S8 E4: Hate Me If You Want
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Some names on the podcast have been changed for anonymity purposes. Opinions expressed by guests on the show do not necessarily represent the views of myself or this podcast. Resources, references, source material, and sponsor info can be found in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. Here's Aridian. She started like...

Blowing up my phone saying, Hey girl. Hey, like, how are you? And since I didn't respond, she texted again within the hour saying, are you friends with Zach? Who is steady bashing me right now. Like I saw a post he made and someone else has been telling me some things that he's saying about me. He's trying to cause a lot of problems for me right now. The way that she said things was,

Was so manipulative. She just kept texting me, kept texting me long text messages and was like, I don't want any problems with my family or with you.

That's when I noticed that she would refer to their family, the family as her family, and then me as me separate. She said, I'm going to just ignore the fact that Zachary is saying these things, and I'm going to try and have a good day. I've told my husband about it, and according to Zachary,

Zachary, all these rumors came from you. She said, I'm having to delete my social media again because of this. I have really bad luck with friends and I don't even, I haven't even spoken to Zachary in over a year. I don't want any problems. I hope we're okay. I have worked really hard to get the bad out of my life and I want to keep it that way.

She's these are more text messages coming in and coming in. She said, I'm really sorry, I think, for texting me. This whole thing caught me off guard. I'm not mad at you. I just don't want any problems with you. And I don't care who you're friends with. But this sucks for me.

Like I'm not friends with that guy or anyone he associates with. And I don't hang out with that crowd because of negativity. And then she moves on to tell me that her and Grant want to have dinner with me and talk about any issues that I might have with them. And that her goal for 2019 was all things family. And now she's going to say that I'm a part of family. Yeah.

This is one thing that she loves saying in text messages to me is you can hate me if you want. So you can hate me if you want, or you can like me or believe whatever you want. I do have a shit past and have made bad decisions, but I've accepted that and only can move forward from there. My family is everything and I don't want any problems.

So she texted Grant, she says, and Grant apparently knows everything is what she says. But he never reached out to me. He never reached out at that time. He didn't reach out to Ben. Nothing. He didn't. Nobody reached out to anybody. So I really don't think that he knew. I really, really don't. You think you know me. You don't know me. You ain't let go.

I really do think that she hadn't told Grant anything. I think that maybe she was trying to intimidate me a little bit and also make sure that I don't say anything else because she did mention that I don't want any problems. I don't want you to make any more problems for me.

But there was no accountability. There was no taking account for her actions.

She didn't even deny it, but she didn't even say anything. She just said, you guys are being mean to me. You're bullying me. You're making up rumors. I told my husband, I told you not to be friends with Zachary and now you are. So I did text her back and I was trying to be, I was trying to work. So these things were like, God, I was honestly just trying to do my job and I'm getting text messages after text messages, um,

of her being so upset. So like I said, I did text her back and I'm pulling it up right now. I said something along the lines of look, Crystal, I honestly don't know what has happened between you and everyone at your work. No, I don't want any problems either. If you, if I did, I would have probably said something a long, long time ago when this actually came to light in the first place. Because if you remember, I actually found out about this.

before January. January is just when she found out that I had already known. I said no information was actually given to me or given to Zachary. In fact, the only reason any of this was even mentioned to me was because I was just showing my coworkers pictures that I edited of Daisy and they all felt really bad for you because your husband passed away and they were all glad that you had

had found someone else that could help you through these hard times? And I'm just putting all these question marks because...

That's a lie. And I just said, Zachary never told me anything about this, nor did I tell him anything. He was actually just the last person to confirm this, this whole situation. It actually all came from like five different girls around me at work. And I was convinced that everyone was talking about someone else, not you. And I don't have the rest of the text message. I literally had just taken a picture of it, but.

But when she got back to me, she just said, wow, I never once said that my husband passed away. She's like, I don't know any of your coworkers. I've been working for the temp agency for so long and they all work for the corporation. She said that she had an ex of five years that died of an overdose when she worked for the company the first time.

And I asked Ben about this and he said he looked into it and he's pretty sure that the boyfriend she's talking about, the long-term boyfriend that she's talking about, actually didn't pass away. That he thinks that it's this guy that just ended up... He did have some sort of drug problem, but they just split up at some point. But she says that she had an ex that died five years ago, five years from 2019. And she said that that was before...

