Master Manipulator and Commander: Trust Your Gut

Summary

Chameleon: Master Manipulator and Commander – Trust Your Gut

Podcast: Chameleon
Host: Josh Dean (Campside Media, Audiochuck)
Date: March 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode centers on deception in relationships, specifically the story of journalist and author Abby Ellen, who was manipulated by a con-man posing as a high-flying Navy doctor. Host Josh Dean guides listeners through Abby's stranger-than-fiction real-life experience—unpacking how intelligent people are duped, the subtle emotional manipulations of pathological liars, and the aftermath of emotional fraud. The conversation not only provides a riveting personal story but also delves into the psychology of scammers and the lessons for listeners navigating an increasingly deceptive world.

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Key Discussion Points

Abby Ellen's Encounter with a Master Manipulator

• Initial Meeting:

  • Abby meets the Commander (anonymized) while writing an article on wellness diets for the New York Times and consults him as a doctor (01:53).
  • "He was a doctor with a fancy practice in a fancy town, Beverly Hills." – Abby (02:43)
  • After initial contact, he claims to have joined the military, opening hospitals for children in war zones.

• Romantic Escalation & Early Red Flags:

  • Relationship develops after Abby returns to school at Johns Hopkins.
  • Fame, uniform, and Pentagon connections build his mystique:
    • "He's a Jewish doctor...he was funny and he was nice and he was charming, and he was a little nerdy." – Abby (05:39)
  • They plan to move in together; the Commander is constantly busy, mysterious, part of "secret missions."

• Strange Behaviors & Tall Tales:

  • Abby recounts his bizarre stories—claiming medals from secret missions, working at Guantanamo, even treating Osama bin Laden (14:40):
    • "A VIP prisoner named Osama bin Laden." – Abby (14:40)
  • "Of course, it's super secret...The president doesn't know." – The Commander (as quoted by Abby, 14:58)

• Relational Gaslighting & Growing Tension:

  • Abby is stymied from verifying military or CIA credentials.
  • He reacts intensely to small things:
    • "He had nightmares. Screaming, nightmares in the middle of the night." – Abby (11:40)
    • Excuses like being held hostage in China, trauma from the military.

• Final Breaking Point:

  • Lies unravel over minor things (like raving about Brussels sprouts he disliked), exposing his capacity to easily fabricate stories (18:30):
    • "If he could lie so easily, so fluidly, so beautifully about something, he could lie about anything." – Abby (18:30)

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The Revelation: The Commander's Crimes

• Discovery of Fraud:

  • Abby moves out, but discovers he never left their apartment as claimed.
  • Contacted by NCIS, Abby learns the Commander has been writing illegal drug prescriptions using the names of colleagues, family, even Abby (21:57):
    • "Her partner...had been falsifying records to prescribe himself narcotics." – Josh (22:18)

• Wider Web of Deception:

  • Investigations reveal he lied to multiple romantic partners, including overlapping fiancées.
  • Ex-wife and exes disclose that much of his tale (being a hero, rescuing hostages, etc.) was invented (24:17):
    • "She was like, yeah, I was never held hostage in Iran...I met him in medical school." – Abby (24:17)

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Psychological Impact & Reflection

• Gaslighting & Self-Doubt:

  • Abby describes severe self-doubt and inability to trust her own perceptions (26:16):
    • "I think the technical psychological term is mind fucked. I was a mess because I was gaslit." – Abby

• Processing and Moving Forward:

  • Abby wrestles with blaming herself, recognizing “complicity” not as victim-blaming but as taking agency (33:34):
    • "I was complicit in my duplicity, and I mean that in any. I was being duped, and I was, you know, there." – Abby

• On the Nature of Pathological Lying:

  • Discussion on narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders, and how these overlap with substance abuse (29:31).
  • The Commander's need for significance and validation drove escalating fabrications (30:10):
    • "He was always looking to build himself up...saving Howard Buffett, all this random stuff." – Abby

• Why Do Victims Stay?

  • Abby admits ignoring gut instincts due to hope, inertia, or practical needs (34:46):
    • "You don't want to see what you don't want to see, you know, so you can empower yourself, take responsibility for that..." – Abby

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the Ring That Exposed a Pattern:

  • "I've had larger pimples than the engagement ring, she means." – Josh (09:27)
  • "He had made a big deal about I'm going into De Beers...and he ended up giving me something that looked like it maybe came out of a gumball machine." – Abby (09:31)

• Lying as a Personality Trait:

  • "He charmed the judge...ended up getting a very light sentence." – Abby (28:26)
  • "However, you can call yourself an MD forever, it's like herpes, you know, it just stays with you." – Abby (28:55)

• Philosophical Questions About Morality and Forgiveness:

  • "If someone behaves a certain way because they're ill...do we owe them sympathy or even forgiveness?" – Josh (32:13)

• Empowerment in Survival:

  • "I look at it like it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It changed the trajectory of my career..." – Abby (36:33)

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Key Timestamps

• Meeting the Commander and Early Romance: 01:53 – 06:38
• Living Together, Red Flags, and Tall Tales: 06:38 – 18:59
• Discovery of Fraud and True Nature: 20:32 – 25:21
• Aftermath, Psychological Analysis, and Coping: 25:42 – 33:34
• Reflections, Lessons, and Empowerment: 33:34 – 36:44

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Thematic Takeaways

• Cons Can Happen to Anyone:
  Abby emphasizes that intelligence is no shield; emotional manipulation is powerful and widespread.

  • "What I realized was...what we've been doing all this time is celebrating the duper, and the victims are these idiots. Actually, I want to lift us up." – Abby (35:09)

• Trust Your Instincts:
  Overriding your own discomfort can have emotional consequences; it’s crucial to listen to your gut.

• Sharing Stories is Healing:
  By openly telling her story, Abby found solidarity and helped others feel less ashamed or alone.

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Final Reflections

Abby ultimately comes out stronger and with new insight, both personally and professionally. Instead of succumbing to bitterness, she uses her experience to explore the psychology of deception, writes about it, and ultimately reframes her narrative as one of survival and growth.

"People have been lying in love forever...but not everyone is like the Commander." – Abby (36:55)

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For those navigating a world full of “chameleons,” this episode is a compelling, cautionary, and ultimately hopeful listen about the power (and peril) of trust––and the reward of listening to your gut.

Transcript

[Kylie Lowe / Ashley Flowers]

Every case file, interview, and archive tells a piece of the truth. I'm Kylie Lowe, and on my podcast, Dark down east. Original reporting is at the heart of every case I cover. I don't just retell crime stories, I investigate them. I'm speaking with families, searching court records, and piecing together the facts that have been overlooked and forgotten with time. The result? True crime storytelling that digs as deeply into a case as you do. You can listen to Dark down east wherever you get your podcasts,

[Abby Ellen]

Campsite Media.

[Josh Dean]

Hello.

[Kylie Lowe / Ashley Flowers]

What is.

[Josh Dean]

What do you want me to say?

[Abby Ellen]

Chameleon.

[Josh Dean]

Chameleon.

[Abby Ellen]

Chameleon Weekly.

[Josh Dean]

Oh.

[Abby Ellen]

Oh, the beginning. So this is going back a long time ago already. This is going back to 2000. I want to say 8. Maybe right around the time you moved to Brooklyn. And I.

[Josh Dean]

You're hearing a conversation I had recently with Abby Ellen.

[Abby Ellen]

I am a writer and journalist and podcast person, and I was duped.

[Josh Dean]

Abby's told the story you're about to hear before it kills at dinner parties and became the spine of a book she wrote that was published in 2019.

[Abby Ellen]

The most interesting book on the subject that's out there. It's called Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married. And it was all about this wacko who turned out to be a pathological liar and went to jail.

[Josh Dean]

It's classic chameleon. A con, a double life, and a person left trying to make sense of it all. And this one feels particularly familiar. If you've been listening to this show, the signs will be easy to spot from the start. And like so many of these stories, the entry point is innocent, charming, romantic.

[Abby Ellen]

I was doing an article for the New York Times, for whom I write, and it was about wellness diets and juice cleanses. And I needed to find a doctor who could verify whether there was any validity to the, you know, any of these hot water and lemon juice, cayenne pepper bullshit things.

[Josh Dean]

Let's be clear, cayenne pepper and lemon water probably do have health benefits, but they don't cure cancer or take a decade off your face. Still, those were the kinds of wellness miracles being sold in the late 2000s.

[Abby Ellen]

So I found a guy in California, and he was a doctor, and he gave me a really funny quote, which basically was something to the effect of, they're bullshit and they amount to bullshit, and everything's going to go right through you.

[Josh Dean]

He was a doctor with a fancy practice in a fancy town, Beverly Hills.

[Abby Ellen]

It's ironic when you think about it now, because he was full of shit,

[Josh Dean]

but she called back to check a few details before it was due to come out. And this doctor had news.

[Abby Ellen]

He said, I left my private practice in Beverly Hills and I'm now in the military. He had rejoined the Navy and he was a Navy doc. And he said, I'm opening up a hospital for kids with cancer in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I said, fabulous. Keep me posted. That's a story I like to write, you know.

[Josh Dean]

So they stayed intermittently in touch.

[Abby Ellen]

Every so often he would drop me these emails, you know, just telling me what was going on in his world. I didn't understand what he was saying really, but okay, we were in touch.

[Josh Dean]

Some time passed and meanwhile, Abby was feeling restless on a personal level. Maybe journalism wasn't what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. At the very least, she needed a change. So she enrolled in a part time degree program to study international relationship.

[Abby Ellen]

So I went to go get my, what I call my second useless master's and I went to Johns Hopkins. I was on my way there when he sort of resurfaced.

[Josh Dean]

Abby and this intriguing doctor found themselves talking more and more.

[Abby Ellen]

We just, we liked each other and we finally got together in person. He said, I want to take you somewhere really celebratory. I'm going to be in New York City for business. I have to speak at the un. I said, okay. So he shows up and we go to the Four Seasons, and he's wearing his whole little Navy uniform. He always wore his little outfit that

[Josh Dean]

would be his dress whites, the most formal version of the US Navy uniform typically worn for official ceremonies.

[Abby Ellen]

He was Lieutenant Commander. Now, what you have to understand is I am a nice Jewish girl from Brookline, Massachusetts. I don't know from the military. I don't know anything about this. So I see a guy in a uniform, I'm like, cool, that's great. I don't know. Lieutenant Commander Commanders, I don't understand any of this. This is not my world. The farther south you go, the more normal that becomes. But it wasn't like that in Boston, and it's really not like that here in New York.

[Josh Dean]

For legal reasons and to protect others, we're not using this Lieutenant Commander's real name and neither does Abby.

[Abby Ellen]

I call him the Commander.

[Josh Dean]

Over that dinner and in the weeks that followed, Abby got to know this mysterious and charming military doctor a lot better. He was smart, accomplished, maybe a little too accomplished.

[Abby Ellen]

I knew that all he wanted in his life was to be a brain surgeon, but he didn't cut it. So to Speak. So he ended up just being in general, like an internist. And he had a degree in sociology, a master's in sociology, and I think a PhD. And he also had an MD, so he was not a moron. He had been divorced and he had two kids, but they were with a mother in California. But he saw them all the time.

[Josh Dean]

Up to this point, the commander had been living in Jacksonville, Florida, where he worked at the Naval hospital. But he was asked to relocate for his work setting up that program in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was moving to Washington, D.C. to work at the Pentagon.

[Abby Ellen]

The Pentagon? The Pentagon. Oh, my God. That's like, wow, the Pentagon. So I'm thinking he's really important, and, you know, I mean, what's not to like? He's a Jewish doctor who's like, you know, and he was funny and he was nice and he was charming, and he was a little nerdy. You know, he was a little nerdy too, which was kind of interesting. But he seemed just decent.

[Josh Dean]

Decent. And now would only be an hour's drive from where Abby was studying at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that Abby was head over heels for this man, but he seemed kind, smart, and at 17 years her senior, apparently had his shit together.

[Abby Ellen]

I mean, I think I was 41 at that point, and I had been single for a long time, kind of happily, but I also thought, you know, maybe I should have kids. Maybe I should move forward in my life. The opposite is, I end up moving to Washington. He's in Washington. He's living with his brother and sister in law and their two kids in Georgetown. And we decide we're going to get a house together.

[Josh Dean]

Abby's relationship with the commander didn't last long, not even a year. But in that short time, she would discover a lot more about this man, including things she definitely wished she'd known before she reorganized her life around him. I'm Josh Dean, and this is Chameleon, the show about con artists and the webs of deception they weave. This week a relationship that unravels fast, leaving a woman wondering what she missed and why it's so easy to fall for a con artist hiding in plain sight.

[Kylie Lowe / Ashley Flowers]

Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, the Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards, distributed in prisons, designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice. Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers. Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to the deck now. Wherever you get your podcasts,

[Josh Dean]

you're listening to Chameleon, the weekly relationships with people who turn out to be scam artists. In fact, many relationships that end in a toxic dynamic generally often begin intensely and move quickly. Oxytocin is coursing through your blood. You're falling in love and looking to the future. And your new favorite person is doing everything possible to convince you you've struck gold. You're feeling very lucky, hopeful. And why not? Because sometimes it really does work out.

[Abby Ellen]

My parents met in the Catskills. After three months, they were married 60, whatever. Years later, they're still together, you know, for better, for worse. There was maybe a lot of worse in there, but, you know, they're still together at 88 and 85 years old. So people do that. So it happens. And I would say to him, this is rushed. And he would say, well, you know, when, you know, you know, and we're old and, you know, what's there to wait for? You know, so, okay, fine. I met his kid, who was 12. I met his younger kid, who was 6 at the time. I knew his brother, his whole family. His parents were both dead, but I knew his aunt, like, who was in her 80s. I knew everybody. I knew his friends. And everybody thought he was this macher. Everybody thought he was this big deal.

[Josh Dean]

It all checked out. And so Abby took the plunge.

[Abby Ellen]

He proposes to me. And my joke is that I've had

[Josh Dean]

larger pimples then the engagement ring, she means.

