Speaker 1: Christine is a longtime special ed teacher in the St.
Speaker 1: Louis area. She remembers the day that her son Zack
Speaker 1: introduced her to his new girlfriend. Her name was Sarah.
Speaker 1: At this point, they had been dating a while and
Speaker 1: Zach really likes her. Zach did tell me that she
Speaker 1: was a nurse, so I did like that. You have
Speaker 1: to be a caring person to be a nurse. Had
Speaker 1: told her other things too. She lives in Illinois and
Speaker 1: she loved dogs just like me. You may hear one
Speaker 1: of them panting in the background here. I asked, Low,
Speaker 1: how did you meet this girl? And then he said
Speaker 1: e harmony? And I was like, oh, okay, brother. But
Speaker 1: that skepticism disappeared when Sarah walked in the door one
Speaker 1: autumn day in two thousand and eight, she just had
Speaker 1: this right smile, just her eyes kind of gleam. She
Speaker 1: said she was working at a St. Louis hospital, at
Speaker 1: least for now. She wanted to work in the neo
Speaker 1: natal unit of Children's hospital. She wanted to work with
Speaker 1: the premier babies. She also said that she was a
Speaker 1: camp counselor at the MSD Camp summer camp for kids
Speaker 1: with muscular dysgraphy as a teacher. Christine loved the way
Speaker 1: that Sarah was so dedicated to children, and I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: this is a nice girl. At the time, Sarah was
Speaker 1: twenty three years old, she was living back in her
Speaker 1: hometown but commuting to St. Louis and dating Zach. Christine
Speaker 1: thought that they were getting serious quickly, too quickly, but
Speaker 1: she liked Sarah. Christine told us by the way that
Speaker 1: Zach preferred for his mom to tell this story, she
Speaker 1: got really close with me. We did shopping together, We
Speaker 1: did a lot of stuff together that you would do
Speaker 1: like with a daughter in law, you know, not maybe
Speaker 1: so much the girlfriend. And unlike what Sarah told Aaron
Speaker 1: Johnson that her parents were doctors or her college sweet
Speaker 1: mates that she had leukemia, the story she told Christine
Speaker 1: seemed to be, at least at first, the truth. She
Speaker 1: said that she was really into skiing at Hidden Valley,
Speaker 1: but not heading to the Olympics. And she talked about
Speaker 1: her mom and dad. They got divorced when she was
Speaker 1: really young, and she did not ever want to be divorced.
Speaker 1: She made that clear. Her dad was a truck driver,
Speaker 1: so she never got to see him. Her dad was
Speaker 1: not in the picture much, but he did by her car.
Speaker 1: While they were dating, she didn't seem to have a
Speaker 1: warm relationship with her mom. Zach didn't offer the greatest
Speaker 1: endorsement either. He described her as just cold. He used
Speaker 1: a bad word. She would say, that's why I love you,
Speaker 1: because you're so kind and you're just a total opposite
Speaker 1: of my mom. The holidays came, we were baking Christmas cuckys,
Speaker 1: and she were talking about her mom almost NonStop and
Speaker 1: about how I am the exact opposite of her mom.
Speaker 1: That December, she and Zack came over one evening and
Speaker 1: said they had some news. Everyone sat down in the
Speaker 1: living room on the sofa. She showed me her hand
Speaker 1: with this ring and a big old smile. I believe
Speaker 1: she started crying. Zach was recently divorced, and Christine was
Speaker 1: glad her son had found someone who made him happy,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, Sarah really seemed to care about Zack's kid,
Speaker 1: who was just a year old at the time. Zach
Speaker 1: had a brief marriage that didn't last, but the little
Speaker 1: boy that came out of it was the light of
Speaker 1: his grandmother's life. For Sarah, marrying Zach would be like
Speaker 1: instant motherhood. She really liked this little ready made family
Speaker 1: that she had was Zack. The even set for portraits Sarah,
Speaker 1: Zach and his son for Christmas, and that's what she gave.
Speaker 1: She gave everybody pictures. I said, wow, Sarah, you put
Speaker 1: a lot of time an effort and spent a lot
Speaker 1: of money, you know, for Christmas this year. And she goes,
Speaker 1: she goes, well, I haven't had a family for Christmas,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted it to be special. So everything
Speaker 1: is wonderful. New Year's Eve is when things start to
Speaker 1: fall apart. New Year's Eve, Sarah told her fiance something
Speaker 1: about herself that she had been raped for reasons he
Speaker 1: couldn't quite articulate. To his mom, Zach was skeptical. Something
Speaker 1: about her story was just too implausible for him. He
Speaker 1: just said something seemed really off about it. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what it was, you know, he couldn't really
Speaker 1: tell me what exactly about it was off. I'm like,
Speaker 1: who lies about this? It has to be true. Nobody's
Speaker 1: going to lie about something like that. And then I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: for Sarah was right? Do you know? And uh so
Speaker 1: he was like, I don't know. I said, oh, I
Speaker 1: basically told him, don't ruin it. You know she's a
Speaker 1: nice girl. The first week in January two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: he broke off the engagement. Everybody was mad at Zach,
Speaker 1: my dad, my mom, my brother, and my sister in law.
Speaker 1: It was a really bad time for him because we
Speaker 1: were all like, how did you do this? And she's
Speaker 1: calling me and crying and I'm crying, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's wrong with him. I was team
Speaker 1: Sarah all the way, and so is my mom and
Speaker 1: my dad, and oh, everybody was like, how could you
Speaker 1: do this to her? I mean, I really felt bad
Speaker 1: for Zach. He held his ground. He said, I'm telling
Speaker 1: you there's something about her that's just not right. I'm
Speaker 1: Laura Beale. You're listening to Sympathy Pains. This is episode
Speaker 1: five Truth. In February of two thousand nine, Christine was
Speaker 1: still stinging from her son's broken engagement. She had come
Speaker 1: to already think of Sarah like a daughter in law,
Speaker 1: and now she was out of her life. But Sarah
Speaker 1: wasn't going to stay out of her life, not by
Speaker 1: a long shot. Christine came home from work one afternoon
Speaker 1: and pulled a plain white envelope out of her mailbox.
Speaker 1: The return address was Sarah's, and I'm like, well, I
Speaker 1: haven't heard from her a while. I wonder, you know,
Speaker 1: I had never received a piece of mail from her before.
Speaker 1: There was no note, but something was tucked inside, a
Speaker 1: picture of an ultrasound. Christine stared at the image in shock.
Speaker 1: Sarah was pregnant, and even if Sarah wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be your daughter in law, it didn't change the fact
Speaker 1: that this was her grand baby. I immediately go to Zach,
Speaker 1: what what's going on? What is this? He says, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's real. She's just upset that I broke
Speaker 1: up with her, and I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: you better marry her. He was adamant. He didn't believe
Speaker 1: her anymore about anything. She's just trying to use this,
Speaker 1: so we get back together again. He goes, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's real. For the next few months, Chris Dean
Speaker 1: and Sarah talked from time to time that summer. Sarah
Speaker 1: said she was on vacation in southern California and she
Speaker 1: went into a labor early and the baby was born
Speaker 1: as a PREMI I was heartbroken that this baby was
Speaker 1: born prematurely and is sitting there fighting for life. Sarah
Speaker 1: named the newborn Isabella, the name Zach had picked out
Speaker 1: if his son had been a girl, Isabella Christine. Her
Speaker 1: middle name was after Zack's mom, and Sarah started a
Speaker 1: blog to post updates on the baby. And I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the blog all the time. There's pictures, and there's
Speaker 1: like narratives that she wrote daily, like long narratives. I
Speaker 1: was hanging onto every word. Christine's parents and friends were
Speaker 1: glued to the blog too. The one person who wasn't
Speaker 1: it was Zack. He wasn't even convinced there was a
Speaker 1: baby at all. Actually, he told his mom that he
Speaker 1: thought the snapshots were of different infants. I'm like, how
Speaker 1: can you say that. Being so far away was tearing
Speaker 1: Christine apart. She was my baby granddaughter, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to see her. I knew I probably couldn't hold her,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to see her and I wanted to
Speaker 1: be there with her. She called Sarah. I just said
Speaker 1: I'm leaving early in the morning, um and driving, And
Speaker 1: I said I'll drive twenty four hours straight through. Later
Speaker 1: that same night, Sarah called her back and says, I
Speaker 1: have some horrible news for you. Isabella died in my
Speaker 1: arms tonight. She just couldn't fight any longer. It was
Speaker 1: like a bomb had just dropped on my head. I
Speaker 1: was devastated. Christine mourned for months. She couldn't even attend
Speaker 1: the funeral for little Isabella Christine because there wasn't one.
Speaker 1: She spent months grieving the granddaughter she never met. Christmas
Speaker 1: came around and Christine found a card from Sarah in
Speaker 1: her mailbox and something else, pictures of a baby, maybe
Speaker 1: six months old, and it says Merry Christmas from Sarah,
Speaker 1: Adam and Isabella. Another bomb hits me. She tried to
Speaker 1: reach Sarah in agony, but she didn't answer her messages.
Speaker 1: Was this her Isabella? So then fast forward the next Christmas,
Speaker 1: I get another Christmas collage and it is a little
Speaker 1: girl and it says again, Merry Christmas from Sarah, Adam
Speaker 1: and Isabella. Uh. Christine of course had no idea that.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, the year before Zack even
Speaker 1: met Sarah, she had started a blog with a profile
Speaker 1: picture of herself looking hugely pregnant. She said she was
Speaker 1: a student nurse married to the most wonderful man in
Speaker 1: the world named Adam. Staring at the picture on the
Speaker 1: Christmas card, Christine thought that the baby girl looks strikingly
Speaker 1: like her grandson. I'm like, oh my god, that is
Speaker 1: my granddaughter. She called Sarah again. This time she answered,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is going on? I thought you said
Speaker 1: the baby died. Sarah told her that the baby hadn't died,
Speaker 1: but she didn't want her to be raised by parents
Speaker 1: who weren't together like she'd been, that she had met
Speaker 1: and married a guy who completed their family. I just,
Speaker 1: I begged her. I said, I don't have to be grandma.
Speaker 1: Can we meet at a park and just like I
Speaker 1: could just be your friend, you know, I just want
Speaker 1: to be in her life. It was sad, it was horrible.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm almost crying now. Sarah never sent another card.
Speaker 1: It was like, your heart is out there somewhere, like
Speaker 1: part of your heart is out there somewhere, and you
Speaker 1: have no idea. A few more years went by. In
Speaker 1: late summer two thousand seventeen, Sarah started texting Christine again.
Speaker 1: The year before, in a parallel Sarah universe, she had
Speaker 1: risen from her power chair at Camp Summit, ridden off
Speaker 1: in a van when Christine got the text from Sarah.
Speaker 1: She was sitting at a Mexican restaurant with her grandson
Speaker 1: and a couple of his friends. Just the four of
Speaker 1: us were there. We were waiting for our food. I
Speaker 1: just I remember, she just starts texting me. You know,
Speaker 1: how are you back? I mean, there was some small
Speaker 1: talk before that, and she was like, are you still teaching?
Speaker 1: And then of course I said, yes, I'm still teaching.
Speaker 1: I'm fine. So how is Adam and Isabella? She said, well,
Speaker 1: I have some bad news, and then she texted that
Speaker 1: Isabella was killed in a car accident. Christine sat at
Speaker 1: the table waiting for her food to arrive. Stunned. She
Speaker 1: went through the rest of the meal in a daze.
Speaker 1: She had lost her only granddaughter. Again, I said, can
Speaker 1: I see some pictures of her, you know, before the accident,
Speaker 1: and so she sent lots of pictures. A day or
Speaker 1: two later, Sarah came over to Christine's house. She went
Speaker 1: straight to the couch and then we just started hugging
Speaker 1: each other and crying. She told me all of out,
Speaker 1: and we boo hooed like her and I were hugging
Speaker 1: each other, just bawling, bawling. A couple more years past
Speaker 1: with Christine carrying around a granddaughter's sized hole in her heart.
Speaker 1: Then in the spring of two tho, she got a
Speaker 1: text from her son, You're not going to believe this,
Speaker 1: but Sarah was on the Dr Phil show. I just
Speaker 1: watched it. Told you guys, nobody believed me. That night,
Speaker 1: after work, Christine called up the links on YouTube. My
Speaker 1: like jaw was dropped the whole show. I could not
Speaker 1: be leave what I was hearing. She was in my
Speaker 1: house telling me that my grand baby died two times,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time time I believed that
Speaker 1: I did not have a granddaughter. Christine was livid, wounded.
Speaker 1: She took my trust and people. At the same time,
Speaker 1: she felt like Sarah needed therapy. At the end of
Speaker 1: the show, it said that she was given a chance
Speaker 1: to go to some place to go get some help.
Speaker 1: But even as Christine was watching the video on YouTube,
Speaker 1: Sarah had already left treatment and was back home. If
Speaker 1: Sarah wasn't going to stop on her own, there were
Speaker 1: now plenty of other people who were going to try
Speaker 1: to make or see the truth. Chris Conrad is a stocky,
Speaker 1: middle aged man with glasses and a high forehead. Today.
Speaker 1: He's the city manager in Highland, Illinois. We talked one
Speaker 1: day in his office on the first floor of city Hall,
Speaker 1: a building with the kind of gingerbread trim that looks
Speaker 1: more like a chalet seeing the Alps, and not a
Speaker 1: small town in the Mississippi Valley. Highland was founded by
Speaker 1: Swiss immigrants. They are pretty proud of their Swiss heritage. Searcy,
Speaker 1: Switzerland is our sister city. Not a ton of controversy
Speaker 1: in Highland. The day we spoke, Chris was getting ready
Speaker 1: for the upcoming charity pie auction in the town square.
Speaker 1: Before he was city manager, he was police chief, and
Speaker 1: if you go all the way back to two thousand six,
Speaker 1: he was a beat cup. That was the year he
Speaker 1: got a call from the local FBI office about a
Speaker 1: woman and a stolen quilt. They asked that we reached
Speaker 1: out to her and find out what was going on.
Speaker 1: Was there a part of you that that the FBI
Speaker 1: has contacted me about a quilt? Well, you know, at
Speaker 1: this point I had been an officer for six years,
Speaker 1: and so I understood death by deception. Was he went
Speaker 1: by her house and learned that she was away at college.
Speaker 1: Had wait till the weekend when she was home, but
Speaker 1: then ended up bringing her bringing her in to talking
Speaker 1: to her about the issue. She seemed nervous. I remember
Speaker 1: that seemed like any other college student that would be
Speaker 1: talking to an officer, so I didn't necessarily think that
Speaker 1: was out of line. Sitting at the police station, she
Speaker 1: said this originally started as doing research for a school
Speaker 1: project on s M A, and that she was a
Speaker 1: nursing student that in doing that research, she started pretending
Speaker 1: to have it and then created another persona on the
Speaker 1: chat room that she was the parent of a child
Speaker 1: that had it. She didn't really have, didn't really have
Speaker 1: an excuse as to why she did it. She was
Speaker 1: embarrassed that she had done it, seemed to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: had gone too far. I remember thinking as I was
Speaker 1: talking to her that she was a little socially awkward
Speaker 1: and not a psychologist. But I remember thinking to myself
Speaker 1: that it was probably she enjoyed the attention that came
Speaker 1: from it. They didn't press charges, but he told her
Speaker 1: he was going to call the college and tell them
Speaker 1: she needed a referral for counseling. That day, he sent
Speaker 1: an email to Andrea Smith, the computer whiz who had
Speaker 1: found out that Sarah was lying. He told Andrea that
Speaker 1: he had called a former teacher of hers and it learned.
Speaker 1: As he wrote to Andrea, Sarah was always slightly different
Speaker 1: and never really fit in with any particular crowd, just
Speaker 1: had a lot of problems socially. He also said he
Speaker 1: was going to speak with Sarah's mom about, as he
Speaker 1: called it, issues that needed to be addressed professionally. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this was the first time someone said
Speaker 1: Sarah needed treatment, but it certainly wouldn't be the last.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how her mom reacted to the advice.
Speaker 1: Mental health issues come with such stigma that people are
Speaker 1: often afraid to acknowledge a problem exists, even to themselves,
Speaker 1: especially in a small town where you can't easily fade
Speaker 1: into anonymity. Even when people do seek therapy, they often
Speaker 1: face a shortage of providers or insurance that views mental
Speaker 1: health coverage as some kind of luxury. The fact that
Speaker 1: Sarah didn't get treatment right then and there isn't all
Speaker 1: that surprising. In a given year, more than half of
Speaker 1: adults experiencing mental illness won't receive care for it. Back
Speaker 1: in South Carolina, Andrea was thrilled to get the quilt back.
