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The Man Who Fabricated a Twin: How My Identity Was Stolen · Narcisist Psychology

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: At six twenty in the morning on a Tuesday in
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: September two thousand nineteen, a sixty one year old fisherman
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: named Norman Thompson waded into Cutter Creek and found a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: driver's license sitting six inches underwater. It was dry laminated,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: sealed in a waterproof sleeve, utterly undamaged. The name on
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: it read Gretchen Lawson. The problem was that Gretchen Lawson
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: did not exist. The license was handed to Deputy Felicia
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Navarro that same morning. She logged it as found property
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and filed it away. It sat untouched for eleven days.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: By then, the woman whose Social Security number was printed
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: on that card was already sitting in her friend's kitchen
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: holding a garden notebook and three envelopes she had just
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: pulled from her husband's workshop. She was thirty two years old,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and she was trying to understand how someone had been
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: living her life under her twin sister's name for the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: past three years. This is the case of Wendy Williams,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and what happened to her was not sudden. It was built,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: one layer at a time, over five years by a
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: man who understood that the most effective way to dismantle
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a person's reality is to use the people she trusts
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the most. There are two details in this story that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: will not make sense until everything else is in place.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: The first is why Eugene Lawson chose a name that
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: didn't quite fit close enough to fool a creditor, close
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: enough to redirect suspicion, but never close enough to be real.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: The second is how a driver's license found in a
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: creek led investigators not just to Eugene's storage unit eighteen
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: miles away, but to a case in an entirely different
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: county that had been sitting cold since twenty twelve. Both
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: of those threads lead back to Wendy's notebook, and they
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: lead back to her sister. Pattenridge sits in Holt County,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: small enough that the same faces appear at the veterinary
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: clinic as the Bowling Alley and the Sunday Church sales.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Wendy Williams had lived there long enough to know the
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: rhythms of the place. She worked part time as an
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: accountant at the local veterinary clinic. Careful methodical, the kind
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: of person who kept a garden notebook not just for
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: planting schedules, but for thoughts, observations, things that needed tracking.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: The notebook was soft, covered, practical. It reflected the way
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Wendy moved through the world, quietly, attentive, precise, without being rigid.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: She had a twin sister named Gretchen. Gretchen was older
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: by nine minutes and forty miles away, working as an
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: office manager at a freight brokerage in Tulliver. Where Wendy
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: measured things, Gretchen moved fast. Where Wendy wrote things down,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Gretchen trusted her instincts. They were close in the way
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: that twins who became different people can still be close,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: bound by something older than their differences. Eugene Lawson arrived
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: in patent Ridge in the spring of two thousand fourteen.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: He was thirty eight years old, medium height, blond hair
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: thinning at the temples, and a face that projected what
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: people in Holt County would later describe as immediate confidence.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: He had come from Sayers County, two counties east. He
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: said his equipment rental operation had closed bad leasing, slow market.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Depending on who he told the story to, he did
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: not rush. He settled in quietly, the way some one
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: does when they have already decided how long they intend
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: to stay. He met Wendy at a church sale in
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: May of two thousand fourteen. By November, four months later,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: he had proposed there is nothing in the record that
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: suggests Wendy hesitated in a way that registered as alarm
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: to any one around her. Beverly Oakes, a nurse who
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: balled with Wendy on Thursday nights, would later say that
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Wendy seemed happy in the early period, genuinely so. Iris Dunn,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: a postal worker who completed the same bowling trio, agreed
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Eugene was present at social events. He was easy to
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: talk to, he remembered details about people. He also, within
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: weeks of meeting Wendy, began cultivating a separate relationship with
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Gretchen Lauren Mitchell, a family advocate and investigator who later
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: compiled the case summary presented to the Holt County District
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Attorney in November two thousand nineteen, described what Eugene did
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: as a three degree construction. The first degree was financial.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: By approximately August of twenty fifteen, Eugene had moved the
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: couple's joint account to a bank in a neighboring town
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: and assumed total control when Wendy asked questions, the response
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: was not anger, it was mild disappointment a tone. The
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: message was that asking was itself the problem. The second
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: degree was the mirror. Eugene was passing Wendy's schedule to
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Gretchen under the pretense of coordination. He was building a
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: parallel channel between himself and Gretchen that Wendy could not
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: see and had no reason to question. And when Wendy
