EP 15 - Tammi

My mom used to always joke around and say, oh, you never marry a doctor because he knows how to kill you and get away with it. She always said that, so I always had that in the back of my mind.

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. Tammy McCrary is a polite, easygoing woman. She's quick to laugh and to make herself laugh. She says that above all, her kids are her world.

I have three children, and I treat all of them as though they are the only and now my grandchildren. Oh those grandkids. That's a whole nother level of love.

Tammy grew up in Atlanta, where she was raised by her mother. She was an only child, just her, her mom, and her mom's sister. As a kid, Tammy dreamed of having a nuclear family of her own.

Most of my friends were in a two parent home. I did not have the family structure of father and mom, so I admired that I wanted to have that for myself and for my children.

In high school, Tammy started dating a guy she'd grown up with.

We hadn't known each other a long time and he'd always teased me about being his wife.

It was a joke at first because Tammy had other plans.

I had planned to go to college, but when she was seventeen, I found out that I was expected.

Tammy's college plans were put on hold and the two got married.

We both attended the same church, so we had a small wedding.

They loved being young parents. Looking back, she says it was easier for them than she expected. By the time they were twenty, the young couple bought a house in the suburbs of Atlanta.

I am an only child, he's an only child, and we both came from middle class backgrounds, so we didn't have those struggles that you would think that a young couple would have.

They were stable and surrounded by community. Tammy and her husband had a second child a few years later.

I had so much support from my mom, from his parents, and I had an aunt that was like a mom to meet, So I was all about kids. That was my life.

When her kids started school and she had more time on her hands, things started changing for Tammy.

I just got to this place where I wanted more. I wanted to do more the time that I would have been in college, you know, having that freedom. I was a mom and I was a wife, so I missed it.

She wanted to grow her career, and she realized she missed out on so much in her early twenties. Maybe there was more out there for her.

I remember getting all of this attention from these guys. I was like, am I really bad attractive?

She was coming into her own and reevaluating what she wanted, including her marriage with her husband.

He was like, I'm not dealing with this. Either you want to be married or you don't.

Ultimately, she decided she didn't want to be married, so they separated and Tammy got a job as a flight attendant.

Based out of Chicago.

She was able to work and travel one week and be home full time with her kids the next. But in Chicago, she got into a horrible car accident.

It was actually a situation where I was pronounced dead. It took me about six months to a year to recover from that car accident. After she recovered, her priorities changed. I no longer wanted to be away from my kids. That was the main thing.

So she moved back to Atlanta and got a job where she could work from home and focus entirely on giving her kids stability.

I pushed for them to have the best education. I never wanted them to feel a difference in their lives and the lives of their peers.

Every other weekend, her kids would stay with their father, and on the weekend she had to herself.

I was hanging out with my cousin, his wife, and their friends. We had our little crew, our little clique, and.

Her cousin would try to set her up on dates.

They were a professional, successful men, bowyers, doctors. But I wasn't interested in dating. I want to be a single mom. But my kids and I we travel, you know, we do things, and life is still good.

On one of these weekends, Tammy, her cousin, and their friends decided.

On a whim to go out to a nightclub. It's a pretty wild scene. I can remember some women being barely dressed. I had never been before. But you know, I'm just hanging with the crowd, she admits to feeling a little out of place. I may have just had on jeans and a sweater, definitely no club gear, nothing sexy.

But she was still getting plenty of attention and even locked eyes with a guy across the bar, but I made.

Eye contact with several people, so you know, it was nothing until he walked over to the area where we were sitting and he just started throwing money over the area. Back then, I think they called it making it rain, and so he did that, and you know, we were just laughing about it, and everyone was like, oh, drinks are on Tammy, because you know, they were picking up their money. And then he came back and he introduced himself.

His name was Eric, and he told her he had just moved to Atlanta for a fresh start. They hit it off and by the end of the night, she gave him her number.

So crazy, because the rule of thumb was always you never met anyone in a club.

Eric called her on Monday and asked her to lunch.

I didn't see the harm. I didn't see the harm in it.

At the time, Tammy worked as a loan officer and Eric was looking to buy a home. It seemed like a possible opportunity for Tammy, and he just moved from Chicago, where Tammy used to live. So over lunch they swapped stories.

I enjoyed his company very much. Soon he was very attentive. He was a great listener, and he definitely retained information. Well, that was an understatement. He was really smart. He went to college really early. He graduated from high school pretty early, so it was like he was a whiz kid.

He said he'd been married before, but it ended abruptly.

He said that he walked in on her and another man, so that was the end of the marriage.

By the end of that lunch, she got the feeling that this was their first date, and they scheduled another.

And so, of course, you know, my next test is to take him around people, just to see how he does or what they think about him. And he definitely passed that test as well. But she was cautious about who she brought around her kids. If I met someone, I didn't allow anyone to come to my home. We would meet out.

Eric also worked remotely as an electrical engineer, so with their flexible work schedules, they went on dates during the day.

There was no nine to five schedule for neither one of us, so there was a great deal of freedom.

After a few months of casual dating, Tammy's life took a turn. The aunt, who was like a second mother to her, was living with Tammy at the time, and her aunt started to get sick. One night, her health declined rapidly.

She was so ill I had to call paramedtings to the house.

She called Eric to tell him that she was going to the hospital and that she was worried. He wanted to meet her there to be supportive and in the er together, she noticed something interesting about Eric.

He began interacting with the doctors about my aunt and her condition, all these medical terms. I'm curious, like, what does he know?

Eric had said he was an electrical engineer, but at the hospital he was talking as if he was a doctor, like asking to see the results of tests and pressing them to do others.

At that time, I'm really like, what is going on? And that's when he tells me he went to medical school. He said he'd.

Gone to med school at the University of Chicago. Another doctor in the room was familiar with the school, so the two started chatting about it. Timmy's aunt was stable enough to move out of the yr, and finally there was an opportunity to ask Eric questions about his past and medical school.

Now, I want to know, why aren't you doing that? And that led to the conversation of him sharing with me his story.

His story was unlike anything she'd ever heard. It was a nightmare.

He explained to me that his parents, along with his two sons, were taking a trip by car and they were involved in an accident with an eighteen wheeler. He said the driver was Dui. He said one son may have died on the scene. Father died on the scene, and his mom and one son were in the hospital, but they both passed before he arrived.

So I was just heartbroken. He's lost both parents, both children.

She sat there, stunted. He went on to explain that the accident derailed his career. He just started working in the er when it happened, but he had to quit.

It was just so devastating for him to know that on a daily basis he's saving lives, but here it is he's not able to save the lives of those that he loved the most. And so it was just too soon for him to go back into medicine. He just couldn't do it.

Timmy herself had nearly died in a car accident. With Eric sitting in front of her in the hospital waiting room, holding back tears, she saw how resilient he was, just like her. He'd fought for a new life and a new career after a tragedy.

Of course, I'm saying, oh, yeah, I understand, I understand.

Eric opened up and shared that he was a doctor but had to stop practicing after a family tragedy. He lost his parents and two young children in a car accident. These revelations and Eric's vulnerability brought he and Tammy closer. Eventually they made it official. He started coming over to her house, where he met her son. It was a big step for Tammy. They would make dinner together and watch a movie on the couch.

But on one of these nights, I remember it being a Sunday evening, and he received a phone call and he wanted some privacy, so he actually came upstairs took the phone call in my bedroom, and I just remember him yelling for me. Of course, I ran upstairs to see what was going on, and he is just like an emotional rick. He is crying. I was finally able to get him to share with me what was the problem, and that's when he told me that his stepdaughter had committed suicide.

Tragedy had struck his life again. It was his first wife's daughter. He helped raise her.

Of course, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this man. I know, he's devastated, and I was just like, well, you know, just stay here. You don't have to go anywhere. You can just stay here with us. You definitely don't need to be alone at this time with this devastating news. You don't have anyone else. He just have us. And so I think from that moment is when things really progressed.

After that, Eric started staying over most nights. He took the death hard, but he didn't want to talk about it.

He did tell me of his plans to pay for her service, but he said that he could not bring himself to attend.

He channeled his grief into their relationship. Doting on Timmy was a good distraction. He would go above and beyond to make her happy.

If I said I used to love these strawberry oreos, but I haven't been able to find him. I don't even know if they make them anymore, he would pop up with those strawberry oreos and say I had to reach out to some people over in Europe, but I had them shipped and here they are. He was like that those are the type things that he would do. He even gave Timmy a nickname. I'd never had a nickname never, but he gave me the name Princess. And I tell you just the way he said it, and

He'd been dating for a few months when Eric said he wanted to look at engagement rings together, so he took her to a custom jeweler.

He's telling the guy, you know what he wants and he's talking about was a peerless dying. He wanted it in an antique setting, and I'm like, what is this?

I think it was ringing up over thirty thousand dollars. I mean, the way he put it together, it was beautiful. So yeah, I was pretty excited.

She was ready to take the next step with him, but the safety of her family and her kids were always her first priority. She didn't have the ability to meet his parents or his friends back in Chicago, so she took it upon herself to vet him. She called her friend who was a private investigator. She gave him Eric's name and birth date and asked him to run a background check.

He came back and was like, oh, he's Coleen. So I felt comfortable.

The findings were reassuring. The next time the topic of marriage came up, she told him that's what she wanted. So right then and there, Eric got down on one knee, but he didn't have the ring.

The ring that we looked at that he was planning to get me that would have to be put on hold because of the money that he had to spend for his stepdaughter's funeral arrangements.

She didn't care about the ring, especially when he was spending that money on something so important. Plus they'd both been married before. They wann't something small anyway. Eric offered to take the lead on planning their wedding and sending out the invitations.

I'm thinking, oh, wow, this is different because normally that's the behavior of the woman. But he wants to do it, okay, So I gave him a list and he created these invitations and we sent them out and then I started getting the phone call.

Everyone was just saying Eric was a doctor, I said, what, Well, the invitation said doctor Eric Petite and Tammy, So of course you know, I reposed him. I said, did you put on these invitations.

That you're a doctor because I never told anyone about that, which I did because I felt he was no longer practicing wasn't important. And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, I did that. It was actually supposed to be a surprise. That was going to be my wedding gift to you. I was going to surprise he'd let you know that once we come back from our honeymoon that I'm going back into medicine.

Then he pulled out a folder of documents he'd been waiting to show her, his letters of recommendation and his offer letter from a hospital.

I said, and what brought this? And he says, well, there's been some time, and I have you now, and I really feel that you deserve a certain lifestyle and I want to provide you with that lifestyle. I'll be going to work and I'm just like wow, the choice felt selfless.

It meant a lot to her that he wanted to provide for her family.

He was like, just start looking at the top private schools, and we need to start looking for another house because I want us to be closer to the hospital. You want to look at another house, you want to get a condo, whatever you want to do, just go do it. Just start looking. And I'm just thinking, like, you know, someone just called and told me that I have that winning lottery ticket. All my numbers met.

He received an advance from the new job, so after their intimate wedding ceremony, Eric paid for a honeymoon to the Bahamas. He wanted the whole family to join them, Tammy's kids and her mom. It was emotional for everyone considering what he'd been through. They were his family now. The vacation ended, but the honeymoon didn't.

And so when we returned, I remember him giving me a check. It was a check for five thousand dollars, and he's like, moving forward, I'm taking care of all of the bills and everything.

That week, he started his job in one of Atlanta's.

Busiest yurs so that meant crazy hours. He was always working, always on call. I can still remember some nights when it was like two or three in the morning and he would receive a tics or a phone call and he would have to jump up and go to the hospital.

They shared a car, so every day Tammy drove him to work and picked him up. One day, while Tammy was driving, they came upon a car crash.

It looked like it had just happened. The paramedics had not arrived yet, so he jumped out to check on those that were involved and get their vitals. There was one person that seemed to have been critically injured. He got out to help, and once the paramedics arrived, he was able to give them information on each victim. I was impressed, I must say, I was like, Wow, he really knows what he's doing.

He could have saved those people's lives. But this responsibility came at a price. His ships in the er were grueling. When she picked him up after work, he looked spent. His scrubs were stained and wrinkled, and he would share upsetting stories about what he'd seen.

I can remember once he was very disturbed because he said that there was a child that came in with an injury from the playground and he wasn't able to save the child and the child died. So of course it triggered memories of his children. The work was taking a toll on him.

Emotionally changing him in more ways than one.

He became somewhat arrogant. I didn't think anything about it, you know, I was just thinking back, Okay, So he's back in his zone, in his doctor's zone. So that's where all of that is coming from.

On his days off, he rested and watched his favorite TV show, episode after episode of Er that was his favorite Shaw. After a few months of marriage, they had a routine. She dropped him off at work, he texted throughout the day to keep her updated on when he'd be done, and on the drive home, they debriefed. That was their thing. They did this day in and day out, week after week, until.

It was on a Sunday, we went to church and came back home, spent the afternoon together, and he said he had to go in for the evening. But whenever he was away, he would always call and check in, see how things are going with myself, let me know what's going on with him. It was weird that this time I had not heard from him at all. I wasn't alarmed, and then the next morning still hadn't heard from him. And then once it started getting late into the morning, then I did start to worry. I tried

Tammy hadn't heard from her husband and was getting concerned. Finally someone answered his cell phone. It was a security guard at the hospital who told her that Eric had been arrested last night for impersonating a doctor. And strangely, the security guard seemed to know Eric pretty well.

He said, I don't know why you would do that because I had really grown to like him, so security they were familiar with him.

Security knew him because Eric had been going into the hospital every day when she dropped him off. He got in using a forged ID card.

He had a badge that actually belonged to a doctor, but he took that badge and put his picture on it.

Every day for months, he strolled the hospital hallways and mingled with nurses and staff. He introduced himself as doctor Eric Petite. Everyone there knew who he was, or thought they did.

There's one thing to say that you're a doctor, but to actually go through the act and show up on site, and then to actually walk around the hospital and interact with other doctors, that is something different.

Tammy was sitting at her kitchen table hearing from a complete stranger that her husband was a stranger himself.

And the one thing that I just kept thinking was who is this person? Have I been with? An axe murderer, a serial rapist. I've got to find out this person's real name. So she started digging. He had a buffle bag that was in the closet. Man, I dumped everything out of that bag, and I just started going through every piece of paper that I could find because I'm

So his marriage hadn't ended like he said, with his wife cheating on him.

But one thing she found did.

Corroborate his back story death certificates for his children.

I myself had never laid eyes on a death certificate before, with the notary sticker and everything.

What was real and what wasn't. There was so much contradictory information in these documents.

I also came across some papers showing me that he was on probation, so he really wasn't supposed to be in Georgia. I came across telephone numbers he goes on the probation stuff, and I just started calling those numbers. One of the numbers just happened to be to this really nice young lady, and you know who she was, his mother. His mother was very much alive. There was no accident, and she confirmed that no, his kids are fine, and there was a stepdaughter, but of course she was fine as well.

The death certificates in her hands were forged. His mother said she hadn't talked to her son in years. She was a devout Jehovah's witness, and so was the rest of his family. Eric had left the faith.

So because he was no longer practicing the religion, his parents were forced or obligated to treat him as though he was dead. That's the way it was explained to me. So that's why he was disconnected from his parents.

His mom provided some answers, but Tammy was still in the dark as to where he was, so she started calling local police precincts.

I found out where they had taken him, and I went to visit him because I wanted to hear his version. I wanted to see what he was going to say to me.

On the drive to jail, she decided she was going to play dumb and not reveal anything she knew, just to see what he would say.

I just wanted to see what he was going to tell me. He still held on to the fact that he was a doctor. She went along with it as he stuck to his line with conviction. How do you as a doctor end up being in jail? How does that happen? And he tried to explain to me that he ended up getting into an altercation with someone at the hospital, which made no sense to me. I let him tell his story and I said nothing.

Eric finished his story and they sat there in silence. Before Tammy got up to leave, she asked him one final question, that.

To say why, and he pretended to not understand.

He wasn't going to give up the act, so she had to walk away. That was the last time they ever interacted. If he wasn't going to tell her the truth, she'd have to find it herself.

I was on the mission to find out who was this person.

And she started by finding out if his name was even real.

The only thing I could think of in my head was that, okay, if I could make contact with the media and have them post a picture of this person. I just felt like once a picture was posted, someone would come forward and say, oh, I know him.

So she put him on the news. The story became a sensation in Atlanta.

And I never thought that the story would get the attention that it received.

All that attention did bring some answers. First, that Eric Petite was in fact his legal name.

It did surprise me that he used his real name. I did later understand why my friend that had the security firm could not find any information on him because I didn't have his correct date of birth. So the age that he had given me we were the same age. I was in my late thirties, but he was actually twenty eight.

Friends of theirs started coming out of the woodwork saying that Eric owed them money, just.

Different people that we know, you know, asking for money. So when I'm thinking that he's making money, he's really not. And that wasn't all. When he was arrested. He was in possession of credit cards that did not belong to him. The credit cards belonged to other women. There were women that worked at the hospital that had given him their

So that's how he'd been affording their lifestyle for the past year, unborrowed money and stolen credit cards.

I was devastated. I was very angry and disappointed at myself all the level of embarrassment. I was so embarrassed. When people hear stories, they always seem to think, Oh, that would never happen to me. I would have known, you know, or how could you not have known? He was a doctor? And you know, and I always ask the question, you explained to me how you would have known that he wasn't a doctor? You tell me how you would have known? Because he's at the hospital.

I mean, he was at the hospital wearing scrubs with an ID car to match. He'd successfully fooled the hospital staff, even the security guards for months. But that didn't stop people in town from judging Tammy.

People were harsh. Oh my gosh, some of the things that I read I could not read because of you know, the things that people were saying about how stupid I was, how dumb? How could you you know? It was bad? So I was so embarrassed. You know, I couldn't even even go to church. I could not because I was so embarrassed, so embarrassed.

Over time, she realized that this wasn't her shame to carry, and slowly she started entering the world again.

It took me about two to three months to just blend back into society. I eventually just stopped trying to defend myself and I just began to focus on moving forward. That's all I focused on.

Charges were brought against Eric for identity fraud and credit card theft. After the sentencing hearing, reporters swarmed the courthouse. When asked for comment, Eric spoke directly to Tammy. He apologized to her.

It meant nothing. It meant nothing to me. I did not show up for his sentencing.

I didn't cheer, but she did care about her privacy and protecting her family from Eric.

I changed my telephone numbers so that he would not be able to contact me.

Looking back years later, there's only one thing that still haunts her.

He would have like syringes in his pocket, and there was something in those syringes. Some type of solution. Makes me think, Like my mom used to always joke around and say, oh, you never marry a doctor because he knows how to kill you and get away with it. She always said that, so I always had that in the back of my head. But I'm just so thankful that the situation did not have a tragic end. I really am today.

Tammy still lives in Atlanta, and.

Well, believe it or not, I am married again. I was just excited to be with someone that that was genuine that had a really good heart, and he was real.

She finds that sharing her story takes the power away from Eric and people like him.

I'm not afraid to talk about how I was vulnerable and how I allowed this person in not seeing the danger and just totally letting my guard down, because I'm so caught up on the fact that all this person has lost everyone and everything and they've lost nothing. It's all a lot.

The end all of our weekly episodes with the same question, why do you want to tell your story?

I don't know why people feel that bay are above being deceived. Everyone has an area of weakness, so I just don't want us to think that it can never happen to me. No one is above this section. On the next episode of Betrayal, I.

Can feel myself start to just float away because what I am seeing I just cannot comprehend. And while holding his phone in my left hand, I take my phone in my right and.

I just start recording.

If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.

Five star reviews go.

A long way.

A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali