Episode 8: All Hell Breaks Loose
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A Dear Media original podcast. A note before we get started. We are using AI-generated voices in this podcast. We'll let you know when it's happening, because the lawyers say we have to. And a warning. This episode includes mention of sexual violence against children, rape, and murder. Listen with care. The destination is on your left. Okay. The red door.

It's a pretty house. It is. Arrived. In January, when producer Karen Given and I visited Utah together, we went to the place where Coco was living when she was arrested in early 2022.

Well, it's Sunday morning, about 1130. Of course, there's a church right at the bottom of the hill, and we assume that people are probably mostly gathered there, but should we knock on the door just to see? I know door knocking is not your favorite thing. Door knocking is not my favorite thing. Door knocking is not my favorite thing either, but I find it to be a very effective journalistic tool. Okay, let's go try to talk to Katie. Okay. Okay.

We were looking for a woman named Katie who was renting a room to Coco when the police came to arrest her. I had called Katie and emailed her several times, but she didn't respond. And I wanted to try once more to see what she might have to say about Coco's last few days as the person who she wanted the world to think she was. As we approach, Katie's two golden doodle dogs come to the door. Your tails are wagging.

You're good. Your golden doodles are nice. Hi. Does Katie live here? Golden doodles are nice. And as it turns out, so is Katie. She let us in to chat for about a half hour, but did not agree to a formal interview. She told us that, like everyone else, she believes Coco really did go through some kind of trauma and that she really is struggling. And so Katie basically said she doesn't want to pile on.

Karen and I debriefed about it afterward. I want to ask you, what did you hope to get when you knocked on that door today? I wanted to get actually something that we didn't even ask about, which is things sometimes take a turn.

I wanted to get a recounting of the day that the police showed up. Coco lived in an apartment on the lower level of Katie's house. It has its own entrance, and when police showed up to question her, she refused to come to the door. Katie had to call her and confirm that, yes, it really was the police who were knocking. According to the report, Coco had spoken with the officer over the phone and told him that she had been a patient at the Huntsman Cancer Clinic.

But the officer had checked with Huntsman, and they had provided documentation saying that Coco had never been a patient there.

The whole thing was just very Coco. The officer showed up with the documentation. Coco apologized. She said that she was actually treated at a different hospital called Intermountain, that she must have gotten it mixed up. She tried a few times to log into her account on the Intermountain website, but it didn't work because, of course, she wasn't actually a patient there. And

And then she actually allowed the officer to search her dresser drawer for the documentation that she said would prove that she had been diagnosed with cancer, but he didn't find it. ♪

This is what we wanted to talk to Katie about, but we actually never ended up asking her about any of that. We can read about that in the police report. Right. But there was so much that we learned that we didn't know about from the police report. Katie is a nurse practitioner, and that gave her a lot of insight into Coco's behavior. Especially in the final months before the cancer diagnosis, the GoFundMe, and the ultimate treatment.

of Coco's story. I found it really interesting because Coco knew that she had medical knowledge, kept trying to get her to like confirm that something was wrong. So when we watched that video of Coco saying that she has cancer and like

pulling at this so-called like lump in her neck, we don't see anything. And so you asked whether she saw anything. And she said she examined her many times and that she didn't see or feel anything either. She said she looked at her lab results and she said, yeah, you need to follow up with your doctor. But then she said, you know, those lab results didn't have her name on them. They didn't have any identifying information.

she could have pulled them off the internet for all she knew. She told the story about like the day that Coco went for a biopsy supposedly and then came back and like went right in the hot tub, which she said is totally, just goes against how every patient would behave after a biopsy. And then she also talked about Coco having seizures. Yeah.

and how she knew those seizures weren't real. Someone who has a seizure has this, she called it a postictal state, and I Googled that when we got home because I don't know what that is. But now I know that it's this period of time where you're not, you don't just wake up from a seizure and then go into the kitchen and make a sandwich. You have this recovery period where you cannot wake up. And so she never witnessed that with Coco, and she believes that they were not real seizures.

But Katie still had a great deal of sympathy for Coco. She still believed that something traumatic must have happened to her. She explained how Coco would often jump when someone entered the room. So when Katie's Golden Doodle dogs had a litter of Golden Doodle puppies, Coco took one of them. Last we knew, this dog was the focus of Coco's recent Instagram page.

For Katie, this is kind of fitting. She said Coco is like a puppy. What did you think of that? Oh my gosh. It was so descriptive. It wasn't like she's like a child. It wasn't like she's like, I don't know, annoying. It's like she's a puppy. She's just there for attention, attention, attention. It's never going to be enough. ♪

It's never going to be like, "I'm fulfilled. My heart is full. I am comfortable and confident in my place in the world." Just a puppy looking for love. It's kind of sad when you think about it that way. This interview with Katie, which we would soon start calling the "sad puppy interview," this was early in our reporting, and Karen and I would talk a lot about making sure that we weren't just beating up on an already sad character.

But one of the next big interviews that we got, it really made us realize that we were wrong. Very wrong. Coco is not just a sad puppy. This is Believable, the Coco Berthman story. Episode 8, All Hell Breaks Loose.

If you wouldn't mind, if you could indulge me and just tell me how you found me about what Coco said about Celine and the tour. Sure, sure. That's Karen speaking with a woman who we're going to call Nicole. Nicole did not want us to use her real name and she didn't want us to use her real voice either. So we've altered the recording of our interview. We have not changed Nicole's words or her inflection, but the sound of her voice has been digitally altered.

So I'm the one who hunted you down. It's my fault, so I'll tell you that story. When Karen first reached out to Nicole, it was for some simple fact-checking. Remember how Coco said that she had a contract to sing with Celine Dion? We got an email between Coco and a person who wishes not to share her name. And it's basically...

I'm going to tell you the truth after all these lies I told you.

No, she had not met Celine Dion, but it wasn't her fault that she lied about it because actually she met a woman, someone who had once been a member of Celine Dion's band. And that woman had led her to believe that Celine had heard her story and was inspired by her. Here's the AI reading from that email. I actually fought with Nicole because I am not sure if she lied to me, but who am I telling her that she lied when I didn't do better?

Karen explained all of this to Nicole because Nicole, as we had discovered, was the woman that Coco was talking about in that truth email, the woman who Coco pinned some of the blame on. This woman had basically led her to believe that an offer was coming from Celine Dion any day. An offer to use one of her songs or something? An offer to have her come to Berlin and be part of the concert. Oh.

Be part of the concert. Yeah. Oh, okay. All right. Fantastic. Wow. That's almost less believable than everything else, honestly. Yeah.

Yeah. The other voice you hear is Beth. And when Beth and Nicole met Coco, they had been a couple for 15 years. You guys had a nickname for Coco. Uh-huh. We had a couple. First, they called her Abel, A-H-B-L, and it stood for All Hell Broke Loose. But then Beth's brother-in-law came up with a better nickname, Foco. Faux, as in not real. F-A-U-X. Oh, Foco.

It's a great one. Part of why we had these names is because it came to the part where really for Nicole, it was terribly painful for her to even hear Coco's name. Beth and Nicole first got to know Coco in Las Vegas in early 2017, about five months before Coco's au pair visa ran out and she had to return to Germany. We worked at a place called Kidville. I was basically the lead of a show called The Rock and Roll Road. My

My kids go to Kidville to Rockin' Railroad. I'm sorry, I can't. Are you serious? We're on the Rockin' Railroad. I loved it. I did it for years. Great audiences. They peed and pooped while they were listening to us because they're like, you know, newborns to a couple years old. And they were sweet and wonderful. And it was great. Coco was the au pair for this little boy. So she came in and what we noticed about her right away was she was always very, very quiet.

She always wore these same little tennis shoes. She sat quietly with the boy, but she also sang along and seemed to be really totally into what we did and was very respectful with what we did. And that was it.

Beth had been a working musician for decades, and Kidville was not her only job. I was doing other shows. Everyone was doing other shows. That's the way Kidville is. So one day during class, Beth introduced her fellow cast members by saying where else they had performed. And on the keyboard is blah, and on the drums is blah, and on the guitar is blah. And when Beth introduced Nicole, she mentioned that she had once been a member of Celine Dion's band. And

And Beth says she immediately saw Coco perk up. I saw her from where I was. I saw the difference in her. I saw her become something else from she's just an au pair to she's an au pair who wants to get to Celine Dion.

She came up afterwards and said, oh my gosh, I'm so excited, blah, blah, blah. I love Celine Dion. She's my favorite. You know, went on and on and on. And she opened up probably the first time she had ever spoken to us more than a few sentences. Over the next few months, Coco would come up to Beth and Nicole after class and share parts of her story. She kept hinting that she had a really...

terrible childhood and she wanted to kind of let us know about it a little bit more. So she was already starting to string us along with that. She did tell us that she had

We had heard about this book before. Coco said that every time she was abused during her childhood, she would write a letter to Celine. She didn't have any way of sending the letters, so she translated them and saved them as a book.

In one version of the story, Coco says that she handed the book to Celine during a concert in Las Vegas, and that's how Celine first learned about her story. She took my hand and held it for the longest from all the others. This is the AI reading from Coco's messages. When she held my hand, something big happened. All this year's dreaming, hoping, and believing. All this year's trying to stand up tall. It was worth it.

The picture I had in my head since I am four became reality. In that moment, when she held my hand, I was more than just a crazy fan. No, in that moment, my past let go and I knew I made it. I did it. I found my place. I found peace.

If that wasn't enough, Coco said that after the concert, Celine reached out, and that's how she got to meet Celine for real. And parts of that story are actually true, small parts. Coco really did go see Celine in concert in Las Vegas. She sent her mom some videos of the show. Coco is way up near the front, and she tells people she's in the fifth row. She's singing and screaming and annoying the heck out of a man that's sitting in front of her.

Yeah, you heard it right. The man tells her enough. At one point, Celine is standing on the edge of the stage. Coco holds out her hand and Celine actually grabs it and holds it for a second. Coco turns around and stares straight into the camera with this look of, can you believe that happened? And then shortly after the concert, Coco really did meet Nicole, a former member of Celine Dion's band, just like she said she did.

But that's where the truth ends and the lies begin. Because the rest of what I'm about to tell you did not take place until months after Coco told people that Nicole had introduced her to Celine Dion. I never, ever encountered a human being like Coco before. Thank God. Her whole existence is based on lies.

We interviewed Beth and Nicole over a video chat on a Sunday afternoon in March. They each poured themselves a drink to calm their nerves before Beth launched in with their story. Part of it is me. I will blame myself in a big way for this. This is a thing that is kind of a thing with me that I...

I mean, I really do care. Coco reached out to Beth over Facebook Messenger in June of 2017. I can send you all... I have 135 pages. Would you like them? Well, yes. Hi, Beth. This is Coco. Coco said she wanted to meet up with Beth and Nicole at a restaurant to talk in person, but that meeting never actually happened. So instead, Coco said she would send her story in an email. And in the meantime, she sent Beth an audio recording of her voice.

I usually don't share too much of my music, but you asked me to. So how can I say no? Over the next 10 months, Coco sent Beth a lot of recordings that she said were her voice. I found a love Darling, just I'm finding it

And then I was like, wow, okay. She also sent Beth a video that she said was her dancing to It's All Coming Back to Me Now by Celine Dion, of course. You're rolling your eyes now. But like,

The day that she gave it to you, was it believable that it was her? And were you impressed by it? Did you think, wow, she has talent? Yes. Yes. It was shot from pretty far away, a bit blurry. You could tell it was a teenage girl-ish with a very fit body as you would expect from a ballet, trained ballet dancer. There was no reason to not believe her.

Coco did not actually send Beth her life story until several months later, just after Becky Rasmussen went to go see Coco in Germany. And as a result of how that trip went, told Coco that she would not sponsor her visa unless she went a full year without telling any more lies. And we can say with certainty that Coco's message to Beth included many more lies.

I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I did, to the detriment of our relationship, to so many things. The story Coco told Beth is very similar to the story that you've already heard. My mom trafficked me, blah, blah, blah, Celine Dion. So from that point, Celine Dion was nearly in every single communication about everything she talked about.

After she sent her first letter, then she sent a second letter asking if we could help her with her resume to get into BYU. She wasn't happy with just Beth alone. Never. I had to be a part of it.

Because to her, Nicole is the access point to Selene. Correct.

But in March, Coco got bad news from Brigham Young University. I didn't get in. I'm angry at God. I know I shouldn't. This entire thing means I'm now longer stuck in Germany. I don't know how to explain it, but my entire me just can't be here too much longer. I don't belong here and it hurts to be here. Eager to leave Germany, Coco instead applies to and is accepted at the LDS Business College. It's a school

owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2020, it was renamed and it's now known as Ensign College. And now all Coco needs to do is wait until school starts in August. But patience is not exactly Coco's thing.

So about a week after Coco was accepted into college, she writes Beth of a big disaster. She says that her sister somehow has gotten her contact information and has sent her a message. Going to be very long, five months until I can move to Utah. We're not sure right now if I'm in any danger, etc. But definitely psychological terror started. Four days later, Beth gets another message from Coco. Beth, my sister is in front of my door. I need help.

Beth tells Coco to call her neighbor, to call the police, and lock the door. I'm hiding, pretending I'm not here. I start a Marco Polo. Marco Polo is an app that allows people to video chat. And this really alarms Beth because she really thinks Coco should be calling the police before getting on Marco Polo. Beth sent us a copy of the video that Coco sent her that day. Coco asks, can you hear that?

And I have to say, I can't. Someone might be knocking at the door, or it might just be a normal kind of noise that you hear when you live in a building with other apartments. It's really hard to tell. Coco looks scared, but she also looks beautiful. I mean, her makeup is perfect.

The video goes on for seven and a half minutes, and Coco does a lot of strange things for someone who's supposed to be afraid for her life. She walks around her apartment, she looks out the window, even goes into the kitchen to grab a bite of food before sitting down with her back against the wall, looking scared. But if that wasn't enough... She started sending me Marco Polo videos and recordings where she was saying, I'm running, I'm hiding in the bushes, they're going to rape me, they're going to kill me.

Coco tells Beth that she was raped by a member of her family. And then she implies that she was raped again by someone else. And she just played with my emotions so much. Really, just hours and hours and hours of this. We've heard some of these tactics before. Keeping people on the phone for hours and hours. Texting for hours and hours. When she's losing someone's attention, texting.

she's all of a sudden always in crisis like keeping people up all night when they clearly are working during the day and just I don't want to put words in either of your mouths but I wonder if I'm making it a correct assumption here that that was going on you're spot on yes 100% I feel like

This really reminds me of the kind of thing that people go through when they have like a cult. There were so many 24-hour days for us that we got no sleep. Finally, Coco tells Beth that she had come home to find a dead rabbit on her doorstep. And by then I was emotionally so invested in this human that I felt so horrible for, that I felt a responsibility for. And there started the, why didn't you come here and stay with us thing.

So one day Beth just said, hey, I'm really afraid. I feel like we should try to get her out of Germany. I was on board. I said, well, yeah, we need to get her out of there. This sounds crazy. Of course, I said yes. I even suggested that I was willing to fly to Germany myself and escort her, be her bodyguard in essence, to help protect her to get her back here.

Instead, a friend of Beth and Nicole buys Coco a plane ticket. But as Coco prepares to fly to Las Vegas, Beth receives an email that appears to have been written by Silke Modell, the therapist that I spoke to outside of her office in Hanover. And I should say that I don't believe this email actually came from Silke Modell. My guess is that it was written by Coco.

But the email asks if Beth has any experience with trauma because Coco has been experiencing flashbacks due to everything she's been through recently. It says,

Beth and Nicole pick up Coco from the airport, and they realize pretty quickly that things are not lining up. I was ready to coach her with her voice. So she sat down in the living room, and I got a background track of a song that she sang, and I said, go ahead, let's try to work on this.

And I'm going to be very honest and say that the first time out, I thought, oh boy, this person cannot sing on pitch, like really badly not on pitch, really badly not on pitch, bad, bad, bad, not on pitch. And I said, can you bring, I was trying to be nice. I said, can you kind of,

bring that pitch kind of up a little bit and oh I'm just really nervous and she would try it over and over again and over and over again and I thought I mean that was right the day or the second day that she'd arrived and I started going what is going on we

We do have one verified recording of Coco's singing voice without filters or auto-tune. She told the person that she shared it with that it was from her high school graduation, but it looks more like some sort of senior talent show. She's standing on the stage wearing a black dress.

There's a backdrop behind her that appears to say Hollywood. And this is a duet, so you're going to hear a male voice singing alongside Coco. Okay, so just a reminder, here's what Coco sounded like in those audio files that she had been sending to Beth. ♪ I found love ♪

And here's how she sounds in that video from high school. And then they're taking me.

And from Coco's first morning in Las Vegas, she started disclosing even more about her past. It was always up to her, whatever subject, topic she wanted to speak about. With great lengthy pauses in between tidbits of information, she would just draw this out while we're just sitting there, captive audience.

Beth says it felt like Coco was developing her story in their living room, in between watching episodes of Law & Order SVU. She'd get up one morning and say, I remembered something else. Some of these are stories that we have not yet told you about. She said she'd been genitally mutilated by that Sebastian guy. And then there are stories that you have heard, but that changed. Like the one where Coco's mother killed a dozen children in a basement in Eastern Europe.

Only this time, it wasn't Coco's mother who murdered the kids. She said, "It's true that my mom came down, but what my mom actually did was she put the gun in my hands and she told me to shoot the kids."

And then there was this story about the forced abortion. She told us in great detail. They performed a brutal abortion on me. No anesthesia, nothing. How they held the baby up for her to see before strangling the fetus to death in front of her. I still have the scar on my stomach. I asked her many times, can I see your scar? No, I'm very, I don't like to show people.

We feel that we've already debunked this story. German Youth Authority documents prove that Coco was not living with her parents when she says this happened. She was in the custody of the state. But just in case there's still some doubt, there's this. I was listed as her...

like guardian because she was staying in the United States. Beth took Coco to see a doctor who was aware of the abuse that Coco says she endured. And the doctor frankly called me and said, I see no evidence of anything she said. No genital mutilation, no scar from a baby being ripped from her belly. She said, I need to tell you this because you're giving your life and your home to this person. And

The scar looks consistent with maybe appendicitis, and there is absolutely nothing that points to genital mutilation anywhere. But Nicole did not need a doctor to tell her that Coco's story was not adding up. I'm a natural-born skeptic, and many things she was telling me just were sounding slightly off. I mentioned to Beth a number of times, said, this sounds like it's out of a Hollywood film.

This is almost too fantastic to believe. But then, as we all have with Coco, Nicole started to second guess herself. Maybe I am walking around with blinders over my eyes and maybe I should try to be a little more open. And so I try to shut down my inner voice and try to be there for Beth, who...

was doing her utmost everything to be there for Coco. I feel badly because, I mean, I feel badly on so many, so many levels, so many, so many levels because protecting my relationship became second and protecting Coco became first. And when Nicole said, I'm not believing this, I jumped all over. How can you do this? You're just like the rest of the people that aren't believing her. I

And in the middle of all of this really serious stuff, Coco was still really focused on getting an invitation to meet Celine Dion. It's as if she was trying after the fact to make that story that she told come true.

The story as she told it is that she met you. This is Karen again, explaining Coco's version of the story to Nicole during our interview. And then immediately there's this back and forth about, oh, I'm sending her your recordings. Celine has gotten back to me and says this, says that. So was there ever any communication from you to Celine about this person? Zero. Zero. For the record, zero.

