March 9, 2026

Michelle and Jonathan Nyce - Part 1

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To the neighbors in his exclusive New Jersey enclave, Dr. Jonathan Nyce was a "gentle giant" — a brilliant molecular biologist on the verge of a billion-dollar medical breakthrough. But behind the 21-room mansion and the 6,000 tulips in the drive, the "perfect" marriage he shared with his wife, Michelle, was a facade built on secrets, financial ruin, and a suffocating need for control.When Michelle’s body was discovered in her Land Cruiser at the bottom of a frozen ravine on a cold January morning, it looked like a tragic accident. However, investigators soon found that the math didn’t add up.

Today's snack: Mackenzies Chocolates from Santa Cruz (thanks Molly!)

Listen to part 2 on Patreon now

Join our March Madness brackets

Sources:

  • "Collegeville Man Sentenced to 97 Months in Prison for Scheme to Sell Fraudulent Canine Cancer Drugs to Pet Owners." U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 16 Feb. 2024.
  • "Forensic Files season 11." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 31 May 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Forensic_Files_season_11&oldid=1295790162.
  • Glatt, John. Never Leave Me: An Obsessive Husband, an Unfaithful Wife, a Brutal Murder. St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2006.
  • Grande, Todd. "Dr. Jonathan Nyce Case Analysis | What is Passion / Provocation Manslaughter?" YouTube, uploaded by Dr. Todd Grande.
  • "John Glatt." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 June 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Glatt&oldid=1318996874.
  • Miller, Allie. "Former drug exec who killed wife in 2004 now in trouble for selling fake cancer cures for dogs." PhillyVoice, 5 Feb. 2020.
  • "Remembering Michelle Nyce." The FilAm, 6 Dec. 2011.
  • State of New Jersey v. Jonathan Nyce. No. A-1516-05T4. Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division. 7 May 2009. Justia Law.
  • USA v. Jonathan Nyce. No. 24-1319. U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. 22 Feb. 2024. Justia Dockets.
  • Vanapalli, Viswa. "Michelle Nyce Murder: Where is Jonathan Nyce Now?" The Cinemaholic, 8 Jan. 2022.
WEBVTT

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Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina.

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If there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years of.

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Marriage, it's that some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and.

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Some days you'll feel like killing your wife.

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Welcome to Love Mary Kill.

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Hi, Tina, Hey Rich, How are you today?

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Great? How are you today?

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I'm doing good. You sounded really excited in our opening.

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Well, it's been a while since you've done an episode,

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so I'm excited to hear this case.

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Before we get to the case, I wanted to give

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a quick heads up. We know that many of you

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like our banter and our snacks, but if you are

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more of a just the facts kind of person, we

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have you covered. Check out Love Mary Kill Just the Facts.

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You'll get the same deep dive research and storytelling, but

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we've cut the snacks and the banter to get straight

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to the case. So search for Love Mary Kill, Just

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the Facts wherever you're listening now. I love that March

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Madness is here. Do you know what that means?

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There's a bunch of insane leprechauns running around.

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It does mean that, but it also means that I

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have created our very own bracket challenge. I called it

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Love Mary Madness, and I want to invite all of

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our listeners to join make their picks, see how their

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picks stack up against hours.

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Okay, and oh, I have to do a bracket.

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You have to do a bracket as well.

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Historically I'm not great at it.

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Well, you know, there's a lot of luck involved, so

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you never know. It's all for fun. But we are

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going to put up some prizes. The overall winner will

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take home a one hundred dollars gift card.

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Oh, I thought you were going to say a date with.

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Rich No, but we have also fifty dollars gift cards

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for the top men's and women's brackets, and there will

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even be a consolation prize. If you finish dead last,

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we'll give you a prize as well.

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So I have a chance, You have a chance.

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The ultimate though, if anybody gets a perfect bracket. I

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haven't talked to you about this yet, but if anyone

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gets a perfect bracket, we will personally show up on

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your doorstep and bring you snacks. Oh how great is that?

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That's great?

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So you can get all the details and sign up

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now at Madness dot Lovemarykill dot com. Okay, that's Madness

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dot Lovemarykill dot Com registration closes March eighteenth, so don't delay.

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Okay, So I told Rich that no one was going

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to sign up, So prove me wrong and sign up

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and make Rich's day.

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I have another thing I wanted to mention.

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Okay, a bad thing.

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No, it's a really good thing. No, you're not in

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trouble at all. It's quite the opposite. So a really

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smart person that I follow on Instagram shared something today

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called the tell them theory, which I thought was really good. Basically,

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if you think your waiter was friendly, tell them, or

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if you think your friend looks nice, then tell them right.

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In other words, don't save com implements for a special occasion,

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because life is a special occasion. I thought that was

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a really nice sentiment.

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Yeah, I think I must opposted that. Yeah, I agree

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that the tell them theory is a great theory. There's

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another theory that a lot of people are talking about

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called the let them theory, but I feel like the

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tell them theory is a little more positive.

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What is the let them theory?

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It's mel Robbins, I think that's her name. She's like

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a podcaster and a writer, and she says, you know, like,

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don't get cut off. If your neighbors just bought a

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new fancy car and you can't afford one, you don't

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let them.

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You know, or let them enjoy what they've got.

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Right, Or if someone you know voted for someone that

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you don't support, let them, you know, don't let all

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that stuff affect you. Yeah, yes, those are simple.

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Good advice too.

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Yeah.

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Well, I wanted to tell you that A you look

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great today and B you inspire me to be a

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better person every day. So thank you for that.

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Okay, why do I feel suspicious of your actions?

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Are not good at taking compliments? You deserve it?

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Well, that is very nice of you to say you're right,

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I do not. I don't do well with compliments, but

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I appreciate the effort.

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Well. I also want to encourage all of you listening

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to tell someone today, whether it's your spouse or the

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person working at the drive through window. I think it's

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really good advice.

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Yeah, that's a great advice for for Monday. And I

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feel like a lot of people the time change is

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going to happen on Sunday, So Monday, especially if you

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have young kids, our hearts go out to you because

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the time change is really it's nice because we seem

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like that much.

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It's only an hour, but it really.

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Messages really especially babies, and so.

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Yeah, they don't they don't quite get the whole daylight

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savings time concept.

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Today our podcast isn't the most popular podcast in the world,

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but we're doing great and we've made a lot of

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friends along the way, and a lot of you guys

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have taken us on journeys with you and some are

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fun journeys like vacations or you know, walking your dog

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at night. But some journeys aren't so pleasant. People have

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told us that we gotten you through chemotherapy or our

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friend Elias went through Diellis's treatment, and some people have

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lost family members and you still tune in and listen

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to us every Monday. So we just want to say

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that we're so grateful for your support, and.

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We just wanted to give a big shout out to Elias,

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whose kidney transplant finally came through, and we are just

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so so happy for you and just so excited.

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We are so happy for you, and we're sending you

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best wishes for a quick recovery.

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I have a snack for you.

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I'm hungry today.

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Well, This is from another one of our sweet listeners, Molly.

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She sent us chocolate banana slugs from Mackenzie's Chocolate in

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Santa Cruz.

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You know mebe I'm not so hungry. I sure probably

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thought I was hungry.

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I'm pretty sure, I'm not one hundred percent of I'm

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pretty sure there are not real slugs in the chocolate.

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But she did send us a pretty sure, pretty sure

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I want you to try him first, though, But she

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did send a nice note explaining why banana slugs are important.

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Because banana slugs are the official mascot of University of California,

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Santa Cruz. They only exist in northern California and the

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Pacific Northwest. They consume leaves, animal droppings, moss, and dead

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plant material, then recycle them into soil humus. So they

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are really important little creatures. And Mackenzie's Chocolates, which apparently

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is a really cool place in Santa Cruz, has made

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a chocolate version of the banana slug. Okay, I've got one.

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For you, all right, lay it on me.

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Well, what did you think of the chocolate banana slug?

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Well, first of all, it's adorable. It's so cute, kind

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of looks like a little sperm but has a little

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smiley face on it. It's very cute. Yeah, it was

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a delicious.

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Thankfully there was no slug, no actual slug inside. It's

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really just pure dark chocolate in the shape of a

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banana slug.

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You probably don't know this, but one of the things

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that I put on my face to remain so beautiful

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is not a slug muse, but snail musin. He actually

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a product and you just add it to your beauty. Wow.

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It's because it's like snail musin.

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Wow, I learned something new today that I'm not sure

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I really wanted to know. But thank you for sharing.

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Well, thank you so much for this nack.

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Yes, delicious, No, thank you Molly for sending it. Adorable,

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really awesome, and yeah, really adorable and delicious.

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So what was the chocolate company again?

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Mackenzie Chocolate? Okay, have you ever met someone, maybe a

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colleague or just someone in passing who is clearly a

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genius but they knew they were a genius?

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Yeah, I just.

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Opened the door for that one. But they're like, they're

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so convinced of their own IQ that the rules just

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don't seem to apply to them, or they think the

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rules don't apply to them. It's sort of a dangerous

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level of arrogance where someone thinks they can outsmart reality.

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And today we're telling the story of a man who

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could be the poster child for that, doctor Jonathan Nice.

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He was a millionaire, a high flying pharmaceutical CEO, and

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a world class scientist. But as we'll see, he thought

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he could engineer a crime as easily as he engineered

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a drug. And then there's his wife, Michelle. She moved

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here from the Philippines for the American dream, and on

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the surface she found it the twenty one room mansion

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the successful husband. But the reality inside that house was

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a lot darker. It was a mix of massive debt,

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intense control, and eventually a total betrayal. This case was

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a recommendation from Nell. Thank you so much Nell for

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suggesting this case. It all starts on a bone shilling,

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sub zero morning in January two thousand and four in

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Hopewell Township, New Jersey. A utility worker was out in

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the cold when he looked down into a fifteen foot

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ravine and saw a green Toyota land Cruiser sitting in

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a shallow creek. When he got down there, the engine

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was still running, steam was coming off the hood into

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the freezing air, and inside, slumped over in the driver's

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seat was the body of Michelle Nice. At first, the

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police thought, okay, icy roads, tragic accident, but the details

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were off. The car wasn't even that badly beat up,

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yet Michelle had these horrific blunt force injuries to her

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head that didn't match a fender bender. Then the investigators

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noticed two things that changed everything. First, the driver's seat.

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Michelle was five foot four, but the seat was shoved

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all the way back like it was set for someone

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much taller. And second, there was a single set of

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size twelve footprints in the snow, leading away from the

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passenger side, up the hill and straight toward the Nice's

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million dollar home just a mile away. This is the

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story of a brilliant scientist that everyone thought of as

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a gentle giant, but he had a secret temper and

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an obsessive need for control. And just when you think

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you've reached the end of the doctor Nice's story, there's

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a bizarre second act involving a million dollar fraud and

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and a supposed miracle cancer cure for dogs.

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So doctor Nice is not so Nice not nice at all,

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the seat being moved all the way back. That's one

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of those things that people just seem to forget a

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lot after they have done something nefarious. Right.

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We have seen that so many times. It's really kind

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of surprising. Just north of Philadelphia's industrial suburbs is a

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place called Collegeville. It's where the Nice family had deep roots.

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Jonathan Wesley Nice the third entered the world there on

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May twenty sixth, nineteen fifty His parents, Jonathan Junior and Emma,

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instilled in him the understanding that he had a significant

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legacy to maintain. Life in the Nice household was defined

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by a modest, devoutly Catholic upbringing and the constant hum

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of a father's hard work. Jonathan Junior was a mechanically

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gifted man who moved the family from hosiery Mills in

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Skip Back to Gettysburg, and finally to a permanent home

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on Mill Road in Collegeville in nineteen teen fifty seven.

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Money was often tight, but the house was full, with

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Jonathan being the eldest of four brothers. Physically, Jonathan was

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a bit of an anomaly. By the age of twelve,

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he had already shot up to six feet tall, eventually

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topping out at six foot four. Yet, despite his imposing

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stature and later found love for basketball and tennis, Jonathan

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wasn't the big man on campus type. He was a loner, quiet, serious,

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and plagued by acute asthma attacks that often left him breathless.

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While other kids were out socializing, Jonathan lived in a

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world of his own making. He was a boy with

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a vivid imagination, filling notebooks with poetry and stories, But

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his true obsession was science. He didn't just study it,

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he lived it. In a scene that would become family lore.

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His parents once returned home to a sickening, heavy stench

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in the kitchen. They found seventeen year old Jonathan boiling

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a raccoon carcass. He wasn't being macabre, at least not

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in his mind. He simply wanted to study the skeleton.

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He was just learning. As his parents would later say.

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What do you do with the pot after that? Do

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you you throw it away? Or do you just well,

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it's boiling? So what do you think?

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I really couldn't tell you. The whole idea of boiling

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a dead raccoon carcass just is pretty disturbing.

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Do you think he found it on a roadside.

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I think I read that he got it from a furrier,

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which a furrier is someone who, like someone who makes

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furs out of animals.

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Right, do people wear raccoon coats? I don't know, I mean,

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why wouldn't you? I guess, I guess, I mean I wouldn't.

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But a quick Google tells me that, yes, people do

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wear raccoon coats. There's one on Poshmark for sale right now.

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You're six hundred and twenty five dollars and I am

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not really, I'm not interested.

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I'm getting you for you an expert.

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I know. Ye no, thank no, thank you. I don't

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work for a veny kind.

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That academic curiosity eventually morphed into a fascination with the law.

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Along with his friend Eugene, Jonathan co founded a high

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school Explorers group focused on criminology. They weren't just reading textbooks,

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they were visiting state police barracks and riding along with

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troopers on live calls. But for all of his intellectual confidence,

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Jonathan was painfully shy, especially around girls. He stayed within

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a tiny circle of friends, avoiding the typical high school

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party scene in favor of his studies. And his faith.

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In nineteen sixty eight, he became the first in his

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family to attend college, enrolling at Temple University in Philadelphia.

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It wasn't an easy road. His parents couldn't afford the tuition,

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so Jonathan spent eight long years working hospital jobs and

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commuting by train from home to earn his Bachelor of Science.

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During this marathon of a degree, he pivoted from his

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dream of being a doctor to the world of medical research,

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and he met Sylvia. Sylvia was an Orthodox Jewish woman,

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and the attraction was immediate. Jonathan proposed quickly, and the

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two settled into an apartment near his parents, but the

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foundation was shaky from the start. The cultural and religious

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divide between Jonathan's devout Catholic roots and Sylvia's upbringing began

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to pull at the seams of the marriage Almost as

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soon as the IDs were exchanged.

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Jonathan threw himself into his work at Temple University, beginning

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the long, arduous climb towards a PhD. During these years,

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Jonathan found his voice. He began moonlighting as a freelance

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medical writer, translating the dense world of genetics for the

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general public. In May nineteen seventy seven, Philadelphia Magazine published

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a seven page spread of his titled Message from a

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Small Chromosome. It was a deep dive into the Philadelphia chromosome,

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a genetic mutation linked to a rare, brutal form of leukemia.

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For Jonathan, this wasn't just an assignment. It was an

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obsession with the tiny, microscopic errors that could end a life.

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In nineteen seventy eight, he secured his master's in molecular biology.

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But as his professional life gained momentum, his personal life

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finally fractured. The religious tension with Sylvia had become an

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insurmountable wall. Despite an attempt at counseling, the marriage collapsed.

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Jonathan was thirty years old, single and ready for a

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new start. He found it three thousand miles away in

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southern California. Jonathan accepted a postgraduate position at the Children's

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Hospital of Los Angeles before joining the prestigious Kenneth Norris

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Cancer Center. The move was a physical rebirth. The dry,

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golden California air did what years of Philadelphia medicine couldn't.

