A mysterious handwritten letter arrives from Sarah Cavanaugh. In it, she asks: What do you think of my crime? Get early, ad-free access to more episodes of Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who is Sarah Cavanaugh and what is her mysterious crime?
Chapter 2: What is the significance of the handwritten letter from Sarah?
Find Pushkin Plus on the Deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. All right, let's get into it. Hey, I'm just recording here because I'm in the car outside the English department and I just got this letter. which was sent to me by Sarah Cavanaugh. Okay. October 12th, 2024. Dear Jake, thank you for sending me the articles and book that you've written.
You have a distinct style when posing questions that really makes one think about the messages between the lines. Jess and I have spoken twice and emailed several times to talk about my actions and the consequences of It is important to me that you know, I know and knew several months before my arrest that what I was doing was wrong.
I could not have imagined the laws I was breaking, but know now that I was always guilty. What is your opinion about my crime? I ask this because no matter who we are, we bring biases and I'd like to know what you are bringing to the conversation. Also, I have not always thought about others before myself and will always be deliberately sensitive to other people for the rest of my life.
I'm looking forward to meeting you, even if it's virtually. Sincerely, Sarah. This letter that I just read you, it's written on lined paper, the kind I used in grade school. And the penmanship is flawless. When I read it for the first time, I was in my car, outside my classroom at the university where I teach, and I found myself just sitting there, reading and rereading this letter.
"'What is your opinion about my crime?' she asked. Now that was interesting to me. It was almost like, right from the jump, this woman, Sarah Kavanaugh, had flipped the script, like she was interviewing me.' And then there was this line. I'd like to know what you were bringing to the conversation. Funny because we weren't even having a conversation yet.
But looking back, I understand now that the conversation had already started and she was already sussing me out, tuning in to me. And Sarah, she's really, really good at that. I know that now. Months before I got that letter, I got a call from my friend, Jess McHugh. She's my co-host this season. Jess is a journalist and an author.
In fact, you may have noticed in Sarah's letter, she makes a reference to Jess. And that's because Jess is the one who found this story.
I first heard about Sarah when I read a few articles about her online. Just snippets, really. But what I read about her was so bizarre, so unusual. I had a million questions. So I tracked her down. We started sending emails, talking on the phone, getting to know each other. And right from the start, she felt familiar to me. We have a few things in common, actually.
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Chapter 3: How did Jake Halpern and Jess McHugh get involved in Sarah’s story?
We're about the same age, both from small towns in New England. But also, I've become a bit of an expert on women like her. I've spent years digging into historical research, reviewing court documents, and immersing myself in the world of women who managed to live multiple lives. I've found so much that I'm now writing a book about it all.
So yeah, Sarah felt familiar to me, but in the most unsettling way. I clearly remember one of the first things I wrote to her after reading those headlines. I told her, I suspect that there is so much more to your story. I had no way of knowing just how true that would turn out to be.
There's so much that we've learned since we first started talking to Sarah. So much else that she's told us. And we've spent the last eight months trying to figure out how much of her story is true. And what, if anything, we could trust. Because this story is all about trust. It's about what it means to know someone or think you know someone and what happens when reality itself seems to dissolve.
I'm Jake Halpern.
And I'm Jess McHugh.
Episode 1, The Warrior.
One of the first people we interviewed for this story was Catherine Dexter. She goes by Dex. Dex initially met Sarah Kavanaugh in the mountains of Montana at a retreat for veterans.
You got to see the sunrise and you got to see mountains and the air was like. amazing and crisp and smelled a little bit like a campfire. So you woke up every single morning and you saw these mountains and they were beautiful and you were just like awestruck because you were like, why don't I live here? And that's where you were drinking your coffee at 5 a.m.
Dex had served in the Marines as military police in Japan and a couple other bases. When she got out, she felt a bit lost.
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Chapter 4: Who is Catherine Dexter and how did she meet Sarah at the veterans’ retreat?
The three of us are lined up, and being female and in the military, like, do you stand tough? Do you stand feminine? And then, you know, we're in a strength retreat, so we should take one that looks kind of cute, but then we should take one that looks kind of tough and so will flex. And Dex is always the one to be like, oh, we have to flex.
In the picture, the three of them are standing against the backdrop of the mountains, all flexing, biceps and triceps bulging. Natalie and Sarah are smiling. Dex is all business, serious as can be. And looking at the photo, I could kind of feel their energy. I'd never guessed they'd just met.
They look like they could be sisters, joking, competing, giving each other shit, like the Three Musketeers or something. Dex told us that this kind of camaraderie is not a given.
When you're a woman in the military. The competition among other women is really intense a lot of the time. You're all trying to be the best, not just be the best woman, but you're trying to be the best so that the men think you're the best because that's what matters. And, you know, men are the ones who are always in charge of you. It's their opinion that gets you promoted.
So if you're falling short, I mean, you're already doing one thing wrong because you're a woman. So it's like you can't do two things wrong.
Dex was especially impressed with Sarah. She was somehow doing all these really intense workouts while also dealing with what seemed like a pretty serious leg injury.
She also was taking injections of some kind, some type of medication for her hip. And she was like telling us like if she doesn't, you know, put this shot in her hip, like her leg goes numb.
Because Sarah was so modest, because she didn't boast or advertise about who she was and what she'd done, there was an air of mystery about her. Sarah said she was a cryptolinguist. She'd served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. She came from a military family. Her brother had been a Marine, too. He was killed in combat and buried at Arlington Cemetery.
In private moments, Sarah began to open up to Dex.
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Chapter 5: What was Sarah’s condition and background as a decorated veteran?
