Speaker 1: And then I leaned forward and a whispered to him.
Speaker 1: I used to think that you were a good guy
Speaker 1: who sometimes wore a monster mask. But what I realized
Speaker 1: that you're actually a monster who sometimes wears a good
Speaker 1: guy mask. He goes absolutely white, and he starts a sweat,
Speaker 1: and he whispers, I'm glad you know.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrea Gunning. And this is Betrayal, A show about
Speaker 2: the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
Speaker 2: change everything. After the death of her husband, Brad, Carrie
Speaker 2: McAvoy retired early from her career as a clinical psychologist
Speaker 2: at the age of fifty one, she started a whirlwind
Speaker 2: relationship with Caesar. He showered her with affection and brought
Speaker 2: her into his Mexican culture. It would be a second
Speaker 2: marriage that promised adventure and expanded her horizons. With all
Speaker 2: three of her sons grown, she and Caesar decided to
Speaker 2: start a new life together in Mexico, so she sold
Speaker 2: her house in the US and packed her bags.
Speaker 1: You're basically consolidating a whole life, accumulated of all my
Speaker 1: adult life down to a few like we took ten
Speaker 1: pieces of luggage. That's it.
Speaker 2: They planned to make a living down there, by renting
Speaker 2: vacation properties in the Yucatan Peninsula, Crystal blue waters, white
Speaker 2: sand beaches. It was the life Brad wanted for her.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was trying to build on the
Speaker 1: best I had with bread, but make it better.
Speaker 2: She and Caesar became fifty to fifty owners in their
Speaker 2: new business and bought four rental properties together, all bankrolled
Speaker 2: by Carrie.
Speaker 1: So the value of Brad's life insurance has now been
Speaker 1: spent on properties.
Speaker 2: But the week before their wedding, Caesar made a shocking disclosure.
Speaker 1: He starts to cry, and he says, it just hit
Speaker 1: me because we're going to get married five days that
Speaker 1: I'm still married. We can't get married this week. And
Speaker 1: I said what.
Speaker 2: Caesar had an explanation, and.
Speaker 1: He said that last marriage was so bad, so contentious,
Speaker 1: that when I got out, I literally put it behind
Speaker 1: me and I forgot I'm married to her. I never
Speaker 1: finalized it. Even though we've not been living together for
Speaker 1: two years. I'm not divorced.
Speaker 2: Caesar's last marriage was a rollercoaster. When he finally ended things,
Speaker 2: she literally refused to let him go.
Speaker 1: They described how she had clung to his feet as
Speaker 1: he tried to get out of the house and he
Speaker 1: said it was really traumatic, and he just put it
Speaker 1: behind him. I've repressed stuff, I forgot stuff. I can
Speaker 1: see how that can happen, But I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be intimate with somebody who's married. Now that I know,
Speaker 1: I'm horrified, like speechless and feel so humiliated. I don't
Speaker 1: even know what to say. This puts it in a
Speaker 1: different category.
Speaker 2: But she had already invested so much emotionally and financially
Speaker 2: in this new life with him, too much to let
Speaker 2: one piece of paper derail their plans. Plus, he was
Speaker 2: adamant that he would get it sorted out and they'd
Speaker 2: be able to get married the following month. So reluctantly
Speaker 2: Carrie let it go.
Speaker 1: We got up and had a nice next day together
Speaker 1: and sort of moved on.
Speaker 2: And his divorce did go through A month later. After that,
Speaker 2: he and Carrie officially tied the knot.
Speaker 1: So get married. It's a beautiful wedding, and then we
Speaker 1: plan a honeymoon.
Speaker 2: A month later, In a nod to Brad's legacy, she
Speaker 2: and Caesar went to Jamaica for their honeymoon. They stayed
Speaker 2: in a new part of the island. It was a
Speaker 2: full circle moment for Carrie, a reminder of how far
Speaker 2: she'd come in the two years since Brad passed away.
Speaker 1: We get to Jamaica, we check in and that night
Speaker 1: we have a great dinner together, kind of romantic, and
Speaker 1: we're walking back to the hotel room and I'm excited
Speaker 1: because I bought something special. We get into the room,
Speaker 1: he flops down on the bed and I go into
Speaker 1: the bathroom to change into something sexy.
Speaker 2: Starting with night one, their honeymoon did not go to plan.
Speaker 1: I hear the TV turn on, and I'm thinking, what's
Speaker 1: a little weird. It's not really the focus of the
Speaker 1: honeymoon night. And I come out and I pose in
Speaker 1: front of the TV, you know, sort of like I'm
Speaker 1: better looking than the TV. And he actually almost cranes
Speaker 1: his neck around me, and I'm stunned. I can't believe
Speaker 1: that he did that. And I'm now feeling underdressed, overexposed,
Speaker 1: and just I can feel the goosebumps raising on my
Speaker 1: body from the chill. He says, just come up next
Speaker 1: to me. He passed the bed, Come up next to me.
Speaker 1: I want to watch this, okay, So I do, and
Speaker 1: I'm tired. It's been a long day, try level and
Speaker 1: I doze off and I don't even remember falling asleep,
Speaker 1: but I fall asleep and I come to and I
Speaker 1: can't tell how much time has passed, but the TV
Speaker 1: is still playing and he's on his phone. I find
Speaker 1: that kind of odd, and I'm curious to why he's
Speaker 1: so interested in on his phone. And as I'm trying
Speaker 1: to like crane my neck without really letting him know
Speaker 1: that I'm awake, I see that he's watching something. And
Speaker 1: at first my eyes is really blurry because I'm just
Speaker 1: waking up. And then i can tell he's watching pornography.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, okay, you opted out of having a
Speaker 1: moment with me to watch pornography. That is soul crushing.
Speaker 2: Early on in their relationship, she asked Caesar if he
Speaker 2: watched pornography. He told her he didn't. Now on their honeymoon,
Speaker 2: she saw that he did. She observed him for another moment.
Speaker 2: Caesar is still not noticing that she had woken up.
Speaker 1: And while I'm watching him watch, there's a text that
Speaker 1: comes in and he opens the textbox and he responds,
Speaker 1: and then he looks for a photo. He sends a
Speaker 1: quick photo of himself. Then she sends a photo back
Speaker 1: of her I mean, they're just like normal photos. There
Speaker 1: wasn't like sexting. But on the other hand, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: my new husband is sending a photo of himself to
Speaker 1: another woman. Yeah, no, you don't do that.
Speaker 2: Even though they were just selfies, it felt strange, and
Speaker 2: he was sending them to a woman she'd never heard
Speaker 2: of before.
Speaker 1: So I make like I'm waking up. He then plays along, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's so wonderful you're awake. Oh, I love you so much,
Speaker 1: And instead of like pulling me into it, embrace to
Speaker 1: kiss me, pull me into something intimate. He starts to
Speaker 1: touch me like he's doing something to me, but we're
Speaker 1: not doing it really together. And this just on the
Speaker 1: tails of what I just saw, feels awful, like the
Speaker 1: last thing I want to be doing. So I feel
Speaker 1: like I was like trying to scoot away from him,
Speaker 1: and I just said the same thing that he said
Speaker 1: to me, is come sit next to me. I'm really tired.
Speaker 1: Let's just sleep tonight. It's been a lot, it's a
Speaker 1: long day. So he does, we fall asleep.
Speaker 2: But Carrie did not fall asleep. It was the first
Speaker 2: night of their honeymoon and She was lying awake, staring
Speaker 2: at the ceiling.
Speaker 1: Feeling really hurt and shocked, like there needs to be
Speaker 1: limits in this relationship and that's not an okay kind
Speaker 1: of relationship.
Speaker 2: She decided to address what she'd seen over dinner.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, I noticed you're on your phone, and
Speaker 1: I noticed you're watching a video. And then also you're
Speaker 1: texting some woman and you send her a photo of yourself.
Speaker 1: I'm not okay with that.
Speaker 2: Then Caesar became very quiet.
Speaker 1: He just kind of stays stiff, like, not okay. We
Speaker 1: have dinner, we're not really talking. And when we walked
Speaker 1: back to our hotel room, he stopped and he stood
Speaker 1: in the doorway and he says, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: heading out. I'll be back in a couple hours. He
Speaker 1: turns around. The door shut. So I watched the door shut,
Speaker 1: and I'm aghast, like mouth dropped, shocked, and I think
Speaker 1: to myself, this is punishment. He's punishing me.
Speaker 2: She spent the next few hours pacing the hotel room,
Speaker 2: hoping she was wrong, hoping he just needed time to
Speaker 2: cool off.
Speaker 1: He comes in a couple hours later, and I'm tense.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I have no idea what mindset he's going
Speaker 1: to be in and he goes, hey, let's go out
Speaker 1: to the pool. Let's go swimming. I said, okay, and
Speaker 1: he holds my hand as we walk to the pool
Speaker 1: and we get out there. He says, look at the sky.
Speaker 1: The moon's out tonight. Remember the night I got engaged
Speaker 1: with you. The moon's out that night. And he says,
Speaker 1: couples shouldn't fight. And you're right, I shouldn't have that
Speaker 1: kind of relationship with a woman. That's inappropriate. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 1: Why don't we put the phones away for the rest
Speaker 1: of the trip and just focus on us? And I
Speaker 1: start to cry and I feel, oh, he gets it.
Speaker 1: We're on the same page. This is going to be good.
Speaker 1: We make a big deal the next day putting the away.
Speaker 1: The next seven eight days are great.
Speaker 2: Until the last day of the honeymoon. It was four
Speaker 2: am and Carrie woke up to a notification on her phone.
Speaker 1: I can see on my phone that there's a text
Speaker 1: message from a stranger from a woman, and she writes,
Speaker 1: so you're married to Caesar. I guess the joke's just
Speaker 1: not on me, it's on you too. I've been dating
Speaker 1: it for the past three months. Then she proceeds to
Speaker 1: start to describe, is that your sunglass case in the car?
Speaker 1: It's floral? Are you the person that called him at
Speaker 1: three am in the morning a few months ago? Because
Speaker 1: I was with him, I was in bed beside him.
Speaker 2: That was her sunglasses case. And they were in a
Speaker 2: long distance relationship before this, and Carrie knew she had
Speaker 2: called him late sometimes. With Caesar asleep next to her,
Speaker 2: she began to panic, was this woman telling the truth?
Speaker 1: As I'm laying there, I literally had the flash. I
Speaker 1: don't know him, He's a stranger. I went into the
Speaker 1: bathroom and my body just dumped. It was sick. I
Speaker 1: was sick. What do I do? My house is sold,
Speaker 1: my car is gone. I have property now in Mexico
Speaker 1: that expects me to open. I'm mid visa process. I
Speaker 1: have to finish this or I lose all that effort.
