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The Dry Coat on the Branch: Who Stole Her Life Story? · Why Humans Lie

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: A charcoal gray peacoat women's size ten, hung from a
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: bare oak branch at chest height, sleeves extended button to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the collar bone, dry after thirty six hours of continuous rain.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: The ground beneath it was saturated, dark, heavy with water.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: There was no overhang above the branch, no shelter of
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: any kind that a person standing there could see. Carl
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Adams had worked the Tillman Park meter root for eleven years.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: He knew the yards on this block the way a
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: person knows a face, not by studying it, but by
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the accumulated weight of ordinary days.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: He stopped. He looked at the coat. He looked at
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the ground.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: He looked at the house behind it, number eleven Portman's Circle,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: quiet curtains drawn. Then he took out his phone and
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: called his wife. That coat belonged to a woman named
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Vicki Schmidt, and the question of why it was dry,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a question that seemed at first to have no rational answer,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: would turn out to be the thread that unraveled something
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: much larger, something that had been running quietly for years
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: across three states, and had come to rest for a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: time in this house on this street. Inside the manuscript
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: of a book Vicki had spent years trying to write.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: She never knew anyone had been inside her home. She
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: never knew her book already had a different name on
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the cover. Vicky Schmidt was thirty eight years old when
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: she moved to Tilton County in the autumn of two
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: thousand seventeen. She rented the house at eleven Portman Circle,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: a modest place with a laundry room off the back
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: and a side door that faced a small yard, and
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: she arrived with a plan that was, in her own words,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: seven years overdue. For most of her thirties, Vicki had
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: worked as a technical writer at a software company in Cincinnati,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: while serving as the primary caregiver for her mother, who
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: had been diagnosed with early onset dementia. That meant full
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: time employment during the day and full time vigilance at night,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: scheduling medications, managing appointments, learning to read the particular language
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of a mind that was gradually losing its own grammar.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: She did not talk about it much. She kept showing up.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: That was the shape her life had taken, invisible effort,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: maintained without acknowledgment for years. Her mother died, Vickie took
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a breath, and then she decided to write the memoir
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: she had been drafting in her head for most of
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a decade. The move to Tilton County was deliberate, lower
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: cost of.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Living, a slower rhythm, room to think.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Within her first month, she joined two local writing groups,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: not because she needed encouragement, but because she understood that
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a book about isolation required, at some point, the discipline
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: of being witnessed.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: She was not a beginner. She was a technical writer.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: She understood structure, precision, the work of making something clear.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: There was one other fixed point in her daily life,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: an orange tabby named Oscar, an orange tabby fourteen years
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: old who had required subcutaneous fluid treatments every morning since
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. Every day Vicki's alarm went off at
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: six forty eight, she was at Oscar's side by seven
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: twelve minutes, without exception. She had built her mornings around
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: that ritual so completely that for a period it was
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the one part of her day she could predict with certainty.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: One friend later described it as the one fixed point
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: in her life during a period when everything else was shifting.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: That detail matters because the person who would enter her
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: life the following spring. Had a particular skill identifying the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: people who already knew how to maintain form under pressure,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: who were accustomed to performing routine without reward, who would
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: be slower than most to recognize that the stability they
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: felt was being constructed for them.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Not by them.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Francis Weaver was fifty four years old and ran a
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: small literary agency out of an office on Calder Street
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: in downtown Tilton. Medium height reading glasses pushed habitually up
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: onto her forehead whether she was reading or not. She
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: had a quiet way of directing a conversation, not by
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: dominating it, but by asking exactly the right question at
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: exactly the right moment, and then waiting. Weaver met Vicki
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: at one of the writing group meetings in the spring
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: of two thousand eighteen. She expressed interest in the memoir project.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: She asked Vicki to send pages, She read them, and
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: then she met Vicki for lunch at a restaurant Vicki
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: would not normally have chosen for herself, and she said
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: a word that Vicki would hear in various forms for
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the next several months.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: The word was gifted.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: She said it once that afternoon, and then set it again,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: lightly differently. Two weeks later. She said the memoir had
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: a quality she did not see often. She said the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: material was extraordinary, but that Vicki's instinct for structure was
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: what made it publishable. Not just sad, but necessary. She
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: said she wanted to represent it. She said she believed
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: in it. Vicki had spent seven years being invisible, and
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: here was someone with an office on Calder Street, reading
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: glasses and professional authority telling her that what she had
