Speaker 1: Liz Hiccox lives in Newport, Rhode Island, in a postcard
Speaker 1: perfect New England cottage by the water, with her husband Brian,
Speaker 1: and a black lab named Salty. She's an athlete. On
Speaker 1: any given weekend, you'll probably find her on her bike
Speaker 1: training for her next Iron Man. She's been a runner
Speaker 1: for decades, finishing the New York City Marathon a dozen times,
Speaker 1: but she didn't get on a racing bike until two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen, after she said she'd do this three
Speaker 1: day charity ride for breast cancer survivors. I had a
Speaker 1: very good friend who was a young survivor. She was
Speaker 1: a mom of about thirty seven, two young kids, who
Speaker 1: was diagnosed in her early thirties. And she would come
Speaker 1: to me and asked for a donation. Every year she
Speaker 1: would do this ride and I would write a check.
Speaker 1: And then one year her friend couldn't participate, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: when's the ride And she said some thirty days as well,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. And she said you have a bike,
Speaker 1: and I said no. She borrowed her friends, crashed at
Speaker 1: the first stop side and I came to I had
Speaker 1: no idea how to shift or anything. I remember riding
Speaker 1: to a hill and found some guy in stretchy shorts
Speaker 1: and said, could you please help me figure out to
Speaker 1: shift this? I don't know how to do this. So
Speaker 1: I went out and trained every day for thirty days.
Speaker 1: She was hooked on both the bike and the organization.
Speaker 1: She met women who said making the ride was the
Speaker 1: goal that had gotten them through chemo. She saw how
Speaker 1: they drew strength from this shared accomplishment, even if they
Speaker 1: could only make it a few miles. The whole experience
Speaker 1: was honestly life changing. And I said to Brian and said,
Speaker 1: you've got to do this. This was a really important event.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't feel more strongly that you know, you
Speaker 1: need to take part in it. And then the next
Speaker 1: year he did. In late September two thousen, a streak
Speaker 1: of tendonitis sidelined her for the Breast Cancer Ride, so
Speaker 1: she volunteered to help at the rest stops, where women
Speaker 1: would take breaks for water and snacks. Everyone's patting each
Speaker 1: on their backs, saying you got this. This is incredible.
Speaker 1: People are singing and cheering, you know, saying, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: you know that was so hard or that was so easy.
Speaker 1: As the day was winding down, another cyclist came up
Speaker 1: to Liz and asked her a favor. There's a young
Speaker 1: woman that's coming in and she's at the end of
Speaker 1: the pack and she's missed all of the photographers and
Speaker 1: it's her first ride, and we'd really like to get
Speaker 1: her picture. Would you mind snapping a picture for her?
Speaker 1: Can I remember? She said? She has a pink sock
Speaker 1: and she has a green sock on. The woman said
Speaker 1: the writer's name was Sarah, and she had recently been
Speaker 1: diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and that she hadn't
Speaker 1: even told her husband yet. Her husband was away overseas.
Speaker 1: He was a pilot, and she had gotten the news
Speaker 1: while he was away on this particular trip. During this event,
Speaker 1: she had gotten the news that her cancer had progressed,
Speaker 1: and she just didn't know how she was going to
Speaker 1: tell him. Liz felt for Sarah. About twenty minutes later,
Speaker 1: a woman with mis match box came riding by. She
Speaker 1: had flown past me and gone into the rest stop,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh my gosh, you must be Sarah.
Speaker 1: I said, can you need me a favor? I said,
Speaker 1: can you go back out, turn around and ride back
Speaker 1: in because I had one job, and I was to
Speaker 1: get your picture, and she laughed, and she did, and
Speaker 1: she she came back in and I snapped her photo,
Speaker 1: and I said, what's your number? I'm going to text
Speaker 1: it to you. As the months passed, their friendship grew,
Speaker 1: with message exchanges quickly ballooning from one a day to
Speaker 1: sometimes a hundred or more. Sarah did have a way
Speaker 1: of quickly turning a casual text feed into an emotional avalanche.
Speaker 1: The following spring, Sarah told Liz there was a more
Speaker 1: immediate threat to her life even than cancer, a stalker,
Speaker 1: someone obsessed with her good looking husband. She said that
Speaker 1: she was smitten with her husband and that she was
Speaker 1: sending him messages saying that after Sarah was gone, they'd
Speaker 1: be together, and she was saying to Sarah, You're not
Speaker 1: pretty enough for him. This hit Liz hard. She had
Speaker 1: told Sarah that when she was nineteen, a classmate of
Speaker 1: hers had been killed by a stalker. Over the course
Speaker 1: of the next forty eight hours or so, Sarah would
Speaker 1: tell me, I'm at the gym. Oh my gosh, she's outside.
