Latest / Hidden Double Lives / She Lived Two Lives - A Birthday Cake, A Hidden Son, One Fatal Night
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: On the morning of January 11th, 2014, Rhonda Hamilton was
- 0:08Speaker 1: checking her trotline on the Calloway River.
- 0:10Speaker 2: She was expecting catfish.
- 0:13Speaker 1: She found a birthday cake, two layers of white frosting,
- 0:17Speaker 1: six blue candles still upright in their holders, a clear
- 0:21Speaker 1: plastic dome cracked at one edge, and written across the
- 0:25Speaker 1: top in neat blue lettering, Happy.
- 0:27Speaker 2: Sixth Birthday, Nolan.
- 0:30Speaker 1: The cake had been in or near the water for
- 0:32Speaker 1: less than a day, No capsized boat.
- 0:35Speaker 2: No accident.
- 0:36Speaker 1: No child named Nolan had been reported missing anywhere in
- 0:40Speaker 1: Harpen County. The cake simply appeared, as though someone had
- 0:44Speaker 1: carried it to the river's edge and let it go.
- 0:46Speaker 1: Four days later, a 31-year-old woman named Kimberly Meyer was
- 0:51Speaker 1: found dead and alone in her grey Nissan in a
- 0:54Speaker 1: hospital parking lot. And when investigators began pulling at the
- 0:58Speaker 1: edges of her life, what they found did not look
- 1:02Speaker 1: like one life at all It looked like two built-in
- 1:05Speaker 1: parallel 41 miles apart for nearly four years. The cake
- 1:10Speaker 1: on the river was the first thing that did not fit.
- 1:13Speaker 1: It would not be the last. Calloway Crossing, Tennessee, is
- 1:18Speaker 1: a town of roughly 9,000 people. It sits along a
- 1:21Speaker 1: slow bend of the Calloway River, and most of its
- 1:24Speaker 1: residents know each other by name, or at least by sight.
- 1:28Speaker 1: There is a diner on the main stretch called the
- 1:31Speaker 1: Sunrise Grill. There is a dental practice two blocks east
- 1:35Speaker 1: of it. These are ordinary coordinates. Nothing about them suggests
- 1:40Speaker 1: a hidden life. Kimberly Meyer had worked as a coordinator
- 1:44Speaker 1: at that dental practice for several years. Her employer, Dr.
- 1:48Speaker 1: Frank Oates, described her as organized and reliable. Her schedule
- 1:52Speaker 1: was precise. Most mornings she was at the Sunrise Grill
- 1:55Speaker 1: before seven, sitting at the same table, ordering the same coffee.
- 2:00Speaker 1: Patsy Drumm, who had served Kimberley's order for three and
- 2:03Speaker 1: a half years, said Kimberley always knew what she wanted
- 2:07Speaker 1: and never lingered longer than she needed to. That kind
- 2:10Speaker 1: of routine is easy to overlook. It is also, as
- 2:14Speaker 1: investigators would later note, exactly what a.
- 2:17Speaker 2: Double life requires.
- 2:19Speaker 1: Predictability in one place creates room for absence in another.
- 2:22Speaker 1: 41 miles northeast of Calloway Crossing sits a second town,
- 2:27Speaker 1: Tanner Fork, population 12,000. On Glenridge Court, a quiet residential street,
- 2:34Speaker 1: there was a ranch house where a woman named Kim
- 2:36Speaker 1: Dwyer lived with her husband, Paul, and their young son, Nolan.
- 2:41Speaker 1: Paul Dwyer was 34, a utility field technician. He and
- 2:46Speaker 1: Kim had married in a Tanner Fork courthouse in May
- 2:50Speaker 1: of 2009. By all accounts available to him, he was
- 2:54Speaker 1: building an ordinary life, With an ordinary woman he had chosen,
- 2:58Speaker 1: Paul did not know about Reeder Street. He did not
- 3:01Speaker 1: know about Dr. Oates or Patsy Drum or the apartment
- 3:05Speaker 1: Kimberly kept under her maiden name, 41 miles southwest of
- 3:09Speaker 1: the county line.
- 3:10Speaker 2: His name appears on no document in Calloway Crossing. Not one.
- 3:15Speaker 1: The woman he knew as Kim drove a white Honda.
- 3:18Speaker 1: The woman Calloway Crossing knew as Kimberly drove a grey
- 3:22Speaker 1: Nissan registered to her Reeder Street address. Two phones, two
- 3:26Speaker 1: sets of neighbors, two complete daily architectures, maintained without apparent
- 3:30Speaker 1: collision for nearly four years. There was one person outside
- 3:34Speaker 1: of Kimberly who knew the full picture. Her sister, Cheryl Roberts,
- 3:38Speaker 1: 34 and living in Nashville, had discovered the Tanner Fork
- 3:42Speaker 1: identity in February of 2013, not through investigation, but through
- 3:48Speaker 1: a birthday card. A card addressed to Nolan Dwyer had
- 3:51Speaker 1: been misdirected to the Registry Department. Cheryl who was handling
- 3:55Speaker 1: some of Kimberly's mail during a family situation, opened it.
- 3:59Speaker 1: She recognized her sister's home address. The name on the
- 4:02Speaker 1: card belonged to a child she had never heard of.
- 4:06Speaker 1: Cheryl confronted Kimberly in Nashville two weeks later. Kimberly asked
- 4:11Speaker 1: for time. Cheryl, according to the investigative record, agreed to wait.
- 4:15Speaker 1: She waited about 11 months. She never told Paul. By
- 4:19Speaker 1: January of 2014, Nolan Dwyer was about to turn six
- 4:24Speaker 1: years old. His birth date was January 11th, 2008. A
- 4:29Speaker 1: party had been planned. A cake had been ordered from
- 4:32Speaker 1: a bakery called Ridgeline Sweets, two miles from the Glenridge Courthouse.
- 4:38Speaker 2: And somewhere between the moment that cake was picked up
- 4:41Speaker 2: and the.
- 4:41Speaker 1: Morning Rhonda Hamilton found it floating on a trot line,
- 4:45Speaker 1: Kimberly Meyer had driven to a hospital parking lot and
- 4:49Speaker 1: died alone. What happened in those four days and what
- 4:53Speaker 1: the cake was doing on the river... is where this
- 4:55Speaker 1: story refuses to resolve cleanly. The note was on the
- 4:59Speaker 1: nightstand at Reader Street, handwritten in Kimberley's hand. It read,
- 5:05Speaker 1: Jan 11 Nolan Party, 4 p.m. Cake Ridgeline, Balloons from
- 5:10Speaker 1: Trunk Call Patsy, Re, Tuesday. Sergeant Donna Vickers photographed it
- 5:16Speaker 1: when she searched the apartment on January 25th, 10 days
- 5:20Speaker 1: after the body was found. It was the most ordinary
- 5:23Speaker 1: thing in the world. It was also impossible. Nolan didn't
- 5:27Speaker 1: exist in Calloway Crossing. Not one neighbor on Reeder Street
- 5:31Speaker 1: had ever heard his name.
- 5:33Speaker 2: Not Dr.
- 5:34Speaker 1: Frank Oates, who ran the dental practice where Kimberly had
- 5:38Speaker 1: worked for three and a half years. Not Patsy Drum
- 5:41Speaker 1: at the Sunrise Grill, who had taken Kimberly's standing breakfast
- 5:45Speaker 1: order so many times she didn't need to ask anymore.
- 5:48Speaker 1: The note referenced a child's birthday party, as though it
- 5:52Speaker 1: were a grocery list. As though it were the most
- 5:55Speaker 1: natural thing to plan, that note is the first image
- 5:58Speaker 1: this investigation keeps returning to. Here is what the record
- 6:02Speaker 1: shows about the days before Kimberly died. On January 9th,
- 6:07Speaker 1: she walked into Ridgeline Sweets, the bakery two miles from
- 6:11Speaker 1: the Glenridge Courthouse in Tanner Fork. She paid cash. She
- 6:15Speaker 1: ordered a two-layer white cake. She asked for happy sixth
- 6:19Speaker 1: birthday Nolan in blue lettering. Six blue candles. The owner,
- 6:24Speaker 1: Sandra Pruitt, took the order herself. The party was set
- 6:28Speaker 1: for January 11th. The next morning, January 10th, at 7am,
- 6:33Speaker 1: Paul Dwyer's mother collapsed. An ambulance came to Glenridge Court.
- 6:38Speaker 1: Elaine Dwyer was hospitalised. The birthday party was cancelled. On Tuesday,
- 6:43Speaker 1: January 10th, at 7.45 in the morning, Paul called Kimberley
- 6:47Speaker 1: on the Tanner Fork number. She was at the Sunrise
- 6:50Speaker 1: Grill in in Calloway Crossing, 41 miles away. She left
- 6:55Speaker 1: her coffee on the counter mid-cup. Patsy Drum watched her go.
- 6:59Speaker 1: Kimberly drove northeast to Tanner Fork and spent the day
- 7:03Speaker 1: at the hospital with Paul and Nolan. That evening, around
- 7:06Speaker 1: 9 p.m., a woman matching Kimberly's description walked into Ridgeline Suites.
- 7:12Speaker 2: She paid cash. She picked up the cake.
- 7:15Speaker 1: Ridgeline's security camera had been malfunctioning since December. Sandra Pruitt
- 7:20Speaker 1: could not say with certainty it was Kimberly. She said
- 7:23Speaker 1: the woman had the same build, the same dark hair.
- 7:26Speaker 1: That is the entire record of who took that cake.
- 7:29Speaker 1: No one saw what happened next. On January 11th, a
- 7:34Speaker 1: woman named Rhonda Hamilton was running a trot line on
- 7:37Speaker 1: the Calloway River, three miles south of the Harpen County
- 7:41Speaker 1: boat launch. She was expecting catfish. She found a birthday
- 7:45Speaker 1: cake instead, two-layer white, still in its clear plastic dome,
- 7:50Speaker 1: resting on its cardboard disc. One corner was wet. The
- 7:54Speaker 1: lettering was intact. Happy sixth birthday, Nolan. Six blue candles
- 8:00Speaker 1: still in their holders. Rhonda pulled it free and called
- 8:04Speaker 1: the county. She thought someone had capsized. She thought a
- 8:08Speaker 1: child might be in the water. No child was in
- 8:10Speaker 1: the water. No boat had capsized. No accident report existed
- 8:15Speaker 1: for that stretch of river. The cake had been there
- 8:17Speaker 1: less than a day, based on how little water damage
- 8:20Speaker 1: had occurred. Someone had placed it there, or left it there,
- 8:24Speaker 1: within hours of Rhonda finding it. The river sits almost
- 8:28Speaker 1: exactly at the midpoint between Glenridge Court and Reader Street.
- 8:32Speaker 1: Vickers noted that detail in her report. She did not
- 8:36Speaker 1: draw a conclusion from it. The record does not draw
- 8:39Speaker 1: a conclusion from it. Between January 11th and January 13th,
- 8:43Speaker 1: Paul Dwyer continued visiting his mother at Harpen County Medical Center.
- 8:48Speaker 1: Kimberly was with him on at least two of those visits,
- 8:51Speaker 1: confirmed by hospital staff. On the evening of January 13th,
- 8:56Speaker 1: she left the hospital around 9 p.m. Paul walked her
- 8:59Speaker 1: to the parking lot. He remembers watching the white Honda
- 9:02Speaker 1: pull out. He went back inside. That was the last
- 9:07Speaker 1: time he saw her alive. Sometime between 11 p.m. that night,
- 9:12Speaker 1: And 1 a.m. on January 14th, Kimberly Meyer died in
- 9:16Speaker 1: the front seat of her gray Nissan in the same
- 9:19Speaker 1: parking lot. She had just left in a different car.
- 9:23Speaker 1: The medical examiner found a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot,
- 9:27Speaker 1: no trauma, no struggle. She died alone in the dark
- 9:31Speaker 1: in a car registered to a name Paul Dwyer had
- 9:34Speaker 1: never heard. The gray Nissan was not visible from the
- 9:37Speaker 1: hospital entrance. She was not found until the morning of
- 9:41Speaker 1: January 15th. This is where the facts stop holding still.
