Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake. I hope you enjoyed our season
Speaker 1: The Truth about Sarah. We'll be having a live event
Speaker 1: later this year. It's going to be a conversation between
Speaker 1: me and my co host Jess McHugh, and we want
Speaker 1: to hear from you too. What questions do you have
Speaker 1: for us about this season? Send your questions to deep
Speaker 1: Cover at pushkin dot fm. That's deep Cover All one
Speaker 1: word at pushkin dot fm and stay tuned for more
Speaker 1: details on this event. Just a heads up. In this episode,
Speaker 1: there's a reference to suicidal ideation.
Speaker 2: Previously on deep Cover.
Speaker 3: Veterans look out for each other, and I'm not going
Speaker 3: to sit here and let all of what I thought
Speaker 3: at the time was a fellow veteran die from lack
Speaker 3: of treatment.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh my god, you basically stole money.
Speaker 4: And I said to I, go, you're going to go
Speaker 4: to jail Sarah, And she's like you think.
Speaker 3: Dave told me like, hey, she's fake, she's not a veteran,
Speaker 3: and I was just in shock and trying to just
Speaker 3: like wrap my brain around it.
Speaker 5: I don't think it's ever going to be easy to
Speaker 5: think about the people I hurt, and because these are
Speaker 5: people that even before they knew I heard them right,
Speaker 5: I was hurting them right because I was lying to them.
Speaker 2: If there was one single person who really puts Sarah
Speaker 2: on the map in a very public way, well it'd
Speaker 2: be this woman right here.
Speaker 6: So my name is Kate Manion, and I am a
Speaker 6: co host of a podcast at Barstool Sports called zero
Speaker 6: Blog thirty Barstool Sports where I work. We're a media company,
Speaker 6: and I say this with love. We're probably the lowest
Speaker 6: brow media company. If you're coming to us for your
Speaker 6: exact factoids and opinions on stuff, you might be wrong.
Speaker 1: Kate is one of the very first people we reached
Speaker 1: out to when we started reporting this season. I sent
Speaker 1: her a message using my work email from the university
Speaker 1: where I teach.
Speaker 6: I'm like, oh, a Yale email address. What could my
Speaker 6: mind was blog like, what could this possibly be about?
Speaker 6: For me? It's got to be something to do with
Speaker 6: like butts or something. I because that's more the beat
Speaker 6: I cover asking.
Speaker 4: The deep question.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, that's your beat is like the buttocks beat.
Speaker 2: But way before she got busy on the buttocks beat,
Speaker 2: Kate had served in the military.
Speaker 6: I was a senior in college with a one point
Speaker 6: eight GPA going into winter break just didn't show up
Speaker 6: for any of my finals. The school was like, you're done.
Speaker 6: You got to get out of here. And I was like,
Speaker 6: oh crap, my parents are going to be pissed and
Speaker 6: I needed a plan b I was like a recruiter's dream.
Speaker 6: I walked into the recruiting office and I knew I
Speaker 6: wanted the hardest branch. I was like, I need the
Speaker 6: biggest kick in the ass ever. Walked into the Marine
Speaker 6: Corps was like one ticket to Marine Corps, please all told.
Speaker 2: Kate's served about five years, including two tours in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: After getting out, she found her way into podcasting at
Speaker 2: Barstool Sports. She hosted that show called Zero Blog thirty,
Speaker 2: all about life in the military.
Speaker 6: Basically, we go over what's happening in the military, spill
Speaker 6: the tea, a little bit about some gossip, and try
Speaker 6: to support each other.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to her show, you've heard Kate and
Speaker 1: her co hosts trying to help other veterans. However, they
Speaker 1: can often plugging veteran charities. Kate's a big support of
Speaker 1: a charity called Hunter seven.
Speaker 2: You might remember Sarah's friend Dex had actually submitted Sarah
Speaker 2: to Hunter seven to get help paying her medical bills.
Speaker 2: This Hunter seven connection, this is how Kate first learns
Speaker 2: about Sarah's story.
Speaker 6: I am scrolling through the Hunter seven social media and
Speaker 6: I see them post about this marine veteran, Sarah Cavanaugh.
