The Dating Detectives - 1: The Widow Hunter & His Depressed Bird

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Mackenzie & Hanna are on their first case! Kat's mom lost her husband recently and is trying to get back into dating, so Kat helped her get set up on some online dating sites. Kat was excited for her mom to find love again, until she met Tom. Something about Tom is just off, so she calls in The Dating Detectives. Tune in to listen to them crack the case of Tom, his house hunting, and his depressed bird. The following program contains names, places, and events that have been anonymized or fictionalized for the purposes of protection and safety. The following program is provided for entertainment purposes only, and any commentary from the hosts are strictly conjecture and should not be held as making any definitive statements about the truth or identity of any particular individuals or circumstances. If you or a loved one are involved in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for support. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, welcome to the dating detectives and thank you for listening to episode one. Just for reference, this intro is being recorded in May of 2024. But this first episode was actually recorded in January of 2023 and it's a little bit of a shit show. We've come a long way of being able to find a rhythm and a different. Yeah, exactly. That works for us. So also, our microphones were real bad. It wasn't in the budget. So. Now they're better. So listen, because this story is really good. So please listen, but we just wanted you to know that this was recorded in January,

2023, and we've come a long way. If you want to jump ahead and hear some great other episodes that might be great introduction to our podcast, I love that Dr. Dogfish episode, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The only fans, Pimp. Mm-hmm. Please listen with this disclaimer that the show gets a lot better, I promise. Oh my God. So keep listening.

And we appreciate you going back to the beginning and starting from scratch where we were. And then we can't wait until you get to where we are now. Welcome to the first episode of The Dating Detective. My name is McKenzie. I'm a licensed private investigator, but I'm basically just the PI next door. Yes, you are. And my name is Hannah. I am the farthest thing from a licensed PI.

I'm a writer and a comedian, but very much an armchair sleuth. So I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited to be here with you. In each episode of the show, we're going to investigate liars, con men, cheaters, and assholes who are absolutely ravaging the dating pool. Okay, let's talk about this show and what we're talking about when it comes to the liars, the con men, the cheaters, and everybody who is taking advantage of the cesspool that we call a dating pool. So what is your take on the dating world right now? Girl. So I'm a single lady.

and as we are going through this, I'm just like taking notes because I don't know who I can trust. We got the apps. Even on a small scale, you don't know what's true looking on social media, let alone what I'm learning from you, that it is so easy to deceive and cheat and lie. So dating, I have hope, but I'm scared. How about that? Well, I'm glad that you have hope. I'm glad to keep your hope. But it scares me because with social media and with the internet, you can literally make up anything you want to about yourself and make it seem true to anyone.

All you have to do is stroke someone's ego, tell a woman she's beautiful or tell her everything that she wants to hear or everything that she needs to hear and then make up a bunch of stuff about yourself that may or may not be true. But all she hears is the stuff that she feels from you. So it's so easy to lie in that way. also everything about me is online like i and part of it is i should rein it in but also i'm a little attention lover and i do comedy so like obviously i'm like everyone please look me up but it would be so easy to be like oh she likes this she likes that i can totally get in there say all the right things if somebody not that i have any money but if i did i'd be so easy so easy to scam but now anybody who wants to scam me i've got mackenzie

my side so like don't even try. Don't worry. I'll let them up for you. That's like maybe half why I'm doing this podcast. I'm just like, I just want to be friends with McKenzie. So McKenzie will protect me. You're so amazing. Truly like if anybody doesn't follow McKenzie on TikTok and Instagram, first of all,

hot and does makeup like nobody's business. But the stories you share are honestly, they're funny, but they're so important because we all have a little thing like, we have our femtuation. Like we have a gut feeling when we know something's off. But like you you make it, you make it easier to trust that because you share what to look for. Well, it's weird too because there's a lot of times most women, we have that fom intuition, that feminine instinct, something is going on or something is wrong. And a lot of the times women don't listen to that because we don't want that to be true. So that fintuition gets kind of pushed to the back of our minds and we just kind of

ignore it and we go with what we're feeling and what we want to be true. Oh, it's so hard out there. But wait. So talk about the difference between like cat fishing because that's been a thing, but now it's like beyond that. When you think about catfishing, you think about being online and talking to someone that maybe not who they say they are. So let's say it's a, you know, 40-year-old man pretending to be a 60-year-old woman or vice versa. Or using using my gorgeous photos. Just kidding. Nobody's ever done that. I'm offended. I would steal them. Thank you so much. All I want is someone to use my pictures to catfish someone. So this is different because this is someone that I like to talk about the people that are they're who they say they are in the physical form. They are this man or this woman or

whatever. But in this case, it's them lying about who they are, what they have, what they do, their assets, their job. Think of dirty John and heartbreakers and, you know, these different characters that it's basically just that it's just a character. And the flesh, there are the physical form, but they're lying. It's called dog fishing because why not? I love it. Dog fishing, FEM tuition. These are all, they're the official P.I. terminology for us. It's in the P.I. Dictionary. As it should be. They can say anything that they want to say, but at the end of the day, they are this person that you're seeing in real life. So what, at what point do you not believe them? And that's where our FEM tuition comes in. All right. So we're going to go through a case and we're going to see if

this person's a dog or not. right okay so i got a call from cat about her mom susan's new boyfriend and she told cat i met this guy i met him online well susan is she's an older woman she's about 70 years old or so she's a widow she's very vulnerable she's lonely she just lost her husband recently and she's looking to get out into the dating world it's just something that we want as humans is to connect with someone romantically intimately And so she, Kat helps her set up a dating profile. Well, Susan. What could go wrong?

What could possibly go wrong? Nothing. So she sets up this dating profile and Susan meets a guy that we're going to call Tom. And Tom is telling her everything that she wants to hear, it's perfect. Everything coming out of his mouth is just perfect. She really likes this guy and she starts trusting him. She goes on a first date with him and they hit it all. pretty well, and they start going out together more and more. So Susan is really happy. Obviously,

she really likes this guy, and her daughter, Cat, is really happy for her. Cat siblings are really happy for their mom. She finally met a nice man. They want their mom to be happy. So it's great news for them, but they're also a little bit cautious, no big deal. So after a few weeks, Susan invites the kids over to meet Tom. And whenever they have this dinner together, Kat immediately when she met him, she was like, something's wrong. Like red flags, spidey senses are going up. And her fintuition kicks in. And was like she just like felt it.

There wasn't like a he didn't. I guess you just know. Well, I'm going to tell you. Okay. Yes. I'm so excited. So Susan told Kat that Tom had a Porsche. Well, when he showed up to dinner, he was driving like a beat up Kia sedan.

Like not even a new one. Like just. Kia. So, and I would think that, like, if you're trying to impress a new lady friend, like, you'd show up in the damn Porsche. Like, you would want to be, right? So he shows up in this Kia. So that was her first clue. Was like, that's weird. Mom told me he had a Porsche. Why is he don't have in a Kia? But whatever, it's fine. Kias are great cars. They have great warrants. The Porsche is in the shop. The Porsche is in the shop. So we're going to go out of this Kia. So he, that night at dinner, he was telling them all these crazy stories about how

Back in the day, he had a band and they played in Madison Square Garden. He talked about the season that he was on Baywatch. No way. And he talked about his time working at Guantanamo Bay, which if you put all of those together, it seems completely unreasonable. Like, there's no, that's so outlandish to have all of those things go on in your life. That's like the most interesting man in the world. Basically.