Speaker 1: I sent an email out to the s M a
Speaker 1: support chat and asked everybody to write a little thank
Speaker 1: you note to Officer Conrad and send pictures of the
Speaker 1: kids send them to me, and I put together a
Speaker 1: big box and sent it to him. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, when Andrea teamed up with Liz and Bethany,
Speaker 1: she knew who she was going to call. By then,
Speaker 1: Officer Conrad had been promoted to Chief Conrad. He referred
Speaker 1: Andrea to a member of his force, the Tromon. David
Speaker 1: Brin's with the Highland Police Department. Tall and friendly, He's
Speaker 1: been a policeman for about thirteen years. Came down to
Speaker 1: this area for college and like the area so just
Speaker 1: happened to stay. He was named Officer of the Year
Speaker 1: once by the local Optimists Club. By the time he
Speaker 1: talked to Andrea, David Brines already knew about Sarah had
Speaker 1: been getting calls from Liz and Bethany. To investigate. He
Speaker 1: obtained records from the Young Survival Coalition, the breast cancer
Speaker 1: charity that had sponsored the bike ride where she met Liz.
Speaker 1: I found out that the bike had been donated to her.
Speaker 1: So at that point we realized that we did have
Speaker 1: a fraud, but the crime was out of state, out
Speaker 1: of his local jurisdiction. So in the summer of two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, he called the FBI investigators discovered another stolen bike.
Speaker 1: Sarah had ordered a bicycle off of the eBay and
Speaker 1: I said, those were several thousand dollars. It was sent
Speaker 1: through the postal service after she ordered it in February,
Speaker 1: but she told the seller it never arrived and got
Speaker 1: her money back. In doing so, she committed mail fraud.
Speaker 1: At that point we had a federal crime. The case
Speaker 1: was now in the hands of a federal prosecutor. Lukeweisler
Speaker 1: I am an assistant United States Attorney in the Southern
Speaker 1: District of Illinois. I've been in this office for about
Speaker 1: two years. Before that, I was in private practice for
Speaker 1: about six years. Luke is a young guy, late thirties
Speaker 1: who coaches the basketball and soccer teams of his three
Speaker 1: young boys. He grew up in Springfield, Missouri, the youngest
Speaker 1: of four, where his dad was a pharmacist and his
Speaker 1: mother was a teacher. He himself taught middle school math
Speaker 1: for two years in the Rio Grand Valley before he
Speaker 1: went to law school. It was in law school that
Speaker 1: he heard a federal prosecutor talk about how his job
Speaker 1: protects people. It inspired him. Every day here, I am
Speaker 1: pushed to do the right thing for the right reasons,
Speaker 1: and so you know, this is a job where I
Speaker 1: feel like I can really make a difference, and that's
Speaker 1: that's why I'm here. He specializes in white collar crimes, corruption,
Speaker 1: money laundering, identity theft. Now that I've been to this
Speaker 1: job for a little while, I am more keenly aware
Speaker 1: of just the amount of fraud that that takes place
Speaker 1: in the world. Being a part of the way to
Speaker 1: confront that and the way to to resolve it for
Speaker 1: people is a really big deal because it it is
Speaker 1: something that has a tremendous impact on people's lives. But
Speaker 1: he had never heard of a case quite like the
Speaker 1: one that landed on his desk. In July of two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, the head of the fraud unit came into
Speaker 1: his office and said, you know, there's there's a new
Speaker 1: case that I want you to handle. There's a woman
Speaker 1: who has faked breast cancer and muscular dystrophe, has most
Speaker 1: likely defrauded some nonprofits. You mentioned that that she had
Speaker 1: largely confessed to the conduct on national television. I think
Speaker 1: my reaction was probably the same as as most people
Speaker 1: that first hear about this case. There's just kind of
Speaker 1: disbelief about what happened. He started looking into the evidence
Speaker 1: that FBI agents and postal inspectors had gathered. When you
Speaker 1: really think about what it takes to commit that fraud,
Speaker 1: that she actually went to a camp, actually allowed counselors
Speaker 1: at that camp to bathe her, to feed her, I
Speaker 1: mean to to for those counselors to learn after the
Speaker 1: fact that she was capable of doing all those things
Speaker 1: on her own, that is just devastating. It went from
Speaker 1: a case that I guess, on its face just had
Speaker 1: some bizarre details into a case that was really worth pursuing.
