Mm-hmm

... um, the way I was picturing it.

It was enough that I, you know, out the corner of my eye as I'm walking past that I could see her silhouette, 'cause I know what she looks like or what she looked like then, and I was like, "Okay." But she wasn't there when I stepped back, so I was like, "Okay, uh, maybe I was just seeing things." But it was enough [laughs] to, uh, for me to remember years going later, because I, uh, never even shared it with anybody at all, 'cause I was thinking, "Well, maybe I just saw something and it wasn't really her." But I thought I saw that she was also wearing a particular nightshirt, and this is gonna be important.

I thought she was wearing a particular nightshirt, um, that used to be mine, and it was handed down to her.

Oh.

And yeah.

And all she did, this, this thing just pointed at her, and she just, all she could do was just get under the covers and just call out for my dad until, you know, finally, uh, I, I believe that he did eventually go in there, but she was just terrified.

AndI didn't know about this until, I feel like it might've been the same week where, uh, she, she thinks that, 'cause this part, I, I don't remember.

[laughs]

So, sent it in, crossed my fingers and toes, and then got the interview set up and I just feel very lucky to have it now.

I was hoping it was a good fit for both and that was very important to me when we were looking for this, is I wanted Cocos to really believe that I was a good fit before hiring me.

I didn't wanna just fill a space.

Because once I, I commit to something, I commit to it for the long haul, and I build a future in my head, and I make things my own.

So yeah, that's how I started here.

I got very excited.

Mm-hmm

[laughs]

So we met in college, and both of our parents had gotten married really young.

Uh, both of our parents were high school sweethearts.

And we got engaged right out of college.

Didn't think much about it because that's what a lot of people were doing.

We both wanted to end up in Dallas, which we did, and my mom nor his mother ever said, "Wow, you guys are really young.

Are you sure [laughs] this is the right fit?" It was just, "Okay, what, what's the date, and how do we help with planning?" Fortunately, it has worked out, but now that I have a 25-year-old, a 23-year-old today, it's Emory's birthday today, a 21-year-old, an 18-year-old, I would advise them to take their time.

What is your best marriage advice?

Mm-hmm.

My mom was nice to us individually.

My dad was okay with us individually.

And then together, they just...

They really, like, spent a lot of time apart.

You know, they kinda had business decisions to make together sometimes, but even that was scaled back because my dad was...

He was a pretty unpleasant person to be around.

Okay [laughs]

Yeah.

So-I did pretty good the first couple months I was here.

I, you know, d- I was on orientation for my new job.

I, um, showed up to work.

I was still, you know, drinking heavily.

My partner at the time, he made-- did the best he could to make me comfortable, to make sure I had everything I needed, to like, you know...

It was a lifestyle change for him and a huge one for me, and he, he really felt like he needed to, like, make me as comfortable as possible, which I, like, to this day totally appreciate.

[phone beeping]

Oh, wow.

And I'm like, wait, y'all are in couples therapy and you're like, "I'm still unhappy and wanna separate," so I'm like, I don't know how the announcement of the separation is going to come up.

I have no idea.

And then they, um, this is the second time in a row that, uh, Lindsay has had a freedom dinner, meaning that she's celebrating the end of her and Carl's engagement, relationship.

I'm like, I don't even know.

Freedom dinner, I'm not exactly sure why we're having this.

Um, Carl seems very happy about his soft bar, which is basically a chili...

That can go to, you know, whatever.

Why don't you s- why don't you tell us Penelope's story?

So, uh, I got pregnant in, uh, March of 2025.

Um, I was seven months postpartum with my son, so it was very much a surprise, but not surprise kind of thing.

I knew I always wanted a third, and so I was just so eager and excited.

And I have annoyingly uneventful pregnancies, my midwives call them.

It's the most uneventful things that happen.

Everything's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is a little sus.

Once I started living with him, that's when I started putting the pieces together and I was like, "Mm, there's something more to this story," and I started believing what the things that you had said more, 'cause now I'm living through it, and it's exactly what she's describing, so what the fuck? Part of me wanted to reach out to you because I kinda wanted to tell you, like, "Hey, I'm sorry for not believing you, and I'm sorry for thinking that you were crazy because you weren't." [laughs] Back to the freaking post that he posted about you.

He was telling me, he's like, "I'm so fucking done," like, "I hate that she's bashing me on the internet.

I feel like I need to, like, do it to her, too." And I'm like, "Well, then just post your side of the story.

Clear your name if that's how you feel." He didn't tell me what he was gonna post, and then he posted that.

He's all like, "My post is up.

