S11 E5: [Nina] There’s a Gun in the Car

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

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[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.

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[10] Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences.

[11] Episodes can discuss topics that can be triggering, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, suicide, and murder.

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[14] Some names have been changed for anonymity purposes.

[15] Opinions expressed by the guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself or audio chuck.

[16] Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes.

[17] Thank you so much for listening.

[18] You think you know me, you don't know me will.

[19] Hi, I'm Nina, and my story began in February of 2016.

[20] I met Will on Tinder, typical storybook romance for the modern age.

[21] He was a bodybuilder, and I had recently lost 100 pounds, so we connected on the whole fitness thing.

[22] It started out just a few text messages here and there, and then it became several a day, several phone calls a day.

[23] The interest was there on both sides for both of us.

[24] His personality was really outgoing.

[25] He asked a lot of questions and was really interested in finding out more about me and what I had gone through in my past.

[26] So that was really awesome.

[27] him.

[28] He was always joking around.

[29] We would tease each other, you know, the playful teasing, flirting, things like that.

[30] He just seemed very comfortable everywhere he went, just really confident in himself.

[31] And I really enjoyed that because it just made me feel at ease.

[32] I'm a little bit more introverted.

[33] So having somebody who's extroverted was really nice because it made me feel like there was a good balance between the two of our personalities.

[34] He knew a little bit about every single subject.

[35] You could ask him anything and he would know something about it.

[36] So real intelligent and then also just successful in his career.

[37] Really career driven, really driven as far as his bodybuilding and wanting to be successful in that area.

[38] So it was really impressive all the goals that he had for himself.

[39] Our first date, we ended up going to the gym and he invited me to lunch after that.

[40] And we just seemed to connect on so many different levels, not just on a physical level.

[41] So I thought that was really awesome.

[42] Maybe a couple days later, it was Valentine's Day.

[43] He said, He didn't want to spend Valentine's Day alone, so he asked me to go out with him, and we spent Valentine's Day together, and it was wonderful.

[44] He brought flowers.

[45] We went to dinner.

[46] It was great.

[47] He just seemed like the perfect guy.

[48] While we were getting to know each other, he had told me that he was recently divorced, and that in his previous marriage, he had been a swinger.

[49] I'm not somebody that really yucks anybody's yum.

[50] I let him know that it wasn't my deal.

[51] I wasn't interested in living a swinger lifestyle, but asked him if that was something he still wanted to continue doing, and he said, no, it wasn't necessary that he was more just looking for a connection.

[52] It was just a part of his life.

[53] Though Nina was enjoying how quickly their romantic relationship was blossoming, she was a little taken aback when only a few weeks into seeing one another, Will said he was in love with her.

[54] When he told me he loved me, I didn't feel the same way.

[55] I did tell him that I loved him because I felt kind of on the spot, but I thought, well, I could grow too, because I really didn't like him at the time.

[56] We became a couple pretty quickly.

[57] I went on his Facebook, after we made it Facebook official, and I was looking back on previous posts that he had done.

[58] And he had made a post about saying, hey, just thought I would let everybody know that I'm getting divorced and this is what's going on in my life.

[59] And it was only just a few weeks, maybe even two weeks before we had met.

[60] So I did ask him about it and say, I thought you were divorced.

[61] I thought this had happened a while ago.

[62] And he said, yeah, it did.

[63] I just hadn't made an official announcement on Facebook.

[64] I just thought I would at that time.

[65] So, put me at ease, made me feel like, okay, that seems plausible.

[66] They'd been divorced for a few months.

[67] He told me that he was best friends with his ex -girlfriend, and his ex -girlfriend was somebody who he had cheated on his ex -wife with.

[68] She was also in the Swinger lifestyle.

[69] So, of course, I asked a lot of questions about this and asked him, why aren't you with her then?

[70] If you're divorced now, why wouldn't you be with her?

[71] And he said, we're just friends.

[72] She's married.

[73] It's not going to turn into anything further.

[74] And he's like, you know, just so you know, she's going to be in my life.

[75] So that's something that you're going to need to be okay with.

[76] Just asked a bunch of questions.

[77] And the way he described it, it just seemed like, yeah, they're just friends.

[78] It's not going to be an issue.

[79] Just kind of trusted him that it was not going to be anything other than a friendship.

[80] I also have friends that are male.

[81] So it didn't seem like a huge red flag to me at that point that he would have his best friend also be somebody that he had dated in the past.

[82] He met my son.

[83] My son immediately did not like him at all.

[84] At the time, I asked him why, and he couldn't really describe it.

[85] I thought maybe because I had been single for such a long time prior to meeting Will that maybe he was uncomfortable with his mom having a man around in the house, but he would get used to it eventually.

[86] I've recently asked my son what it was, and he said, well, I couldn't make him laugh.

[87] And here's this guy that is trying to get with my mom, and he's also not trying to be friends with me. He's not trying to get to know me as a person.

[88] We had our first major fight.

[89] One of the nights he was over at my house and he fell asleep and I woke him up and I said, hey, you got to go home.

[90] I wasn't comfortable having him spend the night at my house while my son was there.

[91] He was really upset when he left and I could tell he was really irritated.

[92] The next morning we talked about it and he said, that's the first time I felt that I was rejected by you.

[93] We got into a little bit of an argument and I said, I'm not going to do it.

[94] do this.

[95] If you can't understand that there's a boundary, that my son comes first, that I'm not ready to have that jump into everything, then we're going to have to go ahead and end this.

[96] We sat on the phone for a couple hours, and it was pretty late at night.

[97] He kept saying, you need to come to my house right now.

[98] We need to discuss this in person.

[99] I wasn't going to leave my son by himself, so I kept telling him no. He would say things like, you need to get help for your issues, the fact that you're not wanting to jump into this.

[100] and that you're nervous about having me around, that's your own issues and that you need to deal with that.

[101] The way he was able to manipulate situations and turn things around, it was pretty astonishing to me. Sometimes we would have a conversation and all of a sudden it would be turned around and an hour later I would think of the conversation and say, how did it even get to this point?

[102] Because he was just really skilled at using his words to manipulate things.

[103] The next morning he even texted me and said, are you sure this is really what you want?

[104] you really want to be with me. And I said, yeah, let's just move on from this.

[105] A couple days later we were discussing it.

[106] And he said, you know that if we ever break up again, it's going to be because of your son.

[107] And I said, you're right, it will be.

[108] He comes first.

[109] So that's just how it's going to be.

[110] I feel like he was jealous of the relationship that I had with my son.

[111] I mean, my son and I, it had just been the two of us for 10 years together.

[112] So we were very bonded.

[113] And I think when he spent time with me and my son and he saw the relationship that we had, I do think it made him feel jealous.

[114] Anytime they would hang out, there was always like a little bit of tension there where you could see that they weren't going to get along.

[115] They weren't going to be best friends.

[116] I think that he really wanted to be the priority in somebody's life where he was number one and that's it.

[117] No children to get in the way.

[118] The relationship was very fast moving.

[119] About a month into it, he had already said, we need to move in together.

[120] We need to get rid of one of our houses.

[121] We probably lived about 25 minutes away from each other.

[122] So he just casually mentioned, hey, let's get rid of one of our houses.

[123] And I said, no, I'm not ready for that.

[124] That seems a little too quick for me, but eventually we'll get there.