Speaker 1: He had seen his share of medicare scams and fake
Speaker 1: go fund me accounts. This was different. I don't believe
Speaker 1: that her her primary or soul objective anyway, was just
Speaker 1: to obtain money. In most of our cases, that is
Speaker 1: the soul objective, and it's the soul objective. Unusually a
Speaker 1: pretty grand scale, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars
Speaker 1: are usually at stake. This was not the case here,
Speaker 1: you know, based purely on dollars, it almost wouldn't be
Speaker 1: a federal case. The law says that you can't physically
Speaker 1: hurt another person and you can't take their money, but
Speaker 1: you can take their trust, their love, their faith and
Speaker 1: people and crush it. Luke saw that Sarah seemed to
Speaker 1: choose communities and people who were the most vulnerable and
Speaker 1: the most giving. They're not going to question if somebody's
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair whether or not that person can walk.
Speaker 1: You know, if somebody is going to have the appearance
Speaker 1: of having gone through chemotherapy, they're not going to question that.
Speaker 1: And she exploited that empathy that they have the emotional
Speaker 1: harm here dwarfed what the financial harm was. Something else
Speaker 1: nagged at him too. He walked me through her biggest
Speaker 1: crime in the eyes of the law, stealing the bike
Speaker 1: she ordered off eBay. It was worth more than four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, so she used her mom's credit card to
Speaker 1: order it. She received that bicycle and then claimed that
Speaker 1: she didn't so she disputed the transaction when when she
Speaker 1: actually did receive the bike and was ultimately reimbursed for
Speaker 1: that money. What really bothered him more than what she
Speaker 1: did was when she did it. She was on Dr
Speaker 1: Phil in April of two thousand. May of two thousand
Speaker 1: and nineteen is when that dispute occurred on the credit card.
Speaker 1: After she was on Dr Phil, vowing to do whatever
Speaker 1: it took to change her life, she stole a bicycle
Speaker 1: and after Dr Phil she signed up for a charity
Speaker 1: swim event, putting her back in the midst of the
Speaker 1: kind of people she had a history of lying to.
Speaker 1: Luke couldn't force Sarah to get help, but he could
Speaker 1: do something to protect more people from getting hurt. This
Speaker 1: was something that she wasn't going to be deterred from
Speaker 1: doing without some sort of intervention beyond what had been
Speaker 1: done to that point, and what had been done at
Speaker 1: that point was significant. She was somebody that that wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be deterred without prosecution. By December of two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, I had already met Liz and Bethany. I
Speaker 1: knew the FEDS were investigating, so I sent Sarah a
Speaker 1: text and asked her if she would speak with me.
Speaker 1: She answered, I'm not interested in doing a story. I've
Speaker 1: been working to put this behind me. The next day,
Speaker 1: I asked her if she would reconsider telling her I
Speaker 1: wanted to hear her context, explanation, regrets, anything that would
Speaker 1: help me understand what she had done. She wrote back,
Speaker 1: It's in the past and nothing positive will come from
Speaker 1: rehashing the past. For over a year, I've reached out
Speaker 1: to Sarah, Sarah's former classmates and members of her family.
Speaker 1: Few of them responded, and none would go on tape.
Speaker 1: One former friend told me she felt bad for Sarah's
Speaker 1: family and didn't want to seem like she was piling on.
Speaker 1: Highland is a small town people talk. I flipped through
Speaker 1: old yearbooks from Highland High School, hoping images of the
Speaker 1: teenage Sarah might offer hints to the adults she would become.
Speaker 1: As a junior, she joined a health promotion group called
Speaker 1: Life Savers and was cast in a production of The
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz. The last page of her senior yearbook
Speaker 1: shows a photo of her walking across the age of graduation, grinning,
Speaker 1: shaking hands with a school board member. She looks like
Speaker 1: any other graduate and a cap and gown, ready to
Speaker 1: go into the world. Zoom in on the photo and
Speaker 1: you can see that her right ankle is strapped into
Speaker 1: a fracture boot all of us are products of where
Speaker 1: we come from, but from the outside, it's hard to
Speaker 1: know what goes on inside of family. Sarah's aunt, the
Speaker 1: one who spoke with Liz and Brian Hickock's exchange polite
Speaker 1: text messages with me, but didn't want to speak on
Speaker 1: the phone. She told me Sarah's not a mean person,
Speaker 1: just a young woman who wanted to be loved and accepted.
