Andrea

mom since her son was born. He's nineteen now. He's the kind of kid who you know, if he sees somebody struggling, he'll help them. He'll hold doors for people. As long as he knows that he's doing the right thing. He's absolutely prepared to He's absolutely prepared to raise all kinds of holy hell. And I love that about him. In the early two thousand's, when he was still a toddler, she spent some of her free time putting around on the Internet trying to reconnect with folks back home. This

was pre Facebook. She learned that one of her old friends had a child with a diagnosis she had never heard of s m A, or spinal muscular atrophy. Andrea looked it up. Baby is born with the most severe form of s m A, never sit up or feed themselves, and usually die by their second birthday. It was something I just could not stop thinking about. I'm sitting here with a fourteen month old and I'm looking at my son. Tears came to my eyes and I was just like

overwhelmed with emotion, thinking, my goodness, what does this. In January of two thousand four, she sent a message to a support group for s m A and offered to volunteer. I've got some free time. I don't have money. I I can't send you cash, but I'm available to help you with whatever you need. She helped with their newsletter and organized conferences. She became their insurance bulldog fighting on

behalf of families denied claims. Not long after she started volunteering, in two thousand and six, a new person popped into the parent chat group. She introduced herself as Connie de Lashmant, mom to Drake. Drake had s m A. She discussed his treatment plan, she sent pictures of him, and then another woman joined the group named Megan, who was mom

to Brook. There was a small subgroup of moms that sort of had this little side chat going, and they started noticing things that made them uneasy about Connie, small inconsistencies about the things that Connie was saying about Drake

and his treatment, things that didn't make sense. And then at some point somebody said, well, I don't you know, Megan doesn't really sound right either, And because they came into the chat and approximately the same time, there was like this, there was this weirdness around the both of them. Both Connie and Megan used the same turns of phrase, and both were misspelling the same words in the same way, like tomorrow with an A in the middle instead of

an oh. Andrea and some of the other moms decided to become amateur detectives, five or six of us that were sort of the Little Little Scooby or Little Scooby Doo Adventure group. She was Velma. We were convinced that Connie and Megan were both frauds and they were the same person. So I have a friend who is a computer whiz, and I wrote to him and said, is there any way to tell if two different emails are

being generated by the same computer? And he said, yes, absolutely, you need to look and see what the I P addresses. And he explained to me how to expand the headers on the email and look for the what they referred to as the originating Internet Protocol address. Andrea was on it.

It didn't take her on to realize that both Connie and Megan had the same IP address, their emails came from the same computer, and the electronic breadcrumbs led her to a woman named Sarah Sarah Delashmant whose mother happens to be named Connie. Remember two thousand six was when Sarah was at the beginning of her friendship with Aaron Johnson in California, when she pretended to have a sister named Gabby, Gabby who had sm A make believe Gabby

died in January of two thousand six. Three months later, the supposed Connie Delashman joined the s M A parent group. After she got caught, Sarah was kicked out, Andrea might have let the whole thing go had her Scooby Doo

group not made one more discovery. Sarah had worked her way into a separate s M A nonprofit, this time pretending she herself had the condition there's a charity out there, cold Cole's Quilts, that makes these beautiful handmade quilts for children with s m A or families of deceased children with SMA, and you have to apply for the quilt. You have to send some kind of proof of your diagnosis. In the s m A community, Coal's Quilts are hallowed ground.

Sarah had duped the charity and gotten one. We were outrage at the violation of one of our most sacred groups. Cole's Quilt makers ask just one thing in return for their labor, that you send a photo of you and your quilt they can post on their website. Sarah did. In the picture, she's lying on her bed, just her

arms and head peeking out from under the quilt. Her hands are bent down at the wrists, back towards her body, like someone who doesn't have a lot of muscle control, something you see in pictures of people who actually have s m A. She used her real name because a lot of times people will stitch the child's name onto the quilt, and she didn't want somebody else's name on her quilt. When Andreas saw the photo, that's when we were like enough with this girl. We need to do

something about her. We need to get that quilt back. Something to know about Andrea. She's not exactly a timid person. She once fought off a would be rapist. At nine point. She campaign door to door for Bernie Sanders in the reddest neighborhoods of South Carolina. She regularly takes insurance companies to the wood shed. When she vowed to get the quilt back, she was getting the quilt back. I had her address, I had her phone number, I had a picture of her house. Thank you Google Maps. I knew

everything about this girl. She was ready to go get it herself. Instead, she called the FBI. The agent didn't seem that interested just a quilt, you know, but said she could call back. So Andrea did every week, to the point that the agent seemed to be getting a little annoyed. My voice was catching, I was I had tears in my eyes when I said, and I said, well, you did say I can call whenever I wanted, So you know, I'm sorry. I will not bother you again.

