Transcript of The Full Picture | EP 4 | Saskia's Story

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. You want to advance your education, but not on a traditional path? At Rasmussen University, you'll find flexible and engaging online experiences, tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more. You may also qualify for a new laptop when you enroll in select online or on-campus programs. Enroll for a fully online program or on one of their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit rasmussen. Edu.

You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the Art Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Over the last couple of years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by Black people because of what happened in Alabama? After Montgomery Bra. This Black History Month, the podcast, Selective Ignorance with Mandi B, unpacks Black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandi B from the Black Effect podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys, Five Rings podcast in the lead up to the Milan a 2026 Winter Olympic Games. We've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen.

Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo.

Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen.

Hi, Cookie.

Hi.

Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears.

Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Saskia had just learned the unimaginable that her husband had been secretly streaming videos of her, videos where she was naked and unconscious. Now, she was sitting across from a social worker hearing One of the worst things any victim can hear.

There's probably nothing that we can do.

Saskia only had one thumbnail photo from Mike's web page. It wasn't enough to prove he had done something wrong. To get a long-term protective order, the social worker said Saskia needed video evidence, but she didn't have that. Saskia was so shocked she couldn't speak. She did the only thing she could do, scream.

I just flipped out because of how wrong I knew it was and how traumatized I felt.

Her friend, Coleen, was there. She let out this blood curdling scream and ran down the hall, and the sheriffs came sprinting. They didn't know what had happened.

They just heard this scream and came sprinting down after her.

Coleen ran after her, too. She found Saskia in the hall crying, shaking. She was just in shock, like, What is going on? But Megan, Saskia's sister-in-law, stayed in the office with the social worker. She thought those videos had to be out there somewhere. Nothing goes away on the internet. Once it's there, it's there. So she took out her phone. She had Mike's username. She scrolled and scrolled through pornographic websites, clicking through pages of graphic videos. Until finally, she found clips of Saskia. These were previews, 10-second grabs from Mike's videos. In those short clips, Megan could tell Saskia was passed out, completely unaware, and Mike was violating her. She was being raped by her husband. After seeing that, it made sense why she wasn't functioning. She was being tortured. I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrial Season 5, Episode 4, The Full Picture. These videos were the key to getting justice for Saskia, evidence of what Mike had done. And even in those previews, it was clear his actions were criminal. The authorities confirmed this was enough for a protective order, and it was enough to launch an investigation. So Megan went into the hall and told Saskia to come back in.

I remember Megan saying, Soss, look, they want to talk to you again. If you don't calm down, they're going to admit you to a hospital. And I was like, I don't care. If they don't do anything about this, I will live in that hospital because I will not be okay.

Megan brought Saskia into the office and started going through the videos with the social worker. Saskia wanted to see for herself to know the full extent of what Mike had been doing while she was knocked out. She looked over Megan's shoulder at the screen, and she saw her bedroom walls, her sheets, her own undressed body.

I was just comatose, and he was having sex with me. Then I told myself, I can't. I can't watch anymore.

With the video previews, Saskia was able to secure the protective order she needed, and the authorities had enough for a warrant to begin investigating. Saskia handed Mike's computer to the police, and then she walked out of the building in a daze. She got in Colleen's car, and they drove back to her house, the home she'd shared with Mike and their kids. On that drive, she reached a new low.

I felt like a bag of bones that someone had thrown to the side. He was honestly the only person that I ever thought truly loved me. And so to realize that I wasn't anything more than a toy or a tool to him, it breaks you.

Kaleen looked over at Saskia, crumpled in the passenger seat, and she could see Saskia was broken. It was a betrayal of everything that she thought was secure. It was sexual trauma and assault. That was one of the most horrific things I could ever imagine for anybody.

All I wanted to do is just scream at the top of my lungs, screamed all of the pain that I felt.

As Saskia and her community began to confront what Mike had done, so did the authorities. Detective Sherry Rule was tasked with the investigation. She declined a request for an interview. But around the same time, another key player was brought onto the case.

My name is Ashley Inderforth. I am an Assistant State's attorney here in Montgomery County. At the time of this, I was a line prosecutor in the Special Victims Division, prosecuting felony Special Victims Cases.

Special Victims Cases are those involving vulnerable victims. They deal with crimes like sexual assault, human trafficking, and child abuse. In these cases, detectives and prosecutors work closely in gathering evidence and figuring out what charges to file. Today, Ashley has spent 14 years as a prosecutor. Of the hundreds of cases she's managed.

This is one of the cases that has stuck with me. It was so horrific in this unimaginable way to be living your life and then have everything that you know be different in a minute.

Ashley met with Saskia early on in the investigation. It's standard procedure and working with special victims.

That first meeting is about explaining our role to them, helping them understand what the court process might look like, and then also getting to know each other a little bit because part of my job as a prosecutor is making credibility determinations and figuring out if I think this is a person who can testify, who can go into court and explain what happened to them. Before I can charge anything, I have to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. And with Saskia, there was never a doubt in my mind that this happened. She was extremely credible. She was willing to talk about her emotions about this entire thing, and then she also didn't hide anything.

Saskia was open about her mental health history, about her prescriptions for psychiatric medications, and her use of alcohol on top of those meds. To Ashley, the prosecutor, these weren't reasons to doubt Saskia's story. They were important details in explaining Saskia's state of mind, how crimes were committed against her own body without her knowledge. Her honesty spoke to her credibility.

She never acted like she was a perfect person or a perfect victim.

After meeting Saskia and watching the video previews, Ashley was determined to prosecute Mike to the fullest extent of the law.

I'm going to work as hard as I can to charge as many rapes as we can prove.

The 10-second previews were enough to kick start the investigation, but they feared they wouldn't be enough to make the charges stick. In order to have a case, Detective Rule and Ashley had to get a hold of the full-length videos. They had Mike's laptop, but unfortunately, there wasn't much there. Mike was careful to leave no evidence. Detective Rule tried to purchase the videos from the porn sites, but that didn't work either. The purchases led to other random videos.

So Detective Rule had to figure out how to access these videos from the Dark Web.

It took weeks and a lot of digging in the darkest corners of the online world.

But eventually, She was able to locate a little bit over 30 videos. Some of them were an hour or more in length.

There was hours and hours of footage. In most videos, Saskia was completely unconscious. In some of the videos, her eyes appear to be open. We'll talk about that later in the episode. But in all of them, it was clear to Ashley that Saskia was being recorded, and she had no idea.

He did a lot of things to try to hide the camera. He'll cover it over periodically, and sometimes you'll see the computer move quickly.

For the most part, though, there was no need to hide the camera. As Megan members from the previews. She was just dead. Dead weight. Watching these clips, seeing her brother-in-law attack her friend, Megan was horrified. She could see that Saskia was completely gone. The question was, how did she get that way? Keep in mind, Megan's known Saskia since the first grade. She's seen Saskia at all levels of drunk. And in all the years she's known Saskia? I've never seen her like that, except for in those videos. It made Megan wonder, was Mike drugging her friend? When Saskia first saw the thumbnails, she had the same thought.

I started to question whether he was drugging me.

You see, in the aftermath of her discovery, Saskia did some digging on her own. Her friend, Coleen, was there. On the day she took Saskia to the Family Justice Center, Coleen remembers going up to Saskia's bedroom. Saskia was opening drawers, looking under the bed, searching for any additional evidence she could. And then... She found phenolbarbidol in the night stand. And she's like, Why is this here? Remember when Saskia was hospitalized in the midst of her health crisis? The doctors theorized that she could be having bad reactions to certain meds she was on. One of those meds was Phenobarbital, a sedative that can cause unconsciousness and amnesia. Her doctors had taken her off of it. But here it was. Is this what was making Saskia sick? That wasn't the the only medication Saskia discovered. Mike had a safe in their bedroom.

I had no idea what was in the safe. He had told me it's like passports, stuff like that.

But when Saskia got a locksmith to open the safe, We found a bottle of my sister's medication and about 10 of my own prescription bottles, a lot of them sedatives. Many of these were medications Saskia's body couldn't tolerate. And her sister's medication, she had no idea why Mike would have that. Saskia turned all this evidence over to the authorities. We asked Ashley, the prosecutor, for her thoughts, having reviewed all of the evidence in the case.

Could he have drugged her? Sure. But we'll never know.

Mike has denied ever drugging Saskia, and there is no definitive evidence that he did. As part of the investigation, investigation, detectives conducted a toxicology test. Saskia gave a hair sample to test for drugs that entered her system in the last 90 days. The results of that test were inconclusive. The only substances identified were the psychiatric medications she knew she was taking. This could mean a few different things. One, that Mike wasn't drugging Saskia. Two, that the levels of drugs still in her system at the time of the test were too low yield a positive result. Or three, that Mike was drugging her using medications she was already prescribed, double-dosing her. For Saskia's sister, Marisa, the inconclusive toxicology results were a blow. They left a big unanswered question. One, Marisa has turned over and over in her head.

It's one of those things that you just have to answer that for yourself. I'll never I don't know if he were spoon-feeding her extra medication or if he acquired different medication and added that to the mix, or if he just sat and waited for her to get there herself.

