamed and screamed and till I lost my voice. The
Speaker 1: person I had just spent three years loving and caring
Speaker 1: for and two months devastated over his loss didn't exist.
Speaker 1: And I came to this point that day where I said,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, he took everything from me,
Speaker 1: and when there was nothing left to take, he took
Speaker 1: himself from me. The person I had loved and been
Speaker 1: in a relationship with disappeared, and with him went three
Speaker 1: years of my life into a black hole.
Speaker 2: Who was Aaron and what was his real life story.
Speaker 1: I was googling everything. I'm a historian. I can research
Speaker 1: like nobody's business. So I'm just googling everything I can
Speaker 1: think of to try to find out who this person is.
Speaker 1: I'm looking on Facebook, I'm looking on Instagram, social media.
Speaker 2: She started reaching out to people who were connected to Aaron.
Speaker 1: You know, now, I'm asking questions, right, what about these people?
Speaker 1: It's not real. Grandparents were not those people. Those people
Speaker 1: didn't exist at all. I mean, it was an entirely
Speaker 1: crafted life. His family is fake, his military experience was
Speaker 1: not his, and I don't know how he kept it
Speaker 1: all straight.
Speaker 2: She found out that the family who showed up at
Speaker 2: Aaron's house, those people she didn't recognize. They were his
Speaker 2: biological family, and they were very different from what Aaron described.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know about his real mom, even though
Speaker 1: she's a real person who lives in a real place.
Speaker 1: I knew about some other version of someone that he
Speaker 1: could completely control that narrative. And I'm never going to
Speaker 1: look her up and say, is this the truth? I
Speaker 1: was the person for him because I chose to trust him,
Speaker 1: and he practiced different things. He tried out different things
Speaker 1: to test me, to see if I would trust him,
Speaker 1: and I did. I always did. He very carefully curated
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 2: When she started looking back on it, she realized that
Speaker 2: Aaron had slowly isolated her from anyone who'd known him
Speaker 2: for more than four years, anyone who would contradict the
Speaker 2: narrative he was telling her.
Speaker 1: When I finally learned everything and could sort of lay
Speaker 1: out a life timeline for him, there is about a
Speaker 1: three to five year capacity on the stories he was
Speaker 1: telling people. And then he would move on in some way.
Speaker 1: He would leave town, he would start a new school program,
Speaker 1: something like that. He'd get married. So he was coming
Speaker 1: to the end of that, and his stories were getting
Speaker 1: a little thin.
Speaker 2: The amputation, the chronic pain from combat wounds, even his
Speaker 2: native American ancestry, it was all a lie. The one
Speaker 2: thing that was real is that he was sick. He
Speaker 2: had an opioid addiction. She sees that clearly now, and
Speaker 2: she sees that as a part of a larger pattern
Speaker 2: of behavior.
Speaker 1: He's an addict, so he's always looking for kind of
Speaker 1: that next better hit of whatever it was. And sometimes
Speaker 1: it was a partner, and sometimes it was becoming a parent,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it was a new degree in school. But
Speaker 1: you know, he's tying things together, trying to make himself
Speaker 1: a life that he would have been happy with. So
Speaker 1: he just kept shifting it into the story that he
Speaker 1: liked a little better, and a little better, a little better,
Speaker 1: and it still didn't satisfy him. He still needed narcotics.
Speaker 1: I feel very strongly that he wanted to stay in
Speaker 1: our life, but wasn't sure how to do that. Do
Speaker 1: I think that he put the patches on and hoped
Speaker 1: he would fall asleep and never wake up. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2: You can probably tell that tour has been through years
Speaker 2: of therapy to understand and heal from what happened to her.
Speaker 1: My doctor had me talk to the therapist in her office,
Speaker 1: and I owe everything to his methods. He gave me terminology,
Speaker 1: and that terminology completely changed how I was going through this.
Speaker 1: He was the first person to say, you have PTSD,
Speaker 1: and I thought, no, no, No, PTSD is for soldiers, which
Speaker 1: is a really common thought that PTSD is for people
Speaker 1: who've been to war through war. He was really good
Speaker 1: about this is what I think might be going on.
Speaker 1: Read it, let's talk about it next time. He was
Speaker 1: providing me information to heal myself.
Speaker 2: It's been four years since Aaron died, and she discovered
Speaker 2: that the man she was building a life with was
Speaker 2: a fraud.
Speaker 1: I'll still be driving down the road and have a
Speaker 1: random memory and go, oh, yeah, that's probably what happened.
Speaker 1: So I'm still less and less and less and less,
Speaker 1: putting things together and making the pieces fit. But I'll
Speaker 1: never know everything, and I'll never have closure, and I
Speaker 1: think that's probably the most important thing. It's like, closure
Speaker 1: isn't necessary for you to move on and heal. It's
Speaker 1: really not help, but it's not necessary.
Speaker 2: Instead, she's tried to find understanding for the real person
Speaker 2: Aaron was. With him gone, She's been able to access
Speaker 2: a kind of empathy, not to excuse his behavior, but
Speaker 2: to make peace with it.
Speaker 1: He was broken. He was broken by a world that
Speaker 1: breaks people and spits them out. I think he grew
Speaker 1: up feeling inadequate. He grew up feeling unloved, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to write himself a better story than that. And
Speaker 1: instead of becoming someone who would be loved, he became
Speaker 1: someone who he thought was lovable and adjusted it for
Speaker 1: each person as he met them.
Speaker 2: Tora moved back to Colorado, where she still teaches history,
Speaker 2: but she says that this time around, she's a different person.
Speaker 2: She's forever changed by the love she had with Aaron
Speaker 2: and the pain he put her through. We end every
Speaker 2: episode with the same question, why did you want to
Speaker 2: tell your story?
Speaker 1: This is an incredible story that sounds like it's made up,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a soap opera, sounds like a drama movie,
Speaker 1: but it's so real and it's not the only one,
Speaker 1: and there's so many stories like this. The more we
Speaker 1: talk about it, the more out in the open we
Speaker 1: bring these people who exist in the shadow and want
Speaker 1: to operate from the shadows. We have to understand them,
Speaker 1: we have to assign terminology to the disorders that caused
Speaker 1: them to act in these ways, and we have to
Speaker 1: support people who've been through it. And my mission through
Speaker 1: all of this became sort of explaining to more and
Speaker 1: more people that you can heal, you will heal. What
Speaker 1: you're experiencing is valid. Something that I say so often
Speaker 1: to this day is my story was true and my
Speaker 1: experiences were valid. My story was true, even if his wasn't.
Speaker 1: Mine was.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 1: I went out into the garage area, the car was gone,
Speaker 1: like where did he go?
Speaker 2: I would like to reach out to the Betrayal team
Speaker 2: or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email us
Speaker 2: at betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way
Speaker 2: to show support is by subscribing to our show on
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Speaker 2: Five star reviews go a long way. A big thank
Speaker 2: you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production
Speaker 2: of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in
Speaker 2: partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by
Speaker 2: Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me
Speaker 2: Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced
Speaker 2: by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlin Golden.
Speaker 2: Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio
Speaker 2: editing and mixing by Matt Delvechio, Additional editing support from
Speaker 2: Nico Aruka. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music library
Speaker 2: provided by Mob Music and for more podcasts from iHeart
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts.