S16 E2: Raised by Wolves

[0] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to something was wrong early and ad -free right now.

[1] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[2] I'm Dan Tversky.

[3] In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York.

[4] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.

[5] What's the answer?

[6] And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

[7] Hysterical.

[8] A new podcast from Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios.

[9] Binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free on Wondery Plus.

[10] Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences, as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence.

[11] Content warnings for each episode and confidential and free resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes.

[12] Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes.

[13] pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection.

[14] Testimony shared by guests on this show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, or Wondry.

[15] The podcast or any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional expertise or treatment.

[16] All persons are considered innocent and less proven guilty in a court of law.

[17] Thank you so much for listening.

[18] That's just a lot.

[19] Although the fucking king's lost, I'm pissed.

[20] But the Warriors continue, which is my other team.

[21] So it's like, you know, win some lose some.

[22] This is also just a lot.

[23] This is a lot to just do.

[24] Just to record yourself is a lot to unload all of this.

[25] It's so much.

[26] And then you came out here and there were so many plants.

[27] You got so much work done and so much fun done.

[28] But that's all stressors.

[29] Well, it's all stressors on your body.

[30] Even just going to a restaurant for me. And I'm sure a lot of people relate to this.

[31] Like when you're living with chronic PTSD, or you have severe anxiety that you have to manage on a daily basis, being on an airplane, going to a crowded restaurant, going to a movie theater, things that I used to be able to do because of the shootings.

[32] When you lose somebody that you love to gun violence, regardless of who's holding that gun, anytime there's gun violence in the news, it's triggering and it seems like that's all the news is lately.

[33] It's like gun violence and police violence.

[34] It's a lot to process at once.

[35] Honestly, I think I made the right call yesterday when we were talking about it at the tattoo shop.

[36] I think my body was just telling me like, no, no, this is too much right now.

[37] Just going through the first episode, writing the timeline out and having to visualize and trying to remember.

[38] And then the remembering is extremely physically taxing and emotionally taxing.

[39] I think it's the most taxing part.

[40] You are doing the deep digging and the uncovering right now.

[41] That is the hardest part of it.

[42] That is the biggest first step.

[43] That is the hardest, most insurmountable step to take.

[44] In the first episode, reading the article about Steve Pryne aloud, quote Uncle Steve, reading the whole thing out loud and actually taking it in in this context that we're sharing, that almost makes it realer, if that makes sense.

[45] So much of my childhood feels like, you know, that what dreams may come movie?

[46] where he's, like, trapped in heaven and hell and it looks like watercolors.

[47] That's kind of how, like, the trauma feels.

[48] And as I would get older or became an adult, any time I would try to express any sort of feeling about, hey, this didn't feel good, or even making a joke, like, oh, yeah, when you used to, like, do this to me, try to, like, bring it up, you know, because I didn't have the tools yet of how to advocate for myself, my mom would gaslight me and be like, oh, I never put my hands on you.

[49] That never happened.

[50] it really fragments your memories in a way when you've been gaslit to that degree because you do truly question yourself even though you know what the fuck happened and you know that you couldn't have mistaken all of those feelings and all of those things that took place and you know that it's only because it's convenient for them that they're trying to sell you this line of bullshit or because they're an adult and they think that because you were a child you didn't remember or you weren't weren't going to remember.

[51] Well, I got news for you all.

[52] I fucking remember.

[53] The parts that I do remember, I didn't misremember them.

[54] I know what happened.

[55] And digging into this shit has only made me like, oh yeah, yeah, I don't know.

[56] You're right the whole time.

[57] Which is validating, but it's also like, I don't know what to do with that.

[58] It's like being raised by wolves.

[59] These people are so goddamn embarrassing and cringy.

[60] When you're in an abusive household, Even when you know the people that are doing wrong to you are wrong, they're still the capsules that brought you into this universe.

[61] It's still perpetually disappointing no matter what happens that those people who created you did not give a fuck to do right by you, couldn't give empathy and love to you.

[62] When I look at my children, I feel nothing but wanting to protect them and love and affection and wanting to uplift them.

[63] Maybe these experiences have made me a more empathetic person.

[64] No place was entirely secure for you.

[65] School was a haven to a certain degree.

[66] But then I was never at one long enough.

[67] Exactly.

[68] Yeah.

[69] So you learn to just take care of yourself.

[70] And as much as I felt alone at home and isolated and wanting to escape, I also knew as I got older and I was around more people that I loved people and I wasn't like them.

[71] and that I was a lovable person.

[72] It took a long time to get there.

[73] When the trailer came out, people were asking me, like, how do you feel being so lovely and supportive?

[74] And I can't even go read all the messages.

[75] It feels like running bare -ass naked through the mall, and every hot guy is there.

[76] That's how vulnerable I feel.

[77] Listen, there's a reason that brought you to this space to begin with to create the podcast, right?

[78] And it was largely your own experiences.

[79] You've learned a shit ton in the process, cover and it's given you a better perspective of your own experiences.

[80] Melissa at dinner the other night actually said something really poignant to me. Melissa and Sarah were asking me about the sentencing.

[81] And I was explaining that I have this finite ending now.

[82] And you are talking about exactly what I was feeling before.

[83] And Melissa was telling me there's a greater grief in a limbo when you don't have finite answers.

[84] And there's that limbo in that grief in that limbo that is so much greater than when we can kind of close a chapter and put it behind us.

[85] You know what I mean?

[86] Yeah, absolutely.

[87] I told you this before, but my mom has made any major event in my life good or bad entirely about her, both of my parents usually.

[88] So I think me doing this, it's like I automatically am waiting for that to happen, as paranoid as that sounds.

[89] But it's like my college graduation, my birthday, like any, it was either forgotten or interrupted or some wild shit.

[90] So any time now as an adult that something good is happening to me, I also feel anxiety.

[91] This memoir should be titled Chronicles of Anxiety.

[92] The many layers of anxiety.

[93] All the different ways a person can have anxiety by Tiffany Reed.

[94] Chronicles of chronic anxiety.

[95] Why I Smoke Weed by Tiffany Rees.

[96] You think you know me, you don't know me well.

[97] During this time, I was involved in this theater group in Grass Valley, and it was run by an older couple of couple of people.

[98] Most of the people in the theater group were older, but there were a few younger kids.

[99] And they had a house in Mexico, and a couple times of year, they would take people from the theater group to go stay at their house in Mexico.

[100] and the group would learn a short play in Spanish and perform it for schools, for kids there.

[101] Which is really cool, but I was seven, eight years old, and most of the kids that went on these trips, either if they were young, they had a parent with them, or they were teens.

[102] I went on two of these trips, which is just absolutely mind -blowing to me. My youngest is eight, and I would never.

[103] but I was allowed to just go to Mexico with these people who my parents really didn't know.

[104] Nobody was watching me there.

[105] One time I walked to the market by myself and nearly got kidnapped.

[106] There was other incidents that happened on the trip with the older kids.

[107] On the surface, it seems like such a cool thing and something they would always tell me, oh, you're so lucky you got to go to Mexico and you got to do this and you do theater.

[108] That is really cool, but it doesn't fix every other thing that's happening here.

[109] Also, who lets their seven -year -old go on a plane with essentially a bunch of strangers?

[110] It's just an example of how unwatched and uncared -for we were.

[111] I know that society in the world was in a different place then as well.

[112] When I think back about it now, the things that happened to me and I see my own children who are actually like their ages and are actually allowed to be children, I look at them and I see the age they are and then I think, that's the age I was when this XYZ happened.

[113] And that is really a wake -up call for me. That has really been validating for me in a lot of ways, as strange as that is, to be like, no, Tiffany, you were eight years old.

[114] You were not in charge.

[115] You were not responsible for this.

[116] You were a baby.

[117] You should have been allowed to be a child, but you weren't.

[118] You were never allowed that.

[119] Maybe that's why I'm such a child now.

[120] The toxic positivity, Tony Robbins phase passed quickly.

[121] I don't think they could afford to keep renting that house.

[122] know they fought a lot about money throughout their entire marriage, but I remember them talking about how they couldn't afford things when we were living there.

[123] And that's an ongoing theme, is them always trying to live outside of their means.

[124] Having a nice car or having a nice house, but you can barely pay your bills.

[125] To me, that's just stress.

[126] But they were constantly trying to project an image or achieve a certain financial status or come off as better than other people.

[127] and that's what they were obsessed with.

[128] A really good memory I have with my brothers when we were living in the Grass Valley House is my older brother, Tony, getting his first CD.

[129] It was a single, and it was tag teams, whoop, there it is.

[130] I think this was the first rap song I had ever heard.

[131] I think the three of us listened to it probably until the CD actually melted into the CD player.

[132] Music has always been such a coping mechanism for me, so in between a lot of these horrific memories, I have memories of society and culture and pop culture that really meant a lot to me as a kid.

[133] And as I reflect on this, I think it's because connection to the outside world was a promise of the future.

[134] Around 8 to 10 is when I started to think about getting older and getting away and figuring out essentially a plan of how I could start working and saving money and getting away from my family.

[135] That's when I started asking for babysitting jobs.

[136] That's when I started going to work with my dad.

[137] I wanted to just learn as much as I could because I saw information as a way to escape.

[138] Also, I'm a really curious person, a nerd, and I love to learn.

[139] It also helps remind me of how long ago this was.

[140] We had a landline.

[141] We did not even have call waiting yet.

[142] I did not have the internet.

[143] I did not know what the internet was.

[144] I remember getting our first CD and being like, we are so high tech.

[145] It's basically the Jetsons right now.

[146] And I don't know.

[147] I could see that there was more coming.

[148] I could see that there was hope beyond what was just in front of me. That kept me going a lot of the time.

[149] I remember meeting each of my grandmothers on both sides.

[150] one time.

[151] Bob's mom, Liz and her did not get along, and Bob and her did not get along.

[152] I mentioned in the first episode that Bob blamed her for his dad's death and her not calling an ambulance.

[153] And from what I gathered, they just had a very fractured relationship.

[154] And knowing Bob, I'm sure he had done something or ruined something along the way because that's what he does to people.

[155] We went over there for dinner, Bobby, myself, and my dad.

[156] She gave us a gift.

[157] She was very kind.

[158] I remember her commenting on how cute we were dressed and how sweet we were.

[159] Then sitting at the table and it lasting for all of three to five minutes and then Bob and her getting in an absolute screaming match and me picking up my brother and walking outside and then my dad came out and we left and I never saw her again.

