Mother of All Stories Part 2: Mom On The Run

Summary

Chameleon: "Mother of All Stories Part 2: Mom On The Run"

Podcast: Chameleon
Host: Josh Dean (Audiochuck | Campside Media)
Air Date: June 25, 2026

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Overview

In this riveting episode, host Josh Dean continues the jaw-dropping true crime saga of Heidi Cloud and her mother, Kathy Marshall—a pathological grifter whose delusions, manipulation, and ability to assume new identities destroyed families, crossed continents, and left a haunting trail. The story explores the blurred lines between mental illness, cult-like control, and calculated deception, as Heidi, now an adult, confronts the wreckage her mother left, searches for answers across borders, and struggles with the complexities of love, trauma, and closure.

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Key Topics & Insights

Early Life & the Roots of Deception

• Heidi’s Imprisonment (00:15):
  • At 12, Heidi became the first documented US child jailed for refusing a custody agreement, manipulated by her mother into believing her father was an abuser.
  • Heidi (00:33): “What child would choose jail? If this guy wasn't a monster... I was set the fuck up.”
• Kathy’s Paranoia and Conspiracies:
  • Kathy wove a paranoid world of satanic cults, the Masons, and abuse—driven by the era’s Satanic Panic (01:05).
  • She adopted extreme beliefs, connecting to contemporary conspiracies like QAnon and Pizzagate—even pre-dating their existence (01:27).
  • Heidi (01:27): “My mom was like, QAnon before QAnon was a real thing.”
• Cult-like Upbringing:
  • Kathy isolated her children, claimed prophetic abilities, and surrounded herself with true believers who tithed to her for “protection.” (05:05)
  • Heidi (04:51): “If I questioned her, there was the fear I was going to go to hell for questioning a prophet. So I was raised very much like an occult.”

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Breaking Free and Recognizing the Pattern

• Escaping the Cycle (06:41):

  • Heidi’s adolescence was marked by forced isolation and relentless control. She worked long hours to support the household while her mother relied on others’ charity and manipulation (07:00).

• Turning Point—Motherhood & Realization (09:37):

  • Heidi’s realization of her mother’s true nature came after Kathy fabricated a story about Heidi’s sister having cancer, targeting Heidi’s in-laws for money.
  • Heidi (10:21): “My sister doesn’t have cancer... she felt my in-laws had money and so she concocted the story.”
  • Kathy’s behavior escalated to estrangement, painting Heidi as “brainwashed” and ostracizing her from the family (11:34).

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The Grift Continues: New Victims, New Names

• Inheritance and Moving On (11:52):
  • After securing her parents’ estate (and alienating family), Kathy moved on to Florida, embedding herself in new relationships and repeating old patterns.
  • Heidi (12:38): “She always sets her eyes on married men for some reason… her obsession with married men.”
• Tall Tales and Trafficking Lies (13:32):
  • Kathy falsely claimed Heidi had been kidnapped and trafficked, exploiting people’s sympathy for financial gain.

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Disappearance and Reinvention in Belize

• Flight to Belize & Reinvention (16:04):

  • Kathy, now “Susie Lawson,” resurfaced in a Belize newspaper at a fundraising event, maintaining a web of aliases and lies (16:56).
  • Heidi and her sister’s search for their mother became a quest through international bureaucracies and expat circles.
  • Heidi (17:01): “Who the hell is Susie Lawson?”

• New Grifts and Manipulation in Paradise (19:15):

  • Kathy ingratiated herself with a local shaman, even practicing acupuncture without formal training.
  • Suspicion abounded regarding her involvement in his death, and her pattern of exploiting wealthy or vulnerable individuals continued.

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The Aftermath of Deceit: Lies, Harm, and Trauma

• False Accusations & Ruined Lives (23:10, 26:13):

  • Much like her conduct in the US, Kathy managed to foster a devoted circle in Belize, using espionage codes and cult-like rituals.
  • After being rejected by a couple she targeted, she allegedly planted incriminating evidence to frame them, leading to their arrest in a dire Belizean prison.
  • Heidi (26:59): “She notified the police and said they were selling guns and trafficking children... they arrested this elderly couple... thrown in a third world jail.”

• Heidi’s Own Search and the Toll (28:09):

  • Heidi traveled to Belize to confront her trauma, connect with her mother’s victims, and piece together her mother’s latest schemes. She narrowly avoided danger, as her resemblance to Kathy nearly provoked violence from someone her mother had wronged (32:41).

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Final Disappearance & Lingering Questions

• Kathy’s Vanishing Act—Again (33:48, 35:16):
  • Multiple rumors circulated: suicide, murder at the hands of those she’d crossed, death from peyote in Mexico City—none verifiable.
  • Heidi (35:50): “Her whole childhood was her hiding because somebody was going to kill her, even though nobody was and that she was going to die. It would be ironic that that wound up being her fate.”
  • Despite reporting her missing in the US and Belize, Heidi was told nothing could be done (34:21).

