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The Man Who Counted Her Money - How a Counselor Stole a Life · Narcisist Psychology

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: On June fourteenth, twenty seventeen, a septic contractor named Diane
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Mueller walked into a house on Caldwell Fork Road and
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: found a single glass of water on the kitchen table.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: The glass was filled to within a quarter inch of
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the rim. The water main to that house had been
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: shut off for six weeks. No one was supposed to
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: be there. The woman who had lived on Caldwell Fork
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Road for eleven years was gone, relocated, she had been
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: told because of a mold problem. There was no mold.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: There was no forwarding address. There was only the glass,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: a folded napkin, a single plate, and a handwritten index
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: card that would take investigators nearly a year to fully understand.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: The card read Thursday seven, a m call M. Below
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: that nine names, and below the names a single dollar figure,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: two hundred fourteen thousand dollars. Monica Romano had written it
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: herself from memory, reconstructing what she had glimpsed on someone
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: else's desk. She filled the glass, set it on the table,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and walked out of her own home for the last time.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: That act, so ordinary and so precise, was the first
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: thing in two years that was entirely her own. Monica
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Romano was fifty two years old in the spring of
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. She had worked as a bookkeeper at Delham
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Green Services for eight years. She was good at her job, methodical, reliable,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the kind of person her supervisor, Connie Baxter, described as
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: someone who caught other people's errors before they became problems.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: She had been divorced for several years and had lived
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: on Caldwell Fork Road in Penrose Township, Delham County for
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: eleven of them. The house was hers, the routine was hers.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Every Wednesday morning at five forty five, she called her
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: younger sister, Lena Voss in Harrisburg. That call had been
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: a constant for four years, early enough that neither of
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: them was performing for the day, yet late enough that
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: coffee was possible. Lina would say later that Monica was
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: not a fragile person. She was precise. She remembered dates,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: tracked small inconsistencies, balanced her own accounts without help. The inheritance,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: approximately two hundred fourteen thousand dollars received after a family death,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: was something Monica had mentioned once to Lena. With a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: kind of careful practicality, she had a plan for it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: She was not reckless in the spring of twenty fifteen,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Monica was referred to a pastoral counselor named Russell Price
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: for what her paperwork called transition anxiety. The referral came
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: through a trusted channel. Price had founded Cornerstone Guidance in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Delham County in two thousand thirteen. He held a lay
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: counseling certificate under a religious exemption applicable in the state.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: He was not required to hold a clinical license, and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: his practice was not subject to the standard audits and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: record keeping obligations that govern licensed therapists. The first session
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: lasted ninety minutes. By the end of it, Monica had
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: disclosed the inheritance, the account where it was held, and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the Wednesday morning calls with Lena. There is nothing unusual
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: about disclosing personal information to a counselor. That is the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: premise of the relationship. What Paul Norris, a licensed clinical
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: social worker with nine years in coercive control identification, would
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: later document is that Price did something specific with what
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Monica told him in that first session. He filed it,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: not metaphorically. He wrote it down, gave it a time,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and placed it in a system. Norris would not learn
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: any of that until much later, in the spring of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, no one was alarmed. Monica had a councilor,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: she had a sister, She had a job she was
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: good at, and a house she had lived in for
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: a decade. Everything was where it was supposed to be.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: That would not last much longer than a season. By
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: fall of twenty fifteen, the sessions had doubled twice a week.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Monica Romano sat across from Russell Price in the Cornerstone
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Guidance office on Pell Street. She was not alarmed by
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the frequency. Price had framed it as progress, a sign
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: that the work was deepening. What was deepening was something else.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: The first image to surface later, the one that stopped investigators,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: was not dramatic. It was a door. The side entrance
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to Cornerstone Guidance used a hollow corps door with a
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: lever handle and no dead bolt. The front alarm log
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: showed no entries during the period that mattered, but the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: threshold matt at the side entrance was worn finn and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: scuff marks on the floor just inside formed a pattern