Speaker 1: Hunter seven has something called an Immediate Needs program. It's
Speaker 1: for veterans who struggle to pay medical bills and have
Speaker 1: illnesses connected to their service. They or someone on their
Speaker 1: behalf can submit a request. And that's what Decks had
Speaker 1: done for Sarah. Submitted her application, and now Hunter seven
Speaker 1: was publicizing Sarah's tragic story online.
Speaker 6: They were sharing her story of her diagnosis, and I
Speaker 6: remember like sobbing as I read her story. I was
Speaker 6: so blown away by it. It was like eight pages
Speaker 6: long on their Instagram story, and she gave them details
Speaker 6: like there was a five centimeter long nodule, it's in
Speaker 6: her femur, her rips, her scapula, thoracic spine, and now
Speaker 6: there's lesions on her brain. Like the medical lingo that
Speaker 6: went into this was so detailed.
Speaker 2: The post also mentioned that Sarah's CT scan showed metallic
Speaker 2: particles in her lungs, something often linked to ied blasts.
Speaker 6: I was like, oh my god, this cancer is related
Speaker 6: directly to her time in service to so many things
Speaker 6: that myself and my friends were exposed to things like this,
Speaker 6: And so I guess you see yourself mirrored in somebody
Speaker 6: and you see them going through a nightmare scenario and
Speaker 6: you're like, holy shit, that could be me. How can
Speaker 6: I help?
Speaker 1: Kate does everything she can to spread the word. She
Speaker 1: donates herself, but she also posts on her social media
Speaker 1: account trying to rally as many people as she can
Speaker 1: to help Sarah. And then at some point she gets
Speaker 1: a call from the woman who's the director of Hunter seven.
Speaker 6: When she reached out to me, it was like, I
Speaker 6: have some crazy news for you.
Speaker 2: That's when Kate learned that all of those details about
Speaker 2: Sarah's medical condition, like the five centimeter long nodule in
Speaker 2: her lungs, appeared to be made up or stolen, and
Speaker 2: that Sarah wasn't who she claimed to be.
Speaker 6: I remember the heartbreak I felt, and I just like
Speaker 6: my heart dropped into my butt. It was like I
Speaker 6: couldn't to put it eloquently, I could not believe it,
Speaker 6: and I didn't want it to be true.
Speaker 1: Shortly after this, Kate goes public on her podcast. Here's
Speaker 1: a clip from that episode where she's talking to her
Speaker 1: co hosts about what happened.
Speaker 6: The feeling was so gross, Like I didn't donate a
Speaker 6: ton of money, but I donated it was like a
Speaker 6: hundred bucks. But I like my emotions, my time, like
Speaker 6: hosting all this stuff. I was genuinely moved by her story.
Speaker 2: Kate goes on like this, venting about the mess Sarah's caused.
Speaker 2: She says that this whole scandal will only scare people
Speaker 2: away from donating to veterans' charities, leaving less help for
Speaker 2: those who really need it. She told her co hosts
Speaker 2: this would just make it way harder for real women
Speaker 2: combat vets to get the respect they deserve, which really
Speaker 2: pissed Kate off.
Speaker 6: Holy shit, this story is. Yeah, I'm sure more is
Speaker 6: going to come out about it. I'm interested to see.
Speaker 6: But anyway, ncis, FBI, via like all these different organizations
Speaker 6: now are coming after her.
Speaker 1: Kate was more right than she knew. Law enforcement officials
Speaker 1: had already started investigating Sarah Kavanaugh on the down low,
Speaker 1: trying to keep it quiet, and now Kate's podcast would
Speaker 1: put pressure on investigators to go into overdrive. Over many years,
Speaker 1: Sarah had built a house of lies. The people she
Speaker 1: deceived lived in separate, shuttered rooms, hidden from one another.
Speaker 1: But now the foundation was cracking, as were the walls,
Speaker 1: and the truth was seeping in, piercing in its brightness,
Speaker 1: as her carefully built world came undone. I'm Jay Colburn
Speaker 1: and I'm Jess McHugh And this is Deep Cover Season six,
Speaker 1: The Truth About Sarah, Episode four, The Suspect.
