The Girlfriends S5/Bonus Ep 3: Blazing Lies

Novel, August sixth, two thousand and five. It's been a decade since Derek Awdred went missing on his college girlfriend Vanessa, and a guy named Captain Tom Oldag is driving home down a busy highway in Eldorado County, California.

It's nearly seven pm.

Captain Tom is a fire investigator with California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

He's steadily making his way.

Through the rush hour traffic when his phone starts to buzz.

It's his battalion chief.

You're supposedly a firefighter wearing a CalFire uniform who had overdosed up in Plasville at Marshall Hospital.

This isn't the kind of call Captain Tom would usually receive. For the most part, his job as law enforcement evolves determining the origin and cause of a fire. But he can see immediately why this situation has raised concern.

It didn't make any sense if somebody had overdosed. If there were in a uniform, the fire engine would have brought him in.

This guy has overdosed, he's wearing a uniform, but he hasn't been brought in by a firetruck or any colleagues, so as the sky begins to fade to twilight, instead of heading home, Captain Tom course corrects.

You could hear beep in and all that from monitors and people walk them back and forth.

Sixteen minutes later, Captain Tom Oldagg arrives at the emergency room of Marshall Hospital in Placerville, California.

Can I see his uniform?

The firefighter he's there to see has been changed into a hospital gown, carted off to a bed in the emergency room, divided from the rest by hospital curtains. So Captain Tom is able to take a closer look at the clothes he's arrived in.

CalFire patches on bull shoulders, he had a blue shirt kind of like what we used, but the bugles that were on his collar brass didn't match. And then the other thing that stuck out is his badge wasn't a CalFire one, it was just a generic badge.

Captain Tom gets permission to search the firefighter's car. In there, he finds receipts for the uniforms, pill bottles, unfilled prescriptions.

And that just kind of started the ball rolling.

Captain Tom talks to the local battalion chief who's at the hospital that evening.

He just had a weird look on his face. He goes, I don't recognize the guy.

Captain Tom peers around the hospital curtain at the man in question.

I didn't recognize him either.

The guy laying on that emergency room bed in two thousand and five, an IV his arm hospital gown on, segregated from the rest of the busy emergency room by curtains, claiming to be a firefighter, is none other than Derek Aldred. When Derek Aldred pled guilty to charges that would see him sentenced to twenty four years in prison, it was far from his first run in with the justice system.

You're a professional gawker. Part of my job was to go and see and then try to figure it out.

Captain Tom will spend weeks making sense of what he's seeing, and when he does, I got.

Him a gat point and I said, Hey, Derek, remember me.

I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart podcasts. You're listening to the girlfriends trust Me Babe.

Bonus episode three, Blazing Lies You.

He had an IVY in him. He was pretty worn out, looked like he was tired. You could say he was out to lunch because he had overdose.

Derek Audread is lying in a Californian hospital in two thousand and five.

He had taken drugs, narcotics and he took too many and he admitted to doing that and he was out of it. But you could talk to him and I was asking him, you know, questions like where do you work? And he goes, well, you work at a fire station. Okay, which one fire station just down the road? Okay, what fire station just down the road? Well you know that that fire station. Okay? What department do you work for?

And you think it's a little odd that you have some uniforms in your car. You're wearing some uniforms.

You get some ship that don't have You're listening to the actual audio from Captain Tom's interview with Derek Cool Dread in that emergency room that evening.

Are you a part of CDF?

There you part of CDF? Derek Tom's asking CDF California Department of Forestry and Fire.

Protection and Training right now.

I'm training right now, replies Derek.

They're training.

Yes, so there should be a record through the CDF files of you being a member of their training. Yes, okay, there is, Derek.

Captain Tom has already checked there are no Derek cool dreads in CDF training.

What why would that be?

Well, do you just want to be a part of.

CDA Derek course corrects, tells Captain Tom that he's been in training to be a paramedic in the evenings, So there's no affiliation on CDIA now, so then there's no reason why you.

Should have DA fulling or uniforms at any point during this time.

Correct I hold up his shirt and said, no, this badge, it's not a real badge.

Where did you get that badge?

Just online?

Who bought it online?

Yeah?

Captain Tom cuts to the point, is.

That what you're doing is selling yourself off as a firefighter to people who don't know you.

That's that's not my intent, but that's that's the way it was.

Yeah, Yeah, because that's that's a serious thing.

Derek admits to wearing the uniforms despite not being a firefighter, but the question remains, why.

We're just trying to find out why. It's it's just a family What do you mean a family day?

Well, just knowund that they wanted to be a paramedic firefighter.

And who is my mom?

Derek claims he just wanted to make his family proud. A series of bad decisions that just snowballed.

In order to be a firefighter, you have to go through train, extensive training. To be a good firefighter takes a while. It's an honorable job. Most people trust firefighters, and here's somebody who is using and abusing that right.

It's a serious thing to impersonate a firefighter. But Captain Tom suspects that actually there's something much much more serious going on here than just a simple guy pretending to be a firefighter for his mom.

The big kicker was in his pocket was a prescription from the Woodland Clinic, which is in another county. It's in Yellow County that just started the ball rolling.

The receipt has workers' compensation written on it. According to the evidence, Captain Tom has collected the guy's unemployed, and he has a suspicion.

You're dressing up like a firefighter to get narcotics, to get drugs Because he's impersonating us our occupation, what we are.

Captain Tom wants to solve this one.

It was personal.

In the days after meeting Derek, Captain Tom gets in his car. There is one, obviously to start with, Woodland Clinic in Yolo County, whose prescription he found in Derek's pocket. Captain Tom tracks down the pharmacy and then the doctor's office and interviews the staff.

They remembered him because he was a firefighter who came in, said he was in training and hurt himself.

One pharmacist tells him that a guy wearing a CDF uniform drops some paperwork in the parking lot and that somebody handed it in. They fish the paper out of the garbage and give it to Captain Tom. It was a doctor's note from another clinic. With it, there were two prescriptions, a copy to be returned to one's employer, and a name, Richard Aldrich. Captain Tom heads to the second clinic on the same day and they can that Derek came in seeking medical help wearing a CDF uniform.

He would walk in and you know, say, hey, doc, I injured my tropedius muscles thrown a fifty.

Foot ladder might scene plausible to medical clinic staff, but not to a seasoned firefighter like Captain Tom.

It's like, dude, there's no way you could pick up a ladder that big, even if it's a thirty five foot ladder. It's like, now, I don't think so.

Captain Tom works his way through all the clinics he can trace to Derek.

I know he went over twenty and that's in like less than a month.

Captain Tom talks to as many people as he can find who remember interactions with Derek.

I think I interviewed over thirty people did I want to every clinic.

And a pattern begins to emerge. He would use different aliases or slight variations of his name, like Derek Cauldron, Derek Caudrich, Derek d on Richard Ordric.

He starts to build up a list.

They had him run all the different needs that I had, social Security numbers that I found on him, or that he had used.

Occasionally, Derek would be asked for verification of his credentials, but more often than not, he'd get access to prescriptions easily. In his investigation, Captain Tom finds out more on the impressive lengths Derek went to to perfect his lies.

He had EMP books, Emergency medical technician books, so he could go in to a doctor's office and he could talk to Lingo and that struck a core. It's like he's doing a lot more than just drug seeking. I mean, he's really intelligent. He could remember everything, and it would just it was crazy.

Derek also had some more extreme tricks up his sleeve.

He would go into a hospital, see Doc, I'm having heart attack, I think, blah blah blah, and they give a morphine because the pain is on a scale of one to ten. It's a nine or it's a ten, So they're going to do that, calm him down, start to run blood tests and everything. He would get his fixed under his id and walk out to me, it's crazy. The people at the pharmacies or their urgent care clinics, they said, is very personal, real friendly. Everyone thought he

Soon after figuring out Derek's movements in Eldorado and Yolo County, Captain Tom's investigations extended to other parts of California, with evidence found in Sacramento County, Placer County, and the Bay Area.

He was NonStop, just going and going. That was his full time job.

And because of his so called firefighting credentials, sometimes the prescription drugs Derek was accessing were even free.

He filled out the paperwork, and because it's an injured firefighter, the state of California would pick up the tab.

By simply showing up in a uniform and being a convincing liar, Derek managed to exploit a system that was set up to help people.

It's not a victimless crime. It's whether people care or not. And I cared it was bad. It's just he's already overdose. He was in the hospital overdose. You put him behind a wheel. All he has to do is crash into somebody. And if I'm doing an investigation on him and I don't stop that, then I would have a hard time with that.

But not everyone feels the same way.

I was told at one point, leave it alone, just walk away.

The higher ups are concerned by how much Captain Tom is putting into this.

You know, you think that doing an investigation, it's forty five minutes and commercials and it's not.

He's even gathering evidence on his days off.

People high, you're up in the organization. They thought I was too fixated on him, and yeah, they're right, I was. But at the same time, there was something special about him. He was special, he needed special attention.

Over two weeks, Captain Tom assembles a report and it's extensive.

Shortly after that, I went to the Yellow County District Attorney's office and met one of their fraud investigators and laid it out. This is what I have and they're going okay, and it's like no, this is like this guy's working hard at it. He needs to get in trouble.

An arrest warrant is written up for Derek.

The next day, Derek Audred is standing at a payphone outside of place of Hill McDonald's. He's just getting ready to hang up the phone when a truck pulls up to the sidewalk next to him.

Captain Tom steps out.

I got him again. Point I said, hey, Derek, remember me, and he said yes, I do. Okay, cool, I haven't warrant for arrest.

In only two weeks, Captain Tom has collected a lot of evidence.

I had him on video. I had him on hospitals and pharmacies and clinics had people who identified him. Then I also had the medical records, his signature, and all the different variations of how he would use his name. I could compile all.

That at a payphone outside of a McDonald's. Captain Tom had put Derrek Aldred in handcuffs, put him in the back of the truck, and tron supported him back to the police station. And now that they've arrived, a new challenge awaits interviewing Derek Audrett directly.

My whole goal was to get him to talk to me and tell me his story, and so that's why I brought him in and being nice, Hey, how you doing. You want some water and want some gatorade.

Captain Tom has been in the job for many years. He knows that this kind of interview is a careful dance, one that begins with making sure Derek feels comfortable.

Just getting a little history about him, him growing up, et cetera. And then he appeared to be kind of stressed when I got done with that, So we gave him like ten minutes where I said, you know, do you need some time to yourself? I said, let me turn the lights off and just put your head down. And he put his head on the table and bent over and we turned the lights off and give him a break.

Well, Derek takes a break head down on a desk, baseball cap on. Captain Tom thinks about his strategy.

I didn't want to go down any road where I was, you know, could be considered a jerk to him. He doesn't like confrontation. He didn't like to be accused. I definitely knew he had an ego. He said, you know what I'm doing to go in there, And I'm gonna tell him he's the best liar I've ever met in my life.

Know what, I'm gonna shake your hand. You're very good. Know what you do, the way you go and get drugs, You're very good. Aren't you not something with it?

Yeah?

No, aren't you very good?

Well?

Yeah? And doing it for a long time?

Okay? And what's the main story? Because you're not a story? And I'm telling you, man, you're good, aren't you?

I don't think so?

I mean, oh, come on, putting yourself on the back. You're good. Well.

I talked to him about him being a good liar and all that I'm trying to get him to acknowledge, and I'm trying to give him some control back.

You can get doctors, you can get clinics, you can get people at pharmacies. They will buy into it. Pharmacies, you know the prescription's already done.

Right.

That's that's pretty easy, isn't it. Yeah, But now at a clinic where you have professionals who are there, and you walk in and represent yourself as what.

I've represented myself as an executive, as a firefighter, as you need it, okay, when you do.

Captain Tom also lays out the information he has in front of Derek.

I know that you've been around and personated a firefighter. I know that, okay, because well that's my job, Yeah, to investigate what I always tell people that I'm a puzzle maker. Being a puzzle maker, what does that.

Mean you put the pieces of the puzzle to them.

Yeah. A lot of times puzzles will point to a direction or something.

Right now, he wants Derek to come to the table himself.

What's harder to do to do something wrong or to admit you made a mistake.

I guess for me it would be so much dashed to it. Yeah, probably admitting the mistake.

