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00:07The best part about being a mom is watching my children figure things out, put the pieces
00:15together. It's pretty cool to see the gears turning. Being a mom kind of feels all-encompassing. I
00:24know a lot of people kind of have an identity crisis. So sometimes it's nice to take a break
00:30from mom mode. You know, getting away from real life and kind of becoming somebody else. So I could
00:38understand why Sarah did some of these things. If Sarah had any shame, she wouldn't have done any
00:44of the things she's done over the last 20 years. I think she really wanted the things that she lied
00:48about. There's something, there's something not right in there. This was a woman with no authentic
00:54identity. I just remember I couldn't sleep that whole week. I've never seen her walk. I don't
00:59even really know how tall she is. I think she just idealized my life at the time and was like,
01:05this is what I want and I'm going to insert myself in your life. As things progressed, I found out
01:11exactly how intricate the web was and it became almost a game. She wasn't in it for the money.
01:17And so I became intensely curious about what she was in it for. That person does not exist.
01:22That feeling of grief of like somebody had just died. That's where it gets really,
01:27really crazy. My head was just spinning. I just don't want anybody to be hurt.
01:33She better hope she never meets me.
02:03People always want to know who Sarah Delosio is. Nobody knows her like me. Girls usually tell their best friend
02:12everything.
02:13Thanks. My name is Erin Johnson and Sarah was my best friend.
02:22I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at eight months. Got put into a wheelchair at three.
02:32In the summer of 2005, the first time I met Sarah, she was one of my counselors. I had a
02:41camp for disabled children and adults.
02:46Sarah did everything for me. She washed my hair and stuff during the week. We were pretty much inseparable.
02:57They become really good friends. And you can imagine how special that was to Erin.
03:03I know what it's like because I lived with two disabled brothers. They just want friends.
03:09They want someone to think they're special enough to spend time with, right, and be a friend to.
03:15So this meant a lot to Erin.
03:19Sarah told me her sister was 11 and her name was Gabby and she was disabled. She had SMA, foreign
03:30and muscular dystrophy.
03:32So now Erin knows that Sarah understands Erin's life because Sarah's living with a sister with special needs.
03:39She would ask me questions about disability health. It's almost like she was studying me.
03:53After camp, we were basically in touch every day, all day.
04:00As Sarah and Erin got closer and started to talk all the time, Sarah started to tell Erin about her
04:06husband, Adam, and their multiple pregnancies, multiple miscarriages, and even deaths of some babies.
04:14There was just so many devastating things happening.
04:19I'm such a good person. It was almost hard to believe.
04:25My name is Sarah Trelevin. I'm a journalist.
04:29And I mostly write long-form magazine features. I also make true crime podcasts.
04:35And I wrote about Sarah DeLashmet for Elle magazine in 2021.
04:41Almost immediately, I knew there was a huge story here.
04:50Sarah and Erin have been friends for quite some time when Erin gets an email from someone.
04:56And it's a guy named Jeff who says he's seen Erin's profile on a dating website and he thinks she's
05:02really pretty and he'd really like to get to know her.
05:05So Erin is narrating this to Sarah while they're on the phone.
05:09And Sarah says, I cannot believe this, but I know Jeff. He's my husband Adam's best friend.
05:17This really feeds into this idea that it's Erin and Sarah who are destined to be together.
05:41You know, Erin, she's an adult who lives with her parents and is very aware of her own limitations.
05:47And so Jeff is sort of promising her this life that they might have together.
05:53And it's this fantasy that is immediately appealing.
05:57I felt really hard and I think it was just a hope of actually having a future with a guy
06:06that would love me for me and not judge me for my disability.
06:14But then later on, Sarah called me and told me Jeff and Adam got in a car accident.
06:24And in the end, Adam lived and Jeff died.
06:31After he passed away, she said he was going to go to California and propose to you, I have the
06:38link.
06:41A lot of things I didn't question because she was a huge part of my life.
06:47So it was always, if I question this and I'm wrong, then I don't have a best friend anymore.
06:57Sarah also started to tell Erin about multiple illnesses, including Guillain-Barre syndrome, Ebola, and multiple cancers.
07:07It was a tumor on her spine, which ultimately paralyzed her.
07:14At this point, she was having multiple seizures every day.
07:20One night we had a video call and Sarah had this seizure and it was like a really, pretty violent
07:27seizure.
07:28The next day, Sarah's sister that called and says, Sarah's in drug-induced coma.
07:35So Gabby was kind of keeping me updated and I got really close because she didn't have her big sister
07:45and I didn't have my best friend.
07:48After Sarah's recovering, Gabby was always in the hospital for different surgeries and different illnesses.
07:57She ended up passing away, I believe, and she was 13.
08:03At this point, it was like, okay, God, like, how much can you put one person through before you're like,
08:10okay, enough to them have.
08:14What's amazing is that when Erin knew her, Sarah was the one providing the care.
08:20But when she showed up at Camp Summit years later, she arrived as someone who needed that same level of
08:27care.
08:28That's where Bethany comes in.
08:38You want to go outside?
08:43Come on.
08:44Don't pee right there.
08:45Oh, my God.
08:47Ruby's just, she's the guard dog.
08:50Our safety net for so long.
08:52My anxiety is up and I'm worried, can I protect us or anything like that?
08:56And she's the little alarm.
08:58Can I have a hug?
09:04Love you, too.
09:07And you got my makeup all over you.
09:10Coming into meeting Sarah, my life was very hard.
09:13There's a lot of pain there.
09:14I grew up in a cult.
09:19The situations I was put in in that cult was very traumatizing.
09:24Sorry, I'm trying to stop crying, too.
09:27So I saw a lot.
09:28I heard a lot.
09:29And I watched girls be put in situations where judgment and shame were kind of the narrative.
09:38And so I left.
09:42Anyone who leaves that community is not spoken well of.
09:46And so I did not have a community.
09:49And in order to build that, I was volunteering with nonprofits.
09:52I worked for AmeriCorps for a year.
09:55And then I taught English in the Dominican Republic.
09:58And then I was working as a camp counselor at Camp Summit, an outdoor camp for adults with disabilities.
10:04And that's where I met Sarah.
10:06She had muscular dystrophy and she was in a wheelchair.
10:10So Sarah was originally someone who was taking care of people with disabilities.
10:15And now she's the one in a wheelchair.
10:18What are the odds of that?
10:29So 2015, I was in my mid-20s working as a camp counselor at Camp Summit.
10:37Camp Summit is an outdoor camp for adults with disabilities.
10:42So there's bonfires, we do cookouts, there's horseback riding.
10:47They have a pool now, which is really great.
10:50So everything is just meant to be outside.
10:52Camp counselors there are kind of a dual role counselor, live-in caretaker in the cabins.
11:00First time I saw Sarah was on move-in day.
11:02And Sarah came in in her power wheelchair.
11:05She was wearing kind of like a light pink t-shirt.
11:08Had a big smile on her face and had just kind of this very gentle first impression.
11:15I'm Carrie.
11:16I worked at Camp Summit the fall of 2015.
11:20I was Sarah's unit leader, so the lead counselor for the cabin that Sarah was in for the week.
11:26I worked directly with her, was a caregiver throughout the time.
11:29Would transfer her to the restroom and bathe her.
11:33And also supported with feeding and then also with all the activities throughout the day.
11:38Sarah was super friendly.
11:40She really engaged with all the counselors and we all became friendly with her throughout the week.
11:45Her mobility at that point was just her wrist.
11:48This is all I ever saw.
11:49She could do enough to kind of control the wheelchair.
11:52You know, obviously anything else that she needed was on us.
11:56One of the things that's super interesting about Sarah is people are really drawn to her positive energy and they
12:02genuinely like her and they want to develop this intimacy with her.
12:06She's somebody who only creates relationships under false pretenses and then blows them up.
12:13And this happens over and over and over again for 20 years.
12:19It's important to tap into your intuition and be aware of your surroundings.
12:24And I'm not saying that that necessarily applies here, but have you ever been in a situation where you, you
12:29know, you like someone, but you start wondering, wait a minute, something's a little off here.
12:35Like something's just not right.
12:36It's like it's your intuition.
12:37It's your gut.
12:38Call it what you want.
12:41We supported her with getting into a hammock and things like that.
12:45And we just made sure she had the best time possible.
12:49Sarah really wanted to go on the zip line during activities.
12:52And we obviously really wanted to make that happen for her.
12:54So there was several counselors that had to get involved for that.
13:00So she went across pretty quick and then got onto the platform on the other side where other caregivers were
13:06there waiting.
13:07And I remember they lowered her down and she laid on the platform and she just sobbed.
13:13Like that was the best experience.
13:14Thank you for doing this for me.
13:16Like I've never been able to do anything like that before.
13:18And we were all just around her like cheering.
13:19Like I'm glad you had fun.
13:20You know, this is why we're here.
13:21I'm so glad that you get to experience this.
13:23And horseback riding was the same thing.
13:25She really liked the horses too.
13:26I remember that.
13:27But it seemed like the zip line was like the very emotional experience for her.
13:31And I felt good about helping her have such a big monumental experience.
13:38And so that helped me work through my own trauma from that cult.
13:42Because I was trying to find a community.
13:44I've been trying, you know, to find myself.
13:48And I have realized this is literally my cheat sheet on how I can heal from it.
13:58For her, mourning would start out with helping her transition onto her wheelchair.
14:10And then we would brush her hair.
14:13Help her with her teeth.
14:15Get her ready for the day.
14:17And then be out the door.
14:19She told us pretty early on when she first arrived that she was on her period.
14:23So she had come prepared with pads for the week.
14:30There was one time we woke up in the middle of the night and was calling for help.
14:34It was like 4am to put her CPAP mask on.
14:38And I was over there like on top of the bed just trying to help support her.
14:45She had to use the restroom a lot that week.
14:48At one point it was north of 10 in a day.
14:52Because she needed pads changed.
14:54And her wheelchair was huge.
14:56And it was very hard to maneuver at 90 degree angles where we needed to get it around the toilet.
15:02It would take at least two people to transfer her onto a toilet.
15:05So I'm trying to get her up, turn her at a 45 degree angle.
15:08And then the girl behind the toilet would have to grab her from behind and carefully like set her down.
15:13Because again, dead weight.
15:14Like you don't want to just drop somebody like that on a toilet.
15:18I have never been so sore in my life.
15:23With that level of intimacy of the care that Bethany gave Sarah, changing her menstrual products and washing her and
15:33wiping her after she went to the bathroom and brushing her hair and all this.
15:37I mean, that brought them close.
15:41That week with her, I felt like I was building a friendship because she was really good at asking questions
15:45and wanting to, you know, be inquisitive, know more about me.
15:49And I feel like she mirrored some of my behavior.
15:52You know, if I was in tears, she would be in tears about something.
15:55Like if I was having a bad day, she was having a bad day and that kind of thing.
15:57And so it just felt like a very fast friendship in that sense.
16:01Sounds a little bit like Sarah's relationship with Aaron, right?
16:04I mean, there's such a connection and Bethany's coming off her own trauma.
16:09She's healing and this connection is part of the healing for her.
16:14At the end of the week, we had to say goodbye to Sarah, but we all planned on going back
16:18to camp for the spring session.
16:20But then I found out I was pregnant in January.
16:22So I'd let her know I wasn't going back for that session.
16:25Sarah's interest in my pregnancy ran pretty deep to the point where, you know, Sarah would just ask me for
16:30my ultrasounds pretty frequently.
16:31You never sent me the ultrasounds.
16:34I thought that was weird.
16:39When I knew she was going to be down at Camp Summit that week, I was back in Tennessee and
16:44got a call from the camp.
16:48It was the assistant camp director.
16:50She said, so Sarah's here at camp this week.
16:52We wanted you to know about what happened.
16:57Sarah's pastor and some family members travel from Illinois to Texas to go to the camp.
17:03They called over the walkie to ask for Sarah to come up to the office where she saw the van,
17:11her family, and the camp director.
17:15She pulled up in the wheelchair and stood up.
17:26Didn't say anything to anybody.
17:28Just got in the van. They closed the door and drove off.
17:32She was able-bodied and was lying about all of this.
17:41After I found out about Sarah lying about everything, it was so emotionally triggering.
17:47It physically caused pain and just feeling like somebody had just died.
17:54To think I was doing something good for someone because they needed this.
17:59And then to shift and realize like, no, I was being violated.
18:04Just felt like such a huge punch in the gut.
18:07So when you look at Bethany, she was coming off her own trauma as somebody no longer a member of
18:13a cult.
18:14I mean, this was part of her healing process.
18:16And it probably set her back.
18:18When I heard about what happened, I kept sending my first emotion, I guess, was total shock.
18:29And then I started to realize that Jeff and Adam, we weren't real.
18:35This was fun.
18:37Gabby wasn't a real person.
18:40The pictures that I was getting of Gabby were pictures of another friend of Sarah's.
18:48I did call her.
18:50I was like, I guess the only question I could ask you is why.
18:54And she was like, I don't know why.
18:57I was like, after almost 12 years, you don't know why.
19:02She stole her time.
19:04She stole her emotions.
19:05She broke her heart.
19:06She stole her disease.
19:09It's disgusting.
19:11I grew up with brothers in wheelchairs and they passed away a long time ago.
19:16To this day, when I am getting out of the subway...
19:27...and I'm looking up at the stairs and there's no elevator.
19:30I think, and my brothers are named Joe and John, and I think, I couldn't get them up the stairs.
19:34How would I get them up the stairs?
19:36To this day, I still think about that.
19:45I never heard from Sarah again, but Sarah made a grave impact on my life because trust is completely out
19:54the window.
19:55I was still processing everything, and then I found out Sarah hurt other people.
20:05My name is Elizabeth Hickox. I live in Newport, Rhode Island, and I was a volunteer for the Young Survival
20:14Coalition bike event.
20:19Sarah told me she was a flight attendant who was on leave for treatment.
20:23She had a 14-month-old daughter, and her name was Bindi.
20:27And that during the course of the charity ride weekend, she had gotten the information from her doctor that her
20:35cancer had progressed to stage 4.
20:38And that she hadn't told her husband yet.
20:42That really just grabbed at me.
20:47Here we see Sarah emotionally targeting Liz, just the way she did with Aaron and with Bethany.
20:54Here we go again.
20:57From there, our relationship really progressed.
21:02It was at that time that she said she was going to fly into Fort Lauderdale for the weekend to
21:08come visit me with her bike.
21:14Sarah showed up at our house, and she had a bike in a bike box.
21:20One of the things that the Young Survival Coalition does is, if you don't have a bike, they would donate
21:26nice bikes so you could participate.
21:28So Sarah had applied for one of these donated bikes and been given a bike.
21:35When she took her bike out of the box and said, well, that's interesting.
21:40That's not the bike that our charity gave you.
21:42Where did that bike come from?
21:45And she told me that Southwest Airlines had lost that bike when she flew home from the charity ride.
21:52And they had given her an insurance claim, and she went out and bought this bike, which was a little
21:59bit nicer.
22:04After that point, a Google search of her name turned up the fact that she had lost her nursing license.
22:11I'm in Oklahoma and Virginia.
22:14It was the official notice from the nursing board saying that she had faked pregnancies not once but twice.
22:20It became apparent that her cancer was fake.
22:25Just when you think there could be nothing worse than cancer, she created a situation to divert my attention to
22:32her, and that became the stalker.
22:36She told me that the stalker was texting her that she's in love with her husband and they're going to
22:40be together after Sarah's gone.
22:44Sarah isn't pretty enough for him anyway.
22:46She told me that the stalker knows how to cut the brakes on a car and make a death look
22:50like an accident.
22:51The FBI was involved.
22:54They wanted to set up a trap for the stalker, and they wanted Sarah to go to a store in
23:01O'Fallon, Illinois, and just shop to try to lure her out.
23:06And would I FaceTime with her during that time that she was going to be bait walking around the store?
23:13So she just looks like an average shopper, and I said, yeah, okay, sure.
23:16And after about 45 minutes, she went out into the parking lot.
23:21She said, Liz, I see her.
23:24And at that moment, I said, Sarah, run.
23:27I was never more scared at that moment because I don't know where to tell her to go.
23:31She told me that shots had been fired.
23:35And then the call dropped.
23:37And maybe about five minutes go by, and she called back and she said they got her.
23:43She's been apprehended.
23:45She said there were, you know, seven bullets shot, you know, five people were injured, and that a bullet hit
23:52her in the knee.
23:54Like, this, this is crazy.
23:57And there was nothing in the media about it, and that just struck me as odd.
24:04Then a couple of calls made, one to the Highland Police Department, saying like, hey, did this happen?
24:10And the Highland Police laughed.
24:13He's like, that never happened.
24:16I felt taken advantage of.
24:19It was pissed off.
24:21These are not the acts of someone who is sane.
24:24I was very afraid of her, terrified.
24:29I think at that point, it was just all about getting information, going down every rabbit hole.
24:36Like, understanding what her past was like.
24:40Sarah grew up in a suburb in Illinois called Highland.
24:45Her parents divorced when she was a baby, and her dad was a long-haul trucker, so he wasn't around
24:50a whole lot.
24:53In speaking to people close with Sarah, there is some element of trauma that she's experienced in her past that
25:02has led her to think that lying is more comfortable than the truth.
25:10Her aunt told us about Camp Summit.
25:14She told us how that ended with the pastor confronting her.
25:18She said she'd been at it since high school, you know, with a story of one kind or another.
25:24So that opened up a whole other channel to meet other victims.
25:31I got a phone call from Liz.
25:34We were all definitely very fired up.
25:36Like, we have to do something because she's going to go do this to other moms, other women, other people's
25:42children.
25:43I tried to wrap my head around, this woman is not okay.
25:49And she needs help.
25:51And, you know, on a really crazy thought, I was like, you know what, I'll just throw a call out
25:57there to Dr. Phil and see if he'll take this on himself.
26:01Liz and I were already on stage.
26:03Sarah starts walking down and I almost looked at Dr. Phil and said, this isn't the same person.
26:08I didn't mean to hurt you guys the way that I did.
26:11Just such a compulsion that I couldn't control.
26:14Are you saying that you're lying is an irresistible impulse?
26:17I can't resist it. No matter what I do, it just takes over my life.
26:22Even when I tell myself I want to choose to be honest, I cannot be honest with myself or with
26:26people.
26:27So you are a total sociopath.
26:33So at the end of the episode, she agreed to go to a mental health treatment facility that Dr. Phil
26:39had set up.
26:40And so she left the show and went straight to that facility in Southern California.
26:44And then to find out a few weeks later, she left the facility and just went back home.
26:57I got a Facebook message from my friend Mary.
27:00She sent me a clip to the Dr. Phil show and she said, oh my God, doesn't this sound like
27:05crazy Sarah?
27:06So I watched it and I said, me, it's her.
27:09I posted on the Dr. Phil Facebook, I've been chasing her around since 2006.
27:16Everybody beware Sarah Delashmitt.
27:18And because I used her last name, Beth and Liz knew that I knew her.
27:23And they Facebook messaged me and said, what do you mean 2006?
27:27And I said, oh man, let me tell you a story.
27:48My friend has a personality theory that everybody is a Winnie the Pooh character.
27:52And I said, well, which one am I?
27:53He said, oh, you're Kanga because everybody you care about, you adopt them.
27:57You put them in your pocket and hop around with them.
27:59You know, you're a very protective like mother figure.
28:03But the other thing about me is that I'm also very dangerous.
28:07If you piss me off, I'm done with you.
28:10I had myself drawn as a kangaroo, but with a scorpion's tail.
28:16I'm Andrea Smith.
28:23I was a stay-at-home mom in a little town outside of Greenville, South Carolina.
28:31And one day, an old friend had posted that they had just lost their four-month-old daughter to SMA.
28:39SMA stands for spinal muscular atrophy.
28:42It's a progressive degenerative disease that causes muscle weakness and wasting away.
28:48It can be terminal at a very young age.
28:51I started reading all these kids' stories.
28:54And after a month, I was like, I feel like I need to get involved somehow.
28:58So I organized two gatherings.
29:01In 2006, Andrea's a volunteer in the SMA community.
29:05She's helping manage this chat.
29:07And a woman named Connie joins.
29:10And she expresses extreme concern, devastation over a recent diagnosis of her son, Drake.
29:18There were pictures that she posted that said, this is Drake, isn't he cute?
29:24A few weeks after Connie joined the chat, Megan joined the chat.
29:29Megan was mom to a little girl.
29:31And at some point, Connie and Megan were talking to each other.
29:37But their grammar, their turns of phrase were the same.
29:40They both misspelled the same common word the same way.
29:44Tomorrow. T-O-M-A-R-R-O-W.
29:48From, you know, Drake and Connie.
29:50And then, oh, Lily is so beautiful.
29:53Have a great birthday.
29:54Tomorrow. T-O-M-A-R-R-O-W.
29:57Love, Megan and Brooke.
29:59And I'm like, oh, my God, this bitch is talking to herself.
30:05So I got one Connie email and I got one Megan email.
30:09I extended the headers and, lo and behold, they were both from the same IP address.
30:12I felt really comfortable saying Megan and Connie were the same person.
30:16We were able to track the IP addresses to Sarah Delashman in Highland, Illinois.
30:22So you need to understand that at this time, Sarah's actually 21 years old living with her mother.
30:28Whose name is Connie?
30:30The same name that appears in this SMA chat room.
30:34And this is at the same time she's met Aaron and told Aaron that she has a sister named Gabby
30:41with SMA.
30:43So she's carrying on this deceptive SMA behavior in two different places.
30:49One with Aaron and one in the chat room.
30:53And that's when we started looking at the other chat boards and we found her everywhere.
31:00She had been active on the Muscular Dystrophy Association chat boards claiming she either had herself or had children with
31:08various forms of muscular dystrophy.
31:10There's something, there's something not right in there.
31:16And I didn't think about her for years after that until the Dr. Phil show.
31:21I wasn't surprised at all that her behavior had escalated.
31:27And it's going to continue to get worse.
31:29I think Sarah is a dangerous sociopath.
31:33So I got in touch with Liz and Beth and they said, like, we don't know what to do to
31:36stop her.
31:36And I said, we need to call the cops.
31:38What are the cops going to do?
31:39It's like, well, because of the bike that she got, you know, maybe you can get her for fraud.
31:49I'm Officer David Brines.
31:52I've been with the Highland Police Department approximately 17 years.
31:57After the Dr. Phil show aired, I received a call from a lady named Andrea Smith.
32:03Andrea had stated that Sarah had received a bike donated to her charity bike ride for the Young Survivors Coalition.
32:10The value of that bike was approximately $650.
32:14At this point, we called a local FBI agent.
32:20It's like I'm going out for a drug deal.
32:23We're the guys wiring people up, not being wired up.
32:26My name is Scott Verseman.
32:28I'm the Chief of the Fraud and Corruption Section for the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of
32:33Illinois.
32:35The harm that Sarah DeLashman had caused was phenomenal.
32:38What she stole went way beyond monetary value.
32:43She stole and harmed the emotions of people.
32:46A lot of very, very good people who were trying to do very, very good things.
32:52So the FBI is investigating how she obtained two bicycles.
32:57One bicycle was donated to her with travel expenses by the Young Survival Coalition, right?
33:03They believe she's a cancer survivor.
33:05The other bicycle she bought on eBay.
33:08It's about $4,500.
33:10And she used her mother's credit card and then intentionally lied to the bank that it was an unauthorized transaction.
33:17And she kept the bike.
33:21The FBI obtained a search warrant for Sarah DeLashman's residence in Highland, Illinois.
33:27The agents were able to recover the triathlon bicycle from her house.
33:32So that was conclusive evidence that she had lied to the credit card company.
33:38Grand jury returned an eight-count indictment, four counts of wire fraud, one count of mail fraud, and three counts
33:46of aggravated identity theft.
33:48In October 2020, Sarah pled guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
33:58When Sarah pled guilty, I think we all kind of crossed our fingers hoping that that sentence would make everything
34:06a little bit healthier.
34:11Sarah was released from prison in 2022.
34:16You know, she's got this, what should be personally, a devastating humiliation.
34:22Instead of seemingly learning anything from that, she moves on.
34:29Sarah is back in Highland, Illinois, where she lives with her mother.
34:33And Sarah has a baby.
34:40So Sarah gets out of prison.
34:41She goes back to Highland, Illinois, and moves in with her mother.
34:45Has a baby of her own.
34:48Some advice to whoever knocked her up.
34:51Don't stick your d*** in the crazy.
34:54But the question is, has Sarah DeLashman been rehabilitated?
34:57Has prison deterred her from future conduct?
35:00I don't think so.
35:01Because she's joined this mom's group in Highland, Illinois.
35:06So, here we go again.
35:12I'm Ansley, I'm a producer on The Curious Case Of, and I've been investigating the Sarah DeLashman case.
35:19I had been contacting Sarah DeLashman for a few weeks with very limited response.
35:25So, I ended up going to Highland, Illinois myself and knocking on her door.
35:31Her mother answered and came to the door and brought Sarah to me.
35:36We spoke on her stoop for 30 minutes.
35:43Yeah, it was just kind of instant panic from her and just kind of saying that she just wants to
35:47move on with her life and put this in the past.
35:50There were a lot of tears.
35:51I did hug her to calm her down.
35:55She just kind of repeated the same statements over and over again, that she has changed, she's moved on, she
36:00wants to move on, nobody's letting her move on.
36:03I did get the impression that she wanted me to feel for her in some way.
36:09I think she wants this national story to go away, and she wants to protect her current job that she
36:17has now.
36:19You know, she's a master manipulator.
36:23She's been doing this most of her adult life.
36:26And guess what?
36:28She's not going to change in my view.
36:30You know, she's already lying to the mother's group in Highland.
36:34She's lied to you.
36:35You know, she's not going to turn over a new leaf.
36:38She's a serial con artist.
36:41That's who she is.
36:43I do believe that Sarah is in some ways trying to continue this behavior because I did identify, you know,
36:51a couple mom groups or a Bible study across town that she had started to infiltrate.
37:19This is the plaque that I got for being inducted into the Music Hall of Fame in Valmire, Illinois.
37:28That's right.
37:34My name is Paige.
37:35I have lived in Highland for about seven years.
37:39I am in a group on social media that is for the moms of Highland.
37:44You know, they say it takes a village to raise a child, and they're not kidding.
37:52I met Sarah DeLashman in October 2024.
37:57She had her very small child.
38:01Sarah was talking about how she's an older first-time mom because she experienced 10 years of IVF treatments and
38:09infertility.
38:09So she was hoping to make some mom friends.
38:14She told me that her husband was a pilot for UPS, so he wasn't home very often.
38:23So she spent a lot of time alone with the baby.
38:27I told her she was a strong example of what a mother can be.
38:34Please don't show the world my boob.
38:36That would be great. Thanks.
38:42And then I noticed that when I would tell her something about my experience as a mom, she would echo
38:49what I had said.
38:53Like my breastfeeding journey.
38:55I had a pretty significant oversupply.
38:58So I would be nursing him and still pumping about four times a day.
39:03And she said that's what she was currently going through, that she had this oversupply.
39:07And she was nursing her baby, but then she was still having to pump about four times a day.
39:13Then she made a post in a breast milk group looking for breast milk donations.
39:20I was like, oh, that's not what a mom with an oversupply does.
39:25And also I had never seen her nurse her child.
39:28It was only bottles.
39:30She was just taking pieces of my story and making them her own.
39:35And I wasn't even sure if what she was telling me was the truth.
39:38I was noticing more inconsistencies, like Sarah originally told me her husband was a UPS pilot.
39:45And then I overheard her telling a completely different story to somebody who was 20 feet away from me.
39:53I honestly don't know if Sarah will ever stop lying and just be happy with the way that her life
39:58is.
39:59That's what I want for her, but I have no idea if that's what she'll come around to.
40:08Sarah needs people who want to help, places where there's a wellspring of compassion.
40:14Those are the places that she turned into hunting grounds.
40:19I think that the people that she's come in contact with recently, just kind of like eyes wide shut.
40:27You know, this kind of stuff doesn't happen in Highland, Illinois.
40:30Well, yes, it does.
40:32And it will happen again.
40:35The victims in her wake feel very strongly about the things that she has done to them.
40:40They keep tabs on her.
40:43I think she should get locked up away for the rest of her life.
40:47Yeah, she's a danger to society.
40:51I will never take my foot off her neck.
40:55I will always know where she is and what she's up to.
40:59When it comes to Sarah, her documented history of deceit, that's going to follow her all her life.
41:05So she may say she's changed.
41:06But the question is, has she really changed?
41:10Or has she just found another way to deceive someone?
41:14I've been tracking this crazy broad around the internet for 20 years.
41:19Because the only way to stop her from doing something that's going to eventually harm somebody,
41:23really harm somebody, is being treated and or put in a box.
41:27One of those two things.
41:28And if she's not going to get treated, I want to make sure that she's in that box.
41:33Thank you so much.
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