Speaker 1: She wrote that Sarah didn't have enough self worth to
Speaker 1: believe that she could make friends by just being herself.
Speaker 1: What Sarah really needed, her aunt said, was family. She
Speaker 1: wanted what her cousins had. She wrote, families to have
Speaker 1: fun and spend time together, care for one another, travel together,
Speaker 1: and build dreams. Reading this reminded me that in Sarah's
Speaker 1: make believe personas, she often seemed to borrow the names
Speaker 1: of her cousins and her cousin's children as if they
Speaker 1: had something she did not. If her family wouldn't help
Speaker 1: me understand Sarah, I turned to someone else who might well.
Speaker 1: I see people with mood disorders, and I also see
Speaker 1: people who have factitious disorder. And factitious disorder is brought
Speaker 1: term to describe people who have much house and syndrome.
Speaker 1: Dr Stewart Eisendraft is on the psychiatry faculty at the
Speaker 1: University of California in San Francisco. Dr Eisendraff spoke with
Speaker 1: me with one big caveat. He wanted it to be
Speaker 1: clear that he hasn't examined or diagnosed Sarah, and that
Speaker 1: his comments are based on his three decades of experience
Speaker 1: with something called Munchhausen syndrome. The description of Munchausen sounds familiar.
Speaker 1: That's basically where a person creates signs or symptoms of
Speaker 1: physical illness for purposes of being in the sick role.
Speaker 1: It isn't somebody who creates science or symptoms of illness
Speaker 1: in order to achieve some goals such as a monetary award. Rather,
Speaker 1: they do it because they want to be in the
Speaker 1: patient role and whatever benefits go along with that. He
Speaker 1: wasn't surprised to learn that Sarah had been a nurse.
Speaker 1: In general, people with factitious disorder fifty or more have
Speaker 1: been involved with the health care system, but the most
Speaker 1: common thing is a nurse or nurse's aid. Our speculation
Speaker 1: is that the people can go into the health care
Speaker 1: fields because they want to help take care of other people.
Speaker 1: They want to get care for themselves as well. They
Speaker 1: oscillate often between being in a caregiving role and being
Speaker 1: a caregiving recipient. In doing so, they may be searching
Speaker 1: for something they're not getting at home. They may recreate,
Speaker 1: say some family dynamics where they're getting a second family
Speaker 1: as it were. I don't want to oversimplify, but it's
Speaker 1: like they're seeking a sort of family nurturing relationship. Is
Speaker 1: that kind of what you're saying, Yes, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1: Or it can be a reaction to genuine medical trauma
Speaker 1: from the past. They might try to in a sense,
Speaker 1: recreated because this time they know they're in control of it,
Speaker 1: when in the original episode they were. Whatever the reason
Speaker 1: behind the behavior, Dr Eisendraff says, there's one commonality, a
Speaker 1: disregard for its impact on others. There are often what
Speaker 1: we call sociopathic. They don't have any empathy for the
Speaker 1: people around them, so they may be quite cruel to
Speaker 1: the people around them, but they're not concerned about that.
Speaker 1: They're only concerned about what they're what they're getting from
Speaker 1: the situation. They may be aware that it's antisocial or pathological,
Speaker 1: but they rationalize it saying that to themselves, this is
Speaker 1: what they need to do in order to get their
Speaker 1: needs met. Sometimes the motive is deliberate control of another
Speaker 1: person's feelings. One dynamic might be that the patient is
Speaker 1: trying to provoke anger in the people around him or her,
Speaker 1: or humiliation. It may be humiliating because they that's the issue,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of traumatic situation that the patient is
Speaker 1: working around, that they were humiliated as a child or
Speaker 1: as a young adult, and that they recreate this situation
Speaker 1: with other people. I think I've just always assumed that
Speaker 1: the motive was to get attention and support. But what
Speaker 1: you're saying is we can't make that assumption. It's a
Speaker 1: common factor getting attention and support, but it's definitely not
Speaker 1: the only factor. Does everyone who has this need psychotherapy
Speaker 1: to stop? Or can they just decide I don't want
Speaker 1: to live this way anymore and I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do it. But my experience, it's very unusual for somebody
Speaker 1: to stop on their own. And this psychotherapy is it lifelong?
