Free Shelley Jensen | 1. Limitless

Shelley Jensen has spent her life making life-or-death decisions. Now, as she prepares to leave everything behind and begin a new chapter, the people around her begin to question her judgment Want the full story? Binge every episode of Free Shelley Jensen ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. Free Shelley Jensen is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:06Speaker 01

  Shelley Jensen is crouched on the floor.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  I was hiding behind slash under a metal frame chair. And that seemed to aggravate the people that were trying to get me out.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  She's just arrived at an emergency psychiatric hospital. Shelley's barefoot, using the chair as a shield. It feels like she's in a movie scene.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Four big guys appeared at the door. And they all came in and grabbed me and carried me to a padded room.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  I didn't know padded rooms really existed.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  They hold Shelley down on her stomach.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Someone came in and like pulled the back of my pants down and gave me a shot in my right butt cheek. And then everyone left.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  As the sedatives kick in, everything goes black.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Just a few days earlier, Shelley was getting ready to move to California with her husband, Chris. In her community in Tampa, Florida, she's known as Dr. Jensen, a successful veterinarian who just sold her practice for millions of dollars. Now she's trapped and sedated inside a padded room.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Shelley is in the middle of a full-blown mental health crisis, the first she's ever experienced in her 52 years. She's never been here before. And that is one of many reasons this story is not about Shelley's mental health. We wouldn't be here if it were just that. Shelley's story is much more troubling.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  I was 60% a solid person and 40% like a transparent ghost.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  I could not believe that this accomplished person that has been so successful and has done so many great things has been reduced to the person that he saw, you know?

• 3:39Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, money brings out the worst in people. And it's awful and it's ugly and people have lots of ulterior motives.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Shelley and her husband, Chris, found themselves in an impossible bind.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  I just couldn't believe that she and I were in this situation, that we were living this hell.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Shelley alleges she's been the victim of neglect, conspiracy, and false imprisonment. She's going to court to try and prove it.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Just like, are you effing kidding me? You know, don't you see how destroyed I am as a person?

• 4:18Speaker 01

  The people she's up against deny all wrongdoing or say they have no knowledge of the allegations. But Shelley's lawsuit isn't just a battle against institutions. She's also suing one of the people closest to her, the person who set in motion the process that stripped Shelley of her independence.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  This is the story of a family torn apart by crisis and how one woman almost lost her freedom forever.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  If this could happen to Shelley, a woman with a supportive husband and friends, what's to stop it from happening to you?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is Free Shelley Jensen. I'm Larison Campbell.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  This is episode one, Limitless.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  In the foothills of the Andes and Peru, below the ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, there's a veterinary clinic. It's 2013 and there's a line out the door. A crowd of locals is queuing up, each with a dog or a cat in tow. They're here to see Dr. Shelley Jensen and her team of volunteer vets.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  We went on trips all over the world doing spay neuter in underserved areas.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Shelley is an expert surgeon. She's on her feet, performing these operations all day.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Because I was doing these trips two or three times a year when I met Chris, he went with me on them.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Chris Jensen and Shelley first started dating in 2009. They met online and clicked instantly.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  Shelley was just very adventurous, loved to travel, animal lover. That was a big connection between the two of us.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Chris is not a vet. He's a former tennis pro who works as a sales exec at a telecom company. So while Shelley tags along on his trips to watch major tennis tournaments, he's also game to follow along on Shelley's international spaying expeditions.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  I would go along and just help move dogs and cats around and do whatever I could to help them.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  He went to Belize, Honduras, vaccinating dogs, giving deworming medicine and working, you know, 10 hours a day, getting very dirty, doing this with me.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Long hours of castrating dogs might not be the most conventional backdrop for romance, but it taught Chris and Shelley something about each other. Shelley could see that Chris wasn't afraid to step out of his comfort zone. And Chris, he got to see Shelley in her element.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  She was always kind of the one in charge and running a team of, you know, 15 to 20 people on these trips. I would never want that responsibility, but she loves that.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Shelley is used to calling the shots. Back home in Tampa, Florida, she ran her own veterinary practice, Hyde Park Vets. It's in a gorgeous neighborhood with old historic houses and streets lined with oak trees.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Shelley founded the practice in 2002 when she was the only vet. But it grew quickly and by the peak, she'd be running a team of 30 employees.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Every day when I woke up in the morning, I got right up out of bed and was enthusiastic to go to work. It was really my sole focus.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  When Shelley wasn't at the practice, she was out volunteering or going on adventures with Chris. They married in 2015 when they were both in their mid-40s and now spent their spare time scuba diving, traveling to far-flung places, and picking up stray dogs along the way. They built a life together and their own menagerie. Four dogs, one parrot, two parakeets, three tortoises, and some fish.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  In 2019, a vet friend of Shelley's got in touch with some news. She was selling her veterinary practice to a firm who were buying up successful clinics. Shelley had always planned on selling her clinic one day, but what had once been a pipe dream was suddenly possible. And then the corporation made her a multimillion-dollar offer.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Honestly, they offered a very large sum of money. And I think Chris and I just thought this opportunity may not present itself again.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  They had no idea this windfall would be their undoing. Instead, they're looking forward with big plans for this new chapter.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  A year before the sale is finalized, Shelley visits San Diego to go whale watching with a friend.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  I went out for four days and saw blue whales and minke whales and three different kinds of dolphins, a blue whale calf swimming right under the boat where you could almost touch it. I said, this is definitely where I'd like to be for the next rest of my life.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Another trip out to San Diego with Chris confirms it.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  We saw a sign for an open house and took a tour of the house and we both just fell in love with it.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  The house is by the water with an ocean view from the upstairs windows. It's a big investment, the biggest purchase of their life, but they take the plunge. Now that Shelley's retired, the plan is for Chris to do the same. In May 2023, they rent an RV to transport their dogs and belongings. The plan is to drive cross-country to California at the end of the month. But in the weeks before their move, cracks in their relationship were starting to show.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  For Shelley's best friend Todd, the first sign that something was wrong came just over a week before she and Chris were due to move to California.

• 11:24Speaker 05

  She said, hey, listen, I'm having kind of a going away party. I'd love for you to come. Would you like to come to the St. Pete Pier?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  The St. Pete Pier is a shining metal structure on the shore of Tampa Bay. It juts out into the water, kind of like a floating park. And tonight, the whole place is jumping.

• 11:49Speaker 05

  You can feel the bass, which is one of the things that I love as you walk it up. I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's gonna be so much fun. Packed with people, awesome lights, sounds amazing. Everybody seems to be having fun.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Todd Jenkins and his partner Jarrell are meeting Shelley and Chris at an EDM party. They've all been going dancing together for years, so Todd can easily pick Shelley out of the crowd.

• 12:14Speaker 05

  I'm tall, I'm 6'3". She's probably like 3'2". No, I'm kidding. All you do is you look out across the crowd and you look for the person with the bleached blonde hair, the little straw girl.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  But not long into the night, Shelley pulls Todd aside. They walk over to a grassy area away from the pounding bass.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  We just kind of sat on a bench and we talked and she said to me, I think Chris is cheating on me. I said, what? And she said, I'm, yeah, I think he is and he's not being very nice to me.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Todd is astonished. This doesn't sound like Chris. Todd saw the two of them only a few weeks ago at his birthday dinner and they'd been talking about how much they were looking forward to retiring together.

• 12:58Speaker 05

  She seemed happier than she'd seemed in the past 10 years. She was excited about moving to California. Things were great with Chris. Life seemed amazing.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Todd starts asking questions.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  Why do you think that? I just know, I just know. It's like, okay. So she's like, we don't say anything to him. I was like, I won't, I won't.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  When Todd and Shelley go back over to the dance floor, Chris tries to come and join them, but Shelley is visibly irritated.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  Shelley said, she's very matter of fact. She said, I don't want you over here. I'm like, what? She said, I don't want him here. She goes, can you do me a huge favor? Can you ask Chris if he will leave? And I said, are you sure that's what you want me to do? And she said, I do. So I went to Chris and said, hey, listen, I don't know what's going on, but Shelley's, you know, she said she wants you to go.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Todd offers to give Chris a ride. And on the walk over to the parking lot, he asks him, what on earth Shelley is talking about?

• 14:12Speaker 05

  He's like, I don't know what is wrong. I don't know what's going on. She just started behaving like this. And I said, something about you cheating on her. He goes, Todd, that's, you know, that's not true. That's not happening. I was like, well, what is she talking about? He's like, I, I really, I don't know. I said, she seemed like she was in great spirits the other night. And he goes, yeah, she seemed like she was. She goes, something has changed. I don't know what it is, but something's changed with her.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  It's clear to Todd that there are tensions in the Jensen house. He doesn't think infidelity is the problem. But what exactly is happening? What nobody, not even Chris and Shelley, can see yet is how quickly their lives are about to spiral out of control. What looks like erratic behavior to Chris is about to look very different to someone else who loves Shelley.

• 15:11Speaker 06

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• 17:21Speaker 01

  It's the early hours of the morning at Chris and Shelley's house. Chris is in bed, fast asleep.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Suddenly, the room is flooded with light. He jolts awake. It's Shelley.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  She'd come in and turn on my light and say, oh, I gotta tell you something. And I said, hey, I'm, you know, I'm sleeping. You know, like, tell me in the morning.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  This has been happening a lot lately. And whatever Shelley has to tell Chris usually isn't anything that important. Shelley's just been feeling restless lately. Their upcoming move to California is exciting, but it's also hectic. And they've both been under additional stress. To Shelley and Chris, pets are family. And one of their beloved dogs has been diagnosed with liver cancer.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  We were both distraught, but he was so worried that she was gonna pass away, he wouldn't let me put her in the hospital. So I had, you know, our bedroom set up like a ICU unit with pumps and monitors.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  We were maybe running on a couple hours of sleep a day and it was very stressful.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  After a couple of weeks, their dog turns a corner. But the late nights have really taken their toll. Chris gets why she'd have insomnia, but he's starting to feel like she just expects him to live by her hours.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  She's like, I just have a lot going on right now. And once we get past this, I'll be able to sleep better and things will settle down.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Despite her reassurances, Shelley isn't exactly dialing things down.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  I told Chris, I've got a lot of extra time and energy. I was working and my job was wearing me down every day, day after day, for 25 years.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  But it wasn't just early retirement that was giving Shelley all this excess energy. Shelley didn't know it yet, but she was, at 52 years old, having her first-ever bipolar episode. She's about to experience extreme mood changes, seesawing from the depths of depression to the highest highs of mania. When you talk to Shelley today, she can recall with perfect clarity how she felt, just as everything was about to unravel.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Have you seen the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper? Somebody gives him a pill and he takes it. It's like a new drug. And he becomes like the smartest guy in the world. He can read like 10 books a night and he suddenly teaches himself like seven languages. And I felt exactly like that. I had all the answers. I could see everything like 10 steps ahead of everyone else, I thought. And it was exhilarating.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  This is where the realities begin to split between Chris and Shelley. They were sharing the same home, the same conversations, and the same events, yet each was experiencing it totally differently. To him, her behavior became increasingly confusing and alarming. To her, the world felt unusually vivid, urgent, and full of meaning.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  And the move to California isn't the only thing on Shelley's plate. She's also planning a dog rescue on the Caribbean island of Dominica. Shelley's done this before. In February, she chartered a flight to bring 41 stray dogs and three cats from Dominica over to the US. Now, she wants to do an even bigger operation.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  A larger plane, more animals.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  I thought the plane's gonna fly down there empty. So I want to send a bunch of veterinary equipment. So I purchased two gas anesthesia machines, an autoclave, IV fluid pumps, like a whole small animal hospital of equipment, and had it delivered to my house.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Shelley says she ended up spending around $56,000 on equipment for the mission.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  So that's when Chris started saying, what is going on? You're filling up our house with dog crates, and stuff just keeps coming and coming and coming, every day more things. And I would say, I sold my practice for a lot of money. This is what I want to do with some of the money.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Chris isn't the only one who's noticed that something is up with Shelley. Keisha Valdez is a friend of Shelley's and a fellow veterinarian. She's the vet who connected Shelley with the deal to buy out her practice. They met on a volunteer Spain expedition a few years back and realized they had some things in common.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  I'm a really good surgeon, she's a really good surgeon. We are about the same age. We each had our own practices. It was just like, she was meant to be my friend.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Shelley is fundraising for the evacuation flight for the dogs in Dominica. She needs to raise $80,000.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  So I got her GoFundMe. She's like, can you forward it to people and can you donate? I said, sure, of course. I saw that there was already a lot of money that was donated. And I called her and I said, wow, you've already got a lot of money. That's great. She's like, well, that's my money. I'm trying to make it seem like, you know, there's a lot of people donating, so more people will donate.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Shelley has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the GoFundMe. And that's on top of the $56,000 she's already spent on the equipment. But the donations aren't the only thing that seems odd to Keisha. Shelley has an unusual theory about why the dogs in Dominica are getting sick.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  She started talking about how she thought that they were being poisoned by the paint, by the lead in the paint that's all around the island. And she's a really smart veterinarian. Like, I have a huge amount of faith in her as a doctor. And I just started thinking, this sounds really weird, Shelley. I just don't, I can't really put two and two together.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  But Shelley won't drop it. On another call, she tells Keisha about her latest discovery. It's about Hurricane Maria, which hit Dominica a few years earlier.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  I think that it has to do with when this island was destroyed by a hurricane. The Chinese supplied all the paint to this country, and I think that they're poisoning these people on purpose. And then I was like, okay, you've lost me. Like, this doesn't make any sense to me. So then I reached out to Chris and I said, I don't know what's going on with Shelley, but this is not right.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Shelley has got all the telltale signs of mania. She's spending way more than she normally does. She's barely sleeping. She's excitedly making plans, left, right, and center. And she's just not her steady, logical self. And Shelley's younger sister, Missy, is worried. Missy is a vet, too. When Shelley founded her practice, she invited Missy to work for her. The two sisters have worked together for nearly 15 years.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Missy said, called me and said, you know, I think something's going on. And I said, okay. Then I started doing a little bit of research. What is mania?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Chris is completely floored by what's happening to Shelley. He's not close to anyone with bipolar disorder, so he's never seen anyone have a manic episode. Chris is just way out of his depth here. But whatever is going on, Shelley needs help. So Chris says he encouraged her to speak to a therapist she'd seen in the past.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  She called her and they spoke. And she said, Shelley, I've known you for 10 years, and you don't sound like yourself. I think that you need to go see someone locally and talk to them.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Shelley goes to an appointment with a nurse practitioner. Shelley says they thought she might have anxiety.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  She prescribed fluoxetine, which is Prozac, Xanax as needed to help me sleep. I got the prescriptions filled and started taking them.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  I said, great. The medication is gonna help, and things are gonna normalize.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  What Chris doesn't realize is that while many people with bipolar can be stable for months and even years at a time, it's not something one prescription can solve. And in this case, the medication Shelley's been prescribed isn't going to make her symptoms better. It's going to turbocharge them.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  That was what really sent this into overdrive. That's when it really started to just become unbearable.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Shelley is still insisting she's fine. But she's also barely at home.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  She wasn't, like, coming back to the house. And then I would call her. I would hear, I could hear she was in the car.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Chris is doing chores, like making homemade dog food to package up for the long road trip. He's honed in on minutia, complaining that she's just not doing her share.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  I said, you're not helping me pack everything up, and you're just constantly doing stuff, doing stuff, you know, would not stop.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  They're arguing more and more, and Chris is miserable.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  She and I have never really thought. It was really weird and really uncomfortable that that was happening.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Looking back, it's like watching a slow-motion car crash. I can't help thinking about what might have happened had the timing been just a little different. Maybe if Shelley's bipolar episode had happened without the intense pressure of the move. At a time when they were talking to each other, it might not have been so easy for Shelley to push Chris away or for Chris to be so baffled by her mania. Maybe then, they could have worked things out. But Chris is feeling hurt, betrayed, and frankly annoyed by his wife's increasingly erratic behavior. He's just not grasping the seriousness of Shelley's rapidly deteriorating mental health.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Surely, this is not a good time to move to the other side of the country. But apparently, the plan is still on.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  The Jensen are only days away from their big road trip to California. Maybe Chris was just being naive. Maybe he was in denial. But despite everything, he says he was hoping if they could just get to San Diego, they could leave all this chaos behind them and start a new chapter.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  I was annoyed, I guess. We're also looking forward to this journey, you know? We were very committed to that.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  But Shelley had been keeping a secret.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  I was then covering my tracks. I was texting people from my phone, hiding in the bathroom so Chris couldn't see me.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  It's a plan that involves her friend Sarah.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  In 2015, I started volunteering with a refugee resettlement program in Tampa. And they gave me a family that had just arrived from the Congo. And it was a 19-year-old woman named Sarah and her five-year-old daughter.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Shelley started out visiting Sarah once a week. And over the years, they've grown incredibly close.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  I really wanted to set them up for success before I moved across the country.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  For a couple of years, Shelley has dreamed of helping Sarah out with a down payment to get a mortgage.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  But Chris had said, you know, that's excessive, that's too much.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  But now, Shelley decides to go behind his back.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  I had found a house that I thought was a good house for them. And I went ahead and started the process of buying it without telling Chris.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Imagine how you'd feel if your partner secretly bought a house for one of their friends after agreeing not to do that. It seems like betrayal on so many levels. I don't know many relationships that could withstand this. But it's about to get even worse.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Shelley has also signed a contract to buy another piece of real estate, a commercial property. Shelley says she had started considering the deal before she was manic. But she's no longer in her right mind, and she's trying to make a wire transfer of $2.1 million. Somebody has to step in before Shelley bankrupts herself.

• 31:08Speaker 07

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• 32:13Speaker 01

  On May 31st, the Jensen's drive to Orlando to pick up the RV. It's enormous, expensive, and it's due to be dropped off in California in a few days' time. The clock is ticking. But Shelley's erratic spending is catastrophically out of control, and things have reached a crisis point.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Missy said, "I think she's got to go into the hospital."

• 32:40Speaker 01

  At Missy's urging, Chris says they tried to persuade Shelley to go to a local clinic to be evaluated, but she refused.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  She was getting a little bit more hostile, getting a little bit combative. You know, I was getting worried.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Shelley's loved ones are at a loss. Chris says Missy and Shelley's parents wanted a radical intervention. And it just so happens, they're in a state with one on the books.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  In Florida, there's a law called the Baker Act. It allows someone to be taken to a psychiatric facility against their will and evaluated for up to three days. In this one state, it happens over 160,000 times a year. It's so common that having someone, quote, "Baker-acted" is part of the local lexicon. Unlike other states where mental health crisis workers can assess someone in their own home and send an ambulance, under Florida law, the default transport is police. Chris says Shelley's family were putting pressure on him.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  You gotta call the police. You gotta just get her into the doctors, get her into the doctors. Okay, that's what her family is, that's what they want to do, and that's what they're telling me to do.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Chris says he was initially reluctant to call the cops on his wife. He knew it was an extreme move, likely to anger Shelley, not to mention potentially dangerous. Chris says he wanted to try one last time to convince Shelley to go to the hospital.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  On June 3rd, a couple of days after the Jensen's collected their RV, Missy came to their house to try to level with Shelley. Chris waited outside.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  I wanted to give them an opportunity to talk, and I didn't want her to feel like we were like ganging up on her.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Shelley still refused to go. Chris says Missy stormed out and told him if he wasn't willing to call the police on Shelley, she was leaving.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  I said, "No, no, please don't leave." You know, I was, I needed help, you know?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Hours later, Shelley's best friend Todd gets a call.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  She called me from the bathroom in the RV, and she was pissed. I mean, she was mad.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  The cops have arrived at Shelley's house. Shelley is hiding out in the RV.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  She was saying, "Why have they called the police? I am perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with me." She was so mad that you couldn't really even talk to her. She's like, "What do I do?" I was like, "Breathe, okay? Just breathe. If there's nothing wrong, then you don't have anything to worry about."

• 35:29Speaker 01

  The police don't take Shelley to the hospital that day. Shelley manages to persuade them that she's fine.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  They said, "Nothing we can do. She's not a threat to you. She's not a threat to anybody. She's not a threat to herself."

• 35:45Speaker 01

  After that, Chris says, he didn't know where to turn.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  She's not willing to go with us, and we can't make her go. What do we do? You know, if they'll kind of help us at that point.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Shelley is furious that Chris called the police on her.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  She texts Missy, quote, "He needs to get out of the house that I paid for and take a break because he's triggering me and making me feel crazy. I'm normal, and he's the crazy one."

• 36:18Speaker 01

  It's in this moment, with the clock ticking on the rented RV, with the promise of a new life in California, that Chris makes a choice.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  It's a decision he'll think back on many times in the weeks and months to come, a decision he'll literally regret. He decides to leave Shelley in Tampa and set off on their cross-country drive to California alone.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  Looking back, it was a huge mistake, but I really felt like, okay, the medicine is going to start to work. It's going to get better, right?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Chris says the plan was for him to go ahead and for Shelley to come and join him.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Shelley can just fly to Texas, and I'll pick her up, and then she can make the rest of the journey with me. I thought, okay, once we just get away from Tampa, things will get better, and I was hoping that was all going to happen.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Shelley says she even agreed that Chris should hit the road without her. So the next day, Chris sets off in the RV with three of their dogs.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Now, if you're thinking that it seems like a wild decision to leave town without your wife the day after you've tried to have her hospitalized by the police, you're not the only one.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  I was like, "What is going on in your head right now?"

• 37:46Speaker 01

  When Shelley's friend Keisha finds out that Chris has left for California, she can't believe it.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  Your wife is losing her plot, and you're worried about getting these dogs to California in the RV? Who cares? Like, your priorities are screwed up. You're being a really dumb male.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Keisha's been getting worrying phone calls from Shelley. The day Chris leaves Tampa in the RV, the phone rings again.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  She was like, "I'm freaking out." And I was like, "Okay, what's wrong? What's happening?" She's like, "I've been packing, and I've been going through my house, and look at all these things I found." And she was sending me pictures of pill vials that had her dogs' names on them with their medications, and this is a lot of garbage. She's like, "I think Chris is on drugs. I'm going to leave him, and look at all this stuff that I think that he's been hiding from me." And I was like, "This just looks like trash. I don't understand what you're so worried about. I don't think he's trying to pull anything over on you. You guys have been together a long time. This is really weird. I think you need to calm down." And again, then she was like, "This isn't helping. You're not helping me right now. I don't need to hear this." And I said, "Well, I think what you need to hear is that you're not right in the head

• 38:59Speaker 04

  right now, and you need to talk to somebody because this is not the Shelley that I know. And, you know, you're my good friend, and I'm worried about you."

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Later that night, in the early hours of the morning, Todd's phone lights up.

• 39:17Speaker 05

  I heard it vibrate, and I thought, "Gosh, who's this? Shelley."

• 39:23Speaker 05

  My stomach sunk.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Todd opens the message. There's a photo of medication bottles spread all over Shelley's bed. Shelley repeats what she told Keisha. She thinks Chris is a drug dealer. But Todd isn't the only person she's sent this to.

• 39:45Speaker 05

  It was a group text message sent to a lot of people. I just knew the fallout from this was probably going to be pretty bad.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  The next day, Shelley is over at her friend Sarah's place when there's a knock on the door. Shelley goes to answer it.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  There are several police officers waiting outside.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  They said, "Are you Michelle Jensen? Yes. All I know is that I got tackled as soon as I stepped out of the house."

• 40:21Speaker 02

  And I had no idea what was happening. They forcibly handcuffed me behind my back and also handcuffed my ankles as I was laying, like, on my stomach on the grass. It felt like they were pressing my face into the dirt and very roughly holding me down. I was saying, "I'm not resisting. I'm not resisting." And they were still being very, very rough. And then they picked me up, holding me by the arms and the leg, but my stomach facing down toward the ground, and just carried me like that.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  As they're carrying me to the police car, a bunch of Sarah's neighbors had come out to see what was going on because I was screaming, and three or four people were standing there videoing the police. And they threw me in the back of the police car, and they didn't tell me what was going on.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  This is difficult to listen to.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  We reached out to the Tampa Police Department for comment, and they denied that Shelley's face was pressed into the dirt by officers or that she was carried face down. They told us that they are committed to, quote, "safety, understanding, and compassion" when handling mental health-related calls.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  When the police came that day, Shelley was in trouble, and she needed help. But as the car door slams shut and the engine starts, Shelley is not about to get the support she needs.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  She's being thrust into a horrific ordeal that she never saw coming. And this is not just a mental health crisis. Instead, Shelley will face something she says was much worse: a guardianship.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Someone convinced a judge that Shelley was no longer capable of making her own decisions. And in return, they were granted control over her life, her freedom, her medical care, her finances, and so much more.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  If the words "Free Britney" mean anything to you, then you're familiar with the concept of guardianships. Britney Spears spent nearly 14 years in a conservatorship, which is similar to a guardianship. In theory, these measures exist to protect people who might not be able to make safe decisions for themselves. But this protection can be twisted into a power grab.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  In June 2021, Britney argued in court that the situation was, quote, "abusive" and doing her, quote, "way more harm than good." She alleged that she'd been drugged, forced to perform against her will, and even prevented from having more children.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  In Britney's case, her father was the one in control. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing through his lawyers. The conservatorship ended in 2021, and a legal dispute over it was settled in 2024, with no admissions on either side.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Like Britney, Shelley says that her experience of guardianship was a nightmare, that she didn't have the power to escape.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  I was barely keeping it together. You know, I was barely staying alive.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  This process was supposed to enable Shelley to get better. Shelley says it did the opposite. She found herself trapped. And the most painful part is that the person who took control of her life, the one who instigated the guardianship in the first place, is her own sister.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  What was the endgame? You know, what was the plan? What was going to happen to me?

• 44:30Speaker 03

  It sounds so crazy to me. You know, like, how could this happen? But it happened. And to happen to somebody like Shelley is just like, it could happen to anybody.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  Once that dotted line, you sign on it, there's no going back.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  I really, like, lost a lot of faith in humanity going through this and just seeing how corrupt so many people were on so many different levels.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  This terrible anxiety and fear has to end? Just, like, make it stop.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  That's coming up on Free Shelley Johnson.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Free Shelley Johnson is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, hosted by me, Larissa Campbell. Our senior producers are Caroline Thornham and Vicky Baker. Mohamed Ahmed is our assistant producer, with additional production from Valeria Roca and Nadia Mady. Georgia Moody is our editor. Sound design and mixing by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander, and theme music by Daniel Kempson. For Novel, our executive producer is Max O'Brien. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis, Jonathan Hirsch, and Louisa Field. Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolfe.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Fact-checking by Donia Souleman. Story development by Susie Baker. Novel's director of development is Selena Meta. Special thanks to Carolyn Sherlevin at Miller Kosnick Raymond LLP. And a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.

• 47:16Speaker 00

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