0:01

At Southern Illinois University in

0:03

the small city of Carbondale. Three

0:06

light brown towers our campus landmarks

0:09

their high rise dorms. A

0:11

sophomore named Emily has moved

0:13

into one of them. I lived

0:15

actually on the fifteenth floor, and

0:18

the view from up inside the towers

0:21

that high up was just amazing. I just

0:23

always loved it, and of course

0:25

at night you could see all

0:27

the lights from the city. It's

0:30

the fall of two thousand three.

0:32

Emily is not her real name, which

0:35

she didn't want used. Emily

0:37

and her roommate share a bathroom with

0:39

two freshmen. The four girls

0:41

are sweet mates, and as the semester

0:44

goes on, they get to know each other. One

0:46

of the freshman sweet mates is named

0:49

Sarah, Sarah Delashman.

0:52

She's from Highland, a small town almost

0:55

two hours north. She's here

0:57

as a pre med student. Sarah

0:59

has short brown hair. It was

1:01

kind of dirty blonde or close to

1:03

brown, and it

1:05

kind of looked a little bit feathered. She

1:08

had glasses embraces. If

1:10

she owned makeup, I didn't know it

1:12

because I don't think I ever saw her wear

1:14

makeup before at all. My

1:17

previous two sweet mates the year before

1:20

they were nowhere nearest, friendly, and so

1:22

Sarah kind of seemed a little bit like a beam of

1:25

sunshine. I guess you could say Sarah

1:27

doesn't talk about her family all that much.

1:30

I never saw it her dad.

1:33

I think her dad was not in a picture, and

1:36

I don't remember if he had passed away or

1:38

it was, you know, like a divorce situation.

1:41

I never saw her mom ever,

1:43

which is kind of interesting because she

1:46

lived about maybe an hour

1:48

and a half, maybe closer to two hours.

1:50

Her cousin had brought her

1:53

newborn baby, and that's

1:56

the only time I think that I remember

1:58

she had any family that came and visited

2:01

him. Not

2:06

long into the semester, Sarah

2:08

walks into Emily's room.

2:10

I think it was about maybe October

2:13

or so when she came and told

2:15

us that, you know, that she had leukemia.

2:18

Leukemia. No one takes

2:21

the news of Sarah's cancer harder

2:23

than her roommate, the other freshman

2:25

of the bunch. She was one of those friends

2:27

that if you

2:29

were crossing the street and she saw that the

2:31

bus was about to hit you, she would have

2:33

jumped in the way to save her friend. She

2:36

was going to support her no matter what

2:38

she was That close with Sarah.

2:41

The semester goes on. They come

2:43

and go from class, and Sarah

2:46

makes sure that nobody forgets

2:48

about her cancer. One

2:50

day, Sarah talks about how she's starting

2:53

to lose her hair and maybe she should

2:55

just go ahead and cut it all off. They

2:58

all gather in Emily's room with hers,

3:00

roll back the rug, and get ready to

3:02

give Sarah a haircut. At

3:05

the last minute, though she backs out. She

3:07

never says why, but you know

3:09

who doesn't back out, her roommate.

3:12

She chops off her hair and a show of

3:14

support. One day,

3:16

Sarah suggests they watch a movie

3:19

called A Walk to Remember.

3:21

It's a teen romance and the

3:23

lead female character is dying

3:26

from cancer. It's the kind

3:28

of cancer story that you might see on

3:30

the Hallmark channel. I'm

3:32

sick, I'm

3:35

sick. Aprkemia.

3:39

Emily isn't so sure this

3:41

is a good idea. You

3:43

know, we were told by Sarah

3:46

and her roommate that it was fine, that

3:48

they were going to be okay, they were going to hold themselves

3:51

together, and it

3:53

was completely the opposite. By the time the movie

3:55

was over, the room was dark

3:58

except for the light of the TV and off in the

4:00

corner. The

4:02

movie ended with Sarah and

4:05

her roommate crumpled on the floor,

4:07

hugging each other, crying together.

4:10

It was a bad idea not to intervene. The

4:13

school year ends, everyone

4:16

scatters for the summer. Emily

4:18

and Sarah decide to room together when they

4:20

come back in the fall. One

4:22

evening in July, Emily is at

4:25

a wedding, and then during

4:27

the reception, I get

4:29

a call from Sarah that she's

4:31

been in a car accident, and a bad one

4:33

at that. She said that she was

4:35

going to have to have her back fused. If

4:38

I could almost paraphrase how she said, you

4:40

know, I've been in a car accident and

4:44

I'm in a wheelchair, and I don't know if I'm

4:46

gonna be able to walk again. Emily

4:51

doesn't see Sarah until the start

4:53

of the new fall term.

4:56

They agree on a move in time, but when

4:58

Emily gets there and opens the door,

5:00

she discovers that Sarah has surprised

5:02

her by moving in early. Here

5:04

the door start to open and

5:08

she's in a wheelchair. And not

5:10

only is she a wheelchair, she's a She's an emmanual

5:12

wheelchair and not an electric wheelchair. She

5:15

also had this heavy

5:18

plastic, medical looking back

5:20

brace that kind of fit

5:23

around her almost like a corset would.

5:25

After school starts, Sarah isn't

5:28

around all that much. She just

5:30

kind of disappeared for a day, or

5:32

disappear for two days, and I barely

5:35

saw her. But then one day

5:38

she started talking to me, and she

5:40

was laying on her bed, and I turned

5:42

around in my chair um

5:45

to face her in the window, and

5:48

I looked back at her, and she was smiling,

5:50

talking, But the way

5:52

that she was laying on the bed looked

5:55

really strange, because she was laying

5:59

like you were laying on your stomach, propping

6:02

your your elbows up like you were

6:04

flipping through a magazine, and like you had your

6:06

feet kind of flipped up towards

6:08

the ceiling. And I just

6:10

remember looking at her, watching

6:12

her smiling and with

6:15

his fused back of hers. I

6:17

thought, I don't know how she's this

6:19

comfortable laying on the

6:21

bed like she is. But

6:24

that was the turning point that something

6:27

is off. Emily

6:30

and Sarah start to not get along, typical

6:33

roommates not clicking. Emily

6:35

moves out, leaving Sarah to fend for

6:37

herself and the wheelchair in the back brace

6:40

a few weeks later, Emily walks

6:43

through the double doors of a dining hall,

6:46

and there she is. I see

6:48

Sarah at the top of the stairs, and

6:51

she is not in a wheelchair, she

6:53

is not in a back brace. She's

6:56

in jeans and a T shirt. Students

6:59

scurry two and throw all around

7:01

them, But for Emily and Sarah

7:03

time stops. Everything

7:10

else around me just seems to disappear

7:13

just as I step into the dining

7:15

hall, looking up at her. And I looked

7:17

at her, and she saw me, and she looked

7:20

at me kind of with a blank stare.

7:23

It wasn't a sad thing, it wasn't a mean

7:25

face or anything. It was just kind of blank,

7:27

and it seemed like everything else faded

7:29

away, and that was like the

7:32

only thing that was going on was just the two

7:34

of us kind of staring at each other. Emily

7:36

walks up the stairs past Sarah,

7:39

neither of them saying a word. And

7:42

I turned the corner to head

7:44

to where the mailboxes were, and

7:47

curiosity got the better of me, and I turned

7:50

back to look at her. And she

7:52

hadn't moved, you, like her feet

7:55

or anything, but she had still turned and

7:57

looked at me with that's

8:00

aim look, it was

8:02

game over, but

8:07

her game was far from

8:09

over. The worst part is I

8:11

found out much, much, much, much later

8:14

that it morphed into something so

8:17

sinister and hurtful

8:20

than I never imagined. We

8:23

were warm up, you know,

8:25

we were practiced. There's

8:27

a reason why Emily doesn't want us

8:29

to use her name. She's hoping

8:31

Sarah has forgotten it. She

8:34

doesn't want Sarah to ever find

8:36

her. You're telling a story about

8:38

someone who's such a masterminded

8:41

lying, and you're like, no one's going to believe

8:43

this story. I mean, it just sounds crazy

8:46

to even think of, Like some of the stuff that had

8:48

happened. Emily never saw

8:50

Sarah again. But over

8:52

the years, Sarah got better and better

8:55

at insinuating herself into online

8:57

support groups for people with illnesses

8:59

or charities that help patients should

9:02

find a way into people's hearts and

9:04

lives. She obviously kept many,

9:07

many, many stories straight for a very

9:09

very long time. She did a good job of fooling

9:11

a lot of people for a really long time, until

9:14

the day she told one lie

9:17

too many. This was a

9:19

case that victims

9:21

were very passionate about. You know,

9:23

Sarah can go to prison, someone can

9:25

lock her up for a crime, but

9:28

where is the law? The law

9:30

doesn't account for the trauma.

9:33

This is a story told by the

9:35

victims of what may seem like a victimless

9:38

crime. Sarah delash

9:40

Miant wasn't really after money or

9:42

power. She needed something

9:45

far more complicated, and what

9:47

she stole from everyone who trusted

9:49

her and believed her in the

9:51

end was far more valuable

9:54

than money. I'm Laura

9:56

Beale. You're listening to Sympathy

9:58

Pains. This

10:04

is episode one. Bethany.

10:08

I've been a medical journalist for a really long

10:11

time, so long that there are times

10:13

when I think that nothing is really going to surprise

10:15

me anymore. Until it does. Until

10:18

you pull a string and just keep pulling

10:20

and pulling, trying to make sense of

10:22

things, and in the end you're left

10:25

in a place that you didn't expect

10:27

to be. This is one

10:29

of those stories. Bethany

10:32

Turner lives in Indianapolis with

10:34

her young daughter. She has a round

10:36

face and soft brown eyes. She's

10:39

thirty one years old. She grew

10:41

up here in a tight knit religious family,

10:43

pretty sheltered until she went to college

10:46

in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Bethany

10:48

is one of those people who not only recognizes

10:51

pain and injustice. She feels it

10:54

down to her bones. She's drawn

10:56

to people in need, people who live

10:58

in the invisible margins of society.

11:01

You're helping yourself along the way to because

11:04

every one of those situations I walked out of I felt like

11:06

I gained more than I was giving. It's it's an

11:08

environment where you

11:10

get to learn from each other, but feel like you're bettering a

11:12

community too. In two thousand

11:15

and fifteen, she was looking for the

11:17

next place she could serve. I

11:19

just finished up a term with AmeriCorps. I

11:22

had done a year with them working with children

11:24

in South Florida. I had traveled abroad

11:26

and done some um teaching.

11:29

I was searching for the kindness. I was searching

11:31

for the humanity. I was searching

11:34

for the community. Scrolling

11:37

through the Internet, she started reading about

11:39

a place in Texas called Camp Summit.

11:42

Today, it spans out of our almost five

11:44

acres, near a town called No Joke

11:47

Paradise. It's been around

11:49

in some form since the nineteen forties.

11:52

It's a place where adults with disabilities

11:54

can spend a week soaking in the outdoors,

11:57

doing the kind of stuff that society

11:59

usually makes hard for them, like swimming

12:02

or putting on a talent show. This

12:04

resonated with Bethany. She had had

12:07

an uncle who was disabled and a friend

12:09

in college who was too. That

12:11

friend especially gave Bethany a

12:13

whole new perspective. She encouraged

12:16

her to not be afraid of being

12:18

bold. She just really challenged

12:20

me to be better and

12:22

try different things and not make

12:24

excuses. The moment Bethany

12:27

drove through the gates of Camp Summit and

12:29

onto the gravel driveway, she knew

12:32

this is where she needed to be.

12:35

You come in and there everything in campus

12:37

surrounded by trees. There's um

12:39

some little walkways back in there where we would take

12:41

hikes into the woods a little bit, and they had some areas

12:44

that were set up for bonfires. The boys camp

12:46

is on the right, so there's five

12:48

or six, I'd say five, maybe

12:50

cabins, just a typical old

12:53

school camp house. Campers

12:55

could ride horses, shoot arrows,

12:58

even go down a zip line. A

13:00

lot of them told me it was their vacation, which

13:02

hadn't really occurred to me until they

13:04

said that out loud. That you know, they

13:06

live in assisted living homes, or

13:09

they live with caregivers or they've lived with family

13:11

their whole life, and this

13:13

is there one or two times

13:16

a year where they can take a week to go be with friends

13:18

and and it be a completely

13:20

accessible experience. For

13:25

many of the campers, it's the best

13:27

week of their lives. Yeah, it's

13:29

the best week of anybody's life that gets to go. To

13:31

be honest with you, I mean, the staff loves it just as

13:33

much, if not more, than the campers do. I think it's

13:36

a very sacred community. Sacred

13:38

community. I've heard this phrase

13:40

a lot while working on this story. You

13:43

passed that gate and everybody's just kind of their own

13:45

chaotic mess, laughing and hugging, and I

13:48

have have never experienced

13:50

so many hugs and so much laughter in my life.

13:52

And the lasting friendships that

13:54

came out of just those few weeks of being there, I think

13:56

are going to be lifelong. The

13:59

new camp burs arrived on Sundays.

14:02

During one session in the fall of two

14:04

thousand fifteen, Bethany

14:06

and the other counselors were roaming through the

14:08

cabin, which was bustling with the chatter

14:10

and activity of unpacking. One

14:13

of the campers was in a power wheelchair

14:15

in the middle of the room.

14:18

Yeah, I remember her wearing a lot of like soft

14:21

pink and soft clothes.

14:23

She told the counselor she had muscular

14:25

dystrophee. She could hold herself

14:28

upright, but could barely move from

14:30

the neck down. Just a little bit

14:32

of arm control enough to work the toggle

14:34

on her chair was all she could manage. Her

14:37

name was Sarah. She

14:39

was thirty years old. She

14:41

said she had her nursing license and lived with

14:43

her mom in southern Illinois, in a town

14:45

not far from St. Louis. She

14:48

kind of came across with someone who hadn't experienced

14:50

a lot outside of her

14:52

small town in Illinois. Bethany

14:54

drifted from camper to camper, helping

14:57

organize their bedding and clothes. So

15:00

of the caregivers was already helping her unpack

15:02

everything because she was basically just kind of pointing where

15:04

she wanted things and organized. And she had she

15:06

brought a c pat machine, so

15:09

that she was talking to her about how to set that up. And she

15:11

pointed over at the separate suitcase and she said,

15:13

open that one. It has some other things in there.

15:15

For the cabin. She had a bunch of

15:17

crafts and things that we could do. I think she had

15:20

maybe even some snacks for us. Of course,

15:22

then everyone else in the cabinet is immediately drawn

15:24

to her and want to see what was in there. The treats

15:27

were a draw, but so was she.

15:29

She seemed like a very good friend to

15:32

everyone. I mean she showed up day one with crafts

15:34

and things ready to go. I mean, I'm

15:36

definitely not that friend most days that I come

15:39

prepared with, you know, thoughtful gifts

15:41

and things. And so she just she set this aura

15:43

in the camp. Because

15:47

of Sarah's circumstances, the counselors

15:49

had to do everything for her, dress

15:52

her, cut her food into bite sized pieces,

15:54

even change her feminine hygiene products.

15:57

They bathed her two and she liked

15:59

to shower every evening. I'm

16:02

five one two, and she

16:05

was significantly bigger and taller than me

16:07

and the other two caregivers. So whoever

16:09

was lifting her from the front, it's really hard to describe,

16:12

but essentially it's, you know, kind of a dead lift

16:14

to get the weight off of your back. But the

16:16

way she would land, because of her height and her

16:18

weight and her inability to help at

16:20

all, our spines

16:23

were going the wrong direction, and just the weight

16:25

on the top of our shoulders. But

16:28

they did it. It's why they were there.

16:31

And as time went on, Bethany

16:33

and Sarah drew closer and closer,

16:36

until their lives became interwoven

16:39

in unexpected ways. Bethany

16:43

gave everything she had to make sure

16:45

that Sarah had the kind of vacation

16:47

she came for. It was just a really empowering

16:50

week for a lot of reasons. She got to participate

16:52

in some camp traditions and things. I

16:54

remember all of the conversations

16:56

of what she didn't have. She

16:59

didn't have the abilitlity to move out on her own

17:01

and you know, have roommates. She

17:03

wanted to experience freedom,

17:06

and she really wanted to go down the zip

17:08

line. It's maybe a ten second ride.

17:10

It assumed really fast, but we would put her

17:14

power wheelchair underneath the zip line.

17:16

There was kind of a sack. It has four points

17:19

with some carabineers on it. To be

17:21

able to lift her with some rope out

17:23

of the power wheelchair and onto

17:26

the zip line. Getting

17:29

her onto the zip line took a lot of staff

17:32

and delayed activities for other campers.

17:35

She just kept throwing her neck back. There was

17:37

a lot of concern on letting her do this, because she

17:39

was not giving us any assistance. But

17:41

she finally did it and went across

17:44

and they lowered her down onto

17:46

the deck to unhook the carabineers. And remember

17:48

her just laying there and just sobbing. It

17:52

felt like such a big moment for her. Through

17:54

it all, Bethany was there for

17:56

the triumphs and the fireside

17:58

hard hearts. Sara

18:01

seemed to make a point of having one on

18:03

one time with the staff. She

18:05

was very intentional with her friendships

18:07

from the get go, and I

18:09

think I just am drawn to deep conversation

18:12

anyway. And so I

18:14

mean, she told me about her home life

18:16

and things like that and college friends and

18:19

feels like you're packing all these things into one week, and

18:21

so it felt much more heartfelt.

18:23

And then when you all parted at

18:25

the end of the week, what was that goodbye?

18:28

Like very tearful. We

18:31

were all really sad to see that weekend. Um,

18:33

we've seen a lot of bonding and

18:35

new relationships formed and things. And so

18:38

I remember Sarah leaving. She was telling

18:41

one of the other campers that she

18:43

was going to fly back to St. Louis, that she

18:45

had to leave early that day, to catch

18:47

a flight. The

18:50

goodbye would not last for

18:52

long, as

18:55

autumn wound down and the weather turned cooler.

18:58

Camp ended, The cow Stlors

19:00

packed up and dispersed. One

19:02

group made plans to head up to Colorado

19:05

to work at the resorts for the upcoming ski

19:07

season. We were going to kind of do

19:09

that for a season and figure out what we wanted to do

19:11

in the spring. Sarah was calling

19:14

and texting and sending gifts to all of us. I

19:16

think I was the one that was probably communicating

19:19

with her the most frequently. Thanksgiving

19:21

week, Bethany and her family were

19:23

on a road trip. Bethany realized

19:26

that they'd be passing close to Sarah's home

19:28

in Illinois. We met

19:30

her at a cracker barrel at the outskirts

19:32

of her town. She was already waiting

19:35

at the restaurant when they arrived. My

19:37

family introduced themselves, and uh we

19:39

sat down at a table, and I remember she ordered

19:41

like a thing. It was like a fried chicken

19:44

or something, and so I cut everything up for you

19:46

know, gave her the straw. It was

19:48

like camp all over again, and

19:51

we sat there in giggled. I remember she was in

19:53

a great mood, super friendly, and bubbly with my family.

19:56

We got ready to leave, and her story was

19:58

that her mom had dropped her off and her

20:00

mom had to take her nephews to their

20:02

Saturday basketball game, and

20:04

then when she got done with that, her mom was gonna come pick

20:06

her up. But that was why she wanted to drop her off

20:08

at Cracker Barrel, because at least Sarah could stay

20:11

somewhere kind of in a lobby area and

20:13

hang out. I hugged her, took a couple

20:15

of pictures, and then my family and I got on the road.

20:17

She said she had talked to her mom and her mom was gonna be there in a

20:19

few minutes and I was just running late. Shortly

20:22

after Bethany arrived in Colorado,

20:24

her life changed dramatically.

20:26

I found out I was pregnant, so I got

20:29

a plane ticket back to Chattanooga

20:31

to kind of figure that out. And that was really when

20:34

my friendship with her took off. Was her

20:36

calling and texting all the time, checking on me and the baby

20:38

and asking about things that were

20:41

going on. Bethany was preparing

20:43

for life as a single mom. I

20:46

was in such a raw, vulnerable

20:48

place in my life, and I felt like she

20:50

was offering to be a new foundation

20:54

and a new friend. I cried to her

20:56

a lot about different

20:58

hiccups that were happening about the pregnancy

21:00

and different things that were just really hard

21:03

situations, and she

21:06

would always cry with me, is what I remember

21:08

now, like looking back on all those conversations,

21:10

Like if I was happy and I was doing well, then

21:12

so was she. You know. If I was happy

21:14

with work and I had a really good day, then so did

21:16

she. But if if we got on the phone and she asked

21:19

about something that was a little sore

21:21

for me at the moment and I started crying,

21:23

then she'd start crying. For a long

21:25

distance friendship, it quickly

21:27

moved to unvarnished emotion. Sarah

21:30

talked about how lonely she was because

21:36

she didn't have friends out there, and how the friends that she

21:38

did have, you know, didn't want to invite her

21:40

to go do things because they wanted to go out to

21:42

the bars, for example, and they didn't know where they

21:45

wanted to go to a restaurant, but they didn't know how to transfer

21:47

Sarah if Sarah had to go to the restroom.

21:49

Bethany was also on her own

21:52

preparing for the day when she would

21:54

suddenly not be I

21:56

just remember there being a lot of days where between, you know,

21:58

trying to figure out how am I going to financially support

22:01

this child. I need to find a place

22:03

to live, I need to find a better steady

22:05

income and figure out how to get her and you

22:08

know, some sort of childcare so that I could, Like there were

22:11

all of the emotions that are attached to anything

22:14

that deals with any of that.

22:16

It was a lot of stress and anxiety and sleepless

22:19

nights and crying, and at every

22:21

point of that, Sarah tried to

22:23

involve herself and cry with

22:25

me and reflect the same

22:27

emotions as if she understood. I

22:29

started to feel an obligation to

22:31

my friendship with her because of the tears and

22:34

because of what she was asking for from

22:36

me, just at an emotional level,

22:38

and I knew that she was

22:40

also doing that for me.

22:44

It felt like they were two women,

22:46

each providing a stabilizing force

22:48

during a time of uncertainty.

22:51

There was one weird thing, though, something

22:53

that wouldn't make sense to Bethany until

22:56

years later. I remember her asking

22:58

several times for my ultrasounds, and I

23:00

was always driving when she asked me, and

23:02

I go, yeah, yeah, when I park, you know, when I get

23:04

to where I'm going, I'll send it. I always forgot to send it. She

23:06

kept pestering me about the ultrasound, and I started to get

23:08

to a point where I felt bad because it was just pregnancy brain.

23:11

I just kept forgetting to send it to

23:13

her, but she asked multiple times. During

23:19

their conversations. Sarah was

23:21

making plans to return to Camp

23:24

Summit for the spring session. We

23:26

talked a lot the two prior weeks before

23:28

she went to camp, but she was anxious about it

23:30

because it wasn't going to be the same staff, and

23:32

so I think Sarah was really nervous about whether

23:35

or not they were going to have the same level of expertise

23:38

with the care, if it was going to be as smooth as it was

23:41

In the spring of two thousand sixteen,

23:43

Sarah went back to Camp Summit

23:47

just after lunchtime sometime early afternoon.

23:49

I was driving to my job

23:51

and I got a call from a Texas number

23:53

that I didn't have saved. It

23:56

was the assistant director at the time, and

23:59

she said, Hey, I'm so sorry to

24:01

call you like this. She said, yours was the hardest

24:03

call to make. Bethany

24:06

had just pulled into the parking lot.

24:08

She stopped the car and braced herself.

24:11

There's a staff alumni page for the camp,

24:13

and it's very very frequently that

24:16

they'll post something about former

24:18

campers who have passed. So I thought that was where the

24:20

conversation was going. I had no idea, she

24:23

said, Bethany, I'm so sorry that I have to be the

24:25

one to tell you this. She

24:27

said, Sarah was here this week, and

24:30

uh, I said, yeah, I know. We've we've kept

24:32

in contact. She told Bethany

24:34

that they had been contacted by a pastor

24:36

from Illinois a few weeks earlier.

24:39

He was inquiring about Sarah's

24:41

relationship with camp and just wanted to know

24:43

if she was going to be down there during

24:46

certain weeks as a volunteer. And

24:48

so some of the staff had gotten involved

24:51

in this conversation and said, well, know she's here as she's

24:53

coming as a camper. And this

24:55

pastor said, well, I am a

24:58

pastor of some of her relatives, and

25:01

she's been caught in a lot of lies before and

25:03

we've tried to catch her and she's always been able

25:05

to sneak her way out. He even

25:07

had proof to back up what he was claiming.

25:10

Here's examples of her social media posts. Here's

25:12

a picture of her skiing in Colorado with her mom.

25:15

Bethany gripped the phone tighter, almost

25:18

unable to breathe. She stared

25:20

out of the windshield. Everything

25:22

was going blurry. What

25:25

the camp had agreed to do because the pastor and a

25:27

couple of family members said, can you please just let

25:29

us come and confront her at camp,

25:31

because we've tried and tried to get her help,

25:33

and we've tried to confront her in the lies, and we

25:36

know that things like this have been going

25:38

on, and so what camp agreed

25:40

to do was to facilitate an

25:43

interaction between them during

25:45

an activity where none of the other campers would

25:47

see, which was extremely

25:49

extremely important to the staff. The

25:52

pastor told the camp employees when

25:54

they would be coming. As the staff

25:56

waited in the office, they saw a van come

25:58

down the drive and stop. They

26:01

radioed for Sarah to come to the office.

26:04

A couple of family members in her pastor got out

26:06

of the van. Sarah pulled up in her wheelchair,

26:08

saw who it was, and camp

26:11

staff told me. She got up out of the chair, got in the van,

26:13

shut the door, and they drove off. There

26:19

wasn't an apology. There wasn't There wasn't

26:22

even anything from the family as far as we'll

26:24

follow up with you once we get home. Nobody

26:26

heard from him. She drives

26:28

off, and they're just sitting there, stunned,

26:31

having to figure out how to deal with the fallout

26:33

of that, how to explain to other campers

26:35

why she's gone. Sitting

26:37

in her car talking to the camp assistant

26:40

director, Bethany erupted,

26:42

I remember screaming

26:45

at her for probably about

26:47

ten seconds, and that's

26:50

not my nature at all. And I stopped

26:52

and I apologized and I said, I'm so sorry. All

26:55

of that was out of line. And she goes, Bethany, I

26:57

totally get it, because I did the same thing to my boss.

27:00

She said, none of us know how to deal with this, like we

27:02

don't know what to believe anymore, what

27:05

we're supposed to do. A

27:07

couple of days later, Sarah called

27:09

in the middle of the night. Bethany

27:12

didn't answer. Her emotional

27:14

well had dried up. For

27:18

the next few days and weeks, Bethany

27:20

was in a daze, and then

27:22

things got creepy. After

27:25

she was exposed. I started getting random

27:28

phone calls from an unknown number, and I would

27:30

answer it and it would be someone breathing heavy

27:32

on the on the other end of the line or cackling.

27:35

And that happened for

27:37

several weeks um and then I started

27:40

getting screenshots of

27:42

my current location sent

27:45

from like a like a Yahoo phone

27:47

number. I mean, I don't know that it was her. I was

27:49

also, you know, a pregnant,

27:51

about to be single mom. There could have been multiple

27:54

reasons, and I just don't know the answer. Bethany

27:57

was haunted by the betrayal of her

28:00

rust. One day, she called

28:02

a friend from the camp, someone who had been

28:04

her mentor. I remember sitting

28:06

in a Chick fil A drive through and

28:08

calling her and having

28:11

to pull over after I got my chicken nuggets,

28:13

and I was just kind of unloading on her, like

28:15

it. I think it just had hit me because

28:18

I had googled Sarah and I had seen the photos

28:20

of her skiing in Colorado right around the same

28:22

times when I had been up there working. Every

28:25

time I googled something about her, I would find

28:27

something new and a new blog, a new email

28:29

address. I mean, I was digging deep

28:31

at that point trying to find where

28:34

does this end? Bethany

28:42

didn't even know the half of it. For

28:44

more than a decade, Sarah had

28:47

built friendship after friendship

28:49

on a foundation of lies, and

28:51

even after Camp Summit, she

28:53

wasn't done. I

28:58

knew of her as a young mom

29:00

whose husband was away, who

29:03

was battling stage four cancer.

29:06

She was my friend, I loved her, she was bregnant, she was myrself.

29:09

So to find out that she miss scared that, you know, it mess

29:11

with me. The story really is unbelievable

29:15

that someone could get away with all the things

29:17

that she did for all those years,

29:19

for so long. Who

29:22

is Sarah? I don't

29:24

even think she knows. Sarah makes herself

29:26

up as she goes along. Sarah

29:28

is an empty shell. Sarah.

29:30

I don't know what happened to her.

29:37

Maybe Sarah doesn't even know herself.

29:39

But her victims know exactly

29:41

what Sarah did to them,

29:43

and they were faced with a problem.

29:46

How do you find justice when no

29:48

law has been broken, but on

29:50

the inside you are. That's

29:55

this season Unsympathy Pains.

30:00

Sympathy Paines is a production of Neon

30:02

hum Media and I Heart Radio. I'm

30:05

Your host. Laura Beale I wrote

30:07

and reported the episodes. Natalie

30:09

Wrinn is the lead producer. Our

30:12

editor is Katherine St. Louis. Associate

30:14

producer is Rufaro Mazzarua.

30:17

Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch.

30:20

Samantha Allison is our production

30:22

manager. Fact checking by Jacqueline

30:25

Colletti. Jesse Pearlstein

30:27

composed the theme song and music heard

30:29

throughout this series. Additional

30:31

tracks are by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic

30:34

Sound. Scott Somerville is our

30:36

engineer and sound designer. Special

30:38

thanks to Stephanie Serrano from

30:40

I Heart Radio. Special thanks to Carrie

30:43

Lieberman and Bethan Macaluso.

30:45

Executive producer at I Heart Radio

30:48

is Dylan Fagen.