Speaker 2: We have to talk about this Instagram post for a second,
Speaker 2: the one that Hunter seven shared about Sarah Kavanaugh. This
Speaker 2: is the post that Kate saw, the one that brought
Speaker 2: her to tears. This post had all the details of
Speaker 2: Sarah's supposed injuries and a photo of her in her uniform. Well,
Speaker 2: a lot of people saw and shared this post, and
Speaker 2: as it made the rounds, people started commenting saying something
Speaker 2: looked off about her uniform. For one thing, she was
Speaker 2: wearing a of regulation earrings, and also, upon closer inspection,
Speaker 2: it looked like her eagle globe and anchor insignia were backwards.
Speaker 2: The folks at hundred seven started getting suspicious, so they
Speaker 2: called the VA to verify Sarah's service record. Folks at
Speaker 2: the VA do a quick check in their database. Sarah's
Speaker 2: not in it, at least not as a veteran, and
Speaker 2: this hot mess. It all lands on the desk of
Speaker 2: a guy named Tom Donnelly.
Speaker 7: The chief of VA Police in Rhode Island, called me
Speaker 7: and said, Hey, you know, I think we might have
Speaker 7: a problem with an employee.
Speaker 2: That's Donnelly. He's an investigator with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Basically,
Speaker 2: he's an in house detective for the VA's Office of
Speaker 2: Inspector General looking into fraud and other sketchy business, which
Speaker 2: is why he was the one to get this call
Speaker 2: about Sarah Kavanaugh, a VIA social worker who had apparently
Speaker 2: gone rogue.
Speaker 1: Now Donnelly is looking at more than just a scammer.
Speaker 1: He's got someone working the system from the inside, like
Speaker 1: a mole in his own ranks. So he opens an investigation,
Speaker 1: and he's just a few days into it when Kate's
Speaker 1: podcast comes out on Barstool.
Speaker 7: So our concern is that we don't know the extent
Speaker 7: of it yet, like we don't know all the evidence
Speaker 7: that there is, which opens the avenue for her to
Speaker 7: potentially destroy evidence or covert tracks a little bit, or
Speaker 7: try to talk to witnesses and get them to not cooperate.
Speaker 1: But here is the good news for Donnelley. Right from
Speaker 1: the start, he had some incriminating evidence, an important set
Speaker 1: of documents. These documents, they all came from Hunter seven
Speaker 1: to charity. They were actually documents that Sarah herself had
Speaker 1: submitted to bolster her lies to support her false claims
Speaker 1: of being a veteran and a cancer patient. These records
Speaker 1: would help Donnelly do two really important things. First, they'd
Speaker 1: help him get a warrant to search Sarah's house. Second,
Speaker 1: like a trail of breadcrumbs, they'd lead him right to
Speaker 1: the doorstep of several people Sarah had deceived, and this,
Speaker 1: in turn would spark some pretty tough conversations. We'll get
Speaker 1: to the search warrant in a bit, but first I
Speaker 1: want to tell you about those conversations. Donnelly contacted Justin,
Speaker 1: Sarah's friend from the VFW. He was the one battling
Speaker 1: stage four lung cancer. At this point. Justin had heard
Speaker 1: the rumors about Sarah being a fraud, but there was
Speaker 1: still so much that he didn't know. Donnelly arranged for
Speaker 1: them to meet at the naval base in Newport, Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: Justin recalls that they gathered in an old conference room,
Speaker 1: a forgotten rundown, beat up place. Old furniture was stacked haphazardly,
Speaker 1: like it had been cleared out for some event and
Speaker 1: never put back. Looking around the room, Justin saw agents
Speaker 1: from a number of federal.
Speaker 3: Agencies NCIS, I think, FBI, and VA investigators all all.
Speaker 3: I sat down with them all at the same time.
Speaker 3: They were extremely sympathetic. First of all, I mean they
Speaker 3: were visibly upset, but they just kind of laid it
Speaker 3: out and they said, look, you know, like this is
Speaker 3: what we think she did.
Speaker 1: They explained how they'd put together the pieces. One of
Speaker 1: Donnelly's colleagues had noticed something interesting about Sarah's medical records
Speaker 1: from Hunter seven.
