As Paty’s search gathers pace, she makes a disturbing discovery, while Kat’s behavior becomes even more unpredictable.If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, here are some resources:The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 988. The National Alliance on Mental Illness is available at 1-800-950-6264.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What disturbing discovery does Patty make in her search for Desiree?
Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hey, Chico here. Just wanted to let you know that this episode has a short mention of self-harm. Please take care while listening. It was the middle of the night. Patty's face glowed in the light of her phone.
She was still awake and still scrolling through Instagram.
So I was not sleeping because I was like searching for her and then I had to work.
It was now more than three months since her best friend, Desiree, had ghosted all her family and friends and moved in with her supermodel life coach, Kat Torres. And every day, Patty spent hours searching through social media for any clues to their whereabouts. Her friends had begun to notice the effect it was having on her.
The people around me, they were a little bit like, maybe she just don't want to talk to you.
And Patty was beginning to wonder if maybe they were right.
Maybe you should live your life and not spend too much time searching for someone that doesn't want to talk to you.
But then she got a message on WhatsApp. It was an invite to a group chat called Friends of Desiree.
There was a lot of people in the group and they are trying to find her, to help her.
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Chapter 2: How does Patty's social media investigation unfold?
It's for the energy or beauty, but she's just throwing in the bath, like, things in plastic or glitter.
Let's start putting...
She put in some rubber toys, a bag of Gumby Bears, bath bombs, plastic packaging and all, gold tinsel. It all seemed pretty harmless, until Cat added razor blades to the bath. Cat said the blades couldn't hurt, because she was an alien. As weird as this alien bath ritual was, Kat's followers on social media seemed to be into it.
People was there, oh my gosh, I want to do that. And you had the people that believed that was a real thing.
That's when we started to realize that Kat had many, many, many loyal followers. I'm talking the kind of followers who idolize her completely.
Followers would write comments praising Cat for her psychic abilities and her beautiful life. She's so strong, they would say. She's a phoenix reborn from the ashes. Lau's friend, Mada, didn't know Desiree directly. But as she watched all of this unfold, it began to dawn on her what was happening.
Wait, it sounds like your friend is in a cult.
It wasn't just Cat's followers who believed in her powers. It also began to affect the searchers. Some of them got scared of Cat's abilities. One of them even feared that Cat could put a curse on her. Patty, Lau, and Mada realized that if even some of the searchers started believing in Cat's powers, then there were so many other young women out there who could easily fall for her.
They had to do more to warn people about Kat. They had to go public.
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Chapter 3: What role does the 'Friends of Desiree' group play?
It's like the person you knew, she's not there anymore. It's another person.
The look on her eyes was really a look of someone lost. Someone is not there anymore.
To the searchers, it looked like a hostage video. It didn't seem like her. Had Desiree been forced into filming it?
That's the moment that I think people really got scared.
The searchers began to cycle through all the worst case scenarios.
Could it be something much bigger?
We didn't know if Kat was involved with the Russian mafia or she was connected to people who did human trafficking. We just didn't know.
They were spiraling.
She lives in Texas. It's really close to Mexico. So you're like, oh, maybe the cartel took misery.
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