Speaker 1: She's I can see her parked out there. She's looking
Speaker 1: at me. She even sent Liz a video when she
Speaker 1: was trying to dodge her. She's wearing a scarf wrapped
Speaker 1: around her head and glistening with sweat while she's at
Speaker 1: the gym. Sarah's out of breath, but her voice is confident,
Speaker 1: even defiant. I'm not gonna let her take this away
Speaker 1: from me. I'm bigger than that. So for forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: she had me wrapped in this web of drama of
Speaker 1: high intensity with this stalker who was now attacking my friend,
Speaker 1: who I thought was already under attack of a terminal illness.
Speaker 1: I couldn't breathe, my chest was heavy. The next day,
Speaker 1: Sarah told Liz she wanted to face time with her.
Speaker 1: As she walked out of a Walmart and she said, Liz,
Speaker 1: she's there. I said, what do you mean? And says,
Speaker 1: she's there between the cars by my car. What do
Speaker 1: I do? I said, you need to run into the store.
Speaker 1: And so she ran into the store and she said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, she has a gun. The phone went
Speaker 1: dead for more than a minute, with Liz frantic on
Speaker 1: the other end. Then she got a text and she
Speaker 1: said they got her. Seven people were shot. She said,
Speaker 1: I took a bullet in the knee. Sarah told Liz.
Speaker 1: She was in an ambulance. A couple of days later,
Speaker 1: to get more details about the shooting, Liz's husband Brian
Speaker 1: called up a friend in law enforcement, a guy named Tom,
Speaker 1: And as I'm talking on the phone, I said, oh wait,
Speaker 1: you know what, I've never actually googled Sarah's name. I
Speaker 1: should probably do that. He typed Sarah de Lashman into
Speaker 1: this search. Barn I said, Holy sh it, Tom, I'm
Speaker 1: Laura Beale. You're listening to Sympathy Pains. This is episode
Speaker 1: three Liz. Liz and Brian are one of those couples
Speaker 1: who actually found true love in a bar, in the
Speaker 1: biggest pickup bar you could ever meet, in Wellington, Florida.
Speaker 1: It was April of two thousand five. Liz is an equestrian,
Speaker 1: and she was in Florida competing at a horse show.
Speaker 1: I was leaving to go home to Rhode Island the
Speaker 1: next day, literally less than twelve hours later, and he
Speaker 1: had just arrived in Florida. He was the only guy
Speaker 1: there that you know, probably had a pickup truck and
Speaker 1: a yellow lab and I was definitely the only girl
Speaker 1: there in a baseball hat and jeans. He um vaguely
Speaker 1: reminded me of Kenny Chesney, and that was a good
Speaker 1: thing at that point in my life. She was a
Speaker 1: New York City native who had left the city for
Speaker 1: good after nine eleven. He was working in Florida for
Speaker 1: Merrill Lynch. He came up for a couple of dates
Speaker 1: in Newport and he said, you know what, I can
Speaker 1: really live here. And then literally after three dates, I
Speaker 1: said to him, you can. You can be my boyfriend
Speaker 1: if you want, but you have to move here, and
Speaker 1: he did. They married after dating for about a year
Speaker 1: and a half and ended up founding a financial services
Speaker 1: business together in Rhode Island. Every winter, they relocate to
Speaker 1: a rented bungalow in Florida, just a mile from shore
Speaker 1: on the Intercoastal Waterway. You pretty much wake up every
Speaker 1: day and I love our life. Back in the fall
Speaker 1: of two thousand and eighteen, after the bike ride where
Speaker 1: she met Sarah, Liz started noticing Sarah's posts on the
Speaker 1: organization's private Facebook group, pictures of herself sitting in what
Speaker 1: looked like um hospital bed with tubes running and taped
Speaker 1: her shirt, wearing a cancer scarf with you know, a
Speaker 1: thumbs up or so. A lot of times She would
Speaker 1: have headphones on and she would say, you know, getting
Speaker 1: getting the juice today, looking for prayers and support, you know,
Speaker 1: going in for a scan today, you know, wish me luck.