- 9:45Speaker 1: Paul Dwyer did not know a grey Nissan existed. He
- 9:49Speaker 1: did not know about Rita Street. He identified his wife's
- 9:53Speaker 1: body on January 15th and was told the car was
- 9:56Speaker 1: registered to Kimberly Meyer.
- 9:58Speaker 2: He assumed it was a made-up car.
- 10:00Speaker 1: Name discrepancy, a paperwork artifact, something that would sort itself out.
- 10:05Speaker 1: He arranged to have Nolan stay with a neighbor, Ted Ackerman,
- 10:09Speaker 1: while he handled the details. Nolan was six years old.
- 10:13Speaker 1: His birthday was 11 days away. On January 19th, An
- 10:17Speaker 1: obituary ran in the Harpen County Courier. It listed Kimberly Meyer, 31,
- 10:23Speaker 1: dental office coordinator, survived by a sister, Cheryl Roberts of Nashville.
- 10:29Speaker 2: No mention of Paul. No mention of Nolan.
- 10:33Speaker 1: Paul found the obituary when a co-worker showed it to him.
- 10:36Speaker 1: He read it three times. His name was not there.
- 10:40Speaker 1: That was the first fracture. Cheryl Roberts had arranged the funeral.
- 10:44Speaker 1: She had written the obituary. She had listed one survivor.
- 10:49Speaker 1: Paul called her. Cheryl told him the service was scheduled
- 10:52Speaker 1: for January 22nd at a funeral home in Calloway Crossing,
- 10:57Speaker 1: a town Paul had never driven through with his wife.
- 11:00Speaker 1: He assumed it was Cheryl's preference. He drove there with Nolan.
- 11:05Speaker 1: There is something specific about what happened next that the
- 11:08Speaker 1: investigative record captures in unusual detail. because Owen Baxter, the
- 11:13Speaker 1: funeral director, witnessed it and later reported.
- 11:16Speaker 2: It to Vickers.
- 11:17Speaker 1: Paul Dwyer walked into the chapel foyer. Cheryl Roberts was
- 11:21Speaker 1: standing near the door. She recognized him immediately. He did
- 11:25Speaker 1: not understand why a woman he had met only twice
- 11:28Speaker 1: before was looking at him with that particular expression. Then
- 11:33Speaker 1: Cheryl spoke to him for four minutes. Owen Baxter did
- 11:36Speaker 1: not hear every word.
- 11:38Speaker 2: He heard enough.
- 11:40Speaker 1: Paul sat down on a bench in the foyer. Nolan
- 11:43Speaker 1: climbed up beside him and began sorting the folded service
- 11:46Speaker 1: pamphlets into a small pile. Paul did not move for
- 11:50Speaker 1: a long time. Cheryl had known for about 11 months.
- 11:54Speaker 1: She had found out in February of 2013 the misdirected
- 11:59Speaker 1: birthday card, the name Nolan Dwyer on an envelope delivered
- 12:04Speaker 1: to Reader Street. She had confronted Kimberley. She had agreed
- 12:09Speaker 1: to wait, and then she had waited through every birthday,
- 12:12Speaker 1: every holiday, every phone call, until the window closed. There
- 12:16Speaker 1: is a detail inside this that does not settle. Cheryl Roberts,
- 12:21Speaker 1: who knew both lives existed, arranged a funeral that named
- 12:24Speaker 1: only one of them. She wrote an obituary that acknowledged
- 12:28Speaker 1: a sister and nothing else. She placed the service in
- 12:32Speaker 1: Calloway Crossing, 41 miles from the house where Paul and
- 12:36Speaker 1: Nolan lived. She did not call Paul before January 19th.
- 12:40Speaker 1: She did not call him before January 15th, when the
- 12:43Speaker 1: body was found. She had about 11 months, and then
- 12:47Speaker 1: she had the four days between Kimberly's death and that obituary,
- 12:51Speaker 1: and she said nothing until Paul was standing in front
- 12:54Speaker 1: of her. The contents of the letter Paul sent Cheryl
- 12:56Speaker 1: in March of 2014 are not in the public record.
- 13:00Speaker 1: Cheryl did not respond, or if she did, That response
- 13:05Speaker 1: is also not in the record. They have not been
- 13:07Speaker 1: in contact since. Picture the Calloway River. At dusk on
- 13:11Speaker 1: January 10th, someone carries a boxed cake to the bank.
- 13:14Speaker 1: The plastic dome catches the last light. They set it down,
- 13:19Speaker 1: or they let it go. They walk back to a car.
- 13:22Speaker 2: Then what? That is the version that seems obvious.
- 13:25Speaker 1: A woman who knew a secret was about to break open.
- 13:28Speaker 1: She couldn't give the cake to Nolan, couldn't explain to
- 13:31Speaker 1: Paul why a bakery in Tannafork had been holding it
- 13:33Speaker 1: all day. couldn't walk back into either house with a
- 13:37Speaker 1: birthday cake in her arms. So she drove to the river,
- 13:41Speaker 1: the midpoint between both lives, and she left it there.
- 13:44Speaker 2: It fits the geography. It fits the timing.
- 13:48Speaker 1: It fits the emotional logic of someone standing between two
- 13:51Speaker 1: incompatible things with no way to reconcile them. But here
- 13:55Speaker 1: is what that version requires. It requires Kimberly to have
- 13:58Speaker 1: decided something. It requires her to have stood at that
- 14:02Speaker 1: river as a person confronting a choice.
- 14:05Speaker 2: And the record does not confirm that.
- 14:07Speaker 1: There is no note, no call, no text to Cheryl,
- 14:11Speaker 1: no message to Paul, no record of any communication from
- 14:15Speaker 1: Kimberly on the evening of January 10th, after she picked
- 14:18Speaker 1: up the cake. The investigative file contains no evidence she
- 14:22Speaker 1: planned to end the double life, and no evidence she
- 14:25Speaker 1: planned to continue it, walk the other direction. The party
- 14:29Speaker 1: was canceled at 7 a.m. Kimberly spent the day at
- 14:33Speaker 1: the hospital. By 9 p.m., She was tired, managing Nolan's disappointment,
- 14:38Speaker 1: managing Elaine's condition, managing whatever arithmetic she ran in her
- 14:42Speaker 1: head every day to keep two addresses 41 miles apart.
- 14:46Speaker 1: She picked up the cake because it was paid for,
- 14:48Speaker 1: because it would have been strange not to, because she
- 14:51Speaker 1: didn't yet know what to do with it. Then she
- 14:54Speaker 1: drove the route she always drove between Tannafork and Calloway Crossing,
- 14:58Speaker 1: and somewhere along that route she stopped. Maybe she couldn't
- 15:02Speaker 1: bring the cake home. Maybe she couldn't bring it to
- 15:05Speaker 1: the apartment. Maybe she stopped at the river for a
- 15:08Speaker 1: reason that had nothing to do with symbolism and everything
- 15:11Speaker 1: to do with having no available place to put a
- 15:13Speaker 1: child's birthday cake at 9.30 on a winter night. That
- 15:16Speaker 1: version is quieter, less resolved, but it is also consistent
- 15:20Speaker 1: with the record in a way. The first version is
- 15:23Speaker 1: not because the first version requires Kimberly to have been
- 15:26Speaker 1: in a moment of reckoning, and there is nothing in
- 15:28Speaker 1: the file that confirms she was. The strongest version of
- 15:32Speaker 1: this story does not live at the river. It lives
- 15:35Speaker 1: in the four minutes Cheryl Roberts stood in a funeral
- 15:37Speaker 1: home foyer and finally said what she had known for
- 15:41Speaker 1: about 11 months.
- 15:43Speaker 2: Cheryl knew. Cheryl waited.