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: consistent with repeated entry. Someone had been using that door regularly,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: someone who did not want their visits logged. Price at
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: the time told no one this was unusual. He had
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: no reason to. There was no alarm to trigger, no
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: record to explain. That detail would sit quietly for almost
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: two years. In the spring of twenty sixteen, Price made
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: a suggestion Monica was carrying too much stress. He said
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: the work schedule was working against her recovery. She should
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: consider reducing her hours at Delham Green Services. The lost income,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: he offered could be managed. There was the inheritance, and
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: there was a structure Price described as a financial wellness plan,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: a secondary account co signed, designed to create distance between
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Monica and decisions that might feel overwhelming. Monica's supervisor, Connie Baxter,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: noticed the change in hours, but had no reason to
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: connect it to Price. Monica was still accurate, still professional,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: just less present. The co signing happened. Monica signed what
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: she did not know. What would only become clear eighteen
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: months later inside a court room, is that the secondary
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: account routed directly to a limited liability company. The LC
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: carried a name built from a variant of Price's own
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: middle name. It was not a wellness tool. It was
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a channel. Between twenty sixteen, in March of twenty seventeen,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: forty one withdrawls moved through that account. Each one fell
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: below the threshold that triggers automatic federal reporting. Each one
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: fell on a day when Price's calendar showed no scheduled appointments.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Forty one times. Not once did the timing slip. A
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: forensic accountant would later describe this as structured of o
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: wa udence. The word she used at trial was deliberate.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: But here is the thing about those forty one withdrawals.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: They did not look like theft from the outside. They
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: looked like a woman managing her own finances. That was
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the architecture of it. Price had not just taken the money.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: He had built a paper reality in which Monica appeared
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: to be in control of decisions she had already been
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: coached not to question. The second image came from a
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: locked drawer. When investigators searched Cornerstone Guidance after Price's arrest
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: in June of twenty seventeen, they found forty seven index
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: cards in the locked desk drawer. Each card carried a
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: client name. Each card listed a time pre dawn or
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: late evening outside standard business hours. Each card listed a
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: dollar figure. Monica's card read two hundred fourteen thousand, dollars.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Price's defense would later argue the cards were a scheduling system.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: The jury considered that claim for less than a day.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: The number forty seven mattered because Cornerstone Guidance had been
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: incorporated in twenty thirteen, Price had been operating for roughly
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: four years. Forty seven cards meant Monica was not an anomaly.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: She was a position in a ledger. Doctor James okafor
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the forensic psychologist retained for the prosecution, described Price's method
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: in phases. The first phase he called saturation of trust,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: extended sessions, after hours contact, careful validation of whatever perception
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Monica brought into the room. If Monica mentioned friction with
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: a coworker, Price did not neutralize it. He amplified it,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: reframed it as end as a pattern, as evidence that
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Monica's instincts had always been correct and that others had
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: always underestimated her. This is not therapy. It is a
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: mirror tilted at a specific angle. Phase two was isolation,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and it moved slowly enough that no single step was
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: legible on its own. Monica's prior doctor, her accountant, finally Lena.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: The Wednesday calls had run for four years five forty
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: five in the morning. Without fail, Lena Vas and Harrisburg
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: knew Monica's voice across every register, good weeks, hard weeks,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the flat, neutral tone that meant Monica was managing something
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: she hadn't named yet. For four years, Wednesday was their constant.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: In February of twenty seventeen, the calls stopped. Price contacted
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Lina directly. He told her Monica was fragile. He told
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: her that Lina's calls were destabilizing, that the contact was unsolicited,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: and that Monica needed space to heal. Lena did not
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: believe this entirely, but she had no framework for what
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: she was hearing, and she had been told it by
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Monica's counselor a person she had no reason to distrust.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: She waited eleven weeks. Late April of twenty seventeen, on
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: a Tuesday, Lena Vass made a call of her own.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: She had found Paul Norris through a family law referral.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: She described what she knew the stopped calls, Price's explanation,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the slow disappearance of the sisters. She recognized. Norris asked
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: two questions, when did Monica last manage her own banking?
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: When did she last initiate contact with anyone outside Price's circle.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Lena could not answer either one. She sat with that silence.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Norris told her later that these two questions were not
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: diagnostic tests for Monica. They were diagnostic tests for the situation.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: A person who cannot access their own banking and cannot
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: make unsupported contact with the outside world is not fragile.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: They are contained. The distinction mattered clinically, legally, and in
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: every way that would matter in a courtroom. Around six
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: weeks before June fourteenth, Price had moved Monica out of
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: her Caldwell Fork Road home. The stated reason was mold remediation.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: No mold existed. This would be confirmed later by inspection.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Monica was not permitted to hire her own inspector. She
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: was given no written address for the new location. Price
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: drove her there himself. The rental was in a neighboring county.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Monica had no car at that address. She had no
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: one nearby. She had chosen herself. When Norris began working
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: with Delham County Sheriff's investigators in May of twenty seventeen,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: the question they could not immediately answer was where Monica was.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: She was not at Caldwell Fork Road. She was not
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: reachable by any contact information Lena held Price was not
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: offering her location. Lenna found her through a ride share receipt. Earlier,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: during a password recovery call, Monica had shared log in
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: credentials to a stored account. Lena used those credentials to
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: pull the receipt history. There was one trip that did
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: not fit the pattern of the others, a different county,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: a street Lena did not recognize. That was enough. Monica
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: was interviewed by Norris and investigators over three sessions in
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: May of twenty seventeen. What Norris documented was not confusion
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: or instability. It was systematic displacement, a woman who had
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: been taught methodically and over two years to distrust her
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: own perceptions. When Monica described a decision she had made,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: she would stop herself mid sentence and say some version
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: of Russell said, that wasn't what I was actually thinking.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: She had learned to narrate her own experience in his language.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Norris wrote in his report that Monica Romano was not
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: a fragile woman. She was a precise woman who had
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: been handed a distorted instrument and told it was accurate.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: The water glass Diane Muller, found on June fourteenth, filled
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: to within a corps her inch in a house whose
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: water main had been shut off six weeks earlier. Had
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: been brought by Monica herself. She had carried a plastic
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: gallon jug. She had filled the glass. She had sat
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: at the table in her own house and tried to
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: remember herself. Then she had written the index card Thursday
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: seven a M call M nine names below the dollar
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: figure two hundred fourteen thousand dollars. She had seen that
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: card on Price's desk during a session and reconstructed it
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: from memory. She left the glass, She left the card,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: then she walked out. Price's defense rested on a distinction
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: he maintained from arraignment through the fourth day of trial.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: He had moved money, yes, but he had not manipulated anyone.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: The financial transfers were acknowledged. The psychological architecture was denied.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Picture the Cornerstone Guidance Office on Pell Street at nine
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: in the evening, after hours, no alarm triggered at the front,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the side door worn smooth from use. If Price's method
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: was simply financial, there was no reason for those after
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: hours times on the index cards. A financial manager schedules
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: during business hours, pre dawn and late evening appointments exist
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: for a different reason. They exist when someone needs access
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: to a person at the edges of the day, when
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: that person is least defended, most reliant on the structure
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: being offered. The forty seven cards collapsed the defense argument
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: before the forensic accountant said a word. Standard scheduling does
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: not sort clients by dollar figure. Standard scheduling does not
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: require a locked drawer. But the defense had a secondary argument,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: and it came close to creating reasonable doubt on the
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: question of consent. Monica had signed the co signing documents.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: She had signed them in the presence of a notary.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Her signature was not forged. Price's team argued she had
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: made an informed choice. That version of events required the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: jury to ignore a specific finding. Norris had documented that Monica,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: by the time she signed, could not name a single
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: financial decision she had made independently in the preceding six months.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: She could not identify her account balance, she had stopped
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: opening her own mail. The co signing had not happened
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: to a woman in full possession of her faculties operating freedom.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: It had happened to a woman who had spent eighteen
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: months being taught that her own perceptions were unreliable and
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: that Price's interpretation of her experience was more accurate than
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: her own. The strongest version of the prosecution's case, the
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: one that the jury ultimately accepted, was not about the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: forty one withdrawals. The withdrawals were evidence of outcome. The
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: real case was about method, specifically about what doctor okafor
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: called deliberate dismantling of epistemic autonomy. Price had not simply
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: taken money. He had first taken Monica's ability to evaluate
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: her own situation, and that brought the case back to
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: a fact planted in the very first session. In the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: spring of twenty fifteen. Price had heard that Lena called
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: every Wednesday at five forty five in the morning. He
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: had noted it, he had waited, and then twenty three
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: months later he had used it not to steal money,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: but to remove the one person most likely to ask
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: the right questions before the money was gone. The calls
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: were not stopped because Monica was fragile. They were stopped
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: because Lena was dangerous to the system. Price had built
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: the index card Monica left on her kitchen table the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: one reconstructed from memory, the one with nine names and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: a dollar figure, was not an act of breakdown. It
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: was an act of documentation. She had seen the ledger,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: she had understood what she was looking at, and she
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: had written it down. Russell Price was arrested in June
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: of two thousand seventeen on three charges, financial exploitation of
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: a vulnerable adult, theft by deception, and unlawful use of
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: a fiduciary relationship. He denied all of it through arraignment
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and through the preliminary hearing. Eleven months passed before the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: case went to trial. On the fourth day of testimony,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: a forensic accountant placed forty one withdraw records before the jury.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Each transaction had been structured below the federal reporting threshold.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Each had occurred on a day when Price's calendar at
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Cornerstone Guidance showed no appointments, no clients, no sessions, no obligations.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: The pattern was not coincidence. It was arithmetic discipline applied
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: over fourteen months. That same day, Price entered a partial confession.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: He conceded the financial transfers, He denied the psychological manipulation.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: He asked the jury to treat those two things as
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: separable to find that money had moved, but that the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: conditions under which Monica Romano had come to hand over
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: access to that money were not his responsibility. The jury
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: did not accept the distinction. Doctor James o'coffer's testimony had
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: already established what the evidence showed. Monica, at the time
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: she co signed the account, could not name a single
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: financial decision she had made independently in the preceding six months.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: She could not identify her account balance. She had stopped
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: opening her own mail. Price's argument required the jury to
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: believe that this state of affairs was coincidental to his methods.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: They deliberated and returned verdicts on all six counts, guilty
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: on every one. Russell Price was sentenced to fourteen years.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: The civil judgment that followed recovered approximately one hundred ninety
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars of the two hundred fourteen thousand taken. Asset.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Seizure and the civil award together closed most of the gap,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: not all of it. Twenty four thousand dollars remained unrecovered.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Routed through the LLC registered under a variant of Price's
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: middle name, dissolved in the months before his arrest. The
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: forty seven index cards recovered from the locked drawer of
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Price's desk at Cornerstone Guidance were entered into evidence. Each
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: card a name, a pre dawn or late evening call time,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: a dollar figure. Monica's card listed two hundred fourteen thousand dollars.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: There were forty six others. Vera Hutchins, who had filed
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: a civil suit against Price in Calhoun County in twenty
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: eleven and settled under a non disclosure agreement, could not
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: testify to the specifics of her case the NDA held,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: but her existence in the record was enough. The prosecution
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: established that Price had operated under a different organizational name
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: before Cornerstone Guidance, that the prior entity had dissolved after
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: eighteen months, and that a similar pattern had preceded its closure.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: The jury heard that a complaint had also been quietly
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: shelved in a neighboring state after Price's affiliation with a
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: church network ended without explanation he had practiced this. Monica
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Romano returned to full time work at Delham Green Services
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: in the fall of twenty seventeen. Connie Baxter, her supervisor,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: had kept the position available. The Wednesday calls with Lena
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Voss resumed. The time shifted no longer five forty five
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: in the morning, but six fifteen, a small adjustment enough
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to mark that something had changed and that they were
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: both still there. The water glass was returned to Monica
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: after the verdict. The glass that Diane Muller had found
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: on a kitchen counter in an empty house in a
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: neighboring county, filled to within a quarter inch in a
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: house where the water main had been shut off for
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: six weeks. Monica had brought the water herself in a
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: plastic gallon jug. She had filled the glass, sat down
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: and tried to remember herself. Then she had left. She
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: kept the glass. There is something in that detail that
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: resists easy summary. Monica Romano was not a woman who
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: had lost her mind. Paul Norris documented her in his
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: own words as a woman systematically taught to distrust her
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: own perceptions. The distinction matters enormously. One describes a person
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: who broke the other describes a person who was broken
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: into methodically over months by someone who understood exactly which
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: supports to remove and in what order. Price had spent
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the first session learning about Lena's calls. He had spent
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the next two years, making Monica doubt everything except him.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: And then when the money was gone and the rental
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: was arranged and Monica was in a house she had
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: not chosen, with an address she had not been given.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Even then, even then, she had seen the ledger on
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: his desk, held the information, and written it down from memory.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: She had reconstructed nine names in the dollar figure and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: left it on a table where someone might find it.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Someone did. The index card was not a cry for help.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: It was a record. Monica Romano had been a bookkeeper
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: for eight years when everything else had been taken from her.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: That remained. Delham County has no regulatory framework specifically governing
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: lay councilors operating under religious exemption. The exemption that allowed
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Price to practice without a clinical license, without mandatory record keeping,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and without oversight audits remains in place. The forty seven
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: cards in that locked drawer represent forty seven people who
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: trusted an institution that was never required to verify his qualifications.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: That is the part of this case that does not
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: resolve with the verdict. Price is serving his sentence. Monica
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: recovered most of what was taken. The calls happen every
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Wednesday at six fifteen in the morning, and the glass
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: sits somewhere in Monica's house ordinary intact, a quarter in
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: short of full, holding the record of the one morning
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: she stopped, poured the water she had carried herself, and
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: decided she still existed. This show is made by Obo
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Media