Episode 6: The Defendant

Pushkin.

Hey, this is Jake. You're about to listen to episode six, our final episode. And just a reminder, this is a six part series, so if you haven't heard the earlier episodes, I encourage you to go back and listen before you hear this one. You'll get a lot more out of it. Also, just so you know, you can hear more ad free episodes from this season of deep Cover before they're released to the public. By signing up for Pushkin Plus. You'll also get bonus episodes, full audio books, and binges from

Previously on deep Cover, I remember sitting on her couch and like me like telling her, asking her is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

You know?

And she was like no, no, no, no no.

What immediately occurred to me was that as soon as I told her I cancer, even though she was telling me it was okay, in the back of her mind she was thinking I can take advantage of this.

Laying in bed in the dark, kind of like pillow talk.

I asked her one more time, do you have cancer? When you lived two separate lives for so long, it feels normal, right. I had to be someone else in front of other people when I was a child, and that was normal.

As the FEDS built their case against Sarah, they collected all kinds of evidence, texts, emails, forged paperwork, witness interviews, and even a country ballad, I Kid you not.

The sun was warm and Edinburgh boots on the ground covered in Afghander.

This song, it's called Let's Go Back. It's all about this tragic war hero who's still reliving the pain of what happened in Afghanistan.

Nice smell the song at thes of blood and down ever again, how heavy the silence was.

Let's Go Back.

The inspiration for this song the hero that it's all about. Yeah, you guessed it. Sarah Kavanaugh. She's not the one singing. That's a country music artist. Sarah collaborated with some songwriters down in Ashville to create this song as part of a program called Creative Vets.

This is a coveted program with limited spots. It gives veterans an opportunity to work through their feelings and traumas through music. So when Sarah faked her way in, she took away the chance for some healing for actual veterans.

The only reason that we even know about this song is because of federal investigators. After they searched Sarah's house, they began picking through Sarah's entire life. This is when everything began to really unravel for her. After the search, she admitted to her wife, Nicole that she'd been lying about having cancer. Nicole was like, I'm out of here. She left the next morning, and eventually she filed for divorce.

Sarah's story was all over the local news. Sarah says she got death threats after position at the VA, and she took a string of low wage jobs. None of them lasted very long. Once her employers caught wind of her story, Sarah says she was fired.

Meanwhile, she was facing a host of criminal charges, including wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and fraudulent use of military medals. It seemed as though everything was finally catching up to Sarah Cavanaugh. So many questions swirled. Would her victims confront her, which she expressed remorse, and would she be held accountable. I'm Jake Colburn.

And I'm Jess McHugh and this.

Is Deep Cover Season six, The Truth About Sarah, Episode six, The Defendant. To fight the charges against her, Sarah needed a lawyer, and a good one enter Kensley Barrett Esquire, a veteran who'd served eleven years in the Coastguard before becoming a lawyer. He goes by Ken and one of the first things I asked Ken was whether, as a veteran he had any misgivings about representing Sarah. Ken said, a lot of people were bewildered they took this case.

My perspective was that I represent people who are accused of heinous crimes you name it, murder, sex, assault, everything in between.

Ken says that if he started declining cases due to some kind of moral aversion, as he put it, well, then what kind of criminal defense lawyer would he be.

I didn't necessarily have any second thoughts about representing miss Galana, and but anything, it is more of intrigue as to how she ended up in the situation that she was in.

When Sarah walked into his office, Ken's first question was about the financial impact of her fraud. He wanted to know how many victims were involved, and what was the dollar amount? Ken says Initially Sarah downplayed the whole thing. It would take Ken some time to get a clearer picture, but eventually, has he reviewed the evidence, he understood it was not a small dollar amount. The prosecution claimed Sarah had stolen over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth

This case was really like hitting a third rail. And I guess anything that involves dogs or animals and the.

Military, simply put, you mess with certain types of people or certain types of four legged animals, and you've instantly turned the jury against you.

Those two crimes in particular, always elicit a very strong viseral reaction.

All of this led Ken to believe that a trial it'd be a disaster because if she loved she could be hit with a sentence of up to twenty four years seemed like the best strategy. The only strategy really was for Sarah to take a plea.

It became very clear to me from my lawyer that if I wanted to kind of survive this, I was going to have to take whatever they were going to give.

Ken told Sarah that even with a PLEA best case scenario, she was looking at a minimum two years in.

Prison, and Sarah high express concern that she couldn't do two years in prison or any jail time. And when I tried to convey to her that two years would be like a gift, her reaction was kind of like why me, Like why should I go to person for two years? And I was kind of taken a back. That was the one time in our entire time together where I was totally white. She doesn't get it.