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: carried alone was worth something.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: She said yes.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: The contract arrived in April of two thousand.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Eighteen twelve pages.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Weaver walked Vicki through it at a second lunch, pointing
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: to clauses, explaining what each one meant in plain terms.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: She was patient, she was thorough. She said.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: The language was standard industry boilerplate, nothing unusual. There were
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: two clauses that mattered more than the rest. The first
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: gave Weaver's agency the right to represent the derivative works, adaptations,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: foreign editions, anything that grew from the original manuscript. The
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: second was a limited power of attorney, authorizing Weaver to
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: act on Vicky's behalf during time sensitive negotiations without requiring
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Vicky's real time approval. Weaver called it boilerplate. Vicky signed.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: What she didn't know, and what wouldn't become clear for
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: almost a year, was that those two sentences were not
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the frame of the agreement.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: They were the agreement.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Everything else in those twelve pages was the packaging around them.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: The summer of twenty eighteen was by most measures quiet.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Weaver was in regular contact emails about the submission process,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: occasional check ins about manuscript revisions, introductions to what she
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: described as trusted collaborators. One of them was Sandra Cheu,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: a freelance editor Weaver presented as someone who worked regularly
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: with her agency. Chew communicated professional, helpful notes. She had
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: no idea the manuscript she was reading had already been redirected.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Vicky had no reason to think otherwise. She was still
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: waking at six forty eight every morning, still twelve minutes
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: with Oscar, still the fixed routine that had carried her
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: through seven years of invisible labor now carrying her through
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the slower, stranger labor of waiting to be published. Then,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: in September of twenty eighteen, a catalog arrived. Patricia odom
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: found it not a major trade publication, a small press listing,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing that circulates in writing communities. Patricia
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: and Vicky had become close through one of the local groups.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Patricia was scrolling through it on her phone over coffee
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: when she stopped at a listing a caregiving memoir, Dementia,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: A Daughter's Perspective seven years.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: The author's name was V. L. Hartman.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: She showed it to Vicky. Vicky looked at it for
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a moment. The subject matter was similar, uncomfortably similar, the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: framing overlapped, but the title was different. The press was
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: a small regional outfit out of Pittsburgh and Weaver. When
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: VICKI mentioned it, agreed immediately that it was probably coincidence.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Almost too quickly, she pivoted to a question about revision notes.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Before Vicky could think further about it. Vicky told herself
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: it was coincidence. She was wrong, but the proof of
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't arrive for another six months because what Vicky
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: did not know in September, what no one around her knew,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: was that the copyright for The.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Quiet Room, authored by V. L.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Hartman, had not yet been filed. It was filed in
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: November of twenty eighteen, two months after that catalog listing appeared,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: two months after Weaver agreed almost too quickly that it
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: was probably nothing. The listing had been premature. Weaver had
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: moved faster than she intended at detail. A catalog entry
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: appearing before the copyright was even registered would later tell
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: investigators exactly how long the plan had been in motion.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Here is what investigators eventually established about the period between
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: November two thousand eighteen and February twenty nineteen. Weaver entered
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the property at eleven Portman Circle five times while Vicki
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: was at work. The first four times she left no trace,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: and on the fifth, her last, she left the coat.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: The entry point was a side door off the laundry room.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: The dead bolt on that door was worn. The bolt
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: did not fully seat in the frame without a specific
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: maneuver lifting the handle while turning the key. Without that,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the bolt could be pushed back from outside with upward pressure.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: According to testimony later given by Weaver's assistant Todd Peren,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Weaver had discovered the mechanism months earlier on a routine
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: document drop. She had tested the door out of wa
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: What she described at the time as idle curiosity. She
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: noted that it worked. What Weaver took across those four
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: entries was not jewelry, not cash, not anything with an
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: obvious resale value. She took the original printed draft of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the manuscript, with Vicky's handwritten revisions in the margins. She
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: took the personal journal's Vicki had kept across the seven
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: years of her mother's illness, the raw material, the source.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: She took a folder of old photographs and documents gathered
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: as reference. She took the interior of a life, not
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the evidence of a life, the interior of one. There
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: is something that stays difficult to process about what happened next,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: even knowing the outcome, even with the full record in
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: front of you. March of twenty nineteen, a promotional email
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: went out from a small Pittsburgh press for a forthcoming
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: memoir by V. L.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Hartmann.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: The subject line referenced the book's central theme. The body
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: of the email include did a poll quote. A single
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: line intended to convey what the memoir was about. The
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: line was seven years of invisible labor. Vicky had written
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: that phrase herself in her original proposal. She had given
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: the proposal to one person. She read the email three times.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Then she called Patricia Odom. Patricia recognized immediately what Vicky
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: was describing. She had the number of a private investigator,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: a woman named Sherry Long, who had worked Patricia's custody
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: dispute two years earlier. Long had eight years of prior
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: experience as a family court advocate. She was methodical, and
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: she was not easily unsettled. Patricia gave Vicki the number.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Vicki called that afternoon. Vicki called that afternoon. Long obtained
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a galley copy of The Quiet Rope and read it
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: in two sittings. Then she sat down with Vicki and
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: went through it, passage by passage. The language was not
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: similar to Vicky's manuscript. It was the manuscript restructured in places,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: re ordered, passages condensed or lightly rewarded, but the specific phrasing,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the particular way Vicky described her mother's progressive disorientation, the
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: precise texture of a Tuesday morning at six fifty, it
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: was Vicky's. Long began pulling Weaver's professional history across states.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: What she found was not a record of an agency
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: making a mistake. It was a record of a pattern.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: In Dayton, Ohio, In twenty eleven, a writer named Susan
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Farber had filed a civil complaint alleging that an agent
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: operating under a different agency name had submitted her novel
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: under a pseudonym without authorization. The complaint was settled out
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: of court in Lexington, Kentucky. In two thousand fourteen, a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: writer named Tom Gravely had reported to a state bar
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: grievance line that an agent matching the same physical description
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: had used a power or of attorney clause to redirect
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: royalty payments into a third party account. The complaint was
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: investigated and closed. Gravely could not afford to pursue it
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: further Dayton, Lexington, Tilto. Each operation ran three to four years,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Each one moved slightly westward. Each one ended before the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: pattern became visible enough to stop. Long delivered her findings
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: to the Tilton County Sheriff's office eight days before the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: second week of March twenty nineteen teen. Four days later,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Francis Weaver was arrested in the second week of March
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Walk back to September of twenty eighteen for
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: a moment not to the catalog listing, but to what
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: happened in the Room when Vicki mentioned it. The obvious reading,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the one that fits everything known at that point, is simple.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Weaver saw a similar book, recognized the timing risk, and
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: moved to reassure Vicky before she could think clearly about
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: what she was seeing, that reading is correct as far
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: as it goes. Weaver did exactly that, But the catalog
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: listing itself suggested something that nobody in that room had
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the information to see yet. If the copyright for the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Quiet Room was filed in November of twenty eighteen, two
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: months after the listing appeared, then the listing existed before
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the legal registration, which means Weaver had already been in
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: contact with the Pittsburgh Press before she had Vicky's complete
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: manuscript in hand. She had already committed to the timeline,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the submission, the negotiation, the advance of fifteen thousand dollars
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: into an account Vicki did not know existed. Those were
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: not improvised after the break ins. They were the reason
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: for them. The break ins did not produce the crime.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: They were the fulfillment of a plan that was already
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: in motion the day Vicky signed the contract. Picture what
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that means for the the contract signing in April of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, Weaver, sitting across from Vicki, patient and thorough
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: explaining clause by clause. The power of attorney was not
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: an afterthought she inserted to preserve options.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: It was the mechanism.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: She had built the whole structure around everything before that, signing,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the writing group meeting, the lunch at the restaurant. Vicki
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have chosen for herself. The word gifted, repeated in
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: different forms across six weeks, was preparation for the moment
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Vicki's signature appeared on page twelve. The validation was not incidental.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: It was load bearing. And consider what the side door
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: changes in that picture. Weaver did not need to force anything.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: She did not need to break anything. The door was
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: already open, had always been open in effect, and she
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: had known it for months before she.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Walked through it.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: The lock was decorative, The contract was decorative. The editorial
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: relationship with sandro Chu, who genuinely did not know, was decorative.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Every layer of apparent legitimacy was a surface beneath which
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the mechanism had already been built and tested. The one
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: thing Weaver did not plan was the coat. On her
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: final entry in late February of twenty nineteen, she pulled
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the laundry room door shut behind her. Vicki's charcoal gray
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: pea coat was hanging on the interior hook. The door
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: caught the sleeve. When Weaver pulled the door closed, the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: coat came with it, dragged through the frame, snagged on
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: the exterior handle, and then released into the wind as
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: she walked away. The wind carried it up into the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: low branches of the oak tree at the edge of
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the property. The branch sat in a pocket of still air,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: sheltered on three sides by the fence, the house wall,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and the dense stand of boxwood. The rain that fell
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: for the next thirty six hours never reached it. Carl
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Adams found it on his Tuesday route, bone dry sleeves extended,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: hanging at chest height from a bare branch, The ground