- 15:46Speaker 1: Cheryl arranged the funeral, wrote the obituary, and traveled to
- 15:50Speaker 1: Calloway Crossing without calling Paul. The investigative record does not
- 15:55Speaker 1: allege wrongdoing. Sergeant Vickers' final report notes Cheryl's prior knowledge
- 15:59Speaker 1: and the funeral arrangements without drawing a legal conclusion. but
- 16:03Speaker 1: the consequence is not legal. The consequence is this. A
- 16:07Speaker 1: man buried his wife without knowing who she was. A
- 16:10Speaker 1: six-year-old boy turned 7-11 days after a funeral with no party,
- 16:14Speaker 1: and a neighbor named Ted Ackerman brought a store-bought cake
- 16:17Speaker 1: and told Nolan his mother was very far away.
- 16:21Speaker 2: The Naldin.
- 16:22Speaker 1: Re-contextualization arrives here. Go back to the misdirected birthday card
- 16:27Speaker 1: in February of 2013. The card was addressed to Nolan Dwyer.
- 16:31Speaker 1: It was delivered to Reader Street by accident. Cheryl found
- 16:35Speaker 1: it while handling Kimberly's mail. That is the version in
- 16:38Speaker 1: the record. But a birthday card addressed to a child
- 16:41Speaker 1: in Tanner Fork, delivered to an apartment in Calloway Crossing.
- 16:45Speaker 1: That is not a common mailing error. The apartments are
- 16:49Speaker 1: 41 miles apart, in different counties, with different zip codes.
- 16:54Speaker 1: Cheryl never explained how the card arrived at Reader Street.
- 16:57Speaker 1: The investigative record does not resolve it. The card itself...
- 17:01Speaker 1: was not recovered. What the record does confirm is this.
- 17:05Speaker 1: After about 11 months of silence, the first person Cheryl
- 17:09Speaker 1: told was a man standing in a funeral home foyer
- 17:13Speaker 1: with his six-year-old son beside him. Beside him, sorting pamphlets,
- 17:18Speaker 1: waiting for a service to begin. That was the moment
- 17:21Speaker 1: Cheryl chose to speak.
- 17:23Speaker 2: Not before. Not privately. There.
- 17:26Speaker 1: Sergeant Donna Vickers closed her report in the early weeks
- 17:29Speaker 1: of 2014. The cause of death was a pulmonary embolism, natural.
- 17:36Speaker 1: No crime had been committed. No arrest would follow. The
- 17:39Speaker 1: grey Nissan was released. The Reeder Street apartment was cleared.
- 17:44Speaker 1: The case, in legal terms, was done. But the record
- 17:48Speaker 1: Vickers left behind does not read like a closed thing.
- 17:52Speaker 1: Paul Dwyer still lives on Glenridge Court, in Tanner Fork.
- 17:57Speaker 2: He did not move.
- 17:58Speaker 1: The ranch house where Kimberly cooked Sunday dinners and helped
- 18:02Speaker 1: Nolan with his shoes is still the.
- 18:04Speaker 2: Address on record.
- 18:06Speaker 1: Paul sent one letter to Cheryl Roberts in March of 2014.
- 18:11Speaker 1: Cheryl received it. The contents have never been disclosed. There
- 18:15Speaker 1: has been no contact between them since. Nolan turned 7-11
- 18:19Speaker 1: days after the funeral.
- 18:21Speaker 2: There was no party.
- 18:23Speaker 1: A neighbor named Ted Ackerman brought a store-bought cake and
- 18:26Speaker 1: sat with the boy at the kitchen table He told
- 18:29Speaker 1: Nolan that his mother was very far away.
- 18:32Speaker 2: That is what the record says he said. Very far away.
- 18:36Speaker 2: The birthday cake on the Calloway.
- 18:37Speaker 1: River was never conclusively explained.
- 18:41Speaker 2: No one was charged. No one confessed.
- 18:44Speaker 1: Sandra Pruitt's visual identification of a woman matching Kimberly, picking
- 18:48Speaker 1: up the cake around nine in the evening on January 10th,
- 18:51Speaker 1: is the closest the investigation came to an answer, and
- 18:54Speaker 1: it confirms nothing beyond the obvious. Someone who looked like
- 18:59Speaker 1: Kimberly retrieved a cake she had ordered. The security camera
- 19:02Speaker 1: at Ridgeline Suites had been malfunctioning since December. There is
- 19:07Speaker 1: no footage. There is no record of where the cake
- 19:10Speaker 1: went after Pruitt's shop. There is only Rhonda Hamilton pulling
- 19:14Speaker 1: in a trot line the following morning, finding white frosting
- 19:17Speaker 1: and six blue candles where she expected catfish, the handwritten
- 19:21Speaker 1: note on Kimberly's nightstand, January 11th. Nolan's party, four in
- 19:26Speaker 1: the afternoon, Cake from Ridgeline, Balloons from the Trunk, describes
- 19:31Speaker 1: a plan that never happened. Elaine Dweer's cardiac event on
- 19:35Speaker 1: January 10th cancelled everything. The party did not take place.
- 19:40Speaker 1: The cake did not make it to Glenridge Court. What
- 19:43Speaker 1: happened between nine in the evening on January 10th and
- 19:46Speaker 1: the river on January 11th is not in the record.
- 19:50Speaker 1: There are two windows at the center of this story.
- 19:53Speaker 1: One faces Reeder Street in Calloway Crossing. One faces Glenridge
- 19:58Speaker 1: Court in Tanna Fork. 41 miles apart. The same woman
- 20:03Speaker 1: stood at both of them for four years.
- 20:05Speaker 2: The record does.
- 20:06Speaker 1: Not tell us why Kimberly Meyer built a second life.
- 20:09Speaker 1: It does not tell us whether she was leaving one
- 20:11Speaker 1: or holding on to both. It does not tell us
- 20:14Speaker 1: what she intended to do next. She was 31 years old.
- 20:19Speaker 1: And she died alone in a parking lot in the
- 20:21Speaker 1: middle of the night. And the only things she left
- 20:23Speaker 1: behind were a note on a nightstand, a cake no
- 20:27Speaker 1: one can account for, and two families who had never
- 20:31Speaker 1: heard of each other. There is something that resists easy
- 20:34Speaker 1: conclusion here. Not because the facts are unclear. They are documented.
- 20:39Speaker 1: But because the person at the center of them is gone,
- 20:42Speaker 1: Kimberly never explained herself. The record has no statement from her,
- 20:46Speaker 1: no letter, no disclosed intention.
- 20:49Speaker 2: What remains is.
- 20:50Speaker 1: The architecture of the life she built and the people
- 20:53Speaker 1: still standing inside it. Paul Dwyer buried a woman he
- 20:57Speaker 1: thought he knew completely. He married her in a courthouse
- 21:01Speaker 1: in May of 2009. He raised a son with her.
- 21:05Speaker 1: He called her from a hospital parking lot on a
- 21:08Speaker 1: Tuesday morning. and she left her coffee on a counter
- 21:11Speaker 1: in another town and drove to him.
- 21:13Speaker 2: That part is true. It is all true.
- 21:16Speaker 1: The question is which part of it was the whole.
- 21:19Speaker 1: Cheryl Roberts knew for about 11 months.
- 21:22Speaker 2: She waited.
- 21:23Speaker 1: The investigative record draws no legal conclusion from that fact,
- 21:28Speaker 1: but the consequence of that waiting was a four-minute conversation
- 21:32Speaker 1: in a funeral home foyer with a six-year-old sorting.
- 21:35Speaker 2: Pamphlets, Six feet away.
- 21:37Speaker 1: The birthday card that started everything, misdirected to Reader Street,
- 21:42Speaker 1: addressed to Nolan Dwyer, was never recovered. No one explained
- 21:47Speaker 1: how it traveled.
- 21:49Speaker 2: 41 miles to the wrong address.
- 21:51Speaker 1: That detail does not close. Some things in this record close.
- 21:56Speaker 1: Most things in this record close. The cause of death
- 22:00Speaker 1: is confirmed. The timeline is established. The double life is documented.
- 22:05Speaker 1: But there is still a cake on a river in January,
- 22:09Speaker 1: and no one has ever said why it was there.
- 22:12Speaker 1: Nolan Dwyer is older now. He knows the word far
- 22:16Speaker 1: away has more than one meaning. This show is made
- 22:19Speaker 1: by Oboe Media.