Peter McDonald
speaker
265 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Peter McDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
By the way, I interviewed Adam in two different places on two different mics. Sorry. You'll notice it. The day of the court hearing, Adam texted Tara Lee.
Adam sent the text and went to work. Meanwhile, at the FBI's Detroit field office, agent Matt Sluss clicked save on the 31-page criminal complaint he'd written. He'd distilled all the evidence into one monstrous story of probable cause.
Here's Sarah Woodward.
On January 11th, 2019, Sarah Woodward and the FBI made their evidence public.
And the FBI took Tara Lee to court the same day.
Miles to the north, Adam Bell's Thomas was at his desk at work. But all he could think about was that the criminal complaint against his friend Tara Lee was about to be publicly released. When it was, Adam printed it out and asked his boss if he could take a short break.
That night, after they put their son to bed, Tara Lee called. Reluctantly, Kyle picked up. Tara Lee ranted. They listened. And then they hung up. Forever.
Adam told me that in their conversations with the FBI and the two lawyers, Talia Getting and Tanya Corrado, they learned their matches didn't fail for the reasons they originally thought. The birth mother in their second failed adoption wasn't even pregnant.
And in the last failure, the birth mother said she told Tara Lee that she was not going to give her baby to Adam and Kyle. But Tara Lee never gave them the message.
In federal court, Tara Lee was charged with 18 counts of wire fraud and freed on a $10,000 bond. She was forbidden from doing any adoption work and from contacting birth mothers and adoptive parents. But then, an unforeseen consequence of Tara Lee's alleged crimes surfaced. Talia Getting, the lawyer, called Tammy and Nick Granath in Chicago.
Tammy was sitting at her kitchen island, holding her infant daughter, May, when she answered.
Next time on Baby Broker...
Tammy and Nick and other couples fight to keep their babies, and Tara Lee goes to court.
Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series. That's all episodes, all at once. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Baby Broker is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence.
It was hosted and reported by me, Peter McDonald. I'm the executive producer, along with Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch of Sony Music Entertainment. Steve and George recorded the narration at the Invisible Studios West Hollywood. We used music from Audio Network and a few tracks from Epidemic Sound. News clips are courtesy of WXYZ7 in Detroit, Michigan.
Our production managers are Tamika Balance-Kolosny and Sammy Allison. Our lawyers are Allison Sherry and Kathleen Farley. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rasek, and Jamie Myers.
Teresa Matheny's initial description of 38-year-old Tara Lee as someone who cussed like a sailor and was covered in tattoos was so striking, it almost sounded like a quote. It was, and I found it in the second paragraph of Tara Lee's introductory email to the Mathenys. She wrote, I swear like a truck driver and am covered in tattoos.
She also wrote that she had a master's degree in social work from Northwestern and that her passion was to help birth mothers. She wrote, I'm constantly teaching life skills to these women who have had no one to help them grow and evolve. That phrase, help them grow and evolve, struck me as pejorative.
I'm sure she didn't mean it that way, but it sounds a little like social Darwinism, as if the birth mothers she worked with were inferior and primitive. She said her fee for evolving Stephanie was $9,000. The day after Teresa and Mike had their upsetting call with Courtney Edmond, they drove to Port Huron with their fingers crossed, desperately hoping Tara Lee and Stephanie would show up.
They parked, went inside, got a booth, and waited. Then they spotted a woman with black hair, tattoo sleeves, and bright designer nails walking toward them. Behind her were a petite pregnant woman with brown hair and two men, the birth father and Tara Lee's assistant, Jay. Teresa and Mike exhaled. From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, this is Baby Broker. I'm Peter McDonald.
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