Something Was Wrong - S9 E2: Perfectly Single

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Ardie was able to convince Danielle to trust him when her family questioned his behavior. But when a detective reached out to Danielle with his own suspicions, Danielle started to wonder if Ardie was telling her the whole truth.Follow @SomethingWasWrongPodcast on Instagram For free mental health resources, please visit SomethingWasWrong.com/Resources 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 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 Psychie 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 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 somethingwaswrong.com slash resources for a list of nonprofit organizations that can help. 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 audio chuck. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. Danielle was thrilled when she met Artie, fell in love, and started planning their future together. She was feeling confident about moving forward

with their plans to marry. Until Danielle's family told her, they had some suspicions about Artie. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is Something Was Wrong. You know me, you don't know me well. Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up. Shortly around that time, one of my sisters and my father had asked to go to lunch with me, and at lunch, my sister reveals that it's possible that Arty is cheating on me. Her husband has a very large extended family. So one of his cousins had a coworker who

was showing her pictures of this guy she had met online, but hadn't met in person yet. And when she showed his cousin the picture, the cousin said, I know this guy. He is my cousin's wife's sister's boyfriend. He's in a relationship. And I guess this girl had texted him, hey, are you in a relationship?

And already had responded, nope, I'm perfectly single. So the girl had sent the screenshot of the messages and the photo he had. And it's this photo of him in scrubs with his stethoscope around his neck, he's in the car, he's taking a selfie and sends it to her co-worker. He sends it to my sister. My sister shows me these, and obviously my mind was kind of reeling right then.

Confused and upset, Danielle drove back to her apartment and texted Artie to confront him. He called me, and I asked him, point blank, what is this? You know, he admitted that there had been some flirting, but he didn't intend to meet up with her. Things had been a little bit tense with us arguing, felt like our communication wasn't there, that there was a distance between us and that had kind of led him to flirt with another woman. He told me he was dropping what he was doing, leaving the hospital and he was coming home immediately to talk to me.

I called my grandmother and I asked for her advice and she basically told me almond cheat. So I was like, well, that doesn't help me. Because if what you're saying is true, then it doesn't matter if I stay or go, then I hung up with her and I called my best friend and I said, look, I really need your advice. And, you know, she's another strong woman. So I was like, I know you're going to want to tell me to leave, but I need you to be objective. And here's the situation and what do you think? And you know, she admitted to me that her long-term boyfriend had done a little flirting with another woman and ultimately nothing had happened physically. So they decided to work on things and it never happened again. This was somebody I loved, and somebody I wanted to build a life with,

somebody I was engaged to. So I do know that cheating happens in relationships, lots of stuff happen in relationships, and you just have to make an effort to see what are those things you want to work on. Artie came home and he and Danielle sat down to talk things out. Danielle thought things over and decided that ultimately,

since they hadn't met up, she felt that perhaps this was an anomaly., since they hadn't met up, she felt that perhaps this was an anomaly. Feeling that they could work through this, Danielle got already to agree to attend couples therapy. That was a big deal because it was completely against going to a therapist. We did go to a few sessions, but ultimately we ended up stopping because I had gotten a promotion and I had to move to San Diego. July of 2013 Danielle was offered a major promotion at work. The only downside, she'd have to move a few hours south to San Diego.

Not only could already not move because he was in the middle of his internship, but it was literally 30-day notice. So in order to not upend his life, I basically had two apartments. I had an apartment that I had a roommate with in San Diego, and I would be there my day through Friday. And then I would take the train back on the weekends and I would have my apartment there.

And I basically paid for two apartments. He never visited me in San Diego. He'd always told me he hated San Diego for some reason. So I just kind of focused on work when I was there. Probably a month or two after I had moved down to San Diego for some reason. So I just kind of focused on work when I was there. Probably a month or two after I had moved down to San Diego, I'm literally in the middle of launching this new market. I just moved into this new apartment. I'm still getting my bearings, and I'm on a scale of one to ten my stress levels like 12. And I get an email from my sister, like 12 and I get an email from my sister and she says that the family suspects that already does not work at UCLA.

Hi, I'm Lindsey 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. Danielle's stepfather told her that he had a close friend who worked at UCLA and not just worked there, but was the head of orthopedics. And he had never heard of Arty. I don't even remember what was going through my head other than sheer panic.

I remember calling the hospital and asking for him, and the receptionist telling me that there's nobody by the name of Arty that works there. So I call him and confront him. I tell him that I've called the hospital that the sky doesn't know him. And he gives me this, the reasoning behind it was that because he had been in the military and we had been on these crazy top secret missions where being a sniper yet to kill his targets. And because of that, when he came to the U.S., he basically had to maintain the strictest privacy. And so one of the things he had done is that, you know, anybody at the hospital knows

not to say that he works there. When it came down to my stepfather's friend, not knowing him, I worked in a hospital. I just sort of thought, this guy can't possibly know every intern and person in this hospital. I mean, it's a huge hospital system. The other piece of evidence that already presented to me, he faced time with me and he showed me his hospital ID badge. I chose to take his side. And, you know, I think I emailed back with my family and we're telling them this. And at that time, already had access to a computer I had at home that my email was in.

And so he chose to go into this laptop and go into my email and look at and respond to this email. Not only had Ardyshone Danielle, his hospital badge, but he would send her photos and videos of himself at work. He'd ask Danielle to bake treats for his co-workers. He'd spend hours after work shifts, describing procedures he'd done that day, with great detail to Danielle. She had no doubts about how many hours he was spending at the hospital, and she chalked all of this up to her family being overprotective.

As for Arty, well, he was pissed. He lashed out in a way that I didn't condone it at the time, but also I understood where his anger came from. You know, he was kind of backed into this corner and he was being unjustly accused. And he already has kind of that personality where he doesn't take shit from anybody. So of course he lashes out at my family. My middle sister in particular decided to be a little more confrontational. My middle sister is going out with him and he calls me he's beyond I rate and he starts making

threats. I'm gonna get your sister fired from her job and I know people they can plant drugs on her and make sure she gets fired from her job and I do remember calling my parents and just being like, please tell her to stop responding to him. And I didn't think you would really make good on his threats. You know, he's one of those people sometimes where his bark is bigger than his bite, but it was not helping the situation for her to keep going at him, especially when I'm taking his side. So it's serving zero purpose other than to make things more stressful for me. Ultimately, Danielle felt that her family just didn't like Artie's personality.

Her family was more reserved and conservative, and Artie could be very brash and obnoxious. It just kind of felt like they were maybe jumping the gun and basing it off of nothing except for the fact that they had also known about the girl that he had texted and said he was single. I'm their daughter and their sister. They're going to be a little bit protective and I think that they just sort of seized on this moment to say he doesn't work there but there was no evidence to show that that was the case. So I didn't talk to my family for nearly two years. That fall was really the first time that I was facing the holidays and not spending it with my family.

We went to Disneyland on Thanksgiving and listen, even though I'm talking to my family now, I still advocate doing Disneyland on Thanksgiving with so much fun. So I didn't really miss my family that year for Thanksgiving, but obviously that wasn't so much the case for Christmas. That was a little harder for me. Though Danielle missed her family, she chose to focus her energy on her career and taking a relationship with Arty to the next level by planning for a family. I'm a planner. When I have a plan in place, there isn't much that stops me from making it happen. I had always planned to take this promotion, but I wanted to be back in LA. No more than a year and a half later.

I also wanted to have a child, and I felt that from a career perspective, if I got pregnant within, you know, a year of moving down there, I could be back in LA within a year and a half, and my pregnancy would allow me to do that. In spring of 2014, I started taking prenatal vitamins and went off of birth control and started really amping up family planning. I have endometriosis and I'd had two surgeries for it. So there was also this sort of biological time clock ticking because I'd always been told

from my doctors, from my younger sister who also has it and had to have IVF, that the clock was ticking for me and I had to kind of get on it. My doctor said, always said, you're not going to be the woman who is able to have kids when she's 40. You're going to have to do this much earlier. So obviously I had been conditioned to think that I had to have children relatively early. There did seem to be a little bit of pressure there

that I was putting on myself, but obviously I was with somebody that wanted children. So I already wanted to start a family, and so I started doing that. Around that same time, I really wanted to amp up planning the wedding and kind of just getting that going. We started to look at venues and I went and bought my wedding dress.

I figured if I started in spring of 2014 kind of trying to get pregnant, that it could take me a year, hell, maybe even two years to get pregnant. I found out I was pregnant three weeks after buying my wedding dress. It's still sitting in my closet. Danielle was nervous to tell her parents

that she was pregnant, especially since they hadn't spoken in two years. She worried that their dislike of Arty would impact their ability to be happy for her, but thankfully, they were thrilled and wanted to support her. I'm sure they had their concerns in the back of their minds, but ultimately, they were supportive of me being pregnant, and that made me feel a whole lot better. Fall of that year, I managed to transfer back to the LA office.

