Dateline Originals - The Seduction - Ep. 1: 'Til Death Do Us Part

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

An impressionable young man falls under the spell of a persuasive older woman with a problem to solve.This episode was originally published on June 14, 2022. 

She's like, well, you want me to leave him, right? Yes. Well, then, what if he accidentally dies? And that's when I realized that everything we were talking about was real. He came off as somehow, well, pure when I met him. Strange, given the story he was about to tell. He was, or seemed to be, just a kid, though by then he was 23 years old, with more hard life under his belt than most men will ever know.

His name was Jaime, Jaime Ramos. Smallish, soft-spoken, very much a beta-not-alpha, with an open baby face and a cascade of curly black hair. He spoke slowly, precisely, as if every syllable mattered, as if he was a penitent, spilling out his story through a confessional screen, a story of lust, obsession, and murder. The kind of plot you'd see in some old Hollywood noir. Like, say, Double Indemnity,

in which a guy falls for a dame who needs a special kind of favor. I loved you, Walter, and I hated him. But I wasn't going to do anything about it, not until I met you. And nobody's pulling out. We went into this together and we're coming out at the end together. It's straight down the line for both of us. If only he was man enough. Man enough to do what she wanted done.

I felt that it was necessary in order to make her happy. If it makes her happy, then that's what I'll do. Yes. Yes, he would. He always would, no matter what. And I'm on the ground and I'm crying, Patty, Patty, what are you doing? It's me. Stop this. Why are you killing me?

So, of course, this is a love story in its own weird, perverted way. About people who act like they're living in a certain kind of movie. But the star, well, he could play any role his director chose. So long as that director happened to be an older woman. How do you feel when you're with older women? I just feel secure. Yes, secure and in love with his older woman. What's the expression? Till death do them part. I'm Keith Morrison and this is Dateline's newest podcast, The Seduction. He must have been a sweet little baby, our Jaime. Certainly didn't deserve all the terrible things that happened around him.

Jaime's childhood in East L.A., simply put, was a mess. His mother killed herself when he was two. His father, a ghost of a presence, floating in and out of his life, passed around from one relative to the next, finally ending up on the doorstep of his maternal grandmother in East L.A. My grandmother is the one who took care of me. She's, in reality, my mother. And one day, I guess somehow she got in contact with my father,

and they signed over the paperwork for the adoption papers. She actually adopted you? And she actually adopted me. She became my legal guardian. That's a very close relationship. Yes. What was that relationship like? She took me in, fed me, clothed me. Did she love you? Oh yeah, I know she loves me. Did she say so? Yes. Yeah? Yes. And... But she didn't quite know how to... I believe she just didn't know how quite to embrace me the way that I never have been because of my mother leaving me so early.

And that, I think, in reality, is what has always caused me to seek for a mother figure in my life. No mom, no dad, no siblings, a stretch in juvie. But then, when he turned 21, Jaime's life took a rare turn for the better. He was accepted into the California Conservation Corps, or CCC, a kind of boot camp for at-risk young adults, teaches skills like building trails, fighting fires, and following orders. Jaime's work camp, hundreds of miles from all his L.A. troubles, was up in the Sierra Nevada mountains on a remote plateau known as the Divide. Nearest community, Georgetown, miles away, was really little more than a village.

So Jaime's world did not extend much beyond the camp's fence line, where a staff of uniformed adults made sure the Corps members, as they were called, stayed in line. And here is one of the coincidences of which a life is made. One of Jaime's supervisors was an older woman, Patti Prespa. I saw all the other young men and women there calling her mother, mom. Because Patti seemed so in control and so popular.

The other recruits adored her, and Jaime, he felt like garbage mostly. So popular. The other recruits adored her. And Jaime? He felt like garbage, mostly. But then something magical happened. Patty paid attention to him. To Jaime. She looked at him. She heard him.

And he told her everything. She would listen to your problems. She would help you. She would give you guidance. Then I started to get that feeling again about this mother figure of her. When you say got that feeling again,

it was the same feeling you had had with some other women. Yes, a secure feeling. Jaime told Patty about his mother and about the nightmare that his childhood became after she died as he was shuttled from one family member to another. And along the way, he said, a male relative repeatedly molested him for years. And this was something that happened once, twice a month. How old were you? I was about six, seven when it started, and it ended about somewhere between 15 and 17. Ten years?