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: expressed a preference about money, about a decision about something
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: as ordinary as how to spend a week end, Eugene
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: would say quietly that Gretchen had mentioned she'd said the opposite.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Mitchell put it plainly in her summary. He used the
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: sister as a mirror. By spring of two thousand seventeen,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Beverly and Iris both noticed something shift in Wendy. Her
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: entries in the Garden note Book grew shorter. She stopped
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: volunteering opinions at Bowling Knights the way she once had.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Iris done would describe it later with an exactness that
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: stayed in the record. She said, Wendy got quiet in
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: a way that felt like she was listening for something.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: What she was listening for without knowing it was confirmation
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that her own instincts were still hers. They were, she
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: just didn't know yet what she was about to find.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: The third degree was the one that required paper. Sometime
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, documents began appearing under a name that
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: did not legally exist. Gretchen Lawson. A hardware store, credit card,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a property filing in a neighboring county. The stated purpose
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: was renovation. The social Security number attached to that name
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: was Wendy's, not Gretchen's. Wendy's Eugene had built something specific.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: When mail arrived addressed to Gretchen Lawson, it could be
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: dismissed as a misdirected piece for the sister in law,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: plausible boring, easily ignored. For three years, that was exactly
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: how it worked. By twenty nineteen, a financial portfolio operating
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: under that name had grown credit instruments, property accounts coordination
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: with at least one outside associate. The name on the
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: documents was borrowed. The social Security number was Wendy's, and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Wendy had no idea any of it existed. Then a
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: fisherman named Norman Thompson went to Cutter Creek. It was
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: a Tuesday morning. In September twenty nineteen, approximately six point
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: twenty in the morning. Thompson was sixty one years old
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and had fished that stretch of creek for years. He
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: saw something pale in six inches of water near the bank.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: He waded in and pulled it out. It was a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: laminated driver's license, undamaged, completely legible. The name on it
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: read Gretchen Lass. He turned it in to Deputy Felicia Navarro,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: who logged it as found property. It sat there for
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: eleven days. Eleven days is not a long time in
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: administrative terms. In the timeline of this case, those eleven
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: days are a fault line because during that window, Wendy
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: was already moving toward the same answer from a completely
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: different direction. Six weeks earlier, on August fourteenth, Beverly Oakes
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: had listened to a voicemail. Beverly was a nurse, a
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: bowling companion, one of the two people who had watched
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Wendy go quiet. The voicemail was from a collections agency.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: It asked for G Lawson at Wendy's number. Beverly told Wendy.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: That same day, Wendy wrote four words in her garden notebook.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: She wrote, G Lawson Collections. E says old account check.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: She did not check, not that day, not the next.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: The question mark sat there in her own handwriting for weeks, unverified.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: What happened to that question mark is the hinge of
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: this entire case. In early September, Iris Dunn saw something
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: from her postal route. Eugene was loading items into his truck,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: a flat packed shelving unit, and draped over the cab
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: door a yellow jacket. Iris recognized the jacket. It belonged
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: to Wendy. She didn't think about it much at the time.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: She was on her route. She kept moving. Two weeks later,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: at bowling practice, Iris mentioned it in passing the yellow
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: jacket Eugene's truck. Wendy heard it and said nothing in
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the moment. That same night, she walked to Eugene's workshop.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: The back door of the workshop had a deteriorated latch.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: It had always been that way. Everyone in the house
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: had simply stopped thinking about it. Wendy pushed it open
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and went inside. She found three mail collection boxes. Inside them,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: financial statements, collections notices, a driver's license renewal application. Every
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: document was addressed to Gretchen Lawson. Every document carried Wendy's
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: social Security number, three boxes, five years of paper. There
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: is a specific quality to the moment when a person
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: understands they have not been wrong, that the ground beneath
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: their feet was built wrong by design around them. Wendy
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: stood in that workshop for an amount of time. The
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: record does not specify. What the record does show is
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: what she did next. She took the garden notebook. She
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: took three of the envelopes. She walked eleven minutes to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Beverly's house and called the sheriff from Beverly's landline, not
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: from her own phone, Beverly's landline. That detail is not
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: in Mitchell's summary as an observation. It's simply a fact
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: of the call log, but it carries weight. After five
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: years of a shared home, a shared account, a shared
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: name in her community, Wendy made the call that dismantled
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: all of it from someone else's phone. Eugene was arrested