I had a baby shower with friends. I think my parents came, but my sisters weren't there. We weren't talking still. You know, I just made the best of it. It was what it was. I wasn't thrilled with the situation, but you know, it was better than nothing. After her baby shower, Danielle, eight months pregnant, packed up her entire San Diego apartment and moved all her stuff back into her LA area condo with Arty. If you know me, I'm incredibly independent, and so it was like not a big deal to me

to kind of move on my own, but kind of in hindsight now. If I had a girlfriend who was eight months pregnant and trying to move by herself, I would go out there and help her just a friend. But also, I mean, he was working like 80 hours a week. So for me, it was just part of the nature of being with a physician, right? He was still doing his internship. He'd be going into his residency that fall. I would talk to Drs. Wise. Hell, I would talk to my own OB. And he would say he remembers his poor wife being all alone

because he was working doubles and 60 to 80 hours a week. So him not being around and always working was always in line with the feedback that I had gotten from other people. That Thanksgiving, Danielle's labor slowly began. After they finished dinner with friends, Artie drove Danielle to her parents' house because he had to go into work until she was an active labor. Danielle texted Arty when she was taken by her parents to labor and delivery. She was in labor into the next morning when Arty finally arrived. He showed up around 9 or 10 am. I had to have an

emergency C-section because she had the cord wrapped around her neck. So he was there when I was a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more

like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more like a little bit more That's okay, that didn't bother me. I knew why. I was released and we had to go to the pediatrician that day. You're supposed to get them checked out immediately. So we drive back, we already picked out this pediatrician. We're in the office. She checks out the baby, baby's great. Turns to me and asks how I'm doing. And I just broke down sobbing.

I was a mess. He was going back to work that night. I was going to be alone with the baby all night. I hadn't quite figured out the breast fitting situation because I was getting so many different opinions from all the different nurses in the hospital that I didn't know what was up from down. We got back out to the parking lot and he did say he was kind of embarrassed by my outburst. I did not apologize for it, but I did wind up calling my parents and I was like, I cannot do this by myself all night. Seeing that she needed support, Danielle's parents invited her and baby Carrie to stay

at their home for the first two months while Danielle recovered from surgery. It was nice to have the extra hands to help just to be able to take a shower or do anything. During those two months, he was working so many hours he would not always come when he could. Sometimes he was super exhausted so he'd just kind of crash at home. When he was there, though, I have to say he wasn't really hands-on with me or helping me or the baby. It's not that he didn't interact with the baby, but I just feel like there's some men that just aren't good with infants. And that's kind of what I'd chalked it up to. good with infants. And that's kind of what I chalked it up to. You wouldn't stay that long. And I also chalked that up to him just being, they're still tension, right, from like the whole

fight. So just having everybody in the same room at that point was a win for me. Before I went into labor, we'd had actually quite a few issues with our landlord. So I was like, we need my family's help. If you're going to be working 60, 80 hours a week. So I looked for a place and moved in. After a few months, Danielle returned to work and her stepmom took care of Carrie. She was thankful to have her parents support during such a difficult time. She was thankful to have her parents support during such a difficult time. I will say that it wasn't an easy transition. Arty and I were starting to argue a lot. Still full of hormones. I had postpartum. I started seeing a therapist weekly.

It was more of postpartum anxiety, to be honest. It wasn't quite depression, but it was definitely a lot of exacerbated anxiety. And I'd always had anxiety issues in my 20s, but over time, I had learned a lot of coping mechanism. So I hadn't had anxiety attack in years, but obviously when you're up all night and you're breastfeeding and you're dealing with all these hormones, every single coping mechanism and self-care you had before goes out the window, you're starting from scratch.

It's like walking around with your hands tied behind your back. So I went to therapy. I didn't really have a lot of friends with children, so it was hard. I didn't get much help from Arty, because he was working all the time, and we were arguing. Danielle was surprised to see Arty return home one day from work, wearing sweat pants instead of his usual scrubs. Perplexed, she asked him why he wasn't wearing his uniform. Already told her that he was carjacked and his clothes had been taken into evidence by detectives. I was driving and a man came up with a gun and tried to carjack him and he wound up kind of getting away,

driving off. You know, he went to the police station and tried to file a report and he went to the police station and tried to file a report. And I go to the police station in his in-win room and the detective asked me to sit down with him and talk to me. He just asked me basic questions, you know, his name and where he is from and you know all this stuff. And I was like, okay, this is weird, but whatever. And that's it. Then I take him, we go to the inbound lot, and we get his car. Over, I don't know how long it could have been a period of weeks. He's telling me that this detective is harassing him.

He's called his work. His work made him do a drug test. Now they're almost like convinced that the whole carjacking happened because of a drug test. Now they're almost convinced that the whole car jacking happened because of a drug bust or something. Like he had drugs and that's why he got a car jack. That was kind of like this working theory. We didn't quite understand why this detective was like

coming at him so hard and he was calling his friends and stuff and he told me it called the detective and was like I'm withdrawing my complaint about the car jacking because you're like basically trying to cause trouble in my life and for no reason. Now you're turning it on me like I'm the one like a car jacked and all of a sudden you're acting like I'm the criminal. So a few weeks of this and I get a 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, the sky is nuts. And then he says, he gave me a name other than Arty. I got silent. In my head, I was just like, I don't know what the hell is happening right now. That's next time on Something was Wrong. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ on something was wrong.

Something was wrong is an audio chuck 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 Gladracks, covered this season by Midwest originals. 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.