Shortly afterwards, she got a message from a local police officer in Highland, Illinois, Sarah's hometown. He had heard from the FBI. The officer brought Sarah into the station, he got the quilt and sent it back. Nobody filed charges. The value of the theft seems small, and local police thought that she was just a board and lonely college student who didn't realize the seriousness of her actions. Andrea

had grown up watching cop shows. I was sort of raised on Hill Street Blues and Barney Miller and NYPD Blue. She knew there needed to be a record. Do some thing wrong in your name needs to be in a file somewhere, and that documentation about the stolen quilt would sit buried in the Highland p D, largely forgotten until the day fifteen years later in a courtroom when it would come back into Sarah's life. I'm Laura Beale. You're

listening to Sympathy Pains. This is episode four Andrea. After Sarah's surfaced in the s m A group after the officer returned the quilt, she tried to slip back into the organization again. That was enough for Andrea to fear that she would never go away. She began tracking Sarah year after year as she moved around the Internet. I have a spreadsheet with all of her known elias Is.

One of her posts goes back to two thousand one, when Sarah was in high school, writing on a chatboard that she was the mother of two children with muscular dystrophy. Andrea found that Sarah would assume whatever identity matched the group she was trying to slip into. If it was a cancer group, she had acute lymphastic leukemia. If it was a breast cancer group, she had breast cancer. She

became an experienced chameleon. If it was a group where they were talking about fertility issues, then she was wondering about people's experiences with Cloe mid If it was a group where there were moms of multiple she was expecting quintuplets. If it was talking about muscular dystrophy, then she had s n A. There was actually a post on a costume board where she was looking for costumes to look pregnant. As Andreas silently followed Sarah from Afar, she warned as

many nonprofits as she could. I said, watch out for this girl. She's a problem. She is a scam artist. By thousand nineteen, Sarah had been juggling multiple cons in multiple places. Liz and Bethany didn't know Sarah's long history. They were more concerned about where she might go in the future. They tried to think of a solution that would go beyond trying to warn charities one by one. Here's Liz and I recognized that she was really sick, and this is a very serious scenario. That mental health

is an illness. They not only wanted to expose her, they wanted her to get treatment. Dr Phil seemed a way to do both. Liz sent an email to the Doctor Phil producers. I asked her to read some of it. She contacted me sometimes a hundred times a day, needing someone to listen or help with a panic attack. She called after treatment to share how six she was, or how she needs to be rushed to the hospital again

for blood transfusion. He seemed whenever informed Sarah had plans with a friend or workman and scheduled she needed me to which, of course I complied every time. Please help us get Sarah that helps she needs, prevent her from purtting others into frauding worthy charities, and the closure we need from this unfortunate event. Days later, Liz and Brian

were at the gym when the phone rang. It was a producer from the show, and I said, can we call you back in about ten minutes and let me get my wife, and we would definitely like to talk to you. So the ball started and started rolling Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, they made the decision that yes, we want to do this, and we are going to try to get Sarah to participate. Sarah's family was willing to help convince her. Sitting at home that evening, Liz and

Brian thought, what are we doing? Not a month earlier they had been taking Sarah out for a ride in their boat. She had been in their hammock looking at the stars, and now they were catching a Monday morning flight to Los Angeles for a confrontation on national television. It was March. That day, they told their stories on tape for the show's producers. The next day, Brian and I had to go for a walk in the canyon to kind of get her head clear and like dial

down some of the nerves and feelings and emotion. And on that day we found out later that Sarah and her mother went to the Santa Monica peer like tourists, took all kinds of pictures and had a really great day Bethany had also flown in. We knew Bethany was staying the same hotel, and we said, hey, why don't we why don't we meet before we get in the show and talk. So we did. We all met in the hot tub and one of those giant ones at

a hotel that maybe twenty people could be in. Liz and Brian got there first and soon saw Petite Brunette making her way across the pool deck. She was carrying a six pack of beer, and that actually made me feel good. I think that we were we really to see that she was, you know, calm, and she seemed kind. It's like we found a kindred soul. So it actually really felt good to find some on who had been

in a similar situation. So she had gone beyond all the shock and horror and betrayal feelings that I was feeling, and which is angry. She was about to get even angrier. After a few days of filming their story and hanging out in l A, Brian, Liz, and Bethany were backstage at Dr Phil perhaps a hundred people that are just either moving rocks of clothes or carrying recording equipment. It's it's really busy, really busy. They knew Sarah was somewhere

in the building, but they didn't know where. She and her mom had stayed in a different hotel. The show staff took pains to make sure that they didn't accidentally bump into her. After hair and makeup, they waited in the green room. We could hear the other show they were taping. I guess they taped two in the same day. I could hear them screaming in the room next to us. Liz where worried about what Dr Phil might say to her. She's like, are you gonna judge me? Is he gonna

turn this story some hours from my fault? And I was terrified that he was going to lamb based me publicly on stage and somehow make me an enabler. Liz was on the verge of backing out. Even the producers knew that I was a basket case and and Bethany was not. She was really composed, and that that brought me a level of calm that I really needed. She's like, this is okay. She's like, You're gonna be okay. Just

tell your story. With Bethany's help, Liz got ahold of herself at this point, what outcome are you hoping for with this whole thing. I wanted to get mental health treatment, and so this was to help her. This was absolutely to help her. And it was almost concerning for the producers. And up to about thirty seconds before we went on the show, they were coaching me. They were like, remember

how remember how mad she made you. It's like they were taking a hot poker and sticking into my side before they released me on the stage, because they knew I was just sad and I felt bad. I remember one of the producers trying to kind of hype me up for it. I said, you know, I don't mean to be offensive or disrespectful or anything. This is not something that I want to do. I'm not here for myself. I'm not here, you know, to get any sort of accolade or anything. I think that's the only thing that

got me on that stage. I was thinking about how she had violated all of those women. They heard the introduction to their stories, segments from the tape that they had filmed on Monday, and then the booming voice of Dr Phil He's like, now we have you know, Brian, Liz and Bethany. Then the curtain opens up, and we just walked down the aisle to the stage. She shakes your hand and introduces himself and it's the first time you meet him and you you take your seat. Brian

held my hand. I know I was shaking. I was will be wide as a ghost. We wanted to play a little of the audio from this, but couldn't work things out with a show anyway. Here's how things went down. After their introduction, Liz and Brian walked out first. They took their seats on stage and oversized wooden bar chairs so high that their feet couldn't touch the ground. Liz was wearing a dark blue dress that should bought a few days before. Then Bethany joined and told her story.

The stage lights, their own bright little sons, bore down on them. They felt the curious stairs of the audience. It felt like an out of body experience, you know, being there on that stage looking at this television personality you see every once in a while, hearing his voice, and you know, seeing cameras all around you. This was

three years in the making of me. To have a one hour window to get some sort of closure, if that was the goal, or to tell my story if that was the goal, or to expose her, you know, it just it felt very surreal. They methodically recounted their experiences with a giant Sarah slide show behind them. Sarah in her wig and scarf, Sarah in her wheelchair, Sarah smiling, gripping the handlebars of her bike. We were all sitting

side by side with each other. It was me and then Brian and Bethany, and I was in the chair that was empty across from me. It was very obvious that it was going to be Sarah. Dr Phil said to Bethany, will know, you've never seen Sarah walk and she said, you know, that's that's correct. She was always

in a wheelchair. And then Liz, you've only seen you know, you've never seen Sarah with hair, and of course we had not, so, you know, there was something to the effect of, well, you know, we're going to see her for the first time or something, and he said, are you ready to see her? And then I said, I don't even know who the real Sarah is. He looked at one side of the room. A door opened, and there's she stood in a burgundy sweater, black slacks, and

gold earrings. Her dark hair sleekly styled. If we had had happened to pass her on the street while we are yelling California, we would not have known. We would not have recognized her for a split second. Like I kind of looked at Brian, thinking like one of us is going to say, this isn't her right, But I was kind of waiting for that validation from Brian and Liz. Absolutely soulless expression, and I will never forget that absolutely soulless.

Slowly staring straight ahead, she marched towards the stage, toward the one empty chair on the set, her arms barely swinging. There's a long pathway. Um, if you've ever seen the show, you can usually see they kind of use this pathway where they open a door and somebody comes out, you know, kind of in between the crowd, and you could have heard a pin drop in that whole place for about thirty seconds, not a single sound as she took the

ten seconds to walk to the chair. She had the stage makeup on, but it still just didn't look like her Her eyes were black. What I remember most about her were her eyes. They were honestly just black. It was like she didn't have a color to her eyes, and she looked right through me as if there was honestly nothing behind it. Her brow did not move at all, her eyelids were heavy, and she just stared right at me.

And I'm just looking in her, into her eyes, like trying to find some of the Sarah that I knew, and I'm looking at her just an absolute disbelief, like who are you? Sarah scooted into her seat, her eyes darted around like she wasn't sure where to look. I was a surprise to her that she came with the understanding knowing that Brian and Liz were going to be there, but she didn't know I was going to be there.

Dr Phil kind, I guess. One on his he said, I believe you know these people, and she said I do, And he said, do you have anything to say to them? And that's when she said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for what I've done and it didn't mean to hurt She didn't mean to hurt you. She kind of just looks like I had this very kind of pathetic, sad puppy face, I guess, and just tried to offer an apology, saying

she didn't mean to hurt anyone. As soon as she started in with her apology, I jumped in and cut her off because I just thought that this is not real. This is not a real apology, This is not how this is going to go. Dr Phil was very quick to point out that that's not a real apology. There's not any empathy behind that statement. I said, Sarah, you don't understand you ruined our life. I'm was the first

thing I said to her, with a stony expression. Sarah turned to Dr Phil throughout the show should respond, offering wandering explanations for what she had done. She talked about the mental fortitude necessary to keep all her stories straight. It was a very strange way that she phrased it. It was something about playing hockey and wanting to hit

the puck but not being able to. And it wasn't really too clear exactly what she was saying, But I think the meaning behind that is she would be in scenarios in situations where she wants to be able to say something but she can't because she's been lying about who she is. I think one of the things that Talking Phil was trying to get with that was how proud she was about all of the lies, and he led her down this this road on the stage that I don't think she realized she was getting led to.

And that's when he went to a clip showing her being interviewed in which she's smiling talking about them. In that clip, she said she didn't tell her first big lie until she was twenty five years old. She said that was the first time she lied about having cancer, which would have been news to her college it's friends, and she is kind of smiling back on stage at Dr Phil. There was one time in particular that Sarah said that I've decided, uh song to the effect I've

decided to tell the truth now. And I responded to her, when did that happen? And I didn't mean it to be a joke or funny, but the audience, you know, laughed at that. The truth has only come out to us for a couple of days. Bethany looked straight at Sarah, steely eyed. She wouldn't make eye contact with me unless I was speaking directly to her, and almost had to kind of force her to look at me, and even

then I could tell she was looking beyond me. I remember one of the claims that Sarah made was that she had a hard time making friends, and Bethany was very quick to say, well, that's not true, because you know they became friends quickly. As he walked around the set, Dr Phil looked at Sarah and asked her if she realized when she was lying and was unable to stop it. He framed it as an irresistible impulse versus an impulse

not resisted. She said she couldn't stop it, that she feels an urge to lie and it just takes over an irresistible impulse. So Dr Phil answered, you have no ability to choose right and wrong. You are a total sociopath. No, I think, I don't know, She stammered, she did know right from wrong. So he said, it is a choice and not an irresistible impulse. Yeah, she said quietly. He said she lacked empathy for others, that she didn't realize how much she had broken people like Liz and Bethany.

Toward the end, they cut to one last commercial break. I remember when when it came back, he said, I'm going to tell you what I think you need, not what I think you deserve. I've lined up treatment facility for you. I think that you need to get some help. The intensive impatient care had lined up. Was in Calabasas, a tony Los Angeles suburb. The facility was on tranquil wooded grounds that looked like a luxury resort. He said he considered it the best care in the country, but

added they do not mess around. The show was done, the camera's shut off. Brian, Liz, and Bethany were ushered off in one direction and Sarah in the other. The show pays for a treatment, and you know, she readily agreed, and I believe that she left neiately from the show

to go there. I do remember walking off the stage with Lizzie and and there were a lot of the audience members that I did make eye contact with, and there are there are some tears I could see in eyes and also um kind of that those gestures of you know, like we're really sorry this happened to you. Did you go to the nearest bar in order of

martini after that? Yes, that's exactly what we did. And I remember that conversation just feeling like we had one little moment of success with this that you know, we could all fly home feel good about what we were able to say, feel good about Dr Phil's responses and how it was going to be, so for her to actually leave set, grab her suitcase and go straight to treatment in southern California was a big deal. We all sat and we really just exhaled because at that point

we thought we had taken care of the problem. We thought we we accomplished what we had, you know, come to do. But that feeling of accomplishment was about to be shattered. The show aired in April two thousand nine. Shortly afterwards, Andreas Smith was at home in South Carolina sitting at her computer scrolling through Facebook. She saw that she had been tagged in a post by someone she knew from her work with s m A. I said, Hey, doesn't this sound like our old friend Sarah? And it

was a link to the Doctor Phil show. And as soon as she came on the screen, I said, holy crap, that's her. The show hadn't revealed anyone's last names, but Andrea had no doubt. She immediately dived into the comments section and I started writing and said, everybody beware sour Delashman this woman. I started writing the story in in in the comments, and as soon as I wrote that, the minute I had sent Liz Hiccox's responded to me, and then Bethany Turner responded to me saying, you know, Sarah,

like what happened? She said, I've been tracking her for twenty years. And then we really started piecing together a lot of the details where Andrea was talking about family members she had talked to and how she had the FBI involved back in two thousand six. It wasn't just

camp summit or breath cancer charities. The common thread I found was that she always infiltrated groups of women, and that it was always in a place where you would never you would never walk into like a breast cancer conference, for example. You would never walk into a camp for adulty disabilities. You would never walk into certain scenarios and

feel like you need to question anyone. The most striking thing about the Dr Phil episode for me was the section where they were talking just to her, like in the green room. I guess it was not when she was on stage where she was discussing her activities, and the look in her eye when she's talking about it and she's almost glowing. She's talking about it like it's

her life's work. When I visited Andrea, we sat down at her computer and she walked me through her Sarah Google drive, which by the way, is named fuck Sarah. This is all Sarah. This is all Sarah's stuff, This is everything. Here is Sarah. This is all Sarah, all of this, all of this, all of this. So these are pictures and posts and and full web pages that I downloaded. This is just a terrifying amount of stuff. You would still google her every now and then. Oh yeah,

I'm not an idiot. I knew she was still out there, given her long history with Sarah. I thought Andrea might know the answer to a question I've been asking myself for a while, the question on everyone's mind. Really, who is Sarah. I don't even think she knows. Sarah makes herself up as goes along. Sarah is an empty shell Sarah. I don't know what happened to her. She showed me the picture of Sarah with her coals quilt, green quilt with a care Bears theme, Cara, bears and frogs. That's

what she wanted. There's a profile on caring Bridge, a site for people with illnesses to share their stories. She created a post for her pretend son Drake, the one from the s m A support group. When Drake was born in November of two thousand two. I thought I had the perfect although Drake surprised us by coming five weeks early. He scored nine at one minute from the get go. Drake was an easy going, happy and in May of two thousand and three, I noticed Drake wasn't

standing up or sitting like most kids. On another website, it wasn't enough for Drake to be gravely ill. He was kidnapped too, And it says Sarah, how is Drake after the kidnapping? And then if you go down a little bit, you'll see here where she says he's fine. It's not as serious as it first sounded when they called me about a kidnap. About a kidnapping? Yeah. The posts on a cancer board when Sarah was in college, Hi,

every when. My name is Sarah and I was diagnosed with a l L that's acute lymphositic leukemia two months ago. I was just looking for another teens that have gone or going through a similar thing. I would love to hear about how this. On this tour through her Google drive, Andreas stops on one other photo. This is supposedly Gabby Gabby who Aaron Johnson. Believed was Sarah's real sister. But it's not Gabby, it's this girl. Andrea pulls up a picture of a blonde girl in a red sweater smiling

for the camera. Sarah Schwegel, who was the m d A Goodwill ambassador for like two thousand and one. So she stole a picture of somebody with Spota muscular atrophy and used it and claim this was her sister. Sarah Schwegel was from the St. Louis area, near Sarah's hometown. Off and on, there were photos ever in the newspaper. After the Doctor Phil episode aired, her victims watched one

by one in disbelief. Aaron had known for almost three years that Sarah wasn't disabled, that she didn't have multiple children or sister named Gabby, but she had held onto the hope that no matter how twisted everything else was, Sarah's affection was real. But then it was a Doctor Phil, so that made me sit up and go, okay, there was no love in my friendship with her. On her side,

she was just a very very good actress. It was the first time in years I was able to actually see her eyes when she talked about all this and explained all the people that she didn't so non tauntly after Dr Phil, this story might have ended right here with Sarah getting the psychiatric care she needed, but even he seemed to doubt whether that would happen. On the show, Sarah said she was ready to change her life. He shrugged, we'll see about that. A few days after the show

was over, Liz was talking to Sarah's aunt. At the time, they were still friendly, and she said, well, she's coming home for Easter, so I guess we'll see her. Then I said, what do you mean, she's coming home? Sarah was already planning to leave treatment and the show hadn't even aired yet. This was a turning point for Liz. She had been willing to bear her humiliation in front of a national television audience as a way to get Sarah the help she needed. Help Sarah said she wanted,

and it had all been for nothing. And at that point I was just furious because again she either had checked herself out or she was kicked out, and either way, at that point I said, I'm done. Now, I'm done being compassionate, and now I'm piste off. And that's when I turned the corner and said no, I'm not done with this yet. I'm not letting this go. It became an obsession because she she in my mind, she got

me one more time. She managed to defraud me, deceive me, betray me, but she still managed to win me over one more time and still get some compassion for me. And that's when I said, no, I'm no, I can't. This is no, I'm done with this. There's something you should know about Liz. She's a native New Yorker who worked in the Lower Manhattan financial district and lost friends and colleagues. On nine eleven, she discovered her father at home, dead of a heart attack when he was only fifty

one years old. The first man she intended to marry, an America's Cup Racer, was killed in a sailing accident. So if she seems enraged that someone would fake their impending death, it's because her life has known far too much real loss. On May three, two, nineteen, Bethany, Liz and Andrea formed a group chet If Sarah wasn't going to stop, neither were they. Liz told Andrea were very

interested in pursuing any avenue possible. She's checked herself out of the facility and is already back in action with a local cancer charity. The next day they got together on a call. Andrea told them the story of the quilt and that she had been in touch with the Highland Police in two thousand and six and now she was ready to call the cops again. They all were at the Highland Police Department. Detective David Brynes was the one on the other end of that phone. And what's

going through your mind when you're hearing this? Kind of thinking this is, lady's a pretty good actor at this point, and kind of also thinking that if if she is pulling off all these I guess elaborate ruses like she is, What's what's running through this lady's head? What's you know, what's her motivation? Why would you do all this? Buddy had a problem. She had done something probably morally wrong, but probably not criminally wrong at that point until the

day he learned that she had committed actual crimes. Starting was stolen racing bikes. At that point we had a federal crime and they started the process of learning more about who Sarah really was. I want to say we executed the search warrant between seven and seven thirty in the morning, and so we were there, I mean roughly four to five hours that's coming up on Sympathy Pains. Sympathy Paines is a production of Neon Hum Media and I Heart Radio. I'm your host Laura Beale. I wrote

and reported the episodes. Natalie Wrinn is the lead producer. Our editor is Katherine st. Louis. Associate producer is Rufaro Mazzarua. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Samantha Allison is our production manager. Fact checker is Jacqueline Colletti. Jesse Perlstein composed the theme song and music heard throughout the series. Additional tracks are by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Scott Somerville is our engineer and sound designer. Special thanks to

Stephanie Serrano from I Heart Radio. Special thanks to Carrie Lieberman and Bethan Macaluso. Executive producer at I Heeart Radio is Dylan Fagin.