[160] Years later, I believe she passed away.

[161] I'm not actually sure.

[162] My other grandmother, my mom's mom, she lived in Bakersfield.

[163] My parents had won a trip through Bob's work.

[164] They took Bobby because I think he may have even still been breastfeeding at this time.

[165] They needed to do something with me because they wanted to go on the trip, kid free.

[166] My parents didn't have any friends and they didn't have any other options.

[167] They hadn't even really spoken in years leading up to this event.

[168] My parents drove me to Bakersfield and left me there for a week while they went on this trip.

[169] I went from knowing this person for two seconds.

[170] my parents leaving and then staying a week there.

[171] What I recall about that trip is my grandmother smoking cigarettes in her very run -down truck with the windows not cracked, and being that I have asthma, having to ask her to try and crack the window and getting a nosebleed.

[172] She did buy me this dress that I loved and I wore forever at, I think it was Montgomery Ward or JCPenney.

[173] She had a house full of really old things that I had never seen before that I thought was really cool.

[174] An old school TV and looking at the books and different things they had.

[175] I remember spending a lot of time in the sprinklers out in the backyard.

[176] In general, I had an okay time for the week that I was there.

[177] One of the nights I was there, I woke up, head to toe, had flea bites all over me. My grandmother really didn't do anything to assist.

[178] There's stuff you can put on it or medicine, Benadryl it.

[179] You know, I'm not a doctor.

[180] but she essentially didn't do anything.

[181] So for several nights, itching all over my entire body and scratching them.

[182] When my parents came to get me, they saw that I was covered and head -toe flea bites and the condition I generally was in, like uncared for.

[183] Ironically, they got really upset.

[184] That led to a huge fight between my grandmother and Liz, and I never saw her again.

[185] She reached out in later years and had sent some stuff she had crocheted for a birthday of mine in later years, but there wasn't a whole lot of that.

[186] When Tony would come and go from the house, there was often custody exchanges that myself and Bobby were brought along for.

[187] It was a bit of a drive.

[188] So that's probably why they also stand out a bit more.

[189] At one of the custody exchanges, Bob and Tony's biological dad got into some sort of screaming match and, I believe, physical fight.

[190] It was just another example of really volatile situation.

[191] situations happening that were completely unnecessary and fueled in people's abusive behavior and their own ego around children and no one was considering the impact of their behavior on the children around them.

[192] That's what stands out to me most now.

[193] Having a narcissistic mother often feels a bit like having a frenemy.

[194] And as sad as it is, I thought if I encouraged my mom or cheered her on enough that I could essentially convert her from a frenemy to a mom.

[195] And that never happened.

[196] But a lot of the time growing up, I would pacify my parents, tend and befriend my parents.

[197] From a very young age, I became good at pacifying assholes and learning how to manage difficult people with humor.

[198] I think that's why my dad saw that I had so much potential and that he could try to influence me for his own purposes.

[199] He would often tell me like, you need to get into sales.

[200] You love people.

[201] You're so outgoing, et cetera, et cetera.

[202] But I hated sales.

[203] I had no interest in that.

[204] I've always been a creative person and I wanted to do something creative or meaningful because that's the kind of person I am, he was always trying to convince me that I wanted to be just like him.

[205] He would talk at me. Like, this was a fact.

[206] And of course, I want to be like him.

[207] Anytime I would be like, actually, I think it would be really cool to like work for the FBI.

[208] He would be like, are you kidding me?

[209] You want to work for the fucking man. Are you insane?

[210] You don't want to do that.

[211] You want to be just like me. Don't you want to be like me?

[212] Why wouldn't you want to be like me?

[213] It was always so extra, but I think that's why my dad, part of the reason that my dad involved me so much in his work and office and stuff, also part of it was that he was illiterate and honestly needed me to literally help him perform his job and read documents and stuff like that, which has benefited me as an adult, but it did not benefit me as a child.

[214] That's not how children should probably be spending their time reviewing like financial documents for your dad's customers.

[215] That's just probably not it.

[216] These people were not behaving okay.

[217] And I was able to, like, crack jokes, bust their balls, and I'd check them in a way that I learned how to use my sense of humor to keep me safe.

[218] And I still do that as an adult all the time.

[219] All the time, I'll be like, I was so uncomfortable.

[220] And somebody will be like, I had no idea.

[221] It might not have seemed like I was uncomfortable.

[222] But I think because I have so much experience at pretending I'm calm and comfortable when I'm not, that other people can't pick up on it.

[223] which is a blessing in some circumstances, but it also has made me realize that I have to tell people how I feel because they may not read it by my delivery and body language because I'm really good at compartmentalizing because I had to do it so, so much growing up.

[224] I've seen you do.

[225] You saw me do it on Friday night.

[226] I've seen you do a panel.

[227] You very much are jovial and social and bright, and you are usually the person bringing the most to the conversation, The most takeaways, the most things, but you're also going halfway through.

[228] You're like, I can't even persist in this position.

[229] I'm so nervous.

[230] And, like, people will honestly go up to you and I've seen this.

[231] Or people have come up to me and said something about you.

[232] And they'll say, she did not seem nervous, even though she said it like three times.

[233] And I'm like, no, nope, she's nervous.

[234] People don't see it.

[235] But I will tell you, I, every time I see you persist like on Friday, like you said, you finish the evening, having taken a bite of maybe a few things, but you got a table Classic me, ordered everything on the menu and ate two bites, because I was so happy, though.

[236] But I was also not, I really was just so happy.

[237] I think it goes beyond that, too.

[238] I will say this.

[239] You did you so well.

[240] How do you?

[241] Well, I know, I'm sorry, not to call you out on your ship.

[242] I'm Dan Taberski.

[243] In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

[244] I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad.

[245] I'm like, stop fucking around.

[246] She's like, I can't.

[247] A mystery illness.

[248] bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.

[249] It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls.

[250] With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low.

[251] Everybody thought I was holding something back.

[252] Well, you were holding something back.

[253] Intentionally.

[254] Yeah, well, yeah.

[255] No, it's hysteria.

[256] It's all in your head.

[257] It's not physical.

[258] Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating.

[259] Is this the largest mass hysteria since the witches of Salem?

[260] Or is it something else entirely?

[261] Something's wrong here.

[262] Something's not right.

[263] Leroy was the new date line, and everyone was trying to solve them.

[264] murder.

[265] A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical.

[266] Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[267] You can binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free right now by joining Wondry Plus.

[268] She struck him with her motor vehicle.

[269] She had been under the influence that she left him there.

[270] In January 2020, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe.

[271] It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel and route to the next location.

[272] What happens next depends on who you ask.

[273] Was it a crime of passion?

[274] If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling.

[275] This was clearly an intentional act.

[276] And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

[277] Or a corrupt police cover -up.

[278] If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover -up to prevent one of their own from going down.

[279] Everyone had an opinion.

[280] And after the 10 -week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.

[281] To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

[282] Law and crime presents the most in -depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

[283] You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus.

[284] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

[285] Partially, it's PTSD, to be real.

[286] Oh, 100%.

[287] And going out to dinner with my parents was such a nightmare because they were a nightmare people, restaurant people, of course.

[288] Do you have any specific memories of like a situation?

[289] I could write a whole memoir on just eating out.

[290] I'll put that on my to -do list.

[291] One time, my dad was such a fucking con artist.

[292] Oh, my God, Amy.

[293] We'd go into a restaurant.

[294] We'd eat half the meal and he'd throw a tantrum so he wouldn't have to pay for it.

[295] it and like flip tables and shit.

[296] This is what I grew up with.

[297] That was just a fucking Tuesday.

[298] There was a phase when FenFen came out.

[299] For some reason, they thought it was a good idea to put Bob on Fenfen.

[300] It was pulled off the market pretty quickly.

[301] But if you imagine Donald Trump on mounds of cocaine, that's what Bob was like when he was on Fenn Fenn.

[302] There would be one year where it's like, okay, you had 10 explosive episodes.

[303] And then there'd be like the month you were on Fenn Fenn.

[304] every day was a goddamn nightmare.

[305] That's also the other thing about living with people like this, is there can be one month that can feel like 10 years, and then there can be a year that feels like, okay, I kind of got left alone that year.

[306] After we lived in Grass Valley, we moved to Rockland, California, and at the time, Rockland was not nearly as developed as it is now, but they had some brand -new neighborhoods with track houses that we moved into.

[307] The street was full of young families with kids around our age.

[308] We lived on a cul -de -sac, and it seemed like a very exciting change.

[309] I attended two schools while living at this house for about two years.

[310] I don't even recall why.

[311] I was told during this time that Bob was selling insurance.

[312] He seemed to be doing really well financially.

[313] We had moved into this house.

[314] He had bought Liz a extremely nice.

[315] nice cherry red corvette that was absolutely terrifying to ride in.

[316] The phase of my parents being vegan and not drinking did not last.

[317] They're drinking during the Rockland House and behavior became increasingly unhinged.

[318] For example, I remember one incident.

[319] It was 4th of July.

[320] We went to this local gym that was having like an event and my mom became extremely intoxicated and we had been out in the sun all day.

[321] On the ride home, I was in the backseat of a minivan that we had at the time, and my dad was driving drunk, per usual.

[322] My mom was completely wasted out of her mind, per usual.

[323] They were blasting music.

[324] I was begging them to turn it down.

[325] And my mom decides, as we're driving down the road, that she's going to climb out of the passenger window, sits on the window sill and is sitting upright hanging out of the car screaming and singing and singing acting terrifying i remember being so scared that we were about to die in the car she's hanging out the window my dad is driving wasted and i'm screaming from the backseat please sit down please get in the car please get in the car what are you doing after a while my dad finally like pulls on her leg and tells her whatever and I'm chastising her like what are you doing you're doing this in front of Bobby I could see that I couldn't see the fact that they were doing it in front of me and that I'm a child but I could see that they were doing this in front of my brother who was probably kindergarten first grade at this time I remember her turning around and saying Tiffany shut the fuck up with her full chest I was crawling on the bottom of the van between where the back seat and the second row sobbing and putting my ear against the bottom of the car and listening to the car noise, praying that we would get home safe and that we wouldn't die the rest of the drive home.

[326] And those kinds of incidents would happen all the fucking time.

[327] As their drinking accelerated, there was also several domestic violence incidences, both with my parents assaulting us or Tony or assaulting one another.

[328] My parents were in some sort of screaming fight.

[329] It woke me up.

[330] I went to the stairs and listened.

[331] What I overheard was something about Liz cutting Bob's toe or something like that or throwing a glass and somebody had stepped in glass and there was blood and someone called 911.

[332] I remember the cops coming and hearing their little radios and then walking around and asking what happened, walking up the stairs and coming and checking on us, and I pretended to be asleep.

[333] I learned from a very young age that I needed to protect my parents.

[334] So yeah, I just laid there and I pretended to sleep.

[335] Living in this house around third, fourth grade, my brothers and I were allowed to just run around without any supervision, whereas my kids aren't even allowed in the front without an adult.

[336] This is very much common, and I know that it wasn't just me, because I was hanging out with a lot of other kids who are also not being watched, society was different.

[337] But we would get into a lot of trouble or I would get hurt.

[338] Things would happen when you're not being watched.

[339] For example, there was this fine neighbor boy that was like four years older than me and he had a dirt bike.

[340] I just thought he was like the cutest boy ever.

[341] His name was Bryce.

[342] He puts me on the back of his dirt bike and like bus it down the road going super fast and then he turns and I fly off the dirt.

[343] bike and get scraped up, stuff like that, or walking home from school and cars following me. I never thought to bring my problems to my parents, really, because when I did, I was told to shut the fuck up or that I was too sensitive or that it was me that was the problem.

[344] So I didn't really alert my parents to a lot of the things that happened either.

[345] There would be strange incidents that happened, like somebody's dad giving me beer in third grade.

[346] There were several incidences in the Rockland House where Tony had done something to physically harm me in some way.

[347] We're in this lower den area and my mom had come around the corner and saw him hurting me in some capacity.

[348] She became so violently enraged, which is ironic because she used to physically harm me all the time.

[349] But it's like she couldn't stand the fact that someone else was getting to harm me. She physically attacked him.

[350] She was, I believe, punching and kicking him.

[351] He was yelling out.

[352] She's screaming at him.

[353] I'm screaming, begging her to stop, to please stop.

[354] After she was done, assaulting him, she spat on him.

[355] I'll never forget that.

[356] The sound and what it looked like and what she looked like, doing that to her own child.

[357] It was bizarre.

[358] It was unexplainable to my soul.

[359] And I just probably went up to my room and hid under my bed or something and just went to school the next day and was like, let's learn cursive, you know, or some other fucking thing.

[360] In the Rockland house was when I also began speech therapy.

[361] And the reason I mentioned that is because as a little kid, if you would have told me that one day people would be listening to my voice and enjoy it and continue to do so, I could have never imagined that because I was really embarrassed of my voice.

[362] I always had like a lower, raspy or voice, I sucked my thumb as a child as a coping mechanism a ton.

[363] That impacted my teeth and it impacted my speech.

[364] It's just kind of wild to think about now how far that little kid has come.

[365] I always remember liking therapy, any kind of therapy or space like that.

[366] Bob also opened a office building in an area called Old Roseville or Historic Roseville, which is a nearby town to Rockland.

[367] He started at a business complex and then he got a business complex.

[368] And then he got a own building.

[369] He was seemingly doing really well.

[370] And this is when I was told that he began doing financial planning in addition to selling life insurance.

[371] He would sell, from what my understanding was, something called a certificate of deposit, which is, hold on, let me Google it.

[372] Okay, according to Investopedia, a certificate of deposit is a savings product that earns interest on a lump sum for a fixed period of time.

[373] CD's differ from savings accounts because the money must remain untouched for the entirety of their term or risk penalty fees or lost interest.

[374] Certificates of deposit or CDs usually have higher interest rates than savings accounts as an incentive for lost liquidity.

[375] What he would sell to a lot of people who were on the verge of retirement is give your money to me, put it into this certificate of deposit for 10 years, Bing, Ban, Boom.

[376] You get whatever this guaranteed fixed rate is.

[377] And in 10 years, look at this.

[378] You've made X, Y, Z interest off of this money that you can use for retirement, et cetera.

[379] This will come into play later.

[380] But this is essentially what he was selling and he was working with a lot of different banks at this time.

[381] I know he worked with Transamerica and that was one of the bigger banks that he worked with.

[382] And that is a company that he won a lot of trips with.

[383] If you met a certain quota or you sold a certain amount, you could qualify for these sales incentive trips.

[384] It was cool except for like being on fucking vacation with my parents, which was absolutely not cool.

[385] But financially, they started doing really well.

[386] This is around the time when I started working with my dad in the office.

[387] Yes, at third grade, I would go in the summer, I would answer the phones, I would work on mailouts, I would do ridiculous amount of things for a child, but I liked doing it.

[388] I liked working with other people.

[389] I liked being around other people.

[390] I liked not being a home.

[391] And honestly, it's so strange to say, but more than one thing can be true at the same time, as terrible a person as my dad was, for the most part, he was the nicest to me. I was very much seen as a daddy's girl.

[392] I also was very outgoing and loved people.

[393] I think my dad used me as sort of a way to gain trust of other people, almost like a prop.

[394] I would walk to the gas station from there and I could buy treats and I would sneak them and it was the best.

[395] My dad hired this lawyer.

[396] He must have been working with him in some sort of financial capacity, but what I recall about this was my dad's treatment of him.

[397] Even my mom would make comments about how horrible Bob was.

[398] I even remember telling my dad, you're Ebenezer Scrooge and he's Bob Cratchett.

