Jess McHugh (Host/Narrator)
Appearances
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sarah told Sam she was really close with her five siblings and talked about them all the time.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sarah would show Sam pictures of her five brothers with their wives and kids, Brody, Joel, Oliver. She'd tell her about their marriage spats or what they were dealing with at work, about their childhood growing up in Georgia. One brother in particular was worrying Sarah, Joel. She told Sam that he was also a vet who now did private military contracting.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sarah told Sam that while Joel was on this mission, he got shot and ended up in a coma and that her mom flew to the Middle East to bring him back to the U.S. But the doctors couldn't revive him. They told Sarah that he would never wake up. One day, Sarah tells Sam, I need to fly to Georgia now. I have to be the one to take him off of life support.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sam was devastated for Sarah. Here was this woman, dealing with all of these injuries, and now this? And just to zoom out for a second, because it can be easy to get lost in Sarah's world. The people in those photos that Sarah shared, they were real people with real lives of their own. They just weren't Sarah's brothers.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
This version of Sarah, the person with the big military family from Georgia, it's someone only a few people saw. And my take is that maybe it's because she couldn't really let Sam into her family life because her whole family had watched her marry Nicole. They'd been to the home that she and Nicole still shared. But I think it's deeper than that.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sarah seems to have understood something fundamental. Tragedy brings us together. Whether it's a friendship or a romantic partnership, being vulnerable enough with another person to let them help you through a crisis, to stand by you at a funeral or a hospital bed. This is where real intimacy is created. And Sarah seems to have taken this idea and just run with it.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sam, of course, didn't know any of this at the time. She continued bringing Sarah deeper into her world, her real world.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sam's mother has been battling stage 3 ovarian cancer for years. So while Sam drove her mother up to Boston for treatment at Dana-Farber, Sarah would help out. She'd help Sam's kids with their homework, plan meals for the family, walk her mother's dog. And get this. While Sam was taking care of her mother's illness, holding her hand through chemo, She was also doing the same for Sarah.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sarah had told her the cancer lie, too, said she had lung cancer. Sarah told Sam, I'm terrified, overwhelmed with medical results. I just can't take any more bad news. So Sam started receiving Sarah's test results, and then she would be the one to relay those results to Sarah. More than once, Sam remembers sitting anxiously in her PT practice, refreshing her email, waiting for results to come in.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
As both Sarah's partner and her caregiver, Sam was in Sarah's world twice over, totally enmeshed. Fast forward to January 2022, the moment when everything started to spiral out of control. News was getting around that Sarah may have lied about a great many things, including her service in the Marines, her medals, possibly even her claims of having cancer.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
When the news first reached Sam, she was in total disbelief. She'd seen a pile of proof over the years. Her enrollment in the Wounded Warrior Independence Program. Years of blood work that she'd received directly from the VA. Sam was trying to wrap her head around this, so she hopped on the phone with one of Sarah's VFW buddies, a guy named Justin. They'd gotten to know each other over the years.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sam told Justin, I've seen years of medical documents, even her cancer diagnosis. There's no way Sarah's lying. How would someone even make that up? More after the break.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
How we found her. Where we found her. We'll get there. You're going to hear from her throughout the rest of the season. But for now, we just want you to hear some of the very first things that she said to us in person. So that you get a read on her. Just like we did. We started with small talk. Like, read any good books lately?
