Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey, this is Jake. You're about to listen to episode six,
Speaker 2: our final episode. And just a reminder, this is a
Speaker 2: six part series, so if you haven't heard the earlier episodes,
Speaker 2: I encourage you to go back and listen before you
Speaker 2: hear this one. You'll get a lot more out of it. Also,
Speaker 2: just so you know, you can hear more ad free
Speaker 2: episodes from this season of deep Cover before they're released
Speaker 2: to the public. By signing up for Pushkin Plus. You'll
Speaker 2: also get bonus episodes, full audio books, and binges from
Speaker 2: your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find Pushkin Plus on
Speaker 2: the deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts or at
Speaker 2: pushkin dot fm, slash plus. Okay, let's get into it.
Speaker 3: Previously on deep Cover, I remember sitting on her couch
Speaker 3: and like me like telling her, asking her is this real?
Speaker 3: Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: And she was like no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 5: What immediately occurred to me was that as soon as
Speaker 5: I told her I cancer, even though she was telling
Speaker 5: me it was okay, in the back of her mind
Speaker 5: she was thinking I can take advantage of this.
Speaker 6: Laying in bed in the dark, kind of like pillow talk.
Speaker 4: I asked her one more time, do you have cancer?
Speaker 4: When you lived two separate lives for so long, it
Speaker 4: feels normal, right. I had to be someone else in
Speaker 4: front of other people when I was a child, and
Speaker 4: that was normal.
Speaker 7: As the FEDS built their case against Sarah, they collected
Speaker 7: all kinds of evidence, texts, emails, forged paperwork, witness interviews,
Speaker 7: and even a country ballad, I Kid you not.
Speaker 8: The sun was warm and Edinburgh boots on the ground
Speaker 8: covered in Afghander.
Speaker 2: This song, it's called Let's Go Back. It's all about
Speaker 2: this tragic war hero who's still reliving the pain of
Speaker 2: what happened in Afghanistan.
Speaker 9: Nice smell the song at thes of blood and down
Speaker 9: ever again, how heavy the silence was.
Speaker 7: Let's Go Back.
Speaker 2: The inspiration for this song the hero that it's all about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you guessed it. Sarah Kavanaugh. She's not the one singing.
Speaker 2: That's a country music artist. Sarah collaborated with some songwriters
Speaker 2: down in Ashville to create this song as part of
Speaker 2: a program called Creative Vets.
Speaker 7: This is a coveted program with limited spots. It gives
Speaker 7: veterans an opportunity to work through their feelings and traumas
Speaker 7: through music. So when Sarah faked her way in, she
Speaker 7: took away the chance for some healing for actual veterans.
Speaker 2: The only reason that we even know about this song
Speaker 2: is because of federal investigators. After they searched Sarah's house,
Speaker 2: they began picking through Sarah's entire life. This is when
Speaker 2: everything began to really unravel for her. After the search,
Speaker 2: she admitted to her wife, Nicole that she'd been lying
Speaker 2: about having cancer. Nicole was like, I'm out of here.
Speaker 2: She left the next morning, and eventually she filed for divorce.
Speaker 7: Sarah's story was all over the local news. Sarah says
Speaker 7: she got death threats after position at the VA, and
Speaker 7: she took a string of low wage jobs. None of
Speaker 7: them lasted very long. Once her employers caught wind of
Speaker 7: her story, Sarah says she was fired.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, she was facing a host of criminal charges, including
Speaker 2: wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and fraudulent use of military medals.
Speaker 2: It seemed as though everything was finally catching up to
Speaker 2: Sarah Cavanaugh. So many questions swirled. Would her victims confront her,
Speaker 2: which she expressed remorse, and would she be held accountable.
Speaker 2: I'm Jake Colburn.
Speaker 7: And I'm Jess McHugh and this.
Speaker 1: Is Deep Cover Season six, The Truth About Sarah, Episode six,
Speaker 1: The Defendant. To fight the charges against her, Sarah needed
Speaker 1: a lawyer, and a good one enter Kensley Barrett Esquire,
Speaker 1: a veteran who'd served eleven years in the Coastguard before
Speaker 1: becoming a lawyer. He goes by Ken and one of
Speaker 1: the first things I asked Ken was whether, as a
Speaker 1: veteran he had any misgivings about representing Sarah. Ken said,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were bewildered they took this case.
Speaker 6: My perspective was that I represent people who are accused
Speaker 6: of heinous crimes you name it, murder, sex, assault, everything
Speaker 6: in between.
Speaker 2: Ken says that if he started declining cases due to
Speaker 2: some kind of moral aversion, as he put it, well,
Speaker 2: then what kind of criminal defense lawyer would he be.