She met, she got back together with Grant and started to change her life around. And it sounds like you don't really care to know the whole story. So whatever. I have a shitty past and it likes to bite me in the ass. And all I can do is keep my head up and continue to try and move forward and be a good mom and wife.

but that's the first I've ever heard of those rumors. I try to ignore the drama and lies and bullshit, but when your name is thrown out there, I start to get concerned. I don't care about all that bad stuff or the bullshit, but I do care about my family. You obviously don't like me and definitely don't have to. And that, I guess that's fine. You don't have to like me, but at this point, but this is not who I am as a person. What

What did she say? And literally this has crushed me today. All I can do now is keep my circle small and take each day at a time and move forward. I can't help what people say about me or think about me or what happens behind my back. I'm sorry for saying anything to you. I usually keep my mouth shut. Guess I should have have a good day.

Here's Aridian's friend and previous coworker, Amber. So I found out about Crystal's husband's supposed death a couple months after she started working with us. She shared with a coworker of mine. We were peers at the time. And so she shared it with me, with Crystal's blessing.

We were told that he passed away. It made her uncomfortable to talk about. And of course, in a situation like that, you don't press for details. That's exactly, though, I think what she preyed upon is people's natural goodwill and trust because normal people don't lie about stuff like that. So we don't have any need to really drill into that. So, yeah.

So Crystal had become very friendly, overly friendly once I promoted and became her boss. And that was whenever she shared with me that he had died in Japan. That was originally what she had told people when she started at the temp company. As a TL, she had told people that

He's in Japan. He's in Japan for work. You know, he's usually over there six months at a time. So nobody thought about it. She said he actually passed away. He caught a very deadly disease over there and passed away before he could get home. Again, I didn't feel comfortable asking for a whole lot of details. I didn't ask what disease it was. I didn't ask if there was a service. I didn't ask any of that.

Which looking back, again, this is what I think when people tell these massive lies that they count on, because it would have taken, I think, three questions and watching her lie about them or like trying to lie in real time about that for like your uncanny valley, your hippocampus brain to be like, hey, something's wrong here. Her face is making the wrong motions.

And when she told me all that, I didn't think to ask a whole lot of questions because, you know, manners and whatnot. She did end up sharing more about him as time went on, but none of them were good things. She, you know, talked about how they had a very abusive relationship and he wasn't a good father. And she told me,

You know, shortly after he died, she was in a car accident with her daughter. She told me her daughter was fine, but that she had suffered brain damage. And so they had to take out part of her skull and that caused her to have seizures. But she said her daughter was fine.

We were friends on Snapchat, which is really like the only social media that I was using at the time and that she was on because I had actually checked other platforms when we became more friendly. And she was only on Snapchat, but she's just sending me videos of her daughter a lot. Or she'd just post them. But her daughter was absolutely beautiful, cute little two year old girl. She seemed perfectly normal and healthy and happy.

I was actually talking to my other coworker about this or my former coworker about this the other day. Like, and she told me that Crystal told her that her daughter actually had seizures because of it. And I was like, we worked together closely for two years. How did we not know this? Like what a crazy anyways. So I was told that it gave her seizures and

But that was, like, the most that I knew about it. I don't remember any other details aside from, like, she had totaled her car. So she had, like, this new one. And then her husband's passing away left her another car. And that she had seizures from it, yeah. That she had to, like, take medication. She couldn't drive solo with her daughter. Here's Aradian's friend and previous co-worker, Zachary.

So about two, maybe three weeks in of me being on her team, that was when we started talking about personal matters and things like that and starting to become like acquaintances friendly. One of those days she she was wearing a wedding ring, which she hadn't the rest of the time.

and I asked her like, oh my gosh, I didn't know you were married. What's your husband's name? How'd you meet? And she said, oh, he's in Japan, and I don't really want to talk about it anymore. Me and the way that I am, I'm a very, I like to call myself a curious person. People just call me nosy. So I pressed more and was like,

So, you know, what does he do over there? Because I had a cousin that was teaching English to children in Japan. And so I was like, well, maybe he's doing that or, you know, who knows. And that was when she first told me that she kind of pulled me to the side and was like,

He died, like, I just don't want to say that because then people ask questions and it just makes it easier for me if I don't have to answer those and da-da-da-da-da. And of course she's, like, teary-eyed and all of that sort of thing, so I'm very sympathetic towards that and was like, of course your secret's safe with me. I didn't tell anyone about it ever the entire time until, until Eridian.

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Five minutes later, she actually came back at me with another text message saying, this is literally humiliating. I love my family. I'm sorry I texted you.

She says sorry as she keeps blowing up my phone. I'm sorry. I'm such a mess. Talk to text and me crying leads to terrible grammar and sentence structure. She ended up, I didn't respond. So within 10 minutes, she texted me again. If you really think all any of that, if it's true about me, then you don't know me at all.

