Scamtown - The Dog Lady & The Inmate | 3

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Toby Dorr is a middle-aged mom trapped in a loveless marriage—until a cancer diagnosis changes her from someone who’d never jaywalked into a scheming, lovelorn lawbreaker who smuggles her inmate crush out of prison in a dog crate, leading to one of the biggest car chases in Tennessee history.Scamtown is an Apple Original podcast, produced by FunMeter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.http://apple.co/Scamtown

Brian, can you feel it? Love is in the air. Ooh, yeah, I feel it. You know, true love is hard to find. Sometimes you think you found true love, only to find out that you picked the wrong person, and now you're a convicted felon. A convicted felon serving years behind bars?

Fugitives, prison stories, we know. We've covered them. We've done documentaries about them. But this is actually a new one for us. A genuine love story. A rom-com turned thriller. Buckle up for a wild ride that turns a 40-something mom who never stole as much as a candy bar in her entire life

into a fugitive with the help of an inmate serving a life sentence, a menagerie of rescue dogs, and an early aughts rock ballad built for two. Welcome to Scam Town, an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. I'm Brian Lizarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. We're filmmakers who've been trading stories now for quite some time. Obsessed and compelled to bring some of our favorites to life. We love a surprising heist, an intricate scam, or just pulling back the curtain on something you think you know. Entering a world that's stranger than fiction and writing that line between comedy and tragedy. This is Scam Town, a place for our favorite stories that do just that.

Today's episode, The Dog Lady and the Inmates. Toby, you've got guests. All right. Hello. Hello. Hello. Toby Doerr, formerly Toby Young, lives with her second husband in the basement apartment of her son and daughter-in-law's house in Virginia. Sorry, I already have my microphone out. What a beautiful day.

It is a beautiful day. You just couldn't ask for a better day out there, that's for sure. That's our producer, Kathleen, who's with Toby in her office with a view of the garden. When she's not writing, she spends a good chunk of her time at her computer, responding to strangers seeking advice. Every week, I get messages on social media or emails from women who say, I know I can tell you what's going on in my life because you'll understand. You know, and this one woman just has been emailing me this week and she said, I can't live in this house anymore. I need to get away from my husband. And I said, just leave him.

They look to Toby because of her unique life experience. Now in her 60s, she appears relaxed for someone who's still struggling with the consequences of an irreversible, disastrous life choice that changed the course of her life. Well, when your whole life and your most private moments and everything has been run across the national news, what's, I mean, it just, it's already out there. What else is there? For those of you who don't know about Toby, here's a micro recap. Police believe he had help from someone, a middle-aged housewife from the outside, who would seem the most unlikely of accomplices. The chase was on.

Reality, in the form of dozens of police cars and two helicopters, was in hot pursuit of Toby and about to bring her to a sudden and possibly deadly conclusion. I was this goody two-shoes. I never did anything wrong. I mean, I never jaywalked. I never didn't stop for three seconds at a stop sign before I turned right. So it was just such a shock to everybody. Do we ever really know what we're going to do?

I don't think so. You know, I think any one of us is capable of anything under the right circumstances. Toby was married to her high school sweetheart for decades, and they raised two boys. Her life in Kansas had gone pretty much as planned. That was until she got diagnosed with thyroid cancer at age 46. Toby says the mortality check made her desperate to change. I didn't have an unlimited amount of time here. And if I was gone, there was not one thing I'd ever done that had made a difference in this world.

And I thought, what a total waste of my entire life. I have not done anything worthwhile, you know, except raising my sons. But I felt like it was time I needed to do something that would make a difference. While Toby was recuperating, the self-confessed dog person became inspired to start a canine rescue program. She worked part-time at a vet clinic, and her co-worker's husband, who worked at a prison, helped make an introduction. She was invited to make a presentation to the prison board and the warden at the Lansing Correctional Facility,

and they loved it. Brian, do you know what you need for a canine rescue program? I have some ideas. Some dogs. They said, can you bring some dogs up on Friday? And I said, yeah. I didn't have any dogs. So I started, you know, looking in the paper

for people who'd found dogs and were looking for a home for a dog. I scrounged up seven dogs in two days and took them into the prison. And then they called me. We need more dogs. We need more dogs. The Safe Harbor Prison Dog Program worked like this. Toby would partner with local shelters and scoop up dogs that were often days away from being euthanized. These canines were matched with inmates who cared for and trained them, making them more appealing and therefore more adoptable.

In short, lonely inmates were paired with unwanted dogs. The response was overwhelmingly positive. A lot of these men might have gone 10, 15, 20 years without ever hugging another person. These dogs lived with the inmates. They slept in their beds with them. The world just changed overnight. I knew I was going to save the lives of all these dogs, but I had no idea that I'd be saving the lives of inmates too. It was just a miracle. The trainers were proud when their dogs were adopted, but it stung too. Those inmates were going to just be devastated. Sometimes they'd cry because they'd get really attached to a particular dog. So Toby's main challenge was making sure there were enough dogs on hand to replace the adopted ones.

It was a good problem to have. After working for about a year at the prison, Toby was walking across the prison yard when an inmate basically cut her off just to introduce himself. And he sticks his hand out and says, hi, I'm John Maynard. I want to be your next dog handler. I'm about five foot tall and he was six foot two. It was kind of surprising to me because that was kind of brash and most inmates weren't that way. The gangly 25-year-old ginger-haired convict continued to make an impression. Normally, I just take a dog and I hand it to an inmate and say, here's your dog. This is everything you need to know about him.

But John Maynard, he looked at each dog and he petted them and he looked at their teeth and he looked in their eyes, you know, and then he went to one and he said, OK, I'll take this one. And, you know, nobody ever did that before. These inmates were like, whatever you want me to do, Toby, I'll just do anything. They were just so grateful that they never bothered even thinking that they could choose a dog. But it was different. John was just different. Brian, different is one way to say it.

Mm hmm. As a prison dog handler, he challenged Toby's dog training style. John thought it was better to be strict with his pup until she showed him otherwise. Mostly, he just asked a lot of questions. Toby noticed that it was John's intelligence that motivated him to be so curious. He may have shown some smarts, but he wasn't in the clink for no reason. When John was 17, he participated in a botched carjacking. He didn't pull the trigger, but still had to pay for his role in someone's death.

He's serving a life sentence. Their connection began to bloom into something more than just dog lady and inmate after Toby's dad was rushed to the hospital. He said, what's going on in your life? You seem really down today. And I said, oh, my dad had emergency surgery last night. He said, well, you know, it was a good thing your husband was there with you because that's a lot to go through. And I said, he wasn't there with me. And John said, what? So it just kind of raised a question. Then he said, he wasn't there with me. And John said, what? So it just kind of raised a question. Then he said, why did you stay married to him? And I opened my mouth to answer, and I didn't have an answer.

And I couldn't think of an answer. Toby stayed away for a few days while she searched for the answer. Her husband was a firefighter, and she had spent nearly a decade and a half working at a telecommunications company. Over the years, their schedules and interests and just about everything else splintered off. And by the time our children had left home, I didn't even know who the person was that was sitting in my living room, in my recliner. And so we just couldn't find our way back to each other. There was nothing in common that we had. And, you know, truthfully, I'd probably still be there today

if something hadn't happened to knock me off my rocker. Her husband didn't notice what she was going through. But the inmate who was serving time for first-degree murder and aggravated robbery did more than notice. John Maynard was the only person that showed me any compassion. James, you can't spell compassion without passion. I love it. So they started talking a lot, wherever and whenever they could.

But they had to find a way to continue these conversations without attracting more attention to themselves. John begged and pleaded for a cell phone, which was basically the top of the no-no list for prison contraband. Eventually, Toby caved and made the first bad girl move of her life. She smuggled him a phone. These two stayed on the phone for hours, like pre-digital era teenagers. I just couldn't get enough of talking to John. We're talking like thousands of minutes a month, not enough. Plus some late night texting when Toby's husband worked nights at the fire station, which gave her lots of uninterrupted time

with John. I wonder what that bill looked like. I really hope they had an unlimited plan. Minutes back then cost money. You know, my husband and I's relationship was never like lovey-dovey romantic. We just never had that. Even in high school, it was just kind of a duty kind of a thing. With John, it was like this crazy fire that I couldn't even, I couldn't live without. He said, I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't do anything. All I can do is think about you. And he said, I've never really been in love before, but I think this might be what it feels like. Their conversations changed to a burning passion, which eventually evolved into, I'll do anything to be with you. And out of this obsession,

they hatched a plan. It never seemed like the right decision, but it seemed like I was going to die if I didn't have a chance. So during their nightly calls, they start throwing out these dreamy escape scenarios. You know, like, oh, I think I'll get out this way. And I'd say, well, that's a dumb idea because of this, this or this. Well, how about this way? No, that's not going to work. Like the time John suggested mailing himself out of prison in a UPS box. Well, where would we go? Well, what would we do? You know, it was just this game we were playing. And it was fun to have this fantasy game. I never really believed it was ever going to work. Something was going to happen, and it was going to be thwarted.

Until the day John proposed a plan that wasn't so outlandish. He said, well, you know, maybe I could hide in a dog crate in your van during a dog adoption. And I said, you know what, that idea would probably work. And so he didn't say any more about it, but then he started planning and thinking. And a couple weeks later, he came to me and said, I got it figured out. Figured out what? He said, how I'm going to fit in the dog crate. It's like, you can't fit in a dog crate. But he pulled one leg up over his shoulder and around his head and the other one behind him. As they formulated this plan, John, in my mind, had to be doing some prison yoga because this dog crate was 36 inches tall and John, mind you, is 6'2".

He also dropped a whopping 25 pounds in just six weeks. Yeah, and you know, the biggest thing he had to practice for was barking like a dog. And how do you, what do you decide? Is he a big dog? Is he a small dog? If someone's carrying the crate, is he growling at them just in case? If he gets a little bit too close. I mean, you know, look, if he goes the lengths of dropping this kind of weight and

practicing, like bending his legs behind his head, of course he's practicing his dog bark. Yep. He has to. You have to. Wow. Toby had her own challenges. Packing for a vacation is hard enough. Just imagine trying to figure out what to bring for a prison escape. I brought everything I like the best. Toby starts sneaking away her clothes and keepsakes at a storage unit. Then she begins stockpiling food. They rent an out-of-state cabin, and she even purchases a truck as their getaway vehicle, paying for everything in cash after secretly dipping into her 401k.

And finally, agrees that they'll steal her husband's two handguns. You know, it's the one thing I really don't like to talk about because it was the biggest mistake. But John convinced me that we were going to have a bunch of cash with us and somebody would want to steal it. And if they saw that he had a gun, that they would leave us alone and that he swore he would never use them and had no intentions of using them, but it would just be safer. And it was dumb. They decided to put their escape plan in motion in 2006 on February 12th, just in time for Valentine's Day. So that particular day, I drive in just like normal. For those of you who haven't visited the Lansing Correctional Facility, the layout is like this. You enter the main prison gate and drive to a guard shack.

It's bookended by two gates, number two and number three. When a dog finally gets adopted and Toby has to come pick it up from a prison inmate, she has to park her car and wait between these two gates. And then they shut gate two in front of my car and they open gate three behind my car. So then the inmates can come into that area and put their dogs in the of my car and they open gate three behind my car so then the inmates can come into that area and put their dogs in the van and then they they watch the inmates load their dogs and then all the inmates go back behind gate three and they close gate three and they look in the van make sure there's no inmates to pull off this escape toby would have to make it through all three gates with her imitation canine cargo. She nervously

drives in. This is basically the point of no return. And I knew that this farm wagon was going to be coming with this dog crate on it with John hidden in a box. And while she waits, Toby attempts her best acting, casually strolling up to the nearby security post and chatting up the guards she's come to know. I just sat in the guard shack talking to the officers and they were flirting with me and we were just, you know, having kind of a good conversation. I thought they're going to notice something's different today, that I'm nervous, that I'm scared. And there was a moment where I thought, I'll just go and we'll just forget this whole thing. But then just then the wagon came around the corner and I saw it coming.

Toby tells the inmates pushing the wagon that they can load the dog crates in the van following her typical routine, unsure if John made it in or not. The door slides shut, she gets into the driver's seat, and the closest security gate opens. She does her best to coolly roll up to the next gate and waits for what feels like an eternity until it too opens. After 18 months of volunteering at the prison, guards rarely inspected Toby's dog crates when she was coming and going. And that's what the lovers were counting on. And I remember pulling out onto the gravel driveway

that went around the side of the prison, and I thought, oh, this is it. You know, and I hollered back. I said, John, are you in there? She calls out John's name several times and nothing. John, are you in there? And he didn't answer. Okay, this whole thing is bonkers.

Yeah, I mean, after calling out his name several times and not hearing anything, she was actually relieved. And then I thought, oh, thank God he didn't come. Of course, time passes differently during a prison escape, but she just keeps on driving. And then when I pulled onto the city street, you know, outside of the prison, I heard this laugh in the back of the truck. And I pulled over. I was so startled. And I saw this arm punch out of the box, and I heard John laughing, you know, and he said, Drive, Toby, drive!

Oh, they drove. First to drop off dogs at Toby's house, and then a stop at the storage unit, before switching vehicles and getting back on the road. While they're hauling ass to the cabin Toby rented in Tennessee, John was seeing the outside world with wonder after being locked up for 10 years. Wow, you know, I can't believe, look at the highways, they look so different, look at all these cars, you know, it was just like, like kind of being with a kid at a birthday party or something. He was at the wheel feasting on all of the junky road trip delicacies Toby had packed,

like Twizzlers and chocolate-covered donuts. Personally, I'm into pretzel sticks and Coca-Cola for my road trip snack. What's yours, Brian? Ooh, I have to stop at a pastry shop and pick up a muffin. Wow. Yeah. Wild. I know. Well, back to Toby and John. By the wee hours of the morning, John's joy was turning into frustration. They were lost. Toby misplaced the map and in the pre-smartphone era of the aughts, GPS was not an option. I was all flustered, you know, and then John said, how can you be so stupid that you don't even know the directions?

I mean, Toby, look what we just did, and we don't even know where we're going. And I was like, I just kind of had a meltdown. And then John got really mad, and he started yelling at me, and he's like, what use are you? And he started driving crazy, and he's like, what use are you, you know? And he started driving crazy and I really got upset and I thought, you know, maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe John was revealing a scarier side to his personality. It's entirely possible that this convicted criminal

wasn't exactly the teddy bear that he was letting on. Yeah, too late now. He finally calmed down, and they successfully got directions. After 24 hours, John and Toby arrive at their secluded cabin in Alpine, Tennessee. It just felt so good. It felt like we had our safe place, you know, and it was a moment when we were alone together,

which is what we'd both been craving, and that really was the best part of our relationship. The love cabin. It was snowy, secluded, and ultra romantic. The next day, they woke up and basically started playing house. Now, it's quite possible John was eager to put back on the 25 pounds he'd lost. So the first meal that Toby made was her signature fried chicken, potatoes, and gravy, which he happily devoured.

But John actually had even simpler cravings. It sounds like next to you, John's next great love was bacon. Yes, it was. We would get up and have breakfast with bacon, and we just had a pound of bacon every day and he'd just eat it and eat it. You know, they don't serve bacon in prison and bacon, you know, people love bacon. I love bacon. It's just like heaven. Wow. Well, I did see a survey a while back that found that 43% of people polled prefer bacon to sex. Although that poll was conducted in

Canada. James, I don't think I've seen that poll, but all vegans aside, I do know that Canadians savor their bacon. Personally, I prefer sausage. Anyway, for Toby and John, it was like they were living their own romance novel. You can almost picture the cover in your head. And over the days, some pleasure rituals started to show. Run above the bath and light the bathroom with candles, and it would be a really romantic evening, and we'd build a fire in the fireplace. Then they would bust out the boom box and start playing some of their favorite slow jams. But their absolute favorite was... Oh my gosh, Lost Lonely Boys. That's right. It was their most

famous song, Heaven. They have a song like, help me get out of this prison, help me get away. Save me from this prison. You know, and he's like, that's our song. That's our song. When they make a movie about us, that's the movie, that's the song they're going to play. Other evenings, John would sing to Toby and play her mandolin. I like how she just brought a mandolin on the trip. Like, that was an absolute need to pack.

Personally, I would have brought like a kazoo or a harmonica, something small. John was in fact a self-taught musician, so pretty easy for him. Well, soon they were venturing out of the cabin, going on shopping trips, even buying him a new bass guitar. They also scooped up a PlayStation video game console for the cabin and a blue parakeet for Toby, the animal lover. What was the parakeet's name? Hmm, Leonard. Inspired by Leonard Skinner, you know, writers of Freebird. Naturally.

And they could only be holed up for so long, so they'd find any excuse to get out of the cabin. John really wanted to see things, so we'd go somewhere. You know, we'd go to a movie or go to a grand old opry or go to something that he'd read about. We went to an aquarium. We went to the IMAX movies. You know, we'd go do something. Just to review, they are on the run from the law.

They know that the police have to be chasing them. In fact, America's Most Wanted was about to air a segment about their escape. Not to sound too judgmental, them going out in public and just hanging out is not just brazen, it's pretty dumb. In fairness, James, they did try to come up with disguises. Toby got a brown wig, which she would wear everywhere. And she bought a gray old man wig for John. But he didn't want any part of it. So he never wore it.

He actually wanted to pick out his own wig. And so one of their trips, they go out to a mall and he picks out this long blonde wig that went down past his elbow. Oh yeah, like you're trying to blend in wearing a Fabio wig out in the middle of Tennessee. That makes sense. I mean, at least get a cowboy hat. They do this for almost two weeks, but on the 13th day of their prison escape, they're on one of these excursions in Chattanooga, completely unaware that U.S. Marshals had been tracking them this entire time.

Days following their escape, local police were getting tips, which led them to Toby's storage unit. But their biggest break came when they matched the address of the super-secret Love Cabin Hideaway with the one Toby used when purchasing their getaway truck.

It's just like the movies. Yeah, where you get caught. So armed with the knowledge of where this cabin is and the truck that they're driving, law enforcement does a little drive by the cabin, but no one's there. That same night, Deputy U.S. Marshal Jason Ladd

actually spots them leaving a bookstore parking lot and quietly follows their truck. You never want to jump with anybody and put your lights and sirens on until the cavalry is there. If you do that, you better be ready to roll. Meaning, wait for backup. We wanted everyone cavalry is there. If you do that, you better be ready to roll. Meaning, wait for backup. We wanted everyone to be there.

And the call was more than answered. Toby and John were in the clouds. They didn't suspect a thing until they were approaching the highway and they saw lights and figured, oh, that must be an ambulance or something. And John said, no, this is for us. I turned and looked out the front window, and you could see the whole highway was filled with police cars, all three lanes filled with them. And he said, what do you want to do, Toby?

You're in this too. You should have a say. And when everyone got there, the Tennessee Highway Patrol come in with full force. That's crazy. He's going everywhere. Go out there and listen to the radio on Channel 6. Hearing this sounds insane. patrol come in with full force. That's crazy, he's going everywhere. Go out there and listen to the radio on channel 6. Hearing this sounds insane. In this situation, full force meant one of the biggest highway chases in Tennessee state history.

We stayed on their 6 and off we go. We're not talking 4 or 5 cop cars. We're not talking even 10 or 20. There were 40 cruisers with their lights on and two helicopters chasing them. That's a lot of guns with a lot of bullets. That was the largest, largest I've seen. There were so many lights flashing, you were blinded.

People on the interstate were just pulled over for miles. Toby was in the midst of talking John into pulling over until one of the marshal's tactics pissed him off. And just then a police car screamed around us real fast and pulled in front of us and slammed on his brakes like they wanted us to hit him and stop. And it made John mad. He said, I'm not going to pull over now. You know, they're trying to kill us. I'm going to run till we run out of gas. Toby says in all the panic, things started to become weird. Like she was on a bad trip. The whole time we were in that car chase, it was like the world was just slowed down and I couldn't hear anything. It was like I was in this weird vortex, you know, and John was talking to me. I could see him talking. There were police sirens everywhere, but I couldn't hear them.

And it was just a crazy, scary place to be. This is going from zero to insane in a matter of minutes. From the dream of the lover's cabin getaway to full-on movie-style car chase. I can't even think of, like, what movie has both a prison escape and a car chase. Con Air and all of the Fast and Furious movies. While John is living his Steven Soderbergh dream,

off-roading, Toby is actually praying for the ultimate escape. I thought, oh wow, I'm in trouble. You know, I'm in big trouble and I don't know what's going to happen to me, but whatever's going to happen to me, I can't do it. You know, I just can't do it. Just let me die. Please, please, please just let me die and be done with this. Toby wants to die. John is going insane driving upwards of a hundred miles an hour. And they're being hotly pursued by a historic number of law enforcement. Just when you'd think it couldn't get any worse for these two,

they hit a tree. Not that they've been making the greatest decisions so far, but this is bad. Bad to worse, right? Hundreds of people die each year in police chases. That's why there's restrictions on when cops are allowed to pursue a suspect. I knew that they were going to rank out at some point. Heading southbound on Interstate 75,

they put a lot of people at risk. Toby and John were banked up, but miraculously survived. And that's when we all got out and extracted them. We're literally dragging them out of the vehicle. At that point, they were apologizing, saying, I love you, and all this other stuff. Typical stuff you see in your arrest. She was saying, be nice to him, but wasn't knowing what it meant to anybody.

They were in an emotional state after the crash. During their arrest and one of his final loving gestures, John attempted to take the blame. He was telling them, she didn't have any part in this. You know, I kidnapped her. I forced her to go, you know, and they didn't believe him, you know. And they asked me, did he kidnap you? And I said, no, you know. I wasn't going to lie.

I was going to own up to it. Just to recap, this is someone who's never been pulled over for speeding. This is someone who was honest to the core, except for the fact that she helped break someone out of prison. But now she wasn't going to lie about it. For his dozen days of freedom, John got 20 years added to his life sentence. Toby naively figured since her record was clean, her penance would be manageable. I thought I'd, we'd go back to Kansas and I'd go home to my mom's house and maybe,

you know, they'd make me do community service or I'd get in trouble and do probation or something. I never thought I'd go to prison, but it was such a high profile case. The prosecutor said, I'm going to have to make her do prison time. She was sentenced to 27 months. At the same time, her husband files for divorce. He just was mortified because he is such a private person anyway. He told me once when we were getting our divorce, he said, I can't even go out in public because people look at me and they think, what must be wrong with him if she would leave him for a convicted murderer? I don't blame him. The rest of Toby's family, except for her parents, also wanted nothing to do with her. So as she's entering prison, she's also entering

a real world of hurt. I would see stuff on TV. I was on the news all the time, and the news wasn't kind. And I'd see something, I'd say, look at that, Toby. You are not worthy of anything. Toby Young ran a dog training program at a state prison in Kansas. There, she met and fell in love with John Maynard, who was serving a life sentence for murder committed during a violent carjacking. How do you fall in love with a convicted killer? You are scum. Look what they just said. And then I'd have to say, no, don't listen to what they said,

because you had to always be building yourself up. So she worked on how to forgive herself, but also realized it's okay to make mistakes. I think probably if I'd allowed myself to do just a little bit wrong every now and then in that 48 years, perhaps it wouldn't have come to this big of a downfall. You know, there's pedestals are not worth being on. James, it sounds like Toby began to find herself in prison. Yeah, but her life was still pretty complicated. The hardest part of this whole thing is that the day I was released from

prison happened to be my youngest son's birthday, which I thought was a great sign. But it was also the day that he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. And that changed everything. Her son said he needed space to focus on fighting cancer before reconnecting with his mom. But when it looked like time was running out, Toby rushed to his bedside. I went in and I said, Greg, you know, I'm really sorry. And I said, I have always loved you.

And I never meant to leave you. I always intended to come back. Their conversation ended when her ex arrived. And she asked her son for a hug. He declined. On her last visit, someone called the police and there was a scene. Toby says she was given only seconds to say goodbye to Greg. I believe he waited for me to get

there because it was like three o'clock in the afternoon and he'd been in this coma all day long and I think he waited for me. But I think there was a lot of beauty in that moment. I really do. I really do. And I know he heard me and I know he felt me there. Sometimes I look at it this way, that whatever his purpose was here on this earth, he accomplished it 13 days short of 25 years. And I'm still here at 65 and I haven't done it yet. Toby's current husband, Chris, reaches out for her hand to console her. The two met by chance working for the same construction company.

She was building their website while Chris oversaw Cruz building condos. Toby heard them talking about a coworker who'd just gotten arrested for a DUI. Chris said, I need to write to him and see what it's going to take for him to get out. And I said, well, if you're going to write to him, you need to know his inmate number

because, you know, they don't get their letters unless their inmate number's on there. And he said, how would you know that? I did some time, and that's all I said. And he went and did a Google search on me that night, and he came into the office the next day and said, we need to talk. I had no trouble with any of it. I don't hold it against people when they have problems in their lives. I've had plenty of myself.

But if you drag them around with you and you let your problems get you down, then you're just, you know, you're going to live that kind of a life. Or you can learn from your mistakes and make a difference somehow. They're definitely in sync. Started out as friends and went from there. I had no intentions of getting married again, but Chris was just too much the perfect person. I needed him. When she and I got together, we saved each other. Chris is bald with a formidable build. Sort of resembles a cuddly bouncer. Toby came clean with him about her ex John Maynard and that whole situation.

It's a relationship between three people, you know, but not in a weird way. It's just that, you know, John has to be acknowledged as being somebody that's a part of Toby's past. And I accept Toby's present. And the only way to accept Toby's present is to accept the whole package. So both Toby and Chris went to visit John Maynard in prison and spent hours together. That visit, though, was really good. This was a person that I had risked everything for, because I was so crazy in love with him. And then the night we got arrested, you're just ripped apart. And he goes in one police car one way, and I go in another police car another way, and you didn't get to say goodbye or anything.

Well, I think the biggest thing for me was to just give him a hug and walk away and say goodbye. You know, to me, those three things were the closure that I needed. We reached out to John in prison in hopes of hearing his side of things and if he experienced any closure too, but he hasn't responded. John was what I expected him to be, charming and intelligent and charismatic. Somebody that if the circumstances had been different, he and I would have gotten together and went and had a beer together or something after work. John was keeping in touch with Toby until 2022 when her memoir came out.

Someday he'll email me again. There's a lot of activity in the house. Toby's daughter-in-law, Lucia, has friends visiting from Belgium. Toby and Chris head upstairs for the dinner party. And the table looks like Autumn has arrived early at the house, and it's filled with the aroma of all-day cooking. Here's Chris's son, Kevin. As like our welcome to America dinner and visiting us,

we basically made Thanksgiving dinner. It's probably the most American thing we could think of. I fixed my candied sweet potatoes and my creamy corn. And then we also have mashed potatoes and ham. Stop. Grandpa, you want to say grace? Thank you, Lord, for this meal we're going to have with friends and family and podcasts.

After losing her own family, Toby found a new one with Chris. They obviously care, but they also just seem to get her. Toby is sharing a story with the table about her nine-year-old granddaughter eavesdropping on a recent Zoom call. One day I was doing an interview and, you know, I was doing it on my computer. And I talked about something about being a criminal and Elisa drew me a little picture and laid it on my desk and it had a girl with tears running down her face and it said grandma why are you a criminal you know and I called her over and I said Elisa you know I was in prison she yeah, but I didn't know you were a criminal.

And I said, well, if you've been in prison, then that's what makes you a criminal. And she's like, oh, okay. The landing page on Toby's website says, You are not your worst mistake. And she appears to be living it. Her memoir is called Living with Conviction, Unexpected Sisterhood, Healing and Redemption in the Wake of Life-Altering Choices. And remember Leonard, the pet parakeet Toby and John adopted during their stay in the cabin?

Of course. It was adopted by one of the marshals who apprehended Toby and John. But of course, he renamed it. Oh, let me guess. Low Salinity Bird? Free Bird? Jail Bird? Bird is the word? Nope. He's now called Maynard, after John Maynard.

So basically, they're both living behind bars. Chirp chirp. On the next episode, a city on fire. Boston was nicknamed the arson capital of the world. 1982, 1983, people around the city were afraid to go to sleep at night. It's like the tornadoes of nighttime. That's next week on Scam Town. Scam Town is an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter.

New episodes come out each Monday. If you want to check out a few extras from our show, you can find us at Fun Meter Official on Instagram. The show is hosted and executive produced by us. I'm Brian Lozarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. Kathleen Horan produced this episode. Clarissa Sosin was our researcher.

Our senior producer is Christopher Olin. Our co-executive producers are Shannon Pence, Nicole Laufer, and Matt Kay. The show was edited and sound designed by Jude Brewer. Final mixing by Ben Freer from Fiddle Leaf Sound. Music for the podcast was composed by James Newberry. Additional music by Five Alarm. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.