Speaker 7: There's this rare procedure in the medical notes. It's got
Speaker 7: a date on it. The providence via only did that
Speaker 7: procedure to one person on that day.
Speaker 1: And that person was Justin. When investigators compared the two
Speaker 1: sets of medical records, Sarah's and Justin's looked pretty much identical.
Speaker 1: Justin's doctor had even made a few typos, and those
Speaker 1: exact same typos were in Sarah's records. It was a
Speaker 1: cut and pace job.
Speaker 3: What immediately occurred to me was that as soon as
Speaker 3: I told her I'd cancer, even though she was telling
Speaker 3: me it was okay, in the back of her mind
Speaker 3: she was thinking, I can take advantage of this.
Speaker 1: You might recall from our last episode, Justin had given
Speaker 1: Sarah money, supposedly so she could pay for her own
Speaker 1: cancer treatment. Sarah had taken this money under false pretenses,
Speaker 1: but as Donnelly had discovered, she'd also done something far
Speaker 1: more devious. Using her privileges as a social worker at
Speaker 1: the Providence VA, Sarah had accessed Justin's medical records. She
Speaker 1: had stolen them, doctored them, and passed them off as
Speaker 1: her own.
Speaker 3: I just couldn't brop my head around what kind of
Speaker 3: person would do that to another person that was especially
Speaker 3: that was you knew was sick, that was getting treatment,
Speaker 3: that was, you know, dying, and you're going to take
Speaker 3: advantage of that person with no no reservations whatsoever. I
Speaker 3: thought about it for a very long time after that,
Speaker 3: just like it just I couldn't stop thinking about how
Speaker 3: how much I was violated by that.
Speaker 1: Justin laid out his side of the story for investigators
Speaker 1: how he'd given Sarah thousands of dollars for her treatment.
Speaker 1: Justin was able to provide them with very specific evidence, dates, amounts,
Speaker 1: and transaction records for every electronic transfer, all of which
Speaker 1: would be helpful to Donnelly's investigation.
Speaker 2: One of the other documents that Donnelly had gotten from
Speaker 2: Hunter seven was a set of medical bills. These bills
Speaker 2: were from Dana Farber, a cancer hospital in Boston. The
Speaker 2: bills looked real, so if they weren't Sarah's, whose were they.
Speaker 2: Donnelly and his colleagues slowly pieced together where the bills
Speaker 2: had come from, and this trail of clues would eventually
Speaker 2: lead them to a physical therapy clinic outside of Providence,
Speaker 2: and that clinic it belonged to Sam. Sam was Sarah's
Speaker 2: physical therapist. They become friends, and then much more than that.
Speaker 2: Sarah had become a fixture in Sam's life. She'd even
Speaker 2: helped out when Sam's mom was ill. Donnelly, along with
Speaker 2: a few other federal agents, just showed up at Sam's
Speaker 2: PT clinic one day with a subpoena and some questions.
Speaker 4: And I was like, well, where do you want to
Speaker 4: have this meeting. I will not have it in my
Speaker 4: practice because I had no private room. I said, I
Speaker 4: will not have it at my home, and they'll go
Speaker 4: what about a cafe? I said, no, I was not
Speaker 4: going to cafe. I was like, everyone knows me in
Speaker 4: this town. Absolutely not. So we basically had the interview
Speaker 4: in their car. I was sitting in the front turn
Speaker 4: like this the entire time, and there was another woman
Speaker 4: who was in the driver's seat saying thank herring looking
Speaker 4: at me the entire time.
Speaker 2: The fence started talking about Sam's mom asked if she
Speaker 2: was in treatment for cancer and I.
Speaker 4: Said yeah, And I went into this whole story that
Speaker 4: she was going to Rhode Island, wasn't getting really the
Speaker 4: care that she needed, so she went to Dana Farber.
Speaker 2: So there's Sam in the car in the parking lot
Speaker 2: at her work, cramped between a bunch of federal agents,
Speaker 2: wondering what all this could possibly have to do with
Speaker 2: her mom. That's when investigators asked her.
