Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
At 17, Chantelle McDougall was nannying for a 36-year-old man. At 20, she was pregnant with his child and swept up in his bizarre spiritual beliefs. At 27, they all disappeared. I just wished I'd asked a lot more questions no matter what. I'm Dominique Bayens, host of Expanse, The Nan Up 4, a story of control, manipulation and isolation.
Search Expanse on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. A few years ago, Stephanie Wood met a sweet guy online. Let's call him Joe. Joe was a sheep farmer, reinventing himself after a career as an architect. He had an ex-wife and two kids at school. Over romantic weekends away and fireside dinners, Stephanie fell in love. But things weren't perfect.
Joe began cancelling plans right at the last minute, or would just not show up at all. Some of the stories he was telling about his business interests and his real estate deals didn't seem to quite add up. Eventually, Stephanie ended the relationship. She was heartbroken, but she started using her journalistic nous to look into the things that Joe had told her.
What she uncovered was a dark, messy web of duplicity and manipulation. Stephanie is not alone. There are plenty of smart, confident, capable women out there being undone by men like Jo. Her book is called Fake. Hi, Stephanie. Hello, how are you? What was going on in your life back in 2014 before you met Jo?
I was very, very single. I'd been single for a number of years. I had dipped my toe in online dating waters a few years earlier, and I describe it as a bit of a swamp in the book. I'd left it. I'd decided, oh, I can't bear it. I can't bear it anymore.
Why?
What was it when you say swamp? You're just not meeting men that are very appealing. And I know that men say this about it in reverse for when the women they're meeting. But for me, just men that aren't quite right. One wanted to tell me all about the tantric sex ashram he'd been to in India.
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Chapter 2: How did Stephanie Wood meet 'farmer' Joe?
That's either going to be very alluring.
And I had to have STD tests before he went into it. And I'm like... This is our first date. We're having a coffee and this is what you want to talk about, right? Another one wanted to tell me about his ex-girlfriend's strange sexual habits. And these are first dates.
That don't become second dates.
They don't become second dates.
But what else was going on?
I mean, you were working, you had a busy social life. I was living in Sydney. I had a great social life. I'm extremely close to my brother and my sister-in-law and their kids, and it was fine. Any woman in my position would say it's lonely.
I'd hit 40, and most of my contemporaries have children, and their lives become very different, and it's quite exclusionary, but not deliberately so, but it is. And so you do find yourself alone a lot. I certainly did, and I'm quite introverted, so thankfully... In a sense, that's a blessing because it makes it easier for me to be solitary.
I was loving my job as a features writer at Good Weekend, the best job in the world. I had the most amazing editor, Amelia Lester, who'd worked at The New Yorker. Actually, she came later. That's right.
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Chapter 3: What red flags did Stephanie notice in her relationship with Joe?
Sorry. But I decided I'd go dating again online. So what was it about Jo's work? Well, he contacted me and very soon after I put my profile back up online, he contacted me and he could write. He put apostrophes in the right place. Grammar will get you every time. Grammar gets you. That is a very rare thing. Men generally online don't write very eloquently and he wrote very, very eloquently.
And I was completely taken in by that. And he talked about his love for the country, for the bush, for nature, for his children. And I love the bush and I love nature. I don't get to it very often, unfortunately, but it was a very appealing package. He talked about having a boat that he sailed on the harbour. I love the water so much. And so that was before we met.
Chapter 4: What did Stephanie uncover about Joe after their breakup?
Those were the things that he'd presented me with and then we met. And what was he like in person compared to that online profile? He was awkward, a little bit awkward the first date. I wasn't blown away at all and I actually left thinking I probably won't see him again. He said something at the time that bothered me. He said, you must be very well connected.
And by that, he meant because I'm a journalist and I know people in fairly wide circles. And I hate the idea of being well-connected. Like, that's not me. I'm much happier digging in the soil in my community garden, as my friends will tell you. And I'm not interested in, you know... Did you get the sense that he was maybe interested in using you as a way to get to other people?
Yes, that was my initial sense. I thought, you're an opportunist and you think I might... I didn't think through every possible ramification or implication of what that might have meant.
Chapter 5: How did Stephanie's background as a journalist influence her investigation?
But he did this thing for the first time that I would see later in the relationship of backtracking. Oh, no, I said to him, oh, I'm not well connected and I don't like that sort of, I'm not interested in that sort of world. And he said, oh, no, no, no, I'm not interested in that. in someone well connected, I'm very, very private.
I, you know, even when I was an architect, I didn't have my, I wouldn't let my work, my firm's work be published in architectural magazines. Oh no. So it was a backtrack and it, It was weird, but I bought it. I thought, okay, that's fine. Did he tell you much about his own life at that first date?
He talked a lot about the farm and the sheep, and I'm a journalist, and so I switched into journalism mode and I asked about sheep. I learnt all about the sheep. And I think later he told me, oh, you ask quite intelligent questions about sheep. And I wasn't faking it because I love the idea of living on a farm and...
Working with sheep, you know, perhaps that's naive of me, but it sounds quite appealing. It's quite alluring.
It's up there with the kind of fireman fantasy, the farmer.
It's a farmer fantasy. Of course, I had fantasised about farmers before. I don't apologise for that. Was there a spark between you, Stephanie? I felt there was. The second day, which I wasn't expecting would happen, but it did, I felt there was a spark, definitely, and I started to...
But then there was another hitch between our second and third dates when we were talking about going out for dinner. And I said, would you like me to book somewhere? And we're discussing restaurants. And because I'm a former restaurant reviewer and great food lover and cook and know restaurants, I feel quite knowledgeable. And he said, well, you make the decision.
And maybe you should book because it'll be really interesting to see how they treat you if it's under your name. And again, recoiled because that's one of my least favourite things to be reckoned with. Not that it happens very much anymore because I haven't been reviewing for a very long time, but I hate being recognised in a restaurant. I hate people fawning over me.
And so again, I recoiled at that. Was he asking you questions about you and... Well, that was an email conversation about the restaurant. But in hindsight, no, not as much as you would ideally like in someone that was potentially interested in you.
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Chapter 6: What emotional challenges did Stephanie face during her relationship?
And I do remember one date that we had after we got together where I talked a lot about my father who, oh, my God, I adore him. Dad died in 2010. Absolutely. He's my hero and very significant figure in my life. And, of course, I'm going to talk about my father again. And later, Jo said to me, you did talk a lot about your father.
And in hindsight, I look back and go, you weren't really interested. You were sitting there not in the least interested in anything I had to say. How soon after the two of you met did you decide to go away for a weekend together? We'd had four dates. And then he said, I'd very much like you to come away for a weekend with me. And I mean, this is what we're built for, isn't it? Love.
Yeah.
And I got rather, I was pretty keyed up about that. You use a Norwegian word.
That's right.
It was a Norwegian word I found in a sort of a modern urban dictionary, I think, called forelskett. And I'm sure Norwegians will tell me I'm not pronouncing it correctly. But it means it describes those incredibly heady, intense, wildly irrational early days of a relationship where you've lost your brain, really. And you're just madly crushing on someone. Madly, madly crushing.
And that was where I was at that stage. And then also anxiety. I suffer anxiety, not to a panic attack. I don't ever want to overstate because I know a lot of people suffer much more severely than I do. and I've suffered anxiety in certain relationships in the past, and around about then the anxiety started to kick in as well.
And I guess those feelings can kind of overlap, can't they?
Yes, exactly. That excitement butterflies in your stomach can be similar to anxiety. Yes, exactly. And so it was very hard to pull apart the emotions and to know what was anxiety and what was Farlskets and what was madness and what was what. And other emotions as the relationship wore on came into play as well, and I still have no idea how I can unpick those emotions and...
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Chapter 7: How did the relationship dynamics change after the weekend getaway?
Well, this is one of the great blackly humorous moments in retrospect that I sat about two desks away from the wonderful Kate McClymott. the Sydney Morning Herald's wonderful, extraordinary investigative journalist who brought down the New South Wales government, who saw Eddie Obeid into jail. And Kate is wonderful. She was at the launch of my book last night.
And I also sat near another investigative journalist, Anne Davies, another wonderful investigative journalist and a good friend of mine. And during the relationship, Anne had said to me, come on, we've got to do some searches on him. And I'd Googled him during the relationship and I'd established certain things were true about his stories.
But I knew the searches that Anne meant and they were things like title deed searches and bankruptcy searches. And I pushed myself on my chair back to my desk and I said, no, this is a love story. I'm not being a journalist here. This is a love story. I can't do that. I can't do that. And after I dumped him, I obviously had the – I did those searches reasonably – I mean, it took me a while.
Christmas was in the middle of it and I was – there was still a lot of time I was spending under a duvet with a pillow over my head. and I certainly took some valium during that time. What was revealed about him when you did those searches?
The first phone call I made was to the man he'd claimed was his ex-business partner in the architectural firm, and certainly this man was his ex-business partner. I refer to him as Peter in the book. And when I told Peter why I was ringing and I was shaking as I made the call, Kate McClymon in the background egging me on... Peter's first words were, he's a compulsive liar.
And then over through the conversation, he revealed just extraordinary details about what had gone down in their business. And he hadn't retired from architecture. The business had collapsed under the weight of debt. Soon, around about that same time, I did a search to discover that my ex had been bankrupt at the time I was with him. Hence why he used cash.
I'd once asked him, why don't you have a credit card? And he said, oh, I hate the banks. I'm not giving them any money, which that's not an uncommon sentiment, is it? But now I can see you can't get a credit card when you're bankrupt.
What about Kirsty, the woman that he'd been seeing at the same time as you? Was he still appearing on her Facebook and Instagram pages?
I did keep an eye on her feed for some months and he would appear sporadically, not very often. How would you feel when you saw him? That was so hard. Is life still going on for you? Oh, it was awful. It was a feeling of jealousy and anger and that mix of emotions of green-eyed rage. And I'd started to see who he really was, that he wasn't at all the man I'd thought he was.
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Chapter 8: What were the major turning points that led to the relationship's end?
And so I've got this picture of him now at his whiteboard with two columns and one for me and one for her and what stories he'd told me and what stories he'd told her. And interestingly, he'd never, ever mentioned his architectural background to her.
So it spun the story slightly differently.
Slightly differently. Like, he talked a lot to both of us about this cafe he adored in the little town near his old farm with the shack. And he told me that he thought the coffee was the best coffee in the country. He told Kirsty that he loved its chops. So it's like, what? ! It is, it's next level madness.
It really is. Did she remember, I mean, this is just one detail I know, but it seems so striking. Did she remember the night where he'd taken her to that restaurant where your brother worked?
Yes. And passed her off as his sister? Well, I think what happened was she must have been walking a little bit behind him. My brother must have escorted them to the bar. They sat at the bar in this very large restaurant, wonderful restaurant. And so Joe must have been walking with David. Maybe it's a busy, noisy, noisy restaurant. And he must have been walking a little bit ahead.
And that's when he must have said, it's my sister. So she wouldn't have heard that. And then my brother was... doing what my brother does so beautifully, you know, giving people who are important in the restaurant a glass of champagne, some complimentary appetizers.
So the fact that Joe risked that, it wasn't just that he was desperate to keep you out of each other's lives. Was there some thrill for him in being so close to exposure?
I think you have to, I'd have to say yes. I'm sure there was an adrenaline rush for him, but I mean, it, I would love to get inside the corridors of his mind because it remains, I think I understand some things, but... What do you understand? What do you think was motivating it? It wasn't money. It wasn't money.
One of the things I did soon after I broke off with him was do a search on Google for the words pathological liar and boyfriend. And what came up was a world of the most extraordinary stories I've ever seen that I could never have imagined was out there.
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