S9 E1: Psychic Abilities
32:26 Share

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now. You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising. But what if you could be saving money by switching to Progressive? Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Multitask right now. Quote today at Progressive.com, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.

With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as a part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside extra time. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Be

Be inspired to explore your inner creativity with Viola Davis' memoir, Finding Me. Find what piques your imagination with Audible. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500.

Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences. Episodes discuss topics that can be triggering, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, suicide, and murder. I am not a therapist or a doctor. If you're in need of support, please visit somethingwaswrong.com slash resources for a list of non-profit organizations that can help.

Hi, friends.

I've missed you and I'm so excited to be back in your feed. Season 9 is unique because instead of featuring one survivor's story, we'll hear the experience of two survivors, Danielle and Kenji, whose individual stories end up intertwining as their own shocking life discoveries unfold.

Bring these two strangers together to try and solve a shared mystery. In the first few chapters of this story, we'll meet Danielle, who met Artie on a dating app in 2011. Because years before Danielle's life ever collided with our other survivor, Kenji, she met Artie. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is Something Was Wrong. ♪

My name is Danielle. I am from Southern California, from the South Bay area specifically. I went to high school and college out here. I got my undergrad from Cal State Long Beach and my MBA from Loyola Marymount University. I

I am the oldest of five children. Two of them are half siblings. I also have a child of my own. She is six years old. I work for a startup and I am also an entrepreneur and a consultant. I am incredibly passionate about supporting women-owned businesses and empowering women in general.

Danielle's life changed in November 2011 when she met a man we'll call Artie. We met on a dating app.

I was in grad school. I was also co-president of our student association. So total overachiever. He seemed very funny and sarcastic when we talked on the phone. I love to cook and he would tell me that he also loved to cook. And so he would joke around with me about having cook-offs. And I remember he also seemed really, really supportive.

Danielle soon learned that not only was Artie funny and supportive, but he was also successful. A doctor. Well, he was finishing up his last year of medical school at UCLA.

We joked that girls love British accents, but I had had a British roommate. So actually, I wasn't too crazy about Brits because my roommate was sort of a pain in the butt. I did like his personality. And so I agreed to go out on a first date with him.

Our first date was at the LA Auto Show, super unconventional. He met up with me and two of my friends from school, and we got to know each other while walking through the different showrooms. He was young, 25 at the time, I was 30. And he was like,

And he talked about being a little bit more mature than others his age, mainly because he had grown up with professional parents. He had traveled quite a bit ever since high school and college. Artie told Danielle he graduated early at the age of 16.

He then went on to graduate at Oxford and joined the British Army. It was after four years in the Army that he decided he wanted to follow in his mother's footsteps to become a physician. He decided to come out to UCLA because at the time they had one of the best neurological programs. That was what he had said.

We talked a lot about the fact that he was looking for a long-term relationship. He wanted to settle down and he wanted to have children before he turned 30. And he told me that he had been adopted as an infant and that his mother was a cardiovascular surgeon. They had a little rivalry going on between them because she had gone to Cambridge and he had gone to Oxford.

Danielle felt these talks came easily because their personalities clicked. He was very sarcastic and funny. He liked to joke around a lot, didn't take things too seriously. I can be a little bit serious, so I get along really well with people that bring out that playfulness in me. There was just one thing missing in those early days for Danielle. Physical attraction.

He wasn't the most attractive person. I guess it was just his personality that kind of overrode anything that wasn't traditionally considered super good looking. I was at that age where I no longer needed somebody to check the boxes of tall, dark and handsome.

I didn't want to be superficial. There was so much about his personality and what he was telling me about himself that I decided that this was the right fit. Following their first date, things progressed steadily. Artie and Danielle would hang out two to four nights a week. Artie was constantly doing little things to surprise her, like showing up at her door with flowers when she thought he was working.

I thought I was taking things slowly. I was definitely adamant about not wanting to be in a labeled relationship and not calling it boyfriend and girlfriend just yet. But that timeline sort of moved up within a month, mainly because my sister was having a co-ed baby shower and my grandparents were coming up from Arizona, California.

And my grandmother and I were really, really close. And I wanted her opinion of him. And so...

I brought him to my sister's baby shower and my whole family got to meet him. I don't know entirely what their first impressions were. My family isn't one to come out and tell me all at once, but I don't think there were any issues. I think they liked him. I think they thought he was nice.

Shortly after that, you know, he had told me that he was talking to his mom on the phone. They were close. And I guess he had mentioned to her that technically I was not his girlfriend yet. And then she said, so let me get this straight. You're not seeing anybody else, right? He said, right. And she said, absolutely.

And you've now met her entire family. And he's like, yes. And she said, and you're not boyfriend and girlfriend. So he realized this conversation word for word to me. And so I was like, oh, I, wow, I guess we are. And that's kind of how we entered into the relationship.

As their relationship continued to evolve, Danielle remembers one instance that gave her pause. While discussing marriage, Artie told Danielle that he may want to move back to his homeland of England someday.

And I remember having to think about that. Do I want to get serious with somebody and move to England, potentially? I remember joking around with my friends and saying, well, I don't mind living in a place where it rains all the time because I'll just hop on a quick train ride and go have coffee and a croissant in Paris. You know, it's just so close to everything in Europe. And just to have that experience.

I think I can compromise and move to England eventually. But we never really discussed when that would be. Obviously, he had to finish medical school and do his internship and then his residency. So that definitely was a little bit of a ways off.

But there was another blip on her radar, as Danielle describes it. One day I was studying with a friend for finals and he texted me something about wanting to do Doctors Without Borders. And I kind of freaked out because...

Because that meant he'd be away for three to six months. And in that moment, I thought that meant he was leaving, like now, just when things were getting started. This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair? Done well. Kitchen sink install?

Done well. Deck upgrades? Done well. Electrical upgrade? Done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for nearly 30 years, so we know the difference between done and done well. Hire high-quality, certified pros at Angie.com.

I had to call him immediately and talk to him and ask him about this. He did say that, you know, this is something that had been a dream of his, that he wanted to go and do this, that it would take him away for three to six months, but ultimately he would have to wait a little bit. So it wasn't happening right now. And that allowed me to kind of calm down and focus on my studies. But

It also kind of made me realize I was really into this person because the idea of him leaving for even three months was pretty jarring to me. Instead of fearing Artie's dreams, Danielle embraced the role of supportive partner. That Christmas, we'd only been really dating for a month. So my Christmas gifts to him that year were...

Obviously not super, super personal because I didn't quite know him well enough yet. But he had talked a lot about the Doctors Without Borders, about being into humanitarian stuff. I ended up getting him a donation in his name for World Vision. And then I got him a cooking class for two that I thought we could do together. Danielle was surprised when Artie was unhappy with the gifts and complained they felt impersonal.

So I was hurt, but it didn't really seem like a red flag. It just seemed like something that was like, okay, I missed the mark. We'll move on next time.

We started getting into swing of things early 2012. Anytime I wasn't in school or working, I was with him, especially every weekend. My brother and sister were nine and ten, and we were taking them to do things, to museums, to hiking, to Disneyland. We were checking out the city, you know, visiting the L.A. Arboretum. We were going to art museums, the Getty, you name it. ♪

During these long weekends, Danielle got to know Artie more intimately. He was telling me all about him. He grew up in England with four best friends. They were kind of this close-knit circle. Two of those best friends were girls and two of them were guys. One of the guys' name I remember was Connor. I remember that one of the girls' name was Catherine.

Connor and him were especially close. And he had told me about having paid for Connor to go to college because he had grown up with money and Connor did not. Artie told her that Connor was a marine biologist currently working in the tropics.

Artie also told Danielle that he had been engaged to a friend turned fiancé, Catherine. They were engaged for a few years when Catherine confessed to Artie that she had cheated on him while drunk at a party.

He felt like perhaps he could have forgiven her, that ultimately, if he had really wanted to marry Catherine, that he would have forgiven her and they would have worked on it. But ultimately, he felt he ended up walking away because there was something else better for him. Do you remember him alluding to that better for him, meaning me? Yeah.

He has a tattoo on the back of his neck. It's the name Kat, K-A-T. And he told me that it was one of his best friends. At first, I thought it might have stood for Katherine, but he said, no, it was for a friend that had died in a car accident.

He told me that he hadn't really been home since he started medical school. He'd just been too busy. He mainly just talked to his mom on the phone sometimes, but that was also difficult because...

His mom worked a lot. He said that his parents kept all his Christmas presents in a room for him so that by the time he did come back, he could just open all his gifts. He told me his mother's name was Stacy and his father's name was Kyle and that his brother Kyle had been his parents' biological son.

And unfortunately, Kyle had been killed a year prior to us meeting during a business trip in Hong Kong when he was robbed at gunpoint. Kyle was an architect and had been there on business. And he told me they had been really, really close growing up.

After his brother's passing, his brother had had a flat in London and Kyle had left the flat to him. His parents would talk to him on the phone and they were concerned that he wasn't properly dealing with Kyle's death.

He was not super emotional. He also didn't want to go and clear out the things out of the London flat, not just because he didn't have time, but because he told me he wanted all that stuff to just stay the same way it was. Artie continued to share with Danielle about his time in the military and the different missions he was assigned, many of them in Africa. He said he was a sniper that had to kill his targets.

and those targets weren't limited to adults. Sometimes he had to kill children too, and it affected him. In an effort to continue to deepen their bond, Artie thought Danielle should have a personal relationship with his family. So he gave Danielle his mom's email address and encouraged her to reach out.

So I did. And I remember her telling me all about how much she likes me and how she's so happy for us and she can't wait to meet me one day. And she signed it, love mom. So she was already letting me call her mom. It was a little fast, yes, and maybe a little unique to some, but it wasn't as odd as what Artie told Danielle next.

Around this time, he started to tell me about things you don't tell somebody right off the bat because they can seem a little crazy. One of these things was that he had these psychic abilities. I don't think he quite came out and said it like that, or it might've been a little more jarring, but he sort of dropped it. Like I know things that I shouldn't know. I

I obviously didn't believe him right off the bat, but he would tell me things that there was just no way he should have known. One day I was chatting on Google Chat with a friend from school and he texts me, "Who's Jay?"

And I'm like a friend from school. I didn't think anything of it because he actually didn't make quite a big deal about it. He just was like, oh yeah, see, told you I know things. So I was like, God, that's so weird.

Then we would sit down to watch newly released movies for the first time and as we were sitting there watching the trailers he would kind of whisper to me what the whole plot was going to be for the movie as a way to show me like he just can see things. Then he would tell me that he could see spirits and this

This wasn't unusual to me because I do believe in spirits. I have known people that can see them. So this wasn't super unusual. He did tell me that he could see my grandmother. One had passed away when I was 10. I called her Uma. We were incredibly close. And it

I remember having a moment one night where we were laying in bed and he told me that she was there next to me. It was really, really emotional for me and I was just so grateful for that.

March of 2012 is when things really got serious for the couple. They were talking about marriage in real terms, not just hypotheticals anymore. But there were small things nagging at Danielle, sometimes causing her anxiety to be so overwhelming that she became physically ill.

Mainly it was around the fact that there were times where I didn't feel super attracted to him physically. I remember talking myself down and being like, what is wrong with you? That's so superficial. Who cares that he's not the most attractive person? You guys have so much fun together and he loves you. And look at all these great things he's done. Like

Look at the fact that he paid for college for his friend. Look what an amazing person he is. He's ambitious and driven and pretty much everything you want in somebody. So basically, get it together. As things get serious, I decided that I had to come out and confess to him this skeleton in my closet.

something that I had done when I was 19 and I was just really deeply ashamed of. I mean, I was 30 at this point, so it felt like a different person had done it. But given the fact that he knew all these things that I had never told him and he had these psychic capabilities, I felt like I had to kind of come out and tell him because the anxiety of him finding out and then confronting me about it just really weighed on me.

Please note, for privacy reasons, we won't be sharing Danielle's personal secret, as it's not relevant to the story. I told him and, you know, he freaked out. He threatened to end things. And then, you know, he said he had to think through things. So he hung up. He called me back a little bit later and basically said he had talked it over with his friend Connor. Connor had said...

I've never seen you this happy before. This seems to be somebody that you really, really love. You know, this is something that happened in her past. So if you really love her, then who cares? Move forward.

Most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. But get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which you've probably forgotten about. Thankfully, Rocket Money can find a bunch of subscriptions you've

forgotten all about, and then help you cancel the ones you don't want anymore. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features.

Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash wondery. That's rocketmoney.com slash wondery. rocketmoney.com slash wondery.

Achieving a gorgeous grin from home isn't a total mystery with BiteClear aligners. Just don't be surprised if all of your sleuthing friends start asking, what's your secret? Begin by ordering your at-home impression kit today for only $14.95. BiteClear aligners are doctor-directed and delivered to your door.

Treatment costs thousands less than braces. Plus, they offer flexible financing, accept eligible insurance, and you can pay with your HSA FSA. Get 80% off your impression kit when you use code WONDERY at Byte.com. That's B-Y-T-E dot com. Start your confidence journey today with Byte.

He agreed to that, but he wanted some tangible thing for me to prove that I was in this, that I loved him. So he jokingly throws out that I should get his name tattooed. I've never had a tattoo in my life. So I say, I will get your name tattooed if you're going to get my name tattooed. And he agrees. So I said, okay, great.

Shortly after that, I went to get mine and he went with me. I don't remember the reason why he couldn't do it at that time, but he said he would get it after the fact. So I got mine. In my head, I was like, well, I could always cover it up or laser it off if things don't work out. But even though Danielle got the tattoo, Artie wasn't ready to let go of what she had disclosed to him.

He told her he just couldn't get over the idea that it had happened at all. And this is when he began to question her friendships. He starts to tell me that the friends of mine that knew about this should have stopped me from doing it or should have held me more accountable for it and somehow manages to convince me that these friends weren't really my friends.

I did have a group of girlfriends who I'd met after that happened, but they knew about it. They probably liked me because of it, because they thought I was more of a free spirit. I was growing up, I was 30. They had been like my closest friends in my early 20s. I just felt like we really didn't have much in common anyway. So kind of drifting apart from them and sort of cutting them out seemed like a natural order of things.

He finally met my best friend from high school. He was male, and he and I were just incredibly close. You know, he was almost like my brother, to be quite honest. That closeness made Artie jealous.

Artie thought there might be something more there. And there wasn't. But a couple of people in my past had often kind of hinted at there being more. And I just dismissed it because I just felt like people just didn't understand our friendship. We did have like a double date with my best friend and his girlfriend. And for some reason, it just convinced Artie that he was into me.

At first, Danielle confidently brushed it off. Later, as her and Artie's relationship developed, she was influenced by Artie's views and also began to question her best friend's motives.

It was probably the end of March that I decided we had talked enough about marriage and I decided to propose because I'm a very impatient person. I have a bit of a type A personality. We'd had discussions about it and he had definitely said, you know, if a woman were to propose to me, I would still get her a ring. So I didn't feel like I was missing out because I was pretty sure he would get me a ring. I bought the

this really, really nice watch and proposed to him with that. And he said, yes. I think I told a few of my closest friends and my family. I don't think my family quite got it because I'm the one that did the proposing and they're very traditional, but I did post it on Facebook. I remember everybody kind of congratulating me except my male best friend.

In Danielle's mind, Artie's instincts were right. Maybe he wasn't as good of a friend as she had thought. It felt like evidence she could trust Artie. After their engagement, Artie moved in with Danielle. They began to spend all of their time together. And with this closeness came cracks in the veneer of their relationship.

We would start to have little cracks, like any relationship. It's kind of when, you know, issues started to bubble up. We would just argue about stupid things. Something that comes to mind is we were getting food from...

fast food restaurant of some sort. And I had pretended to do something to his drink as being a little bit of a jokester. And he just lost his shit for this. He's like, I don't want anybody to mess with anything with me. It's dumb, right? It's not groundbreaking.

But there were little things that I think came up. And when we would argue, that's around the time it started to get a little more heated. And he would start to call me names when we argued. He would call me a bitch or tell me I was being selfish.

never thought of myself as a selfish person, but for some reason when he would sit down and explain to me why he felt a certain action was selfish, I do remember thinking, oh yeah, I can see how that might come across as selfish, although that wasn't my intention. When we would argue, he would tell me that castration

Catherine, his former fiance, she would never do this. She knows me way better than you. And I would argue back. Of course she knows you better. You guys grew up together and you were engaged and we've known each other less than a year. So yeah, that makes sense. A little bit of the jealousy started to bubble up.

Didn't feel super crazy at that time, but maybe in hindsight it was. For example, he wanted me to buy a new mattress because obviously I had had it for a few years. I'd been in other relationships.

He just didn't like the idea of sleeping on a mattress that other guys had been on. I just thought it was weird, but a quirk. Everybody has their own preference. So I bought a new mattress. No big deal.

That wasn't the only time Artie was jealous of someone from Danielle's past. I had a box of letters from pretty much everyone from childhood up until that point before email. I am that old.

We used to just write letters all the time and I was a military brat. So those letters were my connections to a lot of different people throughout my timeline. Some of them guys, my first loves in high school and crushes. And I kept them as a nostalgic way to look back on it.

And I'd also done that with journals from high school. He had found one of the journals. It talked in depth about my high school crush.

And he didn't like it. He asked me to get rid of the letters and the journals. And I guess at that time, I just felt like maybe this was part of growing up. What's the point in hanging on to this stuff? So I got rid of it.

Around that time, we had gone to a bank and he came out. I was sitting in the car. He came back in and he quickly showed me this receipt. He's like, oh, yeah, look, showing me his bank account had 10 million in it.

His mom had wired him money to pay the property taxes on his brother's flat. I didn't really ask to any other details. He just sort of like flashed it at me to show that he kind of had 10 million on the bank momentarily until he paid off his taxes. That's kind of how he had access to funds. He

He just would have a bank in England that his mom would kind of initiate transfers to him on a regular basis so that he would have money here in his account. So despite the fact that he came from money, I will say that...

We often split stuff. So we never quite outright paid for dinner or anything like that. We would always split things. I know a lot of people who are a little more traditional kind of expect the man to pay, but that's not really where I come from. So it wasn't a big deal to me.

Come fall, the money was drying up. Artie started telling Danielle about having issues with money transfers. He said the bank was not wiring the money his parents were trying to send him. They were telling him he had to come to the bank in person, which he obviously couldn't do because the bank was in England and he was back here in the U.S.,

There would be times where he would be late giving me his half of the rent because of these financial issues that would come up. Eventually, he would give me the full amount, but again, it wasn't kind of right when rent was due. I'd have to cover his half for a little bit.

Danielle hoped this wouldn't last long because, at a minimum, Artie was starting his medical internship soon and needed financial support while finishing school. It wasn't going to be millions, but they didn't need millions. He would talk about the different rotations during his year of internship. I do remember him talking about his OB rotation. He talked about his rotation in psychiatry.

specifically having to actually work with a young woman who had attempted suicide. He would talk about other interns. He would talk about nurses. He would talk about doctors in the hospital.

procedures he was in on. And he would even ask me to make cupcakes or cookies for the staff. I love to bake. And he would then tell me, oh, the nurses loved your cookies. They want some more. And so I would bake cupcakes or cookies for the nurses and the other interns on a regular basis.

Danielle felt like things were going well, already had his internship at UCLA, and was incredibly supportive of Danielle as she graduated with her MBA. She was confident they were ready to take their relationship to the next level. That is, until she got a call from her sister.

Shortly around that time, one of my sisters and my father had asked to go to lunch with me. We go to lunch and at lunch, my sister reveals that it's possible that Artie is cheating on me. That's next time on Something Was Wrong. Something Was Wrong

Something Was Wrong is an AudioChuck original. Thank you so much to our team. Executive Producer, Ashley Flowers. Coordinating Producer, Mike McDonald. Mixing and Mastering by Kyle O'Connor. Created, reported, and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. Our theme song was originally composed by Gladrags, covered this season by Midwest Originals.

So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? 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.

Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.

We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit filed by Larry King, and no real product to push. He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs.

To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.