Transcript of Behind the Scenes of HULU’s Betrayal: Dirty Secrets | BONUS | Karoline's Story New

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

Valvoline Instant Oil Change presents Wisdom from the Road. Summer means wide open spaces and a whole lot of extra miles. The last place you want your engine to give out is halfway to nowhere. Out here, low oil or a weak battery is just an ambush waiting to happen. That's why every oil change at Valvoline Instant Oil Change includes an 18-point maintenance check. These techs are trained to help spot issues early and keep you riding easy.

Valvoline Instant Oil Change.

Change wisely.

Hey, Portlandia fans.

Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

The dream of the '90s is alive in podcast form.

We're launching Podlandia: A.O. Rewatch, our brand-new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made.

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLachlan, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.

Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song about—

Well, I thought you were all gonna write a song.

I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia: AAO Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

The show's famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.

We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.

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

On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.

Your Duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you.

Oh no!

I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey everyone, it's Andrea. I have some big news. Betrayal Season 4 with Caroline Borrega is now a docuseries on Hulu. It's called Betrayal: Dirty Secrets, and this is a Betrayal bonus episode to share more about what you'll see in the new show. Caroline was living an idyllic life in Colorado with her police officer husband of more than 20 years. If you've heard the podcast, you know their 2 kids revered their father, especially for serving the community. Until one day, a text from him changed everything.

I fucked up the worst I've ever fucked up in my life. I've ruined our lives. You're going to want to divorce me.

We met Caroline after she discovered her husband was living a secret life. That life included multiple affairs that took place while he was on duty. When I went to Colorado Springs to meet Caroline, we toured her beautiful home. It was filled with reminders of her family, but something caught my eye. Many of the picture frames no longer held family photos. Instead, they displayed the stock images that come with the frames. Caroline had done her best to remove pictures of her ex-husband from her home. When it came time to start production of the TV docuseries, it was something director Jon Hirsch was thinking about.

We put such a premium on family archival on these shows because we think it's one of the key elements to really connecting the audience to the story and to the characters and really understanding, you know, how their lives were impacted. The day before the shoot was gonna begin, I was sitting in her living room and was chatting with Nicole, her daughter, and Caroline excused herself and walked upstairs. And when she came back down the stairs, I saw that she was holding a large, kind of like, legal box. She drops the box down on, like, the ottoman in front of the sofa that I was sitting on, and I see photo albums. She had photo albums that she had buried in a closet that she had, I think, to some extent forgotten she had or wanted to forget that she had. And it included her wedding photo album, photos of the kids when they were born, a lot more than I ever expected to see.

It was a treasure trove of photos and memories, and it really helps you understand the love story that started when Caroline and Joel first met.

I had a real reaction when I saw the contents of this box, especially seeing the wedding photos, because what I saw was, you know, a young couple that was so obviously in love with each other. And seeing the smiles on their faces that day, it really did look like something out of a modern-day fairy tale. And it drove things home for me because seeing those photos juxtaposed to the emotion that we hear from Caroline and her family in the podcast, you really kind of can see and feel to some extent the impact that this experience has had on her and her family.

One of the most shocking moments in our season with Caroline was hearing Joel Kern's meetings with internal affairs. There were multiple instances when he lied about having sex during work hours in his police vehicle.

It's a very serious allegation. This person's identifying that they had sex with you, Joel Kern. In your department car.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm gonna ask you again real quick, understanding the detectives are out there to talk to her right now. Have you been physically intimate with this individual?

Yes.

Did that occur inside a department vehicle?

No.

Those recordings were some of the most unforgettable moments in the podcast. In the new series, you get another layer of the story, seeing Joel's body language on video and how he denies, deflects, and shifts whenever he's confronted with the truth. One heartbreaking moment you may recall in Caroline's story is when she received a message that Joel was having sex with a tenant in the rental property Caroline owned. Joel accompanied Caroline to the rental to confront the woman accused of sleeping with Joel. Not only did he deny it, he doubled down at the meeting.

This psychopath has got me on the road to divorce. My kids want me out of the house.

Eventually, the real story came to light. After putting on a show for Caroline and silencing the tenant, he later admitted it was true. In Betrayal: Dirty Secrets, Caroline took me there for the first time. Revisiting the house and sitting next to Caroline, you can see the grief is still there. Right beneath the surface. In the new Hulu series, you'll meet the people you've heard on the podcast, like the therapist who counseled Caroline, former CSPD officers who worked with Joel, and even one of the women from CSPD Joel had an affair with.

Everybody seems to know Caroline and know what she's like.

Everybody says that she's kind of a problem. From what I understand is that she was very controlling and not nice.

She'd been a voice on the other end of the phone. On Betrayal: Dirty Secrets, she offers more details on just how far Joel's deception went. For a moment, I want to go back to where Joel's double life first began to unravel. It's something we heard early on in the podcast. A man Joel didn't know knocked on his door when Caroline wasn't home. Hey, how you doing?

Oh, can you imagine your wife home by chance? Why is that? You know who I am?

No.

See, that's my wife out there, the one that you fucked in your cruiser. What are you talking about? I'm not here to harass you, but I'm saying, Joel. Yeah, I'm talking about you. Okay, my wife. Okay, my wife is there. Dave, I just want to know if you know her. I have no idea who you're talking about.

Caroline eventually learned that Joel had met this man's wife on FetLife, a kink and fetish networking site. Joel had sex with this woman in his police car in a public park in the middle of the day. The man and his wife reported it all to the Colorado Springs Police Department. That's when Joel's lies were exposed.

Did you arrange to meet her at Memorial Park?

Yes.

Then basically you had sex with her at Memorial Park?

Yes.

When we filmed the Hulu series, I visited Memorial Park with Caroline. It's a breathtaking sight with the lake, swimming, ice skating, and playgrounds all against the backdrop of Pikes Peak, a beloved place in Caroline's hometown that will forever be tainted. During production, we spent more time with therapist Kristen Snowden. Her work helped Caroline begin healing, and you'll hear her share more about betrayed partner recovery.

You're betrayed by the person you've trusted the most, and then naturally, being social beings, we go out and seek support and validation and connection with our loved ones, but they just cannot wrap their brain around unless they've had someone lie to their face about just the most basic things.

We don't know each other, but you know my story already.

You're gonna change people's lives. You're touching upon like so many things that so many betrayed partners are struggling with. Thank God someone like you has the courage to be sharing these stories.

John McFarland showed courage too. He's one of the few former colleagues of Joel Kern at CSPD that talked on the record.

At first, Joel Kern was somebody that I could look up to and trust, and he was very skilled in that arena of investigation. And then as time went on, things really, really started to change. He's sacrificing his duty. He's using his position for personal gain.

I'm excited for you to meet John in the new series. He does a great job at explaining the severity of Joel's behavior from a law enforcement perspective. And finally, there was a special night at the end of recording the podcast. We were invited to join Caroline and her closest friends for their Sunday night supper club. Caroline made a delicious Mexican feast, and we shared a few bottles of wine.

So, you know, I ate every night with them, and then on Sundays we would get together for dinner, but then it was, "This has been so fun, we should do this every Sunday." "Oh, well, we won't just do it at like one house every Sunday, like every Sunday we'll rotate houses." My first time at Supper Club, I was a guest.

I was warmly welcomed, but I felt a little like a fly on the wall, observing everyone. For the new docuseries, I returned to supper club, and this time I felt like I was a member. I know. And then I sat next to Caroline and I was like, oh, how long have you been married? Oh, we're not married. That's my best friend's husband. I was like, yes! Yes! It was so good. Nice job, Scott. Yeah. So then the next day I was like, oh, we're going to this thing. I don't care if it's weird. We're going.

We're going.

I asked our director, Jon Hirsch, why Betrayal fans should watch the new docuseries.

They are hard stories to tell, but it's all the more motivation to tell the story the right way and make sure that, like, you know, we see the good that comes out of this. And I think the podcast and our show do a really great job of seeing the perseverance within the family and seeing where Caroline is now, in the headspace that she's in moving forward. It's pretty awesome.

You've heard the voices. Now see the faces, the places, and the moments that stayed with us long after the recording stopped. Watch Betrayal: Dirty Secrets streaming now on Hulu.

Hey, Portlandia fans.

Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

The dream of the '90s is alive in podcast form.

We're launching Podlandia: A.O. Rewatch, our brand-new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made.

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life— guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Krisel, the mayor himself Kyle MacLachlan, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.

Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised not just words but a song about—

Well, I thought you were all going to write a song.

I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia AAO Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

The show's famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand understand what's going on.

We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.

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

On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.

Your Duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you.

Oh no.

I'm Julie Biniero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I to say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem.

Do you know I just found out who Sydney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeartRadio podcast. Guaranteed human.