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- [00:01]
Sponsor Voice
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are the words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you can talk to your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect the things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
- [00:30]
Corinne Vien
Blink is intended for mature audiences as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as drug use, sexual assault, and emotional and physical violence. Content warnings for each episode are included in the Show Notes. Resources for drug addiction and domestic abuse can be found in the Show Notes and on our website, blinkthepodcast.com the testimonies and opinions expressed by guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or affiliates of this podcast. Before we begin, I have a call to Action Jake is missing pieces of his own life, photos, belongings, memories that were kept from him. We'll get into why in this episode, but if you have pictures, stories, or anything that can help fill in the gaps, please visit blinkthepodcast.com and share. Every piece helps rebuild what was lost in this episode. We'll get into the divorce and Jake's other two requests. But before we dive in, there is a big question, one that I've had and I know many of you have asked as well. How was Jake paying for his care when Ellen was in charge of managing his care and the money? Yet nobody was getting paid? Fortunately for Jake, these hospitals were not about to treat him the way that the hospice company did. And speaking of that company, Jake had a couple of cops show up at his door a few years ago asking questions about it. Turns out it was under investigation and has since been shut down. Because as it happens, abandoning a dying comatose patient on the floor isn't exactly best practice. An unlucky pairing for Jake, but he did survive and as Adrian puts it.
- [03:02]
Jake Handle
Best luck, worst luck ever.
- [03:04]
Corinne Vien
All the time.
- [03:06]
Jake Handle
He has the best luck and the absolute worst luck. It's like something bad will happen and then he'll come out on top somehow and it'll be a miracle.
- [03:15]
Corinne Vien
Jake was drowning in medical debt. As he mentioned a few episodes ago, nurses and aides were using their own money to help buy him basic necessities. Snacks, shampoo, anything to help. But the real question is, how is Jake supposed to pay for any of this in the first place, where did his money go? Fortunately for Jake, once he reconnected with his stepfather, Eli, he had someone in his corner. And Eli was ready to fight.
- [03:42]
Eli
He wasn't capable of doing anything without asking someone. He had no control of his hands. So any letter, any, any email that got sent, somebody did it for him on the computer or on his iPad. I remember. I mean, you just start learning the system, you know, phone calls to different places and can you help? And so many false leads where you think like, oh, I found the people they can help. And you get there and either you don't qualify, you're not sick enough, you're not poor enough. We only do people who are, you know, right handed or left handed. You know, it's just, boy, what a nightmare. I mean, it took months.
- [04:22]
Corinne Vien
This need for rep pay to change was how Jake and Eli were intro to attorney Amy Clifford, who would go on to represent Jake in the preceding divorce.
- [04:32]
Eli
So the rules on how the government pays is that if you're in a facility, the facility gets your monthly check, and then the facility gives you $70 a month for incidentals. What happened was that Elle had been his representative payee, and then when he went into the hospital in Western Mass, she never signed over to them like that. They could be the rep payee, but she was then obligated to give them a check for the full amount, less $70. The government, they sent the check to the hospital, but the hospital couldn't keep the money because she hadn't signed off. They weren't legally allowed to put it into their account. Like they had to put it in a holding account. And so after I came back into the scene, basically Jake filled out a form saying that I was his new rep payee, but he couldn't use his hands. But we managed to go through the paperwork of that. So I became the rep payee.
- [05:34]
Corinne Vien
So now Eli was able to retroactively pay the hospitals for their care of Jake.
- [05:39]
Eli
They started billing me from July. And so I wrote them a check, but they never billed me for May and June. And then like a few months later, I got a bill for June. I remember calling them. I go, what about May? Well, nobody went through May.
- [05:55]
Corinne Vien
Something happened on the accounting side of things. And somehow the money owed to the hospital for the month of May was wiped from the hospital records.
- [06:04]
Eli
And so for Jake's benefit, we kept that money to help pay for his groceries.
- [06:09]
Corinne Vien
Best luck, worst luck.
- [06:10]
Eli
So he was at Tewksbury, and he really hated it. They all said he's horrible. To everybody here and here. You're disabled, you're in bed, you can't get up, you can't do anything. So you're compensating. You're highly demanding. You want everybody to serve you. You know, he did the best he could with that stuff.
- [06:28]
Corinne Vien
So Tewksbury definitely wasn't the most enjoyable place for him to live. But he focused his attention on a few things. One was his recovery. He was still being transferred to Spaulding for outpatient therapy and sometimes to MGH as well for care. And now that he had been connected to Amy Clifford, he retained her to represent him in the divorce. A divorce that was going to become a bit complicated. The hunt for and retrieval of unethically obtained sperm is a shocking detail in Jake's story and something that luckily likely isn't seen in many divorce cases. And while obtaining his sperm was certainly a priority, there were two other items on Jake's list.
- [07:06]
Amy Clifford
One was my personal belongings, mainly stuff I put in storage of my mother's that I was saving for my house. Two was the footage I asked to be taken of me on the road downhill and the off chance I survive. I thought it would be really cool to have.
- [07:26]
Corinne Vien
Jake and I headed to Amy's law office in downtown Boston. He was accompanying me so that he could sign off on the documents giving Amy permission to discuss his case with me and to hand over any of the divorce paperwork and notes that she had. But when we arrived, we hit an obstacle. There was an elevator, but it was up a flight of stairs. And Jake's motorized scooter, the one he relies on to get around it, would not fit inside. A perfect example of why he founded Ahoy An Aptor reviewed the accessibility access of various businesses. As we stood there, totally stuck, another lawyer from a different office noticed our struggle and quickly hatched a plan. We grabbed an office chair, we lifted Jake up the stairs, we sat him down on that office chair, wheeled him into the elevator, and finally made it up a few flights to Amy's office, where he then signed off on the paperwork. So, obviously, it would have been really easy for Jake to call it quits in this moment, right? To say, forget it, this is way too much. But that's not how he operates. Jake is crappy, determined, and willing to do whatever it takes to keep moving forward. I sat down with Amy to discuss her memory of the divorce.
- [08:37]
Jake Handle
There was some challenges because we didn't actually know where Ellen was living. So the way you bring about a divorce is a. Like I said, I'm Very practical. So I'll just call the other party and say, hey, are you also interested in getting a divorce? And if they are, there's like, path one, which is called a, you know, joint divorce. I tried to go that path, but I don't. It didn't work. And then a contested divorce. So this is the other path, which is, like, not the easy path where one party files and then the other person answers, and then there's just a whole bunch of back and forth until a judge grants a divorce. So I remember filing a 1B petition and then trying to serve Ellen and being unable to serve her. She wouldn't give me her address, which makes it impossible to move forward.
- [09:25]
Corinne Vien
In the meantime, Ellen filed for divorce.
- [09:28]
Jake Handle
Which was stupid because it, you know, it costs money to file divorce. And so that was just a waste to have two divorces open. But we ended up withdrawing our complaint for divorce and moving forward with her complaint for divorce. I did get the sense it was very important to Ellen that she be the defendant.
- [09:46]
Corinne Vien
After this was filed, I found an email from Ellen to attorney Amy Clifford providing her contact information and physical address. But there's something else worth noting. In the legal paperwork Ellen submitted, she requested that her address be impounded, claiming she feared for her safety, that Jake's family might pose a threat. The court denied that request. Now, many involved Jake's family. The court felt that there was no real basis for her claim. But I can't help but pause. I've watched enough true crime documentaries to know how many victims of abuse have pleaded for protection only to be turned away for lack of evidence. And that thought lingers with me.
- [10:29]
Jake Handle
When I started talking to her, she was very mistrustful of me. Ellen filed the her divorce herself without an attorney. So a normal hearing in this matter is like, the parties deliver financial statements, like, explaining what their financial position is, and they tell the court whether they agree with this divorce and whatever the issues. But I showed up, and Ellen had this story. She was requesting restraining orders against, not Jake, but against Jake's dad and I think his brother. And she had a whole story where they were abusing her. And I was like, what is going on? And so I tried to work with her to understand where she was coming from and, you know, see what statements she had written in the affidavit. So you. If you request a temporary restraining order from the court, you have to write an affidavit that says, like, why you're asking for it, and you have to have a certain number of incidents and you have to be actually, like, in fear of, you know, your own personal safety. And if you meet all these standards, then the court will grant it. And they often do this in, like, family court matters. But this came out of the blue for me. I did not understand what this was about because as far as I understood, Ellen and Jake's dad hadn't been in a room together for well over a year. At least. At least. So you have to have reasonable fear of your safety. And it, to my understanding, there was no set of facts where somebody could be reasonably in fear. But she's very pretty, she's very well put together, and she's pretty articulate. And she seemed really afraid. Like, she presented herself as being very afraid of Jake's dad. And, like, had I not been there to contradict the story that she told, I'm pretty sure she would have gotten a temporary restraining order. I think that was the first time where I, you know, really questioned what was going on with Ellen.