Speaker 1: They touched me because I knew of her as a
Speaker 1: young mom whose husband was away, who was battling stage
Speaker 1: four cancer, and I felt completely helpless. It's something that
Speaker 1: spoke to me. For several weeks after the bike ride,
Speaker 1: Liz would write messages of support under the photos. Christmas
Speaker 1: time came. One day in December, Liz pulled a handful
Speaker 1: of holiday envelopes out of her mailbox and found a
Speaker 1: card from Sarah, a photo card of perhaps nine photos
Speaker 1: a little girl with one of those giant bows on
Speaker 1: her head, and she had little white socks on and
Speaker 1: black Patton white or black Patent leather shoes, like little
Speaker 1: girl shoes. And that was the Christmas card from Sarah
Speaker 1: James and Bindy, her fourteen month old daughter. And I thought,
Speaker 1: oh cute when I saved it. And shortly thereafter, probably
Speaker 1: literally days later, Brian and I left for Florida for
Speaker 1: the winter. We pack up our house, we head down south,
Speaker 1: we take our office, we take our dog, and we
Speaker 1: literally kind of move our work home life for a
Speaker 1: couple of months during the winter. In January, Liz got
Speaker 1: a message from Sarah through Facebook Messenger. It said her
Speaker 1: cancer had progressed and she had tumors in her liver
Speaker 1: and brain. After that, Liz and Sarah began exchanging notes
Speaker 1: almost every day. As soon as someone messages me, I
Speaker 1: feel like I have to get right back to them
Speaker 1: where they're going to be insulted or hurt in some way,
Speaker 1: so you know, I would respond, which would prompt another
Speaker 1: response from her, And lots of conversations and dare's her
Speaker 1: need to get more regular at this point, and we
Speaker 1: were just talking about life and her chemo and her treatment.
Speaker 1: Weeks of message exchanges drew them closer as Sarah underwent
Speaker 1: grueling treatments. Liz wrote encouragement, you got this, and she
Speaker 1: started calling Sarah's sister friend, trying to make her feel loved.
Speaker 1: In February of two thousand nineteen, Sarah said she was
Speaker 1: going to be in southern Florida that she worked as
Speaker 1: a flight attendant, which allowed her easy travel. She wanted
Speaker 1: to visit Liz and Brian, saying I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a chance here and I'm going to drive up and
Speaker 1: I'm going to see you. And part of me was like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know she trust me enough. That's that's really great.
Speaker 1: This woman who is, you know, fighting for her life
Speaker 1: every day, values me and trusts me enough and us
Speaker 1: to come visit us. And I was a little nervous
Speaker 1: about that, excited and honestly honored, and at that point
Speaker 1: it kind of became my duty to make sure she
Speaker 1: had a wonderful experience. And I had to say to her.
Speaker 1: I said, Sarah, you know, we have a very small
Speaker 1: cottage here. It's just one bedroom. We don't even have
Speaker 1: a couch. But Liz's mother, Maggie, a Florida retiree, lived nearby.
Speaker 1: It was the main reason they headed south every year.
Speaker 1: So she calls me up and I picked up the phone. Hello.
Speaker 1: She asked me if she could have a friend of hers,
Speaker 1: who she met on this spike ride, come and spend
Speaker 1: the weekend with us, because after rule, she doesn't have
Speaker 1: enough room in her place. She said, Mom, Sarah is
Speaker 1: final stage cancer. And as soon as I heard that,
Speaker 1: my heart dropped, my stomach left and it was like, Elizabeth, fine,
Speaker 1: she can't come, Okay, no problem. So that's where Sarah stayed,
Speaker 1: she wanted to do a try etheln and she wanted
Speaker 1: to be like my daughter Elizabeth. We thought we were
Speaker 1: going to give her a life changing experience in a weekend.
Speaker 1: Liz hadn't seen Sarah in person since the bike ride
Speaker 1: where they met. She arrived wearing a scarf around her
Speaker 1: head and a wig. Brian, Liz, and Sarah spent the
Speaker 1: next day cycling around Jupiter Island, a perfect Florida winter
Speaker 1: day with a warm sun and an ocean breeze. Sarah
Speaker 1: seemed to struggle but made the ride. We went back
Speaker 1: to our house, the cottage, and she went back to
Speaker 1: my parents house where she was going to go home,
Speaker 1: you know, shower up, get ready for dinner. I think
Speaker 1: she said she needed to take a nap and call
Speaker 1: her husband, etcetera. By now, my mother is completely enchanted
Speaker 1: with her, and I think at this point Sarah is
Speaker 1: already calling her mom. My mother is one of the
Speaker 1: kindest people on this earth and is getting up in
Speaker 1: the morning before Sarah rides and making sure she has
Speaker 1: a full breakfast. That evening, Brian and Liz stopped and
Speaker 1: bought fresh fish. Brian made tacos for dinner. Afterwards, they
Speaker 1: sat in their backyard at the water's edge, under the
Speaker 1: shade of a bishop wood tree. It's a really peaceful place.
