Introducing: PRETEND

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Nobody Should Believe Me"
Episode: Introducing: PRETEND
Release Date: January 20, 2025

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Introduction

In the premiere episode of "Nobody Should Believe Me," host Andrea Dunlop sets the stage by spotlighting a compelling true crime podcast titled Pretend, created by Javier Leyva. Andrea introduces the show as an exploration of deception, featuring stories of con artists, fraudsters, and cult leaders. She particularly highlights the first episode of the 2024 series, "Who’s Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey?" where Javier delves into the manipulative world surrounding a renowned true crime creator. Andrea emphasizes Javier's journalistic integrity and ethical storytelling, promising listeners a deep dive into unraveling complex webs of deceit.

Andrea Dunlop [00:04]: "Javier is both a thorough and ethical storyteller."

Alicia Lockhart’s Ordeal with Clown Pornography

The episode transitions into the harrowing experience of Alicia Lockhart, introduced by Javier Leyva. In 2010, at the age of 24, Alicia accepted a position as a personal assistant to a man involved in producing clown pornography—a niche and disturbing genre combining child entertainment with adult content. Initially intrigued by the unconventional job, Alicia's discomfort grows when she is coerced into participating in death fetish videos, blurring the lines between reality and horrifying fantasy.

Alicia Lockhart [04:23]: "It was like birthday party clown. You know, like entertainment, children entertainment clown."

The Death Fetish Video and Connection to Melissa Witt’s Case

Alicia recounts being asked to portray a lifeless body in a fetish film, complete with a Mickey Mouse watch, for a mere $500. The experience was unsettling, leading Alicia to later question the significance of the watch in relation to a real-life cold case—the disappearance and murder of Melissa Witt in Arkansas. In 2021, a conversation with her sister ignites Alicia's suspicion that her participation in the death fetish video may be linked to Melissa Witt's unsolved murder, particularly due to the specific detail of the Mickey Mouse watch.

Alicia Lockhart [11:18]: "They found her body six weeks later... her Mickey Mouse watch, along with all her other possessions, gone."

Collaboration with Ladonna Humphrey

Driven by her newfound suspicions, Alicia contacts Ladonna Humphrey, a prominent true crime author and podcaster known for her extensive work on the Melissa Witt case. Together, they embark on an investigative journey to uncover connections between the death fetish community and the cold case. Their collaboration leads to the co-authoring of a book titled Strangled and the launching of a podcast, Deep Dark Secrets, aimed at exposing the dark underbelly of online death fetish communities.

Alicia Lockhart [17:14]: "I co-authored this book with Ladonna because we felt it was so unbelievable. We've got to document it."

Rise of Harassment: The FetishMaster Account

As Alicia and Ladonna delve deeper into their investigation, they become targets of intense harassment from an online persona named FetishMaster. Over two years, Alicia receives threatening messages from various burner phone numbers, filled with explicit sexual content and veiled threats. The harassment intensifies when Alicia discovers that Ladonna may have been unknowingly operating the FetishMaster account, raising serious questions about Ladonna's involvement and intentions.

Alicia Lockhart [29:43]: "It scares me for Ladonna and for myself."

Confrontation and Unraveling Truths

The tension culminates when Alicia confronts Ladonna about the FetishMaster account, suspecting that Ladonna herself may be behind the harassment. Ladonna vehemently denies the allegations, attributing the misuse of her account to potential hacking or malware. Despite her denials, the inconsistency in Ladonna's explanations and the sudden cessation of the harassing messages following the confrontation deepen the mystery, leaving listeners questioning Ladonna's true role in the unfolding drama.

Ladonna Humphrey [35:26]: "I am not Fetish Master. I don't know what's going on."

Cliffhanger and Future Episodes

The episode closes with Javier Leyva highlighting the perplexing nature of the case, emphasizing the lack of concrete evidence linking Ladonna to the FetishMaster account. He teases upcoming episodes that will explore further allegations, testimonies from other victims, and possible defenses from Ladonna herself. Javier underscores the complexity of discerning truth in such tangled narratives, promising a thorough investigation in the episodes to follow.

Javier Leyva [43:21]: "They’re terrified of her and they do not want her to fixate on them or focus on them any longer. They just want her out of their life."

Notable Quotes

• Andrea Dunlop [00:04]: "Pretend takes you deep into the process of unraveling webs of deception."

• Alicia Lockhart [08:16]: "And he reiterated that it was super important that the dead Girl be wearing the Mickey Mouse watch in the video."

• Ladonna Humphrey [35:13]: "I am being completely honest with you. I don't know what's going on."

Conclusion

"Introducing: PRETEND" sets a gripping foundation for a season filled with intrigue, deception, and unresolved questions. By intertwining personal trauma with investigative journalism, the episode invites listeners to question the reliability of narrators and the complexities of uncovering the truth in the realm of true crime storytelling. As the series progresses, it promises to deliver deeper insights and resolutions to the enigmatic claims surrounding Ladonna Humphrey and the Melissa Witt case.

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Next Steps:
Stay tuned for upcoming episodes on Pretend, where Javier Leyva continues to peel back the layers of this intricate case. Subscribers can access bonus content and early releases by following the podcast on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.

Transcript

[Andrea Dunlop]

True Story Media. Hello, it's Andrea, and today I want to introduce you to a show that I love, Pretend. This is the podcast from super talented creator Javier Leyva. Javier tells stories about people pretending to be someone else. So con artists, fraudsters, cult leaders, and much, much more. There's even a previous season that involves a surprise nobod should believe me crossover moment. No spoilers as to which one. But I think you will love this show because it takes you deep into the process of unraveling webs of deception. Sound familiar? And Javier is both a thorough and ethical storyteller. Javier started his career in news and he brings a lot of journalistic muscle to these stories, which are all his original reporting. So today we're sharing the first episode of his breakout 2024 series, who Who's Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey? In which Javier digs into the deceptions and manipulations of a popular true crime creator. This season tackles so many fascinating questions about the ethics and boundaries of true crime storytelling, and Javier just did really incredible research on this case, and he even spoke to ladonna herself. I think you will love this season. You can find Pretend wherever you listen to podcasts, and of course we will include a link in our show notes. Enjoy.

[Javier Leyva]

Foreign.

[Andrea Dunlop]

It's 2025. It's here. This year is going to be. Well, one thing it won't be is boring. And that's about the only prediction I'm going to make right now. But one piece of news that I am excited to share is that the wait for my new book, the Mother Next Door, is almost over. It is coming at you on February 4th from St. Martin's Press. So soon. I co authored this book with friend and beloved contributor of this show, Detective Mike Weber, about three of the most impactful cases of his career. Even if you are one of the OG est of OG listeners to this show, I promise you are going to learn so many new and shocking details about the three cases we cover. We just go into so much more depth on these stories. And you're also going to learn a ton about Mike's story. Now, I know y'all love Detective Mike because he gets his very own fan mail here at Nobody Should Believe Me. And if you've ever wondered, how did Mike become the detective when it came to Munchausen by proxy cases, you are going to learn all about his origin story in this book. And I know we've got many audiobook listeners out there, so I am very excited to share with you. The audiobook is read by me Andrea Dunlop, your humble narrator of this very show. I really loved getting to read this book and I'm so excited to share this with you. If you are able to pre order the book, doing so will really help us out. It will signal to our publisher that there is excitement about the book and it will also give us a shot at that all important bestseller list. And of course if that's simply not in the budget right now, we get it. Books are not cheap. Library sales are also extremely important for books, so putting in a request at your local library is another way that you can help. So you can pre order the book right now in all formats at the link in our show notes. And if you are in Seattle or Fort Worth, Mike and I are doing live events the week of long launch, which you can also find more information about at the link in our show notes. These events will be free to attend, but please do RSVP so that we can plan accordingly. See you out there.

[Javier Leyva]

This episode is brought to you by Amazon.

[Andrea Dunlop]

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[Javier Leyva]

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[Andrea Dunlop]

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[Javier Leyva]

Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical Healthcare just got less painful. Heads up. This episode has depictions of deviant sexual content. You should not listen to this without headphones. You should not listen to this with children in the room. You've been warned.

[Alicia Lockhart]

When I was really young, I used to live in Oregon, in Portland, Oregon, and I had accepted this job as a personal assistant to a man who was a pornography producer.

[Javier Leyva]

It was 2010 and Alicia Lockhart was only 24 years old.

[Alicia Lockhart]

To my knowledge when I accepted this position. His niche was clown pornography.

[Javier Leyva]

Clown Clown. I don't know if it was the streaming. Did you say clown or clown?

[Alicia Lockhart]

Like birthday party clown. You know, like entertainment, children entertainment clown.

[Javier Leyva]

Typically when I interview someone, I have a prepared list of questions. I have an idea of what the story's about. This was not the case when I interviewed Alicia Lockhart. The clown porn thing completely caught me off guard.

[Alicia Lockhart]

When I went for my job interview, there was a like, honest to God, clown pornography being filmed, like in the background of my job interview to be this man's personal assistant. So it was like, it looked legitimate. It was weird.

[Javier Leyva]

But then again, Alicia Lockhart was a goth girl with neon green hair. The clown porn thing was weird, but she Went along with it anyway.

[Alicia Lockhart]

You can see I'm kind of alternative or creative. It didn't bother me in that moment. I was like, okay, cool. This is an interesting kind of office work. I'll. I'll take the. But when I showed up for my first shift of work, he asked me if I would be comfortable, like, starring in any of the movies that he made. And I told him no, that I didn't want to do that. A few days later, he did call me and said he had, like, a really strange request. He had a strange request. Come in.

[Javier Leyva]

You see, the director wasn't just into clown pornography. He was also directing death fetish videos. Kind of like snuff films where someone is killed, but no one really dies. These fake murder videos are as disgusting as you imagine. It's hard to imagine someone actually getting aroused by watching someone stabbed, drowned, or strangled to death.

[Alicia Lockhart]

He wanted a model who would just, like, lay still on a morgue slab. And he said that he needed to do, like, slow pans up and down of their body and that that's all it would be like, no touching, no other people just lay there naked. So I was a little uncomfortable with it, but he was offering me, like, $500 to do that. I was like, 22. It seemed easy. He said that nobody would ever see it. It was like going on a CD in somebody's private collection.

[Javier Leyva]

There was no contract, no consent form, just his word. And Alicia, she just went along with it.

[Alicia Lockhart]

I showed up to the filming location, like, maybe a week later, and it was actually his house, and he was wanting to film this in the basement of his house. He fed me lunch before we filmed.

[Javier Leyva]

Nothing fancy, just sandwiches and lemonade. Also, they weren't alone either. In fact, the director's girlfriend and son were in the room. She was a little nervous, and the kid was within earshot the whole time. So they avoided talking about this whole death fetish shoot that was about to happen. After lunch, they walk downstairs to the basement. Now, this is where things start getting a little foggy for Alicia. I asked her, how did she get the mark across her neck? It made it look like she was strangled. Was it drawn on or was it something else? Alicia says she doesn't remember.

[Alicia Lockhart]

And he had this Mickey Mouse watch in it. And he was like, I need you to put this watch on for me before we start filming. It's like the most important part of the film.

[Javier Leyva]

So put it on a Mickey Mouse watch. That's creepy.

[Alicia Lockhart]

And he reiterated that it was super important that the dead Girl be wearing the Mickey Mouse watch in the video. So I put it on and at this point, like, my memory changes pretty drastically from being like a full blown movie to being like, I can barely grasp little moments.

[Javier Leyva]

From that point, I've unfortunately watched the video. Yeah, Steve?

[Andrea Dunlop]

Yeah, I'm here.

[Javier Leyva]

Oh, well, it looks like it's our guy. The director was also the star of the video, and he played the part of a CSI investigator examining the crime scene. I'm in a hurry because I got another one right after this. Like I said, I'm gonna get her back to the to the field office asap. Alicia is laying on the floor with her back propped on the sofa. Her head is tilted back and her mouth and eyes were wide open. She's posing as a corpse. He eventually grabs Alicia's lifeless body, lifts her up and carries her off screen. Get you down these stairs. In the next scene, Alicia is laying on a platform of some sort. The director examines her entire body. You just keep getting hotter and hotter. I'm sorry for having to describe this in such great detail, but this next part is kind of important. The man slowly undresses Alicia. She's completely naked except for this Mickey Mouse watch. Maybe it's because she was instructed to keep her eyes open and fixed to one spot. Maybe it's the trauma of being exploited, or maybe it was something else. But Alicia says that she doesn't remember much about this day.

[Alicia Lockhart]

And obviously this was not a comfortable or a normal experience for me anyways. So I kind of just felt like maybe I disassociated or something. Like it was uncomfortable.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

Severe bruising in the inner thighs.

[Alicia Lockhart]

But I just kind of had put that memory out of my mind. It was a really long time ago.

[Javier Leyva]

Like I said, it was 2010 and Alicia was just 24 years old.

[Alicia Lockhart]

And it happened to come back up into conversation in 2021 with my sister. And when I told her about this experience, she was like, this is super creepy. Why did they want a video of a dead girl with a Mickey Mouse watch? Where do you think that video wound up? Like what? Do you know what it looked like? Did you ever watch it? So we had this conversation about it and she ended up googling Mickey Mouse watch plus murder.

[Javier Leyva]

And that's when they got a hit. There was a case out of Arkansas where a 21 year old woman named Melissa Witt went missing. They found her body six weeks later.

[Alicia Lockhart]

And so when she did that Google search, Melissa Witt is what came up, because that is a detail about that case. Melissa Witt her watch was taken from her body after she was murdered. And they've always kind of believed that the murderer might have kept it as a trophy. At this point I was really creeped out. I didn't think that it was necessarily related, but it seemed random. Like it just seemed like such a strange.

[Javier Leyva]

It's a detail. It's a detail that's very specific, right? Like the morgue, the morgue thing I could kind of understand. But the Mickey Mouse watch, that just seems very specific, right?

[Alicia Lockhart]

And like it could not be related at all. Could just be a coincidence. But I figured I will just let law enforcement decide that because I figured they could probably find the guy I used to work for and talk to him about it.

[Javier Leyva]

Could this fetish porn director be linked to the Melissa Witt case? Does the Mickey Mouse watch have any significance? They thought maybe this information could be a new lead this now 30 year old cold case.

[Alicia Lockhart]

And so that's why I called in a tip. I really just expected that I would have a phone call with one or two people and that would be it. But the first person that I spoke with was Ladonna Humphrey.

[Javier Leyva]

Ladonna Humphrey, remember that name because she is very important to the story. Listen, I've tried to sum up this story quickly. An elevator pitch. And every time I fail, when my friends ask me, hey, what's this new series about? I'm lost for words because there's just no simple way to tell this story in just a few minutes. So how can I tell it here? And where do I start? I'm about to retell the story the same way I learned about it. Completely out of order. By the end of this thing, you're going to need a suspect board like the ones you see in the movies. I've conducted more than 20 interviews and counting. You're going to hear some pretty far fetched allegations from a lot of different people. Actually from complete strangers. None of these people I've spoken to have anything in common except they cross path with one particular woman. There's a lot of he said she said in the story. And I'm gonna do my best to prove and disprove every one of these claims. This series is going to be a long one. I can't even predict how many episodes it will be because it's unfolding as you're hearing this right now. Yeah, it's gonna be one of those. But by the end of this series, hopefully I've done a good enough job for you to make up your own mind and Find out why so many people are afraid of ladonna Humphrey. I'm Javier Leyva and this is Pretend Stories about real people pretending to be someone else.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

Sa.

[Javier Leyva]

Let'S pick up where I left off. Alicia Lockhart first met true crime author and podcaster Ladonna Humphrey in 2021.

[Alicia Lockhart]

I actually called in a tip to the Melissa Witt tip line. She runs an unsolved murder tip line for a a case from 1994 in Arkansas.

[Javier Leyva]

Tomorrow marks 29 years since the abduction and murder of Melissa Witt. Ladonna Humphrey made a name for herself by covering the Melissa Witt disappearance. She's written books, recorded podcasts, and even produced her own Amazon prime documentary on the case. Melissa Witt was a 19 year old from Fort Smith, Arkansas who vanished from a bowling alley in 1994. She was missing for weeks until they discovered her naked body laying on a rock in the Ozarks National Forest. Her head was badly decomposed, but investigators were able to determine that she was strangled to death, just like Alicia portrayed in the fetish film. And her Mickey Mouse watch, along with all her other possessions, gone. Here's ladonna Humphrey describing meeting Alicia for the first time on her podcast Extinguished.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

Alicia Lockhart came to me via email with a tip. In the Wit case, she had been involved in a death fetish film. She had been asked to pretend to be a girl that had been strangled to death and the producer asked her to wear a Mickey Mouse watch. So she reached out to me and we got to know each other and that's how I discovered the world, the underbelly of the Internet death fetish. And that did spark this year long undercover investigation.

[Javier Leyva]

Ladonna wanted to know who commissioned the film, who was the producer, what did any of this have to do with Melissa Witt?

[Alicia Lockhart]

And she was very, very interested in what had happened to me and if it could be related to Melissa's case. You know, she followed up with me a few times, in case you're wondering.

[Javier Leyva]

Yes, Alicia did report her experience to the Fort Smith Police Department in Arkansas. And she had a series of phone calls with the detectives, but eventually that went nowhere. But it was ladonna who kept following.

[Alicia Lockhart]

Up and she pretty much stayed in touch with me every day from that point on. She needed more information about the man that I used to work for, the video. So I agreed to help her as much as I could. And I started looking for the last name of that man.

[Javier Leyva]

She couldn't remember it at the time. I mean, after all, this video was.

[Alicia Lockhart]

Shot in 2010, and I was still searching for, like, a clown pornographer in Portland, Oregon, and I just couldn't find him. And it was really, like, really wracking my brain. But one night I just typed in morgue porn and hit enter. And what I found was really horrifying. I. I had no idea that was, like, a popular kind of pornography.

[Javier Leyva]

Alicia scoured thousands of death fetish videos.

[Alicia Lockhart]

I found a lot of videos immediately of that nature, and most of them were made by this man that I had worked for for during that time. He called himself Chris Corner, almost like a play on Chris Coroner. I saw these thumbnails with him in them, and I discovered that that was basically his bread and butter. As I was scrolling through these images, I found a screenshot of myself, which was really hard for me since I had been told that it wasn't the something that was going to be sold on a website. So that was a huge discovery. I was able to give ladonna the man's name, his company name, his website, and the, you know, the whole entire video for her to review. And I did end up watching the video. As I said before, it's really hard for me to remember most of what else happened there. So I felt like that was something I needed to do for myself. And I did watch it. And there's a lot that goes on in the video that I did not consent to. I was touched inappropriately. It's my opinion that I may have been drugged in some way during the meal that we shared beforehand, but I don't have any proof of that.

[Javier Leyva]

We don't need to go into any graphic details, but let's just say there was no intercourse either way. Alicia said this wasn't what she signed up for. And thank you for hanging in there, folks, because that was as graphic as this series is gonna get. We needed to talk about it because it's going to come back up at some point in the series. So we're past it now. Let's get back to the story.

[Alicia Lockhart]

At this point, I was again working mostly with Ladonna, not with law enforcement much after the initial interviews. And what Ladonna was telling me was that the police were working on it. They were very interested. They felt like he could have been involved. She wanted me to keep helping her research this man and find anything else I could find out about him online during that time period, potentially figure out who the client was that ordered the video, things like that she wanted me and her to work on together. Now I really feel like that should have been something law enforcement was doing rather than Ladonna Humphrey. But she sort of explained that away by saying that they were very busy and this was a 30 year old case. And you know, that does make sense that if she could help out in some way, maybe they would just do the last part of the investigation or the important stuff. And she also had told me that she was a licensed private investigator and that she had access to the case file, could go into the station. And I know that some detective on that case did give her access like that.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

It's hard to believe in the beginning, although we did determine after the first interview that we felt like what Alicia was telling us, that she at least believed it to be true. You know, she was always very consistent with the story.

[Javier Leyva]

Alicia was caught in the moment. She truly believed that her experience could shed new light into the Melissa Witt case. The Mickey Mouse watch, the strangled girl. Either the director or whoever commissioned this film might be the killer trying to relive a twisted fantasy.

[Alicia Lockhart]

I thought that I was helping not just her, but Melissa Witt, the police. Ladonna was actually paying me to help at this point. She had sent me money through Venmo to keep doing the research that she needed done about this guy that I used to work for. And so I started doing quite a bit of research, not only about him, but like that whole industry. And to be honest with you, I was. I was appalled by it and fascinated by it. Kind of became like a moral mission for me at some point especially too, because I did wonder, in all these thousands of videos that I was seeing, were any of the other women in these videos, you know, potentially being trafficked or were they. They drugged in the videos or. I just had a lot of questions. Were any of them dead actually, and not just pretending to be dead? So I got completely swallowed whole by. By this memory that turned into a kind of a mission. And Ladonna felt the same about it too. So we sort of embarked on a mission together to learn more about the communities, about the laws, about who these people were behind their screen names and monikers. Like who. Who's really making these videos? How many of them are there? So that, that was a pretty time consuming mission. And it led to us writing a book together and starting a podcast.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

And through that process, Alicia and I said, we got to write a book about this. This is so unbelievable. We've got to document it.

[Javier Leyva]

And they did. In 2022, Alicia and Ladonna co wrote a book titled Strangled.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

And then as soon as the book came out. We also launched a podcast called Deep Dark Secrets.

[Javier Leyva]

After Alicia teamed up with Ladonna Humphrey and started to investigate the death fetish community, that's when the harassment started. She became the target of a person going by the name of Fetish Master.

[Alicia Lockhart]

Messages to my personal cell phone number, mostly at nighttime, about how I was in danger and that I needed to stop sticking my nose where it didn't belong, and that whoever was writing these was telling me that I I would be harmed if I didn't stop looking around in these places.

[Javier Leyva]

That's after the break.

[Andrea Dunlop]

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[Alicia Lockhart]

When I started researching these communities, it was only a few weeks into our working relationship. I would say like week two or week three. I had gotten into to a few of the websites that you needed access like that you needed a special membership to to get in and look around. And as soon as that happened I started to get strange emails and text messages from like burner phone numbers and it became sexual pretty quickly. Like I would get called a cunt or they would talk about my pussy. Sometimes they would sort of insinuate that they were going to rape and kill me if I kept looking at the websites. One of them that came through said something about finishing what had been started in the basement. And at that point I was convinced that it was my former employer who was sending me messages, although I didn't really understand how he would know that I was in any of those forums. But of course I, you know, showed everything that I was receiving to ladonna Humphrey because I had been working with her on this. I thought she would know what to do with that information. She told me that law enforcement said that there was no way to trace the numbers and that they would recommend that I just keep my phone number how it was because maybe these people would mess up at some point and send something from something that could be traced. And so I was told that if I just kept documentation of everything that was being sent to me that that was like A better option than like, changing my phone number or anything like that.

[Javier Leyva]

So, let's recap for a second. Alicia takes part in a morgue porn video in 2010. 1112 years go by and she hasn't heard a thing from this director. But the moment that she starts working with ladonna and poking around these death fetish forms, the director comes back and starts harassing Alicia. The timing is just so bizarre. Like, why now?

[Alicia Lockhart]

Yeah, that started pretty early on and continued for almost two years. Like, the whole time I was working with her, I think there's like 70 something different phone numbers that were writing me different messages like that, or things about ladonna herself. They would send me threats, but it would be like a threat towards ladonna, not towards me. And she would show me things too, that she was receiving from the same phone numbers. These people were attacking both of us on the same evenings.

[Javier Leyva]

Here's ladonna.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

I'm going to kidnap you. I'm going to burn your house down. I'm going to do all these horrible things to you. But also on a larger scale. In some of these online death fetish forums, I had been doxxed.

[Alicia Lockhart]

And then I would show her because I was like, look, look at this. This is terrifying. And she would get really upset about it. But it did scare me to get those kinds of messages. It scared me for her and for myself.

[Javier Leyva]

Despite the barrage of threats, Alicia and ladonna continued to work together. In fact, they achieved a pretty high level of success. After all, ladonna Humphrey was already an established published author, speaker, and now popular true crime podcaster writing a book.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

Any book that ends up having any measure of success does come with a price. You know, I'm not saying that for anybody to feel sorry for me, but, you know, I don't have the level of security that I once did. I find it very difficult to go places because now people know who I am. So there is that level of, you know, I can't come, go somewhere anymore and just kind of like, go be ladonna, you know, on my own in a grocery store.

[Javier Leyva]

Leveraging ladonna's public figure, they were able to get in front of the largest true crime audiences.

[Alicia Lockhart]

She got us into CrimeCon UK and then us. It felt like the work we were doing was interesting and important to other people, and so I continued to do it, and I was personally invested in it as well.

[Javier Leyva]

The Deep Dark Secret podcast mostly centered around Lalicia's sexual assault and their work infiltrating the death fetish Community. One day, while on a video call, while doing research on the necrophilia sites, ladonna Humphrey shares some files with Alicia.

[Alicia Lockhart]

We would be like, what do you think of this user? Have you seen him on here? Is he dangerous? Do you know where he lives? What's his story? So she was just sending me a screenshot, like we often did one day.

[Javier Leyva]

One of those screenshots that ladonna shared left Alicia stunned.

[Alicia Lockhart]

This particular day, the screenshot that she sent to me showed her username, but it wasn't the one that I knew. It was actually a username of a user that had been harassing me.

[Javier Leyva]

It was the username FetishMaster.

[Alicia Lockhart]

This user in particular had been sending me emails, posting in the forums, a lot of kind of scary things about wanting to hurt the podcasters and some other things about dead girl porn. And I thought, oh, my God, she has created this fake account just to, like, farm social media content for our podcast.

[Javier Leyva]

Why was ladonna logged in under the screen name Fetish Master? Could it be that she was behind these harassing messages the whole time? Was she just terrorizing Alicia every other day for two years straight for the hell of it?

[Alicia Lockhart]

And so I kind of expected that when I called her out on this, she would admit that to me, like, say, I'm so sorry. I. I made this account so that I had something to post on TikTok this week. And that's not great, you know, but it would have made some kind of sense to me. We could have talked through how I was not okay with that, or, like, let's not do that in the moment. I just couldn't help myself. I was like, how long have you been Fetish Master? At this point, she immediately switches to voice memo and tries to explain to me, but she doesn't explain it at all.

[Javier Leyva]

Listen, as a journalist, I believe it is crucial for the public, especially families of the missing homicide survivors, sexual assault victims, and those who have been harassed, to be aware of these serious allegations against a public figure who has built a whole career on covering crime. Therefore, I'm going to play you some of these voice memos sent to Alicia that reveal information about a possible crime or significant misconduct involving ladonna Humphrey.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

I am being honest with you. I am not Fetish Master. I don't know what to say, but I am being completely honest with you. I don't know what's going on. I took that screenshot this morning because we logged in first thing. Or maybe I did that last night.

[Javier Leyva]

Ruh Roh. I'VE seen the screenshot Alicia is talking about, and she was clearly logged in as Fetish Master. I don't know how she's going to explain this.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

I'm not Fetish Master. It's not me. I'm going to try to figure this out because it is absolutely 100% not me. I am really angry at whoever did this, for sure.

[Javier Leyva]

I have 10 minutes of voice memos of Ladonna trying to convince Alicia that she has it all wrong.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

So I'm a little freaked out. So I went and looked on my phone and I'm not logged into anything at all. You. I'm a little scared right now, actually. Actually a lot scared. I am not Fetish Master, I promise you. But this is super weird because one, how would I not notice that when I'm in there taking a screenshot like that doesn't make sense to me. I don't know. I'm really, really confused about what's going on, but I'm going to get to the bottom of it.

[Javier Leyva]

At one point, she even blames her husband for logging in as Fetish Master.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

Hold on, let me ask Danny too, because I don't think he would do that, but let me ask him. Hold on. It does kind of scare me about what they're up to. This is probably the most freaked out I've been in a while. But again, you ask me any question you want to. I am kind of frustrated. If it was somebody close to me that isn't telling me the truth, but I. I don't think it is. I mean, that would be super odd.

[Javier Leyva]

Then she blames it on hackers.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

Well, I'm wondering if I clicked on a link somewhere and have gotten spyware or malware on my phone or my laptop or both, which is completely possible, I guess. I mean, this just throws me. I mean, I'm not mad.

[Javier Leyva]

You asked if I had a dollar for every time someone blames it on the hackers.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

Okay, So I googled merge two screen names in PHP BBB3, which is their platform. And there's a. Looks like there's an extension that allows an admin of a forum to merge the accounts of two different users.

[Javier Leyva]

PHP B3 merge screen names extension Sounds like a dialogue out of a bad sci fi movie. But she's technically correct. What Ladonna just described is possible. We're going to discuss that in more.

[Alicia Lockhart]

Depth on a future episode for a few days. Yeah, she continued to tell me that she was looking into it and trying to figure out how that happened.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

I'm Perplexed. I don't know why I would be shocked that they would be doing something like this, but I'm shocked. I just don't know what to do. I'm sitting here in my chair in my room. I'm stunned right now. I don't. I don't know. I hate the Fetishers. I hate them so much. I can't even explain to you how much I want their communities to just be blown up. These people are so evil, wicked.

[Javier Leyva]

Then reality slowly starts sinking in.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

This FetishMaster account actually makes us look really bad. And I. I'm kind of freaked out about it, actually. I just. My mind is blown right now. I'm truly. This is the first time I think I've ever felt. Felt like. It's not terror. It's like, what the heck is happening right now?

[Javier Leyva]

Alicia is just as perplexed. The only way she can explain this is if ladonna was creating the illusion of Fetish Master to make their podcast more interesting. Creating the story rather than reporting on it. And I just asked myself, why? Why would she do all this to you? I mean, of all people. Like, I could see why she would do it to other people, but you were like, you're just doing a podcast. I mean, why is she targeting you?

[Alicia Lockhart]

When I called the tip line and told her my story, I think that she just thought it was an interesting story and that it was something that might earn her money or fame or something like that. And I think about if somebody decided to. To harass and scare somebody to the degree that I was harassed and scared, they would be doing that to make a story more compelling. Right. But for what the reason would be, I don't know, for fun, for fame. I'm really not sure. That was the only reason I could think of why my best friend and business partner would be logged into that account.

[Javier Leyva]

And you'll never guess. But all the harassing messages stopped after Alicia confronted her. In fact, the Fetish Master screen name was last active the very same day Alicia confronted her about it. November 22, 2022. I've confirmed this with my own eyes.

[Alicia Lockhart]

But I did think, like, what if all the messages were from her? Not just that one.

[Javier Leyva]

How frequently were you getting these messages?

[Alicia Lockhart]

I think every 48 hours for almost two years.

[Javier Leyva]

Holy crap. The dedication.

[Alicia Lockhart]

It's such a big. I mean, it's a mind fuck.

[Javier Leyva]

One night, when they were sitting across from each other, typing on their laptops, Alicia says that she received an email from FetishMaster.

[Alicia Lockhart]

I think the last Email said, I'm going to enjoy fucking your rotting pussy. And that email in particular had been sent to me while I was in Arkansas in LaDonna's living room with her. I opened it and I gasped and I read it to her, and then she gasped and she was like, who is that? She had me in her living room and I believe she sent me a message to just, like, watch my face as it came in.

[Javier Leyva]

After I spoke with Alicia, I quickly learned that she wasn't alone. There were other people who were claiming to be harassed by ladonna Humphrey after they had a falling out. And she's just an attention seeker. You know, it adds to the mystery.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

And the riveting fear that you get.

[Andrea Dunlop]

When reading her book.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

And it was these messages that I was getting, which I start realizing that these are the same messages everybody else has been getting.

[Javier Leyva]

It's time that ladonna Humphrey is held accountable. It's time that lives stop being ruined at the hands of ladonna Humphrey.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

It's got to stop. She's using fear mongering and people are buying into it, buying into her fear.

[Andrea Dunlop]

I don't know how to stop her.

[Ladonna Humphrey]

It's one of the worst types of evil. How are you going to be this person who is highly respected in society, a journalist, a writer, and then behind closed doors, when nobody sees your face, be this terror.

[Javier Leyva]

Like I said earlier, these people have nothing in common. They didn't know each other. The only thing that binds them together is that at some point in their lives, they've crossed ladonna Humphrey. And soon after, the threatening messages start. Is there something here? I mean, why would this award winning investigative journalist involve herself in this level of drama? I mean, typically when a story sounds too good to be true, it's probably not. So I've been talking with all these people, trying to weigh out what's true and what's not. And, boy, these folks showed up with receipts. This season. You will hear story after story from people who, for the most part, were too afraid to talk to me. But ultimately, they felt they had no other choice.

[Alicia Lockhart]

They're terrified of her and they do not want her to fixate on them or focus on them any longer. They just want her out of their life.

[Javier Leyva]

And you will hear from supporters of ladonna Humphrey. You're even going to hear from ladonna Humphrey herself. In fact, I called her and I had six pages of questions prepared for her, thinking she was going to hang up on me after question number two. But guess what? Now she answered Every single one of my questions. If you can't wait and you want to be the first to listen to the next few episodes, subscribe to Patreon or Pretend plus on Apple Podcasts. The next few episodes are available right now. I'm still putting these together in real time, but if you can wait, they will be available to listen weekly here for free. This episode was produced by me, Alison Brine and edited by the talented Punishinoy with the Podcast Pundits. I want to make something clear before we wrap the episode that Alicia Lockhart received many messages for two years straight from people claiming to be part of the death fetish community. The Fetish master account was one of 78 different harassments that she got. The only evidence right now is that ladonna was logged in under Fetish Master. We can't say the same for the other accounts that were emailing Alicia. We don't know if these messages were from multiple people or one. By the way, ladonna and her surrogates are already going online trying to dispute this Fetish Master thing. They say they have a perfectly good explanation and we are going to talk about that in a future episode. But just so you know, just the other day I received my very first anonymous email and I've been doing this podcast for seven years covering stalkers, and this is the very first time. The timing is impeccable. I've never had one before. It was titled Missy Wit Case and the email I verified is a spoof account. The sender goes by the name of Nixon O'Neill, which will make more sense in a future episode. It reads. Javier, I appreciate your coverage on the Missy Wick case. I grew up in the area and you seem to be an expert on the case. Do you have time to compare notes? In my 45 years living in Arkansas and being familiar with this 30 year old case, you must be a genius. Regards, Nixon. All right, that's it for this episode. Part two and part three are posted right now on Patreon Apple Podcasts. So if you can't wait, you got to listen to these episodes because it's a very big story. Let me know what you think. All right, talk to you next week.

[Andrea Dunlop]

If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that I have very strong feelings about what is and is not responsible true crime content. Maybe you've heard me make some pointed comments about the producers of a certain film. Or perhaps you've heard one of my dozen or so rants about a certain journalist whose name rhymes with Schmike Schmixenbach. And if you've been with me for a while, you'll also know that getting Nobody Should Believe Me on the air was quite the roller coaster. Podcasting is just the Wild west, y'all, and these experiences are what led me to launch my new network, True Story Media, where we are all about uplifting true crime creators doing the work and making thoughtful Survivor centric shows. And I could not be more thrilled to announce our very first creator Partner. You probably think this story's about you the first season of this enthralling show from Breakout creator Brittany Ard took podcasting by storm in 2024, zooming to the number one spot in the charts on Apple and Spotify as Brittany revealed the captivating story of a romantic deception that upended her life and trace the roots of her own complicated personal history that led her there. Britney is back in 2025 with brand new episodes episodes this time helping others tell their own stories of betrayal, heartache and resilience. If you love, nobody should believe me. I think you will also love. You probably think this story is about you for its themes of deception, complex family intrigue and its raw, vulnerable storytelling. You can binge the full first season and listen to brand new episodes each week by following the show on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find it at the link in our Show Notes.