Leona | Betrayal Weekly

[gentle music] I just lost my mind.

It felt like someone opened my brain, and it was spilling onto the floor.

Everything I had known to be true was just not.

[upbeat music] I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

[gentle music] For this episode, we've anonymized all the names and locations.

Leona grew up in the Midwest in a town where nobody was a stranger.

This town is tiny.

There's less than 5,000 people here, so everybody knows everybody.

Her family has lived there for four generations.

It's hard to go anywhere and not be running into somebody that I know or knows someone in my family.

Just outside of town, the landscape gives way to huge fields of corn and soybeans.

It's a big farming community.

Lots of kids at Leona's school are part of a youth organization called FFA, Future Farmers of America.

During FFA week, everyone drove their tractors to school.

Growing up, Leona spent a lot of time with her younger sister.

They were close, and Leona was protective of her.

She's an oldest child to her core.

I am definitely type A personality.

I want everything to be perfect.

I'm a black and white person.

I do not do well with gray, so I have to follow the rules.

Her family didn't have a lot of money, and if Leona wanted to go to the movies, grab dinner with friends, or go on class field trips, she had to come up with the money herself.

I started working pretty much full time at 16, and so I would go to school till 3:00, get to work at 3:30, be there till 10:00.

[gentle music] After high school, Leona stayed in her hometown and lived with her parents.

She was still a teenager and was saving up money to move out.