Transcript of Episode 4: Secrets

I don't know what you've come to expect from a true crime podcast, but I guarantee you Crime Junkie is all of that and more. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brit. And every Monday, we dissect some of the most mysterious cases. But listen, we're not just rehashing what you can read for yourself online. We have a team of dedicated investigative reporters and producers who I work with for months on every single episode. But the show still feels like having a conversation with your best friend, if your best friend was a detective. But like a good detective. So join us and tune in to Crime Junkie every Monday. Wherever you get your podcasts.

This podcast discusses issues such as drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, violence, and assault. Listener discretion is advised.

Particle Entertainment.

When I was 15 years old, I smoked weed for the first time. It put me in like a mini coma. In my mind, I knew what was going on, but in my body, I felt like I couldn't move. My whole body was so heavy, I couldn't— I couldn't move. I couldn't react to stuff. I was staying the night with a friend of mine, and her brother— I was asleep in the bed, and her brother came in there, picked me up out of the bed, carried me into his room, and he pulled my pants down. And while he was pulling my pants down, I got my arms up and I pushed his chest to push him off of me. He then grabbed my wrist He held my wrist down, and he took my virginity. I was so flippin' scared. I was scared. I didn't— I had all these mixed emotions going on. My mind was— it was just broken. I just had my virginity taken from me. Shortly after that, he got in a relationship with somebody, and she would bully me at school, tell me I want her man. I didn't know how to take that because she didn't even know what had happened.

I would walk around the whole school just to not go around her.

If I'm being honest, a part of me feels like I'm being intrusive broadcasting these parts of Natalee's life, but I have to remind myself that she really wanted these stories to be heard, posting these videos online back in 2019. For her, there was a purpose to it all. The trauma Natalee experienced at such a young age would shape the rest of her life. It would heavily influence every decision she was yet to make. But for the young Natalie Jones, the trauma just kept coming.

I met Brian, which is Trent's daddy, and I fell in love for the first time. It's to that day I lost my virginity, too. I found out I was pregnant a week before I turned 16. And I knew Brian didn't love me. I knew one day he would leave me.

But I loved him.

Ryan left me when I was 7 months pregnant. He came home, he got his stuff, and he left. My mom went to jail. I quit school. I was just a 16-year-old little girl with a baby. All by myself.

To fully understand why Natalee was sharing these things on public platforms is to try and figure out what she thought she might accomplish in doing so. She stated several times she wanted to help others with her story. So maybe as much as this story is an investigation into what really happened to her, perhaps it's also a cautionary tale. And while many tragic events in her life were completely out of her control, maybe Natalee was urging us to avoid making some of the same mistakes she did make. Mistakes that might have contributed in some way to her death. I'm Shawn Cipe. From Audiochuck and Particle Entertainment, this is The Truth About Natalie.

I, I think that you have to address the elephant in the room. There are many women nowadays that are doing, like, OnlyFans and stuff like that for income. I don't knock the hustle.

Do you?

You know, live your life. If you need to strip and bank, do your thing. But with Natalee, and I think it's really important to go all the way back to the beginning for me, because during the beginning, we heard those rumors that she's a camgirl, she's escorting, she's doing this, doing that. And We didn't really find— we didn't find her anywhere. I got on OnlyFans. We had a whole group of people that were, you know, signing up for these websites. We heard she's a cam girl. She's doing stuff on cam. Like, um, like, I found no trace of her anywhere.

After initially hearing rumors and attempting to find online adult profiles owned by Natalee to confirm or deny them, One of Natalee's fiercest advocates, Jennifer, tells me she eventually realized they just weren't looking in the right places. Natalee wasn't on OnlyFans or some adult webcam site, but she was escorting, though on a very specific kind of site. They did eventually find her profiles, multiple profiles and Backpage ads. Natalee was looking for a sugar daddy.

So the interesting thing about the 2 websites that she was utilizing for these listings that we have found and that were also in the case file was Secret Benefits was one. There was sugardaddyforme.com. One of them was she was advertising out of Atlanta. Again, like, her profile on both of these sites, it was very mild. Her bio and stuff that was posted was not, like, something like a— an established escort would post, like, that knows the hustle, that knows how to, like, lean into that profession. I didn't get those vibes from—

from—

from that. She was looking for someone that could take care of her. Like, I— kind of the true definition of, like, a sugar daddy. Like, she wanted that male attention. The other website that she was using was— it was advertising herself out of the Gulf Shores area, like Mobile, Alabama, Pensacola, all of that.

When police extensively searched through data in her phone records, they found evidence that she had been communicating with numerous men from these sites located outside of Georgia in those last few days leading up to her disappearance. There were phone calls and texts with several of these same numbers late on the night of July 4th, Into the early hours of July 5th. Natalee wasn't communicating with anyone local from the Atlanta metro area that we're aware of, but a Gulf Shores, Alabama area profile was very active. It was through this profile, for whatever reason, that she met most of the men connected to those out-of-state numbers. Natalee had briefly moved to the Gulf Shores area only to return just months before her disappearance. It was a surprise to everyone in her circle. Even her mother, Elaine, as close as they were.

She said, Mama, I'm moving. I said, you ain't going nowhere. This was in February. She said, I'm moving to the beach. I'm thinking Panama City Beach. I said, now you can't go to Panama— you can't go to Florida and live on no beach. You don't know nobody. You ain't got no job. You know, these was Mama's thoughts. And she said, who said Panama City? Come March, she said, will you help me go to my storage and get some— get my stuff loaded? I mean, you know, she had a little bit of furniture in there, you know, because I mean, she had the bedroom suit and stuff at my house. And I said, yeah, where are you going? She said, Mama, I'm moving to the beach.

These plans of Natalee's seemed to come out of nowhere, and she apparently had already made her mind up. But there was no explanation for why she was leaving so quickly, What she planned to do about her kids or how she was gonna support herself once the little money she had ran out. It was shocking and concerning for Elaine.

I said, Natalie, baby, you, you can't do this. This ain't life.

Why?

You got to live life. You ain't got one life to live and you got to live it to be happy. And she said, I pray one day I'll see you happy. Because she's just seen me in some messed up stuff too. So we met over there at the storage thing, and she said, I need every bit of this to go to the back of the U-Haul. I said, okay. I mean, you only got like this, this little bitty door, you know, that the littlest size of storage you can get. That's what she had. And wasn't nothing in there but, you know, whatever. I said, what are you saving this? What's this big old part for? She said, my car.

Ha!

I was stunned. Yeah, I mean, my baby done thought all this through. And I said, your car? She said, yeah, I'm driving the U-Haul down there with my car, and I can return it down there. After I unload my car and my stuff, I've got an apartment. Me and her never even discussed Gulf Shores. We never visited Gulf Shores. I don't know how that even came up, but she got her income taxes and she moved.

This might have been the first time Elaine began to think that something was going on in Natalee's life that she couldn't explain or understand. Natalee was always secretive. And while it wasn't out of the norm for her to take a trip for a few days here and there, this felt different. It felt panicked. She somehow managed to get her car into the back of a standard U-Haul box truck with the rest of her belongings? Was she trying to conceal it? Was she running away from something? Trying to disappear? And no one has been able to understand or explain how Natalee was able to rent an apartment without any proof of steady employment or income.

How she got this apartment, she don't have no background. She don't have no income, no nothing where you can check a background and you're approved for an apartment. You know what I'm saying?

But it's the relationships she made during her short stay in Gulf Shores I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and I hope you'll join us for season 5 of Dateline: Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them. Maybe you could help solve a mystery. Join us next week for the premiere of season 5.

Search Dateline: Missing in America to listen completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium to unlock new episodes early.

The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking. 48 hours before the trail goes cold. From A&E and Crime House, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series, The First 48.

I'm Carter Roy.

Every Thursday, I revisit a landmark homicide investigation in depth, with long-form storytelling built for your ears. Listen to and follow The First 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Natalee had been communicating via text mostly on the evening hours of the 4th with multiple men, some of whom she met off of sugar daddy sites, or she connected with, I should say, off of sugar daddy sites. The one man, we'll call him Mr. B, I would say he was the main person that Natalee was communicating with. Over the past— from, like, July 2nd up until the 4th. This man lives in Virginia. He works for the federal government. And in these texts back and forth with Natalee, there was just some banter back and forth. There was some sexting, if you will, flirtatious back and forth. They were discussing the potential of a meetup, and he had stated, you know, that he has a girlfriend, he has a kid, I think he even mentioned, and she knows and is okay with it, or may, you know, maybe okay with it, something along those lines. Natalee seemed to be somewhat of in hustle mode.

As Jennifer mentioned, The text messages between Natalee and the man in Virginia, who we're calling Mr. B, were of particular interest at first. The 2 began chatting to get to know one another, sharing information about their lives. But these messages also included discussions of Natalee flying to the Baltimore-Washington area, as Lieutenant Boswell reflects.

We do know that later on that evening that she did leave and that she spoke to one of the people that she was communicating with out of, Virginia. And she was conversing with him for a period of time. We know through the text messages and talking to him that he was trying to arrange a time for her to come stay with him for a certain matter of finances that were taking place between them.

He tells me that even though it wasn't obvious that Natalee had made solid plans to leave the state at the time she vanished, It was still concerning given the totality of what they began learning about Natalee and her private life.

She had a very difficult lifestyle. Between that and the cell phone records, her internet searches, her internet activity with a couple of these dating sites, it was concerning. It was concerning. And really, when we looked into those, like in the very beginning, I think I probably called that guy from Virginia within days of getting the phone records. And another guy in Missouri, an older man in Missouri, I spoke to him shortly after that. And we talked about their conversations. And the guy in Missouri, I knew that he was trying to hire her to come live in his house for a while. So that opened up a can of worms in a sense, not knowing if she might have met someone else. It did draw concern that she may have taken off with somebody.

Boswell told me that Natalee was even scammed by a person she met on one of these sites.

I know that she had been communicating with one guy and he scammed her out of money. She went to the CVS in Hogansville and got a couple credit cards and sent him the information. And next thing you know, she is out that money, you know. So she was communicating with a lot of people. And that, aside from the local aspect of things, now you're talking other areas.

This is a very common and easily detected scam that Boswell is talking about. People still fall for it every day. Someone tells you that you need to buy and activate a prepaid debit or gift card for them in the amount of $100 or $200 and give them the information from the card, at which time they will then load it with money for you. In Natalie's case, it was several thousand dollars she was being promised in exchange for escorting services. Reading through the texts, I couldn't help but say out loud several times, come on, Natalie, this is clearly a scam! But she fell for it and was out several hundred dollars, money she didn't have to lose. Which shows that Natalee was either gullible or desperate.

The, the one key thing though, for us, that was before the report of her missing. So there was no more cell phone activity after that.

Though it doesn't appear as if she'd met up with any of the men she'd been talking to leading up to or on the 4th, she had shared pictures of herself. And she'd sent pictures of one of her kids to at least one of these men. Shared details about her private life, including her real name, and given at least one person, a complete stranger she met online, her home address in Georgia, where she and Elaine were living.

She was definitely oversharing. It was stuff that was not very smart. People that knew Natalee said that she never met a stranger. She was naive. But also, you have to balance that with the reality that she does suffer from mental illness, and that could and probably did play a part in that. But it's like, why would you say that you live here? Or why would you send a photo of your kid? Not everyone has your best interests at heart. But to understand Natalee, you have to understand she was a different little bird, and she just didn't see things that way, which was just incredibly reckless on her part. Like, I would never, ever do that. But that— she didn't know any better.

So I can't—

like, in her mind, like, I can't hate her for that.

Could Natalee have somehow met up with one of these men that night? Someone she met online? Could such an encounter have played a role in her death? It's unclear when Natalee first began creating online profiles like this, and really, there is no way to confirm that she ever actually met up with anyone she met online. So, as you can imagine, that didn't give police a whole lot to work with in identifying a person of interest. Police interviewed several men who Natalee was communicating with, but none seemed to be able to provide any real information other than what was already learned from texts and emails. None of them really stood out as a suspect, not even Mr. B, who we discovered worked for the Department of Homeland Security. Natalee texted him 15 times that night, far more than any other person. The two even spoke on a call lasting over 4 minutes after she left the party. Just before she crossed over the Georgia state line. His was the last number ever dialed by Natalee. But police didn't feel Mr. B knew anything of real value other than providing them with her Sugar Daddy 4 Me profile name, initially solidifying that she was attempting to escort on that site.

I've listened to his conversations with Investigator Boswell, and other than being shocked and a little embarrassed at receiving a call from law enforcement about this, I believed he didn't really know Natalee. He seemed to have no other connection to her other than through the site, numerous texts, and that one phone call. But if that is true, it does make what happened next a very bizarre coincidence. After she'd made her name known online as an amateur investigator in Natalee's case, loudly voicing the opinion that Natalee wasn't simply another tragic OD, Jennifer tells me that she began to notice strange things.

I started noticing I was getting some very strange views on LinkedIn.

Yeah, I know what you're probably thinking here, but just follow me. After all, we do live in a digital age.

I'm a LinkedIn Gold member, so that gives you a little bit more privilege to see like analytics of who's looking at your profile, like what companies are searching for you or how they found you, whether it's organically or they're plugging it in. So I was noticing that there was an influx of views, not all at the same time, but periodically. Some of those included someone, a technician at Northrop Grumman, someone with Virginia Police Department. When you're digging into cases like this, it definitely invokes a bit of paranoia because you just don't know who these people are.

But that wasn't the only strange anomaly she saw. People with direct ties to the Department of Defense, the NSA, private security outfits, active-duty military, and law enforcement were all scanning her LinkedIn profile around the same time. Eyes lingering from profiles mostly rooted in Virginia, the very ground Mr. B called home. And then the clincher— an invisible peek from inside the Department of Homeland Security itself. No name, no trace. Then an unusual call comes in.

After I connected with Steven Ford, who is Natalee's ex that she was at the lake house with on July 4th, he had reached out and called me one morning. I was awake getting ready for work when he called. The number did not show up. As his safe contact. It showed up as a woman, and that name I didn't recognize. It was a local number. I didn't recognize that, so I didn't answer, and it went to voicemail, and I continued to get ready for work. I saw that I had a voicemail, and I listened to it and realized it was a voicemail from Steven. I went and Googled the name and realized that This name, a unique name, belonged to a high-ranking former naval officer turned Department of Defense employee, and it freaked me out.

A random fluke? Sure, it could be. Coincidence? Maybe. But you have to admit the timing was highly suspect. Was Jennifer right to freak out? She'd thrown herself front and center in Natalee's saga, questioning everything and digging into anyone with ties to Natalee. Was she just paranoid or was someone now digging into her? Had the hunter become the hunted? Regardless, she and other advocates for Natalee pushed on and kept digging. They found that from here, Natalee's story continued on into a darker place. And to understand why Jennifer was so freaked out at random LinkedIn views or phone number showing up, I needed to dig into the people in Natalee's life. People close to her. People who could potentially have some motive or reason to want to harm her or for her to stop talking. People considered by many, even law enforcement initially, as persons of interest in her disappearance. People like Erik, Natalee's second husband.

Yeah, Erik. Eric and her met online. They started going out, seeing each other. Bam, they want to get married. I said, Natalie, you know this dude for 2 months. You know, I said, I already don't like him. Mommy, you don't like nobody. That's just probably a fact. But I said, no. I said, I know, Natalie, when somebody is gonna treat you right and not try to be controlling or, or whatever. Okay, they got married.

The relationship between Eric and Natalee was a whirlwind. They met on Facebook and began flirting with each other when Eric says he mistook Natalee for someone else. Less than 3 months later, they were married, and she became pregnant with her second child on their honeymoon. She was 21. It seemed the fairytale love that Natalee had always been chasing after had finally landed in her lap. But by the time Natalee disappeared, she was in the middle of a heated custody battle with Eric over their child Isaac, and things had become violent.

I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and I hope you'll join us for season 5 of Dateline: Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them. Maybe you could help solve a mystery.

Search Dateline Missing in America to listen completely free or subscribe to Dateline Premium to unlock new episodes early.

The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking. 48 hours before the trail From A&E and Crime House, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series, The First 48.

I'm Carter Roy.

Every Thursday, I revisit a landmark homicide investigation in depth with long-form storytelling built for your ears. Listen to and follow The First 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, I mean, I love, I love Natalie, you know.

I loved her very much. I really did, you know. Best I ever done in my life was with her, you know what I'm saying?

I spoke with Eric not long after he was in a serious motorcycle accident, one he had to be life-flighted Speaking in a thick Southern drawl, he seemed a quiet, reserved kind of guy by nature. He was still recovering and a little nervous about being interviewed, so it can be a little difficult at times to understand him. I'll help clarify where needed. But he told me that despite his feelings for Natalee, he never truly felt they were reciprocated.

She didn't love me. She didn't love me like I loved her. She wanted what we could have. But no, she was broken. I mean, she— when I got with her, she just had a spirit about her. But there was things that in her past that even I don't know of. You know what I mean? Just the stuff I found out as we was married and she'd just take off. You know what I mean?

What Eric paints is a portrait of someone mercurial, unpredictable, Present and warm one second, cold and shut off the next.

She's had issues, you know, growing up. And, you know, she didn't tell me all about them at first, you know, but as our marriage went on and everything, it would come out, you know, little bits at a time. And now she— I mean, she hurt. She was hurting from a lot of things, you know, in childhood. Just knew she was going to help so many people with her story.

After their kid came into the world, their relationship started unraveling. This rocky ride of breakups and makeups until they finally split for good. Eric landed on the suspect list almost immediately.

I'm still not even sure of exactly how she died. I mean, I've been told several different things. You know, I've been a suspect through all this, so her family hasn't been able to really tell me anything, but I've just been accused But it wasn't just because stats point fingers to partners first.

In this situation, they were locked in that bitter tug-of-war over custody of their son. Eric relocated back to Alabama, just a stone's throw over the state line, and after the breakup, Natalie circled back to live again with Elaine. The times she and Eric did interact after separating were a mix of peaceful handoffs of Isaac from one to the other and vicious clashes. The friction built until police became involved. Eric was arrested on charges of interfering with custody after refusing to drive their son back to Natalie in Georgia at the end of his time. But as he breaks it down for me, it boiled down to this: the boy himself resisted going back with his mother.

Told her on the phone, just come see if he wants to go with you. You know, I'm not gonna make him if he don't want to. He's little, you know, he's barely old enough to talk. 5, 6 cars of the police come get me, lock me up.

Child custody fights amid a crumbling marriage can spiral quickly into raw, brutal territory. But I put it to Eric straight up. Had their clashes ever crossed into physical violence, as both Elaine and Natalee herself had accused?

I wouldn't say physical. I mean, they, they've called the law to him a couple times, you know, and they— on Father's Day, trying to take him from me, and I'm covering him up, you know, and they Like hit me in the back and I'm just pushing through the door like that or something, you know. Her and Mama done that one time, but I would yell. I've got to where I'd yell. And I've never put my hands on her in any kind of way, but a door, a door jamb or something, yeah. Yeah, I've— I mean, she's hurt me a bunch of times, you know what I mean? 'Cause I mean, I've never hit one before in my life. I promise you.

Yeah, if you missed some of that, he's just saying that the physical altercations were more him defending himself and his son from Natalie and Elaine when things got heated. But while in one breath Eric says he'd never hurt Natalie and he'd never hit a woman, in the next he alludes to pushing her into a doorframe. So I think I'm probably not getting the full picture. But Elaine told me that the alleged abuse was not necessarily just physical. So he was abusive towards her?

Yeah, yeah.

Physically?

Yeah. Mentally, physically. They had a bad relationship. She called me so many times to come pick her up. He done put her out on the side of the road. And then whenever she moved back in with me, he would come and like visit Isaac and he couldn't take him. He'd have to stay there and visit him. And she'd go to the bathroom and he'd throw him in the truck and take off to Alabama. I mean, she, she has a journal of where she would just like put in there where she'd go up in the woods and just cry, you know, not understanding why her life is the way it is. And, you know, and, and what's even sadder is she kept it hid behind a beautiful smile.

In a journal entry dated May 16th, 2018, I'm so tired of hurting. I just wish Eric would love me and care for me the way he says he does. He hates me. He hates how I am, how I do things. My heart is breaking. I just want my family. He says he wants the same, but his actions show different. God, what am I supposed to do with the mental abuse? He says I don't love him. He wants He won't let me. I do the best I can. I've stayed. He tells me to leave, then asks why did I come back. Just something else I've ruined. Guilt, please go away. Signed, Broken Lonely.

She wanted love. She was desperate for love. She was desperate for a family.

Natalee wanted the classic American dream. The house, the white picket fence, the 2.3 kids. She wanted a family of her own. People to care about and who cared about her. She was always searching for it, rushing towards it, as is evident in the 2 marriages she hastily entered into. But truthfully, though it might not have been exactly what she had envisioned, she already had family that loved her. She She at least had her kids and Elaine.

I always kept a home for her, you know, she always had a room. And that was one of Eric's biggest problems, is, uh, if she wouldn't have you to run back to, then, uh, maybe she wouldn't leave me like that. And I said, no, she's coming back to me because you are abusing her. I said, well, you need to be in jail. She was about to get full custody of Isaac. And Isaac, all that was taking place in August, and she came up missing in July.

Natalee and Erik's relationship became a mess of resentment and control. Could the prospect of her winning custody of their son have driven him to the breaking point, pushed him to actually want to hurt her? And that's the question that many close to Natalee were asking while she was missing. And there might have been solid ground for suspicion. A flurry of tips came pouring into the police about Eric, detailing the harsh things he'd said about Natalee. To protect their anonymity, I've altered the voices in these recordings.

Eric stopped by my apartment. We were just talking. I asked him, I said, how is the custody battle going? They always had this, you know, on-again, off-again Get into a relationship. He go, oh, you know, I've had her just some time now because she lost her mind or something. So he said— and I was like, okay. He said, but I tell you what, he said, does keep messing with me. He said, fucking with me about my son. He said, I'm gonna kill her. And he said that though. And I'm not saying he killed her. That's not what I'm saying. I'm telling you what he told me. He had a serious look on his face and like he meant it.

Then another call came in where someone close to Eric had overheard him discussing Natalee with another.

I have heard him and Eric talking about making Natalee disappear. It was all the time. Oh, we gotta do something about that bitch. We need to do something about her. She's not letting me see my kids. This and that and the other. Yeah, it was all the time. And now here, all this time later, she's missing. They're crazy. They are absolutely acting insane. He's done something.

He—

Eric has done something to her.

Well, what we're doing is we're gathering information, but we don't have any authority yet to really do anything against anyone until Natalee shows up.

If Natalee shows up.

I spoke with Investigator Boswell about these kinds of calls and exactly how law enforcement handles tips like this, which, given the circumstances, seemed at least worthy of exploration.

I think we did due diligence. We went and verified where he was during that time. That she came missing. And there wasn't any other indicator that would— Everybody that had contact with her like that, yes, we're going to talk to them. And, you know, this is the thing. We will look into those folks, but I can't tell you how many times in the years I've done this job where I've had Angry husband, angry wife. I'm gonna kill that person. There has to be a lot more to it than that, right? There really does. I mean, anybody's possible. Anybody could do that. But there was nothing to indicate that he had any, any hand in that particular process or that he had anything to do with her disappearance. Both the dads had custody of the kids with them. We were able to verify their alibis.

Boswell claims that Eric and Brian, the father of Natalee's first child, both had solid alibis for the window when she vanished. Her and Brian were never married, and though Natalee was married to another man before she met Eric, that was short-lived and he was completely out of the picture. But in regard to Eric, Boswell is spot on. You can't arrest someone for a heated threat alone. We've all spat venom in the heat of rage or even despair. Words that cut deep or terrify others but never leave blood on our hands. And Eric denies ever being physically abusive to Natalie or knowing anything about how she died. So for now, I have to believe that neither of those exes had a hand in her disappearance nor in the mysterious end she met. But those were not the only men in the shadows of her life back then. There are others, men who refused to comment for this podcast, But have rejected the serious allegations against them.

She started talking to Junior. She was sleeping with him for money. He wanted to marry her and she had told him no. She said, I think of you as my best friend. That's why it crosses my mind, you know, maybe sometimes maybe Junior could have been involved because he couldn't get her, you know what I'm saying? And he didn't gave her Start with Ira.

He's the star of the show.

If you talk about all the men in Natalee's life, like, she did to them what they taught her to do. Where is the root of that? It's Ira coming into her life at age 13.

I think that Ira is a professional at what he does.

If you understand predatory grooming, this is textbook 101. In my opinion, She had taken a video CD to an attorney, and she had plans to expose Ira. Jonathan Lawrence, this politically connected tech ex who she's about to testify against, like, she's on the witness list. There's a lot of people that had motive to do something.

The Truth About Natalie is an Audiochuck original produced by Particle Entertainment. I wrote and produced the series. Executive producer is Ashley Flowers. Additional research provided by Community Advocates for Natalie Jones. Original music written and performed by Jackson Epley. And a special thanks to Elaine Gordon and her family. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available at the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233. You can find me on social media @SeanNorton. @SeanKipeOfficial or at SeanKipe.com. And you can email me any information about this case to info@SeanKipe.com. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And as always, thanks for listening.

Every year, millions of people head into the wilderness searching for peace, beauty, and adventure. But hidden in those same scenic landscapes are stories of violence, survival, and lives cut short. I'm Delia D'Ambra, and on my podcast, Park I uncover the true crimes that happened in the most amazing places on Earth. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.