I took her shaking leg and placed it up on my shoulder and I'm holding her quad in one hand and her foot up here and kind of leaning in and I'm talking her through, like breathe into the muscle, like take some breaths, exhale slowly, picture your leg relaxing and just breathe.
remember her like like having this moment of her leg finally relaxing and this is the leg that she's supposed to have amputated and feeling some some sense of gratitude that i could help somebody in that situation to have some kind of relief
Looking back, Natalie still recalls the intensity of this moment with Sarah. The tenseness of her hamstring, the tremors in her muscles, the pain on Sarah's face. It all seems so real. In the coming weeks, Natalie texted Sarah about the amputation to see if it had been scheduled. And Sarah eventually gave her a date, January 26th. The date sticks in Natalie's mind.
She keeps thinking about it as it draws closer. And then, the night before the surgery, Natalie can't sleep. She just keeps thinking about Sarah.
And like, I'm so genuinely worried about her that in the middle of the night, I wake up and the first thing I think of is, I must be waking up because I've got to pray for Sarah. I should text her and let her know that I'm praying. And so I text out my prayer to her and send it to her.
I asked Natalie to read me that text.
January 26th, 2022, a prayer for you today is what I wrote. God, thank you for Sarah. Thank you for her intelligence, kindness, humor, bravery, courage, and service to the United States and for her gift of friendship. I pray that you will give her and her family a deep sense of peace today, even as she is under anesthesia.
Though she already has such a deep sense of drive and determination, pour into her an extra dose of perseverance and purpose. Heal her body, Lord, from this and all illness and disease.
Did she write anything back?
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Chapter 6: What contradictions and mysteries surround Sarah’s story?
These stories and more are told in the award-winning Disgraceland podcast hosted by me, Jake Brennan, every Tuesday, where I dive deep into the dark side of entertainment and the connection between music history and true crime. Londi's lead singer, Debbie Harry, was shocked when she saw the man's photo in the newspaper. She recognized him. How could she forget?
He'd given her a ride years ago, a ride she'd barely escaped from with her life. And now, here he was, right there on the front page, accused of kidnapping and killing at least 30 women. And now, Debbie Harry finally knew his name. Ted Bundy.
Follow and listen to Disgraceland on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tom Schumann first met Sarah Kavanaugh in the snowy mountains of Boulder, Colorado, at a patrol base Abate retreat.
We're staying in canvas tents. It was an intimate setting where we're spending all day and night with just a small group of people. We connected over our intellectual and academic and literature interests. Had read the same books, talking about the same authors. Pretty immediately, we started hitting it off.
This retreat was similar to the one in Montana we told you about. Hang out, work out, talk, connect. That was the goal. That's why Tom founded PB Abate in the first place. He's a Marine, and when he returned from his tours overseas, he watched his comrades struggle. He told us three of his fellow Marines died by suicide over the course of one month. And that is what led him to start PB Abate.
In Colorado, Tom and Sarah started to get to know each other. Sarah told him she was a professor, which appealed to him. Tom himself taught literature at the U.S. Naval Academy. Sarah also told him that she had a kid who just crashed her pickup truck. She seemed down-to-earth and genuine.
Within the first 24 hours, I felt like we had bonded. And then throughout the weekend, there were a couple of experiences that solidified that bond and strengthened it.
On the last day of this retreat, a guy named Brian Shantosh led them on an adventure workout. Shantosh is a former Marine and a leadership guru famed for his wilderness programs. And his workouts have a reputation for pushing people to their limits. So everyone, even Tom, was nervous. They were told to break down into teams of two. Sarah and Tom partnered up.
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Chapter 7: How did Sarah’s friendships with other female veterans evolve?
Tom, being a guy of action, was like, maybe I can create a salaried position for you at Patrol Base Sabate. At the time, the organization was run entirely by volunteers. There were no paid positions. But the organization did have donors, some with deep pockets. And Tom thought, maybe one of them would be willing to pay for this.
Tom even had a particular donor in mind, a woman who lived up in New Hampshire.
So he wants to get all his ducks in a row. He asks Sarah for a copy of her DD-214. That's the official military discharge paper that all service members receive explaining how and when they left the service. Sarah sends him the paperwork. He says he remembers vividly the moment he received it. He was sitting in his car, in a parking lot, about to get a haircut.
He starts scanning through the documents on his phone and something catches his eye. The DD-214 says Sarah retired as a corporal, which is weird because she'd made it all the way up to staff sergeant. In fact, he'd seen a picture of her with a staff sergeant insignia. So he calls her up.
And so I just said, hey, Sarah, I'm going to New Hampshire tomorrow to ask for $60,000. Okay. Before I do that, could you help me understand why it says that you're a corporal here? And she's like, well, I didn't really want to get into all that, but I was sexually assaulted on ship by the commanding officer.
He had pulled a gun during the sexual assault, and I'm the one who got punished for reporting him. I said, like, I'm sorry to hear that, but... I am now incredulous about all of this.
Suddenly, Sarah's whole story, with all its drama and all its heroics, is feeling very shaky. Tom knew he needed backup, so he reached out to a friend who had access to personnel records. The friend, he punches in Sarah's DOD number, the military equivalent of a social security number, does some more digging. That friend gets back to Tom with what he's found.
And he said the DOD ID number for this DD-214 belongs to a corporal so-and-so. And it's a guy. And he's like, 50% of this document is his record. Then 50% of this document is altered.
It looks like she'd taken someone else's records and doctored them, inserting her own name and other details. This, by the way, is not a small thing. This isn't forging your mom's name on a sick note. This is a huge deal. Felony level huge. Tom is in a state of shock.
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Chapter 8: What challenges do female veterans face in the military community?
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