[399] You're like a terrible person.

[400] Seeing him have financial power and control over somebody as his quote employee was deeply disturbing.

[401] This whole process and digging into all this stuff and figuring all this out.

[402] It's very strange.

[403] Now that I'm in it, I'm starting to get, dare I say, like excited or like anxious about wanting the answers.

[404] For so long I've wanted none of the information and now it's ripped open and I'm like, give me all the information so I can have it, sit with it and move on.

[405] On April 26, 2023, I spoke with a former associate of Robert and Elizabeth Henning that knew them in a professional manner.

[406] This person would like to remain anonymous but gave us permission to share their perception of their time with them.

[407] According to this person, Robert was egocentric.

[408] He could not read and relied upon Liz and other workers to do the reading for him.

[409] He was full of ideas for gaining income, and he bragged about starting at least 23 businesses, but none of them survived because his ideas and practices were not sustainable.

[410] The person that worked with them spoke to Robert's character a little bit more, Their associate said he was paranoid, boisterous, self -centered, and it made him really unpredictable.

[411] The associate discontinued their professional connection with Robert and Elizabeth because it was clear that Robert could not follow through on his ideas in a consistently ethical manner.

[412] The associate went on to write.

[413] I began working with Mr. Henning in the fall.

[414] He was having some computer issues, which I fixed in about five minutes.

[415] I am not a tech -savvy person, but he was obviously even less so.

[416] He hired me on the spot.

[417] I stayed with the Hennings about a year.

[418] Also mentioned at one point went online and read the accounts of Bobby's death and was so heartbroken to read it.

[419] Oh, really?

[420] Wow.

[421] So around third grade is when my life got exponentially better because that's when I started listening to Fiona Apple and hip hop music, both of which I still very much enjoy to this day.

[422] I discovered the radio.

[423] I had like a tape Walkman.

[424] You could have the radio station.

[425] And if you're from Sacramento, you better know 102 .5, KSFM and 1065 Quad FM.

[426] We're the two radio stations that I love to listen to, which were essentially hip -hop music and rock alternative music, which are still my two favorite genres of music.

[427] But I remember just becoming completely obsessed with making mixed tapes during this age.

[428] and recording things off the radio and trying to disassociate with music and culture as much as possible.

[429] I mentioned in the first episode that part of my story is really also about the adults that I had in my life that showed up for me that were perhaps more unexpected.

[430] When I was living in Rockland during these years, I remember two things about going to Twin Oaks Elementary School in Rockland, California.

[431] The first is that this incredible gentleman saying, this is how we do it for the school talent show, and it was honestly the best thing ever.

[432] I wish I could remember his name.

[433] The other thing that I remember is my third grade teacher, Mrs. Shelton.

[434] She was one of the kindest teachers and people I ever had.

[435] She always made me feel extremely welcome.

[436] There was a boy in our class, and he was living with either foster parents or a home for kids in foster care.

[437] And Mrs. Shelton was such an incredible human being and teacher that she actually ended up adopting that young gentleman.

[438] And I ran into them both years later at Rockland High School at like a basketball game or something.

[439] And I learned that she had adopted him.

[440] Finding that out years later, being blown away by that and thinking how incredible it was, she probably has no idea the impact that she made on my life.

[441] and then to like know that she also cared enough about her students to literally adopt one of them, make sure he was good, and to see them all as a family, it was pretty incredible and inspiring to me to see an adult be so empathetic, unselfish, and kind towards both that child and all of us in her class.

[442] Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught.

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[445] We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment, but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit followed by Larry King, and no real product to push.

[446] He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs.

[447] To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Judici, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame.

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[450] After the Rockland House is when we moved to Auburn.

[451] My dad kept his office building in Roseville and he would commute.

[452] It was about 45 minutes.

[453] an hour away.

[454] Auburn was a much smaller town and very, very different from the towns that I grew up in Sacramento and Placer County previously.

[455] It was very much conservative small town vibes compared to Sacramento or even like other spots I've lived at in Placer County.

[456] That was a bit different, more of a charming, beautiful in the foothills place to live.

[457] This was the first time that they bought a house.

[458] So they must have been doing pretty well.

[459] Every time we would move, I would hate it because I would get attached to people.

[460] I wanted to be there.

[461] I would just be finally starting to attach, and then my parents would rip us away.

[462] I think part of that was because my dad was likely always running from one scam to the other, or they were so impulsive and didn't care about the impact that it had on us, but it was never even addressed.

[463] It was just like, we're moving, see you there.

[464] It was difficult when you're already going through so much turmoil at home, and then have no consistency in the outside world, too.

[465] I can't help but wonder if a lot of that was intentional on Bob's part.

[466] Regardless of whatever was causing this, it was very, very difficult to deal with moving so much, switching schools so much, and navigating so much heavy stuff at home.

[467] When we moved to the neighborhood in Auburn, it was an extremely nice middle -class neighborhood.

[468] The school that I attended during these years, as well as Bobby, We lived very close to this school, and I recall being there for fifth and sixth grade.

[469] I want to go back a little.

[470] Before we moved to the Auburn House, when I was living in Rockland, I played basketball for the first time on a team.

[471] I was terrible, but I was tall, so everybody thought I would be good.

[472] I was pretty good at shooting.

[473] But, yeah, I wasn't the best player on the team, but my basketball coach, I wish I could remember his name, but he was so dope.

