Something Was Wrong - S14 Ep4: Next Level Evil

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

*Content warning: emotional, sexual and physical violence, rape, childhood emotional abuse and animal abuse. For info on how to report a crime related to this season and share related crime tips with our team, please visit somethingwaswrong.com/14 For free and confidential resources, please visit: somethingwaswrong.com/resources Artwork by the amazing Sara Stewart @GreaterThanOkay - Instagram.com/greaterthanokayFollow Something Was Wrong on Instagram @SomethingWasWrongPodcastSWW’s theme music –  U think U by Glad Rags, from their album Wonder Under

This season, guests will be sharing their own testimony in regards to the criminal allegations against Jake Gravbrot. All persons are assumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Guest experiences are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself, something was wrong, or wondering. At the time of this episode's airing, Jake Gravbrot has not responded to our request for comment. If you have been a victim of Jake Gravbrot or have a crime tip in

relation to these matters, please visit something was wrong.com slash 14 for more information. All names of minors involved in this story have been changed for their privacy and protection. Some survivor names have also been changed for anonymity and safety purposes. Season 14 covers a variety of mature topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence. Content warnings for each episode and resources for survivors, can be found in the episode notes. The podcast or any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment.

Thank you so much for listening. They wanted to go talk to him. I'm pretty sure they went back to the house and spoke with Kalen. He did thousands of dollars worth of damage. The police come to our house. I don't know where he is. I tell them maybe he's at his salon. I have no idea, but he's not here.

They're like, can we look around? I'm like, be my guest. Promise you, I would tell you. I would be the first to let you know. And she told them, go check his salon. And they asked if we wanted to press charges. The car was in Chris's name. And he said, yes, I want to press charges.

there's a lot of damage to the car. They took the police report and gave it to us, then drove back to my house the next day. And at some point, Jake reached out and asked if there was going to be a warrant for his arrest. It was a Thursday when the car incident happened. And Friday, he was supposed to go pick his son up for the weekend. And he said, I don't want to go pick my son up, but there's going to be cops waiting for me.

And I thought, why would there be cops waiting for you at your son's pickup. That doesn't even make any sense at all. Chris said to me that he was starting to see how this situation was affecting me. And after seeing Jake act like that, he made the decision that pressing charges would most likely amplify the situation more. And so he said, we'll turn it into insurance. We'll get the damage repaired. But I think it's best to let that be. You can move on. They can move on. We'll just leave it at that. In the days after I didn't have too much communication with him, And I wasn't communicating with Kalin either. But Jake reached out a couple times to either lash out at me or to apologize.

He went back and forth between the two. One night, he messaged me to tell me that he was going to kill himself and that he was needing me to give messages to his mom and to his kids. Tell my daughter this and tell my son this. Make sure you tell my mom that I loved her. and I'm sorry for everything I put her through. I'm hysterical on the other side of this. I'm trying to get him to answer his phone.

He won't answer. I am literally hysterical to the point where I'm sick to my stomach, trying to reason with him. I don't know what to do. He's fighting back on everything that I say. And then finally, he says to me, I got to go. My train is coming.

He told me that he was going to throw himself in front of the light rail. And he stopped responding. My messages weren't going through. I was frantic. I called Chris and told him what was going on, and Chris called Kalin. And Kalin went to look for him, and she called Chris back to say, he's asleep on the bathroom floor. He's sound asleep. She said, to my knowledge, I don't think he even left tonight.

He had done that same thing to Kalin, just a few days prior to that. Her response to all of that was she didn't want to deal with it. I remember thinking, that is so mean. I can't imagine feeling that way. But after knowing that he was telling me all of that, and he was just sitting at home, and then he went to sleep and just stopped responding, and it was all just some kind of psychological manipulation

as a way to mess with me or something, it made me mad because I was just, I don't think I've ever been that hysterical in my life, feeling so helpless that I'm talking to someone in their final moments and there's nothing I can do. do. I'm too far away to do anything and I don't know what to do. He did that to me a couple more times after that. And I pretty quick got to that point where you're like, I don't want to listen to this again. This is manipulation. It started to make me mad because I knew that he wasn't

really in that place. I had enough evidence at that point to know that when he was threatening it with Kalin and hysterical with her, that he was calmly on the phone with me. And when he was threatening it with me, he was asleep. It was all lies. So after that, I was ready to cut off communication. I'd seen enough at that point. I didn't really even care at this point of salvaging a friendship because I feel like, I don't know who it was that I thought you were, but that is not who you are. I was past the point of feeling like, you're still a good person, you're just going through something bad. I had moved past that into you're a shitty, human being. And I want nothing to do with you. I don't want to be friends with you. I want nothing to do

with you. He kind of beat me to the punch and wrote to me and said, Kailen and I are trying to make it work. She's putting tracking devices on my phone so she can see who I text. This is my last text message to you. I wish you well. You can write me letters to the salon if you wish. Goodbye. I went in the next day and changed my phone number because I just was so done. I didn't want him to be able to contact me. I blocked him on social media. A week or so went by, and I started to get really sad. I felt like I didn't have any kind of closure.

I was starting to feel the sadness for what he had done to me, rather than feeling like up until this point, I was so focused on trying to help him or feeling guilty or all of this. I wasn't really prioritizing. how I was feeling in all of this. I started to go through those stages of grief, feeling I had lost this friend that I'd had my whole life. I felt like he died because he wasn't real.

He was not the person that he portrayed himself to be. I don't think I've ever been so confused in my life. In an effort to try and work through some of those emotions, I wrote him a letter. When I first started writing it, I don't think I ever had any intention of actually sending. it to him. I just wanted to put it all out on paper and try and sort through how I was feeling. I worked on this letter and rewrote parts and really analyzed how I was feeling in it. I did this

for probably over a week. Kept coming back to it and changing things here and there and adding to it and remembering other things that made me angry or made me sad or frustrated me. And at the end of it, I thought, I'm going to send it. I'll never get closure from him, but that will be my closure. I sent it. It was a couple weeks later. I had forgotten to block. He had an Instagram account for his salon that at that point he wasn't really posting on.

So I had forgotten about it because it wasn't super active. He reached out through there. And the first thing he says to me is, I got your letter. I'll never forget any of the. the things that you said in that letter. But I just wanted to let you know I have cancer. Around this time, I was also back at the house because he was having to go to the doctor. They were going to biopsy the specific part of his body because of HIPAA.

I can't tell you exactly what it is. But it's like the best cancer you can get if you get cancer. All they do is they remove it and then you're done. They removed half of it. recognized that it was cancerous. Then we went and talked with the doctor. They said we are going to have to remove the other portion of it. But once we remove it, you're going to be done.

And he kept saying, this is best case scenario. You're in a good spot. I was like, okay, this is good. So I stayed at the house while he's recovering so that I could help him if he needs it. I felt bad for him. His mom wasn't there to help him. I wasn't going to leave him after he had surgery. I wouldn't do that to anybody.

I stayed, got him things that he needed. That was it. Left him alone. Our agreement for that last period of time that I was at the house was, he was to remain upstairs while I could be downstairs, but that he was not to come downstairs. He would leave me stupid things. He left me like flowers on the porch. They removed it and everything was fine.

He seemed fine other than being a mess. crying all the time and trying to make me feel bad and telling me how much he loved me and how much he loved our family and didn't want me to leave the night before I was supposed to leave I was supposed to leave at 5 a.m. I remember him coming downstairs and waking me up and getting on top of me. I was trying to push him off and I was obviously not strong enough and I was crying and telling him to stop, but Emerson was asleep next to me. So it wasn't like I could be screaming. The last thing I wanted was for her to wake up and see something like that.

She was only two, but she was having her own stuff. She was having diarrhea and vomiting. And when I took her to the doctor, they basically said she was picking up on all of my anxiety. There was nothing wrong with her. It was she could feel what I was going through. I felt like I was already damn. her. The last thing I wanted was to scare her more. I wasn't taking birth control, so I was afraid he was going to get me pregnant. He finished and just got up and walked out. As awful as it was,

that was the norm for us. I would be sleeping and I'd wake up and he's having sex with me. There were so many times where I'd be like laying there crying and he would still be having sex with me. This is different only because Emerson was sleeping next to me, but this had been happening for years. And I think the part that I hung on to the longest was why make me have sex with you if you're having sex with all these other women? Why not just leave me alone? He knew I didn't want to have sex with him. He knew that it wasn't pleasurable for me, that I wasn't enjoying it. He knew he was forcing me into it, yet he still forced me while he's getting it from all these other women. And that's the part that I don't understand. Why not just leave me alone, especially knowing

how much I did not want to participate in that with him? Later, Mimi would talk about how he wanted to have rape, fantasy, sex with her. And I think this is where it started. I think he liked doing that to me. I think he liked having sex with me when I didn't want to have sex with him. and he was going to make it happen one more time before I left. Then at 5 a.m., I got ready to leave, and he gave me a letter saying drive safe and all this stuff. And honestly, that was the best thing he could have done because when we went to court later, he tried to say that I kidnapped Emerson. I used that letter to prove that he agreed to me leaving the state.

I go over to my friend's house and pick her up. I told her what happened. We drove together down to California. Then she flew back to Seattle when we got to San Francisco so that I only had like a seven hour drive to do by myself rather than like a 24 hour drive to do by myself. She ended up letting me know that she was going to take Emerson and leave for a bit. It wasn't I'm getting divorced from Jake. It wasn't a ton of information right at the beginning, but it was like, I'm going to need to go back to Southern California and just get out of this situation. I did know that she had found some evidence that he was in some type of relationship with someone else or at least having sex with somebody else. Obviously,

that's alarming in and of itself. And I completely get why she felt like she needed to be in a place where she could have support from her family. When you haven't really let a ton of people know how bad things are. You're in this situation that you feel it's impossible to get out of. She had kind of created this environment where she felt like she was trapped and thought the only way to really completely separate myself from this, where I'm also not going to get sucked back in by this person who's gaslighting me and telling me all sorts of crazy stories is going to have to relocate temporarily to another state. We move back to California. I move in with my younger brother. He helps me with Emerson. He's

amazing. He was my rock. He could see how much damage Jake had caused. He wanted to protect me. I'm really thankful that I had him during this time because he gave me the space and helped me so that I could leave and get out. After I left is when Jake said he's no longer talking to Melissa. He said he'd blocked her. Probably sent me a screenshot to show me that he blocked her. He wanted to prove it to me. But he was talking to her through WhatsApp. or like some type of side thing. She wrote him a letter, trying to get some closure. And he was like, I need to talk to you about that letter.

You need to come and talk to me. She can tell you more about that. He says, the doctors have told me it doesn't look good. He was very vague. He wouldn't go into detail about any of it. He just said, it doesn't look good. I'm actually going to go visit Kalen. And I really want to take Emerson to Disneyland one.

last time. And after everything that we've been through, could you help me with that? Again, he prayed on my guilt a lot. I felt terrible at that point. I knew that he was being honest about having cancer because Kalin had told Chris, well, he was diagnosed with cancer, but I didn't know anything beyond that. And so I felt bad and I ended up buying him tickets for Disneyland. I gave him actually a gift card that was enough for a one-day ticket for the three of them. And this was after the month before when we were still in communication, he had made me feel so bad for potentially breaking their family apart that I had actually paid for their marriage counseling.

It's crazy to look back on it because I don't even know who this person was that I was in that moment falling for all of this, but I was so. confused and struggling and in such a dark place that I went along with it. Every time he would ask for anything, I would just give it to him. I don't know why I did that. Once you get in person with him, like you're fucked. Because he can manipulate you. Unless you know what's happening, you're going to get manipulated.

After I left, I could see it a lot clearer. But when you're in it, you can't really see it fully. He starts emailing my mom, but he's asked my mom not to tell me that they're talking, which is also really weird. Jake started emailing me daily, sometimes several times a day, begging me to talk to my daughter to please forgive him, that he had changed. He was going to church. He was a different man. He wanted nothing more than his family to work. At this time, I didn't know who Melissa was, we didn't know any of that, but Jake was really begging me to talk to Kalyn. I had gone to her without full knowledge of everything that was going on, saying, is there any way that this can work out? You've got a child, divorce is difficult

at best. It's a solution to what ails you in the moment, but it doesn't absolve anybody of all the responsibility. If there's any way that you can work this out and you think you could be happy and keep the family together, I think you should consider that. All these emails were, I'm going to church, I just ask God for forgiveness, and I really am a changed person, and I need another chance. So I was feeling sorry for him, I guess. It wasn't until later finding out all the other stuff that, oh my gosh, I felt so stupid for letting him manipulate me that way. That was horrible figuring that one out. In the moment, I thought I was doing the right thing, asking her to reconsider all of her options and what is best in the long run for Emerson, for herself, the family

unit. My mom's a Christian. She is like, you need to go back. He's found God. He's a better person now, things are better, and you need to go home. And I said, I don't know if I'll ever be ready, but right now I'm not ready and I'm not going. She's like telling me it's my duty and stuff to go back. And so that's when I'm like, mom, he raped me. He hit Emerson. I know that he did those things. He was verbally abusive.

He was emotionally abusive. He didn't pay for anything. I bought all the diapers. I bought everything. He paid for nothing. And my mom is like, Yeah, but now he's found God. Like, all of a sudden, everything doesn't matter because he's found God.

I'm like, how do I convince her that I can't go back? Because I really believed at this point, if I went back, I could never leave again. He would kill me before I would be able to leave. It was a lot. And I couldn't even figure out how I was feeling about really anything because he was constantly talking and pushing his feelings on me and constantly bombarding me with, it wasn't information, it was a bunch of bullshit. He would write these long blogs about how he cheated on me and how he disrespected me, how he didn't take care of our daughter and that he left me to do it all by myself. He would

out himself, but then somehow switch it to be like, but I just want to be better and I'm trying to make myself better and I'm improving. And then he's having all these people reach out to me telling me, oh, he's different. He's getting better. He's really working on himself. I can see a difference. It was just so confusing. I can't even figure out what I'm feeling because all I know is what he's feeling because he keeps pushing it on me constantly. After I left, he was telling me It was right before he was coming to visit. And he was telling me all the things he misses about me. It's all over the top.

Like, I miss your smell and I miss the way that your hands feel. I miss the way that you would touch my arm. I'm wanting to throw up reading it. He's like, what do you miss about me? I'm like, anything I've missed about you, I have been missing for the last five years. I don't miss anything. And he's like, how could you say that to me after I said all these nice things to you? and I say all these nice things and write you these emails and you don't even respond.

And I'm like, it's because you're like a used car salesman giving me a spiel when I don't care about how you feel right now. How you feel is not important to me right now. I'm trying to figure out how I feel and I'm trying to protect my daughter. I'm not trying to care about your feelings. I did that. I've already done that for six years and look where it got me. Now I'm trying to focus on myself and you won't let me. On March 21st, after him asking me relentlessly if I'm coming back, I said that I would come back, but I wasn't ready yet or anytime soon. I had talked to his cousin and she said, I've been spending a lot of time with him and it looks like he's changing and he wants to be better. He's trying to be accountable. He had given himself a curfew. It was something that he put on

himself. He was going to be home at 11 and that he wasn't going to see or talk to Melissa. Not that Melissa was the problem. He was like, well, this is what I'm going to do to show you. There was no point where I demanded anything in any of this. I wasn't like, I want to see X, Y, and Z. I was like, okay, you tell me whatever silly things you want. I don't care. He was like, I'm going to put a tracker on my phone because that was back before you could share your location with somebody. He had installed something on my phone to see where he was. I didn't even really look at it. So I hadn't tried to find him or anything. So I didn't realize that he actually could track me also. There were times where he's like, why were you here? And I'm like, what are

you even talking about? He was like, who is this person? And it was someone I had searched. It was someone from high school. I was like, oh, yes, this person. And he was like, who is this? And he was like, who is this guy, why are you looking him up online? And I'm like, why the fuck do you know what I'm doing? He was definitely stalking me online and it was very creepy. I uninstalled that app that he had installed, which enraged him, but I'm like, I don't care where you are. Do not continue to follow me. I had done nothing for him not to trust me. So for him to do that to me really made me mad. End of April, early May was when I was attempting to try and come back. It had been only like two weeks and he's like, I need a date.

And I'm like, I don't know. Why are you so aggressive? How am I supposed to figure out my feelings when all you do is message me all day long? That's why I'm here. And that's why you're there. I don't want to be around you. I don't want to talk to you. He ended up telling Melissa, he would leave his.

phone at home and take his iPad out with him so that he still had access to I messaging the phone but could pretend that he was at home so he could text me from his iPad but not be at home he would say like oh I'm just at home doing whatever I'll have an 11 o'clock curfew because nothing good happens after 11 these are things that like he created for himself I did not say you have to be home at this time I didn't tell him really anything I was like like, okay, fine, whatever you want to do. But he would just take his stuff and stay out and pretend that he was home. So it was just so weird.

He would say he wanted to talk to Emerson. I would get her on the phone with him. And then he'd be talking to me the whole time, trying to ask her questions about me, which also was very uncomfortable to the point where I was like, we're getting off the phone. I'm not doing this with you. he came to visit from April 10th to April 15th.

During this visit, we went to Disneyland. I was shocked that he paid for us to go. He's like, I'm going to pay for us to go to Disneyland. I found out later that Melissa paid for that as well because he had told her that his cancer was going to kill him and he wanted to take Emerson to Disneyland for one last time before he died, which is pretty cruel to do to somebody.

So she paid for it for us to go to Disneyland. We went to an angel game while he was here. We went to the Orange County Zoo. And he stayed in a hotel the whole time. I wouldn't let him stay with us. One of the days, he's like, let me cut your hair. I was like, I don't want you to cut my hair. And he's like, please, I don't want you getting your hair cut by anyone else.

He was really weird about it. Like, let me just cut your hair. So I said, fine. So I went up to his room. We're in his bathroom. He's cutting my hair. He finishes and I go to the bathroom and I have a message in Facebook Messenger and it is from an anonymous messenger that is calling themselves blue sky. I get this message.

Okay. I have it. So it says, Kalen, I'm writing from a fake account and I shall tell you why. I don't trust Jake or what he would do to me or my life or career if he ever found out who I was who shared this information. I hope you can understand that. I can't ask that you never share this with him, so I have to protect myself. I met him for the first time when he was dating Romi, so I've known him for a little bit. Romy is also who he was messaging through Facebook on our wedding day when he was saying he was going to.

to meet her in Vegas to have sex with her at like a hair stylist convention. I know a lot of the same people as him. I also randomly have some mutual friends with you. So I've heard some stuff from both sides. My intention is not to be in the middle or to create any issues. My intention is honesty and nothing more. This will be a one-time message. Now that he is telling people you are coming home,

He has completely won you back. I think you deserve to know the truth and nobody else seems willing to tell you. He has made you look like a fool. His behavior is disgusting. Even with all this non-stop words and stupid pictures and posts or his ridiculous public confession on his blog, he still has not told you even half of the truth.

It's just words. He's completely and utterly full of shit. You deserve to know the truth. He did cheat on you repeatedly while you were pregnant with the same person. You also started your relationship as the other woman because he was already seeing someone else before you and after you started dating. And this one wasn't a coworker or even a client to my knowledge. She lived in Seattle at the time. He doesn't think that anyone knows about that so he doesn't have to be honest about it.

