Latest / The Knife: A True Crime Podcast / The Knife: Off Record 136

Transcript

The Knife: Off Record 136 · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Pasha, Hannah, we have merch. Isn't this so exciting?
0:04
Speaker 2: It's so cute. We have tote bags. They're red, which
0:07
Speaker 2: I feel like really stands out.
0:09
Speaker 1: What a great pop of color for the season.
0:11
Speaker 2: That's right, it has our logo on it. The knife.
0:14
Speaker 2: They're perfect for whatever you need to carry around, as
0:17
Speaker 2: long as it's the size of the tote or.
0:18
Speaker 1: Smaller diapers, groceries, a puppy. It would all fit in.
0:23
Speaker 1: A puppy would definitely fit, definitely fit. So go ahead
0:26
Speaker 1: and order it at Exactly rightstore dot com search the Knife,
0:29
Speaker 1: and orders need to be placed by December fourteenth in
0:33
Speaker 1: order to receive them by the twenty fifth.
0:37
Speaker 2: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
0:43
Speaker 1: The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of
0:45
Speaker 1: the speaker and do not necessarily represent The Knife or
0:48
Speaker 1: Exactly Right Media. Welcome to the Knife off Record. I'm
1:09
Speaker 1: Hannah Smith, I'm patia Eton, and I have no idea
1:12
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today, but don't worry, because I'm
1:15
Speaker 1: going to tell you.
1:16
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:16
Speaker 2: Just get to sit back and listen to a story
1:19
Speaker 2: that you've been researching. It's such a pleasure.
1:21
Speaker 1: Well, this one was a pretty wild ride, and there's
1:25
Speaker 1: so much more to this story. It was one of
1:27
Speaker 1: those things where like I came across the headline, kind
1:29
Speaker 1: of filed it away, didn't find the right voices, and
1:32
Speaker 1: then got a call and was like, oh, okay, we
1:34
Speaker 1: should we should do this.
1:35
Speaker 2: Okay, can you tell me like the category of crime
1:39
Speaker 2: that we're talking about today?
1:40
Speaker 1: Female con artists?
1:42
Speaker 2: Oh my favorite? Yeah.
1:44
Speaker 1: So, I mean she has caused a lot of destruction
1:49
Speaker 1: that we'll get into, but part of my motivation for
1:52
Speaker 1: talking about the story is that she's still out there.
1:56
Speaker 2: Really, so this is ongoing.
1:58
Speaker 1: This is ongoing, and I'll get get into that more
2:00
Speaker 1: at the end. But you know, it's like, as I'll
2:03
Speaker 1: talk about, there's the quirky aspects of a con and
2:07
Speaker 1: then there's like the real darkness. Yeah, and I'm gonna
2:12
Speaker 1: play clips from an interview I did with someone who
2:14
Speaker 1: worked closely on one of her cases, and yeah, let's
2:19
Speaker 1: get into it.
2:19
Speaker 2: Cool.
2:20
Speaker 1: So today's story begins in Nashua, New Hampshire. It's the
2:25
Speaker 1: quintessential New England city. There's a population of about one
2:28
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people, but it feels much smaller in a
2:32
Speaker 1: good way. A really charming downtown area, great schools, lots
2:36
Speaker 1: of parks, really safe place. Yeah, unless you run into
2:40
Speaker 1: someone named Jenna Kaplan. So actually that's not her name,
2:44
Speaker 1: but we'll get there. So in twenty seventeen, Marqustbacca was
2:49
Speaker 1: working as an FBI agent, and he had a long
2:53
Speaker 1: career in the FBI. This was sort of known to
2:55
Speaker 1: people in his social circle too, of course, and someone
2:58
Speaker 1: that his wife actually went to high school with ends
3:01
Speaker 1: up calling him on a Sunday, or maybe she called
3:04
Speaker 1: his wife and sort of left message. I'm not really sure,
3:07
Speaker 1: but you know, Mark wasn't working. It was a Sunday,
3:09
Speaker 1: but this woman calls and she wants to know if
3:11
Speaker 1: Mark can look into someone for her, someone that she
3:14
Speaker 1: works with at the mayor's office that she's become pretty
3:17
Speaker 1: suspicious of. This woman that she's suspicious of. Her job
3:21
Speaker 1: was writing grants for the mayor's office. So grants are
3:25
Speaker 1: you know, most people probably noted this, but it's a
3:27
Speaker 1: non repayable financial aid awarded by a government body, in
3:30
Speaker 1: this case, the mayor's office.
3:33
Speaker 3: Nobody really knew where she came from, and you know,
3:35
Speaker 3: she claimed to be a Harvard educated attorney, but what
3:38
Speaker 3: cause concerns for this woman was she was really pressuring
3:41
Speaker 3: her to get the account numbers from the city bank
3:45
Speaker 3: accounts for the grants. She said she needed to put
3:49
Speaker 3: on the paperwork the voting numbers and account numbers and
3:51
Speaker 3: so forth. And you know that was a normal protocol.
3:56
Speaker 3: You write the grant, that you pass it on to
3:59
Speaker 3: the next person a hole fill in those numbers. But
4:01
Speaker 3: she was very insistent that she get the numbers.
4:05
Speaker 2: So the person who calls our FBI agent, what's his
4:08
Speaker 2: name again, Mark Mark. She also works in the mayor's office.
4:11
Speaker 2: She also works in the mayor's office, and she'd encountered
4:14
Speaker 2: this person and Jenna was asking her for the routing
4:20
Speaker 2: numbers and she was like, that seems weird kind of.
4:23
Speaker 1: So Jenna Kaplan is how she knows this woman, this
4:26
Speaker 1: is her name, that she goes by the mayor's office.
4:28
Speaker 1: And Jenna Kaplan's role is writing these grants. And as
4:32
Speaker 1: we hear in Mark's club, you don't need the account
4:34
Speaker 1: numbers to right their grant, so that someone else's right, okay, job.
4:37
Speaker 1: But this woman, I don't think that Jenna goes directly
4:41
Speaker 1: to her to ask about the account numbers. I think
4:43
Speaker 1: she just sort of hears that Jenna's really pushing for
4:46
Speaker 1: these account numbers. Yeah, and she's like, this feels off
4:49
Speaker 1: to me. So she leaves Mark with four pieces of
4:52
Speaker 1: information to go off of the name Jenna Kaplan. She says,
4:56
Speaker 1: Jenna has a three year old daughter, she works in
4:59
Speaker 1: the mayor's office, and she's also has some volunteer role
5:04
Speaker 1: in a nonprofit called My Brother's Keeper, a local nonprofit.
5:08
Speaker 1: So Mark takes these few notes and on Monday he
5:12
Speaker 1: does a little digging. He told me he really wasn't
5:14
Speaker 1: even thinking much of it. He figured he'd just run
5:17
Speaker 1: a quick search, you know, tell her as like a
5:20
Speaker 1: weird coworker, and move on with his life. But pretty
5:24
Speaker 1: quickly things weren't looking right. So he begins with a
5:27
Speaker 1: search for the name Jenna Kaplan.
5:29
Speaker 3: When I check out the name she was using, there
5:32
Speaker 3: was only one person by that name in the entire country,
5:35
Speaker 3: and there was like an elderly woman in Long Island,
5:37
Speaker 3: New York. I knew I was dealing with somebody who
5:40
Speaker 3: was in the late thirties. So then it piqued my interest.
5:44
Speaker 3: Take in the world, is it a possibility of having
5:47
Speaker 3: a parental kidnapping here because obviously she's using a drop
5:50
Speaker 3: pham that you can buy at, you know, the convenience
5:53
Speaker 3: store or CBS or Walgreens, So what are any stores
5:56
Speaker 3: you pay as you go? And that with the fact
6:01
Speaker 3: that she had this three year old in tow and
6:05
Speaker 3: nobody knew anything about her.
6:07
Speaker 2: She's using a drop phone.
6:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
6:09
Speaker 1: So one of the things that comes up in this
6:11
Speaker 1: search is that she has a lot of different addresses
6:14
Speaker 1: phone numbers, and currently her phone number is essentially a
6:17
Speaker 1: burner phone. Interesting, Yeah, like you don't picture someone in
6:21
Speaker 1: the mayor's office. You're a burner phone. How bizarre?
6:25
Speaker 2: How bizarre?
6:25
Speaker 1: So okay, now he's like, these are some real red flags.
6:29
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to find out who this person is.
6:31
Speaker 1: So the first thing he does is he goes about
6:34
Speaker 1: finding her current address, which is nearby. So Mark goes
6:38
Speaker 1: and talks to the landlord and this makes so much sense.
6:42
Speaker 1: I'm like, should I be an FBI agent? He asks,
6:45
Speaker 1: you know, did you run a credit check because that
6:47
Speaker 1: would have a lot of very personal information about this person,
6:50
Speaker 1: and can I see it? And landlord says he actually
6:53
Speaker 1: didn't run the credit check. He had her fill at
6:55
Speaker 1: the application and never ran it. Because he didn't want
6:58
Speaker 1: to pay the fifty seventy five dollars so it would
7:00
Speaker 1: have cost him. His rationale was like, well, she works
7:03
Speaker 1: in the mayor's office, she's got to be trustworthy. Yeah,
7:06
Speaker 1: good story. And so he didn't end up feeling like
7:10
Speaker 1: he had to run it. But he did have the
7:12
Speaker 1: application and he provides that to Mark. And this application
7:17
Speaker 1: has a social security number on it.
7:20
Speaker 3: I had their social screen number. I checked it on
7:22
Speaker 3: my systems and I found it. It belonged to, you know,
7:25
Speaker 3: some woman in her late fifties in western Massachusetts. And
7:30
Speaker 3: I pulled up that driver's license and had a photograph.
7:35
Speaker 3: So with that photograph, now that social screen number, I
7:39
Speaker 3: went to the police department where I formally worked.
7:43
Speaker 2: So is this an identity theft situation?
7:46
Speaker 1: Yeah? And it expands from there. But what Mark is currently?
7:49
Speaker 1: That's the trail he's following, right, right, identity theft.
7:52
Speaker 2: Like she might have taken someone's purse or something.
7:56
Speaker 1: Right, So why is this person who's living under an alias,
7:59
Speaker 1: using a burner phone and claims to be Harvard educated
8:02
Speaker 1: working at the mayor's office writing grants but nobody really
8:05
Speaker 1: can verify anything about her?
8:07
Speaker 2: There's a lot of red flags, a lot of red flags.
8:09
Speaker 1: And I love that this woman who worked with her
8:11
Speaker 1: in some capacity trusted her intuition because had she not,
8:16
Speaker 1: you know, maybe she would have gotten those count numbers.
8:18
Speaker 1: So Mark had mentioned in an earlier clip, he's questioning,
8:21
Speaker 1: could this be a parent or kidnapping, because you know,
8:25
Speaker 1: since those cross state lines, they can fall into the
8:28
Speaker 1: FBI's jurisdiction or whatever you call it and become their investigation.
8:32
Speaker 2: And that's just for anyone who doesn't know, like when
8:34
Speaker 2: a parent kidnaps their own child, right, so maybe there's
8:38
Speaker 2: another parent somewhere who doesn't know where this child is. Right.
8:41
Speaker 1: It happens with like disputes over custody, you know, and
8:45
Speaker 1: people not wanting to give their children to their partner
8:49
Speaker 1: or whatever. So he's questioning if it's that, because why
8:52
Speaker 1: else would she be living under an alias and.
8:54
Speaker 2: Have a three year old with her.
8:56
Speaker 1: And he has contacts in this community law enforcement because
8:59
Speaker 1: he former worked in the police department there, and so
9:02
Speaker 1: he brings this identification that he's found with her photograph
9:07
Speaker 1: on it, and this information for a woman in Massachusetts
9:10
Speaker 1: or someplace. He brings it to the police department because
9:14
Speaker 1: the nonprofit that Jenna Kaplan is a part of. My
9:18
Speaker 1: brother's keeper meets at the police department once a week,
9:23
Speaker 1: so they would know her there. So he goes to
9:26
Speaker 1: the police department and he shows them this picture and
9:29
Speaker 1: he's like, do you know this person? Never seen her
9:31
Speaker 1: in my life? And okay, So Mark kind of knew
9:35
Speaker 1: that was the answer he was going to get. But
9:37
Speaker 1: great confirmation. So they know she's lying about who she is,
9:41
Speaker 1: but they don't know why. The chief of police in Nashua,
9:44
Speaker 1: he says to Mark, I'm going to send a detective
9:48
Speaker 1: back over to her residence to see what we can
9:51
Speaker 1: find out, and we'll let you know what we find.
9:53
Speaker 1: So that detective goes over there and who opens the
9:56
Speaker 1: door but a criminal defense attorney are Yeah, a guy
10:01
Speaker 1: named Nick. And the detective says, I'm looking for a
10:05
Speaker 1: woman named Jenna Kaplan and this three year old girl.
10:08
Speaker 1: And he says that that's his girlfriend and that's their daughter,
10:13
Speaker 1: and that Jenna and their daughter are actually on a
10:15
Speaker 1: bus to New York City. They'd had an argument and
10:18
Speaker 1: she'd just taken off for the weekend to get some space.
10:21
Speaker 2: What is going on?
10:22
Speaker 1: What is going on? Because this is an attorney. They're
10:24
Speaker 1: talking to get a wind of something. Yeah, so the boyfriend,
10:28
Speaker 1: of course, being an attorney, he knows better. I'm not
10:30
Speaker 1: going to let you inside. I don't have to let
10:32
Speaker 1: you inside, and therefore I'm on going there.
10:33
Speaker 2: We assume that he's an actual attorney.
10:35
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, yes, And this further peak suspicion's like, why
10:42
Speaker 1: would she happen to be in New York that weekend?
10:45
Speaker 1: What's going on? So the detective goes back to the
10:48
Speaker 1: police chief, who then updates Mark and they decide that, Okay,
10:52
Speaker 1: Mark's with the FBI.
10:53
Speaker 2: That's scary.
10:55
Speaker 1: Not that a police detective should be taken lightly, but
10:58
Speaker 1: I think the FBI. If you're in an attorney, you know,
11:02
Speaker 1: you don't want to be in trouble with the FBI.
11:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also just like a way to get cases
11:07
Speaker 2: actually like looked at. And an FBI agent bringing this
11:11
Speaker 2: to the police department and saying let's look into this
11:15
Speaker 2: is different from just a random citizen bringing this in.
11:18
Speaker 2: You know, like there's totally like it's going to get
11:20
Speaker 2: looked into more. Yeah, you at least know that multiple
11:23
Speaker 2: people are interested. Yeah, Like it's not going to slip
11:26
Speaker 2: through the cracks. They're going to keep hunting this information down.
11:30
Speaker 2: So the boyfriend doesn't let the detective inside. This makes
11:33
Speaker 2: them more suspicious, and so Mark goes down to the
11:36
Speaker 2: house and again tries to talk to the boyfriend to
11:38
Speaker 2: see if he'll tell him anything, because they get the
11:41
Speaker 2: sense he knows more than he's saying.
11:43
Speaker 3: So I went down to Nashville call the detective. He
11:46
Speaker 3: met me at the house and gave me a brief
11:50
Speaker 3: friend down and we went over there. In to this point,
11:55
Speaker 3: the boyfriend the attorney had always met the detective on
11:59
Speaker 3: the front step of this multi family home, and the
12:03
Speaker 3: detective never had an opportunity to go inside. So I
12:07
Speaker 3: think the game kind of changed. Instead of the police
12:10
Speaker 3: officer being there, there's the FBI knocking on the door,
12:14
Speaker 3: and this is a criminal defense attorney, and you know,
12:18
Speaker 3: I just persuaded him that it'll be you know, let's
12:20
Speaker 3: not talk about your business out here on the porch
12:23
Speaker 3: with all the neighbors around. Why don't we go inside
12:26
Speaker 3: and talk privately. Is when we got inside that house
12:30
Speaker 3: that a lot of alarm bells started going off because
12:34
Speaker 3: the floor inside this house. Before the floor, the floor
12:38
Speaker 3: was covered with legos anybody that has kids. Now this
12:42
Speaker 3: this woman in her kid is sposed have been gone
12:44
Speaker 3: for four or five days. Anybody has kids knows you're
12:47
Speaker 3: not going to leave legos around on the floor. You
12:49
Speaker 3: can step on it.
12:51
Speaker 1: Painful, painful, and you know, I can speak for everybody,
12:54
Speaker 1: but the moment my kid is asleep or childcare out
12:58
Speaker 1: of the house with my husband, I'm cleaning. I love her,
13:01
Speaker 1: but I don't want to see her stuff. Well, especially
13:03
Speaker 1: lego is like strewn in the walkway. That's unrealistic, so unrealistic,
13:06
Speaker 1: like that would make me crazy. So there's legos all
13:11
Speaker 1: over the floor. But this kid has supposedly gone for
13:13
Speaker 1: the weekend, which he.
13:15
Speaker 2: Is aware of.
13:16
Speaker 1: You know, when he says they're in New York for
13:17
Speaker 1: the weekend, that means you know when they're coming back roughly.
13:20
Speaker 2: Right, because it's like just a train ride away, short
13:23
Speaker 2: train that I assume.
13:24
Speaker 1: Right, because they're in New Hampshire. So the boyfriend sticks
13:27
Speaker 1: to his story at first, and he just says, yeah,
13:29
Speaker 1: it's kind of messy, it doesn't bother me, but he
13:31
Speaker 1: eventually consents that Mark and the detective take a look
13:35
Speaker 1: around inside the house and they go into the primary bedroom,
13:40
Speaker 1: and there's a pile of papers on the bed, along
13:42
Speaker 1: with multiple cell phones and computers. Why did he consent
13:47
Speaker 1: to this? Like, I don't know. Sounds like Mark's pretty persuasive. Yeah,
13:51
Speaker 1: Mark is pretty persuasive. I did love that, like, we
13:54
Speaker 1: don't want to have this conversation out here.
13:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty good tactic. Yeah.
13:58
Speaker 1: So they go into the bedroom and they notice all
14:00
Speaker 1: this stuff, and of course Mark asks if he can
14:03
Speaker 1: look through it all and take it with him and
14:04
Speaker 1: make copies. And oddly, and I don't know why, but
14:08
Speaker 1: the boyfriend consents to this. So Mark takes everything with
14:12
Speaker 1: him and he says, you know, why is all this here?
14:16
Speaker 1: And the boyfriend's response is that Jenna just threw it
14:19
Speaker 1: all in the bed before she left. I'm not a
14:21
Speaker 1: neat freak, but I'm not going to sleep in a
14:23
Speaker 1: bed that's like caught a bunch of stuff all over
14:25
Speaker 1: it for a whole weekend. Yeah, but you know, people
14:28
Speaker 1: do weird things. Yeah, that's true. That's true.
14:31
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it is. It is strange, right,
14:33
Speaker 2: and it's strange that he allowed them to take it.
14:36
Speaker 2: Although maybe since he's an attorney, he's thinking if I
14:38
Speaker 2: say no, I'll look like I'm hiding something, right, Okay.
14:41
Speaker 1: So Mark takes everything with him, and he's pretty happy
14:45
Speaker 1: with this hall and it's a lot to look through.
14:47
Speaker 1: But within fifteen minutes of leaving their home, the boyfriend
14:52
Speaker 1: calls him, and.
14:53
Speaker 3: The attorney calls me out and tells me that he'd
14:57
Speaker 3: been lying to me the whole time. She been hiding
15:00
Speaker 3: in the basement with a baby behind the boilers. We
15:03
Speaker 3: never had a reason to go into the basement, right,
15:06
Speaker 3: it's a multi family home whatnot. But that was probably
15:08
Speaker 3: the delay in him coming to the front door so
15:11
Speaker 3: she could get on the back stairwell. But he told
15:15
Speaker 3: me that she was down on main Street trying to
15:17
Speaker 3: get her stuff back, her paperwork. So I immediately called
15:21
Speaker 3: the detective be arranged for a police officer to pick
15:24
Speaker 3: her up on the street and give her a ride
15:26
Speaker 3: to the police department. And I turned around on the
15:29
Speaker 3: highway and went back, and by the time I got there,
15:32
Speaker 3: she was there. She signed into the police department under
15:34
Speaker 3: her fate name.
15:36
Speaker 2: Wow.
15:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mark's all coming together. Yeah, we jump in time
15:39
Speaker 1: a little bit in this clip. But what Marcus saying is,
15:43
Speaker 1: so he leaves the house shortly after like within fifteen minutes,
15:47
Speaker 1: he says, the boyfriend calls him, Hey, I've been lying.
15:49
Speaker 1: She was at the house with Sho's hiding her daughter.
15:52
Speaker 1: She was hiding, but now she knows that you took
15:54
Speaker 1: all her stuff and she wants it back. So she
15:57
Speaker 1: left and she's trying to get to the police department
15:59
Speaker 1: and say me.
16:00
Speaker 2: My stuff back. So she came upstairs probably and was like,
16:02
Speaker 2: why is all my stuff gone? So this explains the
16:05
Speaker 2: toys being out, and also all the stuff in the
16:07
Speaker 2: bed that he may or may not have known what
16:09
Speaker 2: it was or why it was there. Maybe she was
16:12
Speaker 2: in the bedroom with it whenever they arrived, and then
16:14
Speaker 2: she rushed into the basement. Why wouldn't she grab that stuff?
16:16
Speaker 2: I don't know.
16:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. So of course this is
16:23
Speaker 1: kind of great for Mark. He's like, here's the person
16:26
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to talk to, and you're right here
16:28
Speaker 1: at the police department and you have this little girl
16:31
Speaker 1: and we don't know who you are. So he asks
16:35
Speaker 1: if she will speak with him.
16:38
Speaker 3: So she comes into the interview rooms to speak to
16:41
Speaker 3: us and whatnot. And I'm not sure she knew how
16:45
Speaker 3: much of the stuff of her stuff I had with
16:47
Speaker 3: me that you know, fiance had given me. So she's
16:51
Speaker 3: sticking to her story until I started pulling out the
16:54
Speaker 3: documents and one was like, one that really stood out
16:58
Speaker 3: was there was an applicate for a certificate out of Denver, Colorado.
17:05
Speaker 3: And up until this point, you know, the person who
17:10
Speaker 3: originally called it in the boyfriend and even heard her
17:13
Speaker 3: and they knew who kept referred to as little girls
17:14
Speaker 3: is a batt one.
17:16
Speaker 1: So I left the name in there because it's actually
17:19
Speaker 1: not her name, which we'll get into later. But of
17:21
Speaker 1: course she's you know, a minor, but that's not her name.
17:25
Speaker 1: So of the birth certificate had a different name on it, essentially, right,
17:29
Speaker 1: And I'm curious. I don't know if he went into this,
17:31
Speaker 1: but the name on the birth certificate, the mother's name
17:34
Speaker 1: and the father's name, did that matchup with her and
17:36
Speaker 1: the attorney or were you going to get into that later.
17:38
Speaker 1: I'm definitely going to get into Okay, but these are
17:41
Speaker 1: great questions. I'm glad you asked.
17:42
Speaker 2: I'm just so curious what you finds. Yeah, these papers
17:44
Speaker 2: and everything, so okay.
17:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he knows she's lying and now he has
17:48
Speaker 1: all these papers, but he didn't have like a bunch
17:50
Speaker 1: of time between getting all of these documents and realizing, oh,
17:54
Speaker 1: she's here to even look at what he has, right,
17:57
Speaker 1: So he's just kind of doing a quick scan of everything. Yeah,
18:00
Speaker 1: and it's already not checking the boxes. But she agrees
18:04
Speaker 1: to talk to him, so he confronts her with these discrepancies,
18:08
Speaker 1: and she tells them, well, I'm running from an abusive
18:11
Speaker 1: relationship and my real name is Dana Lawrence. And this
18:16
Speaker 1: is true. This is her name, Dana Lawrence. Okay, but
18:19
Speaker 1: she's been lying about her identity using someone else's social
18:22
Speaker 1: Security number. She has multiple big pieces of identification or
18:27
Speaker 1: pieces of identification that are stolen in not hers and notably,
18:31
Speaker 1: because we're going to come back to this, Mark has
18:33
Speaker 1: located this birth certificate for the little girl that they're
18:36
Speaker 1: referring to is Isabella, and the father is listed as unknown.
18:42
Speaker 1: So Dana is arrested at this point because they know
18:45
Speaker 1: she's falsifying her identity and they don't know exactly what
18:48
Speaker 1: the extent of it is, but she's arrested on this alone,
18:51
Speaker 1: which for this little girl super sad. She has to
18:55
Speaker 1: go into state custody at this point because her birth
18:58
Speaker 1: certificate shows that the father unknown, which means it's not
19:01
Speaker 1: she's not legally you know, related to this boyfriend either,
19:06
Speaker 1: even though she's clearly been living with him and under
19:08
Speaker 1: his care.
19:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's rough, really rough.
19:12
Speaker 1: So the boyfriend comes down to the police department in
19:15
Speaker 1: the midst of all this, and he's very upset because
19:17
Speaker 1: this little girl clearly means a lot to him. So
19:20
Speaker 1: he tries to tell Mark that he's the little girl's father.
19:24
Speaker 1: So Mark's like, okay, we'll take a DNA test. Then
19:27
Speaker 1: his story changes again, and.
19:30
Speaker 3: That's when he changed. He changed his story too, well,
19:33
Speaker 3: I'm not the birth father, I am the adopted father.
19:36
Speaker 3: And again we hit him up with well, you know,
19:38
Speaker 3: we'll have agents at the courthouse in Baltimore tomorrow morning
19:41
Speaker 3: to get the adoption paperwork, and once we get verification
19:45
Speaker 3: that you have legally adopted her, you can take your
19:48
Speaker 3: daughter and be on your way. And then yet again
19:51
Speaker 3: he changes his story to say, well, I don't know
19:54
Speaker 3: if she, meaning Dana, ever turned the paperwork into the courthouse.
20:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
20:06
Speaker 1: So it's really sad, and the boyfriend clearly cares for
20:09
Speaker 1: this little girl, but he and Dana were never married.
20:12
Speaker 1: He's not related to this child. So now Mark needs
20:15
Speaker 1: to find out who her father is because you know,
20:19
Speaker 1: nobody wants her to be in state custody.
20:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
20:21
Speaker 1: So Mark continues the conversation with the boyfriend, and he
20:24
Speaker 1: did say the boyfriend was really never that cooperative, but
20:27
Speaker 1: they did speak on a few occasions where he gave
20:30
Speaker 1: up a little bit more. Mark is trying to understand
20:32
Speaker 1: why a criminal defense attorney would get into a relationship
20:36
Speaker 1: with someone like who we now know is Dana Lawrence
20:39
Speaker 1: and also continue to lie for her because as an attorney,
20:43
Speaker 1: there are consequences for that. So apparently, shortly after this
20:48
Speaker 1: guy and Dana had met, she'd told him she was pregnant,
20:51
Speaker 1: but shortly after that she'd run off to Texas, and
20:54
Speaker 1: since he truly believed that she was pregnant with his child,
20:58
Speaker 1: he hired a private investigator to go and find her.
21:02
Speaker 2: Okay, this is all so wild. Wait, can you clarify
21:06
Speaker 2: at what point in their relationship did she say I'm
21:09
Speaker 2: pregnant and run off to Texas. Basically, at some point
21:13
Speaker 2: after meeting Nick and beginning to date him on the
21:16
Speaker 2: East Coast, Dana takes off again with Isabella, who's very little,
21:21
Speaker 2: so Dana runs off to Texas with Isabella and calls
21:25
Speaker 2: Nick from Texas and she's like, I'm in Texas. I'm
21:29
Speaker 2: here with my mom. She has Isabella with her, and
21:33
Speaker 2: so Nick goes to Texas and he's like, what's going on?
21:36
Speaker 2: And he talks to Dana's sister, Billy, who tells Nick
21:40
Speaker 2: her real name is Dana Lawrence. Well, Nick is really
21:44
Speaker 2: confused at this point because somewhere along the way, Dana
21:47
Speaker 2: had also told Nick that she might be pregnant with
21:50
Speaker 2: his biological child.
21:52
Speaker 1: Okay, so but she's not. But she's not and never was,
21:56
Speaker 1: got it.
21:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
21:57
Speaker 1: So Nick then hires a PI firm back in New
22:02
Speaker 1: Jersey because that's where Dana says she's running from, and
22:05
Speaker 1: he says, I want you to find out everything you
22:08
Speaker 1: can about Dana Lawrence and tell me what's going on here. Well,
22:12
Speaker 1: this PI firm said that Dana had defrauded a family
22:17
Speaker 1: and a rabbi in New Jersey, both different versions of
22:22
Speaker 1: a faked pregnancy. So she was on the run because
22:25
Speaker 1: her whole mo with this fake pregnancy was financial support
22:29
Speaker 1: and so they had been providing that. Yeah, and interesting,
22:32
Speaker 1: she was never pregnant. And it also said Yeah, it's
22:34
Speaker 1: not the first time that she had pretended to be pregnant,
22:37
Speaker 1: so okay, well that clarifies a lot. Yeah, so the
22:39
Speaker 1: whole thing was a fraud who was never pregnant that
22:41
Speaker 1: time around at all.
22:43
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
22:43
Speaker 1: But that is why Nick was so invested, even after
22:47
Speaker 1: she ran off to Texas, came back, finds out she's
22:49
Speaker 1: a criminal.
22:50
Speaker 2: You know.
22:50
Speaker 1: I think I had also mentioned a conversation where he
22:54
Speaker 1: did tell Mark or tell someone that he had always
22:56
Speaker 1: wanted a family, and so that was big for him.
23:00
Speaker 3: So now he knows. But yet given all that, he
23:03
Speaker 3: moves her from Texas to Philly and sets her up
23:07
Speaker 3: in an apartment that's owned by a former client of his.
23:12
Speaker 3: And he's bouncing back and forth between Philly and Baltimore
23:16
Speaker 3: because she's wanted nationwide at this point, and he knows
23:19
Speaker 3: she's wanted nationwide, but he's hiding her out until she
23:23
Speaker 3: has some problems in Philadelphia neighborhood dispute, neighbors call the
23:28
Speaker 3: police on her, whatnot. So she's going to get out
23:30
Speaker 3: of Dodge quick again. So now the attorney has to
23:33
Speaker 3: move her again, and he complained to the landlord who
23:38
Speaker 3: he knew because he's represented them in a civil case
23:41
Speaker 3: that it was like the sixth or seventh time he
23:43
Speaker 3: had to move her, and then you know, they probably
23:47
Speaker 3: went up to Maine in Vermont, you know, they wanted
23:50
Speaker 3: a roundfle of, but they did end up settling in Nashuae.
23:53
Speaker 1: So when he says she's wanted nationwide, there's an arrest
23:57
Speaker 1: warrant out for her essentially for like identity theft or
24:02
Speaker 1: fraud or something various identity theft and fraud charges. And
24:06
Speaker 1: they're in multiple states. A lot of them are on
24:08
Speaker 1: the East Coast, but there's multiple places where she's wanted, gotcha.
24:13
Speaker 1: So for a while this kind of works and they
24:16
Speaker 1: fly under the radar. This criminal defense attorney's practice was
24:20
Speaker 1: in Baltimore, but he would return on the weekends to
24:24
Speaker 1: this little apartment that they had rented. Now, this chapter
24:28
Speaker 1: of Mark sort of unraveling things, it's really where we
24:31
Speaker 1: see how methodical Dana Lawrence is in good a sense
24:36
Speaker 1: of how many times she must have done this. Because
24:39
Speaker 1: while her boyfriend is working in Baltimore during the work week,
24:44
Speaker 1: even though he's rented them an apartment there, she goes
24:47
Speaker 1: to a women's shelter with her daughter and she says
24:50
Speaker 1: that I'm running from an abusive relationship and I need
24:54
Speaker 1: shelter here. So she does this, and she really weaves
24:59
Speaker 1: herself into this community. And part of the way that
25:03
Speaker 1: this shelter works is you do volunteer work, because of course,
25:07
Speaker 1: you know, you're not paying rent to be there.
25:09
Speaker 2: It's for your safety.
25:10
Speaker 1: And she really immerses herself in this community of volunteers,
25:15
Speaker 1: and at first it's on a very part time basis,
25:17
Speaker 1: and through this volunteer work, Dana cozies up to people
25:21
Speaker 1: who work in the mayor's office. So, okay, back to
25:25
Speaker 1: the police station. Dana's arrested, and we know the little
25:29
Speaker 1: girl's taken and she's sent to live with the foster family.
25:34
Speaker 1: So Mark's really his first priority is I need to
25:36
Speaker 1: find out who her dad is and get her out
25:38
Speaker 1: of this situation. He needs the full story. So he's
25:41
Speaker 1: got the birth certificate and he's seeing that the child's
25:44
Speaker 1: father is listed as unknown. So from that birth certificate,
25:48
Speaker 1: Mark is able to locate a nurse that helped deliver
25:51
Speaker 1: the baby, and the delivery happened in Colorado, that's where
25:55
Speaker 1: the baby was born.
25:56
Speaker 3: So he calls up this nurse and I got hold
26:00
Speaker 3: of her in Colorado, and she remembered the birth because
26:03
Speaker 3: when the baby was born, she had certain things in
26:06
Speaker 3: her school sample that triggered an alert to child protective Services.
26:14
Speaker 3: And she also had a conversation with the dad, who
26:18
Speaker 3: she never got his name, but she knew he was
26:23
Speaker 3: from originally from Massachusetts. They had that conversation because that
26:27
Speaker 3: nurse marries her name. She was from Massachusetts, and she
26:31
Speaker 3: remembered he was either from North or South Carolina. So
26:34
Speaker 3: I knew he was looking for Matt well as she
26:37
Speaker 3: was back up. The landlord never met him, but knew
26:39
Speaker 3: that the boyfriend was named Matt. I was able to
26:43
Speaker 3: identify two individuals that fit that profile living in that
26:48
Speaker 3: general vicinity where she was during that three month time frame,
26:51
Speaker 3: and the very first one I was able to reach
26:53
Speaker 3: was a guy in South Carolina, and he says, well,
26:56
Speaker 3: look at I don't know Isabella. My daughter's name is.
27:01
Speaker 3: My girlfriend left with my daughter, you know, two or
27:04
Speaker 3: three years ago and never came back and I've been
27:08
Speaker 3: looking for her ever since. But I don't think that's
27:11
Speaker 3: my daughter, because you know, we were in Colorado at
27:14
Speaker 3: the time. They were in South Carolina. Last I knew
27:16
Speaker 3: she was in Florida.
27:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, but is this him? I mean it sounds like
27:22
Speaker 1: it could be him. It's him, So we know. Now,
27:26
Speaker 1: this little girl's name is not Isabella. Obviously I'm not
27:29
Speaker 1: going to reveal her actual name, but she has a
27:32
Speaker 1: dad who's been out there looking for her since her birth,
27:36
Speaker 1: and he had been looking for her by checking arrest
27:39
Speaker 1: records in every place that he thought Dana might be.
27:42
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, and the child aka Isabella not her
27:46
Speaker 2: real name. She's three years old at this time. At
27:48
Speaker 2: this time, she's three years old. Oh yeah, it's three
27:50
Speaker 2: years of him doing this totally. I mean, it's just heartbreaking,
27:53
Speaker 2: like so much time lost. And so even though he's
27:56
Speaker 2: checking all of these arrest records in every place that
27:59
Speaker 2: he thinks there's even a possibility she could have been,
28:02
Speaker 2: he doesn't know her name is Dana Lawrence. He knows
28:05
Speaker 2: her by the name Genevieve Morgan, a different name, a
28:09
Speaker 2: different name. So but interesting that what is her name Jenna?
28:12
Speaker 2: So first it was Jenna Kaplan, Jenna Kaplan. Now it's
28:15
Speaker 2: Genevieve Morgan. Yeah, she had a lot of different names.
28:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they go ahead, they do a DNA test,
28:21
Speaker 1: They confirm that he's the father, and so now they
28:25
Speaker 1: need to get Isabella into her father's custody. So Dana's
28:29
Speaker 1: in jail, but they have a custody hearing for Isabella
28:32
Speaker 1: coming up, and so they fly him up there and
28:36
Speaker 1: they're at this hearing. Dana's trying to talk her way
28:39
Speaker 1: out of this. She wants her criminal defense attorney boyfriend
28:42
Speaker 1: to get custody. She's trying to argue that point because
28:45
Speaker 1: they're in a relationship, the daughter's comfortable with him, supposedly,
28:49
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, Mark's been in contact with this actual father
28:52
Speaker 1: of the child and he's flown up to New Hampshire
28:55
Speaker 1: for this hearing.
28:56
Speaker 3: Dana assisting she didn't know who the father was until
29:00
Speaker 3: of a sudden the doors swing open and here comes
29:02
Speaker 3: the dad, and then she's like, oh, yeah, now I
29:06
Speaker 3: remember he is the father. Now, mind you. They've been
29:09
Speaker 3: living together on and off for a couple of years.
29:14
Speaker 3: So the court eventually gave Matt custody of his daughter,
29:19
Speaker 3: but from jail, she was calling him, calling Matt, trying
29:24
Speaker 3: to persuade him not to take Isabella away from her
29:29
Speaker 3: and her boyfriend, that they could all live on the
29:31
Speaker 3: one roof the three adults and raise her bananas.
29:35
Speaker 2: So when he says they've been living together a couple
29:38
Speaker 2: of years, he means the boyfriend he is.
29:40
Speaker 1: Actually referring to the father of this child. It was
29:43
Speaker 1: not some fling. This was like another relationship that she
29:47
Speaker 1: had been in. They were living together on multiple years,
29:50
Speaker 1: off and on. They were in a relationship. She had
29:54
Speaker 1: the baby, and then what just disappeared. She disappeared. She
29:57
Speaker 1: listed unknown on the paternity side of the birth certificate
30:02
Speaker 1: and jetted, Wow, yeah, I think I can speculate a
30:05
Speaker 1: reason why she does this, but we'll get into that later.
30:08
Speaker 1: But yeah, So then she has this like wild idea
30:12
Speaker 1: that okay, father of Isabella first named Matt, just come
30:17
Speaker 1: in love with us, will be one big happy one. Yeah,
30:20
Speaker 1: MAT's like wild, absolutely not so. Yeah, that was maybe
30:24
Speaker 1: one of the crazier little moments in this interview actually,
30:28
Speaker 1: is that she even thought that was a possibility. But
30:31
Speaker 1: Matt returns to South Carolina with his daughter, which I'm
30:34
Speaker 1: sure was a massive adjustment for both of them, and
30:36
Speaker 1: Dana Lawrence is in jail and they're trying to decide
30:38
Speaker 1: what to charge her with. They eventually landed on identity fraud,
30:41
Speaker 1: which is because she was using a social Security number
30:44
Speaker 1: that wasn't hers on various untal applications and other sort
30:48
Speaker 1: of forms. So in September of twenty seventeen, Dana was
30:53
Speaker 1: convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison.
30:57
Speaker 3: She got eighteen months federal time for using the social
31:01
Speaker 3: Security number on that rental application. I credit her daughter,
31:05
Speaker 3: Kennedy for a lot of that, because Kennedy actually took
31:08
Speaker 3: the stand against her mother in the sentencing, and she
31:11
Speaker 3: hit the nail on the head. She told the judge,
31:13
Speaker 3: if you let her go, she's just going to go
31:15
Speaker 3: do this to other people. Kenny say, she destroyed my life,
31:19
Speaker 3: my siblings' lives in every person she touched.
31:24
Speaker 1: Who is Kennedy. So Dana Lawrence is sentenced to prison,
31:27
Speaker 1: And part of why she got an eighteen month sentence
31:30
Speaker 1: is because another daughter of hers actually showed up to
31:34
Speaker 1: testify against her. And now is where I learned that
31:38
Speaker 1: Dana Lawrence has six children, oh my gosh, with six
31:41
Speaker 1: different men, which, of course, like I don't have any
31:44
Speaker 1: judgments on that as an isolated fact. Yeah, but given
31:49
Speaker 1: her pattern of deceiving people, I think it's very telling.
31:52
Speaker 2: How old is Dana Lawrence.
31:54
Speaker 1: Dana Lawrence I think now is in her early forties. Okay,
31:58
Speaker 1: So she got charged. She's charged for all of these
32:01
Speaker 1: people come out of the woodwork, right and had they
32:04
Speaker 1: all been looking for her?
32:06
Speaker 2: Yeah?
32:06
Speaker 1: So as Mark is putting together this like case against
32:10
Speaker 1: her and helping the prosecutors get everything they need together,
32:13
Speaker 1: he's unraveling her past, which I'm now going to get into,
32:17
Speaker 1: and part of that is this daughter, Kennedy. So we
32:20
Speaker 1: find out Dana has a lot of children with different
32:24
Speaker 1: fathers and that she uses pregnancy to you know, manipulate
32:29
Speaker 1: and deceive people and defraud them of money in certain instances.
32:33
Speaker 1: So pregnancies, real pregnancies and fake pregnancies, right, and she
32:38
Speaker 1: is always leaving the father as unknown because on every
32:42
Speaker 1: birth certificate, right, on every birth certificate except for her
32:46
Speaker 1: first birth certificate of her first daughter, Brittany, who I'm
32:49
Speaker 1: going to talk about. But we learned that Dana is
32:52
Speaker 1: from Saint Augustine, Florida. Her first child, a girl, is
32:55
Speaker 1: placed for adoption, and she's a teenager at the time,
32:58
Speaker 1: so until recently, no, a teenager at at the time
33:02
Speaker 1: of her first daughter's birth.
33:03
Speaker 2: Oh, Dana is a teenager, Okay, Okay.
33:05
Speaker 1: So she's placed for adoption and no one really knows
33:08
Speaker 1: anything about this baby girl or her life. But we'll
33:11
Speaker 1: come back to that. Then Dana gets married a few
33:13
Speaker 1: years later to a man who lives in Utah, so
33:16
Speaker 1: she moves to Utah. She tells him that she's from
33:19
Speaker 1: a very wealthy family associated with Kentucky Fried Chicken.
33:23
Speaker 2: Not true.
33:24
Speaker 1: The marriage ended and Dana went to Illinois and then
33:27
Speaker 1: to New York. In New York, she met a very
33:29
Speaker 1: wealthy man and entered into a relationship with him, but
33:32
Speaker 1: then he broke up with her and she begins stalking him.
33:35
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
33:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, so his family hires an attorney kind of gets
33:38
Speaker 1: rid of her. She tried to tell him she was
33:41
Speaker 1: pregnant with his child. She wasn't how much time has passed,
33:45
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not sure. I think this is over
33:47
Speaker 1: the course of like less than ten years. Okay, all
33:50
Speaker 1: of this.
33:51
Speaker 2: Wow. So she I'm just like trying to track all
33:53
Speaker 2: the movements. And then she gets to New York. She's
33:55
Speaker 2: in a relationship with someone and then stalks him, Like
33:57
Speaker 2: what was going on with that relationship? Yeah, so she
33:59
Speaker 2: learned that he was very wealthy and she started behaving
34:03
Speaker 2: in a way that was strange to him, and so
34:05
Speaker 2: he broke things off, which really upset her. And so
34:08
Speaker 2: she got pregnant in New York and put no name
34:13
Speaker 2: on the father side of the birth certificate. So this
34:16
Speaker 2: is her second daughter. Her first was placed for adoption
34:18
Speaker 2: when she was a teenager back in Florida. So this
34:22
Speaker 2: is her second daughter, Kennedy. We're in the late nineties
34:24
Speaker 2: in New York. Dana is keeping herself afloat with essentially
34:29
Speaker 2: credit card fraud. She's spending a lot on credit cards
34:33
Speaker 2: that she has no business being in the possession of.
34:36
Speaker 2: And she's leaving really generous tips at a local bar,
34:39
Speaker 2: really getting to know the staff there, and ends up
34:42
Speaker 2: sleeping with someone who works at the bar. And she
34:45
Speaker 2: then conceives a second daughter. So Dana and her two
34:56
Speaker 2: daughters moved to Florida. That's where she meets another man
35:00
Speaker 2: who is I think a pilot. Oh okay, yeah, And
35:03
Speaker 2: so with this pilot, they then all move Dana, the pilot,
35:08
Speaker 2: the two daughters to Indiana. In Indiana, during their relationship,
35:13
Speaker 2: she has an idea for a small business and he
35:15
Speaker 2: gives her five thousand dollars as soon as she's got
35:17
Speaker 2: that five grand, she's gone again. Okay, she's not using
35:21
Speaker 2: it to start a business, no, okay, she's just taking
35:23
Speaker 2: the money. Sounds like she's already kind of running, yeah,
35:26
Speaker 2: fraud like all the time.
35:28
Speaker 1: All the time, these like small time scams, scams.
35:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.
35:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she takes her two daughters to Massachusetts, but eventually,
35:37
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, calls this pilot back up and says, actually,
35:41
Speaker 1: I'm pregnant. So he then leaves Indiana and goes to
35:46
Speaker 1: Massachusetts to be with her. He's now moved from Florida
35:50
Speaker 1: to Indiana for her and then now to Massachusetts, right
35:54
Speaker 1: and Dana shortly after that. So this is in the
35:57
Speaker 1: early two thousands, gives birth to a son. Okay, and
36:01
Speaker 1: from what I understand, that son is the pilot's son. Gotcha,
36:06
Speaker 1: so that is his dad, But once again she leaves
36:10
Speaker 1: his name off of the birth certificate.
36:12
Speaker 2: Wild yeah.
36:14
Speaker 1: And then the whole family, all of them, moved to
36:17
Speaker 1: Rhode Island in two thousand and three. She tells people
36:20
Speaker 1: she's Harvard educated, just custody of her nieces. And she
36:25
Speaker 1: starts telling her daughters to tell people that they are
36:28
Speaker 1: her nieces. That she has gained custody of them after
36:31
Speaker 1: a family tragedy.
36:32
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.
36:34
Speaker 1: And so she also starts telling people that she's going
36:38
Speaker 1: to inherit millions of dollars and she's just her inheritance
36:42
Speaker 1: keeps getting held up. So she's running in these wealthy
36:45
Speaker 1: social circles kind of pretending that she's this wealthy Rhode
36:49
Speaker 1: Island mom slash aunt with custody of her nieces. I mean,
36:53
Speaker 1: it's wild. This reminds me of the Peggy Fulford story
36:57
Speaker 1: we did where she was Dennis Rodman's financial mana and
37:00
Speaker 1: she was telling people her son was her brother. Yeah,
37:04
Speaker 1: and I think I remember she said she did that
37:07
Speaker 1: because she wanted to look younger like she he would,
37:09
Speaker 1: you know, she didn't want to be like aged by
37:12
Speaker 1: that she had I'm very young. But she was similarly like,
37:15
Speaker 1: lying about your kids identity is so strange, And I
37:19
Speaker 1: can't imagine asking your kid to lie.
37:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, like horrible.
37:23
Speaker 1: Like to think that you don't want to identify to
37:26
Speaker 1: people that you're their mom would be like so sad,
37:29
Speaker 1: so sad.
37:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
37:31
Speaker 1: And so she tells her friends in Rhode Island that
37:35
Speaker 1: she's having a lot of trouble getting her inheritance I'm
37:39
Speaker 1: not exactly sure what her stories consisted of, but she
37:43
Speaker 1: steals from her friends. They loan her money, they loan
37:45
Speaker 1: her credit cards, she takes them for a ride. That's
37:48
Speaker 1: what she does. And she knows she's going to get
37:50
Speaker 1: found out in Rhode Island, so she flees to Canada
37:54
Speaker 1: with her three kids, leaves the pilot. I don't know where.
37:57
Speaker 2: Pilot's not coming with them.
37:58
Speaker 1: Pilot's gone, okay, not even the ability to fly a
38:02
Speaker 1: plane will get him there with her. So while in Canada,
38:07
Speaker 1: Dana gives birth to another child. Whose child is this
38:11
Speaker 1: I don't know, okay, and then she comes back to
38:13
Speaker 1: the United States. But since she's wanted, she has multiple
38:17
Speaker 1: arrest warrants at this point all over the East Coast.
38:20
Speaker 1: She stopped at the border with her four kids. With
38:23
Speaker 1: her four kids, so she puts the son that she
38:26
Speaker 1: gave birth to in Canada. She places him for adoption
38:29
Speaker 1: in Canada.
38:29
Speaker 2: M hmm, wow.
38:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if he actually would have been
38:33
Speaker 1: placed for adoption in Canada or the US, but she
38:35
Speaker 1: gave birth to him in Canada, yeah, and conceived him
38:39
Speaker 1: I think in the US.
38:41
Speaker 2: And so he doesn't come across the border with them.
38:45
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how that comes out, but she
38:49
Speaker 1: places him for adoption.
38:51
Speaker 2: Interesting.
38:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so she goes to New York and she
38:54
Speaker 1: faces charges and in the process of that, she loses
38:58
Speaker 1: custody of the two that she has in tow as
39:01
Speaker 1: well as the son that belonged to the pilot.
39:04
Speaker 2: And what happens to the sun.
39:06
Speaker 1: So the son goes to be with his dad, who
39:07
Speaker 1: you know, is the pilot, and the daughters they have
39:10
Speaker 1: to go somewhere.
39:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:12
Speaker 1: So the youngest daughter they locate her dad, who was
39:15
Speaker 1: the person who worked at the bar, and she's now
39:18
Speaker 1: sent to live with this family as a young kid
39:20
Speaker 1: she's never met before.
39:22
Speaker 2: That's so wild. And also she's been raised with these
39:25
Speaker 2: siblings and now they're all being separated.
39:27
Speaker 1: That's got to be so hard. Yeah, it was really hard.
39:30
Speaker 1: Kennedy was interviewed about it at one point and talked
39:32
Speaker 1: about just how hard it was. And she was actually
39:36
Speaker 1: sent to live with Dana's sister Billy. Okay, Yeah, Dana
39:39
Speaker 1: asked even her own children to lie for her. So
39:43
Speaker 1: sometime around twenty ten, when Kennedy is twelve or thirteen
39:45
Speaker 1: years old, Dana begins dating another attorney and they're living
39:50
Speaker 1: with him in Boston and then she tells him, I
39:53
Speaker 1: need to go to Florida. I'm going to be arrested
39:55
Speaker 1: if we stay here. He's like okay, and they all
39:57
Speaker 1: go to Florida.
39:58
Speaker 2: Wow, because whenever she was initially arrested after coming back
40:01
Speaker 2: into the US. And then her son gets sent to
40:04
Speaker 2: live with his father, her daughter goes to live with
40:08
Speaker 2: her father, and then the other daughter goes to live with
40:09
Speaker 2: their sister. She's sent to prison, but I'm guessing for
40:12
Speaker 2: a very short amount of time because it's for fraud
40:15
Speaker 2: or credit card theft or something, so she's probably out
40:18
Speaker 2: in like a year or less. And then it sounds
40:21
Speaker 2: like she gets right back into her old tricks.
40:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she regains custody of Kennedy because Kennedy was
40:28
Speaker 1: with her sister.
40:29
Speaker 2: Wow.
40:30
Speaker 1: So they go to Florida, Dana twelve or thirteen year
40:34
Speaker 1: old Kennedy and this new attorney she's dating. And then,
40:38
Speaker 1: just like always, she then does something in Florida and
40:41
Speaker 1: has to leave. Well, this time she does something pretty
40:45
Speaker 1: unimaginable and leaves Kennedy behind.
40:49
Speaker 3: Hmm, you know when he and Dana left Miami Beach,
40:54
Speaker 3: she had stolen somebody's identity at her place for employment
40:57
Speaker 3: and got credit cards in that woman's name. A horrible
41:01
Speaker 3: that all started unraveling. The police called her in for
41:03
Speaker 3: an interview. She told her, hey, I can't make it
41:05
Speaker 3: now today. I'll be in there tomorrow after work at
41:07
Speaker 3: four o'clock.
41:08
Speaker 2: Who would believe that.
41:09
Speaker 3: Well, North Miami Beach police gave her that courtesy, and
41:14
Speaker 3: she went home that night and told Kenny, we're on
41:16
Speaker 3: the run. We're moving again. Because she used to say
41:18
Speaker 3: the Boogeyman's coming. She was say the Boogeyman's coming. And
41:22
Speaker 3: Kenny's a small kid at that time. Was she grew
41:24
Speaker 3: up with it at at thirteen years old. Now Kenny's like,
41:28
Speaker 3: I'm done. I have friends here, I'm not going good
41:30
Speaker 3: for her. Her mother and Jonathan, my boyfriend, gave her
41:34
Speaker 3: twenty dollars and left her in an apartment by herself.
41:38
Speaker 1: In Miami a thirteen year old girl, right, so she said,
41:42
Speaker 1: but you.
41:42
Speaker 3: Know, give that kid credit. She survived for about two weeks,
41:46
Speaker 3: and she went to school every day because that was
41:48
Speaker 3: important to her, taking a city bus. And then when
41:50
Speaker 3: the money ran out, she turned herself. She called the
41:53
Speaker 3: police and says, hey, can somebody come take care of me?
41:55
Speaker 3: My mother abandoned me. So the police came put her
41:59
Speaker 3: in foster care until Billy could come down and only
42:03
Speaker 3: claimed to her.
42:04
Speaker 2: Wow.
42:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, since the beginning of really her late teenage years,
42:10
Speaker 1: she's had this pattern of being on the run from
42:15
Speaker 1: state to state in different relationships and having children and
42:19
Speaker 1: taking them along with her. So Kennedy goes back into
42:24
Speaker 1: Billy's care at that point, and you know, we still
42:27
Speaker 1: don't know how much about this first daughter that Dana
42:30
Speaker 1: had as a teenager, but all of the other siblings
42:34
Speaker 1: that can be in touch are in touch, so the
42:36
Speaker 1: two younger daughters and then the son that she had
42:39
Speaker 1: with the pilot, and so Mark didn't know anything about
42:43
Speaker 1: this first daughter. And then when all of this came
42:46
Speaker 1: out about Dana's arrest and her eighteen month prison sentence
42:50
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire, Mark was asked to do a TV
42:53
Speaker 1: interview and he got in the car to go to
42:56
Speaker 1: the interview and he got a call from a guy
43:00
Speaker 1: in Maryland.
43:02
Speaker 3: I got a call from a guy in Townsend, Maryland,
43:06
Speaker 3: who the weekend before was at a bar with his wife.
43:10
Speaker 3: They had just fallen him from out of town, stopped
43:12
Speaker 3: to get a bite to eat a drink, and who
43:14
Speaker 3: do they run into but Dana Lawrence in the bar.
43:17
Speaker 3: She had now finished her sentence, she was done her
43:20
Speaker 3: parole or probation, i should say, and she had business
43:26
Speaker 3: cards with her true name at this time, Dana Lawreen's
43:29
Speaker 3: Social Justice Center or something. But she told them that
43:32
Speaker 3: she worked for ABC, developing new reality shows and wanted
43:39
Speaker 3: to know if he and his wife would be interested
43:42
Speaker 3: in being in this new reality show that ABC was
43:44
Speaker 3: putting together. And you know, if they were, you know,
43:48
Speaker 3: could they provide their information to her and she would
43:51
Speaker 3: get them a casting call. The wife is all excited
43:54
Speaker 3: by this, was ready to jump on board, but the
43:56
Speaker 3: husband's like, if it sounds too good to be true,
43:59
Speaker 3: let's just hold off a little bit. You know.
44:02
Speaker 1: As soon as she got out of prison in New Hampshire,
44:04
Speaker 1: she was right back at.
44:05
Speaker 2: It new schame reality TV show. Yeah.
44:09
Speaker 1: And this person who reached out to Mark actually found
44:12
Speaker 1: him the same way I did, which was at this point,
44:15
Speaker 1: Dana's case is googleable, and so Mark's name comes up
44:18
Speaker 1: because he's interviewed about it, and he reached out to
44:21
Speaker 1: him on LinkedIn. So that's how we got in touch
44:24
Speaker 1: with Mark, so this is all still happening. And at
44:29
Speaker 1: this point Mark doesn't know anything about the first daughter
44:33
Speaker 1: that Dana ever had, and actually just before our interview,
44:38
Speaker 1: like the weekend before, he heard from her on LinkedIn
44:43
Speaker 1: and then they got on the phone.
44:46
Speaker 3: Brittany was the first of Dana's kids. She was born
44:49
Speaker 3: in like nineteen ninety one, the very beginning of the stuff.
44:52
Speaker 3: Dana was very very young, and nobody knew what ever
44:56
Speaker 3: happened to Brittany. Nobody could tell you. You know, her sister
44:59
Speaker 3: couldn't tell me. The kids couldn't because Brittany was gone
45:03
Speaker 3: before any of them were born, right according to Billy,
45:08
Speaker 3: the sister, Yeah, they knew. She went for adoption, but
45:12
Speaker 3: you know, as luck would have it, Britney's adopted family
45:17
Speaker 3: gave her a twenty one in me kit and she
45:23
Speaker 3: took it, submitted it, and she sat on those results
45:27
Speaker 3: for a while. It never hit the link like who
45:31
Speaker 3: you might be related to? She got the data back,
45:32
Speaker 3: but never hit it until very recently and she hit
45:36
Speaker 3: like who you might be connected to? And it was
45:38
Speaker 3: through that she was connected to Dana as our birth mother.
45:43
Speaker 3: So she reached out for Dana not knowing any of
45:46
Speaker 3: the stuff. It's you know, Dana's tried to suck her
45:50
Speaker 3: into her same scheme, telling her that, you know that
45:55
Speaker 3: she's heired to some lumber mill or saw mill fortune,
46:00
Speaker 3: that she travels down to Dominican Republic every year during
46:04
Speaker 3: the holidays to give gifts to the underprivilege down there,
46:07
Speaker 3: that she spends most of her time in Spain. You know,
46:10
Speaker 3: it's the same type of stuff she told other people
46:12
Speaker 3: in the past, you know, being connected to the royal
46:14
Speaker 3: family or to Jack Nicholson. And she was, you know,
46:19
Speaker 3: sucking Brittany in. Now Brittany is not Brittany anymore. Brittany's
46:23
Speaker 3: now her adoptive family gear. So something just didn't sit
46:27
Speaker 3: well recently with her about these conversations with her mom,
46:32
Speaker 3: and her mom sent her a picture of her when
46:35
Speaker 3: she was a kid, and you know, she was doing
46:41
Speaker 3: a research online saw this story. I saw the mugshots
46:46
Speaker 3: of Dana and noticed that there was a mole on
46:49
Speaker 3: Dana's mugshot between her eyes, the same mole as on
46:53
Speaker 3: the picture Dana sent to Brittany from years ago. So
46:59
Speaker 3: she was starting and you know, she found my name.
47:01
Speaker 3: I didn't know this is just how this passed. On day,
47:04
Speaker 3: you know, I get a message on LinkedIn. At first,
47:07
Speaker 3: I get a request on LinkedIn to be a contact.
47:10
Speaker 3: So Brittany called me. She's like, you know, this is
47:14
Speaker 3: a story that I'm being told, and she says, my
47:18
Speaker 3: parents had dropped me. I've been living in Tennessee. I
47:22
Speaker 3: obviously never met like birth parents, and I'm an only child.
47:28
Speaker 3: But putting the pieces together because Danna is back in
47:32
Speaker 3: I guess Washington, DC area.
47:34
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a lot, but Mark is basically saying
47:37
Speaker 1: that Dennis's first child is reaching out to him, and
47:41
Speaker 1: she is learning on her own through googling that her
47:45
Speaker 1: mom is a common woman and that she's been.
47:48
Speaker 2: Just so horrible. Yeah, I mean, also thinking about like
47:52
Speaker 2: this child, you haven't talked to you in so long,
47:54
Speaker 2: reaching out to you, and then she just starts spinning
47:56
Speaker 2: these lies to her. It's just hard sometimes understand how
48:00
Speaker 2: someone could be such a pathological liar and just also
48:04
Speaker 2: be only thinking about how she can use people totally.
48:09
Speaker 1: And it's like there's no big build up to a
48:13
Speaker 1: prison sentence here. She's out. I mean, at least when
48:15
Speaker 1: I talked to Mark, what two weeks ago, she wasn't
48:18
Speaker 1: in prison. I think the longest sentence she had was
48:21
Speaker 1: the New Hampshire one. She's likely still doing this.
48:25
Speaker 2: Can I have a question at the daughter who's we're
48:27
Speaker 2: calling Brittany but that's not her name, right, You know,
48:30
Speaker 2: it's got to be such a disappointing thing. Maybe I
48:33
Speaker 2: mean to understand that your mother is a sort of
48:36
Speaker 2: serial scammer, but was she able to connect with any
48:39
Speaker 2: of her siblings? Yeah?
48:41
Speaker 1: So Mark has stayed in touch with definitely the two
48:44
Speaker 1: girls now young women that he got to know over
48:48
Speaker 1: the course of her trial and conviction, and he did
48:50
Speaker 1: put them in touch, and I don't know what that
48:53
Speaker 1: resulted in, but I know that he was able to
48:54
Speaker 1: connect them and maybe they'll have a relationship of some kind.
48:58
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's just got to be so disappointing if
49:02
Speaker 1: you're someone who is looking for a biological parent and
49:06
Speaker 1: then you find out that the first thing they do
49:08
Speaker 1: is lie to you the first thing. Yeah, horrible, horrible.
49:11
Speaker 1: So Brittany's only interactions with her mom have just been
49:15
Speaker 1: her lying again. And you know, I was asking Mark, like,
49:18
Speaker 1: how is it possible that she's not serving more time
49:22
Speaker 1: for the kind of crime she's committing And I think
49:25
Speaker 1: it kind of goes back to something we see a
49:28
Speaker 1: lot of in these sort of small time scams. You
49:32
Speaker 1: convince someone that you're pregnant, but how do you prove
49:35
Speaker 1: that you are not pregnant? How does someone else prove
49:37
Speaker 1: that you were never pregnant?
49:39
Speaker 2: Or like you run a bunch of cons but they're
49:44
Speaker 2: not violent. You know, this is not violent crime. So
49:47
Speaker 2: you know, she's up in the East Coast, like stealing
49:50
Speaker 2: from her friends. And then she does get a conviction,
49:53
Speaker 2: but it's what was it, like eighteen months or something,
49:56
Speaker 2: and so then she's just out again and a lot
49:58
Speaker 2: of times also good behavior. Maybe she doesn't even serve
50:01
Speaker 2: those eighteen months, and you know, so she has a record,
50:05
Speaker 2: but it's not like she's done anything that legally could
50:10
Speaker 2: put her behind bars for a very long amount of time, right.
50:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. It's like all small enough that she can
50:17
Speaker 1: skip town and not be at the top of someone's list.
50:20
Speaker 2: This is like the essential problem with cereal scammers is
50:24
Speaker 2: that we see all the time, is that you know,
50:26
Speaker 2: if I'm meeting someone like Dana, like I want to
50:30
Speaker 2: know because like you know, she's going to probably try
50:33
Speaker 2: to scam me or whatever she comes into a community,
50:35
Speaker 2: It's like, they probably want to know, but it's so
50:37
Speaker 2: difficult to actually stop people like this because they just
50:41
Speaker 2: continue to move and do the same thing over and
50:43
Speaker 2: over again. Yeah.
50:45
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And she probably does gain the trust of people
50:49
Speaker 1: by saying she's a mom and she's a single mom.
50:53
Speaker 1: And I can see how someone might fall for that, Like,
50:57
Speaker 1: who would suspect it?
50:58
Speaker 2: Yeah?
50:58
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. All the way back in the beginning when
51:01
Speaker 1: Mark was contacted about her behavior in the Mayor's office,
51:05
Speaker 1: you know, he at least intercepted the case before she
51:09
Speaker 1: got those account numbers.
51:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the fact that he did something about it
51:13
Speaker 2: and that it actually led to some charges is pretty
51:16
Speaker 2: amazing because I feel like that's actually kind of rare
51:18
Speaker 2: when it comes to scams.
51:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some press. So now she's more googleable Yeah, yeah,
51:23
Speaker 1: which I'm sure Brittany is not the first person to
51:27
Speaker 1: google her with suspicions and now find out the truth.
51:31
Speaker 1: So yeah. Dana has also told people that she's the
51:36
Speaker 1: heir to the Esday Latter fortune, that she works for
51:39
Speaker 1: George Lucas at a film company. I mean, she has
51:42
Speaker 1: all kinds of stories. She's conned wealthy businessman, the pilot,
51:47
Speaker 1: a rabbi, her own family and friends, all manner of
51:50
Speaker 1: romantic partners, a lot of people who didn't ever know
51:54
Speaker 1: who she really was. And you know, female con artists.
51:58
Speaker 1: I think it is like us talked about in how
52:01
Speaker 1: violating it is. But if you're in a relationship with
52:05
Speaker 1: someone and they've completely lied to you about everything and
52:07
Speaker 1: there's intimacy there, it's like, have you consented really to anything?
52:12
Speaker 3: No?
52:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really horrible. It's really horrible. And so she's
52:15
Speaker 1: probably out there and still doing this. And you know,
52:19
Speaker 1: I also wanted to mention that the attorney, the criminal
52:23
Speaker 1: defense attorney that Mark interacted with, he was actually disbarred.
52:26
Speaker 2: Wow because of this because of his lies?
52:29
Speaker 1: Or yeah, he can no longer practice law there because
52:32
Speaker 1: he lied.
52:34
Speaker 2: Yeah wow, Yeah, I mean that makes sense. Can't do that? Yeah,
52:38
Speaker 2: can't be doing that? What a story. I can't believe
52:41
Speaker 2: she's still just out there. I mean I can, but
52:42
Speaker 2: it's just like it is mind blowing.
52:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that guy is so confusing in the
52:47
Speaker 1: middle of trying to explain her history, but I think
52:49
Speaker 1: that's by design, truly.
52:51
Speaker 2: Like truly trying to figure out if you're a person
52:54
Speaker 2: who meets her and then trying to like sort through
52:57
Speaker 2: her history or past, it would be incredibly confusing.
53:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, like all of these different fathers of different children,
53:04
Speaker 1: none of them on their birth certificates, different locations, different
53:09
Speaker 1: identities and careers. Everything about her is like she's a chameleon.
53:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what about her family? Did you ever learn
53:17
Speaker 2: anything about them?
53:18
Speaker 1: I didn't. I heard sort of a rumor from someone
53:21
Speaker 1: I called that didn't interview that she had a very
53:24
Speaker 1: difficult upbringing, but I can't verify that. And yeah, wow,
53:29
Speaker 1: well thanks for telling me that story. Yeah, thanks for
53:32
Speaker 1: sticking with it. Yeah, lots of twists and turns, so
53:34
Speaker 1: many twists and turns, so much travel. Yeah, well listen,
53:39
Speaker 1: I don't have a great true crime recommendation right now,
53:43
Speaker 1: but you have a medium recommendation.
53:45
Speaker 2: I have a recommendation. It's just not it's not true crime.
53:48
Speaker 2: But I have sort of been love I've been loving it.
53:51
Speaker 2: I got on the train later. There's three seasons. It's
53:54
Speaker 2: called The Gilded Age. It's on HBO. So this is
53:57
Speaker 2: a show. This is a TV show, okay, scripted, not
53:59
Speaker 2: die documentary. And it's like following families in the late
54:04
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, like eighteen nineties five, like very close to
54:09
Speaker 2: the turn of the century in Brooklyn, New York, Okay.
54:12
Speaker 2: And it's just like about like society, and it's like
54:14
Speaker 2: the new money versus the old money families that are like,
54:17
Speaker 2: we've been around since the American Revolution and you just
54:21
Speaker 2: got here and they're like constructing Brownstones and it's sort
54:26
Speaker 2: of like down Nabby, except it's in New York, and
54:30
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of historical parts, like the
54:33
Speaker 2: opening of the Brooklyn Bridge happens, and it's just really
54:36
Speaker 2: fun and sort of an easy entertaining watch. When you
54:42
Speaker 2: see them building the Brownstones, do you want to reach
54:45
Speaker 2: for the TV and just buy them all?
54:46
Speaker 1: Just buy them all?
54:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, someone please invest that I'm related to in the future.
54:52
Speaker 2: It is fun, like they're living in the Brownstones, but
54:54
Speaker 2: it's still horse and Buggy love us. So they're like
54:57
Speaker 2: pulling up to the Brownstone that's in the carriage. So
55:00
Speaker 2: Ben and I started watching this is just like a
55:03
Speaker 2: relax at the end of a stressful day. Put on
55:05
Speaker 2: a couple episodes of this. But there's one storyline and
55:08
Speaker 2: I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I mean,
55:10
Speaker 2: there's three seasons out, like they've been out for a while,
55:12
Speaker 2: but there's a storyline of one of the characters who
55:15
Speaker 2: meets this woman who like everyone's like, who's her family
55:19
Speaker 2: and we're not sure, We're not sure, and then she
55:21
Speaker 2: sort of surreptitiously gets him in on this like investment deal.
55:25
Speaker 2: And I was like, it's a scam. It's a scam,
55:27
Speaker 2: and Ben was like, what are you sure. I was like,
55:30
Speaker 2: one hundred percent. All the red flags are there, this
55:32
Speaker 2: is a scam. Just you wait, and it was it
55:35
Speaker 2: all played out, and he was like, wow, you really
55:37
Speaker 2: spotted that. And I was like, even too much.
55:39
Speaker 1: About the show, You're like, I can spot a scam.
55:42
Speaker 1: I spend too much time or maybe the right amount,
55:45
Speaker 1: because it's not going to happen to you. You're interviewing
55:47
Speaker 1: the people who scam you.
55:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm very on alert for all the red flags,
55:51
Speaker 2: even in escapist TV.
55:54
Speaker 1: Better safe than sorry.
55:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there was a little bit of a scam
55:58
Speaker 2: in there, but not a true crime show.
56:00
Speaker 1: Well I'll have to check it out.
56:01
Speaker 2: Yeah.
56:02
Speaker 1: Well that's our episode for today. Thanks for listening.
56:05
Speaker 2: We'll be back next week.
56:09
Speaker 1: If you have a story for us, we would love
56:11
Speaker 1: to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia
56:14
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram at
56:16
Speaker 1: the Knife Podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.
56:19
Speaker 2: This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
56:22
Speaker 2: by me Hannah Smith and me Paytia Eaton.
56:25
Speaker 1: Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.
56:28
Speaker 2: This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.
56:31
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
56:33
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.
56:36
Speaker 1: Artwork five Vanessa Lilac.
56:37
Speaker 2: Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark and Daniell Kramer