I hate that you never said anything to me. I have bipolar depression and issues socially and have a hard time handling it a lot. I want more than anything to have a sistership with you and have you like a friend. And I don't know what I ever did to you or anyone. And it sucks. And I'm sorry. I know I have problems as a person, but I'm not bad to my family. I'm

I'll just shut up now. Just my feelings, LOL. It's just so manipulative. It's so manipulative. And it's gaslighting too. It's like, I'm not only going to not take accountability for myself and everything that I've done, I'm going to make you feel like the bad guy. Yeah. And you know, the whole, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for bothering you. I suck. I've had a bad past, but I'm not bad. And

Instead of saying, yes, I did this, if you believe that, then you are part of the problem is what she's saying to me. And she took it to her advantage that I wanted family, that I wanted a sister, that I have never had that kind of relationship. And it was just such a slap in the face that someone would do that because she

She already knows I'm very new to this sort of family, this sort of connection. And she appealed to that. I think she personally told me you, you want a sistership. I want a sistership, but you ruined it. So now we don't, we're not going to be sisters anymore. Yeah.

I was at work when that happened. And I just remember I went to the bathroom and just cried because I know she mentions bipolar. And it makes me so sad that she does that because I've always dealt with bipolar disorder. I've always dealt with depression myself. And that's something that has always been really hard on me.

And to see someone weaponize that was just like such a slap in the face because like I deal with that and you don't see me telling people my boyfriend died. The fact that she was trying to make me feel so evil and it felt like she was saying, you're done, you're done for. You're not a part of this family anymore. Right.

It's my family and I love them and you are an outsider and you hate me and you think I'm evil. That makes you terrible. And I'm telling you, I literally just ran to the bathroom and just sat there and we're timed. You're not allowed to be off of a phone call for so long. If you take a bathroom break, they know that you're on a bathroom break.

So if you have an emergency and have to leave, they know that you're not taking calls. So I'm sitting in the bathroom for 20 minutes plus just sitting there, like trying to compose myself and just like crying. And I just texted Ben and I was like, listen, this is happening. Like I promise I didn't mean for this to happen. I'm not spreading rumors about her. I swear. Like I, I don't know what is happening, but she is lying about everything and,

He just let me know that he was there for me, but he wanted no part in that. He said, I know how she is. Stay away from her. Like, just stay away. Trust me. And I didn't really listen to him.

When I was sitting in the bathroom, just like crying, I ended up texting her and let her, I kind of tried to put my feelings into words. So after all those text messages that are, you know, flooding in and I'm sitting in the bathroom crying, I just texted her. I'm really sorry. I couldn't reply. I've had a really busy day. I will be transparent with you on how this happened to be.

The first person I spoke with was not in any way about you. I was actually just catching up with someone I knew from high school that you happened to work with. And when I mentioned, hey, also, I think you work with my boyfriend's sister-in-law, Crystal. She said the one whose husband passed. And I said, no. And I'm just like, at the time, I was just like making it as quick as possible in a text message. But I told her about how the girl mentioned Christy.

Crystal, the one with the baby girl named Daisy, right? And I said, oh yeah, she's got a baby named Daisy. And her and I just thought we were mixing up girls and

And so weeks later, this is all in the text. I was showing my coworkers who worked for the temp agency up until about September pictures that I've edited that they asked me about. And multiple girls recognized Daisy and asked me how I knew this little girl. And I told them that's my boyfriend's brother's wife's child. That's my boyfriend's niece.

And they started to ask if you were married again. I didn't know what that meant and said, as far as I know, this is her first marriage. They said that they thought your husband passed away. And one woman whose husband actually had passed away said that she distinctly remembered having a conversation with you about it.

I thought we were all talking about different girls and I even kept defending you and saying that the person they were talking about was not the girl I knew. Zachary was the last person that even ever said anything to me about this. I asked him, did Crystal ever mention her husband? And he just said she mentioned he died a long time ago, but that's it. I told him what all the other girls were saying about you and that I didn't know where it was coming from. And here we are.

The thing is, I'm not saying anything about this to Grant. I'm dropping it from here because it's not my place to say anything. Now you know how it was even brought to my attention and I didn't want to say anything because it was all just so absurd and confusing. I also didn't mention like the girls names that were around me because I didn't feel that that was necessary because

Because they were all saying the same thing. So if it were one person spreading a rumor, that would be one thing. But just like multiple people saying the same thing. And the woman I mentioned...

This woman that sat near me, whose husband, she had a husband that actually passed away. She told me that she distinctly remembered having a conversation with Crystal because that's something they had in common. If that happened, that's just, it's so sad because someone that's grieving is confiding in her and she is grieving with them, but their grief is fake. It's not real or true.

When she responded to me, it was, these were all such long text messages. And I promise I'm not going to read all of them because they are, they were so draining that she basically said like, my feelings are hurt. I don't understand why people would say that about me. The only thing I can think of is my first, this, this time she said my first love died when I worked for the company the first time around and

This is super, super messy. She tried to kind of tell me like her timeline working for the company and things like that. And saying that like all these people lies. She said, I have never said that my husband died. I have never cheated on my husband. I have told Grant everything about the situation because he knows Zachary and he knows the bullshit he brings. We both just wish you would have told me sooner. I want us to be cool.

This is where things get weird. If you notice in my text message that I didn't mention who she was having an affair with. I actually didn't mention anyone's name. She actually brought him up to me.

She said that she wants us to be cool and she had a gay best friend named Wilson for many years that worked for the company. And that Zachary did everything he could to use Crystal for rides and that Wilson was usually there when they were together because that was crazy.

quote-unquote, her gay best friend, is what she said. And I mention that she says this because he's not. He's not her gay best friend. She says that Zachary made all that up because...

He was around them when they were friends. However, Zachary actually never mentioned them at all. Like he, he never mentioned Wilson until I prompted him to, until I asked him about it. You know, she was trying to make it seem to Grant that I was making all this up. But to me, she was like, Zachary's making it all up. This is why I don't have friends.

People talk really bad about me and I'm emotionally unstable. Just all that stuff. She also went so far as to tell me that Grant is reading all of the text messages and all of the conversations and everything like that. And that she kept saying, have a good day at the end of her text messages. In the end, she made it seem like

Yeah, you don't understand anything. I'm sorry that you got into this mess, but you're completely causing problems for me. This is what actually happened. And in the end, I didn't want to argue with her. I literally just said, okay, thanks for clearing it up for me.

Some girls mentioned Wilson to me. And so I didn't know, but you, I didn't mention him to you. So basically I just told her like, I don't hate you. I've never hated you. You know, it's none of my business, whatever is happening anymore. I'm, I'm, I'm wiping my hands clean of it.

And that's me trying to leave the conversation. I'm so tired of the conversation. But she ended up saying that as a family, that we should be having each other's backs. And we should, she's talking about me, we should know that those lies aren't true, that those rumors aren't true. And it was very, it was honestly just like pulling me all over the place. I had no idea what was happening. Yeah.

Here's Zachary. Okay, so it was common knowledge that Crystal and Wilson were running game on other girls to like have threesomes together.

She spoke to me directly about it. Like, I had heard the rumors, of course, and as her friend, I did do, like, what I could to kind of squash them, but they were both kind of just messy about it. Like, they didn't exactly, like, keep it on the down low, so it made it hard. Like,

Like this literally sounds like Dynasty in itself sometimes as crazy as this is and it's because I can't explain to people how toxic that environment is. It is literally like a soap opera every day of just there's always the rumor mills, there's always like the backhanded talk.

So there was the gossip as well, but what I'm talking about, I knew she was doing. And the reason that I knew she was doing was because she tried to get my help to do it on someone that I'm still really close friends with this person.

So, like, she was flirting with the girl a lot and would, like, switch off. So she would go flirt with them for a couple, like, back and forth. And then she would have Wilson come and flirt with her for a little bit. And then she would go and flirt with her for a day. And then Wilson would go and would do that. And then at the Christmas party, this girl was supposed to be invited anyways. But...

Crystal specifically was like, hey, I need you to invite her. If you do this for me, I will make Wilson let you help him.

And I was not interested in that. Don't get me wrong. Wilson's very attractive, but I don't mess around with being a side person. That's not my goal in life. I'm not about that. So I was like, no, I'm not doing that. And she was pushy about it. And I didn't want to set my friend up for that because I knew she wasn't that way. And so

Crystal kind of, I told her that and was like, you know, she's not going to be interested in that. And she pretty much was like, well, when we're drunk, we'll see what happens. Here's Aridian. When she was texting me all those things, I literally felt like, oh my God, I've made up these rumors about this girl. I am such a terrible person. Like I, she's telling me this isn't true. And I,

It's like that gaslighting. I'm so, I felt so gullible. I was just like, okay, yeah, I know you better. You're my family. Thanks for telling me. And in my head, I'm like, I don't believe her, but she says it's not true. So how can I not believe her? And I'm just like giving her the benefit of the doubt and, you know, beating myself up about this, but in my head still not believing her. It's

So it was just like so much internal conflict. I'm a terrible person, but no, I think she's lying. But look at me. I'm so terrible. Just it was I hated it so much. It was so much like back and forth in my own head.

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From there, I did stop responding to her kind of immediately. I wasn't giving her the full attention that she wanted. I wasn't answering back with these long text messages, like thanking her and telling her like, oh my God, I'm sorry. Like, you're right. I was just saying, thank you for letting me know. Thank you for the information you've given me. You know, I'm going to stay out of it, blah, blah, blah.

And at one point she actually mentioned to me, like, I thought we were close. I thought that we connected when we talked about your abortion because no one else knows about that. I just remember when she said that it was so like, and I'm pretty sure she's said this in text messages multiple times mentioning that because I know that she was trying to use that as a manipulation tactic. I know that in her mind, she was trying to get across the fact that

if I were to say something to Ben's family about this, then she would say about my abortion to Ben's family. And that was the biggest thing that she had on me was the fact that I had had an abortion. And like, I hate saying it over and over again. I'm not ashamed, I promise. But it was something that

at the time was just such a hard decision for me. And I was so young and Ben was so young and like we made the decision together. Like it was honestly just something that would be best for both of us. And I should have not been ashamed, but I was so ashamed of it at the time. And people were sharing like,

if you have an abortion, you're going to hell on social media and things like that. And people are still like that. And I'm literally still in the middle of clearing those people out of my social media for that reason. But I just know, I remember thinking like, I hadn't even told my mom at that time and she knew, and she was making it sound like she was going to tell on me, not to my mom, but to Ben's family.

It was so manipulative, I think. And it makes me even more mad right now. I'm keeping myself from like feeling the emotions that I tell like the story just because it does make me so angry. But the points in time where that came up and there was just so much manipulation and

That, it makes me so upset that anyone could ever use that. And so I actually told- Thank you so much. Honestly, you have no idea how much that means. It's using stigma and weaponizing it, something that's already so difficult. Yeah. That's so unfair. And I-

It definitely seemed like she was also trying to weaponize that as a way to silence you. And I'm just so sorry that she used something that's already can be challenging and then made it even more challenging for you. That's really, really shitty. It was. It was shitty.

It was so shit. Sorry, there's probably a much better adjective than shitty, but that's just the first one that comes to mind. That works for me. It was so shitty. After all that, after the whole manipulation, and I'm pretty sure she's trying to hint to me that if I say anything, she will out me on this thing that I very clearly felt so much shame for about.

and trauma and you know just like personal internal battle about I decided to just go out and I told I told my mom and my mom is like so supportive but I also went out and I told Ben's mom and Ben's sister at one point in like a moment of connection that we had so eventually I

I don't think Crystal knew that I told them, but she just didn't have that hold on me. And in fact, I think that it would have made her look worse if they knew already and she tried to tell them in a way that I have this information. Do you want to hear it? I think in the end, I kind of use that as a little bit of a shield because

Not like in a weapon way that that she did, but more like if she were to try and use it against me, she's going to end up looking worse herself because that's really shitty to go through and like talk crap about someone and try and like weaponize something that was traumatic. And we all know it was traumatic. And then you're trying to gossip about it.

Ben and Lindsay both on separate occasions found Wilson on social media and they each tried to send him a message and friend requests. And everyone has the same question. Did Wilson even know that Crystal's husband was alive? Did he know that she was having an affair from what I understand? No, at first, but I think he knew eventually because he,

He ended up like he didn't answer their messages. And I think like if I were dating someone and multiple people messaged me on social media saying, hey, do you know this person? First name, last name. I would be a little bit curious at least to know what they're talking about. But he didn't. He didn't even respond. He didn't say like, don't text me or like anything like that. He just straight up ignored the messages unless he didn't see them.

So because of that, Ben actually didn't tell, they didn't tell Grant. Later on, things kind of went downhill pretty fast. Next time.

How good she wasn't at all. How had she spun this web of lies to so many different people over such a long period of time in such a small building in such a tiny environment and not one person busted her out. It is because these lies are all she does.

And she said, I just came from the doctors. My mom is dying of cancer. She only has so long to live. And I just found out this morning. You think you know me, you don't know me well at all.

Something Was Wrong is produced and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. Music on this episode from Glad Rags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. If you'd like to help support the growth of Something Was Wrong, you can help by leaving a positive review, sharing the podcast with your family, friends, and followers, and support at patreon.com slash somethingwaswrong. Thank you so much for listening. I take my time every day

I call my mama, she say, she say, they call me up on the telephone, but I know that it's, they think they know me, they don't know me well.

You think you know me, you don't know me well. I don't. You think you know me, you don't know me well. I don't.

If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.