Free Shelley Jensen | 2. The Locked Ward

Shelley is trapped in a psychiatric institution, while her husband Chris is halfway across the country, driving an RV with three of their dogs to their new home. Rumors swirl and Shelley’s family start to question whether Chris is who he says he is. 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

  This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like "All I Want." Right. OK, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. See terms.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  Listen to every episode of Free Shelley Jensen ad-free right now when you subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else. Get exclusive bonus episodes and unlock more than 70 other podcasts. Just head to The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap Subscribe, or visit gettheBinge.com to listen wherever you are.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  The Binge.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  At GracePoint's psychiatric unit in Tampa, Florida, a fire alarm is blaring. The sound fills the air, bouncing off the anonymous clinical walls. Then, the pounding of feet. A couple of orderlies come running. But instead of a fire, they find Shelley Jensen.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  I was fighting, fighting, fighting. I was pulling fire alarms and calling people to pick me up and calling 911. I think I legitimately felt I was in danger and I needed to get out of there.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  A few days earlier, Shelley was brought here by the police after her sister Missy had triggered a Florida law known as the Baker Act. The Baker Act allows for a 72-hour psychiatric hold, so someone can be evaluated if they're showing signs of severe mental illness. It's a drastic measure, but it's used on thousands of people in Florida every year. Shelley has been acting erratically for the last few weeks. Soon, she'll be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Right now, though, Shelley doesn't understand any of that. She just knows that she wants out. But it's hard to make a clean getaway when she doesn't have her glasses.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  I can see clearly for like two feet in front of me. So I was in this very, very terrifying place with people running up and down the halls and screaming and getting tackled in the middle of the night with no way to see what was going on.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  In the moments after she's pulled the fire alarm, all Shelley sees are blurry shapes coming at her. They're orderlies.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  You're literally tackled. They pull down your pants and give you a shot in a butt cheek. And then you wake up 30 hours later in a random bed, and you don't know what happened.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  GracePoint Wellness, as it was known until 2025, is the main facility in the county for people hospitalized under the Baker Act. It's the designated crisis stabilization unit, a short-term solution for people like Shelley who need emergency intervention. But what Shelley is about to experience will have long-term consequences.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Shelley is trapped here on the ward alone. Her husband, Chris, is halfway across the country driving to their new home in California in an RV filled with their dogs and possessions. The person picking up the pieces back in Tampa is Shelley's sister, Missy. Over the coming days, Chris and Missy will have a brutal falling out that will leave everyone questioning who to trust. And it's at this moment, with Chris gone and Shelley at her most vulnerable, that Missy will make the decision to place her sister under a guardianship with devastating, long-term consequences.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  A manic episode will end with Shelley stripped of her freedom, losing autonomy over her money, and even losing her will to live.

• 4:44Speaker 02

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

• 5:07Speaker 02

  This is episode 2, The Locked Ward.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Todd Jenkins is at the reception at GracePoint, signing in as a visitor.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  You can only visit from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM each day.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  He's been desperate to know how Shelley is actually doing. She's his closest friend. Over the next few weeks, Todd is one of the people who will be caught in the middle of Missy and Chris's fallout. By the end, he'll be convinced that the guardianship was one of the worst things that ever happened to Shelley. But right now, he's on board with Missy's approach.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  I knew that my friend needed help. There was no doubt. I also knew the only way we were going to be able to get her help was to have her Baker acted.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  But as Todd walks timidly to the GracePoint cafeteria, the first doubts are already beginning to take root.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  I had a friend who was at GracePoint at one point in time many years ago, and I went to visit him, and it was bad.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  The way GracePoint, now part of Ibis Healthcare, treats its patients has come under scrutiny in recent years.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  In April 2026, Florida state regulators locked the crisis stabilization facility from receiving new admissions after a patient died while being physically restrained. Staff had used the prone restraint on him, the same restraint Derek Chauvin used on George Floyd. As of this recording, the facility is still under investigation by Tampa police.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Ibis Healthcare declined to comment when we contacted them, but in a statement to Ten Tampa Bay News, a spokesperson said they were conducting an internal review and taking appropriate personnel actions.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  On his visit in 2023, Todd doesn't know what state Shelley will be in. He's used to seeing her at raves, blonde head, bobbing in the crowd. When she walks through the door in a green hospital gown, it's a shock.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  She had bruises on her arms, on her wrists, and on her legs.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  She looks rough. Todd is torn. He knows she needs help. But is this helping her? Was sending her here a huge mistake?

• 7:44Speaker 02

  And there's another question playing on his mind, too. Where the hell is Shelley's husband, Chris?

• 7:52Speaker 04

  I was pissed. I was really mad. I was very mad because I'm trying to understand what's going on here. Why aren't you here?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Chris is hundreds of miles away at the wheel of that massive RV. He's just heard from Shelley's friend, Sarah, that police have taken his wife to GracePoint.

• 8:10Speaker 05

  Sarah called me and had like a video of what had happened. It broke my heart that this was happening. I just felt terrible.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Chris had been on board with the plan to try to get the police to hospitalized Shelley. Still, seeing cops tackle his wife? It's shocking. He's in a group chat with Todd and Missy, who are sending their updates and trying to coordinate with the hospital. Chris is supposed to be the one who makes decisions about Shelley's health care. Three years ago, in 2020, Chris and Shelley signed an agreement, which means that if one of them is incapacitated, the other is authorized to make choices about things like health care. Missy was listed as Shelley's backup if Chris was incapacitated. So she tells Chris

• 9:02Speaker 02

  he needs to liaise with the hospital. After all, he's supposed to be the main point of contact, and Missy is only the backup. So Chris calls the hospital, and he also tries to get through to his wife. Shelley has access to a communal phone on the ward. Her cellphone has been confiscated. But she's mad at Chris because she believes he was involved in calling the police on her.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  In this whole messy situation, there is one positive. While Shelley is at grace point, the doctors give her a preliminary diagnosis: bipolar disorder. It matches her symptoms: impulsive spending, mania, paranoid delusions. Shelley also has a family history of bipolar. A close relative who was hospitalized with the condition when she was in her early 50s, just like Shelley is now. Her classic symptoms, her family history: textbook bipolar, right? This is the point when all the pieces should be falling into place.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  But instead, this is when they started falling apart. While Chris is on the road, Missy is developing her own theory about what's triggered Shelley's illness. Back in Tampa, the news about Shelley being Baker-acted has spread among Shelley's friends. A lot of people are concerned, including Keisha Valdez.

• 10:38Speaker 06

  I was like, what is happening right now?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  She calls Missy to get an update.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  I said, what's going on with your sister? Like, I don't understand. And she said, I think she's suicidal. And I'm like, I don't think she's suicidal. She's like, and I think she's on drugs.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Keisha is one of many people who saw the photos of pill bottles Shelley sent out the night before she was hospitalized. But although Keisha is worried about her friend, she doesn't agree with Missy's theory.

• 11:06Speaker 06

  I'm like, your sister's not on drugs. I've known her a long time, and I've known people who are on drugs, and your sister's not on drugs. I think something's going on in her head, and she needs to be medically evaluated.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Keisha says Missy reassured her. And with Chris out of town, Missy seems like a safe pair of hands.

• 11:22Speaker 06

  I felt better because, at that point, Chris wasn't in charge, because I felt like he was kind of just being a bystander. Her sister's involved, she's in charge, she's a doctor, she's a vet, she knows medical stuff, she's obviously going to be Team Shelley, and I don't have to be too worried about it.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Chris says he was out on the road when he heard about Missy's drug theory.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  Missy calls me and says, I think this is drug-induced psychosis, is what she's suffering from. And I knew this was complete BS.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  To be clear, based on the documents we've seen, it seems like Missy did accept that Shelley had bipolar. After all, Missy knew about their family history, too. But she had begun to suspect that drugs were a factor, either in triggering Shelley's mania or exacerbating it. Chris and Shelley both say the photo of the pill bottles wasn't anything to worry about.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  When Shelley was cleaning everything out of the house, she was taking old medications, old dog medications, old dog vitamins. And in the mania, she was thinking that these were all harmful drugs or illicit drugs.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Chris says he tried to tell Missy she was jumping to the wrong conclusion. He says he had been doing some research on the road, and he made a discovery about a drug that Shelley was actually prescribed: Prozac. Weeks back, when that nurse practitioner had diagnosed her symptoms as anxiety. Mania is one of the main symptoms of bipolar disorder, and it's also a documented side effect of Prozac.

• 13:01Speaker 05

  If somebody is manic, Prozac is the last thing you want to give that person, because it's like putting fuel on the fire. It takes the mania and just turbocharges it.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  To Chris, this seems like a much more likely explanation for why Shelley's symptoms have gotten worse. But he says Missy won't drop the idea that Shelley has a drug problem. For now, Shelley is still at grace point, and the Baker Act is still in effect. But the clock is ticking on the 72-hour hold, and Missy is worried about what to do after it expires.

• 13:41Speaker 05

  She goes, she is going to need to go to a alcohol and drug treatment program for professionals. And I know a facility in Gainesville. Will you support me in having her go there? I said, no, because she doesn't have a drug problem, I can tell you that.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  There's only so much he can do from the road, hundreds of miles away, which is why many people in Chris's position would turn that boat of an RV around and head back to Florida. But this RV, it's become his albatross. He feels like he has to get it over the finish line to California.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  I couldn't turn the RV around. They had expected the RV to be returned.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  He'll drop it off, be done with it, and focus all his attention on Shelley.

• 14:35Speaker 05

  I can get back, and then we can get a handle on this.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  But the rest of the world doesn't stop and wait while he finishes his task. Instead, the longer Chris is away, the more space he leaves for someone else to take control of the situation. Chris says he was starting to feel like Missy no longer trusts him. And he's right. Because it's not just the photo of the pills that's worrying Missy. Two days after Shelley was Baker-acted, Missy went to her sister's house, and she found something else. Something that will drive a wedge between her and Chris, with catastrophic consequences for Shelley.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like "All I Want..." Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget, we're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. See terms.

• 16:00Speaker 07

  There's a pill version of Ozempic. Hello, I'm Ozempic. And I'm other GLP-1s kind of like him. Hey, did I hear there's a pill version of Ozempic? Yep, you sure did. Ask your doctor about which FDA-approved uses of the Ozempic pen or pill may be right for you. Call 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and learn more about Ozempic semaglutide tablets, 9mg, and Ozempic semaglutide injection, 2mg. There's a pill version of Ozempic.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  When Missy went over to the Jensen's house, she found some bottles of Adderall. Adderall is a prescription medication used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy. So many people now have prescriptions for it that there's a national shortage. But it's also a stimulant, and it can be abused. Chris says there's a straightforward explanation for the bottle that Missy found.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  I had a friend who had left a prescription at my house maybe 10, 11 months prior to this. So then I think that's where Missy got this in her mind, that that's what was happening.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Chris told us the name that was on the Adderall. It belonged to a friend, he said. But it seems like that name is exactly what was worrying Missy. Because the friend in question had previously been convicted on federal drug trafficking charges for his role in a prescription drug-dealing ring. When we asked Chris about these prior convictions, he said they had no connection to the Adderall Missy found. He categorically denies that any illegal drug use was going on.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  It's obvious that this prescription is 11 months old, and it's completely full. The prescription hasn't been touched. Was it left in my house without my knowledge? It was. Was it dragged out when Shelley was cleaning out all of the cupboards? It was.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  We also reached out to Chris's friend, but he didn't respond. Based on communications we've seen, it seems like this discovery played a part in making Missy wary of Chris and convincing her that Shelley needed drug treatment.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Back in Tampa, Missy had set up a group chat between some of Shelley's close friends who have rallied around to try and help her. One of them is Todd. And like Keisha and Chris, he's also not buying this idea that Shelley is on drugs.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  I'm like, she's definitely not. I know her. She's not.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Todd says he agreed to work together with Missy, even if they disagreed on the cause of Shelley's symptoms.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  I don't care if it's a drug addiction. I don't care. If she's having some sort of mental breakdown, whatever it is, we just have to get help. That's my position.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  You'd think it wouldn't be too hard to get to the bottom of this. After all, when Shelley arrived at Grace Point, she was given a drug test. But when the result comes back, it isn't going to resolve the cracks that are forming between Missy, Chris, and Shelley's friends. It's going to make them much worse.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Every morning at Grace Point, Shelley joins a queue of patients waiting for their daily psychiatrist appointment over Zoom.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  Some of the time, I was so sedated, I could barely stand up. And I can remember standing in the line and waiting and then sitting down. And there was a woman on the screen. And she would talk to me and ask me a few questions and then say, okay, thank you.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  As the days pass, Shelley's starting to become more aware. She knows her family used the Baker Act and that it's temporary. So maybe it's the sedation, but Shelley could swear this temporary hold is lasting a long time.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  I knew that they could hold me for 72 hours. And then days and days were going by and nothing was happening. And I was asking, when can I leave? I'm fine now. But they wouldn't let me go. And apparently, if the psychiatrist feels that you're not stable, they can fill out some form that says that they need to hold you longer.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  The results of Shelley's drug test have come back. It's positive for benzodiazepines, i.e. Xanax, and for marijuana. Shelley doesn't remember using marijuana while she was manic, but says it's possible. She says the Xanax was prescribed to her by the nurse practitioner earlier in May. The test is negative for amphetamines, which would include Adderall. But this doesn't appear to have reassured Missy.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  That was, I think, enough for my sister to feel like, oh, look, there is a drug problem. My sister was talking to a veterinarian that shared with Missy that she'd had a drug problem a few years back. So I don't know if she said to Missy, this sounds like a drug-induced psychosis, or if Missy had read that online, you know, the symptoms of drug-induced psychosis. And she said, look, it matches exactly what Shelley has.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Okay, sure. But that totally blows past her family history and the bipolar diagnosis that Grace Point's own doctors gave Shelley.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  And wouldn't that make better sense than a drug-induced psychosis from someone who'd never had any issues with drugs or had any run-ins with the police or anything?

• 22:01Speaker 05

  You would think that it would be very obvious at this point. She knows Shelley. She worked with Shelley for 17 years or something. She should know the kind of person her sister is. That just blows my mind.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Chris's relationship with Missy had always been friendly enough. But by this point, they're butting heads on everything. It doesn't help that Chris is halfway across the country when he's supposed to be the one making medical decisions for Shelley. I can imagine that it might have been frustrating that Chris was so far away when they're in the middle of a major family crisis, especially when Chris told her his plan for how he was going to travel home. Once he arrived in California and dropped off the RV, he wasn't planning to fly back from San Diego.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  He was going to rent an SUV and drive all the way back again. Chris says he couldn't take a flight because he still had the dogs with him, one of which had cancer.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  She still has this womb that has to be, you know, the bandages have to be changed multiple times a day. The dog was extremely important to me, and I wasn't going to just leave the dog anywhere.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Missy and Chris need to make a decision about what will happen to Shelley when the Baker Act expires. And it's not just Shelley's mental health. There's also the mess her erratic spending has created over the last few weeks. Chris and Missy have been working with Shelley's financial advisor, Jessica, to try and stop some of the payments from going through. Chris says that Jessica told him to consider becoming his wife's guardian because it would give him the powers to sort out Shelley's finances while she's in the hospital.

• 23:51Speaker 05

  Jessica said, we need to get guardianship. We have to have guardianship.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Guardianships are normally used for the elderly who are in serious cognitive decline or people with severe mental disabilities. So from the very beginning, this seemed like an extreme step for someone like Shelley. Setting up a permanent guardianship usually takes months. But there's also a short-term measure called an emergency temporary guardianship, which lasts 90 days. That can be fast-tracked by the courts if someone is deemed a danger to themselves. Any competent Florida resident can be a guardian unless they've been convicted of a felony or a court finds them unable to carry out the role.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  So can a non-resident who is a close family member. But Chris isn't close, at least not physically. He's over 2,000 miles away, in the RV, trying to get their things across the country. So he says that he and Missy discussed the idea of her becoming Shelley's guardian instead, just to mind things in the short term. Of course, Chris now wishes he had never heard the word guardianship, let alone initially agreeing to put Shelley under one. But Chris says he didn't see it as a big deal at first.

• 25:16Speaker 05

  If we have to do something now, and if you need to be the guardian, because I'm in California, it's going to take me five days to get back, you know, I was going to support that.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Chris says he pulled over at a rest stop and made a call to an attorney to talk about the guardianship plan.

• 25:34Speaker 05

  She looked over all of the documents and said, Chris, for what you're dealing with, I don't see why you would need guardianship. So she was advising against it.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Chris says she told him he already had a lot of authority to make decisions on Shelley's behalf because of the documents they signed in 2020. Chris claims that at this point, he told Missy he had changed his mind.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  I said, no, no, I'm on my way back. I don't support you being the guardian. Absolutely not. I will contest it if you do.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  But Missy has hired her own attorney, one who deals with a lot of guardianship cases.

• 26:16Speaker 05

  And her attorney kept saying, well, just let her be, you can be there too. You'll work together. But you're still five days away. Things have to be done now. And kept trying to convince me to support that. And I said, absolutely not. I'm making the drive back. I don't think there needs to be the guardian.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  It's not going to be that simple. In Tampa, things are moving quickly. Missy still believes Shelley has a drug problem, and she's about to take drastic action.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  Football Sundays are at my house this year, so I've been making a Total Wine & More run before every kickoff. Cold beer for the group is a given, but this time of year, I like to bring in some fall flavors. A bottle of maple whiskey and a salted caramel whiskey that even my friends who don't drink whiskey end up trying. I get everything I need at the lowest prices at Total Wine. Discover your new favorite fall flavors at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Must be 21.

• 27:22Speaker 07

  You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle, no negotiation, no guy from an online listing lowballing you, which means by the time I'm done explaining this, you could have basically done it.

• 27:45Speaker 07

  Still haven't started? Hey, better late than never. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  A few days into her stay at Grace Point, Shelley is sitting at a round table with a couple of other patients from the ward. A rainbow assortment of coloring pencils are scattered across the tabletop.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  For some reason, the thing they've decided to let adults do in these kind of facilities is color.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Shelley is more subdued now than when she first arrived on the ward. All those escape attempts ended with a shot of sedatives.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  One of the other patients told me, if you keep asking to leave, they're never going to let you go. It's when you stop asking and you're quiet that they send you home.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Shelley has been put on medication for bipolar, but the early days of a bipolar treatment protocol are a waiting game as you trial different meds to find one that works. It's not unusual for someone in Shelley's position, who's experiencing their first manic episode, to stay in a hospital until the right drug takes effect. But Shelley has no idea when she'll be allowed to leave Grace Point, and she's still pissed at Missy for calling in the police and at Chris for letting it all happen.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Chris is still miles away from Tampa, now behind the wheel of a rented SUV, with dogs and their medical needs in tow. But as he gets closer, he says his communication with Shelley's family seemed to be winding down.

• 29:38Speaker 05

  I felt very detached, and they were starting to not talk to me.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  When they do communicate, things are tense.

• 29:47Speaker 05

  They were hell-bent on this drug treatment facility. And I told them, Shelley's never had any issues. She's never gotten more than a parking ticket.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Chris claims that he still believed they could try and work together.

• 30:04Speaker 05

  I still had faith that they were trying to do what they thought was right, although it was completely way off base.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  But some of Shelley's friends say that Missy had begun to express concerns about Chris to them. Keisha was one of them.

• 30:18Speaker 06

  She sort of painted that picture that Chris was sort of this gold digger type person now because she had sold her practice. They're having trouble. He wants to get to California, and she bought this house with her money, and none of it's really his money, and they don't have a prenup or anything.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  This argument doesn't check out to Keisha.

• 30:37Speaker 06

  I didn't really get that vibe ever from them, that money was a big deal because he was successful in his career and she was wildly successful with her practices.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Keisha sold her own vet practice around the same time as Shelley. She'd seen firsthand what can happen when a lot of money is suddenly on the table.

• 30:57Speaker 06

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

• 31:05Speaker 02

  It's worth stating that a guardianship doesn't give Missy a free pass to Shelley's money. A guardian, even a temporary one, is subject to court oversight and accounting requirements. Keisha is still unhappy with Chris for leaving town when Shelley was so clearly unwell. But she doesn't buy Missy's theory either.

• 31:27Speaker 06

  I felt like no one was Team Shelley, that no one had her back.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Todd says that Missy came to him with new concerns.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Missy had been telling me all these things about how Chris was bad, that Chris was a drug dealer.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  It's like that late-night text that Shelley had sent keeps coming back to life in new forms. When she blasted her friends at 2:30 a.m. with accusations that Chris was dealing drugs, Todd had brushed it off as part of her increasing delusions. But Todd says that Missy seems to believe there's some truth in the accusation. He says Missy's attorney even called him for information on Chris.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Was he a drug dealer? I said, no, I mean, I know him pretty well, and that seems ridiculous. So she sent me this list of his criminal record or something, and I looked at it, and I was like, well, it seems pretty incriminating.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  A criminal record could exclude Chris from being eligible to be Shelley's guardian. Todd doesn't know what to believe, so he calls Chris.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  He said, I'll prove to you that none of this is true. When I come back, I'll pull the report and show you. And I said, OK, that's great. I need to see that. I have to see that. And I told him, I said, I'm really mad at you right now. I'm really mad that you left her here like this. I said, you need to get back here like tomorrow. I need you here because this is getting out of hand. Like, Missy is not listening to me.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  With Chris out of the picture still, Todd says he felt like the situation was escalating. In a few days, Shelley's younger brother Drew, who Todd had never met before, will be flying in from Ohio to help Missy. And she's also involved another guy called Dave. Dave is a professional interventionist. That is, he works with the families of people with addiction issues to help get their loved ones into treatment. A drug treatment center called the Florida Recovery Center connected him with Missy. She's hired him to help try and get Shelley into treatment. And now this guy, Dave, is also texting Todd and Shelley's friends' group chat,

• 33:45Speaker 02

  asking them not to tell Shelley about the plan to get her into treatment at Florida Recovery Center later that week.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  It sounds like they're building a case to figure out how to have her institutionalized. Missy had been nice to me, but she wasn't hearing me.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  We reached out to Dave and to Missy to get their perspective, but Missy declined to comment, and Dave didn't respond. While Missy is trying to coordinate a plan to keep Shelley in treatment, inside Grace Point, Shelley is trying to get out. The Baker Act was only supposed to hold Shelley there for 72 hours. With all the extensions, she's now been there for 11 days. Shelley says she makes it known that she wants to leave.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  They said, the only way we're going to let you go is if you take this injection. During that time that I was there, they tried different medications, and they decided that the best thing to do was to give me a long-acting antipsychotic medicine that lasted a month. And I wanted to leave, so I took the injection.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  There's still another catch. Before Shelley can go home, there's an important stop she has to make, a drug treatment facility called the Adult Addiction Receiving Facility.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  It turns out my sister had requested that I be evaluated for a drug problem.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Shelley has been legally mandated to undergo this drug evaluation because Missy filed a petition for something called the Marchman Act. It's a law designed to force uncooperative people with addiction into urgent intervention.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  I don't remember any of this. I don't remember being transferred. I don't remember being drug-tested, being interviewed. It's scary that I was still not right, whether it was because I wasn't stabilized psychologically or because I was so overly medicated that I don't remember.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  When the results of the evaluation come back, the drug tests are negative, and Shelley is allowed to leave.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  They said I could go.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  For the first time in 11 days, Shelley is about to walk free. But she says the medication she'd been given was making it hard to keep a grip on reality.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  I can remember sitting, waiting to be discharged, and having quite a vivid hallucination. You know, I thought it was real at the time, about me waiting for our neighbor and his wife to come in a plane to pick me up. The man in real life is actually an emergency room physician at the local hospital. But in my hallucination, they were huge-scale drug dealers, and they were going to be delivering large crates of drugs to where I was. And then I was going to get on the plane with them and go back home.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  And that's the state of mind I was in when they were letting me go.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Shelley steps out into the street, completely alone and hallucinating.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  We reached out to the Adult Addiction Receiving Facility, as well as to IBIS Healthcare, as Grace Point is now known. We asked them about Shelley's account of the care she received and the state she says she was in when they released her. The Agency for Community Treatment Services, who oversee the receiving facility, told us they couldn't comment on any individual's case. But they said they are, quote, "committed to providing services in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and professional standards." And that they take their, quote, "responsibility to protect the privacy, safety, and well-being of the individuals they serve seriously." IBIS Healthcare declined to comment.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  What Shelley doesn't know as she steps out of the facility that day is that her ordeal is far from over. Because the guardianship is already in motion.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Three days beforehand, Missy filed a petition to be appointed as her emergency temporary guardian. Shelley is about to become one of approximately 1.3 million people in the US stripped of their independence by the courts. But incredibly, Chris claims he didn't even know about the hearing when all of this was decided. He was back in town by then, but says he was kept in the dark. Missy denies this. What's even wilder is Shelley says she had no idea about the hearing where her fate would be decided either. What the hell is going on?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Next time on Free Shelley Jensen.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  The conflict between Chris and Shelley's family is about to detonate.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  Shelley, don't go up there. Just get out of the car. I'll come and get you. He can't force you to go.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  That's next time on Free Shelley Jensen.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  If you want a deeper look behind Free Shelley Jensen, now's the time. Join our free newsletter at GetTheBinge.com and get exclusive story details you can't get anywhere else. Again, that's GetTheBinge.com.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Free Shelley Jensen 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 Wolf.

• 40:57Speaker 02

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

• 41:25Speaker 00

  This holiday, all plans, even Unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like "All I Want..." Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at MintMobile.com/switch.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. See terms.