From swinger’s clubs to country clubs, Dawn and Wes are living large. But a call from the Dallas FBI upends Dawn’s life. Content Warning: This episode includes descriptions of suicide and suicidal ideation. If you are experiencing feelings of hopelessness or thinking about ending your own life, you are not alone. Help is available. Call or text ‘988’ from anywhere in America to reach the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at [email protected] and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What led to Dawn's life-changing FBI call?
It was a lie that gave him a reason to leave her. And he took it. Immediately.
When he came back home to pack a bag, he said, this is over. I want a divorce. And I remember begging him like, please don't do this. We can figure this out. Like, don't do this.
Dawn couldn't understand why he was so eager to walk out on her. So she turned to her friend, Sandy. And Sandy had recently seen Wes. And she's like, he took his ring off.
I just want you to know he was not wearing his ring. Dawn was devastated. And Sandy was there to comfort her. And I remember my head was in her lap and I'm crying. And she's like, Dawn, this relationship, it's just too much. It's like a bomb fuse and it was bound to burn out.
Soon after, Wes went on a work trip. Dawn got a weird feeling about it. Call it intuition. So she decided to do a little investigating. I found out where he was staying. She called the hotel front desk and she found out that there were two people staying in Wes's room. The other person was Sandy, Dawn's friend.
She suddenly understood why Wes had been so quick to walk out of their marriage and why Sandy was feeding her information about Wes's infidelity, even advising her that the relationship was too much. She was supposed to be my brand, but she's screwing my husband. When Wes came back from that business trip, his affair with Sandy was outed. It was a big scandal.
You know, we were all members of the country club. Her and I were on the committee at the country club together. So now that's outed, they're up there holding hands at the country club and everybody's talking, talking, talking.
It was humiliating, infuriating, but it was nothing compared to what came next.
He comes and tells me that he filed for divorce and he put a restraining order on me to keep me out of his company. A restraining order? She didn't have anything to do with his company. I think I walked in the doors of his company maybe three, four times. Like I could count it on one hand. I didn't have anything to do with it. So telling me to stay out of the company, like that pissed me off.
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Chapter 2: How did Dawn and Wes's relationship begin?
Every day felt excruciatingly long. Dawn says she got through it for her daughters. And Wes, well, he'd already moved on, to say the least.
He had met a girl in Sunday school and he had convinced all of his family that he was innocent. If I was guilty, I'd be in prison by now. I'm going to sue the government and the SEC and all of them for falsely accusing me. I was told his mom had like second mortgaged her house. I was told that he had gone through this poor woman's savings or whatever. These are things, of course, I was told.
But what I do know is that was starting to unravel.
He might have been telling his family that he was innocent, but that's not what West told the government. He agreed to a plea deal with the FBI. Now he was awaiting sentencing. Finally, they could move forward with their divorce.
Our divorce was a trial because he was trying to fight me for everything the government left me with. So I had to get up on stand and testify. And of course, he pleaded the fifth to everything.
Dawn was relieved to keep the modest half of what the government left her. But Wes still wasn't done with her. Despite it all, he still kept reaching out to Dawn. She didn't reply until finally.
He called me one day. He was really confused and sounded just really out of it. I'm like, just go serve your sentence. Go do your time. And in one breath, he said, I'm not going to prison. What do you mean? I'm innocent. And in the next breath, he'd say, you know what happens to men like me in prison, Dawn?
What am I going to do when I come out? He couldn't wrap his mind around the reality that he was going to prison. Considering what he'd done, Dawn was losing patience for him. She knew he was reaching out for sympathy, maybe for help processing, or maybe because he just didn't have anyone else left.
And then he texted me one more thing, which is what we used to say to each other that meant I love you. We would always say one more thing. And he texted me one more thing. And I reached out to his first wife again. And she said, Dawn, he keeps doing this. Go to bed. Turn your phone off. The next morning, he killed himself. He was supposed to turn himself in that next day.
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