Speaker 1: Is it something that you know you pretty much just
Speaker 1: have to keep treating it and keep treating it so
Speaker 1: it doesn't control your life. Yes, it's basically very long
Speaker 1: term and requires rigorous attention over time. When you're dealing
Speaker 1: with Munchausen, they have a very severe condition that is
Speaker 1: like stage four cancer, and they deserve support not for
Speaker 1: what the person is portraying themselves as, but for the
Speaker 1: condition that causes them to portray it in the first place.
Speaker 1: So instead of feeling sorry for them for they have
Speaker 1: because they have cancer, it's really recognizing they have a
Speaker 1: factitious disorder and they need treatment for that. Sarah thought
Speaker 1: she had to move through the world as someone else,
Speaker 1: someone who needed help, someone with a disability. The tragedy
Speaker 1: is she probably did have a disability, just an invisible one,
Speaker 1: not one that people can easily recognize and feel sympathy for,
Speaker 1: also one extraordinarily difficult for her and her family to face.
Speaker 1: During one pH in conversation with Liz, she told me
Speaker 1: something surprising that she and Brian had driven halfway across
Speaker 1: the country from their home in Rhode Island to Illinois.
Speaker 1: I had to see her. I had to see who
Speaker 1: she was in her elements, and we found her address,
Speaker 1: and we drove around her town, and we went to
Speaker 1: her coffee shop, and we saw all the places where
Speaker 1: she would go and we sat in front her house.
Speaker 1: She came out of her house, and both of us
Speaker 1: were just completely breathless at that moment. It was like
Speaker 1: our hearts stopped seeing her walk out of her house,
Speaker 1: getting her car with her license plates and her personal
Speaker 1: plates and go about her life. And we followed her
Speaker 1: for a bit. So you drove all the way from
Speaker 1: Rhode Island to Illinois just to lay eyes on her.
Speaker 1: We did. I mean, somebody listening to this might think, wow,
Speaker 1: that is just over the top. This was just kind
Speaker 1: of closure if you were and seeing her. Liz wanted
Speaker 1: to see Sarah, the real Sarah at home. She felt
Speaker 1: like she couldn't put this behind her unless she figured
Speaker 1: out who Sarah really was. In some ways, I didn't
Speaker 1: blame her. I'd been wanting to understand Sarah too, looking
Speaker 1: for clues. My mind kept going back to something that
Speaker 1: Bethany told me, the one thing that I've never heard
Speaker 1: her lie about. She's lied about everything else, from cousin's,
Speaker 1: nephew's husband's, you know, dead relatives, kids, whatever. Anytime I
Speaker 1: asked her about her father, she shut it down and
Speaker 1: she said, no, he left when I was little, and
Speaker 1: that was it. So I asked Officer Bryan's in Highland
Speaker 1: if he knew anything about Sarah's father. I did look
Speaker 1: for it, but I was I wasn't able to find
Speaker 1: anything of any sort of father figure for her, So
Speaker 1: even you couldn't find, like even a name of who
Speaker 1: he was. I kept looking, thinking her dad might provide
Speaker 1: a clue to what her life was missing. I learned
Speaker 1: his name is Dave and he lives in a tiny
Speaker 1: town on Roots, less than an hour from Highland. Laura
Speaker 1: les over your letter about Sarah That's next on the
Speaker 1: final episode of Sympathy Pains. Sympathy Pains is a production
Speaker 1: of Neon Hum Media and I Heart Radio. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Laura Beale I wrote and reported the episodes. Natalie Rinn
Speaker 1: is the lead producer. Our editor is Katherine st. Louis.
Speaker 1: Associate 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 Heeart Radio is Dylan Fagan. If you or someone
Speaker 1: you know is struggling with mental illness, you can call
Speaker 1: the National Alliance on Mental Illness at eight hundred nine
Speaker 1: five oh six two six four. That's eight hundred nine
Speaker 1: five O N A m I