Speaker 6: I didn't necessarily have any second thoughts about representing miss Galana,
Speaker 6: and but anything, it is more of intrigue as to
Speaker 6: how she ended up in the situation that she was in.
Speaker 2: When Sarah walked into his office, Ken's first question was
Speaker 2: about the financial impact of her fraud. He wanted to
Speaker 2: know how many victims were involved, and what was the
Speaker 2: dollar amount? Ken says Initially Sarah downplayed the whole thing.
Speaker 2: It would take Ken some time to get a clearer picture,
Speaker 2: but eventually, has he reviewed the evidence, he understood it
Speaker 2: was not a small dollar amount. The prosecution claimed Sarah
Speaker 2: had stolen over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth
Speaker 2: of money and services. Ken needed to know if the
Speaker 2: allegations were true, and after reviewing the evidence, he was
Speaker 2: pretty concerned. The evidence against Sarah, he says, was strong,
Speaker 2: and he worried about the impact that it would have
Speaker 2: on a jury.
Speaker 6: This case was really like hitting a third rail. And
Speaker 6: I guess anything that involves dogs or animals and the.
Speaker 2: Military, simply put, you mess with certain types of people
Speaker 2: or certain types of four legged animals, and you've instantly
Speaker 2: turned the jury against you.
Speaker 6: Those two crimes in particular, always elicit a very strong
Speaker 6: viseral reaction.
Speaker 2: All of this led Ken to believe that a trial
Speaker 2: it'd be a disaster because if she loved she could
Speaker 2: be hit with a sentence of up to twenty four
Speaker 2: years seemed like the best strategy. The only strategy really
Speaker 2: was for Sarah to take a plea.
Speaker 4: It became very clear to me from my lawyer that
Speaker 4: if I wanted to kind of survive this, I was
Speaker 4: going to have to take whatever they were going to give.
Speaker 2: Ken told Sarah that even with a PLEA best case scenario,
Speaker 2: she was looking at a minimum two years in.
Speaker 6: Prison, and Sarah high express concern that she couldn't do
Speaker 6: two years in prison or any jail time. And when
Speaker 6: I tried to convey to her that two years would
Speaker 6: be like a gift, her reaction was kind of like
Speaker 6: why me, Like why should I go to person for
Speaker 6: two years? And I was kind of taken a back.
Speaker 6: That was the one time in our entire time together
Speaker 6: where I was totally white. She doesn't get it.
Speaker 2: We asked Sarah about this, and she agreed with Ken's assessment.
Speaker 4: I didn't get it. No, Like I remember him saying
Speaker 4: to me once, the only thing where she could have
Speaker 4: done is kill puppies, right, And I remember him saying
Speaker 4: that and being like what and not? But now I see, yes,
Speaker 4: I can see the gravity of it and all of that.
Speaker 2: But at the time she didn't see it. And this
Speaker 2: made Ken wonder about Sarah's mindset, because in that moment,
Speaker 2: he says, her thinking seemed quote detached from reality. Ken
Speaker 2: believes that Sarah was motivated by a deeply misguided need
Speaker 2: to find comfort and belonging, because, to him, simple greed
Speaker 2: didn't explain everything.
Speaker 6: Tomorrow, believing that it was not all financially motivated. I
Speaker 6: actually believe that maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 7: Sarah eventually agreed to forego a trial and plead guilty.
Speaker 7: At this point, Ken says they had to pivot now.
Speaker 7: It was all about minimizing jail time. To do this,
Speaker 7: they needed to establish mitigating factors, basically things that might
Speaker 7: help a judge understand why Sarah did what she did
Speaker 7: and then maybe show some mercy. Sarah told Ken that
Speaker 7: during her childhood a man had sexually abused her. This
Speaker 7: trauma had apparently fueled her drinking and depression. To Ken,
Speaker 7: these were mitigating factors that he could present to a judge.
Speaker 6: Problem.
Speaker 7: Of course, with Sarah, her credibility was well pretty much
Speaker 7: non existent at this point, but on this claim she
Speaker 7: had some backup. In official documents submitted to the court,
Speaker 7: Sarah's mother attested that the claims of sexual abuse were true.
Speaker 7: Ken also asked Sarah to gather letters from friends that
Speaker 7: might humanize her or speak to the good things that
Speaker 7: she had done. Sarah provided several such letters to Ken,
Speaker 7: and he submitted them to the court.
