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The Bridal Heel Left Behind: How Two Predators Stole Her Future · Why Humans Lie

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: At six eighteen in the morning on January ninth, two
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: thoy fourteen, a fifteen year old girl named Patricia Andrews
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: pushed open the front door of for Corbett Lane in Millhaven, Ohio.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: She had delivered papers to that address for seven months.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: She knew the door was supposed to be closed. Inside
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the hallway, one white bridle heel sat upright on the floor.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: No coat, no purse, no second shoe, no sign of
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the woman who lived there. Patricia called nine one one.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: The heel was forensically examined within hours. Investigators noted that
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the soule was unmarked, no road salt, no scuff, no
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: compression from weight. The shoe looked, according to the forensic report,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: like it had never been worn. Valerie Gardner was twenty
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: four years old. She worked at the County Assessor's office.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: She drove a two thousand nine civic.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: She was saving for a house, and.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: In ninety three days, two people she trusted had moved
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: her from her apartment, her savings, and every relationship that
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: might have interrupted what they were building around her. This
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: is the story of how that happened, and the single
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: white heel left on a hallway floor is where it ends.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: On Thursday mornings, Valerie Gardner arrived at the Sunrise Diner
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: at seven fifteen. She sat in Booth seven. She ordered
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: black coffee and a soft boiled egg. Diane Cutler, her
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: usual waitress, knew the ordered before Valerie sat down. Valerie
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: always left four dollars on the table when she stood up.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It was one of those routines that signals a life quietly,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: steadily under construction. Valerie had lived in Millhaven for three years.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: She rented an apartment on Renfield Avenue and drove the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: same civic she had bought used when she graduated. Her mother, Brenda,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: lived in Portsmouth, close enough for regular calls. Her closest friend,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Heather Boone, was a college roommate she had stayed in
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: touch with through a weekly text thread. Over three years.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Valerie had saved seventeen thousand, four hundred dollars, not an inheritance,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: not a bonus, a paycheck by paycheck accumulation toward a
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: down payment on a house. That number mattered. It represented
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the outer boundary of what she could protect, and it
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: was exactly what was targeted. Heather Boone later told investigators
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: she had reservations about the pace of certain events in
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the fall of two thousand thirteen. She had never met
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Craig in person. She said the relationship moved in a
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: way that felt compressed, though she acknowledged Valerie seemed genuinely
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: happy that compression was not accidental. In August first, twenty thirteen,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a contractor named Monica Roberts arrived at the assessor's office
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: under a Meridian Administrative Services contract.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: She wore a.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Lanyard with her credentials, She carried business cards. She introduced
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: herself professionally, and settled into the workflow without friction. Among
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: the employees. She made a point of befriending was Valerie
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Gardner within ten days. According to investigators later reconstruction, Monica
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: had identified Valerie as her target. The friendship that followed
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: was built on a specific architecture three weeks of shared
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: coffee breaks, text exchanges, and at least one dinner where
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Monica disclosed personal difficulties with enough detail to feel like
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: genuine vulnerability. Investigators would later describe this phase using the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: word they reserved for the whole operation a project. Monica
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: gave the appearance of someone grateful to be trusted what
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: she was doing was auditing. She was learning Valerie's schedule,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: her finances, her circle, and the width of the gaps
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: between Valerie and the people whom I might ask the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: right questions at the wrong time. By the end of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: September twenty thirteen, Monica introduced a man named Craig Sutter.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: She described him as a former colleague going through a
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: hard stretch. He was thirty four, He was attentive, He
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: was present in a way that Valerie later described as
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: unlike anyone she.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Had met before.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Within two weeks, Craig was staying most nights at the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: apartment on Renfield Avenue. By the first week of November,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: he had moved in. On December first, ninety three, days
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: after Monica walked into the assessor's office, Craig proposed, Valerie
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: said yes. Heather Boone texted Valerie that night. She asked
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: if it felt fast. Valerie told her it felt right.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: There is a question underneath all of this that investigators
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: found themselves returning to once they understood the architecture. At
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: what point does a person realize that the ground has
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: shifted beneath them. For Valery, that point had not yet arrived.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: The relationships felt real the support felt genuine, The future
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: felt closer than it had ever been. What she could
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: not have seen, because it was designed not to be seen,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: was that both people in her life had known each
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: other for years. The lanyard was the first thing that
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: felt wrong once investigators started pulling thread. Monica had worn
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: it every day at the assessor's office, a Meridian Administrative