Speaker 1: There's a hammock there, and Sarah sat in the hammock
Speaker 1: and she said, this is now my happy place. Remember
Speaker 1: giving her a margarite to thinking, oh my gosh, is
Speaker 1: this okay? Can I do this? And candidly I needed
Speaker 1: that margharita myself so much because this dress was so
Speaker 1: great about you have someone's life in your hands. You know,
Speaker 1: this woman is battling a terminal illness, and here I
Speaker 1: am giving her a margharita. Is it okay? They sipped
Speaker 1: their cocktails and talked about life and death. Remember, she
Speaker 1: said to me, I don't want to be forgotten. I
Speaker 1: was sitting in kind of beach chair and I looked
Speaker 1: over at the one of the palm trees that's by
Speaker 1: the water, and I thought, my goodness forgotten. Like just
Speaker 1: imagine being a young mom, a wife and thinking two
Speaker 1: years from now people might not remember me. That just
Speaker 1: really got me. Monday morning came time for Sarah to leave.
Speaker 1: Liz and Brian had to work. As Sarah left, they
Speaker 1: stood in front of the house and pose for pictures,
Speaker 1: the three of them and the dog. We all had
Speaker 1: our arms around each other, you know, we literally hugged
Speaker 1: her like we didn't know if we were going to
Speaker 1: see her again. It was very emotional. I remember her tears. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: she started to cry, and I mean, I know Lizzie did,
Speaker 1: and I would have had a at least a tear drop.
Speaker 1: Sarah got in her rented car and drove off. We
Speaker 1: are just honestly exhausted from caring about her, from talking,
Speaker 1: from crying, worrying, and we sat in the backyard and
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I'm just exhausted. And then around five
Speaker 1: pm that evening we got a text, a text from
Speaker 1: her saying, guess what, guys, my flight was canceled. I'm
Speaker 1: coming back. We can have fish tacos again. And honestly,
Speaker 1: at that moment, I looked at Brian and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I don't know if if I can.
Speaker 1: I don't find the energy, you know, but what we
Speaker 1: have to do this. Sarah stayed the extra night. The
Speaker 1: next weekend. Liz's mom was doing a triathlon that week.
Speaker 1: Brian got a text from Sarah saying, Hey, I'd like
Speaker 1: to come down this weekend to cheer on Mom. And
Speaker 1: you know, I said, I fully understand. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: Mom has given you a lot to Sarah and and
Speaker 1: I thought that was very nice. It was probably what
Speaker 1: six o'clock or so in the morning on the day
Speaker 1: of the race, and I knew that Sarah was on
Speaker 1: her way, but he didn't mention anything to live or
Speaker 1: her mom. He wanted Sarah's second visit to be a surprise.
Speaker 1: I remember putting my mom's bike helmet on her, like
Speaker 1: dropping it on her, and I just thought the irony,
Speaker 1: like here I am putting my mom's bike helmet on,
Speaker 1: like she's my kid, you know, she's seventy seven years old.
Speaker 1: And someone topped me on the shoulder from behind me
Speaker 1: and lo and behold, who's there but Sarah. Sarah had
Speaker 1: flown in the night before, stayed in a hotel in
Speaker 1: Fort Lauderdale, and drove up from Fort Laiderdale to Stewart
Speaker 1: to be there at six o'clock in the morning to
Speaker 1: be at my first triathlon. Elizabeth had made T shirts
Speaker 1: for me, and on the back of the T shirt
Speaker 1: it said te Meg's te for Team Meg's, m Ags
Speaker 1: for Maggie and you know, who also had the same
Speaker 1: T shirt Sarah. Maggie was touched. She must really adore
Speaker 1: Elizabeth to do something like that, and she doesn't think
Speaker 1: too badly of me either. Is just you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I can't even get my husband to get up at
Speaker 1: six in the morning to go to Marathon's with me.
Speaker 1: So there was another Sarah weekend the bike's Hammock Tacos.