I do not and never did have that kind of pull with Celine or that kind of influence or relationship. Very few people do. But that doesn't mean that Nicole did not try. The most I ever told Coco that I would try to do for her was, I said, I think I might be able to arrange a meet-and-greet with

So that you could actually meet her and then you could hand her your book if you wanted. And that's the best I can do. So Nicole contacted a friend, someone who still works with Celine. I gave her the whole spiel. Look at that. I said, look at the art. Look at the video. Look at the voice. Look how talented. But the conversation did not go well. I don't want to put this unkindly, but there are a great...

troubled young people out there who turn to Celine and her music and find comfort and solace from it and who find themselves being very, very attached to Celine. So this friend of mine was saying, you know, this kind of doesn't

I'm having a hard time buying it. And she said, you know, she honestly did say that at that time, Celine was cutting down, had actually eliminated most of her meet and greets. Just wasn't really doing them. So finally, when I came back and told Coco, she was very, very quiet for a

That moment on for the rest of the day to the rest of the night, she went into her room, shut the door and not a word. Once she realized she wasn't getting to Celine, things started really changing.

Nicole says Coco started challenging her in some really weird ways. She would look me straight in the face and say, I'm stronger than you. And she would try to challenge me to arm wrestling. She would say she was a better driver. Of course, in Germany, they teach them how to drive so much better than Americans. She said schools were better in Germany, too. She spoke multiple languages. French, Spanish, German, English, Polish. I think she said six languages. I find myself rolling my eyes at all of this stuff.

But the way that Beth describes Coco's behavior, it was more than just strange, more than just a sad puppy. It was cruel. She would make Beth feel as bad about herself as she possibly could. She would call Beth grandma. Change her hairstyle.

You look old. Make her feel ugly. Yeah. You're out of shape. We went hiking. She left me behind and she said, I should never go with you. You're out of shape. You're old. She said, get a real job. Yeah, yeah. You think music is your job. And I mean, I've been a successful musician for many years. That day you came back from hiking, you sat there on the floor and sobbed. I did. She made you feel that worthless. Yeah.

It was horrible. I feel like I was knocked down to the point of being this tiny of a person by her on purpose, being told that I was less than a human being, that I was just really a piece of crap. I mean, there's 100% of me in streak in her. That broke our relationship of 15 years and she didn't care. She was actually intent on driving us apart.

When we reached out to Nicole for this interview, she was hesitant. And ultimately, she only agreed to talk to us as long as Beth was included in the conversation. Nicole told us many times she had no interest in the notoriety that a story like this might bring. But it was important to her to be there during the interview to support Beth's side of the story. Because, as Coco's nickname suggests, all hell was about to break loose. ♪

This is Believable, the Coco Berthman story. When Coco first moved in with Beth and Nicole, it was supposed to be only for two months. But pretty quickly, it became clear that two months was a long time to live with Coco Berthman. Her shenanigans were constant. Coco actually ran into the kitchen and grabbed the butcher knife. I had been running after her, and I had to grab her from behind her and restrain her because I don't think...

And then there were the suicide threats. She pretended to drown in my hot tub. Oh, geez. She was laying there for a really long time and I went back out.

And when I saw her, I freaked out. And I tried to nudge her and she still wouldn't move. And then she popped up and she said, what are you so freaked out about? I was just kidding. She would...

go into one of her supposed blackout states where she would roll over face first into something, blankets, a pillow, the floor, whatever it was. So Beth and I are freaking out trying to turn her over so that she wouldn't suffocate. She was strong when she was like this. And I hurt my back. I think Beth hurt her back at one point. And whenever Beth or Nicole tried to question Coco about the inconsistencies in her story, she'd find a way to deflect or just

paused long enough that you finally were like, you know, okay, moving on. It was becoming very clear to me that even when the two months were up, that Beth really didn't have any desire for Coco to move out. She felt that, you know, Coco was not in a proper state of mind or anything else to be on her own. And she felt that she needed to stay here. But Nicole felt completely opposite. We did not have the skills necessary to

for dealing with somebody like Coco and whatever help she needed. We were simply unequipped. Nicole even told Beth that if she really wanted to help,

She and Coco could go move somewhere else, somewhere other than the home that Beth and Nicole shared. I said, you can keep helping her if you want, but I want her gone from our home. But Beth did not move out, and neither did Coco. So I left, and I was starting to feel at that point that there was a very serious problem with our relationship. Yeah, I had stopped putting our relationship first. I stopped definitely putting myself in there as well, and Coco became the

I know I'm starting to sound a little bit like the, but wait, there's more infomercial guy. But wait, there's more. Nicole had left and I was just, I was a mess. I really was. I was just. But she wasn't upset about me leaving. I just say that as a statement. Yeah, I was mad because at that point I was still saying, you know, you're not believing her. You're doing what all the rest of the people do. You're not believing her. How could you do this? And then I didn't like how I was feeling. I didn't like what was going on.

Beth thought maybe a change of scenery would do them some good. So I said, why don't we go meet my family? Beth's family lives in Nebraska. So just two or three days after Nicole moved out, Beth and Coco packed up the car and left.

But Coco's drama did not take a break. She passed out next to the pool and next to a knife. Beth's sister Karen also ended up hurting her back trying to keep Coco safe. Karen said, I don't know if I can handle this. It's way too much. And I said, trust me, it has been almost impossible while Coco heard that. And she freaked out and said, that's it, and then went upstairs and started throwing and yelling things. Beth and Coco got back in the car and headed home to Las Vegas.

On the way home, she wouldn't let me drive. I was 24 hours, basically a prisoner in this vehicle. She drove us going like 100 miles an hour, texting my sister, hating me and calling me things and accusing me of things. And then she's saying, let's sing. You know, I'm lucky I even want to ever hear Celine Dion again, because I swear, I think I had to listen to eight hours solid of Celine Dion.

She was done with me. I couldn't give her what she wanted. So that trip home was horrible. When Beth and Coco got to Las Vegas, instead of moving back into the house Beth shared with Nicole, they moved into Beth's parents' house. It was empty. I stayed in that house with her for a couple more days. And finally, I ended up, I said, you've got to get out of this house. That's the thing, she wouldn't leave. So I finally left.

After she moved out, Beth heard from a friend that Coco was at the police station to report a rape. And when the paramedics arrived, she told the paramedics that the daughter of the people where she was staying at, meaning me, raped her.

We had heard this story, actually, that Coco had accused a woman in Las Vegas of rape. But until this moment, we didn't know who it was. And just let me just interject. I'm not an aggressive person. No. I am a very passive, believable, gullible person. Now, I would have happily beat the shit out of Coco, and I still would. But Beth is not that kind of person. I'm not. No, she was never physically violent against anybody.

She finally moved out of my parents' house. So somewhere, I'm thinking it was probably around late July or August after I had heard that she had accused me of rape and all this stuff. I started just thinking, you know what?

The only person that I can believe at this point is me. Beth had no way of fact-checking Coco's sex trafficking story, but she could look into those little lies, the silly lies that we've talked about before. So Beth went to Google and described Coco's drawings. Hand, grasping gun, black and white, other hand holding, I put a lot of details in and sure enough, popped up.

And then her music. And finally, Coco's dancing videos. Yeah.

We met at a bar and she tried to get me to buy her cigarettes. Beth got to the point pretty quickly. Okay, well, here's what I want to talk to you about. And I had it all set out and I showed her the picture and I said, explain this. This is blah, blah, blah. It's not you. Explain this. This is blah, blah, blah. Not you. Explain this. This is blah, blah, blah. Not you. And she looked just, she was completely stumped.

She looked at me and she got up and walked out of the bar, walked to where her car was, lit a cigarette, was standing there by the car smoking her cigarette. And I walked out and I said, you've lied about this and so many other things. Why?

She goes, get in the car. They climbed into Coco's car. It was a car Beth bought for Coco, by the way. And she said, it's for you. It's for your safety. She said that she was still being trafficked and that it was to protect me because I could get hurt by these people. But this time, Beth did not fall for it. She was caught. She was caught. And there was nothing. She had nothing to say. She just got in the car, drove away.

Beth watched Coco drive away, but she continued to follow her on social media, and so she watched for three and a half years as Coco became more and more famous, talking on podcasts and at conferences and at anti-trafficking events.

Beth knew that Coco was spreading lies, but she didn't know how to stop it. You know, I felt bad, but I didn't know what to do. Because everybody was believing her, I didn't know what to do. It took a long time before Beth was ready to share her story publicly. I decided to become a teacher, and I was afraid that she was going to do something to mess with my teaching career. Then I was like, what am I afraid of? There's nothing to be afraid of. I know my truth. I know the reality. She just had brought me so far down.

But the problem is, it's not actually illegal to lie. The things Coco put Beth and Nicole through, there's no law that protects people from that. In fact, it's possible that the only thing that protects people from a liar is information. The thing we're doing right now, spreading the word, letting people know what's true and what's not true about Coco's past.

At this point, we've done about 50 interviews and no one we've talked to believes that Coco was going to stop lying on her own. She's never going to like, what's the word I'm looking for?

Yes, by herself, certainly. I mean, it's just not possible. So it makes me feel like I have a responsibility to also put it out there because maybe had Beth and I heard something about Coco, my God, we would have like, you know, dropped her like a hot potato.

It's been five years since Beth confronted Coco with all of those lies. Not only is she liking her new career as a teacher, but she's performing again. She seems like she's mostly recovered from the ordeal of knowing Foco. But as we were wrapping up our interview, Beth looked across the video chat at Nicole. It's really shattering, you know, because I'm sitting here looking across here at this video of

of somebody who, you know, it's devastating. It's really hard. I'm very sorry that this happened to you. I'm sorry it happened to both of you. Thank you. But Beth, wow. Do you ever like think about it as if it wasn't your story and wonder like how something so crazy could happen? Hmm.

Yeah, I feel like it's a cunning manipulator who can do that. She's very good. I had the best of intentions and Nicole had the best of intentions. And I believe that all of these people that have come into play had the best of intentions, truly found themselves caring about a human being who seemed to be at the bottom. And so, you know, it's hard.

Some people think she's evil, evil, evil. And some people think she's just kind of sad. And some people think she's mentally ill. And some people think she's a psychopath. And so I just wonder where you... Yes. The answer is yes. Yes to all of those. You think that she's mentally ill for sure? 100%. Do you believe she knows what she's doing is wrong? Yes. Yes. 100%. Mm-hmm.

And, as it turns out, Beth has some insight into Coco's mental health. I have records from when she was in psych hospital in Hanover. You do? Yes. Coco gave them to her. I have so much stuff, you guys. I mean, seriously, this is why I wanted to talk to you.

Beth sent us Coco's records. And before you get too excited, this is by no means Coco's entire history of psychiatric treatment. In fact, it's just two pages. They appear to be from two separate time periods. One, after Coco ran away from her mother's home while listening to Celine Dion on November 2nd, 2009. And one from slightly earlier, April to June of 2009.

We're not going to quote directly from these records because they're medical documents, but it's important to note that they do support Coco's story, or at least the part of Coco's story that involves her mother's ex-boyfriend, Gregor. That's probably why Coco shared them with Beth in the first place. But there's a lot in these two pages that we're just not qualified to talk about. So we called up someone who is. I had a look at the impatient notes that you sent me. I've got them in front of me here.

That's next time on Believable, The Cocoa Birthman Story. Believable, The Cocoa Birthman Story is a Dear Media original series. It's reported and written by me, Sarah Ganim, and our showrunner, Karen Given. Additional reporting was done by journalists Kerstine Silm in Los Angeles and Katarina Felke in Berlin.

A special thanks to Aseel Kibbe.

Consulting producers are Simpatico Media and Infinity Rising. Executive producers are Jocelyn Falk and Paige Port for Dear Media. And finally, we know this podcast hits on a lot of difficult topics. If you or someone you know is struggling, see our show notes for a list of resources. ♪