We asked Sarah about this, and she agreed with Ken's assessment.

I didn't get it. No, Like I remember him saying to me once, the only thing where she could have done is kill puppies, right, And I remember him saying that and being like what and not? But now I see, yes, I can see the gravity of it and all of that.

But at the time she didn't see it. And this made Ken wonder about Sarah's mindset, because in that moment, he says, her thinking seemed quote detached from reality. Ken believes that Sarah was motivated by a deeply misguided need to find comfort and belonging, because, to him, simple greed didn't explain everything.

Tomorrow, believing that it was not all financially motivated. I actually believe that maybe I'm wrong.

Sarah eventually agreed to forego a trial and plead guilty. At this point, Ken says they had to pivot now. It was all about minimizing jail time. To do this, they needed to establish mitigating factors, basically things that might help a judge understand why Sarah did what she did and then maybe show some mercy. Sarah told Ken that during her childhood a man had sexually abused her. This

Problem.

Of course, with Sarah, her credibility was well pretty much non existent at this point, but on this claim she had some backup. In official documents submitted to the court, Sarah's mother attested that the claims of sexual abuse were true. Ken also asked Sarah to gather letters from friends that might humanize her or speak to the good things that she had done. Sarah provided several such letters to Ken, and he submitted them to the court.

Sarah's sentencing hearing took place at the US District Court in Providence, Rhode Island. Picture dark wood paneling and heavy green drapes which led in just enough light to glint off the polished floors and faded brass handrails. Very nineteen thirties. You'd half expect to see some old timey gangster played by James K. Hagney dragged in in handcuffs.

The place was packed.

The gallery was filled with spectators, many of them veterans. So many people were in attendance that they actually had to set up an overflow room.

The prosecution had arranged to have several of Sarah's victims be there in person so that they could read their victim impact statements, including some of the people you've heard from in this series. Dave Ainslie, the commander of the VFW, Michelle the Jim Buddy who was Sarah's primary shoe tire, and of course Justin was there too. Justin told me

Honestly, it was kind of disconcerting because when we went into the courtroom, when we went to the lobby, she came in like behind me. Like I turned around and she was there. And that was kind of it was almost like getting hit by lightning, kind of like just kind of like this fight or flight response.

Justin slowly made his way into the gallery and here he found some company, some other people who were also there to speak.

When I got there and found all these you know, started meeting these other people that are making statements, and they were telling me what she had done to them. And I hate to say it, but it made me feel a little better. Though I wasn't the I wasn't the only one that she had victimized so many people that we were all in this together.

The prosecutor in this case was a guy named Ron Jendron. He's an old hand for thirty years, he's been prosecuting criminals, murderers, gang members, white collar embezzlers. He's seen everything. And when he walked in, looked around and sized up the crowd, he took it as a good sign.

I was quite frankly exhilarated to see that turn out. Because you toil away in your office and you don't really have any contact with people during that process. You have an idea of how it impacted people, but you don't know until you walk into a court room and you see those people there.

In some ways, this case was a perfect fit for this courthouse. Providence, Rhode Island. It's actually infamous for its history of mobsters, scam artists, and corrupt public officials. Courtrooms like this one have long fed themselves on a steady diet of fraud cases. All of that being said, Ron says, this case involving Sarah it was special.

I've seen a lot of stuff over thirty years, you know, some very despicable and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around, and this ranks right up there and the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters.

For Ron, the argument that Sarah should receive a lighter sentence due to her trauma just didn't hold weight.

The argument that you know, my trauma caused me to do this, it doesn't fly with me. I mean, I've been doing this for an excess of thirty years, and you know trauma and facing adversity or part of the human condition. Every defendant comes before a court having had some sort of loss or trauma in their life. Every human has such things, but not every human goes out and commits crime.

Sarah's fraud was so extensive, but for Ron, the worst of it, the gut punch, was what she had done to Justin. When the time came, Justin rose to his feet and faced the judge. Then he read his victim impact statement. When I interviewed Justin, I asked if he'd read it to me.

My name is Justin. I'm a member of VFW Post one five to two, the post were Sarah connerway into becoming the commander. I'm also the victim referred to in the charges as JH. I'm a twenty year Navy veteran. I have Stage four long cancer from exposure to the burn pits while in combat, and Sarah Kavanall legally accessed and copied my medical records for her own personal gain.

He went on to describe how we believed that Sarah had cancer, and how he couldn't stand by and let another veteran suffer if he had the power to help. So he gave her over five thousand dollars, believing he was helping her secure private insurance to get treated at Dana Farber, just like he had.

She knew the suffering my family and I were going through, yet she took money from us anyway, money that could have been used to pay for my own treatment or take care of my family in our time of need. I don't know what kind of person can do that to someone with a terminal illness. I know that at some point my cancer will catch up with me. When that happens, I hope my consolation will be that she is paying to the maximum extent possible for what she

When Justin was done speaking, Sarah's lawyer, Ken Barrett, gathered himself.

I knew after hearing Justin speak that no matter what I said, it wasn't going to make an ounce difference to the judge why my client was deservative of mercy.

Ken told me that it was more than just that, he says, it wasn't until this moment that he truly understood the nature of Sarah's crime. The feeling was so acute, he says, it was almost like an out of body experience. That's how he put it, as if for a moment he was no longer himself, no longer Sarah's lawyer, he was just an observer of another man's pain.

The judge in this case was a man named John J. McConnell, Junior, and when it came time to render his sentence, Judge McConnell remarked that he too was deeply moved by Justin's story. Addressing Justin directly, he said, you just gave of what you had, and to know that that love was destroyed and that that love was tained through fraud is the worst kind of victimization. It's really awful when somebody betrays the human love that you showed. I hope in your

It says her one mile away on a perfect but every day.

Okay.

The first time we met Sarah, she was a year and a half into her sentence that she was serving out at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut.

That is crazy. So it's two fences of circular barbed wire.

Yeah, on the bottom, middle.

And top.

It doesn't look so obsecurity.

Yeah.

I know.

This place, by the way, it has something of a reputation as a prison for the stars, kind of like Club Fed. This is the facility that inspired the TV show Orange is the New Black. This is where Leona Helmsley, Lauren Hill, and Real housewife Teresa Judice all serve their time. The first time we came here, a prison official walked us up this hill to a small building for visitors, and then they just left us on our own in this windowless room with a crayon marked table. The visiting

On that first visit, we waited for a while until finally a woman strolled in on her own. She was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and olive green pants. Her blonde hair was pulled into a low ponytail. Her entrance was so casual I thought maybe she was a prison employee, a groundskeeper perhaps, but no, this was Sarah.

Okay, so yeah, maybe we always just kind of start with can you introduce yourself?

I'm Sarah Kavanaugh. I currently am in prison, so i don't have a real job before this. I was a social worker for the VA in Providence, and I'm originally from Rhode Island.

We talked for hours. I kept saying, you want to stop, you need a break. No, she was tireless, and through it all there was really just one question on our minds.

Why Sarah's version basically is that it all started with a big misunderstanding.

I was invited to an event, and when I walked in, I realized it was only veterans. And I realized, right then and there, Okay, they think I'm a they think I'm a veteran. But I didn't deny it, right. I didn't stand up and say, yes, here's where I served in all of these things that hadn't started at that point. That dramatically yet. But I definitely didn't say, oh no, there's a misunderstanding.

Why not.

I was enjoying being around them.

Sarah says that she never intended to become a celebrated war hero. But that explanation just doesn't make sense to me. You said you don't want to be the public face. But there are these photos of you, you know, in uniform next to the governor.

How does that happen?

Yeah, it's like spirals out of control, right. It just became this monster that I had lost control of, and I didn't know how to stop it, because I think I was always just like, get through the moment, be there, be what people want you to be, Get through it, you know, take the pictures, move on.

So surely she wouldn't have done this for six years if she was just getting through it? Why do it in the first place?

Did feel good to be noticed, It felt good to be the center of attention. It Those aren't really great things to say about myself, But I know now that those are true, that I did enjoy those moments, not just push through them.

As she tells it, the main benefit of these lies was the love and admiration she received and the services and money were just a fringe benefit. But just for the record, Sarah started defrauding the Wounded Warrior Project in twenty sixteen, the same year she joined the VFW. If there's one part of this story that seems to really weigh on Sarah, it's her relationship with Justin. She brought him up again and again.

Justin is particularly There are like a few people who I really feel, who I really feel, were hurt more than most, and he is he is He is one of those people because he really cared for me. He really really cared for me.

You can hear the emotion in her voice, the sadness. It felt really convincing. So we asked, Okay, if that's the case, why steal Justin's money and his private medical paperwork.

I knew he had that diagnosis right, he was a patient. I knew his last name. I knew he was enrolled in care. There those aren't excuses, that's not right, but those are facts that I knew, which made it reliable to go to that document.

You say it like it sounds obvious.

I think it was just a way to make the lie more convincing. It was merely to use the correct language. Right, It was so like this impersonal, detached decision that I made.

We were baffled. She had been crying visibly upset over hurting Justin, and now she seemed really cold, annoyed.

Even sitting there, I still didn't feel like she'd answered the question why did she take Justin's money in the first place? Over five thousand dollars, there's probably it feels like you accepting that money from Justin is almost like proof to yourself.

The money is proof to yourself that he cares about you.

No. No, him giving me that money was not proof that he cared about me. I knew he cared about me long before that money.

No.

Honestly, I was kind of taken aback by this. I was searching for a more heartfelt explanation. I was kind of offering it up to her, and she was just like, no. There are still moments when sarah voice is unsaid about herself, almost doubts her own ability to see things clearly. She'll say things like, am I seeing that correctly? And at one point I just pressed her on this.

I mean, am I seeing that in a skewed way?

That's interesting?

Why do you ask me that.

Because I think sometimes I'm not. I didn't see what I was doing wrong at the time as wrong, and I certainly did not have the insight I had now, And is my insights still not correct? Is it still not accurate?

It's as though she's seeking reassurance, still wrestling with the challenge of seeing things as they truly are, which seems credible and sympathetic and also really convenient, because you can't fully hold someone accountable if they're still lost in a fog. And this raises a really thorny question, one that I've been grappling with throughout this story. How do you think about someone who's done something really terrible and seems to

Even after her deception was revealed, Sarah still drew empathy from some people, including Sam, the physical therapist she'd been romantically involved with. If you recall, at her sentencing, there were letters submitted to the court. One of those came from Sam. Sam's letters seemed to reflect a deep belief that beneath all the lies, Sarah was still worse worthy of sympathy. Honestly, I wasn't expecting this, But what really surprised me was that Sam's mother also wrote a letter

We want to read you one line from that letter quote, though Sarah hurt me with her lies, I have forgiven her and will continue to support her regardless of her legal outcome, for the remainder of my life.

I still remember the first time I read this letter, it struck me that despite it all, Sam's mother seemed capable of seeing something deeply kind and redeeming in Sarah. This really moved me. But when we visited Sam, we learned that there was more to this story. She dropped a bomb on us. How did you and your mother decide to write these letters in support of Sarah leading up to her sentencing?

Sarah wrote those letters?

What?

Yep? Wow?

Did you know?

I knew that she wrote one for me, I didn't know that she wrote one for my mother.

Okay, so two bombs really Sam told us that she gave Sarah her blessing to basically ghost write her letter. She explained that at the time, she was still on good terms with Sarah and wanted to help her. It's a little hard to imagine and why Sam would agree to this, and our producer Amy gently nudged Sam on this.

I think it's hard if I'm praying for myself in your shoes, it's very hard that I don't feel comfortable enough with her trying to channel with what I'm feeling after there's been so much betrayal.

Right, Uh, yeah, I don't know. I think I was still kind of under her spell. Does that make sense? I know that sounds really weird, but that's how I feel like like she had this power over me.

I don't know how to say it. And I'm a really really strong person, really strong person mentally, physically, all of it. And it's really weird that this happened.

And yet I see it. It's one thing to spot a lie, but untangling yourself from the liar that's something else entirely, especially when their web of deception has nodded your lives together.

The part of this that was really shocking was a letter from Sam's mom. We got in touch with her and she told us no, I didn't send any letter. She went on to say at that time, I didn't want to think about her. She created havoc. We talked to Sarah about all of this. She said she helped Sam with her letter, but categorically denied writing one for Sam's mother. She was insistent about this. This was a

In fact, she talked about how she thinks of herself compared to some of the other people she's met in prison. She says her crime stands out from the others.

It might be worse, right than like insurance fraud or mortgage fraud. Like you don't know those people. They don't come to your house and they don't have holidays with you or come to your wedding. But these people did and they shared their lives with me, and that's I mean, that's the worst part.

Sarah seems to have this awareness that what made her crime so heinous to many people was not just the dollar amount. It was the intimacy of it all, how wrapped up it was in her life and the lives of so many other people.

It's really hard to think about people like Justine or Samantha or Nicole, people who are inherently good and who our relationship was so significant and so deep, and yet like I did this to them.

When she talks like this, you see the social worker side of her, someone capable of deep analysis of herself, including her own needs.

When I think about greed and wanting more for me, that feeling was like being important to these people. When I reflect now and think of the greed, that was what it was to me, And I understand that the money is not inconsequential to the people that it came from. But the emotional loss is much more significant than the financial loss. And I caused that emotional loss. I took those things. I wanted them, I yearned from them. I wanted more of you know, to feel important, to feel love,

As she said these last words, she had tears in her eyes. There was no plexiglass separating us from Sarah, no handcuffs. We all leaned in close together, Jake and I sharing a mic. We were close enough to reach out and pass re tissue. And in the silence after she said this, the only sounds we heard were her sniffling and the clanging radiator. It was in moments like this one that I felt acutely aware that Sarah is

I know I'll never lie on this scale. No, I'll never create a fake life or pretend I'm someone I'm not. But that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna not ever hurt someone again, right like? And I don't want to do that anymore.

Soon after this, a prison guard knocked on the door to tell us it was time to go. Sarah had to check into her prison block, the one overlooking the mountains. The next day, she would win wake up here again and watch the sunrise, but we understood that one morning, soon she would wake up somewhere else on the outside. Once again, Sarah Kavanaugh would start a new life, one where she's not Sarah the social worker, not Sarah the war hero. She will be something else entirely.

It's tempting to look at Sarah's story as a unicorn, as a freak occurrence involving a very skilled buyer, but in fact, her scams revealed a much deeper problem. The VIA is bogged down by bureaucracy and limited resources. As a result, a network of charities has emerged to jump in and help vets right away. They operate on trust, good faith, and speed, and Sarah exploited this.

In comm stories, the victims or marks are often depicted as naive, greedy, or just dumb. But this story it shows how wrong that is. People fell for Sarah's scam because they were open hearted, generous, hopeful, ready to help a near stranger. That's a rare and beautiful thing in contemporary America. But what are you supposed to do when all of your goodwill just blows up in your face. Many of the people we spoke with for this story expressed a sense of shame that they'd been tricked and

I think we struggle with forgiveness because you have to eat the cost. There's no closure before you get to forgive somebody. If something requires you to forgive, another person. You have to you have to fully eat the cost whatever wrong they did you. You have to expect no repayment. You can't expect it to be made whole. You have to be okay with it not being whole. People wrong you and you. You know, if you're really going to forgive somebody, if you have to be okay with fixing it yourself.

This is a definition of forgiveness I'd never heard before, and it's one I really like. The idea being all the things that people give to Sarah their money, their time, their friendship, their love, those things are lost. Those things are gone. Yeah, sure some people may get some money back, but the rest of it is not coming back. And when Deck says you have to be okay with fixing it yourself, I like to think of all the ways in which all the people we met in this story

As for Justin, even though he's retired now and still battling cancer, in his spare time, he coaches veterans, trying to help them as they look for jobs. When I sat down with Justin for our interview this past winter, we talked about this, about how he'd found his way back to giving of himself.

I did a lot of introspection and said, well, what gives me energy, and that's what gives me energy is to help help people, especially fellow veterans, and so you know, if I lose that, now, what do I have?

Justin's words made me think again about the meaning of empathy. It's more than just a feeling. It's a mysterious human magic, a synergy that crackles between friends and strangers alike. It always seems to conjure a flicker of pain and a breath and a choice. Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah was produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Tally Emlin, additional production support by Sonya Gurwood.

Our show is edited by Karen Chkourgee. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Mastering by Jake Gorsky.

Original scoring in our theme were composed by Luis Gara. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney, fact checking by Anica Robbins.

Special thanks to Izzie Carter, Daphne Chen, Lucy Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey, Amy Hagadorn, Owen Miller, Jordan McMillan, Sarah Bregaire, Jake Flanagan, Christina Sullivan, Sarah Nix, and Greta Cohen.

Additional thanks to Jim Rosenberg, Amanda Simmons, Katie Lee, Jonathan Nellermoe, Daniel Potter, Darwin Lamb, Sabrina Moore, The Fund for Investigative Journalism, Evan Krask, Anna Sproll, Latimer, Travis Dunlap, Charlotte Simms, Hillary Zites, Michael Jackie and Joe Gilleran, Jason McQuaid, The mceugh Family, Lyon, Marie Heatherington, Matt Brown, Kasha Sebastian Lucian and Milo.

I'm Jess McHugh, Jake Halpern.

Hey, it's Jake, and look I got a little favor to ask. If you like the show, please just take one minute and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, Honestly, it really helps new listeners find the show, which in turn helps us continue making these stories for you. Thanks a lot,