October 10, 2024 • 42 mins
Caesar’s mask begins to fall, just as he and Kerry begin their life and business together. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
And then I leaned forward and a whispered to him.
I used to think that you were a good guy
who sometimes wore a monster mask. But what I realized
that you're actually a monster who sometimes wears a good
guy mask. He goes absolutely white, and he starts a sweat,
and he whispers, I'm glad you know.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm Andrea Gunning. And this is Betrayal, A show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. After the death of her husband, Brad, Carrie
McAvoy retired early from her career as a clinical psychologist
at the age of fifty one, she started a whirlwind
(00:55):
relationship with Caesar. He showered her with affection and brought
her into his Mexican culture. It would be a second
marriage that promised adventure and expanded her horizons. With all
three of her sons grown, she and Caesar decided to
start a new life together in Mexico, so she sold
her house in the US and packed her bags.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
You're basically consolidating a whole life, accumulated of all my
adult life down to a few like we took ten
pieces of luggage. That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
They planned to make a living down there, by renting
vacation properties in the Yucatan Peninsula, Crystal blue waters, white
sand beaches. It was the life Brad wanted for her.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I felt like I was trying to build on the
best I had with bread, but make it better.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
She and Caesar became fifty to fifty owners in their
new business and bought four rental properties together, all bankrolled
by Carrie.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
So the value of Brad's life insurance has now been
spent on properties.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
But the week before their wedding, Caesar made a shocking disclosure.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
He starts to cry, and he says, it just hit
me because we're going to get married five days that
I'm still married. We can't get married this week. And
I said what.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Caesar had an explanation, and.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
He said that last marriage was so bad, so contentious,
that when I got out, I literally put it behind
me and I forgot I'm married to her. I never
finalized it. Even though we've not been living together for
two years. I'm not divorced.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Caesar's last marriage was a rollercoaster. When he finally ended things,
she literally refused to let him go.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
They described how she had clung to his feet as
he tried to get out of the house and he
said it was really traumatic, and he just put it
behind him. I've repressed stuff, I forgot stuff. I can
see how that can happen, But I'm not going to
be intimate with somebody who's married. Now that I know,
I'm horrified, like speechless and feel so humiliated. I don't
(03:03):
even know what to say. This puts it in a
different category.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
But she had already invested so much emotionally and financially
in this new life with him, too much to let
one piece of paper derail their plans. Plus, he was
adamant that he would get it sorted out and they'd
be able to get married the following month. So reluctantly
Carrie let it go.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
We got up and had a nice next day together
and sort of moved on.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And his divorce did go through A month later. After that,
he and Carrie officially tied the knot.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
So get married. It's a beautiful wedding, and then we
plan a honeymoon.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
A month later, In a nod to Brad's legacy, she
and Caesar went to Jamaica for their honeymoon. They stayed
in a new part of the island. It was a
full circle moment for Carrie, a reminder of how far
she'd come in the two years since Brad passed away.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
We get to Jamaica, we check in and that night
we have a great dinner together, kind of romantic, and
we're walking back to the hotel room and I'm excited
because I bought something special. We get into the room,
he flops down on the bed and I go into
the bathroom to change into something sexy.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Starting with night one, their honeymoon did not go to plan.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I hear the TV turn on, and I'm thinking, what's
a little weird. It's not really the focus of the
honeymoon night. And I come out and I pose in
front of the TV, you know, sort of like I'm
better looking than the TV. And he actually almost cranes
his neck around me, and I'm stunned. I can't believe
that he did that. And I'm now feeling underdressed, overexposed,
(04:46):
and just I can feel the goosebumps raising on my
body from the chill. He says, just come up next
to me. He passed the bed, Come up next to me.
I want to watch this, okay, So I do, and
I'm tired. It's been a long day, try level and
I doze off and I don't even remember falling asleep,
but I fall asleep and I come to and I
(05:06):
can't tell how much time has passed, but the TV
is still playing and he's on his phone. I find
that kind of odd, and I'm curious to why he's
so interested in on his phone. And as I'm trying
to like crane my neck without really letting him know
that I'm awake, I see that he's watching something. And
at first my eyes is really blurry because I'm just
waking up. And then i can tell he's watching pornography.
(05:30):
And I'm thinking, okay, you opted out of having a
moment with me to watch pornography. That is soul crushing.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Early on in their relationship, she asked Caesar if he
watched pornography. He told her he didn't. Now on their honeymoon,
she saw that he did. She observed him for another moment.
Caesar is still not noticing that she had woken up.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And while I'm watching him watch, there's a text that
comes in and he opens the textbox and he responds,
and then he looks for a photo. He sends a
quick photo of himself. Then she sends a photo back
of her I mean, they're just like normal photos. There
wasn't like sexting. But on the other hand, I'm thinking
my new husband is sending a photo of himself to
(06:20):
another woman. Yeah, no, you don't do that.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Even though they were just selfies, it felt strange, and
he was sending them to a woman she'd never heard
of before.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
So I make like I'm waking up. He then plays along, Oh,
it's so wonderful you're awake. Oh, I love you so much,
And instead of like pulling me into it, embrace to
kiss me, pull me into something intimate. He starts to
touch me like he's doing something to me, but we're
not doing it really together. And this just on the
tails of what I just saw, feels awful, like the
(06:56):
last thing I want to be doing. So I feel
like I was like trying to scoot away from him,
and I just said the same thing that he said
to me, is come sit next to me. I'm really tired.
Let's just sleep tonight. It's been a lot, it's a
long day. So he does, we fall asleep.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
But Carrie did not fall asleep. It was the first
night of their honeymoon and She was lying awake, staring
at the ceiling.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Feeling really hurt and shocked, like there needs to be
limits in this relationship and that's not an okay kind
of relationship.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
She decided to address what she'd seen over dinner.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I said, hey, I noticed you're on your phone, and
I noticed you're watching a video. And then also you're
texting some woman and you send her a photo of yourself.
I'm not okay with that.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Then Caesar became very quiet.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
He just kind of stays stiff, like, not okay. We
have dinner, we're not really talking. And when we walked
back to our hotel room, he stopped and he stood
in the doorway and he says, I'm going to be
heading out. I'll be back in a couple hours. He
turns around. The door shut. So I watched the door shut,
and I'm aghast, like mouth dropped, shocked, and I think
(08:06):
to myself, this is punishment. He's punishing me.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
She spent the next few hours pacing the hotel room,
hoping she was wrong, hoping he just needed time to
cool off.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
He comes in a couple hours later, and I'm tense.
I'm like, I have no idea what mindset he's going
to be in and he goes, hey, let's go out
to the pool. Let's go swimming. I said, okay, and
he holds my hand as we walk to the pool
and we get out there. He says, look at the sky.
The moon's out tonight. Remember the night I got engaged
with you. The moon's out that night. And he says,
(08:39):
couples shouldn't fight. And you're right, I shouldn't have that
kind of relationship with a woman. That's inappropriate. I'm really sorry.
Why don't we put the phones away for the rest
of the trip and just focus on us? And I
start to cry and I feel, oh, he gets it.
We're on the same page. This is going to be good.
We make a big deal the next day putting the away.
(09:01):
The next seven eight days are great.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Until the last day of the honeymoon. It was four
am and Carrie woke up to a notification on her phone.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I can see on my phone that there's a text
message from a stranger from a woman, and she writes,
so you're married to Caesar. I guess the joke's just
not on me, it's on you too. I've been dating
it for the past three months. Then she proceeds to
start to describe, is that your sunglass case in the car?
(09:34):
It's floral? Are you the person that called him at
three am in the morning a few months ago? Because
I was with him, I was in bed beside him.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
That was her sunglasses case. And they were in a
long distance relationship before this, and Carrie knew she had
called him late sometimes. With Caesar asleep next to her,
she began to panic, was this woman telling the truth?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
As I'm laying there, I literally had the flash. I
don't know him, He's a stranger. I went into the
bathroom and my body just dumped. It was sick. I
was sick. What do I do? My house is sold,
my car is gone. I have property now in Mexico
(10:24):
that expects me to open. I'm mid visa process. I
have to finish this or I lose all that effort.