There's no way. Not to say that that can't be true, but what are the chances that this man is telling all these amazing stories of all. It's like he's talking about so many different experiences in other people's lives and making them his own. It's like forest gum. Like he's just like, yeah, I'm for example. But so where are they? Like I'm just curious like what if this is like a New York thing, like maybe somebody is like, okay, you've lived crazy lives. but like it's like what how did he get to the kia at this woman's house from so they watch so the area that

they live in is very country kind of rural very small town nothing like l.A where you would have all these opportunities to meet all these actors and producers and have all these opportunities for these shows and a band and all of these things okay it's a very yeah kind of like backroads country town a little bit like it's kind of a small town so yeah so it's a I could totally see how you hear all that and be like, what's going? Like, how'd you get here? Like, and also, so when they're together at dinner, have you ever been around somebody where you're, the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you are just like something doesn't feel right? Like, this is not. And she said he's not even that cute. Like, he's not even like,

oh no. Maybe if he's like super good looking and you want to believe this stuff a little bit more, but to not be that cute, not be that good looking and then still how. Oh my God. I love the idea of her being like, Baywatch? Really? Like just like, I'm sure. I'm sure he's beautiful in someone's eyes. But yeah, you got to be able to back up your Baywatch claim.

Okay. So she's reached out to me to investigate. So let's get Cat on the line to get all the information that we need to get to the bottom of who Tom is. Are you excited? We're going to get to investigate. I'm on my first case, y'all. And by that, I mean, I'm going to watch McKenzie solve this case. Hi, Kat.

Hey, Kat. Hey. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm really excited to hear this story and to watch, yeah, McKenzie do her thing. Thanks for having me. Tell us a little bit about whenever you met your mom's boyfriend, Tom, and a little bit about what transpired to make you feel a little bit iffy about him. So there's so much. But when he came over for dinner, he just started telling stories that were kind of out there. He just had like an overall creepy vibe. I can't really put my finger on it. It was just a feeling that I had. And then he started telling us about like how he used to have a band and performed in Madison Square Garden. And he had a Porsche, but he parked it some garage somewhere. But yet he pulled. up in like some old eater car. He said he used to work in Guantanamo Bay and he was telling a bunch of

like far outlandish stories about his job there and the different things he did there. And we were just like, this just doesn't seem right. Like something's not right with this guy. Kat, I'm dying for you to tell Hannah about the bird. You told me about the bird. So wait. Oh, yeah. What bird? One of the times he comes to visit, he did live quite far from her. Again, another flag, you know, why would you want to date someone that's like several hours from where you are? Oh, wow. Which can be done, but I don't know, just a couple, like when you combine it with everything else it was going on, we just had a list. And that makes it easy for him to get away with stuff because he doesn't like live in the area.

Right. Right. Okay. Because I kept thinking, well, yeah, okay, that's probably because he doesn't want his wife to know. It's probably what's going through my mind. I don't know. So anyway, she tells me, oh, yeah, he came to stay and we had a great time. but I feel so bad because when he got home, he had to leave his bird with a sitter.

And the bird got so depressed. And he was acting funny when he got it back. And he asked the bird why. And the bird said, oh, it's, you know, because. Wait, what? Susan. Yeah, he's like, what's wrong with you? Why are you acting this way?

And the bird tells him, because you were gone, you know, I'm depressed. And the bird says, Susan's a. F-in-Bitch. What? I'm like, mom, like, birds don't, they don't just have whole dialects like that. They don't just come up with whole. The bird only could say that if he heard someone else say it. I also love, I just.

I love that. Not only did he created that this bird can say that. Wait, that's in time dying. But also that the bird could communicate like its mental health status and was like, like, yeah, like, I'm depressed. There's a part of me that's like he could learn a thing or two from this bird. This bird is like a clear communicator. Maybe he has an anger issue.

But. Well, he was also depressed because when he got up the next day, the bird died. Wait. From depression. The bird died from depression. That's when I was like, okay, McKinsey, I need help. What was your mom's response when you would tell her the things that kind of bothered you? Just depending on what it was, there would just be an excuse.

So like for the car, he just wanted to keep the nice car in the garage because he didn't want it to get damaged. He showed her pictures of that. And I was like, okay, that's great. So I can show you a picture of my Porsche too. Like, that's easy. But in her mind, she was, you know, she's, you know, not from the same time. And I just think she was very vulnerable. She was kind of lonely.

She has, you know, all of a sudden end up a widow. and she was married for a very long time. So she's back in the dating game, which she's never really been in. And she just really just enjoyed having the compliments and someone that was there to talk to. And then we try to say something, he's already kind of conditioned her for in case we say something. He starts telling her stories about like past relationships that he's been in where the kids didn't approve of him and they broke up and he just won't have anything to do with them. and now the girls want to get back with him, but he won't. And so to me, that's conditioning you.

Like, he's preparing you for when we figure him out. I totally see where you're like, this is manipulative behavior. It's like he, and it sucks for, oh, it's so hard because these people are so good at what they're doing, aren't they? Sometimes it's not the woman that is so, you know, how could she not see this? How could she be so dumb or so blind to it? But it's how they manipulate you to give you all the things that you want to hear. It's not a victim blaming situation. It's so similar to all of those other cases where it's easy to like be like, oh my gosh,

you didn't see these signs. Like, how did you not know? And it's like, no, that's, any of us could fall victim to this kind of thing. It's so easy. Yeah. I feel for you. And I feel for your mom. I'm sorry that she's going through this.

And I'm sure you reaching out to McKenzie is like, it's an act of love. And we'll see that. Kat, thank you so much for telling us. your story. I'm so excited to dig into this for you. Thanks, Kat. Thank you. What happens now? Like, McKenzie, you get, like, is this what happens? You like, me with your client. You get all the info. And like, now what are you going to do? How are we going to crack this guy and his bird, his depressed pets? Okay. So I got his name and a little bit of information about him as much as she knew. And we're going to do some research, some investigative research and see what we can find out.

What, like, do you have, like, I don't know, a secret portal that only PIs have access to? Like, what kind of information do you have access to about all of us? Basically, so the resources that I have are generally only available to license private investigators. So it's super secret top squirrel portal stuff. Okay, so it's not like my basic Instagram stocking? Basically not. No, I'm sorry. And then... But you can get a lot of information from social media.

Okay, Hannah, we're going to do some investigative research. Are you ready? I am ready because I want to put mine to the test. Like, we've gotten this information. I'm like, what can I find about this dude? Okay, so I guess you go solve a case and we come back. Let's do it. Okay, you guys, we're back. I've done a little bit of digging to find some information on this fella. But before I tell you guys what I found, Hannah, I'm so curious if you hopped on the the Google machine to find out anything for yourself and what did you find? I did as our resident armchair sleuth with absolutely no experience other than just being a nosy girlie. I got his name.

You were able to give me his full name and his address and then everything that Kat was able to tell us, including that he had a depressed bird, which I'm still not over. Like what the, I can't. Found no record of the bird, by the way. But okay, I think I'm just going to go through what I what I found or did not find and you tell me if I was like on the right track. Okay. I found a man by this name and it said he was 63 years old. Is that correct? No.

He's actually seven. Dang it. He totally lied. Wait, really? lied about his age to Susan. And to me on Google. Okay. That's, I'm already mad.

So I could not find much about him. Like no Facebook, no like real social. media other than one LinkedIn account that I'm not sure is his. It says he went to the University of Tennessee, according to this LinkedIn. Is that the right guy? Dang. Flabbit. Well, I feel like the fact that I didn't find much is finding a lot because if you can't find record of people, that feels almost fissier than like finding, I don't know. So there's a part of me that feels like that alone is a red flag to like, as we've been saying, trust your gut. So if you can't find record of like that to me is already a sign that you should be digging deeper and trusting your intuition.

Take it away, expert. I did all I could do. Absolutely. So you're absolutely right when it comes to looking online for some information on someone. But a lot of those are so, number one, so many names are so common. So the name Tom, for instance, with any last name is going to be super, there's going to be a ton of them. So it's really hard to narrow that down. But you are right to go online and look. although it's just so hard to know if it's the right person that you're looking at or if it's just someone with the same name. So what I did was I started with the background check on this gentleman using the information that Kat had given me. I pulled up a basically a comprehensive report on him. And the comprehensive report basically gives us all past information about this person where they

lived, the jobs that they've worked, the cars that they've owned, the homes that they've owned, basically everything under the sun, the criminal, everything that you can think of. I found, first of all, we'll start with an address. So the address that he actually lives at is a shoebox, basically, very run-down house. Very sus. So check this out. You remember when we were talking about him having the Kia? Yes.

He said that he had a horse, but then he showed up with IKEA, remember? Found that he does not. a Porsche. He has no other vehicles in his name besides the Kia that was co-signed for him by someone else. So that's the only thing in his name. Pon pulling his information, I actually found out that the woman prior to Susan that he had dated actually owned the Porsche in question. How, okay, okay, I'm connecting dots. How did you find, like, I want to hear your process. So how do you find this woman? Like, how do you find? He has a list of addresses that he used to live at. So his prior residences. So when I found out the addresses that he lived at before, I was connecting those

addresses to other widows that either owned whatever cars that they owned. And so the woman that I found before, Susan was the woman who owned a Porsche. And the reason I know that it's the same Porsche is because it had a vanity tag on it that I obviously didn't want to say the tag number on the podcast, but the vanity tag matched the one that was actually registered to her. So he's claiming ownership of a vehicle from an ex-girlfriend. Wait, but you just said widows when you were talking. So this is like this guy knows what he's doing. He has a history of this widow thing, right? So once I found out that the Porsche actually belongs to a widow that he dated before he dated Susan. I start looking at other women who are widowed that he had dated before and those women were

related. They owned the addresses that he lived at over the last 15 years. So every address he lived out over the last 15 years was owned by a widow and they are mansions. These women are widowed and they were left a chunk of money. So they either lost their husband and got the home or lost their husband and got a chunk of money to buy this home. So he is basically showing a history of living in these high dollar homes with women who had been widowed. He really is the widow hunter because he was just going after widows. He's the widow house hunter.

Like he's specifically like getting widows that have nice houses where he can crash. It's all like adding up in the different way. Okay. So he's claiming that he has a Porsche, but it wasn't actually his Porsche. It was his ex's Porsche. And he was living at her house. And these were also women that lived. far away from him. So like two hours away. So he lived two hours away from these women. And that gave

him, in my opinion, a way for them not to come over. Like he's like, I live so far away. I'll come to you. No big deal. I'll do the traveling. No big deal. I'll do that for you because I love you that much. The history of his addresses goes back for years. Like we're talking 10, 11, 12 years. So not only is he lying on his dating profile saying that he's one age, but he's really 10 years older. He's lying about the car that he drives. He's totally a dogfish. Like, he's totally lying about what he has. Oh, my God.

Let me tell you what else I found. He has a sealed criminal record. Oh, okay. So what did he do? So he had a 25-year-old charge. And he, here we are 25 years later, he's still seeing a parole officer about it. and finalizing, after 25 years, finalizing this criminal record situation. So it was a very, very...

What did he do? Can we see what he did? What's his crime? It was a very serious charge involving a minor. Oh, my God. Which is probably a good reason, one of the reasons why it was sealed. But he's finishing up his parole status or probation status, whatever it was. was. So I think that that was really interesting too. And because it sealed, the general,

there's no general knowledge about it. Like it just shows a sealed record. But nothing is ever really actually fully sealed. So that's good to know. I mean, I didn't, you don't have to break into the Pentagon to find information. You just sometimes have to know where to look. And it's there. Have to know where to look. I don't know. I just, there was a lot of things that he really lied about that we found out not to be true. And it just makes me sad because this is someone that was saying all the right things. And when they touch your heart, have you ever heard that saying people don't remember what you say? People remember how you made them feel.

So he was saying all the right things. And he was saying it in a way that made her feel so special. And so that's what sucks is that because he made her feel safe and special. She had a hard time seeing what he was deceiving her with. which is so I can't imagine I mean like that's a breakup on another level because of the trust that you have to develop after going through something like that so what so you told cat I assume or have you talked to the family yet or what is like that like that like sometimes I guess you're hired to just kind of give information and then be like do with this what you will like that's hard so I will I will give you an update on the next episode okay I like how you think I want to mention also one of the things that I think going forward, if Susan were to continue to date, I think that one thing that was a really good lesson to learn was when you're doing online dating especially, not putting specific information like that you're a widow because that automatically makes you seem a little bit more vulnerable.

And if you think of an older woman being a widow, sometimes that people hear chuching and they hear, you know, she's been left with a sum of money. And so that could make you a target. It could flag you as vulnerable. And obviously, like I said, it's not her fault. There's nothing that she did wrong. This is all on him. Absolutely.

Oh, my God. I mean, he's a professional, like we said, he knows what he's doing. He's done it before. And he's done it super successfully. And all of these women are probably smart, wonderful people who just like are good people and thus believe others are good people. That's so sad. But I do like that takeaway, like even if you're not widowed specifically, but like if you have a little money, like just not leading with it on your dating profile.

Anything that might make someone think that you could be a little bit more vulnerable. Like if I ever have the date again, like thank God for my husband because that dating pool was a nightmare. But if I ever had a date again, like my profile is going to say, I'm armed and I have like jujitsu and I know karate. and I'm like I'm going to let everybody know I'm a private investigator like I'm going to let them know everything so that they don't try me dude my dating profile nobody's going to try me because if I say I do stand up comedy everyone's like no thanks so target I think no they're like not interested we know she has nothing it also is just going to make jokes the whole time was I would never want to date a stand up comic because if I ever break her heart she's going to

roast me so hard. No, no. It'll just, it'll just, well, yeah. But then it's, yeah, yeah, I can't deny it. It's funny, I'm like, yeah, I would never do a stand-up comic either. Oh, well. We could never. There can only be one.

But anyways, stay with, keep your fim tuition, like listen to your fim tuition. And you, we as women, have this innate sense of just knowing when something is off. Like, it's so important to focus on that. and don't ignore it. Because even though it feels good now to kind of brush it aside, the consequences of the long term are just so painful. Oh, yeah. And also now I'm thinking back,

I'm fortunate to have never been horribly scammed, but I've always been right about my gut stuff. Also, I went on a date yesterday, kind of a legend. And I told them about this pot. Thank you so much. I don't know. It was fine. but I told him about this podcast and I was like, are you scamming me?

And he said no because of course. And then first my gut, my brain was just like, oh, man. And then I realized that I'm at a point where I'm like, I hope I get scammed for content. Like it would be a good story. And I was like, I need to get out of Los Angeles. Like that's what it's doing to my morals. I'm just like, I hope someone brutally destroys my trust so that I couldn't like make a podcast

about it. I just want to know what's, that's what we're doing. dealing with over here. What's his phone number? I'm asking for myself. Oh, I'm sending it to you right now. We're going to find out who this guy is. Hey, guy, if you're listening. Oh, my God, he just texted me. Hope, hope the pot is going well. He's overcompensating. That's it. We're going to figure out everything. He's over. It's a lot bombing. Okay. Next episode, we get to hear what happened with Kat and Susan and Tom and the bird. And then also, if I've been horribly scammed or got married. Don't go eloping.

Thank God. Okay, let's go. Thank you guys so much for listening. Next week, we're going to give you a conclusion to Kat's story and also have a brand new story for you. Man, I'm excited. And also, if you have anything going on in your life where you think someone isn't who they say they are, send us an email at investigate at datingdetectivepod.com. And we'll get to the bottom of it for you.

All right. We did it. Trust your femme tuition. Oh, bye my dating detective. Bye, my armchair slew. See you next week. The following program contains names, places, and events that have been anonymized or fictionalized for the purposes of protection and safety.

The following program is provided for entertainment purposes only, and any commentary from the hosts are strictly conjecture and should not be held as making any definitive statements about the truth or identity of any particular individuals or circumstances. If you or a loved one are involved in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7234 for support.