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Empathy, Grief, and Hope

• Haunted by the Unfinished Story (39:59, 41:12):
  • Heidi expresses anger mixed with empathy: she hopes her mother is alive, that the cycle of harm has finally broken, and that one day she’ll learn the truth.
  • Heidi (40:56): “She comes in like a wrecking ball and you leave with your whole family destroyed. She just comes in and doesn’t just take your money—she fucks your whole life.”
  • Heidi (41:54): “I hope that she finds whatever she's looking for in herself without hurting others… that she could live a productive and healthy life without it.”
  • Despite everything, the mother-daughter bond is hard to shake: “She hates me more than anything in the world, but I'm the only person who cares that she's missing. It took me 40 years to cry about her…” (42:50)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Being Set Up:
  • “What child would choose jail?... I was set the fuck up.” — Heidi (00:33)
• On Her Mother’s Cult-Like Control:
  • “If I questioned her... there was the fear I was going to go to hell for questioning a prophet.” — Heidi (04:51)
• Adulthood Realization:
  • “My sister doesn’t have cancer... she concocted the story.” — Heidi (10:21)
• Empathy Amid Harm:
  • “She comes in like a wrecking ball and you leave with your whole family destroyed...” — Heidi (40:56)
  • “I just need to know what happened to her.” — Heidi (41:16)
  • “She hates me more than anything... I'm the only person who cares that she's missing...” — Heidi (42:50)

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Major Segments & Timestamps

• Heidi's Imprisonment and Early Trauma: 00:15 – 05:19
• Cult-Like Family Manipulation: 05:19 – 07:38
• Heidi’s Epiphany and Break from Kathy: 09:02 – 11:34
• Kathy’s Later Years in the US: 11:52 – 13:32
• Tracking Kathy to Belize: 16:04 – 20:05
• Interviews with Belize Victims & Escape: 23:10 – 27:39
• Heidi’s Dangerous Search & Final Disappearance: 28:09 – 34:44
• Empathy, Grief & the Hope for Closure: 40:56 – 42:50

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Final Reflections

This episode illustrates the terrifying depth and real-world impact of generational deception, manipulation, and fantasy-fueled control. Beyond the lurid scams and heartbreaking trauma, Heidi’s journey is one of self-reclamation—and a testament to the complicated, enduring bonds of family, even after everything has been broken.

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For those fascinated by the psychology of cons, cults, and survivors’ stories, this episode is both gripping and profoundly moving, blending crime investigation with existential human drama.

Transcript

[Heidi Cloud]

Campsite Media.

[Josh Dean]

Hello.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

What is. What do you want me to say?

[Heidi Cloud]

Chameleon.

[Josh Dean]

Chameleon, Chameleon.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

Weekly.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi Cloud made history. She was the first US Child on record to go to prison for refusing to go along with a custody agreement when she refused to follow a judge's order to spend time with her father. This was back in 1995. Heidi was just 12 years old.

[Heidi Cloud]

What child would choose jail? If this guy wasn't a monster, if he really wasn't this pedophile abuser, no child would choose it, and I didn't. I was set the fuck up.

[Josh Dean]

She means set up by her mom. Kathy Marshall had convinced Heidi and her younger sister Rachel they were victims of abuse at the hands of their father. They weren't. But what their mom believed went much deeper.

[Heidi Cloud]

It was always just occult witches and warlocks, which was also really prevalent in the evangelical church.

[Josh Dean]

It was all part of what became known broadly as the Satanic panic in the 1980s and 90s. Warlocks were men who were believed to be abusing children as part of a satanic cult.

[Heidi Cloud]

She also weaved in a conspiracy with the Masons. My dad flashed a ring to the judge.

[Josh Dean]

Kathy Marshall loved a conspiracy.

[Heidi Cloud]

My mom was like, QAnon before. QAnon was a real thing. She believes in Pizzagate. I'm 100%. The list could go on and on.

[Josh Dean]

Around the time of the court case, though, Kathy's highly distorted worldview began to shift. If you can believe it, it became even more extreme after she met a guy named Kevin at a festival.

[Heidi Cloud]

So she would just sit on the porch and, you know, listen to this one Christian song called My Deliverer is coming. My deliverer is coming My deliverer is standing by. She would just, like, sit there and rock, and she would talk about, like, him coming to rescue her and that his helicopter. There was, like, this one key of the chorus where it, like, really kicked up, and she'd be like, do you hear that? Like, the helicopter. He's gonna drop the rope and, you know, have the blade in his teeth and come down with the heads of my enemies shrunken and rescue me.

[Josh Dean]

Kathy believed that Kevin was an FBI agent who was going to help her uncover this insidious, deep state sex trafficking ring that her children had narrowly escaped. We don't think Kevin actually believed any of it, and he didn't work for the FBI, as far as we know, though Heidi does think he was some kind of PI the delusions were all Kathy's. There was also something else.