And I'm literally in transition as if I'm a wire artist,
and I let go of one wire and I'm jumping
to the next, and I'm trying to grab and I'm midjump,
and I'm realizing everything that I thought I was building
(10:44):
on didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
She shook her new husband awake and showed him the messages.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I say to Caesar, Caesar, Caesar, A woman wrote me.
She says, she knows you. His first reaction was stop
reading that. Stop reading that. And my thought was, you know,
you know her, you know what I'm talking about. I
fled the room. I split for the ocean and went
(11:13):
down to the sand and I start circling, literally circling.
It was early, like six am, six thirty, and there
was a runner who run past me. I much look
like a crazy woman, like I don't know what to do.
I'm midjump, I'm in transition. I have no home in
the United States. I don't know what to do here.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So she called a close friend who, like her, also
worked in mental health.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And she says, Carrie, I think he's traumatized. I think
there's something else going on. I really suggest that you
go back and talk to him. I'm thinking, okay, she
knows him. In fact, she's the person that married us.
Maybe there's something more here. Plus she's a therapist. So
I go back in and I get into the room
and he's standing there, white shaking, and he just looked
at me and he said, I just wanted to know
(11:59):
what a felt like to have an affair, and then
he said, you know, I have problems because I've told
you that I've came from a troubled home and that
there have been issues. And I don't know why I
did it. I know it was dumb, but I don't
know why I did that.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Then he asked for her help. He felt like his
behavior was out of control and needed professional support. In fact,
he had asked his ex wives for their help too.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
And they didn't believe me. They laughed at me.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
If anyone could help him, it was Carrie. She believed
in recovery.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
I also, as a psychologist, really believed in the capacity
of people to change. Why would I spend my whole
life doing what I did if I didn't believe people
could actually have a conversion experience.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
As soon as the honeymoon ended, Carrie started looking for
a psychologist, a specialist who could help with trauma, infidelity,
and deception. And she got them an appointment the very
next day.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And she sees us. She says, Carrie, these issues are
really big. He needs residential care and I'm thinking residential
care or moving. Plus who's going to pay for that?
This is not covered by insurance? And he needs months
I've worked in the system. I know how much it
costs for psychiatric care. This is going to add up
(13:21):
to probably close to one hundred thousand dollars in treatment costs.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Instead of long term residential care. They planned for a
three day intensive program for couples and crisis and they
flew there right away.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So we walk into the intensive program and it was
built on accountability model. The focus is more of what
are you going to do? What's the reality of your situation?
Do you have a plan in place? They're trying to
help us really think this through.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Although the program was meant for couples to attend together,
where both individuals or promise treatment and support, Carrie felt
like her pain wasn't being seen.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
But we go through the three days and it becomes
really clear to me that I'm invisible here. This treatment's
about him, and yet I feel like my whole world's
been torn apart, that I've been shattered. There's two people here. Yes,
he was the one who acted out, but I'm the
one who's suffering the consequences. What about me?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Caesar left the program feeling clear headed and committed to Carrie.
He had an accountability plan and an outpatient counselor to
check in with him every week, but Carrie felt more
confused than ever.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
We walk out of the program after three days, and
I feel like, well, he has a better direction, he
seems helped, But I'm now more scared than ever, and
I'm going into a country that I don't think has
this kind of care available. All I know is now
I don't know how much. I don't know, because if
that's what they did, tell me, this is like a problem,
like an iceberg. You just saw a tip, but you
(14:57):
don't know how deep this goes or how big this is.
So all that you did for me is to let
me know there's a whole lot more to this that
you don't know, and I don't know what to do.
I'm in a mid leap and I don't know what
I'm in for.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
After leaving the three day treatment program, Carrie and Caesar
continued with their plan to move into a new apartment
imply a Del Carmen and get their business off the ground.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
We move into our first apartment and we furnish it.
We're watching the construction of the next two and trying
to get the business going, you know, get our properties
listed on Airbnb.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Besides starting their business, their main priority was continuing Caesar's treatment,
and it seemed to be working for him.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
In that period of time. It actually gets good, it
gets quiet. You know, he's working a program. He does
his weekly thing. I do my weekly thing. It feels
like a partnership. We're buying furs together, we're setting up
a house, kids are coming in for Christmas.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
With Caesar's commitment to recovery, Carrie felt validated in her
decision to give him another chance and get him help.
He was really trying. Their life in Mexico was finally
coming together. At night, they would go up to their
penthouse roof and look at the stars.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
And the stars are out and there's actually even falling stars,
and we're talking to each other and kissing each other
and talking about how beautiful this is. And had like
a little blanket on that platio, just really really lovely.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
After a few months, their business started to take off.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
The properties are now coming online. The business is off
to a good start, and I feel really optimistic about
all of this.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
But their relationship on the men, they were proving to
be strong business partners. They settled into a daily routine.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
He would set the alarm super early in the morning.
Then we would read something together, talk to each other,
and then we'd get dressed and get going for our day.
We'd run from appointment to appointment. But there's another half
of the company that had to be run, and that
is the customer end, who's making all the emails and
it's corresponding with guests. So I'd manage that at night,
(17:18):
and then we'd do all the businesses together in the day.
So basically I was like doing two jobs one day.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
While running around town to manage the properties.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
I start to suddenly vomit. I mean like I'm throwing
up saliva, and it's really strange. I'd never seen anything
like it before. He calmly hands me a grocery bag
to vomit in, and then we never talk about it again,
and we just went on for the rest of the day.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And then she began noticing other symptoms.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
I have really severe diarrhea, real strange diarrhea that I'd
never seen before. It's water, it's clear water. It frightens
me because I've never seen this before. And I had
white lines, like you hit your fingernails as a hammer.
I was searching for what causes white lines across all
the fingernails. They're called nasee lines.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And it only got worse.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
My toenails were falling off, and my yearine was now
dark like tea and frothing.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So they went to the er.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
They take one look at me, and they hospitalized me.
And while I'm admitted, the nurse comes up and says,
you don't understand. You're super ill. Your white count is
extraordinarily high, but we can't find the infection. You're very,
very sick. You don't understand how sick you are. Caesar
comes in that night to sit next to me, and
he sits there and he goes. I realized something today.
(18:42):
I realized if something were to happen to you, I
would really miss you. That's a weird thing to say.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
After a few nights in the hospital with ivy antibiotics,
Carrie was feeling better. The doctors ran dozens of tests,
but ultimately couldn't figure out what was causing Carrie's symptoms.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
But I get discharged and we continue to kind of
do normal business, you know, running day to day life.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Caesar thought Carrie's sudden illness could be stress related. After all,
she'd had an incredibly busy year, so they decided to
go on a weekend get away to relax and reconnect
with each other.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So we go to this resort for Thanksgiving weekend, and
the first night we get there, he heads in for
a shower and while he does it, he leaves his
phone on the table. I don't know why, but I
picked up his phone and snoop for the first time
in my life.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
She didn't find anything concerning in his photos or texts,
but then she opened his email.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
This is the first I really heard of Maria.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Earlier that day, he'd written a long email to this woman.
It sounded like she was an old flame.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
So I go rush into the bathroom to use it
for he used to read the email, and I opened
the email. He says this marriage is a prison, and
he's talking about missing her.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
He told Carrie he wasn't talking to any other women,
that the help he was getting was really working. What
did he mean this marriage was a prison. She'd been
working so hard to hold it together. She sent herself
a copy and then.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I send it to our counselor that we saw at
the intensive and say we need an immediate appointment. He's
breached his contract with me, and he said he wasn't
doing this. So we have a therapy appointment with our
therapist and he confronts Caesar about this, and Caesar doesn't
really have a good excuse. I was just dumb, I
(20:45):
was reminiscent. I was feeling nostalgic.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
He said he'd been missing his ex Maria and that
they once spent time at the same beach.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
He said, I thought of her and I reached out
or I shouldn't have. I know. It was really bad.
And then the therapist turns to me and says, so,
what are you going to do about this? What's your consequence?
We talked about this. You need to have a consequence,
and I'm thinking, what do you mean. I can't kick
him out. I'm in another country, We're starting this business up,
things are in construction. I depend on him. I can't
(21:17):
run a business without him.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So instead of a consequence, she opted for a solution.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So we both get into therapy. That's my solution. He
starts to see a therapist.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
But that didn't quell her anxiety.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And I'm starting to feel increasingly paranoid, enough so that
I'm now like trying to break into his phone. Or
I'm now looking for a second phone. It's weird. I'm
like feeling crazy, and while all this is happening, he's
just getting harder to reach, feeling really distant to me.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
He told Carrie he was going to his regular therapy appointments,
but then she found.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Out he didn't go. He apparently stashed the phone somewhere
near the therapist's house and did something else. I have
no idea what he did for the hour and a half,
but he didn't go. So I'm catching him in lies
now and I know something is up.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
This lie was disturbing. She started to doubt if he
was really committed to changing. Repeatedly catching Caesar and lies
became a vicious cycle. But then one day she got
news that pulled her out of it. Carrie had three
sons who were now all adults. Two of them were
living together, and one noticed his brother, Cameron, wasn't acting himself.
(22:27):
He was observing Cameron's behavior and called their mom out
of concern.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
He said, he's been staring at the whole wall all weekend, Mom,
just staring at the wall, like ours staring at the wall.
And then he'll say weird things like he doesn't know
what time of the day it is, and I'm thinking, oh, no,
this is a serious neurological scien it's an emergency. I'm frightened.
This is bad. Something's really wrong.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
She flew back to America to be with Cameron. When
she got to the hospital, all of her boys were there.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And they've been waiting for me. I can tell they've
been waiting for mom to show up. And he says, Mom,
it's leukemia. And then we follow in each other's arms
and just start to cry, and I think, oh, I've
been here before.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Cameron was scared.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
He said, Mom, don't leave me, don't leave me, and
I say, I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
It wasn't even a decision for Carrie. She knew she
had to stay and take care of him. She spent
entire nights a week keeping an eye on her son's
health as he started chemotherapy.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
But you have to see if the chemotherapy is going
to work. So he makes it through the first round,
which is a big deal. He has to be hospitalized.
It's given every twelve hours for five to seven days.
It's ron mclock chemotherapy. And meanwhile the treatment team tells
me he's going to need this for upward to eighteen months,
and he needs you here. This is a big thing
(23:57):
and he's going to need your help.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Caesar had come with Carrie back to the US, and
right away she noticed that he was distant. He didn't
seem interested in staying in America long term or in
supporting Carrie and Cameron. Instead, Caesar started complaining he wanted
to go back to their life in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
He's telling me he's not staying. I can tell already.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
One night, while Caesar was sleeping, his phone alarm started ringing,
so Carrie got up to shut it off.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
So I go in to get the phone and turn
the alarm off. I passed through the pass code and
it opens right up to the text messages. He'd been
texting and had fallen asleep with it beside his head.
The messages between him and Maria, and it says, my
sister had cancer. She's recovered, she's just fine. Her son
(24:48):
will be too. He's young, he's twenty eight. He's got
the advantage of youth on its side. And Caesar right back.
So yeah, I know, but I got to be supportive
for Carrie. Carrie's really worried that's not how she feels.
And then he says, but I'll have to be careful
because I'm with her now a lot. We're going to
have to really be careful around these conversations. And then
she texts, but what I'm really concerned about is that
(25:10):
Cameron's care is going to eat up your half of
her money.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
It was so callous, calculated even.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Not only had he been betraying me and seeing women,
but he has been communicating with her about a lot,
including the money and what's happening with the money, and
that there is this money.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Reading these texts and seeing how dismiss if he was
of her son's care and the concern for Carrie's money
half of Brad's life insurance money finally sent her over
the edge.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
It's money that paid out on Brad's death to a
person who never earned it, didn't know him, didn't love him,
and is trying to exploit and manipulate me. He's going
to capitalize on Brad's death about enraging me. Hell no,
I loved Bread. We spent thirty three years together. He
(26:08):
died from something catastrophic. Be damned, you're gonna get half
of that. I sat there with Bread, then morphine didn't work,
and him pleading for another dose. Your half of Bread's
life insurance? What do you mean your half? There is
no your half here.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
After she saw text between Caesar and Maria, Carrie was furious.
She finally saw Caesar for who he really was, or
at least she thought she had.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
We're at a restaurant having a meal, and I finally
say to him, you know what, this can't good for you.
It's certainly not good for me. I think maybe we
need to separate, and I walk away. I get up,
and I walk out.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
She spent a few hours alone to process everything, to
grieve the life she envisioned with Caesar. After all, her
first marriage was a fairy tale. It was solid, joyous,
and honest. Eventually, she made her way home to continue
the conversation with him.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
I said, so, what's going on here? Do you want
a divorce? He said, yes, I want a divorce.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
The following morning, they sat down at the breakfast table
for the next hard conversation about what this divorce would
mean for both of them financially.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
He starts to list all the properties that the company owns,
one by one, and next to them, he writes their
market value, and then he adds the column up in
front of me, draws a hard line, so hard that
I think he's going to scratch into the wood table.
That's how Fermi pressed. And he points at it that
that's what I mowed half of that. I have a
(28:01):
right to half of that. And I look at him
and my mouth dropped, and I said, but that's Brad's legacy.
That's what he gave to me and the kids to
give me a new start. And he says, life's never
been fair to me, Why should it be fair to you.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
When Terry and Caesar sat down to discuss the terms
of their divorce, she watched her soon to be ex
husband become an entirely different person.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
He's basically saying he has a right to something he
has never worked to own, didn't come into this relationship
with anything, and he's going to walk out with half
of everything brand and I had spent all these years,
with all these decisions to get to he feels he
has a right to it because life's not been fair.
(28:50):
I'm enraged. I can't believe this is the way this is,
and I can't believe this is actually legal. I'm speechless,
like floored. I feel like I don't know him. This
is another level of a stranger. I don't know who
this person is.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
She was not going to let him take what Brad
had worked so hard for. After all, she'd only been
with Caesar for three years.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
So my first thing is is I pull all the
documents together, proving all the money I'd brought in, proving
that it had been my assets, my capital that had
been invested, and I make an appointment with the best
divorce attorney that I can find in town, and I
sit down with her. Then she looks at me and says,
none of that matters. According to Mexican law, he's fifty
(29:35):
to fifty owner unless you can prove he's broken the law.
He's owed half, he's owed half. I realized, I better
start making copies of the deeds to prove that I
actually own the property. So I get smart and start
making photocopies of stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Carrie was going back and forth in the US, taking
care of her son Cameron, whose cancer treatment was going well,
and in Mexico untangling her marriage with Caesar. They moved
into separate apartments while Carrie collected the evidence she needed
for their divorce, Caesar had not invested any money into
their shared business, but, like the lawyer told her, her
(30:12):
case didn't look promising.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
I'm frantic. I don't know how to get the company back.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
To add insult to injury. In the middle of this
financial untangling, she received news Caesar's ex Maria was back
in town and they were back together.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
And not only has she been in town, but they
put a deposit on a property together. They're going to
buy a house together.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
She and Caesar had rarely spoken throughout the divorce. They
were still in a bitter legal negotiation about dividing their business,
but one day she got a text from him. He
sounded desperate.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
It says, I'm in trouble. I've been realizing I'm out
of control and I need help. I need to see you.
Can we meet.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
She thought maybe this was her chance to offer him
a settlement that he would accept.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
And I'm thinking, this is the moment you've been waiting for.
You have an opportunity to leverage your control of the company.
