Eileen | Betrayal Weekly

Eileen grew up in the '60s and '70s just outside of Boston.

She was part of a big Irish Catholic family, the fourth of seven children.

It was a happy house full of very strong opinions, [laughs] and our family was always trying to one-up each other with storytelling and jokes.

In a house of nine, she learned to speak up.

I can be a little bit feisty.

[laughs]

It's no wonder she gravitated towards politics.

In high school, I was kind of driven to do things that I thought would be important for the country.

I had been a page in Congress in Washington, DC, in my high school years and had interned down there.

And I had a very defined vision of going into politics.

So right after she graduated college, she moved to DC.

I was working in Washington for a political consulting firm.

After a few months on the job, she began to doubt whether politics was really for her.

This had been the career she'd always imagined.

But she hadn't ever really considered other options.

I probably was in a bit of a crisis in my life at that moment, questioning, "Oh, am I really doing the right thing?" I was kind of bobbing around in the water looking for my purpose, and really missing Boston.

That summer of 1986, she had to travel back home for a wedding.

One of her cousins also happened to be in town.

A distant cousin of mine was over from Ireland, and he was living in a household full of Irish people who were working there.

Eileen decided to spend a night out in Boston with her cousin and his friends.

We were all going out tonight, and let's all go to this party.

They went out to an Irish pub, and that's where she met a man we're going to call Paul.

He was friends with her cousin.

He was a little shy, and that's sort of why I began talking to him.

I wanted to draw him out.