Yes. At first, I didn't know what was going on. He just kept telling me not to tell anybody. And I just felt threatened. That was a big issue for me when it came to feeling like a man. Yeah. It was Patty who changed all that. Patty who made him feel like a man.

And so he told her about his life, all of it, including that first time he fell for an older woman. It was in middle school, said Jaime, with one of his teachers. We became friends, and then it started to become an intimate relationship. And I was with her till I was about 17. Outrageous. Immoral. Just wrong. And like all forbidden loves, it was destined to end badly. She was the one who put a stop to it. By telling Jaime, not not directly but through his cousin, that she'd met another man.

Another man? What are you talking about, another man? I was mad. Well, yes, it was an odd thing to say, really, given that Jaime wasn't yet a man himself. So how could there be another one? And maybe that's what triggered something inside him, being reminded by a woman, an older woman, that he, Jaime, wasn't a man at all, that he'd been merely play-acting. He was just a boy,

and now a very angry one. Enraged and heart sick, Jaime ran to the teacher's house to plead with her not to leave him. I get there and I start knocking on the door. There's no answer. So I start banging on it. She has a two-story house. So she opens up the window from her bedroom and tells me, whoever's out there, you better, or I'll call the police.

It's me, James. What are you doing? Open the door, please. I don't want you here right now. You need to leave. I don't know you. She kept saying that. I'm like, you don't know me. It's me. What are you doing? I ended up smashing the sliding door open with a chair outside that she had, a patio chair. She goes downstairs and sees that I smashed it. She starts yelling, get out of my house, get out of my house. She starts hitting me. I said, we need to talk. What is this about another man? What are you doing? Why do you want me to leave? She calls the police. I get arrested. And before I get into the squad car, I tell her, tell them that this is a mistake.

Tell them that I live here, that this is wrong. And the last words I ever heard from her were, don't dare you say you know me, you psycho. I listened to all this, and I watched his face so caught up in the details of that woman's rejection. And I couldn't help but think of a particular scene from the 1981 film noir crime thriller Body Heat, in which a young man becomes so obsessed with his seductress she smashes a patio door with a chair to get at her.

Exactly what Jaime said he did too, though in that moment of passionate fury, he probably wasn't thinking about a later scene in Body Heat, in which the hapless lover is set up to take the fall for a husband's murder. But then Maddie sees a way to get rid of both of us at once. So when Patty heard Jaime's story, did she get some ideas of her own about Jaime? About how far he would go for a woman he loved? I gave her my whole life story from beginning to end. I've given her things that my family doesn't even know about. How did she respond?

With pure kindness and understanding. She embraced you? Yes. Like I've never felt embraced before. And she made me feel like a man again. Never felt like a man before? Never felt like a real man before until I

talked to her. And how did that make you feel about her? It made me feel indebted. There was something about Patty Prespa that a certain type of guy just fell for. Hard. Auburn hair. Curvy. And whenever the need arose, she could shed weight as easily as a thrift store coat

and squeeze back into her old daisy dukes. A transformation that happened right before Jaime's eyes and stirred a lustful pull. One Patty seemed to feel, too. Patty was 47 the first time she had sex with Jaime. He just 21, younger than any of Patty's four children. Happened in the back seat of Patty's car that time. And then they took to finding hidden corners of the Conservation Corps camp. Sometimes she'd sneak Jaime out to a cheap motel.

Discretion was called for because Patty was Jaime's boss of sorts. It was a taboo thing because she was a supervisor, I was just a core member. If I get caught with my supervisor, we're both going to get fired. It was forbidden excitement, and thus ever sweeter. They were months into their affair when Patty told Jaime something important. She was ready to trust him with her own dark secrets, starting with a very big one. She was married. But by then, my feelings were so strong that... Wait a minute.

When she told you, after months of this, that she was married, do you remember that moment? Yes. I felt this thing of, I wouldn't want to say betrayal. Must have been a shock. But it definitely was a shock. It was like a slap in the face. Patty's husband was a big bear of a man named Ron Prespa.

And for Jaime, she skipped over the story of how hard she worked to snag Ron six years earlier. That was after her third husband dumped her. And she started dropping by Ron's remote mountain spread unannounced, as if just accidental-like, despite it being on a one-lane road miles from town. She was all dolled up with makeup or hair done and a dress and high heels and come by just to say hi. And at this point, they weren't dating or anything, and it seemed like she was already... Worming her way in there. Yeah. And she did.

Ron's daughters, Misty Davis and April Hensman, said it was like their dad fell under some bewitching spell. He wanted to be with her. He really wanted her. And he, Ron Prespa, was a catch. Tall, muscular, a thick head of sandy hair with a beard to match. Perfectly at home on the back of a horse or the seat of a backhoe. He was such a man of the mountains, his adoring daughters teased him about it. Called him Grizzly Adams after the big barrel-chested character in a family TV show. Except this grizzly man raised his girls on his own. He'd do our hair.

French braid our hair. Yeah, French braid our hair. Grizzly Adams who French braids your hair? Yeah. Whoa. And he knew. He was like a mother-father, and he really knew how to take care of us. And he did a really good job and taught us a lot.

He did indeed. April and Misty, both fit, blonde, bright as the California sun, grew up riding horses and herding livestock. So at home in the mountains, they could be filly and hosts on YouTube's Country Life channel. We raised cattle and we'd be out there with dad. We could talk about cows for hours. Dad was always a MacGyver. There wasn't anything he couldn't fix with duct tape or with a bailing wire. I mean, we always just thought it was a fabulous life. But kids are meant to leave home, and both April and Misty went off to start families of their own,

which left Dad, Ron, all alone for the first time in his life until Patty sashayed into his world. But as attracted as Ron was to Patty, he made it clear to her he had no interest in ever getting married again. His breakup with April and Misty's mom was too painful. So the two just dated, seeing each other exclusively. Until about three years into this relationship, Ron's daughters noticed something suspicious about Patty's behavior.

She was up to something. Up to what? Having an affair with my dad. He was losing weight. Is that how you could tell that she was kind of doling herself up and looking good? Yeah, she was quite a bit overweight. Did he know? Did he suspect? You know, I think that my dad was an intelligent man, so I think that he did know,

but I think that he, again, was just finding the good. He always wanted to please, and so maybe if I do more, then she'll recognize that. So Ron did, of course. He'd do anything to keep her, make her happy. And it turned out there was something he could do. I was fishing at Grandma's pond with my son and my husband, and Dad and Patty came up to the gate. And Dad's waving this little piece of paper, and I'm like, what is that? So he came up to me, and he showed me it, and it was their marriage certificate.

And I punched him in the arm, and I said, are you kidding me? You did what? And I was angry. Patty really, to me, pushed the issue. She was really desperate to be married. She just kept wanting that to happen and was really pushing the issue. Let's get married, let's get married, let's get married.

We got to get married. For what reason? Why is the rush? We've been together for so long and that was dad's outlook on it. There's no reason to get married, let's get married, let's get married, we've got to get married. For what reason? Why is the rush? We've been together for so long. And that was Dad's outlook on it. There's no reason to get married. What do you think, if they got married, she wouldn't have any more affairs? Honestly, couldn't tell you. The bottom line is he truly wholeheartedly loved her and believed in her.

So when the new Mrs. Prespa wanted a thing to happen, Ron made sure it did. Even if it meant his sweet daughters were no longer welcome guests in the home they'd grown up in. It was Patty's house now. Her kids could visit, but his? April and Misty had to arrange to see him in a neutral location, their grandmother's house. And I think Dad just wanted to keep the peace.

So he was like, oh, I'll just meet you at Graham's. We'll visit over there. And we'd always sit down, have a cup of tea, and, you know, have our conversations. And then he'd look at his watch. Oh, I got to go make dinner. So he'd come home, make dinner, and have dinner ready for when Patty got home for work.

He was on a pretty short leash. Yeah. And I'm like, Dad, me and the kids aren't here for that long. Let's just stay here and visit. No, I got to get dinner done and I'll be back, you know, so... He was trying to please her. He was always trying to please her. And he would cater to her every need.

He would wake up in the morning and... Make her breakfast and coffee. Make her breakfast and coffee. And Dad always just went out of his way for her. Always. April and Misty knew nothing about Jaime. Didn't know Patty had taken up with a kid less than half her age. But it was pretty clear to them that three years or so after that last time she was caught cheating on their dad, Patty was at it again. We knew because she started wearing makeup and she lost almost 60

pounds and she was dressing all cutesy and short shorts and tighter pants laying out in the sun. Yeah. And so I started thinking things and dad and I would have conversations. She would have training with the CCC. She had training in Tahoe. She had training in Stockton. She had training in San Francisco. She'd go away for a few days. Yeah, and I'm like, dad, her job isn't that important for her

to be leaving for this training here and there. So you thought something was going on? I did. We both did. Dad said, no, it's, you know, it's training. I trust her. Gossip tended to travel pretty quickly among the ranchers and villagers around Ron Prespa's place. But find somebody willing to spread dirt on Ron?

Forget it. Loyal, honest, hardworking, loving father, devoted son. Those were the words friends and neighbors used to describe Ron. But they were not the words Patty used. Not with Jaime, anyway. In their heart-to-hearts at the conservation corps, Patty told Jaime that she was trapped, was living in constant fear of, well, a monster, an ogre-like creature out of a Grimm's fairy tale, who took pleasure in beating her. She told me how he just kept hitting and hitting and how he was just there laughing.

She even mentioned being hung upside down on a ceiling, a rope. How did it make you feel to hear those things? I was enraged, and I kept telling her, go to the police, tell them what's going on. And then she'd come up with these excuses of, it's a good old boy town, nobody believes me. Every time I go to somebody, they say, okay, and they file a report, but nothing ever happens.

So she claimed that she had gone to the police. She claims that she had gone to the police. And they did nothing. And they did nothing. Because it was a good old boy town. They look out for their men. I just kept telling her, well, get a divorce. Leave. Find an apartment. Do something.

Live with your kids. But it was never that simple. There was always some complication for her. What, for example? Even her children didn't believe her. I felt bad. She's one of the most honest people I've ever met. And yet she's telling me how her kids don't even believe her.

And it made me feel even more in love with her. Like, wow, I guess it really is only you and me against them. Yeah, the two of you against the world. Yes. And she started engulfing me with gifts at the same time. Gifts that she knew that I always wanted but never had. Like the time Patty took Jaime shooting with her brand new cowboy-style revolver, a.44 Magnum. I was shooting bullets for like half an hour straight, just having the time of my life.

What did that feel like? Powerful. And I felt like a kid. You know, like, that's the thing about those experiences. I always ended up feeling like a kid again. Good feeling. A good feeling. No more worries about taxes, work, stress. Just, I'm this kid with no worries whatsoever having the time of his life. And she did that for you? And she did that.

Then there was a secret trip to San Francisco. Patty told husband Ron she was attending a conference there. But really, she was attending to Jaime. And she had a special surprise

in mind. To be unveiled out of all places, Fisherman's Wharf. It was Valentine's Day. We were going to little candy shops and little stores, and she bought two matching engagement rings. And she gave her private ceremony

of a wedding with me. And I felt that I was her husband. This was her idea? This was her idea. She surprised me with this. During this wedding, she said that she promised me that the only way we'd break up ever would be death. Death do us apart, literally. Then, a few weeks later, Patty arranged another trip, another weekend tryst.

This time it was Las Vegas, and she told him this was to be their honeymoon. She took me to the place that I always wanted to go to, and that was the Star Trek experience. It was the greatest time of my life. I got to talk to Commander Riker and Data and Geordi LaForge.

I got chased by the Borg. I honestly believe that I was on the Enterprise. Listen again to what Jaime just said. I honestly believe that I was on the Enterprise. The way Jaime told the story, the look in his eyes, the slight puff of his chest, it seemed like he really did believe he was on a starship out in space. Which meant, to Jaime,

Patty was a lover, yes, but also a fairy godmother who could fulfill his greatest wish. So his love, his obsession was real. It was spiritual. Those secret wedding vows they exchanged on that San Francisco pier were as binding to Jaime as if they had been made in a holy cathedral before God. A promise he made terrifyingly real during one of their getaways. They were on the freeway. Jaime was driving.

When his cell phone rang, Jaime glanced at the screen. Looked like an incoming call from an ex-girlfriend, so Jaime hit ignore. Not quick enough. Patty, who'd heard about this ex-girlfriend, flew into a rage. She's like, it's her, isn't it? And I said, so what if it is?

And she's like, I just told you three days ago not to call her, and you called her. I'm like, I can't say no. She's a friend. Don't you understand that? She throws this water bottle in my head and that gets me flustered. Like, what did you do that for? Pull the car over, turn it around. We're over. We're through. When she said it was over, during this wedding, she said that she promised me that the only way we'd break up ever would be death. So I made that vow with her.

Yes, death threw us apart, literally. And I started yelling at her, telling her, so you're telling me that we're through? She said, yes. I said, well, then that means we need to die, if that's what you're saying. And I pushed the car to like 95 and I purposely ran myself under a semi truck. Somehow we spun out from the tires instead of getting sucked in and landed in the median rolling and not a scratch on us. And she was upset, very upset, but at the same time she was scared. And I told her, I told you, so death do us part. The highway patrol showed up, of course, but Patty covered for Jaime by quickly concocting a lie.

She automatically started manipulating the situation by saying it was an accident and it was let go as a hit and run because the semi wasn't anywhere to be found. Of course, Misty and April heard about the accident. But not that there was someone else in the car. They didn't know Jaime existed. But it only added to their conviction that Patty was up to no good. Her story didn't add up. Something strange was going on.

The vehicle was totaled on Highway 99 in Stockton somewhere, but they towed her back to Bakersfield and put her up in a hotel in Bakersfield. And I'm like, that doesn't make sense, Dad. You need to start questioning this. Didn't make sense because Bakersfield was a couple of hundred miles in the opposite direction, away from Ron's place. I'll drive down and pick her up. Oh, no, no, they're going to get her home. Everything's going to be okay. And I'm like, are you sure?

I think you need to ask more questions. But he really wanted to trust her and wanted to believe the good. Oh, he had no idea. Because Patty was telling Jaime she had an even darker secret to share about her husband, Ron. A secret so disturbing, she was afraid of what Jaime might do once he heard what it was. She was crying. She was trembling. What had he done?

She told me that she went home. she was going to go to sleep. He came over her, as he usually tries, and she reaches for her gun and hits him in the head with the butt, and it doesn't affect him. He takes it away and he's laughing. She tells me how he hits her, turned her over on her stomach, held her down, and went from behind and was raping her and calling her names and even doing some punching in the back, I guess. And what happened to me as a child with my predator,

that's what went through my head. I felt like this man did it to me, and I promised myself that this will never happen to me again. And since it happened to me again, I'm going to hurt this man. And she said what? She kept telling me not to do anything rash as I said right and then I said well it's gonna happen you either move the horse or I'm gonna hurt him I felt that now that I am a man I can actually be angry not scared and maybe I can do something and maybe I can do something about this. And I said, either you move immediately, or I'm going to hurt him very soon. And that's the moment when a strange, dark, and curious little idea

wormed its way into Jaime's all-consuming story of love. It was Patty's idea, of course. Patty had all the ideas, didn't she? She said, there's other ways we can do this where we'll both be happy. And I tell her, what do you mean by both of us being happy? She's like, well, you want me to leave him, right? Yes.

And you don't want him to hurt me no more, right? Yes. Well, then what if he accidentally dies? And when I tell her, you mean by accident as in an accident we orchestrate? And she says, what else Coming up next on The Seduction I told her if you want me to kill a man I need to see what he's like

So this is part of the plan You gotta be there, you gotta be close You have to see, you have to make sure for yourself You need to eyeball the guy But you were gonna do it You told her you were gonna do it Yes You have to see. You have to make sure for yourself this is. You need to eyeball the guy. Okay. But you were going to do it. You told her you were going to do this.

The Seduction is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Vince Sterla is the producer. Jonathan Moser is the audio editor. Rachel Ligon is associate producer. Matt Sullivan is assistant audio editor. Susan Nall is senior producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Liz Cole is executive producer.

And David Corvo is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes as Technical Director, sound mixing by Bob Mallory. Nina Bisbano is Associate Producer.