So the fact that he had this opportunity, this brand-new opportunity, this shiny brick road for him to just trot on down, go into the sunset with his new woman, his new job, which is arguably even better than The Bachelor, okay? Working for the most popular person on the internet, and he went and fucked that up all by himself.

... of any of those? I mean, we're gonna try to flow throughout, but do you have a sense?

Well, I feel pretty comfortable that like, unless you feel diff...

Like the living room doesn't really bother me, the dining room doesn't really bother me, but I know I could be doing something cooler with it.

There might be times that I wanna like move ahead on painting some other rooms that just need painting while I'm working on some more of like the design-y things about the other rooms, but-

Great.

That painting is another.

But other than that, I have some other pieces in other rooms that, you know, like a glass-fronted, you know, dark wood cabinet and a white kinda scallopy bookshelf.

So I can send you...

Here's his friend Stephanie talking to me from France.

He supported me in everything, in all, absolutely in everything in my life.

You know, each time I felt bad, he was there for me, but he's the same with everyone because Charlie feels a lot helpless in solitary confinement, and I think he wants to help the others.

It's something really, really important for him, is to be able to help the others, you know?

Well, share your angel story, please.

Okay.

So, um, this was a long time ago.

My children are grown now, but they were small.

So I have three small children, and my h- I was married at the time.

So my husband, myself, and my three small children lived in a duplex.

So our bedrooms were upstairs, and everything else was downstairs.

Oh.

Talk a little bit about what that experience was like actually going to Reed City and meeting family members of the victims and going to the crime scene.

It was kind of nerve-wracking and a little scary and ominous, especially when we went to the actual crime scene down there.

I think it's 'cause we had that mindset, like we knew what happened there, and so it was kind of scary and also, like, it was very poorly lit.

And everything is supposed to be like most relatively the same.

And so we were just like standing there where she was, and we also got to meet the loved ones.

We got to interview them and just all the grief they're going through, just knowing that one of their loved ones was murdered and they still have no, no idea why or who it was even after like forty-plus years.

And I think that we need to focus on their lives and everything that happened apart from the horrible things that we're discussing here, and I think that they deserve to be remembered as more than just what happened to them.

Another thing, um, about this podcast is we're not only trying to make their voices heard, but we're also trying to make our voices heard.

[laughs] Oh, Stephanie, honey, let's do the work.

Great morning.

Great day.

I'm glad I finally made it.

[laughs] I have, um, I live with the diagnosis of ADD, and it does, it does play out sometimes because there have been times that I've signed up for your talk and either I forget it or I overthink it in my mind, and, oh, I haven't done this, I haven't done that, I'm not ready.

And so I'm just glad that I pressed my way through.

Mm.

'Cause I don't like the feelings that I feel right now.

Mm-hmm.

And his uncle, who was still living at the, in the home at the time, could not leave to come to us to get food during the snowstorm, and so that was when I really said, "Hey, we need a door so that we could just walk through without having to deal with rain or the historic snow."

[laughs]

...

I pointed out her, her desires.

I will say, the only thing I have actually asked Lee to do in this debate is we have a friend who is an architect, and I just want his opinion on if it would be feasible, because my mother-in-law has been talking about this since the '80s.

And so just rule it out or rule it in, is it possible?

She felt deeply loved by her family and recalls her parents concealing nothing about her adoption from her, nor her connection to India.

Obviously, I didn't have the same color as them, so you cannot [laughs] lie about that, and you ask questions.

So in fact, they could not, uh, have kids on their own, so like it was the most amazing experience for them.

But there were never any, um, lie or hidden things or whatever.

No, I remember them telling me that when I would be 18-something, we would go back to India if this is something that we wanted to do.

And to be honest, I felt that I didn't wanted to go back at all to India.

Are you still curious about her?

I still have this curiosity, but it's okay to leave it like this.

In the few years since we met her, Stephanie's gained a better sense of why she needed to alter her appearance.

I saw so many of the images, the photos that he took, and so my trauma was very rooted in the sight of my face and my body.

And so in those couple of years after I discovered what he was doing, the sight of my own face and my own body was very triggering for me.

It was very difficult to even change my clothes or take a shower.

By not taking care of myself, cutting my hair short, and by wearing the baggy clothing, I could keep myself safe from seeing myself.

[instrumental music] And since the podcast, and as I have continued with therapy and yoga, I have been able to reclaim myself again.

I'm growing my hair out again.

She's dedicated herself to being an advocate, telling her story in the hopes that new victims will feel less alone.

After 23 years of marriage, she found intimate photos of herself on her husband's laptop.

But it was very empowering for me to share my story through the Betrayal podcast, and the best part of what came out of that is that the podcast producers connected me with Saskia, who is my absolute soul sister.

