S9 E4: We're Just Getting Started
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When she brought up the fact that she was sleeping with him and trying to actively get pregnant with his child, that's when I was like, okay, something is seriously wrong. And never ever in a million years did I think something like this would happen to me. Like, ever. I never thought Darcy would do something like that to me. It was just crazy.

When Kenji thinks back to this time, he questions how he was able to function at all. I don't even know how I went to work. I don't know what I did with my kids. I can't recall anything else about that time other than those few conversations I had with her about Artie. I knew I needed help. Kenji found a local highly-rated marriage and family therapist and booked the first session he possibly could, the week after Thanksgiving. But Darcy wasn't interested. He had to beg her to go.

She was like, what's there to talk about? You know, like, I'm going to pursue this relationship with Artie. And I think things are over between us. So you can go, you could use the therapy, but I don't see why I need to go. I explained to her why I felt it was important for her to go. And reluctantly, she did agree. So the following week, we did go to a session with the counselor. And pretty much the whole session, she's not really budging. I

I remember the marriage counselor asking us like on a scale of one to 10, how willing are the two of you to work this marriage out and fix things? You know, and I was at an eight or nine on the scale and she was like at a one or two. And so then at that point I knew it was like, okay, well that difference is just way too great.

She was moving forward, and I just had to kind of deal with it. The therapist told me it was really important for me to kind of like go lean on my friends, family, anybody I could and kind of get that support. So I did slowly start telling my friends. It was a really difficult conversation to have because all of my friends have known Darcy and I for a long, long time. I'm talking like 10 plus years, 10, 15 years. So they've seen our relationship from almost the beginning before we were married.

And they were all just as shocked as I was when I first found out. They couldn't believe what was going on.

During their first counseling session, Darcy told Kenji and their therapist that she wanted to introduce their kids to Artie. The counselor immediately says, no, no, that's a horrible idea. You can't do that. You need to wait X amount of months before you do that. I'm sitting there trying to tell Darcy, like, why can't you wait till like June of 2020 or something? Like, wait, give it like a good six months. See where this relationship goes before you introduce another man to our kids. And she refused. She was like, I

I'm their mom. I know what I'm doing. If I feel that this man is safe to bring around my children, I'm going to do it. And eventually, you know, during that session, she did agree. Okay, fine. I'll wait until April 1st to introduce them reluctantly. For some reason, she felt like she needed to introduce the kids right away. And I don't understand it, but that's what she wanted to do. And she was determined to do it.

And I also got the impression that Artie was really pushing for it because in conversations we had around that time, she mentioned that she had met Artie's daughter because he has a daughter that's the same age as ours, six years old. And that because he had felt comfortable bringing his daughter around her, he was kind of turning around on her like, well, I've introduced my daughter to you and I've shown you how serious I am about you. So you need to reciprocate, right? So you need to introduce your children to me.

That's where I could see that the manipulation was starting. In the midst of all of this, Darcy and Kenji were still in escrow on their new home. When the couple discussed what they should do about the purchase, she told him that she wanted to move forward with their plans. Darcy told Kenji that maybe she just needed some space from the relationship for about a month to think things through and then they could reevaluate.

Obviously, in retrospect, I should have backed out way earlier, but there was just so much going on, I couldn't even think straight. I stayed on the boat and just kind of kept going forward and didn't really do much to change the course of things. Moving is tough enough as it is. When you have kids, it's 10 times more difficult. I think just moving forward was the path of least resistance for me. And that was all my mind and body could really handle at the time.

Again, looking back, it's just a blur. I mean, every day was just, I remember I'd go to work. I was just kind of zoned out all day at work. And then I remember I'd come home thinking, okay, maybe tonight she'll just snap out of it. And maybe we can kind of sit down and talk and kind of hash this out and work things out. But that wasn't the case. Every night during that time, I mean, she was going out like five nights a week now, maybe six times a week. We

We even got in an argument one night where I basically told her, no, you can't go out. I was refusing to let her go because I said, I'm not going to stay home and watch the kids while you get to go out and do whatever you want. So I put my foot down. I said, I'm going to go out. And I remember I went downstairs to get my car keys to leave. And she got furious. She chased after me. And literally, as I'm opening the door with my keys in my hand to leave,

She grabs my hand and like starts wrestling with me trying to get the keys out of my hand. And she's telling me like, if you leave, I'm going to throw all your shit out on the street and I'm going to change the locks. You won't be able to get back in here.

And she's almost baiting me into a physical fight. I'm much bigger than her, but she's literally trying to wrestle with me to get the keys out of my hand. And eventually I just say, you know what? Okay, I'll stay here. I don't want to escalate this. I don't want you to call the police. I don't want you to throw all my shit out on the street. Just whatever. During this altercation, Kenji realized how much Darcy cared about her relationship with Artie and how little she was willing to fight for her relationship with him.

Reluctantly, I get her to agree to go to one more session with me. She's waffling back and forth on it the whole time. And then the day of the session, she says, you know what, I'm not going to go in, but I'll call in. I ask why she just says this therapy is really for you. You know how I feel about our relationship. So I'm only going just for you, really.

I go into therapy in person, she calls in and during the entire session it was just like having a robot on the phone. I mean, it was like everything she was saying was so robotic and scripted and she cut her part of the session short. I mean, she was basically giving one word answers, just not showing any type of emotion at all, just not willing to budge on anything.

We pretty much hang up on her halfway through the session because she's not giving us anything to work with and not really cooperating. And the first thing my therapist says to me was like, I think someone was in the background on that phone call. And I said, yeah, I think so too. And we both suspected that Artie was in the background feeding her lines and telling her what to say. Because that's what it sounded like. It sounded like she was talking off a script, which is very unlike her.

Shortly after this strange therapy session, Kenji stumbled upon more evidence of Darcy and Artie's accelerating relationship. Our kids have iPads, and when we had set them up, Darcy had set them up using her iCloud account. And she's not the most tech-savvy person, so I don't think she realized when she did that that all her pictures from her phone would sync to her iPad.

And I remember one day I was sitting with my daughter on the couch and she was showing me something on her iPad, some pictures or something she had taken or drawings or something she had done on her iPad that were saved to her camera roll.

When we got to the main photo screen and you can see all the previews of the pictures there, I saw some naked and half-naked pictures of Darcy there. And I knew they weren't for me, so there was only one other person they could have been for. And I was furious about that. I deleted them right away and...

And let Darcy know like, hey, your daughter can see your naked pictures. Do you know that? And obviously she didn't know. And she quickly unlinked her pictures from our daughter's iPad right away. It was just kind of difficult to have to see. I felt like I couldn't escape from it.

At this time, Darcy was going out five nights a week, so Kenji was spending a lot of time alone at night when his kids were sleeping. And I just remember being angry so many nights and upset and sad and not being able to sleep and wanting answers. My curiosity got the best of me and I started digging.

So I knew her car was equipped with a GPS from the factory. We have an app for the car that lets you remotely lock it, unlock it, and do all kinds of stuff. And then you can also see its location at any time. Darcy would tell Kenji she was going out to various dive bars, and at first he took her at her word. Then she began staying out way past closing time, and he again suspected that Darcy was lying to him.

So I'd pop open the app late at night and check. And sure enough, I see the car parked at the beach somewhere like at one in the morning or on a couple of occasions it was parked at a nearby motel. So it was clear to me that things were really progressing with this guy. I don't think that was the healthiest thing for me to do, but I just didn't know what else to do. I just needed answers. I guess that's kind of what you do when you're upset at midnight and one in the morning and another person is doing this to you. You just kind of want to know what's going on.

She would kind of mix the truth in there. Like she'd say, oh, I'm going out with like a group of friends. Oh, and he might be there. Or yeah, he was there for like an hour or two and then he went home or something. I remember a couple of conversations. She used to be like, oh, he's not going to be around this weekend because he volunteers with Doctors Without Borders. So he's flying to Afghanistan or something, which never happened. You know, the weekend would come and then she would be like, oh, he just canceled his trip and he magically showed up. I wasn't planning to go out with him. He just kind of showed up type of thing.

So she would always kind of like make these excuses or tell these little half-truths. But in the back of my mind, I knew what was going on. Skeptical of Artie's claim to Darcy that he owned three houses in Manhattan Beach, Kenji questioned her on why she had never visited his homes.

And she would say, oh, well, he's a really private person. He doesn't want anyone to know too much about him because he's afraid someone might do something to him because he was so fabulously wealthy. He came from a family that was worth almost a billion dollars, according to her.

So he was just very secretive about where he lived and all these things about him until he could really trust somebody. And that was what he used with her a lot was like, well, I don't trust you yet. And I need you to do all these things and jump through all these hoops for me first. And then I'll trust you. So the burden was always on her to prove herself to him in order to earn his trust.

Right before Christmas one night, she gets all dressed up, leaves to go out with him. I think she said she was going to downtown LA or something, but she left her Apple Watch behind. And again, she didn't know that copies of all her text messages are stored on her watch. Even if she deleted them from her phone,

They'd still be on her watch unless she deleted them there too. So again, it's like 11 o'clock midnight. The kids are asleep. I'm home alone, upset, ruminating about all this stuff. And so I decide to go through her watch and just kind of figure out

Okay, how serious is this really? All of Kenji's suspicions were confirmed once he read Darcy and Artie's text exchanges. He read about their plans to get married and have children together. Artie also told Darcy that he was going to take her back to England and let her drive all of his sports cars around his family's multi-million dollar estate.

One of the messages that is seared into my memory forever was a line where she had said, LOL, we've been having so much sex. One of us is about to get pregnant. And that just confirmed it for me. I saw it with my own eyes and I can't even describe how I felt in that moment. Just knowing that my wife, who I'm sharing a home with and just purchased a new home with, is out actively like that night trying to get pregnant with this guy's child. Yeah.

Heartbroken after reading their romantic exchanges, Kenji tried to focus his attention on caring for his children. He didn't want the children to see any kind of conflict between the two of them. He wanted to try and keep their lives as calm and stable as possible.

They were the only reason I kept my composure, kept my cool. I just wanted to protect them as much as I could. I just kept it all inside, talked to my therapist about it every week, talked to my friends when I could about it. Almost daily, I would wake up in the morning and it would take me a few minutes to kind of realize like,

wait, is this all a dream or is this really happening? And then I'd be like, oh yeah, this is really happening. This isn't some bad dream, unfortunately. I remember reading through it and I just didn't know, like, how could someone fall for this? Like, how could someone think that this person they had just met is ready to get married to them, have kids with them? And I just remember reading the text messages and they almost seemed like he was copying and pasting them off some websites or something. They were just so outlandish.

So Kenji decides to again confront Darcy about what he had discovered. Darcy in turn gets upset with him for invading her privacy. He told Darcy that he knew she had been lying to him and to Artie, because in addition to finding text messages between them, he also found texts between Darcy and another guy.

who turned out to be one of her best friend's brothers, where she was flirting with him and sending him naked pictures and trying to plan to hook up with him too. The messages were pretty recent. They were within a few days of me reading them. So she had apparently tried to plan to meet up with her best friend's brother that weekend, but...

But she couldn't because Artie had wanted to see her instead. So she had to cancel. She's not denying anything because she can't. She's just more like, well, that's illegal for you to look. That's my privacy. How dare you invade my privacy? That type of thing.

The twisted, messed up thing about all of this is that the whole time this is happening, Darcy's telling me about a lot of the things that are happening. She'll come home or the next morning she'll tell me about what happened the night before or ask me things that kind of sound suspicious to her, almost as if she's confiding in me a little bit. And the only reason I allow this is because I'm curious too, right? I want to find out who this guy is. And also I wanted answers.

I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to know what she was thinking, why she was doing all this. So by listening to her, I was hoping I could get some of those answers. 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.

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One of Darcy's stories about Artie in particular set off alarm bells for Kenji.

She tells me that Artie had gotten drunk while they were out and he was too drunk to drive home. And she refused to let him drive home, so she took his keys away from him and tells him that she's going to give him a ride home. Apparently they get in her car with one of her girlfriends and they start to drive Artie home. And she's asking Artie, okay, what's your address? Can you just put it in my Google Maps so I can take you home?

And he's kind of like, he's kind of stalling. He's telling her, oh, I live on like 9th Street in Manhattan Beach. So just go this way. He's not giving her an address. He's not punching it in her phone or anything. So they're driving around, you know, they get to Manhattan Beach. And she tells me that Artie can't remember exactly where he lives. You know, she's asking him, what's the house number on 9th Street? And he can't tell her anything.

and he's acting like too drunk to remember. So eventually Darcy and her friend kind of give up and Artie's like, "Okay, you know, I'm feeling more sober now. Can you just take me back to my car and I'll drive home?" And so that's what they do. He convinces her that he's sober enough to go home and she doesn't push him on it. So she drops him off back at his car. And that was that.

In Kenji's mind, this was a huge red flag. In order to protect his family, he needed to figure out who the fuck was Artie. In an effort to gain more clues to solving this mystery, Kenji listened intently whenever Darcy shared details about Artie. During one of these conversations, Darcy tells Kenji that Artie has a daughter.

and that his daughter and his ex-fiance live nearby. Artie claims that he purchased the home that his ex-fiance and daughter live in. But then I start to question, okay, well, if he's got this daughter with her, how is he able to spend so much time with you? Doesn't he have custody of his daughter ever? Because they were going out like five nights a week, right? So in my mind, I thought, well, surely he has to have custody of his daughter a couple nights a week. This guy is super wealthy. He doesn't really have to work.

All Darcy would tell me was like, well, when he goes out with me, you know, he's got a nanny that watches her.

Okay. Another night shortly after, Darcy comes home and tells me that Artie was talking about his ex-fiancee, saying how great of a mother she was to their daughter and all this stuff. And he gave Darcy her full name, Danielle. We both Googled her and we found her nearby. And the address that was listed for her wasn't a house where he said it was. It was an apartment building that was pretty close by. Okay.

Kenji was desperate to find out as much as he could about Artie, so he patiently listened and made mental notes when Darcy would go into detail about their dates.

Danielle's information all comes up, a bunch of phone numbers. And I'm really tempted to contact her at this point once I find all this out. But Darcy tells me, oh, no, we can't contact her. Already says that, you know, I'm never allowed to talk to his ex. And if I try to, he's going to ruin our lives. He's got a team of lawyers on retainer at all times. And he wants to protect his ex-fiance and daughter. He doesn't want anyone to know who they are, have contact with them. So she begged me not to call or text Danielle.

I mean, Darcy has some of her doubts, but she still believes his story. She tells me, oh, I've seen his British driver's license. Or, oh, I've seen a bank statement. He showed me a bank statement where it said he had $600 million in his bank account, a Wells Fargo bank account. Immediately to which I replied...

who keeps $600 million in a checking account at Wells Fargo? That's not what rich people do. But in her eyes, she had seen the proof and that was enough for her. And she also mentioned that, oh yeah, every time they would go out or they go somewhere, Artie would flash like a stack of $100 bills everywhere they went.

He didn't want Darcy to have any contact with Danielle, which makes me wonder why he even told her her name to begin with. I don't know why he gave up her information so easily if he really didn't want anyone to contact her. But yeah, he had made those threats. And at the time, Darcy believed him. Darcy believed that he had a team of lawyers on standby that would just sue someone into the ground if they crossed his path.

Unfortunately, Kenji was unable to convince Darcy of his concerns about Artie. She made it clear to Kenji that she believed Artie and planned to continue their relationship. When the new house was finally ready, they decided to tell their kids that they were separating. We sat the kids down and explained to them that daddy's going to go move into the new house and mommy's going to stay at the old house and that's just going to be our new normal for them.

They were young kids at the time. I mean, they're still young and they didn't really understand it, but obviously they were upset about it. They didn't see why mommy and daddy and everybody couldn't live in the same house together. So that was an adjustment for all of us.

That Christmas Eve, Darcy tells Kenji that she had finally earned Artie's trust. He was going to show her his house in Manhattan Beach. I took the kids to my parents to kind of do our little Christmas Eve thing over there. And she goes off on this date with Artie. Once again, Kenji was able to see where Artie and Darcy were by tracking their car's GPS system. When he looked up the address, instead of being a million-dollar mansion, the car was parked in an apartment complex.

It was in the general area of where he said he lived, but he was very specific that he lived on 9th Street in Manhattan Beach, right next to the Strand. You're talking like a $10 million home, probably. And this building where she was at, just looking at her location, that wasn't a $10 million home. So I knew something was up.

That night, Darcy tells me that she has more doubts about him because she tells me that, yeah, Artie took me to this apartment that had no personal artifacts of his in it. It looked staged, like it looked like it was staged to be rented or sold or whatever. All the pictures had the stock pictures in the picture frames, that sort of thing. There was nothing about Artie inside the apartment. And she went through a few of the drawers and stuff and it was like empty.

She immediately knew something was fishy, like this wasn't his place. And then she had the address of it and she looked it up on Google that night. And yeah, his name wasn't tied to it at all. The previous residents were some other couple and Artie wasn't the owner of the building either. So none of this really made sense. So I start to dig into Artie's identity a little more and figure out what I can about this guy.

When Kenji googled Artie's name, he found a court case docket between Artie and an apparent ex-girlfriend. He wasn't able to access the details of the case, just the names of the parties involved and the presiding judge.

When I looked at it, it said DVRO. That stands for Domestic Violence Restraining Order. But obviously it was clear to me that this woman had filed a domestic violence restraining order against Artie. I showed this to Darcy right away and asked her about it. And I remember Darcy telling me, "Oh yeah, Artie already told me about that. He had this crazy ex-girlfriend he dated a couple years ago.

And apparently she made up the whole thing and he has a written affidavit that's signed by her where she admits to falsifying the whole restraining order against him. So it's all bogus. You don't need to worry about that. And we're just getting started. We're just getting started, Tiffany. During his Google deep dive, Kenji also comes across Artie's Yelp account, which might not sound very interesting, but he found it to be very telling.

Click on it and I start to go through all his past reviews and a lot of things don't add up. A few of them are threats against businesses he's been to, particularly a couple car dealerships and both times he's complaining that this dealership screwed me over, they sold me a lemon. And I'm just reading this and just the way he talks in his reviews, the grammar, the spelling, it's awful. And then also his behavior is awful.

Once Kenji found out as much as he could about RD Online, he decided to approach Darcy again.

I kind of present those to Darcy and I'm like, wait, if he's from the UK, when did he come to the US? And what was he doing? Why is his name tied to an address in 2011, 2012? She doesn't really have the answers. I think that kind of gets her a little curious. But again, she kind of brushes it off. It's no big deal. She's seen all the proof of Artie's identity so far that she needs and she's satisfied with that.

I did have a conversation with her parents. I don't remember if this was the end of December or early January 2020, but I remember I reached out to them because I don't think they knew what was going on at the time. They were willing to talk and I sat down with them and I basically told them everything I've told you up to this point about what has happened and they were shocked. I think they tried to reach out to her to figure out what was going on, but clearly they couldn't get through to her either.

Darcy, Kenji, and the kids spent Christmas Day 2019 with Darcy's family. Much of her extended family had no idea about what was going on. So just like at Thanksgiving, Kenji tried his best to put on a happy face.

I just remember having to try and act like everything's normal and she's acting like everything's normal when in reality, everything's kind of falling apart around us. But I had to hold it together for the kids, make sure they had a good Christmas experience. I was physically present, but my mind was anywhere but. I think my therapist at the time was out of town for Christmas. So the last couple of weeks of December are really tough. My friends and stuff, they're busy with their families doing Christmas. So

I just remember having to be alone with my thoughts a lot and have to kind of deal with this and process this on my own. That holiday season, I don't wish that upon anybody. I hope nobody ever has to go through something like that because that was just awful. But things were about to get even more difficult because after Christmas, that's when Darcy wanted to introduce the kids to Artie.

Like I mentioned previously in one of our therapy sessions, Darcy had mentioned that she wanted to introduce the kids to Artie soon, like after Christmas. Eventually we negotiated with my therapist and she agreed, okay, I'll wait till April 1st because my therapist said it's not good for the kids to basically see you guys split up and then boom, another man comes right in and takes my place, so to speak.

Beginning of the January, she brings up the subject again and says that, hey, I have to introduce the kids to him. He's really pressuring me to because I've met his daughter, I've spent time with his daughter, and he doesn't understand why he can't meet our kids. And I guess it's causing some issues in their relationship. He's threatening to leave or end the relationship if she doesn't do this for her. And at this point, she still thinks she's won the lottery, so she doesn't want to see her lottery ticket fly away in the wind.