[125] Another reoccurring conversation the couple had was about Will's relationship with his ex -girlfriend.

[126] He would tell me she saw a post on Facebook and she would contact him and be talking about it.

[127] And if I, I questioned him or said, why is she involved?

[128] Why does she care if you guys aren't connected anymore?

[129] He would say, well, are you jelly?

[130] Are you getting jealous of this situation?

[131] And I'd say, no, I just am trying to get clarification on the situation.

[132] There was always other women that he would mention and talk about.

[133] He talked to women on Instagram, other fitness models and things like that.

[134] He would always give little hints of talking about swinging and saying, hey, we should give this lifestyle try.

[135] Maybe if you meet some people and maybe you'd do it, maybe it's something you'd be interested in.

[136] And I kept saying no, that that's not something I'm interested in.

[137] I told him that I would go to a swinger's party, but I wasn't going to do anything with anybody else.

[138] I would just kind of go and see what the environment's like, just have a new experience.

[139] But he didn't want to do that.

[140] Unless we were going to participate, he didn't want to go.

[141] Eventually, I did start in a way, entertaining the idea.

[142] Somebody had reached out to me that I had known before.

[143] I had met Will.

[144] And we started chatting and talking about going out and things like that.

[145] I had such an icky feeling inside.

[146] I don't like this.

[147] This is not me. I'm just a monogamous person.

[148] That's who I am.

[149] After coming to this realization, Nina decided to tell Will about the conversation she had with her old love interest.

[150] Because that was his thing is, you can date whoever you want to, as long as you tell me everything that happens.

[151] So I was telling him, hey, this person reached out to me. This is what happened.

[152] And he said, I want to read the messages.

[153] And I was like, well, they're deleted.

[154] I got rid of them.

[155] And he was really, really upset about that.

[156] He had me come to his work so he could talk about it.

[157] And I was like, hey, I'm sorry.

[158] I didn't feel right about it.

[159] So I just deleted it.

[160] I didn't know what you would need to read messages to feel better about the situation.

[161] And we seemed to kind of like smooth things over.

[162] I had to leave.

[163] I was going to a hair appointment.

[164] And the whole time he's texting me and just wanting to rehash everything and tell me how bad it was that I didn't let him read the messages.

[165] And it was more shady that I had deleted the messages rather than letting him read them.

[166] And I was like, okay, I'm sorry.

[167] I'm not in this lifestyle.

[168] I don't know what the rules are.

[169] And it was ours.

[170] You're getting your haircut.

[171] You're getting a dyed.

[172] You're there for hours.

[173] And he's just messages one after the other.

[174] And I was trying to reply.

[175] And one of my good girlfriends that I've had for 20 years is my stylist.

[176] And she was getting upset.

[177] And she said, you need to tell him to stop messaging you.

[178] It's irritating me now to get all of these messages.

[179] So I let him know that, and he said, by the way, this isn't going to break us up.

[180] In my head, I thought, why is it your decision?

[181] Why do you think you're the only one who gets to the side whether or not we break up?

[182] But having that jealousy that I was feeling from him just from a few text messages was, it was just overwhelming to me. And I thought, I don't know how somebody could be in an open relationship because I can't handle this, the berating that he's giving me from just these few messages.

[183] And it's kind of like a double bind, right?

[184] Because it's like he's in one way asking you to be interested in this type of swinger lifestyle or a polygamous lifestyle.

[185] But then when you actually seem to attempt it, it's like he then turns it on you and uses it against you.

[186] Exactly.

[187] Also, he's talking to these other fitness women on Instagram.

[188] I would see the notifications on his phone and it would be a lot.

[189] And so I would ask him, who are you talking to?

[190] And I don't mind that he was talking to people on Instagram.

[191] It's not a big deal, but there was one that kept on coming up.

[192] And I just asked him about it.

[193] And he said, well, she's in California.

[194] And I just talked to her about her goals and things like that.

[195] And he really downplayed it.

[196] And then one day he came to me and said, hey, this person is coming to our town.

[197] There was a bodybuilding show that she was coming to.

[198] And he said, is it okay if I take her and pick her up?

[199] up at her hotel and take her to get food and just kind of show her around for the weekend.

[200] As we discussed it, I said, well, how about we do it?

[201] We'll do it together.

[202] I'd be happy to meet her and we can show her the town.

[203] He's like, oh, then I don't want to do it if you're going to come.

[204] We went to the bodybuilding show, and as we were in the audience, he saw her over to the side, and he said, hey, there she is.

[205] And he didn't say, let's go say hello, let's go talk to her, anything, didn't say a word to her the whole time and we ended up leaving.

[206] So I asked, him about it and said, why wouldn't you just go say hello if she's just your friend?

[207] And he's like, well, you didn't want to want to.

[208] That's why I didn't do it.

[209] I didn't want to hurt your feelings.

[210] And I thought, well, she's just your friend.

[211] Then why wouldn't we go say hello?

[212] Why keep me separate from her?

[213] That seems a little strange.

[214] Things like that happened a lot throughout the first couple months.

[215] Despite him doing these things, he was also the perfect boyfriend because he was calling all the time, texting all the time, flowers, gifts.

[216] I felt like I was the center of his universe, but he would kind of do these things where it would pop up and make me feel like, maybe I'm not, maybe this is weird.

[217] So I go to a small local gym.

[218] It's a really awesome gym with really great people.

[219] Honestly, probably the best people I've met in my life I've met through this gym.

[220] And it's just real small family oriented.

[221] Because we were both into fitness, he said he wanted to come check it out and just see what it was like.

[222] And he cozyed up to the owner that first day, and they ended up becoming really good friends.

[223] And the owner said, hey, I'll train you and get you ready for your next show.

[224] Just start coming here.

[225] So he joined the gym.

[226] He started to get upset that he didn't feel like we were spending enough time together because we had maybe hang out a couple times a week because we're busy with our own schedules and lives.

[227] And he said, I don't like that I don't get to see you very often.

[228] So I changed my schedule so that he and I could work out.

[229] So I wasn't working out with my friends, but just working out with him.

[230] him.

[231] That's where we spent most of our time was at the gym.

[232] So at Brown the end of May, his dad passed away.

[233] He had gotten into an argument with his family the day that his dad passed away.

[234] I'm not exactly sure what it was about, but he was really upset with his mom and sister.

[235] He said he wasn't going to go to the funeral.

[236] He was really upset.

[237] So when it came down to the actual funeral, he said, I'm going to have my ex -wife come, which certainly understandable.

[238] They'd been together for a long time.

[239] So, of course, she would be there.

[240] But then he also said that he wanted his ex -girlfriend to come.

[241] And that was a big red flag for me. It felt really uneasy about it.

[242] But I thought, well, he's grieving.

[243] I'm not going to tell somebody how they can and can't grieve.

[244] So he said he was going to invite her to the funeral.

[245] And then he said, well, I actually want to go to lunch with her before the service.

[246] So I can finally see her.

[247] And I did not like it.

[248] But at the same time, I just thought, okay, everyone handles grief differently.

[249] So he ended up going to that and then met me, and we went to his dad's funeral.

[250] It was super awkward.

[251] It was the first time I met his ex -wife and met the ex -girlfriend as well.

[252] We had some services after the funeral with his really close family, aunts, uncles, things like that.

[253] And he was really standoffish towards me the whole time.

[254] And I asked him just straight up, did you sleep with her?

