Tara Lee pressures a couple to hand over her final payment, moments after their son is born. They stall. They hide. And for a good reason. The FBI is hot on Tara’s tail and she has no clue. 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
Chapter 1: What is the background of Tara Lee and her connection to the Mathenys?
Teresa Matheny's initial description of 38-year-old Tara Lee as someone who cussed like a sailor and was covered in tattoos was so striking, it almost sounded like a quote. It was, and I found it in the second paragraph of Tara Lee's introductory email to the Mathenys. She wrote, I swear like a truck driver and am covered in tattoos.
She also wrote that she had a master's degree in social work from Northwestern and that her passion was to help birth mothers. She wrote, I'm constantly teaching life skills to these women who have had no one to help them grow and evolve. That phrase, help them grow and evolve, struck me as pejorative.
I'm sure she didn't mean it that way, but it sounds a little like social Darwinism, as if the birth mothers she worked with were inferior and primitive. She said her fee for evolving Stephanie was $9,000. The day after Teresa and Mike had their upsetting call with Courtney Edmond, they drove to Port Huron with their fingers crossed, desperately hoping Tara Lee and Stephanie would show up.
Chapter 2: Who attended the meeting with Tara Lee and what was discussed?
They parked, went inside, got a booth, and waited. Then they spotted a woman with black hair, tattoo sleeves, and bright designer nails walking toward them. Behind her were a petite pregnant woman with brown hair and two men, the birth father and Tara Lee's assistant, Jay. Teresa and Mike exhaled. From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, this is Baby Broker. I'm Peter McDonald.
Episode five, The Last Adoption.
There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks. But investigators will go even further to uncover the truth. I'm Nancy Hixt, a senior crime reporter for Global News. This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases and some you've likely never heard of before.
Search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
Teresa and Mike stood up, introduced themselves, and gave Stephanie a hug. Everyone, except Tara Lee, was nervous.
We had never heard anything about this guy named Jay. He was introduced to us as someone that would be witnessing our birth father signing away his rights because that's what we were doing that night.
Stephanie and her partner sat next to each other.
You could tell that the birth parents loved each other very much.
Because there'd been so much confusion about Stephanie's due date, Teresa decided to ask the one person at the table who would know for sure. Stephanie said she wasn't due for a few more weeks.
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Chapter 3: What suspicious activities were observed during Stephanie's labor?
They said Tara Lee wore a black Lululemon tracksuit, Prada reading glasses, a Rolex watch, and a large diamond ring. She also had diamonds painted on her nails. As Tara Lee dug into her lunch, she told them a story.
This bullshit story about how, you know, that morning she was at the bank, at Bank of America, blah, blah, blah, like conducting some business. And she, you know, she blacked out and she fell and she hit her head and she had to go get multiple stitches.
And she was telling us that she probably had a concussion and that the doctor told her that she needed bed rest, but it was so important for her to be there for us. for the birth of this baby. And the reason I say that's important is because there were so many of those type of stories.
Heart attack, stroke, cancer.
Gunshot. Did she seem like she had a concussion?
No, no, not at all. And we knew it was bullshit. We knew.
It seemed like every time someone else was in the spotlight, in this case, Stephanie, Tara Lee would try to redirect everyone's attention to herself. When she was done eating, they went up to labor and delivery.
Our birth mom is hooked up to the monitors. She is frantically trying to get a hold of her partner who doesn't have the phone. She's terrified. She's alone. She doesn't know us. She has no support there.
Tara's sitting in the corner of the table. Teresa and I are literally sitting in chairs against the wall. Facing the bed. While Tara is, you know, on her cell phone, Like, the whole dynamic was just so freaking weird.
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Chapter 4: How did the Mathenys handle Tara Lee's demands for payment?
I think she had every intention of having us drive to Detroit. I don't think she had any intention of us going home with the baby.
Yeah, no intentions at all. But the adoption paperwork couldn't be signed for three days, and they needed sleep. The Mathinis went back to their rental house and crashed. In the morning, they rushed back to the hospital. Baby S was still in the NICU, and Tara Lee was still sitting right next to Stephanie in her recovery room.
She's camped out waiting for us, and she is pissed off. because she wants her money. Teresa said they ignored Tara Lee's demand for her final $4,000 payment. And that's when we put the hospital on notice that we didn't want Tara anywhere near the NICU.
So no one knew about the FBI. So the hospital, they thought we were crazy.
Later that morning, the lawyers, Talia Getting and Tanya Corrado, surreptitiously arrived. They messaged the Mathinis to meet them on another floor where they could talk in secret. When they were all out of Tara Lee's earshot, the lawyers said the FBI's investigation was very serious, and this might be Tara Lee's last adoption.
They gave the Mathienes the phone number for FBI Special Agent Matt Sluss.
And so I called what turned out to be Matt's cell phone, left him a voicemail. And then it was like, I don't know, probably lunchtime. I was walking into the hospital by myself. I had just parked the car. It was snowing. I see this 313 number. Mike answered.
He had his first conversation with the FBI. Last summer, I reached out to the FBI to ask if they'd speak with me about their investigation into Tara Lee. They don't always talk to reporters, but this case was very important to them. Special Agent Matt Sluss is thin, with a neat beard, and talks in a thoughtful and precise way.
In 2018, he was a newish agent working white-collar crime, and he said when he got this case, he knew nothing about how adoption works.
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Chapter 5: What were the Mathenys' first moments with their adopted son like?
And then just literally started drawing, hand-drawing, handwriting a roadmap of every name, who's connected to who, about the parents' names, birth parents' names, match date, how much money was paid, did the match succeed, was it failed, a quick note on how did it fail if it did.
Courtney and Curtis Edmond, two failed matches. Tammy and Nick Granath, one failed match, one fabricated match, one success. On October 26th, Agent Sluss added, Mike and Teresa Matheny, success. 20 blocks away, Mike hung up with Matt Sluss and found Teresa in the hospital and told her what had just happened. He now had no doubts that this investigation was real.
and it was time to turn the tables on Tara Lee. He and Teresa walked the echoey halls talking in hushed tones when they saw two familiar faces coming toward them. It was Stephanie and her partner.
With no Tara. And so we just kind of start talking and we find one of those just little random like sitting areas. She was like, oh, Tara's upset with you guys about something. Okay. I said, she wants us to pay her more money and we're not going to pay her. She's not providing the services. The rent wasn't paid. Their electric was about to be cut off. No insurance on the cars.
The tires hadn't been put on. There's no food in the house. I said, I can do one of two things. I said, I can either pay Tara so that she goes away, or we can tell Tara to fuck off, and I can put that money to use to help you guys. I had spoken to the attorneys.
The attorneys confirmed that as long as everything was documented and we weren't giving cash, I could pay their rent and then submit receipts directly myself. And so that was what we chose to do.
They paid Stephanie's back rent and three months of advance rent. They paid her overdue electric bill and bought a few months of credit. They paid her car insurance and had her driver's license reinstated. They put new tires on her car. They bought her food, clothes, and shoes. And they felt bad that Stephanie had been taken advantage of. She'd been promised support for her pregnancy.
Instead, she struggled for months. She collapsed in her car. She was alone during the delivery. The truth was, even after what they'd done for her, Stephanie was going to keep living paycheck to paycheck. Her son was going to grow up with a middle-class family. It was going to be hard, no matter what. Tara Lee had made it so much harder.
A few days later, Tanya Corrado returned to the hospital in secret so the Mathinis could sign the adoption consent forms. In her last adoption, Tara Lee was going to be cut out.
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