He's going to need help from you. Use it. So
I meet him at a coffee shop nearby, and he
starts to tell me he's in trouble. And then I
lean forward and a whisper to him. I used to
think that you were a good guy who sometimes wore
(31:25):
a monster mask. But when I realized that you're actually
a monster who sometimes wears a good guy mask. He
goes absolutely white, and he starts to sweat, and he whispers,
I'm glad you know.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
She finally saw him for who he really was, and
she knew she needed an out. So Carrie told him
she would help him through the next few months financially
if you agreed to her terms.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
I say to him, I will help you, but I
want all of the company back. You have to sign
the company money over to me. And he says to me, so,
what are you thinking how much? And I said, how
about whatever I have sitting in the bank right now,
which is one third of what he wants. You can
have that. You can have the car that you're driving.
(32:15):
I'll sell the other car. You can have whatever is
in the house. That's what you can have.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Caesar didn't like the deal. He wanted to split their
company's profits for the next two years.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And he leans into me and he whispers, you don't
want to make me angry.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
In the moment, She pretended to agree to the deal.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I shake his hand and I say, okay, I promise,
But in my head I thought I promised as much
of a promise as any of your promises you've ever
made to me.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
She never intended to give him half the profits. Once
he signed over the company, she sold it. In the end,
she settled their divorce and paid him ount. It was
a big sum, but not nearly what he wanted, not
even close.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
He never got any more money out of me out
in that settlement that I made, the agreement I made
with him of the attorney.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
After selling the properties, she packed up her life in
Mexico for good.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
So I packed myself up. I throw most of it away.
I don't want it. Everything that reminds me of this house,
this life, this person, this relationship. I took to the
trash and people scavengers came in and got it, and
it was like, go for it, you can have it.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
She found evidence that he and Maria had been meeting
up every few weeks for their entire relationship, even back
to when she first met Caesar.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
And then when we break finally up, he's texting her
about the half of the money, and then he sees
her right away, right after we break up.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
And she also found some things that made her suspect
her entire relationship with Caesar had been orchestrated. Like he said,
he had been researching widows.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I found cliff notes he kept on women. He literally
was keeping track of stories, what to say, He planned
things out. The guy that never existed.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
She found no cards with names of women he dated,
and on the cards he'd written information about each of them.
This is one of those strange details she'll never get
an explanation for. Shocked, ashamed, and betrayed, Carrie flew back
to the US. She focused on her family and settled down,
moving close to her son, whose cancer was in remission.
(34:31):
She was rebuilding, but there was still one piece of
unfinished business. She wanted to know who Caesar really was,
so she tracked down his ex wives.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
I get a hold of wife number one, who lived
in Mexico, heard her version. Then I heard the one
who'd been married seventeen years. But the one I couldn't
get a hold of was the one that was the shortest,
that he had the least to say about. So six
months after I sent her a message, she contacts me
and says, yeah, I'll have a phone call with you.
And she says, because one of the things that happened
is I got really sick. I said what she said, Yeah,
(35:05):
I got really sick and I don't know why. And
I got better when I got out of the relationship.
And I'm thinking, well, that's really strange.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
It was strange. Carrie's symptoms also got better after she
left the relationship. The vomiting and diarrhea, the lines on
her nails, they all disappeared. She says she'll never know
why she got so sick during her marriage. What she
does know is that that relationship was literally toxic to
her body.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Living with somebody who's constantly deceitful, this chronic state of
being in a fight or flight with all the cordals,
all levels, does terrible damage to the body.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Back in the US, she joined support groups and relied
on her three adult sons. Cameron was cancer free and
the family had become closer than ever.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I did have a moment with my sons and I
said to them, you must be so ashamed of me.
And my oldest looked at me and he said, no, mom,
Caesar used your best qualities against you. Were not ashamed,
and I just wept.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
That was the start of her healing process, and the
next step was writing a book about what she went through.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
They just started writing. I wrote this story as fast
as I could. Took me nine months to write Love
You More, and I thought, really, really healing.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
With time, she could look back on the relationship with clarity.
She applied her expertise in psychology and began to understand
that what she experienced was narcissistic abuse.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
They consider a narcissistically abusive relationship a cult of two
really the same tactics that cult leaders use. Highly predatory
people use the same to create fast rapport, build trust,
and also create a very highly almost addictive relationship that's
very difficult to leave. It's intoxicating but also terrifying. It's
(37:01):
like a connection on fear.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Through her work in therapy, she came to a big revelation,
one that went back to the abuse she experienced as
a child, and she realized that violation might have played
into the cycle she found herself in with Caesar.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
I realized that when I was little and I had
suffered the abuse with my sister, even though I was
only like five and she was four in my head.
I had made her a promise that I would never
abandon her again, and I approached that promise that I
had made that was really unreasonable as a child, but
I sort of applied it to him, and so leave
(37:39):
him felt like I was abandoning her all over again.
And that was what made it really hard for me
to truly break free, break out of this and come
into that conclusion. Felt like it broke so much of
my paralysis, my confusion.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
She wanted to know how she'd missed the signs with
Caesar and why she stayed in it for so long.
It wasn't like her.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
I cannot begin to describe to you the agony paralysis
I felt about making a decision. The mind literally says,
I can't compute. Both realities seem true. I can't compute,
so it makes no decision, as if that's a decision.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
She turned to books and research on coercive control and
narcissistic abuse to help give her perspective.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
I came across a book by Don Hennessy called How
He Gets Into Her Head. Highly recommend it Irish law Enforcement.
He writes about the grooming practices in the first part
of the book he describes working with domestic violence victims
for years, I mean like many, many, many years. They
kept trying to do all these studies finding a consistent
pattern among victims that would predict that this is a
person vulnerable to abuse. They couldn't find any There was
(38:48):
no consistent pattern among all of the domestic violent victims.
It wasn't until they started looking at the predators that
the pattern fit. The pattern is with the predator, not
with the victims.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
She's been able to let go of her shame about
the decision to stay with Caesar. The betrayal community has
shown her that no one is above being deceived.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
I'm a psychologist. Everyone somehow assumes a psychologists are like
above human, superhuman. We should know, we should be excellent
reads of people. Yeah, I'm good reads of people, But
when it comes to myself, I'm not always so good.
My personal life, my personal perceptions get involved. It's very
easy for us to criticize victims and say it's the
victim's fault. But you're just showing your ignorance because anyone
(39:35):
can fall for something like this. You just haven't met
the sophisticated enough predator.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
When she was at her most vulnerable, grieving Brad's death,
and desperate to have that kind of partnership back again.
At that very moment, she happened to meet the right predator.
Her trust in Caesar is inherently linked to losing Brad.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Somebody prepares you for what it's like to lose a partner.
You know. We often think if you say there than
my other half, I'll tell you it felt like I
was ripped in half. And to think about the future,
I've got maybe what thirty more years of no one
in my life, and I'm going to be alone and
(40:20):
this big, critical person who was my partner, my husband,
my lover, my best friend, my co parent is gone.
I can't even begin to describe to you the panic
I felt. We talk about love bombing and it's too
good to be true, and it happens super fast and
you suddenly are with this person for forever. But you
(40:43):
know what, sometimes love looks like that, That's what love
with Brad looked like.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
why did you want to tell your story? For Carrie,
it comes back to letting people know no one is
above deception or betrayal.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
And by the way. I have had many psychologists who've
now since reached out to me to tell me it's
happened to them. And an excellent book is Kristin Milstead,
Why Can't I Just Leave? Who's a PhD in sociology,
and it happened to her. But there are many professional
women who are and men who've gotten trapped by this.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
I look up one of his email addresses and it
shows that he has an Ashley Madison account, and I
just nearly threw up.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal pod
at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One
way to show support is by subscribing to our show
on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review
betray Five star reviews go a long way. A big
(42:03):
thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a
production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group
and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
by Nancy 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 Mercury and
(42:25):
Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinchech.
Audio editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing
support from Nico Ruka and Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed
by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by myb Music and
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(42:48):
or wherever you get your podcasts,
And then I leaned forward and a whispered to him.
I used to think that you were a good guy
who sometimes wore a monster mask. But what I realized
that you're actually a monster who sometimes wears a good
guy mask. He goes absolutely white, and he starts a sweat,
and he whispers, I'm glad you know.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm Andrea Gunning. And this is Betrayal, A show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. After the death of her husband, Brad, Carrie
McAvoy retired early from her career as a clinical psychologist
at the age of fifty one, she started a whirlwind
(00:55):
relationship with Caesar. He showered her with affection and brought
her into his Mexican culture. It would be a second
marriage that promised adventure and expanded her horizons. With all
three of her sons grown, she and Caesar decided to
start a new life together in Mexico, so she sold
her house in the US and packed her bags.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
You're basically consolidating a whole life, accumulated of all my
adult life down to a few like we took ten
pieces of luggage. That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
They planned to make a living down there, by renting
vacation properties in the Yucatan Peninsula, Crystal blue waters, white
sand beaches. It was the life Brad wanted for her.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I felt like I was trying to build on the
best I had with bread, but make it better.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
She and Caesar became fifty to fifty owners in their
new business and bought four rental properties together, all bankrolled
by Carrie.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
So the value of Brad's life insurance has now been
spent on properties.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
But the week before their wedding, Caesar made a shocking disclosure.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
He starts to cry, and he says, it just hit
me because we're going to get married five days that
I'm still married. We can't get married this week. And
I said what.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Caesar had an explanation, and.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
He said that last marriage was so bad, so contentious,
that when I got out, I literally put it behind
me and I forgot I'm married to her. I never
finalized it. Even though we've not been living together for
two years. I'm not divorced.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Caesar's last marriage was a rollercoaster. When he finally ended things,
she literally refused to let him go.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
They described how she had clung to his feet as
he tried to get out of the house and he
said it was really traumatic, and he just put it
behind him. I've repressed stuff, I forgot stuff. I can
see how that can happen, But I'm not going to
be intimate with somebody who's married. Now that I know,
I'm horrified, like speechless and feel so humiliated. I don't
(03:03):
even know what to say. This puts it in a
different category.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
But she had already invested so much emotionally and financially
in this new life with him, too much to let
one piece of paper derail their plans. Plus, he was
adamant that he would get it sorted out and they'd
be able to get married the following month. So reluctantly
Carrie let it go.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
We got up and had a nice next day together
and sort of moved on.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And his divorce did go through A month later. After that,
he and Carrie officially tied the knot.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
So get married. It's a beautiful wedding, and then we
plan a honeymoon.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
A month later, In a nod to Brad's legacy, she
and Caesar went to Jamaica for their honeymoon. They stayed
in a new part of the island. It was a
full circle moment for Carrie, a reminder of how far
she'd come in the two years since Brad passed away.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
We get to Jamaica, we check in and that night
we have a great dinner together, kind of romantic, and
we're walking back to the hotel room and I'm excited
because I bought something special. We get into the room,
he flops down on the bed and I go into
the bathroom to change into something sexy.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Starting with night one, their honeymoon did not go to plan.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I hear the TV turn on, and I'm thinking, what's
a little weird. It's not really the focus of the
honeymoon night. And I come out and I pose in
front of the TV, you know, sort of like I'm
better looking than the TV. And he actually almost cranes
his neck around me, and I'm stunned. I can't believe
that he did that. And I'm now feeling underdressed, overexposed,
(04:46):
and just I can feel the goosebumps raising on my
body from the chill. He says, just come up next
to me. He passed the bed, Come up next to me.
I want to watch this, okay, So I do, and
I'm tired. It's been a long day, try level and
I doze off and I don't even remember falling asleep,
but I fall asleep and I come to and I
(05:06):
can't tell how much time has passed, but the TV
is still playing and he's on his phone. I find
that kind of odd, and I'm curious to why he's
so interested in on his phone. And as I'm trying
to like crane my neck without really letting him know
that I'm awake, I see that he's watching something. And
at first my eyes is really blurry because I'm just
waking up. And then i can tell he's watching pornography.
(05:30):
And I'm thinking, okay, you opted out of having a
moment with me to watch pornography. That is soul crushing.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Early on in their relationship, she asked Caesar if he
watched pornography. He told her he didn't. Now on their honeymoon,
she saw that he did. She observed him for another moment.
Caesar is still not noticing that she had woken up.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And while I'm watching him watch, there's a text that
comes in and he opens the textbox and he responds,
and then he looks for a photo. He sends a
quick photo of himself. Then she sends a photo back
of her I mean, they're just like normal photos. There
wasn't like sexting. But on the other hand, I'm thinking
my new husband is sending a photo of himself to
(06:20):
another woman. Yeah, no, you don't do that.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Even though they were just selfies, it felt strange, and
he was sending them to a woman she'd never heard
of before.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
So I make like I'm waking up. He then plays along, Oh,
it's so wonderful you're awake. Oh, I love you so much,
And instead of like pulling me into it, embrace to
kiss me, pull me into something intimate. He starts to
touch me like he's doing something to me, but we're
not doing it really together. And this just on the
tails of what I just saw, feels awful, like the
(06:56):
last thing I want to be doing. So I feel
like I was like trying to scoot away from him,
and I just said the same thing that he said
to me, is come sit next to me. I'm really tired.
Let's just sleep tonight. It's been a lot, it's a
long day. So he does, we fall asleep.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
But Carrie did not fall asleep. It was the first
night of their honeymoon and She was lying awake, staring
at the ceiling.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Feeling really hurt and shocked, like there needs to be
limits in this relationship and that's not an okay kind
of relationship.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
She decided to address what she'd seen over dinner.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I said, hey, I noticed you're on your phone, and
I noticed you're watching a video. And then also you're
texting some woman and you send her a photo of yourself.
I'm not okay with that.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Then Caesar became very quiet.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
He just kind of stays stiff, like, not okay. We
have dinner, we're not really talking. And when we walked
back to our hotel room, he stopped and he stood
in the doorway and he says, I'm going to be
heading out. I'll be back in a couple hours. He
turns around. The door shut. So I watched the door shut,
and I'm aghast, like mouth dropped, shocked, and I think
(08:06):
to myself, this is punishment. He's punishing me.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
She spent the next few hours pacing the hotel room,
hoping she was wrong, hoping he just needed time to
cool off.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
He comes in a couple hours later, and I'm tense.
I'm like, I have no idea what mindset he's going
to be in and he goes, hey, let's go out
to the pool. Let's go swimming. I said, okay, and
he holds my hand as we walk to the pool
and we get out there. He says, look at the sky.
The moon's out tonight. Remember the night I got engaged
with you. The moon's out that night. And he says,
(08:39):
couples shouldn't fight. And you're right, I shouldn't have that
kind of relationship with a woman. That's inappropriate. I'm really sorry.
Why don't we put the phones away for the rest
of the trip and just focus on us? And I
start to cry and I feel, oh, he gets it.
We're on the same page. This is going to be good.
We make a big deal the next day putting the away.
(09:01):
The next seven eight days are great.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Until the last day of the honeymoon. It was four
am and Carrie woke up to a notification on her phone.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I can see on my phone that there's a text
message from a stranger from a woman, and she writes,
so you're married to Caesar. I guess the joke's just
not on me, it's on you too. I've been dating
it for the past three months. Then she proceeds to
start to describe, is that your sunglass case in the car?
(09:34):
It's floral? Are you the person that called him at
three am in the morning a few months ago? Because
I was with him, I was in bed beside him.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
That was her sunglasses case. And they were in a
long distance relationship before this, and Carrie knew she had
called him late sometimes. With Caesar asleep next to her,
she began to panic, was this woman telling the truth?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
As I'm laying there, I literally had the flash. I
don't know him, He's a stranger. I went into the
bathroom and my body just dumped. It was sick. I
was sick. What do I do? My house is sold,
my car is gone. I have property now in Mexico
(10:24):
that expects me to open. I'm mid visa process. I
have to finish this or I lose all that effort.