- [12:36]
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- [12:50]
Lowe's Voice
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- [12:51]
Uber Eats Voice
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- [12:55]
Corinne Vien
No.
- [12:55]
Uber Eats Voice
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- [12:56]
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- [12:57]
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- [13:08]
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- [13:44]
Corinne Vien
I've tried reaching out to Ellen, but I've come up empty handed. It does seem like she was scared, and I do want to provide some examples of why she could be. Of course, these examples are not told from her perspective, so they could be skewed, but they do provide examples no less. Ellen had previously taken out two restraining orders, one on Daron, Jake's dad, and Max, Jake's half brother. Jerome tells me about a time that Ellen and Max fought. Ellen had been living at Daron's House, which is where she and Jake had resided before his diagnosis and where Jake received hospice care.
- [14:19]
Lowe's Voice
I'm down in my downstairs. It was a split level house. I'm downstairs in my room and I hear this commotion going on upstairs. And there was a caretaker, it was Elle and Max. And obviously Jake was in the bed and saw this noise. And they're fighting each other. Ellen and Max are going at it. She's like clawing at his hand and he's kicking her. And I finally said, max, stop. Get out. Go. Just go, go, go, go. So he left and, well, so now she took out a restraining order against him and he wants getting arrested.
- [15:03]
Corinne Vien
Daron describes the fight a bit more based on what Max had told him. It resulted with Ellen knocked to the ground.
- [15:09]
Lowe's Voice
That's why I heard the thud when she hit the ground and I came running up.
- [15:13]
Corinne Vien
Daron tells me about another time. And this was months later after Daron had supposedly tried to strangle Ellen and the whole subsequent legal trial, everyone had been shut out. And in an attempt to find Jake, Max decided to visit his dad's house.
- [15:29]
Lowe's Voice
He goes, I'm going to go find him. He breaks into my house, smashes the glass sliding door in with a concrete cement block. And Ellen was home in bed, I guess, and she called the cops. He ends up getting arrested. But Jacob wasn't in the house. You know, Max got to go all around the house and was able to call me up and said, jake's not there.
- [15:58]
Corinne Vien
You'll hear Daron laughing as he tells the story, but don't mistake it for amusement. Without seeing him, it's really easy to miss what's happening. As he speaks, Doron is fidgeting, shifting uncomfortably. This isn't just a story. It's a deeply complicated and uneasy memory. So while the court ultimately denied Ellen's request to keep her address private, I can understand why she wanted it. Just because you haven't seen someone for a while that you haven't felt threatened over the previous year or two, it doesn't guarantee safety. Right.
- [16:31]
Jake Handle
I remember then she hired an attorney. And you know, obviously when somebody hires an attorney, you never speak to them. You speak to their attorney. So she hired an attorney named Catherine Parakilis, and then from there on I would speak to attorney Parakilis about the matter. So I was like, oh great, I got another attorney involved. This should be easy. You know, these parties don't have anything to fight over and they both want to get a divorce. So quickity, quick, bang, bang, bang. Like, you know, I think we should be done with this soon.
- [17:03]
Corinne Vien
I asked about some of the conditions of the divorce. What were Jake and Amy asking for, and what did Ellen want?
- [17:10]
Jake Handle
She had taken his sperm when he was not able to speak for himself, and he absolutely did not want her to have a child with that sperm. That was really important to him. And the other one was that he wanted to be able to tell his story. And other than that, I remember he wanted some photographs, some things that she had access to, like things that his mother had left him. His mother had passed away. Cancer, I believe. There was some possessions that his mother had given him and some other just mementos of him and maybe even the relationship that he wanted. Jake would tell me I would just like my photos. She's got this photo. I know she has it because she. Here's this email. And I'd be like, how do you know she has it? And he's like, well, there's this email and she's talking. I have the photo. I was like, well, I guess she has the photo. But he would ask for things that he knew she had because in communication, she would say that she had him. I would see the documentations. You know, I'd. I'd ask her for the thing that he asked for, and then the answer would come back from attorney Parakeilis that she doesn't have that. And. And so we just go back and forth like that, where Jake would be like, can I have it? And she'd say, at Park. Antonio park would say, she doesn't have it.
- [18:26]
Corinne Vien
It's challenging to only have paperwork and screenshots and testimony from one side of the story. I would love for Ellen to share her perspective, but in her absence, I'm going to try my best to step into her shoes for this episode. Sometimes when you're deep in a situation, living every day in a constant state of fight or flight, you don't realize how bad it's gotten. I know that feeling very well. When I struggled with postpartum depression, I didn't ask for help until I was nearing the finish line that I had quietly set for myself. And it makes me wonder if something similar happened to Ellen. The crushing weight of caring for a dying spouse combined with the fear, justified or not, that others might negatively influence him or get in the way of any chance at recovery. Maybe at some point it stopped being about Jake at all. Maybe it became about Ellen realizing that she'd completely lost herself. I know that when I've faced those moments, I have one instinct to purge. I gather evidence of my pain, I delete, I donate. And sometimes I burn. Because to rise from the ashes, you have to light the fire first. And I can't help but wonder, was that what Ellen did? Did she wipe her hands clean and move forward, forward? And if so, how frustrating it must have been when the past kept pulling her back.
- [19:48]
Jake Handle
There was like six items or something that she said she had and so I was like, Jake, that's all she says she has. Like we can't get, we can't get anything from her that she says she doesn't have. You know, how about the String Cheese Incident video?
- [20:04]
Corinne Vien
Jake's favorite band recorded a video for him while he was dying, singing him Happy Birthday. And this video brought him to tears. He really wanted the video. He wanted to show his friends at the hospital.
- [20:15]
Jake Handle
Oh, she just doesn't have that anymore. She lost her phone. And I'd be like, oh, Jake, sorry, she doesn't have that anymore. She lost her phone. He'd be like, well no, that, that doesn't make sense. Cuz she has an Apple phone. She always has. She's never lost anything. She, like, her habit is to back stuff up to the cloud and so she has it from the cloud. So I'd be like, okay, I'd go back to return a pair of heels back and forth. And then, you know, eventually she come back to me. She said she just doesn't have it. We got to this point where we're like, well, the String Cheese Incident video that you forwarded to somebody else via email, like, and we'd have a record to say she sent this video to somebody else and we know that she sent it on this day because we had the email. And they'd be like, oh no, we don't have it. Because if you send something via email, you just look in your email history and I'm like, okay. She would pretend not to understand how to do a search on email. She pretended to be like, completely incompetent.
- [21:06]
Corinne Vien
All right, let me play devil's advocate just one more time. I know that there is one email provider and I won't name names, but it is a nightmare to navigate. You send an email and five minutes later it's like it vanished into the abyss. So while in a legal battle you'd probably be able to eventually track this down, the outlook on finding it quickly, not so great.
- [21:30]
Jake Handle
So I said, you know what, why don't I, I'll meet you somewhere and we'll go through, you know, your email and we'll do a search and we'll just forward the stuff. I offered to do that, stuff like that. It was like, absolutely, you know, went nowhere. I believe I filed a motion with the court to demand that she hands over certain things.
- [21:46]
Corinne Vien
One of those items was Jake's driver's license.
- [21:49]
Jake Handle
The court issued a ruling, as I recall, for the things that she said she did have for them, for her to hand them over. And then we arranged a meeting. I think it was in the Friend Friendly's parking lot. I met her and was like, apparently her mom and her. They unloaded some stuff. I don't remember what it all is, into my car. Things were so heated between the parties. It's not normal for your attorney to go and gather things from the other side. But in this instance, I was like, it's just absolutely the way it has to be. Because Ellen, I was concerned she would bring additional claims against, like, Eli or just anybody who went to meet her. I was concerned what she would do.
- [22:31]
Corinne Vien
I understand attorney Amy Clifford's concern here. While pulling court documents, found yet another request for a restraining order, this time against Jake's stepsister Katie. It lacked any real evidence and was ultimately denied. And in the end, Ellen had to let Katie into Daron's house to retrieve items. So while the restraining order requests against Daron and Max, I can understand, the one against Katie does make me start to wonder, was this just yet another way to control who could come in and out of the house?
- [23:03]
Jake Handle
So I volunteered to go. So I went. I grabbed the stuff from her and her mom. They were perfectly polite. I take the things, and then I drive them to Eli's house and I drop them off.
- [23:15]
Eli
I mean, we got a few small boxes of stuff. There were some beautiful paintings and stuff that never got back. I remember that. And, you know, there was a period when Jake would say to the attorney, I'm not getting. I refuse until she does that. I'm like, jake, it's gone. Forget it. You have no power here. You know, he's still upset about it. Some of the stuff has some real emotional value. A painting by Tony Curtis of Marilyn Monroe. I mean, that was pretty cool.
- [23:43]
Jake Handle
I remember we were negotiating the divorce and that he was on the Reddit forum, and it was like, a very good forum for him to be on. And he was making great strides in his recovery, and he's trying to tell his story. And at the same time, I was challenged with negotiating this divorce agreement. And I think I got an email from attorney Paraculis saying, like, your client really screwed it up. He's talking about Ellen on the Reddit forum. And you know, I still do this thing where I take an attorney at their words. I'm like, oh, he must have done something.
- [24:14]
Corinne Vien
This was in 2020. Jake hosted an ask me anything on Reddit and Reddit is public, so anyone can go on and look at the thread. Amy Clifford could and did. Ellen's attorney could have as well.
- [24:26]
Jake Handle
I went back to the attorney and I was like, he never mentioned her name then. The attorney wouldn't agree to that. And I was like, well, the facts are right here.
- [24:35]
Corinne Vien
Jake's online presence started as a way for him to show his recovery, to tell his story, and maybe even to inspire others. He read every single comment and response. Occasionally there'd be a snarky comment made by a stranger, but you know, such is life in the age of the Internet. But Jake also noticed something else. Occasionally a new profile would pop up and to Jake, these looked like burner accounts. And all of these accounts seem to make similar comments and to have a similar writing style.
- [25:06]
Amy Clifford
These paragraph angry comments and I just like screenshot this stuff through voice and I'm like, I think this is Elle. And then we pull up writing samples of hers and you just look at them side by side and you're like, that's her.
- [25:28]
Corinne Vien
After reading many text threads and email exchanges, I know what Jake is referring to here. There's often the use of capitalization mid sentence in places that you may not ordinarily see it. I pulled an example of this from an email sent by Ellen advocating for Jake back on February 18, 2018. Quote, I really hope that they will reconsider and give Jake another chance at rehab while he is no longer storming. End quote. The use of capitalization isn't exactly rare, but Jake wondered if these comments were a clear indication that he was being watched. Amy remembers another challenge, one Jake hadn't anticipated. A request that he never speak about what happened. That this entire chapter of his life remain a secret. It was an unusual demand. But in that moment, Jake realized something else. This was the fourth thing he needed. And on this, he would not budge. His story was his story. He had spent years without a voice. No one was going to silence him. Now.
- [26:41]
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- [27:10]
Corinne Vien
The missing child is Lucia Blix, 9 years old.
- [27:13]
Jake Handle
Please let her come back home safely.
- [27:17]
Corinne Vien
Thursdays the kidnappers plumbed it meticulously.
- [27:21]
Jake Handle
If money is what it takes to get her back, we're gonna pay it.
- [27:24]
Corinne Vien
The secrets they hide.
- [27:26]
Jake Handle
You can't talk about this. You can't write about it.
- [27:28]
Corinne Vien
Are the clues.
- [27:29]
Jake Handle
The mother's hiding something.
- [27:31]
Corinne Vien
I know it.
- [27:31]
Jake Handle
To find her, tell me where she is.
- [27:34]
Corinne Vien
The stolen girl. New episodes Thursdays stream on hul.
- [27:49]
Jake Handle
She didn't want her name to be associated with it at all. And she just didn't want him to tell, to have the ability to tell his story. And so there was this really bizarre back and forth because she was trying to negotiate, like, a confidentiality agreement. She was holding the divorce hostage in order to get Jake to sign a confidentiality agreement that he wouldn't tell his story. So she didn't want her name in it. But that. That's not what she said. She. She also just didn't want him to tell his story. I told Jake at the time, I was like, listen, do you want to get divorced or do you want to tell your story? You can get divorced pretty quick or if you want to hold on to your story, like, we gotta. We just gotta hunker in.
- [28:29]
Corinne Vien
I asked Amy if this was something you could do. And at the time, she was a newly licensed attorney, and she told me that she went through great lengths to consult with family law attorneys, IP attorneys, and people who were many, many years her senior in practicing law. In the end, this request was unforceable. Amy told Jake, just sign it. It wasn't something that would hold up in courts if he ever got to that point again. But Jake refused. He wanted it to be extremely clear he was not going to just pretend that this didn't happen.
- [28:59]
Jake Handle
We stuck to the guns about keeping that out of the marital separation agreement.
- [29:04]
Corinne Vien
Jake was after a few other specific things. His icloud account, which had photos of his demise, his recovery, childhood pictures, photos with friends. And he also wanted his mom's belongings and then some random odds and ends that would help him recover.
- [29:20]
Eli
I don't remember what she was asking for, but, you know, it was like all sorts of, like this little nickel and dimey stuff. You know, he had an Alexa and she wanted. Wanted him to return the Alexa, you know, and stuff like that. In the end, I wrote a check for 300 bucks for her to buy a new Alexa. Okay. We finally had to, like, she wouldn't let go of the Alexa. You really want the three year old Alexa?
- [29:46]
Corinne Vien
I asked the same question back to Eli and later to Jake. Why not just give the Alexa back? Why do you want a three year old Alexa? And it all came down to accessibility. That Alexa knew his voice, that model was easy for him to navigate. They didn't want him to have to start from scratch with yet another thing. An Alexa speaker seemed like a small and simple enough thing to give him. But Ellen had originally paid for that Alexa, so it was technically hers. So Jake asked for his tv, some artwork, some personal belongings of his and his mom's, access to his photos and videos, his sperm, the right to tell his own story, and apparently the Alexa. But one item I found interesting in the paperwork was Ellen's request that Jake pay for her dental bill from January 22, 2018. And there was no other information provided as to why. But I'd love to know. And my mind floats to this fight with Jake's dad, Daron, and the physical fight with or potential attack by Jake's half brother, Max. Did it have something to do with what happened then?
- [30:52]
Amy Clifford
It went from like, a very complicated divorce over nothing to like, us burning money on both sides fighting over nothing. Just these, like, key points of I want my belongings back. I want all the recovery footage that she was recording of my downfall and my early recovery back. And went from like, just confrontational argument to just one day, like, okay, yeah, I'll sign. And that's when all the comments kind of stopped. At least the ones with these similar writing patterns.
- [31:32]
Corinne Vien
After a long and costly battle, everything just stopped. The divorce papers were ready and it was time to sign and move on. But with the divorce came a harsh truth. Love is not enough. And with that realization, something shifted. Knowing that Jake was no longer with Ellen, people who had stayed silent for years finally felt safe enough to speak. They came forward with what they had seen, what they had heard, the things they had tried to bury for Jake's sake. But now there was no denying it. Jake's love story was over. And the version of events he had clung to, the one he had carefully pieced together in his mind, was unraveling fast. It was looking less like Hallmark and a lot more like Misery. For the first time, Jake learned exactly what had been happening when he wasn't in the room. Thank you for listening to Blank. This podcast is hosted and produced by me, Corinne Vien alongside my co creator and survivor Jake Handle. Our original music is composed by the brilliant and talented Michael Margay. We're so grateful for your support. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider rating, reviewing and sharing this story with others. For additional resources, updates and behind the scenes content, visit our website blank the podcast.com Blink will return with a new episode next Sunday.