[Abby Ellen]

And the reason that's significant is because he had made a big deal about getting me a ring. He had made a big deal about I'm going into beers and I'm like, talking to the people, and I found a ring, but I can't afford it. It's like this $35,000 ring. And I said, you know, I don't need a $35,000 ring. Like, $10,000 is fine, you know. And he ended up giving me something that looked like it maybe came out of a gumball machine. It was really, really kind of lame. So it wasn't about it being lame. It was about the buildup to something that he was just this over promise that he didn't have to make.

[Josh Dean]

When things are moving quickly, it can be easy to overlook the warning signs. Even if you sense something could be off, you don't want to risk being wrong and ruining a good thing.

[Abby Ellen]

I guess the way to have a relationship is to not, you know, go into interrogation mode every Time somebody says something to you.

[Josh Dean]

And in this relationship, there were a lot of things that felt just a little bit off. Abby's heart was open, but her gut, it was trying to tell her something almost from the very start.

[Abby Ellen]

He said, I'm gonna go back to Jacksonville and pick up my stuff that I had in storage there and move it back to Washington. I said, cool, let's go. We'll have a road trip. No, I'm gonna send some kids to do that. I'm too old. I'm not gonna do that. You know, I'm gonna send some people to pack up my belongings. And I thought that was weird. I thought, he's hiding something. I don't know what, but he's hiding something.

[Josh Dean]

Niggling reservations aside, they did move in together into the Watergate apartment complex in D.C. yes, that Watergate. Where in 1972, security guard Frank Wills discovered that the locks on the Democratic Party headquarters had been tampered with, leading to the arrest of five operatives connected to Richard Nixon's Re Election committee and ultimately bringing down his presidency. What a location for this story to be set. Not that this was remotely on Abbey's mind. It's a nice complex, and it worked well for them. It was close to the commander's work, just across the Potomac, and pretty close to Abbey's school, less than an hour's drive north and east. Best of all, the Navy was paying for it. So the couple settled in and got into the flow of their new life together, which didn't get off to the greatest of starts.

[Abby Ellen]

He's kind of a drag. He has nightmares. Screaming, nightmares in the middle of the night. He sleeps with the lights on. He sleeps with the Food Network blaring because he had been held hostage in China and beaten mercilessly. And so he still had nightmares about that. So he needed to sleep with the lights on. And I thought, this can't be true. But then he would scream in the middle of the night. And I thought, you know, nobody's screaming bloody murder for no reason. Like, something must have happened. I didn't know what was up. I even talked to his brother about this, and the brother would say, abby, you gotta go easy on him. You know, he's very important. They all believe that. He was, like, I like to say, Jason Bournstein,

[Josh Dean]

as in Jason Bourne of the Bourne books and films. Dating a Bourne or a Bornstein is exciting, but it's also problematic because they're always flying off on some spontaneous adventure that you can't ask about.

[Abby Ellen]

You know, he'll go off on these kind of secret missions. I can't talk to you about them because, you know, we need a secure line, that kind of thing. I don't know. Okay. Sometimes he would say, well, I'm gonna take you here. We're gonna do this or we're gonna do that. And then that would never materialize. And he was always canceling plans, you know, again. But I was a freelance writer. I can make my own schedule for the most part. I realize there are people who work for the military and the Pentagon and, you know, real jobs that actually have to adhere to his schedule. So I thought, okay, fine.

[Josh Dean]

I've got to say, the military pilots, cabin crew, not the first time we've talked about people from these worlds. On Chameleon, it's the perfect job for someone who is leading a double life. You always have an excuse to be somewhere else. And Abby was starting to question things.

[Abby Ellen]

And the problem with that, you can't like, call up CIA, human Resources and just say, hey, do you have this guy working for you? So I couldn't verify anything. And I wanted to. I really wanted to, because a lot of times things wouldn't make sense. And after that point, I thought, I can't maybe interrogate him directly, because that's not good. But I can do research. I'm suspicious. I'm at Johns Hopkins. I'm asking my professors whether it's possible to have medals full of super secret operations that don't officially exist. And they say, yes, it is.

[Josh Dean]

It's possible. And I should say here, the commander was genuinely in the military. He did work at the Pentagon. But these medals were fishy.

[Abby Ellen]

He had medals for operations that didn't officially exist. For example, he had met his ex wife when he rescued her when she was held hostage in Iran. And I said, oh, when was that? He said, it was a secret mission you wouldn't have heard about.

[Josh Dean]

It must have been extremely secret because no American hostage had been rescued from Iran in decades. And the questionable stories just kept coming.

[Abby Ellen]

He had told me, and in fact this is true, that he had been the medical doctor at Guantanamo at one point.

[Josh Dean]

He mentioned one very high profile patient in particular.

[Abby Ellen]

A VIP prisoner named Osama bin Laden.

[Josh Dean]

Right, the Osama Bin Laden who had been the world's most wanted man since 2001, who was never captured or held by US forces, who was in hiding until 2011 when a Navy SEAL team killed him in Pakistan.

[Abby Ellen]

It's like, what the fucking fuck? I said, that is not possible. He said, yeah, it is. And he listed all these things that was wrong with the guy medically. And he said, you know, people don't know about this. Of course, it's super secret. And I said, well, two things. That's a stupid thing to tell a journalist, and B, you know, the president, it was Bush at the time, would not want that to be kept secret because everybody wanted bin Laden. He said, the president doesn't know. And I'm thinking to myself, this guy's either nuts or there's something going on that I don't know about. And my mother, I told her that, and she said, abby, there's something wrong with this dude. She said, first of all, Jewish mother, first of all, what doctor would quit a job in Beverly Hills in private practice? And you know, secondly, like, that's not fair, right? No, they don't have bin Laden.

[Josh Dean]

And yet Abby at this point just looked past it.

[Abby Ellen]

Am I madly in love? No. But I loved him, which is almost worse because I thought he, as I said, I thought he was decent, I thought he was kind. I thought he wasn't a liar. I thought he was like really an upstanding citizen who just wanted to do good in the world.

[Josh Dean]

Still, the signs kept revealing themselves.

[Abby Ellen]

We went out to lunch with Howard Buffett, who was Warren Buffett's grandson, who was lovely. And one afternoon before we went out, the commander said to me, you know, Abby, don't tell him this. Cause we're with his girlfriend. She won't know this. But I actually saved his life because we were on the Metro in Washington D.C. and somebody tried to kidnap Howard. And luckily I was there to judo chop the assailant. And I saved Howard's life. And I never asked Howard about that because I never had a chance alone with him. But I remember thinking, I said, well, there's gotta be video footage of that. You know, he had a 20 minute meeting with Obama in the White House and he brought back a signed baseball that Obama had signed for his son. He told Obama about me, and Obama really wanted to meet me. I'm sure Barack Obama, there was no one else he wanted to meet but Abby Allen. There were all of these things that didn't make sense. One afternoon I had called these people to come clean their house in the Watergate. And they came over and he was livid, livid that I invited these people and they were Asian women who came over to clean it. And he came home from work early and he said, you know, they're really triggering me because they're Asian and they remind me of the people who were keeping me hostage. Right. But what I think it was that he had things hidden under the bed that he didn't want them to find

[Josh Dean]

at this point. They've been together for a year.

[Abby Ellen]

Christmas 2010, I think maybe it's 29 into 2010. I overhear him and his son talking, and the son said, hey, what's that on Abby's finger? Is that from you? And he said, yes. And that was it. And I remember thinking, that's weird. We. He knew we were engaged, so what the fuck? At that point, I was really fed up. And he would always say to me, when I would confront him about broken promises or broken whatever plans, he would say, I'll do better, I'll do better next time. Like he was an oversized 5 year old. I was sick of hearing that. I mean, it just felt like he was playing me and I didn't like it.

[Josh Dean]

Abby couldn't ignore her gut anymore. Things were coming to a head. And the final straw came unexpectedly. Shortly after this, the couple went out to dinner with Abby's parents to a fancy restaurant in D.C. a recommendation from the commander, who raved that they just had to try this one particular vegetable.

[Abby Ellen]

He raved about the Brussels sprouts. They were the best brussels sprouts known to man. And at the end of the meal, we got outside and he said, that was like the worst meal I've ever had. And I said, well, why did you lie? And he said, well, I wanted your parents to feel good. And I said, they didn't cook the food. They didn't care if the brussels sprouts were good or bad. You didn't have to say anything unsolicited. And I thought if he could lie so easily, so fluidly, so beautifully about something, he could lie about anything. And I was like, I am out.

[Josh Dean]

Abby still had another year to go at college and was also still working as a journalist. But she didn't have much cash lying around. She was done with this guy, but decided she was going to stay in the apartment until she could find a new place to live.

[Abby Ellen]

And he comes to me one day and he says, you know, Abby, the military needs the apartment back. They're moving me around. I don't know where I'm going to be, but they're putting me in a different location. They're relocating me, so we got to get everything out. So I'll help you send your stuff home. I said, okay.

[Josh Dean]

Abby moved in with her parents in New York. She was busy with school and didn't see the Commander anymore. That chapter of her life was over, thank God, and she'd escaped with a few good stories. Only she does end up running into the Commander again and would soon learn a whole new set of truths, revelations that would turn a collection of weird anecdotes about her ex into one really great story. That's after the break.

[Kylie Lowe / Ashley Flowers]

Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, the Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice. Because these stories deserve to be heard and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers. Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to the Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Dean]

Welcome back to Chameleon. One day, completely by chance, Abby Ellen is driving through her old neighborhood in Washington. As she passes her old apartment in the Watergate, she notices the lights are on, which was strange, given that the Commander, her ex boyfriend, had told her he moved back to Florida.

[Abby Ellen]

Nancy Drew kicks into action. I call him. I said, what's going on? I saw the light on. He said, I know, it was a comedy of errors. He said, I put everything in storage and I moved everything out. And then the Navy said, you know what? We need you to stay.

[Josh Dean]

This, she told him, was actually good because she left some cookbooks behind. Maybe she could swing by and pick

[Abby Ellen]

them up, which is true, but I don't cook, so, I mean, like, I didn't need them. I wanted to snoop around, go up to the apartment. Everything is exactly as it was when I left. Everything from his baseball glove and on the shelf to my cookbooks to a sliver of soap in the soap dish. And I looked at him and I said, you never moved out. And he looked at me, he said, oh, yes, I did. And I thought, you are nuts. You are nuts.

[Josh Dean]

A few days later, Abby is sitting at home in New York when she gets a call. The guy on the phone says his name is Dan Ryan from the ncis. That's Naval Criminal Investigative Service. If you don't watch the TV show or its many spinoffs, Dan Ryan had some questions and some answers.

[Abby Ellen]

There's a doctor who's writing prescriptions for drugs, and he's using all these people's names, including yours. Do you know this doctor? And do you have a prescription for Vicodin? And I said, well, I know this doctor, and no, I prefer Valium. So no, I don't.

[Josh Dean]

In the course of giving a statement, Abby Learns the whole truth. Her partner of a year, this allegedly decorated hero Navy doctor, had been falsifying records to prescribe himself narcotics.

[Abby Ellen]

He had been using the name of people he worked with at the Pentagon. He'd been using the name of his dead mother. He'd been using family members. He'd been using all these people's names to get drugs.

[Josh Dean]

The commander was eventually caught with the help of the people he had scammed, including a woman he dated after Abby, who wore a wire. Now that Abby had this new and extraordinary piece of information, she instantly saw her relationship and the commander in a whole new light.

[Abby Ellen]

Remember when I said that he didn't want people in the house because they were going to look under the bed? I suspect he had been keeping the drugs there in a laundry bag. Do you remember? I also said that he would fall asleep at night. He was on drugs. Remember I talked about the nasal spray. I think he was crushing up the drugs, snorting him.

[Josh Dean]

The commander used other people's names to write prescriptions for drugs which he was using. There's no evidence that he was also selling, but Abby has her suspicions still. The fake prescriptions alone were enough to land the commander a jail sentence.

[Abby Ellen]

I call my mother, and I'm like, guess what? And she was so. She's like, I knew there was something wrong with him, and she was really upset again because she loved him. He was a Jewish doctor.

[Josh Dean]

For Abby, there was still a lot that didn't make sense. And if he could keep this from her for months, what else was he hiding? What was his story?

[Abby Ellen]

I kicked into journalist mode, and I began investigating. My mother would always say to me, you know, I wish you could call his ex wife, but I guess you can't. Well, now I could.

[Josh Dean]

First port of call for investigator Abby was the commander's old office in Beverly Hills.

[Abby Ellen]

They were like, we can't talk to you on the record, but unofficially, he was completely erratic, and there was something, like, really off with him, and we just didn't trust him.

[Josh Dean]

It quickly became clear she wasn't the only one who'd been hoodwinked.

[Abby Ellen]

And then I called his ex wife, and she was like, yeah, I was never held hostage in Iran because I've never been in Iran. And I met him in medical school, and he was married to another woman at the time. So then I called her the ex ex wife, and she was like, yeah, you know, I supported him, and we were gonna have a kid. And then he met this other woman, and, you know, and then I called the woman he was living with in Jacksonville. Remember, he didn't want us to pick up his belongings because he was living with another woman to whom he was engaged. He had proposed to her. She said yes. And then he said, I'm gonna go on a super secret mission. And the super secret mission was Operation Abby. She had no idea what happened to him until I called. He just disappeared. He evaporated. Poof. He left the Navy Hospital, the Naval hospital in Jacksonville. He left her, and then he went up north, and she never found out. Eventually. And he left his belongings with her, and eventually she just gave him away to, like, a homeless shelter.

[Josh Dean]

If you want to hear this story from the woman herself, she spoke to Abby on a podcast she made back in 2021. It's called imposters the Commander. In it, Abby starts to pull together the various threads of the commander's complicated facade of a life, dissecting what happened to her and a whole cast of other partners and family members.

[Abby Ellen]

People were devastated because they trusted him and they believed in him. And just like I did, they thought he was a really good, decent guy. And the mother had to go and tell the son who was at boarding school that dad is not a hero, and Dad's like, a pathological liar, and I'm sorry, but. But like everything he's been feeding you all these years is just bullshit. And the kid was devastated. So, I mean, all these people were just really traumatized by this.

[Josh Dean]

Abby and all these other people were in the same boat, and it was a disorienting place to be.