Speaker 4: Do you realize that Sarah used a bill, one of
Speaker 4: your mother's bills from Dana Farber? And I said no,
Speaker 4: I didn't realize that. I didn't know that. And I said,
Speaker 4: that's really disappointing, and that's when I got upset and
Speaker 4: I started crying.
Speaker 2: Just a few weeks earlier, Sam had learned that Sarah
Speaker 2: had been lying to her for years about nearly everything.
Speaker 2: But this was different. These documents from Hunter seven. They
Speaker 2: would be key to Donnelly's investigation because even before he
Speaker 2: sat down with Justin and Sam, they gave him ample
Speaker 2: evidence of a crime. Those documents would allow him to
Speaker 2: do something really crucial yet, a warrant search Sarah's house.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Early on the morning of February
Speaker 2: third two, search warrant in hand, Donnelly set out for
Speaker 2: Sarah's house.
Speaker 7: So we got the got the paperwork signed, figure out
Speaker 7: how we're going to approach the house. We all pile
Speaker 7: into our cars and we drive down Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: Donnelly had a couple of his own agents with him,
Speaker 2: a couple of agents from the FBI.
Speaker 7: So we get there and you know, it's snowing, and
Speaker 7: everyone like surrounds the house. Everyone's got their tactical plate
Speaker 7: carrier vests on. Everyone's all dressed up for the occasion,
Speaker 7: and we form, you know, a stack of agents to
Speaker 7: go up and knock on the door. So requirement of
Speaker 7: a normal search warran is that you knock, you announce,
Speaker 7: you know, police search warrant, and then you give a
Speaker 7: reasonable amount of time for somebody inside to answer the door.
Speaker 7: So knocking on the door loudly announcing nobody's coming.
Speaker 1: So this crowd of age is standing there in Sarah's
Speaker 1: front yard debating whether they should break in the door.
Speaker 1: And it's snowing, freezing cold. So what does Donnelly do?
Speaker 1: Turns out he's got Sarah's cell phone number. He's never
Speaker 1: actually spoken to her, but he figures, hey, maybe before
Speaker 1: I bust this door down, I should, you know, give
Speaker 1: her a ring very considerate. You never see that in
Speaker 1: the police movies, right, detective gives suspect a courtesy call,
Speaker 1: but that's what he does. He calls her and she
Speaker 1: picks up, and.
Speaker 7: I said like, hey, we are at your house. It's
Speaker 7: the police. Are you in the house. We need you
Speaker 7: to come to the door, and she says no, I
Speaker 7: went out.
Speaker 2: Sarah had slipped out of the house without anyone knowing.
Speaker 2: Donald is not quite sure how.
Speaker 7: Oh she ducked surrounds and it wasn't that she was
Speaker 7: trying to avoid survealans she was trying to avoid the
Speaker 7: new but it had the side effect of avoiding the surveillance.
Speaker 7: I said, all right, you said you're fifteen minutes away,
Speaker 7: You've got exactly fifteen minutes to come back, and if
Speaker 7: you don't come back, then at that point we're going
Speaker 7: to have to force away into your house.
Speaker 1: While they're all waiting on Sarah, an agent notices there's
Speaker 1: a back window that's unlocked, so he shimmeys through it
Speaker 1: and opens the front door for the rest of the agents.
Speaker 1: By the time Sarah pulled up, the search was in
Speaker 1: full swing. The whole street was blocked off.
Speaker 7: There was a dozen cars cars, there's agents everywhere, evidence bags, evidence.
Speaker 1: Tapes, and Donnelly laid eyes on Sarah for the first time.
Speaker 7: So she pulled up. Maybe bewildered is the word I
Speaker 7: would use, just because there's all these people milling about.
Speaker 7: The FBI people are wearing their play carriers that say
Speaker 7: FBI and big letters on them.
Speaker 2: So Donnally tells her, look, you can't be in the
Speaker 2: house while we search. You can go wait at a
Speaker 2: friend's or get a coffee at Duncan, but you can't
Speaker 2: go in the house. Sarah decides to wait outside all right.
Speaker 7: Thursday, February third, three, twenty three pm.
Speaker 3: Video walk through as we leave the residence.
Speaker 2: We got footage of the search through a Freedom of
Speaker 2: Information Act request.