[474] He was the nicest guy.

[475] I hadn't made a shot all year.

[476] And it was our last game, and he knew I was the only person on the team that hadn't made a shot yet.

[477] And being the awesome dad and coach that he was, he kept telling the whole team, keep passing to Tiffany.

[478] So I was, like, forced to continue to try, right?

[479] Because I would get nervous, so I wouldn't make the attempts.

[480] I end up getting the ball.

[481] I make it two points.

[482] And I remember this coach jumping into the air.

[483] He was so excited for me, screaming.

[484] It was everybody on the team.

[485] win and I had this incredible feeling of happiness.

[486] I don't remember if my parents were there or not, but we had our team party after that, after our last game, and we went to his house.

[487] We had so much fun.

[488] When he was giving out all the trophies, he was talking about me and how I wasn't the best player on the team, but I had the most heart.

[489] And that seeing me make that one basket was the highlight of his entire season as a coach.

[490] And when we moved to the Auburn House, to the next house shortly after, I remember going to my mom's room and I was like, had been crying, thinking about how much I was going to miss this coach and being on this team and telling my mom and her getting mad and yelling at me for basically expressing that to her that I was going to miss my coach and basically acting like, you weren't that good at basketball anyways, what do you care, why are you bothering me with this?

[491] She just didn't know how to empathize for anyone but herself.

[492] She also didn't seemed to be equipped to handle the emotions of a genuine, authentic, honest person like myself.

[493] Me sharing my feelings with her made her very uncomfortable because of her own lack of empathy and her own shortcomings.

[494] She would act like when I would express my feelings, it was an act of betrayal towards her.

[495] When I would express feelings of happiness, she would act jealous.

[496] Sometimes she would genuinely seem happy to see me be picked on or to see me struggle or to see me be sad.

[497] And that's the person that brought you into this world.

[498] Fifth and sixth grade and moving to this school is when I would recognize I started being bullied at school.

[499] I had a male teacher for both fifth and sixth grade and neither of them really seemed to particularly like me very much.

[500] My fifth grade teacher, he would make us do all of those physical fitness tests that the state makes them do.

[501] But I felt like he tried his hardest to be a dick about it when it didn't need to be like that.

[502] For example, he would go around the class and he tried to get us to say our weight out loud.

[503] I think finally some brave student was like, can I come up and tell you my weight?

[504] Because I don't want to announce it to the whole fifth grade class.

[505] And he was irritatingly like, fine.

[506] Those incidents led to a lot of comments and snickering and stuff, being that I was seen as overweight as a child as I started to enter those tween years.

[507] This is the year when boys started commenting on my appearance and other girls in our class's appearances when we were going around doing the weight thing.

[508] Some boy in the class commented that I had a big nose.

[509] I never even thought I had a big nose, but like now I do.

[510] I started to have some more of that social awareness and the kids at this school just seemed more mature.

[511] When I attended school in Rockland, I wore a head -to -to -toe sweat pant outfit with smiley faces on it from Walmart.

[512] And then when I showed up at fifth grade in Auburn, everybody was wearing Stussy and freaking DCs and Jinkgo jeans and pipes.

[513] And it was like, oh shit, this is like a whole different situation.

[514] It just felt a lot older.

[515] This is when my brothers and I started getting into like skateboarding and skate culture, watching skate videos together and playing video games.

[516] It got a little bit easier to tolerate each other.

[517] My older brothers tended to lay off me a little bit more as I got older because I'm now almost six feet tall and pretty quickly in fifth and sixth grade I got taller than most people.

[518] So it got a lot easier for me to fight back, hold my space for myself.

[519] As the bullying would happen at school, sometimes my dad or mom would be like picking me up from school and they could see that the kid was picking on me in the line or something or that I wasn't invited to something that other kids are being invited to.

[520] My dad was driving me home from school one day, and he said to me, you know, you could be a real fox if you lost some weight.

[521] I was in fifth grade.

[522] That's like 11.

[523] Wait, that's like 10.

[524] That's so weird.

[525] But this is when my parents really started to comment on my weight and talk to me about withholding food or encouraging me to, starve myself or when I would ask for food my mom would scream at me or my brothers being able to have food and I wasn't allowed to have that food or in general making sure that I knew anytime that I wanted to eat or possibly enjoy myself near food that that was a really really bad idea and that I should just not eat as I started to enter pre -puberty before I got tall I was gaining weight and my parents were commenting about it more and and them trying to shame me and starve me and all that kind of stuff wasn't working.

[526] They decided to sign me up for a class.

[527] A class through Kaiser Permanente.

[528] My mom and dad took me because my mom, of course, wanted to make sure that my dad heard everything they had to say because she blamed him and his genetics for me being perceived as overweight or not good enough.

[529] She'd be like, you're not even eating that much.

[530] You're so fat.

[531] Why?

[532] We're not even feeding you and you're still fucking too big.

[533] That was the way that she would act.

[534] And after the class, she was so pissed because she's like, everything that they already said in the class to do, you're already doing.

[535] We're already forcing you to do X, Y, Z. It's still not working.

[536] You're still not in the body that we like.

[537] And what a fucking waste of time.

[538] And those other kids in the class are real fat kids.

[539] And there's something wrong with them and they're parenting.