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
In the days after that phone conversation with Justin, Sam still held on to the hope that maybe this was just some terrible misunderstanding. Sarah kept maintaining her innocence, saying she had the paperwork to prove it. Sam says she believed it, maybe because she wanted to believe it. At one point, Sam was driving to work and talking to Sarah on the phone about all of this. She got frustrated.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
And that's when Sarah finally said it. A one-word confession. No. She'd never been in the military.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
It was an avalanche of betrayals. The cancer, the military service, the family down in Georgia, the brother she'd taken off life support. None of it was true. Sarah had been lying to her every single day for years. About nearly everything. Even things unrelated to her stolen Valor scam. Like still being married to Nicole. And in doing so, she had made Sam the other woman.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sarah had spent hours and hours with Sam and her family in their home, nursed the wounds of Sam's divorce, helped her find happiness again. Sarah hurt Sam in all of these intimate, profound ways. And then she made that pain dirty, shameful.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Brody, one of Sarah's fake brothers. Memories like this come back to Sam, even now. And then there was the fact that Sarah was also Sam's patient. That she'd been getting physical therapy from her for years. And some of those bills had been paid for by a wounded warrior. That meant that the very basis of their relationship was a theft, a crime.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
As she sat on the couch confronting Sarah, the implications became crystal clear.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
I said, like, hey, we are at your house. It's the police. Are you in the house? We need you to come to the door.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Our show is edited by Karen Shakerji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Mastering by Jake Gorski.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Izzy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake Flanagan, and Greta Cohn. Additional thanks to Vicki Merrick. I'm Jess McHugh.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
As I sat there listening to her, I noticed Sarah was doing this a lot. Ending a sentence by saying, right? It's kind of subtle. She doesn't yank you through her version of events. It's more like she was feeling around for things that we might have in common. And if we nodded along, she'd say, right?
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
When she talked about her old life as a social worker, I got this strange sense that I was seeing the Sarah Kavanaugh that won over everybody's hearts. Because let's be clear, the people we interviewed for this story, once upon a time, they all loved Sarah. And listening to her talk, I started to understand why. She knew, in her own words, how to be present in a way that silently says, I get it.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
It's weird to say, but I found her really likable. By the time we met in person, I'd been talking to her over the phone for nearly a year. And I'd been hearing about all the terrible things she'd done for just as long. Sarah, she seems pretty aware of her effect on people, then and now. Of all the ways, big and small, said and unsaid, that people come to trust each other. To trust her.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Last fall, Jake and I, along with our producer Amy, went on a road trip to Rhode Island. We wanted to meet the people in Sarah's inner circle, people who were closest to her, who each knew some part of the truth. One morning, Amy and I went to meet someone named Sam. We're just going to use her first name to protect her privacy. We spoke at her boyfriend's house, sitting around the kitchen table.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sam is in her 50s with short blonde hair. She's a physical therapist. And for years, she was Sarah's physical therapist.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
What was it that drew you to her, especially in those early days?
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sarah and Sam first met in the fall of 2018, just a few months after Sarah's wedding to Nicole, the wedding attended by all her VFW friends. By this point, Sarah was fully immersed in this veteran role. Sam told me about the moment when Sarah first came in for a consultation.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
This was the Sarah who, in her own words, had always been able to, quote, keep her mouth shut and be quiet and not share anything. Someone who let the silences do the talking. But Sarah did say she had been injured in Iraq.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sam had worked with trauma patients before, so when Sarah didn't want to show Sam her scar, she didn't push. Plus, she already knew a little about Sarah's supposed military past because one of Sarah's gym buddies had connected them. Sarah got into a routine of twice-weekly PT with Sam. And eventually, the Wounded Warrior Project started paying for it. Sarah was part of their independence program.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
It's a super selective program for the most severely wounded veterans, usually people with traumatic brain injuries, which Sarah claimed she had. Over many months of these weekly appointments, these two women became friends. They talk about nature, gardening, or books. They both love reading. They also talked about more intimate things.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
Sam was recently divorced, and Sarah told her, in that way she does so well, I get it. My marriage isn't working out either. Yeah, that's right. Sarah told Sam that she was also getting divorced.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
None of this was true, at least not according to Sarah's wife, Nicole. At the time, they were still living together, still married, and not in an open marriage. That's not what she told Sam. This, by the way, is also classic Sarah, as we've learned. And it's a pattern I've seen with women scammers in general.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
They often find emotional common ground with victims, even when that shared trauma is totally made up. And it worked.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
And by more, Sam means Sam and Sarah went from having a professional relationship to a friendship to a love affair. One that was really romantic. They started going on a ton of trips together.
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
And it wasn't just a fling. Their lives became really entwined. Much of this I actually learned from other interviews. Sarah would talk about Sam as her partner so much that it got really confusing for us as we reported this. There were times I would talk to someone for this story and they'd mention Sarah's significant other. And I had to double check. Who did you think was Sarah's wife?
