In 2018, Tara Lee matches Teresa and Mike Matheny of Atlanta with a pregnant woman in Detroit who is due in just two weeks. But hours before the couple drives to Detroit to adopt their son, they make a horrifying discovery. Binge all episodes of Baby Broker, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment & Perfect Cadence production. 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
What is the introduction to the Baby Broker podcast?
Which was two weeks to the day from when we had this phone call. So we were literally thinking like, oh my God, we're going to have to go home after this wedding and literally pack our stuff and go to Michigan.
Then Tara Lee told them that Stephanie, the birth mother, was waiting on another line.
She was like, can I patch her at?
Teresa said, of course. So Stephanie came on and said hello. She was in her early 40s and had been taking care of others her whole life. First, her younger siblings. Then, two children from her first marriage, who were now older. Then her husband went to prison for a drug-related offense, and they divorced.
And now, she lived with her boyfriend and was raising their four-year-old son on the boyfriend's limited income. They decided to put their baby up for adoption because they thought he'd have a better life. But it was a very hard decision.
Tara asked, Do you choose them to parent your child? And she said yes.
The Mathinis told me the call was tense. They didn't want to say the wrong thing and make Stephanie second-guess her decision. As in any private adoption, Stephanie had the right to change her mind even a few days after the final adoption agreements were signed, and that would be days after her son was born.
They said Stephanie also seemed cautious though, but not because they were strangers making a life-changing decision together. It was more like Tara Lee seemed to be controlling what Stephanie said, as if Stephanie had been coached or prepped to seal the deal.
After we got off that phone call, she was like, okay, so I'm going to put you and myself and your birth mom into like a group chat. And she was like, the reason why I do that is so in case things get awkward, I can kind of step in and kind of smooth things out.
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