Something Was Wrong - S1 E7: We're Done, I'm Running, You're Insane

Episode Date: February 19, 2019

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Hey, prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. I'm Candace DeLong, and on my new podcast, Killer Psychie Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the cold-butter killers you read about in the news. Listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast killer psyche daily in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. This podcast is intended for mature audiences and could be triggering to some. Please use

discretion when listening. I'm Tiffany Reese and this is something was wrong. And then Kimi calls me back. And it's Hose. She calls me. My phone is vibrating. Her name is on the screen. And I freeze. Like I can't feel my limbs. I'm so terrified. And I let it ring all the way through. I didn't answer it because I didn't know what to do. And then I get a text from her minutes later.

It says, your voice smells not set up yet. Hunn, because I had a new phone since my fiance and I were going to get married. I switched to a different plan and got a new phone. Hadn't set up my voice. My all in, I'm like, damn it. And to this day, I wonder what she would have said. But I said, Kimi, I'm gonna ask something of you. Can you send me a picture of yourself right now? I know it's weird, send me a picture.

She was in a problem, here's a picture of me at dinner. And I went, no, can you get more specific? Cause it was weird, like something about it. This is still when you're sitting there with your mom on the floor with my roommate. Sunday morning. Yep. In my fiance's oversized t-shirt,

then morning after I asked him to postpone our wedding. Okay. And I have not slept more than like 10 minutes all night. And I said, can you send me a selfie? She sent me this weird picture that I'm just like this almost looks like I could reverse search it on Google and find like it's a stock photo kind of thing and she says hello from dinner and sends another picture and it's a picture of like the

London skyline with Big Ben and I'm like no you've sent that to me before and that's not what I asked for so you can you know imagine my brain right now and everything going through it all the thought. And is she saying fuck you? She goes where are you? Why are you, what is that? Wait, she's like, what the heck is this to make sure I'm real LOL? Like, she said, this is insane sauce, ha ha. And I went, yeah, I understand how this can be weird.

But can you understand, my life isn't a little bit of a weird spot right now. So I need one thing from you. I need a selfie with a peace sign. Hold up your hand and of a weird spot right now, so I need one thing from you. I need a selfie with a piece sign. Hold up your hand and make a piece sign right now. And she's like, this is ridiculous. Here's a picture of Brian and me at our wedding. It's a picture I'd seen before. And I stopped replying.

I mean, I stopped breathing also. I actually, I do remember, I think my face went white. I started to pass out because one roommate said, I'm getting her water and starts to jump up and the other one grabbed me. I kind of like fell over. And so she's holding me and I'm just laying there

and she's holding me going, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. Cause I think something in my brain just kind of snapped and they bring me water. That's when my roommate starts, she, I think all of a sudden, stopped replying and then a good 10 to 15 minutes pass. And I'm shaking, I'm hyperventilating

and I'm trying to figure out, okay, where do we go from here? Who is she? Who am I talking to? Is it someone that my fiance knows that was posing as a friend? That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking something about her is not real. So now all I know is that I have been lied to, but I don't know how. I don't know exactly what's going on. What's the no bullshit roommate saying at this point? She's saying I've been to I knew this, like I told you. And she kept saying like, oh, she said I had a friend that was recently catfished. This happens.

It's a real thing. And she kept like, look at me, I'm going look at me. This happens. This is what has happened. And I'm like looking at her blank face going no no no like not me And she had suspected it for a while But there was something wrong with Kimmy or that Kimmy was not Kimmy. She was someone else There was something about her that was very like much more wrong than any of us really wanted to admit and

So all I need to do then was I needed to talk to my fiancee figure I was going on But about 10-15 minutes later, he calls me and my roommates are still in the room. He calls me and he goes, well what's going on? And the tone, he sounds kind of quiet and he's just like, hey, is everything okay? And I said, well, I think so. Because at that point, I'm still waiting to hear back from Kimmy. I hadn't heard anything. She hadn't sent me the picture I'd asked for. I said, you still haven't sent me what I've asked for. I've asked him for one thing,

and I will wait until I get that one thing. And he's like, hey, what's going on? And I'm like, well, I'm not quite sure right now what's going on with you. And he's like, well, at this point it was 12 o'clock. And we had a dance lesson for our wedding scheduled at like 12.30 and I hadn't spoken with him all morning and He said, well, I was I my alarm just went off my notification for our dance lesson

And I had lost track of time all morning because he claimed that he had been in Bible and worship time all morning Didn't see the faces. Give me a fucking race. So spiritual. I mean, it's Sunday morning. Oh, it's Saturday. So he said, what's going on?

My roommates are standing there. He's on speakerphone. He doesn't know that my two roommates are right there listening to everything. And I said, well, I have been talking with Kimmy and he goes okay long pause and I said he goes so what do you what is where's that going and I said well I'm waiting for something from her and then you just hear silence and he goes okay long silence and I look at my roommates like where do I go from here and they look at me and one is like, he's thinking, he's processing.

This is not the voice of somebody who's confused. This is the voice of somebody who's thinking really, really quickly. And he goes, okay, what do you need from her? And I said, and I said, well, I've asked her for a certain picture and I still haven't received it. And he just goes quietly, he goes, okay, what happens if you don't get that from her?

And I said, wow, no, babe, we'll have to cross that bridge when we get there. And he just goes, okay, in the meantime, what do you need from me? Are we going to our dance lesson? And I said, no, I don't, I don't think that would be the best idea right now. I really just want to see what happens with this and I'm still waiting pretty much and it was like, okay, um, I Said, do you think there's anything you can do about this? And he was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna make some phone calls I'm gonna try and I see that I think that'd be a good idea You know if your friends really really care about you as much as it's been made very clear that they do I Think that it's worth a phone call right now. Okay, so what do you want?

And I said, I either need a selfie, like a picture, but it didn't tell them the specifics. And I said, or he said, oh, he goes, it's like, what do you want? Like, is it a FaceTime call you want? Is it like, what do you need? And I said, actually, yeah, no, that you mentioned it, that would be great. But I'm not as smooth and firm as I am telling it right now.

And the moment I'm shaking, like I was talking like this, yes, that actually, yeah, that'd be good. And I'm still everything that I'm saying, and the tone that I'm saying it with is, I love you, I'm here with you, I am for you, I need some answers, and I need your help. But is that where you were at in your mind? Nope, no, I'm absolutely freaking the f out.

Thinking I might be talking to a psychopath like who's been in cahoots with more Psychopaths to lighten me or something and you remain so there with you yep They're right there and I cuz I started thinking okay if Kimi and Brian are this like not in thoughts He has got to have a screw loose if he's been this close with them and there's no amount of backpedaling that he can do now To tell me oh no, yeah, they are crazy. I don't, I shouldn't get them as friends. And you're crying together at night. Yeah.

Talking, being talked off a ledge by this person that is a terrible person. Right. So he says, okay, I've got some phone calls to make and I said, hey, can you send me an updated phone number for Brian just so that I know that I have the right one and he sends it to me. So I try to call Brian and it doesn't go anywhere.

It's a bad number. It says this number, blah, blah, blah, does not exist. Well I texted my fiance and said, hey, have you called them? And he said, I've done, I have left voicemails on both numbers is what he said. And that's when I knew he's lying. You can't leave voicemails on both numbers. Because neither one- Kimmy didn't have a voicemail set up and the other one wasn't even a good number.

At this point, I don't know who I'm dealing with, so my instinct is don't poke a bear, don't don't corner a lion, you know kind of thing. So I wanted everything to be smooth. I wanted to set up the best possible situation to get as much truth as possible, so I wanted him to feel safe. I didn't want him to feel like I was on to him in any way. He was definitely scrambling, but I didn't want him to feel like I was on to him in any way. He was definitely scrambling, but I didn't want him to see me as the threat. Just like I'm in a safe place, tell me exactly what's going on so I can get the full information and then I'm calling the cops and getting the hell out of here. He came to my place first, comes into my room and we sit at the foot of my bed to talk. And I started it off with, okay, we need to talk about the Kimmy thing.

He stops me and he said, that involves somebody who is not here right now, can't, you know, voucher than I can't voucher than they can voucher themselves. Set that aside and let's talk about the fact that my brother and his wife are ready right now to FaceTime with you and your parents and vouch for me and explain why we cannot postpone this wedding and why it would be actually not biblical and I'm thinking you say that word one more time and I am going to freaking karate chop your neck. We need to talk to my brother and his wife. They're ready and waiting like a right this minute.

And I said, actually, that's not the issue at hand. Let's bring Kimmy back to the middle. And I kind of make this motion in front of him like, let's look at what's on the plate right now because everything else around it hinges on this more than you think it does. And he just kind of went quiet and sat back and went, okay, and I said, babe, I want you to know I love you. I'm in this. We're going to work through it,

but I need you to help me and I need you to give me some clarification because now I know that I don't know the full truth. There's something I don't know, but I also know that I am emotionally, like I'm not safe. This is not what I thought it was anymore. I'm gonna have to find a way out. Nothing is what I thought it was, but I need him to not know that. Right, of course. And I also know that, like, physically, I'm safe.

My roommate's got her phone. She's on the other side of the door, you know, we're good. And I kind of just have this sense of God's in this. He's taking me this far. It's gonna be ugly, but we're gonna be okay. And he said that, yes, I'm taught, he said, I just finally goes, what are you asking? Like, what do you need from me?

And I just went, they please, are Brian and Kimmy real people? Like, are they friends of yours? And I felt, I felt like an idiot saying that. I'm asking this, I'm also stupid and crazy to even assume or like propose this and he calm as a cucumber looks me straight in the eye and he says Brian and Kimmy are real people their friends of mine they have you know crazy lives and they have they will go off the grid he goes honestly

They are those people that will just ditch and I went then what wait no that's not consistent with what I know of them Why are they not sending me a picture right now? Why is she not texting me and he goes, honestly, you might never hear from them ever again. And he just looked me right in the eye. And he says that with this like, I wish I could save you, you know, from that kind of thing. There's nothing I can do. And I went, babe, do you see how that's very mean? Like, that's very dysfunctional of your friends that they're gone forever. And he goes, honestly, terrible people people, like I should have never associated myself with them. And I went, hey, no, please, like tell me, like, I don't think we're at the full, I knew

we weren't the full truth. And I'm just like, but this doesn't add up, hey, this is so weird that she suddenly stopped texting me. Have I been talking to them the whole time? Or have I been talking to someone else? And he's like, you've been talking to them. He looked me dead and they ironed, told me that. And then it kind of, I don't remember where the conversation took a turn, but it turned into, well, there have been this time, one

time or two, where Kimmy was overwhelmed. The keep in mind she's raising through kids and running a business and jet lagged. They're moving country to country. So she wouldn't always know what to say back to me because she's also not a girly girl. It doesn't know how to like relate to other women, is surrounded by guys. So Brian would see the text on the phone and be like, hey bud, and shoot it over to my fiance. He's like, here's what the conversation that's happening between your fiance and, you know, Kimmy.

And my fiance would say, here's what, you know, I would say kind of thing. Or sometimes Brian would take Kimmy's phone and reply for her. That was what his explanation was when I said she kind of sounds like a dude sometimes. He said, oh yeah, those times where you got like regular emojis because they were texting from gophones and stuff. And I said, why am I getting iPhone emojis? You know, so like that. And he'd be like, oh, that was when it was Brian. What an ass, you know, he would take her phone and text you as her. And I'm like, do you see where that's pretty messed up thing? Like, do you see where a couple shouldn't do that to somebody? And that was very manipulative toward me. And he'd go, oh, absolutely, like he had to be ahead of me.

So he would say, oh, it's very dysfunctional and it's not okay. And it will stop. Never, like, it'll never happen again. I'm like, yeah, will stop. Never, it'll never happen again. I'm like, yeah, no, no shit, it won't happen again. But then he left and the plan was, and it's still, this is Mother's Day, it's, so he's gonna go home and Lothers Day. Yeah, Sunday's Mother's Day. My family, all they know is that I've just asked him

to call up the wedding, so bless my mom's heart. She's not expecting to see or hear for me today. She doesn't know what's going on. She's at church in a service where the speaker has a crazy testimony and she's talking about how sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand when it comes to your children and you've got to protect them. So my mom, not confrontational, not an attention seeker. I found out later is standing up in the service with our fisting air going, yes! Yes! Yes!

I'm like, oh dear God. What if you were trafficked into a cult, over shot nine times, or fell in love with a vampire, or went into a minor surgery and woke up one week later, paralyzed? What would you do? I'm Whit Missildine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast from

Wondry that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dunes his entire future with one choice, to a woman who survived a notorious serial killer. You'll hear their first-person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Each episode is an exploration of the human spirit and personal discovery. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening. Follow this is actually happening wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or under the app They find out they're at home waiting for texts and so my close friends are texting me and my roommate that I'm close with

Has my mom's number and is texting my mom saying like real life update, real time updates, going, here's what she's doing. We've just found out that some things up with Kimmy, she may not be who we thought we, like, she was, you're that kind of stuff. I can only imagine what's going on in my parents' house right then because there's just a fire, you know. And once I realized that, like something was off with Kimmy and that I was being lied to, I didn't know the full truth. I was like, okay, this is done. So maybe we're gonna get to the bottom of this, but in my mind,

I'm gonna lead him to believe that we're still gonna stay together because I don't know who I'm dealing with, but we're actually done done and it is canceled. So that word got back to my parents through my roommate or a friend or something. I texted one of my close friends who was checking up on me and I was I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, dad like laid his head on the table and wet because he was just so kind of relieved but also exhausted and also going oh my gosh I was like thank god I was right because my parents really weren't convinced that they were doing the right thing they were sick and hoping they were wrong of course like one in the wedding to happen they invested thousands of dollars and not the money has anything to do with it but of course in my brain this is what I'm thinking. So that night my family is celebrated Mother's Day without me and my mom's just like I was my best mother's day gift was knowing that my child had seen what was going on and you know cancel their wedding.

I decided to drive over to his our house in sack to get more because once my no bullshit roommate came home and We're all kind of talking they were just like mm-hmm. You don't have the full story. I Drive over to our house, which is like six minutes down by myself. Yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, and Because at this point I feel physically safe. He has never made me feel physically unsafe Which is sounds like absolute insanity now, but in the moment I was, I just, I was running on instinct and I knew. Because I also knew that he still thought everything was fine, he still thought he had me. So I knew he wouldn't go to anything extreme and I wasn't gonna tell him in person, we're done, I'm running, you're insane, I wasn't gonna do any of that. And I sit on the couch with him and I basically come

out at like, okay, babe, I'm here to get more of the truth, like more of the story. I'm still here with you, I'm still for you, I still love you, but I just, I need to give you more of a chance, you know, to come clean. And he stuck with the, you know, brand and came here, real people, but it became, well, keep it work on the computer and they were using apparently Google voice accounts, which you can use from phone to phone It's an online thing you can just sign up for it and you get a free phone number So he had access to their Google voice accounts because Often times they would shoot him over the conversation that I was having with Kimmy and he would be like Super casual switch over and just type type type type type. Here's what I'd say. Shoot it back over to them and they'd be like, eh, what's good? It was even a bit of word true. So messed up. So weird. I know. Oh my gosh. And I would say, babe,

don't you see how that's kind of weird? Like actually really weird. And he'd go, oh I know, super dysfunctional. I'm never going to be friends with them again like I'm so glad they're out of my life and that we can move forward from this and still be together. In my mind I'm making this is either all them or all you. They either like are real or they're not dead this but I just know it and he, it became the large majority of the conversations I had with Kimmy and Brian were actually with him. So now in my mind, I'm going back over nine months of very honest personal conversation thinking how much of that was him? Was that conversation him? Was the cellulite conversation him? Was the time that I sent a photo of me in my wedding dress to Kimmy? Was that him?

Did he see my gown on me? Like, did he, was he the one who pitched the ESV study Bible to buy for him? Did he feed me all of the phone numbers for his 30th birthday surprise? I need to know who was him and who was them? Or did he was it them? But he went back and read all the conversations. These are all the thoughts that are just shooting bullet holes in my mind right now and I'm sitting on the couch with him and I'm like I've got to get out of this house. Yeah, I have to get away from here. I'm not safe anymore. And it ended with the high 90 something percentile of the conversations were actually him. Next time. And so my parents are on the other end going and my friends are

like calling me saying cut him off, break up. And I'm like then okay okay I will I really get off my back everybody let me handle this. But my dad goes in the military mode and he's like no you're not safe. We don't care about someone else's feelings now. We're gonna come in guns blazing and we're gonna get you out of Sacramento and we're not going to treat this like a breakup. We're treating this like a rescue. Something was wrong is written, recorded,

edited, and produced by me, Tiffany Rees. All the music this season is by the band Gladrax, a special thank you to Sarah, her family, and friends for participating in this series. Check out Sarah's personal blog, Space and Purpose linked in the show notes. Thank you to Alyssa Doyle for her hype, zen, support, and story-editing assistance. A special shout out to my husband Michael and our three amazing kids, Jude, Ruby, and Ozzy, for cheering me on every step of the way.

Thank you to Ryan Doyle, who's always encouraging me and just surprised me with a something was wrong website, coming soon. Follow the hashtag Something was Wrong Pod on Instagram to stay up to date on this series. There is also now a something was wrong Facebook group that was started by a listener, Jen. Jen, you're awesome. I'm not in the group because anxiety, however, you can join the group by going to Facebook and entering something was wrong into the search bar. Today's episode is sponsored by Picture Play. Use Offer Code SWW to get $3 off. If you're enjoying something was wrong and you're not a troll, please consider leaving a five-star review

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