Speaker 1: We just took her out solely on the boat to
Speaker 1: see the flying Fish that Saturday night. Sitting on the
Speaker 1: couch with Maggie's Chihuahua Pedro in her lap, Sarah calmly
Speaker 1: talked about a stalker that was after her. He felt
Speaker 1: sorry for this girl with the stalk rafter and dying
Speaker 1: a cancer and with the wig and this and all that,
Speaker 1: and all she was trying to do was do a
Speaker 1: triathlon before she died. Sensing that Sarah was working her
Speaker 1: way deeper into the family, Brian made it clear to
Speaker 1: Sarah that she absolutely could not come for a third
Speaker 1: weekend in a row. My father was coming in for
Speaker 1: a visit with his his girlfriend at the time, and
Speaker 1: next weekend, just you can't, you can't come, you know,
Speaker 1: not that we've been making plans for it, but just
Speaker 1: like we can't have a a surprise, but this was Sarah.
Speaker 1: Sarah was full of surprises. The last weekend in February
Speaker 1: two thou nineteen was a family gathering for Liz and Brian.
Speaker 1: Brian's dad was visiting. They went fishing in the boat
Speaker 1: that anchors just off their backyard. They caught a tuna
Speaker 1: and came back to the dock. I just put the
Speaker 1: fish down, and that's when she walked in the backyard
Speaker 1: and I'll just never forget the hi guys. And I
Speaker 1: looked up and I sare and I did not say
Speaker 1: a word. I just kind of walked past her. I
Speaker 1: walked to the house and I took a moment, and
Speaker 1: Lizzie came in a minute or so later, and she
Speaker 1: kind of yelled at me, and she said, you you
Speaker 1: can't be rude like that, and I said, I'll be fine.
Speaker 1: I just I just need a minute. She was not
Speaker 1: welcome for the weekend, but I'm not gonna say anything.
Speaker 1: And so she spent the weekend you know, with me
Speaker 1: and my father and us, and she crashed our family
Speaker 1: reunion in every way. But they made the best of it.
Speaker 1: And by this time she's gotten to be one of
Speaker 1: the family. Pago looks for a When Sarah pulled up
Speaker 1: to the house, Maggie noticed something different about her rental car.
Speaker 1: It had a bike rack and strapped to it. It
Speaker 1: was a beautiful bike. It looked like it was brand new.
Speaker 1: I think it was maroon, and they're not cheap, these
Speaker 1: marathon bikes. Brian and Liz made it clear in the
Speaker 1: starkest of terms that she could not come back for
Speaker 1: yet another weekend, telling her as much as I would
Speaker 1: love to see you next weekend, I really need to focus.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any of my friends or family. I
Speaker 1: haven't been able to do any work. I have my
Speaker 1: own races. I needed trade for next weekend. I need
Speaker 1: just to catch up. I've been the worst friend. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen my parents alone. They told Sarah they had
Speaker 1: plans a good friend was getting married. I've missed all
Speaker 1: of the bridal things that my dear friend needs me
Speaker 1: to do. I need this weekend to myself. But Sarah
Speaker 1: burrowed into Lizz's life anyway. It was early March two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen when Liz first started getting messages about her stalker.
Speaker 1: Sarah wrote, I'm hiding in the bathtub. I cam afraid
Speaker 1: to leave my house. And then from Sarah's husband James,
Speaker 1: messaging me when she's not saying she's having a panic attack.
Speaker 1: You're the only person that can talk to her. She'll
Speaker 1: only listen to you. For two days, Liz was sucked
Speaker 1: into the vortex of Sarah in trouble, culminating with the
Speaker 1: shooting at an Illinois Walmart. I'm absolutely exhausted because been
Speaker 1: forty eight hours of the stalker chasing her, following her,
Speaker 1: threatening her, and now you know, chasing her down to
Speaker 1: the walmart and showing up with a gun after her
Speaker 1: and there's shots fired. I'm exhausted. I just can't even
Speaker 1: believe what just happened. But something about it struck Brian
Speaker 1: as off. We are starting to, of course, look for
Speaker 1: any record of a shooting at at a Walmart in
Speaker 1: you know, in Illinois, where seven people are shy like
Speaker 1: you're going to see something in the news, and nothing
Speaker 1: was in the news, and we found that to be strange.
Speaker 1: Sarah had an explanation. She said the FBI was trying
Speaker 1: to keep it quiet that they had told her to
Speaker 1: go to the store to lure the stalker out. What
Speaker 1: she didn't know was that Liz and Brian had a
Speaker 1: friend with FBI connections. Their friend Tom, our friend, openly laughed.
Speaker 1: He's like, that's not how it works. He made a
Speaker 1: quick call to the local station there and they said, no,
Speaker 1: there's there hasn't been a shooting here, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe not ever. And that is when Brian began to
Speaker 1: ask a question, a question that many people had asked
Speaker 1: before him and would ask later. Who is Sarah Delashman.