She's willing to do anything to keep him happy. And I'm telling her, how about this? You can introduce the kids to him, but I need to see what his identity is. I need to see a driver's license, a picture of his medical degree from Oxford, his medical license, something like anything. And Darcy tells me, no, Artie's not going to do that. Artie's a very private person. He doesn't feel like he has to prove anything to anybody. And he doesn't want anyone knowing where he lives because he's afraid you're going to come to his doorstep and beat him up.

To which I point out, wait a minute, doesn't this guy have a concealed weapons permit? Doesn't he carry a gun on him at all times? Isn't he a military trained sniper? Why the hell would he be afraid of me or anybody for that matter? And if he's got millions of dollars, wouldn't he have security or some way to make it hard to get access to his place to even get to the front door?

I'm trying to logically work through this with Darcy and she doesn't see it that way. She still believes everything he's told her thus far. Clearly, I'm thinking, okay, this guy's got something to hide and it's not the fact that he's a billionaire.

Most of January was a blur too, getting used to living alone for the first time in a long time and kind of navigating this whole co-parenting thing with Darcy. And it's hard for my kids too because they don't really understand. On the evening of January 26, 2020, Kenji was awoken around 2 a.m. by his phone ringing repeatedly.

I figured I was being paged for work or something. So I pick up my phone and look at it and I see a bunch of missed calls from a number that I recognize to be Artie's. So immediately, you know, I text Darcy and I say, hey, why is your boyfriend trying to call me at two in the morning? Immediately right after I send that text, Darcy calls me and says, hey, I'm in your driveway right now. Artie's on his way over here.

And I'm like, you know, I just got woken up at two in the morning. So I'm kind of disoriented, a little confused. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, what are you doing in my driveway? Why is he on his way over to my house? Get out of here. What are you doing at my place? And she tells me, oh, we just got in a big argument. He's threatening to come over here and start a bunch of shit with you. So I got here before he could to make sure he doesn't come and harass you or whatever. And then she's telling me this.

I hear Artie drive up in the background and I hear him get out of his car and he starts like yelling at her and she's telling him to leave, go away. And then she tells me, oh, I gotta go. The kids are asleep in the house. I go downstairs away from them so they can't hear the conversation. But when I hear Artie show up in the background, she tells me to call the police and...

that she has to go. She hangs up. She leaves. I'm standing at my front window looking out and I see her car leave. I see Artie's car out there too. So I call the police. He's clearly upset about something and he wants to start shit with me and I'm here alone with my kids. So I call the police and I tell them that. I say, hey, there's a man on my property. I don't know what he's going to do but he's got a gun on him and

I'm afraid for my kids and myself. And as I'm on the phone with him, Artie comes up to the door and he rings my doorbell. The doorbell's loud and I'm like, oh shit. Artie comes up, rings my doorbell. He walks back out to the street kind of and paces back and forth for a while. The police say they're on their way. So I'm just kind of sitting there waiting for him. I'm watching him outside. I didn't answer the door.

Then after a few minutes, he gets in his car and leaves. And then literally a minute or two later, the police show up and I talk to them. I kind of explain to them what happened. And they pretty much tell me, well, he didn't break into your property. He didn't vandalize anything. He basically didn't do anything. So there's nothing we can do, but we'll keep an eye out for him. Blah, blah, blah. And that was that.

After the police left, Kenji talked to Darcy to try and figure out what had happened. She told him that they had gotten into an argument because she hadn't returned home at the exact time she had told Artie that she would. And he became very angry. Then threatened to come over and start shit with me to kind of get back at her. I hang up with her, I try to go back to sleep. And at 2.30, I receive a bunch of text messages from Artie.

basically saying, "Hey, there's something you should know that Darcy didn't want to tell you." And then he sends me a video.

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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. I play the video and it's a video of Darcy getting Artie's name tattooed on her hip.

And I was just floored. First of all, Darcy doesn't have any tattoos, but she decides that her first tattoo is going to be a name of some guy that she had just met a couple months before. We were still intimate together here and there. And so I sent him a message to let him know that like, hey, she says she's been faithful to you and loyal to you. It's not true.

Here's the truth. And I think I sent that hoping he would kind of go away after that. Because I knew when I sent that message, there was a 50-50 shot. Well, either he goes away or he doubles down and uses that against her. And that's exactly what he did to control her, right? He used those kind of mistakes she had made in her relationship with him to kind of control her and use against her.

And now he was upping the bar saying, okay, now you have to do all these other things to prove you're worthy of my trust and love and affection and so on. After finding out about Darcy's new tattoo, Kenji confronted her. She told Kenji it was no big deal. She had gotten it done with white ink so that it was less visible and easier to remove later if she wanted.

I didn't want to let him know that it got to me. You know what I mean? Because I know that's what he wanted. He wanted to get me upset and riled up because that's what psychopaths do. They thrive on that. They thrive on creating chaos. After this text exchange with Artie, Kenji's therapist and close friends began suggesting that he should file for a restraining order of protection against Artie.

If he really has a gun on him at all times. Darcy says she's seen it and says he's got a gun and had told her the story before that he shot and killed somebody in LA a few months prior. I was concerned. And she also told me that he had friends at local police departments and the sheriffs that would take care of things for him if he needed it.

In my mind, I thought maybe this guy does have a little money. He's probably not a doctor, but maybe he's some rich trust fund asshole. And he's got some money to throw around and people with money, they can make things happen if they want. If he really does have friends with the police or military friends, and he wants to come after me, he can do it. So I was concerned.

I tell Darcy, like, "Hey, I gotta go file a restraining order against this guy. I gotta protect me, I gotta protect our kids." And Darcy begs me not to. She says, "No, don't do that. He's gonna ruin our lives financially. He's just gonna drag us through the legal system forever. He's gonna drain us, and he's basically just gonna ruin our lives." Against his better judgment, Kenji decided to put off filing for a restraining order against Artie. He decided instead to try and let things go and take a wait-and-see approach.

I was still kind of hoping that Darcy would snap out of this sometime soon and get rid of Artie. But as we know, that wasn't the case. To me, it was clear that this guy was a little unstable just based on his behavior. And he did have a bunch of money that he could do some things to me and he could get away with it probably if he wanted. So I felt kind of stuck at that point. I wasn't sure what to do.

I'm taking my son to baseball practice or some event and my daughter's with us and they're talking and my daughter tells me that she's going to the park the next day and they're going to have a play date with mommy's friend.

And I asked my daughter, oh, who's mommy's friend? I had my suspicion right away when she said that. And my daughter says, it's Artie. And Artie has a daughter. So at that point, you know, once I heard that, I instantly went zero to 100 because Darcy and I had agreed in front of our therapist. She said she wouldn't introduce the kids to him until...

April and here it was January, you know, she's trying to introduce them to him. You know, tell my daughter, oh, that's nice and kind of try and play it off. Keep a smile on my face for her and not let her know that it's bothering me. But later I call Darcy and I confront her about it and she tells me basically tough shit. She's their mom too. She can introduce them to whoever she wants and there wasn't going to be a discussion about it. I tell her, no, it's not healthy for the kids. I don't care if he's introduced his daughter to you or

what he does with his own daughter, you're not going to let him dictate his interactions with our children. And she fights me on it. She tells me they've already met him over FaceTime and they've talked with him on the phone a bunch and all this stuff. I was just upset. I just felt like Darcy was just going to do whatever she wanted to do and there was nothing I could do to stop it. You don't know if he could be a sex offender. You don't know what his history is.

He could be anybody and she didn't seem to care. So, you know, that was just extremely tough for me to deal with and wrap my head around. Some of this was starting to rub off on Darcy. She was starting to say and do the same things he was.

Shortly after their argument over Artie being around the children, Kenji received a message from Artie on his cell. It was a picture of a cease and desist letter. It looks like a legal document that's attached to a text message. And the instructions on it say that I need to sign and return a copy of this cease and desist within 10 days or else he's going to take full legal action against me. So immediately I called Darcy and I'm like, what the fuck is this?

And she tells me, I just got the same letter from him. And I said, what's going on? What is this all about? And she said that they had just gotten into an argument. They broke up. He left. And he had sent those text messages to us asking to cease and desist. That's next time on 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.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.