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: the following morning. In the initial interview, he denied everything.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: He denied the name, he denied the accounts, He denied
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: any knowledge of the documents in the workshop in his
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: own work shop, in boxes he could touch from his workbench.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: The first search warrant covered the workshop and the residents.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: It confirmed the boxes, it confirmed the documents. Eugene's attorney
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: challenged scope. The second warrant reached eighteen miles east to
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a self storage facility in a town called Elswick. Inside
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: that unit, investigators found a complete credit portfolio operating under
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the name Gretchen Lawson, tied to Wendy's social Security number.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: They found a burner phone. Text exchanges on that phone
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: showed coordination with a man named Marcus Deel regarding two
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: property accounts, and at the back of the unit in
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a waterproof case was the laminated driver's license bearing the
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: name Gretchen Lawson. The same license Norman Thompson had pulled
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: from six inches of water at Cutter Creek eleven days earlier.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: The same license Deputy Navarro had logged as found property
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: and filed without connection. The license had been near the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: road that accessed the creek, it had not fallen there.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: The storage unit was eighteen miles away, and the road
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to Cutter Creek ran between patent Ridge and Elswick. At
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the sentencing hearing, Eugene Lawson's attorney told the court the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: contested hearing was not winnable. Eugene confessed. He was convicted
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: on nine counts identity fraud, financial exploitation, and coercive control,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: the last of those under a statute Holt County had
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: only adopted two years prior. He received a sentence of
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: fourteen years. Gretchen Williams was cleared of any involvement after
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: a three week review. She had been used. She had
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: never been Gretchen Lawson. The name had simply been borrowed
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: from him and attached to Wendy's numbers. Because sisters share
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: a plausibility that strangers cannot manufacture. Picture what Eugene needed
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: that name to do. He needed Gretchen Lawson to be
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: explainable at a glance. Mail arrives addressed to Gretchen Lawson
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: at or near a household where Wendy Lawson lives. The
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: answer writes itself, the sister in law careless with her mail,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: probably sent it to the wrong address. Nobody investigates carelessness.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: But that version of events requires something. It requires that
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Wendy never compare her own social Security number to the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: one on those documents. It requires she never look inside
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the boxes in the workshop. It requires she keep not
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: checking the question mark in her own notebook. For three
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: years she didn't and that is not a failure. That
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: is what five years of engineer doubt produces in a person.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Mitchell described the construction plainly. Each degree felt like weather.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: You do not investigate weather. You adjust to it. You
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: stop noticing it has been raining for years. What broke
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the construction was not a dramatic discovery. It was a
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: yellow jacket draped over a truck door, a detail so
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: ordinary that Iris Dunn forgot it for two two weeks
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: before mentioning it at Bowling. Four months after Eugene's arrest,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a detective named Paul Steeger from Sayers County contacted the
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Holt County District Attorney. Stegger had spent years on a
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: case from twenty twelve a woman named Brenda Hollis, same
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: county Eugene had come from, same method, never resolved. Eugene
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: had relocated before charges could be filed. That case was reopened.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: The Garden notebook was returned to Wendy Williams. Lauren Mitchell,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: who compiled the case summary and presented it to the
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: district attorney, noted afterward that Wendy had started writing in
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: it again. The question mark from August fourteenth had been answered.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: What Wendy found on the other side of it was
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: not evidence she had been weak. It was evidence that
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: someone had spent five years making sure she would not
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: look she looked. Eugene Lawson denied everything. In the initial interview.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: He was measured unhurried, the same that had projected immediate
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: confidence at a church sale five years earlier. He denied
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: it at the preliminary hearing. He denied it through the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: first search warrant. When investigators found the three mail boxes
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: in his workshop and began building the paper trail outward.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: The denial held until it didn't. The second search warrant
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: reached a self storage unit in Elswick, eighteen miles from
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: patent Ridge. Inside, investigators found a complete credit portfolio filed
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: under the name Gretchen Lawson, cross reference to Wendy's Social
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Security number. They found a burner phone. On that phone
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: were text messages coordinating with a man named Marcus Deel
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: regarding the disposition of two property accounts, and at the
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: bottom of the unit, sealed in a waterproof case, was
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: a laminated driver's license bearing the name Gretchen Lawson. The
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: same license Norman Thompson had pulled from six inches of
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: water in Cutter Creek eleven days before Nay anyone acted
