What started as a straightforward effort to move on spiraled into a bitter and complicated divorce—one that called Jake’s right to share his own story into question. As the layers begin to peel back, deeper questions emerge—about love, control, and the versions of a relationship we choose to believe. Content warning: Drug use/abuse, addiction, divorce, discussions of consent, sexual assault, emotional distress & mature content. Resources can be found on our website, blinkthepodcast.com Blink is part of The Binge - subscribe to The Binge to get new episodes of Blink one-week early and all episodes completely ad-free. Just Hit ‘Subscribe’ at the top of the Blink show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices . . . . . Hosted and produced by Corinne Vien Co-created by Jake Haendel Original composition by Michael Marguet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What challenges did Jake face with his medical care and finances?
Something happened on the accounting side of things, and somehow the money owed to the hospital for the month of May was wiped from the hospital records.
And so for Jake's benefit, we kept that money to help pay for his groceries.
Best luck, worst luck.
So he was at Tewksbury and he really hated it. They all said he's horrible to everybody here. And here you're disabled. You're in bed. You can't get up. You can't do anything. So you're compensating. You're highly demanding. You want everybody to serve you. You know, he did the best he could with that stuff.
So Tewksbury definitely wasn't the most enjoyable place for him to live. But he focused his attention on a few things. One was his recovery. He was still being transferred to Spalding for outpatient therapy and sometimes to MGH as well for care. And now that he had been connected to Amy Clifford, he retained her to represent him in the divorce. A divorce that was going to become a bit complicated.
The hunt for and retrieval of unethically obtained sperm is a shocking detail in Jake's story and something that, luckily, likely isn't seen in many divorce cases. And while obtaining his sperm was certainly a priority, there were two other items on Jake's list.
One was my personal belongings, mainly stuff I put in storage of my mother's that I was saving for my house. Two was the footage I asked to be taken of me on the road downhill, and the off chance I survive, I thought it would be really cool to have.
Jake and I headed to Amy's law office in downtown Boston. He was accompanying me so that he could sign off on the documents, giving Amy permission to discuss his case with me and hand over any of the divorce paperwork and notes that she had. But when we arrived, we hit an obstacle. There was an elevator, but it was up a flight of stairs.
And Jake's motorized scooter, the one he relies on to get around, it would not fit inside. A perfect example of why he founded Ahoy, an app to review the accessibility access of various businesses. As we stood there, totally stuck, another lawyer from a different office noticed our struggle and quickly hatched a plan.
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Chapter 2: How did Jake regain control over his finances and care?
Jake is scrappy, determined, and willing to do whatever it takes to keep moving forward. I sat down with Amy to discuss her memory of the divorce.
There was some challenges because we didn't actually know where Ellen was living. So the way you bring about a divorce is, A, like I said, I'm very practical. So I'll just call the other party and say, hey, are you also interested in getting a divorce? And if they are, there's like path one, which is called a joint divorce. I tried to go that path, but it didn't work. And then...
a contested divorce. So this is the other path, which is like not the easy path where one party files and then the other person answers and then there's just a whole bunch of back and forth until a judge grants a divorce. So I remember filing a 1B petition and then trying to serve Ellen and being unable to serve her. She wouldn't give me her address, which makes it impossible to move forward.
In the meantime, Ellen filed for divorce. which is stupid because it costs money to file divorce. And so that was just a waste to have two divorces open. But we ended up withdrawing our complaint for divorce and moving forward with her complaint for divorce. I did get the sense it was very important to Ellen that she be the defendant.
After this was filed, I found an email from Ellen to attorney Amy Clifford providing her contact information and physical address. But there's something else worth noting. In the legal paperwork Ellen submitted, she requested that her address be impounded, claiming she feared for her safety, that Jake's family might pose a threat. The court denied that request.
Now, many involved, Jake's family, the court, felt that there was no real basis for her claim. But I can't help but pause. I've watched enough true crime documentaries to know how many victims of abuse have pleaded for protection only to be turned away for lack of evidence. And that thought lingers with me.
When I started talking to her, she was very mistrustful of me. Ellen filed her divorce herself without an attorney. So a normal hearing in this matter is like the parties deliver financial statements, like explaining what their financial position is, and they tell the court whether they agree with this divorce and what are the issues. But I showed up and Ellen had this story.
She was requesting restraining orders against not Jake, but against Jake's dad and I think his brother. And she had a whole story where they were abusing her. And I was like, what is going on? And so I tried to work with her to understand where she was coming from and, you know, see what statements she had written in the affidavits. So you
If you request a temporary restraining order from the court, you have to write an affidavit that says, like, why you're asking for it. And you have to have a certain number of incidents. And you have to be actually, like, in fear of, you know, your own personal safety. And if you meet all these standards, then the court will grant it. And they often do this in, like, family court matters.
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Chapter 3: What complications arose during Jake's divorce proceedings?
And so we just go back and forth like that, where Jake would be like, can I have it? And she'd say, Antonia Periculus would say she doesn't have it.
It's challenging to only have paperwork and screenshots and testimony from one side of the story. I would love for Ellen to share her perspective, but in her absence, I'm going to try my best to step into her shoes for this episode. Sometimes, when you're deep in a situation, living every day in a constant state of fight or flight, you don't realize how bad it's gotten.
I know that feeling very well. When I struggled with postpartum depression, I didn't ask for help until I was nearing the finish line that I had quietly set for myself. And it makes me wonder if something similar happened to Ellen.
The crushing weight of caring for a dying spouse, combined with the fear, justified or not, that others might negatively influence him or get in the way of any chance at recovery. Maybe at some point, it stopped being about Jake at all. Maybe it became about Ellen, realizing that she'd completely lost herself. I know that when I've faced those moments, I have one instinct. To purge.
I gather evidence of my pain, I delete, I donate, and sometimes, I burn. Because to rise from the ashes, you have to light the fire first. And I can't help but wonder, was that what Ellen did? Did she wipe her hands clean and move forward? And if so, how frustrating it must have been when the past kept pulling her back.
There was like six items or something that she said she had. And so I was like, Jake, that's all she says she has. Like, we can't get we can't get anything from her that she says she doesn't have.
You know, how about the string cheese incident video? Jake's favorite band recorded a video for him while he was dying, singing him happy birthday. And this video brought him to tears. He really wanted the video. He wanted to show his friends at the hospital.
Oh, she just doesn't have that anymore. She lost her phone. And I'd be like, Oh, Jake, sorry, she doesn't have that anymore. She lost her phone. And he'd be like, Well, no, that that doesn't make sense. Because she has an Apple phone. She always has. She's never lost anything. She like her habit is to back stuff up to the cloud. And so she has it from the cloud.
So I'd be like, Okay, I'd go back to return to Perry Hills back and forth. And then, you know, eventually she come back to me. She said she just doesn't have it. We got to this point where we're like, well, the string cheese incident video that you forwarded to somebody else via email, like, and we'd have a record to say she sent this video to somebody else.
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Chapter 4: Why was serving divorce papers to Ellen difficult?
All right, let me play devil's advocate just one more time. I know that there is one email provider and I won't name names, but it is a nightmare to navigate. You send an email and five minutes later, it's like it vanished into the abyss. So while in a legal battle, you'd probably be able to eventually track this down, the outlook on finding it quickly, not so great.
So I said, you know what, why don't I, I'll meet you somewhere and we'll go through, you know, your email, we'll do a search and we'll just forward the stuff that I offered to do that, stuff like that. It was like absolutely, you know, went nowhere. I believe I filed a motion with the court to demand that she hands over certain things. One of those items was Jake's driver's license.
The court issued a ruling, as I recall, for the things that she said she did have for them, for her to hand them over. And then we arranged a meeting. I think it was in the Friendly's parking lot. I met her and it was like apparently her mom and her. They unloaded some stuff, I don't remember what it all is, into my car.
Things were so heated between the parties, it's not normal for your attorney to go and gather things from the other side. But in this instance, I was like, this is just absolutely the way it has to be because Ellen, I was concerned she would bring additional claims against Eli or just anybody who went to meet her. I was concerned what she would do.
I understand Attorney Amy Clifford's concern here. While pulling court documents, I found... yet another request for a restraining order, this time against Jake's stepsister, Katie. It lacked any real evidence and was ultimately denied. And in the end, Ellen had to let Katie into Derone's house to retrieve items.
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Chapter 5: What role did Amy Clifford play in Jake's divorce case?
So while the restraining order requests against Derone and Max I can understand, the one against Katie does make me start to wonder. Was this just yet another way to control who could come in and out of the house?
So I volunteered to go. So I went, I grabbed the stuff from her and her mom. They were perfectly polite. I take the things and then I drive them to Eli's house and I drop them off.
I mean, we got a few small boxes of stuff. There were some beautiful paintings and stuff that never got back. I remember that. And, you know, there was a period when Jake would say to the attorney, I'm not getting, I refuse until she does that. I'm like, Jake, it's gone. Forget it. You have no power here. You know, he's still upset about it. Some of the stuff has some real emotional value.
A painting by Tony Curtis of Marilyn Monroe. I mean, that was pretty cool.
I remember we were negotiating the divorce and that he was on the Reddit forum and it was like a very good forum for him to be on. And he was making great strides in his recovery and trying to tell a story. And at the same time, I was challenged with negotiating this divorce agreement. And I think I got an email from attorney Periculus saying like, your client really screwed it up.
He's talking about Ellen on the Reddit forum. And You know, I still do this thing where I take an attorney at their words.
I'm like, oh, he must have done something. This was in 2020. Jake hosted an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, and Reddit is public, so anyone can go on and look at the thread. Amy Clifford could and did. Ellen's attorney could have as well.
I went back to the attorney and I was like, he never mentioned her name. Then the attorney wouldn't agree to that.
And I was like, well, the facts are right here. Jake's online presence started as a way for him to show his recovery, to tell his story, and maybe even to inspire others. He read every single comment and response. Occasionally, there'd be a snarky comment made by a stranger, but, you know, such is life in the age of the internet. But Jake also noticed something else.
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Chapter 6: What allegations and restraining orders were involved in the divorce?
these paragraph angry comments and i just like screenshot this stuff through voice and i'm like i think this is out and then we pull up writing samples of hers and you just look at them side by side and you're like that's her
After reading many text threads and email exchanges, I know what Jake is referring to here. There's often the use of capitalization, mid-sentence, in places that you may not ordinarily see it. I pulled an example of this from an email sent by Ellen advocating for Jake back on February 18, 2018. Quote, End quote.
The use of capitalization isn't exactly rare, but Jake wondered if these comments were a clear indication that he was being watched. Amy remembers another challenge. One Jake hadn't anticipated. A request that he never speak about what happened. That this entire chapter of his life remain a secret. It was an unusual demand, but in that moment, Jake realized something else.
This was the fourth thing he needed. And on this, he would not budge. His story was his story. He had spent years without a voice. No one was going to silence him now.
She didn't want her name to be associated with it at all. And she just didn't want him to have the ability to tell his story. And so there was this really bizarre back and forth because she was trying to negotiate a confidentiality agreement. She was holding the divorce hostage in order to get Jake to sign a confidentiality agreement that he wouldn't tell his story.
So she didn't want her name in it, but that's not what she said. She also just didn't want him to tell his story. I... Told Jake at the time, I was like, listen, do you want to get divorced or do you want to tell your story? You can get divorced pretty quick. Or if you want to hold on to your story, like we got to we got to get a hunker in.
I asked Amy if this was something you could do. And at the time, she was a newly licensed attorney. And she told me that she went through great lengths to consult with family law attorneys, IP attorneys and people who were many, many years her senior and practicing law. In the end, this request was unforcible. Amy told Jake, just sign it.
It wasn't something that would hold up in courts if he ever got to that point again. But Jake refused. He wanted it to be extremely clear. He was not going to just pretend that this didn't happen.
We stuck to the guns about keeping that out of the marital separation agreement.
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Chapter 7: What incidents explain Ellen's fear and restraining order requests?
It went from like a very complicated divorce over nothing to like us burning money on both sides, fighting over nothing. Just these like key points. If I want my belongings back, I want all the recovery footage that she was recording of my downfall and my early recovery back. And it went from like just confrontational argument to just one day like, okay, yeah, I'll sign.
And that's when all the comments kind of stopped, at least the ones with these similar writing patterns.
After a long and costly battle, everything just stopped. The divorce papers were ready, and it was time to sign and move on. But with the divorce came a harsh truth. Love is not enough. And with that realization, something shifted. Knowing that Jake was no longer with Ellen, people who had stayed silent for years finally felt safe enough to speak.
They came forward with what they had seen, what they had heard, the things they had tried to bury for Jake's sake. But now, there was no denying it. Jake's love story was over, and the version of events he had clung to, the one he had carefully pieced together in his mind, was unraveling fast. It was looking less like Hallmark and a lot more like Misery.
For the first time, Jake learned exactly what had been happening when he wasn't in the room. Thank you for listening to Blink. This podcast is hosted and produced by me, Corinne Vien, alongside my co-creator and survivor, Jake Handel. Our original music is composed by the brilliant and talented Michael Marguet. We're so grateful for your support.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider rating, reviewing, and sharing this story with others. For additional resources, updates, and behind-the-scenes content, visit our website, BlinkThePodcast.com. Blink will return with a new episode next Sunday.
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