Speaker 1: Why is your X and X? It all started with
Speaker 1: the housewarming party. After saving for nearly five years and
Speaker 1: working double shifts at the hospital, I finally bought a small,
Speaker 1: two bedroom place in the outskirts of Austin. It wasn't huge,
Speaker 1: but it was mine. My ex Let's call her Sophie
Speaker 1: was the reason I didn't celebrate it the day I
Speaker 1: moved in. She said she had a weird feeling about
Speaker 1: the date, like the stars weren't aligned or something. But
Speaker 1: when I finally threw the housewarming party a month later,
Speaker 1: she showed up late in a red dress that I
Speaker 1: didn't recognize, and she didn't come alone.
Speaker 2: She brought Griffin.
Speaker 1: Griffin was my former roommate from college, a decent guy
Speaker 1: back then until he slept with my girlfriend during junior year.
Speaker 1: Sophie swore she barely knew him when they bumped into
Speaker 1: each other at the gym. I should have known better.
Speaker 1: The entire night, she clung to him like he was
Speaker 1: the one who just bought the house. I saw her
Speaker 1: refill his wine, laugh at his lame stories, touch his
Speaker 1: arm in that way that used to be ours. People
Speaker 1: started whispering. I saw my best friend Jenna pull Sophie
Speaker 1: aside once and her face turned stone cold. When she
Speaker 1: returned after the party, I confronted her. She said I
Speaker 1: was jealous, insecure, and controlling, and that Griffin respected her
Speaker 1: boundaries unlike me. I should have ended it there, but
Speaker 1: I didn't. Three weeks later, Sophie moved in.
Speaker 2: She claimed her.
Speaker 1: Apartment had mold and the landlord refused to fix it.
Speaker 1: I said yes, because I still loved her, even if
Speaker 1: something didn't sit right. At first, it felt almost normal again,
Speaker 1: until little things started changing. My espresso machine vanished from
Speaker 1: the kitchen. She said it was too masculine for the
Speaker 1: new esthetic and swapped it for a pale, pink currig.
Speaker 1: My favorite leather couch was pushed into the garage to
Speaker 1: create space, and she brought in some abstract couch that
Speaker 1: looked like a deformed jellybean. Every time I brought it up,
Speaker 1: she'd say, are you really going to fight me on
Speaker 1: a couch?
Speaker 2: Wow? Then came the cameras.
Speaker 1: One afternoon, I got home early and noticed a new
Speaker 1: smart speaker in the living room. She said it was
Speaker 1: a housewarming gift from Griffin. I unplugged it that night.
Speaker 1: She accused me of being paranoid. Everyone has those. You're
Speaker 1: acting like it's spying on you. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: A few days later, I said something to my friend
Speaker 1: on the phone about maybe asking Sophie to move out,
Speaker 1: and the very next morning, she was already packing her
Speaker 1: suitcase in tears. You don't want me here. I knew it.
Speaker 1: I heard you say it. She claimed she had intuition.
Speaker 1: She never admitted she listened in, but it got worse.
Speaker 1: I went to visit my mom for a few days
Speaker 1: after that. When I came back, the locks were changed.
Speaker 1: Sophie texted me you left without warning. I didn't feel safe.
Speaker 1: Griffin helped me change the locks, and I'm staying here
Speaker 1: for now. Legally, I can do this legally. I was stunned.
Speaker 1: She refused to open the door and said I was
Speaker 1: abandoning the relationship. I had to sleep in my car
Speaker 1: for two nights until I got a lawyer involved. It
Speaker 1: turns out while I was gone, Sophie had told the
Speaker 1: neighbors we had a domestic dispute. She showed them texts
Speaker 1: Cherry picked from months earlier where I vented about my
Speaker 1: work stress and twisted it to make it sound like
Speaker 1: I was threatening her. One neighbor even called my HR
Speaker 1: department anonymously. I nearly lost my job. When I finally
Speaker 1: got back into the house with the help of a
Speaker 1: sheriff's deputy, the place looked like a war zone. Walls
Speaker 1: were painted in loud colors, shelves drilled into every room,
Speaker 1: and dozens of photos of Sophie and Griffin filled the
Speaker 1: living room. In my house, she had already changed her
Speaker 1: mailing address to mine. The scariest part, I found a
Speaker 1: journal of hers in the bathroom drawer. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I looked, but I did. One entry, dated the
Speaker 1: week before she moved in. Read if I can just
Speaker 1: stay for ninety days, I can claim tenant rights. Then
Speaker 1: he's trapped, and if Griffin plays along, we'll flip the
Speaker 1: house and start fresh. That was the moment I realized
Speaker 1: Sophie never loved me. She loved my stability, my mortgage,
Speaker 1: my future, and she planned it all. After reading that
Speaker 1: journal entry, something in me broke. Ninety days that's all
Speaker 1: she needed to legally establish residency in my house, and
Speaker 1: Sophie had already been there for seventy two. She was
Speaker 1: playing a long con, and I was the fool who
Speaker 1: gave her the keys. I took the journal to my lawyer, Mark,
Speaker 1: who was as horrified as I was. She's building a case,
Speaker 1: said said Flatley. And based on what you've told me,
Speaker 1: she's doing a damn good job at manipulating the optics.
Speaker 1: Manipulating the optics. That phrase haunted me, because Sophie was
Speaker 1: brilliant at it. Online, she was still posting loving couple
Speaker 1: photos of us, many of which were from last year.
Speaker 1: The captions were syrupy. Home is where he is or
Speaker 1: blessed to be building our life together. Meanwhile, inside the
Speaker 1: house she was sabotaging my sanity. She started locking the
Speaker 1: master bedroom from the inside. She began inviting Griffin over more,
Speaker 1: often calling him her emotional support person after our fights.
Speaker 1: Once I returned from a late shift to find Griffin
Speaker 1: lounging in my robe, eating my leftover tie food from
Speaker 1: the fridge like it belonged to him. I told him
Speaker 1: to leave. Sophie screamed at me so loudly. The neighbor
Speaker 1: banged on the wall. You don't get to decide who
Speaker 1: my guests are anymore, she hissed, This is my home too.
Speaker 1: I stood there blinking, Was this real life? On Day
Speaker 1: seventy nine, things escalated. I came home to find a
Speaker 1: letter on the kitchen table with bold letters, notice of
Speaker 1: emotional distress. Apparently Sophie had filed a report accusing me
Speaker 1: of creating a hostile living environment by refusing to speak
Speaker 1: to her unless absolutely necessary and slamming doors to intimidate.
Speaker 1: She also mentioned verbal abuse, which was based on one
Speaker 1: single time I called Griffin a parasite under my breath.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that was a thing. An emotional
Speaker 1: distress notice. My lawyer said it was a common intimidation
Speaker 1: tactic in these messy pseudodomestic cases. It doesn't have real
Speaker 1: legal power, but it plants seeds, It creates a paper trail.
Speaker 1: She was playing chess, I was still playing checkers. So
Speaker 1: I changed tactics. I installed internal cameras quietly, just in
Speaker 1: the hallway and kitchen, not in bedrooms or bathrooms. I
Speaker 1: needed proof that I wasn't the aggressor. And what those
Speaker 1: cameras captured was enough to make my jaw drop. Sophie
Speaker 1: and Griffin laughing while mocking me. Sophie pulling photo frames
Speaker 1: of my family off the wall and replacing them with
Speaker 1: her own Griffin, yelling at my cat to get lost
Speaker 1: and pretending to kick him when I wasn't around. Sophie
Speaker 1: walking around with her phone, recording herself crying and then
Speaker 1: instantly dropping the tears when she passed the lens, grinning.
Speaker 2: She was manufacturing evidence.
Speaker 1: By day eighty two, my lawyer filed for a temporary
Speaker 1: protection order, not against Sophie but from her. Based on
Speaker 1: the footage and the journal page, we were able to
Speaker 1: argue emotional manipulation, attempted property usurpation, and mental cruelty. The
Speaker 1: judge reviewed everything in chambers. The decision came fast. She
Speaker 1: had seventy two hours to vacate the property. When the
Speaker 1: sheriff delivered the notice, Sophie collapsed into a dramatic fit
Speaker 1: in the driveway, screaming that I was abusing the legal
Speaker 1: system to silence a woman's voice. She sobbed into Griffin's
Speaker 1: arms and swore I was gaslighting her. The neighbors watched
Speaker 1: from their porches, some filmed it. I didn't care anymore.
Speaker 1: I just wanted her gone, but it wasn't over. Three
Speaker 1: days later, I came home from work and found the
Speaker 1: locks had been drilled out again. My security cameras, destroyed,
Speaker 1: my router, unplugged and stomped on. Inside, everything was flipped, papers,
Speaker 1: furniture drawers. Sophie was gone, so was Griffin, and so
Speaker 1: was my safe the one in the closet that held
Speaker 1: my birth certificate, social Security card, passport, and a hard
Speaker 1: drive with sensitive patient data I kept offline as a backup.
Speaker 2: Gone.
Speaker 1: I filed a police report. They found fingerprints from both
Speaker 1: of them on the safe boxes handle, But because Sophie
Speaker 1: had been a resident until recently, the situation was now
Speaker 1: a civil dispute, not a break in. The detective said
Speaker 1: it would take months to sort through. I asked, how
Speaker 1: is it not a break in if I had a
Speaker 1: restraining order? The officer shrugged, You gave her access voluntarily
Speaker 1: for months. She's going to say she still had belongings inside.
Speaker 1: Judges don't like these messy gray areas. Gray areas.
Speaker 2: My life was.
Speaker 1: Now completely gray. Then the identity theft started. I got
Speaker 1: a call from my bank about a flag transaction twelve
Speaker 1: thousand dollars wired to an account in Griffin's name. My
Speaker 1: credit card had been maxed out buying luxury handbags from
Speaker 1: websit sight. I'd never heard of someone had opened a
Speaker 1: new line of credit in my name to Lisa BMW
Speaker 1: in Dallas. It was Sophie, and she wasn't hiding it.
Speaker 1: She posted on Instagram a few days later a story
Speaker 1: of her behind the wheel of a brand new black
Speaker 1: BMW with the caption new beginnings with my ride or die,
Speaker 1: tagging Griffin.
Speaker 2: I was livid.
Speaker 1: My lawyer filed an emergency motion and we began working
Speaker 1: with a financial crimes unit. But damage had already been done.
Speaker 1: My credit score dropped nearly two hundred points. My job
Speaker 1: began auditing my patient records for security breaches. I was
Speaker 1: placed on administrative leave pending investigation. Even though the stolen
Speaker 1: drive was encrypted. Everything was unraveling because of her, because
Speaker 1: I let her in. I thought losing access to my
Speaker 1: accounts was the lowest it could get.
Speaker 2: I was wrong.
Speaker 1: The next blow came via Jenna, my best friend since
Speaker 1: college and the only one who hadn't jumped Ship when
Speaker 1: Sophie started spinning her victim narrative. Jenna called me one
Speaker 1: morning in a full panic. You need to check Reddit
Speaker 1: right now. There it was a brand new throwaway account,
Speaker 1: a post titled he looked perfect until he locked me out?
Speaker 1: Of my own home after gaslighting me for months. It
Speaker 1: had over twenty three thousand up votes. The post was
Speaker 1: filled with half truths, screenshots of selective texts I'd sent Sophie,
Speaker 1: mostly from arguments she had secretly instigated and photoshopped DMS,
Speaker 1: implying I had threatened her. She described our relationship as
Speaker 1: narcissistic abuse, claimed I refused to let her see a therapist,
Speaker 1: and even wrote that I disabled the hot water to
Speaker 1: make her uncomfortable. The comments were full of sympathy. Girl,
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of you for getting out. He's textbook
Speaker 1: controlling ow. Let me add him what a monster. I
Speaker 1: didn't have a voice. She controlled the narrative and Griffin.
Speaker 1: He'd created a Twitter thread the same day about protecting
Speaker 1: the women you love when they escape abuse. He linked
Speaker 1: Sophie's Reddit post. It went viral. I felt the walls
Speaker 1: closing in my HR department put me on unpaid leave.
Speaker 1: Emails started flooding the hospital's complaint line from people who
Speaker 1: had never met me, demanding my license be revoked. Patients
Speaker 1: I'd helped for years refused to see me. My reputation
Speaker 1: was being dragged through the digital mud by a woman
Speaker 1: who once cried because I threw out her expired oat milk.
Speaker 1: Jenna tried defending me online, commenting under Sophie's post that
Speaker 1: none of this was true, that Sophie had planned to
Speaker 1: take over my house and even shown her screenshots of
Speaker 1: price listings for similar homes. Her comment was downvoted into oblivion.
Speaker 1: Someone even accused her of being my flying monkey. The
Speaker 1: Court of public opinion had decided I was the villain.
Speaker 1: That week, I sat in a deposition for the identity
Speaker 1: theft investigation. The detective Monroe was a grizzled, straight shooting
Speaker 1: guy in his fifties. Halfway through reviewing the credit fraud timeline,
Speaker 1: he paused, you said your ex recorded herself crying for
Speaker 1: social media. Yes, he leaned forward, you still have that footage?
Speaker 1: I nodded. He asked to see everything. Within three days
Speaker 1: he called me back with news the Financial Crimes Division
Speaker 1: had flagged a pattern. Sophie had done this before twice,
Speaker 1: but under different names. Legal name Sophia Grace Elmont, but
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen she'd gone by Sophie g Leclaire and Sacramento,
Speaker 1: and in twenty eighteen as SG Maren in Tampa.
Speaker 2: Same story.
Speaker 1: Both times, she'd moved in with financially stable men, built
Speaker 1: residency just long enough to claim rights, posted about emotional abuse,
Speaker 1: and ended up with assets. Neither of those men press charges.
Speaker 1: One relocated to another state, the other died in a
Speaker 1: car crash a year later. But now they had me
Speaker 1: and I had footage. Detective Monroe said words, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget son. You might be the first one to take
Speaker 1: her down. The next court date was scheduled fast civil
Speaker 1: suit for identity theft, property damage and defamation. Griffin showed
Speaker 1: up in a white suit. Sophie wore a baby blue
Speaker 1: dress like she was attending a tea party. Her lawyer,
Speaker 1: a smug, expensive looking woman named Rena Langford, tried to
Speaker 1: get the case dismissed for lack of concrete evidence of
Speaker 1: malicious intent. Then we played the hallway footage Sophie and
Speaker 1: Griffin mocking her replacing my f hamily photos, him joking
Speaker 1: about how I don't even know where my safe is.
Speaker 1: The courtroom was silent. Then we played the recording of
Speaker 1: Sophie crying on command, the one where she sobs, presses
Speaker 1: her face against the camera and then smiles and says
Speaker 1: take three. This one will get sympathy. Langford asked for
Speaker 1: a recess, the judge denied it. Then we dropped the
Speaker 1: final bombshell. Detective Monroe had obtained chat logs from Sophie's email,
Speaker 1: apparently synced to a cloud folder she forgot to disconnect.
Speaker 1: The logs included this message to Griffin. If this works,
Speaker 1: I can rinse and repeat. Men are easy when they
Speaker 1: think you're broken. Let's get the payout gasps. Even the
Speaker 1: court clerk looked up. The judge ordered an emergency hold
Speaker 1: on all her assets and froze every account tied to
Speaker 1: Sophie's SSN. Griffin looked stunned. Sophie she just blinked. No apology,
Speaker 1: no remorse, like a snake shedding its skin. But even
Speaker 1: with that win, the damage wasn't undone. My house was
Speaker 1: still a wreck, my credit was still in ruins. Life
Speaker 1: since was technically safe, but my job wasn't too much
Speaker 1: pr fallout. The hospital offered me a quiet resignation package.
Speaker 1: I declined. That night, I sat in the garage, staring
Speaker 1: at the leather couch she'd exiled there months ago, the
Speaker 1: only part of my home untouched by her. I didn't cry.
Speaker 1: I felt nothing. Not relief, not satisfaction, just the slow
Speaker 1: burning realization that love, when weaponized, becomes nuclear. I thought
Speaker 1: the worst was over once the judge froze Sophie's assets.
Speaker 1: I was wrong again, because while the courtroom may have
Speaker 1: sided with me, the internet hadn't caught up, and Sophie
Speaker 1: wasn't done. Three days after the hearing, a documentary style
Speaker 1: video popped up on TikTok, a stitched together clip using
Speaker 1: blurred footage from our court day, the now viral Reddit post,
Speaker 1: and audio overlays of Sophie telling her side. It painted
Speaker 1: me as the cold, calculating man who used legal loopholes
Speaker 1: to silence a woman fighting for her life. The TikTok
Speaker 1: hit two point one million views in twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: I watched in numb dis belief as thousands of people
Speaker 1: stitched it, reacted to it, or made spinoff videos labeling
Speaker 1: me a manipulative narcissist. One user even shared a video
Speaker 1: claiming she saw me in Austin once and that I
Speaker 1: looked like the type. Whatever that meant. Griffin was back
Speaker 1: on Twitter too. His pinned tweet now read They'll believe
Speaker 1: the footage, but they'll never know what he did off camera,
Speaker 1: no specifics, just inference, innuendo, and endless retweets. The truth
Speaker 1: didn't matter. The narrative did. Then came the email subject line,
Speaker 1: You're not the first. It was from a man named
Speaker 1: Lucas Trenholm, a real estate broker in Tampa. He had
Speaker 1: seen the court footage because someone in a lawyer's subreddit
Speaker 1: had posted clips and linked it to Sophie's alias history.
Speaker 1: His story mirrored mine too closely. In twenty eighteen, Lucas
Speaker 1: met Sophie through a client referral. She was charming, soft spoken,
Speaker 1: and recovering from a traumatic breakup. He rented her an
Speaker 1: apartment he owned, then a month later they started dating.
Speaker 1: She moved in by month three by months. His business
Speaker 1: had taken a hit due to a massive client loss,
Speaker 1: and Sophie offered to help with online marketing. She accessed
Speaker 1: his devices, his bank, his cloud. By the time he
Speaker 1: caught on, she'd already wired forty two thousand dollars out
Speaker 1: of his accounts and accused him of abusing her dog.
Speaker 2: Lucas didn't even own a dog. It was hers.
Speaker 1: She vanished before the lawsuit could be filed. Lucas and
Speaker 1: I spent hours on the phone, connecting the dots. Sophie
Speaker 1: wasn't acting out of impulse. This was a pattern, a system,
Speaker 1: a business model. Almost target men with assets, leverage, romantic vulnerability,
Speaker 1: and slowly dismantle their financial independence while playing the victim publicly.
Speaker 1: And when she was caught, she'd start the cycle again
Speaker 1: with a new name, a new city, a new angle.
Speaker 1: Lucas told me he'd hired a private investigator. After she disappeared.
Speaker 1: The PI traced her movements across five states, each time
Speaker 1: the same script. She even lived with a female photographer
Speaker 1: for six months in Denver under the name Sarah Gale.
Speaker 1: The woman thought they were best friends until Sophie allegedly
Speaker 1: maxed out her American Express and left her studio destroyed.
Speaker 1: And yet no criminal conviction, not once, because she walked
Speaker 1: the legal line like a tightrope walker. Back in Austin,
Speaker 1: I tried to move on, but the Internet had long memory.
Speaker 1: A former colleague from the hospital pulled me aside and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe the stuff online, but maybe delete your
Speaker 1: old Instagram posts. You still have photos with her. Even
Speaker 1: Jenna had begun distancing herself. I love you, she said
Speaker 1: gently one night but I can't keep arguing with strangers
Speaker 1: in your comments.
Speaker 2: It's exhausting.
Speaker 1: I understood, I really did, but I'd never felt more
Speaker 1: alone until he showed up. His name was Eli. I
Speaker 1: came home one night and found a man standing on
Speaker 1: my front porch holding a thick envelope and a Manila folder.
Speaker 1: He looked nervous, tired, but familiar in that way trauma
Speaker 1: makes people familiar. You're the guy from court, he said.
Speaker 1: I nodded slowly. I'm her ex before Griffin, before you.
Speaker 2: He handed me.
Speaker 1: The inside were printed emails, bank statements, screenshots of DMS,
Speaker 1: and a letter.
Speaker 2: I didn't speak up back then.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe I deserved it, But seeing what she
Speaker 1: did to you, I realized I couldn't stay silent anymore.
Speaker 1: Eli's story was even worse than mine. Sophie had nearly
Speaker 1: driven him to suicide. He had the medical records, the
Speaker 1: therapy logs, the restraining order she violated twice but still
Speaker 1: got away with because Eli was too ashamed to press further.
Speaker 1: I saw your trial, he said, and for the first
Speaker 1: time I felt like maybe I wasn't crazy. That line
Speaker 1: broke me. We sat on my steps for an hour
Speaker 1: and said almost nothing. Two men, strangers but tied together
Speaker 1: by the same woman, the same scars. I gave Eli's
Speaker 1: documentation to Detective Monroe, who added it to the growing
Speaker 1: case file. With two more victims stepping forward publicly, Lucas
Speaker 1: and Eli, the DA's office finally showed interest, and yet
Speaker 1: the moment they contacted Sophie, she vanished. No social media,
Speaker 1: no forwarding address. Griffin too had wiped his presence clean,
Speaker 1: gone except for one thing, one final surprise. A week later,
Speaker 1: I received a call from my bank. Someone had attempted
Speaker 1: to open a business line of credit in my name
Speaker 1: for a consulting firm based in New Mexico. The address
Speaker 1: a virtual office rental in Sophie's mother's name. We flagged it,
Speaker 1: shut it down, and that's when I realized she was
Speaker 1: still trying, still reaching from whatever hole she'd crawled into,
Speaker 1: desperate to pull one last string before disappearing again. But
Speaker 1: this time I had people watching. I had Lucas, I
Speaker 1: had Eli, and more importantly, I had proof. After Sophie vanished,
Speaker 1: it felt like the dust was finally settling. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't the end. It was just the eye of the storm.
Speaker 1: One of Lucas's contacts. A tech savvy freelance journalist named
Speaker 1: Cassandra Rell reached out. She'd read the Reddit thread, watched
Speaker 1: the TikTok smear campaign, and attended the latter half of
Speaker 1: my court hearings. She wanted to write an expose, not
Speaker 1: about me specifically, but about Sophie, or rather about the
Speaker 1: grifter pattern, the kind of manipulative schemes that thrive in
Speaker 1: gray legal areas, especially when wrapped in the right hashtags
Speaker 1: and trauma laden language. Her title was Brutal the Instagram
Speaker 1: Victim Complex, How one woman turned false allegations into a
Speaker 1: financial empire. She asked for interviews. I hesitated, I'm not
Speaker 1: looking to humiliate her, I said, I just want my
Speaker 1: life back. But then she showed me what she had
Speaker 1: already dug up. Sophie had allegedly sold relationship advice courses
Speaker 1: under the pseudonym Healing Queen Collective, a fake coaching service
Speaker 1: with testimonials that Cassandra traced back to five her actors.
Speaker 1: The email connected to the domain was identical to the
Speaker 1: one Sophie used in her legal documents with me. Cassandra
Speaker 1: also pulled screenshots from a now deleted YouTube channel that
Speaker 1: featured Sophie giving softly lit talks about recovering from emotional
Speaker 1: abuse while asking viewers to donate to a GoFundMe titled
Speaker 1: help Sophie Start Over after her toxic ex took everything.
Speaker 1: The fundraiser had raised twenty seven thousand dollars. The last
Speaker 1: donor's note read, so brave, Stay strong, sister. I felt
Speaker 1: sick That money wasn't from corporations, it wasn't from the state.
Speaker 1: It was from people well meeting strangers who genuinely thought
Speaker 1: they were helping a victim heel. Instead, they were funding
Speaker 1: a predator's next attack. Cassandra published her article two weeks later.
Speaker 1: It hit Medium first, then was cross posted to Hacker
Speaker 1: News read it, and eventually syndicated through a podcast called Threadbare.
Speaker 1: The episode title Gaslight Gatekeep Grift the Sophie Elmont Story.
Speaker 1: Within days, Sophie's name trended on Twitter, not in admiration,
Speaker 1: in outrage. Former roommates, business partners, x flings, and even
Speaker 1: a wedding planner all came forward. The planner described how
Speaker 1: Sophie conned a couple out of a nine thousand dollars
Speaker 1: deposit by pretending to be an assistant photographer, taking the
Speaker 1: money and vanishing The day before the wedding. Another man
Speaker 1: in Portland posted receipts of jewelry he bought Sophie that
Speaker 1: she later sold online under a different name. Even her
Speaker 1: own cousin made a TikTok saying, we always knew Sophie
Speaker 1: was manipulative, but what she did to these men, that's sociopathic.
Speaker 2: The floodgates opened.
Speaker 1: One night, Jenna sent me a screenshot of a TikTok
Speaker 1: comment on Cassandra's post that stopped me cold. She was
Speaker 1: in Phoenix using the name Eva Marin. She dated my brother.
Speaker 1: Attached was a blurred picture of Sophie, darker hair, nose piercing,
Speaker 1: but the same eyes leaning into a man at a bar.
Speaker 1: That post got over four hundred thousand likes. We sent
Speaker 1: it to Detective Monroe. He confirmed through hotel records that
Speaker 1: Sophie had used the alias in Arizona just a few
Speaker 1: weeks before she went off grid. She'd booked a room
Speaker 1: for seven nights, paid in cash, and disappeared before the
Speaker 1: final day. But she'd made a mistake. She logged into
Speaker 1: one of her older Instagram burner accounts using the hotel
Speaker 1: WiFi IP traced geolocation, pinged, and then silence until I
Speaker 1: got the letter. No stamp, no return address, just a
Speaker 1: blank envelope slipped under my door. Inside was a handwritten note.
Speaker 1: The writing was unmistakable, looped, feminine, intentional. Congratulations. You wanted
Speaker 1: your troupe, you got it. But just remember every villain
Speaker 1: needs a hero, and in your version of the story,
Speaker 1: you'll always play the latter, even if you're not. No name,
Speaker 1: no apology, just a warning wrapped in smug self awareness.
