Natalie Robomet
Appearances
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
And I'm Natalie Robomedic. So there's this quote about relationships that I read in a novel and I think about all the time. It goes, you'll never know anyone's marriage but your own. And even then, you'll only know half of it. The idea is that however well we think we know our romantic partners, we never really can know anyone else fully.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
Even after 20 years and countless egg sandwiches cooked exactly that one specific way, one morning they can wake up and still do something that'll surprise you. But what happens if that surprise isn't an egg sandwich? What happens if it turns out to be really bad? If the person you loved, the person you were married to, wasn't telling the truth?
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
This is the story of betrayal, fraud, and what you do when the scrapbook life you've made for yourself gets ripped in two.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
Spring has sprung, and I am dying to get out of town. I'm actually going away this weekend with some friends, and I recently bought my partner a new Quince carry-on that I might just be borrowing for this trip.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
This year, I'm treating myself to the luxe upgrades I deserve with Quince's high-quality travel essentials at fair prices, like lightweight European linen styles from $30, washable silk tops, and comfy lounge sets, with premium luggage options and stylish tote bags to carry it all. The best part? All Quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince. Go to quince.com slash infamous for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash infamous to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash infamous
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Brittany had been at Lululemon only for a little while, but Bethesda was actually the second store she'd worked in. As Isla mentioned, Brittany had been at the Georgetown store. She got let go from it for a reason Isla found a bit confusing.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Basically, during the holidays, Lululemon ran a special sale for employees called Shop Night, where workers could buy clothes at 70% off, an even bigger discount than usual. Lululemon employees were only allowed to buy $1,000 worth of clothes, but Britney bought more than $2,000 worth. It caused conflict between her and her manager, and Brittany was actually fired.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
But after launching an internal investigation, Lululemon Corporate overturned the decision, and Brittany was relocated to Bethesda's store around January 2011, where things seemed to be going swimmingly, according to Isla.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
The day of the attack, Isla actually hung out with Brittany that morning.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So the police also brought in Rachel, another educator working there the day of the attack. How long have you worked for Lululemon?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So a couple personal items had gone missing, but Rachel says it was nothing crazy.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So this specific Friday, when Rachel left for the day, this is what she remembers.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
They both seemed fine. But apparently, after Rachel left, something happened that made everything not fine. Remember the bag checks where employees who are closing have to look in each other's bags? Isla explained it.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Well, apparently... When Jaina went to bag check Brittany that night, she found something. Jaina called another employee to ask about it. Here's that employee now.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Apparently, Brittany had said that this employee had rung her up.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
A different Rachel. The store manager. The woman who would find Jaina dead the next morning. State's attorney John McCarthy again.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Remember the size 14 men's shoes, the display ones that had been used for hemming, with that distinctive waffle print that had tracked blood around the store? Well, the footprints from the shoes never left the store.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
And police began to wonder, what if there hadn't been anyone else there at all? What if Britney had put the display shoes on to make it look like there'd been a man there? It would explain why Jaina had been killed, but the attackers had left Britney alive. And it would explain why the Apple employees had heard only women's voices. The problem? It didn't make a whole lot of sense.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Just because someone gets caught stealing, that doesn't mean they kill the person who caught them. And what happened to Jaina was horrific. When medical examiners carried out an autopsy, they counted more than 331 wounds made with over five different weapons. The back of Jaina's head had 13 different fractures.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
There was just no way that Brittany, this friendly, charming athlete who was all into athleisure clothes, could do something like this. Was there? Next time on Infamous.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
This week, we pick up the story with those detectives as they try to figure out just who did this. This is Murder at Lululemon, part two. So Brittany didn't make it seem like the guy you heard from at the beginning of this episode had something to do with the crime. She told police that she and Jaina were attacked by two men she didn't recognize.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
They were dressed all in black and wearing ski masks. One of them was about six feet tall. The other was closer to Brittany's height, five foot three. She said they sounded as if they were white. Now, this case was popping off in the media, so police were very motivated to find the assailants and quick. They get to work, hunting down any clues they can find, starting with surveillance tapes.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
The Lululemon store didn't have interior cameras, so they can't see exactly what happened inside. But the Apple store next door does have a bunch of security cameras. And one of them points right at the parking lot outside the store. Police secure the tape from Friday, March 11th, the night of the crime. One of the lead detectives on the case is eager to find out what it reveals.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So he goes home, pops the DVD into his computer, and scrolls to 10 p.m. I can just imagine him squinting at the screen in the dark, looking for anyone who matched the descriptions Brittany had provided. At first, he doesn't see much, just average shoppers in light-colored clothes. But then, just after 11 p.m.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
That's state's attorney John McCarthy again, the chief prosecutor for the county. He's describing what police found on the CCTV tape.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
One about six feet tall, the other shorter. Both dressed in black and wearing beanies that looked like they could have been ski masks if they were to be pulled down over their faces. Investigators spring into action.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
They start questioning them. The two men are nervous and can only speak broken English. And these men say they have a perfectly good reason to be in that footage. They work in a restaurant in that shopping center.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
To be sure, one of the investigators went down to the restaurant. Other restaurant employees confirmed the men's stories. They couldn't have been leaving the scene of a murder. They'd just finished their shift. So the security footage lead was a dead end. But police also had tons of tips coming in. The reward for information was more than $100,000.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
This is audio of the two detectives who are investigating the case.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Most of these tips don't go anywhere, but a lot of people are calling about a man named Keith Lockett. He's a tall, black, homeless man known for being a drinker. Investigators are skeptical. This is mostly wealthy, mostly white Bethesda, and when people get scared, their prejudices quickly start to show.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
But some of the coolers say they've noticed Keith hanging out with a short guy and that he hasn't been seen at his usual location since the murder. And when detectives look into him, they find a colorful rap sheet spanning back years. Cocaine possession, assault and battery, robbery, the list goes on.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So even though they think it's a long shot, they start looking for Keith and they find him six miles away at a hospital with bloody clothes and a swollen eye. Now, Keith says that the reason his eye is swollen was that a man had punched him the night before. But he can't seem to keep the details straight about who that man was, how the fight started, or where it even happened.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
As the detectives interview him, Keith becomes increasingly agitated. He keeps saying that he's schizophrenic and needs medication. And detectives start to wonder, was he unstable enough to have committed this grisly crime?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Then there was the issue of Jaina's car. Jaina had actually driven to work that day, so when Brittany called her, telling her she needed to go back to get her wallet, Jaina drove back to meet her. So you'd expect that Jaina would park right outside the store. But her car wasn't there.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Local police had seen Jaina's car in the parking lot the night of the murder and they'd seen someone in it. When detectives get to the car, they discover something else.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
There was some blood in Jaina's car. Had the killers taken Jaina's keys, planning to steal it, but then just abandoned it a few blocks away? It didn't make much sense. And there was one more clue investigators uncovered.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So, Jaina had impeccable credentials, with her exceptional education and master's degrees. She didn't need to sell Lululemon clothes to make ends meet. She was at the store because she was inspired by their corporate ethos, had even studied it. And Brittany, with her college education and Division I soccer career, had pretty impeccable credentials too.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
She dated professional men, not just the guy you heard at the start of the episode, but a dentist and even a guy in the Secret Service. Brittany had come to Lululemon after working at a DC high-tier hotel, where she had said she'd work directly with VIPs, like the Jonas Brothers, to make sure their suites were exactly to their liking.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
She was actually hoping that working at Lululemon would help her get to her next goal in life, to be an Equinox trainer. And now two Apple employees are saying that on Friday night, when Britney said that two men had been yelling and laughing as they carried out this horrible attack, they hadn't heard any men in the store.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Instead, they said they'd heard what sounded like an argument between two women. This is interesting to detectives, especially now that the Keith lead felt like it was drying up. They'd collected his DNA to send to the crime lab, but they weren't optimistic. So they start talking to Lululemon employees, looking for new clues.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
She worked the early morning shift the Friday of the attack, and she knew both Jaina and Brittany well.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
And why is it that men seem to so disproportionately do these things? Or is that fair?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah. And I just wanted to pick out something that you said earlier there, that it's not always just sort of men to women, that it can power abuse or whatever term we're using can transcend gender or sexuality. And most recently, there's another example in the news. This former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO, Michael Jeffries, was
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
And perhaps a little more reflectively, why are we drawn to these stories, both as listeners and as journalists? To try and answer those questions, this episode, we're talking to a psychologist about some of the mental underpinnings of the sorts of people we cover, whether it's Diddy and his alleged crimes or Keith Raniere and his NXIVM sex cult.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
indicted on 16 federal counts of sex trafficking and international prostitution and the indictment basically alleged that between 2008 and 2015 jeffries and his male partner and a third man engaged in a sex trafficking scheme in which they would recruit men to engage in quote-unquote sex events where the alleged victims were allegedly given muscle relaxants viagra and
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
In exchange, they were enticed into these acts with modeling and career opportunities at Abercrombie. So, I mean, these are really just horrible allegations. But I bring it up to sort of point out allegations involving gay men. So it's not just men to women.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Absolutely. So Vanessa interviewed Keith Raniere, who was the leader of NXIVM. And she wrote one of the very early stories on NXIVM.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
And it's so messed up, but he essentially used sex as a tool of manipulation in one of these ways where he would tell that sex with Keith was a way to kind of get rid of emotional blocks or energetic blocks and sort of a way to transcend and reach a higher spiritual plane, which actually is something that several different cults and cult leaders have said. But, I mean, what is it about sex...