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Services badge, crisp and laminated with matching business cards she
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: handed out twice in Valerie's presence. It looked exactly like
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: the credentials of a legitimate contract worker. It was exactly that,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: convincing and nothing more. When Todd Patterson requested Meridian's personnel
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: records in mid January twenty fourteen, the company confirmed their
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: contract with the county was real. The person officially assigned
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: to it was not Monica Roberts. Someone else's name was
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: on the payroll. Monica had no ever been on it
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: at all. The lanyard had opened a door for five months.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: That was its only job. Patterson held this fact and
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: looked back at everything else the lanyard had made possible.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: The daily access, the proximity to Valerie, the coffee breaks
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: that felt like friendship, the confessional dinner that felt like intimacy.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: None of it required force. It only required a badge
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: on a string and a name on a card. But
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the lanyard was not the strangest artifact in the file.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Not yet, the strangest object sat in an evidence bag
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: from for Corbett Lane. One white bridle heel, left foot
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: upright in the hallway. Forensic examination of the soul found
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: no road salt, no scuff marks, no sign of contact
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: with pavement. The conclusion in the report used plain language.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: It looked like it had never been worn. Valerie had
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: worn flats to her own wedding. That detail surfaced when
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Patterson reviewed the clerk's office records from January fourth, two
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, and eleven minute ceremony. Two witnesses Terry Sprague,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: a clerk's office employee who had never met the bride
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: or groom before that morning, and Monica Roberts, who stood
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: beside Valerie as though she had known her for years.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: The marriage was legal, The signatures were valid. Within eight
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: days of the ceremony. Craig's name had been added to
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Valerie's bank accounts. The reason Valerie wore flats was a
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: small thing. Craig had told her heels were wrong for
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the occasion, Patterson noted it. He noted it because small instructions,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: given gently and at the right moment, rarely announced themselves
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: as instructions. On January seventh, two thousand fourteen, three days
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: after the wedding, Craig walked into the bank. He conducted
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: three separate teller transactions. Each one fell below the threshold
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: that triggers automatic reporting. Combined, they totalled seventeen thousand, four
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars, the full balance of a savings account Valerie
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: had built over three years toward a down payment on
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: a house. He told the teller that Valerie was at
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: work and had asked him to handle it. The teller
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: had no reason to question a man whose name was
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: on the account. Three transactions one morning, three years of
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: savings gone before noon. The withdrawals closed the financial loop,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: but they opened a different question. The operation had moved fast,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: ninety three days from introduction to marriage, then a week
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: from marriage to an emptied account. That pace was deliberate,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: and it had been executed before.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: When the DNA profile from a coffee cup.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Found in the assessor's office was submitted to a prior
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: case database. It returned a partial match to a forged
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: notary investigation in another state. The prior victim had declined
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to press charges. No conviction had followed, but the pattern
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: held an alias. A false credential, a manufactured relationship, a
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: target with documented savings, a forged.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Document is the probable endgame.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Monica Roberts, which investigators confirmed as her legal name through
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: finger print analysis after her arrest, had built and dismantled
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: some one else's life. Before Valerie Gardner existed in her files.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: She had simply gotten further.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: This time.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: There was a photograph on Monica's recovered phone. It showed
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Monica in the hallway at Fort Corbett Lane, crouching, placing
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: a pair of white bridle heels on the floor. The
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: time stamp placed it between January fourth and January seventh,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, after the wedding, before the withdrawals, and
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: before Valerie disappeared. Patterson looked at the photograph for a
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: long time. The shoe had seemed at first like evidence
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: of panic. A woman leaves her home in the early morning,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: loses a heel in the rush to notice. That was
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the version the scene at Corbett Lane almost invited an
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: open door, A single shoe, no coat, no purse, no
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: sign of struggle. It looked like someone who had left
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: without thinking clearly. But a shoe placed deliberately for a
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: photograph is not evidence of panic. It is evidence of preparation.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: The photograph collapsed the reading of every earlier detail. The
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: shoe was not lost. It was positioned, and the reason
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Monica needed it positioned, the reason she needed visual proof
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: of a wedding in a specific home. Betanned pointed at
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: something Patterson had seen in the outline of the prior case.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: A forged, notarized document, a record of shared residents, a
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: legal marriage, an asset transfer. The architecture of the prior operation,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: never completed, never prosecuted, had arrived again in a different