Speaker 2: Sarah's sentencing hearing took place at the US District Court
Speaker 2: in Providence, Rhode Island. Picture dark wood paneling and heavy
Speaker 2: green drapes which led in just enough light to glint
Speaker 2: off the polished floors and faded brass handrails. Very nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: You'd half expect to see some old timey gangster played
Speaker 2: by James K. Hagney dragged in in handcuffs.
Speaker 4: The place was packed.
Speaker 7: The gallery was filled with spectators, many of them veterans.
Speaker 7: So many people were in attendance that they actually had
Speaker 7: to set up an overflow room.
Speaker 2: The prosecution had arranged to have several of Sarah's victims
Speaker 2: be there in person so that they could read their
Speaker 2: victim impact statements, including some of the people you've heard
Speaker 2: from in this series. Dave Ainslie, the commander of the VFW,
Speaker 2: Michelle the Jim Buddy who was Sarah's primary shoe tire,
Speaker 2: and of course Justin was there too. Justin told me
Speaker 2: he was nervous about the whole thing. He'd never made
Speaker 2: a statement in court before, and he hadn't actually seen
Speaker 2: Sarah since he'd learned about her lies.
Speaker 5: Honestly, it was kind of disconcerting because when we went
Speaker 5: into the courtroom, when we went to the lobby, she
Speaker 5: came in like behind me. Like I turned around and
Speaker 5: she was there. And that was kind of it was
Speaker 5: almost like getting hit by lightning, kind of like just
Speaker 5: kind of like this fight or flight response.
Speaker 2: Justin slowly made his way into the gallery and here
Speaker 2: he found some company, some other people who were also
Speaker 2: there to speak.
Speaker 5: When I got there and found all these you know,
Speaker 5: started meeting these other people that are making statements, and
Speaker 5: they were telling me what she had done to them.
Speaker 5: And I hate to say it, but it made me
Speaker 5: feel a little better. Though I wasn't the I wasn't
Speaker 5: the only one that she had victimized so many people
Speaker 5: that we were all in this together.
Speaker 7: The prosecutor in this case was a guy named Ron Jendron.
Speaker 7: He's an old hand for thirty years, he's been prosecuting criminals, murderers,
Speaker 7: gang members, white collar embezzlers. He's seen everything. And when
Speaker 7: he walked in, looked around and sized up the crowd,
Speaker 7: he took it as a good sign.
Speaker 10: I was quite frankly exhilarated to see that turn out.
Speaker 10: Because you toil away in your office and you don't
Speaker 10: really have any contact with people during that process. You
Speaker 10: have an idea of how it impacted people, but you
Speaker 10: don't know until you walk into a court room and
Speaker 10: you see those people there.
Speaker 7: In some ways, this case was a perfect fit for
Speaker 7: this courthouse. Providence, Rhode Island. It's actually infamous for its
Speaker 7: history of mobsters, scam artists, and corrupt public officials. Courtrooms
Speaker 7: like this one have long fed themselves on a steady
Speaker 7: diet of fraud cases. All of that being said, Ron says,
Speaker 7: this case involving Sarah it was special.
Speaker 10: I've seen a lot of stuff over thirty years, you know,
Speaker 10: some very despicable and things that are kind of tough
Speaker 10: to wrap your head around, and this ranks right up
Speaker 10: there and the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters.
Speaker 2: For Ron, the argument that Sarah should receive a lighter
Speaker 2: sentence due to her trauma just didn't hold weight.
Speaker 10: The argument that you know, my trauma caused me to
Speaker 10: do this, it doesn't fly with me. I mean, I've
Speaker 10: been doing this for an excess of thirty years, and
Speaker 10: you know trauma and facing adversity or part of the
Speaker 10: human condition. Every defendant comes before a court having had
Speaker 10: some sort of loss or trauma in their life. Every
Speaker 10: human has such things, but not every human goes out
Speaker 10: and commits crime.
Speaker 2: Sarah's fraud was so extensive, but for Ron, the worst
Speaker 2: of it, the gut punch, was what she had done
Speaker 2: to Justin. When the time came, Justin rose to his
Speaker 2: feet and faced the judge. Then he read his victim
Speaker 2: impact statement. When I interviewed Justin, I asked if he'd
Speaker 2: read it to me.
Speaker 5: My name is Justin. I'm a member of VFW Post
Speaker 5: one five to two, the post were Sarah connerway into
Speaker 5: becoming the commander. I'm also the victim referred to in
Speaker 5: the charges as JH. I'm a twenty year Navy veteran.
Speaker 5: I have Stage four long cancer from exposure to the
Speaker 5: burn pits while in combat, and Sarah Kavanall legally accessed
Speaker 5: and copied my medical records for her own personal gain.