Speaker 1: And I'm literally in transition as if I'm a wire artist,
Speaker 1: and I let go of one wire and I'm jumping
Speaker 1: to the next, and I'm trying to grab and I'm midjump,
Speaker 1: and I'm realizing everything that I thought I was building
Speaker 1: on didn't exist.
Speaker 2: She shook her new husband awake and showed him the messages.
Speaker 1: I say to Caesar, Caesar, Caesar, A woman wrote me.
Speaker 1: She says, she knows you. His first reaction was stop
Speaker 1: reading that. Stop reading that. And my thought was, you know,
Speaker 1: you know her, you know what I'm talking about. I
Speaker 1: fled the room. I split for the ocean and went
Speaker 1: down to the sand and I start circling, literally circling.
Speaker 1: It was early, like six am, six thirty, and there
Speaker 1: was a runner who run past me. I much look
Speaker 1: like a crazy woman, like I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: I'm midjump, I'm in transition. I have no home in
Speaker 1: the United States. I don't know what to do here.
Speaker 2: So she called a close friend who, like her, also
Speaker 2: worked in mental health.
Speaker 1: And she says, Carrie, I think he's traumatized. I think
Speaker 1: there's something else going on. I really suggest that you
Speaker 1: go back and talk to him. I'm thinking, okay, she
Speaker 1: knows him. In fact, she's the person that married us.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's something more here. Plus she's a therapist. So
Speaker 1: I go back in and I get into the room
Speaker 1: and he's standing there, white shaking, and he just looked
Speaker 1: at me and he said, I just wanted to know
Speaker 1: what a felt like to have an affair, and then
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I have problems because I've told
Speaker 1: you that I've came from a troubled home and that
Speaker 1: there have been issues. And I don't know why I
Speaker 1: did it. I know it was dumb, but I don't
Speaker 1: know why I did that.
Speaker 2: Then he asked for her help. He felt like his
Speaker 2: behavior was out of control and needed professional support. In fact,
Speaker 2: he had asked his ex wives for their help too.
Speaker 1: And they didn't believe me. They laughed at me.
Speaker 2: If anyone could help him, it was Carrie. She believed
Speaker 2: in recovery.
Speaker 1: I also, as a psychologist, really believed in the capacity
Speaker 1: of people to change. Why would I spend my whole
Speaker 1: life doing what I did if I didn't believe people
Speaker 1: could actually have a conversion experience.
Speaker 2: As soon as the honeymoon ended, Carrie started looking for
Speaker 2: a psychologist, a specialist who could help with trauma, infidelity,
Speaker 2: and deception. And she got them an appointment the very
Speaker 2: next day.
Speaker 1: And she sees us. She says, Carrie, these issues are
Speaker 1: really big. He needs residential care and I'm thinking residential
Speaker 1: care or moving. Plus who's going to pay for that?
Speaker 1: This is not covered by insurance? And he needs months
Speaker 1: I've worked in the system. I know how much it
Speaker 1: costs for psychiatric care. This is going to add up
Speaker 1: to probably close to one hundred thousand dollars in treatment costs.
Speaker 2: Instead of long term residential care. They planned for a
Speaker 2: three day intensive program for couples and crisis and they
Speaker 2: flew there right away.
Speaker 1: So we walk into the intensive program and it was
Speaker 1: built on accountability model. The focus is more of what
Speaker 1: are you going to do? What's the reality of your situation?
Speaker 1: Do you have a plan in place? They're trying to
Speaker 1: help us really think this through.
Speaker 2: Although the program was meant for couples to attend together,
Speaker 2: where both individuals or promise treatment and support, Carrie felt
Speaker 2: like her pain wasn't being seen.
Speaker 1: But we go through the three days and it becomes
Speaker 1: really clear to me that I'm invisible here. This treatment's
Speaker 1: about him, and yet I feel like my whole world's
Speaker 1: been torn apart, that I've been shattered. There's two people here. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was the one who acted out, but I'm the
Speaker 1: one who's suffering the consequences. What about me?
Speaker 2: Caesar left the program feeling clear headed and committed to Carrie.
Speaker 2: He had an accountability plan and an outpatient counselor to
Speaker 2: check in with him every week, but Carrie felt more
Speaker 2: confused than ever.
Speaker 1: We walk out of the program after three days, and
Speaker 1: I feel like, well, he has a better direction, he
Speaker 1: seems helped, But I'm now more scared than ever, and
Speaker 1: I'm going into a country that I don't think has
Speaker 1: this kind of care available. All I know is now
Speaker 1: I don't know how much. I don't know, because if
Speaker 1: that's what they did, tell me, this is like a problem,
Speaker 1: like an iceberg. You just saw a tip, but you
Speaker 1: don't know how deep this goes or how big this is.
Speaker 1: So all that you did for me is to let
Speaker 1: me know there's a whole lot more to this that
Speaker 1: you don't know, and I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: I'm in a mid leap and I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm in for.
Speaker 2: After leaving the three day treatment program, Carrie and Caesar
Speaker 2: continued with their plan to move into a new apartment
Speaker 2: imply a Del Carmen and get their business off the ground.
Speaker 1: We move into our first apartment and we furnish it.
Speaker 1: We're watching the construction of the next two and trying
Speaker 1: to get the business going, you know, get our properties
Speaker 1: listed on Airbnb.
Speaker 2: Besides starting their business, their main priority was continuing Caesar's treatment,
Speaker 2: and it seemed to be working for him.
Speaker 1: In that period of time. It actually gets good, it
Speaker 1: gets quiet. You know, he's working a program. He does
Speaker 1: his weekly thing. I do my weekly thing. It feels
Speaker 1: like a partnership. We're buying furs together, we're setting up
Speaker 1: a house, kids are coming in for Christmas.
Speaker 2: With Caesar's commitment to recovery, Carrie felt validated in her
Speaker 2: decision to give him another chance and get him help.
Speaker 2: He was really trying. Their life in Mexico was finally
Speaker 2: coming together. At night, they would go up to their
Speaker 2: penthouse roof and look at the stars.
Speaker 1: And the stars are out and there's actually even falling stars,
Speaker 1: and we're talking to each other and kissing each other
Speaker 1: and talking about how beautiful this is. And had like
Speaker 1: a little blanket on that platio, just really really lovely.
Speaker 2: After a few months, their business started to take off.
Speaker 1: The properties are now coming online. The business is off
Speaker 1: to a good start, and I feel really optimistic about
Speaker 1: all of this.
Speaker 2: But their relationship on the men, they were proving to
Speaker 2: be strong business partners. They settled into a daily routine.
Speaker 1: He would set the alarm super early in the morning.
Speaker 1: Then we would read something together, talk to each other,
Speaker 1: and then we'd get dressed and get going for our day.
Speaker 1: We'd run from appointment to appointment. But there's another half
Speaker 1: of the company that had to be run, and that
Speaker 1: is the customer end, who's making all the emails and
Speaker 1: it's corresponding with guests. So I'd manage that at night,
Speaker 1: and then we'd do all the businesses together in the day.
Speaker 1: So basically I was like doing two jobs one day.
Speaker 2: While running around town to manage the properties.
Speaker 1: I start to suddenly vomit. I mean like I'm throwing
Speaker 1: up saliva, and it's really strange. I'd never seen anything
Speaker 1: like it before. He calmly hands me a grocery bag
Speaker 1: to vomit in, and then we never talk about it again,
Speaker 1: and we just went on for the rest of the day.
Speaker 2: And then she began noticing other symptoms.
Speaker 1: I have really severe diarrhea, real strange diarrhea that I'd
Speaker 1: never seen before. It's water, it's clear water. It frightens
Speaker 1: me because I've never seen this before. And I had
Speaker 1: white lines, like you hit your fingernails as a hammer.
Speaker 1: I was searching for what causes white lines across all
Speaker 1: the fingernails. They're called nasee lines.
Speaker 2: And it only got worse.
Speaker 1: My toenails were falling off, and my yearine was now
Speaker 1: dark like tea and frothing.
Speaker 2: So they went to the er.
Speaker 1: They take one look at me, and they hospitalized me.
Speaker 1: And while I'm admitted, the nurse comes up and says,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. You're super ill. Your white count is
Speaker 1: extraordinarily high, but we can't find the infection. You're very,
Speaker 1: very sick. You don't understand how sick you are. Caesar
Speaker 1: comes in that night to sit next to me, and
Speaker 1: he sits there and he goes. I realized something today.
Speaker 1: I realized if something were to happen to you, I
Speaker 1: would really miss you. That's a weird thing to say.
Speaker 2: After a few nights in the hospital with ivy antibiotics,
Speaker 2: Carrie was feeling better. The doctors ran dozens of tests,
Speaker 2: but ultimately couldn't figure out what was causing Carrie's symptoms.
Speaker 1: But I get discharged and we continue to kind of
Speaker 1: do normal business, you know, running day to day life.
Speaker 2: Caesar thought Carrie's sudden illness could be stress related. After all,
Speaker 2: she'd had an incredibly busy year, so they decided to
Speaker 2: go on a weekend get away to relax and reconnect
Speaker 2: with each other.
Speaker 1: So we go to this resort for Thanksgiving weekend, and
Speaker 1: the first night we get there, he heads in for
Speaker 1: a shower and while he does it, he leaves his
Speaker 1: phone on the table. I don't know why, but I
Speaker 1: picked up his phone and snoop for the first time
Speaker 1: in my life.
Speaker 2: She didn't find anything concerning in his photos or texts,
Speaker 2: but then she opened his email.
Speaker 1: This is the first I really heard of Maria.
Speaker 2: Earlier that day, he'd written a long email to this woman.
Speaker 2: It sounded like she was an old flame.
Speaker 1: So I go rush into the bathroom to use it
Speaker 1: for he used to read the email, and I opened
Speaker 1: the email. He says this marriage is a prison, and
Speaker 1: he's talking about missing her.
Speaker 2: He told Carrie he wasn't talking to any other women,
Speaker 2: that the help he was getting was really working. What
Speaker 2: did he mean this marriage was a prison. She'd been
Speaker 2: working so hard to hold it together. She sent herself
Speaker 2: a copy and then.
Speaker 1: I send it to our counselor that we saw at
Speaker 1: the intensive and say we need an immediate appointment. He's
Speaker 1: breached his contract with me, and he said he wasn't
Speaker 1: doing this. So we have a therapy appointment with our
Speaker 1: therapist and he confronts Caesar about this, and Caesar doesn't
Speaker 1: really have a good excuse. I was just dumb, I
Speaker 1: was reminiscent. I was feeling nostalgic.
Speaker 2: He said he'd been missing his ex Maria and that
Speaker 2: they once spent time at the same beach.
Speaker 1: He said, I thought of her and I reached out
Speaker 1: or I shouldn't have. I know. It was really bad.
Speaker 1: And then the therapist turns to me and says, so,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do about this? What's your consequence?
Speaker 1: We talked about this. You need to have a consequence,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, what do you mean. I can't kick
Speaker 1: him out. I'm in another country, We're starting this business up,
Speaker 1: things are in construction. I depend on him. I can't
Speaker 1: run a business without him.
Speaker 2: So instead of a consequence, she opted for a solution.
Speaker 1: So we both get into therapy. That's my solution. He
Speaker 1: starts to see a therapist.
Speaker 2: But that didn't quell her anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I'm starting to feel increasingly paranoid, enough so that
Speaker 1: I'm now like trying to break into his phone. Or
Speaker 1: I'm now looking for a second phone. It's weird. I'm
Speaker 1: like feeling crazy, and while all this is happening, he's
Speaker 1: just getting harder to reach, feeling really distant to me.
Speaker 2: He told Carrie he was going to his regular therapy appointments,
Speaker 2: but then she found.
Speaker 1: Out he didn't go. He apparently stashed the phone somewhere
Speaker 1: near the therapist's house and did something else. I have
Speaker 1: no idea what he did for the hour and a half,
Speaker 1: but he didn't go. So I'm catching him in lies
Speaker 1: now and I know something is up.
Speaker 2: This lie was disturbing. She started to doubt if he
Speaker 2: was really committed to changing. Repeatedly catching Caesar and lies
Speaker 2: became a vicious cycle. But then one day she got
Speaker 2: news that pulled her out of it. Carrie had three
Speaker 2: sons who were now all adults. Two of them were
Speaker 2: living together, and one noticed his brother, Cameron, wasn't acting himself.
Speaker 2: He was observing Cameron's behavior and called their mom out
Speaker 2: of concern.
Speaker 1: He said, he's been staring at the whole wall all weekend, Mom,
Speaker 1: just staring at the wall, like ours staring at the wall.
Speaker 1: And then he'll say weird things like he doesn't know
Speaker 1: what time of the day it is, and I'm thinking, oh, no,
Speaker 1: this is a serious neurological scien it's an emergency. I'm frightened.
Speaker 1: This is bad. Something's really wrong.
Speaker 2: She flew back to America to be with Cameron. When
Speaker 2: she got to the hospital, all of her boys were there.
Speaker 1: And they've been waiting for me. I can tell they've
Speaker 1: been waiting for mom to show up. And he says, Mom,
Speaker 1: it's leukemia. And then we follow in each other's arms
Speaker 1: and just start to cry, and I think, oh, I've
Speaker 1: been here before.
Speaker 2: Cameron was scared.
Speaker 1: He said, Mom, don't leave me, don't leave me, and
Speaker 1: I say, I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 2: It wasn't even a decision for Carrie. She knew she
Speaker 2: had to stay and take care of him. She spent
Speaker 2: entire nights a week keeping an eye on her son's
Speaker 2: health as he started chemotherapy.
Speaker 1: But you have to see if the chemotherapy is going
Speaker 1: to work. So he makes it through the first round,
Speaker 1: which is a big deal. He has to be hospitalized.
Speaker 1: It's given every twelve hours for five to seven days.
Speaker 1: It's ron mclock chemotherapy. And meanwhile the treatment team tells
Speaker 1: me he's going to need this for upward to eighteen months,
Speaker 1: and he needs you here. This is a big thing
Speaker 1: and he's going to need your help.
Speaker 2: Caesar had come with Carrie back to the US, and
Speaker 2: right away she noticed that he was distant. He didn't
Speaker 2: seem interested in staying in America long term or in
Speaker 2: supporting Carrie and Cameron. Instead, Caesar started complaining he wanted
Speaker 2: to go back to their life in Mexico.
Speaker 1: He's telling me he's not staying. I can tell already.
Speaker 2: One night, while Caesar was sleeping, his phone alarm started ringing,
Speaker 2: so Carrie got up to shut it off.
Speaker 1: So I go in to get the phone and turn
Speaker 1: the alarm off. I passed through the pass code and
Speaker 1: it opens right up to the text messages. He'd been
Speaker 1: texting and had fallen asleep with it beside his head.
Speaker 1: The messages between him and Maria, and it says, my
Speaker 1: sister had cancer. She's recovered, she's just fine. Her son
Speaker 1: will be too. He's young, he's twenty eight. He's got
Speaker 1: the advantage of youth on its side. And Caesar right back.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I know, but I got to be supportive
Speaker 1: for Carrie. Carrie's really worried that's not how she feels.
Speaker 1: And then he says, but I'll have to be careful
Speaker 1: because I'm with her now a lot. We're going to
Speaker 1: have to really be careful around these conversations. And then
Speaker 1: she texts, but what I'm really concerned about is that
Speaker 1: Cameron's care is going to eat up your half of
Speaker 1: her money.
Speaker 2: It was so callous, calculated even.
Speaker 1: Not only had he been betraying me and seeing women,
Speaker 1: but he has been communicating with her about a lot,
Speaker 1: including the money and what's happening with the money, and
Speaker 1: that there is this money.
Speaker 2: Reading these texts and seeing how dismiss if he was
Speaker 2: of her son's care and the concern for Carrie's money
Speaker 2: half of Brad's life insurance money finally sent her over
Speaker 2: the edge.
Speaker 1: It's money that paid out on Brad's death to a
Speaker 1: person who never earned it, didn't know him, didn't love him,
Speaker 1: and is trying to exploit and manipulate me. He's going
Speaker 1: to capitalize on Brad's death about enraging me. Hell no,
Speaker 1: I loved Bread. We spent thirty three years together. He
Speaker 1: died from something catastrophic. Be damned, you're gonna get half
Speaker 1: of that. I sat there with Bread, then morphine didn't work,
Speaker 1: and him pleading for another dose. Your half of Bread's
Speaker 1: life insurance? What do you mean your half? There is
Speaker 1: no your half here.
Speaker 2: After she saw text between Caesar and Maria, Carrie was furious.
Speaker 2: She finally saw Caesar for who he really was, or
Speaker 2: at least she thought she had.
Speaker 1: We're at a restaurant having a meal, and I finally
Speaker 1: say to him, you know what, this can't good for you.
Speaker 1: It's certainly not good for me. I think maybe we
Speaker 1: need to separate, and I walk away. I get up,
Speaker 1: and I walk out.
Speaker 2: She spent a few hours alone to process everything, to
Speaker 2: grieve the life she envisioned with Caesar. After all, her
Speaker 2: first marriage was a fairy tale. It was solid, joyous,
Speaker 2: and honest. Eventually, she made her way home to continue
Speaker 2: the conversation with him.
Speaker 1: I said, so, what's going on here? Do you want
Speaker 1: a divorce? He said, yes, I want a divorce.
Speaker 2: The following morning, they sat down at the breakfast table
Speaker 2: for the next hard conversation about what this divorce would
Speaker 2: mean for both of them financially.
Speaker 1: He starts to list all the properties that the company owns,
Speaker 1: one by one, and next to them, he writes their
Speaker 1: market value, and then he adds the column up in
Speaker 1: front of me, draws a hard line, so hard that
Speaker 1: I think he's going to scratch into the wood table.
Speaker 1: That's how Fermi pressed. And he points at it that
Speaker 1: that's what I mowed half of that. I have a
Speaker 1: right to half of that. And I look at him
Speaker 1: and my mouth dropped, and I said, but that's Brad's legacy.
Speaker 1: That's what he gave to me and the kids to
Speaker 1: give me a new start. And he says, life's never
Speaker 1: been fair to me, Why should it be fair to you.
Speaker 2: When Terry and Caesar sat down to discuss the terms
Speaker 2: of their divorce, she watched her soon to be ex
Speaker 2: husband become an entirely different person.
Speaker 1: He's basically saying he has a right to something he
Speaker 1: has never worked to own, didn't come into this relationship
Speaker 1: with anything, and he's going to walk out with half
Speaker 1: of everything brand and I had spent all these years,
Speaker 1: with all these decisions to get to he feels he
Speaker 1: has a right to it because life's not been fair.
Speaker 1: I'm enraged. I can't believe this is the way this is,
Speaker 1: and I can't believe this is actually legal. I'm speechless,
Speaker 1: like floored. I feel like I don't know him. This
Speaker 1: is another level of a stranger. I don't know who
Speaker 1: this person is.
Speaker 2: She was not going to let him take what Brad
Speaker 2: had worked so hard for. After all, she'd only been
Speaker 2: with Caesar for three years.
Speaker 1: So my first thing is is I pull all the
Speaker 1: documents together, proving all the money I'd brought in, proving
Speaker 1: that it had been my assets, my capital that had
Speaker 1: been invested, and I make an appointment with the best
Speaker 1: divorce attorney that I can find in town, and I
Speaker 1: sit down with her. Then she looks at me and says,
Speaker 1: none of that matters. According to Mexican law, he's fifty
Speaker 1: to fifty owner unless you can prove he's broken the law.
Speaker 1: He's owed half, he's owed half. I realized, I better
Speaker 1: start making copies of the deeds to prove that I
Speaker 1: actually own the property. So I get smart and start
Speaker 1: making photocopies of stuff.
Speaker 2: Carrie was going back and forth in the US, taking
Speaker 2: care of her son Cameron, whose cancer treatment was going well,
Speaker 2: and in Mexico untangling her marriage with Caesar. They moved
Speaker 2: into separate apartments while Carrie collected the evidence she needed
Speaker 2: for their divorce, Caesar had not invested any money into
Speaker 2: their shared business, but, like the lawyer told her, her
Speaker 2: case didn't look promising.
Speaker 1: I'm frantic. I don't know how to get the company back.
Speaker 2: To add insult to injury. In the middle of this
Speaker 2: financial untangling, she received news Caesar's ex Maria was back
Speaker 2: in town and they were back together.
Speaker 1: And not only has she been in town, but they
Speaker 1: put a deposit on a property together. They're going to
Speaker 1: buy a house together.
Speaker 2: She and Caesar had rarely spoken throughout the divorce. They
Speaker 2: were still in a bitter legal negotiation about dividing their business,
Speaker 2: but one day she got a text from him. He
Speaker 2: sounded desperate.
Speaker 1: It says, I'm in trouble. I've been realizing I'm out
Speaker 1: of control and I need help. I need to see you.
Speaker 1: Can we meet.
Speaker 2: She thought maybe this was her chance to offer him
Speaker 2: a settlement that he would accept.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, this is the moment you've been waiting for.
Speaker 1: You have an opportunity to leverage your control of the company.
Speaker 1: He's going to need help from you. Use it. So
Speaker 1: I meet him at a coffee shop nearby, and he
Speaker 1: starts to tell me he's in trouble. And then I
Speaker 1: lean forward and a whisper to him. I used to
Speaker 1: think that you were a good guy who sometimes wore
Speaker 1: a monster mask. But when I realized that you're actually
Speaker 1: a monster who sometimes wears a good guy mask. He
Speaker 1: goes absolutely white, and he starts to sweat, and he whispers,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you know.
Speaker 2: She finally saw him for who he really was, and
Speaker 2: she knew she needed an out. So Carrie told him
Speaker 2: she would help him through the next few months financially
Speaker 2: if you agreed to her terms.
Speaker 1: I say to him, I will help you, but I
Speaker 1: want all of the company back. You have to sign
Speaker 1: the company money over to me. And he says to me, so,
Speaker 1: what are you thinking how much? And I said, how
Speaker 1: about whatever I have sitting in the bank right now,
Speaker 1: which is one third of what he wants. You can
Speaker 1: have that. You can have the car that you're driving.
Speaker 1: I'll sell the other car. You can have whatever is
Speaker 1: in the house. That's what you can have.
Speaker 2: Caesar didn't like the deal. He wanted to split their
Speaker 2: company's profits for the next two years.
Speaker 1: And he leans into me and he whispers, you don't
Speaker 1: want to make me angry.
Speaker 2: In the moment, She pretended to agree to the deal.
Speaker 1: I shake his hand and I say, okay, I promise,
Speaker 1: But in my head I thought I promised as much
Speaker 1: of a promise as any of your promises you've ever
Speaker 1: made to me.
Speaker 2: She never intended to give him half the profits. Once
Speaker 2: he signed over the company, she sold it. In the end,
Speaker 2: she settled their divorce and paid him ount. It was
Speaker 2: a big sum, but not nearly what he wanted, not
Speaker 2: even close.
Speaker 1: He never got any more money out of me out
Speaker 1: in that settlement that I made, the agreement I made
Speaker 1: with him of the attorney.
Speaker 2: After selling the properties, she packed up her life in
Speaker 2: Mexico for good.
Speaker 1: So I packed myself up. I throw most of it away.
Speaker 1: I don't want it. Everything that reminds me of this house,
Speaker 1: this life, this person, this relationship. I took to the
Speaker 1: trash and people scavengers came in and got it, and
Speaker 1: it was like, go for it, you can have it.
Speaker 2: She found evidence that he and Maria had been meeting
Speaker 2: up every few weeks for their entire relationship, even back
Speaker 2: to when she first met Caesar.
Speaker 1: And then when we break finally up, he's texting her
Speaker 1: about the half of the money, and then he sees
Speaker 1: her right away, right after we break up.
Speaker 2: And she also found some things that made her suspect
Speaker 2: her entire relationship with Caesar had been orchestrated. Like he said,
Speaker 2: he had been researching widows.
Speaker 1: I found cliff notes he kept on women. He literally
Speaker 1: was keeping track of stories, what to say, He planned
Speaker 1: things out. The guy that never existed.
Speaker 2: She found no cards with names of women he dated,
Speaker 2: and on the cards he'd written information about each of them.
Speaker 2: This is one of those strange details she'll never get
Speaker 2: an explanation for. Shocked, ashamed, and betrayed, Carrie flew back
Speaker 2: to the US. She focused on her family and settled down,
Speaker 2: moving close to her son, whose cancer was in remission.
Speaker 2: She was rebuilding, but there was still one piece of
Speaker 2: unfinished business. She wanted to know who Caesar really was,
Speaker 2: so she tracked down his ex wives.
Speaker 1: I get a hold of wife number one, who lived
Speaker 1: in Mexico, heard her version. Then I heard the one
Speaker 1: who'd been married seventeen years. But the one I couldn't
Speaker 1: get a hold of was the one that was the shortest,
Speaker 1: that he had the least to say about. So six
Speaker 1: months after I sent her a message, she contacts me
Speaker 1: and says, yeah, I'll have a phone call with you.
Speaker 1: And she says, because one of the things that happened
Speaker 1: is I got really sick. I said what she said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got really sick and I don't know why. And
Speaker 1: I got better when I got out of the relationship.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, well, that's really strange.
Speaker 2: It was strange. Carrie's symptoms also got better after she
Speaker 2: left the relationship. The vomiting and diarrhea, the lines on
Speaker 2: her nails, they all disappeared. She says she'll never know
Speaker 2: why she got so sick during her marriage. What she
Speaker 2: does know is that that relationship was literally toxic to
Speaker 2: her body.
Speaker 1: Living with somebody who's constantly deceitful, this chronic state of
Speaker 1: being in a fight or flight with all the cordals,
Speaker 1: all levels, does terrible damage to the body.
Speaker 2: Back in the US, she joined support groups and relied
Speaker 2: on her three adult sons. Cameron was cancer free and
Speaker 2: the family had become closer than ever.
Speaker 1: I did have a moment with my sons and I
Speaker 1: said to them, you must be so ashamed of me.
Speaker 1: And my oldest looked at me and he said, no, mom,
Speaker 1: Caesar used your best qualities against you. Were not ashamed,
Speaker 1: and I just wept.
Speaker 2: That was the start of her healing process, and the
Speaker 2: next step was writing a book about what she went through.
Speaker 1: They just started writing. I wrote this story as fast
Speaker 1: as I could. Took me nine months to write Love
Speaker 1: You More, and I thought, really, really healing.
Speaker 2: With time, she could look back on the relationship with clarity.
Speaker 2: She applied her expertise in psychology and began to understand
Speaker 2: that what she experienced was narcissistic abuse.
Speaker 1: They consider a narcissistically abusive relationship a cult of two
Speaker 1: really the same tactics that cult leaders use. Highly predatory
Speaker 1: people use the same to create fast rapport, build trust,
Speaker 1: and also create a very highly almost addictive relationship that's
Speaker 1: very difficult to leave. It's intoxicating but also terrifying. It's
Speaker 1: like a connection on fear.
Speaker 2: Through her work in therapy, she came to a big revelation,
Speaker 2: one that went back to the abuse she experienced as
Speaker 2: a child, and she realized that violation might have played
Speaker 2: into the cycle she found herself in with Caesar.
Speaker 1: I realized that when I was little and I had
Speaker 1: suffered the abuse with my sister, even though I was
Speaker 1: only like five and she was four in my head.
Speaker 1: I had made her a promise that I would never
Speaker 1: abandon her again, and I approached that promise that I
Speaker 1: had made that was really unreasonable as a child, but
Speaker 1: I sort of applied it to him, and so leave
Speaker 1: him felt like I was abandoning her all over again.
Speaker 1: And that was what made it really hard for me
Speaker 1: to truly break free, break out of this and come
Speaker 1: into that conclusion. Felt like it broke so much of
Speaker 1: my paralysis, my confusion.
Speaker 2: She wanted to know how she'd missed the signs with
Speaker 2: Caesar and why she stayed in it for so long.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like her.
Speaker 1: I cannot begin to describe to you the agony paralysis
Speaker 1: I felt about making a decision. The mind literally says,
Speaker 1: I can't compute. Both realities seem true. I can't compute,
Speaker 1: so it makes no decision, as if that's a decision.
Speaker 2: She turned to books and research on coercive control and
Speaker 2: narcissistic abuse to help give her perspective.
Speaker 1: I came across a book by Don Hennessy called How
Speaker 1: He Gets Into Her Head. Highly recommend it Irish law Enforcement.
Speaker 1: He writes about the grooming practices in the first part
Speaker 1: of the book he describes working with domestic violence victims
Speaker 1: for years, I mean like many, many, many years. They
Speaker 1: kept trying to do all these studies finding a consistent
Speaker 1: pattern among victims that would predict that this is a
Speaker 1: person vulnerable to abuse. They couldn't find any There was
Speaker 1: no consistent pattern among all of the domestic violent victims.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until they started looking at the predators that
Speaker 1: the pattern fit. The pattern is with the predator, not
Speaker 1: with the victims.
Speaker 2: She's been able to let go of her shame about
Speaker 2: the decision to stay with Caesar. The betrayal community has
Speaker 2: shown her that no one is above being deceived.
Speaker 1: I'm a psychologist. Everyone somehow assumes a psychologists are like
Speaker 1: above human, superhuman. We should know, we should be excellent
Speaker 1: reads of people. Yeah, I'm good reads of people, But
Speaker 1: when it comes to myself, I'm not always so good.
Speaker 1: My personal life, my personal perceptions get involved. It's very
Speaker 1: easy for us to criticize victims and say it's the
Speaker 1: victim's fault. But you're just showing your ignorance because anyone
Speaker 1: can fall for something like this. You just haven't met
Speaker 1: the sophisticated enough predator.
Speaker 2: When she was at her most vulnerable, grieving Brad's death,
Speaker 2: and desperate to have that kind of partnership back again.
Speaker 2: At that very moment, she happened to meet the right predator.
Speaker 2: Her trust in Caesar is inherently linked to losing Brad.
Speaker 1: Somebody prepares you for what it's like to lose a partner.
Speaker 1: You know. We often think if you say there than
Speaker 1: my other half, I'll tell you it felt like I
Speaker 1: was ripped in half. And to think about the future,
Speaker 1: I've got maybe what thirty more years of no one
Speaker 1: in my life, and I'm going to be alone and
Speaker 1: this big, critical person who was my partner, my husband,
Speaker 1: my lover, my best friend, my co parent is gone.
Speaker 1: I can't even begin to describe to you the panic
Speaker 1: I felt. We talk about love bombing and it's too
Speaker 1: good to be true, and it happens super fast and
Speaker 1: you suddenly are with this person for forever. But you
Speaker 1: know what, sometimes love looks like that, That's what love
Speaker 1: with Brad looked like.
Speaker 2: We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
Speaker 2: why did you want to tell your story? For Carrie,
Speaker 2: it comes back to letting people know no one is
Speaker 2: above deception or betrayal.
Speaker 1: And by the way. I have had many psychologists who've
Speaker 1: now since reached out to me to tell me it's
Speaker 1: happened to them. And an excellent book is Kristin Milstead,
Speaker 1: Why Can't I Just Leave? Who's a PhD in sociology,
Speaker 1: and it happened to her. But there are many professional
Speaker 1: women who are and men who've gotten trapped by this.
Speaker 1: If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 3: I look up one of his email addresses and it
Speaker 3: shows that he has an Ashley Madison account, and I
Speaker 3: just nearly threw up.
Speaker 2: If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
Speaker 2: team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
Speaker 2: us at betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal pod
Speaker 2: at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One
Speaker 2: way to show support is by subscribing to our show
Speaker 2: on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review
Speaker 2: betray Five star reviews go a long way. A big
Speaker 2: thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a
Speaker 2: production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group
Speaker 2: and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
Speaker 2: by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by
Speaker 2: me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also
Speaker 2: produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and
Speaker 2: Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinchech.
Speaker 2: Audio editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing
Speaker 2: support from Nico Ruka and Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed
Speaker 2: by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by myb Music and
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your podcasts,