Deep Cover
Episode 3: The Confidante
A woman named Sam or a woman named Nicole? Oftentimes people said Sam. Sarah was living a full-on double life with Sam. A second double life. Because she was still living with her actual wife at the time, Nicole. Still, Sarah found a way to spend lots of time with Sam. In fact, Sarah and Sam would socialize with Sarah's VFW pals. Sam met Sarah's mom and a brother.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Inside the VFW, there was an understanding that the awards Sarah had won, the sacrifices she'd made, were fundamentally about service, about doing her job, about having the backs of her fellow Marines. But in the civilian world, her acts of valor made her something of a hero. For people who'd never seen a battlefield, heroes were the stuff of Hollywood movies. People you praised and admired.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
They certainly weren't people whose credentials you questioned. And in the absence of that kind of scrutiny, Sarah could truly be that storybook hero. The perfect blend of valor, tragedy, and triumph. And that's who Sarah was, at her gym, a place called Training for Warriors in Rhode Island. We're going to take a deep dive here, into the world of her gym.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Because if you've been wondering, why would Sarah do any of this? Why would she take such risks? What was in it for her? Well, the story of her gym offers some very interesting answers. One afternoon last fall, I sat down with one of the gym's most passionate members.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Michelle is in her early 60s with spiky blonde hair. She reminds me a lot of the moms from where I grew up outside of Boston. When you first meet her, her attitude is kind of, what the hell do you want? But then she'll invite you into her home and make you a peanut butter ball, and you're in.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Michelle, along with other members of the gym, came to believe that Sarah was suffering from PTSD. Some days, out of nowhere, she'd drop into the fetal position. Once, when someone was taking pictures, Sarah was triggered. She told Michelle, you see a camera, I see a gun. Michelle stepped in and asked the person taking the pictures to move. This kind of thing became a habit for Michelle.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Sarah had other triggers, too. Any surprises or loud noises could make her jump, literally, which is a real symptom of PTSD for vets. And for Sarah, kids were also a problem. Yeah, kids. She told Michelle that she avoided them, and there was a reason.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
At this point in the interview with Michelle, my jaw was on the floor because of course this isn't true. It's another fictional story Sarah told. But of all the lies I'd heard Sarah tell, that one stands out. If Sarah was going to make something up about killing someone in combat, why say it was a child? It just seems so bizarre, the kind of thing that would actually put people off from her.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
But maybe it's because it's the kind of story that really does not invite questions. Michelle grew attached to Sarah, and their friendship really deepened as they started spending time together outside of the gym. They'd go for weekly walks in the woods and meet for crepes. In those moments, Sarah opened up even more about her past.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
She said she'd been hit by an IED blast in Iraq, that she'd developed a traumatic brain injury and damaged her lungs. All of this came out piece by piece, one walk at a time. And despite all she was facing, Sarah remained resilient, upbeat even. Her nickname at the gym was actually Sunshine.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
But a few years into Sarah and Michelle's friendship, Sarah's health took a decisive turn for the worse. During their walks in the woods, she couldn't catch her breath. Sometimes she'd need to stop altogether. And one day, Sarah tells Michelle why.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
The gym rallied to help Sarah. They raised thousands of dollars. They cooked her meals and peanut butter balls. One couple even got her brand new hearing aids. Whatever Sarah said she needed, the gym community tried to give it to her.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
The gym buddies showered Sarah with many gifts. And perhaps the greatest of these was a wedding. Here's how it went down. Sarah told people at the gym that she was engaged to Nicole, and their main problem was that they couldn't find a wedding venue. But there was this couple from the gym, Kate and Mark Feudy.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
They're in their mid-50s, both had worked at Dunkin' Donuts headquarters, where they met and fell in love. That's a New Englander's dream, if you ask me. They often took Sarah out for dinner, let her use their pool as part of her physical therapy. They became really close, almost like a set of surrogate parents. Kate and Mark also have a place up in Vermont.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Kate told us that one day, Sarah just kind of dropped the hint, told them, Well, we want to get married.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
They're underselling it, but it's a gorgeous farmhouse originally built in 1851. Kind of classic Vermont charm.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
So problem solved, right? Sarah and Nicole now had a picture perfect venue for free. But for Sarah, there was actually potential for disaster still lurking. In an act of true boldness, Sarah had created a guest list that included both people who believed her to be a war hero and people who knew damn well that she wasn't one. You had her buddies from the gym and VFW.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
And then you had people like her own parents who knew she'd never served a day in her life. And if people started mingling and chatting, as wedding guests tend to do, Sarah's lie would quickly be outed. Sarah's saving grace, her insurance policy, if you will, hinged on yet another lie, which she'd set in motion months before.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Sarah passed herself off as a veteran, specifically a former U.S. Marine who'd served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who'd been injured, a decorated war hero. But none of this was true. was a story she told about herself. A sprawling lie she lived for six whole years. You might think that to pull this off, she'd play it safe.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
The day of their wedding, Mark and Kate played the role of wedding coordinators, basically. Mark actually cut down a birch tree so he could build a pergola for Sarah and Nicole to get married under. They set up the benches in the backyard and draped tulle over the pergola as an altar. The wedding colors were blue and gold, the Marine Corps colors.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
The veterans might appreciate this understated touch, but it wouldn't tip off anyone else. And there were sunflowers, Sarah's favorite, in maple syrup buckets along the aisles. And sure, people talked and chatted and joked and laughed like they do at weddings when things start to get rowdy. But somehow, Sarah's world stayed separate or just separate enough that her lies held.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
And if this seems hard to believe, it is. This moment, this wedding, was something that Jake and I were both obsessed with. How was it that no one's drunk uncle asked Sarah about her time in Iraq? That no cousins started chatting too much to the VFW guys and figured out Sarah's charade? But none of this happened. It was a pretty perfect summer wedding. Sarah emerged from it unscathed.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
She lived those two lives for another three and a half years, until January of 2022. That's when charities started getting suspicious of Sarah's claims and reached out to the authorities to investigate. Rumors started circulating that Sarah was an imposter. Word quickly got back to Dave that the commander of his VFW post might be a fraud. And right away, Dave picks up the phone.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
But the rumors kept going. Online, there was chatter, people speculating, questioning Sarah's credentials. It started to snowball.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Avoid attention, like not advertise the lie because that'd be a great way to get caught. Seems logical, right? Instead, she did this.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Our show is edited by Karen Shikurji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Mastering by Jake Gorski.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Izzy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake Flanagan, and Greta Cohn. Additional thanks to Vicki Merrick. I'm Jess McHugh.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
This is Sarah giving an interview on the local news. She's speaking about the state's new Purple Heart Trail, a network of roads dedicated to veterans who were injured or killed in service.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
So, yes, Sarah really did this. She stood next to the governor and talked about the meaning of the Purple Heart. A Purple Heart, by the way, that she bought online. Part of me wonders, if you're Sarah, why agree to do this? Because Sarah grew up in Rhode Island and still had family there, classmates from high school, people who knew full well that she was no war hero.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
And if any of them had seen her making this speech or watched her on the local news, they could have started asking questions. And Sarah's lies could have unraveled so easily.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
VFW, by the way, stands for Veterans of Foreign Wars. It's kind of like a club for veterans where they can kick back, swap stories, and support each other. Dave was the commander of this post, and his ongoing goal was to modernize the place. He says when he first arrived in 2010, the vibe was kind of like what you might expect. As he put it, smoky bar, bunch of old guys.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Dave loved those old guys, but he also wanted to open up the doors, create an environment where any and all veterans would feel welcome, especially the younger generation. So he upped their game on social media. He focused on doing community service, and he set the tone with his welcoming personality. Then, in 2016, he meets Sarah Kavanaugh, and apparently, she was struggling.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
In other words, Sarah said there'd been some kind of delay, that she was supposed to be getting financial support from the VA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, but there was a holdup. And Dave, he understood this kind of thing.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
As far as Dave was concerned, the day was a win-win. He got to help a vet in need, and he also got a new member, a fresh face, and a woman, too.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
And it wasn't just that Sarah was a woman. She had a great energy about her. She seemed to embody the new, younger VFW that Dave wanted to build.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Not to mention, she was also a wounded combat veteran. This didn't come out right away or in a super public manner. She would make references to her injuries and later to the medals that she'd won. Eventually, she showed up to VFW meetings with Purple Heart license plates. And she seemed remarkably resilient.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
When folks actually talked to Sarah, she was relatable, even to the other veterans, the old school guys.