Speaker 1: This video was taken by an officer as he walked
Speaker 1: through the house. They were looking for Sarah's work phone
Speaker 1: and any computers, checks from charities that uniform that she'd
Speaker 1: been photographed in, any evidence that would corroborate their case. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Sarah was watching agents come in and out of the house.
Speaker 1: Sarah didn't say much. She just looked dazed. In Donnelly's words.
Speaker 7: Maybe like if you've ever seen someone immediately like after
Speaker 7: a car accident, where they're still trying to process exactly
Speaker 7: what just happened kind of thing. Because it was a
Speaker 7: big turnout.
Speaker 1: According to Sarah, by the time the FEDS searched her house,
Speaker 1: she was already in rough shape, mentally exhausted by the
Speaker 1: stress of all her lies.
Speaker 5: I lost a ton of weight, I began to drink
Speaker 5: extremely heavily, and I kind of lost interest in most
Speaker 5: other things. I began to just kind of go through
Speaker 5: the motions of these lies. Okay, just keep going, something's
Speaker 5: going to happen. It will end.
Speaker 1: For Sarah. The day of the search was kind of surreal.
Speaker 5: When they came to search my house. I had been
Speaker 5: like taking some pills to sleep or calm down, because
Speaker 5: I would get up during the night and I would
Speaker 5: walk around the house and check the windows. And this
Speaker 5: wasn't because I thought they were coming to search my
Speaker 5: house or anything. I had no idea about the investigation,
Speaker 5: but it was just this sense of like knowing I
Speaker 5: was lying in the paranoia that comes from that.
Speaker 1: Standing in the snow covered driveway, Donally tried to talk
Speaker 1: to Sarah.
Speaker 7: I had just said, Hey, why are we here today,
Speaker 7: and she had started to tell me about who she
Speaker 7: borrowed the Marine Corps uniform from that she had worn.
Speaker 7: And then I think at that point it really sink
Speaker 7: in what was happening, because there's agents coming in and
Speaker 7: out of the house. And then she said she stopped
Speaker 7: her story about the uniform and she just said, I'm
Speaker 7: not I'm not going to talk to you.
Speaker 5: I was so afraid, right, I was so so afraid.
Speaker 5: Not because I thought it was illegal, not because I'm
Speaker 5: thinking I'm going to go to prison, but because I'm like,
Speaker 5: they are not going to be my friends. Anymore. I'm
Speaker 5: not going to have these people in my life.
Speaker 1: The team of agents went through the house methodically placing
Speaker 1: items in evidence bags.
Speaker 7: There were VFW like donation bins in the basement, you know,
Speaker 7: like the five gallon buckets that they put out like
Speaker 7: when you're going to the grocery store or something. There
Speaker 7: was no money in them.
Speaker 1: They also found her VFW membership card and VFW polos
Speaker 1: mail from the Wounded Warrior Project. And inside a closet
Speaker 1: in her home office, Donnalley found something else, something very curious,
Speaker 1: a green colored notebook.
Speaker 7: I used to work in counterintelligence and investigations, and she
Speaker 7: had what, in my opinion, I would call a backstoped
Speaker 7: identity expand what.
Speaker 1: You mean by that.
Speaker 7: Anyone who was ever in the military or worked for
Speaker 7: the government knows the green record book. It's a notebook,
Speaker 7: it's ruled paper inside, it's like this nineteen fifties seafoam green.
Speaker 7: The military has probably used them since World War Two.
Speaker 7: She had one of those, and she wrote a very
Speaker 7: detailed fake war diary.
Speaker 1: That's right. He'd found what looked like a war diary. Sarah,
Speaker 1: by the way, doesn't remember this at all, but Donnelly
Speaker 1: told us it included detailed entries from Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: And Donnelly found other clues for the character. Sarah had
Speaker 2: been playing other props for her double life. Her backstopped
Speaker 2: identity Sarah the Marine, Sarah the Hero like a handmade
Speaker 2: vase with the Marine Corps insignia. He later discovered Sarah
Speaker 2: had made it as part of an art therapy trip
Speaker 2: for veterans. As Sarah waited, her mind went to dark places.