Speaker 1: It was March seventh, two. Brian Hickocks was on his
Speaker 1: phone in the backyard pacing. After learning from his law
Speaker 1: enforcement friend that there had been no Walmart shooting, Brian
Speaker 1: googled Sarah's name on his phone. He clicked on the
Speaker 1: first hit. The first article that came up was that
Speaker 1: there's a record of Sarah losing her nursing license in
Speaker 1: the state of Virginia. The document was from almost five
Speaker 1: years earlier, dated July two, fourteen. Sarah was living in Virginia.
Speaker 1: That's where she met Naomi, the college student who tried
Speaker 1: to support her through miscarriages and an abusive boyfriend. The
Speaker 1: Virginian Nursing Board was pulling Sara's license because they learned
Speaker 1: that she had lost her license in the state of
Speaker 1: Oklahoma earlier that year. Document said that Sara was working
Speaker 1: as a nurse in the neonatal Intensive Care unit at
Speaker 1: Oklahoma University Medical Center in the fall of two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: During that time, over a period of about four months,
Speaker 1: she started stuffing pillows under her clothes so she would
Speaker 1: look pregnant. She showed her co workers copies of an
Speaker 1: ultrasound of twins, and then at some point she said
Speaker 1: she had delivered the twins prematurely and they had died.
Speaker 1: The report also said it was the second time she
Speaker 1: had faked a pregnancy as a nurse. In her testimony
Speaker 1: to the nursing board, she said she pretended to be
Speaker 1: pregnant to make friends, that she had seen how much
Speaker 1: support women got when they lost a baby. Faced with
Speaker 1: the discipline that could result from a formal hearing, she
Speaker 1: surrendered her Oklahoma nursing license on May two, fourteen. If
Speaker 1: she wanted to get her license back, the board recommended
Speaker 1: a psychiatric evaluation. Standing under the bishop Wood tree, staring
Speaker 1: at his phone, Brian was astonished. I walked back into
Speaker 1: the house and I said, Lizzie do not contact her again.
Speaker 1: I don't know really what's up. But she's not who
Speaker 1: she says she is, and we don't need to be
Speaker 1: communicating with her. I don't believe that the shooting actually happened.
Speaker 1: I don't think that you know, anything happened. She looked
Speaker 1: at him with a confused stare that said, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? It was not really even even to
Speaker 1: process it. I was still literally in shock for probably
Speaker 1: forty eight hours after that. I mean I was on empty.
Speaker 1: I had had, you know, four days of really heavy,
Speaker 1: exhausting emotion. Then Brian remembered the text with James, Sarah's
Speaker 1: supposed husband. They had been corresponding since Sarah's second visit.
Speaker 1: But I had already been thinking that James was not real.
Speaker 1: You know, it was three weekends in a row that
Speaker 1: she was coming down to Florida like that. You know,
Speaker 1: you want to leave a legacy for your daughter. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't be wanting to leave your daughter first. He tried
Speaker 1: an oblique approach. Sarah had told Liz and Brian that
Speaker 1: her husband was an mm A fighter, So Brian sent
Speaker 1: a message to James, Hey, I'm a big fan of UFC.
Speaker 1: How do I find your fights. When that didn't get
Speaker 1: a response, he just said out right, I said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I need you to give me a call right now.
Speaker 1: James of course never answered. James was Sarah, Sarah was James.
Speaker 1: Nothing was real. They realized they needed to break the
Speaker 1: news to Liz's mom. It was certainly a hard call
Speaker 1: to have to make. You need to make sure that
Speaker 1: the security guards take her off the list. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, we'd better change the code or in
Speaker 1: a garage. I thought that maybe she just might try
Speaker 1: to break in the house and do something. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's like, who's not to say, she's going to open
Speaker 1: the door and walk in and kill us. Snippets of
Speaker 1: conversations that once seemed benign, at least in the context
Speaker 1: of her stalker, now took on new importance, like how
Speaker 1: to cut break lines, how to make a death look
Speaker 1: like an accident, how to hide a body. Those are
Speaker 1: not things that normally come to someone's thoughts. So the
Speaker 1: fact that she had these thoughts and shared them with us, like, wow,
Speaker 1: these are things that are on her mind. She told
Speaker 1: us one day when she was claiming to have a daughter,
Speaker 1: that she dropped off a childcare at the y. She said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's to be so easy for anyone to
Speaker 1: steal a toddler. Here she goes, I show up and
Speaker 1: I pick up my daughter, and you know, the sixteen
Speaker 1: year old girl doesn't even look up from her iPad.