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His chronic asthma faded away for the first time in

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his life. The six foot four scientists could breathe freely,

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but his work was heavy. Jonathan was now in the

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front lines treating children with terminal leukemia. He watched patient

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after patient succumb to the disease when standard drugs failed,

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and he became obsessed with understanding why he discovered a

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specific enzyme that was a thousand times more prevalent in

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these drug resistant cases. He didn't just want to treat them,

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he wanted to outsmart the cancer. He began developing a

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smart drug, a treatment that would lay dormant in the

307
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body until the specific enzyme triggered. It like a biological

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00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:34.559
landmine for cancer cells. Yet, as Jonathan would soon learn,

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the world of medicine is often governed more by the

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ledger than the laboratory. He took his bindings to venture capitalists,

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pitching his breakthrough with the fervor of a man who

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had seen too many children die. But the suits looked

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at the numbers and saw a small market only applicable

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to the small percentage of patients that were resistant to

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the standard drugs. The return on investment wasn't there.

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That's hard, king, it really is, and I can't remember

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the numbers of it, but there it is a very

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small percentage of people who are resistant, and that was

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the only group of people that this drug would help.

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But it would still help them.

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I think there's so many people with different, smaller diseases

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that face problems like this, where you know, the medical

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research just isn't there. That's why it's so important to

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have grants from the government to help in these smaller

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situations that aren't as profitable. Right, Jonathan Nice had the

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intellect to solve the medical mystery, but he was starting

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to realize that in the high stakes world of biotech,

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brilliance wasn't enough. You needed power. In nineteen eighty seven,

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the thirty seven year old scientist packed up his life

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in southern California and headed back to the East Coast.

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He accepted an assistant professorship at East Carolina University in Greenville,

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North Carolina, a town a world away from the fast

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paced biotech labs of Los Angeles. When he first stepped

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onto the ECU campus, Jonathan Nice looked a lot less

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like a rigid academic and more like a California beach boy.

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He stood out in the humid North Carolina heat, strolling

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into the lab in loud Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and sandals.

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Colleagues initially saw him as a gentle giant, affable, quick

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with a laugh, and physically imposing, though the six foot

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four frame was starting to soften with age and his

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hairline was beginning to recede. But the easy going exterior

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was just an exterior. While he was pleasant at faculty mixers,

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he remained an enigma. He didn't make close friends, he

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didn't grab beers after work. His most consistent social interaction

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was the frequent visits from his parents, who would drive

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down from Pennsylvania to see their eldest son's rising star,

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and that star was rising fast. By June nineteen eighty eight,

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Jonathan secured a four hundred thousand dollars grant for cancer

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research and was fast tracked to a full professorship. He

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was a powerhouse in the lab, known for his outside

351
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the box thinking that left his peers both impressed and

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slightly intimidated. But then came the epiphany. While sitting in

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a colleague's lecture on asthma, a light bulb went off.

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He realized the smart drug that he had designed for

355
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a tiny population of leukemia patients could potentially be repurposed

356
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to treat the millions of people suffering from chronic asthma,

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the very condition that he had struggled with as a child.

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In the world of medicine, this was a gold mine.

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At that time, roughly ten million Americans suffered from asthma,

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and that number was growing quickly. It's about twenty eight

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million people today. The market for a breakthrough treatment would

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be worth billions. For the next five years. Alongside his partner,

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doctor James Metzger, Jonathan became a man possessed. But as

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the stakes grew higher, controversy emerged. Jonathan enlisted his colleagues

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to help run tests in their laboratories, utilizing their resources

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and expertise. However, when it came time to protect the discovery,

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he moved into the shadows. He secretly filed patents for

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the drug entirely in his own name. When this news broke,

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the department exploded. Three of his colleagues were livid, officially

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accusing him of professional misconduct and demanding a stake in

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what they viewed as a collective discovery. The tension reached

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a fever pitch, reportedly getting so bad that Jonathan actually

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locked himself inside his laboratory at one point to avoid

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the confrontation. In the end, the university's head of pharmacology

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investigated the claims and ruled in Jonathan's favor. He was

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cleared of misconduct, but the bridge was burned. Jonathan Nice

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00:20:45.279 --> 00:20:48.160
had proven he was brilliant, but he had also shown

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that when it came to his legacy, there was no

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room for partners.

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I don't know a lot about how patent law works,

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00:20:54.160 --> 00:20:56.759
so I'm not sure if these colleagues had a legitimate

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00:20:56.880 --> 00:20:59.799
beef or not. It does sound like the investigation found that,

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you know, he acted properly, but it still seems a

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little shady what he did.

385
00:21:05.079 --> 00:21:08.559
Definitely, because in research, you're a team, and you know,

386
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usually I think everyone should get credit. Who cooks on

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the project.

388
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:12.680
Yeah, I would think so too.

389
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We'll be back after a break.

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By nineteen eighty nine, Jonathan Nice was approaching forty and

391
00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:29.799
the contrast in his life was stark. Professionally, he was

392
00:21:29.839 --> 00:21:33.640
becoming a titan, a tenured professor with a potential billion

393
00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:37.359
dollar patent in his pocket. Personally, though, he was a ghost.

394
00:21:37.759 --> 00:21:40.720
Despite his six foot four athletic frame and a face

395
00:21:40.799 --> 00:21:44.920
that many described as handsome, he seemed almost entirely disconnected

396
00:21:44.920 --> 00:21:48.279
from the world of dating. The loner tendencies of his

397
00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:53.160
childhood had solidified into a sterile, work obsessed adulthood. But

398
00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:55.519
as he stared down the start of a new decade,

399
00:21:55.680 --> 00:21:59.000
Jonathan decided he wanted to start a family. He wanted

400
00:21:59.039 --> 00:22:02.000
a wife and children, and he approached the goal with

401
00:22:02.079 --> 00:22:06.160
the same clinical determination that he applied to molecular biology.

402
00:22:06.559 --> 00:22:09.960
The catalyst was a chance encounter in a hospital cafeteria.

403
00:22:10.519 --> 00:22:14.039
Jonathan struck up a conversation with a young Filipino woman

404
00:22:14.319 --> 00:22:18.519
and asked her out. She politely declined she was already engaged,

405
00:22:18.759 --> 00:22:21.599
but she offered him a different kind of lead. She

406
00:22:21.720 --> 00:22:25.759
showed him the Lonely Hearts section of the Manila Times newspaper.

407
00:22:26.440 --> 00:22:30.079
Scanning the newsprint, Jonathan's eyes stopped on a photograph of

408
00:22:30.119 --> 00:22:34.559
a nineteen year old girl named Michili or Michelle Riviera.

409
00:22:35.119 --> 00:22:38.319
She was striking with a youthful radiance that jumped off

410
00:22:38.359 --> 00:22:41.519
the page. She was looking for an American pen pal.

411
00:22:42.039 --> 00:22:46.279
Jonathan was instantly captivated, but he was also deeply insecure.

412
00:22:46.759 --> 00:22:49.759
He carried that newspaper clipping in his pocket for days,

413
00:22:49.880 --> 00:22:52.839
pulling it out in private debating whether or not to

414
00:22:52.880 --> 00:22:56.079
reach out. When he finally summoned the courage to write,

415
00:22:56.119 --> 00:22:58.680
he didn't lead with the truth. He told her that

416
00:22:58.759 --> 00:23:02.000
he was thirty years old, shaving nearly a decade off

417
00:23:02.039 --> 00:23:05.079
of his real age, and he tucked an old photograph

418
00:23:05.079 --> 00:23:08.319
of himself into the envelope, a version of Jonathan from

419
00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:12.559
years prior. He kept the budding correspondence a total secret

420
00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:17.200
in the highbrow, often judgmental circles of academia. He feared

421
00:23:17.319 --> 00:23:20.519
his colleagues would look down on a mail order romance.

422
00:23:21.039 --> 00:23:24.559
So while he debated patents and lectured on genetics by day,

423
00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:28.519
by night, he was meticulously crafting letters to a nineteen

424
00:23:28.559 --> 00:23:30.559
year old on the other side of the world.

425
00:23:31.200 --> 00:23:34.400
I'm not a researcher who has a cure, a potential

426
00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:37.680
cure for a deadly disease, But I imagine having the

427
00:23:37.759 --> 00:23:40.279
stress of that. Yeah, you know, like if I work

428
00:23:40.319 --> 00:23:43.519
hard enough, I could save millions of people's lives. So

429
00:23:43.839 --> 00:23:47.279
putting off a family, you know, I can understand how

430
00:23:47.319 --> 00:23:48.319
that happened.

431
00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:50.160
Oh totally. And I think having a mind like that,

432
00:23:50.160 --> 00:23:53.880
that you're really focused on science, I think it does

433
00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:56.799
become all consuming. Like even if you're not just doing

434
00:23:56.839 --> 00:24:00.559
it for the good of mankind. It's just inherent and

435
00:24:00.759 --> 00:24:03.079
I think people like that that they just can't really

436
00:24:03.079 --> 00:24:04.400
focus on anything else.

437
00:24:04.799 --> 00:24:06.359
Yeah, singularly focused.

438
00:24:06.839 --> 00:24:10.400
While Jonathan was navigating the sterile High Sakes lab of

439
00:24:10.440 --> 00:24:15.279
North Carolina or world Away Mishili, Michelle Riviera was dreaming

440
00:24:15.319 --> 00:24:18.799
of a life beyond the horizon. Born in November nineteen

441
00:24:18.880 --> 00:24:22.680
sixty nine, Michelle was the fourth of seven children raised

442
00:24:22.680 --> 00:24:26.720
in the tiny, remote village of Depenza, Kapunitan. To get

443
00:24:26.720 --> 00:24:29.599
there from the bustling capital of Manila, you had to

444
00:24:29.720 --> 00:24:33.200
endure a three hour ferry ride, a journey that underscored

445
00:24:33.319 --> 00:24:36.759
just how isolated her world truly was. Life in the

446
00:24:36.839 --> 00:24:40.359
village was a constant struggle. Her father worked tirelessly to

447
00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:43.160
put food on the table for nine people. Even as

448
00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:46.079
a young girl, Michelle was a standout. She was a

449
00:24:46.079 --> 00:24:50.319
perennial honor student, a responsible and loving daughter who spent

450
00:24:50.359 --> 00:24:54.319
her mornings over textbooks and her afternoons scrubbing floors and

451
00:24:54.440 --> 00:24:58.279
raising her younger siblings. At sixteen, she made her first

452
00:24:58.400 --> 00:25:02.119
move toward a bigger life, relocating to Queyson City to

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00:25:02.359 --> 00:25:06.519
enroll in the National College of Business Administration for one semester,

454
00:25:06.599 --> 00:25:09.279
it seemed her hard work had paid off, until the

455
00:25:09.319 --> 00:25:12.640
money ran out, Her father could no longer afford the tuition,

456
00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:17.440
and the gates of academia slammed shut. Undeterred, Michelle found

457
00:25:17.440 --> 00:25:20.000
work in a dress shop at the Subic Bay US

458
00:25:20.160 --> 00:25:23.319
Naval Base. It was there, surrounded by the home of

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00:25:23.480 --> 00:25:28.440
American sailors and international commerce, that she began meticulously polishing

460
00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:32.160
her English. She wasn't just selling clothes, she was preparing

461
00:25:32.200 --> 00:25:35.680
for a conversation that she hadn't had yet. By eighteen,

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00:25:35.920 --> 00:25:38.799
she joined a pen pal agency in Manila, and soon

463
00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:43.759
a letter arrived from an American scientist named Jonathan. To Michelle,

464
00:25:43.839 --> 00:25:48.920
Jonathan represented everything her village lacked, stability, education, and a

465
00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:52.799
ticket to the American dream. As the weekly exchange of

466
00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:56.279
cards and letters grew more intimate, the distance between North

467
00:25:56.279 --> 00:26:00.680
Carolina and the Philippines began to shrink. Frequent, spensive long

468
00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:05.279
distance phone calls replaced the silent wait for mail. For Michelle,

469
00:26:05.359 --> 00:26:07.680
it was a whirlwind romance with a man that she

470
00:26:07.799 --> 00:26:11.640
believed was a thirty year old rising star. For Jonathan,

471
00:26:11.960 --> 00:26:14.279
it was a chance to start a family of his own.

472
00:26:14.680 --> 00:26:17.400
Do you have any more information? About this pen Pale agency.

473
00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:19.000
No, I really don't.

474
00:26:19.039 --> 00:26:23.039
And I think was the purpose to put together two

475
00:26:23.079 --> 00:26:26.440
people and you know, to find a mate.

476
00:26:26.559 --> 00:26:28.880
You know, I don't know for sure, but I can

477
00:26:28.960 --> 00:26:32.039
guess that Michelle's purpose in joining this was to meet

478
00:26:32.079 --> 00:26:35.400
someone's overseas and potentially find a new life, you know,

479
00:26:35.480 --> 00:26:38.079
somewhere where there was more opportunity for her than the

480
00:26:38.119 --> 00:26:41.119
little village that she was raised in. In late May

481
00:26:41.240 --> 00:26:44.599
nineteen ninety, the weekly letters and long distance phone calls

482
00:26:44.640 --> 00:26:48.640
culminated in an announcement from Jonathan. He had bought a ticket.

483
00:26:48.920 --> 00:26:51.400
He was wrapping up a lecture in Tokyo and a

484
00:26:51.400 --> 00:26:54.000
meeting in Hawaii, and he was going to come to

485
00:26:54.039 --> 00:26:57.680
the Philippines to marry her. For twenty year old Michelle,

486
00:26:57.720 --> 00:27:03.079
the dream was suddenly terrifyingly, her father, Teodoro, was skeptical.

487
00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:05.799
He wasn't about to let his daughter marry a man

488
00:27:05.920 --> 00:27:08.799
he had never looked in the eye. In early June,

489
00:27:08.839 --> 00:27:11.839
he chaperoned Michelle on the three hour ferry ride to

490
00:27:11.960 --> 00:27:15.440
Manila to meet her suitor. As the boat churned through

491
00:27:15.480 --> 00:27:19.319
the water, Michelle sat in a quiet panic. She confessed

492
00:27:19.319 --> 00:27:21.720
to her father she was afraid that she was making

493
00:27:21.720 --> 00:27:25.960
a massive mistake. Theodoro, ever, the protective father, gave her

494
00:27:25.960 --> 00:27:28.200
an out. He told her, if you don't like him

495
00:27:28.200 --> 00:27:30.839
in person, we turn around, we call it off. You

496
00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:33.119
don't have to go through with it. But when they

497
00:27:33.160 --> 00:27:36.240
reached the meeting point, it wasn't fear that struck Michelle.

498
00:27:36.319 --> 00:27:39.640
It was confusion. Standing before her was a man who

499
00:27:39.680 --> 00:27:42.720
bore almost no resemblance to the photos that he had sent.

500
00:27:43.160 --> 00:27:46.839
The thirty year old athlete from the airmail envelopes was gone.

501
00:27:47.400 --> 00:27:50.000
In his place stood an older man with thinning hair

502
00:27:50.200 --> 00:27:53.000
and a frame that had grown heavy with middle age.

503
00:27:53.480 --> 00:27:57.400
Yet while Michelle saw a stranger, Jonathan saw a miracle.

504
00:27:57.680 --> 00:28:00.519
He would later recall, she was the most beautif woman

505
00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:03.119
I ever met. She was everything and more that I

506
00:28:03.160 --> 00:28:06.599
had come to expect. For two days, the trio stayed

507
00:28:06.599 --> 00:28:10.359
in a Manila hotel, navigating a mountain of marriage paperwork,

508
00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:13.640
with Theodora watching from a room across the hall. It's

509
00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:16.680
not awkward at all, is that you're meeting your future

510
00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:18.599
wife and you're staying in a hotel room, and her

511
00:28:18.680 --> 00:28:20.720
dad is right right there across the hall.

512
00:28:20.839 --> 00:28:25.759
I can't imagine. I'm surprised. She wasn't like turned off

513
00:28:25.799 --> 00:28:28.000
immediately because she was like, well, you've lied to me

514
00:28:28.039 --> 00:28:29.359
about what you look like. Yeah.

515
00:28:29.359 --> 00:28:32.640
She definitely had her doubts, But despite the initial shock

516
00:28:32.680 --> 00:28:36.680
of his appearance, Jonathan deployed the same gentle, giant charm

517
00:28:36.759 --> 00:28:39.920
that had won over his colleagues in North Carolina. He

518
00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.119
was attentive, generous, and seemingly desperate to be loved. By

519
00:28:44.119 --> 00:28:47.240
the end of forty eight hours, Theodoro gave his blessing,

520
00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:51.359
Jonathan leaned into his new role as the American Savior.

521
00:28:51.880 --> 00:28:55.279
He traveled to Michelle's village, meeting her large family with

522
00:28:55.359 --> 00:28:59.240
open arms and winning them over instantly. To the rivieras

523
00:28:59.359 --> 00:29:02.400
he wasn't an aging scientist with an ego, he was

524
00:29:02.440 --> 00:29:05.400
a kind, wealthy man who was going to give Michelle

525
00:29:05.400 --> 00:29:09.720
the world. As the wedding date approached, Michelle's cold feet returned.

526
00:29:10.200 --> 00:29:12.640
She was about to marry a virtual stranger from the

527
00:29:12.680 --> 00:29:15.920
other side of the planet. To seal the deal, Jonathan

528
00:29:15.960 --> 00:29:18.880
took a bottle of white out to his own birth certificate.

529
00:29:19.359 --> 00:29:23.759
He painstakingly altered the year, transforming himself from forty one

530
00:29:23.880 --> 00:29:28.799
to a more acceptable thirty two. On June eleventh, nineteen ninety.

531
00:29:29.079 --> 00:29:31.920
Just one week after they met in person, they stood

532
00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:35.160
before a judge in Michelle's hometown and were married in

533
00:29:35.240 --> 00:29:38.279
a civil ceremony. The first week of their marriage was

534
00:29:38.279 --> 00:29:42.000
a sun drenched blur of romantic beaches and candlelit dinners.

535
00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:47.279
Jonathan was the perfect gentleman, kind, considerate, and profoundly generous.

536
00:29:47.839 --> 00:29:50.559
In those early days, it was easy for Michelle to

537
00:29:50.599 --> 00:29:54.559
look past the receding hairline and the decade of missing years.

538
00:29:54.599 --> 00:29:56.920
She believed that she had found her hero.

539
00:29:57.680 --> 00:30:00.039
How long did they know each other when they he

540
00:30:00.319 --> 00:30:02.240
decided to meet in person and get married.

541
00:30:02.480 --> 00:30:04.519
I am not sure the exact timeline, but it was.

542
00:30:04.640 --> 00:30:07.440
It was several months, I would guess, maybe six months

543
00:30:07.480 --> 00:30:08.240
give or take.

544
00:30:08.160 --> 00:30:11.559
Okay, when Jonathan touched down back in North Carolina, and

545
00:30:11.680 --> 00:30:14.400
he didn't return as a man celebrating a new marriage.

546
00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:17.039
He returned as a man with a secret. To his

547
00:30:17.160 --> 00:30:20.519
colleagues at ECU and even to his own parents. The

548
00:30:20.559 --> 00:30:24.359
trip to the Philippines never happened. He told everyone he

549
00:30:24.400 --> 00:30:28.079
had been away at a grueling cancer conference. For the

550
00:30:28.119 --> 00:30:31.920
next several months, Jonathan lived in a state of suspended animation.

551
00:30:32.559 --> 00:30:36.079
He had opened a bank account specifically for Michelle's family,

552
00:30:36.319 --> 00:30:39.319
and he began depositing money to help his new family

553
00:30:39.359 --> 00:30:42.200
in the Philippines. But as the weeks turned into months

554
00:30:42.240 --> 00:30:47.400
and Michelle's visa remained stuck in bureaucratic limbo, Jonathan's composure

555
00:30:47.640 --> 00:30:50.519
began to crack. Was that part of the deal, like

556
00:30:50.599 --> 00:30:53.839
money exchanging hands? Or was he just he wanted to

557
00:30:53.880 --> 00:30:54.799
take care of her family?

558
00:30:54.839 --> 00:30:56.559
He just wanted to help. I think he will talk

559
00:30:56.599 --> 00:30:58.640
about this more, but I think he had a bit

560
00:30:58.680 --> 00:31:01.240
of a savior complex. I think he saw this family

561
00:31:01.359 --> 00:31:04.359
that was living in poor conditions and he wanted to

562
00:31:04.400 --> 00:31:04.839
be a hero.

563
00:31:05.480 --> 00:31:08.519
The distance didn't just make his heart fonder, it made

564
00:31:08.599 --> 00:31:11.880
him frantic. He flooded Michelle with daily phone calls and

565
00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:15.440
a relentless stream of romantic cards, but the long distance

566
00:31:15.559 --> 00:31:20.079
nature of the relationship triggered a suffocating anxiety. He became

567
00:31:20.160 --> 00:31:23.240
convinced she was dragging her feet, and every delay in

568
00:31:23.319 --> 00:31:26.759
her paperwork fell to him like a personal rejection. By

569
00:31:26.759 --> 00:31:29.720
the time her visa was finally approved in late March

570
00:31:29.799 --> 00:31:34.279
nineteen ninety one, Jonathan wasn't just relieved. He was frustrated.

571
00:31:34.720 --> 00:31:38.200
He couldn't understand why she wasn't moving faster. Even as

572
00:31:38.240 --> 00:31:41.839
Michelle prepared to leave behind everything and everyone she had

573
00:31:41.880 --> 00:31:46.759
ever known. Finally, on April nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, ten

574
00:31:46.799 --> 00:31:50.240
months after they had married, Michelle said her goodbyes and

575
00:31:50.359 --> 00:31:54.079
boarded a plane for California. Jonathan met her there for

576
00:31:54.160 --> 00:31:57.640
a brief honeymoon before the move to North Carolina, but

577
00:31:57.720 --> 00:32:02.599
the vacation had an underlying purpose the rehearsal. Terrified that

578
00:32:02.640 --> 00:32:06.240
his academic peers would label Michelle a mail order bride,

579
00:32:06.400 --> 00:32:09.880
Jonathan spent their days in California coaching her on a

580
00:32:09.920 --> 00:32:13.759
fabrication the news story they had met in Hawaii during

581
00:32:13.759 --> 00:32:17.359
a medical conference. He had literally tripped over her foot

582
00:32:17.400 --> 00:32:20.319
while taking a break from scuba diving. It was a

583
00:32:20.359 --> 00:32:23.720
meet cute straight out of a Hollywood script. Years later,

584
00:32:23.839 --> 00:32:27.480
Jonathan would try to flip the script, claiming Michelle invented

585
00:32:27.519 --> 00:32:29.880
a lie because she feared people would think that she

586
00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:33.440
had been a sex worker at the Subic Bay Naval Base.

587
00:32:33.839 --> 00:32:36.759
Whatever the case, this was the story they would tell

588
00:32:36.839 --> 00:32:39.559
consistently for the rest of their years together.

589
00:32:39.799 --> 00:32:41.799
I guess there were a lot of sex workers at

590
00:32:41.839 --> 00:32:44.680
the sub Bay Naval Base where she worked, so she

591
00:32:44.920 --> 00:32:47.720
was very concerned that people would think that of her,

592
00:32:47.759 --> 00:32:49.640
and there was no There was no evidence that she

593
00:32:50.559 --> 00:32:51.200
was okay.

594
00:32:51.480 --> 00:32:54.920
When they finally arrived in Greenville, Jonathan paraded Michelle in

595
00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:59.960
front of his colleagues. The reaction was instant, stunned silence.

596
00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:03.920
Faculty lounge hummed with gossip. The Hawaii story was thin

597
00:33:04.039 --> 00:33:07.359
and the pairing was odd. Jonathan was twice her age,

598
00:33:07.400 --> 00:33:12.480
introverted and increasingly rigid. Michelle was a radiant, outgoing twenty

599
00:33:12.519 --> 00:33:15.039
one year old who seemed to vibrate with the happiness

600
00:33:15.200 --> 00:33:18.920
that Jonathan never possessed. The final stop on the reveal

601
00:33:19.039 --> 00:33:22.720
tour was Collegeville. Jonathan walked into his parents' home and

602
00:33:22.799 --> 00:33:26.279
introduced them to the daughter in law they didn't know existed.

603
00:33:26.519 --> 00:33:30.079
To their credit, the senior nices didn't care about the secrecy.

604
00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:33.880
They saw Michelle's warmth and immediately folded her into the family,

605
00:33:34.119 --> 00:33:36.240
treating her like the daughter they never had.

606
00:33:36.440 --> 00:33:39.599
You imagine not even telling your parents until he brought

607
00:33:39.640 --> 00:33:40.880
them over to introduce her.

608
00:33:41.160 --> 00:33:43.480
Yeah, that would be a that would be a huge shot.

609
00:33:43.559 --> 00:33:46.400
It sounds like they were used to his eccentricities a

610
00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:48.240
little bit and were like, yeah, that's just Jonathan.

611
00:33:48.680 --> 00:33:51.119
Michelle had a new family and a New Country, but

612
00:33:51.240 --> 00:33:54.160
she was living in a house built on Jonathan's carefully

613
00:33:54.519 --> 00:33:58.720
curated fictions. The age, the meeting, the scuba diving, Meetcute

614
00:33:59.119 --> 00:34:01.359
stage was set for a life where the truth was

615
00:34:01.440 --> 00:34:05.279
whatever Jonathan Nice decided it should be. The years of

616
00:34:05.319 --> 00:34:08.679
the Nice marriage in Greenville played out like a suburban dream.

617
00:34:09.079 --> 00:34:12.480
Within months of her arrival, Michelle was pregnant, and on

618
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:15.960
January twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two, she gave birth to

619
00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:19.320
a son they named Alex for Jonathan. This was the

620
00:34:19.400 --> 00:34:22.800
fulfillment of a lifelong ambition. The man who spent most

621
00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:25.840
of his time blocked in sterile labs was suddenly a

622
00:34:25.880 --> 00:34:29.199
doting father, hovering over his infant son with the devotion

623
00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:34.159
that surprised even his closest colleagues. Michelle, still only twenty two,

624
00:34:34.559 --> 00:34:37.599
took to motherhood with the same disciplined grace she'd shown

625
00:34:37.639 --> 00:34:41.280
in her village. She worked tirelessly to master her English,

626
00:34:41.440 --> 00:34:44.480
and her happy, go lucky spirit quickly made her a

627
00:34:44.559 --> 00:34:49.840
favorite among the university faculty and their spouses at department parties. However,

628
00:34:49.880 --> 00:34:54.559
a noticeable dynamic began to emerge. Jonathan was intensely protective.

629
00:34:54.920 --> 00:34:59.000
Some might say possessive, Michelle was often seen literally hanging

630
00:34:59.039 --> 00:35:02.599
on his arm, appearing highly dependent on the gentle giant

631
00:35:02.719 --> 00:35:05.760
who had brought her to this new world. By late

632
00:35:05.880 --> 00:35:08.440
nineteen ninety three, the family grew again with the birth

633
00:35:08.440 --> 00:35:11.760
of a second son, Trevor. Despite the grueling hours that

634
00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:16.079
Jonathan was putting in alongside doctor James Metzger to perfect

635
00:35:16.280 --> 00:35:20.199
his potential billion dollar asthma drug, he made a ritual

636
00:35:20.320 --> 00:35:23.920
of family time. There was a duck pond situated right

637
00:35:23.960 --> 00:35:28.840
between their apartment complex and the University Medical Center. Most afternoons,

638
00:35:28.920 --> 00:35:32.480
Jonathan would step away from his microscopes and patents to

639
00:35:32.519 --> 00:35:35.199
meet Michelle and the boys, and together they would stand

640
00:35:35.199 --> 00:35:38.239
at the water's edge feeding the ducks, a scene Jonathan

641
00:35:38.280 --> 00:35:41.280
would later describe as the happiest time in his life.

642
00:35:41.559 --> 00:35:44.800
But as Michelle became more comfortable in her American skin,

643
00:35:45.440 --> 00:35:49.719
her world began to expand beyond Jonathan's shadow. She developed

644
00:35:49.719 --> 00:35:52.400
close friendships with other stay at home moms, and she

645
00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:56.039
found a new outlet for her disciplined nature, the Gem.

646
00:35:56.360 --> 00:35:59.639
Every morning, the moment Jonathan's car pulled out of the driveway,

647
00:35:59.679 --> 00:36:04.480
Michelle headed for a strenuous workout. She became fanatical about

648
00:36:04.480 --> 00:36:08.679
her fitness, transforming her physique, and more importantly, building a

649
00:36:08.679 --> 00:36:13.360
social life entirely independent of the university circle. She now

650
00:36:13.400 --> 00:36:16.519
had her own friends, her own routine, and a burgeoning

651
00:36:16.599 --> 00:36:20.079
sense of self that existed outside of being missus nice

652
00:36:20.719 --> 00:36:24.039
to any outsider visiting their home. The marriage looked like

653
00:36:24.079 --> 00:36:28.280
a picture perfect portrait of the American dream, a brilliant scientist,

654
00:36:28.480 --> 00:36:32.360
a beautiful, fit wife, and two healthy sons. But beneath

655
00:36:32.360 --> 00:36:36.360
the surface of those duck pond days, the dynamic was shifting.

656
00:36:36.719 --> 00:36:39.880
Michelle was finding her feet, while Jonathan was still holding

657
00:36:39.960 --> 00:36:43.440
onto a version of her that was increasingly a work

658
00:36:43.480 --> 00:36:43.960
of fiction.

659
00:36:44.559 --> 00:36:47.280
I think the dynamic that we're describing in their relationship

660
00:36:47.400 --> 00:36:48.840
is entirely predictable.

661
00:36:48.920 --> 00:36:49.079
Right.

662
00:36:49.079 --> 00:36:52.280
You've got this very young, twenty year old woman, young

663
00:36:52.320 --> 00:36:54.960
woman who is coming to a new country, and over

664
00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:57.480
time she's going to find out who she is.

665
00:36:57.400 --> 00:36:59.800
And she's going to blossom into who she's spent.

666
00:37:00.239 --> 00:37:02.480
Yeah, and I think Jonathan was not. I think he

667
00:37:02.519 --> 00:37:04.079
had a hard time handling.

668
00:37:03.679 --> 00:37:07.159
That sounds like it. In the spring of nineteen ninety five,

669
00:37:07.280 --> 00:37:10.440
Jonathan took a leave of absence from ECU to launch

670
00:37:10.599 --> 00:37:15.719
Epigenesis pharmaceuticals. The mission was bold to bring a revolutionary,

671
00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:18.599
one size fits all asthma drug to the global market.

672
00:37:18.960 --> 00:37:21.440
He wasn't just a professor anymore. He was now a

673
00:37:21.559 --> 00:37:25.320
CEO on the verge of a medical breakthrough that promised

674
00:37:25.320 --> 00:37:28.599
to change the life of millions. But as the company grew,

675
00:37:28.880 --> 00:37:32.239
the gentle giant of the lab began to vanish. Jonathan

676
00:37:32.320 --> 00:37:35.519
was now a man in a suit, courting venture capitalists

677
00:37:35.559 --> 00:37:39.960
and presenting papers at international conferences. His absence from the

678
00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.320
actual research bench fueled a growing acrimony among his colleagues,

679
00:37:44.440 --> 00:37:47.400
who felt he was reaping the glory while they did

680
00:37:47.440 --> 00:37:51.079
the heavy lifting. Inside the new company, the culture was

681
00:37:51.119 --> 00:37:54.440
even more strained. While Jonathan had the outside the box

682
00:37:54.519 --> 00:37:58.280
brilliance to envision a new miracle drug, those who worked

683
00:37:58.280 --> 00:38:02.679
for him described him as the worst manager in the world.

684
00:38:02.719 --> 00:38:05.360
He lacked even a shred of business sense, but his

685
00:38:05.559 --> 00:38:09.320
obsessive need for control made it impossible for him to delegate.

686
00:38:09.719 --> 00:38:13.199
He hired a qualified executive to run operations, only to

687
00:38:13.239 --> 00:38:17.079
suffocate him by demanding a hand in every single decision.

688
00:38:17.440 --> 00:38:21.440
For Jonathan, Epigenesis wasn't just a business, It was his

689
00:38:21.559 --> 00:38:27.199
personal kingdom. The financial Floodgates, however, didn't care about management styles.

690
00:38:27.679 --> 00:38:32.440
After features in Nature magazine and Newsweek, investors began flocking

691
00:38:32.480 --> 00:38:35.880
to him. By April nineteen ninety seven, Jonathan opened an

692
00:38:35.920 --> 00:38:39.760
office in Durham, North Carolina, home of Michael Peterson when

693
00:38:39.800 --> 00:38:42.119
if we talk about Durham, that's what you think of,

694
00:38:43.159 --> 00:38:46.519
and he was fielding licensing offers from twenty five different

695
00:38:46.519 --> 00:38:51.880
pharmaceutical giants. This new wealth transformed the Nice household. Michelle

696
00:38:51.880 --> 00:38:54.639
began sending more money back to the Philippines, where her

697
00:38:54.679 --> 00:38:58.840
family purchased land and established a duck farm, finally becoming

698
00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:02.519
self sufficient. Jonathan would later claim he went even further,

699
00:39:02.920 --> 00:39:07.239
building schools, playgrounds, and six houses for her relatives, though

700
00:39:07.239 --> 00:39:10.920
the Riviera family would later dispute those claims of savior

701
00:39:11.119 --> 00:39:15.320
level generosity. But as the bank account grew, the house

702
00:39:15.360 --> 00:39:19.280
in North Carolina grew colder. Michelle, now twenty eight and

703
00:39:19.360 --> 00:39:23.760
applying for US citizenship, was feeling the weight of Jonathan's absence.

704
00:39:24.079 --> 00:39:27.320
He was constantly traveling, leaving her alone with two young

705
00:39:27.480 --> 00:39:31.559
sons and a third pregnancy. She kept her fanatical gym

706
00:39:31.639 --> 00:39:34.960
routine up, telling friends it was the only thing keeping her,

707
00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:37.960
saying to the outside world, she was still the happy,

708
00:39:38.000 --> 00:39:41.079
go lucky wife, but those close to the Lab saw

709
00:39:41.079 --> 00:39:44.960
a different side. In March nineteen ninety eight, Michelle gave

710
00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:48.800
birth to their daughter, Samantha. To Jonathan, the family was

711
00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:52.119
now complete. He would later insist they were the happiest

712
00:39:52.119 --> 00:39:56.880
couple imaginable, a family people envied, but as some observers,

713
00:39:56.920 --> 00:39:59.920
the nicest seemed to be performing, working just a lo

714
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:03.039
a little too hard to project a perfect image while

715
00:40:03.039 --> 00:40:06.840
the foundation of their marriage was quietly crumbling. Do you

716
00:40:06.880 --> 00:40:11.239
think at any point in their marriage was Michelle actually happy.

717
00:40:11.519 --> 00:40:13.559
I know she was a happy person, but was she

718
00:40:13.679 --> 00:40:15.199
happy with her husband?

719
00:40:15.400 --> 00:40:17.840
You know, it's a really good question. It seems like,

720
00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:20.039
you know, when they were writing letters back and forth

721
00:40:20.079 --> 00:40:23.199
that she really loved him, but it seemed like things

722
00:40:23.239 --> 00:40:25.440
started to kind of go south pretty quickly.

723
00:40:25.559 --> 00:40:25.760
Yeah.

724
00:40:25.760 --> 00:40:28.280
I think when she realized that he was different than

725
00:40:28.280 --> 00:40:30.599
he portrayed himself, that sort of left a bad taste

726
00:40:30.639 --> 00:40:31.039
in her mouth.

727
00:40:31.119 --> 00:40:31.920
Huge red flag.

728
00:40:32.119 --> 00:40:34.719
Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think that, you know,

729
00:40:34.800 --> 00:40:36.639
she came to America and that I think he was

730
00:40:36.719 --> 00:40:39.760
so busy with his work that she probably didn't get

731
00:40:39.800 --> 00:40:42.400
to spend that much time with him as she probably

732
00:40:42.440 --> 00:40:44.480
expected when she made that trip.

733
00:40:44.599 --> 00:40:46.159
We'll be back after a break.

734
00:40:53.119 --> 00:40:56.719
By early nineteen ninety eight, the buzz surrounding Epigenesis had

735
00:40:56.760 --> 00:41:00.320
reached a fever pitch. Jonathan Nice was no longer just

736
00:41:00.360 --> 00:41:04.280
a scientist. He was a sought after commodity. Cities across

737
00:41:04.320 --> 00:41:06.800
the country were competing to become the home of his

738
00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:10.440
revolutionary new drug, but it was Princeton, New Jersey that

739
00:41:10.519 --> 00:41:13.039
won out with a lucrative tax package.

740
00:41:13.320 --> 00:41:15.719
Do you have any idea how much the company was worth.

741
00:41:16.039 --> 00:41:18.639
Did he become a millionaire overnight? Or was it just

742
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:21.000
a good lucrative company.

743
00:41:21.199 --> 00:41:23.920
The company became worth a lot. I don't know the

744
00:41:24.039 --> 00:41:26.599
exact number, but it was all on paper, right. It

745
00:41:26.639 --> 00:41:29.119
was all like a lot of investors were pumping a

746
00:41:29.119 --> 00:41:32.320
lot of money in, but the company never really made money.

747
00:41:32.559 --> 00:41:34.679
So like an Elizabeth Holmes type situation.

748
00:41:35.079 --> 00:41:38.199
Yeah, very much so. In the fall of nineteen ninety eight,

749
00:41:38.280 --> 00:41:41.599
the company moved into a sleek, fifty one hundred square

750
00:41:41.599 --> 00:41:45.760
foot facility in Cranberry, New Jersey. Jonathan brought his old

751
00:41:45.800 --> 00:41:49.400
guard from North Carolina with him, including his loyal research

752
00:41:49.440 --> 00:41:53.920
assistant Sherry Leonard, his co founder, doctor W. James Metzker

753
00:41:54.239 --> 00:41:57.119
took a seat on the board, although he would tragically

754
00:41:57.159 --> 00:42:00.239
lose his own battle with cancer just two years later later,

755
00:42:00.679 --> 00:42:04.360
leaving Jonathan with even fewer people who felt comfortable standing

756
00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:07.079
up to him. One of his first new hires in

757
00:42:07.079 --> 00:42:11.360
New Jersey was Amanda Gillim, brought in as VP of Operations.

758
00:42:11.840 --> 00:42:15.079
Amanda arrived with high hopes, but it didn't take long

759
00:42:15.159 --> 00:42:18.119
for the cracks in the corporate facade to show. She

760
00:42:18.280 --> 00:42:22.000
watched as the staff from North Carolina followed Jonathan with

761
00:42:22.039 --> 00:42:25.880
a devotion that bordered on blindness. To Amanda, it was

762
00:42:26.000 --> 00:42:30.159
clear Jonathan didn't want a partner or an advisor. He

763
00:42:30.239 --> 00:42:33.960
wanted an audience. His ego had become as massive as

764
00:42:34.000 --> 00:42:37.039
the office space, and anyone who dared to challenge his

765
00:42:37.119 --> 00:42:41.960
business sense was quickly sidelined. While Jonathan was building his empire,

766
00:42:42.199 --> 00:42:45.719
the foundation of his home life was crumbling. He moved

767
00:42:45.800 --> 00:42:49.480
Michelle and their three children into a rented townhouse in Princeton,

768
00:42:49.599 --> 00:42:54.239
landing an upscale community near the university. For Jonathan, it

769
00:42:54.280 --> 00:42:57.679
was a status symbol. For Michelle, it was a cage.

770
00:42:58.159 --> 00:43:02.079
Michelle was devastated by the move to Princeton. In Greenville,

771
00:43:02.119 --> 00:43:05.440
she had built a life, a community, a circle of friends,

772
00:43:05.719 --> 00:43:09.159
and a hard won sense of belonging. In the cold,

773
00:43:09.199 --> 00:43:13.280
intellectual atmosphere of Princeton, she felt like an outsider once again.

774
00:43:13.840 --> 00:43:16.920
During those first few months, the happy go lucky mask

775
00:43:17.079 --> 00:43:20.480
finally slipped. She spent her days in a deep depression,

776
00:43:20.719 --> 00:43:23.960
calling her old friends in North Carolina and breaking down

777
00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:26.960
in tears. She began to voice the question that she

778
00:43:27.039 --> 00:43:30.599
had suppressed for years. Had she made a massive mistake

779
00:43:30.840 --> 00:43:35.400
leaving the Philippines. As always, her only sanctuary was the gym.

780
00:43:35.719 --> 00:43:38.880
While Alex and Trevor were at school, Michelle would drop

781
00:43:38.920 --> 00:43:42.360
young Samantha off at the gym's daycare and lose herself

782
00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:45.079
in the physical strain of a workout. It was the

783
00:43:45.079 --> 00:43:49.639
only part of her life where she still felt in control. Slowly, however,

784
00:43:49.719 --> 00:43:53.239
Michelle and Jonathan began making friends in New Jersey, and

785
00:43:53.320 --> 00:43:57.199
Michelle began to feel at home. Meanwhile, the public's adoration

786
00:43:57.320 --> 00:44:01.920
of Jonathan continued unabated. In March nineteen ninety nine, the

787
00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:06.480
prestigious US one business newspaper featured him in a glowing

788
00:44:06.559 --> 00:44:10.360
cover story. To the readers, Jonathan Nice was the man

789
00:44:10.440 --> 00:44:13.519
who was going to cure the world's breathing by the

790
00:44:13.599 --> 00:44:17.159
dawn of the new millennium. Jonathan Nice was wealthy beyond

791
00:44:17.199 --> 00:44:21.599
his wildest dreams, but that wealth existed almost entirely on paper.

792
00:44:22.039 --> 00:44:24.880
To the outside world, he was a Titan of biotech.

793
00:44:25.280 --> 00:44:29.880
His colleagues, however, noticed something unsettling. They started to suspect

794
00:44:29.880 --> 00:44:34.559
that Jonathan was a compulsive liar. He became increasingly tangled

795
00:44:34.599 --> 00:44:38.679
in a web of untruths, some small, some foundational, and

796
00:44:38.800 --> 00:44:41.800
even when caught red handed, he refused to back down.

797
00:44:42.320 --> 00:44:45.519
The brilliant scientist was losing the one thing a researcher

798
00:44:45.599 --> 00:44:49.960
needs most, credibility. Jonathan began living the high life of

799
00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:53.119
a Silicon Valley mogul. Though his wealth was tied up

800
00:44:53.159 --> 00:44:56.000
and yet to be proven stock, he acted as though

801
00:44:56.039 --> 00:44:59.119
the finish line had already been crossed. He traded up

802
00:44:59.119 --> 00:45:02.039
for a sleek out d sports car, bought Michelle a

803
00:45:02.119 --> 00:45:07.119
green Toyota land Cruiser, and handed her a generous allowance. Michelle,

804
00:45:07.199 --> 00:45:10.239
ever mindful of the world she had left behind, funneled

805
00:45:10.320 --> 00:45:13.239
much of that wealth back to the Philippines, sustaining her

806
00:45:13.280 --> 00:45:16.800
family and their duck farm. In early two thousand, as

807
00:45:16.840 --> 00:45:20.559
the company prepared for Phase two human trials, moving from

808
00:45:20.639 --> 00:45:25.079
healthy volunteers to actual asthma sufferers. The Nices bought their

809
00:45:25.159 --> 00:45:28.679
dream home, a five thousand square foot mansion in the

810
00:45:28.800 --> 00:45:32.239
ultra exclusive Hopewell Township, perched at the end of a

811
00:45:32.239 --> 00:45:35.280
private cul de sac on three acres of land. It

812
00:45:35.400 --> 00:45:38.679
was a twenty one room monument to their success, costing

813
00:45:38.760 --> 00:45:41.880
nearly nine hundred thousand dollars or about one point eight

814
00:45:41.920 --> 00:45:45.880
million today, the first home they had ever owned. Jonathan

815
00:45:45.880 --> 00:45:49.440
would later claim the house was Michelle's choice, a compromise

816
00:45:49.519 --> 00:45:53.400
he made despite wanting to be closer to their children's school.

817
00:45:53.480 --> 00:45:55.960
If it was her choice, she leaned into it with

818
00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:00.239
a vengeance. Michelle spared no expense, furnishing the twenty one

819
00:46:00.320 --> 00:46:03.159
rooms with the best of everything. In the center of

820
00:46:03.159 --> 00:46:06.960
the circular driveway, she installed a massive, five tier water

821
00:46:07.039 --> 00:46:11.320
fountain and surrounded it with six thousand hand planted tulips.

822
00:46:11.719 --> 00:46:15.960
Jonathan's tulips. This a lot of tulip show was very beautiful. Jonathan,

823
00:46:16.079 --> 00:46:19.360
perhaps fueled by guilt for his absences or a need

824
00:46:19.400 --> 00:46:22.840
to maintain the perfect image, seemed unable to say no

825
00:46:23.000 --> 00:46:26.400
to her. The peak of Jonathan's professional life came in

826
00:46:26.440 --> 00:46:30.400
April of two thousand, Jonathan signed a staggering one hundred

827
00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:34.559
million dollar deal with Taisho, Japan's largest over the counter

828
00:46:34.639 --> 00:46:39.280
drug company. The deal turned Epigenesis into an international powerhouse,

829
00:46:39.559 --> 00:46:43.519
and they expanded once again, moving operations into a sprawling

830
00:46:43.719 --> 00:46:48.719
twenty thousand square foot facility in Princeton. Jonathan's exit strategy

831
00:46:48.840 --> 00:46:52.039
was clear, sell the company to a giant like mrk

832
00:46:52.199 --> 00:46:55.840
or Ty, show, cash out his massive steak, and solidify

833
00:46:55.920 --> 00:46:58.960
his legacy as the man who cured asthma. He was

834
00:46:59.000 --> 00:47:02.519
standing on the summit of the American dream. In the

835
00:47:02.599 --> 00:47:05.679
year two thousand, the twenty one room mansion in Hopewell

836
00:47:05.719 --> 00:47:08.320
became less of a home and more of a fortress.

837
00:47:08.880 --> 00:47:12.360
The first cracks in the perfect facade appeared when Michelle

838
00:47:12.519 --> 00:47:15.199
prepared for her first trip back to the Philippines in

839
00:47:15.280 --> 00:47:18.400
nine years. She wanted to show her children the village

840
00:47:18.440 --> 00:47:21.000
where she had grown up, to bridge the two halves

841
00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:24.960
of her life. Jonathan's reaction, though, was swift and paranoid.

842
00:47:25.400 --> 00:47:28.199
He refused to let the children go, going so far

843
00:47:28.280 --> 00:47:31.320
as to lock away their passports. He claimed he was

844
00:47:31.360 --> 00:47:35.800
protecting them from kidnappers targeting the children of wealthy scientists,

845
00:47:36.119 --> 00:47:39.000
but to Michelle it felt like a different kind of theft.

846
00:47:39.400 --> 00:47:42.320
She traveled alone, and when she returned to New Jersey,

847
00:47:42.679 --> 00:47:46.880
she was changed. The dependence Jonathan had cultivated was beginning

848
00:47:46.920 --> 00:47:50.920
to dissolve. She was more independent, more vocal, and more

849
00:47:50.920 --> 00:47:54.840
determined to secure her family's future in the Philippines, funneling

850
00:47:54.960 --> 00:47:57.000
even larger sums of money back home.

851
00:47:57.559 --> 00:47:59.559
Do you think her intention was to move back to

852
00:47:59.559 --> 00:48:01.800
the Philip Peen someday with the children.

853
00:48:01.679 --> 00:48:04.039
The good question. I think at this point that that

854
00:48:04.159 --> 00:48:06.559
idea of may have just been starting to form in

855
00:48:06.559 --> 00:48:11.719
her mind. Jonathan's insecurity, always simmering beneath the surface, began

856
00:48:11.800 --> 00:48:14.760
to boil. He was acutely aware of the growing gap

857
00:48:14.840 --> 00:48:17.679
between them, not just the years that he had lied about,

858
00:48:17.719 --> 00:48:21.159
but the physical reality. Michelle was thirty one, in the

859
00:48:21.199 --> 00:48:24.960
prime of her life, and fanatical about her fitness. Jonathan

860
00:48:25.039 --> 00:48:29.800
was fifty, overweight, and increasingly tethered to his desk, terrified

861
00:48:29.800 --> 00:48:32.320
of the men that she might meet at a public gym.

862
00:48:32.440 --> 00:48:35.960
Jonathan spent thousands of dollars to build a professional grade

863
00:48:35.960 --> 00:48:39.840
fitness center inside their home. It was a grand gesture,

864
00:48:39.880 --> 00:48:42.519
but it was wrapped in a layer of control. If

865
00:48:42.559 --> 00:48:45.159
she wouldn't stop working out, he would at least ensure

866
00:48:45.199 --> 00:48:48.559
that she did it behind closed doors. By late two

867
00:48:48.559 --> 00:48:51.599
thousand and one, the duck Pond days were a distant memory.

868
00:48:52.079 --> 00:48:55.039
Michelle abruptly cut off all contact with her old friends

869
00:48:55.039 --> 00:48:58.000
in North Carolina, as if that chapter of her life

870
00:48:58.079 --> 00:49:01.480
had been bleached from her mind. Jonathan would later claim

871
00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:04.960
this was the moment the marriage began to spiral, saying

872
00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.239
that his success went to Michelle's head. Meanwhile, Michelle was

873
00:49:09.280 --> 00:49:12.440
expanding her circle. In July two thousand and one, she

874
00:49:12.599 --> 00:49:16.679
met a woman named Larissa Sues, a fellow Filipino immigrant

875
00:49:16.840 --> 00:49:20.400
who had also married a successful American man. They were

876
00:49:20.440 --> 00:49:24.719
both middle children from large rural families, Navigating the strange,

877
00:49:24.960 --> 00:49:29.480
sterile waters of elite New Jersey suburbs. The two became inseparable.

878
00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:32.639
They spent hours in the expensive home gym that Jonathan

879
00:49:32.679 --> 00:49:36.800
had built, with Michelle acting as Larissa's personal trainer. She

880
00:49:36.920 --> 00:49:40.000
confided in Larissa that the gym wasn't just a gift,

881
00:49:40.199 --> 00:49:43.880
it was a restriction. Jonathan had forbidden her from joining

882
00:49:43.880 --> 00:49:48.400
a public club because of the guys. But Michelle, ever resourceful,

883
00:49:48.480 --> 00:49:52.639
turned her cage into a social hub. Bored with solitary workouts,

884
00:49:52.760 --> 00:49:56.000
she began inviting friends over, filling the house with the

885
00:49:56.119 --> 00:50:00.360
very outside energy that Jonathan was trying desperately to exclude.

886
00:50:00.639 --> 00:50:04.000
In early September two thousand and one, Jonathan Nice was

887
00:50:04.079 --> 00:50:07.719
standing on the precipice of immortality. He had just signed

888
00:50:07.760 --> 00:50:12.079
preliminary documents for a staggering eight hundred million dollar deal

889
00:50:12.480 --> 00:50:16.840
with a pharmaceutical giant. To celebrate and secure even more capital,

890
00:50:17.159 --> 00:50:21.159
Epigenesis launched a high stakes cross country road show to

891
00:50:21.280 --> 00:50:25.599
court new venture capitalists. Jonathan believed he was days away

892
00:50:25.719 --> 00:50:30.079
from joining the global elite. Then the world changed. The

893
00:50:30.119 --> 00:50:33.480
attacks of September eleventh, two thousand and one didn't just

894
00:50:33.559 --> 00:50:37.920
shatter the national psyche. They froze the financial markets. The

895
00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:42.360
investor climate turned sub zero overnight. The eight hundred million

896
00:50:42.400 --> 00:50:46.159
dollar deal, the one that was supposed to cement Jonathan's legacy,

897
00:50:46.519 --> 00:50:50.719
vanished into thin air. While Jonathan's smart drug was proving

898
00:50:50.960 --> 00:50:55.360
partially successful in clinical trials, partial wasn't enough for a

899
00:50:55.440 --> 00:50:59.480
terrified market. In normal times, a scientist of his caliber

900
00:50:59.599 --> 00:51:02.800
might have survived the lull, But Jonathan had built his

901
00:51:02.840 --> 00:51:06.239
empire on a house of cards, supported primarily by the

902
00:51:06.320 --> 00:51:11.199
Japanese firm Taisho and a small, increasingly nervous investor base.

903
00:51:11.800 --> 00:51:14.320
By early two thousand and two, he was watching his

904
00:51:14.440 --> 00:51:18.360
kingdom crumble. The twenty thousand square foot facility in Princeton,

905
00:51:18.679 --> 00:51:22.320
once a hive of billion dollar ambition, became a ghost town.

906
00:51:22.840 --> 00:51:26.480
Jonathan was forced into rounds of brutal layoffs, cutting the

907
00:51:26.519 --> 00:51:30.239
staff from a small army down to just twelve loyalists.

908
00:51:30.800 --> 00:51:34.360
The pressure was suffocating. Desperate for a cash infusion to

909
00:51:34.440 --> 00:51:37.840
keep the clinical tests alive, Jonathan turned to the one

910
00:51:37.880 --> 00:51:41.239
thing that he actually owned, the twenty one room dream home.

911
00:51:41.719 --> 00:51:44.199
He took out a two hundred thousand dollars home equity

912
00:51:44.239 --> 00:51:47.159
loan against the mansion in Hopewell to a man who

913
00:51:47.239 --> 00:51:49.719
had been chasing nearly a billion dollars. It was a

914
00:51:49.800 --> 00:51:53.400
drop in the bucket, a temporary bandage on a severed artery.

915
00:51:54.000 --> 00:51:56.760
Jonathan Knice was now a man fighting a war on

916
00:51:56.840 --> 00:51:59.840
two fronts. At the office, he was trying to outrun

917
00:51:59.840 --> 00:52:03.119
a financial collapse, and at home, he was trying to

918
00:52:03.159 --> 00:52:06.920
maintain the illusion of the successful provider for a wife

919
00:52:06.960 --> 00:52:09.440
who was becoming more independent by the day.

920
00:52:09.960 --> 00:52:13.679
In May two thousand and two, Michelle's father, Theodoro, arrived

921
00:52:13.719 --> 00:52:16.920
from the Philippines for a six months stay, bringing a

922
00:52:16.960 --> 00:52:20.400
sense of home to the cavernous twenty one room mansion.

923
00:52:20.880 --> 00:52:24.360
He fell into a rhythm of domesticity, filling the house

924
00:52:24.400 --> 00:52:27.880
with the scent of Filipino and Chinese cooking, and doting

925
00:52:27.880 --> 00:52:33.519
on his three grandchildren, two outsiders, including Larissa and Teodoro himself.

926
00:52:33.679 --> 00:52:37.960
The relationship between Jonathan and Michelle still seemed good. Jonathan

927
00:52:38.079 --> 00:52:41.679
was the consummate gentleman, pulling out Michelle's chair at dinner,

928
00:52:41.920 --> 00:52:45.159
opening doors, and never missing a chance to show affection

929
00:52:45.480 --> 00:52:49.679
in front of friends. But Michelle's feelings for Jonathan had changed,

930
00:52:50.159 --> 00:52:53.920
and then came the revelation that shook Michelle to her core.

931
00:52:54.639 --> 00:52:58.239
The setting was a family birthday party for Jonathan's brother Michael.

932
00:52:58.639 --> 00:53:01.119
It was a casual gather during the kind of event

933
00:53:01.199 --> 00:53:05.400
where guardrails are lowered and family laura is shared. Michelle

934
00:53:05.400 --> 00:53:09.880
found herself chatting with Jonathan's mother, Emma. The conversation turned

935
00:53:09.880 --> 00:53:14.280
to Jonathan's upcoming birthday, and Emma, with the casual certainty

936
00:53:14.280 --> 00:53:17.199
of a mother, remarked that she couldn't believe her son

937
00:53:17.599 --> 00:53:22.400
was turning fifty two. Michelle froze. She corrected her mother

938
00:53:22.480 --> 00:53:26.039
in law, stating that Jonathan was turning forty four. But

939
00:53:26.079 --> 00:53:29.239
Emma didn't budge no. She insisted he was born in

940
00:53:29.360 --> 00:53:32.320
nineteen fifty. I'm his mother, of course I know what

941
00:53:32.440 --> 00:53:35.800
year he was born. In that moment, twelve years of

942
00:53:35.840 --> 00:53:39.519
marriage shifted. Michelle realized that the man she had built

943
00:53:39.519 --> 00:53:41.840
a life with, the man that she had moved across

944
00:53:41.880 --> 00:53:44.880
the world war, had lied to her before they had

945
00:53:44.920 --> 00:53:48.559
even met. He hadn't just budged a number in a letter.

946
00:53:48.960 --> 00:53:52.199
He had used white out on a legal document. He

947
00:53:52.239 --> 00:53:55.199
had looked her father in the eye while posing as

948
00:53:55.239 --> 00:53:59.199
a man nearly a decade younger. The betrayal wasn't about

949
00:53:59.239 --> 00:54:03.119
the number. It was about the fundamental deception. From that

950
00:54:03.239 --> 00:54:06.159
day forward, the love Michelle had felt for the gentle

951
00:54:06.199 --> 00:54:10.760
giant was replaced by a cold, sharp resentment. She began

952
00:54:10.840 --> 00:54:15.599
to see every gentlemanly gesture and every protective rule not

953
00:54:15.800 --> 00:54:19.239
as acts of love, but as layers of control. She

954
00:54:19.519 --> 00:54:22.400
wanted out, But as she looked around the five thousand

955
00:54:22.440 --> 00:54:25.840
square foot dream home, she realized she was living in

956
00:54:25.880 --> 00:54:29.639
a cage where Jonathan held the only keys. He controlled

957
00:54:29.639 --> 00:54:33.519
the bank accounts, the investments, and the narrative. Even though

958
00:54:33.559 --> 00:54:37.360
she was now a citizen, she still felt powerless. She

959
00:54:37.519 --> 00:54:40.639
was a woman with a magnificent house, a famous husband

960
00:54:40.679 --> 00:54:44.280
in six thousand Tulips, and she had absolutely nothing of

961
00:54:44.320 --> 00:54:44.760
her own.

962
00:54:44.960 --> 00:54:47.119
I think this discovery of his age thing, she must

963
00:54:47.159 --> 00:54:50.760
have somewhere in her mind believed that he was older

964
00:54:50.800 --> 00:54:52.440
than he said he was. But I think this just

965
00:54:52.519 --> 00:54:55.159
made it so real for her that it was really

966
00:54:55.199 --> 00:54:57.559
like flipping a switch. I think that was just, you know,

967
00:54:57.639 --> 00:54:59.880
a moment in time when she realized, this is not

968
00:55:00.119 --> 00:55:01.000
what I want anymore.

969
00:55:01.239 --> 00:55:04.239
Right, it's a huge deception. In the fall of two

970
00:55:04.280 --> 00:55:07.159
thousand and one, as the world outside was still reeling

971
00:55:07.199 --> 00:55:10.679
from nine to eleven and Jonathan's company was hemorrhaging cash,

972
00:55:11.000 --> 00:55:14.280
Michelle was focused on the three acres surrounding their mansion

973
00:55:14.400 --> 00:55:17.800
at one keith Wood Court. She hired a company called

974
00:55:17.800 --> 00:55:23.079
the Ostrich Nursery for a massive fifty thousand dollars landscaping project.

975
00:55:23.320 --> 00:55:25.679
It was through this project that she first met the

976
00:55:25.719 --> 00:55:29.119
man who would become her undoing, a thirty one year

977
00:55:29.159 --> 00:55:33.800
old crew leader named Miguel Dejesuss, better known as Enyo.

978
00:55:34.039 --> 00:55:37.840
The initial attraction was mutual and immediate, but it stayed

979
00:55:37.840 --> 00:55:41.639
dormant for nine months. It wasn't until July two thousand

980
00:55:41.679 --> 00:55:45.320
and two, just as Jonathan's age deception was settling into

981
00:55:45.400 --> 00:55:49.960
permanent resentment, that Michelle called the nursery again. When Enyo

982
00:55:50.079 --> 00:55:53.000
returned to discuss a bill, Michelle didn't just pay it,

983
00:55:53.199 --> 00:55:56.039
She asked for his cell phone number. When a surprised

984
00:55:56.159 --> 00:55:59.239
Enyo asked why she was blunt, I'd like to be

985
00:55:59.360 --> 00:56:02.920
your friend. To Michelle, Enio represented the youth that she

986
00:56:02.960 --> 00:56:06.280
had traded away at nineteen. He was handsome and closer

987
00:56:06.280 --> 00:56:08.840
to her age than the husband who had lied to

988
00:56:08.920 --> 00:56:12.440
her for a decade. But Enio was also shady. He

989
00:56:12.519 --> 00:56:18.159
operated under at least three different aliases, Alexander Costanado, Sergio Martinez,

990
00:56:18.239 --> 00:56:23.000
and Miguel de Jesus, utilizing multiple social Security numbers to

991
00:56:23.039 --> 00:56:26.079
stay one step ahead of child support warrants. And a

992
00:56:26.119 --> 00:56:30.480
common law wife named Patricia Michelee, however, saw in Eno

993
00:56:30.519 --> 00:56:33.159
an escape. She bought a secret pay as you go

994
00:56:33.360 --> 00:56:37.480
phone to bypass Jonathan's control and began an ardent pursuit.

995
00:56:38.039 --> 00:56:41.760
She showered Eno with gifts, watches, jewelry, expensive chocolates, and

996
00:56:41.840 --> 00:56:46.199
for six months, the relationship remained platonic. In October two

997
00:56:46.199 --> 00:56:49.480
thousand and two, the relationship moved from long phone calls

998
00:56:49.519 --> 00:56:52.920
and lunches to CD motel rooms in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

999
00:56:53.400 --> 00:56:55.559
Once a week, the mistress of a twenty one room

1000
00:56:55.599 --> 00:56:58.280
mansion would meet her gardener in a cheap room to

1001
00:56:58.480 --> 00:57:03.039
escape a marriage she discret is boring but inescapable because

1002
00:57:03.039 --> 00:57:06.079
of her children. The secret didn't stay quiet for long.

1003
00:57:06.760 --> 00:57:10.719
In September, Enyo's wife, Patricia, grew suspicious and dialed the

1004
00:57:10.760 --> 00:57:14.280
mystery number that showed up frequently on his phone. Michele's

1005
00:57:14.320 --> 00:57:17.360
voice answered with the cheerful high honey, I am not

1006
00:57:17.480 --> 00:57:21.559
your honey. Miss Patricia snapped back, I'm your honey's wife.

1007
00:57:22.039 --> 00:57:25.599
Despite the confrontation and subsequent thirty minute phone call between

1008
00:57:25.639 --> 00:57:29.039
the two women, Michell denied the affair, insisting they were

1009
00:57:29.159 --> 00:57:33.000
just friends. As the affair deepened, Danyo began making pointed

1010
00:57:33.079 --> 00:57:36.840
questions about Jonathan's finances. He wanted to know the cost

1011
00:57:36.920 --> 00:57:40.360
of the house. He asked to borrow three thousand dollars

1012
00:57:40.400 --> 00:57:44.360
for his family in Guatemala. Michele refused, she was now

1013
00:57:44.400 --> 00:57:47.519
a woman living three lives. The devoted wife of a

1014
00:57:47.639 --> 00:57:51.719
genius scientist, a happy go lucky friend to Larissa and others,

1015
00:57:51.920 --> 00:57:55.440
and the clandestine lover of a man with three names.

1016
00:57:55.880 --> 00:57:59.159
She told no one about Enyo, We'll be back after

1017
00:57:59.199 --> 00:57:59.639
a break.

1018
00:58:07.760 --> 00:58:10.440
By February two thousand and three, the cracks in the

1019
00:58:10.519 --> 00:58:13.639
nice marriage were no longer just private, They were becoming

1020
00:58:13.679 --> 00:58:17.639
public spectacles. Michelle planned another trip to the Philippines to

1021
00:58:17.679 --> 00:58:20.519
see her family, with Jonathan set to join her a

1022
00:58:20.559 --> 00:58:24.840
week later, but citing the same paranoid fears of kidnapping

1023
00:58:24.920 --> 00:58:29.079
and danger, Jonathan again refused to let Alex, Trevor, or

1024
00:58:29.119 --> 00:58:33.119
Samantha leave New Jersey. His parents, Emma and Jonathan Senior,

1025
00:58:33.519 --> 00:58:36.599
moved into the twenty one room mansion to babysit while

1026
00:58:36.599 --> 00:58:40.440
the parents were away. Just days before her departure, Enyo

1027
00:58:40.559 --> 00:58:45.119
asked Michelle for money yet again. This time she finally caved.

1028
00:58:45.519 --> 00:58:49.000
She handed her lover one thousand dollars in travelers checks,

1029
00:58:49.039 --> 00:58:52.239
some of the money that Jonathan had specifically provided her

1030
00:58:52.360 --> 00:58:56.159
for her trip. She was effectively using her husband's crumbling

1031
00:58:56.199 --> 00:59:00.679
biotech fortune to support her lover. When Jonathan finally arrived

1032
00:59:00.679 --> 00:59:03.880
in the Philippines, his first time back in thirteen years,

1033
00:59:04.159 --> 00:59:07.800
The Rivieras greeted him as a returning hero. They threw

1034
00:59:07.840 --> 00:59:11.400
a massive family party, but the celebration was short lived.

1035
00:59:11.760 --> 00:59:15.079
The family quickly noticed that the gentle giant was gone.

1036
00:59:15.559 --> 00:59:18.920
In his place was a man who was drinking, heavily, irritable,

1037
00:59:19.239 --> 00:59:23.480
and prone to dark, explosive moods. The tensions boiled over

1038
00:59:23.599 --> 00:59:26.760
during a family outing to a local beach. Jonathan had

1039
00:59:26.800 --> 00:59:29.639
treated all of Michelle's nieces and nephews to a day

1040
00:59:29.760 --> 00:59:33.480
in the sun, but during lunch, his insecurity spiraled out

1041
00:59:33.480 --> 00:59:37.280
of control. He became convinced that their hunky tour guide

1042
00:59:37.360 --> 00:59:40.119
was paying too much attention to Michelle. In front of

1043
00:59:40.119 --> 00:59:44.599
her entire family, the successful American scientist began screaming at

1044
00:59:44.599 --> 00:59:48.719
his wife, a public unraveling that left the Rivieras stunned.

1045
00:59:49.320 --> 00:59:53.280
Adding to the grim atmosphere, Michelle's family was struggling financially.

1046
00:59:53.679 --> 00:59:57.199
The Duck Farm, the business that Jonathan's money had helped build,

1047
00:59:57.639 --> 01:00:01.119
had gone bankrupt. According to John Nathan, he found the

1048
01:00:01.159 --> 01:00:04.840
family living in squalor, a claim that the Rivieras would

1049
01:00:04.920 --> 01:00:10.119
later vehemently dispute as a savior complex fabrication, regardless of

1050
01:00:10.159 --> 01:00:14.079
the truth, Jonathan later claimed he spent six thousand dollars

1051
01:00:14.360 --> 01:00:18.000
on a massive shipment of freeze dried emergency food to

1052
01:00:18.119 --> 01:00:21.679
rescue them upon his return to the US. I wish

1053
01:00:21.760 --> 01:00:24.159
I knew more about the financials here, because there's a

1054
01:00:24.320 --> 01:00:28.199
very clear dispute between what Jonathan has to say about

1055
01:00:28.239 --> 01:00:30.400
what he did for the rivieras and what they have

1056
01:00:30.519 --> 01:00:31.159
to say about it.

1057
01:00:31.280 --> 01:00:33.800
Okay, well, we know that Michelle was sending it. It

1058
01:00:33.840 --> 01:00:36.719
sounds like a significant amount of money back there, right, Yeah.

1059
01:00:36.760 --> 01:00:38.800
She definitely was. The question is how much of that

1060
01:00:38.960 --> 01:00:42.199
was basically her doing it on her own versus Jonathan

1061
01:00:42.760 --> 01:00:45.400
doing it or asking her to do it, because the

1062
01:00:45.440 --> 01:00:48.199
way Jonathan made it seem later is that he was

1063
01:00:48.239 --> 01:00:50.400
the one who really was doing all this.

1064
01:00:51.000 --> 01:00:54.159
I'm curious about a duck farm as a business, but

1065
01:00:54.519 --> 01:00:56.960
Google tells me that in the Philippines they eat a

1066
01:00:57.000 --> 01:01:02.639
lot of duck, and particularly fertilized duck. It's something called

1067
01:01:02.719 --> 01:01:07.840
blue or ballot balut. It's a culturally ingrained street food

1068
01:01:07.920 --> 01:01:09.920
in a major industry.

1069
01:01:10.400 --> 01:01:12.519
Interesting. I didn't know much more about the duck farm

1070
01:01:12.559 --> 01:01:15.000
other than that they had it, so that makes sense.

1071
01:01:15.360 --> 01:01:18.400
By the spring of two thousand and three, Jonathan Knice

1072
01:01:18.440 --> 01:01:21.280
was a man mortgaged to the hilt, desperately trying to

1073
01:01:21.320 --> 01:01:25.360
maintain a million dollar lifestyle on a foundation of shifting sand.

1074
01:01:25.840 --> 01:01:28.119
While he was still driving the audi and living in

1075
01:01:28.159 --> 01:01:31.079
the twenty one room mansion, he had already traded away

1076
01:01:31.119 --> 01:01:34.280
the one thing that gave him power control of his business.

1077
01:01:34.719 --> 01:01:38.480
In a desperate bid to save Epigenesis, A new consortium

1078
01:01:38.519 --> 01:01:42.400
of venture capitalists had moved in. They saw what Jonathan's

1079
01:01:42.400 --> 01:01:45.800
colleagues had seen for years, a brilliant scientist who was

1080
01:01:45.840 --> 01:01:50.599
a catastrophic manager. To the venture capitalists, Jonathan wasn't a titan,

1081
01:01:50.760 --> 01:01:55.360
he was a liability. They began a ruthless restructuring, stripping

1082
01:01:55.440 --> 01:01:58.440
Jonathan of his authority and cutting the staff to the

1083
01:01:58.480 --> 01:02:01.639
bare bones. David Ramsay, a partner at one of the

1084
01:02:01.719 --> 01:02:04.679
VC firms who was poised to take over, put it

1085
01:02:04.760 --> 01:02:08.199
this way. He was more of a scientist and a discoverer.

1086
01:02:08.719 --> 01:02:11.559
It was the corporate version of a death sentence. The

1087
01:02:11.599 --> 01:02:15.880
pressure was visible. Jonathan seemed to be physically and mentally breaking.

1088
01:02:16.320 --> 01:02:19.280
The final blow landed on March twenty eighth, two thousand

1089
01:02:19.320 --> 01:02:22.679
and three. Jonathan was summoned into the boardroom. He had built,

1090
01:02:22.800 --> 01:02:26.280
and was summarily fired from his own company. The board

1091
01:02:26.320 --> 01:02:28.480
made it clear that he was the one to carry

1092
01:02:28.480 --> 01:02:31.920
the blame for the company's stagnation. They handed him a

1093
01:02:31.960 --> 01:02:35.559
confidential severance package later rumored to be two years of

1094
01:02:35.599 --> 01:02:39.199
salary and showed him the door. But the ultimate insult

1095
01:02:39.280 --> 01:02:43.159
came next. The company didn't just fire Jonathan. They abandoned

1096
01:02:43.199 --> 01:02:46.559
his life's work, a halted development on the smart drug

1097
01:02:46.599 --> 01:02:49.599
that he had spent nearly twenty years on, pivoting to

1098
01:02:49.679 --> 01:02:53.400
a completely new approach. Eventually, the drug that was supposed

1099
01:02:53.400 --> 01:02:57.119
to cure the world was shelved entirely due to disappointing

1100
01:02:57.159 --> 01:03:00.760
test results. Jonathan Nice walked out of that building a

1101
01:03:00.840 --> 01:03:05.039
man with no mission, no company, and a reputation in tatters.

1102
01:03:05.519 --> 01:03:07.639
He was fifty two years old, and he was heading

1103
01:03:07.679 --> 01:03:10.760
home to a fifty six hundred square foot monument to

1104
01:03:10.840 --> 01:03:13.639
his own failure. I wish I knew more about the

1105
01:03:13.760 --> 01:03:18.199
drug trials. What I don't really know wasn't able to learn,

1106
01:03:18.440 --> 01:03:22.079
is whether his drug was a fraud or whether it

1107
01:03:22.239 --> 01:03:25.280
just didn't quite work as well as he expected, Whether

1108
01:03:25.320 --> 01:03:27.840
it was partially effective or not. It's really hard to tell.

1109
01:03:27.880 --> 01:03:31.079
And I think when these venture capitalists took over. They

1110
01:03:31.119 --> 01:03:33.920
probably didn't want anything publicized, so they just kind of

1111
01:03:33.960 --> 01:03:37.440
quietly you dismissed it and took it off the shelves.

1112
01:03:37.480 --> 01:03:41.239
Yeah, it is really disappointing because asthma, I mean, it's

1113
01:03:41.320 --> 01:03:44.920
such a horrible condition and so many people struggle with it.

1114
01:03:45.079 --> 01:03:47.239
It sounds like this drug had so much promise, But

1115
01:03:47.239 --> 01:03:51.360
that's the problem with pharmaceutical industry because there's so much

1116
01:03:51.440 --> 01:03:54.119
money there. Whenever there's a drug that has any promise,

1117
01:03:54.199 --> 01:03:56.519
I think people are so quick to invest in it.

1118
01:03:56.559 --> 01:03:58.760
People are throwing money at it, but it takes years

1119
01:03:58.800 --> 01:04:01.119
to really figure out whether it's actually going to work

1120
01:04:01.199 --> 01:04:01.400
or not.

1121
01:04:01.599 --> 01:04:04.360
Yeah, I mean decades even to make sure that it's

1122
01:04:04.360 --> 01:04:05.039
not harmful.

1123
01:04:05.239 --> 01:04:10.239
Right. Following the boardroom ouster from epigenesis, Jonathan retreated into

1124
01:04:10.280 --> 01:04:14.159
a deep clinical depression. He refused to discuss the firing,

1125
01:04:14.360 --> 01:04:17.639
telling neighbors and colleagues a more palatable story he was

1126
01:04:17.679 --> 01:04:21.760
taking a sabbatical to focus on his true passions. Jonathan

1127
01:04:21.760 --> 01:04:24.320
decided to spend the first year of his severance living

1128
01:04:24.400 --> 01:04:27.880
in a literary fantasy. He began writing a children's book

1129
01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:31.360
called Doctor Nice's Poems for Children and the Parents who

1130
01:04:31.400 --> 01:04:31.840
love them.

1131
01:04:32.280 --> 01:04:34.280
Well, that is quite a turnaround, it is.

1132
01:04:34.679 --> 01:04:37.760
He hired a professional illustrator and dedicated the work to

1133
01:04:37.920 --> 01:04:41.000
Michelle and their three children, framing it as a love

1134
01:04:41.119 --> 01:04:44.960
letter to the family that he was increasingly losing touch with.

1135
01:04:45.000 --> 01:04:47.880
The lead poem, about a single shoe that his sons

1136
01:04:47.960 --> 01:04:50.559
made for him from deer Hyde, which was based on

1137
01:04:50.599 --> 01:04:53.800
a true story, was a window into Jonathan's psyche. I

1138
01:04:53.800 --> 01:04:55.559
think it's actually a very nice poem, so I'm going

1139
01:04:55.599 --> 01:04:58.159
to read it. Son one and Son two made Dad

1140
01:04:58.199 --> 01:05:00.599
a new shoe. They didn't have quite a enough stuff

1141
01:05:00.639 --> 01:05:03.119
to make two. But what would Dad do with only

1142
01:05:03.159 --> 01:05:05.719
one shoe, said Son two to Son one, and Son

1143
01:05:05.800 --> 01:05:08.320
one to son too. But their dad was happy to

1144
01:05:08.360 --> 01:05:10.920
get such a prize. He sat himself down to try

1145
01:05:10.960 --> 01:05:13.719
it for size. It fits just so perfectly well, he

1146
01:05:13.800 --> 01:05:16.800
exclaimed that I think I shall never wear two shoes again.

1147
01:05:17.199 --> 01:05:19.519
He hopped up and down, He hopped left and right.

1148
01:05:19.679 --> 01:05:22.199
He hopped so fast he gave mom a fright. He

1149
01:05:22.239 --> 01:05:24.519
hopped all the day until it was night. Then he

1150
01:05:24.559 --> 01:05:27.320
hopped into bed and turned off the light. He dreamed

1151
01:05:27.320 --> 01:05:29.760
all night long of Son one and Son too, His

1152
01:05:29.880 --> 01:05:32.119
heart filled with joy for the gift of the shoe,

1153
01:05:32.440 --> 01:05:35.039
for gifts from the heart means so very much more

1154
01:05:35.239 --> 01:05:37.599
than anything anyone could buy in the store.

1155
01:05:38.239 --> 01:05:39.519
Those years of reading Dog.

1156
01:05:41.280 --> 01:05:43.800
Made it leads very much like a doctor Seue's poem.

1157
01:05:44.199 --> 01:05:46.719
It is a good poem for a man who had

1158
01:05:46.760 --> 01:05:49.800
been chasing an eight hundred million dollar dream. The poem's

1159
01:05:50.000 --> 01:05:53.280
closing sentiment felt like a desperate attempt to rewrite his

1160
01:05:53.320 --> 01:05:56.360
own reality. He was trying to convince himself that he

1161
01:05:56.400 --> 01:05:59.199
didn't need the corporate kingdom that he had just lost.

1162
01:06:00.039 --> 01:06:02.519
Jonathan couldn't stay in the world of poetry for long.

1163
01:06:02.960 --> 01:06:06.440
His obsessive need for control wouldn't allow it. Even while

1164
01:06:06.519 --> 01:06:09.719
he was writing about hopping Fathers, he was trying to

1165
01:06:09.719 --> 01:06:13.639
birth a new company, Prism Pharmaceuticals, to develop a lung

1166
01:06:13.679 --> 01:06:17.559
cancer prevention drug. He also began tinkering in the garage,

1167
01:06:17.760 --> 01:06:21.880
remaking furniture, and even attempting to invent a new comfortable

1168
01:06:21.960 --> 01:06:24.840
type of footwear by cutting the heavy soles off of

1169
01:06:24.880 --> 01:06:28.239
a pair of size twelve Brahma work boots and gluing

1170
01:06:28.280 --> 01:06:32.239
them onto the bottom of a pair of moccasins. Remember

1171
01:06:32.280 --> 01:06:35.800
that for Part two. By the summer of two thousand

1172
01:06:35.840 --> 01:06:38.320
and three, the twenty one room mansion had become a

1173
01:06:38.360 --> 01:06:42.440
pressure cooker. Jonathan was always home, now hunched over his computer,

1174
01:06:42.840 --> 01:06:47.599
retreating into his books, or obsessively writing poetry. While Michelle

1175
01:06:47.599 --> 01:06:50.679
had once struggled because Jonathan was never home, now she

1176
01:06:50.760 --> 01:06:54.360
felt suffocated by his constant presence. It was a reminder

1177
01:06:54.360 --> 01:06:57.119
of their financial ruin and the lives that had built

1178
01:06:57.159 --> 01:07:00.760
their life. She began to resent his sabbatical, urging him

1179
01:07:00.800 --> 01:07:04.679
to find a job as the severance money began to dwindle. Meanwhile,

1180
01:07:04.719 --> 01:07:08.199
Michelle continued her own deception. She told Jonathan that her

1181
01:07:08.199 --> 01:07:11.800
physical fitness classes at the community college started a month

1182
01:07:11.880 --> 01:07:15.239
earlier than they actually did, using those phantom hours to

1183
01:07:15.280 --> 01:07:19.599
meet Enyo in CD Motels. On June twenty sixth Enyo's wife,

1184
01:07:19.639 --> 01:07:23.280
Patricia reached her breaking point after finding a silk thong

1185
01:07:23.400 --> 01:07:26.400
in ENO's pocket. She drove to the Nice home and

1186
01:07:26.480 --> 01:07:31.480
rang the doorbell, looking for a confrontation. Michelle's dad, Teodoro, answered,

1187
01:07:31.519 --> 01:07:34.880
but the collision of the two families was narrowly avoided.

1188
01:07:35.199 --> 01:07:39.039
Neither Jonathan nor Michelle was home. Two days later, Enyo

1189
01:07:39.119 --> 01:07:42.159
packed his bags and left Patricia, but he wasn't moving

1190
01:07:42.159 --> 01:07:45.039
toward Michelle he was moving into the shadows of a

1191
01:07:45.079 --> 01:07:48.519
friend's house. In an attempt to save his crumbling family,

1192
01:07:48.760 --> 01:07:52.320
Jonathan booked a July fourth week long vacation for the

1193
01:07:52.480 --> 01:07:55.960
entire Nice clan in the Outer Banks. At the last minute,

1194
01:07:55.960 --> 01:07:59.039
Michelle refused to go, claiming she had to stay back

1195
01:07:59.079 --> 01:08:03.239
to study. Jonathan was reduced to begging, eventually driving to

1196
01:08:03.280 --> 01:08:07.000
North Carolina alone with the three children. When Michelle and

1197
01:08:07.039 --> 01:08:10.679
Theodora finally joined them by bus three days later, the

1198
01:08:10.800 --> 01:08:13.440
tension in the air was so thick that everyone in

1199
01:08:13.480 --> 01:08:18.119
the extended family noticed. Jonathan's scientific mind, once used to

1200
01:08:18.159 --> 01:08:22.319
map genetic defects, was now mapping his wife's deception. He

1201
01:08:22.359 --> 01:08:25.640
had noticed the discrepancies in her school schedule, he had

1202
01:08:25.640 --> 01:08:29.039
felt the growing distance between them. On returning from the

1203
01:08:29.039 --> 01:08:31.840
Outer Banks, he did a reverse search on the mystery

1204
01:08:31.920 --> 01:08:34.479
number in her phone. It came back to a name

1205
01:08:34.720 --> 01:08:37.560
he didn't recognize, Alexander Castaneda.

1206
01:08:37.960 --> 01:08:39.800
I have a question for you. You've mentioned school a

1207
01:08:39.800 --> 01:08:42.560
couple of times. Did I miss something? Is she getting

1208
01:08:42.760 --> 01:08:44.880
like a personal trainer certification or something.

1209
01:08:44.880 --> 01:08:46.720
I'm not sure what if she was just going back

1210
01:08:46.760 --> 01:08:49.119
to school to take some classes, or if she was

1211
01:08:49.159 --> 01:08:51.560
actually going towards some goal like that. But yeah, I

1212
01:08:51.560 --> 01:08:53.640
didn't really mention it earlier. I think she was just

1213
01:08:53.680 --> 01:08:57.520
taking some classes at a community college, primarily in like fitness.

1214
01:08:58.359 --> 01:09:01.960
In a moment of raw, unhand hinged desperation, the former

1215
01:09:02.039 --> 01:09:05.079
CEO drove to the address on the background report that

1216
01:09:05.159 --> 01:09:08.000
he paid for. He sat in his car outside his

1217
01:09:08.119 --> 01:09:12.800
rivals home, crying uncontrollably. He called his old assistant and friend,

1218
01:09:12.880 --> 01:09:16.279
Sherry Leonard. Sobbing into the phone, he told her he

1219
01:09:16.399 --> 01:09:18.319
was either going to beat the man to death or

1220
01:09:18.399 --> 01:09:22.960
kill himself. Sherry, hearing the genuine suicidal intent in his voice,

1221
01:09:23.159 --> 01:09:26.920
spent hours talking him down, eventually convincing him to just

1222
01:09:26.960 --> 01:09:30.439
go home. Two days later, Jonathan put his feelings into

1223
01:09:30.520 --> 01:09:34.520
a poem directed at Michelle. Your stainless steel heart like

1224
01:09:34.560 --> 01:09:37.800
a knife, rips open my soul with another man's seamen

1225
01:09:38.039 --> 01:09:41.079
still warm within your belly? When, oh when will my

1226
01:09:41.239 --> 01:09:45.079
dying end? Quodit departure from his I hope Doctor suis

1227
01:09:45.119 --> 01:09:45.840
poem right.

1228
01:09:45.680 --> 01:09:46.800
Up here in the children's book.

1229
01:09:46.880 --> 01:09:50.680
No, he didn't show Michelle the poem. Instead, he tucked

1230
01:09:50.680 --> 01:09:53.880
it into a desk drawer near his bookcase alongside his

1231
01:09:53.960 --> 01:09:57.359
pistol and ammunition. And that is where we are going

1232
01:09:57.399 --> 01:10:00.359
to end part one. But before we wrap, I few

1233
01:10:00.439 --> 01:10:03.319
topics I wanted to discuss with you. First of all,

1234
01:10:03.560 --> 01:10:06.119
I want to go back to the dead raccoon. Do

1235
01:10:06.199 --> 01:10:09.640
you think that that childhood experiment was just a curious

1236
01:10:09.840 --> 01:10:12.760
scientific mind or do you think there is something troubling there,

1237
01:10:12.960 --> 01:10:13.880
like a warning sign?

1238
01:10:14.279 --> 01:10:17.720
Well, he didn't kill the raccoon, right, the raccoon, So no,

1239
01:10:17.880 --> 01:10:20.960
I think he probably was just a scientist, and that

1240
01:10:21.199 --> 01:10:23.000
is something that you know, a scientist would do.

1241
01:10:23.079 --> 01:10:25.800
Right. Yeah, I think you're right too. When I first

1242
01:10:25.920 --> 01:10:27.840
read that fact, I was like, Oh, that's really that's

1243
01:10:27.880 --> 01:10:29.800
like serial killer stuff. But then I was like, no,

1244
01:10:29.920 --> 01:10:32.600
I think it really was just someone who was very

1245
01:10:32.800 --> 01:10:35.199
curious and like he said, he didn't kill the animal.

1246
01:10:35.279 --> 01:10:37.960
He didn't have any history of cruelty to animals or

1247
01:10:37.960 --> 01:10:41.560
anything like that. How do you think Jonathan's dramatic fall

1248
01:10:41.640 --> 01:10:45.439
from being like this powerful titan of industry, potentially you know,

1249
01:10:45.880 --> 01:10:49.399
leading this pharmaceutical company worth billions of dollars and then

1250
01:10:49.640 --> 01:10:52.239
basically losing it all. How do you think that affected

1251
01:10:52.279 --> 01:10:54.119
his relationship with Michelle?

1252
01:10:54.319 --> 01:10:57.680
Well, you said he went into a deep depression, and

1253
01:10:57.840 --> 01:11:00.439
I'm sure it didn't feel good at all. Worked for

1254
01:11:00.479 --> 01:11:04.520
that for you know, such a long time, and even

1255
01:11:04.520 --> 01:11:07.119
though when things weren't going well, he was probably still

1256
01:11:07.159 --> 01:11:11.079
optimistic and he was probably like a darling to the investors,

1257
01:11:11.199 --> 01:11:13.760
right because he was the one who had this, you know,

1258
01:11:14.159 --> 01:11:16.640
this drug that was possibly going to change the world.

1259
01:11:16.920 --> 01:11:21.359
So people built him up until they didn't anymore. So, Yeah,

1260
01:11:21.359 --> 01:11:24.720
I'm sure it greatly affected his you know, like you said,

1261
01:11:24.760 --> 01:11:27.640
Psyche and his marriage. And you know, I wonder if

1262
01:11:27.680 --> 01:11:30.520
Michelle also was like, oh, yeah, you're not you know,

1263
01:11:30.640 --> 01:11:32.520
the great inventor that I thought you were.

1264
01:11:32.720 --> 01:11:34.760
Yeah, I wonder if that kind of just contributed to

1265
01:11:35.119 --> 01:11:37.600
what she had already started believing about him, that he

1266
01:11:37.680 --> 01:11:40.199
was a fraud, right, that he was deceptive and lying

1267
01:11:40.239 --> 01:11:43.199
about different things, And that might have definitely would have

1268
01:11:43.279 --> 01:11:46.079
impacted her her perception of him too, I would think.

1269
01:11:46.439 --> 01:11:49.199
But I think the pivotal thing that really affected her,

1270
01:11:49.239 --> 01:11:51.399
it sounds like, was when she realized that he'd been

1271
01:11:51.479 --> 01:11:55.079
lying about his age for so long. Yeah, like their

1272
01:11:55.119 --> 01:11:58.000
relationships started on this huge lie.

1273
01:11:58.079 --> 01:12:00.359
Right. We did talk about this a little bit earlier,

1274
01:12:00.359 --> 01:12:02.960
But do you think that Jonathan did have a savior

1275
01:12:03.000 --> 01:12:06.920
complex when it came to Michelle's family in the Philippines.

1276
01:12:07.359 --> 01:12:09.760
Yeah, I think he did. And it was a way

1277
01:12:09.800 --> 01:12:13.720
to ingratiate himself into her family and for her father

1278
01:12:13.920 --> 01:12:16.159
to be like, oh, well, I guess you would be

1279
01:12:16.479 --> 01:12:18.600
a good mate for my daughter because you'll take care

1280
01:12:18.640 --> 01:12:21.399
of her and us, and so, yeah, it was definitely

1281
01:12:21.399 --> 01:12:21.800
the case.

1282
01:12:21.960 --> 01:12:24.479
I was reading a little bit about the savior complex

1283
01:12:24.520 --> 01:12:26.960
and what what are like the key warning signs of

1284
01:12:27.119 --> 01:12:29.279
a savior complex, and I think he had some of these,

1285
01:12:29.319 --> 01:12:31.720
but some I don't think he necessarily did. But here

1286
01:12:31.760 --> 01:12:35.000
are the key warning signs. One is neglecting your own

1287
01:12:35.199 --> 01:12:38.640
self care, like constantly putting others' needs before your own

1288
01:12:39.000 --> 01:12:41.039
to the point of exhaustion or illness. And I don't

1289
01:12:41.039 --> 01:12:44.079
think I don't think he did that. Enabling behavior like

1290
01:12:44.159 --> 01:12:48.039
shielding people from the consequences of their actions, preventing them

1291
01:12:48.079 --> 01:12:51.840
from growing. Not really sure he did that either. Unsolicited

1292
01:12:51.880 --> 01:12:55.319
advice like frequently trying to fix people who haven't asked

1293
01:12:55.359 --> 01:12:57.640
for help. I think he definitely did that. I don't

1294
01:12:57.640 --> 01:13:00.560
I don't think that Michelle's family was really asking for

1295
01:13:00.600 --> 01:13:02.880
his help. I think he just felt like he needed

1296
01:13:02.880 --> 01:13:08.359
to relationship imbalance, constantly partnering with or befriending individuals who

1297
01:13:08.479 --> 01:13:12.760
are in crisis or need help, validation through helping, deriving

1298
01:13:12.800 --> 01:13:17.079
self worth solely from being needed or rescuing others, martyrdom,

1299
01:13:17.319 --> 01:13:21.239
making sacrifices, then feeling bitter or taken for granted when

1300
01:13:21.239 --> 01:13:23.920
they're not appreciated. I don't know if that happened with him,

1301
01:13:23.920 --> 01:13:25.800
but I do get the sense that he felt like

1302
01:13:26.159 --> 01:13:29.640
he was making all these contributions to this family in

1303
01:13:29.680 --> 01:13:32.399
the Philippines and they didn't really appreciate it. And then

1304
01:13:32.439 --> 01:13:35.640
control issues, which I think he definitely had, believing that

1305
01:13:35.720 --> 01:13:39.239
you're the only one capable of solving someone else's problems.

1306
01:13:39.560 --> 01:13:41.560
Well, to be fair, it sounds like he did help

1307
01:13:41.600 --> 01:13:44.039
the family, you know, even if it was Michelle sending

1308
01:13:44.039 --> 01:13:45.600
the money back. Well, he was the one who ran

1309
01:13:45.760 --> 01:13:48.840
the money, so I mean he definitely didn't help them out.

1310
01:13:48.920 --> 01:13:49.600
Oh absolutely.

1311
01:13:50.119 --> 01:13:54.199
Jonathan seems like a typical scientist so far. He is

1312
01:13:54.319 --> 01:13:57.319
self absorbed and has an ego, But so far I

1313
01:13:57.399 --> 01:14:01.920
don't really see sociopathic tendon with him. Yeah, guessing maybe

1314
01:14:01.920 --> 01:14:03.560
in part two we'll see more of that.

1315
01:14:03.920 --> 01:14:06.880
No, I mean, I don't think you're wrong about that.

1316
01:14:07.000 --> 01:14:09.560
Obviously we will learn more about him in part two.

1317
01:14:09.600 --> 01:14:11.319
But I think he was, like you said, he was

1318
01:14:11.439 --> 01:14:15.760
very self absorbed. I think he was maybe controlling in

1319
01:14:15.840 --> 01:14:18.520
some ways, like he really wanted to have control over everything,

1320
01:14:18.560 --> 01:14:21.600
couldn't couldn't let go control of anything, including like his

1321
01:14:21.720 --> 01:14:24.960
business and his marriage. But I don't get the sense

1322
01:14:25.000 --> 01:14:27.119
that he used really a sociopath either.

1323
01:14:27.600 --> 01:14:31.479
Well, marrying Michelle, who was an immigrant, I think that

1324
01:14:31.600 --> 01:14:34.079
shows that he must have been somewhat controlling too, Not

1325
01:14:34.119 --> 01:14:36.600
that every man who marries an immigrant is controlling, but

1326
01:14:36.640 --> 01:14:39.399
he chose someone who wasn't.

1327
01:14:39.359 --> 01:14:41.319
Would be fully dependent on him, right.

1328
01:14:41.079 --> 01:14:44.680
And she was younger and you know, helping her family out,

1329
01:14:44.920 --> 01:14:47.840
So he did, I think, think that he could control her,

1330
01:14:48.079 --> 01:14:53.199
but she grew and you know, she found her own way. Yeah,

1331
01:14:53.439 --> 01:14:55.319
she would have been fine without him, and I think

1332
01:14:55.319 --> 01:14:55.880
that probably.

1333
01:14:56.039 --> 01:14:58.079
I think he probably had a hard time dealing with that.

1334
01:14:58.279 --> 01:15:00.319
Although part of the reason he may have been up

1335
01:15:00.359 --> 01:15:03.520
with Michelle was just because he was very awkward around

1336
01:15:03.600 --> 01:15:06.640
women and painfully shy and had a hard time socializing.

1337
01:15:06.760 --> 01:15:10.479
So finding someone through a pen pal ad in a

1338
01:15:10.800 --> 01:15:13.880
paper that was halfway around the world and corresponding with

1339
01:15:13.920 --> 01:15:16.720
them for months might have been more comfortable for him

1340
01:15:16.800 --> 01:15:20.159
than you know, meeting someone local. Right, We'll be sure

1341
01:15:20.159 --> 01:15:25.720
to come back for part two.

1342
01:15:28.199 --> 01:15:31.319
Well, speaking of finding love and being a little awkward,

1343
01:15:31.479 --> 01:15:35.119
I have been consumed this weekend with the latest season

1344
01:15:35.119 --> 01:15:37.199
of Love Is Blind. Love Is Blind, Ohio.

1345
01:15:37.439 --> 01:15:38.760
Love Is Blind, Ohio.

1346
01:15:39.239 --> 01:15:42.640
Yeah, and I feel like it's not it's kind of

1347
01:15:42.640 --> 01:15:46.279
a cruel series really, because you know, these people are

1348
01:15:46.399 --> 01:15:48.920
just I think a lot of them are genuinely looking

1349
01:15:48.960 --> 01:15:51.800
for a mate. Yeah, especially the women, Like I feel

1350
01:15:51.840 --> 01:15:54.560
so bad for women in today's world because the dating

1351
01:15:54.600 --> 01:15:55.720
pool isn't good.

1352
01:15:57.319 --> 01:15:59.520
The premise of the show, just for people who haven't

1353
01:15:59.560 --> 01:16:02.960
watched it, I think, I mean, I mean I did

1354
01:16:02.960 --> 01:16:04.960
watch a little bit of it. But these people are

1355
01:16:04.960 --> 01:16:06.600
meeting each other and getting to know each other, but

1356
01:16:06.600 --> 01:16:07.479
they can't see each.

1357
01:16:07.359 --> 01:16:09.760
Other, right. They're in what they call pods, and you're

1358
01:16:09.800 --> 01:16:12.880
just there's a wall that you can't see the other person.

1359
01:16:13.000 --> 01:16:16.239
You just talk to them and you have several dates

1360
01:16:16.319 --> 01:16:19.279
and dates me I'm not sure how long. I think

1361
01:16:19.319 --> 01:16:21.359
that they let you meet a few times a day

1362
01:16:21.680 --> 01:16:23.960
and you can spend an hour or two with the person,

1363
01:16:24.039 --> 01:16:26.880
and sometimes they have a couple of drinks, but you

1364
01:16:26.920 --> 01:16:29.520
know the object the objective of the show is love

1365
01:16:29.640 --> 01:16:31.600
is blind, and you know, you don't have to.

1366
01:16:31.680 --> 01:16:34.479
Falling in love just based on talking to this person

1367
01:16:34.520 --> 01:16:37.079
without actually seeing them and just geting to know them.

1368
01:16:37.119 --> 01:16:40.239
And as a social experiment, it's a huge fail because

1369
01:16:40.479 --> 01:16:42.800
like every season, they most of them, I mean, and

1370
01:16:42.840 --> 01:16:45.199
they have to get The thing that I think is

1371
01:16:45.199 --> 01:16:48.520
really toxic is they have to get engaged before they

1372
01:16:48.600 --> 01:16:51.640
let them see each other. So they have to propose

1373
01:16:51.800 --> 01:16:54.920
and the other person has to accept and you know,

1374
01:16:54.960 --> 01:16:57.239
and they're like, I love you so much. And it's

1375
01:16:57.279 --> 01:17:00.279
just crazy to me because it's like, yeah, I think

1376
01:17:00.319 --> 01:17:03.000
you like each other, but you can't love each other

1377
01:17:03.079 --> 01:17:05.479
until you see each other and touch each other.

1378
01:17:05.760 --> 01:17:08.520
Yeah, there's definitely more too, like falling in love with

1379
01:17:08.560 --> 01:17:10.960
someone than just talking with them. That's an important thing.

1380
01:17:11.039 --> 01:17:14.600
But I'm on episode six right now and they are

1381
01:17:14.880 --> 01:17:19.279
on their vacation in Cabo, and it's just so funny

1382
01:17:19.279 --> 01:17:21.079
because where they're in the pods and they haven't seen

1383
01:17:21.119 --> 01:17:23.159
each other, Like, I don't care what you look like.

1384
01:17:23.439 --> 01:17:26.760
I love you. It doesn't matter if you are four

1385
01:17:26.800 --> 01:17:29.199
foot tall and three hundred pounds. I'm gonna love you

1386
01:17:29.279 --> 01:17:33.960
for the rest of my life, and obviously for the well,

1387
01:17:34.399 --> 01:17:36.439
most of them still like when they see each other,

1388
01:17:36.520 --> 01:17:40.119
they're like, you know, they don't have really unattractive people

1389
01:17:40.159 --> 01:17:43.239
on the show. They're all like moderately attractive. But you know,

1390
01:17:43.319 --> 01:17:45.119
like the guys that said I don't care what you

1391
01:17:45.159 --> 01:17:48.119
look like once they meet, Like and one guy who's

1392
01:17:48.159 --> 01:17:51.560
like this athlete guy who's he's probably the best looking

1393
01:17:51.560 --> 01:17:55.359
guy in the show. His fiance is she's beautiful. She's blonde,

1394
01:17:55.359 --> 01:17:58.600
and she's beautiful, and he's like, first when he meets

1395
01:17:58.600 --> 01:18:00.920
he's like, oh, you're so beautiful and keeps talking about it.

1396
01:18:00.960 --> 01:18:03.000
But then he's like to the you know, the camera

1397
01:18:03.119 --> 01:18:05.399
or to the other guys, he's like, you know, I

1398
01:18:05.439 --> 01:18:08.760
really prefer women with dark features and darker hair. And

1399
01:18:08.800 --> 01:18:11.840
he's like, you know, so it kind of sure, love

1400
01:18:11.960 --> 01:18:14.920
is blind, but I prefer He's like, she's great. But

1401
01:18:15.319 --> 01:18:17.880
so that happens every season. It's like these guys are

1402
01:18:17.960 --> 01:18:21.079
just it's usually I mean, it's the women too, but

1403
01:18:21.119 --> 01:18:23.479
it's mostly you know, guys who are like, I don't know,

1404
01:18:23.560 --> 01:18:26.760
she's not exactly my type, which is crazy to me.

1405
01:18:27.079 --> 01:18:29.800
Did you have a type before you met me? No,

1406
01:18:29.840 --> 01:18:32.359
I never had a girl named girl's named Tina.

1407
01:18:32.600 --> 01:18:34.279
I did have, well, it was only one though it

1408
01:18:34.319 --> 01:18:35.279
wasn't a long.

1409
01:18:35.119 --> 01:18:38.399
Term ex girlfriend before me was also.

1410
01:18:38.239 --> 01:18:41.399
Named but that wasn't a regular thing. But I really

1411
01:18:41.439 --> 01:18:44.640
never felt like I had a type either. I knew

1412
01:18:44.760 --> 01:18:47.439
guys who did, like, like, you know, I only want

1413
01:18:47.439 --> 01:18:49.279
a date a woman that looks a certain way, has

1414
01:18:49.399 --> 01:18:50.920
certain features.

1415
01:18:51.399 --> 01:18:54.359
Had to put it on paper, I probably would have

1416
01:18:54.399 --> 01:18:59.880
said six fee, which isn't six feet tall. But you know,

1417
01:19:00.399 --> 01:19:02.880
I'm glad I didn't have to put that on paper

1418
01:19:02.920 --> 01:19:04.920
and abide by it. The other last night, you was

1419
01:19:05.000 --> 01:19:08.920
showing someone a picture of yourself when you were younger.

1420
01:19:09.359 --> 01:19:13.399
I was like, yeah, I went to dated. You've had

1421
01:19:13.399 --> 01:19:14.159
a good glow.

1422
01:19:14.840 --> 01:19:16.159
That went through some awkward years.

1423
01:19:16.520 --> 01:19:19.159
My seventeen year old was pretty awkward too, so to

1424
01:19:19.199 --> 01:19:20.159
be fair, Yeah.

1425
01:19:20.000 --> 01:19:23.520
It's interesting that the love is blind that they chose Ohio.

1426
01:19:24.600 --> 01:19:27.199
It's not that it's nothing wrong with that you live

1427
01:19:27.279 --> 01:19:27.800
in Ohio.

1428
01:19:27.880 --> 01:19:30.600
We're next to Ohio. Yeah, what are you saying about

1429
01:19:30.600 --> 01:19:31.319
people from Ohio?

1430
01:19:31.439 --> 01:19:33.760
It's an odd choice, Like why did they choose Ohio

1431
01:19:33.880 --> 01:19:34.479
for a reason?

1432
01:19:35.000 --> 01:19:37.159
They just move around, Okay, they're trying.

1433
01:19:37.000 --> 01:19:41.079
To get like just like Middle America sort of average American.

1434
01:19:41.600 --> 01:19:44.039
I think that's their goal pretty much. Yeah, but if

1435
01:19:44.039 --> 01:19:46.439
you haven't checked out Love is Blind, I mean it's

1436
01:19:46.800 --> 01:19:49.319
it's a good show. It's entertaining if you like I

1437
01:19:49.359 --> 01:19:52.479
think I'm just a big reality reality TV person.

1438
01:19:52.680 --> 01:19:54.199
They can be very entertaining.

1439
01:19:54.239 --> 01:19:56.600
I did watch part of I made you watch at

1440
01:19:56.680 --> 01:19:59.800
least one season, and I really loved it, and you.

1441
01:19:59.640 --> 01:20:02.079
Did it was all right. I mean I can see

1442
01:20:02.119 --> 01:20:04.359
the entertainment value that. The problem I always have with

1443
01:20:04.439 --> 01:20:06.399
shows like that is I always feel like if it

1444
01:20:06.479 --> 01:20:09.560
really felt like reality, I would. It always feels a

1445
01:20:09.560 --> 01:20:11.600
little bit staged, like they're kind.

1446
01:20:11.399 --> 01:20:14.319
Of Yeah, there's definitely producers that are pulling the strings.

1447
01:20:14.000 --> 01:20:16.600
Well, and there's a little performative type thing too, where

1448
01:20:16.640 --> 01:20:18.840
the people who go on the show, I feel like

1449
01:20:18.840 --> 01:20:21.880
they're not being one hundred percent sincere, like they're trying to,

1450
01:20:22.479 --> 01:20:25.640
you know, be dramatic or make for good TV watching.

1451
01:20:26.199 --> 01:20:28.640
I'm not sure if that's true for the people that

1452
01:20:28.760 --> 01:20:31.479
can tell the Yeah, the people that are dating, I

1453
01:20:31.560 --> 01:20:34.920
get the feeling that, especially for the women, that they

1454
01:20:34.960 --> 01:20:38.199
are there because they genuinely want to find love.

1455
01:20:38.319 --> 01:20:40.640
Yeah. Well, I hope that it all works out for them.

1456
01:20:40.880 --> 01:20:43.119
Yeah. Me too, but it definitely won't. But it makes

1457
01:20:43.159 --> 01:20:46.079
really good TV when it doesn't work. Although it's devastating

1458
01:20:46.159 --> 01:20:49.600
because they have to get married and some people like

1459
01:20:49.680 --> 01:20:52.399
they put like they go through, like they have wedding dresses,

1460
01:20:52.439 --> 01:20:55.560
their families are there, they have like its weddings, and

1461
01:20:55.760 --> 01:20:57.640
you get to they have to go all the way

1462
01:20:57.640 --> 01:21:00.000
to the altar and then I think it's a probably

1463
01:21:00.119 --> 01:21:02.319
about half of them and maybe more than half of

1464
01:21:02.359 --> 01:21:05.279
them end up saying no. It is kind of heartbreaking.

1465
01:21:05.399 --> 01:21:08.000
Yeah, yeah, well, as always, thank you so much for

1466
01:21:08.039 --> 01:21:10.159
hanging out with us. If you'd like to listen to

1467
01:21:10.319 --> 01:21:13.439
part two of this episode right now, consider joining us

1468
01:21:13.439 --> 01:21:16.960
on Patreon dot com slash Love Marykill. We have just

1469
01:21:17.039 --> 01:21:19.840
one tier five dollars a month. You get early ad

1470
01:21:19.880 --> 01:21:22.560
free access plus a monthly bonus episode.

1471
01:21:22.760 --> 01:21:26.359
Please rate, review, follow, and subscribe. Find us on social media,

1472
01:21:26.560 --> 01:21:31.439
YouTube and TikTok, or email us at Lovemarykill at gmail

1473
01:21:31.479 --> 01:21:33.760
dot com if you'd like to send us a snack.

1474
01:21:34.199 --> 01:21:38.560
L MK pod po Box one one one Dexter, Michigan

1475
01:21:38.800 --> 01:21:42.119
four eight one three zero. Thank you so much to

1476
01:21:42.239 --> 01:21:45.680
now for recommending this case, and thank you so much

1477
01:21:45.760 --> 01:21:53.000
to Mollie for the banana slugs awesome, excellent, Until next time.

1478
01:21:53.119 --> 01:22:00.680
Don't kill your wife and don't kill your husband to

1479
01:22:27.960 --> 01:22:28.479
Compat