The Full Picture | EP 4 | Saskia's Story

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Joe Interstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. No matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. I dread the conversation with my son. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Saskia had just learned the unimaginable. that her husband had been secretly streaming videos of her. Videos where she was naked and unconscious. Now she was sitting across from a social worker, hearing one of the worst things any victim can hear. There's probably nothing that we can do. Saskia only had one thumbnail photo from Mike's webpage. It wasn't enough to prove he had done something wrong. To get a long-term protective order, The social worker said Saskia needed video evidence. But she didn't have that. Saskia was so shocked she couldn't speak. She did the only thing she could do, scream. I just flipped out because of how wrong I knew it was and how traumatized I felt. Her friend Colleen was there. She let out this blood-curdling scream and ran down the hall. And the sheriffs came sprinting. They didn't know what had happened. And they just heard this scream and came sprinting down after her. Colleen ran after her too. She found Saskia in the hall, crying, shaking. She was just in shock. Like, what is going on? But Megan, Saskia's sister-in-law, stayed in the office with the social worker. She thought those videos had to be out there somewhere. Nothing goes away on the internet. Once it's there, it's there. So she took out her phone. She had Mike's username. She scrolled and scrolled through pornographic websites, clicking through pages of graphic videos, until finally, she found clips of Saskia. These were previews, 10-second grabs from Mike's videos. In those short clips, Megan could tell, Saskia was passed out, completely unaware, and Mike was violating her. She was being raped by her husband. After seeing that, it made sense why she wasn't functioning. She was being tortured. I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal Season 5. Episode 4, The Full Picture. These videos were the key to getting justice for Saskia. Evidence of what Mike had done. And even in those previews, it was clear. His actions were criminal. The authorities confirmed this was enough for a protective order. And it was enough to launch an investigation. So Megan went into the hall and told Saskia to come back in. I remember Megan saying, Sass, look, they want to talk to you again. If you don't calm down, they're going to admit you to a hospital. And I was like, I don't care. If they don't do anything about this, I will live in that hospital because I will not be okay. Megan brought Saskia into the office and started going through the videos with the social worker Saskia wanted to see for herself to know the full extent of what Mike had been doing while she was knocked out she looked over Megan's shoulder at the screen and she saw her bedroom walls her sheets her own undressed body I was just comatose and he was having sex with me Then I told myself, like, I can't, I can't watch anymore. With the video previews, Saskia was able to secure the protective order she needed. And the authorities had enough for a warrant to begin investigating. Saskia handed Mike's computer to the police. And then she walked out of the building in a daze. She got in Colleen's car, and they drove back to her house, the home she'd shared with Mike and their kids. On that drive, she reached a new low. I felt like a bag of bones that someone had thrown to the side. He was honestly the only person that I ever thought truly loved me. And so to realize that I wasn't anything more than a toy or a tool to him, it breaks you. Colleen looked over at Saskia, crumpled in the passenger seat, and she could see Saskia was broken. It was a betrayal of everything that she thought was secure. It was sexual trauma and assault. That was one of the most horrific things I could ever imagine for anybody. All I wanted to do was just scream at the top of my lungs, screamed all of the pain that I felt. As Saskia and her community began to confront what Mike had done, So did the authorities. Detective Sherry Rule was tasked with the investigation. She declined our request for an interview. But around the same time, another key player was brought onto the case. My name is Ashley Inderforth. I am an assistant state's attorney here in Montgomery County. At the time of this, I was a line prosecutor in the Special Victims Division, prosecuting felony special victims cases. Special victims cases are those involving vulnerable victims. They deal with crimes like sexual assault, human trafficking, and child abuse. In these cases, detectives and prosecutors work closely in gathering evidence and figuring out what charges to file. Today, Ashley has spent 14 years as a prosecutor. Of the hundreds of cases she's managed, This is one of the cases that has stuck with me. It was so horrific in this unimaginable way to be living your life and then have everything that you know be different in a minute. Ashley met with Saskia early on in the investigation. It's standard procedure and working with special victims. That first meeting is about explaining our role to them, helping them understand what the court process might look like, and then also getting to know each other a little bit because part of my job as a prosecutor is making credibility determinations and figuring out if I think this is a person who can testify, who can go into court and explain what happened to them. And before I can charge anything, I have to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. And with Saskia, there was never a doubt in my mind that this happened. She was extremely credible. She was willing to talk about her emotions about this entire thing. And then she also didn't hide anything. Saskia was open about her mental health history, about her prescriptions for psychiatric medications, and her use of alcohol on top of those meds. To Ashley, the prosecutor, these weren't reasons to doubt Saskia's story. They were important details in explaining Saskia's state of mind. How crimes were committed against her own body without her knowledge. Her honesty spoke to her credibility. She never acted like she was a perfect person or a perfect victim. After meeting Saskia and watching the video previews, Ashley was determined to prosecute Mike to the fullest extent of the law. I'm going to work as hard as I can to charge as many rapes as we can prove. The 10-second previews were enough to kickstart the investigation, but they feared they wouldn't be enough to make the charges stick. In order to have a case, Detective Rule and Ashley had to get a hold of the full-length videos. They had Mike's laptop, but unfortunately, there wasn't much there. Mike was careful to leave no evidence. Detective Rule tried to purchase the videos from the porn sites, but that didn't work either. The purchases led to other random videos. So Detective Rule had to figure out how to access these videos from the dark web. It took weeks and a lot of digging in the darkest corners of the online world. But eventually... She was able to locate a little bit over 30 videos. Some of them were an hour or more in length. There was hours and hours of footage. In most videos, Saskia was completely unconscious. In some of the videos, her eyes appear to be open. We'll talk about that later in the episode. But in all of them, it was clear to Ashley that Saskia was being recorded. And she had no idea. He did a lot of things to try to hide the camera. He'll cover it over periodically, and sometimes you'll see the computer move quickly. For the most part, though, there was no need to hide the camera. As Megan remembers from the previews, she was just dead. Dead weight. Watching these clips, seeing her brother-in-law attack her friend, Megan was horrified. She could see that Saskia was completely gone. The question was, how did she get that way? keep in mind Megan's known Saskia since the first grade she's seen Saskia at all levels of drunk and in all the years she's known Saskia I've never seen her like that except for in those videos it made Megan wonder was Mike drugging her friend when Saskia first saw the thumbnails she had the same thought I started to question whether he was drugging me You see, in the aftermath of her discovery, Saskia did some digging of her own. Her friend Colleen was there. On the day she took Saskia to the Family Justice Center, Colleen remembers going up to Saskia's bedroom. Saskia was opening drawers, looking under the bed, searching for any additional evidence she could. And then... She found phenobarbital in the nightstand. And she's like, why is this here? Remember when Saskia was hospitalized in the midst of her health crisis? The doctors theorized that she could be having bad reactions to certain meds she was on. One of those meds was phenobarbital, a sedative that can cause unconsciousness and amnesia. Her doctors had taken her off of it. But here it was Is this what was making Saskia sick That wasn the only medication Saskia discovered Mike had a safe in their bedroom I had no idea what was in the safe. He had told me it's like passports, stuff like that. But when Saskia got a locksmith to open the safe... We found a bottle of my sister's medication and about 10 of my own prescription bottles. a lot of them sedatives. Many of these were medications Saskia's body couldn't tolerate. And her sister's medication? She had no idea why Mike would have that. Saskia turned all this evidence over to the authorities. We asked Ashley, the prosecutor, for her thoughts, having reviewed all of the evidence in the case. Could he have drugged her? Sure. But we'll never know. Mike has denied ever drugging Saskia, and there is no definitive evidence that he did. As part of the investigation, detectives conducted a toxicology test. Saskia gave a hair sample to test for drugs that entered her system in the last 90 days. The results of that test were inconclusive. The only substances identified were the psychiatric medications she knew she was taking. This could mean a few different things. One, that Mike wasn't drugging Saskia. Two, that the levels of drugs still in her system at the time of the test were too low to yield a positive result. Or three, that Mike was drugging her using medications she was already prescribed, double dosing her. For Saskia's sister Marisa, the inconclusive toxicology results were a blow. They left a big unanswered question. One Marisa has turned over and over in her head. It's one of those things that you just kind of have to answer that for yourself. I'll never know if he were spoon feeding her extra medication or if he acquired different medication and added that to the mix. Or if he just sat and waited for her to get there herself. After all, over the last three years, Saskia was doing anything she could to get a solid night of sleep. Her goal was to feel better. And sometimes more often than I would have liked, that included drinking to excess and then taking her medication. What matters to Marisa isn't why Saskia was passed out. It's about what Mike did to her sister while she was in that state. No matter how she became unconscious, this wasn't her fault. Saskia's friend Heather agrees. When she learned about the videos, she remembered all the times Saskia had been blackout drunk at parties, unable to stand by herself. Mike did not seem worried at all, ever. Even when some of our friends approached him with concerns, he was like, she's fine. Whether or not Mike drugged Saskia, It was to his advantage to keep her in this drunken, drugged