Speaker 1: She wasn't denying anything, she was owning it. That's when
Speaker 1: I realized Sophie didn't want forgiveness. She wanted mythology, infamy.
Speaker 2: She wanted to be.
Speaker 1: Remembered as the chaotic hurricane in everyone's life. And I
Speaker 1: had handed her the headline. But karma, as they say,
Speaker 1: has patience. Because Cassandra's article gained traction beyond just the Internet,
Speaker 1: a legal blogger reposted it, Then a morning talk show
Speaker 1: did a quick segment. Then a Netflix docuseries producer reached
Speaker 1: out to Cassandra asking for rights to the story, and
Speaker 1: with the public pressure mounting, two new civil suits were filed,
Speaker 1: one from Lucas and Florida, and one from the wedding
Speaker 1: planner's couple in Nevada. Sophie had gone federal, meaning now
Speaker 1: the FBI was reviewing the financial records Detective Monroe had
Speaker 1: helped compile. We weren't just looking at identity theft anymore.
Speaker 1: We were looking at wire fraud, interstate deception, and cyber crimes.
Speaker 1: And if convicted, that wasn't just restitution, that was prison.
Speaker 1: But she still had one card left to play. The
Speaker 1: final blow came fittingly on a Wednesday. I remember because
Speaker 1: I was trying to eat cereal when I got the email.
Speaker 1: The subject line read urgent Home Title fraud Investigation Notice.
Speaker 1: I nearly dropped the bowl. Turns out Sophie had filed
Speaker 1: paperwork months ago before our fallout to designate herself as
Speaker 1: a financial co contributor to the mortgage, even though her
Speaker 1: name wasn't on the deed. She claimed in one declaration
Speaker 1: that she was financially responsible for forty percent of upkeep
Speaker 1: and utilities, and somehow, through pure manipulation, she had submitted
Speaker 1: a forged intent to amend title form through a third
Speaker 1: party legal site. The process hadn't gone through yet, but
Speaker 1: it was pending she had almost succeeded in and legally
Speaker 1: putting her name on my house. If I hadn't been
Speaker 1: monitoring the property records weekly after court, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: caught it in time. I submitted a fraud alert, had
Speaker 1: it blocked, and called my lawyer in a blind panic.
Speaker 2: He was stunned.
Speaker 1: That's unprecedented, he said, She's insane. But I knew better.
Speaker 1: She wasn't insane. She was strategic. That night, I stood
Speaker 1: outside my house looking at the front door. It used
Speaker 1: to represent everything I worked for. Now it felt like
Speaker 1: the final battleground. I went inside and took every photo
Speaker 1: of Sophie that had somehow survived the purge, prints, digital copies, files,
Speaker 1: and burned them. I deleted the last voicemails, cleared the
Speaker 1: backup folder, changed the passwords again, and for the first
Speaker 1: time in a year, I slept through the night. No alarms,
Speaker 1: no paranoia, no pacing, Just silence, the kind that doesn't
Speaker 1: feel empty, the kind that feels earned. After shutting down
Speaker 1: the title fraud attempt, I believe Sophie was finally cornered,
Speaker 1: but like every good con artist, she had contingency plans.
Speaker 1: While I was trying to put my life back together.
Speaker 1: The FBI investigation, now officially opened under Operation Echo Veil,
Speaker 1: was pulling at strings across three states. Detective Monroe had
Speaker 1: handed over the compiled evidence, and Cassandra's article had done
Speaker 1: more than just exposed Sophie's behavior. It had emboldened people,
Speaker 1: more victims, more stories, more patterns. One man in Chicago,
Speaker 1: Julian Hart, claimed Sophie used a fake name and posed
Speaker 1: as a freelance accountant. She helped him reorganize his finances
Speaker 1: after a painful divorce, then slowly drained his savings through
Speaker 1: fake investment apps. She disappeared when his brother started asking questions.
Speaker 1: Julian had never spoken up. He was too ashamed, but
Speaker 1: now he was talking to the FBI. Then something I
Speaker 1: never expected happened. Griffin reached out. He sent a single
Speaker 1: email through my lawyer. I know I'm the last person
Speaker 1: you want to hear from, but I didn't know what
Speaker 1: she was not until it was too late. I want
Speaker 1: to talk in person, no tricks. I didn't trust him,
Speaker 1: but my Mark advised me to hear him out. If
Speaker 1: nothing else, Griffin might provide insight into Sophie's current location
Speaker 1: or her escape plans. So we arranged a meeting at
Speaker 1: a public park with Mark present. Griffin looked like hell
Speaker 1: sunken eyes, hollow cheeks. He wasn't the smug jerk in
Speaker 1: the white suit anymore. He looked like a man whose
Speaker 1: ego had been chewed up and spit out. I thought
Speaker 1: she loved me, he said quietly. She told me you
Speaker 1: were abusing her, that I had to protect her, that
Speaker 1: if I didn't, you'd ruin her. I didn't say anything,
Speaker 1: just watched. Griffin swallowed hard. She promised we'd flip your
Speaker 1: house and start a new life, that she'd pay me
Speaker 1: back for everything. But when the court stuff started falling apart,
Speaker 1: she turned cold. He showed us a text, Sophie's last
Speaker 1: message to him, You were the tool. Don't confuse utility
Speaker 1: with loyalty. Brutal and yet so perfectly her. Griffin had
Speaker 1: nothing left. She'd drained his accounts, wrecked his credit, and
Speaker 1: left him with a pending lawsuit for digital defamation. I
Speaker 1: know I don't deserve forgiveness, he said, but I can
Speaker 1: help you. I know where she went after Arizona. My
Speaker 1: heart froze. She's in Oregon, he said, using the name
Speaker 1: Madeline Vail. I have the Airbnb address. I paid for it.
Speaker 1: We sent it to the FBI immediately. Within seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: agents arrived at the cabin Sophie had rented, but she
Speaker 1: was gone again. The owner said she'd left a day early,
Speaker 1: claiming a family emergency. Paid in cash, no ID, no
Speaker 1: phone trace, but she left something behind a box. Inside
Speaker 1: were printed screenshots of every article, video, Reddit post, and
Speaker 1: tweet about her. Some were circled, annotated, scored undermine she
Speaker 1: had written too much control never again, and under Cassandra's article,
Speaker 1: press works, but must pivot to victim before saturation point.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just narcissism, it was research. She was treating
Speaker 1: her downfall like a failed product launch and planning the
Speaker 1: next one. That's when the FBI brought in someone unexpected,
Speaker 1: Sophie's mother. Her name was Margaret Elmont, a quiet, elegant
Speaker 1: woman in her sixties who lived just outside of Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 1: She had never appeared in any of Sophie's narratives, never
Speaker 1: mentioned publicly, almost like she'd been deliberately removed from the picture,
Speaker 1: but she agreed to speak under one condition, anonymity in
Speaker 1: all press coverage. What she shared shook me more than
Speaker 1: anything else in this whole saga. Margaret said Sophie had
Speaker 1: always been different, not cruel, not at first, but calculated.
Speaker 1: She'd learned early how to cry on command, how to
Speaker 1: change accents to match her teachers, how to manipulate teachers
Speaker 1: into thinking classmates were bullying her when she just wanted
Speaker 1: them gone. By fourteen, Sophie had already orchestrated the expulsion
Speaker 1: of two girls she felt threatened by. Margaret tried therapy,
Speaker 1: Sophie manipulated the therapists. CPS was briefly involved when a
Speaker 1: neighbor reported bruises on Sophie's arms, bruises she had inflicted
Speaker 1: on herself. Margaret said she'd lived in a state of
Speaker 1: constant fear and guilt. I wasn't her mother, I was
Speaker 1: her hostage. She had tried to go no contact three times,
Speaker 1: but Sophie always pulled her back with threats, fabricated suicide notes,
Speaker 1: or financial destruction. At one point, Sophie forged her signature
Speaker 1: on a loan application for fifteen thousand dollars. When Margaret
Speaker 1: found out, Sophie simply said, you owe me that for
Speaker 1: bringing me into this world. Margaret gave the FBI a
Speaker 1: storage box with old diaries, school reports, even videos from
Speaker 1: Sophie's childhood. Patterns decades long undeniable. Still, the FEDS needed
Speaker 1: more to build a watertight criminal case. And that's when Griffin,
Speaker 1: desperate to redeem himself, made the final move. He gave
Speaker 1: them access to Sophie's encrypted cloud backup. He'd helped her
Speaker 1: set it up months ago. She never changed the passcode.
Speaker 1: Inside were dozens of documents, fake IDs, passport scans, lease
Speaker 1: agreements under false names, financial planning spreadsheets, and voice recordings
Speaker 1: where she rehearsed phone calls to banks and victims. In
Speaker 1: one clip, she even practiced crying, adjusting pitch and tempo.
Speaker 1: It was no longer just identity th left. It was
Speaker 1: full blown wire fraud, cyberstalking, and racketeering. The FBI now
Speaker 1: had enough to issue a federal arrest warrant, but catching
Speaker 1: her that was a different story. She had no digital
Speaker 1: footprint now, no phone, no cards, no online presence, like
Speaker 1: a ghost with perfect makeup, until one small mistake brought
Speaker 1: it all crashing down. A petty fraud report surfaced in Portland.
Speaker 1: A woman named Madeline Vail had used a fake gift
Speaker 1: card scheme at a boutique shop. The store clerk got suspicious,
Speaker 1: took a photo and submitted it to local authorities. That
Speaker 1: photo landed on Monroe's desk. It was Sophie, hair dyed black,
Speaker 1: no makeup, heavier, older, but unmistakable. They traced her to
Speaker 1: a hostel. She'd used a burner ID checked in under
Speaker 1: Ella Shaw. This time they got her. Sophie Ellmant was
Speaker 1: arrested on six federal counts and twelve civil suits pending.
Speaker 1: Bail was denied. She appeared in court in a gray jumpsuit,
Speaker 1: eyes hollow but chin raised like she would above it all.
Speaker 1: The courtroom was packed press, victims, lawyers, FBI agents, and
Speaker 1: those who had followed her online saga for over a year.
Speaker 1: She gave one statement, I am not a criminal, I'm
Speaker 1: a mirror and none of you liked what you saw.
Speaker 1: And just like that, she turned her trial into performance art.
Speaker 1: But this time she wasn't in control. Sophie's federal trial
Speaker 1: began on a crisp Monday morning in October. The courtroom
Speaker 1: was packed with spectators, journalists, and victims. Some flew in
Speaker 1: from other states. Others like me, sat silently watching, listening, waiting,
Speaker 1: hoping this wasn't just another stage for her to manipulate.
Speaker 1: She arrived in shackles but held herself like royalty. Her
Speaker 1: hair was pinned back, no makeup, no smirk, but her
Speaker 1: eyes scanned the room the same way they had the
Speaker 1: day she first stepped into my house, like she was
Speaker 1: measuring how easily the walls would fall. The judge, an
Speaker 1: imposing woman named Honorable Margaret Fields, wasted no time. This
Speaker 1: trial is not about social media, she said in her
Speaker 1: opening statement. This was about deliberate, orchestrated criminal behavior that
Speaker 1: cross state lines and ruined lives. Sophie's defense attorney was
Speaker 1: a high profile man named Carter Blaine, Slick, polished, expensive.
Speaker 1: He argued that Sophie was a traumatized woman navigating systemic failure,
Speaker 1: and that the digital evidence collected was uncontextualized performance from
Speaker 1: someone seeking therapy through art. He called her misunderstood. He
Speaker 1: called us her victims emotional reactionaries. But the prosecution wasn't
Speaker 1: having it. They opened with three words displayed on the
Speaker 1: courtroom screen, calculate, manipulate profit. The first to testify was
Speaker 1: Lucas from Tampa. He walked to the stand with shaking
Speaker 1: hands in visible sweat, but when he spoke, his voice
Speaker 1: was firm. He recounted how Sophie, then going by sg Leclair,
Speaker 1: infiltrated his finances, pretended to invest in cryptocurrency on his behalf,
Speaker 1: and cleaned out his savings. She knew exactly what she
Speaker 1: was doing, he said. She used her pain as a disguise.
Speaker 1: Then came Julian from Chicago, the man Sofi had convinced
Speaker 1: to let her manage his divorce settlement. She told me
Speaker 1: we were partners, Julian said, eyes wet, that she wanted
Speaker 1: to rebuild with me. She left with eighty three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in a note that said you're too soft for
Speaker 1: this world. Even the wedding planner testified tears in her
Speaker 1: eyes as she described the destroyed reception hall, the fake
Speaker 1: vendor emails, and Sophie's disappearance with nearly ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Piece by piece, Sophie's empire of lies was reconstructed in court.
Speaker 1: But it was my turn that turned the tide. I
Speaker 1: took the stand on day four. I didn't read from
Speaker 1: a script. I didn't cry. I told the court what
Speaker 1: Sophie took from me. Not just the house, the money,
Speaker 1: the job, but my self worth. How she weaponized love,
Speaker 1: how she nearly convinced me that I was the villain.
Speaker 1: And then I played the hallway footage again, the one
Speaker 1: where she rehearses crying into her phone, mutters take three
Speaker 1: and grins. The courtroom was silent. Even Blaine didn't object.
Speaker 1: Then I handed over the letter she left under my door,
Speaker 1: the one that read, every villain needs a hero, and
Speaker 1: in your version, you'll always play the latter, even if
Speaker 1: you're not. I looked straight at her as the judge
Speaker 1: read it aloud. For once, she didn't look back. But
Speaker 1: the defense had one more move. Carter Blaine requested a
Speaker 1: psychological expert to testify. Enter doctor Meredith Lang, a clinical
Speaker 1: psychologist who claimed Sophie had traits consistent with histrionic personality
Speaker 1: disorder and complex PTSD. She has constructed identities as a
Speaker 1: form of psychological survival. Doctor Lang said, while this does
Speaker 1: not excuse her actions, it contextualizes them. She is both
Speaker 1: manipulator and victim. The courtroom murmured. Blaine leaned into the angle.
Speaker 1: Are we here to punish a woman who cried out
Speaker 1: for help and the only way she knew how prosecution
Speaker 1: rebutted fast their own expert, doctor Alan Price, testified that
Speaker 1: Sophie's behavior was not survival based. It's strategy. He said,
Speaker 1: she shows no remorse, she studies her targets, she escalates
Speaker 1: only when she's caught. This is not disorder, this is design.
Speaker 1: And then the final piece of evidence was entered, a
Speaker 1: notebook retrieved from Sophie's Oregon rental, filled with scripts. One read,
Speaker 1: if he cries, pause, let him feel like he's being heard.
Speaker 1: Then redirect with a story about childhood neglect. Another, don't
Speaker 1: overplay panic. Women get dismissed. When hysterical use calm rage,
Speaker 1: it terrifies them more chilling, precise, unforgivable. The trial lasted
Speaker 1: twelve days. On the final day, Sophie requested to speak.
Speaker 1: The courtroom buzzed, victims tensed. The judge allowed it under
Speaker 1: supervision with strict boundaries. Sophie stood, hands folded, voice steady.
Speaker 1: I am not evil, she said. I did what I
Speaker 1: had to do. Maybe I used people, maybe I overreached,
Speaker 1: but in a world that doesn't protect women, I protected myself.
Speaker 1: Gasps murmurs. She looked around the courtroom and smiled faintly.
Speaker 1: You all think you're different from me, but you're not.
Speaker 1: You've lied to lovers, you've used charm, you've played roles.
Speaker 1: I just did it better than she looked at me.
Speaker 1: And you, she said, were the easiest mark of all,
Speaker 1: because you wanted so badly to save something broken. Court
Speaker 1: officers moved in. She didn't resist. She sat down, calm smiling.
Speaker 1: The judge immediately called a recess. The jury deliberated for
Speaker 1: nine hours. They returned with a unanimous verdict, guilty on
Speaker 1: all counts, six federal charges, maximum sentence twenty seven years.
Speaker 1: Judge Fields delivered the sentence swiftly. Your talent for deception
Speaker 1: is not a gift. It is a poison, she said,
Speaker 1: And the trail of devastation you leave is no longer
Speaker 1: a secret. Sophie didn't flinch. She just whispered as they
Speaker 1: led her away. They'll write books about me. After the sentencing,
Speaker 1: it was strangely quiet. No news vans, no viral hashtags,
Speaker 1: no clickbait headlines. The world moved on, but for us,
Speaker 1: the people Sophie tore through like tissue paper. Healing was
Speaker 1: a slow, uncertain process. It didn't come all at once.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel triumphant. It felt like silence. After an explosion,
Speaker 1: ringing ears, dust settling, Griffin moved back to his hometown
Speaker 1: in Michigan. He sold his car, deleted every social account,
Speaker 1: and started therapy. Before leaving, he sent me one final message,
Speaker 1: I'll never ask you to forgive me, but I hope
Speaker 1: one day you'll forget me. I didn't reply. Some ghosts
Speaker 1: are better left unacknowledged. Julian returned to his brother's home
Speaker 1: in Chicago. He started a podcast called Grifted, where he
Speaker 1: interviewed people, mostly men, who had been conned or manipulated
Speaker 1: but never felt safe enough to tell their stories. His
Speaker 1: third episode featured Lucas and it went viral on Reddit.
Speaker 1: Cassandra signed a deal for a documentary series on Netflix.
Speaker 1: The working title her name was Never Sophie. She offered
Speaker 1: me a spot as a talking head. I declined. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be a chapter in her legacy anymore. Instead,
Speaker 1: I rebuilt, slowly, painfully, quietly. The house took months to
Speaker 1: fully restore. I sold the pink Kurig, replaced the couch,
Speaker 1: took down the soundproof foam she installed in the office
Speaker 1: where she once recorded those fake crying sessions. There were
Speaker 1: still stains I couldn't remove, scratches on the floor where
Speaker 1: she dragged the safe, a crack in the dry wall
Speaker 1: from when I punched it during one of our last fights.
Speaker 1: But the space was mine again. The memories were ghosts,
Speaker 1: now familiar but fading. Then one day I got a letter,
Speaker 1: official sealed from the Bureau of Federal Corrections. It was
Speaker 1: a victim notification. Sophie had been transferred to a medium
Speaker 1: security facility in New Mexico after a conflict in holding.
Speaker 1: The letter informed me I had the right to submit
Speaker 1: a victim impact statement for her parole hearing scheduled five
Speaker 1: years from now. My hands trembled. Five years. It sounded
Speaker 1: like forever. It felt like tomorrow. I placed the letter
Speaker 1: in a drawer and walked outside. My cat, still miraculously
Speaker 1: alive through it all, curled against my ankle. We sat
Speaker 1: on the porch, listening to nothing. But Sophie hadn't entirely
Speaker 1: vanished from the public's imagination. Six months after her conviction,
Speaker 1: a niche group of online defenders began reappearing on TikTok,
Speaker 1: on Tumbler, even a subreddit. They called themselves the Mirrors.
Speaker 1: Their theory that Sophie was a symbol, a modern anti hero,
Speaker 1: a survivor of patriarchal abuse who used society's tools against itself.
Speaker 1: They sold t shirts. One had a quote, don't overplay panic,
Speaker 1: use calm rage. It made me sick, but it also
Speaker 1: reminded me why people like Sophie thrive, because truth is fragile,
Speaker 1: easy to mold, easier to ignore when it contradicts a
Speaker 1: good story. Cassandra eventually did a rebuttal piece exposing the mirrors.
Speaker 1: She found out the main account spreading Sophie's defense was
Speaker 1: run by a former burner. Sophie herself created it had
Speaker 1: posted under multiple identities. She'd built a fan base for
Speaker 1: herself before going to prison, planted the seeds in advance,
Speaker 1: just in case it worked. I spent the next year
Speaker 1: doing things I never had time for before her. I
Speaker 1: reconnected with my sister, took a solo trip to Banff,
Speaker 1: learned to cook something other than scrambled eggs. Jenna and
Speaker 1: I I drifted, then reconnected organically without obligation. She visited
Speaker 1: one weekend and helped me paint the bedroom. We didn't
Speaker 1: talk about Sophie, not once. We didn't need to some
Speaker 1: wounds heal better unspoken. Then, just when I thought the
Speaker 1: door was fully closed, the parole Board sent a reminder
Speaker 1: a year left twelve months until Sophie could request early
Speaker 1: release based on nonviolent behavior and rehabilitation participation. I had
Speaker 1: a choice to make write a victim impact statement or
Speaker 1: say nothing. It sat with me for weeks. I thought
Speaker 1: about what to say. Should I write about the money,
Speaker 1: the house, the lies, or about the therapy bills, the insomnia,
Speaker 1: the identity loss. Should I talk about the court, the humiliation,
Speaker 1: the way even now people question if maybe I'm exaggerating?
Speaker 1: Or should I say nothing, deny her the satisfaction of
Speaker 1: knowing I still carry her weight. In the end, I
Speaker 1: wrote a single paragraph, Sophie Elmont is not a danger
Speaker 1: because she is violent. She is a danger because she
Speaker 1: is believable. I signed it, folded it, mailed it, and
Speaker 1: never looked back. But closure is rarely cinematic. No one applauded.
Speaker 1: There was no final scene, no sweeping music, just time
Speaker 1: and distance and quiet. Until one day, exactly two years
Speaker 1: after her conviction, I received a small brown envelope, no
Speaker 1: return address, inside a photograph, a familiar street, a bench,
Speaker 1: a tree, a cat mine sleeping on the porch. The
Speaker 1: photo was taken from across the street, not recent, but
Speaker 1: not old either. On the back one line, you always
Speaker 1: did keep the door unlocked. That night, I changed every
Speaker 1: lock again. The photo came without a stamp, no return address,
Speaker 1: just an envelope slipped under my door mat like a whisper.
Speaker 1: Inside was a picture my cat asleep on the front porch,
Speaker 1: taken from across the street. The handwriting on the back
Speaker 1: said only you always did keep the door unlocked. I
Speaker 1: didn't sleep that night or the next. Someone had been here,
Speaker 1: not online, not in theory.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Three days later, right before sunset, someone knocked. Three soft taps, familiar, measured.
Speaker 1: I checked the porch camera. A woman older than Sophie.
Speaker 1: No expression, no threat in her posture, just stillness. When
Speaker 1: I opened the door, she said, my name is Claire Elmont.
Speaker 1: I'm Sophie's sister. I'm not here to argue. May I
Speaker 1: come in? We sat in the kitchen. She placed a
Speaker 1: folder between us. No flourish, no build up. I've stayed
Speaker 1: out of it for years, she said, But you. She
Speaker 1: never let go of you, not like the others. The
Speaker 1: folder held copies of old therapy notes, school reports, disciplinary records,
Speaker 1: pieces of a life I never saw. She was different,
Speaker 1: even at twelve. Claire said she made people believe things,
Speaker 1: not just lies, stories, beautiful, dangerous ones. I listened without speaking.
Speaker 1: Most people were tools, But with you, she circled you obsessively,
Speaker 1: even after the trial. She slid a final page across
Speaker 1: the table, a ripped journal entry, Sophie's handwriting. He believed
Speaker 1: in the version of me I could never become, and
Speaker 1: that made him dangerous. I stared at the ink like
Speaker 1: it might shift. She didn't hate you, Claire said. She
Speaker 1: hated what you saw because you saw something human, and
Speaker 1: she couldn't afford that. I didn't reply. Claire stood you
Speaker 1: weren't weak, you were honest. She never forgave you for that.
Speaker 1: Before leaving, she paused in the doorway. She was right
Speaker 1: about one thing. You were dangerous, not because of what
Speaker 1: you did, but because you saw her clearly, and you
Speaker 1: loved her anyway.
Speaker 2: She left.
Speaker 1: I sat at the table for a long time, not angry,
Speaker 1: not broken, just still. And finally, after years of spirals
Speaker 1: and smoke, the mirror shattered for good and I wasn't
Speaker 1: in it. Five years past, a letter came from the
Speaker 1: parole Board. Sophie Ellmentt is eligible for early release. The
Speaker 1: hearing would be held privately. Victims could submit written statements.
Speaker 1: I had already done that years ago. I didn't plan
Speaker 1: to attend until the night before when I found another envelope,
Speaker 1: no return address, just a single line inside. They want closure,
Speaker 1: I want a stage. I booked a seat the next morning.
Speaker 1: The parole room was colder than I expected. No jury,
Speaker 1: no cameras, just chairs, a table and Sophie thinner, older,
Speaker 1: but unmistakably composed. Her hair was pulled back, no cuffs.
Speaker 1: She looked around like she was still performing for an
Speaker 1: audience only she could see. The board asked her questions.
Speaker 1: She answered calmly, yes, I understand the damage I caused.
Speaker 1: I've reflected every day since sentencing. I take full accountability.
Speaker 1: But her eyes never matched her tone. She called her
Speaker 1: crimes mistakes, called us hurting people, called herself a survivor
Speaker 1: of her own childhood. Then the board asked if she
Speaker 1: had anything else to say. She smiled faintly. I became
Speaker 1: who I needed to be, and I'm sorry that hurt others.
Speaker 1: Then she looked at me. Not by accident, not for long,
Speaker 1: just enough enough to say I still know how to
Speaker 1: find you. They denied her release. The board's language was clinical,
Speaker 1: lack of demonstrated remorse patterns consisted with high risk of recidivism,
Speaker 1: continued emotional manipulation in verbal testimony. She would serve the
Speaker 1: rest of her sentence twenty two more years. Three weeks later,
Speaker 1: I moved out of that house, not because of fear,
Speaker 1: because I was finally done waiting, waiting for another letter,
Speaker 1: a message, a ghost tap on the door. I didn't
Speaker 1: change my name, I didn't run. I just stopped standing still.
Speaker 1: I still get emails sometimes from men, some I know,
Speaker 1: most I don't. They ask if the story was real,
Speaker 1: if it ever ended, if it ever gets better, And
Speaker 1: I always say yes, it ends the moment you stop
Speaker 1: giving them the script, the moment you stop letting them
Speaker 1: direct your silence. Because people like Sophie, they don't want love,
Speaker 1: They want narrative, and the only way to win is
Speaker 1: to stop being part of their story.