After all, over the last three years, Saskia was doing anything she could to get a solid night of sleep.

Her goal was to feel better, and sometimes more often than I would have liked, that included drinking to excess and then taking her medication.

What matters to Marisa isn't why Saskia was passed out. It's about what Mike did to her sister while she was in that state. No matter how she became unconscious, this wasn't her fault. Saskia's friend Heather agrees. When she learned about the videos, she remembered all the times Saskia had been blackout drunk at parties, unable to stand by herself. Mike did not seem worried at all ever. Even when some of our friends approached him with concerns, he was like, She's fine. Whether or not Mike drugged Saskia. It was to his advantage to keep her in this drunken drugged up bad mental health state because the more vulnerable she became, the easier it became for him to take advantage of her. Saskia's community rallied around her. To them, how she became incapacitated did it matter. Raping Saskia was a crime. Ashley, the prosecutor, agreed.

She could have taken all the drugs she wanted herself voluntarily, or he could have drugged her. It doesn't change our analysis from a legal perspective as to whether she was physically helpless or able to resist any unconsented to sex act.

In other words, when it comes to drug facilitated sexual assault in Maryland, it doesn't matter how the drugs enter the victim's system. What matters is the perpetrator's actions when the victim is under the influence. The videos were just one piece of evidence in the case against Mike, but then there were the chats. Chatterbate, the livestreaming website, sent the authorities everything they had on Mike. Hundreds of pages of chat logs and thousands thousands of messages and comments from viewers, going back at least a year before Saskia's discovery.

The chats, coupled with the video, is really what put this together.

From these records, the authorities could tell Mike was on chatter bait multiple times a week.

I can't say he was on that site every time doing things to Saskia, but there were numerous times where people were saying things like, Is she asleep? And he would respond, That's how we like to do it. And somebody said, When my wife plays asleep like that, and then makes a sexual comment about what he does to her.

Ashley is paraphrasing the messages here.

Somebody said to him, My girl's passed out, too. Pm me. A lot of people telling him what to do to her body. A couple of times people say, Hey, even if she's fake asleep, that's against the terms and conditions. You could get in trouble for that. And he just says and he's like, She likes it like that.

These chats put Mike's crimes in a whole new light. It wasn't just that he was filming what he was doing to Saskia. He was sharing it with thousands of real people, live. When she heard about the chats, Saskia's sister-in-law, Megan, was disgusted. People in the chat, is she alive? Is she okay? People thought she was dead. And the records revealed something else. Not only was she being raped by her husband, people were paying to see this go down. You want to advance your education, but not on a traditional path? At Rasmussen University, you'll find flexible and engaging online experiences, tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more. You may also qualify for a new laptop when you enroll in select online or on-campus programs. Enroll for a fully online program or on one of their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit rasmussen. Edu.

Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles.

I'm Minalik Lamuber.

It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Riding in protest broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Alma Mata, Morehouse College. The students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Jr. And a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

This story is about protest.

It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind.

Listen to the A building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where Culture Meets the Soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks. And we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there to be more to the story. This show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

This MSS officer officer has no idea the US government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the sixth Bureau podcast.

I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's the unicorn.

No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable.

This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

Listen to the sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Chatterbate records showed that this crime went far beyond Mike alone. People were paying to see this go down. Chatterbate has a token system. Users can buy tokens to tip performers or pay for private shows. Based on the records we received, users tipped Mike 347 times. People thought she was dead, and they were watching it and paying for it. It's like, what the hell is going on in society? It was one thing to know these videos existed online, but to read the chats and to see the tokens exchanged was sickening. Mike didn't commit this crime in a vacuum. He was rewarded for it by thousands of viewers, people who got off on watching Saskia suffer. There was one more important thing authorities found in the chatterbate records. In matching the chats up with the videos, Ashley Inderforth and Detective Rule were able to establish a timeline of Mike's actions. They brought the dates of the videos to Saskia. And...

There were many, many rates that lined up with my decline.

In the three years leading up to her discovery, Saskia's health had been in freefall. She was passing out, picking at her skin, pulling out her hair, and sometimes she was unable to get out of bed. Saskia, her friends, and family were grasping at straws to figure out why she wasn't getting better. Was she drinking too much? Was she having bad reactions to certain meds? Or was this just a full on mental breakdown? No matter the intervention, Saskia only seemed to grow worse, and there was no clear cause of any of it. All of the videos that Detective Rule recovered were from the last year. And when Saskia saw the dates of the videos, she wasn't just looking at the dates of Mike's crimes. She was looking at a timeline of the worst year of her life. The first video that was recovered was from October 28th, 2017.

That date was right around the time that my friends came over with lasagna because my mom had just died.

There was another video on November 10th, 2017.

That was the day before my son's birthday party that I had been so excited about, but I couldn't get out of bed.

And another on October 13th, 2018.

My high school reunion was October 13th, That morning, I had woken up with the worst black eye I had ever seen, so I couldn't go.

These were some of the lowest moments in Saskia's life. She had no idea why she was so sick, why she had to miss these moments. She thought she was failing as a sister, a friend, a wife, a mother. She thought, like her dad, she might never get better. But looking back on those years, knowing what Mike had been doing?

It clicked. I was a basket case for those years and crying on the shoulder of the person that was doing all this to me.

Her body knew something her brain didn't. Mike had been using her. In the light of day, he was a loving husband. He wrote her love letters, cared for her children as his own. But when the lights went out, he was someone else entirely.

Seven years of my life were with this person who never cared about me and humiliated me and enjoyed it.

Saskia only has vague memories of the weeks that followed. She took time off work, so she sat at home on her couch staring at the wall.

I felt like I could not even breathe.

People came in and out of the house trying to comfort her, but no one could really understand what she was going through. Even when she was surrounded by friends and family, she felt alone.

I remember people wanting to bring me dinner, and I didn't want to eat.

Mike was gone. She was no longer being abused. But realizing that this abuse had occurred, that she had been blind to crimes happening against her own body, was earth-shattering. There were still many mornings when she couldn't get out of bed.

I felt like this is it. You don't move on from this.

One of the hardest parts of this reckoning was that the videos remained accessible online. She knew that her sister-in-law, Megan, had seen the videos. Surely she thought other friends would search for them, too, and strangers all over the world could access her rape with a few simple clicks. During this time, she got coffee with another coworker, Vera. Like Saskia, Vera had spent years working in child welfare, helping survivors of child abuse. Saskia explained to Vera what Mike had done and walked her through her discovery. And then she says, Vera, have you seen the videos. Vera hadn't. Imagine what she's carrying thinking that everybody now has seen these videos. She broke my heart. Hearing Saskia's story, pieces started to come together. Over the past three years, Vera had seen Saskia's decline firsthand. The hair picking, the face, the skin picking. She was fidgety, she was anxious, she looked nervous, she lost It wasn't until this moment that Vera realized those symptoms could be signs of abuse. She often saw similar behaviors in the abused children she worked with. Kids sometimes will act out in so many ways, and they don't know why. This is not that uncommon that people behave or act out because of the trauma that they're dealing with.

Her body knows that it was going through trauma. Even though consciously she I didn't know. Her body knew. The signs of Mike's abuse had been there all along, but no one, not even Saskia, was looking for them. Why would they? A couple of weeks after she reported the crime, Detective Rule contacted Saskia. There was an update in the case against Mike.

And she was like, We've got this son of a bitch big time.

She told Saskia, Mike was going to be charged with rape.

When I was told that they were going to be able to charge him with crimes against me, I felt relief. I wanted him to be in jail.

Ashley, the prosecutor, was ready to get the case going.

We have to show that she was substantially cognitively impaired, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless, and that the defendant knew or reasonably should have known of her condition.

The authorities had videos of Mike violating Saskia when she was completely unconscious. To Ashley, this would normally be considered rape.

Initially, I had been like, Okay, we're charging all of these.

But then, when Ashley and Detective Rule went to file the rape charges, they made a discovery. Detective Rule called Saskia again. It was a call Saskia would never forget.

She said, I can't believe I even have to tell you this. We can't even believe this. We're watching these horrible things that he's doing to you on tape. We all it's wrong. And now we hear about the marital exemption, and we don't know if we're going to be able to prosecute him for it.

Marital exemption. Ashley and Detective Rule learned that in 2018, according to Maryland Criminal Code.

At the time, raping your sleeping wife was okay.

To Ashley, this was clearly incapacitated rape. But there was a catch, because in the state of Maryland, You can't rape an incapacitated spouse. You can't rape an incapacitated spouse because according to Maryland law, that wasn't rape. This is the marital exemption. If Saskia was dating Mike, or if Mike had been a stranger who'd attacked her while she was sleeping, this would be rape under the law. But because she signed a piece of paper, a marriage certificate, what Mike did wasn't Clearly illegal. Here's Debbie Feinstein. She runs the Special Victims Unit of the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office. She supervised Ashley.

At the time, the spousal defense to rape was in effect for rapes that occurred when the victim was mentally incapacitated.

Legally, that's when someone is unable to make or communicate their decisions.

Which is really the primary thing that was happening in Saskia's case.

