EP 25 - Kelsey Pt. 1
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Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarcki. And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season, we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news. A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw what thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free?

Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, season three, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My mom was the first one to be like, does this seem off at all to you? It was really the first time someone said something that made me think, what do you mean off? Like I was immediately defensive. I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

When I hear other people's horrific stories of things that have happened to them, I now have a lens of what a human experience to love so deeply that we're willing to suspend disbelief that high is like...

I truly believe that deception really comes from a deep desire to be loved. And I can sympathize with the desire to be loved. This is Kelsey's story of building her life around someone else's lies. Lies that consumed Kelsey's 20s, derailed her early career, and destroyed her sense of trust. For many years, she tried to hide from the deception she experienced. But now, she's ready to tell her story.

As a listener note, names and locations have been changed to protect privacy. When she was a little girl, Kelsey's mom told her the origin story of their family unit. It was a survival story. My dad was really abusive to all of us kids and my mom. And so my mom was finally able to get out when I was about three months old.

Her mom and the three girls started anew in a small West Coast town. But the fear of her dad was always looming in the background.

Nearly everyone in their new town was Mormon. And their family wasn't. Their dad was Cuban. So Kelsey and her sisters stood out in a sea of blonde hair and blue eyes.

I remember my mom would like brush out my hair so I looked more white. And so I looked like the other Mormon girls in town and then essentially told me not to talk about my background, which worked because she was also, I think, hiding us from my dad in prison. Her mom's survival story had another chapter. For Kelsey's entire childhood, her mom battled breast cancer.

It was finally getting away from my dad, but then she had a bout of cancer she thought she was going to die from. As a kid, Kelsey didn't know the details. She just knew her mom was exhausted and was always going to the hospital. And that was definitely on purpose. I think that she wanted to be super careful. And even when I asked her about it, I even remember her saying, this was private, this is adult things. I don't want to scare you. I'm protecting you from this information.

Kelsey's escape was the Girl Scouts. I had this tiny pocket of girlhood that was so fun, like waiting once a week with my girlfriends to earn badges. When I think about where I felt like I mattered most, it was there. Over the summer, she started going to Girl Scout camp. There, she was allowed to just be a kid. I would go for weeks at a time. I just loved summer camp.

I was meeting women who were older than me, who were models of what it was like to really be yourself. Oh, I have the best memories at Girl Scout camp. The women who ran the camp were Kelsey's idols. She wanted to be just like them. I just thought they were so special and cool. I just thought, that's it. I'll be there one day.

As she got older and entered high school, she started dreaming about broadening her horizons. I'm going to do whatever it takes to get out of the state I was raised in and really find myself. So I got perfect grades and worked really hard in school. But this was also around the same time that I fell in love for the first time and I fell in love with a girl in the grade above me.

Kelsey and her high school girlfriend kept their relationship a secret. It was in the mid-2000s, and they were in a mostly Mormon community. At the time, I think I was afraid of being gay. Definitely afraid of the implications of it. So she set her sights on going to college in a place where she could be out and be herself. She was accepted to her first choice and made the leap. I loved being on my own for the first time.

I came out and openly had a relationship and thought that was so special. And I was doing really good in school. But her family's finances took an unexpected turn. So after the first year, Kelsey had to transfer to a new university, one that she'd be paying for herself. I transferred to the public university. I was just pretty isolated and it wasn't the dream for me, but it's all I could afford.

She worked to put herself through college, and she started working summers as a counselor at her old Girl Scout camp. It was life-changing, and I loved it. By her third summer, she earned an executive leadership role at the camp, helping coordinate all the younger counselors. I was doing real programming work, and I went to summer camp that year early because senior staff meets early before counselors get there.

Arriving at camp was a much-anticipated reunion, where she saw all of her closest friends again. One of the new counselors immediately caught Kelsey's attention. Her name was Morgan.

I remember her walking into the office. She was very sporty, so she had the classic REI look. And then the cut-off hair. And she just had the most beautiful eyes. I just remember thinking, mostly because it was the most radical thing I'd ever known for someone to cut off their hair. When they first met, Morgan was shy. She kept to herself and seemed guarded. I found her to be really mysterious. But she and Morgan had a close mutual friend in common.

My other camp friend really vouched for her and was like, trust me, when she opens up, you're going to love her. And over time, she did. It felt like she chose Kelsey. I felt really honored. I just felt like she kind of opened up more to me. I felt really privileged to be the one person that she was opening up to. Like we would spend the weekend after training just talking.

And I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you got her to talk to you. That's how shy she was. And she was telling me like really intimate details about her life. Even though Morgan was only 20 years old, she'd been through a lot. She had shared about some sexual assault, body dysmorphia, struggles with an eating disorder. I just felt like I really knew her.

Morgan confided in her. Forming close bonds was a hallmark of the camp experience. They would be spending every day together for the next three months. In camp time, that's three years. It's a massive amount of time that people don't normally get to spend in a very intense environment where you're like growing and learning and changing about yourself and finding things from kids and teaching kids of remarkable things that change you. It really is a lifetime together.

At camp, there were no cell phones, no distractions from the outside world. And in this bubble, Kelsey knew she was developing feelings for Morgan. But she was in a leadership role. And then there was this. Camp relationships are famously passionate and intense and destructive, which is why we avoid them at all costs. So they continued on with a supercharged friendship. It was a connection Morgan needed. At home, she'd been struggling with an eating disorder.

She had shared that she was really struggling with her eating disorder at camp. And eating with your campers is such a huge part of the experience. Like you're with your campers 24-7. And we're really rigid at camp about calorie intake and water intake. That kind of structure and vigilance around food was really triggering for Morgan. In fact, it was having an impact on her job performance.

She had gotten disciplinary write-ups from the camp director. If she didn't get it under control, this was not going to be the job for her. The idea of losing Morgan at camp was upsetting. Kelsey felt a responsibility to help as both a friend and a camp executive. And so she was really nervous about losing her job because she really loved the work.

I remember spending all of my free time. I got books from the local library and brought them up to camp and was reading about eating disorders. Like, I really became her resource to staying. I was like, I'll help you stay. Don't worry. I've got this under control. And I really felt responsible for that. They were spending a lot of time together, even when they had days off. We would travel as friends, like off to go to Walmart and get face wipes or to a local festival or

We tried to get as much time off from camp as possible. My outside of camp time became Morgan time. About halfway through the summer, they took a day off together and drove to Kelsey's hometown. And I just think there was this little switch one weekend. We were just alone for the first time really together. And then we kissed. Now it was clear that the attraction was mutual.

After that week, we started sharing like a journal. So we had a notebook that we would write notes to each other and then keep it in a cubby. And then I'd write it, put it away, and she'd write it and put it away. And so we sort of had this very sweet romance at camp. Near the end of camp, Morgan's parents came to town. They were devout Mormons. And on that visit, Morgan wanted to come out to them. Kelsey drove her to meet them, to be there for emotional support.

She met with her parents and I wasn't with her. I was in the parking lot, but I remember seeing them at a picnic bench. She came out to them and it didn't go well. She got back in the car. She was like, they believe I'm living in sin. They think this is wrong. They think that any person who had influence over me is of the devil and that I should separate myself from those people.

She was really, really emotional about it. Her parents' rejection brought the two of them even closer. It sort of deepened that connection. It was like, look what we're fighting for. There was so much at stake, and Morgan was now left on her own. They made their relationship official. And when camp ended, Morgan couldn't go home. So they decided to move in together. We were all like, look how adult we are.

We all have our own space and our own beds. So it wasn't like, oh, I live with my girlfriend now. It was very much like we were just continuing the summer camp experience. I think we were on that high of the summer fling. It was Kelsey's last year of college. At first, living with Morgan was a novelty. Even mundane tasks were exciting. Figuring out bus schedules, like everything was just really fun. I also remember doing paintball fights and basketball.

making cookies and burning them for the neighbors. But soon, reality set in. I was working also a full-time job while I was in school because I had to pay for it. I was doing everything to put me on the trajectory to go to my master's program. And at this point, I was on track to be valedictorian. Kelsey's priority was school. We just weren't getting as much time together and we're like drifting a little bit.

But right when the semester began picking up steam, Kelsey started receiving emails from Morgan's family. I remember them very explicitly. One was from her dad. One was from her mom saying that it was an abomination, that I was poisoning Morgan, that I took her away from the life of Christ.

It didn't help that the person Morgan was waiting for to come back from a mission had come back and they had really hoped that she would marry him. Every time I got a message from them, it was very nasty. The message was clear. They thought Kelsey brainwashed their daughter and they wanted her to leave Morgan alone. Morgan's very sacred and pure. Stop this now before you ruin that forever for her.

Like they deeply wanted to make me hate myself so I didn't feel deserving of Morgan. The messages were overwhelming. After a couple months, it got complicated very quickly. It was just that feeling of thinking that I was destroying someone's salvation. It was taxing. But Morgan was fixated. All she wanted to do was talk about her parents with Kelsey. It's like, ah.

Between the stress of school and the drama with Morgan's parents, Kelsey's connection with Morgan was fading. Yeah.

In the real world, it was kind of hard to sustain because I had a lot of ambition. I was really excited about starting my life somewhere new. And it just suddenly was like, oh, this is kind of affecting my ability to be present at work and school. And I'm really rigid about doing right by my career. So Kelsey made a tough decision. Ultimately, I came home from school one day.

The next day, Kelsey came home from school to find Morgan on their couch in tears.

there was something she needed to tell Kelsey. I sat down with her and she had explained that she had been hiding something from me that she didn't want to talk to me about because she didn't want to burden me with it, but she just got really bad news. I honestly thought at the time that it was something with her parents. But it wasn't about her parents. That's when she shared that she had been living with terminal bone cancer and she was in remission.

Her doctors gave her the prognosis when she was at the doctor today that she had three months to live. Hey, listeners, I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, host of the Murder on Songbird Road podcast. Murder on Songbird Road revisits a controversial 2020 murder that occurred in southern Illinois. It divided a community and pitted families against one another. But questions remain as to whether the mother of four serving time for the crime is actually guilty.

I'm excited to tell you that you can get access to all episodes of Murder on Songbird Road 100% ad-free and one week before anyone else with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today.

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarcki. And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season, we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them. We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's right.

That's a fact. We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective. And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom-made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories.

There's one for every story we tell. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news. When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult.

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow.

Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Just when Kelsey thought her relationship with Morgan was over, Morgan came to her with devastating news. She had bone cancer and she was dying. Kelsey was no stranger to cancer. She grew up watching her mother's breast cancer go into remission and return again. It was a horrible cycle. And to think another person she loved was going through this was hard to fathom. I don't think I got it at first.

Morgan had known about the diagnosis all along, but she was just telling her now that the cancer had returned when she only had three months to live. I asked her more details. She said she was diagnosed when she first went to college. She had an injury, a bone break. They did some testing and they discovered that she had cancer. She was fighting it for about a semester, but she beat that bout and then died.

hadn't had a recurrence until that day. She was so flooded with grief for Morgan that the breakup became an afterthought. I remember feeling so deeply sad because my breakup with Morgan was never about not loving her. I cared about her so deeply. The thought of her dying was insane to me and felt so unfair.

especially to have this prognosis with her family not being very close. I was devastated for her. We were sobbing and then we went to bed and I remember holding her, thinking, no, no, this is like my partner going through cancer. This isn't, oh, my ex-girlfriend from yesterday. This was someone I love so deeply, dying. Like this really is the end of someone's life. The next morning, Kelsey woke up with a new perspective.

It changed the way I framed our relationship. I felt grateful that she was alive and I was ready to figure this out together. So she sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop and a notepad to talk about what this would mean. Luckily, Morgan had some answers. She's like, I already have a plan with my doctor. We're going to start treatment. It's really unlikely that I'll survive this treatment, but it's worthy of taking a shot. And so...