[255] Is that what ended up happening when you guys went to lunch?

[256] And he said, no, that's not.

[257] Because some of the interactions that I saw at the funeral, I just thought this looks like more intimate than somebody who's just your best friend.

[258] And he mentioned to his sister, oh, did you see her at the funeral?

[259] And she said, yeah, and she glanced over at me, like, I can't believe you're doing this to her.

[260] So it was pretty uncomfortable when I was leaving the family gathering after his mom gave me a big hug and said, please take care of him.

[261] And I said, I always will.

[262] And he somehow found out about that later that I had said that.

[263] And he used that against me as much as he possibly could.

[264] I would say, maybe a week or two after his dad's funeral, we kept talking about him going to lunch with his ex -girlfriend.

[265] He kept talking about her.

[266] He was saying if she wasn't married, that they would be together.

[267] But he also started mentioning a couple other women.

[268] He mentioned a woman that had three children.

[269] And he said she invited him to come stay the night because he had mentioned her, oh, I sleep by myself all the time.

[270] And it's pretty lonely.

[271] And so she said, well, you can just come stay at my house.

[272] And when he told me that, I said, geez, that seems a little weird, but somebody with three kids is just inviting some strange man over to their house.

[273] And he said, yeah, but it's nice to have somebody that wants you, which I took that as a personal hit against me. because I wasn't having him sleep over when I had my son there.

[274] Because he kept mentioning other women to her, Nina told Will that she felt like it would be best if they broke up.

[275] He had taken me out to dinner and we were discussing it.

[276] And we kept mentioning his ex -girlfriend.

[277] And I just got to the point where I said, well, it's either going to be, you're just going to be with me or you're going to be with your ex -girlfriend.

[278] It's not going to be both ways.

[279] I'm not going to continue on with this.

[280] And as he was dropping me off at my car, she ended up calling.

[281] And so he answered and said, hey, I'm going to call you back in a minute.

[282] And when he hung up, I said, that's okay.

[283] You can go ahead and have her.

[284] I'm done.

[285] So we ended up breaking up there.

[286] He still continued to go to the gym.

[287] It was awkward, but we tried to continue to be friends.

[288] In addition to going to the same gym, Nina and Will continue to follow one another on social media.

[289] One week later, I saw that he was in a new relationship.

[290] I asked him about it.

[291] He was like, yeah, it's this woman I told you about her.

[292] She has the three kids.

[293] And, of course, just astonished, I just thought, how do you move on so quickly?

[294] Obviously, you were probably talking to her when you were with me. Who knows how far you went with her before we finally broke up?

[295] So in the week that we were broken up, he was at work, and he said he was in the bathroom, and his stomach had started to bloat, and it was huge.

[296] And he was just texting me constantly, like giving me updates about what was going on, and I kept saying, you need to call an ambulance, you need to go to the hospital.

[297] There's really not a whole lot that I can do.

[298] And it was for about an hour where he is either sending me a picture or talking about how much pain he's in, but he wouldn't get help.

[299] And I finally said, I'm getting off the phone and I'm calling an ambulance for you right now.

[300] And then the next text message was, oh, I think I'm okay now.

[301] I think I'm going to be all right.

[302] And one of my coworkers knocked on the door and I think I'm going to be okay.

[303] I bring this instance up because it was so traumatic for me to be on one side of the phone where you're trying to help somebody, but they won't actually help themselves.

[304] They won't call 911.

[305] They won't call an ambulance or something like that.

[306] But it was an hour long of just being panicked.

[307] That night, he knew that I was going to go hang out with friends.

[308] And we were broken up at the time.

[309] And he kept calling me when I was with my friends.

[310] And, of course, I'd answer the phone, make sure he was okay.

[311] And he's like, yeah, I still don't feel great, but I think I'm going to get through it.

[312] So I ended up leaving where I was with my friends and going to his house.

[313] And when I got there, he seemed perfectly fine.

[314] Like nothing was wrong.

[315] Everything seemed fine and he's just like, let's just go to bed and just spend the night here and we'll just hang out.

[316] And I was like, okay, you've just had this traumatic thing.

[317] You don't want to talk about it.

[318] You just want to go to bed, but you seem perfectly fine.

[319] So that was kind of a red flag for me as well of just saying, okay, I'm supposed to drop everything that I'm doing and you're in distress when you're not even my boyfriend anymore.

[320] And basically my life wasn't as important as his is kind of what it seemed like to me at the time.

[321] Before Nina and Will had broken up, they had planned a trip to Chicago with a group of mutual friends.

[322] Since we had broken up, I just assumed I wouldn't go.

[323] But he called and said, I still want you to go.

[324] Let's just go as friends.

[325] We were staying in a condo that had multiple rooms, and so I would have had a room all to myself.

[326] He ended up talking me into going to where I thought, yeah, this is going to be fine.

[327] We're with these other people, they're bringing their child with those.

[328] I can't see a reason why we wouldn't all go together.

[329] They were people that we knew from the gym, so just seemed like a, friendly trip.

[330] I'd never been to Chicago and I thought, okay, yeah, let's go.

[331] We both made it very, very clear beforehand that it was going to be just as friends.

[332] He said, you're paying your own way.

[333] I'm not going to do any of that.

[334] And I said, yeah, that's great.

[335] As soon as we got to the airport, he had turned on the charm and was flirting the whole entire time on the airplane, just being the most sweet person that he could.

[336] I ended up taking a nap on the plane and I remember he put his hand on my leg, and I thought, oh, no, this isn't going to go well.

[337] She struck him with her motor vehicle.

[338] She had been under the influence, and she left him there.

[339] In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe.

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

[341] What happens next?

[342] Depends on who you ask.

[343] Was it a crime of passion?

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

[345] This was clearly an intentional act.

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

[347] Or a corrupt police cover -up.

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

[349] Everyone had an opinion.

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

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

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

[353] You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondry Plus.

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

[355] 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.

[356] I'm Sachi Cole.

[357] And I'm Sarah Haggy.

[358] And we're the host of scam influencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims and what's left once the facade falls away.

[359] 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.

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

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

[362] Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[363] You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad -free right now on Wondry Plus.

[364] I just had a feeling that he was not going to keep it just as friends, which I ended up being correct in that.

[365] We had a really nice patio deck on the bill.

[366] building that we were staying in.

[367] And there was a rooftop patio deck that looked over the city.

[368] And we had some drinks.

[369] And we were just hanging out up there.

[370] And he told me, I've made a huge mistake in breaking up with you.

[371] I shouldn't be with Cammy.

[372] I should be with you.

[373] He said, I don't know how to handle the situation right now, but I really do want to be with you.

[374] And I fell for it.

[375] I thought, okay, that seems plausible.

[376] They've only been together for a week or a couple weeks at that time.

[377] So it didn't seem too far out of the realm of possibility for me. Despite him saying that he wanted to be with Nina, Will asked her to not post any pictures from their trip online.

[378] And I even made a joke of saying, you're not going to turn me into your side chick.

[379] It's not going to happen, even though obviously on the trip I became a side chip.

[380] A listener note, this incident includes sexual violence, so please listen with caution.

[381] An incident happened between us, so we were in my room and we were being intimate at the time.

[382] And he was behind me, he put his arm around my throat, and he choked me until I passed out.

[383] I came to, and it just felt like I was drunk, and I remember thinking, why am I drunk right now?

[384] It's the middle of the day.