[Heidi Cloud]

She claimed that she was A prophet

[Josh Dean]

of God, something Kevin, the FBI or the CIA or whoever just couldn't get

[Heidi Cloud]

on board with because they just wouldn't fall on their knees and give glory to God for her knowledge and that she's just always like one step ahead of knowing the bigger things of the world.

[Josh Dean]

According to Kathy, this is when they turned on her too and started bugging her home to understand how she knew so much about this nefarious stuff going on behind the scenes in America.

[Heidi Cloud]

She said she was sitting on the couch and the TV was right there and she smiled and she was on her phone and he said, oh, is that a smile I see? I mean, I hear. And so like that that was her story.

[Josh Dean]

This story became Heidi's real.

[Heidi Cloud]

So as a teenager that at that point was also like smoking pot and like living my best rebellion. Like the world at this point I was like God, cameras too. Like, oh my gosh, the phones tapped, the cameras. So we had code words to go smoke cigarettes because our whole world was spy centered. Now you had to walk outside to talk to her because they were constantly watching her.

[Josh Dean]

If this isn't weird enough for you yet. Kathy also thought that the FBI thought she was from another planet.

[Heidi Cloud]

Like straight up, she had this whole thing that they thought she was an actual alien. At one point she drove to Texas and that's where Kevin lived and signed a Bible to him and signed the alien. And she thought that they were going to try to kidnap her and, and like run tests on her to figure out how she knew all these things.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi walked a tightrope between the real world as she saw with her own eyes, and the one inhabited and described by her mother.

[Heidi Cloud]

There was always that if I questioned her or thought that was a little too much, there was the fear I was going to go to hell for questioning a prophet. So I was raised very much like an occult.

[Josh Dean]

The thing that makes this even more cult like is that Kathy also had followers, friends and people she knew from church who believed her, who were willing to support her financially, to tithe to her in order to keep her safe.

[Heidi Cloud]

Do you see psychosis? But then there was things that she did very maliciously that she knew were bald faced lies. Is she really crazy? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Did she become worse of a con artist said that she could feed herself and take care of herself because she couldn't function in society. I don't know.

[Josh Dean]

After an appeal, Heidi was released from juvie after just a day behind bars. Kathy retained custody somehow and decided to move the Family to Georgia.

[Heidi Cloud]

Things get a little too weird for people, and that's normally when we run and we hide. I also. I don't know if it's because I was getting older and she wanted to isolate me further, I think, so I wouldn't really discover the truth so that I couldn't speak out against her and uncover it. And so, yeah, we came to Georgia,

[Josh Dean]

to Peachtree City, south of Atlanta, where Heidi still lives today. They moved in with a friend of Heidi's. Mom.

[Heidi Cloud]

We give my sister the bed because she's the baby of the family. And my mom and I, we sleep on the floor. She just lives off of her best friend, and her best friend's taking care of us and everybody else who's still sending her money and tithing to her.

[Josh Dean]

Rachel and the other two kids in the house went to school, but Heidi was kept home. She didn't step one foot inside a school past the eighth grade.

[Heidi Cloud]

I do remember we watched Bill Clinton's impeachment. And so she would, like, have me write papers about how awful Bill Clinton was. And that was like school. I'm stuck with Looney Tune every day until I'm old enough to get a job.

[Josh Dean]

The job Heidi found at 16 was as a server at Pizza Hut.

[Heidi Cloud]

They have delivery drivers pick me back up and forth to work, and I work, you know, six days a week, 40, 50, 60 hours a week. At one point, they set me down. They're like, we're going to get in trouble for child labor. I was like, nobody cares about me. I need to work so my mom can get on her feet and my sister can have nice things and fit in this place, bougie area that we live in that we don't belong to. Please don't take away my hours. So, yeah, I just work to kind of get us on our feet until she cons more people to, you know, get us an apartment eventually.

[Josh Dean]

I'm Josh Dean, and this is Chameleon, a show about people who pull others into the shadows. This week, a mother runs from the consequences of her delusions, and her daughter follows to a point.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

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[Josh Dean]

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[Heidi Cloud]

Chameleon, Chameleon, Chameleon.

[Josh Dean]

This is Chameleon Weekly.

[Heidi Cloud]

I did not fully disconnect from my mom until after my son was born when I was like 21. I just didn't want to leave my sister behind.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi Cloud knew that her mom, Kathy Marshall, and the environment surrounding her wasn't healthy. But she got by, lived a life. In almost a decade after leaving Chicago, she was married and had a baby on the way. Heidi was still only 21, but very much an adult with adult responsibilities. And that's when she had an epiphany. The first time she understood for real that her mom was full of shit.

[Heidi Cloud]

I was sitting there and I was talking to my mother in law and she asked me how my sister was doing. I was like, oh yeah, she's great. You know, senior year of high school, life is good. And she was just like, oh my gosh, that I feel so much better. Oh, that's so great, Heidi. I'm so glad to hear that. And she goes, I just want to let you know, if we had the money, we would do it. We would help in any which way that we could.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi was confused.

[Heidi Cloud]

I don't understand what are you talking about? She goes, your mom came over here and she let us know that your sister was diagnosed with cancer. You know, Heidi, I just want you to know, like, we would do anything. We just don't have the kind of money that she needed.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi was no longer confused. She was mortified.

[Heidi Cloud]

Anytime I would question, is it just mental illness? I would always kind of go back to that conscious decision that she felt that my in laws had money. And so she went to them and concocted the story that my sister was dying of cancer.

[Josh Dean]

This moment changed everything for Heidi.

[Heidi Cloud]

I was just sitting there and I said, my sister doesn't have cancer. I started to come forward with more and then they saw things too as well. Like when my son was born, she said a lot of crazy things to my mother in law who was terrified because she said she was going to go nail her window shut so my dad couldn't break into our apartment and kidnap my son. And you know, there was all this weird stuff about keeping an eye on him in the hospital because the Masons were going to take blood out of his big toe. And that's how our family was marked. That was it. It was like, I can't be around that. I have to protect my son.

[Josh Dean]

When Kathy realized that her older daughter was onto her, she didn't try to argue. Instead, she disowned Heidi fully. Heidi didn't speak to her mother or her sister for the whole of her 20s.

[Heidi Cloud]

The family was told that I was brainwashed and I was now on my dad's side and I was after the family and part of the evil cult and nobody was allowed to talk to me.

[Josh Dean]

Kathy also skipped town. She moved back in with her parents who had left Chicago for Alabama in 1999.

[Heidi Cloud]

It was a really nice place. It had a guest house and a tennis court. And my mom sent my grandfather off to a nursing home. And then when he passed away, my grandmother died less than a week later and my mom got it all. I wasn't allowed at my grandparents funeral or anything. There was like a live auction come in the house and take things and sold everything bit by bit. And then she moved to Florida with that money and hobnobbed with some other people and started over again finding new sources of income.

[Josh Dean]

This was 2007 or 2008, and by new sources of income, Heidi means a new man who had money.

[Heidi Cloud]

She always sets her eyes on married men for some reason. There's plenty of other guys that want to be your sugar daddy. I don't know. Her obsession with married men.

[Josh Dean]

This was a pattern Heidi had seen play out before and would see again.

[Heidi Cloud]

She would befriend the wife's and kind of infiltrate what was wrong in the marriage. You know, just the ultimate cruelty. And then she would cozy up to the husbands.

[Josh Dean]

It's exactly what happened in Florida. Kathy met a couple cozied up, and soon enough she was having an affair with Ken the husband, someone who could provide for her.

[Heidi Cloud]

You know, she stole credit cards and tens of thousands of dollars outside of the money that he had freely given her over the time that they were together.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi's sister Rachel had gone with Kathy to Florida. But around 2013, she also began to question what was going on around her. At about the same age Heidi had,

[Heidi Cloud]

there was this couple and she ran into them and she had said something about me and this couple was like, oh my God, they found your sister. And so my sister was like, what do you mean found my sister? And they're like, your mom told us about how she had been kidnapped and she was being sex trafficked and we have given her money to find her. Thank God, bless Jesus. Oh my gosh, they found her. And my sister's just dumbfounded. Was like, my sister is alive and well. Never been kidnapped, never been trafficked overseas. She's actually pregnant with her second child, home in Georgia, living her best life. She works in the anti trafficking movement. But like, no, for my sister I feel like was like my moment with my in laws, like when you know that was a bald faced lie. This doesn't come from your delusions and just really believing the bullshit that you're saying.

[Josh Dean]

And how would you guess Kathy responded to this revelation?

[Heidi Cloud]

My mom had told my sister, hey, let's meet, I need to put everything over in your name. And then they met and she was giving my sister her birth certificate and signing over things to her and gave her a Disney cup that they had got on a trip to Disney World.

[Josh Dean]

Kathy was preparing to do what she always did when the illusion she'd created began to break. She ran.

[Heidi Cloud]

She actually had one of her friends call my sister and give my sister her farewell letter that was like, don't ever look for me. I won't even come back to bury the dead. And then she vanished. We kind of were worried. We're like, is she gonna come try to like kill our dad?

[Josh Dean]

Did Heidi really think that was in the realm of possibility?

[Heidi Cloud]

My mom put a gun to my head when I was 14. So yeah.

[Josh Dean]

One good thing to come out of this tragic, if predictable twist in our story was that the sisters were able to reconnect. It became clear their mom was just gone and wasn't going to reach out.

[Heidi Cloud]

Probably about after a year, my sister was like, it's not fair that we're not going to know where she is and if something happens. So we started to look.

[Josh Dean]

It took three years before the sisters found anything. Then Rachel's girlfriend just happened to see a picture in a newspaper from Central America.

[Heidi Cloud]

Holy shit. There she is, my mom in the Belize newspaper. So that's how we found her in Belize.

[Josh Dean]

Belize, as some of you may remember, is a place I know reasonably well. It was the setting for a limited series I made a few years ago called White Devil. My producer for that show is the same one who works with me on this one, Joe Barrett. Belize is basically a tropical paradise. And a great choice for a holiday. But behind the villas and the dive schools, there's also another Belize, a darker place where it's very easy to hide things, be that money, a troubled past, or yourself. It made absolutely no sense why Kathy had wound up in Belize. Yet there she was, photographed in a local newspaper wearing a pink cocktail dress and at a fundraising event. But the name they attributed to her, it wasn't one they recognized.

[Heidi Cloud]

Susie Lawson. Who the hell is Susie Lawson?

[Josh Dean]

Heidi posted a series of Facebook comments on expat community pages asking for help locating this woman. Eventually, someone responded, and she gave this man a call.

[Heidi Cloud]

I remember the night you called me. I was sitting there having a rum and Coke.

[Josh Dean]

His name was Paul, another American who'd relocated himself to Belize.

[Heidi Cloud]

I called my phone company and I was like, I need to be able to call Belize. I mean, it's weird, right? Like, do you know this person? Oh, yes, that's Susie. Hi. I'm her daughter. Did she mention she has a daughter? She would just brush me off, and I'm like, well, she don't want to go there. So I didn't push her too hard.

[Josh Dean]

We are able to hear Paul because Heidi went to Belize herself later with a tape recorder. But at this point, they were strangers. Paul had known Kathy, or Susie Lawson, as she was calling herself, but they'd recently had a falling out, perhaps because he was a journalist and liked to ask questions.

[Heidi Cloud]

And that's when she told me that she was a expert in spy stuff.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

Yes.

[Heidi Cloud]

CIA. CIA or something. I said, what? What kind of expert? Where. Where did you go to college? He said, oh, I'm self taught. Okay, wait a minute.

[Josh Dean]

Paul and Heidi are now close, but the first call they had was tentative on both sides. Heidi didn't want her mom to know she was snooping around, and Paul didn't want Kathy to know he was talking to her daughter. But eventually he began to open up, and Heidi got the story of how her mom had ended up in Belize in the first place.

[Heidi Cloud]

So I do believe that she had traveled to Belize with Ken, and he put her up at a hotel. And I think he paid for her to live at this hotel for several months. And then he left.

[Josh Dean]

But Ken, the guy from Florida, left something behind. His name, Lawson, which Kathy had taken on even though they were not married. Susie was her middle name. Hence Susie Lawson. Anyway, with Ken gone, presumably back to Florida and his wife, this left an opening, which is when Kathy Marshall met a local shaman and healer named Ed Jenkins.

[Heidi Cloud]

Next thing I knew, they were wearing Matching uniforms every day, walking down the street, holding hands and matching uniforms. I keep hearing that. That he was an amazing shaman, but a little crazy. Well, crazy well. She had some brain damage, you know, he had brain surgery.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi was able to connect the dots. The article in the newspaper she had seen was for a fundraiser for Ed. Kathy, or Susie had become his business partner, even working in his practice as an acupuncturist.

[Heidi Cloud]

He goes, yeah, I used to get treatments from her. And I go, oh, okay. Well, just to let you know, like, she has zero training in acupuncture, but I'm glad it worked out for you. She did work as a secretary at an acupuncture office, so I guess she picked up enough of the language.

[Josh Dean]

Sadly, Ed Jenkins has since died.

[Heidi Cloud]

My mom's taking care of him. I don't know. And there was a lot of people in Belize that feel like my mom had a hand in his death.

[Josh Dean]

Word on the street was that Kathy, Susie, as they all know her, had only been interested in Ed's business and property from the beginning. This was all obviously familiar to Heidi. She'd heard enough.

[Heidi Cloud]

He was like, I'll keep you updated of, like, how your mom is. And I said, no, thank you. I said, I've been there. I've lived that life. Please only reach out to me if she is dead, in critical condition, hospitalized type of thing, or she's done something really wrong to somebody and you need my help. Basically,

[Josh Dean]

Heidi heard nothing for years. Then in April 2018, she got an email from Paul with the subject line, your mother.

[Heidi Cloud]

I was sitting on the front porch drinking my coffee, having a morning cigarette, and I see this email, and it was like, oh, wow, do I have the bandwidth to read this before work? He was like, I couldn't keep your secret anymore. I had to let them know that her name wasn't Susie Lawson. Her name was Kathy Marshall, and that I'd been in contact with the daughter.

[Josh Dean]

And what Heidi heard on the next phone call from yet another couple made her change her mind. She needed to go back to Belize to track her mother down herself. That's after the break.

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[Josh Dean]

You're listening to Chameleon, the weekly really this stranger in Belize. Paul had opened the door for Heidi to learn about her mother's life in Central America. But over time, others came forward too. And the stories she was hearing about her mom were all too familiar.

[Heidi Cloud]

She was kind of threatening people. There was this guy who owned a smoothie store. My mom was convinced he was a warlock. So she went around with these little vials of poison around her waist and did weird stuff.

[Josh Dean]

A picture of Kathy's life in Belize began to form. It was much like the one back in the States where she pulled people into her almost cult like orbit.

[Heidi Cloud]

She used acupuncture to find people. She jumped from one rich couple to the other. She was everywhere, planting her seeds of who would bite, right? Who could she pull into her world?

[Josh Dean]

Belize seems like the perfect place for her to do this.

[Heidi Cloud]

Things that people were reporting to me that felt like really odd were not odd there. Like the fact that you just really do leave mail at like the bar, you know, like secret notes. I was like, you guys don't think that's weird and everybody does it there. It's weird. She had all these secret codes too, like emojis, a coconut met 12 o'. Clock. And everybody had a code name and a different name. So if you got wrapped up in her world, for some people it was like super fun espionage.

[Josh Dean]

Kathy had built up a sort of community of friends, partners, followers who would support and protect her from the FBI, from the CIA, from Heidi's dad, from God knows what else. And Heidi got that. She understood her mom better than anyone.

[Heidi Cloud]

She's very charismatic. She's a very beautiful woman. She, she's humorous, she's witty, she's smart. So she just comes in with all of this amazing energy. Like she has this steady storyline that she's going to engulf you in. But in the beginning, she's going to become a chameleon and make herself what you need her to be to gain that trust.

[Josh Dean]

There was one part of Kathy's web of lies and manipulation that really bothered Heidi.

[Heidi Cloud]

I hate that she gets to use me like, oh my God, this mother. And her daughter was jailed and you can Google it and you can find it. And so that validates her. And so then they start to believe the other things about her and then they want to protect her. And then if they're religious, that's a bonus, you know, because then she really uses this profit thing and then you have to tie to her. You have to take care of the prophet. She quotes the Bible, scriptures. I'm telling you, if she would have been a man, she would should have been like Jim Jones. She would have had the next full on complete following.

[Josh Dean]

Time and again, Kathy would focus her efforts on couples like the people who had gotten in touch with Heidi via Paul. The couple had initially hit it off with Kathy and after a while invited her to live with them. And you probably know where this is going. She tries it on again with the

[Heidi Cloud]

man and the husband says, absolutely not. And that really angered her. She wanted the money, she wanted the house, and then she was abruptly cut off from the things that they were giving her when the husband denied her. And that was the first time, like she had been rejected. Normally she got what she wanted. She broke up marriages.

[Josh Dean]

An angry Kathy Marshall is something to fear. You piss her off, you go from being inside the cult to to outside it. And part of the conspiracy, so the

[Heidi Cloud]

story goes, there was a sleepover. And during that sleepover is where my mom planted the gunshelling case at the house.

[Josh Dean]

I want to back up a minute here and explain the significance of the shell casing because this has eerie similarities to that other story I did in Belize. Guns are easy enough to get hold of in Belize, and it's a problem. It has one of the highest murder rates in the world. But there are rules around guns and safety. And if you develop some sway or are a convincing enough person, the police can be used to your advantage.

[Heidi Cloud]

And then after that sleepover, she notified the police and said that they were selling guns and trafficking children and that they were in the wall and they would find things. And so the police went and they found the bullet. So they arrested this elderly couple and threw him like in a third world jail.

[Josh Dean]

Belize has some of the harshest and most dilapidated prisons in the world. They are not nice places.

[Heidi Cloud]

They were taking care of her and then their whole life was flipped upside down. She was spreading all these lies about them in town, trying to turn people against them. They were fighting to have the charges

[Josh Dean]

dropped, which is why they'd been so keen to speak to Heidi once Paul told them about her.

[Heidi Cloud]

They were seeking evidence to validate themselves and find out, what the hell did I just get myself into?

[Josh Dean]

In 2020, Kathy disappeared again. There's unmistakably a pattern here. This is what prompted Heidi to go to Belize herself to explore the trail of ruined lives, marriages, and businesses that her mom had left in her wake.

[Heidi Cloud]

Find out where my mom had stayed and find out who she was here and what happened, and try to figure out where she disappeared to.

[Josh Dean]

After many years, this felt to Heidi like it was the right time finally to address some of her own trauma.

[Heidi Cloud]

Healing isn't linear. It became very, like, intentionally healing for me because I kind of just disassociate through all of the trauma that was caused in my life from her. And so being connected to other people's trauma, their experience forced me to stay present and deal with my own.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi knew that her mom was probably alive. Kathy had always stayed in touch with her brother. And Heidi was also still in touch with him and his family. And she was at a gathering with them when her mom called. A cousin put Kathy on the speakerphone.

[Heidi Cloud]

I had not heard her voice or anything. I don't know, really, I guess, since I was in my 20s.

[Josh Dean]

What Heidi suspected was that Kathy had just skipped town or gone into hiding.

[Heidi Cloud]

She was still running from my dad and the CIA. And she would have people, like, believe, you know, he was still out in the jungle, and she was always being watched. And then when people would spot her, when people would, like, sniff her out or realize that they were being conned and stop giving her that attention and stop giving her money, they would then become the villains of her story. And then she would now bring in the story of the bad guys a little bit closer to home with locals, right? Like, who's with her?

[Josh Dean]

And Heidi was certainly going to be one of those villains, someone Kathy's followers would want to protect her from.

[Heidi Cloud]

If people know her, it's not necessarily like they would tell either. At one point, she was wearing a disguise, like a mustache and a wig, like Kentucky Fried Chicken, I don't know, Cowboy Colonel Sanders. And was in the back seat in this disguise with this mustache and this hat. And I was like, in. In the back, like, with. But why? You know, so that nobody would see her. So she's also going through great lengths to hide herself. And there's a part that makes people believe it even more, her doing that, I guess.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi contacted five different men in Belize who she knew had been supporting her mom.

[Heidi Cloud]

They all played different roles in her life. Financially, emotionally, and probably physically. None of the men will tell me other than where their last encounter was with her and where she went to. They don't know.

[Josh Dean]

They didn't know, or at least they didn't want to tell Heidi. It became very clear that her mom just didn't want to be found. This became even more clear when she visited a place where her mom had been staying.

[Heidi Cloud]

She put in a trap door in the bathroom. That way, if the bad people showed up to get her, she could go out the trap door. So everybody thought that was normal. Okay, I found her tinfoil in a box. Because she was wrapping her passport in tinfoil.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi perhaps didn't realize quite how dangerous the search was.

[Heidi Cloud]

She would wear big hats so that satellites couldn't see her. So my mother and I look similar to each other, which is horrifying. Anyways, I met with the man who my mom set up with the bullet in that family. And he showed up at the resort, and he agreed to meet with me. And so he was, like, sitting at the bar. And I'm in Belize, and it's hot. It's so unbearably hot there. So I'm going down, and I have a big hat on, not for satellite purposes, but to create shade. And so I come down and he told me that I was seconds away from being killed. Basically, like, he thought I was my mom, and, like, I had set him up and had tricked him to come to this location. So he thought the whole thing was like a trap, because here I come with this gigantic hat down, and my mother and I look similar, and it's dark, and he's already had a couple rum drinks. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Well, I'm so glad I got close enough for you to know I'm not my mom and didn't kill me. I mean, whether he really was or not, he was just like, oh, I'm done with this bitch. You know, we're not playing this game.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi later found out that Kathy, as Susie, had set up a complicated ruse to throw her daughter and anyone else who might have been after her off track.

[Heidi Cloud]

They did this outlandish thing to go over to Guatemala, took her computer and her passport, had this woman walk around with it as if I have the capability to track her like that and find out that you know and believe that she's. She, like, had all these people, like, spin lies and reach out to Me to like validate that she was like, really? And Guatemala. So that was her way to try to divert me off of anything beliefs and send me to Guatemala looking for her.

[Josh Dean]

And then covet struck, which made things even more complicated.

[Heidi Cloud]

So nobody was going out and then there was masks and so I didn't really panic. And then I think I had asked Paul, I was like, any update? And he was like, I think I saw her at the market, you know. But she was coming out less and less at that time.

[Josh Dean]

After the national lockdown finally eased, the trail went cold. There were no credible indications of Kathy's whereabouts. A year later, in 2021, Heidi reported her mom missing in the US and Belize. But authorities in both countries told her they couldn't help. Adults are allowed to disappear without telling anyone, even their own children. This unsettled Heidi. She began to worry, especially when her uncle, Kathy's brother, passed away and she didn't make contact with his family.

[Heidi Cloud]

That kind of panicked me because I would have thought that she would at least reached out to my cousin because she called when he was in the hospital.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi felt she needed to step up the search, so she went public on Facebook.

[Heidi Cloud]

It was like a gradual outing, I will say, you know, like I kept kind of with her alias and then I started to disclose more and more.

[Josh Dean]

Things felt different now.

[Heidi Cloud]

Nobody had heard from her and my phone was blowing up. It was almost like confirmation that she really left Belize because everybody had been like kind of tight lipped about it other than, I don't know, I think she went to Guatemala or blah blah, blah. But people just started dumping their trauma on me and what she had been doing this whole time and that she disappeared and who she hurt and who she conned and whose marriage she broke up and, you know, all of these things.

[Josh Dean]

In November of 2022, Heidi even did an interview on one of Belize's main news stations, Love fm, a name that white devil listeners may also remember.

[Heidi Cloud]

While most people spent today wishing their family and friends a happy Thanksgiving day, for Heidi Cloud and her family, it was anything but. That's because for the past two years, she and her siblings have not heard a word about their mother, Kathy Sue Marshall.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi, speaking here on that news report, was now fearing the worst.

[Heidi Cloud]

It feels kind of surreal and not real at the same time because her whole childhood was her hiding because somebody was going to kill her, even though nobody was and that she was going to die. It would be ironic that that wound up being her fate. But the only thing that made that fate happen was her mental illness. And it's. It's a really hard thing, too, because I don't. I don't want her in my personal life in that way, because it's not safe. But she's my mom, and she's a human, and she's mentally ill, and I just need to know what happened to her.

