The Girlfriends S5/E6: The Gold Bracelet

Novel. Last time on the Girlfriends Trust Me, Babe. The group chat has grown by one member. He got cut, and Derek Aldred is finally in custody.

He's gonna get what he deserves.

It's early summer twenty seventeen and Laurie, Wendy's big sister detective from episode one, is at home in Texas.

I am in my kitchen making dinner.

Laurie's barefoot, hair up in a ponytail, wooden spoon in hand.

Five o'clock news comes on on my little kitchen TV, kind of in the background.

Well, I'm doing my thing.

She's just stirring the orange chicken sauce into the walk when her ears perk up.

I whip around and I'm thinking, surely I heard that wrong. Well, that looks like him, and that's his name, Derek Aldred.

Wooden spoon still in one hand. Laurie turns the gas stove off and pivots towards the TV.

I go over and I'm watching and it shows pictures of him, pictures of him in like some navy uniform.

She moves closer, leans her elbows on the kitchen counter to get a better look. It really is that loser, her sister Wendy dated back in twenty thirteen on the news. But you know the weirdest part, this whole takedown of Derek, It's all happened just down the road from where Wendy's sister Laurie lives.

Literally about three miles from my house.

Laurie is immediately on the blower to Wendy.

I'm like, are you sitting You're not going to believe.

This, and She's like, he was arrested.

And that's how Wendy, here's the news.

We are just going nuts.

No way, I cannot believe all this is happening.

Sure, just a handful of miles from Laurie, we'll get more.

Couple, will take your caught off.

Derrek Audred has been marched to the County jail house in Fort Worth. Well. He's now face to face with Special Agent Mike, whose planned to catch Derek at the hospital with Tracy's help. Has all fallen into place a Mike.

Anyway, we knew that we were never going to get him to admit that he was doing anything. The strategy was to confront him.

And let me ask you, have you ever served in the military, Have you ever been in law enforcement before. No, okay, do you wear uniforms of military personnel? Don't? I don't. Never I happened to pass, but I mean yeah, I mean last week, last week, not last month, not last year.

He had no idea that I had pictures of him on Dorry's balcony wearing uniform, which was like literally a week prior. And I remember putting that picture down and his response was.

I can tell you this much. I never wore this in public anywhere. And that's a I don't even know how that was taken. That's that's crazy.

He's loosening his tie up. He's kind of sitting back. You can see his demeanor change.

Military ideas now even bake counterfeit anything like that.

And think so now, every chance we confronted him on anything, it was a denial or a lie or some sort of story.

You have these credentials here and you had this navy No, yeah, okay, and what were you going to do with these here?

No?

I haven't done anything with.

Him Nowhere was he remorseful for anything. No where did he take responsibility for anything.

In particular as the Rangers ticket, we were able to pull some footage clearly you are showing idea and insisting now you're military and gaining something, which is the equivalent of stolen valor.

I didn't like.

This is a guy who's a professional liar. He's a professional con man.

I think in the last twenty minutes you have lied to our face about fifty times.

Guys, I just told you, I told you the truth.

Special Agent Mike is looking for the truth, the whole truth, but he's not going to find it in this interview room.

Why would all of these people say this, Then there is evidence of it happening. Then there's videos and pictures of you doing it.

Guys, look look at.

When I there's nothing that we're going to do inside the interview room that's going to get him to have an AHA moment. Go, you're right, I did do it.

But Mike's not going to give up that easily. He's about to discover there's a whole army of women who've been working on this case since long before he began.

Every single one of them kept their records, kept documents, kept pictures.

Oh and one more thing, Derek did, what are you thinking they don't play in Texas? I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts. You're listening to the final episode of The Girlfriends Trust Me.

Babe, Episode six, The Gold Bracelet.

Derek is arrested on June first, twenty seventeen, and over the months that follow, Special Agent Mike and his team continue their investigation. It takes them all over the country, spans years of Derek's life, and as their evidence grows, so does their charge list. Within a few months, the indictment is ten charges long felon in possession of a firearm, access to vice, fraud, aggravated identity theft, male fraud, and the evidence looks pretty damning, so damning in fact, that

Every reaction I got from almost everybody was he's going to get out and he's going to do it again. If you look over the years, he got a slap on the wrist for every single thing he did, and he never spent any significant amount of time in jail. I can't blame them from being skeptical.

But this time the prosecuting team have got a plan. Those three charges are only about Derek's crimes against Dorry in the colony, but when you look at all the evidence, you can see plainly there's a pattern. It's the same thing he did to so many women for years. The prosecution thinks they can make the case that when it comes time to decide on Derek's sentence, the judge should take all of that history and loss into consideration. It's

For the victim to get up there and talk about some things that were excrucially painful for them. That really does sway what the judge.

Thinks It's Midsummer, a year after Derek's arrest in Fort Worth. The prosecution's plan is in full swing.

It was wild because all of us girls were together.

It's the evening before the sentencing hearing. Nearly a dozen women who'd been scammed by Derek had gathered together in person, women who otherwise would have never met but for the deadbeat ex boyfriend. They all have in common. They're now in a makeshift sorority house preparing for the big reckoning. It was a huge, beautiful home. Tracy is there, the country girl who is whined and dined by Derek on Dorry's dime.

Everybody could pick where they wanted to sleep. I think I slept down in the basement or something in a god that was a bizarre time.

That's Wendy our DIY detective from Hawaii who sussed out Derek scuba diving lie.

Immediately there was an instant bonding. I felt like I would do anything for these women.

And there's other women you haven't met yet. A doctor from Hawaii, a neat clear scientist from Minnesota, a flight attendant.

They were all delightful. Every woman I met I just really liked.

And though they bond for some of the women. It's a shock.

That was the first time I started hearing about the PTSD. So many of them had.

They all had a different story. Some had lost everything to Derek, some hadn't, but they all had one thing in common. Every last one of them had been lied to. Before long, they're cracking jokes, swapping war stories.

Didn't he wear those atrocious bike shorts? It leaves nothing to the imagination.

And tearing their shared ex boyfriend a new one.

The worst thing in his mind would be for a bunch of women talking about how bad he was in bed.

There you go, there's some justice right.

There, and among them is Vanessa A'm Miley Californian. On her first visit to Texas.

I felt that it was really important for me to be involved.

All the women gathered in that house will have wondered at one time or another whether anything Derek told them about himself was true and how did he become the guy who ruined their lives.

He was more naive back then and maybe not so crafty.

It's Vanessa who can give them some of those answers because she's Derek's college sweetheart.

I'm going to date myself, but we're going all the way back to the nineties. I couldn't believe I got Intocla.

It's nineteen eighty nine and Vanessa is heading to college.

I was ecstatic when I found out.

Vanessa's dad owns a Mexican restaurant in La and he's protective of her. Her mom passed away from cancer when Vanessa was still just a kid, and she'll be the first in her family to get a degree. So for that first year she lives at home.

I was miserable. I had maybe made one or two friends. It's hard to meet people on campus. People don't just stop and talk to.

You, except for people like Derek Aldred.

And I think he said something, Have I seen you before? No? No, oh, you go to school here.

Derek has walked past Vanessa while she's waiting for a medical appointment on campus one day. He's young, handsome, presents himself as a medical student at the same college.

He's wearing a white lab coat, his name embroidered. He said he was studying cystic fibrosis. I didn't even know what that was, and I still kind of don't.

It's so strange to imagine Derek in his college years. I can hear the same guy who've come to know in these anecdotes.

He really gave off a good impression. I really like this guy.

Why they date for a year, and as far as she's concerned, he's it nothing weird or of note to report until this one thing happened. About six months before she's due to graduate. Vanessa is walking up to Derek's apartment near campus when she catches sight of him in the third floor window.

He was in his white lab coat with the French doors open, and he was throwing everything that was in his apartment out of the window.

Vanessa watches from the street below, obscured from view behind a tree.

I see him throwing this Carrera marble top table out the window.

Stuff her dad had lent him.

This table that my dad loved. He must have spent like, I don't know, thousand bucks on it, a lamp. I gave him this antique typewriter because I felt like he could use that for his studies.

Outflies the vintage typewriter.

My mouth hits the floor. I'm frozen. I'm like, what is going on? I left because I didn't know what to do.

Vanessa sits in her car, trying to make sense of what she's just saying, and I was like, what do I do?

What do I do?

Eventually, curiosity gets the better of her.

I come back to the front of his apartment and I see him now, not in his apartment anymore, but he's out in the front on the street talking to these police officers. He said that someone broke in and did that he was not taking responsibility for it. I was even more perplexed, like what is going on.

When Vanessa brings the subject up with Derek later, she remembers that he doesn't admit to being the guy standing on the ledge, and he still denies it was him throwing the furniture out the window. He claims he even went to court to testify against the man who broke into his apartment, but so far we've been unable to locate court records of this standing on the street that day, Vanessa felt sure it was him.

I was so fond of him and so in love with him, and I was so attached to the idea of building a family with him that I let it go, which was a mistake.

Vanessa finishes college six months later, graduates, and afterward it's Derek that she wants to celebrate with.

I blew off all my friends, all the sorority girl, even my dad, to be with him, just him.

It's after the graduation festivities are over that the other shoe drops. They're sitting in his car. Derek is about to leave Los Angeles to visit his parents.

I kiss from goodbye and he's like, I'll see you soon, you know, when I get back. I never heard from him again. Literally, he fell off the face of the earth.

They've been dating for a year and a half, Vanessa's first serious relationship, the guy she was in love with. But one of the worst parts of all of this, Vanessa soon realized, wasn't just the loss of her boyfriend or the life she had been imagining with him. It was something else Entirely.

On the night of my graduation, Derek said, Oh, maybe I'll borrow that, you know, to go with my suit.

A gold bracelet. When Vanessa's mum died she was just nine years old, her father gathered together all her mum's gold jewelry, had it melted down and reformed into a bracelet, a thick Cuban style chain.

It was kind of masculine, bracelet. A man or a woman could wear it.

At first, Vanessa's dad intended to wear it, but in the end he had gifted it to Vanessa. And now Derek wondered if he could borrow it, and I.

Was happily just like, yes, borrow it, but don't forget to give it back. Of course, he forgot to give it back.

When he left, the bracelet disappeared with him. For years, she wondered what had happened, and then one day, about twenty years later, bored at work.

I decided to google his name, you know, just out of sheer curiosity. What's he doing? Where is he? Is he married? You know, I'm expecting maybe a LinkedIn profile or Facebook link, But instead I see a news article. I was like, no, wonder he just disappeared.

Before she knows it, Like every woman in that group chat, She's on the phone to Cindy.

Do I want to get on board with her and the rest of the girls to try to fight together? And at first I was like, no.

There are a lot of reasons to leave this in the past. But as she learns more and more about Derek's trail of destruction.

I said, you know what, Yes, maybe I'll get my bracelet back.

And now here she is in a house in Texas, surrounded by the women who came after her.

We bonded and we told stories. One girl was like, oh, he told me he was an attorney, and then another girl was like, no, no, no, he was a firefighter. He was wearing a white lab coat with me, and he was wearing a naval officer uniform with someone else. There were like eight different names that he used for each different girl.

Derek cool Right, Derek Cooldread, Richard Aldridge, Steel Aldridge, Richie Peterson, Richie Taylor.

And even though maybe he was a different persona, it was so relatable and being this persona that we thought we were in love with, we had a lot of spirit in us. We had a lot to fight for.

Tomorrow they'll learn whether it all pays off, and Vanessa will get the chance to look Derek in the face.

That was my moment of truth. This person has been deceiving people since he was a young man, and it needs to stop.

It's the morning of August twenty second, twenty eighteen, in Sherman, Texas. The women arrive at the old, very pretty courthouse.

We took a little bus together. I don't think anybody ate any breakfast or anything because we were all on pins and needles.

They step out onto the stairs that lead up to the entrance, and inside.

You've got all the old woodwork, the old flooring, church pews.

That's all I saw. It was church pews. The women are sitting together in solidarity across two rows, waiting, and then the judge has arrived. When you hear those three loud bangs, it's like suddenly everything goes completely silent. William Tatum, the Assistant United States Attorney in Texas, is the legal brain behind the big plan.

You could hear a pin drop at that moment.

He's sitting up front with his team as the proceedings get underway. Then out comes Derek.

Just the sight of him, ugh, oh, it just made me sick.

He did not look our direction at all.

He's not in a pilot's uniform, not dressed as a fireman or a doctor. This time he's in a uniform he's qualified to wear.

Derek was shackled, his feet were shackled, his arms were shackled.

An orange jumpsuit. Derek has already signed a plea agreement admitting to the three charges, but it's a judge, he'll hand down a sentence, and so the lawyers duke it out over what should factor in and what shouldn't. They argue over whether Derek has really accepted responsibility for his actions. Despite his guilty plea, Derek is still claiming that he did in fact have authorization to use some of the credit cards. Not him personally, of course, but his alter ego, Richie.

No, no, no, no.

He had to have spent hours and hours to have created those documents and details and on trucks. I just wanted the judge to know this guy was incredibly calculated.

Before long, Wendy and the others will be offered just that opportunity.

They started calling us to read our victim impact statements.

First off is Cindy, who's been leading the way for years. Then Dorry steps up.

I was the second one to read my impact statement. May seventeenth, twenty seventeen, was the last day I would be the trusting, loving, giving person that I had been for fifty plus years.

Derek is forced to listen.

It was a day that I uncovered that my boyfriend Ritchie Taylor, who I now know is Derek Aldred, had conned and manipulated me.

Statement after statement.

I want my voice to represent those women victims whose lives have been turned upside down due to Derek the socio. I believe that swindling for Derek is like a drug. Every time he gets away with it, he has a deeper desire to do it again.

He's a master manipulator. He will go to unimaginable links to steal money from women.

I don't think that Derek understands the fundamental difference between lies and the truth.

I've seen in the history that over and over again the justice system has let us down.

As soon as he's free, he will just do this again.

He must be stopped from ruining other lives.

No matter what sentence he's given, it's not going to compare to the one he's given me. I remember, I felt real powerful when I said it, like, listen to me, you know you're not in charge anymore. I wanted him to look me in the face so I could just give him that you discussed me. Look, he never even looked.

When the women finish, the judge turns to Derek and ask if there's anything he'd like to say. There is. After a bit of waffle to his honor, Derek says to say, I'm mortified, and I'm embarrassed, and I'm shamed, and I'm sorry. Doesn't begin to capture really how I feel. You know, the harm that I've caused some of the people behind me. I know the money is really inconsequential to a degree. I never wanted to hurt someone's trust like that to where they would leave me and move

Sorry.

I hope at this point that the victims behind me can have some peace now, go back home and move on about their lives with a little more a little more peace than they've had the past three four five years.

Then he brings up my name or.

Even in someone like Vanessa's case, where it's been twenty five years, hopefully this brings some closure to that. So I'm sorry, and that's all I have to say. There's something about that tone of surprise that's jarring to Vanessa.

I just wanted to laugh at him and like, you know, be like you know what really?

And then it's over. The women have said their peace, even Derek's spoken of apologized satisfyingly or not. It's finally time for this decade long saga to come to an end. The women are lined up in rows knots in their stomachs.

The judge was getting ready to give his sense, and you can hear a pin drop.

Derek sits in the courtroom in his orange jumpsuit and a judge cloaked up is ready to deliver the moment they've all been waiting for.

The judge said it, I sentenced you to to eighty eight months. We're all like, how many years is that? How many years is that? You can't have your phone in there? So we're all like, how many years is that. One of the ladies in front of us had a calculator and she held it up and it's a twenty four. You got the maximum twenty four years, no parole.

There was a collective sigh of relief.

All of us were just like silently high fiving and clapping and just like smiles so big.

You could just feel everybody's shoulders just lower a little bit, like we've been fighting to get somebody to pay attention. And this judge got the.

Memo alongside the sentence. Derek is ordered to pay two hundred and fifty four thousand, eight hundred and ninety two dollars and sense. The judge tells Derek, if he could have given him a higher sentence, he would have. I can't get them their money back. I can't give them any other solace. But all I can do is protect society for as long as I can do so, so

Like we did a girls, we did it, Like he's going to Gail now.

All the women we interviewed for the series were among those who gave statements to NCIS investigators, and most gave victim impact statements at Derek Aldred's sentencing hearing too. In total, NCIS investigators were able to link Derek or dread to at least twenty five victims, women from Hawaii, Minnesota, Texas, Nevada, calif Women who consider themselves hopeless romantics, don't right ballbusters that done it. Dorry was elated.

By seeing all these girls and how good they were doing, and he had gotten through it and we're talking about it without, you know, getting real upset. Really helped me see that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm not a fool. It can happen anybody seeing this group of women who are very diverse, but you know, all had one thing in common and we just wanted to be loved.

In the years since, there are various relationships with Derek. Some of the women have found romantic love again and some haven't.

Like Vanessa, I'd say that Derek really kind of kind of screwed it up for me and made me not really want to trust people. I feel like being a part of his big lie really took away the potential

But Vanessa and I also share a fundamental belief the love and joy is not something that you can only get from romantic relationships. Vanessa lives a beautiful life that's filled with love. She has so many friends, close family, a big garden which is often absolutely filled to the brim with dogs, her own and others.

I'm a pet sitter on the side. I've been doing that for about ten years, and I love it.

She's happy with the trajectory her life has taken since Teric. She's put the experience behind her, and I am in complete support of that, which is why I'm going to let her go back to her sweet poaches and sweet tea. Just after one question, what do you think he did with your bracelet?

By the way, I'm guessing he ponned it for money. I doubt he kept it.

I'll ask him about the bracelet if I do manage to get through.

Oh MG, please, I would love that. Oh my gosh.

I agree with Vanessa. Derek is best put behind all of us. What are ways of energy? However, as a journalist, of course, I will give him a writer of reply to some of the allegations that have been made against him, which means getting in touch with him in prison. And if I'm going to email this guy, I might as well ask about that bracelet. Hey, who knows he might have a sudden rush of conscience. Anna, I just got

I think after going through all this, I'm no longer the hopeless romantic.

As for Dorry, she used to read Danielle Steele books, She watched the occasional Hallmark movie. Then she met Derek and brought his scamming spree to a screech halt. She's changed a lot since then.

It's not my life goal to meet mister perfect and have the happily ever after. I'm really at peace with myself. I love myself, I love who I am. I'm perfectly fine me and my dogs. I really value my friendships. I have some really, really really solid good friends of my life that really really helped me through this, and so I'm trying, Oh.

I'm trying now to make up to my friends that were there for me, Be there for them and whatever they may need. Be the best friend that I can to people that stop their lives to help me, help you through it.

Well, it's tough for her, still, Eventually those scars harden.

I'm definitely stronger now. It's like I'm steel. It's like you could say whatever you want. I know who I am. I'm happy with me.

They remind you daily who was there all along. Sure you got duped, hurt terribly, but you also mocked up the pieces survived it.

I just hope people learn, particularly girls that might be in a sticky situation. We women have to look out for each other.

The number one lesson I learned from all of this is to trust my gut.

Really trusting yourself, not second guessing yourself like I did.

Always go with your gut feeling.

It will never steer you wrong.

I think women are still good at having these instincts and being able to recognize them. We're not always good at listening to them.

Girlfriends. If I you're lesbian, agony arms can leave you with one message from this series. It's this, know you're worth You're better off without any loser making you second guess yourself. Trust me, babe, So listen to your gut. But for some reason you can't hear it. Here's some other advice for you.

We always say that trust your girlfriends.

There we go coming up in the next Bone episode of the Girlfriends Trust me, babe.

I can't describe the bashing that the public gave us.

Oh, I'm smarter than this. I wouldn't file for it.

People are very powerful behind their computers.

Truly, these techniques they really work.

They can work on any of us.

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 Anna Sinfield, is produced by Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is Valeria Rocker. Our editor is Joe Wheeler. Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact checking by Dania Suleman, Sound design,