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
This takes us on a slightly different tangent, but I just wanted to ask because it's something I've been wondering about. What role does sort of having experienced abuse yourself play into perpetuating abuse? I mean, it strikes me that these are probably different profiles of people, but you hear that saying hurt people hurt people. Would you mind just kind of talking a little bit about that?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
By the way, we had some technical difficulties during our conversation, so you're not going to hear very much of Vanessa. Sorry about that. And don't worry, she'll be back. All right, let's get to the interview. We're here with Dr. Kate Balistrieri, a licensed psychologist and certified sex therapist who focuses on providing counseling services to help people build resilience and recovery.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Is that why women like true crime? Because there's... So let me explain a little bit. There's so many statistics about how... True crime is disproportionately consumed by women. True crime shows audiences 80% female. And one theory has been posited that it's like women are less physically powerful than men. And if we can understand the psychology of criminals, we can better avoid them.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
But I also wonder if there's this sort of the phrase you just used where it's kind of a way to safely...
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
I think it's just so fascinating how our deepest fears can get metabolized into sexual desire and like the way in which sexual desire can become this playground or battleground for some of the things we're genuinely most worried about, frightened about, actively working through.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
I ask about the true crime thing because Vanessa and I have talked about this, but we're both incredibly drawn to these really dark stories. And both of us have worked on a lot of very dark stories. And there's a psychological weight that comes to hearing people's darkest experiences over and over. And yet... We don't stop doing it as reporters. Why am I drawn to these stories?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Kate has lots of very smart thoughts on psychopathy and something called the dark triad, a term we're going to get into, which probably covers a lot of the people we talk about. Keen, infamous listeners will remember we did an episode on Diddy and one of his former long-term loves and That is a story we're going to continue to cover.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
You know, like, why do I want to hear the worst moments of somebody's life over and over? And maybe it's all of the above. It's that it gives you a little bit of catharsis and control or maybe a chance of empowerment at seeing how they made it through.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
When we're talking about some of these more specific characteristics of kind of a narcissist, or I know it's not in the DSM, but a psychopath or somebody who has these Machiavellian tendencies, what are warning signs that people should kind of watch out for and avoid in their own life as much as possible?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
We've also talked a lot, of course, about NXIVM, the sex cult that was run by Keith Raniere. So all of these things are very, very related, I think. And yeah, I mean, Kate, I just wanted to start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah, I think that's fantastic advice. And the victim blaming part of it is something I find myself trying to say to a lot of the folks I end up interviewing. I've spoken to a lot of people who've been the victim of con men or cult leaders. And there is so much shame that they carry of just feeling like this was my fault. How was I so stupid? How did I fall under this person's spell? I'm an idiot.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Why couldn't I see? It breaks my heart because I'm like, this isn't on you. This is them. Yeah.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
That's incredible. Yeah. I think that's the perfect note to end on. Thank you so much for talking to us and for coming on Infamous. Where can people find you?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah, it's very dark stuff, but we'll try to make this conversation illuminating. Just to begin with, because I already used this term in the intro, what is the dark triad? What does that mean?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Okay. It's been a long time since I read Machiavelli. What is this? Remind us what that is.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
So then how is that different to a narcissist? Which I feel like is a word that's gotten thrown around a lot. I feel like it's all over my TikTok and everyone's just claiming everyone else is a narcissist. And I'm like, I don't really know that I know what that means. Yeah.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah, that's so interesting because I think when we think in pop culture terms, this might be a little bit of a dated reference, but when we think of a narcissist in pop culture terms, we maybe think of like a talented Mr. Ripley type, like somebody who has that grandiose sense of self-worth and a lack of empathy.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
We just did an episode about Elizabeth Finch, who is the former Grey's Anatomy writer who... basically ended up lying about having cancer and doing a lot of strange and antisocial behaviors, lying about her past and her medical history in a way that really seemed to be with the purpose to kind of create attention for herself.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robamed. So if you're a regular listener, you've probably noticed that we tend to dive into a lot of scandals. Scandals that often involve some less than savory characters who do some less than savory things. And one thing Vanessa and I are always wondering is why? Why do people do the terrible things they do?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah, I mean, I think probably the most prominent case of exploitation of women that's in the news right now relates to Diddy, who he was recently charged in a three count indictment with racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. And
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
And basically the indictment alleges that Diddy abused, threatened, coerced women and others and led a racketeering conspiracy that engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, obstruction of justice, a ton of other horrible things. And, A lot has come out about that case that has been talked about.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
But I think the thing that we really want to ask about is what drives somebody to do that? Somebody who ostensibly has it all. I mean, Diddy was incredibly wealthy and rich and powerful. Why would he need to allegedly take from people in that way?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
So Jaina is this go-getter. She was actually about to move to the Pacific Northwest to be with her boyfriend. And then this horrible tragedy occurs. So what about the other victims?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
So these two athletes, Jaina and Brittany, were the women inside the store. The women who had been brutally attacked. Jetzt möchte ich einen Moment auswählen und ein bisschen mehr generell über Fitness und ihre Rolle in unseren Leben sprechen. Speziell die Art von Boutique-Fitness-Klassen und Luxury-Gyms, die Lululemon dich ausführt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Die, die in den 2010ern wilder populär geworden sind, wie SoulCycle, CrossFit und Equinox. Diese teuren, kultistischen Workouts, die nicht nur ein Weg sind, dein Körper zu bewegen, sondern eine Lebensweise, eine Marke, die kommt, um deine Identität zu definieren. Ich glaube nicht, dass es eine Überraschung ist, dass die Amerikaner sich von organisierter Religion entfernt haben.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Das hat mit dem Wachstum dieser Identitären Fitnessregime zusammengefasst. Und es gibt etwas Religioses an ihnen, denke ich. Die dünn gelassenen Klamotten bei SoulCycle, die furchtbare Verzweiflung von Crossfit-Liften, die hohen Türen und zigzige Atriums von Equinox, diese modernistische Architektur, gebaut, um Angst zu inspirieren und dich klein zu machen, als würdest du in einer Kathedrale sein.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Und die Lululemon-Store sind eines dieser heiligen Räume. Du bist wahrscheinlich in einer, oder am wenigsten hast du sie gesehen. Sie sehen wunderschön aus. Spaltlicht-Tabeln, gefälschte Mannequins, die in ihren berühmten, streckigen Yoga-Panzen gekleidet sind, schöne kleine Kuppelhäuser, die mit gerollten Yoga-Matten vorbeigelegt sind. Es ist hochwertig und tieflich aspirativ.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Ein Ort, um Kleidung zu kaufen, das versprochen hat, dich eine bessere Person zu machen. Dieser Lululemon-Store in Bethesda war nicht anders. Hinter der Kante standen rote Shopping-Tüten mit Sagen auf sie, wie die heutigen Vorgaben. Dinge wie, atme tief und genieße den Moment. Erfolgspflichtige Leute verwendeten die Worte wünsche, sollte und versuche mit, ich werde.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Dieser Umfeld machte die schreckliche Szene, die die Polizei in Lululemon entdeckt hat, immer mehr zerstörerisch, sogar heilig. We got a hold of a video from the actual crime scene. At first, the store looks normal. Everything seems to be in its right place. But then you notice a mannequin is lying on the floor. It's got black bike shorts on and a striped shirt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
And there looks to be a bloody shoe print near it. Und in the back of the store, behind a purple door, they find Jaina. Die George-Washington-Gradin mit mehreren Master-Klassen. Sie ist bereits tot. Seine Haare sind geschliffen und geschliffen. Es gibt einen großen offenen Cut auf der Rückseite ihres Herzens. Eine Rippe liegt unter ihrem Nacken.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Die Rückseite ihres Pants sieht aus, als ob sie zerbrochen oder geschliffen worden sind. Im Bad finden sie Brittany, den starken Athleten, der schon mal Kunden zu Push-Up-Kontesten gefordert hat. Sie ist auf dem Boden, aber sie ist noch lebendig. Sie hat Kratzer über ihrem Gesicht und sie weint.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Sie trägt weiße Fußgängersocken, die in Blutstöhnen verkleidet sind, und schwarze Yoga-Panzen, die sich auf dem Kratzer öffnen. Plastische Zip-Tüten verbinden ihre Ankeile und Rüste. Eine grüne Shirt ist um ihren Nacken geworfen. Es ist mit dem Satz geprintet, setz deine Ziele. Die Leben sind zu kurz für den Treppen. Geh raus und renn. Die Beige-Bathroom-Türen sind in Blutstöhnen gesmehrt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Im Video sieht man drei weiße Blumen, die auf dem Boden gestoßen wurden. Sie sind Ivory-Petale, die von den grünen Strähnen ausgeschnitten wurden. Außerhalb des Bathrooms ist ein roter Lululemon-Kotthänger, eine Schnauze von Windex, Papier-Türen und eine Buddha-Statue. Einer dieser kleinen, ca. 10 cm langen. Die Buddha wurde überknockt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Brittany doesn't look like she's in good shape at all, so she gets rushed to the hospital. When she's there, she's stable enough to talk. She's freaked out, but she's coherent. So an investigator sits down with her, a woman, and Brittany starts talking to her.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Sie haben den Store zusammen geschlossen, was bedeutet, dass sie die Rechte ausgeschlossen haben, die Lichter ausgeschlossen haben und dann, bevor sie weg waren, haben sie alle in der anderen Tasche gespeichert, um sicherzustellen, dass es keine stickigen Finger gab, dass keine Items gekauft wurden.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Diese wurden als Tasche-Schecke genannt und es war der Weg, wie Lululemon die Storchen jeden Abend geschlossen hat, egal wo in Amerika sie waren.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Es gab auch andere Vorteile, z.B. dass die Mitarbeiter mit Geld auf Yoga- und Fitnessklassen bezahlt wurden. Aber es gab auch ein paar Lululemon-Praktiken, die nur etwas seltsam waren. Ich spreche nicht von den intensiven Lululemon-Fans, wie zum Beispiel der Frau, die ihren öffentlichen Job verabschiedet hat, um dort zu arbeiten.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Ich spreche von den seltsamen persönlichen Dingen, die die Firma ihren Mitarbeitern gemacht hat. Like, Lululemon was really big on helping employees set goals and achieve them.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Too personal, I'm sure, for a lot of people. But for Kat, who was so young and so new to the city, it was actually pretty helpful.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Von Sony Musik Entertainment und Campside Media bin ich Nathalie Robomet.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Nun, vielleicht kannst du es von dem Titel hören, aber diese Geschichte ist ein bisschen mehr traditioneller wahrer Kriminalität, als wir es normalerweise bezeichnen. Aber es ist auch viel mehr als ein sehnsüchtiger Mord. Es bringt so viele verschlossene Worte dazu, was es bedeutet, in Amerika im Jahr 2010 zu sein, welches die Ära ist, die wir bezeichnen werden.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Es geht um Frauenheit, darum, wie Brands und Fitness-Fads und Fashion-Label die Anhaltspunkte unserer Leben geworden sind, quasi ein Moralsystem für uns zu erschaffen. Und die Gründe, warum wir diese Moralsysteme brechen, warum wir die schlimmsten Dinge als Menschen tun. Für diese Geschichte haben wir auch das Gerichtshof angerufen, um die Files und Gerichtsdokumente der Polizei aufzuholen.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Es gab so viel, dass sie uns einen Lippenabschluss gemailt haben, aber es wurde zurückgegeben. Also haben wir die Schwester eines unserer Kollegen nach DC gesendet. Long story short, haben wir schlussendlich unsere Hände auf eine Menge Files, einige davon sind noch nie veröffentlicht worden, so ihr werdet viele dieser Insider-Taperecordings über die nächsten paar Episoden hören.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
The first employee, Rachel, arrives. She's wearing orange sneakers. She's the manager of this particular Lululemon, and she's arrived to open it for the day, as she's done on so many other days. But almost immediately, right when she approaches, she can tell something is wrong.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Er stimmt. Nach dem Buch von Dan Morse, The Yoga-Store-Murder, gehen die beiden in Lululemon zusammen. Innerlich scheint alles normal zu sein zu Beginn. Racks von leckeren, knusprigen Kleidungen, viele inspirierende Sagen auf den Kappen und ein Schalkbord auf der Wand. Heute sagt es, dass wir alle gleich glücklich und glücklich sind. But then he notices something. Stains on the floor.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Small at first. But as he walks deeper inside, he sees more and more. It's blood. Some of it pooling beneath a purple door. He pushes the door open. Und was er im Inneren sieht, schickt ihn zurück in den Storefront.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Ein Ort, der mit einem fast religiösen Sinn und Zufriedenheit verbunden ist. Und jetzt liegen zwei weibliche Körper auf dem Boden. Die Szene ist voller Chaos. Das ist eine Umgebung, die sich nicht an gewaltige Verbrechen befindet. Die Gruppen beginnen zu sammeln. Die Geräusche verbreiten sich.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
In der Zwischenzeit, bei einem nahen Diner, ist Staatsanwalt John McCarthy, der Hauptprosekutor für die ganze Stadt von fast einem Millionen Menschen, ein ruhiges Frühstück genutzt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Das machte es eines der größten, seltsamen und berühmtesten Töne, die er in seiner jahrzehntelangen Karriere gesehen hat.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Kat arbeitete bei Lululemon auf einer schönen Straße in Soho, in New York.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Sie hat von George Washington University begonnen mit einem Degree in Business and Marketing und war sowohl ein Outdoorer als auch jemand in der Corporate Life. Als Kind hat sie sich mit ihrem Vater zu Boy Scout Campouts eingeladen. She took dance lessons. She was fluent in Spanish. She was very athletic.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3
Ladies, I'd like you to meet the rabbit.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3
And it's even got a remote. I mean, how lazy do you have to be?
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3
She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't.
Infamous
Blake Lively v. Justin Baldoni
Justin Baldoni speaking to what he called his dream team, lamenting the fact that he was put in the basement on the premiere of his own movie, he says, per Blake's demands.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
I don't have the exact figures in front of me, but it might be something like 90% of people living in the country are expatriates and only 10% are actually nationals.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
It's a really interesting question. And I think that that is something that from my perspective, I watched the UAE debate while I was there. So when I was in school there, you had to take Arabic up until what would be the American equivalent of the eighth grade. So that was one way to be trying to establish a national identity.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And of course, all the traffic signs and road signs or whatever have Arabic on them. There have since been various government programs to ensure that there are That actually brings us to one of our listener questions, which is what do most average Emirati citizens do for work? Yeah.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
I mean, I think there's no easy, quick answer to that because it's like any other country, what are a lot of people doing for work? I mean, plenty of them are working in the police or in the armed forces, a lot are in government roles, right? Whether that's ministry of finance or whatever else. I feel like back in the day, you wouldn't have seen an Emirati woman working in a
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
store, you know, working in Sephora. And yes, there are Sephoras in Dubai. But that is something that you might see these days.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yes, there's. Yeah, I'm laughing because I'm trying to find a delicate way to phrase this. But there's like an incredible amount of racism in the UAE, just as there isn't in any other country. And there are certain roles and especially service roles that are typically kind of like occupied by expats from Europe. say, the Philippines or South Asia. Exactly. Exactly.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And yeah, that's a whole other topic which we can get into.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And that's that's the other thing I wanted to say is there's really not an easy route to naturalization. What I mean by that is that it's not easy to get an Emirati citizenship just based on having lived there for X number of years. You can't naturalize in the way that you can in lots and lots of other countries.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Now, the New Yorker story highlights Shamsa, Latifa's older sister, and what happened to her in England. We discussed a lot of this in episode one of our series. If you remember, Shamsa was the older sister of Sheikha Latifa. Shamsa actually ran away in 2000. way before Latifa did.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And part of that is because being a citizen confers a whole lot of rights and privileges to you. But also, I think of that as a way to kind of protect the national identity of When you are in a country that has so many expats. Right. That makes sense. So, yeah, you can have lived there for 30 years, but you're not a citizen.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yeah, exactly. Or you get to a certain age that might be retirement age and you have to retire elsewhere. Right.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Two very important questions. I will handle the booze question first. So yes, you absolutely can drink alcohol there. One of these emirates, Sharjah, is a dry emirate. So there's no alcohol served there. It's a dry state.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Poor Sharjah. But yes, so you absolutely can drink booze in Dubai. One thing I do think is funny is that if you listen to radio ads there, they actually like can't say the words wine and champagne. They'll have to use code words like bubbly or like I'm making this up like grapes, 50 dirhams for dinner and grape.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The other thing I was going to say was that in order to have a liquor license, like typically you have to be inside a hotel. So that's that's kind of one of the limitations. But that's the reason why a lot of the nightclubs and a lot of the bars are within hotels.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
No, that's not a thing that's happening in the UAE. I mean, again, like, probably depends on the family in question, right? I feel like most Emiratis that I know live very, very free lives and very kind of like equal lives. Women aren't asking for the permission of a male relative to travel.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
But maybe in the case of an individual family that is maybe stricter or more conservative, that might be happening. But across the board, I would generally say no.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yeah. And I think that's something that we heard about a little in the series is that there are these stricter lives for royal women. I do think that's kind of similar to being a British royal. You have somebody figuring out your travel and wanting to know where you are.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
I would say it's perhaps even more so because the other thing to know that is strange if you've never been there is that the faces of the royal family are everywhere.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
She had escaped from her dad, Sheikh Mohammed's house in the UK, by driving a Range Rover to the edge of her father's estate. But we didn't quite know where she went after that. And the New Yorker figured it out.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And what I mean by that is on the front page of the newspaper every day, there would be a picture of the president or the head of Dubai, the head of Abu Dhabi, shaking hands with ex-dignitary or doing something with a diplomat on the front page of the newspaper every single day. I mean, there's even like on the highway, there's this big highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai called Sheikh Zayed Road.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And there's kind of a giant highway. billboard essentially with Sheikh Zayed's face on it that has just been up for years and years.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Do you want to end up in a prison in the desert? No. I'm joking. I'm joking. That's a joke. But absolutely not. There is no free press or kind of tabloid TNC-esque press in the way that we think of it in the U.S.,
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
actually I worked at a newspaper there in the summer when I was still in college and there was a lot of self-censorship that happened if I remember correctly I tried to publish a review of something and I'd use the phrase like seventh heaven and my editor she was like oh we don't we can't make any references to heaven because that would be like Christian I guess and I just thought that was so funny because it wasn't like the top editor reviewed that or
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Some sense or somewhere cut it out. It was more that she was just like, oh, I want to stay in the good graces of of X, Y and Z people. So I'm going to make sure that that we don't print this thing.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So the UAE is one of the U.S. 's biggest allies in the region. Saudi is another huge ally. And they're heavily invested in Hollywood in various ways, in various film slates and production companies. sports teams, real estate, tech, pretty much any industry you can think of, the UAE is invested in it primarily through its sovereign wealth fund.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
A lot of that information I would say is somewhat hard to find, but they're incredibly diversified because they're preparing for a life after oil, right? They know that oil is going to run out at a certain point, so they need to diversify.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
These are such great questions. So pretty much every time I go there, I have sort of a minor freak out internally about the climate crisis because you kind of drive around and you're like, this is so unsustainable. There's So much air conditioning. There's these kind of like gardens that are being watered every single day. And it feels incredibly unsustainable.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
There are a couple of buildings that I absolutely love. There's this one skyscraper in Abu Dhabi. It has these awnings that move around the side of the building with the time of day. So if the sun is hitting that side of the building, there are these awnings that kind of stretch out. And it kind of almost looks like these waffle kind of hexagons or whatever of awning that cover over the glass.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The other thing I was going to say that a lot of people don't know is that they actually seed rain there. I am not a scientist. You will be surprised to learn. But they seed clouds. So they kind of like engineer these clouds that then... pop and produce rain.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So desalination plants are huge and there's lots and lots of desalination plants. So Essentially, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, they're right on the coast. So right next to the sea. And a lot of the water that gets used is desalinated. So it's kind of taken from the sea and then made usable.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yes, I've never thought of that. I mean, this is also a very rich country. Right. So. Right. So, yeah, it might it might be expensive. But look, when you're one of the most important kind of exporters of oil, your desalination plant might be the lowest of your concerns.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Well, let me know when you do and I'll show you around. That's it for this week's episode of Infamous. We'll be back next week with a new series we're very excited for you to hear. It's more true crime than our usual episodes, but it's a fascinating story that raises some really interesting questions about womanhood, athleisure, and what drives us to do the worst things ever.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
As we talked about, the UK and UAE have very deep ties. The UAE is a major trading partner to the UK. Tons of British tourists visit Dubai on holiday, many wealthy Emiratis have real estate in the UK, and so on. And that deep conviviality may be part of why Shamsa was not safe on British soil. This is what happened when British police were first alerted to her case.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And perhaps while the authorities were not paying attention, something awful happened to Shamsa. Here is what the New Yorker reported happened. They got their hands on a note Shamsa had written that said, quote, quote, They drove me to my father's place in Newmarket, where they gave me two injections and a handful of tablets.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The very next morning, a helicopter came and flew me to the plane, which took me back to Dubai. I'm locked up until today.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So a few years after Shamsa was captured, Shamsa's sister, Princess Latifa, tried to escape for the first time. This was back in 2002, when she was still just a teenager. Latifa was caught and allegedly imprisoned and tortured for years, though Sheikh Mohammed's office has denied that Latifa has ever been arrested or detained.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
When she got out, years later, according to the New Yorker, one of her guards was actually one of the guys who had allegedly beaten her when she was in prison.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
That just sounds so scary. It's unimaginable. And it really makes me reflect how brave she was to try to escape again, which she did 16 years later. This was in 2018, with the help of Tina Juhiainen, her capoeira instructor. But once again, as with Shamsa, Latifa was caught. And once again, another nation either turned a blind eye or actively helped.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Because according to The New Yorker, the Indian government wholly aided in Latifa's capture.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So with the help of the Indian government, Latifa was ferried back to Dubai, and her escape was scuppered. So after Latifa was obtained, a secret meeting allegedly took place between Latifa, her father, Sheikh Mohammed, and her sister, Shamsa, according to The New Yorker. Here's a voice recording of Latifa from the podcast talking about that meeting. So...
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
This was a huge moment for Latifa. The last time Latifa had seen Shamsa, she'd been heavily medicated and basically imprisoned by guards. And now Latifa, who herself had tried to escape and been caught, was being brought to see Shamsa, the older sister who had tried to escape and been caught.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The whole thing must have been so confusing for Latifa. This was her sister, who had tried so desperately to get away, who had said she was being held against her will. Latifa came to a conclusion about Shamsa. Shamsa is completely brainwashed.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So as you may recall, a lot of this information came out because of legal proceedings in the UK between Sheikh Mohammed and his ex-wife, Princess Haya, the royal from Jordan, who also ran away under slightly different circumstances. As Haya's case was going on, it appears that Sheikh Mohammed was using freedom as a bargaining chip for Latifa.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robomed. I hope you enjoyed listening to our series on the princesses of Dubai. As I said a few episodes ago, there's been new reporting by another journalist on this case, and I want to get into that in this episode. However, the new information does not include figuring out for sure that Sheikha Latifa is free.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
There have been all sorts of strange photos that seem really forced, but the question of whether she is really free remains. I even found an Instagram account that I think might be Latifa's, though we don't know for sure and we don't know who's running it. It's under the handle Soylati. We DM'd the account, asking for an interview, but did not get any response.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The most recent upload from October 26th, 2024, includes a photo of Latifa walking a rescue dog in what looks like the UAE desert. In the picture, she's standing with this very cute brown and white pup on a leash. There are sand dunes and scrubby bushes in the background. Latifa's wearing a pair of Victoria's Secret pink brand camo leggings, a burgundy t-shirt, and big black aviator sunglasses.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The caption tags the account of an animal rescue called the Stray Dog Center, located about an hour from Dubai. According to this photo, she seems to be hanging out with animals again, something we know she loved. But I also can't help but see it as a metaphor. Maybe she's a stray dog who's been rescued. Or maybe she's been captured and is now being kept close on a tight leash.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So a lot of what I just talked about is really quite dark, but I wanted to pivot now to something slightly lighter. A while ago, I answered a bunch of questions about the UAE from listeners. You're going to hear our producer Shoshi Smolovitz pose those questions to me, and you'll hear me answer them.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So Dubai is this small city state in a country called the United Arab Emirates that is sandwiched kind of between Oman and Saudi Arabia, very close to Iraq and right across a body of water from Iran.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yeah, absolutely. So the UAE itself does have a huge amount of oil, but it's comprised of different states. You can think of that as similar to American states like California or Maine or whatever. And where the oil is, is not dispersed equally within the country. So Abu Dhabi actually, and that's the capital, has the larger reserves of oil and Dubai in comparison has very little oil actually.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And that is one of the reasons why they have really tried incredibly hard to diversify through tourism and real estate and a million other assets and potential moneymakers. This man, Sheikh Zayed, he's passed away now, but he's really known as kind of the the founder of the nation. And he brought together these different families and different groups into the United Arab Emirates in 1971.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So that's actually really, Still relatively recently, right?
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yeah, I know. So especially when you think about it like that, there has been an incredible amount of progress in that time. And, you know, very few countries establish the kind of international influence or kind of reputation that the UAE has already achieved.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And I actually think that really speaks to the great job that Dubai has done in creating a kind of PR reputation for itself around the world. Dubai is the place that rappers shout out. People say, oh, I want to go there for this exotic holiday, etc., etc. I mean...
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
They have made themselves known for five-star hotels or even seven-star hotels and malls, kind of a symbol of quote-unquote Western progress or capitalist progress in the region. You know, Dubai is known as being very high-end, but there are also a lot of package vacations that kind of... go there and there are tourists there from... Do they have a Club Med?
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
I know that may be hard for some people to hear, and it certainly is for me. So here's what happened. A few weeks after we first aired our series in March 2023, The New Yorker published an excellent in-depth story by Heidi Berg called The Fugitive Princesses of Dubai and a podcast on the series In the Dark.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
They don't, but like spiritually they do. No, there's... If you go at any given point, there's tourists. We're not just talking from the UK or America. You've got tourists from Russia, from... all over there. And the same goes for expats. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of expats living there.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
She says she found a gun left on her bed with the safety catch off. A provocation. A threat. Then, one afternoon, Haya and the kids were at home in their Dubai palace when one of the sheikh's helicopters unexpectedly touched down in the yard. The passengers, a pilot and a few security guards, allegedly climbed out. One said he had come to take a passenger to al-Awir, a prison in the desert.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
There have been more photos, more meetings with UN representatives, but questions remain. Despite all of the attention Latifa's escape received, no one has been brought to justice for attacking the boat near India, or for the treatment Tina and the rest of the crew say they received. Latifa's sister Shamsa, the one who ran away back in 2000, has still not been seen in public for decades.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
And the thing is, there are so many more strange cases involving Emirati royals. Cases that have never really gotten any attention. For one, Sheikh Mohammed has another ex-wife who claims he kept her from her child. Randa Albana, a Lebanese woman who married him in the 70s, told the Sunday Times she hasn't been allowed to see their daughter since she demanded a divorce nearly 50 years ago.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Then there's Sheikh Mohammed's brother, the late Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Back in 2000, the same year Shamsa was allegedly abducted, her cousins, Maktoum's kids, were also living in England. They were in this giant rooftop apartment in the fancy London neighborhood of Knightsbridge, when all of a sudden, four Emirati bodyguards allegedly swooped in and escorted them away.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Their nanny called the British police. She thought they'd been kidnapped. In the press at the time, the incident was chalked up to a disagreement between the Sheikh and his wife over where their kids should go to school. He wanted them to return to Dubai, while she wanted them to study in London. But it all sounds eerily similar to Shamsa, her abduction, and her desire to study abroad.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
And sadly, this alleged treatment isn't a thing of the past. We are hostages in our home. As recently as October 2022, Sheikh Mohammed's nephew's ex-wife alleged that she faced abuse, harassment, and intimidation during a bitter custody battle. My children and I are terrified and frightened for our lives. It seems like the same thing just keeps happening over and over.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
I mean, Latifah is just out there, supposedly doing okay, but we don't really know. It's almost like the world isn't watching this situation. Or doesn't care. And maybe that shouldn't be surprising. Because this is a story about women seeking their freedom. Arab women, specifically.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
A demographic the world likes to use as a symbol of oppression when convenient, rather than humanize with the depth reserved for other people. And in America, we like to think that we're better than all that. That we really are free. But freedom means something different to everyone. And we definitely don't all have it. For some, it's the right to work. For others, it's the ability to have guns.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Of course, it doesn't help that the people alleged to have done wrong in this story are incredibly powerful and incredibly rich. People in my life were even worried about me being involved in this series. That I might disappear the next time I visit Dubai. Just be hauled off at passport control and never seen again. Or that something might happen to my family.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Thinking about all this, it's hard not to hear Latifa's voice in my head from that original 2018 video.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Haya's son clutched her leg. She assured him the men were only joking. But she later says she thought if Zayed were not there, they would have taken her. In fact, one of the guards in this very same helicopter had allegedly abducted Shamsa from England way back in 2000. Sheikh Mohammed claimed the helicopter landed in the yard by mistake. But Haya felt that she and her children were in danger.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
And what was she going to do about that? Run. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Infamous.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
We also learned about Haya's affair and Sheikh Mohammed's apparent anger about that affair.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
So a while ago, we talked about how in the UAE, some wives can practically be their husband's property, but they can also quickly become not their property.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Now, we don't know for sure if this is what Sheikh Mohammed did with Haya, but under Sharia law, that's all you need to say to divorce your wife. And on February 7th, 2019, without Haya knowing about it, he ended their marriage. It may have been a deliberate date. It was the anniversary of her father's death. And after that, according to Haya, things got really scary.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Nun, laut einer zweijährigen Investition der BBC, hat Mike Jeffries offensichtlich junge Männer für Sexpartys gegründet, unter dem Hinblick auf die mögliche Modellierung für Abercrombie. Die ganze Geschichte ist wirklich, wirklich zerstörerisch. Es bildet eine schreckliche Bildung eines mächtigen CEOs und seines Partnern, die schlechte Dinge mit jungen Männern tun.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Und ein weiterer, kalkulierter Pattern. Es war wohl auch ein dritter Vertreter dabei, ein Mann namens Jim Jacobson, der so genannte Auditionen durchführt hatte, um diese Jungs auszutesten.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Die Gefühle gehen weiter, zu beurteilen, dass sie, wenn sie seine Auditionen durchführen, okay sein würden, um Partys zu besuchen, einige von denen am Haus von Mike Jeffries in Hampton stattfanden. Sie sagen, das Haus wurde von Hausmännern ausgestattet, attraktiven Männern, die in Abercrombie & Fitch-Uniformen tragen mussten.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Um es klar zu machen, hat Jeffreys nicht schuldig zu allen Angelegenheiten gebeten. Aber die Angelegenheiten sind ziemlich verdammt. Die Gefühle, zumindest eine, die damals nur 19 Jahre alt war, sagen, dass Jeffreys und seine Begegnungen sie in Sexpartien verabschiedet haben.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Und dass sie in diesen Partien mit Substanzen verabschiedet wurden, um sie zu verabschieden und in Sexaktionen zu beeinflussen, zu denen sie entweder nicht oder nicht zu verabschieden konnten.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Das ist einer der ehemaligen Modelle, die für den BBC-Podcast gesprochen hat, World of Secrets, über seine Erfahrungen. Er geht weiter, um zu beschreiben, wie spezifisch diese Events waren.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Diese Angelegenheiten sind alle in Ordnung mit einer größeren Kultur von unabhängigem Verhalten, die damals in Abercrombie rammt. Zum Beispiel der Fotografer, der viele von diesen ikonischen, fast nudischen Fotos gefilmt hat, Bruce Weber.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Und es war an diesen Partien, die auch, wiederum bezeichnend, in London, Paris, Wien und Marrakesch stattfanden, dass junge Männer verurteilt wurden, gefordert wurden, Non-Disclosure-Agreements zu signen und Druck auf Alkohol, Viagra und Muskel-Relaxantien zu konsumieren, bevor sie sich in explodierende Sex-Akte engagierten. That investigation was published in 2023.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Then, late last year, Jeffries, along with his partner and Jim Jacobson, were indicted on multiple charges, including sex trafficking and interstate prostitution, all of which he's pleaded not guilty to.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Diese Woche hat Natalie einen Kontakt mit Alison Klayman, der Schauspielerin des 2022er-Netflix-Dokumentes White Hot, der Erste und Nächste von Abercrombie & Fitch. Und sie wurden auch von Colin Jones, einem der Produzenten des Films, eingeladen. Der Film war vermutlich der erste Domino in der Reihe von Ereignissen, die den Entschlossenen führten.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Colin und Alison interviewierten ehemalige Modelle und einige der Vorschläge, die sie auf der Kamera gemacht haben, ermutigten andere, voranzugehen, nach einer explosiven 2023er BBC-Erfahrung. Sie sprechen über das, was Abercrombie früher war, was es sich jetzt verändert hat und bis zu welchem Punkt es sich geformt hat und geformt wurde durch die Kultur. Hier ist diese Konversation jetzt.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous. I'm Lily Houston Smith. This week, Natalie is going to be bringing you a story about Abercrombie & Fitch, the aspirational brand of my childhood anyway. It was the brand my parents refused to buy for me and that I believed in my heart would make me cool.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Ich weiß nicht wirklich, was ich dir gemacht habe, aber ich nehme ein Pinot Grigio.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
The Hamburglar was just a mascot, but Jerome Jacobson was the real deal. A McDonald's security chief who almost pulled off the ultimate inside job. On Wondery's podcast, The Big Flop, Comedians join host Misha Brown to chronicle pop culture's biggest fails and try to answer the age-old question, who thought this was a good idea? At the time, the McDonald's collab with Monopoly was a genius idea.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Ich habe einige Abercrombie-Geräte verkauft, aber meistens mit Geschenkkarten, die meine Brüder für Weihnachten schicken würden. Als Kind finde ich das sehr seltsam, aber die Geschenkkarten hatten immer auf ihnen eine sehr provokative Foto eines fiten, weiblichen Mannes, der so niedrig gekroppt wurde. Ich meine, genau über Skandal.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Come get a Big Mac and you could go home with a million dollar prize piece. The only problem? When they picked their head of security, the one guy in charge of protecting those million dollar pieces, McDonald's drew the wrong card. Comedians Ify Wadiwe and Beth Stelling joined Misha to break down what really happened with the McDonald's Monopoly scandal.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Alison, Natalie and Colin are about to talk more about Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, who took over after the company was acquired by the same man behind Victoria's Secret and The Limited. Jeffries is now facing accusations of exploiting and abusing young men during his time leading the company.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Aber in der Vergangenheit haben sich einige Angelegenheiten erzeugt, die diese seltsamen, sexierten Geschenkkarten viel weniger lustig und viel mehr bedrohlich sehen. Und das hat alles zu tun mit der Firma's ehemaligen CEO, Mike Jeffries.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
They made her move Jaina's car? Why is Brittany offering up this information? I mean, if she really can explain this, maybe all the other puzzle pieces will fall into place. Maybe she's innocent after all.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
Maybe not. Because Britney's saying she saw a cop. Probably that patrol officer who'd seen someone behind the wheel the night of the murder. And she didn't flag him down. The cops have heard enough. They're ready to confront Britney. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robomad. And I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
This episode, detectives zero in on their prime suspect. This is Murder at Lululemon, Part 3. So in the span of a week, Brittany has gone from victim to prime suspect. Maybe she'd been caught stealing, and in her panic, she'd killed Jaina, and then tried to cover her tracks.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
State's attorney John McCarthy again, the chief prosecutor for the county.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
So police have a new suspect, Brittany. Maybe, they think, Jaina had caught her shoplifting and Brittany lured Jaina back to the store and killed her. But it was just so unbelievable, and it didn't answer a lot of questions. Like, for example, remember how they found Jaina's car a few blocks away from the store?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
Detectives started digging into Brittany's past. They soon found out the cropped pants incident wasn't the first time that Brittany had allegedly been caught stealing, not by a long shot. According to Dan Morse's book, The Yoga Store Murder, back when Brittany was young, she seemed to have a habit of sticky fingers.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
For example, when her sister babysat for a neighbor, that neighbor said that whenever Brittany would accompany her, stuff would go missing from the house. Just little things, coins from the change jar or pieces of cheap costume jewelry. Later, when Brittany started playing varsity soccer in high school, she made friends with her teammates. And one of Brittany's friends' wallets kept going missing.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
The teammates suspected Brittany. When they confronted her, they said she broke down and admitted it. Brittany's really fun to hang with, they would say. But be careful. She steals and she lies. Then, when she got into college on a soccer scholarship, there were allegedly more instances of thieving. Enough of her teammates raised concerns to the coach and she was off the team.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
which was devastating, not just because she loved soccer, but because she also lost her scholarship. By the fall of 2004, Brittany dropped out, just a handful of credits shy of graduating. She moves to DC after school and troubles continue. In 2006, she gets into a relationship with a dentist and ends up getting a job in his practice as an office manager.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
But they break up, she leaves the job, and a while later, he alleges that she breaks into his house and steals stuff from his new girlfriend. A Lacoste polo shirt, a pair of diamond earrings, a bottle of Vera Wang perfume. The ex files a restraining order against Brittany. Brittany agrees not to go near him for a year. After that, Brittany's roommate accuses her of stealing, too.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
And her sister does. It just doesn't seem to stop. Brittany bounces between jobs and relationships. And apparently, she was also looking for creative ways to make ends meet. At one point, she browsed Craigslist for potential sugar daddies. She texted one of the advertisements and began a correspondence with the prospective benefactor.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
The two made plans to meet up and Brittany wrote, I don't have any hidden agendas. I'm just a younger woman with goals slash dreams and could use financial assistance. But she also seemed to be trying to get her life together. She was going to exercise classes all the time and working towards a new career in fitness.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
A patrolman had seen someone sitting behind the wheel after midnight, after the murder had taken place. Had that person been Brittany? And if so, why would she get into Jaina's car? Before detectives can even figure out their next move, they get a call from Chris, Brittany's brother. He says that apparently Brittany has something important to tell them, something she'd forgotten to say earlier.
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Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
Actually, two days before the murder, the store's management team had brought up the missing things at a regular meeting. They'd noticed that Britney had worked all the shifts where things disappeared. $10 here, a bottle of perfume there. And the reason why Britney left the Bethesda store came up as well. Dana was at that meeting and heard everything.
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Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
The night of the murder, after she talked to Brittany about the crops, she called the same coworker and said something along the lines of, I caught her.