[Josh Dean]

At this point, having spread the word far and wide, Heidi was getting a lot of confusing and conflicting information from people in Belize.

[Heidi Cloud]

A man showed up at the news station with a piece of paper signed saying it was my mother and that they had to pull the news report or they were going to sue for defamation of character and that she was alive and well and everything was good. And I was like, so that's how it works over in Belize. Some random dude shows up with a piece of paper claiming, with my mom's signature, she's been a missing person for, you know, two or something years at that point, and you just decide that's legitimate.

[Josh Dean]

I have to say that this is very much what news can feel like in Belize. It's a hotbed of misinformation. But it's also a place where the most horrible and unlikely of rumors sometimes turn out to be true.

[Heidi Cloud]

I have messages where there was a lady who was telling me that my mom was tossed in the shallow grave. And she basically said my mom had crossed and, you know, hustled the wrong people, and they killed her and threw her in her shallow grave.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi was even worried about suicide.

[Heidi Cloud]

There's a lot of people that struggle with depression and suicide ideation, and I think my mother did at times, but sometimes I think my mother used it more to manipulate people.

[Josh Dean]

This is something Kathy had apparently done several times. Was her mom alive? Heidi just had no idea. And she was running out of leads.

[Heidi Cloud]

She's definitely not back in the States. That just would not be functional for her. So my feeling is, and based on some other things, think that maybe she went to Mexico City.

[Josh Dean]

There's a few reasons this makes sense. Kathy had traveled there before. Also a source who Heidi trusted as much as any other, a spiritual medium.

[Heidi Cloud]

The medium says that she was in Mexico City and that she went by name Lucinda. And she was a waitress at a restaurant called the W, which just exist. And she got a hold of some bad peyote.

[Josh Dean]

Peyote is a hallucinogenic cactus. It's illegal in the US as it is in Mexico. Apart from when used in indigenous ceremonies, it's a very strong substance. People use it to try and speak to their higher Power of choice.

[Heidi Cloud]

And she was doing a lot of peyote. And he gave me a couple names and that she passed away. She had a heart attack. She had complications from peyote. But that's the only lead that I have.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi investigated this too, but got nowhere. Kathy Marshall, AKA Susie Lawson, is missing to this day. But Heidi feels deep down that her mom really could still be alive. The tips she gets are just never conclusive.

[Heidi Cloud]

So my mom had a slew of friends that all had the same name, and they were all of her cult followers. And so the two Jennies she stayed in very close contact with, and they had always tithed to her. They had always given her money. One of them is who we stayed with when we moved to Georgia. I reached out to them several times and said, you can keep her secrets. We don't need to know. Will you just tell us if you've heard from her? And one of them sent me a message saying that, you know, my mom was alive and well. That's still probably been about three years, probably at this point, three at least.

[Josh Dean]

Heidi searched for her mom and all the public records she could locate and found. Kathy Marshall registered to vote in the u. S. At an old friend's place in Tennessee. She now doesn't think she was ever actually there, but she can't know for sure if Kathy is out there somewhere. Heidi just hopes she's not hurting people.

[Heidi Cloud]

She comes in like a freaking wrecking ball and you leave with your whole family destroyed. Like, she just comes in and doesn't just take your money. She fucks your whole life. And then she leaves and she moves on to the next person.

[Josh Dean]

What she wants now is really quite simple.

[Heidi Cloud]

I don't want her to hurt people, and I want to know if she is alive or not. And I would hope that she would just have enough empathy as a mother to check in with an embassy to let the embassy know once a year, like, yes, I'm alive and notify my children. Because the truth of the matter is I'm the only person that would bring her home and bury her.

[Josh Dean]

This is the practical side of Heidi speaking. But if she's being really honest, she

[Heidi Cloud]

take all of her imagination and all of her skills and all of the things that she's fully capable of and put it towards good. I don't know. Like, I. I hope that she finds whatever she's looking for in herself without hurting others. You know, I wish that she would get the help that she needs and knows that mental illness doesn't have to define her and that she could live a productive and healthy life without it.

[Josh Dean]

Because after all this, Heidi still has love for her mother. That's a bond that just doesn't break. Plus, Heidi has something her mother has shown little sign of empathy. She can see the world through her mother's eyes and that maybe is what hurts the most.

[Heidi Cloud]

We're the bad guys. We have been brainwashed and that we're seeking her and that we're hunting her and that we're trying to cause her harm. And no matter what she did to me, I still wouldn't want her to just die somewhere and not know and not bring her home and not have that closure. She hates me more than anything in the world, but I'm the only person who cares that she's missing. It took me 40 years to cry about her, so I still don't like it. But yeah, I'm trying to get used to it.

[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 editing Emma Simonoff. Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimmack. Theme by Ewin lytramuin 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 platform platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help. 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.

[Heidi Cloud]

I think Chuck would approve.