Pod Insights Betrayal Deb | Featured on ABC's Betrayal: Secrets and Lies About this episode You can now watch Deb’s story on TV! Check out Betrayal: Secrets and Lies. Episodes air every Sunday at 10pm EST/9pm CST on ABC.
The Canadian police have a 30-year cold case, and only Deb can help them solve it.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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2:32 Speaker 00 Hi, it's Andrea. And we are re-releasing some of our past weekly episodes, and there's a good reason why. For the last year, I have been working with ABC on turning some of your favorite episodes of Betrayal Weekly into a TV show. The show is called Betrayal, Secrets, and Lies, and it airs every Sunday at 10:00 PM on ABC. This week, we are re-releasing Deb Proctor's story. You may have heard Deb's story before, or you may be new to her story. A little bit about Deb. She is an incredible and beautiful spirit. If you talk to her, you know instantly she is just a genuine, good person and a good friend, a true advocate. And in my conversations with Deb,
3:15 Speaker 00 sure, we talked about her experience of betrayal in life. But what I really wanted to pick her brain about was golf. She's an avid golfer, and you hear a little bit about that in the episode. I just started learning, so I even sent her videos of my swing. Why does this matter to betrayal? Well, for me, learning something new is to confront and push through failure. It's pushing through discomfort and self-criticism. It's celebrating the small wins. And it's about showing up. Deb has overcome so much in her life, from addiction to betrayal. And today, I hope she is on a golf course somewhere, celebrating how far she's come.
3:57 Speaker 00 If you have not heard this story, I won't give any more away. Hearing Deb's story is fascinating, but seeing it unfold is a whole new experience. So please be sure to check out Betrayal, Secrets, and Lies on ABC and Hulu to see Deb and where her story takes place. Enjoy the episode.
4:21 Speaker 04 It was a profound moment. It's the duality of, "Oh my God. What in the world? Who is this cruel? Who can pull this off? Whose friends pull it off? How do you fabricate the details like that?"
4:58 Speaker 00 I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.
5:10 Speaker 04 My real name is Deborah, but typically everyone calls me Deb.
5:15 Speaker 00 Deb Proctor grew up on the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. She recently retired from her role as the Senior Director of her tribe's Domestic Violence Program. And before that, she spent her entire career as a nurse.
5:29 Speaker 04 After being a RIN for, well now, it's been 48 and a half years.
5:35 Speaker 00 Like a lot of people in the medical profession, she developed a keen sense for when someone is lying.
5:41 Speaker 04 When you mention bullshit detectors, I can spot them a football field away or further.
5:47 Speaker 00 Deb is Cherokee and proud of her Native American heritage.
5:52 Speaker 04 My grandmother, who lived until she was 99 years old, she is actually our family's original enrollee, which means she is on the Dawes Roll.
6:04 Speaker 00 The Dawes Roll was a list compiled by the US government in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And named about 100,000 Native Americans who were allotted land.
6:15 Speaker 04 Which was pretty unusual to have an original roly in your life for most of it.
6:21 Speaker 00 Growing up, Deb's grandmother was a constant presence and a source of inspiration.
6:26 Speaker 04 I think I got a lot of my proper will and strength and courage from her. She was born before statehood and she was still stacking her own wood when she was in her early 90s. She was a survivor of many, many situations in her life.
6:50 Speaker 00 Her grandmother experienced a lot of violence firsthand. Deb's father did too. As a child, his own father was murdered in front of him.
6:59 Speaker 04 Those life events are what gives the background and the experience to what we would call intergenerational trauma or historical trauma.
7:13 Speaker 00 She saw the impact of that on her family. There was alcoholism and emotional turmoil. And when she was young, Deb struggled to process it.
7:23 Speaker 04 When you're a very sensitive nature child, your little heart's open and you're intuitive. You pick up that energy.
7:34 Speaker 00 From a young age, she experienced violence and abuse herself.
7:39 Speaker 04 The violence I experienced, I truly in my heart know that it's as a result of those that could not heal.
7:52 Speaker 00 Deb believes her father's unresolved trauma led him to become a civil servant.
7:57 Speaker 04 He taught me a lot about community service. He would be in his vehicle, driving through the rural areas, seeing what the natives needed. And ultimately, he was a councilman for our tribe, served many, many years.
8:13 Speaker 00 Deb grew up quickly in more ways than one. In fact, on her 16th birthday, her high school boyfriend surprised her.
8:21 Speaker 04 They had a birthday party for me and he asked me to marry him and I accepted. That was the day I turned 16.
8:30 Speaker 00 But her engagement didn't distract her from prioritizing education. Her father insisted that she earn an advanced degree.
8:38 Speaker 04 He was the one in the family who said, "You must have an education." And so at age 17, I did start college and I finished at 19 with my first RN degree. That was as a result of my dad pushing me.
8:55 Speaker 00 Before she even had a chance to know herself, she was married and working as a full-time nurse.
9:01 Speaker 04 I mean, I'm running the hospital as a baby nurse. I'd probably turn 20, maybe 21 by then. It was tough, but I spent a good part of my energy on trying to achieve perfection.
9:17 Speaker 00 Deb and her husband shared a very similar upbringing.
9:21 Speaker 04 He came from a violent background, very similar to mine. And so we just went together like peanut butter and jelly.
9:30 Speaker 00 They had two sons together, but a few years into marriage, her husband's behavior became a problem.
9:37 Speaker 04 He struggled with drugs and drinking and he had violent tendencies. It was really hard.
9:47 Speaker 00 She eventually left her husband and resolved to end the cycle of violence, to make a safe and stable environment for her and her two sons.
9:55 Speaker 04 And so for many years, I remained single and just spent time with myself and the boys. And so for the next few years after we divorced, I sought to understand. I bought books, I joined book clubs, anything on self-understanding.
10:15 Speaker 00 She started going to therapy and joined support groups for families impacted by alcoholism. She was creating a better life for herself and for her sons. When her sons became teenagers, she looked around and realized.
10:29 Speaker 04 I did want a partner in life. You know, someone to enjoy life that I meant something to, that I mattered to.
10:37 Speaker 00 She was 41 and felt ready to explore a new partnership. So she made an online dating profile. This was 1997, back when online dating was a novel concept.
10:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, this ain't Bumble, this ain't, yeah, this is none of that stuff.
10:53 Speaker 00 One man piqued her interest. His name was Jeff Walton.
10:58 Speaker 04 His profile was just romantic. It was something like, "I'm looking for my Guinevere."
11:08 Speaker 00 Jeff said he wanted to treat his next partner like a queen. Deb wrote him an email. He lived a couple of states away in Kentucky. But their conversation flowed easily. And Deb quickly discovered they shared the same interests. They both loved golf. And Jeff wanted to hear more about Deb's Cherokee culture.
11:27 Speaker 04 You know, the music, a spiritual journey. He loved the Native American spiritual practices. And when I talked to him, I was just smitten with him.
11:39 Speaker 00 She looked forward to his phone calls and emails.
11:42 Speaker 04 I saved all of that. I printed everything. I had a huge three-inch purple binder with all of our exchanges.
11:52 Speaker 00 As they got closer, she got to know more about his backstory.
11:56 Speaker 04 He was born in Alaska and moved to Canada.
12:02 Speaker 00 He was a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. And he had a complicated relationship with his biological family.
12:10 Speaker 04 He didn't know his real dad. His stepdad was very violent. And he would share stories, like, you know, his stepdad murdered the family poodle in front of his sister and his mom and him. And, I mean, it was horrible stories.
12:30 Speaker 00 Deb had seen her share of violence as well. She understood what it was like. So they bonded over their difficult childhoods. Jeff's family was still in Canada, but they'd fallen out of touch. He moved to New Orleans as a young man. And along the way, he picked up the accent.
12:47 Speaker 04 So when he would talk to me on the phone, he would have that, you know, dialect. He would say, "Hello, darlin', and I mean, darlin', yeah, I can't do it, but it was definitely New Orleans."
13:01 Speaker 00 Jeff's ex-wife and adult son still lived in New Orleans. But after his divorce, he'd taken a job in Kentucky.
13:09 Speaker 04 He was a project manager for a big construction company that, you know, worked on Toyota plants, that worked on the University of Kentucky, that had done all this great work.
13:20 Speaker 00 Jeff was the kind of person who'd lived a million lives in one.
13:24 Speaker 04 He just fascinated me. He was a pilot and played football for Woody Hayes at Ohio State and was phenomenal.
13:37 Speaker 00 Jeff could really see herself with this guy.
13:39 Speaker 04 We're gonna embark upon this journey together. We love music. We love golf. We're both seekers. I just was so excited about meeting this man.
13:51 Speaker 00 After a year of talking, they decided to finally meet each other in person. Jeff flew to Oklahoma. And when he arrived at the airport, she was waiting for him with a gift.
14:03 Speaker 04 I'd had a traditional healer, a medicine man, had gone to him and asked him to bead a feather. There was a song by Robbie Robertson, and the name of it was "Golden Feather." "Give My Love A Golden Feather." And if you were to look it up, it's "So That I Never Lose My Way Home." And I thought, what a beautiful expression of love for this new man in my life, to give him a feather, because he loves that Native American song so much. So I met him at the plane with that, and I said, "Here's So You Can Always Find Your Way Home."
14:46 Speaker 00 And Jeff had come with a surprise of his own.
14:50 Speaker 04 Soon as he got off the plane and he was walking toward me, it seemed like his voice was shaking. And he said, "You will marry me, won't you? You're gonna marry me, right? You are marrying me, right?"
15:05 Speaker 00 That was Jeff's marriage proposal.
15:08 Speaker 04 And I was like, well, of course, of course, yes.
15:13 Speaker 00 The weekend could not have gone better. Jeff wanted to get to know her world.
15:18 Speaker 04 You know, I drove around, showed him the rural area, my history, some of the culture, where I worked. We went out to my golf course. I introduced him to a lot of my friends, met the family. It was just a really good weekend. I just loved him, just loved him.
15:40 Speaker 00 They started making arrangements for him to move to Oklahoma.
15:44 Speaker 04 And I'm a planner and an organizer in every aspect of my life. So, shoot, the next thing you know, I'm getting busy. I'm helping him find jobs. He's getting his resume. Of course, we're still using faxes then, and he would send things and I would write cover letters for him to help him get relocated.
16:03 Speaker 00 A few months later, Jeff moved in. They spent the next year planning a small family wedding in the Ozarks.
16:12 Speaker 04 We married on April 23rd, 2000.
16:17 Speaker 00 It was the anniversary of the day they met in person. Deb's youngest son walked her down the aisle, and Jeff's son, little Jeff, flew in to support his dad. It was a true merging of their lives.
16:29 Speaker 04 I really thought it was meant to be.
16:36 Speaker 00 They planned their first trip together as newlyweds, a golf trip with Deb's group of friends. Deb had been golfing for her entire life. Every year, she and her friends traveled the country to play. Jeff was eager to join. He'd been an avid golfer when he was younger, but he hadn't played in years.
16:53 Speaker 04 So he lost these golf clubs. Well, heck, you know, I gotta go buying golf clubs, you know, because he's gotta have golf clubs if I'm gonna play. So then he needed lessons because he just hadn't got to play in a while, he said, needed to brush up.
17:08 Speaker 00 But on their first golf trip with her friends.
17:11 Speaker 04 Once we got all the scores in and everything, the winner was him.
17:17 Speaker 04 And I was like, well, golly, great job.
17:20 Speaker 00 But Deb's friends were standoffish with Jeff about his win. And one of her friends was quick to point out.
17:26 Speaker 04 A real golfer is not going to leave their clubs behind. It doesn't make sense.
17:33 Speaker 00 Her friends had never acted like this before. She didn't know what happened, and neither did Jeff. But after that, they weren't invited on any more golf trips.
17:44 Speaker 04 I felt like everybody was mistreating him.
17:47 Speaker 00 A year into their marriage, Jeff was still struggling to find the right job in Oklahoma. One day, when Deb was helping him with an application.
17:56 Speaker 04 Well, I found an old resume. And on this particular resume, it says Vietnam Veteran. I was like, my God.
18:07 Speaker 00 He'd never told her he was a veteran, but Deb had a lot of experience with the VA. While getting her advanced nursing degree, she worked on a program at the VA that specifically studied Vietnam veterans with PTSD.
18:22 Speaker 04 I'm like, you never told me you were a veteran. You never told me you were in the Vietnam War. That is a significant event in life. I was flabbergasted. It had never come up. And he said, well, I don't like to talk about it, Deb. I use it on my resumes because, you know, that ought to tell you something. I was like, but you should have told me. I should never found out here.
18:54 Speaker 00 Deb felt like he needed to talk about it, even if he didn't want to. She'd had firsthand experience with veterans and PTSD.
19:03 Speaker 04 And so, over the course of time, he began to tell me what happened. It was an elaborate story, intricate details.
19:14 Speaker 00 As an 18-year-old, he'd been in the Special Forces in Vietnam. One night, he caught his senior officers using drugs. Fearing he would turn them in, the officers allowed Jeff to be captured. He was held as a prisoner of war, and for months, he was tortured.
19:32 Speaker 04 And they busted his feet with the butt of a gun so that he couldn't walk. But he got out and he escaped and he made it back to the US forces by following the path of a stream. And it was so difficult because his feet were busted up.
19:55 Speaker 00 He was taken to a veterans hospital.
19:57 Speaker 04 He had to have metal put in his feet because they were broken. And if we flew anywhere, it would trigger the metal alarms as you go in.
20:09 Speaker 00 He recovered physically and was discharged. But psychologically, he was scarred.
20:15 Speaker 04 The trauma was so bad, he said it was just so awful that sometimes he would just get in the closet and he would just hide.
20:26 Speaker 00 Deb was worried about his mental health, especially because his support system was thin. He was in a new place and wasn't in touch with his biological family. So Deb was happy when his siblings reached out to reconnect. They invited him back to Canada.
20:42 Speaker 04 His siblings had said that his mother's 80th birthday party was coming up and they wanted him to come. And he talked to them about it and I said, well, we've got to. I've never met any of your family and absolutely.
20:58 Speaker 00 A few months later, they flew to Alberta to meet his family. They hadn't seen Jeff in decades. They were elated to welcome him home. And Deb never thought she'd get the chance to meet his siblings.
21:09 Speaker 04 I finally got to meet his family. I was just so excited to be there and to meet them. And, you know, at one of the brothers' houses, we might play games and just chat and get to know each other.
21:25 Speaker 00 Deb fit right in.
21:26 Speaker 04 We didn't have any serious, meaningful conversations about life or anything. We were just doing a friendly, cordial, meet the family thing. He was up B, everyone was up B. It was a good trip.
21:46 Speaker 00 It was a good trip. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Deb didn't know it at the time, but everyone there was in on a secret. Everyone except for her. Her husband Jeff wasn't who he said he was. In fact, everyone in his family knew Jeff by a different name.
22:07 Speaker 04 Come to find out, he met his siblings at the door and told him, "I'm going by Jeff Walton now. I'll tell you later."
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24:08 Speaker 04 I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland
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25:12 Speaker 00 Deb and her husband went to Canada to reconnect with his estranged family. And to her surprise, the trip was a success. Meeting his family brought the two of them closer. But one day after they returned from their trip, Jeff collapsed on the golf course.
25:29 Speaker 04 And a friend of ours found him sitting up against a tree and wanted him to let him take him into the hospital. And he said, no, just take me to my car. And so he did that. He got in his car and he drove home.
25:46 Speaker 00 Deb met him at their house and forced him to go to the hospital. Jeff had suffered a major heart attack. It would require ongoing care. But Jeff still hadn't nailed down a steady job, so the couple needed help covering his medical expenses. Deb had worked at the VA years ago and insisted it was their best resource.
26:07 Speaker 04 And he absolutely said, "I will not go. I don't trust the government. I'm not going." And I said, "Well, that's bullshit. We're going broke. We've got to get your health care."
26:22 Speaker 00 That's when Jeff explained, "The VA wouldn't take him."
26:26 Speaker 04 He said, "They don't even have a list of me because I was dishonorably discharged because I reported to officers. They won't even have me on the, well, anything to do with the VA." And I said, "That's bullshit. You were a soldier. You were captured." And he said, "I won't go." He got up and he never talked about it again.
26:53 Speaker 04 In that moment, I was like, "That is weird."
27:00 Speaker 00 His explanation just didn't add up. Deb even considered hiring someone to look into Jeff's background.
27:08 Speaker 04 "I wonder if I need to get a private investigator or something." And I logged on to the internet. And then I was like, "God, I don't have any money to get a private detective."
27:21 Speaker 00 She didn't have the money or the time to hire a P.I. Shortly after Jeff's heart attack, he had a stroke. Then, his memory began to falter. All the while, he was refusing to go to the VA. It financially strained the family, and Deb was at a loss.
27:40 Speaker 04 I had begun to say, "I do not know what is wrong with my life. How am I going to get this guy health care? He's got to have health care."
27:50 Speaker 00 Deb was his primary caretaker, on top of her full-time nursing job. It was overwhelming.
27:57 Speaker 04 I began to drink, and then I drank heavily. And then it was uncontrollably.
28:04 Speaker 00 Alcohol became an escape from her marriage and its problems.
28:08 Speaker 04 When I started drinking, I didn't have to be confused anymore because my brain was numb.
28:14 Speaker 00 Deb had spent so many years taking care of other people that she neglected herself.
28:20 Speaker 04 I was the person that was going to Al-Anon from the mid-'80s, taking family, taking coworkers, taking friends to AANA rehab. I was taking everybody to get help. But myself had, I guess, reached just a hard stop where I couldn't deal with it.
28:42 Speaker 00 Deb had just turned 50 and had been with Jeff for a decade, but life with him was becoming harder year after year. At first, he failed to bring in a steady income. Then, when he became sick, he refused resources for affordable health care. Deb turned to booze for the stress. But one day, after a long night of drinking, she found herself too shaky to put the golf ball on the tee. She checked herself into a 30-day rehab.
29:10 Speaker 04 Best move I ever made. I'm not going to tell you it was pretty. It was ugly. But there's always been a driving force within me to rise above.
29:23 Speaker 00 Being alone in rehab gave her a lot of clarity. And with that clarity came questions, specifically about Jeff. When she left rehab, she looked at Jeff's behavior with a new set of eyes.
29:36 Speaker 04 I began to really observe. He was strange. Something was not right, not right.
29:47 Speaker 00 She wasn't ready to leave the marriage. Her focus was on her new sobriety. But she did come up with a plan. To get some answers out of Jeff, she gave him an assignment.
29:58 Speaker 04 And I began to say to him, "Jeff, every day while I'm at work, I want you to work on your life story because I don't understand it. You told me you were born in Alaska and you moved to Canada. But I don't know where you even went to school. I don't even know when you moved to Canada. If something happens, I'm going to be honest with you. I can't even write an obituary."
30:26 Speaker 00 She thought it would be a good exercise for both of them. And she hoped it could help her understand why he was the way he was.
30:35 Speaker 04 And so every day I would come home and I would go, "Well, share your story with me." "Well, I couldn't work on it today."
30:42 Speaker 00 After his stroke, Jeff's memory was worse than ever.
30:46 Speaker 04 He began to claim that he just didn't have much of a memory. But the neurologist at the time of his stroke had already advised me that the stroke was not going to impact his memory. And he wanted me to get him checked for possible early dementia.
31:02 Speaker 00 He needed more care than she could provide at home. So she applied for him to be in a funded outpatient care facility. And he was accepted.
31:11 Speaker 04 It's a wonderful program that where you stay in your home. But they basically have a center that's open during the day. And there's activities and transportation. There's clinic on site, everything that you could need. And if you need something outside, they'll take you.
31:28 Speaker 00 He started going to the center every day. That was until...
31:32 Speaker 04 The program called me and they said, "Have you talked to Jeff? Because nobody can find him. He's gone."
31:40 Speaker 00 Deb was at work. She didn't know where he was. With his memory issues, she worried he could have gotten lost. So they called the police.
31:49 Speaker 04 Come to find out, he had left the group and the care team to go to the bank.
31:56 Speaker 00 When Deb got there, Jeff seemed confused about what was happening. The whole situation confirmed that he really needed this facility. His memory must be worse than she thought. But shortly after Jeff's incident at the bank, Deb received another phone call. Only this one would change her life forever.
32:15 Speaker 04 It was a number I didn't recognize. And I typically didn't pick those up in my office.
32:21 Speaker 00 It was an international call. But Deb had a strange feeling. When she picked up, there was a police officer on the other line.
32:30 Speaker 04 And I was like, what is this about?
32:33 Speaker 00 The officer was Canadian and he was investigating a cold case from 30 years ago.
32:39 Speaker 04 That's when he began to say that they were looking for Ron Stan and they had believed that they tracked him down through social media.
32:49 Speaker 00 But Deb didn't know a Ron Stan. The officer continued, explaining that Canadian police had been looking for a man named Ron Stan for over 30 years. He disappeared during a fire.
33:02 Speaker 04 There was a fire in his barn at night and initially he was presumed to have been in that fire and he had left a wife, infant and another child.
33:17 Speaker 00 Deb's blood ran cold. She knew what the officer was about to say before he said it. The man she was married to, who she knew as Jeff Walton.
33:28 Speaker 04 Was actually a complete fraud.
33:32 Speaker 04 He was Ron Stan to this missing person.
33:36 Speaker 00 Here's the thing about Ron Stan. He was originally declared dead, but in reality, he'd been on the run ever since that barn fire.
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36:22 Speaker 00 Of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment. The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.
37:04 Speaker 00 Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.
37:20 Speaker 00 11 years into her marriage, Deb Proctor got a phone call out of the blue from a Canadian police officer. They were looking for Ron Stan, a Canadian man who'd been missing and later declared dead after an arson fire in 1977. And they believed they'd found him in the United States. He was hiding out in a rural part of the Cherokee Nation, using the name Jeff Walton. When the police explained this to Deb.
37:48 Speaker 04 Initially, I thought it was perhaps just a cruel joke.
37:53 Speaker 00 So she asked the officer for proof, for details.
37:57 Speaker 04 The more I pushed for dates, times, names, locations, the more I realized, oh, ugh.
38:08 Speaker 00 She didn't say much on the phone. She just listened, writing down everything the police told her.
38:14 Speaker 04 Every detail, dates, times, information, I still have that notepad.
38:22 Speaker 00 Canadian officials wanted to speak to Jeff, or Ron, directly. Deb explained that he was in a care facility during the day because of his memory problems. She confirmed their home address, thanked the officer, and hung up the phone in disbelief.
38:37 Speaker 04 I was sitting there when there was a nurse that looked at me from the office door, and she said, "Are you okay?" I remember saying, "I don't know. I've just had the most bizarre phone call." So I went to talk to my director of nursing, and she said, "Get out of here. What in the world?"
38:56 Speaker 00 She debated whether this phone call was real, if the person on the phone was even a police officer. A coworker who was afraid for Deb suggested another possibility.
39:07 Speaker 04 He probably is in witness protection, and you just blew it. So you're probably not safe, nor is he. And they said, "We'll go with you to the Cherokee Nation Marshals, and we will get to the bottom of this."
39:24 Speaker 00 So Deb went straight there. She wanted to know if the call she'd received was real, or if Jeff could be in witness protection. An investigator took Deb's concerns seriously and started making calls.
39:37 Speaker 04 I gave her the cell number, the badge number, and everything from the officer that called. And she did call, and she confirmed every last detail.
39:48 Speaker 00 She verified that Jeff Walton didn't exist. Her husband of 11 years was a missing person. A man named Ronald Stan, who'd faked his death in an arson fire and had been on the run for 30 years.
40:04 Speaker 04 I was just heartsick, gutsick, heartsick. My whole body responded. And all I could think of was, "Who are you? How could you do this?"
40:18 Speaker 00 When Ronald Stan disappeared from his farm in rural Ontario in 1977, he abandoned his wife and two young sons. In order to escape, he had lit his barn on fire, killing all the animals. His family watched the blaze helpless, fearing that Ron was trapped inside.
40:36 Speaker 04 That poor wife and those two sons that he walked away from in this barn fire in the middle of the night. What horror, what pain, what trauma that they must have endured, thinking that they were watching him burn up in front of their eyes.
40:56 Speaker 00 Why he'd faked his death, Deb wouldn't find out until much later. In that moment, she just knew she couldn't go home, not to the house she shared with him. He was a criminal, a fraud, a total stranger. So the Cherokee Marshals helped her come up with an immediate plan.
41:18 Speaker 04 Go to an attorney, go to the bank, and get protection. So that's what I did.
41:25 Speaker 00 She made an appointment with a divorce attorney for the following day, and a friend offered to let Deb stay at her place while she figured out her next move.
41:34 Speaker 04 I just was in a state of robot, just trying to put one foot in front of the other, and then formulate a plan on how to tell the family.
41:48 Speaker 00 She met with her sons to break the news, and with all of their support, she called Jeff's son, the one he'd had in America after he went on the run. After all, he was the only child Deb knew about.
42:02 Speaker 04 I loved that boy. He was my son, too, you know? He was a third son. So my heart hurt for him, just like it did for my boys, to tell him.
42:12 Speaker 00 Everyone in the family called him Little Jeff. He was named after his father, or rather, his father's alias.
42:20 Speaker 04 And his response was, you know, silent initially, as you could imagine, and then just struggling.
42:29 Speaker 04 We both needed some time to just deal.
42:32 Speaker 00 The one person she didn't want to speak with was Jeff.
42:36 Speaker 04 I really did not have any communication with him whatsoever. I just had nothing to say.
42:45 Speaker 00 When the authorities finally got ahold of Jeff, they questioned him and asked to see his proof of identity.
42:51 Speaker 04 He admitted to everything.
42:54 Speaker 00 In fact, he seemed amused. He made a joke to police officers, asking what took them so long. Because the arson had happened so long ago, the statute of limitations had expired in Canada, and authorities in the US couldn't charge him either.
43:11 Speaker 04 There was no charges to be made here, you know? He's a scam, but there's no charges that I could file.
43:19 Speaker 00 The only legal action Deb could take was filing for divorce.
43:23 Speaker 04 The domestic violence service of the tribe helped me and just took the papers. And when they served in the papers, he just signed it. He didn't even question it.
43:36 Speaker 00 The news caught wind of the story, and it was a media frenzy.
43:40 Speaker 04 Media showed up from Canada, from Oklahoma, from the UK. I just didn't have any peace. I could rarely go home. My phone rang constantly. I was just completely overwhelmed.
43:54 Speaker 00 Deb's niece drafted a statement to send to the press on her behalf, and Deb kept tabs on the news. That's how she learned Jeff's real-life story, the one he claimed he couldn't remember. A journalist with the Toronto Star had been reporting on it. Through their investigation, they uncovered a possible motivation for why he faked his death.
44:16 Speaker 04 Evidently, he was messing with young college girls, and he was getting ready to get in trouble.
44:23 Speaker 00 At the time of the arson, Ron was working at a college in Canada. He was having a relationship with a local girl who was much younger. The day he went missing, it seemed this information was about to be revealed. It's not clear how old the girl was, but the threat of being discovered prompted him to go on the run for three decades. Deb also learned how he pulled it off.
44:47 Speaker 04 When he left Canada in the fire and came to New Orleans, he said, "I've got to find a woman with money."
44:54 Speaker 00 He did. In fact, he had two other marriages he'd never told Deb about. And after he found a woman with money, he needed papers to validate his new identity.
45:05 Speaker 04 He got a social security from somebody that had died in the 70s, a girl. So he took over her social security.
45:14 Speaker 00 He used his stolen identity to find work and even collect social security benefits.
45:21 Speaker 04 That's how he worked in the decades that he came to the United States. He used this social security and false name. I don't know how anybody pulls this off. It's so elaborate.
45:34 Speaker 00 When the story broke, Jeff himself spoke to the media about how and why he faked his death, and he seemed to revel in it.
45:42 Speaker 04 He sought that attention. He wanted to be a star.
45:47 Speaker 00 He said he chose the name Jeff because it was the name of his infant son he abandoned in Canada. And the last name Walton was inspired by the TV show, The Waltons. It sounded like a classic American last name. As for the documents he used to marry Deb, they appeared to be forged.
46:06 Speaker 04 I had seen his birth certificate, and I still have it. But when you look, there are things that have been changed.
46:18 Speaker 00 Like the arson, too much time had passed for him to be charged in the US with identity fraud. And what about his elaborate stories? Like being a prisoner of war in Vietnam?
46:29 Speaker 04 It's all made up.
46:31 Speaker 00 That's why he was so resistant to using the VA. He never fought in the Vietnam War. He wasn't even an American citizen. The POW story? Well, he ripped those details straight out of a movie called Platoon, starring Charlie Sheen and his football career at Ohio State with Woody Hayes.
46:52 Speaker 04 There was never anybody that played football so Woody Hayes by his name, ever.
46:59 Speaker 00 Deb was left wondering if anything he'd ever told her was true. Today, she doubts if he'd even swung a golf club before she met him. After all his lies were exposed, one of Deb's friends finally came clean about something. Remember the golf trip where Deb's friends iced them out? Well, back then, the group had discovered that...
47:22 Speaker 04 He cheated all day. He never counts his strokes, and when he was out of bounds, he never counted it.
47:29 Speaker 00 He cheated and basically stole a pot of money from Deb's friends. That's why they were never invited to play with the group again. Even his memory issues were a lie. When he talked to the press after the fact, he seemed to remember every detail just fine. So what was really going on that day when he went missing from the facility and was found at the bank? Deb suspects he was planning an escape. She also wonders if he targeted her because she lives in a rural part of the Cherokee Nation.
48:03 Speaker 04 It's very possible because, look, this is rural. This is a dead end road. Maybe he did think, hey, I can get out in the woods in rural Oklahoma and continue to hide.
48:15 Speaker 00 One of the most baffling aspects of his deception is that visit to Canada a few years into their marriage. Back then, the reunion seemed completely normal. But behind the scenes, Jeff had asked all of his family members to use his new name instead of calling him Ron. They said they were so happy to see him again that they obliged.
48:38 Speaker 04 They did it because they'd lost him once and they didn't want to lose him again. I think they were just so happy to have him back in their lives.
48:47 Speaker 00 There's clearly so much more to his family dynamics than she'll ever know. It still doesn't sit right with her.
48:54 Speaker 04 What makes it okay that you support this kind of deception?
49:00 Speaker 00 In the beginning, she didn't even know how to refer to him, what name to call him by, whether to call him Ron or Jeff.
49:08 Speaker 04 But I had a really dear friend. She nicknamed him Ref. And so for a while, when I referred to him, it was Ref. But now I usually just say Jeff.
49:18 Speaker 00 In the weeks after his double life was revealed, Deb was emotionally destroyed. It all happened in her first year of sobriety. Jeff moved back to New Orleans with his son, and Deb was left alone in the house they shared.
49:34 Speaker 04 I just remember it was a profound moment. It's the duality of, oh, my God, what in the world? Along with, you have to live. You have to deal with this and go on. And I remember just laying in the floor, just face down, and just sobbing and saying, my God, how does another human do this to a human in the guise of love?
50:09 Speaker 00 In that moment, she couldn't get up. It felt like her world had ended.
50:15 Speaker 04 I just had so much pain and confusion. I got on my knees. I leaned into a chair, and I just kept praying and asking for help. And just, if you can get me on my feet, I will go forward. I will keep my sobriety. I promise, I promise. I made a commitment to live life, to help others, to be the best person I can, to be loving, kind. I mean, those were the things I'd always been. But I was not going to let this make me harsh and hateful.
50:50 Speaker 00 In the throes of despair, she gained vivid clarity.
50:54 Speaker 04 You know, we often talk of spiritual awakenings. I feel like I've had a few in my life, but that was profound, profound.
51:05 Speaker 04 And when I stood up, you know, I was still crying, but I wasn't suffering as much. I didn't feel the pain as deep at the betrayal or shock. And I knew that when I stood up, that it was something greater than me. It said, get up. You got work to do. Go on.
51:28 Speaker 00 She got up that day, and she's stayed on her feet ever since.
51:33 Speaker 04 I made a commitment to do that in that moment, and I've never turned back. And I've never tried to rewrite the story. And I don't want to live in bitterness. I still wanted to be open-hearted and help others. And that's what set the tone for the years to where we are today.
51:55 Speaker 00 She's now 11 years sober.
51:57 Speaker 04 I maintain sobriety. I was dedicated to my meetings, and I was dedicated to the spiritual journey and dealing with my loss and grief and shock.
52:13 Speaker 00 She took on a leadership role in her tribe as director of a program providing resources and support to victims of domestic violence.
52:22 Speaker 04 I would say you've still got to stay working on your emotional health because it's a tough service. What I know for sure is that we can't help others adequately or appropriately if we haven't began our own work to here. I feel like I'm more effective in these last years because of all the work I've done.
52:51 Speaker 00 In 2019, she got a call from Jeff's son. Jeff had passed away.
52:57 Speaker 04 It was a sense of relief. But also, all the emotions that flood into that moment, you just have to hold them.
53:06 Speaker 00 In the last few years, her life has taken an unexpected turn.
53:10 Speaker 04 I just recently married on September 7th, and I never saw it coming. Both of us are nevers. And it was the most beautiful wedding outdoors, overlooking the lake. It was just beautiful, romantic, just wonderful.
53:29 Speaker 00 After all, she did make a commitment to being open-hearted. Her new husband meets her at her level, and he's put in the work too.
53:38 Speaker 04 He is also sober, him forty-something years. Both of us love golf, both of us love music. It's just a blessing for us both. We feel so grateful. It's too bad we're meeting each other at seventy and sixty-seven, but here we are.
53:58 Speaker 00 We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question. Why did you want to share your story?
54:04 Speaker 04 If my story could help others identify lies from their partner earlier, that's one part. The real part is, we can heal, and we can have a good life, and we can live well. The trauma, and the pain, and the suffering, and the sorrow, we have the potential to just be an amazing human on the other side.
54:34 Speaker 04 Leave your heart open, love others, help others, learn boundaries, set limits.
54:44 Speaker 00 On the next episode of Betrayal.
54:48 Speaker 00 My mom was the first one to be like.
54:52 Speaker 02 Does this seem off at all to you?
54:55 Speaker 02 It was really the first time someone like said something that made me think, "What do you mean off?" Like, I had never considered doubting it.
55:07 Speaker 00 If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at [email protected] . That's [email protected] . 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 Fason, hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique LaBord, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers
55:51 Speaker 00 are Kristen Mulkeri and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ally Perry and Jessica Krychek. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MyB Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Previous Ramon | Featured on ABC's Betrayal: Secrets and Lies Next Introducing: Nobody Should Believe Me — The Catalyst | EP 1 Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated