Where do I begin? The story unfolds and you would expect Rod Serling to chime in saying something about the twilight zone…
It started back around Sept 2006. I had a Myspace page up and I certainly was getting my share of female attention. In fact I was out of a 4 year relationship and was liking the ego stroking from so much mail. I added a woman named LeiAnne to my friends list. Her piercing eyes and her overall beauty certainly captured my attention. Over the next few weeks we corresponded and kind of grew into friends. Her familiar picture popping up daily in my Myspace inbox.
Then the Myspace IM was introduced. We both downloaded it and proceeded to use that for hours into the night. I was very excited about this girl. By this time I had a few more pics. Very pretty. Still I knew she was an investor but not too much more about her business life. Then one fateful day in September. She asked me to call her. Now, mind you, at this point everything is safe because it is myspace. Throw in a phone call and it gets real, real fast. I pondered the idea and dismissed it. Well, on her fourth attempt at getting me to call her, I happened to be in Laredo, TX. My friend and I had a few beers in us (I don’t drink too often) and I was feeling good if you know what I mean. She IMed the phone number and I called it.
OH MY GOD!!!! I thought as she answered the phone with the most beautiful Texas accent. Her laugh was like music. I swear I could almost smell her, it was that good. We talked for a good 45 minutes before my friend and I needed to be somewhere. When I got off the phone with LeiAnne, I turned to my friend and said, “I am going to marry that girl!”
Hook, Line and Sinker!
I am really into LeiAnne now. We are definitely getting close and she starts to tell me more about what she does. She was happy to tell me at this point because she knew that I wasn’t in it for the money. I am an engineer and I can take care of myself anyway. OK so anyway she tells me how she is an investor and she helps other people invest their money. Her Clients include: Jason Taylor of the Miami Dolphins, Zach Thomas of the Miami Dolphins, Brian Urlacher, The list goes on and on. Now you say “well there you go, that should have told you something….Right?” Nope, you see I have been on the phone with her when these people call. It is often and the calls go on for hours sometimes. Then one day Tom Brady calls and then sends me an email. Worried that I might think he is trying to move in on “my girl”. Then he added Leianne and I to his top 10 on Myspace. Cool huh? Zach and Jason are like brothers to LeiAnne and very protective.
OK now this is where Joey Harrington from the Falcon (formerly the Miami QB) comes in. He is calling and leaving drunk messages on her phone. This happens for months. By this time we have been talking for a good 6 months…at least. We have both completely stopped going out. We just spend hours on the phone. You ask, “Why haven’t you met yet?” We both have children with our Exs and more than once on both sides has that got in the way of us seeing each other. No big deal.
Now by this time, the “L” word is out in the open. We are totally a match made in heaven. I am regularly corresponding with Pro football players and everything. Then my Jeep starts to have problems. She said, “well I wasn’t going to tell you but I already bought you a truck.” I was stoked 2008 Ford F-350 Superduty. She was even having a custom built wheelchair ramp installed for my 8 y/o son with Cerebral Palsy. I am so blown away. She said I just needed to wait a few weeks for that to be finished. No problem. I could wait for that. So, my jeep gets worse and worse. I don’t bother doing any major repairs to it. I just limp it along, waiting for this truck. A month passes and she really hasn’t brought the truck up very much and my jeep is just about to be parked for the last time. I bring up the truck and she flips out that I am just with her for her money and I am materialistic! Now let me step back a little and say that, I live at this point in a very rural area in AZ. I take my kids for a week at a time 50/50 with the Ex. Now I don’t have a car and this truck is looking like a necessity more than a luxury. Back to her freaking out. So I tell her at this point to cancel the truck because I don’t want it if she thinks I am a materialistic guy. She does just that. I take my jeep in and have $2000 worth of repair done but the worst part is that the repairs took over 3 weeks to get done. Those 3 weeks were hell for myself and my children because we couldn’t go anywhere. I had trouble just getting to the store for food.
But wait, there is more behind door number two…
The boat
Well not a boat, a yacht. Hargrave 70 footer 3 master state rooms and 2 crew states. Just the most beautiful boat you have ever seen. She took me to the website to show me. It was an amazing thing of beauty. Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas bought it for us. It was so awesome. The catch? It is parked in Miami FL. Oh well, vacation is in order I guess… someday.
Meanwhile I get Pepe my jeep back and things seem to get back to normal. The year mark is passing and I am on the phone with LeiAnne when I wake, lunch and from the time I get off until I go to sleep which is usually 2:00am or so. Lets not forget the phone sex almost every night either. We have fought here and there but nothing really serious or anything. Things looked good.
…A day that will live in infamy.
My company was a non-profit and funding was getting short so the boss man calls me in to tell me that I should start looking elsewhere before they ran out of money. Golden opportunity. Here we go. First though, I need to see my kids. It is early Nov. My ex married an Air force Jerk and decided it was ok to take the kids with her. I had a weeks notice. Nothing I could do. So I got the opportunity to spend two weeks with them in CA. My parents live in Santa Cruz….Perfect. I buy a 4runner and I am on my way. I spend two wonderful weeks with my kids and then It is off to TX to meet my woman. She has decided that we are going to get a house in Santa Cruz so I could be near my children. I would just spend a couple of months in TX while her two boys finish basketball season.
Bam….I-40 to Amarillo. 21 hours and 9 redbulls later I am there. Magic moment!!! It is 4:00am the ground is white from weather a little earlier in the evening. It is freezing. I am on the phone with her and I can see her head at the front door window. It’s her… I can see the long straight brown hair. Door opens……….. wait. This can’t be right. She said 128 pounds didn’t she? Wait. That car I parked in front of ,was the loaner she got because her Lexus is in the shop? Hey where did that extra 100 pounds come from? OK, don’t freak. You are not a shallow guy Mike. I walked to the door. She immediately starts kissing me all over. Lets not forget that we are in love…right? In the house we go. We had rehearsed this a thousand times. We were right into bed. Bang!! Its over. I am still in shock and I just slept with a pretty big chic. I stay for two days and one thing I didn’t count on was the affect of being away from my kids would have on me. The situation looking the way it did and me being 1000 miles farther from my kids was a bad mix and late on the third night I packed up and left with her begging me to stay crying the whole time. Tears in my eyes and confused like crazy it was starting to seam like a big lie. But who would go to such extraordinary lengths to fabricate a lie? Nobody. On my way home to Santa Cruz, I can only see this chubby little sad face tormenting my soul!!!! What a jerk I am. Leaving like that. I cried almost all the way home. I almost turned around a hundred times. I called and talked with her in the final hours of my trip and she assured me that everything is OK and that everything is still in the plans to move so don’t worry.
Dang, that’s a shock…
A couple of days later I was on the phone with Leianne…of course. There was a freak accident and a ton of bricks, that fell out of no where, landed right on me!!!! Sort of, you see she is pregnant! Don’t remember much for the next day or so. I know I tried to act normal but I wasn’t thinking that way. But on the bright side, I got a really cool job and started working. She of course was all depressed and having the worst morning sickness ever. I felt so freakin bad. The was barking all the time and I am living in a paradise of a city.
Duh….
I offer to come back. She really wants me to. It is a week before Christmas. I quit my super cool job and “do the right thing.” 21 hours of driving….again!! Pull up. She is so happy to see me and everything seems to go right. On the way I had forgot to make my car payment. Check was written but not in an envelope. No problem she said and mailed my payment off. Oh yeah lets not forget storage bill in AZ where all my stuff is awaiting our big move to Santa Cruz.
OK, now it is basketball games and picking up kids. We even watched her little nephew (which by the way is the funniest 3 year old I have ever met). It is rolling around to about 5 weeks in country. She doesn’t want me to work because we are moving anyway and she has plenty of money….tied up in trust…but that is getting worked out. We are over at her sisters watching her nephew. I go to use her nieces laptop and check on my car payments. I just need the phone number to Wachovia. I get to the Wachovia home page and the damn internet goes down. Its 5 degrees outside and the wind is whippin’. I try the phone and it is down too. DSL….Phone and internet down….. 5 degrees outside….. could happen.
The next day I need to take her son to the mall. On the way I ask him about the lake house they used to live in. I got the total “deer in the headlights” look. Leianne of course hears about this and asks me why I was asking him about it. I was just making conversation I said. She told me well just ask him about the Tanglewood house. He will know what that is. So the next day I asked her other son about the tanglewood house. He swore up and down that they did not ever life in tanglewood. Then of course he told his mom wondering why I was asking about tanglewood. This is the moment where my red flags became really real and I started to worry about my situation. She told her son that it was OK to talk about the tanglewood house with me. This happened right in front of me and I knew that her son wasn’t lying to me to begin with. A big lie was sitting right there just flopping around like a big ol’ bass.
Fight or Flight
I immediately started freaking out…inside. I turned right into Sherlock Holmes. I got on the computer and went right to Wachovia and signed up for online access. Denied do to an account problem. I tried over and over again. Same result. I couldn’t find her cell so I waited until morning to call. Oh my god, her cell phone is gone!!!! We can’t find it anywhere. Two or three days go by and no cell phone. Her sons phone is broken all of the sudden and her other sons isn’t working either. I can’t even call my kids and I am freaking out. I finally use her sisters cell phone to call Wachovia…
Oh Shit!@!@!#!#@
I get a hold of Wachovia I talk to the really nice lady about the status of my loan…. 2 months overdue!!!!!! I immediately call the storage place…. Two months overdue!!!!!!!! Oh my god!!! I tell Leianne, that is it I am gone! I asked her if anything was real? Her response, “I don’t have to prove anything to you.” I get in my car and go fro a drive. I go right to her sisters house and talk with them. They are blown away! They can’t believe it and then they inform me about why the internet and phone were out. They cam home and their bedroom door was locked and the DSL connection was unplugged. Also one of their cordless phones was in the closet under a bunch of blankets off the hook. Remember this is the reason I couldn’t get on the Wachovia site or call. They inform me that she doesn’t know any of the people that she said she did and have watched her on several occasions talk into a kids play cell phone for hours while on the phone with me at the same time!!!!!!!!!!!!! I then when to work on the computer. Being that I am a software engineer I felt I could do a little digging.
We had tried to order some parts from an electronics place online. It of course didn’t go through. I tried to log into the account created to buy the stuff. None of the common passwords worked. I then went for a lost password recovery. You know email it. I knew the email password. I got in and it wasn’t any password I had seen before. Then on a hunch. I tried that password to log into Jason Taylors private email….I got in. How about Zach Thomas…..Yup.
I can not begin to tell you the level of betrayal I felt. Knowing I have children and one in a wheelchair for God sake. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t. We all have a basic belief that humanity no matter how bad they are will stop somewhere. A conscience, not seen to often, will poke its head up and stop somebody from doing something like this. The extent that this was taken involved lots of people and webs upon webs of lies. I am hurt because, yes I did love her and I wanted so bad to believe her.
What now….
I live at home with Mommy and Daddy. I am 37 years old and I still have not got a job after a month of being back. Not from lack of trying either.
So if this is worth anything, that is my story.
Some stuff was left out due to lack of interest in reliving this for nothing. However if this appeals to the readers then by all means I would be happy to give the full story.
My name is Michael and I swear all of this to be true.
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