[Abby Ellen]

I think the technical psychological term is mind fucked. I was a mess because I was gaslit. I couldn't trust my own instincts. There was one day when I had sent a birthday card to my friend's kid and I had asked him to mail it. This is when we were living at the Watergate. And he said he did, and the kid never. And I was like, he's messing with me. He's messing with me. I would call my friend up. Did he get it? Did he get it? And eventually it came back to us. I had forgotten to put a stamp on it. Right. Of course, that's on me. But it was like I just thought there was something I couldn't trust. These little. Nothing. I couldn't trust anything. And I couldn't trust my own sense of self, and I couldn't trust my own perceptions.

[Josh Dean]

This is just a taste of what it can feel like to be close to someone who can't stop lying to you. You start to question your own reality. And that doesn't go away when the truth comes out. You're stuck asking yourself why you didn't work it out sooner. And more than that, why did you stay?

[Abby Ellen]

I knew something had been off, and I couldn't verify it. And then when I could verify it, I got out. But I thought I stuck around too long. I mean, there were all these questions about who I was, you know, that were really terrible.

[Josh Dean]

Abby's first thought was, if not revenge, then at least a confrontation with this man. There was a natural instinct for some sort of accountability.

[Abby Ellen]

I'm thinking, you know, the way to handle it is for me and the woman from Jacksonville to kind of ambush him. You know, I'll call him up and I'll say, hey, let's get together. You know? And then she'll show up, and we'll be like, surprise. And then I think to myself, why? What's the point? What's he gonna say? What's he gonna say to us? He's gonna lie. He's absolutely gonna spin the stories. He's not gonna give us a reason. He's not gonna tell us what was up. He's gonna double down because that's just like he did when I went back to the apartment. He's gonna say I moved out.

[Josh Dean]

The problem is people who are pathological liars, as seems to be the case here, they don't stop. They can't. And they very often charm, which is exactly what happened at the commander's trial.

[Abby Ellen]

He charmed the judge. He charmed the judge, and he ended up getting a very light sentence because he said, you know, I was very distraught by my. What I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I couldn't help but turn to drugs to help me ease my pain. And she bought all that nonsense. You're a real hero, was her kind of attitude.

[Josh Dean]

The commander was discharged from the Navy, at least, and gave up his medical license voluntarily.

[Abby Ellen]

However, you can call yourself an MD forever, it's like herpes, you know, it just stays with you. So he uses his name, and he writes papers, and he is teaching at some medical school in the Caribbean, I think. And it's his name, MD Abby has

[Josh Dean]

come to a conclusion. The commander isn't going to change. There will be no reckoning. And she won't get an apology. He won't stop lying. Not because he's unwilling, but because she suspects he can't. Even if the commander could see the damage he's done, she doubts he'd truly understand it.

[Abby Ellen]

I think he's a psychopath. Or has npd. Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This is what I said in my statement to the Navy, was that the fact that he was doing drugs was just something else that was wrong with him. But he's an unreliable narrator no matter what, and he's using this as an excuse. He had a drug problem. He had a drug problem, but he's also insane.

[Josh Dean]

Something Abby noticed was that the lying wasn't really about the thrill of getting away with it. She was always aware of a deep seated insecurity and a need to be special, to somehow be more than what he was.

[Abby Ellen]

Like I said he always wanted to be a brain surgeon and he couldn't do it. And he always felt less than. And he was always looking to build himself up. You know, like when he told me that, you know, he was on an airplane and sitting in the back row and Hillary Clinton was in the front row, and she requested. Requested that he be moved up to sit next to her, like saving Howard Buffett, all this random stuff.

[Josh Dean]

And the sad thing is, he didn't need to do any of this stuff.

[Abby Ellen]

Like, he was a good doctor. He was really smart. He was trying to do good work. I would see him or hear him on the phone. I think with real people. Maybe it wasn't trying to raise money for this hospital like he was really trying. I talked to people he worked with at the Pentagon. Like they loved him, so he didn't need to. So what is that? That's psychopathic. That's people who make things up just because they can.

[Josh Dean]

But still, whatever his intentions, the commander did lie.

[Abby Ellen]

And then the question is this, should this. Is this a diagnosis unto itself, or is it a symptom of something else? And right now in the DSM 5, it's a symptom of something else.

[Josh Dean]

The DSM 5 is the official US psychiatric manual. It's been updated from time to time since it was launched in 1952. Abby thinks the commander fits somewhere under an umbrella of personality disorders. Narcissistic, antisocial, borderline histrionic. Psychopathy and sociopathy are closely linked, but these are murky, overlapping categories, a collection of symptoms and behaviors clustered together. Anyway, identifying behaviors really only gets you so far. A bigger question is the why. There's little understanding or agreement about why people end up with these conditions. Are they the result of past trauma? Or are some people just born like this, wired differently?

[Abby Ellen]

I asked his ex wife about this, what happened in his youth, and she, because I didn't know his parents, you know, they were dead and she said, they were lovely people. They were lovely. I said, why did he have nightmares? Why did he scream in the middle of the night? She said, just because he had nightmares.

[Josh Dean]

There is no doubt that many people with these conditions suffer and really struggle. And in the commander's case, he was also a drug addict. And addiction is a terrible sickness, too. This forces us to ask a moral question. If someone behaves a certain way because they're ill, if they didn't mean to hurt you necessarily, if at the end of the day they just can't help themselves, do we owe them sympathy or even forgiveness?

[Abby Ellen]

Like, where do we draw the line? I can accept that one has psychological problems. I can accept that one is numbing oneself with drugs. I can accept that one does bad things when they're on drugs and things that they might not want to do or do when they're not on drugs. I still think they have to pay for it.

[Josh Dean]

Abby doesn't have answers to these complicated questions, and she doesn't think she'll get the answer she's looking for from the commander either.

[Abby Ellen]

Every once in a while, I think, what would happen now if I went to find him and say, hey, you know, just have, like, a little post mortem? He would still lie. He would just lie. I know he would.

[Josh Dean]

But asking them has helped her make sense of her experience. And ultimately her real path to some sort of healing has come from looking at the only part of all this that she can control that is her own role.

[Abby Ellen]

Anytime there is an interaction like that, there are two people involved. I have talked to many people, women and men, about their own stories and about DuPage. And usually they say, I knew, but I didn't know. I knew something was off, but I didn't quite know what it was and I didn't want to know. And it makes you really question yourself and your motives and your, you know, behavior. I was complicit in my duplicity, and I mean that in any. I was being duped, and I was, you know, there. You know, I should have walked out at the first sign of something being off, and I didn't, because I didn't have anywhere to live, you know, and I was at school and I didn't really have money, and I was, you know, I needed to be there, and I knew I was gonna stick around until I could find out one way and the other what was going on. But I still believe that it takes. I used the word complicit because I didn't quite want to see some things that were Off. That's the word I use. People feel like I'm. And I'm not. It's not a judgment. It's actually. I feel like it's empowering to say that because that gives me agency. I see what's going on here. I'm sorry. It's going to overhaul your life. It's going to uproot your life. But you know what? Get out. You'll be better.

[Josh Dean]

It will get better. And it did get better for Abby, which I think is an important message. As the show has evolved, we've had people get in touch to tell us that hearing stories of con artists and scammers has been helpful for them. Exposing the various types of chameleons and how they operate has made them feel seen. Abby has noticed something similar as she shared her own story.

[Abby Ellen]

Part of my dealing with this whole thing was I told everybody, anybody I met, I was like, guess what just happened to me? And everybody I spoke to had their own experience or they knew somebody who'd been in some kind of relationship like this, and I thought, okay. And they didn't want to talk about it. They didn't want to use their real names. I would say, can I write? Can I use your name to, you know, can I interview you? No, you can't use my real name. So I was like, I'm going to tell this story. Because what I realized was that what we've been doing all this time is lauding celebrating the duper, and the victims are these idiots. And actually, I want to lift us them up. This happens to a lot of people. This can happen to smart people. You put your disbelief aside. You don't want to see what you don't want to see, you know, so you can empower yourself, take responsibility for that and also take responsibility or take comfort in the fact that there are crazy, bad people out there who will take advantage of you, but it's not you personally. They'll do it to anybody and everybody. Anybody.

[Josh Dean]

Abby's put the experience behind her, and she's now out the other side.

[Abby Ellen]

I didn't lose money. You know, I made money. I lived for free. I. You know, it was a year of my life. There were really not that much collateral damage other than a little bit to my psyche or a lot to my psyche at the time.

[Josh Dean]

She's even grateful.

[Abby Ellen]

I look at it like it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It changed the trajectory of my career, you know, so I was happy about that. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it.

[Josh Dean]

Abby Ellen's not going to forget what happened to her, but she's also not going to let it stop her from living or from loving, even though she knows it's a minefield out there.

[Abby Ellen]

People have been lying in love forever. That's what you do. I mean, that's biblical. That goes, you know, that's. Everybody does that. It's not nice. It's the way it works.

[Josh Dean]

It's just that not everyone is like the Commander.

[Abby Ellen]

What I think is interesting is that a couple years after that, I started seeing somebody else who told me he was separated from his wife. And they were separated the way we are, by like a microphone, you know, they were like, totally still together. And it was really interesting because it was a different kind of a lie. It was a lie, but the guy was just. He was just a guy who just was cheating on his wife. The Commander just created this whole elaborate thing. I mean, that's a true con artist. This other guy was just. Just a d.

[Josh Dean]

Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's hosted by me, Josh Dean, and was written by me and Joe Barrett. It was produced by Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Simonhoff. Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimac, themed by Ewin Leitrimuin and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Sher, and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help. And if you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email [e-mail] or leave us a message at a special number we've set up. 201-743-8368. Add a plus one if you're outside North America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

[Kylie Lowe / Ashley Flowers]

I think Chuck would approve.