The Girlfriends S5/E4: Stolen Valor

Novel Last Time on the Girlfriends Trust Me Babe, Derek Aldred skips town.

They let him go, and he then disappeared again.

Lisa, our hockey loving mom in Minnesota, tries to put the past behind her. I'd forget about it for a while, and then another texta come only Now there's been a new update, this time from Texas. It's spring twenty seventeen and a woman named Dorry has an exciting date with a guy she met online, Richie Taylor.

He asked me to go to the Ranger game, Texas's major League baseball team.

He's pretty tall, nice smile, close cropped hair, flies jets in the Navy, teaches at the university nearby. It's their second date.

We pulled into a fifty dollars parking lot and I'm like, I'm not paying fifty dollars to perk.

Dorry is the one behind the wheel, but Richie insists he claims to have a receipt that should get them in for free.

So I pull in.

We get up to the guy and he's ready to collect the fifty dollars. Richie says, you know, hold on him in. I've got a receipt.

Dorry the guy at the ticket booth and a steadily increasing line of cars weight while Richie fruitlessly searches through his phone.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

In the course of his searching, Richie flashes a badge to the ticket booth guy.

He always showed his NCAAs.

Bad The badge is gold, it's shiny, it's got an eagle on it. It signifies that Richie, now furiously scrolling through his emails, is also a law enforcement officer in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. No less.

You know, the crowd is getting huge, the game's going to start. You're not gonna sit there and wait for this guy to find this email. What's the guy going to do? And finally the guy just goes, just go. So we got parking for free.

And the special treatment doesn't end there. Once they're parked up, they head to the stadium box office.

He goes up there and he says, I'm Captain rich Taylor, Corporal Let's see Jan Smith left tickets for us. Here they go and look, you can't find anything, and he starts getting louder and louder.

You'll have guests by now, Richie Taylor isn't the jet flying college professor slash naval investigator. He's making himself out to be. This is actually just plain old Derek Aldred appearing to chuck a tantrum for free tickets to a baseball game. But Dorri doesn't know that yet.

He's getting angry and making a scene.

This kind of identity fraud the kind Derek or Dread seems to keep getting away with. It's hard to investigate, hard to catch, hard to prove, and it's hard to prosecute, never mind successfully. But what really helps is when the person doing it makes a mistake.

Finally, they just gave us two tickets.

And Derek's made a big one.

We were there for quite a while and it's an ki Emera.

Messing with Dorry won't prove to be one of Derek or Dread's smartest moves either.

I vowed I will be his last target. I can stab him.

I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts. You're listening to the girlfriends Trust Me Babe, episode four Stolen Bala.

I have to laugh because you know what I just found in my hair?

A drill. When we first speak to Dorry, she's tucked off on a gray sofa in her apartment on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. There's a cinnamon scented candle burning and she's plucking a single, small, flat bottomed crystal out of her hair. In the diamond art world, these glittering little beads are cold drills.

My diamond art was in my hair.

I'm like, what is this? It's from my beating in her spare time. Dorry likes to do diamond art.

You take these little beads and put them on this sticky canvas and it makes a picture. My anxiety is still very high, and I'm telling you what I can get into that diamond painting, and it's just takes my anxiety away.

By twenty seventeen, Dorry had survived a tough divorce, and through the pain of that breakup, she was carving out a new version of herself.

Suddenly it was like, you know, what does Dory like to do?

Self? Sufficient, artistic independent.

I learned that I'm extremely crafty. I made wreaths and crochet and crustach.

But don't get he wrong. She contains multitudes.

I have my license to carry, so I can carry my gun at anytime.

This is Texas. After all, I.

Was feeling good about myself. I was looking good. You know, everything was going right for me.

At that time. I felt, let's go.

So Dori decides to add dating into.

The mix vexing and I met Richie. I still can't stop calling him Richie.

When she first meets Richie Taylor, she's working in HR, loving her job, and living just outside of Dallas in a place called the Colony.

It's a big town but has a very small town feel. It probably could be like a Norman Rockwell painting.

I'm now picturing a Norman Rockwell in diamond art, a nostalgic picture book idealized America, but with dating apps.

I can remember his name and plenty of fish. Was Flyboy because he pretended to be a pilot.

It's a story you've heard before. Their first date is magic.

I felt like my stomach dropped in a good way that this.

Guy is a pilot in the Navy. It's hugely appealing for one reason.

My grandpa was in the Navy.

I almost trusted him a little more, opened up a little more.

So I'm hearing about.

This guy who flies jets, and he's telling me all these big stories. I can distinctly remember one time he put on his dress blues, his formal navy uniform, and there was a couple of times he wore his flight suit too. He had the helmet with the microphone on it. I was impressed by him, and so they kept dating.

He's telling me he loves me left and right.

But soon the cracks begin to appear, like Richie's quick temper, but the fact that he wasn't very reliable. He'd be on his phone a lot or hit cancel on that dates last minute.

At first I took it personally. I thought, well, he's not interested in me. He explained it was because of this military things going on and he needed to fly to Washington. This is around when the Korean Crisis was going on the new level.

Of threats and provocations from North Korea. Just hours ago, the regime carried out a large scale artillery drilled just one hundred miles from Soeul, South Korea.

Experts say that Kim jongling seems to be sending a message.

It was frustrating. It's kind of hard to hold it against a guy who's just trying to prevent nuclear destruction. But then Dorry receives a sign that's quite hard to ignore. One day, mid April, Richie is over at Dorry's townhouse. They're in the living room when her phone pings.

So I checked my phone and it said that just to let you know you're withdrawals coming up for your credit card.

The number on her credit card statement sends Dorian to shock.

Holy Moses, I don't come near that much every month. It was close to eight thousand dollars.

How did it get that high? Dorry logs in to analyze the charges, gift cards, flowers, Airbnbs, eBay purchases.

Wasn't me don't even buy anything from ebabe.

Richie sitting on the couch and I'm standing by the door and I'm just looking at him with my mouth like, oh my gosh, somebody's got in a hold of my number.

And he said, do you want me to pay it for you?

Well, Dorry panics. Richie goes over to the computer attempts to make a payment into Dorry's account. Huge surprising coming.

He attempted to send it three times and it did not go through immediately.

Dorry calls her bank cancels the card, but until the bank processes her complaint, she has to pay it off. Dorry gets a new card, and as the days go by, she pays much closer attention to her payments.

I saw it happening again right away.

She stares at the payments. She can't figure out how it's happening again.

I didn't realize it was him yet till I got ahold of the iPad.

Soon after that started dating Richie old story if he could borrow her iPad. She didn't use it much and he could really use it for his college work.

I said, no problem.

After that, Dory doesn't see her iPad for a while until one night she's up late watching television, and that's when she spots it.

He had left the iPad my iPad. I picked it up.

I opened it up, and I was shocked to see that the picture was changed.

There was a passcode on it.

I had seen the passcode he had put in his phone, so I tried the same passcode on my iPad and I got in. Everything was changed. I'm thinking, where are my pictures at? So I went to pictures and I hit it. All his pictures from his iCloud had downloaded.

One of those pictures is Richie lying in a hospital bed.

He's got the blue pillow, the blue blankets pulled up to him. He's smiling taking a picture. There's hospital equipment behind him. And at the bottom it said a big thank you for everyone's prayers and support. Surgery was a success. Should be out of the hospital Monday. And the name on the picture was Derek m Allred. I'm looking at this and I'm like, that is Richie. I go over to my computer and I googled Derek Alred.

Google doesn't recognize that name, but it makes a helpful suggestion.

It said, did you mean Derek Aldread?

She sure did.

All of a sudden, like six to nine mug shots popped up. Everything in me stopped, like my heart just absolutely stopped. All these things in the past that were not adding up everything, everything started making sense.

All those eBay purchases, the gift cards, flowers, Airbnb chargers, those were all Derek. Her credit card had been sitting next to her computer for weeks. She'd left it there to remind herself to get the names on her cards changed after her divorce.

That's how Richie got the card and I never noticed it was gone.

I felt like I got hit by a truck.

Attached to the mugshots were articles about a prolific cond man with a habit of a skip justice, articles featuring other women who claim they've been scammed by Derek.

I was terrified, is he going to come back here?

Dorry knows Derek's anger can escalate fast.

I leashed up my dogs, I moved my bookcase in front of my door.

I went upstairs and got my gun and waited.

By the time sunrises, Dorry has been sitting wide awake, gun on the table in front of her for hours. There's been no sign of Derek.

The next morning, I got a hold of my brother and I called him and told him what was going on. He said, you know, pack your dogs and get out here. My brother and his wife have a little ranch. I hid out there for two days.

Dorry feels terrified of what Derek might do to her. While she's in hiding, she has a chance to really process what's happened.

That's where I.

Found out he had also gotten into my checking account. I had my checkbook sitting out on my computer, so I think he probably just snapped a picture of it. Then I had another credit card he had gotten a hold of too, so I uncovered a bunch of charges on there too.

This was on top of the one she'd already noticed and canceled.

In total, it was just under twenty thousand dollars that he had gotten.

Dorry will get some of that money back by reporting the fraudulent charges to her banks. Two of them will refund her, but one bank refuses, meaning Dorry is still out close to twelve thousand dollars.

It was devastating, absolutely devastating to realize that ninety nine point nine percent of the things that he told me were false. They were absolutely all lies. I was embarrassed. I was humiliated. I thought, how could this happen to me? How could I have fallen for somebody that you know lied from the get go?

But I don't know. I'm like, why, God, why am I going through this.

Dorry and her brother are sitting together on the deck of his Texan ranch. Dorry hasn't spoken to Derek so since she arrived.

My brother says, give me his phone number. So I said, okay. So we're sitting out there and we rang his phone and Derek answers, and my brother says to him.

So.

Richie, Derek Taylor Peterson whatever we should call you. How's it feel to.

Know that you've been caught? It felt great at the time. I'm laughing about it now, But at the time then I thought, oh my gosh, what have we just done. We have just told him that we know who he is. We've just basically told.

Him, I know that you're a fraud.

This unlocks the new fear.

Is he going to come after me?

Dory knows from her reading that Derek has a habit a skipping town when things get sticky. But what if his m O changes.

And you hear all the time, Oh you know that's one in a million. Oh that's not going to happen to you.

That kind of thinking has lost all its power for Dory in the law two days Suddenly, every fair, irrational or not is in play.

Anything can happen to me, is what I think. Now.

She doesn't know what Derek could be capable of, who might be helping him, and how.

You know he had ID cards for Army Navy Marines. I was just so embarrassed that I had fallen, hook line and sinker for somebody who probably didn't care two pennies about me. Okay, I'm going to go in here and tell the police that I just totally used and fell for.

It, despite the feeling of embarrassment. The next day, Dorri is sitting in her car in the parking lot of the Colony police station.

I'd spent the weekend crying.

And now she's gearing herself up for a difficult compation. Dorry's read all the same stories I've told you about.

I felt like I had every other girl, every other person on my shoulder or behind me that he had wronged. I felt I was representing all of them and I.

Had to do it right.

So I knew that I had one chance. This is serious, Please take me seriously. I almost felt like I was on a job interview.

Dorry works a nightshall and as a nighthall Girlie, she knows better than most a first impression is everything.

I looked professional, so it didn't look like I crawled out of bed after crying for three days.

I made sure I had my backup, my documentation.

Dorry opens up her card door, gets out and heads into the station.

I explained briefly what I was there for, and they put me in a room where I wrote out my statement. What I've got had to be taken seriously and not just oh gosh, another guy gets some money from a girl and she's crying about it.

The Colony PD assigns a detective to Dorry's case.

I thought I won the lottery.

She listened to me with different ears than a man would have.

I think, Detective Kelly Hunt.

She was just what I needed, very calming. It's okay, Dory, we hear you. We've got this.

When Detective Kelly meets Dorry in twenty seventeen, she's working for the Colony PD as a fraud and financial crimes investigator, and she's got enough experience to know that this is going to be a hard case to get over the line, but she says about investigating it anyway. She speaks to a bartender at a local Irish themed bar mcswiggins, where Richie appears to be a regular. She visits the local grocery store just a doors down speaks to some of

It was kind of like a cold call.

It's a Wednesday and Special Agent Mike Elcare is at his office in Arlington, Texas when Detective Kelly Hunt gets a hold of him.

She was really pitching me the keys on the phone.

Mike works for the NCIS, as in, he actually works for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

She reached out about Derek Aldred.

Hey, listen, I kind of got this deal where we have a guy and he's a kind of a fraudster.

Detective Kelly explains the investigation she's been doing into Derek or Dread's jaunt around the colony, the money he appears to have stolen from Dorry.

Just on the threshold alone, the monetary threshold, I would say ninety to ninety five percent of agencies on the federal level would probably have dismiss that.

She explains he's been pretending to be in the military, the Navy specifically, and as she predicted, that detail catches Mike's interest. The next day, Mike is at the colony police department.

She invited me into the conference room. She kind of had everything laid out on the table, and so I think my first reaction was, what's.

That carefully arranged across the conference room table? Is the evidence A.

Flight helmet, counterfeit, Geneva convention ID cards, the uniforms, the certificates, anything of value that he left that said, you know, he was a captain in the navy, or he was a professor, or any of these items that Dory had in the house. And she gave that up.

And among them a badge.

A counterfeit and CIS badge that looked pretty darn real.

Mike takes out his own badge, gold looks like a shield an eagle on the top and places it down on the table next to Dereks.

It was darnyar identical. I think for the average person you wouldn't know the difference if you saw that badge and my badge at the time. Is he committing crimes with that badge? Is he stopping women with that badge? Is he assaulting people with that badge? Was immediately apparent that likely this was going to be a bigger deal than just some isolated local issue.

Together, Detective Kelly and Special Agent Mike can make this into a case, one that catches all Derek's historical wrongdoing, state based or otherwise, into one investigation.

We have resources, we can travel, we can conduct interviews, and we can charge in different states because we are federal LA enforcement officers.

And the crime that could link all those cases that gets the ncs's backs really up. Not kidnapping, not fraud, not theft or the other allegations we know about. Now, what about stolen.

Valor somebody that's using the military or being an uniform and obtaining something of value.

It may not be the most obvious crime, but it is a federal one.

A very patriotic in this country. In Texas, it's almost like to another level.

You see, stolen valor is something that the good military lads and ladies of America get really pissed off about.

To pretend to be in the military or police officer, to me is fairly despicable. I have no respect for that, and I have no tolerance for that.

Golf friends, we've found our inn. Suddenly, the hunt for Derek Aldred goes coast to coast with Special Agent Mike at the Helm first port of call.

Dorry I first met with Mike. I think it was in the parking isla of mcswiggins. Actually, he's just a good guy.

This is the first of many meetings. Dorry and Mike will have Dorry and her Camaro, Mike and his Dodge Charger in the parking lot of that Irish themed bar.

As I was finding stuff in the apartment, he'd be like, all right, meet me in the parking lot and I'd give it to him.

They talk about cars for a bit and then they get into business. Mike needs evidence that Derek used the uniforms to make financial gains. That's a crime, stolen vala. Not wearing the uniform just to trick people, but using the uniform to get things, and Dorry has just the story, the one from their second date where Richie slash Derek flashes his badge at the baseball game. She can give Mike exact dates, and the whole exchange was caught on camera.

He gets a sense usually that he's in trouble, and then he takes off. And so my fear was that he would figure out that he was in trouble, the police were on to him, he was being investigated, and then he was going to skip out of town. The objective was to really get him into custody as soon as possible. Let's get him off the street before he runs, and then we can go from there.

You see, Special Agent Mike has a new plan underway right at this moment. His team have realized if he's still in town, the fastest way to catch Derek would be if someone still close to him just tells them where he is.

While we were looking through all the material from the iPad, we also saw Tracy's information.

Another woman named Tracy, who Derek appears to be dating too at the very same time as Dorry. Coming up next on the Girlfriends Trust Me Babe, Tracy turns out to be just the girlfriend for the job.

Never Fuck with the Country Girl.

Never Fuck with the Country Girl. If you've found any of the themes explored in this episode difficult and you need support or advice, please reach out to our charity partners No More at no More dot Org. We'll add some useful links to the episode description look after Yourself. The Girlfriend's Trust Me Babe is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is hosted by me Annasinfield's, produced by Leona Hamid.