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He Fixed Her Reflection - Seventeen Procedures, One Missing File · Why Humans Lie

0:03
Speaker 1: On the morning of September fourth, twenty nineteen, a fisherwoman
0:09
Speaker 1: named Tammy Baker was running trot lines on the eastern
0:12
Speaker 1: bank of the Culver River, roughly two miles south.
0:16
Speaker 2: Of the Route nine bridge.
0:17
Speaker 1: She found something wedged between willow roots about four feet
0:21
Speaker 1: below the surface. It was a waterproof camping sleeve with
0:25
Speaker 1: a black zipper seal, and it was dry. Inside seventeen
0:29
Speaker 1: hand written pages, a photocopy of a Social Security card,
0:33
Speaker 1: and a photograph of two girls taken in nineteen eighty nine.
0:37
Speaker 1: The sleeve had been planted there on purpose. That single
0:41
Speaker 1: detail changes everything about.
0:43
Speaker 2: What this story is.
0:45
Speaker 1: This is not a case where evidence surfaced by accident.
0:49
Speaker 1: Someone chose that spot, chose that river, chose to preserve
0:53
Speaker 1: exactly the right documents, and nothing more. Someone built a
0:57
Speaker 1: record in secret and then hid it some where it
1:00
Speaker 1: could survive. That someone was the woman the documents belonged to,
1:05
Speaker 1: And by the time Tammy Baker pulled that sleeve out
1:08
Speaker 1: of the Culver River, Kimberly Anne Price had already been
1:11
Speaker 1: dismantled and rebuilt at least twice, once by her own
1:15
Speaker 1: twin sister and once by a man who had been
1:18
Speaker 1: inside her house years before he ever introduced himself to her.
1:22
Speaker 1: There is something worth pausing on here. The photograph inside
1:26
Speaker 1: the sleeve was dated on the back in Ballpoint Penn
1:30
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, two Girls. When investigators first saw that image,
1:36
Speaker 1: the question was not who took the picture? The question
1:40
Speaker 1: was which one. That question will matter more than it
1:44
Speaker 1: seems right now. Kimberly Ann Price was born in March
1:47
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty one in Haddon, a small county seat
1:51
Speaker 1: in Morrow County. She was born a twin. Her sister
1:54
Speaker 1: Wendy came into the world minutes later, and for thirty
1:57
Speaker 1: eight years, the two of them occupied the same family,
2:01
Speaker 1: the same history, and, as it would eventually emerge, some
2:06
Speaker 1: of the same paperwork. By the time she was in
2:08
Speaker 1: her late twenties, Kimberly had built a life that was
2:12
Speaker 1: quiet in all the ways that reflect deliberate effort rather
2:16
Speaker 1: than accident. She had worked as an account's payable coordinator
2:20
Speaker 1: at Hendrick's Supply for eleven years. She rented a house
2:23
Speaker 1: on Chaldecott Street. She watered her garden every Monday and
2:27
Speaker 1: Thursday at seven fifteen in the evening, and she weeded
2:31
Speaker 1: every Saturday before nine in the morning. Her neighbor Pat
2:35
Speaker 1: Novak could set a clock by it. That routine was
2:40
Speaker 1: not anxiety, It was architecture. Kimberly had learned early that
2:46
Speaker 1: order was something she had to construct herself, because the
2:49
Speaker 1: people closest to her were not always reliable sources of it.
2:53
Speaker 1: Her relationship with Wendy was what the people who knew
2:56
Speaker 1: them called functional but careful. Their mother, Paulette had spent
3:00
Speaker 1: two decades mediating between them. Their father, Denis had spent
3:04
Speaker 1: those same two decades looking elsewhere. The friction between the
3:08
Speaker 1: sisters was old enough that most people in their orbit
3:12
Speaker 1: had stopped asking about it. It was simply the weather
3:15
Speaker 1: between them. What no one outside the family fully understood
3:19
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen was that the friction had a financial history.
3:24
Speaker 1: Wendy had been borrowing Kimberly's identity sporadically for years, not dramatically,
3:30
Speaker 1: not in ways that immediately collapsed into crisis. A delinquent
3:34
Speaker 1: rental account opened in Vestal in twenty twelve under Kimberly's
3:39
Speaker 1: name at an address that matched Wendy's apartment. The handwriting
3:43
Speaker 1: on the agreement was close to Kimberly's but not exact
3:46
Speaker 1: the lower case letter why had the wrong loop. It
3:50
Speaker 1: was a small thing, the kind of thing that would
3:53
Speaker 1: take a forensic examiner to confirm, and no one was
3:56
Speaker 1: looking for it yet. Kimberly had a brief engagement in
3:59
Speaker 1: her late twenties that did not lead to marriage. She
4:02
Speaker 1: had no children. She kept to herself in ways that
4:05
Speaker 1: were social, but bounded the friends she had. She kept
4:09
Speaker 1: with care, a woman named Diane, another named Jenny Marsh.
4:14
Speaker 1: She did not confide easily. She trusted incrementally, and she
4:19
Speaker 1: expected the same in return. She was, by every account,
4:23
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of person who would notice a discrepancy
4:26
Speaker 1: in a bank statement, exactly the kind of person who
4:29
Speaker 1: would write it down, and exactly the kind of person
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Speaker 1: a particular type of man would study before approaching. In
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Speaker 1: spring of twenty fourteen, a man named Wayne Russo introduced
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Speaker 1: himself to Kimberly in a parking lot at a county fundraiser.
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Speaker 1: He was thirty six years old. He did home renovation work.
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Speaker 1: He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
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Speaker 2: He had not.
4:54
Speaker 1: The parking lot introduction was not an accident. It had
4:57
Speaker 1: a two year architecture behind it. In late twenty thirteen,
5:02
Speaker 1: Russou called Doug Ferris, the Caldecott Street landlord. He did
5:07
Speaker 1: not call about renovation work. He asked about the tenant.
5:11
Speaker 1: He asked about the lease renewal. Ferris could not later
5:14
Speaker 1: confirm whether he gave.
5:16
Speaker 2: Russou a name.
5:17
Speaker 1: What Taylor's case summary documented was simpler and more precise.
5:22
Speaker 1: Russo's call came within three weeks of Kimberly's rental application processing.
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Speaker 1: Caldecott Street was the only property he asked about. He
5:31
Speaker 1: had retiled that kitchen, He had replaced the back door
5:35
Speaker 1: and its frame. He had measured every room. He already
5:38
Speaker 1: knew the layout of the house she was about to
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Speaker 1: move into. So when he crossed that parking lot in
5:43
Speaker 1: spring of twenty fourteen, with a handshake and a contractor's
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Speaker 1: easy confidence, Kimberly Price met a stranger. Wayne Russo had
5:52
Speaker 1: not been a stranger for.
5:54
Speaker 2: Over a year.
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Speaker 1: What followed looked from the outside like an ordinary courtship.
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Speaker 2: He was at ten PhOH.
6:00
Speaker 1: He remembered things she mentioned. He called when he said
6:03
Speaker 1: he would. By spring of twenty fifteen, he had moved
6:07
Speaker 1: from attentive to something more specific. He began mentioning Diane
6:12
Speaker 1: not warmly, A small observation here, a soft comparison there.
6:16
Speaker 1: He did the same with Jenny Marsh. He retreated each time.
6:21
Speaker 1: Kimberly pushed back so gently that the retreat itself felt
6:25
Speaker 1: like consideration, like a man who accepted correction, like a
6:29
Speaker 1: man who was trying. By summer of twenty sixteen, Kimberly
6:34
Speaker 1: had stopped confiding in Diane. She had reduced contact with Jenny.
6:39
Speaker 1: She had not been instructed to do either of those things.
6:42
Speaker 1: She had arrived at both decisions herself, following a trail
6:46
Speaker 1: of small suggestions she no longer remembered as suggestions. That
6:50
Speaker 1: is the mechanism worth holding. While Kimberly's social circle contracted,
6:55
Speaker 1: something else was moving.
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Speaker 2: Quietly in the background.
6:58
Speaker 1: Between two thousand, six sixteen and twenty seventeen, over fourteen months,
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Speaker 1: seventy eight separate transfers left a joint account she shared
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Speaker 1: with Russo. No single transfer exceeded ninety five dollars. The
7:12
Speaker 1: smallest was sixty. The total was eleven thousand, four hundred dollars.
7:18
Speaker 1: The account they moved to did not appear on any statement.
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Speaker 1: She received sixty dollars ninety dollars seventy five each one
7:28
Speaker 1: small enough to vanish inside normal spending noise. Collectively, they
7:32
Speaker 1: were a salary. In late summer of twenty seventeen, Kimberly
7:38
Speaker 1: went to refinance. The loan officer pulled her credit and
7:42
Speaker 1: read her a list of items she did not recognize.
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Speaker 1: Two open credit lines, a late payment history on Hadden
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Speaker 1: utilities that had never appeared on any bill she had paid.
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Speaker 1: She went home and told Russo. He told her it
7:58
Speaker 1: was a bank glitch. He said he would call and
8:02
Speaker 1: get it resolved. He made the calls, He reported back
8:05
Speaker 1: that it was handled. There is no record of what
8:08
Speaker 1: those calls produced. What exists in the case file is simpler.
8:12
Speaker 1: After Russo made those calls, Kimberly stopped pursuing the question.
8:17
Speaker 1: She had handed him the threat and he had taken it.
8:20
Speaker 1: But something shifted anyway, not all at once, not dramatical.
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Speaker 1: By spraying of twenty eighteen, Kimberly had stopped believing the
8:29
Speaker 1: bank glitch explanation. She did not confront Russo. She did
8:33
Speaker 1: not contact the bank again. Instead, she began writing things
8:37
Speaker 1: down quietly in handwriting in a document.
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Speaker 2: No one else would see.
8:43
Speaker 1: She listed dates, amounts, names, account numbers. She listed the
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Speaker 1: twenty twelve vestal delinquency she had discovered years earlier and
8:53
Speaker 1: never fully explained. She listed the credit anomalies from the refinancing.
8:59
Speaker 1: She listed the things Russou had said and the things
9:02
Speaker 1: she could no longer verify. She compiled seventeen pages. She
9:06
Speaker 1: did not send them to anyone. She did not file
9:09
Speaker 1: a report. She placed them inside an orange waterproof camping sleeve.
9:14
Speaker 1: Sealed the zipper, added a photocopy of her Social Security
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Speaker 1: card and a photograph from nineteen eighty nine. She walked
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Speaker 1: to the Culver River and put the sleeve among willow
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Speaker 1: roots four feet below the water line, waited with river stones.
9:30
Speaker 1: Four days later she called the Morrow County Sheriff's Department.
9:35
Speaker 1: The case that Taylor inherited had two perpetrators, one victim,
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Speaker 1: and a structure he had not seen organized quite this
9:42
Speaker 1: way before. The question his summary returned to was a
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Speaker 1: sequencing problem, which came first Russou finding Kimberly or Russou
9:52
Speaker 1: finding a woman whose twin could be used picture the
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Speaker 1: parking lot moment without the two year runway. Russeau as
10:00
Speaker 1: an opportunist who met a woman, liked her, and then
10:03
Speaker 1: discovered the twin, it holds together on the surface. Romance
10:07
Speaker 1: that turns exploitative is common. Identity fraud by a partner
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Speaker 1: is documented across dozens of case patterns in four counties,
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Speaker 1: but that version cannot survive.
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Speaker 2: The phone call to.
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Speaker 1: Ferris Russo called Ferris in late twenty thirteen asking about
10:24
Speaker 1: the tenant and lease renewal at the only property he
10:28
Speaker 1: had renovated within three weeks of Kimberly's application. He did
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Speaker 1: not call about any other property. He did not ask
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Speaker 1: a general question. He called about one address, one tenant,
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Speaker 1: one timing window. The renovation files showed he had been
10:44
Speaker 1: inside that house. He had the floor plan, he had
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Speaker 1: the door measurements. What the renovation files could not show,
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Speaker 1: but what the contractor permit records assembled by Sonia Marsh
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Speaker 1: did show, was a pattern. In three of the four
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Speaker 1: counties where brod complaints followed Russeau's permit activity, the fraud
11:04
Speaker 1: appeared within eighteen months of the renovation. In two earlier cases,
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Speaker 1: the victim had a sibling, not a twin, a sibling
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Speaker 1: close enough in appearance or documentation to create confusion. He
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Speaker 1: had refined the method before he arrived in Hadden, so
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Speaker 1: the sequence runs differently. Russeau renovates Caldecott Street in twenty twelve,
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Speaker 1: he retains the floor knowledge and the least connection. In
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Speaker 1: late twenty thirteen, he calls Ferris not to follow up
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Speaker 1: on the work, but to confirm who lives there now.
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Speaker 2: He learns it is Kimberly.
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Speaker 1: Sometime between that call and spring of twenty fourteen, he
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Speaker 1: learns or confirms that Kimberly has a twin and Wendy,
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Speaker 1: who had already borrowed her sister's name for a vestal
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Speaker 1: rental account in twenty twelve, was a known quantity to
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Speaker 1: anyone who looked. The relationship Kimberly experienced as a courtship
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Speaker 1: was from rus So Sighe a delivery system, and it
12:02
Speaker 1: had been in construction before she ever saw his face.
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Speaker 1: What makes this harder to absorb is not the fraud.
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Speaker 1: The fraud is documented, itemized, prosecutable. What is harder is
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Speaker 1: the twenty seventeen credit anomaly. The moment Kimberly handed Roussou
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Speaker 1: the threads she had found, and he took it from
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Speaker 1: her and reported it handled. She had the evidence in
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Speaker 1: her hands, she gave it to the person who had
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Speaker 1: manufactured it and for almost a year.
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Speaker 2: That was enough to stop her.
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Speaker 1: Not because she was careless, because she trusted the person
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Speaker 1: standing in front of her more than she trusted the
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Speaker 1: document she was reading. That is not a failure of intelligence.
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Speaker 1: That is what the previous two years had been designed
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Speaker 1: to produce. Kimberly did not give the sleeve to an investigator.
12:49
Speaker 1: She gave it to a river. That detail stayed with
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Speaker 1: Ryan Taylor for years afterward. He kept a photograph of
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Speaker 1: the orange sleeve above his desk, not as a trophy,
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Speaker 1: as a reminder, in his words, of what competence looks like,
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Speaker 1: when it has nowhere else to go. A woman had
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Speaker 1: spent months building a case file in secret, handed it
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Speaker 1: to the Culver River for safe keeping, and then called
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Speaker 1: the Sheriff's department.
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Speaker 2: Four days later.
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Speaker 1: The document was already out of reach before she made
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Speaker 1: the call. Whatever happened next, no one could take it
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Speaker 1: from her again. Taylor was assigned within forty eight hours
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Speaker 1: of Tammy Baker's discovery. On September fourth, two thousand nineteen.
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Speaker 1: The sleeve came to him, dry, legible and complete, seventeen
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Speaker 1: handwritten pages, a photocopy of Kimberly's social security card and
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Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty nine photograph of two girls who looked
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Speaker 1: nearly identical.
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Speaker 2: Kimberly's own notation on.
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Speaker 1: The back of the photograph identified which one was which.
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Speaker 1: What Taylor received was not a tip. It was a
13:53
Speaker 1: prosecution brief assembled by the person who had been the target.
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Speaker 1: The document established the time line Kimberly had reconstructed from memory,
14:02
Speaker 1: bank statements and her own handwritten notes compiled secretly from
14:07
Speaker 1: spring twenty eighteen onward. It identified Wayne Russo by name
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Speaker 1: it named Wendy. It described the two thouy seventeen credit anomaly,
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Speaker 1: Russou's intervention with the bank, and the fourteen months of
14:21
Speaker 1: incremental withdrawals she had traced through account records she had
14:25
Speaker 1: copied before Russo could account for them. Taylor cross referenced
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Speaker 1: the sleeves timeline against bank records and contractor permit files.
14:33
Speaker 1: The permit files had been polled by Sonia marsh, a
14:36
Speaker 1: paralegal in the prosecutor's office who had noticed something in
14:39
Speaker 1: the licensing database while running a routine background check. Russou
14:43
Speaker 1: held permits across four counties over twelve years.
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Speaker 2: In three of those.
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Speaker 1: Counties, identity fraud complaints appeared within eighteen months of his
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Speaker 1: renovation activity. In two earlier cases, the victim had a sibling.
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Speaker 1: That pattern did not make it into the charges. It
14:58
Speaker 1: was not provable the standard required, but it told Taylor
15:02
Speaker 1: everything he needed to know about the question no document
15:05
Speaker 1: could formally answer how many times had.
15:08
Speaker 2: This happened before?
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Speaker 1: Kimberly The storage unit answered a version of that question.
15:13
Speaker 1: Russo disclosed its location during plea negotiations. It sat in Ackler,
15:18
Speaker 1: eighteen miles south of Haddan. Inside physical documents corresponding to
15:23
Speaker 1: each woman he had defrauded, not destroyed, retained. Taylor's case
15:29
Speaker 1: summary described the unit's contents without elaboration, but the word
15:33
Speaker 1: he used in the later filing was organized. The Ackler
15:36
Speaker 1: unit identified two additional victims in Graydon and Sutter Counties
15:41
Speaker 1: who had not yet filed reports. Their cases were opened separately.
15:46
Speaker 1: They are not part of this record. Wayne Russo entered
15:49
Speaker 1: a negotiated confession. He was sentenced to nine years, with
15:54
Speaker 1: parole eligibility at six. Wendy Price entered a separate plea
15:59
Speaker 1: on tis two counts of identity fraud. She received a
16:02
Speaker 1: suspended sentence and three years of supervised probation. Her cooperation
16:07
Speaker 1: with Russo was documented from at least two thousand seventeen,
16:12
Speaker 1: but the record of her earlier frauds, the twenty twelve
16:15
Speaker 1: vestal rental account the February two thousand seventeen cell contract
16:21
Speaker 1: established that her use of Kimberly's name predated the arrangement
16:25
Speaker 1: with Russo by years. Neither sentencing was attended by Kimberly
16:29
Speaker 1: Anne Price. A statement attributed to her in Taylor's case
16:33
Speaker 1: file described where she was directing her attention.
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Speaker 2: Instead.
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Speaker 1: The phrase on record is the work of reconstruction. That
16:41
Speaker 1: is the full quotation. Taylor did not press for elaboration,
16:45
Speaker 1: and none appears in the file. There is a question
16:48
Speaker 1: this case does not answer, and it is probably the
16:51
Speaker 1: one that has been forming since the beginning. How does
16:54
Speaker 1: a person sit across from someone for five years, someone
16:57
Speaker 1: who has systematically dismantled her finances, her friendships, and her
17:02
Speaker 1: sense of what is real, and not see it. The
17:05
Speaker 1: answer is that seeing it was not the obstacle. Kimberly
17:09
Speaker 1: did see it. She found the credit anomalies in late
17:12
Speaker 1: summer of twenty seventeen. She held the thread. The obstacle
17:17
Speaker 1: was that the person she handed it to was the
17:19
Speaker 1: one who had manufactured it, and he had spent two
17:23
Speaker 1: years making himself the most credible voice in her life.
17:27
Speaker 1: The isolation of Diane and Jenny Marsh was not incidental.
17:31
Speaker 1: The love bombing was not romantic enthusiasm. The incremental withdrawals,
17:36
Speaker 1: never more than ninety five dollars, never fewer than sixty
17:39
Speaker 1: across fourteen months, were calibrated to stay below the threshold
17:44
Speaker 1: of what a person would stop and investigate. Every element
17:47
Speaker 1: had a function. That is what makes this case something
17:51
Speaker 1: other than a fraud story. The fraud was the mechanism.
17:55
Speaker 1: The architecture was something older and more patient. What kim
18:00
Speaker 1: Ver really built in response was the same thing turned inward.
18:04
Speaker 1: Seventeen pages compiled in secret over more than a year.
18:09
Speaker 1: A waterproof sleeve river stones as weight a river is vault.
18:14
Speaker 1: She did not go to the sheriff until the document
18:17
Speaker 1: was already beyond any one's reach. That sequence evidence, first, report,
18:22
Speaker 1: second was not impulsive. It was the decision of someone
18:26
Speaker 1: who had learned, at considerable cost not to hand evidence
18:30
Speaker 1: to the person standing in front of her. Ryan Taylor
18:33
Speaker 1: kept the photograph of that sleeve above his desk. The
18:36
Speaker 1: sleeve is orange, the zipper is black. In the photograph,
18:40
Speaker 1: it sits on a gray evidence table, still wet from
18:43
Speaker 1: the river, still sealed everything Kimberly knew was inside it, waiting.
18:49
Speaker 1: The cases in Graydon and Sutter Counties are separately documented.
18:53
Speaker 1: The two women who had not yet filed reports were
18:55
Speaker 1: identified from Rousseau's own storage unit. He kept records, he
19:00
Speaker 1: organized them. That detail does not resolve. It simply sits
19:04
Speaker 1: there in the file, waiting for someone to look at
19:07
Speaker 1: it long enough. Kimberly Price was thirty eight years old
19:11
Speaker 1: in the fall of two thousand nineteen. She did not
19:13
Speaker 1: attend either sentencing. She was focused, according to the record,
19:18
Speaker 1: on reconstruction. What that means in practice, which friendships she
19:22
Speaker 1: tried to rebuild, What her credit looks like now. Whether
19:26
Speaker 1: she still waters her garden on Monday and Thursday at
19:29
Speaker 1: seven fifteen in the evening is not in any file
19:34
Speaker 1: that part belongs to her. What the record holds is
19:37
Speaker 1: the river. A woman who trusted no one enough to
19:40
Speaker 1: hand them the evidence walked to the Culver River in
19:43
Speaker 1: August and let the water keep it, and four days
19:46
Speaker 1: later she made the call. This show is made by
19:50
Speaker 1: Obo Media