Okay, so can you start admitting the mistakes you've made where you've gone dressed as a firefighter filling out forms? What is it going to take for me to get you to admit to that?

It's not going to take anything. I mean, okay, I couldn't tell you where I've gone to do that, except I really don't remember.

I just don't.

I mean, I've been to you know. Shoot, I've been to a lot of places.

Okay, start naming places.

Oh boy, it works. Derek starts talking. He begins to list clinics the same ones Captain Tom investigated.

And I was just shocked he remembered it.

Plus he provides the names of additional clinics, explains in more detail how he was able to scam them with this infamous ladder injury story.

I can tell you one time in particular that I remember clear as a bell, because I wasn't totally out of my tree. I said, I entered my shoulder. I think that what the specific reason I used was that I was moving, I was lifting something heavy off the.

Back of the truck, and the heavy object was like a ladder or something like that. And give me the story how you would tell.

After a bit of back and forth, Derek begins to explain, I'd.

Say I entered my shoulder and I just need to have someone to take a look at it.

Okay, how did you do your shoulder? I don't know.

I was. I would give varying reasons. You know, something very you know, stupid mundane, like you know, picking something up or lifting.

Something, And there was more.

Before pretending to be a fire fighter, Derek had also tried to defraud people by impersonating other professions.

He had mentioned that he was up in South Lake Tahoe earlier at the previous winter and he was impersonating executives and companies just to get stuff blew me away that he really wants to go and be someone different.

This is more than a decade before getting caught for impersonating a naval officer, financial executives, successful business owners to gain the trust of women across the states. Captain Tom is surprised by how calm Derek is throughout the confession.

I still don't understand how a person can do what he did. Normal people, if they got caught or you'd think they would be nervous and scared, But he wasn't. It didn't phase him. He did not have any issue with him putting on a firefighter uniform walk in into a medical office, Saint Doc, I injured myself. I needed prescription. It just amazes me. The only thing Derek felt bad about is that he got.

Caught at first.

Derek Audread is indicted on a series of charges that include insurance fraud, prescription drug fraud, misrepresentation as a firefighter, and burglary. In the end, he'll make a plea deal please no contest to a couple of the burglary charges and the.

Rest are dismissed.

He'll spend a year and a half in a county jail and be on probation for another couple of years after that, and Captain Tom goes back to his normal life and his work as a fire investigator. Until one day, many years later, when he's already retired, he gets another unexpected call.

Ay, do you know what Derek Aldred?

Yeah, almost two decades have passed since Captain Tom last heard that name, and Derek has gotten up to a lot in the intervening years.

It's like, oh my god, I could not believe it. I couldn't believe what he had done. He was a predator when he was dealing narcotics. He was a predator, you know, with every woman that he had a relationship with. He was always pretending to be somebody better than himself.

But in a way, no one knew better than Captain Tom what Derek Audread was really capable of.

He puts his uniform on, goes to work, steals from people, and he does it over and over again, and then he does it on steroids. When he's doing it to these women. It blows my mind. I can't comprehend the stuff that he did to these women, and he was able to get away with it. It wasn't until the women started researching him and doing their homework that actually got him.

I can't help but wonder whether all the pain Derek inflicted over the years could have been prevented if more law enforcement felt the way Captain Tom did.

When I worked in law unfortune, I cared took the job to do a service to people, and a lot of them. It appears that law enforcement didn't want any part of it.

Coming up in the next bonus episode of The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe, Why did it take so long to bring Derek's crime spree to an end.

How are you allowing this person who's clearly done these heinous cramps to continue to be set.

Free or to get away from y'all? And has anything changed?

The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is hosted by me Annisinfield and this episode was produced by Valeria Rocker and Leona Hamid.

Our editor is Joe Wee.

Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact checking by Dania Suleman, Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. The Girlfriend's scene was composed by Daniel Kempson and Louisa Gerstein and performed by Daniel Kempson.

With vocals by Luisa Gerstein.

Music supervision from Daniel Kempson and Anna Sinfield. The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemcol. Story development by Susie Baker and Olivia Smart. Novel's director of development is Selena Metta. Max O'Brien is the executive producer for Novel Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etoor are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts,