Something Was Wrong - S10 E9: [Olivia] Loose Pills

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

This week, we hear the final half of Olivia’s story...**Resources:For free mental health resources, please visit SomethingWasWrong.com/Resources SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, available in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders at 1-800-662-4357. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Callers can also order free publications and other information.Sources:The U.S. The Department of Health: HHS:  What is the U.S. Opioid Epidemic?Content last reviewed on October 27, 2021 National Institute of Justice: Taking on the Dark Web: Law Enforcement Experts ID Investigative Needs on the Dark Web, June 15, 2020  **Something Was Wrong’s theme song was originally composed by Glad Rags and is covered this season by Basic Comfort. You can listen to their cover of "U Think U" on all streaming platforms or at https://basiccomfort.bandcamp.com/ Website: Basiccomfort.band IG: Basic_Comfort Twitter: Basic_Comfort  FB: Basiccomfortband See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 Psychy 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 Psychy Daily in the Amazon Music exclusive podcast killer psyche daily in the Amazon music app. Download the app today. Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences. Episodes can discuss topics that can be triggering such as emotional, physical, and sexual

violence, suicide, and murder. I am not a therapist or a doctor. If you're in need of support, please visit something was wrong.com slash resources. For a list of nonprofit organizations that can help, some names have been changed for anonymity purposes. Opinions expressed by the guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself or audio chuck. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. So I had gone inside just to get privacy and be away from

everybody and I called her mom and it felt really strange to be letting her know this, but I just tried to tell her as best as I could. My let her know your daughter was arrested at work for shoplifting. She was supposed to appear in court on the 14th and she didn't. And she has a warrant out for her arrest. And I have not heard from her since before she was arrested. And I don't know where she is or where she's gone.

And her mom was just devastated. She was really almost hysterical over the phone, really, loud crying and screaming and cursing Janet's name, just angry. And then she started saying, you can't believe this is happening again, not again. And I was like, hold up. Again, she explained to me that this is not the first time Janet has been in trouble with police, and it's not the first time that she didn't appear for a court date. And that's when everything starts unraveling to me. You think you know me, you don't know me well At all, you think you know me, you don't know me well

At all, you think you know me, you know, know me well, don't know So Janet's mom starts telling me from the beginning From what she said, it sounds like she was only ever familiar with Janet having issues with the law when it came to drinking issues. So she had several DUIs from the past. Most recently, Janet had a DUI from, I believe, the year before I met her. It was from taking her stepfather's very expensive car basically out for a joy ride right before Christmas. And it was when her parents were away and their second home. And Janet went out driving, was extremely intoxicated, and crashed the car and completely totaled it in a different state.

So she had really went far distance while drinking and driving. Thankfully, she wasn't hurt and I don't believe anybody else was hurt, but she was arrested from that incident. And I think she had to spend time and jail over Christmas that year. And as a result, her license was suspended, which made a lot of sense when I learned that because when I met Janet, she was constantly walking everywhere, even in the winter time. And she had told me it was because she was on this regimen of walking and trying to stick to her exercising and getting all her steps in, even though I thought it was really

strange because in the harsh winters, she was even doing that. But I just took her word for it, because I had barely known Janet at that time when she didn't have her license. And so that was the most recent incident. That was the incident that Janet was supposed to show up for court and she didn't, and they had law enforcement go and drive past her address and saw her truck and they went inside and arrested her. And then that's when she had to call her parents to let them know what had happened. That was the last time they had really trusted Janet

with the house and being there on her own. And so this particular winter was the first one that they had left for the long period of time again. Her mom told me about other times she had had DUIs. She had a history of DUIs in her previous home out on the West Coast, as well as I think her mom maybe knew about some minor theft charges she had there. And that was kind of her whole reasoning for moving to the Midwest into our town was because she was trying to start over.

Her parents felt about a loss for how to help her. And I think that that was kind of maybe one of their last resorts or last options was to have her come live with them and start fresh and new with them. When Janet's mom shared with her that the reason she moved in with them was because of her legal trouble at West, Olivia came to an upsetting realization. I asked, well, I thought Janet moved in with you because you had cancer. And her mom

said, no, I had cancer several years ago, but Janet never came here to take care of me. She was still living out west, and that wasn't true. And so that was when I started to learn. Not only did Janet have this criminal history, I didn't really know about. Not knowing about her, having a drinking issue, or not knowing about her having, even the theft issue, for some reason,

feeling the need that she has to steal things. I think the most difficult part was that of how much Janet was lying to me about and things that seemed like she didn't need to lie to me about. For example, Janet had told me that she was married at one point on her previous life, living out west. And her mom told me that that wasn't true. They never had been married before and their relationship just ended really badly and that was kind of when after their relationship

ended was when Janet came to live out here in the Midwest. And Janet also had lied to me about the hospital job she was working. She did have that job for my belief a month or so here, but she ended up losing her job. They fired her once they got the background check. I guess maybe they hired her before they finished the background check, but they found out about her criminal history and they had to let her go because she couldn't have that job with that kind of criminal history. So all those times that Janet said that she was at work, she couldn't see me because she was so busy with work or so exhausted from her second job. These were always lies that she was telling me,

because that went on for a couple of years that she would say she was working that second job at the hospital. And it was just a lie. And it wasn't the first time that she lied to somebody about where she was working that second job at the hospital. And it was just a lie. And it wasn't the first time that she lied to somebody about where she was working. She did that same thing to her mother before I ever met her.

Before she started working at the grocery store, she had told her mom she had the same type of clerical administrative type of job at a different hospital. And apparently she did, or she had an interview, but they didn't hire her because of her criminal history. But she told her mom she had the job anyways, and at the time she didn't have her license because of it getting suspended from the DUI charge.

So her mom would go take her to work, pick her back up after eight hours, thinking the whole time she was at work and the whole time she was at work and the whole time she wasn't. I think what her mom found out is she was going to a library nearby and just saying that she was at work the whole day. So she had this pattern of lying

and she was really good at it. I believed her, her mom believed a lot of these lies even though she already knew she had a history of it. And that was, I think, really hurtful to me to know that I had been so lied to for so long. I imagine that the conversation you had with her mom was extremely difficult. Yeah, I thought that I was going to be the one to be breaking really big news. And I was.

I mean, of course, her mom didn't know about this most recent incident and her mom definitely didn't know to the extent of her theft and how much she was stealing at least according to her mom she didn't know. But I realized that it was me who didn't know anything. I really was on the outside of Janet's life in such a way that I didn't know. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Janet because we were so close and I just was so wrong. The next time they spoke,

Janet's mother called Olivia, who was at work, to give her a heartbreaking update. She had told me that police had found Janet and her truck passed away. I was back in the little back room where we wash our dishes and things like that. And I remember not being able to stand after I heard that. We always hear how people say,

I fell to my knees and stuff like that. It's really a true saying that you truly do kind of lose your balance when you hear news that you just were not expecting at all and something just so horrific. I remember my boss coming back there when she heard me, I don't know if I screamed or I don't remember saying really very much at all to her mom on the phone, which in retrospect seems. And consider it to her mom, but I don't think I knew what to say. I just was in shock. And so I remember just being in tears and not being able to stand. Eventually I walked outside to get some air and just get away from people and I called Skylar to let her know and she came and picked me up because I just I couldn't even function to drive or really do anything.

And honestly thinking back on it, even though it was only a few years ago, it's hard to remember what happened after that, like what I did the rest of the day. I remember just laying in bed a lot and crying. Trying to navigate her grief while also longing for an explanation, Olivia began searching for answers as to how Janet had died. I didn't really give myself a lot of time to just grieve.

I went into this, I need to find out every little detail I possibly can because I just wasn't okay with knowing that this all happened so quickly. I didn't get a chance to talk to her. I think that was the biggest thing as I had it in my head when she was missing that the next time I would talk to her, she would be hopefully in jail and I could I would talk to her, she would be hopefully in jail and I could actually speak to her. And then that was just stolen from me, that kind of fantasy I put up for myself, that although that's not how I wanted our friendship to be or how I wanted things to look like, I thought that I would have a chance to at least confront her, even if it meant she was in prison or something like that.

First of all, I'm again, so sorry for your loss. Thank you. Did she get into the details at all with you at that point? So Janet's mom told me that a truck driver, because Janet stopped at a truck stop. It was like a gas station, but also, it's where all the truckers hold off to get some rest. And the trucker saw her behaving really bizarre the night

before she was found. So she was found in the middle of the next day. And the night before she was acting really odd, I guess he watched her go around her truck into the passenger side and fumble around looking for something. I think he might've said he saw her and just something. I don't know if he saw her drink something or if it was just he saw her take pills.

I'm not sure what it was that he saw. And then she fell on her way back in the grass. And I believe the officer told us that day that we went to pick up the truck that she had grass stains on her knees and so that aligned with what the truck drivers said. And then she got into the driver's seat and kind of looked like she was going to sleep. And then when he woke up the next morning from his rest, he saw that this woman, this woman who's acting strange, she's still there.

I had this truck stop and he thought, that's really weird. And when he went up to go into the store area, he kind of looked into the truck and saw her leading over her steering wheel. And he just could tell something wasn't right and called the police. And then that's when they came out. And so her mom had all of that information when she told me because the officers who called her told her all of that. So it was hard to picture that that was Janet's last moments

in a random truck stop alone and scared and maybe on some type of substance. Just was like a horrible thing to picture. And it was like a really vivid picture in my head. Did her mom say did she have any contact that you know of once she was arrested with her parents? Did she make contact with anyone after she left? No, no Janet didn't contact anybody. Actually, I think her mom told me that her stepdad because he flew back from the West to Back to home as soon as we had told him at least I think it may have been a couple days in between so that he could Because they were mostly concerned about their house and the status of their house and their belongings and

When he got there, he had found her phone, her wallet, her laptop, everything was there. I don't know if she got a burner phone or what she did, but she left everything behind. We kind of all knew that she wasn't going to be contacting or reaching out to us and trying to get a hold of that same number we had for her was going to be pointless. Did you speak with her mother again after that conversation? Oh yeah. Her mom and I talked a lot that day even because after our last conversation, our last recording I went back and looked through the text messages between her mom and I that day.

I think I texted Janet's mom and asked her, when are you coming here? And I think she had told me on the phone, but I was in such shock. I didn't retain any of the information. And so I was kind of asking a lot of the same things that we had talked about over the phone. And from there, we just kind of started messaging each other pretty frequently. Every day, I checked in with her. Every day, I would see if there was anything new

because her mom and stepdad took so long to actually come because her stepdad came, but then he flew back out west because they were supposedly taking care of his mother. Although, I don't know how much of that is true, but it's like they were prolonging going to go identify Janet, going to go pick up her belongings and it was all very, it just took so long. We didn't end up going until March to actually go and pick up her truck and identify her. We weren't able to identify her, but just to pick up her belongings. And I always was asking for updates on the autopsy report

and just things like that. Were they able to ID her body another way? My understanding is that you go in and identify in person, but sometimes they use dental and things like that. Was that the case here? I think that was the case. The fact that they were able to get a hold of Janet's mom in the first place, I'm assuming what they had have done because she left her ID and everything at home. So what they had to have done was trace maybe the license plate. And I know that

that probably would have come up some type of information with her mom and stepdad because I think they helped pay it off or they were involved in the insurance or something like that because they had all of Janet's records for her truck. And I think that's how they found her mom. And then I don't know if maybe they felt like it wasn't even needed to identify her, maybe they did it through medical records, but originally the plan was that we were going to go up there and see her body because I made sure that her mom knew that I wanted to be there when they did that because I needed that closure. And then it was like everything was really delayed and pushed off and pushed off to a point where the autopsy

was done, the funeral home was ready. And at that point, it was too late to try to go and identify her and her mom just made the decision to cremate her. And it just all happened kind of not fast because it was a slow and painstaking process, but it happened without any information being related to me or Skylar. It just seemed like more limbo space, more time to just sit and wait when something one of the most traumatic things

has ever happened to me and then we're just gonna sit and not do anything about it. The past, I've lost people really close to me, but it was always a normal type of death, old age, or illness or something like that, was what I was used to, and then you have a food or all you celebrate who that person was, and you do those things that you're supposed to do, and this situation was so far different

from what I was ever used to with how you process and grieve over someone dying. I did take off, I think a weaker two of work, and then I just decided that I needed to try to move on, like it seems like everyone else was. Not to say Skylar wasn't like that, of course, she was very in the same place as me, mostly angry, but she understood how I was grieving and how I was feeling. But the way that her mom and stepdad were acting like this was not the biggest thing happening in their lives,

made me feel pressured to also behave that way. And then the rumor mill at the store we worked at was just going on million miles an hour and I didn't tell anybody what I knew but what ended up happening is that her mom posted on her Facebook that she had gone on a trip and passed away from a natural causes. So it was completely denying the reality of what was happening and then letting everyone know that Janet's gone and a lot of people were flooding. My phone, my Facebook messages to find out

what I knew, what happened because they all knew she didn't just go on a trip. They knew that there was something more involved, and they knew that I probably had those answers. And so there was a point where I would just shut my phone off for hours during the day, because I couldn't handle all of the questions. Skylar would often answer for me,

or we would just delete them. I even had Janet's family members reach out to me, which I thought was odd instead of like her mom. It was overwhelming. I didn't know how to deal with all of everyone's questions because I had so many questions. And I also was very possessive of her dying. I felt like right now that's my pain and I can't focus on anyone else. This is pain,

except maybe her moms and skilers. It just was a really awful time. There was no type of memorial service. Her mom never had one. No memorial service at all, I believe. Maybe her home town friends back from where she was from out west did one for her. Just like a remembrance. But there was nothing like that here. And with many of her people here,

and that made it even more sad, I think. They did conduct an autopsy. many of her people here and that made it even more sad, I think. They did conduct an autopsy. Her mom got those reports. She did not share with me anything other than a blood clot formed in her leg. And it went to her heart and it killed her pretty quickly. She did not share anything other than that though. The officer mentioned that they figured it had to do with an overdose because of the amount of drugs that they found in the truck. And by drugs, I mean prescription pills mostly, but her mom did not share that with me.

And the death certificate stated natural causes. I didn't know this, but apparently, especially in the Midwest, I learned from a lot of other people who lost friends and family to overdose that their death certificate also said natural causes instead of overdose or something like that. And apparently from where I'm from, that's common because of the opioid epidemic and how extreme it is here, that typically they try to avoid saying stuff like that so that the statistics look better.

I don't know if that's true. I don't have anyone who could confirm that, but I just have a lot of people I know because of how prevalent that is here, that their family members also had that listed, even though everyone knew it was because of an overdose of some kind. The U.S. Department of Health reports that in the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies re-assured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to opioid pain relievers, and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates.

The increased rate of opioid medication prescriptions led to widespread misuse of both prescription and non-prescription opioids, until it became clear that these medications could be highly addictive. In 2017, the opioid epidemic was declared a public health emergency. Opioid overdoses accounted for more than 42,000 deaths in 2016, more than any previous year on record, an estimated 40% of opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription. Once Janet's mom and step-dad finally got back to town and they took a few days to kind of go through all of the stuff in the house, kind of assess what was missing. I believe there was a few things missing from the house. And they also had her computer and her phone. So they were getting a lot of their answers because according to her mom Janet didn't delete anything. She kind of left everything there,

which I would have loved to have been able to look at or just know more about. But I didn't get a lot of information on that. But that's how they found out that she was using the Dark Web. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wondries Podcast American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our newest series, we look at the Kids for Cash Scandal, a story about corruption inside America's system of juvenile justice.

In Northeastern Pennsylvania, residents had begun noticing an alarming trend. Children were being sent away to jail in high numbers, and often for committing only minor offenses. The FBI began looking at two local judges, and when the full picture emerged, it made national headlines. The judges were earning a fortune, carrying out a brazen criminal scheme, one that would shatter the lives of countless children, and force a heated debate about punishment, an America's criminal justice system.

Follow American scandal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or wonder app. The Dark Web is a hidden collective of internet sites only accessible by a specialized web browser. It is used for keeping internet activity, anonymous, and private, which can be used for illegal activities, such as buying illegal drugs and firearms. About 80% of dark web traffic is related to accessing child pornography. It's also used to access sites used for human trafficking, fake IDs, stolen credit cards, and other various illegal activities. Although not all content on the dark web is illegal, more than 60% of the sites host illicit material.

Natal they found out about conversations she was having with people in the days and moments leading up to everything. And so I'm sure that that also added a huge element of more processing to do for her. But they took some time to just assess the situation at the house. And then once they had that in order, we had to wait a couple days longer for the funeral home to be ready for us and have the death certificates made up. And then once everything was all in order, because they wanted to avoid as much as possible going up there and then having something not be ready or done,

which makes sense. It was about a five hour drive. Once they were ready, they said that we're gonna have to bring this truck home and they told us that they wanted me to have it, which I kind of was like anything I can get that feels like a piece of her. That's fine. I don't really know what I'm going to do with her truck. I know it was an older one and I didn't I just said okay and went with it.

But I think that was the biggest reason why Skyler and I were able to go with them up there because they knew that they needed someone to take it back. up there because they knew that they needed someone to take it back. And I know that neither one of them wanted to be the one to have to drive in it. So we all drove up the four of us together in their car. When we first got to the funeral home and we picked up Janet and the earned that Janet's mom had picked up was really pretty. After picking up Janet's remains at the funeral home. They headed to the police station upon arrival and officer took them into a small room to go over Janet's belongings

that were found with her body. He gave Janet's mom a purse that they found in there, but it didn't have any IDs or cards. It had a lot of cash. I think it was all the cash that Janet had left with her and they gave that to her mom and her stepdad. And then he took us to this large evidence locker. Well, evidence garage. And they pulled the truck out and they opened up all the doors and gave us some trash bags and then said just to start cleaning it. It was a rushed process because,

I think there's a couple reasons why it was so rushed. I don't think Janet's mom and Stepdad really wanted to linger in that truck for very long, which I can't blame them. But it also seemed like we were on a timeline with the officer standing there waiting for us to just get it done. And honestly, it was all such a blur that I feel like I don't even remember

how we got to the truck and the evidence garage and everyone just started going in and putting everything in trash bags. And I didn't know what to expect, but I thought we would look closely up. These were her last moments that we were getting to look at. And I it seemed really bizarre to me that we were also quick to just start stuffing stuff in trash bags. I'm remembering though, just what everything looked like, how she was living in her truck. how she was living in her truck. I hate that she felt like she deserved to live like that. For whatever reason, she felt so much guilt that she deserved to live in a truck that way.

Just, it made me really sad that and it still makes me sad now. But it was a mess. It was clear she was trying to wherever she was going to go. She was trying to start a new life because she brought with her a lot of clothes, all her jewelry, things that her mom said she kept on her nightstand. So important things. Her initial thoughts were not to go somewhere to die. She was going somewhere to live somewhere else and start fresh. So when the officer opened the doors to the truck, the smell just hit me like a ton of bricks. I still remember that smell. It smelled like her rose was always her favorite scent, but it also smelled like spoiled food and it just was the saddest smell. I know that

probably sounds kind of silly, but it's just something that stuck with me. And so when I kind of was hit in the face with her smile mixed with the smile of death honestly, it was overwhelming. So I was watching mostly Skylar because she looked back at me to check in with me and she's like you don't have to do this. Then I clicked that they're putting things in trash bags and so I tried to look to see what I could. We were all holding our own, and I tried to see what looked like valuable or worth keeping before someone else could grab it.

And I saw four journals sitting underneath the seat, the passenger seat, and I just grabbed them and stuffed them in my bag. And I wasn't gonna throw them away. I was gonna keep them with me. And I started just having Skylar hand me all the things that she could see that looked like we should keep because she knew how I felt.

I even asked her mom and stepdad if I could keep their bags, even though most of them were just trash. And I did, I took all the trash home and cycled through it later, just to make sure none of it was an answer to any of my questions. But I also remember hoping maybe in there was a picture for you, my gave her. I had just given it to her for that Christmas. At the time, I didn't have a lot of money. I was just beginning school and I was paying for everything mostly out of pocket as I

worked and I didn't have a lot of money for a lot of things and I always wanted to give Janet something back in the way that she gave me so much and I could never seem to do that properly because well I thought she was buying me all these things, but I knew I couldn't afford anything nice or a lot of gifts like she did. And so I just ended up making her picture frame of me. It's a picture that me, her and Skyler took together. It was one that you can paint, and so I painted it.

And I was really hoping that it would be in the truck somewhere, because I remember hoping she thought about me and thought about the fact that she was leaving me behind. And I felt really selfish with that being something I was really looking for, but just was at the time something that really meant a lot to me, knowing that at least maybe she thought about me and was gonna miss me. But the picture frame wasn't in there. I always asked her mom if it was anywhere inside her bedroom or anything and her mom said she never found it. But the main things that we really capped and looked at, especially on the drive home were these four journals that I picked up. So the drive home was really awful. That smell was still in there, poor Skylar had to drive because it was a stick and I know how to drive a stick. And it also

Skylar knew that I wasn't going to be able to handle that. So she drove and we both knew she was in the seat that Janet died in. I think that was one of the most quiet rides I've ever had with Skylar. We really hardly said anything to each other. We just tried to keep the windows open to get the smell out. It was loud because the truck was really loud, but it was just awful. It felt like we were in her casket coming home, and it was just so silent and tense, and all we wanted was just to get home and get out of the arm.

But while we were especially in the first part of the drive, I was looking through in the glove box and things like that to see if I could find anything in there. We ended up finding a map and she had circled a few spots on the map where she was looking to go. One of the spots was in Canada and then she also was looking to go to a spot in the very, very upper tip of Wisconsin where it's almost Canada. I think that maybe she knew she wouldn't be able to get into Canada because she wouldn't have any IDs or anything with her.

So she had a specific spot in Wisconsin, but she had written down directions, how to get there, like kind of vague directions. Olivia also found sale receipts in Janet's truck, which she later pieced together were from Janet's eBay transactions. She would steal items, especially high ticket items, from places, really a lot of different stores, but one of the main ones was the store that we worked at, and there's a pharmacy section, so she would steal the high dollar items in there like the Nigret gum and the patches and stuff like that any type of medication

It's over the counter and then also that hair regrauth for men's tough I can't remember what it's called, but she would steal things like that Especially the most expensive items, but she would steal things like that, especially the most expensive items But she'd also steal makeup and stuff like that and then she would resell it on eBay, she would go to the post office that was nearby and have them shipped from eBay orders And so that's where we found out like just stacks and stacks of those and that was not like okay She sent a package not with like hundreds of packages. And I think the very first, the oldest date we found in there was from a year prior. So I mean,

it was just clearly it had been going on for a long time and she knew what she was doing for sure. And then I started looking into the journals because I just knew she was a writer for sure. And I just thought for sure in her journal she would have written something. She discovered that Janet had written down notes about running away and starting a new life. She wrote out where she planned on going and running away to. She wrote down a few different ideas that she was planning on.

She wrote down that she looked at possibly going to a few different battered women shelters in that area, and then she has questions written underneath like how much information does battered women shelter need? Do they ask for names? Do they need to know what kind of certain stuff do they need to know? She also wrote down where she could work and she wrote library, which she always wanted to be a librarian. And so sometimes part of me wishes that maybe she did get to run away and get there and

start her new life and be in a library. Unfortunately, there were no computers or getting electronics left inside her truck, which I was hoping I would be able to kind of look through something like that because I would have told me a lot, but her mom told me that she Janet was using the dark web. I didn't know anything about the dark web before, but I guess if you use it, you download this whole other, I didn't know anything about the dark web before, but I guess if you use it you download this whole other I don't know if it's like a program or what but a whole other thing to use on your computer and she had that downloaded and she could see She still had tabs open that she was looking at before she left and Her mom had told me that I asked her several times. Well, what did you find?

What was on there? Can you tell me and share with me? But she just never wanted to open up about that with me. But her journal had pretty much, it almost was like looking at her web searches in her journal because her thoughts were not complete. There weren't answers to her questions. She just wrote down her questions really quickly. You could tell she was just not in the right state of mind, which it was really difficult to see just how frantic she was on the moments before she left. You could tell she didn't have much of a direction about what her true plan was,

because she had a lot of questions she wrote down with million answers and no true place or name. There was nothing concrete that she had truly decided. We didn't know that Janet purchased a new social security number on the dark web. And I think what she had done is she bought one from someone who had, well, it's on the dark web.

So obviously this isn't legal, but it was someone who had passed away themselves. So the numbers that you can buy are people who are already dead and she bought a new number. So she had that. One of the things she wrote down was being a fugitive, how to not get caught, how to live invisibly, how to get new identity documentation, faking my own death, can I drive my truck off a bridge, getting new credit cards. What happens to credit card debt, school loans, after you die, how to run a truck into a river,

pay phones, anywhere, phones without an ID? They were all questions, and she didn't have any answers to her questions. It also opened up a lot of questions and a lot of reason for my self-doubt and anxiety to kind of kick into overdrive, knowing that she was seriously considering faking her own death, paired with not being able to see her body

and get that closure is what created that perfect storm for me. And that's kind of what created my obsessive thoughts about is she really alive somewhere. Did she actually make it to where she was supposed to go and she successfully faked her own death somehow? And I really would convince myself of some pretty crazy scenarios because I had so little answers. So it was helpful to have her journals for sure. They're the one pieces of her things that I will never get rid of. But it also opened up a whole other door of things that I didn't even know I was gonna have to

wonder and obsess over for so long. Do you still have those lingering thoughts or did you find resolution? I still have those lingering thoughts for sure. They're not as prevalent and that's not every day anymore, even every week or every month. But every now and then, when I check the mail, I'm hoping that maybe it's a card from her saying, I'm okay, baby. Everything's fine. And this is where I am now, and this is my new life. And I think most of that is just comfort thoughts for me. But it took me a while a good year. I was just really irrational for sure. And I was creating a whole

other space for my brain to go to and live in. A space where she was alive and I would be able to talk to her again. And I was obsessed with getting answers. Just totally obsessed. I would spend hours and hours and hours googling and researching everything about her, everything about what could have happened. Can people fake their own deaths? I went down a rabbit hole. And I even would find myself googling the same things. She was researching just so I could feel like I knew

what she was looking at and what kind of things she was researching just so I could feel like I knew what she was looking at and what kind of things she was thinking about right before. She made her decision. If I hadn't had her journals and everything, I wouldn't have really known what was her purpose of fleeing. Did she have a plan? And she was probably so not in the right mind just from the trauma and everything else.

And then I think she was just using drugs and drinking the whole time as well that she couldn't even get very far. You know, only five hours away, but she was gone for almost two weeks. That's kind of an odd place to land. Sometimes I wonder if maybe she was on her way back down here. There's a lot of those questions

that just eat at me for sure. I imagine that it would be a very complex grieving process due to the nuances of this whole situation and how unique for lack of a better term it was. How do you remember Janet? So I remember Janet as a couple of things. I remember her as someone who was like a mom to me. I always described her as an angel. She just was a true blessing in my life at the time. And there's a lot of things I attribute to her. I don't think I would have had the bravery and courage to come out if she wasn't in my life. I don't think I would have believed in myself to go to school and get my degree and have the job I have now if it wasn't for her. She made me feel so confident

in myself and that was something I never had before. And sometimes on my worst days, I still think about her and think about, well, what Janet's a right now, if I told her what I was going through and she would give me the best advice and hug and hold me and tell me that I can do anything, I set my mind to. And then I have days that I remember her as somebody who really deeply hurt me. And sometimes I think maybe she used that lost part of me to her advantage and she could be someone she always I think wanted to be with me. And although I'm glad maybe that I could give that to her, I also really wish I could have had fully who she was because it's just not fair what happened. And it's not fair that I was left with so many unanswered questions and all the lies I was told.

I don't ever really feel anger towards her. I just feel really disappointed that she could have opened up to me. And it took me a long time to accept that it wasn't my fault that she didn't open up to me. Because for a very large portion of my griefing time, I blamed it on me and that I was too selfish of a friend. Because like I said, our friendship was mostly about me. And although that's not how I really typically go about friendships, I liked that it was about me because I felt important to somebody

and I felt like I was the apple of their eye and that I had never felt like that before. I don't think she was a bad person. I think she was really hurting and had a lot of pain that she felt like she couldn't share with anybody in her life. And I can't imagine how sad that must have been for her. As someone who carries their own pain and their own baggage, and I think about if I felt like I couldn't share that with anybody, what a horrible place you must feel inside your mind that you can't share that with anybody. And I don't think that

makes someone a bad person. I think she just consumed her pain and what she must have felt and went through every day. And I think that she struggled with addiction. I think that maybe when she couldn't look towards drugs or alcohol for help with her addiction, she stole. I don't know if it filled that void the way drugs and alcohol did or not. I don't know if she stole in order to get the drugs. It's hard to know what her reasoning was, but there's never a moment where I think it's because she was a bad person. That's why she did everything

that she did. She was just in a lot of pain and really alone. I don't know for sure what it was like for her with her mom, But from my experience with her mom, I can imagine that they had expectations for her that maybe Janet felt like she couldn't live up to. I think being the only child, there was a lot of focus and pressure on her. And I also think that she maybe was struggling with a lot of things like mental illness for a long time,

but I can't really imagine from what I know that that was a home she could have that addressed and dealt with. I'm sure she felt like she couldn't share that with anybody, especially because even her mom said to me at one time afterwards, it doesn't make any sense because she would have helped her with money. If that was the problem, they had plenty of money, we would have helped with that. And it was clear she still didn't really understand. It was a mental illness.

It wasn't about money, I don't think. So when we got home from Michigan, I didn't really look at the bags that we had capped for a while. I would say at least a week or two weeks and then I finally decided I was gonna go through them one day and a lot of it was just trash. Old stuff like food and clothes that had gotten torn or looked like they hadn't been washed and stuff like that but there were and all of the trash, there was all of these loose pills.

So there weren't any actual pill bottles. It was just loose pills everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Every little crevice in the cup holders. And in between the seat cushions and on the dashboard, just everywhere. Olivia, sort of the pills, and began researching what kinds of medications were in Janet's car. And it was just a whole buffet of pills. She had something that would help prevent seizures, and it was prescribed to people who had epilepsy, Janet didn't have epilepsy or seizures.

Her mom said that I knew from what I've seen with her. I never seen that that was something she needed to worry about. She had pills that were for high blood pressure, pills that were for heart disease, pills that were for something else. I think it was maybe just a strong pink killer. And I was researching why someone would have these pills. A pink killer makes sense.

Okay, that's like an opioid. But the ones that were for epilepsy, for heart disease, I was researching those. And with the right combinations of certain pills, you could get a really specific type of high. And specifically, I think this combination was like a speed type of high. So she had just these combinations to get, I think, the different effects she wanted. Of course, she attained these illegally. We researched them and saw you can't obtain any of these without a prescription. None of them.

I think the only bottle we did find was something that had just a, it was an up-for-and-language. And her mom did tell us that she knew Janet would purchase things from some website for medication, but she kind of played it off as an easy and cheap way to get medicines. The same type you would get from your doctor, but clearly it was not because she was worried about high blood pressure, but because she's trying to get a high.

Initially, Olivia had to continue working at the grocery store chain despite how difficult it was for her to do so emotionally. But thankfully, she was eventually able to take a job doing something she absolutely loves. Currently, I'm a victim's advocate. I work for an abuse and rape crisis organization. I always knew that I wanted to get involved in this type of work since I was a younger teen, specifically. I felt really called to this type of work since I was a younger teen specifically. I felt really called to this type of work because I'm myself a survivor of child sexual abuse and I always

felt really passionate about giving a voice to people who didn't have a chance to have one. I specifically, when I was in high school, I got really involved in work for human trafficking victims. I learned a lot about what that type of work looked like as much as I could as a volunteer and a minor. There's only so much to think, let you do. But I knew that it was something I wanted to be more a part of. After high school, I had a period where I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do yet. I've always struggled with depression and anxiety and PTSD as a result of my abuse. And so when I was out of high school, I think that's when I was truly dealing with my trauma. So I took a couple years to really go through a healing process. And when I met Janet, I was kind of in the thick of my healing.

And Janet was someone who obviously gave me that attention and love that I needed. And so when I met her, she really pushed me towards what my real dreams and passions were and gave me that confidence that I was really lacking, that I could actually do work like that, that I believed in to help give a voice to people who didn't have one. So, took me a while to really figure out which direction I wanted to go. I began with psychology, I teetered on the idea of social work, and then I landed in the field

of women's gender and sexuality studies. And it's an amazing field to study, and I highly recommend it to anybody because it just really helps bring a lot of awareness because advocacy is kind of the whole point of that is to give a voice to people who don't have one. And often those who don't have one are from marginalized communities and people who aren't there to help support and speak for them. And that's where my role and my job comes from is to help speak on their behalf with law enforcement, with the court systems, with hospitals and everything in between. So I'm very happy and lucky and grateful that there's so many organizations where I live like that, but there's a lot of places that are lacking, that type of work, and I think that's something else I feel really

passionate about making sure that there's an agency everywhere like that. But I live in an area where there's a lot of opportunity and this type of work for me. Janet was a huge part of pushing me towards that, and when I graduated with my bachelor's degree, I so badly wanted her there with me, but I knew that she was proud and would be proud of the job I have now, and she just was a really huge part of all of that for me. Thank you for the work that you do.

I really respect and admire the work that you do. And I think it's amazing that Janet was able to push you towards your dreams and following that. And she kind of helped be a part of your legacy in a way as well. Yeah. I'd love to hear how Skylar's support has impacted you and where your relationship is at now. Skyler and I are still together.

We are working on buying a house together. She is the most supportive partner I could have asked for, especially as an Aquarius and a very stubborn person. I need a lot of support and space to be exactly who I am and everything that that comes with. We definitely deal with things and process things very differently. We are just completely opposite and have very little and common, but that's what I love so much about her and she makes me be a better person and challenges me and I like to think that I'm able to do the same for her. I think we're still going through our own process of grief from Janet in our own ways.

And we definitely deal with that very differently, but she's always been supportive of how I need to deal with that. The first day I had to go to therapy, the first session I had after we found out what had happened when we found out that she was running away. I had Skyler come with me because I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get through all of it by myself. And since then, Skyler comes to almost all of my therapy sessions

with me. She's very supportive and helps me. She's just kind of a huge part in my healing journey. And it's also been really healing for her too. She had a lot of her own stuff. She had to learn how to heal from as well. So it ended up being a really awesome thing because she came from a family who was not super supportive of the idea of therapy.

So she kind of grew up with that same idea that if you're going to therapy, there has to be something really wrong with you. And getting the opportunity to have her there with me because of what happened to Janet, I think was a perfect way to introduce her to why therapy looked like and what it could do for you. And I think in a lot of ways ways it helped her heal from everything as well because it directly impacted her too. And she had a safe place to talk about how it affected her too.

So we make a good team for sure. I really like your team. Thank you. So although I was an IEM a survivor of abuse, being a survivor of something that was kind of emotionally abusive, which even I have a hard time really, saying that what happened with Janet was abusive, but it was traumatic. And I didn't know that I was going to have to deal with trauma from a friend. I kind of thought, okay, I had trauma from a predator type person,

someone who I can find all the books and podcasts I need on that. And I've been to support groups for that. And that information is although not out there as much as it should be, it's out there in some ways. But specifically going through something traumatic, like that caused by a friend, it was hard to feel like I had anyone to relate to in that way, besides Skylar, of course. And so when I found this podcast, I was, of course, obsessed with it. And I've zoomed through every season and on my long commutes to work and nights and

Skylar's wanting to play video games, I would sit and listen to the podcast. And then the second season was just so solidifying for me to hear that someone else had been traumatized by their friend and what that looked like and to have those lies told to them by a friend. And I felt like although our stories are very different, I still felt like I could relate to tea in some way and it just felt like, oh my god, it's not just me. I'm not just this like crazy phenomenon where something really weird and bizarre and hard

to explain happened to me. Someone else went through that tool and it's also have spent a really complex process for them too. I just felt so much more seen and heard and like I wasn't alone in that type of trauma. I just want to say thank you so much for all of the time and energy that you have given to sharing your story on the podcast. It has been so high-opening to me to speak with you and learn more about the nuances of grief and how trauma can be so different for each person. Something I think about a lot in the last year or so is intent versus impact. And sometimes a lot of the time, the intent doesn't really matter. The impact it has on us is still painful and I think that even if Janet didn't intend to hurt you, obviously you were still hurt and experienced trauma because of it. and it's understandable to me why that could be isolating to find others. And this is something that

Tee has talked to me a lot about how that can kind of feel very isolating and like you can't easily find someone who can necessarily relate to these very unique situations. So it makes my heart overflow to think about her story reaching you. Because I know that that was her whole goal was to reach that one person who needed it. And I think now you're doing that for someone else. That gets me chills. And I think survivors really get that and know how valuable it is. And it can be really truly one of the most valuable healing

things for us is to just sit with someone that says me too. Yeah. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that leads public health efforts to advance the behavioral health of the nation. SAMHSA's mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America's communities. SAMHSA's national helpline is confidential, free, and 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's available in English and Spanish for individuals and family members facing mental and or substance use disorders at 1-800-662-4357. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Colors can also order free publications and other information.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next week, stay safe friends. Something was wrong is an audio chuck production created and hosted by Tiffany Rees. Our theme song was originally composed by Gladraggs covered this season by Basic Comfort. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve? Hey Prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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