That's Stephanie again.

Her country gave her the privilege of having her anonymity, but she still went forward to bring this abuse onto a national, international spotlight, which was just amazing.

Stephanie was married for 23 years, but then she discovered something horrifying on her husband's laptop.

He had a Flickr account that was filled with nude photos of me, hundreds of pictures.

He explained that he puts the picture up in a chat room, and 25 people at a time can be in the chat room, but people come and go.

And so as they come in and out, these other men are explaining how they would rape me.

But for her, and for women who've been through what she's been through...

It's this other thing.

It's that when you go home at the end of the day and you crawl into bed with the man that you love, that should be the safest place you'll ever be in the world.

I found out that that was the most dangerous place that I had ever been, and that is a real mind fuck.

Wouldn't you say, Stephanie? You had some thoughts about that as well.

And it reminded me as we look back to the Jesus movement in time then and our generation now, how in Ecclesiastes, it says that nothing is new under the sun.

Yeah

... new generations are coming because we know God's word doesn't change, and we know we all have that void in our heart where we're seeking a relationship with Jesus.

But how we approach that and how we connect and, as Noelle was saying, we're so isolated in our generation, knowing and trying to learn how do we connect with that generation then-

Mm.

They have this general email box called the duty attorney email.

You send a email to the duty attorney saying like, "Hi, my client's actually a citizen." And you get an auto-response back, and the auto-response is like, "We are, have overwhelmed with cases, and we will not give our position on any prospective motions.

We will file a response accordingly.

If you need to speak to the attorney about a particular case, please look at who is assigned to the case.

We will no longer be providing information about who is assigned to the case."

Mm-hmm.

And the attorney says, um, "Your Honor, like, we were recently served with, um, third-country removal, an, a, a motion for third-country removal.

Hmm.

Um, just to spend time together.

It was just, like, a thing we did, and on a pay week, I could get, like, an extra little treat, and when it wasn't a pay week, I couldn't.

Um, so there was that, and I remember hearing, "Well, there's no money for that, so nope," uh, just in general about things.

Um, I didn't think we were poor by any means, um, but I did not, I knew we weren't, like, wealthy or anything like that.

Um, they didn't talk to us directly about money, um, other than, "We have it," or, "Nope, you, we don't have it, so you can't have that." So there was no talk about, um, like, investments or any kind of these bigger picture things.

Credit cards, bad.

[whoosh]

Mm-hmm.

Um, so I had observed the camera crew doing what they do f- like, prior to this event.

So I kind of went in having that, that in my mind, um, and then, uh, it helped relieve the pressure, honestly.

Like, uh, [laughs] the focus isn't really on me.

They're, they're gonna capture what these girls are doing 'cause th- that's what they have to do for the show.

Have you thought about going back to that resort, like, for an anniversary or anything?

Um, I thought about going back to Jamaica because it was so pretty.

I don't know if the whole all-inclusive resort is really my style now, but at the time it was nice, and it definitely served the purpose of the wedding and then just, like, having all the guests there.

(laughs) Increasingly so.

And so we were there over the summer, kind of right before the kids were going back to school.

And this cat started hanging around our house, which isn't unusual in Trout Lake, because I grew up there.

People have a lot of cats, and they hang around, and they're always usually indoor/outdoor cats.

But this cat was really clinging on to us, and we were kind of falling in love with it.

It was coming around pretty much every weekend we were there.

And then my mom, who lives next door, was feeding it when we weren't there.

What? How many times did your kid ride that fucking bouncy cord? (laughs)

I just stand there thinking to myself, "Holy cow, my husband's never gonna believe this, so I'm not going to tell him." I also didn't tell my children about this because I did not want to frighten them

Christina and I loved to go ride our bikes out in the driveway.

We had this cool circle drive area, and there are windows all across the front of our house, and we're just playing and having a great time.

As I'm driving in front of the house, I keep seeing something behind me every time I pass by the window.

At some point as I'm passing through, I stop my bike, and Christina and I are talking, and I look in the window, and sure enough, I see in the window my reflection, and I see the reflection of someone standing behind me

At this point, my sisters and I have all married, and we have children of our own.

We were back visiting my parents.

I was in the bathroom with my youngest daughter, and she was four years old at the time.

Can we put a number on something like that?

Sure.

Sure, absolutely.

I mean, I would love to own a house again.

When I was in my 20s I owned a house, and then I got divorced, and that throws everything into craziness.

And so I would love to own a house.

My dream goal would be to be able to put 30% down on a house, and in Southern California that's probably about $300,000.

Like, where is that money?