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: on it. Eugene had not discarded it carelessly. He had
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: stored a back up. The one in the creek had
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: been a copy he was moving or disposing of, or
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: simply transporting when it fell. The waterproof case in Elswick
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: told a different story. This was infrastructure. This was a
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: construction meant to outlast any single piece of evidence. At
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the sentencing hearing, his attorney stated on the record that
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: a contested hearing was not winnable. Eugene Lawson confessed he
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: was convicted on nine counts, identity fraud, financial exploitation, and
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: coercive control. That last charge mattered in a specific way.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Holt County had adopted the coercive control Statute only two
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: years before the arrest. In most surrounding jurisdictions, what Eugene
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: did to Wendy over five years would have produced fewer
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: charges or none at all. In the domain of psychological dismantlement.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: The statute named the pattern as a crime. That naming
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: carried fourteen years. Gretchen Williams underwent a three week review.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: She was cleared of any participation. She had never signed
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: a document as Gretchen Lawson, she had never opened an account.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: She had been a tool in someone else's architecture without
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: knowing the building existed. What that meant for the sisters afterward,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the record does not say. Four months after the arrest,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Detective Paul Stegger from Sayers County reached the Holt County
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: District Attorney. Steger had worked a case from twenty twelve
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: a woman named Brenda Hollis, same county. Eugene had come from,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: same method financial control, identity, construction, a close relationship used
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: as a mirror to confuse the target. Hollis had filed
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: a report. Eugene had relocated before charges were filed. The
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: case had been classified inactive for seven years. It was reopened.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: There there is something in this case that resists clean summary.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Not because the outcome is ambiguous. It isn't. The conviction
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: is on record, the sentence is fourteen years. The construction
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Eugene Lawson built over five years has been documented, named,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and entered into a legal file that will follow him.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: What resists summary is the mechanism itself. Lauren Mitchell, the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: family advocate and investigator who compiled the case summary and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: presented it to the district attorney in November twenty nineteen,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: described the method in a single sentence. She said, the
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: pattern was constructed one degree at a time over five years,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: and each individual degree felt like weather. That sentence does
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: something precise. It explains why Wendy Williams, a thirty two
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: year old accountant who balanced ledgers for a living, did
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: not see the ledger being kept against her. You do
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: not audit, whether you do not cross reference rain. You
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: wake up one more warning and realize it has been
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: reigning for years, and you assumed that was just the climate.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Eugene's second tool was the sister. He cultivated a friendship
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: with Gretchen Williams independently passed Wendy's schedule to Gretchen under
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the pretense of coordination, then cited Gretchen back to Wendy
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: when Wendy expressed a preference, Actually, Gretchen mentioned you'd said
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the opposite. Over time, Wendy's own sense of what she
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: had said, what she reperred, what she remembered, became uncertain.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Mitchell described it plainly. He used the sister as a mirror,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: not Gretchen the person Gretchen as a reflection adjusted. The
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: third tool was paper. A name that was almost Wendy's
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: on documents that were almost hers, had an address close
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: enough to explain away three years of financial instruments operated
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: under that constructed identity, three years in which any anomalous
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: envelope could be a tribut to careless mail from an
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: impulsive relative. What ended it was? Iris done? Noticing a
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: yellow jacket on a truck door, Wendy Williams walked eleven
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: minutes to her friend Beverly's house that night, carrying a
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: garden note book and three envelopes. She picked up a
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: land line and called the sheriff. She did not hesitate.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: That is the part that carries the most weight when
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: you sit with this case long enough, after five years
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: of engineered uncertainty. After the question mark she wrote in
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: August and did not check until September, she did not hesitate.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: The note book was returned to her after the investigation closed.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Lauren Mitchell noted in the case summary that Wendy had
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: started writing in it again. That detail does not resolve
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: everything this case asks. It does not answer what Brenda
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Hollis is still waiting to hear from Sayers County. It
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: does not account for the years in which a coercive
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: control statute simply did not exist, and what Eugene Lawson
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: built would have had no legal name. But Wendy Williams
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: is writing in her note book. She is writing in
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: her own handwriting about her own garden, in her own words,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: and for the first time in five years, no one
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: is telling her she remembered in wrong. This show is
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: made by Oboe Media.