[540] But like, I'm not like those other parents because I'm a good parent.

[541] When really it's like, lady, you need to go to therapy and work on your fucking personality.

[542] Your problem is not your daughter.

[543] Your problem is that you're a soulless human being who doesn't understand anything beyond the surface.

[544] That's your problem.

[545] You need to go work on yourself instead of trying to live your life through me as a vessel and projecting all of your unprocessed trauma and your bullshit onto a 10 -year -old child.

[546] That felt good.

[547] The neighborhood we lived in was a nice suburb and people would actually still let their kids go play outside and etc. me and my brother having this deep emotional connection that I can't explain and some people might not understand this.

[548] But I was at home and it was not uncommon for us.

[549] After school, play until dark.

[550] For some reason, I just had this weird feeling that something was wrong with Bobby.

[551] I went downstairs and I asked my mom, where's Bobby?

[552] And she was like, I don't know.

[553] I was just having a weird feeling too.

[554] She went up the street and could hear him screaming from someone's backyard.

[555] I was told this right after this happened.

[556] She went up the street to see which house he was playing at, heard screaming coming from a backyard.

[557] One of the boys that my brother played with, who was around his age, had a older brother who was probably 16 or 17 at the time.

[558] He had put my brother in a full -sized trash can and took a hose and put it in the trash can and was filling it with water and holding the lid down and telling him that he was going to kill him and drown him in the trash can.

[559] I know that my brother came home.

[560] The police were called.

[561] That boy that did that to him went in front of some sort of juvenile judge who made him write an apology letter.

[562] I don't know what else, but I know that was an extremely traumatic thing for everyone involved.

[563] Again, an insane amount of trauma for a small child to continually go through these sorts of things.

[564] It's really important to also honor these things that happen to Bobby.

[565] They deserve space.

[566] He literally was in survival mode perpetually.

[567] He was goofy like me, but also very sensitive like me. You can see that in all the beautiful photos of him.

[568] He's such a beautiful soul.

[569] He was more like shy.

[570] He was a very sensitive kid.

[571] And that's why experiencing all the trauma that we did, especially together, made us so close.

[572] Stuff like that would happen.

[573] And then I'd be like, okay, what's tomorrow?

[574] When you live in constant chaos, you expect nothing different.

[575] You're just waiting for the other shoe to drop because that's what's always happened.

[576] There was actually a CPS call that was made at some point when Tony was younger.

[577] But I don't remember the CPS people coming to the house or myself being interviewed.

[578] But when we were in the Auburn House, I believe after the physical altercation that took place at one of the custody exchanges, somebody had made a call to CPS.

[579] My parents both claimed that it was Tony's biological dad that had called CPS on them out of spite just to get at them, not because, you know, they hit their children and they're being held accountable for that.

[580] Nope, that can't be it.

[581] Must be somebody else's fault.

[582] They had already interviewed Tony separately, but my parents had told me that CPS would be coming to our Auburn house and that they would be interviewing me. my dad for hours prepared me for this barking orders at me telling me exactly what I couldn't couldn't say coaching me making sure that I knew exactly what to say how to say it whatever the CPS woman came she took me to the garage where there was like a card table separate from my parents she asked me questions and I reported to her exactly what I was coached to say she said thank you very much.

[583] She left and nothing happened.

[584] I felt really, really guilty about that, and I still do, even though it's not my guilt and it's not my shame.

[585] I was doing the best I could and I was a child.

[586] I wish I would have said something to stand up for him and to stand up for all of us.

[587] But I did what I was supposed to do.

[588] And the toxic belief that blood is everything, family is everything, no matter what they do or what they say or how they behave, that is when this line of thinking became heavily relied on as we got older.

[589] As we started to be able to express ourselves more and recognize through outside influence and relationships with the outside world and could recognize our parents' problematic behavior more readily, then they shifted the conversation to family as everything.

[590] You're either with us or against us.

[591] And often I was against them and Tony.

[592] But I always had Bobby.

[593] I would see all of this terrible stuff happening.

[594] I would do what I could to make Bobby and I's childhood happier, whether that meant like planning a Halloween party myself and organizing it and inviting neighborhood kids or baking cookies with my brother or making house decorations with him out of paper, paper chains, or playing games with him.

[595] That's where I learned to focus my attention during some of this.

[596] And I saw that as my responsibility.

[597] CPS looked into it and they determined that it was safe enough for Tony, according to them, to continue to be in either household, which is very sad to think about.

[598] When we moved to Auburn, this is the house that will contain the most traumatic memories for me. This season on something was wrong.

[599] They came upstairs, busted into her room, held her at gunpoint, while they flipped her room.

[600] The second phone number I called, it was him.

[601] Oh my God, what did he say?

[602] Once he got cash from a new client, like a Ponzi scheme, he would use that money to purchase the actual thing the previous person was still waiting for.

[603] It was like the really fucked up version of Schitts Creek, season one, episode one.

[604] It was very strange.

[605] It's like apocalyptic.

[606] and convinced me that he was innocent of his crimes for so long.

[607] He used me as a tool when it was convenient to him.

[608] Thank you so much for listening.

[609] Until next time, stay safe, friends.

[610] Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese.

[611] If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram, at Something Was Wrong podcast.

[612] Our theme song was composed by Gladrags.

[613] Check out their album, Wonder Under.

[614] Thank you so much.

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