July 25, 2024 • 30 mins
Stephanie thinks she knows her husband. Then, she takes a look at his computer. What she finds, changes everything.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the things that I kept a screenshot of
was the one that I thought was the worst. It's
a collage. It's almost like a Christmas card. There's some
writing on the top and the bottom and then all
these different photos. The photo in the top corner is
a picture of my face, and then the rest of
(00:24):
the pictures are nudes and they become ever an ever
more close up and across the top it says something
along the lines of slut wife alert. Do you know
this woman? And that's out there and I can't ever
get it back.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Here at Betrayal, we've received hundreds of emails
messages from listeners telling us their own shocking stories, and
(01:17):
we knew we had to find a way to share them.
So I'm excited to announce that every Thursday, we will
be bringing you new, fascinating stories of resilience in the
face of devastating betrayal.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Some stories may.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Be told over a week or two weeks, some more,
and we knew where to start. A listener who emailed
us in the summer of twenty twenty three, she wrote,
I've been in this betrayal club for over two years now.
When I discovered your podcast, I was intrigued. We were
the couple that all the other couples envied. We were
(01:53):
best friends, walking down main street, holding hands and giggling
like newlyweds after two decades together. The email explained that
she didn't just love her husband, she liked him. He
was the love of her life, or so she thought.
It's funny how so many of these betrayal stories start
(02:15):
the same way, beautiful, long term relationships that aren't what
they appear to be. This is Stephanie's story, although that's.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Not her real name.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
All the names will hear in this story have been
changed or censored to respect her privacy.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
We got married in nineteen ninety eight. It was a
second marriage for both of us. I came with four boys.
He had a boy and a girl. Our kids were
already friends and were thrilled about us being together.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Stephanie and her husband I'm gonna call him Greg, live
together in a tiny Midwestern town. It's the kind of
town where everybody knows everybody.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It's like a small town that you would see on
a movie or a sitcom. I didn't want my husband
to go to the grocery store with me. It just
would take so long if he went with because we
knew every person at the store and everyone would have
to stop and visit with him.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Their big, blended family was well known in town. Picture
a modern day Brady bunch. At least that's the feeling
I got from a photo she shared with me. It's Stephanie,
her sons, and Greg's kids, all six of them standing
side by side on the beach, smiling. Their family takes
up the whole three by five photo across their arm
(03:40):
and arm having the best beach vacation.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
It's really sweet.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
He was the absolute ideal husband. He was my best friend.
He did housework, he cooked, he played with the kids,
and when the kids were little, we would go in
and volunteer at their elementary school and help with their
reading groups, which was super fun and like what their
(04:08):
dad does that? I mean back in those days, he
was the only dad who volunteered, and the kids all
loved him.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
There's another photo of Stephanie and her husband in front
of a waterfall in a forest with his arms wrapped
around her. The sun lights her face, and she looks
relaxed and blissful.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
He was very kind, very generous, very interested in hearing
what I had to say. He very much lifted me up.
He made me feel seen, and he made me feel
(04:48):
like I was smart and competent.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
They had great chemistry. They made great partners, not just
in marriage but in business.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I just end upded up working at my husband's optometry practice,
because you know, it's a small practice, just him. He
always had three employees and one quit and I was
kind of in between jobs, so it's like, oh, could
you just fill in?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Stephanie did a lot more than just fill in. She
started managing her husband's optometry practice, pushing insurance claims through
and making the business more profitable than ever. They had
a clear vision for their future.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
We certainly were not rich, but we were very comfortable.
We had our own resort in our backyard. We had
a large in ground pool, hot ub, basketball court. Have
this great photo of Greg on his giant pool lounger
watching the Master's golf tournament on our outdoor big screen TV.
(05:53):
We had just begun a plan of getting the house
absolutely perfect and maintenance for when we retired.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Of course, there were hard moments, bumps along the way,
and a twenty two year marriage that's par for the course.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
At one point, he admitted that he hadn't been paying
the taxes at his business and there was a possibility
we could lose the business, our house, he could go
to jail. That's a pretty big bump. It's like I've
invested everything. I've put my life and my kids' lives
(06:32):
in this man's hands. So that was tough, but we
worked through it.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
They agreed to a payment plan with the irs and
move forward as a team, back on track for a
happy retirement. As the kids got older, Stephanie and her
husband adjusted well to the empty nest.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
When the kids were grown, things were almost even better.
We would leave the office and walk hand in hand
down the street to the local cafe and go to
lunch together and sit and talk and laugh through the
whole lunch, not and scroll on our phones like other couples,
(07:12):
And then we would go back and work for the afternoon,
and then we would go home together and make dinner,
watch our favorite game shows, and play a board game.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Even during the twenty twenty pandemic, Stephanie and her husband
got along.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So you know, during COVID, I'd hop on a zoom
call with like six or seven girlfriends and we're pretty
much all empty masters. So we're all just stuck in
the house alone with our husbands. And my friends have
good marriages, and still there was a lot of like,
I don't know how much longer I can take this.
(07:51):
I'm really bored, and I'm going, oh gosh, you guys,
I feel bad because, you know what, we're having a
blast over here. We're trying new recipes, We've got this
whole game thing going on, We're doing all these puzzles.
We're having so much fun.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
When COVID restrictions lifted, the couple took the opportunity to
spend even more time together and enjoy a warmer climate.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Kind of on a whim, we were like, hey, things
are opening up. We didn't get to go on our
winter vacation to our time sharing cancuon let's go down there.
So we had gone down the first week of April
and had a fabulous time as we always do.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
But on this little COVID getaway, she could tell that
something was off with Greg. She first noticed it when
they were lounging by the pool.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
One of the things that really struck me as weird
on that trip was that we had kind of sat
in this same spot a couple days and there was
someone else sitting a couple chairs down from us, another
husband and wife, and the guy made me really uncomfortable.
You know how some guys just look at you weird,
(09:02):
you know, when you're hanging out in your bathing suit whatever,
And the guy just kind of made me uncomfortable. And
I told Greg that, I said, you know, that guy
is just kind of creeping me out. Can we sit
somewhere else? And he said no. That was totally out
of character for him. He was always so accommodating to
(09:25):
me and never wanted me to feel uncomfortable. I mean,
does it matter if we sit over on the other
side of the gorgeous infinity pool looking out at the ocean.
So yeah, it just struck me as a little weird.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It was weird, but Stephanie didn't think much of it.
That night, the couple indulged in a long, romantic dinner.
This was always part of their vacation, a few dinners
where they could really treat.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Themselves, many many courses and lots of different drink and
wine and follow that.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The next morning, Stephanie was in a fog. I was
very out of it, like it was really hard to
wake up. I had this feeling it was almost.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Like I was at the bottom of the lake and
I could just see light way up ahead, but it
was so hard to try to get there. And then
I would just feel so awful, like very cotton mull,
very dehydrated, headache, miserable, waking up. Shouldn't feel like that.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
But Greg was there to help take care of her.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Last night. You had a lot to drink, and we
were out in the sun a lot. I'm sure you're dehydrated.
Let's get you some water, Let's get you some coffee.
Let's try to stay out of the sun a little
bit today, you know, very comforting, very.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Kind, and Stephanie was determined to make the most out
of the rest of for vacant.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
We got home and on the airplane, I had seen
somebody was watching. You know, you can kind of see
other people's screens. I could see somebody was watching something
with Nicole Kidman, and I was like, oh, that looks
kind of intriguing. I got to look that up and
see what they're watching. So I figured it out that
they were watching this show called The Undoing.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
The Undoing was a fictional TV mini series about a
pediatric surgeon played by Hugh Grant. The character is warm
and charming, but is ultimately suspected of a violent crime.
It's at complete odds with the man. His wife knows.
When Stephanie got home, she binge watched the show.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
In that first episode, he is just so engaged with
his child, and he's so fawning over Nicole Kidman about
you know, just how beautiful and wonderful and perfect she is.
But he doesn't want want to go and like socialize
(12:02):
with other people and go to the party.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Eerily. This character reminded Stephanie of Greg.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
He just wants this little bubble of his little family
and he loves being adored by his patience. Just this
really engaging charismatic personality, but yet doesn't necessarily always want
to be social unless he can be the center of attention.
(12:31):
As it became more and more clear that the Hugh
Grant character had this tremendous secret, it just made this
feeling in my gut, say, you know who else has secrets?
Your own husband?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It's unsettling to see a depiction of a violent and
manipulative character on TV and think, Hey, that reminds me
of my husband. That's exactly what happened to Stephanie. There
was a nagging feeling, a twist in her gut that
felt distantly familiar. Stephanie had felt this before. After one
(13:27):
big fight she'd had with Greg years ago in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie had found out about a secret her husband was keeping.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Here's what happened back then on.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
This particular weekend in twenty sixteen. It was just a
weekend trip with another couple. The guys had been golfing
all day, as girls had been hiking and sightseeing, and
we got back to the hotel and got ready and
went out for dinner, the four of us. And after dinner,
I wanted to take a picture of the four of us,
(14:00):
and I was like, Oh, my phone is somewhere in
the bottom of my purse. Just give me yours. So
I grabbed his phone and I opened the camera. In
the bottom corner, it showed the last photo he had taken,
And the last photo he had taken was of me
(14:22):
getting ready in our hotel room, nude from the waistep
I had no idea it had been taken. So I
see this photo of me on his phone, and I
don't want to say anything in front of our friends,
So we take the picture. I say, I'm not feeling well.
(14:44):
We go back to the room. I hold onto his
phone the whole time until we get up there, and
I'm like, what is this? What the hell?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Stephanie enjoyed the physical intimacy of her marriage. She thought
it was in a healthy place. There were boundaries.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I did not ever consent to that. I did not
ever say I would do that. And he also knew
that there had been a few times throughout the years
when he had asked about taking pictures and I very
adamantly said no and talked with him about things like
what if the kids open to your phone. I just
(15:23):
don't want to take the chance that anything would ever
get out there. And here's the thing, I told him,
I'm live and in person. You see me, you see
my body every day. And I wanted to have sex
with my husband. I felt like that was an important
part of our love and our marriage. Shouldn't that be enough.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Instead of respecting her boundary around pornography and nude photos,
Greg had used it against her, twisted it to explain
away his own indiscretions.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
He knew that I was adamantly opposed to pornography, and
the reasoning he gave for taking pictures of me was
he felt that he shouldn't look at pornography and instead
(16:20):
he would create his own just for himself. He ended
up telling me, I've only ever done it a couple times.
There's only a few pictures. I wanted it to make
sense because I couldn't breathe without him.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
When they got home from that vacation back in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie moved into the guest bedroom.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
She was mad. It stayed that way for a few weeks.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
They still worked together and kept the same routine, but
they slept in separate bedrooms.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Greg worked hard to earn her forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
One evening in early September, you know, after this had
been going on for a few weeks, that I was
in the other bedroom. I was sitting in the family
room watching TV, and he came over and he knelt
in front of me and he sobbed. I mean just
(17:29):
the tears and the snot and the whole thing, just
poured his heart out at how terrible. He felt that
he had ever done anything like that, and that he
would never do anything to jeopardize our relationship because I'm
(17:49):
the most important thing in the world. Our marriage is
the most important thing in the world. He can't live
without me, and there's nothing he wouldn't do for my forgiveness,
and so.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I forgave him under a few conditions.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
The one thing that I made him agree to was
that I had access to all of his devices anytime
I wanted, all his passwords, everything, and I could check
them whenever I wanted, without question. He absolutely agreed to that,
(18:31):
and she lived like that.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
For six years, checking his phone and devices three times
a week.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So the trust was in a really tenuous place after
twenty sixteen. But now balance that with everything else is perfect.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
She believed her husband when he said it began and
ended with that photo he took of her on vacation,
Like she says, everything else about their life was fantastic.
So slowly they worked through it. During hardships, trust, love
and bonds are often forged even stronger.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It just was this very grounding feeling that as long as.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
I had that relationship, as long as we were together,
there really wasn't anything that I couldn't handle, that I
couldn't get through.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And as much.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
As I talk about how.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Great and how content and how wonderful everything felt, I
always had an eye and an ear out for anything
to be off.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
The couple resumed their normal routine.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Every night.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Stephanie went to bed early to read, while her husband
would stay up late fiddling around with his guilty pleasure
fantasy sports, and I mean a lot of fantasy sports.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
He would participate in ten or twelve fantasy.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Football leagues every year.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
He would do fantasy baseball and golf, and so he
would spend a tremendous amount of time. Sometimes I'd wake
up at one two in the morning and be like,
are you coming to bed? Because he was still on
his computer doing fantasy football. But he wasn't. That's not
(20:44):
what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
After the break, Stephanie makes a life shattering discovery. There
is a photo of Stephanie on vacation with her husband.
(21:08):
She is staring into his eyes. The two look madly
in love, infatuated, almost smiling so big it's like they
just started dating, not twenty two years into their marriage.
Looking at that picture, I think, good for them. They
persevered through a tough financial crisis with their business but
(21:28):
made it out the other side. They were coasting into retirement,
and they even worked through a major trust issue, the
fallout after Stephanie found a naked photo of her on
her husband's phone. But intuition is an interesting thing, that
twist of the gut. Six years had come and gone,
(21:51):
she had forgiven her husband, They had a happy life,
yet something still churned inside Stephanie. On an and seasonably
warm day in April twenty twenty one, she was home
alone while Greg was out golfing with his friends.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I had that feeling. I was like, I got to
check all his stuff while he's gone. I saw his
laptop was sitting there by his recliner. I picked it
up and I took it over to the kitchen counter
and that was where I was sitting, and I literally
just lifted it up and it was there. The pages
(22:29):
were open. He had a Flicker account filled with nude
photos of me, Hundreds of pictures, lots and lots of
them that were like the one I saw him take
(22:56):
me getting ready shower, bathtub, that kind of stuff. Lots
of photos taken when we were at our time, sharing
Cancun from angles that I would never have agreed to.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
To make it even more disturbing, there were captions under
the photos of Stephanie, disgusting captions. It's uncomfortable for me
to even read this, but it shows just how degraded
Stephanie felt. One caption read made your wife eat my comb.
These photos were live posted on the Internet for anyone
(23:41):
to access. In the moment, Stephanie was panicked.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I'm in the account and I'm deleting, deleting, deleting, deleting,
and then something in me went, I gotta have evidence
of this at that point, not even thinking it was illegal, like,
I can't even believe this, No one is ever going
to believe me. So I took some screenshots and then deleted,
(24:08):
so that I deleted all the naked pictures out of
his account.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
She was in reaction mode, horrified and angry. She confronted
him right away.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I texted him a screenshot of that picture of me
in the bikini, and.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
With that picture she typed out a message. In that message,
she called Greg by his online alias you see on
all of his accounts.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
He didn't use his real name.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Instead, he used the name of one of his patients,
a patient who was a mentally disabled adult.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
So on the morning of the eleventh I sent this text,
we need to talk. You better come home so he
knows he's busted. He comes flying home and it's all
there on the computer. There's no backing his way out
of it. This time. His reaction is one hundred percent
(25:10):
of it than it was the time before. He readily
confessed to all of it. No tears, no remorse, no regret,
no care whatsoever. He talked to me like he was
telling me I went to the store and got a
(25:31):
gallon of milk.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
In addition to the photos of herself, there were photos
of other women. What was this and why did he
have these photos?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
He said, I have those pictures of those other women
because I trade. Like kids trade Pokemon cards, I would
trade your image.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Stephanie is usually a very calm person. She can count
on one hand the times she's ever raised her voice
at her family, But on this day she lost it.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I was screaming, taking pictures off the wall and just
smashing them. I took the kitty litter box and dumped
it in his bed. I mean, I broke a lot
of stuff completely out of character. I was screaming and
(26:32):
breaking things to the point where it set off the
house alarm because we had glass break sensors, and because
there were so many things being smashed and so much screaming,
the sensors went off.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
On the day she found out, she was so mad
she couldn't even process the bigger question.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I mean, it really took me about twenty four hours
to get to the point of looking at that and going,
I don't understand how he could take those pictures without
me knowing.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
She squinted at the photos, trying to remember when and
where they were taken.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
There was a series of photos of me on the
bed at our time share, and I'm fully naked, spreading
along the bed, and there's close ups. There's no way
you can get that angle on a person without them
knowing you're there.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
There was only one way it could have happened.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I know what happened. He drugged me. Yeah, he drugged me.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
There was twenty two years of marriage, the vows they'd taken,
the business they'd grown together, the children they'd raised, their
plans for retirement, and then there was this stranger, this man.
She slept beside, a man who was drugging her, hosting
(28:08):
photos of her nude body on the internet, photos with
her face in them, photos captioned with her real first name,
all for his own enjoyment. On the next episode of Betrayal,
(28:32):
Stephanie runs for her life.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
At five am. They were on the phone and said,
get out, get out. We are afraid he is going
to kill you. This is a huge secret. He is
not going to want anyone to know you are in danger.
Get out, don't take anything, just get out right now.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Next time, Stephanie starts her own investigation, she finds out
what her husband was really doing online, and what she
discovers is worse than she could.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Have ever imagined.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or one to tell us your betrayal story, email
us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com. Also, please be sure to follow
us at Glass Podcasts on Instagram for all Betrayal content,
news and updates. We're grateful for your support. One way
(29:39):
to show support is by subscribing to our show on
Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal
five star reviews, go a long way, a big thank
you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production
of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in
partnership with iHeartPodcasts. The show was executive produced by Nancy
(30:00):
Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Associate producers are Kristin Mercurie and Grace Bollinger. Our iHeart
team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Special thanks to Stephanie.
