The Mathenys arrive in Detroit praying their adoption is on—when two women contact them with grave concerns about Tara Lee. The scope of her crimes is only beginning to come to light. Binge all episodes of Baby Broker, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment & Perfect Cadence production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What is the story behind Tara Lee's adoption scheme?
So she took a negative test that you saw, and she pretended it was positive and called a family to say, hey, I've got a baby for you.
Yeah, and this family, this birth mom had already placed with this family, so she said, I'm just going to call the same family.
Wow. Right, because then she can play the, you need to adopt the sibling card. Yeah, exactly. That money-making lie sent Courtney packing. She flew home to Colorado Springs. But she wasn't done with Tara Lee, because Courtney was still invested. She had matched with another birth mom, and this baby was real. When the match began, the birth mother didn't have a place to live.
Tara did have a relationship with a slumlord that had these junk houses that she would just kind of house her, the women she was working with in. I only saw one. It was trash. Holes in the walls, tarps for roofs, yards overgrown. Smelled like musty mold, like just not clean. Not clean. Just crap houses. Tara put her in a house that had no appliances.
I don't think it had any heat, didn't have electricity. So she was keeping her food in the snow to keep cold. Her baby's milk, you know, eggs, just the basic stuff. They slept on the floor, no bed, not even an air mattress, no couch, nothing.
Courtney said she gave Tara Lee money to buy the woman a refrigerator, a bed, and to pay for heat. But the woman told Courtney she hadn't gotten any of those things.
She would send me pictures, and I would come back to Tara and say, Tara, why is she not getting these things? She's keeping her food in the snow. She's sleeping on the floor. She's pregnant. And Tara would be like, she's lying to you. I gave her that money. She had to have used it on something else. She would say, you know, she probably used it to buy drugs. She probably used it to get alcohol.
It was always something like, you can't trust these girls. You can't trust them.
But Courtney kept pushing, and she said Tara Lee eventually got the woman what they'd agreed on. Where it came from and how much she paid for it wasn't clear. As the baby's due date approached, Courtney said Tara Lee asked them for her final $4,000 payment. They paid her and flew to Detroit for the delivery.
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