[385] And when I came to, we were still having sex at the time.

[386] I turned around and I said, what happened?

[387] And he said, you passed out.

[388] And I was like, how did that happen?

[389] He's like, oh, it just happened.

[390] It was an accident.

[391] It wasn't anything.

[392] He just was so nonchalant about it and was not panicked about it, was not upset.

[393] I mean, he continued having sex with me even though I was passed out.

[394] The way he explained it, I guess it just seemed plausible of like, well, yeah, maybe it was an accident.

[395] So I didn't panic about it.

[396] But also, we were with our friends.

[397] And I didn't want to raise an alarm about it, make it a big.

[398] issue.

[399] I already felt a little bit ashamed that I'd become the other woman on this trip, and I didn't really want them to know what was going on.

[400] I just dropped it and didn't mention it again.

[401] While on their trip, Will continued calling his girlfriend back home, Cammy.

[402] But he told Nina that he planned to break up with her in person when they returned.

[403] It was really a weird dynamic of having somebody say, I really love you, I really want to be with you.

[404] And then he's calling somebody else and saying that he cares about her.

[405] I don't feel like he really.

[406] gave me a choice in the matter.

[407] It was just like, we're going to be back together.

[408] But I just went okay, sure, we'll see what ends up happening.

[409] So as the weeks went by, he continued on with his relationship.

[410] We continued to be friends, but he still kept telling me that we were going to get back together.

[411] My birthday came up and he ended up buying me a promise ring and some earrings.

[412] And he said, this is my promise to you that I'm going to come home.

[413] You're my home.

[414] You're where I want to be.

[415] This is my promise so that you know that this is what's going to happen.

[416] In the back of my mind, I was hopeful that, yes, we would get back together.

[417] But at the same time, I was seeing things and saying, this is not what I want.

[418] Looking for support, Nina began seeing a licensed therapist.

[419] I felt like maybe it was my attachment style that was causing me to have all these uneasy feelings about him.

[420] That maybe because I had been single for such a long time before meeting him, that that I needed to work on that.

[421] And maybe that's the reason why I was feeling that way.

[422] And she was interested in getting to know him.

[423] And she asked me if he would be interested in coming and meeting her and just having a discussion so she could get a better perspective on everything.

[424] And surprisingly, he said yes, and he said he would come.

[425] So we had our first meeting and he loved it.

[426] He loved talking to her.

[427] He thought that she was amazing.

[428] I thought, she sure is talking him up.

[429] She's making him feel like he's just the king of the world.

[430] They had a great first meeting.

[431] She'd asked if he would come back another time, and he said, yeah, he would love to.

[432] But she texted me after, and she said, he's a narcissist and you need to get away from him.

[433] So our next couple sessions with her were her talking to me about learning what narcissistic personality is, not just somebody who loves themselves and thinks they're amazing, but all the manipulative ways that they interact with people and the things that they do to get their supply.

[434] So I started reading up, and he did match a lot of this.

[435] behaviors that qualify somebody with narcissistic personality disorder.

[436] So in the back of my mind, that was theirs.

[437] So even though he's telling me, hey, I want to be with you and all this, I knew that those behaviors were there.

[438] And so it did make me feel really uneasy.

[439] I think it was really difficult when you're dealing with somebody who is a narcissist is they may not match all the criteria all the time.

[440] Sometimes they do wonderful things and they're not self -centered all the time.

[441] And so it makes you question what you're seeing.

[442] Maybe he's having a difficult time.

[443] Maybe it's because his dad passed away.

[444] So it was really confusing.

[445] Nina was over Will's excuses as to why he hadn't broken up with his girlfriend as he had promised to do while they were on their trip.

[446] I kept pressuring him saying, well, if you wanted to be with me, why not just break up with her?

[447] It's going to be easier the quicker you do it.

[448] And he would give me excuses of, well, she's a single mom of three children and I need to help her out financially.

[449] And being a single mom myself, I say, yes, okay.

[450] But then I would question him and say, well, how was she doing it before she met you?

[451] He just always came up with some sort of excuse so that it made sense.

[452] But I put his feet to the fire.

[453] I was just like, you need to make a decision because I don't want to keep on doing this back and forth.

[454] Will Venn said he wanted to take Nina out for a special evening together.

[455] We ended up going up nice, overlook, really romantic.

[456] And he told me that he was going to choose her.

[457] I was devastated because I thought I wasted this time thinking that you're going to be with me. I mean, you gave me a promise ring.

[458] Now you're choosing her.

[459] That seems unusual.

[460] But she was in the lifestyle.

[461] So I kind of felt like, okay, maybe that's why he really does want to be in a swinging lifestyle.

[462] And it is what it is.

[463] We ended up not talking for a while.

[464] I would block him on something and he'd have a brother reach out to me or he'd have somebody from the gym reach out to me and say, give him another chance.

[465] unblock him so that he can talk to you.

[466] So I would let him back in, and he would just keep saying, you're my best friend.

[467] You're the person that I want to be able to have by my side.

[468] You're so supportive of everything I'm doing.

[469] I can't lose you.

[470] I think at the time, because I was wanting to find love that I allowed him to keep on coming back, I would let his words fool me into letting him back in.

[471] That's one thing that my therapist and I had talked about was I need to go no contact with him.

[472] and I made a decision to leave my gym.

[473] Didn't want to.

[474] Obviously, I love it.

[475] It's my sanctuary.

[476] But I was like, he's not going to leave, and he won't leave me alone.

[477] So less ties I have with him, the better.

[478] A few weeks after she quit the gym, Will contacted her begging for her to come back.

[479] He's like, we need you here.

[480] And I assume what happened was people were asking about me at the gym and asking why I had left.

[481] And I think because he didn't want to be seen as somebody who caused me. me to leave.

[482] He was begging me to come back.

[483] He ended up paying for my gym for three months so that I would come back.

[484] I said, okay, well, go ahead and pay for it.

[485] And he said, no, I don't want them to know that I'm the one paying for your stuff.

[486] So I'll transfer the money to you and then you pay them.

[487] I think it was more like an image thing that he didn't want to be seen.

[488] Here he has this girlfriend and he's paying for somebody else's gym membership.

[489] I ended up coming back to the gym trying to only briefly see him, only seen for a couple minutes, try to keep it as limited as possible so that I didn't get pulled back in to his hurricane that he had created for himself.

[490] Her therapist invited Will to join Nina for another therapy session.

[491] And the second time, she was not as sweet to him.

[492] She was more stern, trying to help us separate and not be together and do it in an abacable way.

[493] She was really awesome in pointing things out and really intuitive of seeing what he was doing and trying to help me to separate away from him.

[494] After their second therapy session, Nina tried to limit her contact with Will as much as possible.

[495] And that fall, Nina was focused on training for a 5K with some of her gym mates.

[496] The night before, I was hanging out with friends, and he called me 10 times in a row.

[497] On the 11th time he finally left a message, and on the message he said, Well, since you're not going to pick up the phone, I guess I'll just leave you this message.

[498] I'm just trying to tell you good luck on your 5K tomorrow and wish you well.

[499] I was with my girlfriends and they saw how many times they called and they were like, this guy that you're not with anymore.

[500] And he's calling you this many times.

[501] And I was trying to really minimize the situation and didn't want to raise any red flags with anybody.

[502] But they thought it was a weird situation.

[503] The next day, I did run my 5K and when I was at the finish line, he showed up with flowers.

[504] and I was with some of my friends and the looks that they were giving me were just very confused as to why he was there because they knew he had this other girlfriend and he's there with flowers.

[505] I ended up leaving pretty quickly after my race.

[506] We went and got coffee and he said, well, I hope you know how risky it is for me to be here with you.

[507] I'm in my neighborhood where people know that I'm with Cammy and they could come by and see that I'm with you.

[508] And I said, well, we're just, friend, so it shouldn't really matter, right?

[509] He kept trying to guilt trip me, I guess, but I thought, well, you're the one who came to my race.

[510] I didn't ask you to come here.

[511] He told me, well, next weekend, I'm going to California with Cammy.

[512] And I said, I don't want to know anything else.

[513] I don't want to know what you guys are doing.

[514] He just kept reassuring me, even saying he's going on vacation with her, that it's going to be okay, you and I are going to be together.

[515] It was very confusing.

[516] It was just such an up and down thing.

[517] It was so sweet that he came and brought the flowers, but then you're telling me you're going to go do these things with other people.

[518] Will kept calling Nina incessantly a few days later while she was in a therapy session.

[519] And she finally said, you need to get that.

[520] I looked at it and I said, it's Will.

[521] And she's like, what are you going to do?

[522] When I left, I called him and he said, I have something to tell you and just sat there and I said, you're engaged aren't you?

[523] And he said, yes.

[524] The amount of rage that I felt and myself.

[525] I haven't probably ever felt before.

[526] I just let out a tirade of all the pent -up frustration from all the few months of everything so angry at him and I would hang up and he'd call right back.

[527] He didn't really say anything other than this is what I'm doing.

[528] He wasn't apologetic.

[529] He wasn't saying he wanted to be with me. I don't know if he just wanted to hear me be angry at him.

[530] I don't understand why at the time he just kept calling me back and it was for a few hours that it was like this.

[531] And I said, don't talk to me ever again.

[532] I don't care.

[533] Leave the gym.

[534] You've got to get out of my life.

[535] I don't want to ever see you again and blocked him as much as I could.

[536] He would give me a week to calm down, I guess, and then he would start contacting me again.

[537] He would call me from his various work phones.

[538] He would call me from other people that he works with their phone numbers.

[539] He would email me, just trying to get in contact with me. And it would wear me down because it was so constant that I would finally just say, okay, what do you have to say?

[540] And then we would open the conversation and he would be able to manipulate the situation in a way to make me feel bad or make it feel like it was my fault for reacting the way that I did to what he did to where he would say, just be my friend.

[541] I'd need a friend.

[542] I'd need you to be my comfort.

[543] And I would fall for it and start talking to him again.

[544] I honestly felt like I was just being patient with a difficult person.

[545] So I thought, okay, I will be his friend.

[546] I'll help him through this situation, that's fine.

[547] And then on social media, he would post something that was related somehow to something we had talked about.

[548] It would be like a little dig, like something to try to make me jealous or get a reaction from me. For example, he had posted a picture with his fiance and saying, oh, I can't wait to be a dad.

[549] Real excited about being a dad.

[550] And I felt like that was a dig on me because he didn't like my child.

[551] He always was doing something like that.

[552] I'm sure that's something that he used with his ex -girlfriends, with me, or any of them, just to try to get reactions.

[553] Sometimes he would tell me, oh, she contacted me, and he's trying to make it seem like it was out of the blue.

[554] But really, it was probably something that he posted on social media.

[555] After getting engaged, Will told Nina that he and Cammy were planning to get married in Las Vegas, where he would be entering into a bodybuilding competition.

[556] Around October, he started telling me that he wasn't interested in getting married.

[557] that he was going to break up with her.

[558] He wanted to be with me. They had bought a townhouse, and he was selling his house.

[559] And one day he called me and said, is it rude of me to break up with somebody when they spent the whole entire day cleaning my house?

[560] And I told them, yes, that's really disrespectful.

[561] Don't do that.

[562] And he's like, okay, yeah, I won't do that to her.

[563] But yeah, I really want to be with you.

[564] I was defeated in a way to where I allowed him to do whatever.

[565] And I listened to what he said, but then I did whatever I wanted to do anyway.

[566] He would not allow me to move on.

[567] I would start to date somebody and tell him about it because I was hoping that maybe if I told him about it, that he would just move on.

[568] He's already got somebody else.

[569] I'm not really sure why he was stuck on me. That's when the love bombing would really amp up.

[570] He would really get more affectionate, really try harder to pull me back in.

[571] And when I would tell him, okay, I stopped dating that person, then it would come back to devaluing me, something else would happen with him where he was now with the love of his life.

[572] Will called Nina and told her that he wanted to talk.

[573] She no longer felt safe letting him in her home.

[574] So she agreed to speak with him in his car parked out front of her house.

[575] He had brought me flowers in a card and he was telling me how much he loved me and how much he wanted to be with me. He was sobbing, which that pulls at my heartstrings, obviously, somebody's sobbing saying, how much they care for you, it's really hard to just walk away from that.

[576] and it was really trying hard to get me to come back and at least hang on with him.

[577] Be patient with him because he was really trying to work his way back home.

[578] In the middle of him crying, he stopped and said, oh, I need to text my training partner.

[579] And his tears turned off immediately.

[580] And it was so unnerving to see somebody just go from one extreme to the other.

[581] During their conversation in the car, as Nina was reaching into the center console for a piece of gum, Will gave her an alarming warning.

[582] He said, just so you know, there's a gun in the car.

[583] I'm Dan Tiberski.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[591] Everybody thought I was holding something bad.

[592] you were holding something back intentionally.

[593] Yeah, yeah.

[594] Well, yeah.

[595] No, it's hysteria.

[596] It's all in your head.

[597] It's not physical.

[598] You're, oh my gosh, you're exaggerating.

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

[600] Or is it something else entirely?

[601] Something's wrong here.

[602] Something's not right.

[603] Leroy was the new date line and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

[604] A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios.

[605] Hysterical.

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

[607] You can binge.

[608] all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

[609] He's like, I don't want to freak you out.

[610] So he opened it up and there was a gun.

[611] And I said, what is this?

[612] What are you carrying a gun for?

[613] And he said, it's for protection.

[614] And I was just like, is this loaded?

[615] What is this?

[616] He took the gun out.

[617] He showed me that it was loaded and he let me hold it.

[618] I don't know what it was about that instance where I just felt like I just need to be very calm.

[619] I need to agree to what he is asking me to do right now and just defuse the situation.

[620] He wasn't threatening me. He didn't tell me, I'm going to hurt you with this.

[621] But just the presence of that one, I know that there was never one there before was really shocking to me. When he said, I really want you to be with me. All of that, I said, I will think about it.

[622] Give me some time to see what I want to do.

[623] And he allowed me to go.

[624] I walked back inside my house and just a disbelief.

[625] of what had just occurred.

[626] Will eventually broke off his engagement with his then -fiancee Cammy.

[627] When he told me that he had ended it, he said, well, I want you to come to Las Vegas with me. I want you to bring your son.

[628] Our friends are going to be there.

[629] Our family's going to be there.

[630] Come with me. And so I agreed.

[631] Around this time, my son kept asking, are you back together?

[632] Are you back together?

[633] And I would just tell him no. Because we weren't.

[634] I wasn't lying to him.

[635] But I also didn't want my son to think that I was putting him in any sort of awkward situation either.

[636] And I would just explain to him.

[637] Will does not have a lot of friends.

[638] We're just being friends with him because he's having a hard time.

[639] We ended up going to Las Vegas for his bodybuilding show.

[640] We stayed in a house that he had rented for when he was going to be getting married.

[641] Our friends came down with us and his whole family came down.

[642] So that was nice to have that.

[643] He was really irritated the whole time.

[644] time, but everybody just chalked it up to his bodybuilding when they're on their peak week and right before they're depleting themselves of water, they're low of energy.

[645] It's kind of common that they're really irritable.

[646] That night, I was out at the pool and just hanging out and he went up into the restroom and he was in there for probably 45 minutes to an hour.

[647] Then I started texting him to make sure that he was okay.

[648] He was really short with me, really irritated.

[649] We finally decided to go up into the room and I said, give me your phone.

[650] And he reluctantly handed me his phone.

[651] And I just immediately put in the passcode and started looking.

[652] He asked me how I knew.

[653] And I said, you're on your phone 24 -7.

[654] I see you put your passcode in a hundred times a day.

[655] I, of course, memorized it.

[656] I'm not dumb.

[657] He started looking through the messages and he was reaching out to Cammy's children saying that he wanted their mom back, saying that he'd made a mistake that he should be with her.

[658] So, of course, we got into a discussion about that.

[659] The thing about any arguments that we had is that he never raised his voice.

[660] It was always a discussion.

[661] It was never an argument.

[662] I never felt like he was ever an angry person at me. It was always a discussion.

[663] He's just calmly saying, I was talking to them.

[664] They need me. And he dismissed it.

[665] It didn't seem like it was a big deal to him.

[666] He went right to sleep.

[667] I, of course, couldn't sleep.

[668] Unable to sleep, she again went through Will's phone and discovered that he had not only been begging his ex -fiancee Cammy to get back together with him, but he'd also been catfishing people through dating apps.

[669] I was in disbelief of who is this person?

[670] Is this something recent?

[671] Is he always acting like he's somebody else?

[672] How many other people is he talking to?

[673] It was really, really shocking.

[674] I didn't sleep at all that night and trying to figure out what I was going to do.

[675] What my therapist has been saying, about who he is is really coming true.

[676] The next morning we were leaving Las Vegas and I was making breakfast and he just came up to me and hugged me and said, it's okay, we're going to be fine.

[677] This isn't the end of us.

[678] We're still going to make it through this.

[679] And in my head, I was like, how is this possible?

[680] How do we go through these situations and you just gloss them over?

[681] I tried to be as boring as possible.

[682] One of the methods that people use is gray rock.

[683] The gray rock method is, a psychological technique, often recommended by therapists as a coping mechanism when interacting with manipulative and abusive people.

[684] The idea is to behave boring or uninteresting when interacting with this person, much like a gray rock, plain, quiet, and unbothered.

[685] When he would call me, I would just listen to what he had to say.

[686] I wouldn't really give him too much.

[687] I wouldn't tell him what I was doing, hoping maybe that he would get bored of me and move on.

[688] He told me he didn't didn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving.

[689] He said, let's go to your family.

[690] He just invited himself.

[691] When I was talking to my mom about it, she said, no, she didn't want him there.

[692] My family did not like him at all.

[693] They'd heard some of the things and they just didn't like him as a person.

[694] But I talked them into allowing him to come over.

[695] So he came over to our Thanksgiving.

[696] It was awkward.

[697] Nobody really talked to him.

[698] And then he said, well, we're going to go.

[699] And we went to, he said his friend's house.

[700] We went to their house, and it was really awkward because they've actually already eaten their Thanksgiving dinner.

[701] I don't know who these people were.

[702] He just said they were just a friend, but I could tell that the woman was flirting with him.

[703] So I don't know if maybe they were a swinger couple, and he was filling him out.

[704] I'm not really sure what the situation was there.

[705] And then we left there and went to his grandmas, where his whole family was.

[706] You told me you didn't have anywhere to go.

[707] You had two other places that you could have gone to, but you forced your way into months.

[708] family's Thanksgiving.

[709] He dropped me off at the end of the night and said, I'm not going to stay the night.

[710] I said, that's fine.

[711] I was actually happy to get away from him at that point.

[712] And when he got home, he texted me and said, it was a really great day.

[713] I had an awesome time with you, but I'm going to kill myself.

[714] And he had done this several times before.

[715] I had spent many nights with him, texting him, calling him, trying to get him to talk him down from the situation that he was in.

[716] This time, I said, this is my very favorite holiday.

[717] You're going to ruin Thanksgiving for the rest of my life because you want to go ahead and unalive yourself.

[718] And we talked for a while and he finally said, okay, I won't.

[719] For you, I won't do that.

[720] There was a couple other instances like that, maybe a couple weeks later where he said he had given himself an overdose of insulin and he was going to kill himself that way.

[721] He had this wonderful dog that was just the story.

[722] He was just a Sweet as he sent me a picture of her where she was passed out.

[723] And he said, I already gave it to her as well.

[724] She's going to die with me. I'm panicking, trying to get him to not do this.

[725] I would call him and he wouldn't answer.

[726] So it was all through text.

[727] He would tell me, if you call the police, then I'm just going to shoot myself.

[728] I would sit there and talk him down.

[729] And it was so traumatic to have to deal with that and be so helpless to not know.

[730] Then the next day, he would be fine and act like nothing happened.

[731] happened.

[732] There was one time where the next morning, I had a therapy appointment scheduled and he was supposed to come with me. He called me in the morning and said, I'm not going to come with you to this therapy thing.

[733] Can you cancel it?

[734] And I would say, well, I'm going to go.

[735] And especially after last night, I definitely need to go and talk to a therapist.

[736] And he said, well, if you go, don't tell them what happened last night.

[737] I don't want her to know.

[738] And I said, well, I've been to talk about whatever I want to talk about with my own therapist.

[739] If you want to come, great.

[740] If you don't, that's fine, too.

[741] He ended up showing up a therapy appointment and he told her that he had tried to kill himself.

[742] She didn't seem like she was panicked or that she needed to call the police or anything like that.

[743] I think she thought the whole instance was to manipulate me. And she found a way to say, you guys really need to not be together, saying, I think that this is not a good healthy situation for either one of you.

[744] In another appointment that I had had with her, we were talking about his threats a suicide and what I was supposed to do, and I would say, I can't just not talk to this person if this is what he's planning to do.

[745] She said, if he's going to do that, then I want you to call me and I'll call the police.

[746] Somebody who's doing that shouldn't be terrorizing you with this kind of information.

[747] And then if you ever ask you, if you call the police, you can say no, that I'll be the one that's doing that.

[748] A few weeks later, we'll let Nina know that he was heading out of state for the weekend on a hunting trip with a friend.

[749] He said, I won't be in contact with you.

[750] And I said, great, that's fine.

[751] I was actually relieved to have a little bit of a break from everything that was going on.

[752] He maybe text me once or twice that entire weekend.

[753] And then that following Monday, he was taking a work trip to North Carolina.

[754] And that morning, he was going to come to my house.

[755] I was going to take his truck, drop him off at the airport.

[756] He ended up being really late, getting to my house.

[757] On the road to the airport, he said, I think I'm going to move to Idaho, which is where his friend was from.

[758] We discussed it a little bit, and I said, I think that would probably be a good thing for you.

[759] In my mind, I thought maybe the separation, he'll get away for me and let me have some peace.

[760] Because of all the women that he had talked to on Instagram, I've gone in the habit of stalking his Instagram and Facebook and interactions that he would have with the same person over and over again.

[761] This is not a normal behavior for me. So that was something that my friends and family started noticing saying, hey, you're acting a lot different.

[762] You're not usually this insecure about tracking everything that they're doing.

[763] But the reason why I was doing is because I could usually tell if things are going well as his relationship.

[764] If something was going wrong, I knew that he was going to be talking to me. In my research of looking at Instagram, I saw that he was commenting a lot on this one woman's profile.

[765] I confronted him and said, who is this?

[766] What's going on?

[767] I could tell something's different, and he finally said, yeah, there's somebody else.

[768] I think I'm in love with her.

[769] She's amazing.

[770] She's also in the lifestyle.

[771] She's blah, blah, blah, blah, telling me all these wonderful things.

[772] I just was like, we're done.

[773] Don't talk to me ever again.

[774] I'm just so, so, so done.

[775] Don't talk to me. I took his truck and went and dropped it off at his place, put the keys in the garage and just slaps.

[776] and was like so done with all of this.

[777] Blocked him on everything.

[778] And this time I had blocked him on Instagram and Facebook and every other place I could think of to make sure that this was the last time.

[779] I left the gym again.

[780] I cannot keep going through this situation with you over and over again.

[781] Will continued to try and make contact with Nina.

[782] He would call her constantly from random phone numbers and he would ask mutual friends to ask her to contact him.

[783] By this time, I'd gotten smart enough to not tell people, things.

[784] Unless they were my close friend, if it was an acquaintance from the gym, if they reached out, I had a feeling that he was asking them to reach out to me. He would email me saying how much you love me and that he couldn't be without me. I just ignored all of them.

[785] I talked to one of my sisters and said, I finally left him.

[786] I'm not going back to him.

[787] And she said, to me, why should I believe you when you've gone back to him so many other times?

[788] And at the time, I thought it was really harsh that she had said that, but it was actually true.

[789] Why would Would somebody believe me, I'd gone back to him so many times.

[790] But I promised myself that I was not going to talk to this person again, no matter what it took.

[791] Because of all the back and forth, me telling bits and pieces to different friends, they got caught up in the soap opera, if you will.

[792] They had started following his Instagram accounts, and every once in a while I'd ask them about it, or they would tell me something.

[793] Nina's friends reported back when their social sleuthing uncovered that Will was again in a new relationship.

[794] And I just thought, yeah.

[795] And here he is calling me saying that he misses me, but then he's with this new person.

[796] And she's the love of his life.

[797] He was really playing it up online.

[798] She was the most perfect person.

[799] And they were both posting all these lovey -dovey quotes.

[800] And some of my friends for the gym were just like, it is over the top.

[801] I have never seen him act like this before.

[802] I'd continue to ignore him.

[803] From the next six months or so, I would still get the no caller ID calls.

[804] It wouldn't be every day, but it would be at least once a week.

[805] I made sure that on my son's phone, he was blocked.

[806] I made sure my friends and family blocked him.

[807] There was just no way for him to get in contact with me. Make sure to tell my son don't ever answer the door.

[808] I didn't know if he would ever show up.

[809] I lived the next few months looking over my shoulder, making sure I was not going to get sucked in in any way, shape, or form.

[810] Nina learned through a mutual friend that Will had broken up with his latest girlfriend and then began posting about a new relationship shortly after, and then they broke up.

[811] They had told me he had started seeing another woman that had gone to our gym.

[812] I had never met her.

[813] When my friends looked like they were together, I went and looked at her information that said she was married.

[814] I didn't want to reach out and warn her of what was going on because I wasn't 100 % sure that they were together.

[815] In talking with my therapist, I would ask her, should I reach out?

[816] What should I do?

[817] I've got to warn somebody about who.

[818] he is as a person.

[819] And what she had said to me was, well, you can do that if you want to, but just so you know, most likely they're not going to believe you.

[820] They'll probably go and talk to him and he'll manipulate the situation and make it look like you're just the ex.

[821] They can't let go.

[822] They won't see the same behaviors.

[823] They're in the love bombing stage.

[824] You're going to open yourself back up to him coming back in.

[825] And you don't know what kind of retribution you might face for doing so.

[826] So she just said, it sucks that you can't.

[827] There's not really a whole a lot that you can do to change their minds.

[828] So I never reached out, even though I really wanted to to kind of warn them about what type of person he has and the things that he does.

[829] The two women did finally connect when Evelyn, the other woman from the gym that Will had been dating, reached out to Nina on social media.

[830] She said, I know that you dated Will in the past.

[831] He's been making threats.

[832] She wanted some advice as to how to get away from him, how I got away from him.

[833] I replied to her and said, I'm so sorry that you're going through this is really difficult.

[834] The way that I did it was I blocked him on everything, ignored him, and eventually he'll get bored and move on.

[835] Kind of left it at that.

[836] The next day, Nina came across a shocking news article on social media.

[837] Please note, this incident includes descriptions of gun violence, including children.

[838] So please listen with caution.

[839] I saw a post and it.

[840] It was a picture of his truck with a news article that was talking about a shooting.

[841] And one of the people at the gym had said, is this the woman from our gym?

[842] My dad is related job -wise somehow to the police.

[843] And so I called him and said, hey, this is what happened.

[844] Can you confirm who is involved in this incident?

[845] And he called me back and said, yes, this is Will.

[846] And what had ended up happening was he had confronted Evelyn in front of her son's school.

[847] and she had gotten into a car, somebody else's car, and he ran the vehicle.

[848] He ended up getting out of the vehicle, and he shot Evelyn, and he shot the children that were in the back, ended up killing one of her children and injuring two others, and then he killed himself.

[849] My phone started going off like crazy.

[850] Lots of people that I knew, reaching out and making sure that I was okay.

[851] It's a feeling that I really don't know how to describe.

[852] Knowing that somebody that you had once cared about was capable of this.

[853] In talking to people that knew him, nobody saw this coming.

[854] Even people that were close to him around this time, they didn't know that that was something that he was even capable of doing.

[855] I was shocked.

[856] I remember walking around my house and just breathing heavy.

[857] I ended up calling my ex -husband, which is really strange because we are not on friendly terms that way.

[858] He helped, he was actually really great and helped calm me down.

[859] for the situation.

[860] But it was devastating to know that the day before she had reached out to me, and I didn't have the right words or the right thing to know what to say to help protect her in that situation.

[861] I'm so sorry.

[862] It was very surreal experience.

[863] It kind of didn't feel like I was within my own body, kind of out -of -body experience, going through the motions of every day.

[864] A few days after, Survivor's guilt really, really set in really hard.

[865] Survivor's guilt is a term for when a person has feelings of culpability because they survived a life -threatening situation when others did not.

[866] It is a common emotional response to traumatic life events and often a symptom of post -traumatic stress disorder.

[867] PTSD is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event.

[868] I couldn't stop crying and kept thinking about her and her family, and how devastated they are, and I kept thinking it should have been me and that maybe if he had taken me out, then maybe people wouldn't have been as upset.

[869] It felt very surreal that this was our lives, that this had even happened, and not one single person said, yeah, I saw this coming.

[870] Nobody had seen it coming at all.

[871] I think the Survivor's guilt really said in a month or so after, it hit me really, really hard.

[872] And I started processing my relationship, with him and things that he had said to me and things that had been done and I started thinking that actually could have been me. I think the instance where he choked me until I passed it out bringing the gun to my house, I thought, yeah, those were red flags and things that probably I should have seen as a warning sign and maybe I should have said something to somebody else.

[873] I didn't think I was an abusive relationship.

[874] I just thought it was a difficult one.

[875] Processing all of that.

[876] I felt so, so, so guilty for not being the person to be able to stop it.

[877] They've gone through a lot of therapy.

[878] I know now that there's nothing that I could have done, nothing that really could have been done at the time.

[879] In the weeks following, I did actually reach out to his mom and I did send her a card and say, I was sorry for her loss.

[880] I had adored his family.

[881] They were great people, so I wanted to give them my condolences, and she ended up calling me, and we talked for a little bit.

[882] She had no idea why this had happened.

[883] It was so out of the blue.

[884] If you don't mind me asking, what did your therapist say when you told her what happened?

[885] She was devastated.

[886] It was pretty close to around the incident that I went to go see her and I told her what had happened and she was like, I am so sorry.

[887] And she was saying what a lot of other people were saying, which was, I'm so glad it wasn't you.

[888] That was a really hard thing for me to hear from people because I just thought there's still a family that's devastated.

[889] I know they were saying that as a comfort, but it was kind of a hard thing for me to process at the time.

[890] I don't think she anticipated anything like this either.

[891] What was the response from the community like?

[892] All the news reports after the incidents, they kept calling it a domestic violence situation.

[893] And I know that for her family and everybody at the gym, she's such a wonderful person, they felt such an incredible loss from losing this person.

[894] My gym family had done fundraising raisers for her after the fact.

[895] To try to raise money to give to her husband for funeral costs and things like that.

[896] For me, it took me a few months before I really decided to process what had even happened.

[897] And I actually ended up switching therapists because I needed somebody who was more of a specialist in trauma.

[898] So it took me going to a few different therapists and finally finding one that was able to help me process through.

[899] everything that had happened, probably the best advice that I got from my therapist was even though this has happened to you, this isn't your defining relationship.

[900] There's so much more life for you to have and you can have a good life even though you've had trauma.

[901] Therapy has really been the thing that has helped me the most to just be able to see the situation a lot more clearly.

[902] Just saying these are the facts of what happened and this is why I did it and how to not repeat that cycle in the future.

[903] What do you hope that listeners will gain from hearing this story?

[904] I hope that people will hear my story and see that there are very subtle ways for you to be abused.

[905] In my mind, I always thought that an abusive relationship with somebody yelling at you or somebody hitting you, those kinds of things.

[906] And there is emotional abuse that is so subtle, you almost don't even detect it.

[907] somebody who is so sweet and to the outside world is showing you all these amazing things but inside when it's just the two of you will have these horrible conversations putting you through those situations over and over again in those highs and lows that is trauma that is abuse so even if somebody isn't hitting you even if somebody isn't yelling at you or threatening you specifically there are subtle ways for there to be it they are an abuser I would hope that people would take that and say, yes, the relationship can't be good at times.

[908] It can be terrible at times and you really have to look at who that person is when they're not being their best selves and say, I'm not going to take this anymore and I am going to walk away, even though it's really hard.

[909] Something that I do see with him is that even today with everybody knowing everything that happened with his crime and all of that is that I will still have people today tell me he was a great guy.

[910] To me, it's really hard to deal with that.

[911] because I see the final outcome and say, well, what he did was not good, but because of how manipulative he could be, even though he has committed a heinous crime, people will still say that he was a great guy because people will show the parts of themselves that they want you to see.

[912] That is such a good point.

[913] I don't know if you're aware of this statistic, but there was a study done by the Journal of Emergency Medicine.

[914] And the study found that 43 % of women who were murdered in domestic assaults, 45 % of those victims were then murdered within a year of being strangled by that partner.

[915] That makes you want to cry.

[916] It's just one of those other signals of just how dangerous it is and how it does escalate.

[917] In the days and months after, I haven't really ever probed people that knew her and knew him as to what really happened, but I'll get bits and pieces every once in a while.

[918] And the three other women that he dated after me, they did say, yeah, he threatened this one.

[919] He would threaten this one.

[920] He'd be saying these things.

[921] He was stalking her, those kinds of things.

[922] So you just see the escalation of the abuse happening, but like nobody suspects that they're actually going to do anything, especially when they're able to cover it up, you know?

[923] Yeah, it's so surreal that you think that's something that happens in movies or in the news until it's at your front door.

[924] What did your son say?

[925] I shared it with him right away because he saw that I was panicking.

[926] And he said, what's going on?

[927] And I just told him what happened.

[928] And his face went white and just was like, oh, we talked about it the next day and just told him he's not in our lives.

[929] It's okay.

[930] We're safe.

[931] We don't have to worry about any retribution or any.

[932] We didn't have to worry about it at that time.

[933] He hates him.

[934] He is glad that he wasn't in our lives at that time.

[935] He's handled it really, really well, surprisingly well.

[936] I haven't shared with him how I feel and all the things that I've gone through.

[937] That's one of the main reasons I did there being things like that is because I didn't want to traumatize him more than what had already happened.

[938] So he doesn't know the emotional toll it took on me. Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to share your story.

[939] I think it's so important to share stories like these because I really do believe it saves lives.

[940] So just thank you so, so much for doing so.

[941] And thank you for giving me the opportunity.

[942] This is actually the first time that I've shared my entire story.

[943] With friends and family, I've only given them bits and pieces to protect them, I guess, from what was happening.

[944] So thank you for giving me the opportunity to share it.

[945] And hopefully, sharing these stories does help other people to where they can see abuse.

[946] And they can see a way out of it as well.

[947] A study of intimate partner homicides in the United States found that 20 % of victims were not the intimate partners themselves, but family members, friends, neighbors, persons who intervened, law enforcement responders, or bystanders.

[948] The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that 72 % of all murder suicides involve an intimate partner.

[949] 94 % of victims of these murder suicides are female.

[950] Women of color are disproportionately impacted.

[951] An estimated 51 .3 % of black adult female homicides are related to intimate partner violence.

[952] American Indian and Alaska Native women experience physical assault and domestic violence at much higher rates.

[953] Over 84 % experience violence during their lifetimes.

[954] On some reservations in the United States, the murder rate of Native women is 10 times higher than the rest of the nation.

[955] If you or someone you love is being abused, please reach out to the Domestic Violence Hotline at 1 -800 -799 -7233.

[956] If you're a Native American person looking for support, Strongheart's is a culturally appropriate, anonymous, confidential service dedicated to serving Native American survivors of domestic violence and their concerned family members and friends.

[957] Call them at 1844.

[958] 762 -8483 available 247 nationwide callers can connect at no cost one -on -one with knowledgeable strong hearts advocates who can provide life -saving tools and immediate support to enable survivors to find safety and lives free of abuse thank you so much for listening until next week stay safe friends something was wrong is an audio chuck production created and hosted by Tiffany Reese.

[959] Our theme song was originally composed by Gladrags, covered this season by Kenna and the Kings.

[960] So what do you think, Chuck?

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