That's what she did. During the day, Kelsey would attend class for her senior year of college, and Morgan would spend the day at the hospital. The next few weeks, she was doing treatment all the time, like four or five times a week. She would leave the house and come back really tired and struggle to keep a conversation, struggle to stay awake. She was just deeply impacted by the treatment. Quickly, Kelsey took on a caretaker role.

I started really doing some research and taking care of her. I was making meals. Once again, she was juggling the weight of school and being there for Morgan. I distinctly remember trying to complete homework and being like, I can't finish this. She's puking somewhere, thinking like, get your priorities straight. This is someone's life. This is the end of their human life. And you're worried about like not finishing this math problem.

Like, why was I wasting my time on these early morning classes for, like, my own benefit when she only had a few months left to live? I just suddenly felt selfish and stupid. And that's really the moment that I reframed my entire life. For the first time in her life, Kelsey let school take a backseat. I was letting go of a lot of things I'd worked my whole life toward, but I was like...

I can do this for three months for somebody to enjoy the last few months of their life. Christmas was a few weeks away. With Morgan's family out of the picture, they decided to celebrate with a family friend, an older woman named Joanne, who'd been a mentor to Morgan for years. She considered her like a second mom. We drove out of state to visit her. This family friend was with her when Morgan got her first diagnosis of having bone cancer.

And she was with her when she was doing IV treatments. To meet someone who was so intimately involved with her treatments, I felt really bonded right away. I remember her saying, I didn't even know what I was doing. I just got kind of thrown into this. I was like, I didn't know what I was doing either. It was a relief to talk with someone else who'd been involved with Morgan's care. She was a great resource. For Christmas, Morgan and Kelsey got each other something special. We got rings for our wedding. Rings for their wedding.

Morgan wanted to get married to Kelsey. It was a legal and financial decision. Her attorney had shared with her that when she died, her health payout would be really big and it would go to her parents because that's next of kin. And that was really overwhelming for her. Like she had fought so hard for her queerness and now suddenly in her death as a queer woman, all this money would be granted to her parents. But if she were married to me,

then I would get to decide where that money goes. Morgan wanted the money to be donated to a library foundation. Kelsey was honored to help facilitate one of her final wishes. Of course, whatever you need to do what you want to do with the end of your life. So for her, this was a really meaningful way of honoring her life. So we agreed that we would get married.

Kelsey felt a responsibility to make sure every day was a good day. I tried to make our life so joyful and loving and silly. And that's how we just tried to spend our time. We didn't have very much left. But the days were still difficult, especially as Morgan's health worsened. She would go to treatment and come back and throw up. She was tired all the time. I remember coming home from work and she'd have like fallen over.

She seemed very weak to me. And this is also how my mom would describe her treatments going through breast cancer. Morgan would like lose her hair. I'd come home and she'd have taken a nap and she'd have hair on the pillow. And I'd be like, oh my God, your hair. This only furthered Kelsey's resolve to support Morgan. She offered again to go to the hospital with her, to be by her side as she got treatment. Morgan said no. She didn't want to be a burden. ♪

She was very, very clear that this was her private journey and that she had already burdened me enough and she didn't want me to lose work or lose school. After all, it was Kelsey's job that kept them afloat financially. As the weeks went on, the treatment seemed to be slowing the progression of her cancer. And Morgan hit the three-month mark. By that time, we had gotten word that she'd beat that bout of cancer. There was a lot of medical language, but essentially it was like,

For the past three months, Kelsey had been bracing herself for the end, putting her all into caring for Morgan. It had been exhausting. I still worked full time. I still finished my degree. By the time graduation came around, I was like, I'm going to be a doctor.

I just like barely made it. Like I barely emotionally, physically, spiritually made it. I just remember being an empty person when my family came for graduation. I just felt like nothing. In her last semester, she earned B's and C's and her dreams of being valedictorian were dashed.

Instead of giving the valedictorian speech, she applied to be an honorary student speaker at commencement. I was able to stand alongside the valedictorian, which would have been me, and share my story about what happened with my partner. Like what it really meant for me to give up my schooling in order to help someone I loved.

After she graduated, they finally had the time to plan a small wedding ceremony. At the time, same-sex marriage wasn't legal in their state, so they had to travel. She didn't feel good enough to fly, but she did feel good enough to drive. So that's when we booked our trip for our wedding ceremony. Kelsey drove them to California, with Morgan asleep in the passenger seat. Along the way, they camped in national parks.

There was something really beautiful and intimate. It felt like the end to me. She just didn't seem all there. But there's something about being in nature together and our dynamic started in nature. It was actually really beautiful. The whole trip we took disposable cameras and...

It was very fleeting and lovely. And I remember one of the nights just before we had our ceremony, we slept on the beach of the Lost Coast. And there was something really poetic about waking up. Morgan was still sleeping and I got out of the tent and like looked out into the ocean and just thought like, if I can love someone this big one day after Morgan's passing, someone will be able to love me in this way back. The day before the ceremony, they both sat down to write their vows.

We wrote our vows on, like, hotel napkins. Like, my white dress is in the corner. I'm, like, sitting down with this piece of paper, and I suddenly didn't know what to say. I think vows are for promising to someone, but I don't know how to promise something to her in her death. Like, it just suddenly felt wrong. Maybe it was nerves. She couldn't help but overthink the whole thing. I got to stop thinking in my head, and so I, like, kind of cleared my head of everything.

And this was the commitment she made. Promising her that the memory of her and who I knew her to be and like the love that people didn't get the chance to know, especially her family, that would live on. They delivered their vows and signed the papers in Sequoia National Park. We drove into the woods and...

found a really neat tree. That was two trees that like corkscrewed into one. And there was like one little spot where you could squeeze into. And so we squeezed into these trees and signed the paperwork and we left. Being officially married was a relief. It was the final thing Morgan wanted to do before she passed away. We drove back from California and I was like driving into the sun as it was going down thinking,

I know in my heart that I've done everything that I possibly can for Morgan to feel loved well. Like, I felt like I had finished what I needed to do. I remember her looking at me with a lot of love and, like, she saw me as a wife. Like, I almost felt her relief. Like, okay, got it. Everything's going to be okay. I obviously interpret that differently now.

Hey, listeners. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, host of the Murder on Songbird Road podcast. Murder on Songbird Road revisits a controversial 2020 murder that occurred in southern Illinois. It divided a community and pitted families against one another. But questions remain as to whether the mother of four serving time for the crime is actually guilty.

I'm excited to tell you that you can get access to all episodes of Murder on Songbird Road 100% ad-free and one week before anyone else with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today.

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarcki. And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season, we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them. We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's right.

That's a fact. We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective. And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom-made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories.

There's one for every story we tell. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news. When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult.

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow.

He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In less than a year, Kelsey and Morgan went from being 21-year-olds at camp to being a married couple, handling a terminal disease. Now they were committed to each other. For however much time Morgan had left, Kelsey had been accepted into a master's program across the country. Neither of them expected Morgan to be alive for that next chapter. We're legally married, and now it's a little complicated because I don't know...

how to bring up, like how am I supposed to navigate the next few months? Morgan's successful treatment meant she had more time. She could take a break from treatment. But her cancer was still deemed terminal. No one knew how long she really had left, not even her doctors. It was very much like, this is what we've been told and we're lucky to have this little bit of extra time. It was suddenly another continuation, another chapter of Live Like You're Dying.

Kelsey didn't know what this meant for her plans to start graduate school. She barely got through her last semester. I was really conflicted. I was like, oh no, this is everything I've worked for and I can still go. I still got in and I can still do it. But I can't because it's going to be with Morgan. And I'm grateful that she's still alive. I'm truly grateful, but I also feel like I've lost myself and I don't know how to gain it back if she's still here. Like I hadn't planned for it.

She was worried about juggling her master's program and supporting Morgan at the same time. She didn't even know if she could handle that. But she decided. I said we would do this and we're married now. And so now we're going to travel across the country and start my master's together. They rented a U-Haul and began the cross-country drive. Along the way, they made a pit stop to see Joanne, Morgan's mentor. ♪

She was sort of our middle point between the West Coast and the East Coast. And when we got to her place, I immediately sensed that there was some sort of tension between them. Like maybe an argument had been had and I didn't know about it. It just felt like we were kind of dancing around something that was unsaid. It was clear something had come between Joanne and Morgan. Joanne said she wanted to talk to Kelsey in private, but they just couldn't find the right moment.

At the end of their stay... I could tell that she was holding back from saying something, but she just said, "Okay, good luck." And that was it. So there was sort of this, like, mystery about this odd dynamic we had walked away from, and that made me nervous. I distinctly remember being in the U-Haul and Morgan being asleep next to me and thinking, "We're about to move to a new state. I don't know anyone in. She doesn't know anyone in. We have no friends or family."

And the one really close family connection that she has, she sort of just had a rupture with. It was really the first time I thought like, oh, this is really just us now. When they arrived in their new city, they had to face the reality of living alone. Kelsey found a job in hospitality while she started her master's degree. But Morgan was too sick to work. And...

The reality of affording grad school, working full-time, going to school full-time, paying for both of our lives and also paying for cancer treatments, medicines, was really a tremendous burden. Kelsey was only 22 and she was the sole provider. Morgan found new doctors. And now that they were married, Kelsey was paying for more of Morgan's care. I would say like 25% of every paycheck was going to Morgan.

And so after a couple months of being on the East Coast, it was like thousands and thousands of dollars we were pouring into anything related to her health. She became hyper fixated on financials. I remember specifically Googling what it actually costs if someone dies. She wanted to be cremated. And I just remember looking at this $1,500 price tag thinking, I'm never going to get what I need to cremate her. But she found it hard to have open conversations with Morgan about it.

because she didn't want to talk about death. It was just like every tiny little thing was overwhelmingly my responsibility. It had been a year since Morgan shared her diagnosis. Even though Kelsey was now paying for Morgan's care, she still wasn't privy to the details of it.

I wasn't even sure how to broach the topic of like, can we go together to your doctor to get an update on what we can look at? Can we reassess your medications? But Morgan didn't want to talk about it. She wanted to do everything alone. And that worried Kelsey.

What happens if I don't know where you are? How do I get like your health record? Like there was suddenly some like logistics that didn't really have the answers to. The lack of information was becoming a real problem for Kelsey. It became a wedge in their relationship. This is where things started shifting in our dynamic where it's like,

I need real concrete answers. What is your current prognosis? Like, how is your body doing? Where is the cancer in your body? Without any answers, she was getting frustrated. She felt like she couldn't help Morgan if she didn't have all the information. That year, they spent Christmas with Kelsey's family. We flew home. Morgan was so sick that she could barely even talk. She was lethargic. She was sleepy all the time. She was throwing up.

whatever new medication, whatever new treatment she was trying was really taxing. Like I remember taking photos together that trip and she's sleeping in all of them. This was the second time they thought it was their last Christmas together. And it was the first time Kelsey's mom was getting to really spend time with Morgan. My mom had pulled me aside at some point during this holiday and she was the first one to be like, does this seem off at all to you?

And it was really the first time someone, like, said something that made me think, like, what do you mean off? I was immediately defensive. Still, Kelsey's mom insisted that something didn't add up. She was starting to feel skeptical about Morgan's story. My mom, who obviously has experience with cancer, was like, it just feels off. Like, when she's around us, something feels off. Before this moment, Kelsey had never doubted Morgan's diagnosis.

For nearly two years, her entire life revolved around Morgan's health. I had felt like a bad person for even feeling burdened by cancer. I had never considered doubting it at all. But this is when I started to feel doubtful. And that was when she started breaking bones. On the next episode of Betrayal.

I got a Facebook message. She's like, I've been down a rabbit hole about Morgan. I have proof there's a lot more to this story. And that's when it really blew open. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at BetrayalPod at gmail.com. That's BetrayalPod at gmail.com.

We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning. Written and produced by Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristen Malkuri and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing and mixing by Matt DelVecchio. Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Music Library, provided by Myb Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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