Saskia was knocked out when Mike filmed these videos. She'd consumed alcohol and taken her psychiatric meds. She had no way of knowing what was happening to her, let alone telling Mike to stop. Here's Saskia again.

My brain couldn't handle that he would not be punished for what he did or be held accountable.

But there was still hope because the authorities kept at it.

We could argue that there was force involved.

Under the law, it wasn't rape if the wife was unconscious, but if it was clear that the husband was using force on his wife to have sex, that was rape. So Detective Rule and Ashley went back to their strongest evidence, the videos. If they could just find one moment, a time when Saskia tried to shield her body or move away from Mike, maybe they could argue that Mike was using force.

We looked at every time you could see Saskia do something that could show that she was not consenting.

And they did find moments where Saskia seemed to resist. Sometimes she'd wake up in a haze mid-attack. She'd roll over or place her hands over sensitive areas. Then she'd pass back out, and Mike would keep going. He continued to violate Saskia, even as her body said no. There were even a few moments in which, with what middle strength Saskia had, she tried to push Mike away. None of this was forced exactly, not in the traditional sense of the word, but it was enough to charge Mike with a crime. The authorities brought 31 charges of surveillance in a private area based on the video content. And on top of that, we were able to identify three charges of completed vaginal intercourse, and one charge of what was an attempted vaginal intercourse that we felt we could show to a jury and argue that there was force involved. Finally, on December 18th, 2018, two months after Saskia's discovery, charges were filed against Mike Levingood, and he was arrested. You want to advance your education, but not on a traditional path? At Rasmussen University, you'll find flexible and engaging online experiences, tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more.

You may also qualify for a new laptop when you enroll in select online or on-campus programs. Enroll for a fully online program or on one of their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit rasmussen. Edu.

Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles.

I'm Minalik Lumuba.

It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Have both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Riding in protest broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Alma Mata, Morehouse College. The students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Jr. And a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

This story is about protest.

It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind.

Listen to the A building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you do when the headlines, Don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where Culture Meets the Soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks. And we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

This MSS officer has no idea the US government is on to him, but the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question of his life. And that's the unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chatterbate records showed that this crime went far beyond Mike alone. People were paying to see this go down. Chatterbate has a token system. Users can buy tokens to tip performers or pay for private shows. Based on the records we received, users tipped Mike 347 times. People thought she was dead, and they were watching it and paying for it. It's like, what the hell is going on in society? It was one thing to know these videos existed online, but to read the chats and to see the tokens exchanged was sickening.

Mike didn't commit this crime in a vacuum. He was rewarded for it by thousands of viewers, people who got off on watching Saskia suffer. There was one more important thing authorities found in the chatter bait records. In matching the chats up with the videos, Ashley Inderforth and Detective Rule were able to establish a timeline of Mike's actions. They brought the dates of the videos to Saskia. And... There were many, many dates that lined up with my decline. In the three years leading up to her discovery, Saskia's health had been in freefall. She was passing out, picking at her skin, pulling out her hair, and sometimes she was unable to get out of bed. Saskia, her friends, and family were grasping at straws to figure out why she wasn't getting better. Was she drinking too much? Was she having bad reactions to certain meds? Or was this just a full-on mental breakdown? No matter the intervention, Saskia only seemed to grow worse, and there was no clear cause of any of it. All of the videos that Detective Rule recovered were from the last year. And when Saskia saw the dates of the videos, she wasn't just looking at the dates of Mike's crimes.

She was looking at a timeline of the worst year of her life. The first video that was recovered was from October 28th, 2017. That date was right around the time that my friends came over with lasagna because my mom had just died. There was another video on November 10th, 2017. That was the day before my son's birthday party that I had been so excited about, but I couldn't get out of bed. And another on October 13th, 2018. My high school reunion was October 13th. That morning, I had woken up with the worst black eye I had ever seen, so I couldn't go. These were some of the lowest moments in Saskia's life. She had no idea why she was so sick, why she had to miss these moments. She thought she was failing as a sister, a friend, a wife, a mother. She thought, like her dad, she might never get better. But looking back on those years, knowing what Mike had been doing. It clicked. I was a basket case for those years and crying on the shoulder of the person that was doing all of this to me. Her body knew something her brain didn't.

Mike had been using her. In the light of day, he was a loving husband. He wrote her love letters, cared for her children as his own. But when the lights went out, he was someone else entirely. Seven years of my life were with this person who never cared about me and humiliated me and enjoyed it. Saskia only has vague memories of the weeks that followed. She took time off work, so she sat at home on her couch staring at the wall. I felt like I could not even breathe. People came in and out of the house trying to comfort her, but no one could really understand what she was going through. Even when she was surrounded by friends and family, she felt alone. I remember People wanting to bring me dinner, and I didn't want to eat. Mike was gone. She was no longer being abused. But realizing that this abuse had occurred, that she had been blind to crimes happening against her own body, was Earth-shattering. There were still many mornings when she couldn't get out of bed. I felt like this is it. You don't move on from this. One of the hardest parts of this reckoning was that the videos remained accessible online.

She knew that her sister-in-law, Megan, had seen the videos. Surely she thought other friends would search for them, too, and strangers all over the world could access her rape with a few simple clicks. During this time, she got coffee with another coworker, Vera. Like Saskia, Vera had spent years working in child welfare, helping survivors of child abuse. Saskia explained to Vera what Mike had done and walked her through her discovery. And then she says, Vera, have you seen the videos? Vera hadn't. Imagine what she's carrying thinking that everybody now has seen these videos. She broke my heart. Hearing Saskia's story pieces started to come together. Over the past three years, Vera had seen Saskia's decline firsthand. The hair picking, the face, the skin picking. She was fidgety, she was anxious, she looked nervous, she lost weight. It wasn't until this moment that Vera realized those symptoms could be signs of abuse. She often saw similar behaviors in the abused children she worked with. Kids sometimes will act out in so many ways And they don't know why. This is not that uncommon that people behave or act out because of the trauma that they're dealing with.

Her body knows that it was going through trauma. Even though consciously she didn't know, her body knew. The signs of Mike's abuse had been there all along, but no one, not even Saskia, was looking for them. Why would they? A couple of weeks after she reported the crime, Detective Rule contacted Saskia. There was an update in the case against Mike. She was like, We've got this son of a bitch big time. She told Saskia Mike was going to be charged with rape. When I was told that they were going to be able to charge him with crimes against me, I felt relief. I wanted him to be in jail. Ashley, the prosecutor, was ready to get the case going. We have to show that she substantially cognitively impaired, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless, and that the defendant knew or reasonably should have known of her condition. The authorities had videos of Mike violating Saskia when she was completely unconscious. To Ashley, this would normally be considered rape. Initially, I had been like, Okay, we're charging all of these. But then when Ashley and Detective Rule went to file the rape charges, they made a discovery.

Detective Rule called Saskia again. It was a call Saskia would never forget. She said, I can't believe I even have to tell you this. We can't even believe this. We're watching these horrible things that he's doing to you on tape. We all know it's wrong, and now we hear about the marital exemption, and we don't know if we're going to be able to prosecute him for it. Marital exemption. Ashley and Detective Rule learned that in 2018, according to Maryland Criminal Code? At the time, raping your sleeping wife was okay. To Ashley, this was clearly incapacitated rape. But there was a catch, because in the state of Maryland... You can't rape an incapacitated spouse. You can't rape an incapacitated spouse, because according to Maryland law, that wasn't rape. This is the marital exemption. If Saskia was dating Mike, or if Mike had been a stranger who'd attacked her while she was sleeping, this would be rape under the law. But because she signed a piece of paper, a marriage certificate, what Mike did wasn't clearly illegal. Here's Debbie Feinstein. She runs the Special Victims Unit of the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office. She supervised Ashley. At the time, the spousal defense to rape was in effect for rapes that occurred when the victim was mentally incapacitated.

Legally, that's when someone is unable to make or communicate their decisions. Which is really the primary thing that was happening in Saskia's case. Saskia was knocked out when Mike filmed these videos. She'd consumed alcohol and taken her psychiatric meds. She had no way of knowing what was happening to her, let alone telling Mike to stop. Here's Saskia again. My brain couldn't handle that he would not be punished for what he did or be held accountable. But there was still hope because the authorities kept at it. We could argue that there was force involved. Under the law, it wasn't rape if the wife was unconscious, but if it was clear that the husband was using force on his wife to have sex, that was rape. So Detective Rule and Ashley went back to their strongest evidence. The videos. If they could just find one moment, a time when Saskia tried to shield her body or move away from Mike, maybe they could argue that Mike was using force. We looked at every time you could see Saskia do something that could show that she was not consenting. And they did find moments where Saskia seemed to resist.

Sometimes she'd wake up in a haze mid-attack. She'd roll over or place her hands over sensitive areas. Then she'd pass back out and Mike would keep going. He continued to violate Saskia, even as her body said no. There were even a few moments in which, with what little strength Saskia had, she tried to push Mike away. None of this was forced exactly, not in the traditional sense of the word, but it was enough to charge Mike with a crime. The authorities brought 31 charges of surveillance in a private area based on the video content. And on top of that... We were able to identify three charges of completed vaginal intercourse and one charge of what was an attempted vaginal intercourse that we felt we could show to a jury and argue that there was force involved. Finally, on December 18th, 2018, two months after After Saskia's discovery, charges were filed against Mike Levingood, and he was arrested. You want to advance your education, but not on a traditional path. At Rasmussen University, you'll find flexible and engaging online experiences, tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more. You may also qualify for a new laptop when you enroll in select online or on-campus programs.

Enroll for a fully online program or on one of their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit rasmussen. Edu. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in Lick, Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Riding in protest broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Alma Mata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Jr. And a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, We'll die. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins. If you can hear me, it's where Culture Meets the Soul, a place for real conversation.

Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

This MSS officer has no idea the US government is on to him, but the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the sixth Bureau podcast.

I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's the unicorn.

No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable.

This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

Listen to the sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Two months after Saskia reported the videos, Mike was arrested, but he didn't spend long behind bars. He was able to get out on $10,000 bail. Based on the sentencing guidelines, Mike was looking at up to nine years in prison for each of the four rape charges, and up to a year for each count of illegal surveillance. He could spend the rest of his life in prison. But first, there would be a trial. Ashley and her team at the state's attorney's office would have to prove that Mike was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And that was no easy feat. They'd have to convince a jury this was a crime because of the marital exemption law. And on top of that, they'd be going up against a strong defense team. Ashley, the prosecutor, remembers.

He immediately hired a really well-known high-powered criminal defense attorney in Montgomery County.

Mike's legal team knew how to get their clients off. They did it all the time. Before the case even reached the courtroom, they tried to plant doubts about Saskia's story.

Even before charges were brought while the detective was reviewing the case, his attorney sent a detective rule or an email saying that Mike Leventhal is this family man who has a great relationship with his ex-wife and this great career. And then he sent pages of things that are, quote, unquote, wrong with Saskia.

Mike claimed that Saskia was a willing participant, that she knew about the videos and consented to them. His attorney ran with it. This wasn't Ashley's first sexual violence case. She'd seen this all before.

You get your attorney involved and you try to get in people's heads about the victim right away. Luckily, Detective Rule and I didn't fall for it.

Mike's defense team failed to get the charges dismissed, but they weren't going to give up yet. They were going to come at Saskia hard. That's almost always the defense's strategy in a rape case, to put the victim on trial. In the months that followed, there were several pretrial hearings. That's when both sides go before the judge to argue what evidence should or should not be admitted. Good morning, Your Honor. Rebecca McFitty on behalf of the state.

Good morning, Your Honor. Andrew Jessick and David Moïse on behalf of the defendant.

You're listening to real audio from Mike's court proceedings. In these hearings, the lawyers went back and forth about one thing, the video evidence. Here's Rebecca McFitty. She worked with Ashley as one of the prosecutors on the case.

Your Honor, the state has a motion in limonade to exclude any of the, what I would refer to as pornographic images or videos or photographs that were not charged in this case.

Rebecca asked the judge to admit only a portion of the chatter bait videos, the ones where the prosecution could argue for to get around the marital exemption. Mike's attorneys had other ideas. They wanted to show the jury as many videos as possible. Here's one of Mike's attorneys.

We don't want the jury to think that she is just somebody who woke up on October 25th, 2018 and realized, Oh, my God, my husband has been secretly filming me for the last year and streaming me to 10,000 people. Because if we aren't allowed to show the whole picture, they may actually think that. There are a lot of videos where it's very, very clear that she is playing to the screen and playing to the TV and playing to the camera.

Mike's attorney pointed to a few moments in the footage where Saskia Saskia's eyes were open. He wanted to use those moments to argue to a jury that Saskia was awake, aware, and consenting. Ashley Inderferth has prosecuted dozens of rape cases, and she reviewed these videos So we asked her for her professional opinion. Did Saskia know what Mike was doing?

There's no doubt in my mind that Saskia had absolutely no idea what was happening to her.

Ashley Saskia was familiar with the med Saskia was prescribed, and she consulted with medical experts. In our reporting, we did the same. We spoke to psychiatrists who confirmed that Saskia's gaps in memory made sense. Her use of these meds in combination with alcohol could explain how she was completely unaware of her surroundings, unconscious, even with her eyes wide open. It's a similar effect to when you get wheeled into the operating room before surgery. You might be awake and talking to nurses while you're going under. But when you wake up, any memory of that is gone. Ashley knew all of this, but more importantly, she knew the facts. This woman was raped and was just finding out about it.

I think we all want to believe that things like this can't happen. We could all sleep better at night if Saskia was a crazy person who, for whatever reason, was out to get her husband and made all this up. But the evidence in this case is so strong when you have the full picture of what happened that what we don't want to believe is what we have to believe. That's what happened. That's the truth. There's absolutely no way that Saskia knew what was going on.

Ashley and her team weren't swayed by the defense's arguments, but maybe a jury would be. If they had any doubt in Saskia's story, Mike could walk free. That's our legal system is designed.

The jury has to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. Even if they are 75% there, their job is to acquit.

The defense's strategy is always to make the jury feel uncertain, and they weren't just going to sow doubt using the videos. They were prepared to use every shred of evidence they could find to discredit Saskia. Here's an example. At that same pre-trial hearing, Mike's attorney alleged that Saskia fulfilled Chatterbate's consent requirements for performers.

In order for her to be seen on the screen as she's having sex with her husband, she needed to sign an agreement and put her passport up on the screen and essentially say, I know what Chatterbate is. I agree to be on this portion of the screen, live, being seen by tens of thousands of people worldwide. And she signed that in October of 2017. She agreed in writing and with her passport.

The defense attorney had a copy of the written agreement and a picture of Saskia's passport held up next to her face. I know Saskia, and I know what she went through. But when I first heard this, there was a moment when I questioned her story. In our culture, that is never far. We are trained to question rape victims. But then I listened to the rest of the pretrial hearing. Here's Rebecca, one of the prosecutors, again.

As defense council mentioned, chatterbate requires a photograph picture with your passport visible.

That photograph defense council mentions is actually a picture of the victim smiling at the camera with the defendant's arm arm behind her. You can see it's his arm by the watch that he's wearing, holding the passport. It was Mike's hand, not Saskia's, holding up her passport for the camera. And as for that signed user agreement, It is a electronic signature, and the return on that is to the defendant's email address. Mike was holding the passport. The signed agreement could be traced to his email mail. In other words, all roads point back to Mike Levingood. Prosecutors worked for months prepping answers to every one of the defense's allegations. They secured experts to speak to Saskia's state of mind. They wrote opening statements, and they prepared to talk about the content where Saskia's eyes were open. After the pre-trial hearings, the judge ruled that Saskia could be asked about the other videos if it came up in her testimony. If the jury found Mike guilty, he could spend decades in prison. But in order for that to happen, the jury would have to believe Saskia.

For good, for bad, for ugly, I knew that It would lie on me.

The trial was delayed to June, then October, and finally, a date was set for December second, 2019, a full year after Mike was charged. As the day When he approached, Saskia was nervous. What if the jury bought Mike's story? What if they couldn't see the truth? But none of those questions changed how she felt about taking the stand. She was ready.

I wanted him to be in jail, and I felt like testifying against him and holding him accountable would give me back some of my power.

On the next episode of Betrayal, Betrayal. Call me on the face 1350630. Stay in my office. Michael Paul Leventhal.

I was very familiar with the statement of charges. But knowing the facts of the case is very different from watching those videos.

For resources on sexual violence, visit Raine. Org/betrayal. That's R-A-I-N-N. Org/betrayal. Betrayal. You can also get free confidential 24/7 support through Raine's National Sexual Assault Hotline. Just text Hope to 64673 or call 1-800-656 Hope. You are not alone. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your story, email us at betrealpod@gmail. Com. That is betrealpod@gmail. Com or follow us on Instagram @betrealpod. To access additional content and to connect with the Betrayal community, join our Substack at betrayal. Substack. Com. We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeartPodcasts. The show is executive-produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison, hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Kaitlyn Golden. Our supervising producer is Kari Hartman. Our story editor is Monique Laborde, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Olivia Hewitt and Leah Jablo. Production management by Kristen Malkuri.

Additional support by Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing by Tana Robbins, with additional editing and mixing by Matt Dalvecchio. Special thanks to Saskia, her friends, and family. And special thanks to Will Pearson and Kari Lieberman. The Trail's theme is composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by Mybe Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You want to advance your education, but not on a traditional path? At Rasmussen University, you'll find flexible and engaging online experiences, tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more. You may also qualify for a new laptop when you enroll in select online or on-campus programs. Enroll for a fully online program or on one of their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the you need. Visit rasmussen. Edu.

You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Over the last couple of years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by Black people because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast, Selective Ignorance with Mandi B, unpacks Black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandi B from the Black Effect podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys, Five Rings podcast in the lead up to the Milan Corteina 2026 winner Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi Bowen.

Hi Matt. Hey, Elmo.

Hey Matt. Hey Bowen. Hi Cookie.

Hi.

Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.