up, bad mental health state because the more vulnerable she became, the easier it became for him to take advantage of her. Saskia's community rallied around her. To them, how she became incapacitated didn't matter. Raping Saskia was a crime. Ashley, the prosecutor, agreed. She could have taken all the drugs she wanted herself voluntarily, or he could have drugged her. It doesn't change our analysis from a legal perspective as to whether she was physically helpless or able to resist any sort of unconsented to sex act. In other words, when it comes to drug facilitated sexual assault in Maryland, it doesn't matter how the drugs enter the victim system. What matters is the perpetrator's actions when the victim is under the influence. The videos were just one piece of evidence in the case against Mike. But then, there were the chats. Chatterbait, the live streaming website, sent the authorities everything they had on Mike. Hundreds of pages of chat logs. And thousands of messages and comments from viewers. Going back at least a year before Saskia's discovery. The chats coupled with the video is really what put this together. From these records, the authorities could tell Mike was on chatterbait multiple times a week. I can't say he was on that site every time doing things to Saskia. But there were numerous times where people were saying things like, is she asleep? And he would respond, that's how we like to do it. And somebody said, when my wife plays asleep like that and then makes a sexual comment about what he does to her. Ashley is paraphrasing the messages here. Somebody said to him, my girl's passed out too. PM me. A lot of people telling him what to do to her body. A couple of times people say, hey, even if she's fake asleep, that's against the terms and conditions. You could get in trouble for that. And he just says things like she likes it like that. These chats put Mike's crimes in a whole new light. It wasn't just that he was filming what he was doing to Saskia. He was sharing it with thousands of real people. Live. When she heard about the chats, Saskia's sister-in-law, Megan, was disgusted. People in the chat, is she alive? Is she okay? People thought she was dead. And the records revealed something else. Not only was she being raped by her husband, people were paying to see this go down. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast Doubt the case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was no voicing of any skepticism or doubt it'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong listen to Doubt the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. Luke opens up about success, self-doubt, mental health, and what it really takes to stay true to who you are when your life changes overnight. I hate fame. I hate the word celebrity. I hate those words that you make me uncomfortable. But I think when you get to a certain point, the fame or the success or the influence, it just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent person that you are. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. I'm in Australia when Bo was born. My whole identity is that no matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children over my job. I dread the conversation with my son. What do you think you'd say? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chatterbait Records showed that this crime went far beyond Mike alone. People were paying to see this go down. Chatterbait has a token system. Users can buy tokens to tip performers or pay for private shows. Based on the records we received, users tipped Mike 347 times. People thought she was dead and they were watching it and paying for it. It's like, what the hell is going on in society? It was one thing to know these videos existed online, but to read the chats and to see the tokens exchanged was sickening. Mike didn't commit this crime in a vacuum. He was rewarded for it by thousands of viewers. People who got off on watching Saskia suffer. There was one more important thing authorities found in the Chatterbait records. In matching the chats up with the videos, Ashley Inderforth and Detective Rule were able to establish a timeline of Mike's actions. They brought the dates of the videos to Saskia. And There were many, many dates that lined up with my decline. In the three years leading up to her discovery, Saskia's health had been in free fall. She was passing out, picking at her skin, pulling out her hair, and sometimes she was unable to get out of bed. Saskia, her friends, and family were grasping at straws to figure out why she wasn't getting better. Was she drinking too much? Was she having bad reactions to certain meds? Or was this just a full-on mental breakdown? No matter the intervention, Saskia only seemed to grow worse. And there was no clear cause of any of it. All of the videos that Detective Rule recovered were from the last year. And when Saskia saw the dates of the videos, she wasn't just looking at the dates of Mike's crimes. She was looking at a timeline of the worst year of her life. The first video that was recovered was from October 28, 2017. That date was right around the time that my friends came over with lasagna because my mom had just died. There was another video on November 10, 2017. That was the day before my son's birthday party that I had been so excited about, but I couldn't get out of bed. And another on October 13, 2018. My high school reunion was October 13th. That morning I had woken up with the worst black eye I had ever seen. So I couldn't go. These were some of the lowest moments in Saskia's life. She had no idea why she was so sick. Why she had to miss these moments. She thought she was failing as a sister, a friend, a wife, a mother. She thought, like her dad, she might never get better. But looking back on those years, knowing what Mike had been doing... It clicked. I was a basket case for those years and crying on the shoulder of the person that was doing all this to me Her body knew something her brain didn Mike had been using her. In the light of day, he was a loving husband. He wrote her love letters, cared for her children as his own. But when the lights went out, he was someone else entirely. Seven years of my life were with this person who never cared about me and humiliated me and enjoyed it. Saskia only has vague memories of the weeks that followed. She took time off work, so she sat at home on her couch, staring at the wall. I felt like I could not even breathe. people came in and out of the house trying to comfort her but no one could really understand what she was going through even when she was surrounded by friends and family she felt alone i remember people wanting to bring me dinner and i didn't want to eat Mike was gone. She was no longer being abused. But realizing that this abuse had occurred, that she had been blind to crimes happening against her own body, was earth-shattering. There were still many mornings when she couldn't get out of bed. I felt like this is it. You don't move on from this. One of the hardest parts of this reckoning was that the videos remained accessible online. She knew that her sister-in-law, Megan, had seen the videos. Surely, she thought other friends would search for them too, and strangers all over the world could access her rape with a few simple clicks. During this time, she got coffee with another co-worker, Vera. Like Saskia, Vera had spent years working in child welfare, helping survivors of child abuse. Saskia explained to Vera what Mike had done and walked her through her discovery. And then she says, Vera, have you seen the videos? Vera hadn't. Imagine what she's carrying, thinking that everybody now has seen these videos. She broke my heart. Hearing Saskia's story, pieces started to come together. Over the past three years, Vera had seen Saskia's decline firsthand. The hair picking, the face, the skin picking. She was fidgety, she was anxious, she looked nervous, she lost weight. It wasn't until this moment that Vera realized those symptoms could be signs of abuse. She often saw similar behaviors in the abused children she worked with. Kids sometimes will act out in so many ways, and they don't know why. This is not that uncommon that people behave or act out because of the trauma that they're dealing with. Her body knows that it was going through trauma. Even though consciously she didn't know, her body knew. The signs of Mike's abuse had been there all along, but no one, not even Saskia, was looking for them. Why would they? A couple of weeks after she reported the crime, Detective Rule contacted Saskia. There was an update in the case against Mike. And she was like, we've got this son of a bitch, big time. She told Saskia Mike was going to be charged with rape. When I was told that they were going to be able to charge him with crimes against me, I felt relief. I wanted him to be in jail. Ashley, the prosecutor, was ready to get the case going. We have to show that she was substantially cognitively impaired, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless, and that the defendant knew or reasonably should have known of her condition. The authorities had videos of Mike violating Saskia when she was completely unconscious. To Ashley, this would normally be considered rape. Initially, I had been like, okay, we're charging all of these. But then, when Ashley and Detective Ruhl went to file the rape charges, they made a discovery. Detective Ruhl called Saskia again. It was a call Saskia would never forget. She said, I can't believe I even have to tell you this. We can't even believe this. We're watching these horrible things that he's doing to you on tape. We all know it's wrong. And now we hear about the marital exemption. and we don't know if we're going to be able to prosecute him for it. Marital exemption. Ashley and Detective Rule learned that in 2018, according to Maryland Criminal Code, At the time, raping your sleeping wife was okay. To Ashley, this was clearly incapacitated rape. But there was a catch. Because in the state of Maryland, You can't rape an incapacitated spouse. You can't rape an incapacitated spouse, because according to Maryland law, that wasn't rape. This is the marital exemption. If Saskia was dating Mike, or if Mike had been a stranger who'd attacked her while she was sleeping, this would be rape under the law. But because she signed a piece of paper, a marriage certificate, what Mike did wasn't clearly illegal. Here's Debbie Feinstein, She runs the special victims unit of the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office. She supervised Ashley. At the time, the spousal defense to rape was in effect for rapes that occurred when the victim was mentally incapacitated. Legally, that's when someone is unable to make or communicate their decisions. Which was really the primary thing that was happening in Saskia's case. Saskia was knocked out when Mike filmed these videos. She'd consumed alcohol and taken her psychiatric meds. She had no way of knowing what was happening to her, let alone telling Mike to stop. Here's Saskia again. My brain couldn't handle that he would not be punished for what he did or be held accountable. But there was still hope because the authorities kept at it. We could argue that there was force involved. Under the law, it wasn't rape if the wife was unconscious. But if it was clear that the husband was using force on his wife to have sex, that was rape. So Detective Rule and Ashley went back to their strongest evidence, the videos. If they could just find one moment, a time when Saskia tried to shield her body or move away from Mike, maybe they could argue that Mike was using force. We looked at every time you could see Saskia do something that could show that she was not consenting. And they did find moments where Saskia seemed to resist. Sometimes, she'd wake up in a haze, mid-attack. She'd roll over or place her hands over sensitive areas. Then, she'd pass back out and Mike would keep going. He continued to violate Saskia, even as her body said no. There were even a few moments in which, with what little strength Saskia had, she tried to push Mike away. None of this was forced exactly, not in the traditional sense of the word. But it was enough to charge Mike with a crime. The authorities brought 31 charges of surveillance in a private area based on the video content. And on top of that, we were able to identify three charges of completed vaginal intercourse and one charge of what was an attempted vaginal intercourse that we felt we could show to a jury and argue that there was force involved. Finally, on December 18th, 2018, two months after Saskia's discovery, charges were filed against Mike Levingood, and he was arrested. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, This episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. no voicing of any skepticism or doubt it'll cause so much harm at every single level of the british establishment of this is wrong listen to doubt the case of lucy letby on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey i'm jay shetty host of the on purpose podcast i'm joined by luke combs award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. Luke opens up about success, self-doubt, mental health, and what it really takes to stay true to who you are when your life changes overnight. I hate fame. I hate the word celebrity. I hate those words that make me uncomfortable. But I think when you get to a certain point, the fame or the success or the influence, it just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent person that you are. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. I'm in Australia when Bo was born. My whole identity is that no matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children over my job. I dread the conversation with my son. What do you think you'd say? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it, all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Two months after Saskia reported the videos, Mike was arrested. But he didn't spend long behind bars. He was able to get out on $10,000 bail. Based on the sentencing guidelines, Mike was looking at up to nine years in prison for each of the four rape charges and up to a year for each count of illegal surveillance. He could spend the rest of his life in prison. But first, there would be a trial. Ashley and her team at the state's attorney's office would have to prove that Mike was guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt And that was no easy feat They have to convince a jury this was a crime because of the marital exemption law And on top of that they be going up against a strong defense team Ashley the prosecutor remembers He immediately hired a really well-known, high-powered criminal defense attorney in Montgomery County. Mike's legal team knew how to get their clients off. They did it all the time. Before the case even reached the courtroom, they tried to plant doubts about Saskia's story. with Saskia. Mike claimed that Saskia was a willing participant, that she knew about the videos, and consented to them. His attorney ran with it. This wasn't Ashley's first sexual violence case. She'd seen this all before. You get your attorney involved and you try to get in people's heads about the victim right away. luckily Detective Rule and I didn't fall for it. Mike's defense team failed to get the charges dismissed. But they weren't going to give up yet. They were going to come at Saskia hard. That's almost always the defense's strategy in a rape case. To put the victim on trial. In the months that followed, there were several pre-trial hearings. That's when both sides go before the judge to argue what evidence should or should not be admitted. Good morning, Your Honor, Rebecca McVitie on behalf of the state. Good morning, Your Honor. Andrew Jessick and Dave Moeese on behalf of the defendant. You're listening to real audio from Mike's court proceedings. In these hearings, the lawyers went back and forth about one thing, the video evidence. Here's Rebecca McVitie. She worked with Ashley as one of the prosecutors on the case. Your Honor, the state has a motion in Lemonade to exclude any of the, what I would refer to as pornographic images or videos or photographs that were not charged in this case. Rebecca asked the judge to admit only a portion of the Chatterbait videos, the ones where the prosecution could argue force, to get around the marital exemption. Mike's attorneys had other ideas. They wanted to show the jury as many videos as possible. Here's one of Mike's attorneys. We don't want the jury to think that she is just somebody who woke up on October 25th, 2018, and realized, oh my God, my husband has been secretly filming me for the last year and streaming me to 10,000 people. Because if we aren't allowed to show the whole picture, they may actually think that. There are a lot of videos where it's very, very clear that she is playing to the screen and playing to the TV and playing to the camera. Mike's attorney pointed to a few moments in the footage where Saskia's eyes were open. He wanted to use those moments to argue to a jury that Saskia was awake, aware and consenting. Ashley Inderfirth has prosecuted dozens of rape cases, and she reviewed these videos. So we asked her for her professional opinion. Did Saskia know what Mike was doing? There's no doubt in my mind that Saskia had absolutely no idea what was happening to her. Ashley was familiar with the med Saskia was prescribed, and she consulted with medical experts. In our reporting, we did the same. We spoke to psychiatrists who confirmed that Saskia's gaps in memory made sense. Her use of these meds, in combination with alcohol, could explain how she was completely unaware of her surroundings, unconscious, even with her eyes wide open. It's a similar effect to when you get wheeled into the operating room before surgery. You might be awake and talking to nurses while you're going under, but when you wake up, any memory of that is gone. Ashley knew all of this, but more importantly, she knew the facts. This woman was raped and was just finding out about it. I think we all want to believe that things like this can't happen. We could all sleep better at night if Saskia was a crazy person, who, for whatever reason, was out to get her husband and made all this up. But the evidence in this case is so strong when you have the full picture of what happened that what we don't want to believe is what we have to believe. So that's what happened. That's the truth. There's absolutely no way that Saskia knew what was going on. Ashley and her team weren't swayed by the defense's arguments, but maybe a jury would be. If they had any doubt in Saskia's story, Mike could walk free. That's how our legal system is designed. The jury has to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. even if they are 75% there, their job is to acquit. The defense's strategy is always to make the jury feel uncertain. And they weren't just going to sow doubt using the videos. They were prepared to use every shred of evidence they could find to discredit Saskia. Here's an example. At that same pretrial hearing, Mike's attorney alleged that Saskia fulfilled Chatterbait's consent requirements for performers. In order for her to be seen on the screen as she's having sex with her husband, she needed to sign an agreement and put her passport up on the screen and essentially say, I know what Chatterbait is. I agree to be on this portion of the screen live being seen by tens of thousands of people worldwide. and she signed that in October of 2017. She agreed in writing and with her passport. The defense attorney had a copy of the written agreement and a picture of Saskia's passport held up next to her face. I know Saskia and I know what she went through. But when I first heard this, there was a moment when I questioned her story. In our culture, that doubt is never far. We are trained to question rape victims. But then I listened to the rest of the pretrial hearing. Here's Rebecca, one of the prosecutors again. As defense counsel mentioned, chatterbait requires a photograph picture with your passport visible. That photograph defense counsel mentions is actually a picture of the victim smiling at the camera with the defendant's arm behind her. You can see it's his arm by the watch that he's wearing, holding the passport. It was Mike's hand, not Saskia's, holding up her passport for the camera. And as for that signed user agreement... It is an electronic signature, and the return on that is to the defendant's email address. Mike was holding the passport. The signed agreement could be traced to his email. In other words, all roads point back to Mike Levingood. Prosecutors worked for months prepping answers to every one of the defense's allegations. They secured experts to speak to Saskia's state of mind. they wrote opening statements, and they prepared to talk about the content where Saskia's eyes were open. After the pretrial hearings, the judge ruled that Saskia could be asked about the other videos if it came up in her testimony. If the jury found Mike guilty, he could spend decades in prison. But in order for that to happen, the jury would have to believe Saskia. For good, for bad, for ugly, I knew that it would lie on me. The trial was delayed to June, then October. And finally, a date was set for December 2nd, 2019. A full year after Mike was charged. As the day approached, Saskia was nervous. What if the jury bought Mike's story? What if they couldn't see the truth? But none of those questions changed how she felt about taking the stand. She was ready. I wanted him to be in jail. And I felt like testifying against him and holding him accountable would give me back some of my power. On the next episode of Betrayal. I'm from Case 135-0630, State of Maryland, this is Michael Paul Levin. I was very familiar with the statement of charges. But knowing the facts of the case is very different from watching those videos. hope to 64673 or call 1-800-656-HOPE. You are not alone. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your story, email us at BetrayalPod at gmail.com. That is BetrayalPod at gmail.com or follow us on Instagram at BetrayalPod. To access additional content and to connect with the Betrayal community, join our Substack at betrayal.substack.com. We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning. Written and produced by Caitlin Golden. Our supervising producer is Carrie Hartman. Our story editor is Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Olivia Hewitt and Leah Jablo. Production management by Kristen Melchiori. Additional support by Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing by Tanner Robbins with additional editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Special thanks to Saskia, her friends and family. And special thanks to Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman. The trail's theme is composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MyB Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Jill Interstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it, all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. No matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. I dread the conversation with my son. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.