And I'm literally in transition as if I'm a wire artist,
and I let go of one wire and I'm jumping
to the next, and I'm trying to grab and I'm midjump,
and I'm realizing everything that I thought I was building
(10:44):
on didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
She shook her new husband awake and showed him the messages.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I say to Caesar, Caesar, Caesar, A woman wrote me.
She says, she knows you. His first reaction was stop
reading that. Stop reading that. And my thought was, you know,
you know her, you know what I'm talking about. I
fled the room. I split for the ocean and went
(11:13):
down to the sand and I start circling, literally circling.
It was early, like six am, six thirty, and there
was a runner who run past me. I much look
like a crazy woman, like I don't know what to do.
I'm midjump, I'm in transition. I have no home in
the United States. I don't know what to do here.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So she called a close friend who, like her, also
worked in mental health.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And she says, Carrie, I think he's traumatized. I think
there's something else going on. I really suggest that you
go back and talk to him. I'm thinking, okay, she
knows him. In fact, she's the person that married us.
Maybe there's something more here. Plus she's a therapist. So
I go back in and I get into the room
and he's standing there, white shaking, and he just looked
at me and he said, I just wanted to know
(11:59):
what a felt like to have an affair, and then
he said, you know, I have problems because I've told
you that I've came from a troubled home and that
there have been issues. And I don't know why I
did it. I know it was dumb, but I don't
know why I did that.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Then he asked for her help. He felt like his
behavior was out of control and needed professional support. In fact,
he had asked his ex wives for their help too.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
And they didn't believe me. They laughed at me.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
If anyone could help him, it was Carrie. She believed
in recovery.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
I also, as a psychologist, really believed in the capacity
of people to change. Why would I spend my whole
life doing what I did if I didn't believe people
could actually have a conversion experience.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
As soon as the honeymoon ended, Carrie started looking for
a psychologist, a specialist who could help with trauma, infidelity,
and deception. And she got them an appointment the very
next day.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And she sees us. She says, Carrie, these issues are
really big. He needs residential care and I'm thinking residential
care or moving. Plus who's going to pay for that?
This is not covered by insurance? And he needs months
I've worked in the system. I know how much it
costs for psychiatric care. This is going to add up
(13:21):
to probably close to one hundred thousand dollars in treatment costs.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Instead of long term residential care. They planned for a
three day intensive program for couples and crisis and they
flew there right away.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So we walk into the intensive program and it was
built on accountability model. The focus is more of what
are you going to do? What's the reality of your situation?
Do you have a plan in place? They're trying to
help us really think this through.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Although the program was meant for couples to attend together,
where both individuals or promise treatment and support, Carrie felt
like her pain wasn't being seen.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
But we go through the three days and it becomes
really clear to me that I'm invisible here. This treatment's
about him, and yet I feel like my whole world's
been torn apart, that I've been shattered. There's two people here. Yes,
he was the one who acted out, but I'm the
one who's suffering the consequences. What about me?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Caesar left the program feeling clear headed and committed to Carrie.
He had an accountability plan and an outpatient counselor to
check in with him every week, but Carrie felt more
confused than ever.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
We walk out of the program after three days, and
I feel like, well, he has a better direction, he
seems helped, But I'm now more scared than ever, and
I'm going into a country that I don't think has
this kind of care available. All I know is now
I don't know how much. I don't know, because if
that's what they did, tell me, this is like a problem,
like an iceberg. You just saw a tip, but you
(14:57):
don't know how deep this goes or how big this is.
So all that you did for me is to let
me know there's a whole lot more to this that
you don't know, and I don't know what to do.
I'm in a mid leap and I don't know what
I'm in for.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
After leaving the three day treatment program, Carrie and Caesar
continued with their plan to move into a new apartment
imply a Del Carmen and get their business off the ground.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
We move into our first apartment and we furnish it.
We're watching the construction of the next two and trying
to get the business going, you know, get our properties
listed on Airbnb.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Besides starting their business, their main priority was continuing Caesar's treatment,
and it seemed to be working for him.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
In that period of time. It actually gets good, it
gets quiet. You know, he's working a program. He does
his weekly thing. I do my weekly thing. It feels
like a partnership. We're buying furs together, we're setting up
a house, kids are coming in for Christmas.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
With Caesar's commitment to recovery, Carrie felt validated in her
decision to give him another chance and get him help.
He was really trying. Their life in Mexico was finally
coming together. At night, they would go up to their
penthouse roof and look at the stars.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
And the stars are out and there's actually even falling stars,
and we're talking to each other and kissing each other
and talking about how beautiful this is. And had like
a little blanket on that platio, just really really lovely.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
After a few months, their business started to take off.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
The properties are now coming online. The business is off
to a good start, and I feel really optimistic about
all of this.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
But their relationship on the men, they were proving to
be strong business partners. They settled into a daily routine.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
He would set the alarm super early in the morning.
Then we would read something together, talk to each other,
and then we'd get dressed and get going for our day.
We'd run from appointment to appointment. But there's another half
of the company that had to be run, and that
is the customer end, who's making all the emails and
it's corresponding with guests. So I'd manage that at night,
(17:18):
and then we'd do all the businesses together in the day.
So basically I was like doing two jobs one day.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
While running around town to manage the properties.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
I start to suddenly vomit. I mean like I'm throwing
up saliva, and it's really strange. I'd never seen anything
like it before. He calmly hands me a grocery bag
to vomit in, and then we never talk about it again,
and we just went on for the rest of the day.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And then she began noticing other symptoms.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
I have really severe diarrhea, real strange diarrhea that I'd
never seen before. It's water, it's clear water. It frightens
me because I've never seen this before. And I had
white lines, like you hit your fingernails as a hammer.
I was searching for what causes white lines across all
the fingernails. They're called nasee lines.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And it only got worse.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
My toenails were falling off, and my yearine was now
dark like tea and frothing.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So they went to the er.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
They take one look at me, and they hospitalized me.
And while I'm admitted, the nurse comes up and says,
you don't understand. You're super ill. Your white count is
extraordinarily high, but we can't find the infection. You're very,
very sick. You don't understand how sick you are. Caesar
comes in that night to sit next to me, and
he sits there and he goes. I realized something today.
(18:42):
I realized if something were to happen to you, I
would really miss you. That's a weird thing to say.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
After a few nights in the hospital with ivy antibiotics,
Carrie was feeling better. The doctors ran dozens of tests,
but ultimately couldn't figure out what was causing Carrie's symptoms.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
But I get discharged and we continue to kind of
do normal business, you know, running day to day life.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Caesar thought Carrie's sudden illness could be stress related. After all,
she'd had an incredibly busy year, so they decided to
go on a weekend get away to relax and reconnect
with each other.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So we go to this resort for Thanksgiving weekend, and
the first night we get there, he heads in for
a shower and while he does it, he leaves his
phone on the table. I don't know why, but I
picked up his phone and snoop for the first time
in my life.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
She didn't find anything concerning in his photos or texts,
but then she opened his email.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
This is the first I really heard of Maria.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Earlier that day, he'd written a long email to this woman.
It sounded like she was an old flame.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
So I go rush into the bathroom to use it
for he used to read the email, and I opened
the email. He says this marriage is a prison, and
he's talking about missing her.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
He told Carrie he wasn't talking to any other women,
that the help he was getting was really working. What
did he mean this marriage was a prison. She'd been
working so hard to hold it together. She sent herself
a copy and then.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I send it to our counselor that we saw at
the intensive and say we need an immediate appointment. He's
breached his contract with me, and he said he wasn't
doing this. So we have a therapy appointment with our
therapist and he confronts Caesar about this, and Caesar doesn't
really have a good excuse. I was just dumb, I
(20:45):
was reminiscent. I was feeling nostalgic.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
He said he'd been missing his ex Maria and that
they once spent time at the same beach.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
He said, I thought of her and I reached out
or I shouldn't have. I know. It was really bad.
And then the therapist turns to me and says, so,
what are you going to do about this? What's your consequence?
We talked about this. You need to have a consequence,
and I'm thinking, what do you mean. I can't kick
him out. I'm in another country, We're starting this business up,
things are in construction. I depend on him. I can't
(21:17):
run a business without him.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So instead of a consequence, she opted for a solution.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So we both get into therapy. That's my solution. He
starts to see a therapist.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
But that didn't quell her anxiety.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And I'm starting to feel increasingly paranoid, enough so that
I'm now like trying to break into his phone. Or
I'm now looking for a second phone. It's weird. I'm
like feeling crazy, and while all this is happening, he's
just getting harder to reach, feeling really distant to me.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
He told Carrie he was going to his regular therapy appointments,
but then she found.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Out he didn't go. He apparently stashed the phone somewhere
near the therapist's house and did something else. I have
no idea what he did for the hour and a half,
but he didn't go. So I'm catching him in lies
now and I know something is up.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
This lie was disturbing. She started to doubt if he
was really committed to changing. Repeatedly catching Caesar and lies
became a vicious cycle. But then one day she got
news that pulled her out of it. Carrie had three
sons who were now all adults. Two of them were
living together, and one noticed his brother, Cameron, wasn't acting himself.
(22:27):
He was observing Cameron's behavior and called their mom out
of concern.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
He said, he's been staring at the whole wall all weekend, Mom,
just staring at the wall, like ours staring at the wall.
And then he'll say weird things like he doesn't know
what time of the day it is, and I'm thinking, oh, no,
this is a serious neurological scien it's an emergency. I'm frightened.
This is bad. Something's really wrong.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
She flew back to America to be with Cameron. When
she got to the hospital, all of her boys were there.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And they've been waiting for me. I can tell they've
been waiting for mom to show up. And he says, Mom,
it's leukemia. And then we follow in each other's arms
and just start to cry, and I think, oh, I've
been here before.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Cameron was scared.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
He said, Mom, don't leave me, don't leave me, and
I say, I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
It wasn't even a decision for Carrie. She knew she
had to stay and take care of him. She spent
entire nights a week keeping an eye on her son's
health as he started chemotherapy.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
But you have to see if the chemotherapy is going
to work. So he makes it through the first round,
which is a big deal. He has to be hospitalized.
It's given every twelve hours for five to seven days.
It's ron mclock chemotherapy. And meanwhile the treatment team tells
me he's going to need this for upward to eighteen months,
and he needs you here. This is a big thing
(23:57):
and he's going to need your help.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Caesar had come with Carrie back to the US, and
right away she noticed that he was distant. He didn't
seem interested in staying in America long term or in
supporting Carrie and Cameron. Instead, Caesar started complaining he wanted
to go back to their life in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
He's telling me he's not staying. I can tell already.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
One night, while Caesar was sleeping, his phone alarm started ringing,
so Carrie got up to shut it off.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
So I go in to get the phone and turn
the alarm off. I passed through the pass code and
it opens right up to the text messages. He'd been
texting and had fallen asleep with it beside his head.
The messages between him and Maria, and it says, my
sister had cancer. She's recovered, she's just fine. Her son
(24:48):
will be too. He's young, he's twenty eight. He's got
the advantage of youth on its side. And Caesar right back.
So yeah, I know, but I got to be supportive
for Carrie. Carrie's really worried that's not how she feels.
And then he says, but I'll have to be careful
because I'm with her now a lot. We're going to
have to really be careful around these conversations. And then
she texts, but what I'm really concerned about is that
(25:10):
Cameron's care is going to eat up your half of
her money.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
It was so callous, calculated even.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Not only had he been betraying me and seeing women,
but he has been communicating with her about a lot,
including the money and what's happening with the money, and
that there is this money.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Reading these texts and seeing how dismiss if he was
of her son's care and the concern for Carrie's money
half of Brad's life insurance money finally sent her over
the edge.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
It's money that paid out on Brad's death to a
person who never earned it, didn't know him, didn't love him,
and is trying to exploit and manipulate me. He's going
to capitalize on Brad's death about enraging me. Hell no,
I loved Bread. We spent thirty three years together. He
(26:08):
died from something catastrophic. Be damned, you're gonna get half
of that. I sat there with Bread, then morphine didn't work,
and him pleading for another dose. Your half of Bread's
life insurance? What do you mean your half? There is
no your half here.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
After she saw text between Caesar and Maria, Carrie was furious.
She finally saw Caesar for who he really was, or
at least she thought she had.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
We're at a restaurant having a meal, and I finally
say to him, you know what, this can't good for you.
It's certainly not good for me. I think maybe we
need to separate, and I walk away. I get up,
and I walk out.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
She spent a few hours alone to process everything, to
grieve the life she envisioned with Caesar. After all, her
first marriage was a fairy tale. It was solid, joyous,
and honest. Eventually, she made her way home to continue
the conversation with him.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
I said, so, what's going on here? Do you want
a divorce? He said, yes, I want a divorce.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
The following morning, they sat down at the breakfast table
for the next hard conversation about what this divorce would
mean for both of them financially.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
He starts to list all the properties that the company owns,
one by one, and next to them, he writes their
market value, and then he adds the column up in
front of me, draws a hard line, so hard that
I think he's going to scratch into the wood table.
That's how Fermi pressed. And he points at it that
that's what I mowed half of that. I have a
(28:01):
right to half of that. And I look at him
and my mouth dropped, and I said, but that's Brad's legacy.
That's what he gave to me and the kids to
give me a new start. And he says, life's never
been fair to me, Why should it be fair to you.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
When Terry and Caesar sat down to discuss the terms
of their divorce, she watched her soon to be ex
husband become an entirely different person.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
He's basically saying he has a right to something he
has never worked to own, didn't come into this relationship
with anything, and he's going to walk out with half
of everything brand and I had spent all these years,
with all these decisions to get to he feels he
has a right to it because life's not been fair.
(28:50):
I'm enraged. I can't believe this is the way this is,
and I can't believe this is actually legal. I'm speechless,
like floored. I feel like I don't know him. This
is another level of a stranger. I don't know who
this person is.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
She was not going to let him take what Brad
had worked so hard for. After all, she'd only been
with Caesar for three years.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
So my first thing is is I pull all the
documents together, proving all the money I'd brought in, proving
that it had been my assets, my capital that had
been invested, and I make an appointment with the best
divorce attorney that I can find in town, and I
sit down with her. Then she looks at me and says,
none of that matters. According to Mexican law, he's fifty
(29:35):
to fifty owner unless you can prove he's broken the law.
He's owed half, he's owed half. I realized, I better
start making copies of the deeds to prove that I
actually own the property. So I get smart and start
making photocopies of stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Carrie was going back and forth in the US, taking
care of her son Cameron, whose cancer treatment was going well,
and in Mexico untangling her marriage with Caesar. They moved
into separate apartments while Carrie collected the evidence she needed
for their divorce, Caesar had not invested any money into
their shared business, but, like the lawyer told her, her
(30:12):
case didn't look promising.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
I'm frantic. I don't know how to get the company back.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
To add insult to injury. In the middle of this
financial untangling, she received news Caesar's ex Maria was back
in town and they were back together.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
And not only has she been in town, but they
put a deposit on a property together. They're going to
buy a house together.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
She and Caesar had rarely spoken throughout the divorce. They
were still in a bitter legal negotiation about dividing their business,
but one day she got a text from him. He
sounded desperate.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
It says, I'm in trouble. I've been realizing I'm out
of control and I need help. I need to see you.
Can we meet.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
She thought maybe this was her chance to offer him
a settlement that he would accept.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
And I'm thinking, this is the moment you've been waiting for.
You have an opportunity to leverage your control of the company.
He's going to need help from you. Use it. So
I meet him at a coffee shop nearby, and he
starts to tell me he's in trouble. And then I
lean forward and a whisper to him. I used to
think that you were a good guy who sometimes wore
(31:25):
a monster mask. But when I realized that you're actually
a monster who sometimes wears a good guy mask. He
goes absolutely white, and he starts to sweat, and he whispers,
I'm glad you know.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
She finally saw him for who he really was, and
she knew she needed an out. So Carrie told him
she would help him through the next few months financially
if you agreed to her terms.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
I say to him, I will help you, but I
want all of the company back. You have to sign
the company money over to me. And he says to me, so,
what are you thinking how much? And I said, how
about whatever I have sitting in the bank right now,
which is one third of what he wants. You can
have that. You can have the car that you're driving.
(32:15):
I'll sell the other car. You can have whatever is
in the house. That's what you can have.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Caesar didn't like the deal. He wanted to split their
company's profits for the next two years.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And he leans into me and he whispers, you don't
want to make me angry.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
In the moment, She pretended to agree to the deal.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I shake his hand and I say, okay, I promise,
But in my head I thought I promised as much
of a promise as any of your promises you've ever
made to me.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
She never intended to give him half the profits. Once
he signed over the company, she sold it. In the end,
she settled their divorce and paid him ount. It was
a big sum, but not nearly what he wanted, not
even close.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
He never got any more money out of me out
in that settlement that I made, the agreement I made
with him of the attorney.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
After selling the properties, she packed up her life in
Mexico for good.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
So I packed myself up. I throw most of it away.
I don't want it. Everything that reminds me of this house,
this life, this person, this relationship. I took to the
trash and people scavengers came in and got it, and
it was like, go for it, you can have it.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
She found evidence that he and Maria had been meeting
up every few weeks for their entire relationship, even back
to when she first met Caesar.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
And then when we break finally up, he's texting her
about the half of the money, and then he sees
her right away, right after we break up.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
And she also found some things that made her suspect
her entire relationship with Caesar had been orchestrated. Like he said,
he had been researching widows.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I found cliff notes he kept on women. He literally
was keeping track of stories, what to say, He planned
things out. The guy that never existed.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
She found no cards with names of women he dated,
and on the cards he'd written information about each of them.
This is one of those strange details she'll never get
an explanation for. Shocked, ashamed, and betrayed, Carrie flew back
to the US. She focused on her family and settled down,
moving close to her son, whose cancer was in remission.
(34:31):
She was rebuilding, but there was still one piece of
unfinished business. She wanted to know who Caesar really was,
so she tracked down his ex wives.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
I get a hold of wife number one, who lived
in Mexico, heard her version. Then I heard the one
who'd been married seventeen years. But the one I couldn't
get a hold of was the one that was the shortest,
that he had the least to say about. So six
months after I sent her a message, she contacts me
and says, yeah, I'll have a phone call with you.
And she says, because one of the things that happened
is I got really sick. I said what she said, Yeah,
(35:05):
I got really sick and I don't know why. And
I got better when I got out of the relationship.
And I'm thinking, well, that's really strange.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
It was strange. Carrie's symptoms also got better after she
left the relationship. The vomiting and diarrhea, the lines on
her nails, they all disappeared. She says she'll never know
why she got so sick during her marriage. What she
does know is that that relationship was literally toxic to
her body.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Living with somebody who's constantly deceitful, this chronic state of
being in a fight or flight with all the cordals,
all levels, does terrible damage to the body.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Back in the US, she joined support groups and relied
on her three adult sons. Cameron was cancer free and
the family had become closer than ever.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I did have a moment with my sons and I
said to them, you must be so ashamed of me.
And my oldest looked at me and he said, no, mom,
Caesar used your best qualities against you. Were not ashamed,
and I just wept.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
That was the start of her healing process, and the
next step was writing a book about what she went through.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
They just started writing. I wrote this story as fast
as I could. Took me nine months to write Love
You More, and I thought, really, really healing.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
With time, she could look back on the relationship with clarity.
She applied her expertise in psychology and began to understand
that what she experienced was narcissistic abuse.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
They consider a narcissistically abusive relationship a cult of two
really the same tactics that cult leaders use. Highly predatory
people use the same to create fast rapport, build trust,
and also create a very highly almost addictive relationship that's
very difficult to leave. It's intoxicating but also terrifying. It's
(37:01):
like a connection on fear.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Through her work in therapy, she came to a big revelation,
one that went back to the abuse she experienced as
a child, and she realized that violation might have played
into the cycle she found herself in with Caesar.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
I realized that when I was little and I had
suffered the abuse with my sister, even though I was
only like five and she was four in my head.
I had made her a promise that I would never
abandon her again, and I approached that promise that I
had made that was really unreasonable as a child, but
I sort of applied it to him, and so leave
(37:39):
him felt like I was abandoning her all over again.
And that was what made it really hard for me
to truly break free, break out of this and come
into that conclusion. Felt like it broke so much of
my paralysis, my confusion.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
She wanted to know how she'd missed the signs with
Caesar and why she stayed in it for so long.
It wasn't like her.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
I cannot begin to describe to you the agony paralysis
I felt about making a decision. The mind literally says,
I can't compute. Both realities seem true. I can't compute,
so it makes no decision, as if that's a decision.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
She turned to books and research on coercive control and
narcissistic abuse to help give her perspective.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
I came across a book by Don Hennessy called How
He Gets Into Her Head. Highly recommend it Irish law Enforcement.
He writes about the grooming practices in the first part
of the book he describes working with domestic violence victims
for years, I mean like many, many, many years. They
kept trying to do all these studies finding a consistent
pattern among victims that would predict that this is a
person vulnerable to abuse. They couldn't find any There was
(38:48):
no consistent pattern among all of the domestic violent victims.
It wasn't until they started looking at the predators that
the pattern fit. The pattern is with the predator, not
with the victims.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
She's been able to let go of her shame about
the decision to stay with Caesar. The betrayal community has
shown her that no one is above being deceived.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
I'm a psychologist. Everyone somehow assumes a psychologists are like
above human, superhuman. We should know, we should be excellent
reads of people. Yeah, I'm good reads of people, But
when it comes to myself, I'm not always so good.
My personal life, my personal perceptions get involved. It's very
easy for us to criticize victims and say it's the
victim's fault. But you're just showing your ignorance because anyone
(39:35):
can fall for something like this. You just haven't met
the sophisticated enough predator.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
When she was at her most vulnerable, grieving Brad's death,
and desperate to have that kind of partnership back again.
At that very moment, she happened to meet the right predator.
Her trust in Caesar is inherently linked to losing Brad.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Somebody prepares you for what it's like to lose a partner.
You know. We often think if you say there than
my other half, I'll tell you it felt like I
was ripped in half. And to think about the future,
I've got maybe what thirty more years of no one
in my life, and I'm going to be alone and
(40:20):
this big, critical person who was my partner, my husband,
my lover, my best friend, my co parent is gone.
I can't even begin to describe to you the panic
I felt. We talk about love bombing and it's too
good to be true, and it happens super fast and
you suddenly are with this person for forever. But you
(40:43):
know what, sometimes love looks like that, That's what love
with Brad looked like.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
why did you want to tell your story? For Carrie,
it comes back to letting people know no one is
above deception or betrayal.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
And by the way. I have had many psychologists who've
now since reached out to me to tell me it's
happened to them. And an excellent book is Kristin Milstead,
Why Can't I Just Leave? Who's a PhD in sociology,
and it happened to her. But there are many professional
women who are and men who've gotten trapped by this.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
I look up one of his email addresses and it
shows that he has an Ashley Madison account, and I
just nearly threw up.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal pod
at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One
way to show support is by subscribing to our show
on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review
betray Five star reviews go a long way. A big
(42:03):
thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a
production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group
and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
by Nancy 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 Mercury and
(42:25):
Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinchech.
Audio editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing
support from Nico Ruka and Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed
by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by myb Music and
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(42:48):
or wherever you get your podcasts,
Host
Andrea Gunning
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