(30:21):
Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Betrayal's theme composed
by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by my Music and
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
One of the things that I kept a screenshot of
was the one that I thought was the worst. It's
a collage. It's almost like a Christmas card. There's some
writing on the top and the bottom and then all
these different photos. The photo in the top corner is
a picture of my face, and then the rest of
(00:24):
the pictures are nudes and they become ever an ever
more close up and across the top it says something
along the lines of slut wife alert. Do you know
this woman? And that's out there and I can't ever
get it back.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Here at Betrayal, we've received hundreds of emails
messages from listeners telling us their own shocking stories, and
(01:17):
we knew we had to find a way to share them.
So I'm excited to announce that every Thursday, we will
be bringing you new, fascinating stories of resilience in the
face of devastating betrayal.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Some stories may.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Be told over a week or two weeks, some more,
and we knew where to start. A listener who emailed
us in the summer of twenty twenty three, she wrote,
I've been in this betrayal club for over two years now.
When I discovered your podcast, I was intrigued. We were
the couple that all the other couples envied. We were
(01:53):
best friends, walking down main street, holding hands and giggling
like newlyweds after two decades together. The email explained that
she didn't just love her husband, she liked him. He
was the love of her life, or so she thought.
It's funny how so many of these betrayal stories start
(02:15):
the same way, beautiful, long term relationships that aren't what
they appear to be. This is Stephanie's story, although that's.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Not her real name.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
All the names will hear in this story have been
changed or censored to respect her privacy.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
We got married in nineteen ninety eight. It was a
second marriage for both of us. I came with four boys.
He had a boy and a girl. Our kids were
already friends and were thrilled about us being together.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Stephanie and her husband I'm gonna call him Greg, live
together in a tiny Midwestern town. It's the kind of
town where everybody knows everybody.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It's like a small town that you would see on
a movie or a sitcom. I didn't want my husband
to go to the grocery store with me. It just
would take so long if he went with because we
knew every person at the store and everyone would have
to stop and visit with him.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Their big, blended family was well known in town. Picture
a modern day Brady bunch. At least that's the feeling
I got from a photo she shared with me. It's Stephanie,
her sons, and Greg's kids, all six of them standing
side by side on the beach, smiling. Their family takes
up the whole three by five photo across their arm
(03:40):
and arm having the best beach vacation.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
It's really sweet.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
He was the absolute ideal husband. He was my best friend.
He did housework, he cooked, he played with the kids,
and when the kids were little, we would go in
and volunteer at their elementary school and help with their
reading groups, which was super fun and like what their
(04:08):
dad does that? I mean back in those days, he
was the only dad who volunteered, and the kids all
loved him.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
There's another photo of Stephanie and her husband in front
of a waterfall in a forest with his arms wrapped
around her. The sun lights her face, and she looks
relaxed and blissful.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
He was very kind, very generous, very interested in hearing
what I had to say. He very much lifted me up.
He made me feel seen, and he made me feel
(04:48):
like I was smart and competent.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
They had great chemistry. They made great partners, not just
in marriage but in business.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I just end upded up working at my husband's optometry practice,
because you know, it's a small practice, just him. He
always had three employees and one quit and I was
kind of in between jobs, so it's like, oh, could
you just fill in?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Stephanie did a lot more than just fill in. She
started managing her husband's optometry practice, pushing insurance claims through
and making the business more profitable than ever. They had
a clear vision for their future.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
We certainly were not rich, but we were very comfortable.
We had our own resort in our backyard. We had
a large in ground pool, hot ub, basketball court. Have
this great photo of Greg on his giant pool lounger
watching the Master's golf tournament on our outdoor big screen TV.
(05:53):
We had just begun a plan of getting the house
absolutely perfect and maintenance for when we retired.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Of course, there were hard moments, bumps along the way,
and a twenty two year marriage that's par for the course.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
At one point, he admitted that he hadn't been paying
the taxes at his business and there was a possibility
we could lose the business, our house, he could go
to jail. That's a pretty big bump. It's like I've
invested everything. I've put my life and my kids' lives
(06:32):
in this man's hands. So that was tough, but we
worked through it.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
They agreed to a payment plan with the irs and
move forward as a team, back on track for a
happy retirement. As the kids got older, Stephanie and her
husband adjusted well to the empty nest.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
When the kids were grown, things were almost even better.
We would leave the office and walk hand in hand
down the street to the local cafe and go to
lunch together and sit and talk and laugh through the
whole lunch, not and scroll on our phones like other couples,
(07:12):
And then we would go back and work for the afternoon,
and then we would go home together and make dinner,
watch our favorite game shows, and play a board game.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Even during the twenty twenty pandemic, Stephanie and her husband
got along.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So you know, during COVID, I'd hop on a zoom
call with like six or seven girlfriends and we're pretty
much all empty masters. So we're all just stuck in
the house alone with our husbands. And my friends have
good marriages, and still there was a lot of like,
I don't know how much longer I can take this.
(07:51):
I'm really bored, and I'm going, oh gosh, you guys,
I feel bad because, you know what, we're having a
blast over here. We're trying new recipes, We've got this
whole game thing going on, We're doing all these puzzles.
We're having so much fun.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
When COVID restrictions lifted, the couple took the opportunity to
spend even more time together and enjoy a warmer climate.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Kind of on a whim, we were like, hey, things
are opening up. We didn't get to go on our
winter vacation to our time sharing cancuon let's go down there.
So we had gone down the first week of April
and had a fabulous time as we always do.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
But on this little COVID getaway, she could tell that
something was off with Greg. She first noticed it when
they were lounging by the pool.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
One of the things that really struck me as weird
on that trip was that we had kind of sat
in this same spot a couple days and there was
someone else sitting a couple chairs down from us, another
husband and wife, and the guy made me really uncomfortable.
You know how some guys just look at you weird,
(09:02):
you know, when you're hanging out in your bathing suit whatever,
And the guy just kind of made me uncomfortable. And
I told Greg that, I said, you know, that guy
is just kind of creeping me out. Can we sit
somewhere else? And he said no. That was totally out
of character for him. He was always so accommodating to
(09:25):
me and never wanted me to feel uncomfortable. I mean,
does it matter if we sit over on the other
side of the gorgeous infinity pool looking out at the ocean.
So yeah, it just struck me as a little weird.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It was weird, but Stephanie didn't think much of it.
That night, the couple indulged in a long, romantic dinner.
This was always part of their vacation, a few dinners
where they could really treat.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Themselves, many many courses and lots of different drink and
wine and follow that.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The next morning, Stephanie was in a fog. I was
very out of it, like it was really hard to
wake up. I had this feeling it was almost.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Like I was at the bottom of the lake and
I could just see light way up ahead, but it
was so hard to try to get there. And then
I would just feel so awful, like very cotton mull,
very dehydrated, headache, miserable, waking up. Shouldn't feel like that.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
But Greg was there to help take care of her.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Last night. You had a lot to drink, and we
were out in the sun a lot. I'm sure you're dehydrated.
Let's get you some water, Let's get you some coffee.
Let's try to stay out of the sun a little
bit today, you know, very comforting, very.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Kind, and Stephanie was determined to make the most out
of the rest of for vacant.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
We got home and on the airplane, I had seen
somebody was watching. You know, you can kind of see
other people's screens. I could see somebody was watching something
with Nicole Kidman, and I was like, oh, that looks
kind of intriguing. I got to look that up and
see what they're watching. So I figured it out that
they were watching this show called The Undoing.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
The Undoing was a fictional TV mini series about a
pediatric surgeon played by Hugh Grant. The character is warm
and charming, but is ultimately suspected of a violent crime.
It's at complete odds with the man. His wife knows.
When Stephanie got home, she binge watched the show.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
In that first episode, he is just so engaged with
his child, and he's so fawning over Nicole Kidman about
you know, just how beautiful and wonderful and perfect she is.
But he doesn't want want to go and like socialize
(12:02):
with other people and go to the party.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Eerily. This character reminded Stephanie of Greg.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
He just wants this little bubble of his little family
and he loves being adored by his patience. Just this
really engaging charismatic personality, but yet doesn't necessarily always want
to be social unless he can be the center of attention.
(12:31):
As it became more and more clear that the Hugh
Grant character had this tremendous secret, it just made this
feeling in my gut, say, you know who else has secrets?
Your own husband?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It's unsettling to see a depiction of a violent and
manipulative character on TV and think, Hey, that reminds me
of my husband. That's exactly what happened to Stephanie. There
was a nagging feeling, a twist in her gut that
felt distantly familiar. Stephanie had felt this before. After one
(13:27):
big fight she'd had with Greg years ago in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie had found out about a secret her husband was keeping.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Here's what happened back then on.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
This particular weekend in twenty sixteen. It was just a
weekend trip with another couple. The guys had been golfing
all day, as girls had been hiking and sightseeing, and
we got back to the hotel and got ready and
went out for dinner, the four of us. And after dinner,
I wanted to take a picture of the four of us,
(14:00):
and I was like, Oh, my phone is somewhere in
the bottom of my purse. Just give me yours. So
I grabbed his phone and I opened the camera. In
the bottom corner, it showed the last photo he had taken,
And the last photo he had taken was of me
(14:22):
getting ready in our hotel room, nude from the waistep
I had no idea it had been taken. So I
see this photo of me on his phone, and I
don't want to say anything in front of our friends,
So we take the picture. I say, I'm not feeling well.
(14:44):
We go back to the room. I hold onto his
phone the whole time until we get up there, and
I'm like, what is this? What the hell?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Stephanie enjoyed the physical intimacy of her marriage. She thought
it was in a healthy place. There were boundaries.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I did not ever consent to that. I did not
ever say I would do that. And he also knew
that there had been a few times throughout the years
when he had asked about taking pictures and I very
adamantly said no and talked with him about things like
what if the kids open to your phone. I just
(15:23):
don't want to take the chance that anything would ever
get out there. And here's the thing, I told him,
I'm live and in person. You see me, you see
my body every day. And I wanted to have sex
with my husband. I felt like that was an important
part of our love and our marriage. Shouldn't that be enough.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Instead of respecting her boundary around pornography and nude photos,
Greg had used it against her, twisted it to explain
away his own indiscretions.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
He knew that I was adamantly opposed to pornography, and
the reasoning he gave for taking pictures of me was
he felt that he shouldn't look at pornography and instead
(16:20):
he would create his own just for himself. He ended
up telling me, I've only ever done it a couple times.
There's only a few pictures. I wanted it to make
sense because I couldn't breathe without him.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
When they got home from that vacation back in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie moved into the guest bedroom.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
She was mad. It stayed that way for a few weeks.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
They still worked together and kept the same routine, but
they slept in separate bedrooms.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Greg worked hard to earn her forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
One evening in early September, you know, after this had
been going on for a few weeks, that I was
in the other bedroom. I was sitting in the family
room watching TV, and he came over and he knelt
in front of me and he sobbed. I mean just
(17:29):
the tears and the snot and the whole thing, just
poured his heart out at how terrible. He felt that
he had ever done anything like that, and that he
would never do anything to jeopardize our relationship because I'm
(17:49):
the most important thing in the world. Our marriage is
the most important thing in the world. He can't live
without me, and there's nothing he wouldn't do for my forgiveness,
and so.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I forgave him under a few conditions.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
The one thing that I made him agree to was
that I had access to all of his devices anytime
I wanted, all his passwords, everything, and I could check
them whenever I wanted, without question. He absolutely agreed to that,
(18:31):
and she lived like that.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
For six years, checking his phone and devices three times
a week.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So the trust was in a really tenuous place after
twenty sixteen. But now balance that with everything else is perfect.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
She believed her husband when he said it began and
ended with that photo he took of her on vacation,
Like she says, everything else about their life was fantastic.
So slowly they worked through it. During hardships, trust, love
and bonds are often forged even stronger.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It just was this very grounding feeling that as long as.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
I had that relationship, as long as we were together,
there really wasn't anything that I couldn't handle, that I
couldn't get through.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And as much.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
As I talk about how.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Great and how content and how wonderful everything felt, I
always had an eye and an ear out for anything
to be off.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
The couple resumed their normal routine.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Every night.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Stephanie went to bed early to read, while her husband
would stay up late fiddling around with his guilty pleasure
fantasy sports, and I mean a lot of fantasy sports.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
He would participate in ten or twelve fantasy.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Football leagues every year.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
He would do fantasy baseball and golf, and so he
would spend a tremendous amount of time. Sometimes I'd wake
up at one two in the morning and be like,
are you coming to bed? Because he was still on
his computer doing fantasy football. But he wasn't. That's not
(20:44):
what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
After the break, Stephanie makes a life shattering discovery. There
is a photo of Stephanie on vacation with her husband.
(21:08):
She is staring into his eyes. The two look madly
in love, infatuated, almost smiling so big it's like they
just started dating, not twenty two years into their marriage.
Looking at that picture, I think, good for them. They
persevered through a tough financial crisis with their business but
(21:28):
made it out the other side. They were coasting into retirement,
and they even worked through a major trust issue, the
fallout after Stephanie found a naked photo of her on
her husband's phone. But intuition is an interesting thing, that
twist of the gut. Six years had come and gone,
(21:51):
she had forgiven her husband, They had a happy life,
yet something still churned inside Stephanie. On an and seasonably
warm day in April twenty twenty one, she was home
alone while Greg was out golfing with his friends.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I had that feeling. I was like, I got to
check all his stuff while he's gone. I saw his
laptop was sitting there by his recliner. I picked it
up and I took it over to the kitchen counter
and that was where I was sitting, and I literally
just lifted it up and it was there. The pages
(22:29):
were open. He had a Flicker account filled with nude
photos of me, Hundreds of pictures, lots and lots of
them that were like the one I saw him take
(22:56):
me getting ready shower, bathtub, that kind of stuff. Lots
of photos taken when we were at our time, sharing
Cancun from angles that I would never have agreed to.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
To make it even more disturbing, there were captions under
the photos of Stephanie, disgusting captions. It's uncomfortable for me
to even read this, but it shows just how degraded
Stephanie felt. One caption read made your wife eat my comb.
These photos were live posted on the Internet for anyone
(23:41):
to access. In the moment, Stephanie was panicked.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I'm in the account and I'm deleting, deleting, deleting, deleting,
and then something in me went, I gotta have evidence
of this at that point, not even thinking it was illegal, like,
I can't even believe this, No one is ever going
to believe me. So I took some screenshots and then deleted,
(24:08):
so that I deleted all the naked pictures out of
his account.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
She was in reaction mode, horrified and angry. She confronted
him right away.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I texted him a screenshot of that picture of me
in the bikini, and.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
With that picture she typed out a message. In that message,
she called Greg by his online alias you see on
all of his accounts.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
He didn't use his real name.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Instead, he used the name of one of his patients,
a patient who was a mentally disabled adult.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
So on the morning of the eleventh I sent this text,
we need to talk. You better come home so he
knows he's busted. He comes flying home and it's all
there on the computer. There's no backing his way out
of it. This time. His reaction is one hundred percent
(25:10):
of it than it was the time before. He readily
confessed to all of it. No tears, no remorse, no regret,
no care whatsoever. He talked to me like he was
telling me I went to the store and got a
(25:31):
gallon of milk.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
In addition to the photos of herself, there were photos
of other women. What was this and why did he
have these photos?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
He said, I have those pictures of those other women
because I trade. Like kids trade Pokemon cards, I would
trade your image.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Stephanie is usually a very calm person. She can count
on one hand the times she's ever raised her voice
at her family, But on this day she lost it.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I was screaming, taking pictures off the wall and just
smashing them. I took the kitty litter box and dumped
it in his bed. I mean, I broke a lot
of stuff completely out of character. I was screaming and
(26:32):
breaking things to the point where it set off the
house alarm because we had glass break sensors, and because
there were so many things being smashed and so much screaming,
the sensors went off.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
On the day she found out, she was so mad
she couldn't even process the bigger question.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I mean, it really took me about twenty four hours
to get to the point of looking at that and going,
I don't understand how he could take those pictures without
me knowing.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
She squinted at the photos, trying to remember when and
where they were taken.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
There was a series of photos of me on the
bed at our time share, and I'm fully naked, spreading
along the bed, and there's close ups. There's no way
you can get that angle on a person without them
knowing you're there.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
There was only one way it could have happened.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I know what happened. He drugged me. Yeah, he drugged me.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
There was twenty two years of marriage, the vows they'd taken,
the business they'd grown together, the children they'd raised, their
plans for retirement, and then there was this stranger, this man.
She slept beside, a man who was drugging her, hosting
(28:08):
photos of her nude body on the internet, photos with
her face in them, photos captioned with her real first name,
all for his own enjoyment. On the next episode of Betrayal,
(28:32):
Stephanie runs for her life.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
At five am. They were on the phone and said,
get out, get out. We are afraid he is going
to kill you. This is a huge secret. He is
not going to want anyone to know you are in danger.
Get out, don't take anything, just get out right now.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Next time, Stephanie starts her own investigation, she finds out
what her husband was really doing online, and what she
discovers is worse than she could.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Have ever imagined.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or one to tell us your betrayal story, email
us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com. Also, please be sure to follow
us at Glass Podcasts on Instagram for all Betrayal content,
news and updates. We're grateful for your support. One way
(29:39):
to show support is by subscribing to our show on
Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal
five star reviews, go a long way, a big thank
you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production
of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in
partnership with iHeartPodcasts. The show was executive produced by Nancy
(30:00):
Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Associate producers are Kristin Mercurie and Grace Bollinger. Our iHeart
team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Special thanks to Stephanie.
(30:21):
Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Betrayal's theme composed
by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by my Music and
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Andrea Gunning
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