Speaker 2: He went on to describe how we believed that Sarah
Speaker 2: had cancer, and how he couldn't stand by and let
Speaker 2: another veteran suffer if he had the power to help.
Speaker 2: So he gave her over five thousand dollars, believing he
Speaker 2: was helping her secure private insurance to get treated at
Speaker 2: Dana Farber, just like he had.
Speaker 5: She knew the suffering my family and I were going through,
Speaker 5: yet she took money from us anyway, money that could
Speaker 5: have been used to pay for my own treatment or
Speaker 5: take care of my family in our time of need.
Speaker 5: I don't know what kind of person can do that
Speaker 5: to someone with a terminal illness. I know that at
Speaker 5: some point my cancer will catch up with me. When
Speaker 5: that happens, I hope my consolation will be that she
Speaker 5: is paying to the maximum extent possible for what she
Speaker 5: did to me, my family, and countless others. The mental
Speaker 5: anguish she has caused me and my family cannot be
Speaker 5: measured in money or time in prison, but I guess
Speaker 5: it will have to do.
Speaker 2: When Justin was done speaking, Sarah's lawyer, Ken Barrett, gathered himself.
Speaker 6: I knew after hearing Justin speak that no matter what
Speaker 6: I said, it wasn't going to make an ounce difference
Speaker 6: to the judge why my client was deservative of mercy.
Speaker 2: Ken told me that it was more than just that,
Speaker 2: he says, it wasn't until this moment that he truly
Speaker 2: understood the nature of Sarah's crime. The feeling was so acute,
Speaker 2: he says, it was almost like an out of body experience.
Speaker 2: That's how he put it, as if for a moment
Speaker 2: he was no longer himself, no longer Sarah's lawyer, he
Speaker 2: was just an observer of another man's pain.
Speaker 7: The judge in this case was a man named John J. McConnell, Junior,
Speaker 7: and when it came time to render his sentence, Judge
Speaker 7: McConnell remarked that he too was deeply moved by Justin's story.
Speaker 7: Addressing Justin directly, he said, you just gave of what
Speaker 7: you had, and to know that that love was destroyed
Speaker 7: and that that love was tained through fraud is the
Speaker 7: worst kind of victimization. It's really awful when somebody betrays
Speaker 7: the human love that you showed. I hope in your
Speaker 7: healing you don't lose that compassion. With those words hanging
Speaker 7: in the air, he delivered his sentence seventy months in prison,
Speaker 7: followed by three years of supervised release. Sarah was also
Speaker 7: ordered to pay restitution totaling over two hundred and eighty
Speaker 7: thousand dollars. She was taken directly from the courtroom into custody.
Speaker 1: It says her one mile away on a perfect but
Speaker 1: every day.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 7: The first time we met Sarah, she was a year
Speaker 7: and a half into her sentence that she was serving
Speaker 7: out at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: That is crazy. So it's two fences of circular barbed wire.
Speaker 7: Yeah, on the bottom, middle.
Speaker 6: And top.
Speaker 2: It doesn't look so obsecurity.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 7: This place, by the way, it has something of a
Speaker 7: reputation as a prison for the stars, kind of like
Speaker 7: Club Fed. This is the facility that inspired the TV
Speaker 7: show Orange is the New Black. This is where Leona Helmsley,
Speaker 7: Lauren Hill, and Real housewife Teresa Judice all serve their time.
Speaker 7: The first time we came here, a prison official walked
Speaker 7: us up this hill to a small building for visitors,
Speaker 7: and then they just left us on our own in
Speaker 7: this windowless room with a crayon marked table. The visiting
Speaker 7: room was for family visits. There was a mural of
Speaker 7: mermaids on one wall and doll parts scattered in the corner.
Speaker 2: On that first visit, we waited for a while until
Speaker 2: finally a woman strolled in on her own. She was
Speaker 2: dressed in a gray sweatshirt and olive green pants. Her
Speaker 2: blonde hair was pulled into a low ponytail. Her entrance
Speaker 2: was so casual I thought maybe she was a prison employee,
Speaker 2: a groundskeeper perhaps, but no, this was Sarah.
Speaker 7: Okay, so yeah, maybe we always just kind of start
Speaker 7: with can you introduce yourself?
Speaker 4: I'm Sarah Kavanaugh. I currently am in prison, so i
Speaker 4: don't have a real job before this. I was a
Speaker 4: social worker for the VA in Providence, and I'm originally
Speaker 4: from Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: We talked for hours. I kept saying, you want to stop,
Speaker 2: you need a break. No, she was tireless, and through
Speaker 2: it all there was really just one question on our minds.
Speaker 7: Why Sarah's version basically is that it all started with
Speaker 7: a big misunderstanding.
Speaker 4: I was invited to an event, and when I walked in,
Speaker 4: I realized it was only veterans. And I realized, right
Speaker 4: then and there, Okay, they think I'm a they think
Speaker 4: I'm a veteran. But I didn't deny it, right. I
Speaker 4: didn't stand up and say, yes, here's where I served
Speaker 4: in all of these things that hadn't started at that point.
Speaker 4: That dramatically yet. But I definitely didn't say, oh no,
Speaker 4: there's a misunderstanding.
Speaker 6: Why not.
Speaker 4: I was enjoying being around them.
Speaker 7: Sarah says that she never intended to become a celebrated
Speaker 7: war hero. But that explanation just doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 7: You said you don't want to be the public face.
Speaker 7: But there are these photos of you, you know, in
Speaker 7: uniform next to the governor.
Speaker 1: How does that happen?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like spirals out of control, right. It just
Speaker 4: became this monster that I had lost control of, and
Speaker 4: I didn't know how to stop it, because I think
Speaker 4: I was always just like, get through the moment, be there,
Speaker 4: be what people want you to be, Get through it,
Speaker 4: you know, take the pictures, move on.
Speaker 7: So surely she wouldn't have done this for six years
Speaker 7: if she was just getting through it? Why do it
Speaker 7: in the first place?
Speaker 4: Did feel good to be noticed, It felt good to
Speaker 4: be the center of attention. It Those aren't really great
Speaker 4: things to say about myself, But I know now that
Speaker 4: those are true, that I did enjoy those moments, not
Speaker 4: just push through them.
Speaker 7: As she tells it, the main benefit of these lies
Speaker 7: was the love and admiration she received and the services
Speaker 7: and money were just a fringe benefit. But just for
Speaker 7: the record, Sarah started defrauding the Wounded Warrior Project in
Speaker 7: twenty sixteen, the same year she joined the VFW. If
Speaker 7: there's one part of this story that seems to really
Speaker 7: weigh on Sarah, it's her relationship with Justin. She brought
Speaker 7: him up again and again.
Speaker 4: Justin is particularly There are like a few people who
Speaker 4: I really feel, who I really feel, were hurt more
Speaker 4: than most, and he is he is He is one
Speaker 4: of those people because he really cared for me. He
Speaker 4: really really cared for me.
Speaker 7: You can hear the emotion in her voice, the sadness.
Speaker 7: It felt really convincing. So we asked, Okay, if that's
Speaker 7: the case, why steal Justin's money and his private medical paperwork.
Speaker 4: I knew he had that diagnosis right, he was a patient.
Speaker 4: I knew his last name. I knew he was enrolled
Speaker 4: in care. There those aren't excuses, that's not right, but
Speaker 4: those are facts that I knew, which made it reliable
Speaker 4: to go to that document.
Speaker 7: You say it like it sounds obvious.
Speaker 4: I think it was just a way to make the
Speaker 4: lie more convincing. It was merely to use the correct language. Right,
Speaker 4: It was so like this impersonal, detached decision that I made.
Speaker 7: We were baffled. She had been crying visibly upset over
Speaker 7: hurting Justin, and now she seemed really cold, annoyed.
Speaker 2: Even sitting there, I still didn't feel like she'd answered
Speaker 2: the question why did she take Justin's money in the
Speaker 2: first place? Over five thousand dollars, there's probably it feels
Speaker 2: like you accepting that money from Justin is almost like
Speaker 2: proof to yourself.
Speaker 1: The money is proof to yourself that he cares about you.
Speaker 4: No. No, him giving me that money was not proof
Speaker 4: that he cared about me. I knew he cared about
Speaker 4: me long before that money.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I was kind of taken aback by this. I
Speaker 2: was searching for a more heartfelt explanation. I was kind
Speaker 2: of offering it up to her, and she was just like, no.
Speaker 2: There are still moments when sarah voice is unsaid about herself,
Speaker 2: almost doubts her own ability to see things clearly. She'll
Speaker 2: say things like, am I seeing that correctly? And at
Speaker 2: one point I just pressed her on this.
Speaker 4: I mean, am I seeing that in a skewed way?
Speaker 2: That's interesting?
Speaker 1: Why do you ask me that.
Speaker 4: Because I think sometimes I'm not. I didn't see what
Speaker 4: I was doing wrong at the time as wrong, and
Speaker 4: I certainly did not have the insight I had now,
Speaker 4: And is my insights still not correct? Is it still
Speaker 4: not accurate?
Speaker 2: It's as though she's seeking reassurance, still wrestling with the
Speaker 2: challenge of seeing things as they truly are, which seems
Speaker 2: credible and sympathetic and also really convenient, because you can't
Speaker 2: fully hold someone accountable if they're still lost in a fog.
Speaker 2: And this raises a really thorny question, one that I've
Speaker 2: been grappling with throughout this story. How do you think
Speaker 2: about someone who's done something really terrible and seems to
Speaker 2: be struggling with their mental health. I bounced around on
Speaker 2: this a lot, and I do feel empathy for Sarah,
Speaker 2: but I also know she's honed the art of weaponizing
Speaker 2: such empathy.
Speaker 7: Even after her deception was revealed, Sarah still drew empathy
Speaker 7: from some people, including Sam, the physical therapist she'd been
Speaker 7: romantically involved with. If you recall, at her sentencing, there
Speaker 7: were letters submitted to the court. One of those came
Speaker 7: from Sam. Sam's letters seemed to reflect a deep belief
Speaker 7: that beneath all the lies, Sarah was still worse worthy
Speaker 7: of sympathy. Honestly, I wasn't expecting this, But what really
Speaker 7: surprised me was that Sam's mother also wrote a letter
Speaker 7: of support. She's in her eighties and is battling ovarian cancer,
Speaker 7: and if you recall, Sarah had used her medical bills
Speaker 7: and passed them off as her own.
Speaker 2: We want to read you one line from that letter quote,
Speaker 2: though Sarah hurt me with her lies, I have forgiven
Speaker 2: her and will continue to support her regardless of her
Speaker 2: legal outcome, for the remainder of my life.
Speaker 7: I still remember the first time I read this letter,
Speaker 7: it struck me that despite it all, Sam's mother seemed
Speaker 7: capable of seeing something deeply kind and redeeming in Sarah.
Speaker 7: This really moved me. But when we visited Sam, we
Speaker 7: learned that there was more to this story. She dropped
Speaker 7: a bomb on us. How did you and your mother
Speaker 7: decide to write these letters in support of Sarah leading
Speaker 7: up to her sentencing?
Speaker 4: Sarah wrote those letters?
Speaker 11: What?
Speaker 6: Yep? Wow?
Speaker 4: Did you know?
Speaker 3: I knew that she wrote one for me, I didn't
Speaker 3: know that she wrote one for my mother.
Speaker 7: Okay, so two bombs really Sam told us that she
Speaker 7: gave Sarah her blessing to basically ghost write her letter.
Speaker 7: She explained that at the time, she was still on
Speaker 7: good terms with Sarah and wanted to help her. It's
Speaker 7: a little hard to imagine and why Sam would agree
Speaker 7: to this, and our producer Amy gently nudged Sam on this.
Speaker 11: I think it's hard if I'm praying for myself in
Speaker 11: your shoes, it's very hard that I don't feel comfortable
Speaker 11: enough with her trying to channel with what I'm feeling
Speaker 11: after there's been so much betrayal.
Speaker 12: Right, Uh, yeah, I don't know. I think I was
Speaker 12: still kind of under her spell. Does that make sense?
Speaker 12: I know that sounds really weird, but that's how I
Speaker 12: feel like like she had this power over me.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to say it. And I'm a
Speaker 3: really really strong person, really strong person mentally, physically, all
Speaker 3: of it. And it's really weird that this happened.
Speaker 2: And yet I see it. It's one thing to spot
Speaker 2: a lie, but untangling yourself from the liar that's something
Speaker 2: else entirely, especially when their web of deception has nodded
Speaker 2: your lives together.
Speaker 7: The part of this that was really shocking was a
Speaker 7: letter from Sam's mom. We got in touch with her
Speaker 7: and she told us no, I didn't send any letter.
Speaker 7: She went on to say at that time, I didn't
Speaker 7: want to think about her. She created havoc. We talked
Speaker 7: to Sarah about all of this. She said she helped
Speaker 7: Sam with her letter, but categorically denied writing one for
Speaker 7: Sam's mother. She was insistent about this. This was a
Speaker 7: tricky bit to report. It was an uncomfortable conversation with Sarah,
Speaker 7: and I told her it's really hard to give her
Speaker 7: the benefit of the doubt here. As far as we
Speaker 7: can tell, at the very moment, Sarah faced culpability. It's sentencing.
Speaker 7: This letter seems like proof that Sarah was still lying,
Speaker 7: and not just lying, but yet again pretending to be
Speaker 7: someone else, this time a woman she victimized, a cancer
Speaker 7: patient whose builds she used, pleading in someone else's voice
Speaker 7: for mercy. According to Sarah, she's in a much better
Speaker 7: place than she was. She's been in therapy and she
Speaker 7: says she's done a lot of reflection.
Speaker 2: In fact, she talked about how she thinks of herself
Speaker 2: compared to some of the other people she's met in prison.
Speaker 2: She says her crime stands out from the others.
Speaker 4: It might be worse, right than like insurance fraud or
Speaker 4: mortgage fraud. Like you don't know those people. They don't
Speaker 4: come to your house and they don't have holidays with
Speaker 4: you or come to your wedding. But these people did
Speaker 4: and they shared their lives with me, and that's I mean,
Speaker 4: that's the worst part.
Speaker 7: Sarah seems to have this awareness that what made her
Speaker 7: crime so heinous to many people was not just the
Speaker 7: dollar amount. It was the intimacy of it all, how
Speaker 7: wrapped up it was in her life and the lives
Speaker 7: of so many other people.
Speaker 4: It's really hard to think about people like Justine or
Speaker 4: Samantha or Nicole, people who are inherently good and who
Speaker 4: our relationship was so significant and so deep, and yet
Speaker 4: like I did this to them.
Speaker 7: When she talks like this, you see the social worker
Speaker 7: side of her, someone capable of deep analysis of herself,
Speaker 7: including her own needs.
Speaker 4: When I think about greed and wanting more for me,
Speaker 4: that feeling was like being important to these people. When
Speaker 4: I reflect now and think of the greed, that was
Speaker 4: what it was to me, And I understand that the
Speaker 4: money is not inconsequential to the people that it came from.
Speaker 4: But the emotional loss is much more significant than the
Speaker 4: financial loss. And I caused that emotional loss. I took
Speaker 4: those things. I wanted them, I yearned from them. I
Speaker 4: wanted more of you know, to feel important, to feel love,
Speaker 4: to feel all those things. And that's greed, right, that's greed.
Speaker 7: As she said these last words, she had tears in
Speaker 7: her eyes. There was no plexiglass separating us from Sarah,
Speaker 7: no handcuffs. We all leaned in close together, Jake and
Speaker 7: I sharing a mic. We were close enough to reach
Speaker 7: out and pass re tissue. And in the silence after
Speaker 7: she said this, the only sounds we heard were her
Speaker 7: sniffling and the clanging radiator. It was in moments like
Speaker 7: this one that I felt acutely aware that Sarah is
Speaker 7: an exceptional storyteller. That she's telling us a story, one
Speaker 7: in which she's more than the worst thing she's ever done.
Speaker 7: And for some people, the more forgiving types, she is
Speaker 7: more than that. But to so many of the people
Speaker 7: she's harmed, she's precisely that, no more and no less.
Speaker 7: And the reasons why she did those things, they're just reasons, words,
Speaker 7: more stories. When Sarah's released she'll be in her mid thirties.
Speaker 7: She still has her whole life in front of her.
Speaker 7: What will that life look like?
Speaker 4: I know I'll never lie on this scale. No, I'll
Speaker 4: never create a fake life or pretend I'm someone I'm not.
Speaker 4: But that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna not ever
Speaker 4: hurt someone again, right like? And I don't want to
Speaker 4: do that anymore.
Speaker 7: Soon after this, a prison guard knocked on the door
Speaker 7: to tell us it was time to go. Sarah had
Speaker 7: to check into her prison block, the one overlooking the mountains.
Speaker 7: The next day, she would win wake up here again
Speaker 7: and watch the sunrise, but we understood that one morning,
Speaker 7: soon she would wake up somewhere else on the outside.
Speaker 7: Once again, Sarah Kavanaugh would start a new life, one
Speaker 7: where she's not Sarah the social worker, not Sarah the
Speaker 7: war hero. She will be something else entirely.
Speaker 2: It's tempting to look at Sarah's story as a unicorn,
Speaker 2: as a freak occurrence involving a very skilled buyer, but
Speaker 2: in fact, her scams revealed a much deeper problem. The
Speaker 2: VIA is bogged down by bureaucracy and limited resources. As
Speaker 2: a result, a network of charities has emerged to jump
Speaker 2: in and help vets right away. They operate on trust,
Speaker 2: good faith, and speed, and Sarah exploited this.
Speaker 7: In comm stories, the victims or marks are often depicted
Speaker 7: as naive, greedy, or just dumb. But this story it
Speaker 7: shows how wrong that is. People fell for Sarah's scam
Speaker 7: because they were open hearted, generous, hopeful, ready to help
Speaker 7: a near stranger. That's a rare and beautiful thing in
Speaker 7: contemporary America. But what are you supposed to do when
Speaker 7: all of your goodwill just blows up in your face.
Speaker 7: Many of the people we spoke with for this story
Speaker 7: expressed a sense of shame that they'd been tricked and
Speaker 7: said they'd be slow to trust strangers again. But they
Speaker 7: all also said they didn't want this whole nasty business
Speaker 7: to change their outlook on life. They didn't want the
Speaker 7: lesson here to be don't trust someone claiming to be
Speaker 7: a VET, or don't help a cancer patient. Dex, one
Speaker 7: of the female Marines who met Sarah and Montana, shared
Speaker 7: her take on this with me.
Speaker 13: I think we struggle with forgiveness because you have to
Speaker 13: eat the cost. There's no closure before you get to
Speaker 13: forgive somebody. If something requires you to forgive, another person.
Speaker 13: You have to you have to fully eat the cost
Speaker 13: whatever wrong they did you. You have to expect no repayment.
Speaker 13: You can't expect it to be made whole. You have
Speaker 13: to be okay with it not being whole. People wrong
Speaker 13: you and you. You know, if you're really going to
Speaker 13: forgive somebody, if you have to be okay with fixing
Speaker 13: it yourself.
Speaker 7: This is a definition of forgiveness I'd never heard before,
Speaker 7: and it's one I really like. The idea being all
Speaker 7: the things that people give to Sarah their money, their time,
Speaker 7: their friendship, their love, those things are lost. Those things
Speaker 7: are gone. Yeah, sure some people may get some money back,
Speaker 7: but the rest of it is not coming back. And
Speaker 7: when Deck says you have to be okay with fixing
Speaker 7: it yourself, I like to think of all the ways
Speaker 7: in which all the people we met in this story
Speaker 7: continue to fix it themselves. Many of our interviewees continue
Speaker 7: to help others, to give of themselves, to make small
Speaker 7: fixes to broken systems. Dex became staff at Pbia Batte Retreats.
Speaker 7: Tom Schumann hasn't stopped running those retreats in Montana. We're
Speaker 7: trying to help people, and Michelle is still teaching boot
Speaker 7: camps at a gym in Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: As for Justin, even though he's retired now and still
Speaker 2: battling cancer, in his spare time, he coaches veterans, trying
Speaker 2: to help them as they look for jobs. When I
Speaker 2: sat down with Justin for our interview this past winter,
Speaker 2: we talked about this, about how he'd found his way
Speaker 2: back to giving of himself.
Speaker 5: I did a lot of introspection and said, well, what
Speaker 5: gives me energy, and that's what gives me energy is
Speaker 5: to help help people, especially fellow veterans, and so you know,
Speaker 5: if I lose that, now, what do I have?
Speaker 2: Justin's words made me think again about the meaning of empathy.
Speaker 2: It's more than just a feeling. It's a mysterious human magic,
Speaker 2: a synergy that crackles between friends and strangers alike. It
Speaker 2: always seems to conjure a flicker of pain and a
Speaker 2: breath and a choice. Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah
Speaker 2: was produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Tally Emlin, additional
Speaker 2: production support by Sonya Gurwood.
Speaker 7: Our show is edited by Karen Chkourgee. Our executive producer
Speaker 7: is Jacob Smith. Mastering by Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 2: Original scoring in our theme were composed by Luis Gara.
Speaker 2: Our show art was designed by Sean Carney, fact checking
Speaker 2: by Anica Robbins.
Speaker 7: Special thanks to Izzie Carter, Daphne Chen, Lucy Sullivan, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 7: Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey, Amy Hagadorn, Owen Miller, Jordan McMillan,
Speaker 7: Sarah Bregaire, Jake Flanagan, Christina Sullivan, Sarah Nix, and Greta Cohen.
Speaker 2: Additional thanks to Jim Rosenberg, Amanda Simmons, Katie Lee, Jonathan Nellermoe,
Speaker 2: Daniel Potter, Darwin Lamb, Sabrina Moore, The Fund for Investigative Journalism,
Speaker 2: Evan Krask, Anna Sproll, Latimer, Travis Dunlap, Charlotte Simms, Hillary Zites,
Speaker 2: Michael Jackie and Joe Gilleran, Jason McQuaid, The mceugh Family, Lyon,
Speaker 2: Marie Heatherington, Matt Brown, Kasha Sebastian Lucian and Milo.
Speaker 7: I'm Jess McHugh, Jake Halpern.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's Jake, and look I got a little favor
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Speaker 2: a lot,