Jake Logic at his finest. They haven't all just been. fuck friends. He's arrogant and selfish and knows that he can have whatever the fuck he wants. What he wrote in that confession was nothing more than a fictional story to garner more sympathy. He believes he can win anything and that's what he is attempting to do with you now. You are just another game to him. He knows if he gives up or you don't come back, he knows he loses his daughter. Anyone who knows Jake, he does not like to lose anything. He doesn't like being told no by anybody. He'd sell his soul to the devil to get you to come home, but not for the reason

that you think. You are nothing more than a pawn in his twisted game. A game he thinks he can sweet talk his way out of. It's sickening. I think you know this in your heart. He does not now and never has loved or respected you. You don't treat people you love. the way he treats you. He has spoken so horribly about you over the years, everything from you being straight edge to you being a complete selfish, controlling bitch he wishes he could be rid of, but can't because of his daughter. Don't doubt that. I can tell you he never talked about Romy that way when they were together. He was never loyal to you. Don't let him tell you otherwise. I only know of one of the woman he was with personally.

But they were both ones he didn't admit to in the story. So I'd bet there were even more that he hasn't come clean about. The way that he treats women in general is appalling. He is not capable of telling the truth. He didn't just cheat on you a few times. He cheated on you the entire time. Think about that. The entire time.

Disgusting. He has absolutely no respect for you. He doesn't even respect you enough to tell you the whole truth. You aren't worthy of even that. to him. He only cares about keeping his daughter, nothing else. If he actually cared, he wouldn't have done what he did. If he cared, he would have tried to fix it on his own. He didn't because he truly doesn't care about you at all. The rest is just talking, talking, talking. As you know, he can talk his way out of anything. He has never told the truth in his whole life. Only when he is

caught, will he do so? But even then, it's only partial truth. Pathological liars, manipulators, don't suddenly become truthful saints in a matter of weeks. Sorry, it doesn't happen. They just get better at lying. Case in point. Has he once confessed anything to you on his own? I'm sure the answer is no, just like he'll deny what's written in here, I'm sure. The truth to Jake is a last resort, nothing more. He showed his true colors to you that time and time again. What you are seeing now is not genuine. It's all for show. As you know, he's a master of deception. He uses many tools to get what he wants. Right now, he's using religion and words to manipulate you in addition to those close to you, your family and friends. It's nothing more than a game. He doesn't lose anything he plays,

and he knows that if he loses this game, he'll also lose his daughter. He's a daughter. He's is trying to turn your family and friends against you and it looks like it's working brilliantly. Why do you think everyone is trying to convince you to give him a chance? He is doing it on purpose and behind your back. I feel bad for you. You should hear the way people are talking about you in Seattle based on what he's telling them. He thinks that you are the one that needs to change. He thinks that you are the unreasonable one, that you are the one that needs help.

The words bitter, angry, self-righteous are common now. He has somehow managed to turn himself into the victim in this situation. People actually feel sorry for him and have taken his side over yours. It's disgusting and there is no way after everything he has done to you that anyone should ever feel sorry for him. People are actually starting to think that you were the awful one now. He is trying to get to your own parents even. That was obvious from his over-the-top confession. You have to know that he's spoken nothing but venom of your family from the very beginning.

He truly hates them. He does not respect them. He's just using them. And I'm sure at some point he will start trying to convince you just how much he's changed to. He knows they are good, kind Christians. And he knows if he appears to have found Jesus, they will side with him. He's done this purposefully so that they have. all help convince you to come back. I know that you know better than this. You're smart,

Kaelin. Don't fall for this bullshit. You're too good for that. You were starting to feel peace being away from him. You felt the difference. There is a reason for that. He is toxic. Don't allow yourself to be a pawn in his game. Lean on your friends in California. Anybody who has been corrupted by Jake's lies will help you see the truth in your situation. If it seems too good to be true, it always is. You are a beautiful, strong, independent woman. You're an amazing mother. You deserve somebody to love you and respect you completely.

There's a man out there that will love you and your daughter the way that you deserve and never put you through this bullshit. Jake is not now and never will be that person. No one doubts that he loves his daughter. It's all for her, though. You will be miserable if you come back to. him because you know you deserve better and you know that you will never ever be able to trust him or even a word of that comes out of his mouth please remember that you have tons of people praying for you

and your daughter some of us can actually see through jake's lies and bullshit i'm so sorry he did this to you signed somebody who cares so when i got that honestly i thought maybe it was one of of his boy cousins at first because I was really close to one of them and I felt like they would have done that, tried to protect me. They were close to him that they would have heard and said something. There was also a friend that was a tattoo artist that he was close with and I thought maybe it was him because he's a very nice, genuine person and I felt like he might be looking out for me. there was another person that she was like a youth counselor and she was always a really good friend. She helped me move the one time when I was pregnant and I thought maybe it was her because she'd been around the scene for a while.

In all honesty, I have no clue who it is and no one's ever come forward and told me, hey, I sent that to you. I did not know he was emailing my mom when I got this message because he was doing that behind. my back and asked my mom not to tell me. And she didn't. It was somebody that met him when Romie was around. So that would have been seven years prior. But would have been 2006. I know that Courtney thought that he was cheating on her with Romie. But when Romney came to stay, she stayed at Jake's apartment. And Courtney said that he told her she needed to leave because Romie was coming to stay with him. Their relationship's a little bit murky, so I have a harder time kind of following the timeline there. I think he was doing party drugs. I think he was doing cocaine.

A lot. The only thing he ever did around me was smoke weed, and he would never do it in front of me because I was straight-edge, so he didn't do anything around me. At one of Bowie's birthday parties, Courtney, she was there. We did it kind of all together as a family. And she appeared to be under the influence of something. I could tell that she had gone through it herself with him. But I do think that her memory might get a little foggy because of substance abuse. She's doing really great now. I just want to see that. And she's somebody that I have a relationship with. She's always said that I was a really good stepmom to Bowie. And so she's, she's doing really good. She respects me. I respect her as his mom. It was very hard for me to leave Bowie because I knew that both of them were not fully stable. And he was so erratic. I didn't want him to be around that. And so I had reached out to her when I left because I was like, you need to know, things are very crazy. I thought it was better if she keep Bowie from our house because I didn't think that it was very healthy for him to be around.

during those that time. Did you ever witness him hitting or abusing Bowie at any point? No, the only abuse that I ever, I didn't even witness it. I just knew one time he had cats and I had come over and one of his cats had a bloody nose and was limping and I was like, what happened? And then Bowie told me that he got mad and kicked the car. cat. And so I got his cats and I packed them up and I took them to the shelter. I think abusing an animal in front of a child is, I think that's abuse. I think it's been so long that he might not even

remember. I know that he did that in front of him. But I never witnessed anything. No excessive punishment or anything like that. I would have stopped it. He would have never done it in front of me. I was in a bathroom with him in a hotel. I was scared. It was everything that I was already feeling. I was mad. I confronted him about it. I said, I just got this message, we need to leave.

And he's like, what are you talking about? What's going on? Trying to be super sweet. And so I pack up Emerson, got her in the car. He had one more day of visitation. I think that that is when we were going to the Orange County Zoo, I had told him in the car, I'm not coming back anytime soon. I know I told you after I talked to your cousin, I would come back end of April, early May,

but I'm not giving you a date. I'm not coming back anytime soon. I don't know when I'm coming back. I don't know what's going on. I need time and you're too much for me. And he freaked out on me and I kicked him out of the car. He was like, how am I supposed to get to the airport? And I was like, not my problem. I don't care. You figure it out. He comes running up and he's, I'm sorry. I just don't know who would say that. None of that's true. I was like, I'm not having this conversation in front of Emerson. I'm not talking to you about this. This is not an appropriate place to have this conversation. The sucky part of that whole thing, I mean, it's all pretty bad, but it really took away from what was in that message because he was so concerned with who

sent it. Maybe it was this person. Maybe it was this person. I'm like, who cares? I don't even care who it was. I wish they could have told me and I could have been able to ask some questions, but it doesn't matter who told me. The point of it is I'm not coming back because this is all how I feel. And knowing you're going around running your mouth in Seattle, I don't want to come back right now. I'm not ready. He was pretty upset about that. He went back to Seattle on the 15th. And then on the 19th is when he asked Melissa to come over and talk to him.

He took them to Disneyland. I don't remember us having very consistent communication through any of that. I would hear from him occasionally, but we weren't communicating on a regular basis. Then when he came back to Seattle, I think Kalyn had started to pull away from him even more at that point as she was further away from him and able to start to clear her head a little bit. And he was starting to act out again. I started getting more messages during all of this. And he asked, are you going to be in Seattle at all? I really need a friend. I'm really struggling. I don't need anything other than someone to talk to. I just need someone to help me sort out what's going on in my head. He kept asking over and over and over again. And I was in.

Seattle one day and I was with other friends and I told him finally just so he would stop messaging me. I said, I'll stop by on my way home. He said thank you and he pretty much left me alone the rest of that day. And so I was able to go about my day. I was dreading, actually stopping by. I didn't really want to see him. I didn't really want to talk to him. I was just tired at this point, emotionally and mentally. I stopped by and we sat outside and he cried and cried and cried some more hysterically at points and I sat and listened. And every time I would try and say anything, he'd interrupt me and tell me I wasn't finished talking. So I just sat and listened. As soon as he's done, he turns the waterworks off like a switch. And he says to me, we should have sex one last

time. I said, no, I'm not having sex with you. And he gets super, super pushy. I'm not going to take no for an answer is the attitude that he was coming at me with. I gave in and I felt terrible about myself afterwards. And I'm getting ready to leave. And he says to me, hey, what would you say? If I told you, I just recorded us with a secret hidden camera. My head whipped around so fast that I think it caught him off guard and he says to me, oh, I was just joking. I didn't really do that. I was so uncomfortable that I got my keys and left because I knew up until that point he had wanted to video or take pictures of almost every time we were together. Sometimes without asking for permission, he would just do it. He would grab his phone or grab his camera or whatever and

do it and I just let him. So I couldn't shake the feeling that most likely he was being honest, that he really had videoed us. And that made me mad because it's one thing to like need me to come over there to talk. But I don't think he needed me to come over there to talk. I think he obviously knew that that's where he wanted it to go and he set the camera up ahead of time and hit it. So he knew that that was going to happen. And I felt really violated by the whole thing.

Going forward for the next couple weeks, I again wasn't really talking to him. I actually had started talking to Kalin more, and we were starting to help each other sort through how we were both feeling because it's really confusing to deal with someone like this. May of 2013, I woke up and I felt really off, and I mentioned it to my best friend, and she said, you need to go take a pregnancy test. And I instantly panicked thinking,

that would be my luck that I got pregnant that one time that I gave in and went and talked to him, and he was pushy about it. And sure enough, I drove to Target, took the pregnancy test in the Target bathroom, and it instantly popped up positive. I was in shock. I am on this roller coaster that I cannot get off of.

I don't want to be on this roller coaster. I don't want to be on this roller coaster with these people. I don't want to have him in my life. I need to get away from all of this. I called Chris and told him, I just took a pregnancy test. I'm pregnant. I don't know what to do. He said, okay, calm down.

We can talk about it when I get off work. And I said, okay, he comes home. We sit down and talk about it. And he says to me, you need to tell him tonight or I'm going to. And I said, I don't want to tell him yet. I'm not ready. I need a couple days to like try and figure out what I'm going to do, how I'm going to handle this situation without him bombarding me

because he won't give me any kind of space to think or process. He'll bombard me over and over again with texts. Chris was pretty adamant. No, you're going to tell him and you're going to tell him tonight or I can do it for you, but he's going to find out tonight. I said, okay, fine. And I sent him a text and said, I took a pregnancy test, I'm pregnant.

I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I don't know how I'm going to handle this. I need you to give me a little bit of space. while I figure this out. And that first night, he was, oh my gosh, okay, let me know what you need from me and left me alone. Then the next day, just as I thought, he started absolutely bombarding my phone with text messages. It was so much to the point that I would turn my phone off because I couldn't handle either the sound of it vibrating or the notification. I couldn't handle hearing it anymore.

Chris was seeing what this was doing to me. He says to me, I'm going to give him a week. He's going to tell Kalin the truth that he got you pregnant or I'm going to tell him in a week because I'm not going to watch him put you both through this anymore. This is absolutely ridiculous that one person can cause this kind of chaos. He said, you can go ahead and tell him that. On this day, Chris is calling and telling Kalin the truth that you're pregnant. He has that whole time to tell her in an answer. any way that he wants to.

I thought, okay, well, that's plenty of time. He can figure it out. Well, he was not figuring it out. That week that he was supposed to be having this conversation with Kalen, he spent it coming at me with idea after idea of how to get him out of having to take accountability for this. In his mind, Kalin's in California, and he's almost worn her down to the point where she's willing to come back and try. and he says to me, you're going to ruin everything. She's going to find out you're pregnant and she's not going to come back to Seattle.

I said, I don't really understand how that's my problem. You've created this situation. You've lied your way into this situation and you're trying to lie your way out of it. And I don't want any part of it. He asked me to have an abortion and I said, no, I'm not having an abortion. And he said, okay, well, then we're going to do adoption. My high school friend and her husband are actually looking to adopt, I contacted her earlier and she's willing to meet with you this week to start the process.

I am just floored. Like, what is wrong with you? I am adopted. I personally am not going to be able to give a child up for adoption because I've struggled my whole life for my own personal reasons. I can't do it. And he said, oh, okay, well, let's figure out something else then. I'll give you $10,000 cash if you tell Chris and Kalin that you slept with a bunch of random people and you don't know who the father is. I said, anyone that knows me is going to know that's a lie. They're going to know that it's yours.

And you don't have $10,000 anyway. He says, I'll give you $10,000 and I will be present in the baby's life when I can. I said, you don't have $10,000. You wouldn't pay me that anyway. And that's seriously the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I could not believe all the things he was coming at me with. He said, well, why don't you just have your doctor induce you two and a half months early? And that way, Kailen will think that you got pregnant during the original time frame where we were seeing each other. I'm sorry, what the fuck?

Yeah, he wanted me to ask my doctor to induce me early. So it was on the last day. He missed the deadline. Chris called me and told me. I was still at work when he said, let me know when you get off work. I have to tell you something. I was anxious to find out what that would be

because he just tells me as it is and straight up and I'm so thankful for him that he's done that for me. He's been respectful enough to be like, this is what it is. No judgment, whatever you want to do with that. He thought that Jake was the worst. He is watching him manipulate, abuse, and destroy two women, right? With Melissa, and he's seeing it with me.

He had told me he hadn't seen her. So how do you get somebody pregnant you haven't even seen? And it was relief again. I was like, yes, this is what I needed. This is what is going to allow me to stay. I now have proof to show my mom. He is manipulative. He is just manipulating you.

He is trying to turn you against me and it's working. Nothing is real. I already had plans to meet my mom for lunch. So when I got there, I went him to my mom and I said, guess what? And she says what? And I said, Emerson is going to have a sibling. And she's like, what are you talking about? Because I think she maybe thought that I was telling her I was pregnant.

And I said, Melissa is pregnant. And she's only a month long. She's like, what? I said, yeah. He did not get her pregnant while I was still living in Seattle. He got her pregnant while he's been working on our marriage and working on our relationship and working on himself to be a better husband. My mom was like, fuck him.

You're right. I'm sorry. I don't think my mom probably had come across anyone like him before to like. to like be so brazenant to manipulate her and try to turn her against me. Like that is next level evil. Okay, well, the guy hasn't changed. I was just going to move forward and help her do what she needed to do to extract herself. I was like, okay, yep, divorce.

Let's find an attorney and I'll pay for it. Chris called and told Kaylin. and Jake knows that Kaylin knows that I'm pregnant, but he's going to call and talk to her. And he messages me right before and he goes, okay, I'm going to call her in 20 minutes. I have one more outlandish idea before I do. I said, oh my God, what now? And he said, is it possible to get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat after someone's jacked off on it? I remember laughing at my phone and I wrote back to him,

you cannot be serious. Go ahead and tell her that and let me know what she says. He's like, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to come up with ideas. And I said, no, you're trying to come up with ideas so you don't have to take accountability and you're trying to lie your way out of it again. Like, you cannot be honest. You are the absolute worst person

that I can imagine ever having a child with. This is a nightmare. This is like the worst possible scenario. He also asked me if he could get Melissa to agree to give the baby to us if I would come back and raise the baby. He said, that's Emerson's sister. Like, that's going to be Emerson's sibling. What if we just raise the baby together and we adopt her type of thing? You adopt her.

It'll be your baby. I'm like, no. No. I was not actually seeing him through the beginning part. of my pregnancy. I was communicating with Kalyn Moore. At this point, her and I have become friends. As we talk more and more, we realize how similar we are as people and the way we process things and we're both really logical. We both had struggled with the same things within dealing with him. Why would you say something if you don't mean it? Why do you put all of this effort into lying when

you could just be honest and save yourself all of this drama and chaos, everything that you're inflicting, he couldn't do it. It's like he thrived on the chaos. When he didn't have it, he would create it. It was really hard to wrap our heads around, but being able to talk to each other, we were able to really put two and two together and start trying to figure out who he was, where he had lied to her, where he had lied to me. I can't speak for her, but I know that Without a doubt, I don't think I would have survived my pregnancy without her friendship and her support. She never showed me anything but kindness and love. And I forever will be so thankful for that.

She was really honest from the beginning. You're never going to know where he stands. He's going to go back and forth. He's going to go up and down and back and forth. And you're going to be confused. Your whole pregnancy, you're going to be so tired. by the end of it. She said, I'm sorry to tell you that, but that's how my pregnancy was. It was a nightmare. You don't get to actually enjoy any of it or look forward to this amazing thing that's happening

because you're dealing with someone that is causing so much chaos that you can't focus on anything other than that. I tried, especially early on, to maintain really firm boundaries, with him. He made it really clear to me that he was going to start dating now that Kaelin was for sure going to divorce him. I didn't really let him know how I felt about any of it. I'd ignored him and gave one word responses when I had to, tried to keep my distance. And he would go back and forth. I wouldn't hear from him. And then he would reach out to tell me, oh, I went on a date. She's beautiful. and successful and I just thought you should know. I'm finally happy with someone.

And I'd just not react to it and go about my business. And then the next day, he would lash out at me. He would tell me over and over again multiple times that he wanted me to kill myself. Go kill yourself. Go sit in the garage. Turn your car on. Are you there yet?

And then he would message me throughout the night. Are you sitting in your garage yet? Are you going to put me out of my misery? He told me at one point that he was going to, carve my face like a jackal lantern. He told me multiple times things like go die. I wish you would die. You ruined my life.

It was constant. It was either that or him trying to like message me about other women. It would be those two things or it would be love bombing. And it would like rotate back and forth between all of those for most of my pregnancy. He comes for his visit in May. and now I know about the babies so I'm like no fuck's given here

I'm probably a little bit rude at times but I'm trying to have a good time and honestly like it lifted a lot of that stuff because I wasn't as emotional I didn't feel like I was trying to decide what to do and I had all this pressure on me the pressure was gone

I'm just trying to have a good time with my kid you're here whatever during this trip we went to Belboa one day, we went to the beach one day. We did family stuff together, but we were only seeing each other for like five-hour windows. We weren't spending the whole day together.

I think he was pretty, like, beaten down because he saw that I was uninterested. I started seeing somebody. I wasn't interested anymore. Jake made it sound like he stopped calling Emerson during this time, because she mentioned this other guy. He did not want to call her anymore.

And so he stopped calling in between his visits. When all of this happened, it's when he first started to go on tour with Justin Bieber. That's next time on something was wrong. He admits to me, well, I was actually sleeping with her best friend. During that time frame, he told me it was probably upwards of like a dozen women that he slept with in the weeks after Kalyn moved to California. He then started saying that his child had been kidnapped. The very last date that I ever had contact with Jake, it was, it changed the way that I view the world.

It changed everything about me. It was like having a rug ripped out from underneath you. Every time you try and stand up, the rug gets ripped out from underneath you again. It was really scary. I'd carry my pepper spray with me. There's a part of me that thinks that he knows how evil he is, how horrendous he is. Once in a while, he'll admit it. Thank you so much for listening.

Until next time, stay safe, friends. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram at Something Was Wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed by Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much.