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: beneath it saturated and dark. He reported it to his supervisor.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: His supervisor's brother in law worked for the Tilton County
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Sheriff's office. That call reached Sherry Long. Weaver had entered
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: four times without leaving a trace. On the fifth, her last,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: she left the only one she hadn't meant to.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Four days after.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Sherry Long delivered her findings to the Tilton County Sheriff's Office,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Francis Weaver was arrested. That was the second week of
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: March two thousand nineteen. The charge list was spacific wire fraud,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: identity fraud, theft of intellectual property. Todd Peren, Weaver's assistant,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: the one who had confirmed the broken side door mechanism
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: to prosecutors, testified under a co operation agreement he had
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: known he had said nothing until a deal was on
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the table. Sandra Cheu, the freelance editor Weaver had introduced
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: to Vicky as trusted, was not charged. Investigators confirmed she
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: had no knowledge the manuscript was stolen. She had edited
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: a book in good faith. The deception had layers Chew
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: never reached. Eight days after, a cellmate named Douglas Pruitt
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: reported to a corrections officer what Weaver had said in
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: their shared cell described, according to the official record, inconsiderable
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and apparently proud detail, Weaver gave a formal statement to detectives.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Pruitt's account was corroborated by a second cell mate. The
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: boasting had been real. The advance had been fifteen thousand
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: dollars deposited into an account VICKI did not know existed,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: accessed through the power of attorney clause. Weaver had called Boilerplate.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: On the afternoon, Vicky signed The Pittsburgh Press cooperated fully
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: uncirculated copies of The Quiet Room were recalled. In October
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: two thousand, nineteen, Weaver was convicted on all counts, the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: sentence six years in a federal corrections facility. The copyright
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: of The Quiet Room was voided. It was reassigned to
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Vicky Schmidt, the woman who had written it, whose handwriting
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: was still visible in the margins of the draft Weaver
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: had carried out through a laundry room side door. What
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the legal record does not show is this Weaver had
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: done it before. Susan Farber in Dayton in twenty eleven
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: had filed a civil complaint alleging Weaver submitted her novel
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: under a pseudonym without authorization. It was settled out of court.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Tom Gravely in Lexington in twenty fourteen had reported to
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: a grievance line that an agent matching Weaver's description had
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: used a power of attorney clause to redirect royalty payments.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: The complaint was closed. Gravely could not afford to pursue it.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Tilton was the third location. The pattern had run for
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: at least eight years across three states. Farbour settled, Gravely
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: couldn't pursue The system, logged the complaints and closed the files.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: What stopped Weaver was not a regulatory body. It was
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Patricia Odom, noticing a catalog listing on a phone screen
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: and knowing the number of someone who would read a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: galley cover to cover. Vicky Schmidt published her memoir in
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: two thousand twenty one different press, her name on the cover.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: The book was about seven years of caregiving for a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: mother whose memory was dissolving, years of holding a life
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: together while her own went largely unseen. She had moved
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: to Tilton County to write it. She had trusted someone
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: who recognized the value of that invisibility and used it
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: against her. The author's note thanked three names. Patricia Odom,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: who had seen the listing and said something, Sherrie Long,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: who had read the stolen book in two sittings and
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: confirmed passage by passage what had been taken. And Oscar
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: her Orange Tabby, fourteen years old, who had died the
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: spring before the book came out every morning for years.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: The six forty eight alarm twelve minutes subcutaneous fluids before
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the workday began. The one fixed point, Francis Weaver's name
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: does not appear in the author's note, not in the acknowledgments,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: not in the dedication, not anywhere in the book. That
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: absence is not an omission.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: It is a decision.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: The memoir was about invisible labor, about the years of
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: work that nobody sees, that do not accumulate into credit
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: or recognition, that simply happened because someone.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Has to do them.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Vicki had lived that, she had then written it. Someone
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: had tried to own it. The book exists, he does
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: not in it. There is something that stays with anyone
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: who looks closely at this case. Not the fraud, not
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the mechanics of the contract clause, not even the dry
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: coat on the branch. It is the moment Vicki read
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: those words in a promotional email.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Seven years of invisible.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Labor, her phrase, her years, someone else's name above them.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: She had spent seven years being invisible for her mother.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Then she had tried, for the first time to be
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: visible for herself and the person she trusted with that effort,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: had taken it and made himself visible Instead. He miscalculated
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: one thing. He thought the value was in the manuscript.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: It wasn't.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: The value was in the person who had lived it.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: You cannot steal that, you can only delay it. The
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: book is real, Vicky Schmidt's name is on the cover
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: and in the silence where another name should be. The
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: story says everything it needs to say. This show is
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: made by Obo Media