The Curious Case of...

The best part about being a mom is watching my children figure

things out, put the pieces together.

It's pretty cool to see the gears turning.

Being a mom kind of feels all encompassing.

I know a lot of people kind of have an identity crisis.

So sometimes it's nice to take a break from mom-mode.

You know, getting away from real life

and kind of becoming somebody else.

So I could understand why Sarah did some of these things.

If Sarah had any shame, she wouldn't have done any of

the things she's done over the last 20 years.

I think she really wanted the things that she lied about.

There's something...

There's something not right in there.

This was a woman with no authentic identity.

I just remember I couldn't sleep that whole week.

I've never seen her walk.

I don't even really how tall she is.

I think she just idealized my life at the time and was

like, "This is what I want, and I'm gonna insert myself

in your life."

As things progressed, I found

out exactly how intricate the web was,

and it became almost a game.

She wasn't in it for the money, and so I became

intensely curious about what she was in it for.

That person does not exist.

That feeling of grief of, like, somebody had just died.

That's where it gets really, really crazy.

My head was just spinning.

I just don't want anybody to be hurt.

She better hope she never meets me.

They become really good friends.

And you can imagine how special that was to Erin.

I know what it's like, 'cause I lived with two

disabled brothers. They just want friends.

They want someone to think they're special enough to spend

time with, right, and be a friend to.

So this meant a lot to Erin.

So now Erin knows that Sarah understands Erin's life

because Sarah's living with a sister with special needs.

As Sarah and Erin got closer and started to talk all

the time, Sarah started to tell Erin about her husband Adam

and their multiple pregnancies, multiple miscarriages,

and even deaths of some babies.

My name is Sarah Treleaven. I'm a journalist.

And I mostly write long-form magazine features.

I also make true-crime podcasts.

And I wrote about Sarah Delashmit

for ELLE magazine in 2021.

Almost immediately, I knew there was a huge story here.

Sarah and Erin had been friends for quite some time

when Erin gets an email from someone.

And it's a guy named Jeff who says he's seen Erin's

profile on a dating website,

and he thinks she's really pretty.

And he'd really like to get to know her.

So Erin is narrating this to Sarah while they're on

the phone, and Sarah says, "I cannot believe this,

"but I know Jeff.

He's my husband Adam's best friend."

This really feeds into this idea that it's Erin and Sarah

who are destined to be together.

You know, Erin, she's an adult who lives

with her parents and is very aware of her own limitations.

And so Jeff is sort of promising her this life

that they might have together.

And it's this fantasy that is immediately appealing.

Sarah also started to tell Erin about multiple illnesses,

including Guillain-Barré syndrome,

Ebola, and multiple cancers.

What's amazing is that when Erin knew her, Sarah was

the one providing the care.

But when she showed up at Camp Summit years later,

she arrived as someone

who needed that same level of care.

That's where Bethany comes in.

You want to go outside?

Come on. Don't pee right there.

Oh, my God.

Ruby's just, she's the guard dog, our safety net for so long.

My anxiety is up,

and I'm worried, can I protect us or anything like that?

And she's the little alarm.

Can I have a hug?

Thank you. Thank you.

Love you too.

And I got my makeup all over you.

Coming into meeting Sarah. My life was very hard.

There's a lot of pain there.

I grew up in a cult.

The situations I was put in in that cult

was very traumatizing.

Sorry, I'm trying to stop crying too.

So I saw a lot, I heard a lot, and I

watched girls be put in situations where judgment

and shame were kind of the narrative.

And so I left.

Anyone who leaves that community is not spoken well of,

and so I did not have a community.

And in order to build that, I was volunteering

with nonprofits.

I worked for AmeriCorps for a year, and then I taught

English in the Dominican Republic.

And then I was working as a camp counselor

at Camp Summit, an outdoor camp for adults with disabilities.

And that's where I met Sarah.

She had muscular dystrophy, and she was in a wheelchair.

So Sarah was originally someone who was taking care

of people with disabilities.

And now she's the one in a wheelchair.

What are the odds of that?

So, 2015, I was in my mid-20s,

working as a camp counselor at Camp Summit.

Camp Summit is an outdoor camp for adults with disabilities.

So, there's bonfires, we do cookouts,

um, there's horseback riding.

Um, they have a pool now, which is really great.

So, everything is just meant to be outside.

Camp counselors there are kind of a dual role.

Counselor, live-in caretaker in the cabins.

First time I saw Sarah was on move-in day.

And Sarah came in in her power wheelchair.

She was wearing kind of like a light pink T-shirt.

Had a big smile on her face and had just kind of this very

gentle first impression.

I'm Kerry. I worked at Camp Summit

the fall of 2015. I was Sarah's unit leader,

so the lead counselor for

the cabin that Sarah was in for the week.

I worked directly with her, was a caregiver throughout

the time, would transfer her to the restroom and bathe her,

and also supported with feeding and then also with all

the activities throughout the day.

Sarah was super friendly.

She really engaged with all the counselors and we all

became friendly with her throughout the week.

Her mobility at that point was just her wrist.

This is all I ever saw.

She could do enough to kind of control the wheelchair.

You know, obviously anything else that she needed was on us.

One of the things that's super interesting about Sarah is

people are really drawn to her positive energy and they

genuinely like her and they want to

develop this intimacy with her.

She's somebody who only creates relationships under false

pretenses and then blows them up.

And this happens over and over and over again for 20 years.

It's important to tap into your intuition

and beware of your surroundings.

And I'm not saying that that necessarily applies here,

but have you ever been in a situation where you,

you know, you like someone, but you start wondering,

wait a minute, something's a little off here?

Like, something's just not right.

It's like, it's your intuition.

It's your gut calling what you want.

We supported her with getting into a hammock and things like

that and we just made sure she had the best time possible.

Sarah really wanted to go on the zip line during activities,

and we obviously really wanted to make that happen for her,

so there was several counselors

that had to get involved for that.

So, she went across pretty quick and then got onto

the platform on the other side where other caregivers were

there waiting, and I remember they lowered her down,

and she laid on the platform, and she just sobbed.

Like, "That was the best experience.

"Thank you for doing this for me."

Like, "I've never been able to do anything like that before."

And we were all just around her, like, cheering, like,

"I'm glad you had fun."

You know, this is why we're here.

I'm so glad that you get to experience this.

And horseback riding was the same thing.

She really liked the horses too.

I remember that.

But it seemed like the zip line was, like, the very emotional

experience for her.

And I felt good about helping her have such a big,

monumental experience.

And so that helped me work

through my own trauma from that cult.

Because I'm trying to find a community.

I've been trying, you know, to...

find myself.

And I have realized this is literally my cheat-sheet

on how I can heal from it.

For her, morning would start out with helping her

transition onto her wheelchair.

And then we would've brushed her hair,

help her with her teeth,

get her ready for the day, and then be out the door.

She told us pretty early on when she first arrived that

she was on her period, so she had come prepared

with pads for the week.

There was one time we woke up in the middle of the night

and was calling for help. It was, like, 4:00 AM

to put her CPAP mask on,

and I was over there, like, on top of the bed