Speaker 5: I had to sit outside on the of the car
Speaker 5: and the garage, and there were two officers standing on
Speaker 5: either side of me, and they were I think, playing
Speaker 5: good cops, so to speak, right, And there was this
Speaker 5: man and he was like an it guy, and he
Speaker 5: was thin, he had glasses, kind of like a boyish haircut,
Speaker 5: and he wasn't like as intense as the other agents.
Speaker 5: And he had a gun on his holster and I
Speaker 5: was like, I I could probably get to him fast
Speaker 5: enough that the other man on the other side will
Speaker 5: shoot me. And I remember, like, even when they were
Speaker 5: in my house, that thought consuming me, not even thinking
Speaker 5: about like that they're searching my house and that this
Speaker 5: is now a criminal investigation, right, just thinking about like
Speaker 5: letting it end, letting it be over.
Speaker 2: Donnally remembers this moment really clearly too.
Speaker 7: She had said, what would happen to me if I
Speaker 7: tried to take your gun from you right now? To
Speaker 7: the agents that were kind of standing there like watching her,
Speaker 7: and they're like, well, like, why would you do that?
Speaker 1: And so at that.
Speaker 7: Point we were concerned. So we had the local police
Speaker 7: respond out and said, look, she's saying things that I
Speaker 7: think could be construed as self harm.
Speaker 2: Sarah was taken to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Donnelly dove into the mountain of evidence. The scope of
Speaker 2: Sarah Kavanaugh's fraud was beyond what he could have imagined.
Speaker 2: Over six years, Sarah defrauded ten different veterans' charities ten
Speaker 2: She also stole federal benefits, accepted donations from GoFundMe, and
Speaker 2: exploited five individuals, including Justin her Jim Buddy, Michelle, Sam,
Speaker 2: and Sam's mother. All told she stole over a quarter
Speaker 2: of a million dollars of cash and services. And that's
Speaker 2: just the wire fraud total, which doesn't even count the
Speaker 2: donations she took from friends in cash over the years.
Speaker 2: All of this while working as a licensed social worker
Speaker 2: at the VA. The FEDS would spend the next few
Speaker 2: months building their case against Sarah Kavanaugh.
Speaker 1: Later that same day, after Sarah's psychiatric evaluation, she was
Speaker 1: cleared and released. Her wife, Nicole, was waiting for her
Speaker 1: at the hospital and drove her home. It's easy to
Speaker 1: forget that Sarah had a wife. This story is so twist,
Speaker 1: did and complicated, but she did. They shared a home
Speaker 1: and a life together and her wife. She thought she
Speaker 1: knew who Sarah was until that day when the police
Speaker 1: searched their house for Nicole. That was the moment of truth.
Speaker 1: So that night, when they finally returned home, Nicole had
Speaker 1: questions and there would be a reckoning next time. On
Speaker 1: Deep Cover.
Speaker 5: Picked up the phone just to check my messages, and
Speaker 5: she said, you need to come home. The FBI is here.
Speaker 5: That's when I knew it was that fast. I had
Speaker 5: nothing until I had that. When you lived two separate
Speaker 5: lives for so long, it feels normal, right. I had
Speaker 5: to be someone else in front of other people when
Speaker 5: I was young and when I was a child, and
Speaker 5: that was normal.
Speaker 1: Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah was produced by Amy
Speaker 1: Gaines McQuaid and Tally Emlin. Additional production support by Sonya Gerwood.
Speaker 2: Our show is edited by Karen Chakerjee. Our executive producer
Speaker 2: is Jacob Smith, mastering by Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 1: Original scoring in our theme were composed by Luis Gara.
Speaker 1: Our show art was designed by Sean Carney, fact checking
Speaker 1: by Anica Robbins.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Busy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake Flanagan,
Speaker 2: and Greta Cone. Additional thanks to Vicky Merrick.
Speaker 1: I'm Jess McHugh and I'm Jake Halpern. Hey, it's Jake,
Speaker 1: and look, I got a little favor to ask. If
Speaker 1: you like the show, please just take one minute and
Speaker 1: review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Honestly, it really
Speaker 1: helps new listeners find the show, which in turn helps
Speaker 1: us continue making these stories for you. Thanks a lot