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Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
So Brittany, her sister Marissa, and her brother Chris all head to the station. Chris and Marissa wait outside, and Brittany sits down in the interrogation room with two detectives. What you're about to hear is tape from that conversation.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Tina and her associates managed to smuggle a cell phone to Latifa and Latifa started sending them video messages. The situation is very hard. In one, Latifa sat in the corner of a bathroom wearing a dark shirt. She brought up Mary Robinson's visit and told the story, but from her side.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Latifa's supporters kept reaching out to human rights organizations for help, but they hadn't heard much since Mary Robinson's visit.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
So far, Princess Haya had believed Sheikh Mohammed when it came to Latifa. Observers thought Haya may have been either a knowing participant in the campaign against Latifa or porn. But that was all about to change because a fissure in Sheikh Mohammed and Haya's relationship turned into a chasm. At the end of December 2018, Sheikh Mohammed published a poem. It was called The Morality of a Knight.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
One of our producers, Rajiv, is going to read it.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Now, Sheikh Mohammed has written a lot of poetry. In the Arab world, it's not super weird for a royal to write poetry. It's like a president releasing a memoir or giving a commencement speech after being in office. It's just something people do. And most of his poems are about horses, his nation, pretty innocuous, universal topics. But these weren't innocuous.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
To me, they seem pointed, venomous even. Here's another from a few months later.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
But Sheikh Mohammed seemed like he wasn't mad at Latifa or even Shamsa. These poems appear to have been directed at Haya, his beloved modern Jordanian wife. Why was he allegedly mad at Haya? It all had to do with a certain employee of hers, Remember how Latifa made friends with Tina, the Caprera instructor? Well, Haya made friends with one of her own employees, her hunky British bodyguard.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
And starting around 2017 or 18, he became more than a friend. Right around when all the international drama with Latifa was going on, Princess Haya was apparently having an affair with one of the men who was supposed to protect her. Not unlike Princess Diana, who allegedly slept with her own bodyguard. Now, let's just remember that Sheikh Mohammed was legally married to two women at this point.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
I'm not saying that cheating is okay, but an eye for an eye and all that? Regardless, Sheikh Mohammed's reaction became out of proportion to the affront, and the messages only got darker over the next few months. In one phone conversation, Sheikh Mo allegedly told Haya, I have received bad news about you.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Haya hung up, terrified. Haya says a number of her trusted staff members were dismissed and replaced with people loyal to Sheikh Mohammed. She probably felt like, all of a sudden, even the walls had eyes. And then, anonymous notes allegedly began appearing in her house.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
By the way, we sent a detailed list of questions to Sheikh Mohammed's attorney about everything you're hearing in this episode. He didn't return our request for comment. And that wasn't all. While their seven-year-old son Zayed was on a trip, Mohammed allegedly phoned Haya and said, He is a desert boy.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
According to Haya, Mohammed didn't try to hide his disdain for her in front of their kids either. During one visit, he allegedly said to his son, Zaya, do we need a mama?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
By March 2019, Haya says her desk at the ruler's court had been removed. To Haya, it was a public slap in the face, an indication she no longer had any power. Maybe Haya finally realized what Sheikh Mohammed was capable of. Or maybe her own desire for freedom suddenly aligned with Latifa's cause. Whatever it was, Haya was about to pick up the baton Latifa had placed down.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Right. And she recorded that video that would go viral, the one that Louise watched in a cafe in Beirut.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Spring has sprung and I am dying to get out of town. I'm actually going away this weekend with some friends, and I recently bought my partner a new Quince carry-on that I might just be borrowing for this trip.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
This year, I'm treating myself to the luxe upgrades I deserve with Quince's high-quality travel essentials at fair prices, like lightweight European linen styles from $30, washable silk tops, and comfy lounge sets, with premium luggage options and stylish tote bags to carry it all. The best part? All Quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince. Go to quince.com slash infamous for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash infamous to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash infamous
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
So Haya told a court she only became aware of Latifa's disappearance when the rest of the world did in March 2018. Initially, she thought Sheikh Mohammed couldn't possibly be responsible for the forcible return of his daughter. Haya and Sheikh Mohammed had a son and a daughter of their own. He often doted on them, especially their daughter Jalila, who seemed to be Mohammed's favorite.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Haya says she asked her husband about Latifa's video. She says he told her that Latifa was bipolar and unstable. Mental illness is even more stigmatized in the Arab world than in the West. So dubbing Latifa as bipolar effectively painted her as persona non grata. Princess Haya says she felt sympathy for both Latifa and Sheikh Mohammed. But she was basically not involved. Until December 2018.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
This BBC documentary was a major news event. Latifa's story was not going away. Dubai's ruler was forced to publicly respond.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
The very same day, a United Nations committee made another request that Dubai prove Latifa was alive. Princess Haya sprang into action. Haya called her friend, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
On December 15th, 2018, Mary Robinson says she went to one of Haya's residences for lunch. Mary sat down with Latifa and a couple others. An array of fruit plates and Evian bottles lay before them on a table. They looked at each other, warily, chatting.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
This lunch with Mary Robinson was supposed to assuage concerns. But the whole thing just looked off. Robinson was dressed for a stately lunch, a white collared shirt under a tailored peach jacket, pearl earrings. Latifah was dressed in a hoodie, zipped all the way up.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Weeks after the lunch, Mary Robinson gave a public interview.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Princess Haya had to respond. And she did so on a top Irish radio station, RTE Radio 1.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Haya made it clear that she'd acted of her own volition.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Any time the interviewer pressed her on Latifa's disappearance and the BBC documentary's reporting, Haya said the same thing.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
She pushed Mohammed's narrative. that Latifa's escape had been a kidnapping.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
And she implicitly denied all of Latifa's allegations from her video.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
But it wouldn't be long before Latifa's version emerged. That's after the break.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
As the Mary Robinson episode played out, Tina Jauhiainen looked on in horror. After Tina got out of jail in the UAE, she started working with others on a campaign they dubbed hashtag free Latifa. But she hadn't been able to get back in touch with Latifa. In fact, no one had heard from her in months. Then Tina was in Finland, sitting with her brother, when she got an odd message.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
This was a total stranger. The person said Tina would need to answer a series of security questions before they would give her the note.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Finally, Tina received a picture of a letter Latifa had written to her.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Before turning off the recording, Latifa had a final message for her father.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Look, when Shamsa escaped, it was so long ago, turn of the 21st century. Cell phones with cameras weren't readily available. The internet was in its infancy. There was no Twitter or Facebook. Not that many people even heard what happened with Shamsa. But this time would be different. More after the break.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
So that video that Latifah made, it went viral. It made news across the world.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Soon, a UN committee demanded something. They wanted Dubai to prove that Latifa was alive. And some of Latifa's skydiving friends even flew a banner over the 2018 Kentucky Derby. It said, Dubai, where is Princess Latifa? Now, Tina and the rest of the crew members were released from jail, but Latifa hadn't been heard from. The whole situation was really confusing.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Many in the Arab world couldn't believe that the Sheikh would treat his own daughter with such apparent cruelty. And it didn't help that rumors started circulating about the captain of the yacht, Herve Jobert.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
In May 2018, the Delhi Beast ran an article that claimed that Latifa's escape was a highly orchestrated extortion plot between Latifa and Joubert. The story is only on the record source, Hervé's ex-wife.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
By the way, this has never been proven, and Joubert denied all the allegations in the article. And to us, this is what he said. Why would you give credit to a former bitter ex-wife who knew nothing about this operation? This ransom demand has been refuted in high court already, and it does not make sense. Latifa did not want to go back. So ransom? For what? For her to be returned? Nonsense.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Louise remembers there were so many different stories swirling.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
But Sheikh Mo, through the whole ordeal, was silent. And remember, he didn't respond to our questions either.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
But Sheikh Mo wouldn't stay silent forever. Or, at least, an emissary of his would speak out. And then, this story would take an even stranger turn. next week on Infamous. Infamous is created and executive produced by Gabriel Sherman and me, Vanessa Grigoriadis. This episode was co-hosted by Natalie Robomed, who wrote it with Heather Schroering.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Producing by Heather Schroering, Natalia Winkelmann, Lily Houston Smith, and Grace Heerman. Princess Latifah and Sheikh Mohammed did not comment for this series. Shoshi Shmulevitz is our managing producer and editor. Sound design by David Devereaux. Recording by Ewen Lai Tramuen. And fact-checking by Matt Giles. Voices by Rajiv Gola and Lily Houston-Smith.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Scher, and myself. Campside Media's operations team is Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, and Destiny Dingle. If you're enjoying Infamous, please rate and review the show. It helps us more than you know.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis. And I'm Natalie Robamed. This is Dubai's Missing Princesses, Episode 2. So last episode, we heard all about Princess Latifah and her sister Shamsa, who had tried to run away years before Latifah.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Yeah, it does seem that way. And now we're going to hear exactly how Latifa escaped. And it's mostly from Tina's perspective. We'll hear what happened after she ran away. So it all began in February 2018 at a cafe in Dubai called La Serre. It's in downtown Dubai, spitting distance from the tallest building in the world. Early one morning, a royal driver drops Latifa and Tina off for breakfast.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
I can picture the scene around them. Women with designer handbags, sipping lattes. Men in their traditional white robes, dish dashes in Arabic. They're chatting over espressos. First, Latifa strode to the bathroom. She took off her black abaya, applied makeup, and put on sunglasses. As they departed, Latifa left her cell phone behind. She and Tina headed to Muscat, the coastal capital of Oman.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
It's about a four and a half hour drive. On the way, they took some selfies. Then they pulled into the beach. There was a dinghy there that had been waiting for them, and they climbed in. Tina's friend and a personal trainer, he drove the dinghy. They went out about 15 miles into the turquoise sea. Joubert was there. He was waiting with a pair of jet skis.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Several miles later, they reached a yacht that Joubert was piloting. It was named the Nostromo. That's Italian for shipmate, and it's a very popular name for boats. It's also the name of the spaceship in the movie Alien.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
This Nostromo was a white yacht with a navy blue hull and two large masts. Not quite the super yacht that Latifa's father owns. Latifah climbed on board. She was determined to make it out this time. She was not going to be like Shamsa. She was going to get to safety. And her plan?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
She was going to the grand city on a hill, the place of freedom, the place where Natalie and I both live, the United States. So they set out across the Arabian Sea. They watched movies, sent messages to friends. But were those messages secure? By now, Latifah knew her father would have discovered she was gone, and she worried about what he might do.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
She got even more worried when they lost touch with the guy who piloted the dinghy. So Latifah sent a very important message, one that might save her life. That's after the break.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
So Latifa and Tina were on this boat on their way to America, but sailing towards India. But they weren't alone.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
It turned out that Sheikh Mo's office had reportedly gotten in touch with an FBI agent at the U.S. consulate in Dubai. According to USA Today, he asked for their help in locating Latifa. He told them the princess had been kidnapped and she needed urgent assistance. So this FBI agent pulled data from the boat's internet provider and they gave it to Dubai officials.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
At this time, the UAE government was also believed to be a client of the NSO Group, a cyber intelligence technology firm and creators of a spyware tool called Pegasus, which can secretly hack and extract data from people's phones. At this point, Latifa and Tina were off the coast of Goa. That's a resort town in India that's very popular with young people, full of dance clubs.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
This whole life that Latifa wanted was almost there to touch. But for now, Tina and Latifa were still below deck in their room. Then they heard a noise.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
The cabin began filling with smoke, and they could barely see anything. They struggled up the stairs to the deck.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
These men were from the Indian Special Forces. One of them boarded the boat, tied Tina's hands behind her back, and dragged her to the deck. The men kept shouting, asking who Latifa was, and Latifa just kept repeating, over and over, I am seeking political asylum. I am seeking political asylum. But the men just dragged her away, kicking and screaming. Tina heard her say something.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Tina watched on in fear as Latifa was carried away by the men. Guards looted the boat, taking electronics and even Tina's makeup.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Tina was left on the Nostromo with the crew and the guy who had coordinated this entire escape, Hervé Jobert. Jobert, by the way, responded to some questions from us, but declined to be interviewed for this series. At some point, Tina says she noticed there were UAE soldiers on the boat. It seemed to her that India was allowing them to be here, just turning a blind eye.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
An Indian news outlet even reported that Sheikh Mo had called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the situation. The two countries had a relationship. I mean, India had many, many citizens working in Dubai, building all those huge skyscrapers. Tina says that the UAE soldiers had access to two large helicopters. And now Latifah was getting hustled away.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
The helicopters disappeared into the air. The Nostromo began to move. Once the boat reached the UAE, Tina says she and the rest of the crew were blindfolded, cuffed, and transported to the middle of the desert. There was a secret prison there. The interrogation began immediately.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
As the men pressed Tina, she had the sense that these men thought it was all a plot. She was somehow involved in kidnapping Latifa to extort money from Sheikh Mohammed.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
The interrogators questioned Tina for hours that night, and then again for days. She was being treated like an accomplice.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
And she might not have if it wasn't for a very clever trick by Latifah. Before she'd escaped, Latifah had recorded a video of herself. She was in Tina's apartment, telling her entire story to the camera. So the audio you've been hearing from Latifah, that's where we got it. But the world hadn't seen this video yet.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
While she was on the boat, Latifa got the video into the hands of a group that aimed to help people who had been wrongly imprisoned.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
David Haig is a businessman turned human rights advocate.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
And now, this video was on YouTube. It was visible to the entire world, and the world noticed.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Louise was in a cafe in Beirut when she clipped on the video.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
In her video, Latifa warned that her father would try to discredit her. She made it clear that she is actually just one of three of the Sheikh's daughters who are named Latifa, and that the royal family might point to one of her other sisters and say, see, Latifa is fine.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
The only seven star hotel in the world. Dubai is a playground for expats and the mega rich.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Who is responsible for this world of earthly delights? Well, there's one man who takes credit. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Welcome to Dubai. Sheikh Mo, as he's called, is the all-powerful ruler of Dubai. He's 73 years old, but his beard is jet black, which might mean it's dyed, and overall, the look is very stern Arab dad.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Infamous is created and executive produced by Gabriel Sherman and me, Vanessa Gregoriotis. This episode was co-hosted by Natalie Robamed, who wrote it with Heather Schroering. Producing by Heather Schroering, Natalia Winkleman, Lily Houston-Smith, and Grace Heerman. Princess Latifah did not comment for this series.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Shoshi Shmulevitz is our managing producer and editor, sound design by David Devereaux, recording by Ewan Lai-Tramuwen, and fact-checking by Matt Giles. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Scher, and myself. Campside Media's operations team is Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren, and Destiny Dingle. If you're enjoying Infamous, please rate and review the show.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Sheikh Mo is a monarch, but he's sort of like a cool monarch. He drives around in a white Mercedes G-Class SUV. The license plate, number one.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
He projects the image of a progressive democratic ruler, or at least progressive for the Gulf region. He's a poet, an author, a horse lover. Some horses just give you that feeling, you know, telling you that there is something about them. Through their eye, you can see their heart, and the horses is fantastic. Sounds pretty great, huh? Sheikh Mo seems like the perfect leader for his country.
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A man whose vision helped turn Dubai from a speck on the map to a world-renowned destination. A man who represents wealth, prestige, and progress. And of all the things that are big about Dubai, the skyscrapers, the overseas horse races, the money, there's one more thing. Sheikh Mo's family.
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At certain points, he's had multiple wives at once, which is permitted under the country's Sharia law, and a lot of children. He's thought to have up to 30 kids.
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This was the general assessment. But there was one child who didn't agree.
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From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Infamous, and I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis. This is episode one of our four-part series, The Missing Princesses. This week, we're telling yet another dramatic story about the rich and famous, but this one is from halfway across the world.
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It's a story I've done a lot of reporting on, but I'm also going to be joined as a co-host by Natalie Robamed. She's a writer on our team, and she has a personal link to the country. So, Natalie, tell us about that.
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So that's like when people say, oh, these people, they were just living in tents. Like, I mean, is that the truth? Or what was it like back then?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
But when you were growing up, it was obviously more sophisticated than that.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
And then suddenly it becomes this, like, champagne brunch Louis Vuitton toting hellscape. Like, right?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
But their values are consistent with real housewife values? I mean, what are these people doing living in Dubai then?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
And that's what our story is about. It's about what happened to three princesses when they tried to break out of those golden handcuffs. Natalie will kick it off after the break.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Welcome to Dubai. It's a dazzling metropolis in the United Arab Emirates, flanked by rolling sand dunes and the turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf. This is one of the world's great cities.