RE-RELEASE: EP 10 - Torrah

Summary

Betrayal: Weekly – Episode 10: Torrah

Introduction

In Episode 10 of Betrayal: Weekly, hosted by Andrea Gunning, we delve into the heartrending story of Torah Giles and her tumultuous relationship with Aaron, a man who seemed to embody strength and resilience but ultimately revealed a web of deceit and hidden secrets. This episode explores themes of trust, betrayal, and the arduous journey toward healing after uncovering profound personal deceptions.

Torah's Background

Torah Giles, a history professor in Colorado, presents a life rooted in strong community and faith. Growing up on a farm in California as one of seven siblings, Torah was deeply entrenched in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which shaped her expectations for a traditional life path—graduate high school, marry, and start a family.

Torah Giles [02:28]: "We grew up on a farm. So my life was kind of wild and crazy and great. Grew up super religious in the Seventh Day Adventist Church."

Despite her strong religious upbringing, Torah found herself deviating from the expected path. After high school, she became a full-time nanny and eventually pursued higher education in history, leading her to Colorado for her PhD.

Torah Giles [07:24]: "I was living in this really cute tiny apartment in the older section of Colorado Springs. So cute. And just loving my life."

Meeting Aaron

In January 2017, Torah began teaching a class on conspiracy culture and elections in U.S. political history. It was here that she met Aaron, a fellow mid-30s student with a commanding presence and a service dog named Osa.

Torah Giles [05:05]: "He had a service dog, this really cute English mastiff named Osa...He was finishing his Bachelor's degree, on his way to start nursing school."

Aaron's background as a former army medic who lost his foot in Iraq added layers to his persona, making him both admirable and relatable. Their interactions grew from casual chats to a deeper connection, with Aaron often seeking Torah's help with childcare due to his impending custody of his son amidst a tumultuous divorce.

Torah Giles [09:32]: "He might need some help with my son."

Building the Relationship

Over the next few months, Aaron and Torah developed a strong bond, blending friendship and familial support. Torah became integral to Aaron's life, helping him manage his son while Aaron pursued his nursing career.

Torah Giles [12:17]: "He was just Aaron, and that made her feel comfortable...We had a beer, sat on the back patio, and he told me a little bit more about what was going on."

Their relationship deepened, leading Torah to move into Aaron's home and live as common-law spouses. Despite financial strains, their life together appeared harmonious, anchored by love for Aaron's son.

Aaron's Decline and Death

The stability of their life was shattered when Aaron fell seriously ill. Initially thought to be an infection from his amputation, Aaron's condition rapidly worsened, leading to chronic pain and dependency on pain medications like oxycodone and fentanyl.

Torah Giles [28:07]: "He was taking oxycodone, I believe Percocet...He had a patch on his shoulder. I said, what's that? He said, oh, it's fentanyl...And he kind of pooh poohed me like, I know what I'm doing."

Despite Torah's efforts to care for him, Aaron's health deteriorated, culminating in his untimely death due to an overdose. Torah’s grief was compounded by the sudden appearance of Aaron’s estranged family, who challenged the narrative Torah believed about Aaron's heritage and past.

Torah Giles [31:13]: "I reached down and I picked him up and I held him really close and I said, never forget I love you and I'm your amma and that will never change."

Discovering the Betrayal

Torah's quest for closure led her to uncover shocking truths about Aaron after his death. She discovered that Aaron's military records did not align with his embellished stories, revealing that he had fabricated significant aspects of his identity, including his Native American Choctaw heritage and his status as a Special Forces medic.

Torah Giles [35:03]: "When I got his autopsy, it was very much an overdose. He had on double the dose and he had taken double the dose of oxycodone at the same time to go to bed."

Further investigation exposed Aaron's infidelities and deceptive relationships with multiple women, undermining the trust Torah had placed in him. The most devastating revelation was Aaron's false assertion that no one had ever loved him except Torah, highlighting the depth of his deceit.

Torah Giles [37:07]: "Nobody has ever loved me. Nobody, except for you. And that is the biggest lie he ever told."

Torah's Healing Process

The unraveling of Aaron's true identity plunged Torah into deep despair, yet it also set her on a path toward healing. Through therapy and introspection, Torah began to confront the complexities of Aaron's behavior, recognizing patterns of manipulation and addiction that contributed to his fraudulent life.

Torah Giles [49:00]: "He was broken. He was broken by a world that breaks people and spits them out...Instead of becoming someone who would be loved, he became someone who he thought was lovable."

Torah emphasizes the importance of validating one's own experiences, despite the betrayal, and finding empathy for both herself and Aaron to reconcile her past.

Torah Giles [49:50]: "My story was true and my experiences were valid. My story was true, even if his wasn't."

Conclusion

Four years after Aaron's death, Torah Giles continues to teach history in Colorado, forever changed by her experiences. Her journey underscores the profound impact of betrayal and the resilience required to rebuild one's life after uncovering deep personal deceptions. Through her story, Torah advocates for understanding and supporting those who have been betrayed, emphasizing that healing is possible even in the aftermath of profound loss.

Torah Giles [48:47]: "Closure isn't necessary for you to move on and heal. It's really not help, but it's not necessary."

Notable Quotes

• Torah Giles [02:28]: "We grew up on a farm...Grew up super religious in the Seventh Day Adventist Church."
• Torah Giles [07:24]: "I was living in this really cute tiny apartment...And just loving my life."
• Torah Giles [05:05]: "He was finishing his Bachelor's degree, on his way to start nursing school."
• Torah Giles [37:07]: "Nobody has ever loved me. Nobody, except for you. And that is the biggest lie he ever told."
• Torah Giles [48:47]: "Closure isn't necessary for you to move on and heal."

Final Thoughts

Torah Giles’ story is a compelling testament to the hidden depths of human relationships and the devastating consequences of deceit. Betrayal: Weekly presents her narrative with sensitivity and depth, encouraging listeners to reflect on the complexities of trust and the journey toward personal healing after experiencing profound betrayal.

Transcript

[Andrea Gunning]

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[Torah Giles]

This is an incredible story that sounds like it's made up. It sounds like a soap opera, sounds like a drama movie, but it's so real. And it's not the only one. There are things we might not know about somebody we live with, and there's so many stories like this.

[Andrea Gunning]

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. About a year ago we heard from a listener with a story that floored us. Torah Giles is a history professor in Colorado, but she grew up on the California coast with her seven siblings and.

[Torah Giles]

We grew up on a farm. So my life was kind of wild and crazy and great. Grew up super religious in the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

[Andrea Gunning]

As a kid, the church was Torah's life. She went to a Christian school, her friends and after school activities were all through the church and she assumed that her life would follow the same path that was modeled by the women around her, graduate high school, get married and start having kids.

[Torah Giles]

Funny enough, I thought as a kid that 20 years old was being a grown up and 25 year olds were old. And so I thought for sure that I would be married by 20. But I never really dated.

[Andrea Gunning]

After high school, Tora became a full time nanny and she tried to give dating a shot.

[Torah Giles]

I finally went on one date with a guy and gave him like the little peck at the end of the night and was just like, nope, that was not for me. I did not like that. I don't want a date.

[Andrea Gunning]

Torah started to realize that the traditional path wasn't for her. So instead of trying to find a husband, she started planning for a new career.

[Torah Giles]

I decided to go to college and I studied history, which was really fun.

[Andrea Gunning]

After undergrad, she moved to Colorado to pursue a PhD in history.

[Torah Giles]

I was living in this really cute tiny apartment in the older section of Colorado Springs. So cute. And just loving my life. I felt like I had really kind of arrived. I had a job, I was teaching, I had friends. I was very happy.

[Andrea Gunning]

She loved teaching, especially American history.

[Torah Giles]

It was so much fun. Keep this in mind. It's January of 2017 and I decided it would be a good time to teach conspiracy culture and elections in United States political history.

[Andrea Gunning]

By this time, Toro was in her mid-30s. She'd tried dating for years, but ultimately decided she didn't need romance. Her life was complete without it.

[Torah Giles]

Dating and romantic relationships were not going to be part of my life. And I was sort of settled into that in a very comfortable way where it didn't bother me. It wasn't something I was seeking out. I wasn't on dating apps. I wasn't looking for it and I certainly was not looking for him.

[Andrea Gunning]

In that class, she met a student named Aaron. Like her, he was also in his mid-30s.

[Torah Giles]

He had a service dog, this really cute English mastiff named osa. And she had the best underbite. And she would be in the back of class chomping on a bone. So I was always very aware of his presence, partially because of her. He would come up after class and we would pet the dog and chat a little bit.

[Andrea Gunning]

Aaron was a veteran, a former army medic who'd lost his foot in an explosion in Iraq.

[Torah Giles]

I knew that he had had an amputation to his leg. He talked about it fairly frequently. He had a handicap parking pass.

[Andrea Gunning]

The disability was a big part of his life, but it didn't define him and it certainly didn't hold him back. He was finishing his Bachelor's degree, on his way to start nursing school. After each class he would stay behind and chat with Torah.

[Torah Giles]

He had a very slow way of speaking. There was no rush for anything in life. I always had the vibe that he was one of those people that would talk forever if you let them. And so I would start to gather my things and eventually he started walking me to my car because my class was from 7 to 10pm and it was very surface level chat. Throughout the whole time I was his teacher, usually about class, usually about some interesting fact. He was like a sponge for information.

[Andrea Gunning]

Aaron shared that he was Native American Choctaw, which was a big part of his identity. And she noticed that he was always immaculately put together.

[Torah Giles]

He had kind of long hair that he kept tied back in this low knot on the back of his head, kind of slicked back low. I hesitate to call it a man bun because I know that would hurt Aaron's feelings, but that's what it was. And he had a cowboy western vibe, almost, not like costumey, but he wore a lot of very nice button ups and jeans and leather boots. So that was pretty much his uniform. He just had this confident air about him that he knew he was smart, he knew he was good looking, but he was also kind and respectful and interesting and funny and talented. And I was a fan very quickly just of his entire aura.

[Andrea Gunning]

Aaron and Tora kept talking every week after class for the rest of the semester.

[Torah Giles]

At some point in those conversations I brought up the fact that I had been a nanny. And a few months later he came to me after class one day and said, we need to switch where my son is going to daycare. What do you know about maybe hiring a nanny? So we chatted a little bit about that and that's how I found out he had a child. I didn't know that before. He wore a ring, so I knew he was married, but I didn't know that he had a kid. He was a baby at the time, maybe four or five months old. So that was sort of our first foray into anything personal was just that bit of advice he was seeking about finding good childcare.

[Andrea Gunning]

After the class ended in May, Torah got a Facebook friend request. It was from Aaron. He was already Facebook friends with other teachers. So she accepted the request.

[Torah Giles]

And then about a week later, he sent me a message about 9, 10 o'clock at night I was already in bed and I thought, well, that's weird, what the heck? And so rolled over and checked the message. It was from him and he Just said, you know, something very casual. How are you? And I said, oh, I'm good. The whole time thinking like, what does this guy want? Keep in mind, I am very single, very happy to be single, not looking for anything, think he's great. Hadn't really given any thought. The man's married with a baby, right?

[Andrea Gunning]

They chatted for a few minutes before Aaron revealed why he had reached out.

[Torah Giles]

He said, do you know that I'm going through a pretty bad divorce? And I said, oh no, I had no idea. So we chat a little bit about it. He said, yeah, actually she was arrested last night. We got into an argument and she got physical. And I said, oh, that's terrible. I'm so sorry to hear that. And then I did the nice thing, which I've since learned not to do, which is I said, is there anything I can do to help? And he said, well, I might need some help with my son.

[Andrea Gunning]

Torah. Read between the lines. Aaron was desperate. He was about to start an intensive two year nursing program and now he would likely have full custody of his infant son. She felt for his situation. And the next day, while Aaron was on campus, he swung by Torah's office with his baby in tower. He wanted to thank Torah for the semester and for offering to help.

[Torah Giles]

And I sat and listened with him and I held the baby and oh my gosh, he was the cutest little thing. And then as we sort of wrapped up that conversation, it was the end of my day. And I said, okay, well, if you need anything, let me know. And he said, well, actually I have paper I have to work on tonight. Would you be able to come over and just hang out with him while I do my homework for an hour or two and then I'll make dinner?

[Andrea Gunning]

Almost reflexively she said yes.

[Torah Giles]

It was more this like Christian sense of duty that I had been trained into. Someone needs help, you show up even if it's inconvenient or you don't really want to. And that was my first thought, is I don't really want to. I don't really want someone who's going to rely on me. I don't really want to be involved in someone else's drama. And I have a full time job, I'm teaching, I'm busy.

[Andrea Gunning]

In addition to that, she didn't want Aaron to mistake her kindness for something else.

[Torah Giles]

I'm worried all the time that men are going to take my presence as some sort of an invitation. And I was so anti dating in relationships that it was just something I never wanted to foster. So I'm thinking about all this as I'm driving the 20 minutes to his house. Like, okay, I'm gonna have to think of boundaries. I'm going to have to be careful with saying yes.

[Andrea Gunning]

When she got to his house, her anxiety dissipated. He was just Aaron, and that made her feel comfortable.

[Torah Giles]

He was himself the way he always was with me after class, just very warm and friendly and kind and thoughtful. So I stayed, had dinner, and then, you know, stay and we'll have an adult beverage is what he used to call them. Stay and we'll have an adult beverage after the boy goes to bed. And I didn't really have anything going on, so why not? So I stayed and we had a beer, sat on the back patio, and he told me a little bit more about what was going on. And it was pretty bad. There were holes in the wall going up the stairs. There was a hole in the wall in the dining room. And we just talked and talked and talked and talked. He shared a little bit of the emotions that came up with him. Oh, I feel bad and she is my son's mother, but also, we can't keep doing this, and I need to get out of this. Mar.

[Andrea Gunning]

That night, they ended up talking until 1am I have work at 8am and.

[Torah Giles]

He said, just crash in my guest room. Here's some clean pajamas, here's a toothbrush. Just crash downstairs. And I did, which is so out of character for me. I felt a little weird, but I was very happy to be around him and just wanted to stay there and be helpful. I loved to be helpful. I loved to be needed. So I stayed the night, got up in the morning, trucked off to work. And then the next day he said, hey, I've got a test coming up if you're free. Later on, I went back over there.

[Andrea Gunning]

Soon she was going over to Aaron's every few days to help out with his son. It felt like the right thing to do.

[Torah Giles]

I was always sleeping in the guest room. I made it very clear to him, I don't let people touch me. I'm not interested in a romantic relationship. I am just here to help. I want to be your friend. I want you to feel supported, but that's as far as this is going to go. And I just kept telling him, like, we're just friends. I don't let people touch me. The fact that I give you hugs is kind of exceptional. You have to respect that. And he really did.

[Andrea Gunning]

After Aaron would put his son to bed, the two of them would stay up and have a drink on the back patio and just talk about life. It became their little ritual.

[Torah Giles]

He was a very guarded person. So a lot of what he would talk about was things that were very present right now. If he brought up the past, it always felt like kind of an honor that he trusted me with that story. And he would point that out in a very subtle way of, oh, I don't really tell people this story, but you're different. We just never ran out of things to say.

[Andrea Gunning]

After about two months of this, Torah went back home to visit her family in California.

[Torah Giles]

The whole time I'm with my family, I'm bringing him up and I'm talking with him on the phone, and they're seeing that this person is making me kind of giddy and smiley and those kinds of things.

[Andrea Gunning]

She had never talked about a friend like this before. When she got home from that trip, she went straight to Aaron's house.

[Torah Giles]

He had cleaned the whole house. He had some of my favorite music on. Baby was in bed. He had, you know, a bouquet of flowers and a card welcoming me home and thanking me for being his friend. And that was my first sort of inkling, like, I'm going to have to keep an eye on this because here I was at home kind of being giddy about this person. Here he is bringing me flowers. So there was this undercurrent starting where I'm repeatedly saying to him, like, we're just friends, but we're friends who are snuggling on the couch, watching a movie, not touching each other, just leaning like my head on his shoulder or something. So benign, so middle school. But it was perfect for me because I wasn't ready to do that.

[Andrea Gunning]

One night, while they were up late talking on the patio, Aaron finally said what they had both been thinking.

[Torah Giles]

He said something to me like, I think you're in love with me. And I said, I think you're in love with me. And that was it. We were in a relationship after that.

[Andrea Gunning]

That day became their anniversary.

[Torah Giles]

I leaned in and it was the most fulfilling time of my whole entire existence. Resistance. I'm getting emotional just talking about it because that part is perfect in my mind.

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[Torah Giles]

Painful Thoughts the guy in front of.

[Andrea Gunning]

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[Torah Giles]

Through an incredibly detailed 17 minute story.

[Andrea Gunning]

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[Torah Giles]

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[Andrea Gunning]

After writing off romance, Tora found a man who defied all expectations. Aaron was strikingly handsome, determined, respectful, and he was an incredible father. Tora moved into his house and their relationship deepened. That's when Aaron opened up about his traumatic childhood. He said that both of his parents.

[Torah Giles]

Were abusive, his family was incredibly complicated, incredibly damaged, incredibly dysfunctional. And these were the reasons that he's so guarded. These are the reasons that he doesn't have a relationship with them or see them or go to visit them.

[Andrea Gunning]

When he was 18, he ran away from home and joined the military. At the time, the war in Iraq was just beginning. He worked his way up to become a Special Forces medic, but his military career ended in tragedy.

[Torah Giles]

He got hurt in Iraq. They were on a drive through a city of some kind and hit an IED and the Humvee in front of them blew up. Theirs didn't, but the impact knocked theirs off its balance. He got hurt, his foot was amputated because of that injury and he was medically retired and then came home.

[Andrea Gunning]

Aaron spent weeks in the hospital recovering from his injury and even in this time of Crisis. His family turmoil continued.

[Torah Giles]

His dad showed up to the hospital and tried to get medical power of attorney so that he could sell Aaron's portion of land that he had been left by his grandparents on the Choctaw Reservation in Oklahoma. So Aaron fought tooth and nail to get better, to get stronger, and kicked his dad out of his life.

[Andrea Gunning]

This is one of the reasons he needed Tora's help, because he didn't have anyone. His family and his ex wife, they weren't safe people. Tora realized he'd spent his entire life moving from one traumatic situation to another.

[Torah Giles]

The man was covered in enormous scars. Everything about him screamed, I have had a hard life. I have had a physically hard life. I've been injured. I've had surgeries.

[Andrea Gunning]

Even though it had been years since Aaron was injured in the war, it was part of his everyday life.

[Torah Giles]

He walked with a very slight limp and kept that leg pretty stiff, but he always kept a sock on that foot, and I just figured he wanted to protect it. He had a couple of different doctors who were working on maybe a better prosthetic because he ended up injuring his knee on that same leg. And we thought maybe he needed a little bit more support from that prosthetic.

[Andrea Gunning]

And that wasn't his only injury from the war. He'd also injured his knee back, his shoulder and his arm. They were constantly getting re injured, causing Aaron to go to the doctor in pain. But despite all this, he still fought for full custody, especially because of his childhood. Aaron was determined to show up for his son.

[Torah Giles]

He was an incredible father. He was so attentive and so loving and so affectionate and just lit up. When it came time to go get the boy out of bed or read the boy his bedtime story, we called him the Boy. I'm gonna call him the Boy because I'm not gonna say his name.

[Andrea Gunning]

The boy was only a few months old when Torah met him. And she was there for all of his big firsts.

[Torah Giles]

The boy and I were just absolutely connected at the hip from day one. When it was time for him to start eating solids, I was the one who decided how that should go, because I have 20 years of childcare experience and this is his first child. He and I would just light up to be around each other.

[Andrea Gunning]

The boy took his first steps to Torah. The three of them fell into a kind of domestic bliss based on a foundation of love for each other and love for Aaron's son. After a year together, Torah felt like this was her family now. She didn't want to go through the formalities of a wedding and marriage. So instead they lived as common law spouses. They just started calling each other husband and wife. With Aaron in school, Torah took on more financial responsibility.

[Torah Giles]

He's a retired veteran, so he gets some money, but you know, life is expensive. So we were always a little bit stressed on money. He really liked being a provider and making sure that the baby had everything he needed. But that usually meant that there was no food in the refrigerator for adults. So I started doing things like pitching in on groceries and I took over the wi fi and the trash bills.

[Andrea Gunning]

Aaron had to make a monthly home equity payment to his ex wife. And the expenses just kept coming.

[Torah Giles]

Oh, gosh. It was just never ending. We needed a new roof, but we didn't have any money. We needed to pay off $5,000 in credit cards in order to get a refinance on the mortgage, so we didn't lose the house.

[Andrea Gunning]

Despite the stress of living paycheck to paycheck, Tora was filled with love for her family. Everything was precariously perfectly balanced. That was until Aaron got sick one day. He woke up in excruciating pain with a very high fever. Tora had to go to work, so Aaron went to see their family doctor by himself. And when he got there, his fever was so high he needed to go to the ER right away.

[Torah Giles]

One of the things that they thought might be going on when he was in the ER was that he was having some kind of an infection from his amputation.

[Andrea Gunning]

He called Torah from the hospital and she rushed over, but when she got there, he wasn't in a hospital room. Erin was just sitting by the hospital entrance in a wheelchair.

[Torah Giles]

He said that they ended up accusing him of being pain med seeking. And he said that was racist. That was because he was brown. He literally ripped the IV out of his arm and stormed out of the hospital. And I kind of yelled at him all the way home, like, what were you thinking? You obviously need help. Something is going on. He had a very high fever. He was in a lot of pain. I could see that he was miserable. It had been a long, awful day, sitting in the ER getting tests done on him and all of them coming back negative.

[Andrea Gunning]

In addition to the fever, Aaron was in excruciating pain, debilitating chronic pain from his old combat injuries. But this time, his doctors weren't able to figure out what was going on. So Torres stepped in to take care of him this whole time.

[Torah Giles]

I'm icing his back. I'm getting the ice packs for his knee. He had special equipment for icing his shoulder. I'm driving him around to doctor's appointments because he's in too much pain to drive. I can see the pain on his face. I can see him changing and drawing into this pain. His life of being in chronic pain. He stopped going to the gym, and then he stopped working out in the garage, and then he stopped moving. Eventually, he just sat around all day and the house stopped getting cleaned. And this is all because he's in excruciating pain and he's miserable.

[Andrea Gunning]

He spent weeks on the couch unable to function. To keep his spirits up, he showed tora his favorite YouTube videos you mentioned.

[Torah Giles]

Have you ever heard of Stolen Valor? And he pulled up YouTube and we spent, I would say, probably an hour watching YouTube videos of people being exposed for a stolen valor.

[Andrea Gunning]

Stolen valor is the term for people who impersonate military service members and veterans.

[Torah Giles]

And so there's lots of videos on YouTube of people going up to a person wearing a uniform in, say, a mall and saying, your bars are on the wrong side of your collar, your patch is upside down. You are not supposed to be in this uniform, you know, shaming them for this act of stolen valor. And this was something that he was very amused by, that these people are getting caught and shamed publicly. He loved it. He thought it was so entertaining.

[Andrea Gunning]

It was a welcome distraction from his pain, especially considering the price he was paying for his military service. She understood why he liked the Stolen Valor video so much.

[Torah Giles]

So as he withdraws into this chronic pain, I'm pushing harder and harder to make sure that bills are paid, to make sure the house is taken care of, make sure the baby has everything he needs, make sure the baby got to go to the park today and play outside. I just started picking up more and more of the slack as he withdrew into being miserable. It was awful to watch the person that you're so in love with falling apart in front of me. Foreign with the best all inclusive vacation.

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[Torah Giles]

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[Torah Giles]

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[Torah Giles]

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[Andrea Gunning]

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[Torah Giles]

All inclusive package to reuse Negril and do your [e-mail] Amazon One Medical presents Painful Thoughts I could catch anything sitting in this doctor's waiting room. Okay, just wiped his runny nose on my jacket and the guy next to me sitting in a pool of perspiration insists on sharing my armrest. Next time, make an appointment with an Amazon One medical provider.

[Andrea Gunning]

There's no waiting and no sweaty guy.

[Torah Giles]

Amazon won. Medical healthcare just got less painful.

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[Andrea Gunning]

Tora's new life with Aaron was thrown off balance when his chronic pain took a sharp turn for the worse. Aaron eventually started pain management therapy, and Tora felt helpless.

[Torah Giles]

He was taking oxycodone, I believe Percocet. Anyway, he was taking one of those and he was supposed to take like one a day and he was taking like two or three because he was in so much pain.

[Andrea Gunning]

He said he knew what he was doing. He was in nursing school and had years of training as an army medic. One night before he came to bed.

[Torah Giles]

He went, took a shower. He came back into the room and he had a patch on his shoulder. I said, what's that? And he said, oh, it's fentanyl. It's great. I'm not in any pain. It's amazing. And I said, but you took your meds today. He said, yeah. And I said, isn't that how people overdose? And he kind of pooh poohed me like, I know what I'm doing. I'm not an idiot. It's fine. I'm going to bed. Good night. I've had a bad day. We're not going to have a fight about this. I was so uncomfortable and I just sat there staring at his back, wanting to rip them off but trusting him at the same time.

[Andrea Gunning]

In the morning, Aaron was unresponsive.

[Torah Giles]

So I grabbed my phone and I called 911 hysterical. Said, My husband's not breathing. He was asleep and he's not waking up.

[Andrea Gunning]

The 911 operator instructed her to begin chest compressions until the paramedics arrived.

[Torah Giles]

And the whole time I'm doing chest compressions, I'm like, he's cold, he's gone. This man is not alive. The whole time in the background, the boy is just screaming my name.

[Andrea Gunning]

The paramedics arrived and confirmed what she already knew. There was no bringing Erin back. She called friends to come over, and together they waited for the coroner. Not knowing what else to do, she fixated on the boy. He was three. Torah tried to distract him, play with him, but he wanted to know what was going on.

[Torah Giles]

He loved the little prince. And we started saying, you know, daddy went to hang out in the stars with the little prince and the fox.

[Andrea Gunning]

Before the coroner came, Tora and their friends took turns saying goodbye.

[Torah Giles]

We all went up and sat with Aaron and I sat down and I told him, I will miss you every day for the rest of my life. And then he was gone.

[Andrea Gunning]

But his death would reveal an avalanche of discoveries. It began on that very day when his ex wife showed up at the front door. The police had notified her of Aaron's death, and his ex wife called his family, his estranged family.

[Torah Giles]

About 10 o'clock, knock on my door. The boy's mom showed up and insisted on sitting down and talking to me. I don't know this person at all other than the reputation that I have been very carefully spoon fed for three years, which is that she is awful and a horrible person. And she came in like a blast of cold air, sat down in my living room and said, if you want to be in my son's life, there's some things you need to know. First of all, Aaron's not Choctaw. Aaron's black. And I kind of laughed at her. I'm like, okay, lady, like, really, we're gonna do this right now?

[Andrea Gunning]

Given the circumstances, this comment seemed absurd and irrelevant. But his ex wife insisted that there were truths about Aaron that Tora needed to know before she could share more. Aaron's biological family arrived. They were surprised to meet Torah. They didn't know she existed.

[Torah Giles]

It was Aaron's mom and Aaron's brother, who is very much a black man. They came in, they sat down in my living room, and I told them about me and my life with Aaron and how long we'd been Together. And she said he wasn't a good person. And I thought, well, that's a really weird thing to say to a grieving widow.

[Andrea Gunning]

Tora had seen pictures of Aaron's mother, father and brother, but these people in her house, they weren't the same ones she'd seen photos of. Nothing made sense from Aaron's sudden death to the arrival of this family she didn't recognize. But they were his family and now they wanted the house back right away.

[Torah Giles]

I gave it a lot of thought and I called my family on a zoom call and I said, okay, I'm going to vacate the house. I don't own it, my name's not on it, I don't have any right to it. And my friend, the lawyer said, take what's yours, what you bought together, and nothing else.

[Andrea Gunning]

Tora packed her car with a few boxes and prepared to leave. She'd also be leaving the boy she'd raised from infancy to nearly age 4. But she knew she wasn't part of his biological family. It was clear that with Aaron gone, Torah just didn't have a place in the boy's life.

[Torah Giles]

I reached down and I picked him up and I held him really close and I said, never forget I love you and I'm your amma and that will never change. And she peeled out of the road, drove away. I never saw him again.

[Andrea Gunning]

Before walking out of the house for the last time, she decided to take Erin's laptop with her. Her brother came to meet her and together they drove back to their parents house in California.

[Torah Giles]

I fell apart. I fell apart. I wasn't getting out of bed, I wasn't taking care of myself, I wasn't eating. I was a disaster.

[Andrea Gunning]

At first. She fixated on his death, how and why it happened. She got a copy of his autopsy report.

[Torah Giles]

When I got his autopsy, it was very much an overdose. He had on double the dose and he had taken double the dose of oxycodone at the same time to go to bed.

[Andrea Gunning]

And there was something else on his autopsy that stood out.

[Torah Giles]

On his autopsy. It said he had a brace on his leg. Said brace on his left leg. And I thought, well, that's a really weird way to say prosthetic. And that was the last I thought of it.

[Andrea Gunning]

The questions that came up right after his death, about his family, his race. She just didn't have the capacity to think about all of that at the time.

[Torah Giles]

I stayed very much in grieving widow mode for two months, and it wasn't until after the second month That I opened my eyes finally. So I just let a lot of this stuff slide and thought, like, either I'll deal with it later or it's not true, or it's a misunderstanding. And then after two months, I opened his computer and everything changed instantly. So I opened the computer, got right in on the first try, knew the password, and I opened his pictures and I started looking through and there were some screenshots in there that sent me to his text messages. All of his text messages are on his computer. And immediately, within 20 seconds, realized that he was in a relationship with somebody long distance. I spent an hour combing through their text messages, which were graphic and filthy. And the worst part of all of it, there were two things that were just devastating. The first was that the things he said to her while they were having this, like, fantasy relationship is the same stuff he would say to me when we were intimate, verbatim. And he would tell her, well, I have time and I won't have the boy on these dates because I was gonna be gone for a conference on those dates. So that was a lot to realize. Like, he was manipulating her and me to keep us both on the hook, back and forth. But then the worst thing I found in everything I found was him saying, nobody has ever loved me. Nobody, except for you. And that is the biggest lie he ever told. And just the most infuriating, devastating, cruel thing he could have said was that nobody had ever loved him. And here I had just spent eight weeks, bottomed out, devastated, flatlined, because this man had died and I had given him everything.

[Andrea Gunning]

She kept looking through his texts and found more women.

[Torah Giles]

He was texting four other girls, a couple from Tinder, a couple from school. One of my favorites was a girl he had been in school with who had been to our house and knew me. And they were talking about how she could move in and her teenager could live in the basement bedroom. A three bedroom house, and his son lives in one of those bedrooms. So presumably I'm not living there as she's moving in. So that was like, what the heck? Is he just gonna kick me out? Like, this is recent.

[Andrea Gunning]

Aaron was talking to these women up until the week he died, making plans with them and inviting him over.

[Torah Giles]

And he was saying, well, you know, I don't ever have anything going on on Tuesday nights. So you could come over for dinner, we could watch a movie. But then I have to go to bed around 10 because I was teaching. I was at Class 7 to 10 on Tuesdays, so he knew I would stay at work and go to class. So that was like, I guess, kind of opening that, that box of like, okay, so he's been doing stuff behind my back. I don't know what. I still don't. I don't need to. It doesn't matter. He offered it.

[Andrea Gunning]

In the two months since Aaron died, these women had been trying to get in touch with him. So Tora messaged them back to let them know he was gone.

[Torah Giles]

The girlfriend messaged me back, what? No, this isn't real. What's going on? Who are you really? Did you steal his phone? Just total disbelief, which is fair. It was completely fair. And I said, yeah, no, real. Here's some pictures of us. We've been together for this amount of time, three years. And she said, we've been together for longer than that. They've been together when he was married to his other wife.

[Andrea Gunning]

Tora kept digging through his laptop and that's when she saw the photo that changed everything.

[Torah Giles]

On his computer were all these pictures of his honeymoon, including his two fully attacked feet on the beach. Much, much after he was supposedly injured. I just stared at these feet like, these are his feet. I recognized one of them. I'd seen one of them without a sock on.

[Andrea Gunning]

The entire time they were together, Aaron kept a sock and a brace on his prosthetic foot. She'd never actually seen his amputation site.

[Torah Giles]

He didn't ever, like, pop off a prosthetic or anything like that in front of me. And he needed to shower downstairs because it was really hard for him to step into the shower upstairs. So it was a tub, shower combo. So he basically had his own bathroom in the downstairs part of the house. So I never saw him fully unclothed because he kept a sock on it when we were, you know, sleeping. So I never questioned it. It was his private business. That's his medical history. And there was nothing for me to say. Well, that seems off.

[Andrea Gunning]

She saw the monthly checks coming in from the military. She heard the hard prosthetic foot hitting the ground when he walked.

[Torah Giles]

He.

[Andrea Gunning]

Plus he was self conscious about his injury. She never pressed him further.

[Torah Giles]

Why would I question that? Who would that make me?

[Andrea Gunning]

But after she saw the photo of Aaron's two feet in the sand on his honeymoon, Tora called their family doctor, the doctor who'd done physical exams on her and Aaron in the past year.

[Torah Giles]

I said, did you ever look at his prosthetic or looked at his amputation site? And she said, oh, I'm sure I did. Well, maybe not, actually. Let me think. Yeah, Maybe I didn't. And I just sat there flabbergasted. And at that point, that was what was finally like, yeah, this man did not have an amputated foot. I don't know what he was wearing. I don't know why he was wearing it, but it wasn't a prosthetic foot.

[Andrea Gunning]

This shocking revelation caused her to question the whole story she'd been told about his military career.

[Torah Giles]

Found his DD214, which is like his exit paperwork from the military. And it didn't add up with what.

[Andrea Gunning]

He told me on his discharge papers. It said he did join the military at 18, and he did go to combat once, not four times. Like he'd said he wasn't a Special Forces medic like he'd claimed. She doesn't know why he left the army, but it wasn't because of an injury. Her entire understanding of Erin changed.

[Torah Giles]

And I went out into the kitchen and I poured myself. I am not joking. Eight ounces of tequila downed. That. My dad lives in the country, thank goodness. Walked out way out into the hills and just screamed and screamed and screamed until I lost my voice. The person I had just spent three years loving and caring for and two months devastated over his loss didn't exist. And I came to this point that day where I said, at the end of the day, he took everything, everything from me. And when there was nothing left to take, he took himself from me. The person I had loved and been in a relationship with disappeared. And with him went three years of my life into a black hole.

[Andrea Gunning]

Who was Aaron and what was his real life story?

[Torah Giles]

I was Googling everything I could. I'm a historian. I can research like nobody's business. So I'm just Googling everything I can think of to try to find out who this person is. I'm looking on Facebook, I'm looking on Instagram, social media.

[Andrea Gunning]

She started reaching out to people who were connected to Aaron.

[Torah Giles]

You know, now I'm asking questions, right? What about these people? Not real. Grandparents were not those people. Those people didn't exist at all. I mean, it was an entirely crafted life. His family is fake. His military experience was not his. And I don't know how he kept it all straight.

[Andrea Gunning]

She found out that the family who showed up at Aaron's house, those people she didn't recognize, they were his biological family, and they were very different from what Aaron described.

[Torah Giles]

So I didn't know about his real mom, even though she's a real person who lives in a real place. I knew about some other Version of someone that he could completely control that narrative. And I'm never going to look her up and say, is this the truth? I was the perfect person for him because I chose to trust him. And he practiced different things. He tried out different things to test me to see if I would trust him. And I did. I always did. He very carefully curated my life.

[Andrea Gunning]

When she started looking back on it, she realized that Aaron had slowly isolated her from anyone who'd known him for more than four years, anyone who would contradict the narrative he was telling her.

[Torah Giles]

When I finally learned everything and could sort of lay out a life timeline for him, there's about a three to five year capacity on the stories he was telling people. And then he would move on in some way. He would leave town, he would start a new school program, something like that. He'd get married. So he was coming to the end of that. And his stories were getting a little thin.

[Andrea Gunning]

The amputation, the chronic pain from combat wounds, even his native American ancestry, it was all a lie. The one thing that was real is that he was sick. He had an opioid addiction. She sees that clearly now, and she sees that as a part of a larger pattern of behavior.

[Torah Giles]

He's an addiction, so he's always looking for kind of that next better hit of whatever it was. And sometimes it was a partner, and sometimes it was becoming a parent, and sometimes it was a new degree in school. But, you know, he's tying things together, trying to make himself a life that he would have been happy with. So he just kept shifting it into this story that he liked a little better and a little better, a little better. And it still didn't satisfy him. He still needed narcotics. I feel very strongly that he wanted to stay in our life, but wasn't sure how to do that. Do I think that he put the patches on and hoped he would fall asleep and never wake up? Yeah, I do.

[Andrea Gunning]

You can probably tell that Torres been through years of therapy to understand, and he from what happened to her.

[Torah Giles]

My doctor had me talk to the therapist in her office, and I owe everything to his methods. He gave me terminology, and that terminology completely changed how I was going through this. He was the first person to say, you have ptsd. And I thought, no, no, no. PTSD is for soldiers, which is a really common thought that PTSD is for people who've been to war or through war. He was really good about this is what I think might be going on. Read it. Let's talk about it next time. He was providing me information to heal myself.

[Andrea Gunning]

It's been four years since Erin died, and she discovered that the man she was building a life with was a fraud.

[Torah Giles]

I'll still be driving down the road and have a random memory and go, oh, yeah, that's probably what happened. I'm still less and less and less and less putting things together and making the pieces fit. But I'll never know everything, and I'll never have closure. And I think that's probably the most important thing. It's like closure isn't necessary for you to move on and heal. It's really not help, but it's not necessary.

[Andrea Gunning]

Instead, she's tried to find understanding for the real person Aaron was. With him gone, she's been able to access a kind of empathy, not to excuse his behavior, but to make peace with it.

[Torah Giles]

He was broken. He was broken by a world that breaks people and spits them out. I think he grew up feeling inadequate, grew up feeling unloved, and he wanted to write himself a better story than that. And instead of becoming someone who would be loved, he became someone who he thought was lovable and adjusted it for each person as he met them.

[Andrea Gunning]

Tora moved back to Colorado, where she still teaches history. But she says that this time around, she's a different person. She's forever changed by the love she had with Aaron and the pain he put her through. We end every episode with the same question. Why did you want to tell your story?

[Torah Giles]

This is an incredible story that sounds like it's made up. It sounds like a soap opera, sounds like a drama movie, but it's so real, and it's not the only one. And there's so many stories like this. The more we talk about it, the more out in the open we bring these people who exist in the shadows and want to operate from the shadows. We have to understand them. We have to assign terminology to the disorders that cause them to act in these ways, and we have to support people who've been through it. And my mission through all of this became sort of explaining to more and more people that you can heal, you will heal. What you're experiencing is valid. Something that I say so often to this day is my story was true and my experiences were valid. My story was true, even if his wasn't. Mine was.

[Andrea Gunning]

On the next episode of Betrayal.

[Torah Giles]

I went out into the garage area. The car was gone. Like, where did he go?

[Andrea Gunning]

If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at betrayalpodmail. That's betrayalpodmail.com we're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison, hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Laborde also produced by Ben Federman. Associate producers are Kristen Melchiori and Kaitlyn Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krynczyk. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Del Vecchio Additional editing support from Nico Aruka betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines music library provided by my music and for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartradio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Torah Giles]

That's why over 40 million people choose Kroger brand products, making them a true crowd pleaser and with quality guaranteed. You'll love your choice or get your money back. Score Kroger brand products with savings you can cheer for and great taste you can't resist.

[IKEA Announcer]

Kroger Fresh for Everyone the holidays are here and so is the Ikea Winter Sale. Now's your chance to make the holidays a little more magical and less expensive. Save up to 50% off on select items in store and online now through January 7th. Plus IKEA loyalty members get an extra 10% off on sale items offer valid in the US through 17 mall supplies. Last selection may vary by store and online. See store in ikea-usa.com wintersale for complete terms. Restrictions apply.