S9 E3: This Is Bullsh*t
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Some names have been changed for anonymity purposes. Opinions expressed by guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself or AudioChuck. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. A few weeks after Artie was carjacked, Danielle receives a shocking phone call.

I'm at home and it's the detective. And I don't quite remember what questions he was asking me. But when I repeat that he's from the UK, he said he didn't have an accent with me. I was like, are you crazy? How do you not hear his accent? He's like, he didn't have an accent. And I was just like, oh, this guy is nuts. And then he says he gave me a name other than Artie.

I got silent. In my head, I was just like, I don't know what the hell is happening right now. And the detective goes, listen, judging by your reaction to some of my questions, I feel like you might be a victim of fraud. And if you need help, you can call me. And I was like, I've got to go. And I hang up. And my mind is reeling again.

And I called Artie and I said, did you give the police a different name? And he said, yes, I did. I said, why would you do that? He said, because this guy was harassing me. You know that I value my privacy. I didn't want them in my business. And I mean, he proved me right. He's over here harassing me and trying to make it look like I'm the criminal. And it's ridiculous.

And I was like, I don't understand why you would give him a different name. I understand you want to protect your privacy and everything. He's like, because he's being an asshole. I'm not going to give him my real name.

So I don't remember the exact words I used, but something to the effect of this is bullshit. I mean, I had a six month old, I'm working full time again, and I'm still kind of in the middle of the postpartum hormonal stuff. And he did apologize. I'm really sorry that you got dragged into this. He just said, I will make it up to you. So we sort of just moved on.

Danielle emailed Artie's mom a few photos of Carrie, but never received a response. She chalked it up to the ongoing difficulties Artie was having with his parents. They wanted him to move back to England with Danielle and Carrie, and he didn't want to. They got in a huge fight over this, and their communication seemed to stop.

I do remember telling her that the detective had called me and I was like, your son's an idiot because he did this thing. The following year, 2016, sometime in the spring, he hurts himself at work. What he had told me was that he had been assisting this woman getting up. She was really heavy and heavy.

She had somehow fallen on him and he sort of slipped a disc or something like that. And he continues to work, but he's now working through insurance and workers comp. For a while, he's doing physical therapy. I think he even did water therapy.

In the summer of 2017, I was sitting in the living room with Carrie and he comes home and he had been in an appointment that morning, a doctor's appointment of some sort. And he had come in and he was going to do something with us. I don't even know what made him snap. But all of a sudden, he's like, I'm going to take off with her. I'm going to disappear to England and you're never going to see her ever again. ♪

And I looked at him and I was super calm. And I was like, why would you do that? Why would you take her from her mother? He basically responded to me that she would be fine without me.

He said that he wanted me to leave, that he wanted to spend time with her alone, just the two of them. And I told him I will go into the bedroom because I don't want to be around you right now. But in no way, shape or form am I leaving this house after what you've just said.

I went into the bedroom and no more than five minutes, he came in and he immediately goes, I don't know what just happened. I am so sorry. I don't even know where that came from. He's like, I think it might be the steroids I've been taking for my back that the doctor gave me. He goes, I'm going to stop taking them immediately. I don't even know where that came from. I guess I've moved on, but I never forgot anything.

Though they moved forward, this event always lingered in the back of Danielle's mind. She began to wonder if Artie was taking substances that could be altering his mood as well. He had a temper, and there were times when he spanked Carrie. Because of this, Danielle didn't feel comfortable leaving Carrie alone with him. There was one time in the car who screamed at her because she wouldn't stop crying. So I just felt like he could not handle a toddler.

As Danielle became increasingly concerned about Artie's behavior, she began to wonder if he was really capable of making good on his threats to kidnap their daughter. I had that thought in the back of my mind. What if he's not just saying that shit and he really means it? So even when I would do a spa day with the girls, I would make my parents watch her. My parents became my de facto caretakers, even on weekends. ♪

Summer of 2017. Artie traveled to New York for three weeks for a work trip. Danielle's parents also happened to be traveling during this time, so Danielle was solo parenting. Though it was a bit of a challenge, she made the most out of her personal time with Carrie.

Took her on her first Disneyland trip by myself all day. I do know that Artie was really sad about missing out on her first trip to Disneyland, but he understood. And that was kind of like part of the deal. Him being a doctor and working so much, he missed out on a lot of firsts. The first Disneyland trip, her first steps, her first words, all of these things happened when he was at work.

With Artie having to miss so many of his daughter Carrie's first due to his demanding work schedule, the couple was excited that fall of 2017 to host Carrie's first birthday party together. But things did not go quite as planned. Her birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. We obviously invited my parents and, you know, some of my friends.

And my mom came up with my stepfather. He was on an oxygen tank at that time. And all of a sudden, I'm blindsided because Artie comes up to me and he's ranting and raving about how my stepfather had made a rude comment to him.

So Artie's furious. He's basically like, it's me or him. Either you tell him to go home, which, you know, they drove two hours to get there, or

Or I'm leaving. I tried to calm down the situation. I'm like, are you sure that's what he meant? I'm like, the guy, he's sick. He's on an oxygen tank right now. Are we sure that's even like how the conversation happened? Maybe that's not what he meant. I'm basically trying to calm the situation down and grasp at anything.

And he says, no, that's exactly what he meant. And I don't know how I managed to calm him down. It was probably a little bit of begging and pleading. I'm like, I can't ask them to leave. So I was like, he can stay over there and you can play with Carrie and be around the games and the rides and just stay apart. And it was like, that's fine. If he says one more thing to me, I'm going to put him in the hospital. I'm going to beat the shit out of him.

This party is ingrained in my mind because it was fight or flight mode for me, but 10 times worse. I couldn't obviously ask her father to leave the party, but I also couldn't ask my stepfather to leave. I didn't agree that my stepfather should never have said that in the first place at the birthday party. That was my opinion. Like, there's just not time and place. But at

But at the same time, the situation was so insane. I mean, it was just insane. And I literally was just so on edge the whole party and I couldn't even breathe until everybody went home.

Shortly after the disastrous birthday blowout, Artie was injured when he got into a physical fight with a co-worker at UCLA. He told Danielle that after he got into the physical altercation, the co-worker filed a restraining order against him. Artie re-injured his back during the encounter and was then placed on permanent disability by the hospital as a result.

Around that time, he's also dealing with his visa application. He had had an issue with one of his lawyers. The lawyer hadn't filed something on time and had actually even falsified one of his signatures. This is your signature. This is the date. And he had said, here's my records from being at work at the hospital that day. So that can't be my signature. So

So obviously that lawyer was fired. He did borrow money from me to, he had to hire a new lawyer to take care of this and now amend this new visa application. But there was like a little bit of up in the air because we didn't know if they would approve this visa application going through because it had been past the deadline. And that was the whole argument. Yeah.

He was like, what if I have to go back to England? And I was like, well, we'll make it work. How long would that be for? He's like, I don't know. It could be three months, six months, a year. And I was like, well, you know, we'll figure it out one step at a time. He also mentioned, well, I couldn't.

I could go to Mexico since it's so close for you, you know, because then I could regularly see Carrie because, you know, we're so close. And I was like, yeah, I guess if it boils down to that, that's an option. So sometime in the fall, I don't remember because it was so unceremonious, but we had this second bedroom. That's where he kept all his clothes and stuff. It's

So I'm in there and he's going through his backpack and he pulls out a ring and he just kind of drops it there. Like here, here's your engagement ring. And I was like, are you serious? He's like, yeah. And so I'm looking at it. It's pretty ring. And I was like, what made you decide to give me this? He's like, I don't know. I just decided. So that was how I finally got my engagement ring back.

Due to the tension between Artie and Danielle's family, he had been adamant about her not being around her sisters. Until surprisingly, seemingly out of nowhere, he had a change of heart.

He just kind of came to me one day. He's like, I have this friend at work who's dealing with this situation. And I just have to say that, like, I'm seeing what he's going through and family is important and whatever. I'll swallow it. If you want to take Carrie around, whoever, your sisters, whatever, like, that's fine. I'm not going to push back anymore. Miracles do happen. Yeah.

I just didn't expect to hear that from him. And it was nice because I no longer had to walk on eggshells or beg for his permission to have her around whenever my sisters were in town.

In the spring of 2018, Artie told Danielle about a friend of his that was having issues with his girlfriend. Artie relayed that his friend had gotten into a relationship with a woman who then became pregnant quickly into their problematic relationship. The new mother denied Artie's friend the opportunity to visit the baby, so Artie traveled with him a few hours away to try and serve her with custody paperwork.

Then shortly after, he comes to me and he says, my friend's trying to gain custody of their child once the child is born. And he says that he wants to help his friend out. And he told him that we would take care of the baby for him since he's another resident. We're also working 60 to 80 hours. He's got no family here. So we would help him take care of this baby.

And I had like this two warring emotions. Obviously, one was like, what the fuck? But the other part of me is that, honestly, when we first started dating, he told me he wanted to adopt and adoption had always been something that I thought that I would do. And I have a family is very warm and welcoming.

But I also knew he would often get ideas in his head that never materialize. And we didn't know what was going to happen in this situation. So I was just like, oh, I guess we'll talk about it when the time comes. And we moved on.

Danielle didn't hear anything more about that family for a while, and she soon forgot all about them, because in early 2019, Danielle's workplace was forced to make cuts. Danielle was laid off, and her days became focused on taking care of her daughter and trying to find another job to support her family.

I was interviewing. I was also doing multiple gig work. And I did a lot of consulting on the side, even in prior years. So I still had a little bit of that. But that stuff usually kind of trickles out in the fall. So I was basically facing the Christmas season. And I think I had a retail job just for the Christmas to have a little extra for the holidays.

Danielle was given minimal financial support from Artie during this time. He had decided not to finish his residency after he was injured and eventually got a part-time job at a medical company based in San Diego. Despite this new job, Danielle still felt Artie wasn't doing his part to help pay for their family's needs.

He was falling short on giving me rent. At this point, I'd probably taken over his car payments as well. His car that he was driving was always under my name because he didn't have a social. Danielle's seasonal work ended February of 2020, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown in March, adding more stress. Instead of hard times bringing the couple closer, Danielle felt distance between them.

I mean, to be honest, we hadn't been intimate. We basically had sex twice in six years. And the last time at this point had been three years prior to that. I wasn't really in love anymore. We didn't have that connection. I knew he was an asshole. I was

I would find myself being in the shower and fantasizing about him getting into an accident. He liked to go to Yosemite all the time and go like mountain climbing or hiking. I would fantasize about him getting into an accident or getting into a car accident and then being free. And I specifically told my therapist, it's not even a relationship anymore. We're just roommates. It's

but shitty roommates. And I said, what if I leave and find a man that actually wants me? What does my life look like then? He will continue to try to control me through Carrie, through our daughter. He had done that over the years,

obviously with not allowing my sisters around at some points. And he would start fights with me right before I was going to go to my mom's for the weekend and tell me, you can go, but you can't take my daughter with you.

Danielle wanted to leave Artie, but like many victims of abuse, she was afraid of what Artie would do if she tried.

So I was trying to suss out all the different situations. If I left him in a manner that was a nonviolent situation, he would make my life a living hell. And he would use Carrie to do it. And he would try to control me through it. I thought the other situation is he becomes violent. I had thought about running away with her and just disappearing. But then...

But then I thought, this is a man who knows where my parents live and my half-siblings are there. And I wasn't sure if he was capable of showing up with a gun. I mean, he'd been in the military, told me he had no problems hitting women constantly. So what was going to stop him from showing up at my parents' place and trying to fight my father? I didn't see a way out safely or

peacefully. And so I stayed. And instead, I used my therapist and I said, I just have to stay sane until there's a breaking point, until something happens. And I said, I've seen miracles happen before, and I just have to wait for that to happen.

There was definitely some times where he would be out all night. And I do remember having a conversation with him very calmly. And I was like, you know, if we ever split up, I would never take Carrie from you.

You know that, right? And he'd say, of course I do. Where's this coming from? And I would say, well, I just feel like you don't want to be here. I mean, we don't have sex. You are out a lot. And we feel like roommates. Doesn't really feel like we're in a relationship anymore.

or a family. And he would say, I love my family. Of course we are. It's just, I'm a night owl. I like to be up at night and you go to bed early and you have the baby. And he's like, I'm not doing anything. I'm just, I'm either out playing poker or out with my guy friends. And so I would be like, okay,

And to be honest, I would bring this stuff up because I wanted him to say, you're right, let's just call it a day. Like, I was hoping we could like amicably split that way.

One day, Artie approached Danielle about taking Carrie to a playdate with the new family he'd made friends with through a poker night. The couple had two children around Carrie's age, and he was excited because he didn't have many friends with children. Danielle reluctantly agreed. It was probably the first time that he'd had her for more than a few hours, so...

So he was hanging out mainly with the husband, but it was the wife that was kind of doing things with the kids, arts and crafts and stuff. So she really got along with the two kids and kind of came home after that and was talking about that. They went on another play date about maybe like a month later. Carrie loved the kids so

After months of manifesting and interviewing, in June of 2020, Danielle landed her dream job. She was feeling energized and excited for the future when her life took a shocking turn.

I went to my parents' house to pick up my daughter, and it was a really nice day out. So my dad was sitting outside, and I went outside to sit down next to him. And we were just kind of talking, and he got serious. And he was like, what would happen if you found out something about Artie?

Internally, I was like, oh, this again. Everything in my body sort of tense. And I was like, dad, it wouldn't matter. Like he's still her father. There's nothing that's going to change that. I also knew I wanted out of this relationship. And I knew that I couldn't leave on my own or he would make my life a living hell.

That kind of made my dad upset. You know, really? Nothing? Nothing at all? At this point in my head, the wheels are starting to turn that it's possible he's cheated on me. I'm also just like, I just started a new job three weeks ago.

And I wanted to focus on that. And I was in a good place mentally. And I didn't think I could handle anything else, even if it was him cheating. To be honest, if it was him cheating, that was honestly the least of my concerns. I really didn't even care at that point, just cared about staying mentally healthy and

focusing on my new job and on my daughter. I say to my dad, dad, whatever you're about to do or say, I am begging you, please don't. Whatever it is, I can't handle it. Don't want to go there right now. I just started this new job, please. And he basically said it was happening.

He asked me if Artie had taken Carrie on a play date with some kids. And I said, yeah, he's gone a couple times to the house of this couple that he plays poker with. He's taken her. Yeah. And he said, well, they're coming over to talk to you. They're going to be here in 15 minutes.

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I say to my dad, dad, whatever you're about to do or say, I am begging you, please don't. Whatever it is, I can't handle it. Don't want to go there right now. I just started this new job, please. And he basically said it was happening. He asked me if Artie had taken Carrie on placements.

play date with some kids and I said yeah he's gone a couple times to the house of this couple that he plays poker with he's taken her yeah and he said well they're coming over to talk to you they're gonna be here in 15 minutes

We're going to pause Danielle's story for now, because that man and his wife that are coming over to meet Danielle, that's Kenji and his wife Darcy. And to understand how Kenji found his way up to Danielle's doorstep, we have to go back to June of 2019, when Kenji first heard Artie's name.

My name is Kenji. I'm 38 years old. I live in the suburbs of Los Angeles where I've grown up here most of my life. I met Darcy back in 2003 through a mutual friend in college. We began dating shortly after that and ended up getting married in 2010. We have two kids together. They're eight and six. Trouble began for the couple in 2019 when Kenji and Darcy started to argue over whether or not they wanted to have a third child.

Darcy always felt like she was destined to have a third child, really wanted to have a third child. And I, on the other hand, I thought we were good wet too, you know? Kids are a lot of work, time, money, all of that. Just the day-to-day of having kids, raising kids in a high cost of living area like Los Angeles isn't easy. So I,

who was pretty opposed to having a third kid. But I think Darcy was hoping that she could change my mind at some point. - Still, his mind didn't change, and as their kids got older and became more independent, Darcy started spending more time outside of the house.

So she had a little more free time because the eight years prior to all this, she was a stay-at-home mom raising two young kids, which wasn't an easy job by any means. So by 2019, you know, she had a little more free time on her hands and that was cool. I needed that for myself.

Kenji understood why Darcy needed time for herself and had no issues with her going out. That was until one fateful night in June 2019 when Darcy made a new friend at a local dive bar, Ardy.

She tells me a story of a British doctor she met at the bar that she frequents with one of her friends. And she just told me how random it was to meet a British doctor there because it's not the type of place where you typically see a doctor, let alone a British one, hanging out there. It's kind of a dive bar.

And then she recalled some story he had told her about how maybe a week or two prior, he had shot and killed somebody in the LA area who had tried to rob him when he was leaving a party at a friend's house. And immediately that just kind of set off some red flags. So I remember when she was telling me the story, I just did a quick Google search to see if shootings had happened, self-defense shootings that happened in LA within the past couple of weeks. And I couldn't find anything because typically that's the type of thing that would make the news even in a big city like this.

But Kenji didn't find anything. At first, he brushed it off and didn't think much more about the shooting or the British doctor. That is, until early fall of 2019, when Darcy came home from a bar and said Artie had been there again.

She kind of talks a little more about him and the way she talks about him, I can tell she kind of admires him. Like she thinks highly of him because she tells me, oh, he's young. He's an orthopedic surgeon. He went to Oxford, all this stuff. And I didn't really think anything of it. You know, I thought maybe, okay, maybe she was flirting with this guy a little bit, whatever. I'm not really the jealous type, so I wasn't getting all panicked or freaked out or getting in an argument with her about it.

Darcy and Kenji were in the process of purchasing their dream home and had just entered into escrow when Kenji noticed a change in Darcy's behavior. She started getting a little more, just acting a little more distant. She was spending more time on her phone.

She just wasn't spending as much time with me, communicating with me. Particularly later that month, I went on a business trip to London, actually, for a week. Normally, when I'd go away on a business trip, she would be really kind of sad and she'd miss me a lot. And when I'd come home, she'd be really happy to see me. And that wasn't really the case this time. I'll never forget this. When I get home, I get to the door. My kids greet me, but she doesn't even bother getting up off the couch to say hi. She's glued to her phone, clearly texting somebody. I wasn't

I wasn't sure who, but I could just tell, you know, the energy had kind of changed between us at that point. Kenji had suspicions, but he chalked it up to the stress of them buying their new home. I just thought, well, we've got a lot going on right now. Maybe she's just stressed out. Maybe we'll get through this. Once we get through escrow, everything will be better and we'll kind of get back to where we were before. But clearly that wasn't the case.

So the beginning of November, Darcy starts going out more often. Before it was maybe one night a week, one night every couple of weeks with one of her close girlfriends. Now it was turning into two nights a week and then three nights a week, which did start to raise some suspicions with me because I started questioning, you know, who are you really with? Because the girlfriend she claimed she would go with, she was a mom too. She had three kids.

and she had a job. And so I kind of wondered, well, how does this woman have that much free time to be going out two or three nights a week to the bar with you? I definitely started getting suspicious and then combined that with just her distant behavior and her being on her phone all the time. Due to Darcy's distant behavior and constant texting, Kenji became even more suspicious of her behavior. Frustrated, Kenji decided to confront Darcy.

I asked her like, hey, you can be honest with me. What's going on here? Did you meet somebody at the bar? Are you hanging out with somebody at this bar? Just come clean. Just be honest with it. It took a couple of times questioning her about it, but eventually she did come clean and she did say she was talking to the British doctor that he was really interested in her and really liked her. But then she also said, well, it's not really like that. You know, he's just a good friend.

She spoke so highly of him, like she respected him so much. I remember she would say things like, oh, he's the smartest person I've ever met. He's so wealthy, but he doesn't act like he's wealthy. He doesn't care about money. He's so rich that money means nothing to him. Just when I'm starting to put this all together in my mind, I'm just seeing red flag after red flag. She doesn't see it. She buys into the whole thing.

Around the time of Darcy's birthday, she started going out much more frequently. Kenji knew in his gut that something was up. I think that week she probably went out four or five nights that week, you know, saying she was out with her friends, saying that there were new friends she had made at the bar that wanted to celebrate her birthday and so on. And that's when I pretty much knew, I didn't have the evidence at the time, but I pretty much knew, okay, she must be out with this guy.

and she's spending pretty much all night out with him because she wouldn't come home till like 2, 3, sometimes 4 in the morning. Bars in LA close at 1:30, 2 o'clock so there's really no reason for her to be out till 4 in the morning unless she's out with somebody doing something she shouldn't be. I did confront her again and I'm like, "Look, what's going on? Just please be honest with me because

We're about to spend all this money on this house. We're about to make all these big changes in our lives. Like, I need to know what's going on. And then she admits that she's really interested in this guy and she wants to pursue a relationship with him.

I was just kind of floored by that. I didn't know how to respond because I just honestly didn't see it coming. I probably should have, but I didn't. She tries to spin it around to make it sound like she won the lottery, like she just hit the jackpot and things are going to be so much better for her. She's going to be so much happier. I should be happy for her. And it's like a win-win all around when it clearly wasn't.

Darcy continued telling Kenji more details about Artie and his impressive background. She told him that he went to Oxford at just 16, how he was adopted into a family worth hundreds of millions of dollars and went on to be a sniper in the military before moving to affluent Manhattan Beach.

which is a very expensive part of LA. Owned multiple properties there. One of them on the beach, you know, like a multi-million dollar estate. She also told me that he had a fleet of sports cars. Aston Martins, Lamborghinis, all of it. She told me he

carried a gun on him at all times and had a concealed weapons permit to do so. And then when I started to ask questions about all of this stuff, just because clearly when you hear it all at once, things don't add up, right? Like I asked her about his fleet of sports cars. I said, okay, if he's got 10 or 12 sports cars and he's so wealthy, what kind of car does he show up to the bar in? And she told me, oh, he drives a red...

And she tried to say, "Well, he doesn't care about money. He doesn't want to look like he's rich, so that's what he drives daily."

I said, "Okay, well, what does he do now? What is he doing in the area?" And she says, "Well, he doesn't really practice medicine anymore, but he works as a consultant to other doctors and other hospitals in the area. And then in his free time, he's got pharmaceutical investments that he manages and that he lives off of," which was also another trigger. I thought pharmaceutical investments, it sounds like code word for a drug dealer, right?

Things didn't add up. And I was just kind of floored by the fact that she wanted to start to pursue a relationship with Artie and that she really didn't see any red flags about any of the things he was telling her about himself. She really, in her head, thought that she was upgrading. She thought that, hey, I hit the jackpot. I met this wealthy British surgeon. He can take care of me. He can take care of my family. He can provide me with anything I want.

So while she thought it might be hard on the children at first, she thought in the long run, it would be a huge win for her. She would be happier. And because of that, the kids would be happier. All of this floored Kenji because when he met Darcy, they were two broke college students. They didn't have money for things like luxury vacations or expensive things. Darcy had always seemed satisfied with their middle-class life. That was until she met Artie.

She never, she just was never that kind of person. A thousand things were going through my mind at that point. I can't pinpoint one particular feeling, but yeah, shock, betrayal, anger, sadness, all the emotions. I didn't know how to react. And in that situation, all I could do was kind of ask her more questions and try and get more answers and try and figure out why and figure out what I could do to fix things and get us back on the right path.

So we were scheduled to move into our new home the week of Thanksgiving. That didn't happen for a couple of reasons related to the cellars. There were a couple of things they were being difficult about. But either way, I had taken the week off work the week of Thanksgiving. But that week was kind of when shit hit the fan, literally.

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Plus, they offer financing options, 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. Thanksgiving week, Darcy went out nearly every night with Artie. Meanwhile, Kenji, with the week off work, stayed home with their kids, trying to process what was happening.

It seemed like everything had just literally been flipped upside down in my life within a matter of days. I don't even remember if I even slept that week more than a couple of hours. I was just so stressed, so upset. Just everything. That whole week was a blur. Thanksgiving we spent at her parents, my in-laws, and that was just a blur too. Like I remember showing up and being there at Thanksgiving and eating a meal, but my mind was in a million other places.

She hadn't told her parents what was going on yet, so she was trying to put on a happy face and act like everything was fine, nothing was out of the ordinary. And I was clearly upset, but I also didn't want to say anything. I didn't want to spoil the holidays, so I kind of kept my mouth shut. But I know she did pull...

her brother's girlfriend aside during the dinner and went outside and kind of filled her in on what was going on. And I remember her brother's girlfriend told her, what are you doing? This doesn't make any sense. And she was trying to talk Darcy out of what she was doing, but she was already deep into Artie at that point. And I think we all kind of realized, I kind of realized that I didn't know if I was going to be able to snap her out of it. I

I didn't tell a soul that week. And that was probably the hardest part because I was just sitting at home alone every day with the kids. But still, I just had all these emotions and all these things I wanted to talk about. And I didn't have anyone to talk to about it, partially because I was afraid to. I'm the type of person, I don't usually lean on people when I have a problem. I don't know if that's just my upbringing or part of being a guy, but guys don't really...

Our generation were raised to be tough. You don't talk about your feelings. You don't cry. You don't do this. You don't do that. You kind of suck it up and move forward. You know what I mean? One night that week, Kenji asked Darcy to stay home instead of going out with Artie so they could talk.

I'm telling her like, "Hey, please don't. Can you just stay home? Can we talk about things? Can we try and work this out?" She gets angry with me and she refuses. Then I ask her, "Are you sleeping with him?" And then she tells me, "Yes." And I say, "Please tell me you're using protection or birth control or something at least." And she tells me, "No." She tells me, "I want to have a child with him. He wants to give me more children."

And that's what I'm going to do. I'll never forget that conversation as long as I live. I think I turned white in the face and almost passed out because I just couldn't believe she was saying those things to me. You know, it's just crazy. Um,

And I said, what are you thinking? Like, what are you doing? Why are you going to have a kid with somebody you barely know? And her only response was, well, I'm an adult. I'm in charge of my life and I can do whatever I want and you can't stop me. And it's true. Anyone who knows Darcy knows she's a very stubborn person, very hardheaded. Once she has her mindset on something, that's it. So I knew when she told me that she wanted to have a child with this guy, she was going to make it happen. And there was nothing I could do to stop her.

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. 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.

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

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

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