Deep Cover
Episode 2: The Poster Child
Sarah says... that she's gonna have to have her leg amputated. And I was blown away.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
So the retreat in Montana comes to an end and the three musketeers say goodbye to one another. They stay in touch. And this, by the way, is exactly the goal of this program. Veterans forming real bonds that last long after the campfire goes out. A few months after the Montana retreat, in December of 2021, Dex happened to be in Virginia visiting Arlington National Cemetery.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
And suddenly, Dex remembers that Sarah's brother was a Marine who was killed in action. So she sends Sarah a text and says she'd like to lay a wreath at his grave. Within minutes, Sarah texts back with a plot number. But when Dex gets to the grave, she notices that this Marine, he has a different last name than Sarah's.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
And when she looks up his obituary, she sees that they're not even the same race. When she sends Sarah a picture of the grave, though, Sarah confirms that, yes, this is him.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
You can hear Dex trying to make sense of this, but she said she didn't ask Sarah too many questions about it.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
So Dex just didn't say anything. Besides, at this point, Sarah was fighting lung cancer. And from time to time, she'd mention to Dex that her medical bills were piling up, that the VA wasn't covering everything. Dex wanted to help, even from far away. That's when she heard about this charity called Hunter 7. Hunter 7 helps veterans who struggle to pay their medical bills.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
The reality is many veterans face huge gaps in the health care the VA provides. Long wait times, denied claims, and charities like Hunter 7 come in as a stopgap. So Dex tells Sarah she should apply for financial assistance. At first, Sarah seemed reluctant. Maybe she was just underwater with everything she had going on. So Dex offered to step in and submit an application for Sarah.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
She couldn't know this then, but this simple act of kindness would set something in motion. Something that would forever alter the way Dex saw Sarah.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Tom Schumann first met Sarah Kavanaugh in the snowy mountains of Boulder, Colorado, at a patrol base Abate retreat.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
This retreat was similar to the one in Montana we told you about. Hang out, work out, talk, connect. That was the goal. That's why Tom founded PB Abate in the first place. He's a Marine, and when he returned from his tours overseas, he watched his comrades struggle. He told us three of his fellow Marines died by suicide over the course of one month. And that is what led him to start PB Abate.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
In Colorado, Tom and Sarah started to get to know each other. Sarah told him she was a professor, which appealed to him. Tom himself taught literature at the U.S. Naval Academy. Sarah also told him that she had a kid who just crashed her pickup truck. She seemed down-to-earth and genuine.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
On the last day of this retreat, a guy named Brian Shantosh led them on an adventure workout. Shantosh is a former Marine and a leadership guru famed for his wilderness programs. And his workouts have a reputation for pushing people to their limits. So everyone, even Tom, was nervous. They were told to break down into teams of two. Sarah and Tom partnered up.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
They get to it. They start pushing this weighted sled up the mountain and then back down the mountain on this mile-long loop again and again and again. And remember, this is the Rockies in December, so it's freezing, and the wind is whipping them as they trudge through.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Tom's not a very effusive guy, so this is basically his version of gushing. He didn't know about all of Sarah's health issues, the cancer, and the leg amputation. Sarah had never told him about this, though he would soon find out.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
So he wants to get all his ducks in a row. He asks Sarah for a copy of her DD-214. That's the official military discharge paper that all service members receive explaining how and when they left the service. Sarah sends him the paperwork. He says he remembers vividly the moment he received it. He was sitting in his car, in a parking lot, about to get a haircut.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
He starts scanning through the documents on his phone and something catches his eye. The DD-214 says Sarah retired as a corporal, which is weird because she'd made it all the way up to staff sergeant. In fact, he'd seen a picture of her with a staff sergeant insignia. So he calls her up.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Suddenly, Sarah's whole story, with all its drama and all its heroics, is feeling very shaky. Tom knew he needed backup, so he reached out to a friend who had access to personnel records. The friend, he punches in Sarah's DOD number, the military equivalent of a social security number, does some more digging. That friend gets back to Tom with what he's found.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
It looks like she'd taken someone else's records and doctored them, inserting her own name and other details. This, by the way, is not a small thing. This isn't forging your mom's name on a sick note. This is a huge deal. Felony level huge. Tom is in a state of shock.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Tom goes home and tells his wife. His wife, she's pissed. She knows how hard Tom has been working for this woman, trying to help her. And now she seems to be a fraud? She's like, not on my watch. So she goes over in person and reports this whole thing to NCIS. That's the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Maybe you've seen the TV show.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
They're the badass investigators for the US Navy and Marine Corps. Anyway, the NCIS folks, they're like, OK, we'll look into this.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
This season is about a betrayal writ large, a deception that played out over the course of more than six years, not just in Montana, but in Colorado and Texas and Tennessee, California and Rhode Island too.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
I first heard about Sarah when I read a few articles about her online. Just snippets, really. But what I read about her was so bizarre, so unusual. I had a million questions. So I tracked her down. We started sending emails, talking on the phone, getting to know each other. And right from the start, she felt familiar to me. We have a few things in common, actually.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Our show is edited by Karen Shakerji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Mastering by Jake Gorski.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Izzy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake Flanagan, and Greta Cohn. Additional thanks to Vicki Merrick. I'm Jess McHugh.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
We're about the same age, both from small towns in New England. But also, I've become a bit of an expert on women like her. I've spent years digging into historical research, reviewing court documents, and immersing myself in the world of women who managed to live multiple lives. I've found so much that I'm now writing a book about it all.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
So yeah, Sarah felt familiar to me, but in the most unsettling way. I clearly remember one of the first things I wrote to her after reading those headlines. I told her, I suspect that there is so much more to your story. I had no way of knowing just how true that would turn out to be.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
One of the first people we interviewed for this story was Catherine Dexter. She goes by Dex. Dex initially met Sarah Kavanaugh in the mountains of Montana at a retreat for veterans.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Dex had served in the Marines as military police in Japan and a couple other bases. When she got out, she felt a bit lost.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
The retreat was organized by a nonprofit called Patrol Base Abate, also known as PB Abate. The founder started the organization because he was concerned about the mental health of veterans and their difficulties readjusting to civilian life. And this was kind of the exact crossroads Dex was at. So she applied to go on one of their all-expense-paid trips to Montana.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
And that's how she ended up drinking her coffee in Big Sky country with all these other vets and meeting Sarah. What were your first impressions of her at the time?
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Episode 1: The Warrior
person who started these retreats was concerned about all the challenges that vets face as they transition back to civilian life. And he wanted this time in the woods to be healing, transformational even.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Dex says that on this retreat, there were just a few female vets. It was her, Sarah, and another former Marine named Natalie. The three of them worked out together.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
So just to recap, here's this woman, Sarah, who at the time was just 30 years old, already a decorated war veteran, strong, modest, quietly brave, sprinting down these mountain trails and giving herself these injections to stem the pain. And on top of it all, she also has stage four lung cancer. Dex had to coax it out of her because Sarah's story came out in dribs and drabs.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
And it got more tragic incrementally, like a kettle on a stove that heats up slowly until all of a sudden it starts to boil.
Deep Cover
Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people.
Spotlight: Snitch City
Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Jess and I have spoken twice and emailed several times to talk about my actions and the consequences. It is important to me that you know, I know and knew several months before my arrest that what I was doing was wrong. I could not have imagined the laws I was breaking, but know now that I was always guilty. What is your opinion about my crime?
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Remember Natalie, the third musketeer from the Montana retreat, the clarinetist? Yeah, well, Natalie also stayed in touch with Sarah. In fact, right around the time that Dex was visiting the cemetery in Arlington, Natalie and Sarah were actually hanging out in person. A bunch of vets, including a few from the Montana retreat, gathered at a CrossFit gym in California to have a little competition.
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Well, not so little. Even for Natalie, it was a lot.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Yeah, pretty insane. This was like an ultra marathon for weightlifters. They broke down into teams of two. Now, at this point, Natalie didn't know about Sarah's cancer. And this is because Sarah had never told her. She just confided this to Dex, which, as we've come to learn, is kind of how Sarah operated. She shared details about her life one-on-one in these small, private moments.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
And so the secrets remain compartmentalized. Natalie was aware that Sarah had some issue with her leg, but that was about all. Then, in the middle of the competition, during one of the breaks, they're all kind of just sitting around, resting. Natalie, her teammate. Sarah, her teammate.
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I ask this because no matter who we are, we bring biases and I'd like to know what you are bringing to the conversation. Also, I have not always thought about others before myself and will always be deliberately sensitive to other people for the rest of my life. I'm looking forward to meeting you, even if it's virtually. Sincerely, Sarah.
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Natalie is looking at Sarah's leg, and it's trembling.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
And the proof was, Sarah's team then goes on to beat Natalie's team in the competition. And Natalie, she's in awe. The two women went to another retreat together not long after this. And it seemed like Sarah's leg was in bad shape.
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Looking back, Natalie still recalls the intensity of this moment with Sarah. The tenseness of her hamstring, the tremors in her muscles, the pain on Sarah's face. It all seems so real. In the coming weeks, Natalie texted Sarah about the amputation to see if it had been scheduled. And Sarah eventually gave her a date, January 26th. The date sticks in Natalie's mind.
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She keeps thinking about it as it draws closer. And then, the night before the surgery, Natalie can't sleep. She just keeps thinking about Sarah.
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I asked Natalie to read me that text.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
This letter that I just read you, it's written on lined paper, the kind I used in grade school, and the penmanship is flawless. When I read it for the first time, I was in my car outside my classroom at the university where I teach, and I found myself just sitting there, reading and rereading this letter. "'What is your opinion about my crime?' she asked. Now that was interesting to me.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
The next day, Natalie shot Sarah another text to see how the surgery went. And Sarah explained they had to call off the amputation.
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That guy she mentions, Tom, that's Tom Schumann. He's the founder of Patrol Base Abate, the nonprofit that organized those retreats up in Montana. Tom also knew Sarah, and now he was texting with an urgent message.
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Tom says that Sarah has been lying about a number of things, and that she may have lied about her military service. Natalie didn't know who or what to believe.
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But it turns out Tom had his reasons. In the weeks leading up to this moment, he'd been digging into Sarah's story and he discovered a few red flags, some things that just didn't add up. More on that after the break.
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It was almost like right from the jump, this woman, Sarah Kavanaugh, had flipped the script, like she was interviewing me." And then there was this line. I'd like to know what you were bringing to the conversation. Funny, because we weren't even having a conversation yet. But looking back, I understand now that the conversation had already started.
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Within a few weeks, Tom hears about Sarah's cancer, and he feels like he's got to do something.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
At the time, Tom lived in Rhode Island, where Sarah also lived. So they met up for coffee and talked for hours. He learned how she'd seen combat in Afghanistan, how her convoy was blown up, and how she'd been seriously hurt in the blast. And how, despite it all, she still managed to save some of the guys in her patrol, dragging them to safety, even with her own crushed hip.
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How she'd gotten a bronze star for her bravery. And now, she had cancer in her lungs because of the toxic chemicals in that explosion.
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She told Tom that her plan had been to get a PhD in English literature. She'd even been accepted into a program at Johns Hopkins. But then the VA delivered some shattering news. They told her that she couldn't use her GI Bill. Why? Because her life expectancy was shorter than the time it would take to finish the program. It was devastating. All of it.
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Tom, being a guy of action, was like, maybe I can create a salaried position for you at Patrol Base Abate. At the time, the organization was run entirely by volunteers. There were no paid positions. But the organization did have donors, some with deep pockets. And Tom thought, maybe one of them would be willing to pay for this.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Tom even had a particular donor in mind, a woman who lived up in New Hampshire.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
And she was already sussing me out, tuning in to me. And Sarah, she's really, really good at that. I know that now. Months before I got that letter, I got a call from my friend, Jess McHugh. She's my co-host this season. Jess is a journalist and an author. In fact, you may have noticed in Sarah's letter, she makes a reference to Jess. And that's because Jess is the one who found this story.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Around this same time, something else very important happens. Remember how Dex, the friend from the Montana retreat, tried to help Sarah with her medical bills? How she contacted a charity called Hunter 7? Well, that charity had also started digging into Sarah's backstory. And what they discovered prompted them to alert both Tom and the FBI.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
But what no one realized, not Tom or Dex or NCIS or even the FBI, was just how deep this deception went. None of them could begin to fathom it. Lies tend to be fragile, temperamental things. Small ones may flourish, but the big ones die, wilting under their own weight. Except in this case, the bigger it grew, the more real it became.
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To this day, much of this story is shrouded in mystery. There's no detailed public record of what really happened. What's more, most of the people caught up in all of this haven't spoken publicly or even to each other. So the story itself remains compartmentalized, like rooms in a mansion with no doors between them.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Jess and I have spent the last year or so finding our way into these rooms and listening. Coming up this season on Deep Cover.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah was produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Tali Emlin. Additional production support by Sonia Gerwit.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Original scoring and our theme were composed by Luis Guerra. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
There's so much that we've learned since we first started talking to Sarah. So much else that she's told us. And we've spent the last eight months trying to figure out how much of her story is true. And what, if anything, we could trust. Because this story is all about trust.
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Part of the ethos of this retreat was you didn't brag about the past. You focused on now. And you exercised a lot. The whole point of this retreat was actually strength building. The vets built a platform that became their outdoor gym. They lifted weights here, did squats, deadlifts, power cleans. And apparently, they were also carrying giant slabs of rock up a mountain.
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That woman you can hear saying, push it, that's Sarah Kavanaugh. We found this video of her on YouTube from this same retreat. She's in a sweaty gray tank top, has on these mirrored sunglasses and leather workman's gloves. She has blonde hair and a runner's build, slim and athletic.
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And that soft, inspirational music, that's in there because this is a promotional video for Patrol Base Abate. And in that video, we see Sarah giving an interview with the wild mountains of Montana in the background.
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That's Natalie Markham. She was a clarinetist in the Marine Corps band, a self-described band nerd. At the time of the retreat, Natalie was struggling. She owned a CrossFit gym that had been hit hard during the pandemic, and she was worried that it might go bust. So for her to be here in Montana, doing something she loved under the open sky with new friends, it was like she could breathe.
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She asks someone to take a picture of her with Dex and Sarah to commemorate the moment.
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Introducing Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah
Hey, I'm just recording here because I'm in the car outside the English department and I just got this letter. which was sent to me by Sarah Cavanaugh. Okay. October 12th, 2024. Dear Jake, thank you for sending me the articles and book that you've written. You have a distinct style when posing questions that really makes one think about the messages between the lines.
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In the picture, the three of them are standing against the backdrop of the mountains, all flexing, biceps and triceps bulging. Natalie and Sarah are smiling. Dex is all business, serious as can be. And looking at the photo, I could kind of feel their energy. I'd never guessed they'd just met.
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They looked like they could be sisters, joking, competing, giving each other shit, like the Three Musketeers or something. Dex told us that this kind of camaraderie is not a given.
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Dex was especially impressed with Sarah. She was somehow doing all these really intense workouts while also dealing with what seemed like a pretty serious leg injury.
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Because Sarah was so modest, because she didn't boast or advertise about who she was and what she'd done, there was an air of mystery about her. Sarah said she was a cryptolinguist. She'd served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. She came from a military family. Her brother had been a Marine, too. He was killed in combat and buried at Arlington Cemetery.
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In private moments, Sarah began to open up to Dex.
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As Sarah told it, her hip never healed properly. From the knee down, her leg was basically dying. But that's not all.