Speaker 1: Any of these children could be stolen at a moment's notice.
Speaker 1: That was really a ring. They call the police, not
Speaker 1: really knowing who else to call. They grew more fearful.
Speaker 1: Officers warned us to be you know, you can get
Speaker 1: a level of protection so that we will know if
Speaker 1: she leaves the state. Again, no one knew at that point,
Speaker 1: no one knew. I was terrified. Brian began frantically scouring
Speaker 1: the internet, trying to find out as much as he could,
Speaker 1: And that's when Brian got really busy, just messaging everyone
Speaker 1: he can possibly fine. Brian began turning up multiple Facebook
Speaker 1: profiles with variations on her name and different photos. He
Speaker 1: hunted through the comments and tags for people who knew her.
Speaker 1: One of them turned out to be her aunt. Brian
Speaker 1: sent her a message. She responded to my my messenger
Speaker 1: my message saying yes, I'm I'm her aunt and I'd
Speaker 1: like to know what she's up to. It was definitely
Speaker 1: a what she's up to? Here we go again. This
Speaker 1: is not the first time. Liz gave Sarah's aunt a call.
Speaker 1: She was really distraught actually to hear the news. Said
Speaker 1: that she'd been at it for years and that the
Speaker 1: family was really torn apart about it. She told us
Speaker 1: about Aaron in California and that was really upsetting. She
Speaker 1: told them Sarah didn't have cancer, never had cancer, and
Speaker 1: she didn't have a child either, and it was also
Speaker 1: very concerning. You know, the pictures of the baby, it's
Speaker 1: the same baby in different situations, different you know, different poses,
Speaker 1: definitely different environments. The baby is a mystery and it
Speaker 1: seems to be the same baby in every picture. Sarah's
Speaker 1: aunt told them what had happened in Texas at Camp Summit.
Speaker 1: I called the camp as well, and the girl that
Speaker 1: answered the phone um again. I said, my name is
Speaker 1: you know, Brian, and this is what's going on. It
Speaker 1: might sound a little bit strange, and she actually laughed
Speaker 1: to herself. She said that we were just in training
Speaker 1: on this yesterday. And as Brian and searched for more
Speaker 1: information on Camp Summit, he found one other person tagged
Speaker 1: in Sarah's pictures Bethany Turner. He sent Bethany a message
Speaker 1: over Facebook saying, here's what's been going on in our lives,
Speaker 1: and this is what we've been told and we understand
Speaker 1: it not to be true, and you know what has
Speaker 1: your experience been. The next morning Bethany saw the message.
Speaker 1: She recoiled at the sight of Sarah's dame. I was
Speaker 1: brushing my daughter's teeth and looked down and saw something
Speaker 1: on my phone and I threw the phone down on
Speaker 1: the counter and I was like, nope, not doing that.
Speaker 1: She thought it was Sarah herself. I wasn't sure if
Speaker 1: it was her trying to catfish me, and I finally
Speaker 1: landed on you know what, maybe I just need to
Speaker 1: google this guy and see who he is, because if
Speaker 1: it's not Sarah, then it's someone that Sarah's hurt. It
Speaker 1: was early in the morning, I remember that, maybe five
Speaker 1: thirty or so where I I heard the messager go
Speaker 1: off and then normally I might sleep through that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, but not at that one time. And she
Speaker 1: said something not dismissive, but maybe questioning who I was
Speaker 1: or or you know what happened, And it didn't take
Speaker 1: more than a couple of minutes, I guess for her
Speaker 1: to say, okay, you know, I'd be up for a
Speaker 1: for a phone call. That call would be the first
Speaker 1: of many. Brian and Liz soon learned that Sarah was
Speaker 1: back in Florida. They had helped her train for a
Speaker 1: triathlon and she was actually going to do it. The
Speaker 1: event was just a couple of miles away, and at
Speaker 1: that moment, I was never more scared. Do you remember
Speaker 1: Alf Hitchcock movies where your hair standing on the head, Because,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that woman is going to open the doorway.
Speaker 1: You're in the bathtub, in the shower, and she's got
Speaker 1: a knife. She's liable to do anything. If she could
Speaker 1: do what she did. Liz and Brian couldn't believe she
Speaker 1: was back in Florida, almost in their backyard. They decided
Speaker 1: to go to the race, putting on hoodies and sunglasses
Speaker 1: and ducking behind palm trees waiting for her to go by.
Speaker 1: Once they saw her, their jaws dropped. She was wearing
Speaker 1: all new gear, new helmets, new sunglasses, new shoes, everything,
Speaker 1: everything that's identical to mine, everything, And I was so
Speaker 1: unbelievably freaked out. It was really creepy, and you know,
Speaker 1: everything right down to the sunglasses and the way she
Speaker 1: did her hair. There were so many facets to the
Speaker 1: emotions that we had. You know, one is, you know,
Speaker 1: you're piste off, as Brian said, you know we've just
Speaker 1: been completely taken advantage of. One is humiliated, and you know,
Speaker 1: one is fearful, you know, fearful for our safety because
Speaker 1: we didn't know you know, where she draws the line.
Speaker 1: And then over the course of a few days, we
Speaker 1: also developed a compassion. How can we turn this into
Speaker 1: something productive? How can we make our horrible experience have
Speaker 1: a good ending, you know, for her right if she
Speaker 1: really is sick and unable to get help, certainly for
Speaker 1: all the potential victims, all the former victims. You know,
Speaker 1: how can we just fix this? The police had told
Speaker 1: them there was nothing law enforcement could do. It's not
Speaker 1: a crime to fake cancer. Like we feel terrible about
Speaker 1: what happened to you, but what she's doing isn't a crime,
Speaker 1: and that just didn't sit with us. Liz also felt
Speaker 1: for Sarah's aunt. She was very kind. She told me
Speaker 1: the family was just you know, at wits end. This
Speaker 1: is you know, wrecked them in so many ways. I thought,
Speaker 1: if there were mandated help treatment that might help in
Speaker 1: some way, and that was our thoughts was that if
Speaker 1: the family can't afford to do it, we've got to
Speaker 1: find a way to get this done. They didn't want
Speaker 1: to go to her employer because then, you know, her
Speaker 1: aunt had told me if she lost her job that
Speaker 1: the family will lose the house. I couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: pay for any kind of extended treatment for her, but
Speaker 1: I knew that this television personality offered people help, and
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, I'll just call Dr Phil Dr Phil
Speaker 1: today on an all new Dr Phil that Dr Phil.
Speaker 1: I went his website and it says do you want
Speaker 1: to be on the show, and it said tell us
Speaker 1: your story. You know, if we're interested, will give you
Speaker 1: a call. So I wrote a pretty pretty detailed story
Speaker 1: about what was going on, and they asked Bethany if
Speaker 1: she would join them. I don't think I'd ever watched
Speaker 1: a Dr Phil episode in my life, but she didn't
Speaker 1: want Sarah to hurt anyone else. Ever, since she had
Speaker 1: learned about Sarah walking out of Camp Summit, I knew
Speaker 1: that at some point it was going to resurface, because
Speaker 1: I knew she was doing it other places. If I
Speaker 1: can google her and find trails of her from Oklahoma
Speaker 1: to Texas to Illinois to out east. I mean, there
Speaker 1: was no way she was going to stop. I just
Speaker 1: didn't have the capacity at that point to deal with it.
Speaker 1: I told them, I said, we've got to get this
Speaker 1: out on a broader scale. This needs to be a
Speaker 1: viral story, because otherwise is We're just going to end
Speaker 1: up chasing Sarah from town to town from nonprofit and nonprofit.
Speaker 1: Bethany agreed that national television might be the only way
Speaker 1: that they could get help for Sarah and maybe keep
Speaker 1: her from hurting anyone else. And along the way they
Speaker 1: found one more woman who was ready to join them.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, how do you know her? And she said,
Speaker 1: I've been tracking her for twenty years, And eventually they
Speaker 1: found the one person who could finally stop Sarah. I
Speaker 1: think my reaction was probably the same as as most
Speaker 1: people that first hear about this case. There's just kind
Speaker 1: of disbelief about what happened. That's on the next episode
Speaker 1: of Sympathy Pains. Sympathy Pains is a production of Neon
Speaker 1: hum Media and I Heart Radio. I'm Your host Laura
Speaker 1: Beale I wrote and reported the episodes. Natalie Wrinn is
Speaker 1: the lead producer or editor is Katherine st. Louis. Associate
Speaker 1: producer is Rufaro Mazzarua. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch.
Speaker 1: Samantha Allison is our production manager. Fact checker is Jacqueline Colletti.
Speaker 1: Jesse Perlstein composed the theme song and music heard throughout
Speaker 1: the series. Additional tracks are by Blue Dot Sessions and
Speaker 1: Epidemic Sound. Scott Somerville is our engineer and sound designer.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Stephanie Serrano from I Heart Radio. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Carrie Lieberman and Bethan Macaluso. Executive producer at
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio is Dylan Fagan