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: county with a different name. Patricia Andrews had found the
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: shoe five days before Monica's plan required it to be found.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: That was the gap.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: A fifteen year old on a paper route delivering to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: four Corbett Lane for seven months, noticed an open door
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: at six eighteen in the morning on January ninth, and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: called nine one one. Whatever document Monica intended to produce
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: and its precise nature was Patterson's inference not a finding
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: of the trial. It had not been completed. The photograph existed,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: the document did not. Valerie was found five days after
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Patricia's call. She was at a budget motel in Delfos, Ohio,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: forty eight miles west of Millhaven.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: She was confused.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: She had no phone, no wallet, no car.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: She was alive.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: The shared address record closed the last open question about
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the architecture. Craig Sutter and Monica Roberts had lived at
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: the same address in a neighboring county twenty two months
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: before Monica walked into the assessor's office with a meridian
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: lanyard around her neck. Investigators established they had known each
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: other for at least four years. Craig was not a
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: former colleague going through a hard stretch. Craig was the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: second instrument of the operation, deployed on a specific schedule
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: for a specific purpose. The intimacy had been manufactured.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: All of it.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: The confession dinners, the urgency of the proposal, the gentle
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: instruction about the heels. Todd Patterson described it once in
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: a way that stayed in the case record. He said
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: they moved Valerie Gardner one degree at a time, away
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: from every person and every resource that might have steadied her.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Craig's version of events delivered at trial began with a
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: simple claim he had not understood the full scope of
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: what Monica was doing picture the court room when that
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: statement was read into record, the bank transactions were already
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: in evidence, the shared address documentation was already in evidence,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the photograph from Monica's phone was already in evidence. The
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: partial DNA match to the prior forged notary case was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: already in evidence. Against that weight, Craig's claim asked for
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a very specific kind of belief that a man who
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: had lived with Monica Roberts, who was deployed to Valerie's
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: apartment on a specific date, who structured three withdrawals to
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: stay beneath automated reporting thresholds, had nonetheless failed to grasp
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: what was happening around him. The physical evidence did not
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: accommodate that reading. Structured withdrawls do not happen by accident.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: A man who does not understand a financial scheme does
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: not conduct three separate transactions calibrated to stay under a
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: federal reporting trigger. Craig also claimed genuine feelings for Valerie.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: That claim, unlike the others could not be closed by
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: a document. The trial transcript neither corroborated nor disproved it.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: What the evidence did establish was that whatever Craig felt,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: it had not changed what he did on January seventh.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Monica offered nothing a trial that altered the record.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: The version that fit all.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: The physical evidence, the lanyard, the address record, the photograph,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: the structured withdrawls, the DNA match to the prior pattern
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: was not complex. Monica Roberts had run this operation before
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: with a prior victim who ultimately did not press charges.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: She had arrived in Milhaven with a false credential, a
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: prepared partner, and a documented target. She had built a
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: social container around Valerie Gardner that replaced her existing relationships
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: with two people who.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Reported to each other.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: When the financial transfer was complete, the container dissolved. What
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Patricia Andrews interrupted at six eighteen in the morning on
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: a January day she almost walked past was the final step,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the document that would have legitimized the asset transfer on paper.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Without it, the scheme had no clean exit with it.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Lenging the transfer would have required Valerie to prove the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: relationship was fabricated. While holding only her own memory against
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a signed marriage certificate, a bank record with two names,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and a notarized document that was the architecture, and it
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: had nearly been invisible. Craig Sutter was arrested January nineteenth,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. He received nine years. Monica Roberts was
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: apprehended in Indiana approximately eleven days later. She received fourteen
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Valerie Gardner was found on approximately January fourteenth, two thoy fourteen,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: had a budget motel in Delfhos Ohio Delphos Sits, forty
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: eight miles west of Millhaven. She was alive, She was confused.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: She had no phone, no wallet.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: And no car.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Five days had passed since Patricia Andrews called nine one one.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Investigators would later piece together that Valerie had been moved
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: not by force, but by a sequence of decisions she
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: had made herself, each one guided by people she had
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: no reason to distrust. The motel room was the terminus
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: of ninety three days of incremental redirection. By the time
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: she arrived there, every anchor was gone. The apartment on
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Renfield Avenue, the savings, the routine, the people who might
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: have noticed something was wrong. Todd Patterson's case file by
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: that point held the full picture, the meridian lanyard that
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: had never been issued, the photograph on Monica's phone, the
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: bank records from January seventh, the shared address from twenty
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: two months before the operation began. Every piece fit the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: same architecture, and that architecture had a name in the record,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Monica Roberts. Her finger prints taken at booking in Indiana
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: returned a match.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Monica Roberts was not Monica Roberts.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: She was Monica Roberts, thirty one one years old, with
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: a prior operational signature from another state, a forged notary
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: case in which the victim had declined to press charges.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: The DNA recovered from a coffee cup at the assessor's
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: office confirmed the connection. Same partial profile, same method, different name.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Craig Sutter was arrested January nineteenth, twenty fourteen, on charges
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: of fraud, identity theft, and financial exploitation. He received nine years.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Monica Roberts was apprehended in Indiana approximately eleven days later.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: She received fourteen.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: At trial, Craig offered a partial confession. He said he
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: had not understood the full scope he said Monica had
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: directed him.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: He said his.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Feelings for Valerie had been genuine. The judge heard all
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: of it. The physical evidence three structured withdrawals calibrated below
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: federal reporting thresholds, a shared residential address, a photograph taken
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: on his co conspirator's phone, spoke without qualification. A person
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: who does not understand a financial scheme does not execute.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Three transactions engineered to avoid detection. Craig's sentence reflected that
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Monica offered nothing a trial that.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Changed the record.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: The document Monica intended to produce, the instrument that would
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: have legitimized the asset transfer on paper was never completed.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Todd Patterson's conclusion, based on the prior forged notary pattern,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: was that the bridal heel was a prop proof of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: a wedding captured in a photograph to anchor a notarized document.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Without that document, Valerie's challenge to the transfer would have
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: been difficult. With it, she would have been holding her
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: own memory against a signed marriage certificate, a bank record
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: bearing two names, and a notarized instrument. Patricia Andrews had
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: delivered to for Corbett Lane for seven months. On January ninth,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: she almost kept walking six weeks.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: After her recovery.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Valerie Gardner walked into the Sunrise Diner on a Thursday morning.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Diane Cutler was working. The Thursday regulars were there. Valerie
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: took Booth seven. She ordered black coffee and a soft
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: boiled egg. She left a four dollar tip. There is
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: no record of what she said, or whether she said
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: anything at all. What the record shows is that she
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: came back to the place where her ordinary life had been,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: and she sat in the seat that had always been hers,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and she ordered what she always ordered. That is not
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: a small thing. The operation Monica roberts Ran was designed
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: specifically to make return impossible, to replace every familiar anchor
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: with two people who reported to each other until the
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: original life felt like something that had happened to someone else.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Valerie came back anyway. The mechanism Monica used did not
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: require a single act of violence. It required patience, sequence,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and an understanding of trust is built and then redirected.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: A friendship that felt organic, an introduction that felt incidental,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: a proposal that felt sudden but romantic. A bank account
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: with two names that felt like a natural next step.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Each degree of movement was small enough to seem reasonable.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: The accumulation was total. What stopped it was not a
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: sophisticated surveillance system or a financial algorithm. It was a
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: fifteen year old girl on a paper route who noticed
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: an open door at six eighteen in the morning and
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: decided it was worth a phone call. There is something
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: in this case that resists a clean conclusion. Monica Roberts
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: had run this operation before the prior victim did not
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: press charges. A partial DNA profile existed in a database,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the pattern was documented, and yet Monica arrived in Milhaven
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: with a lanyard, a set of business cards, and a
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: prepared partner and spent ninety three days building something that
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: nearly held. The question the evidence cannot answer is how
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: many times a version of this worked without a Patricia Andrews.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: To interrupt it.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Valerie Gardner saved seventeen thousand, four hundred dollars over three years.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: She was twenty four. She had a plan for those savings,
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  Speaker 1: and people she trusted, and a Thursday morning routine that
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  Speaker 1: was entirely her own. By January fourteenth, twenty fourteen, all
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  Speaker 1: of it was gone, except the routine she chose to
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  Speaker 1: go back to it. That four dollar tip is the
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  Speaker 1: last confirmed detail in this record, it is also the
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  Speaker 1: most important one. This show is made by Obomedia