Once the initial call to the Fargo Police Department was made, they assigned us a Financial Crimes Detective and provided a secure file share link to upload everything we had gathered thus far. When we finally sat down to meet with them and go over it all, we were encouraged they would be much more efficient and thorough with their investigation than we could. With it in their hands we got back to work piecing together our actual financial situation with a call to the new accountant's office. We were met with yet again another surprise. Kayla hadn't hired the accountant after all and had in fact not responded to any follow up requests from them about utilizing their services. Who had been doing the books since February? Another message to the out-of-town friend bookkeeper - she also hadn't done anything since February. Perhaps she could provide everything up to that point for us, but unfortunately once again for us that wouldn't be possible. Kayla had used a QuickBooks software for desktop use only. This means there is no online record of any of our books, and it is all stored on her laptop she was using. The bookkeeper would simply remote in to do her part and then log out. Dead end. She claimed she had no idea about what Kayla was doing and was just as shocked as we were. I was hopeful that through the police investigation we might be able to retrieve the laptop and then the information. Her laptop also contained thousands of organization files, photos, and contacts. We would have to be patient and do what we could until that time. We hired the new accountant immediately.
With all the inquiries, subpoenas, restraining orders, and records requests flying around, it probably shouldn't have been a huge surprise to be contacted by the Attorney General's office. Just another hurdle, another call, another meeting. Fairly they were looking into some incorrect filings, and they needed a full picture of all of the organization's donations, expenses, tax filings, and events. I scoured every method of payment we had ever used, every donation we have ever received through every platform, and every piece of fraud we had come across and painstakingly put them all into a file to be reviewed by the Attorney General's office. Thankfully, after a thorough investigation and a Zoom meeting I couldn't ever have imagined I would be in, they were satisfied with our continuing operations. Ok, one thing done.
If you have been following along since the beginning, you very well know the surprises don't seem to end in this story. With the FPD on the case, and our organization cleared to continue operations it was now time to start individually contacting as many families as possible who have been involved. One after the other for hours and hours I detailed the facts we knew to these families. By this time the rumors of whether or not Kayla had a stillbirth in the way she had led everyone to believe had circulated in part because of the restraining order documents that had been made public. The questions from the families all came back to this. Is this true? Is Hope real? So many theories were flying around between us - maybe it was an early miscarriage, maybe she gave the baby up for adoption, or what if she was never pregnant at all?
October 1st 2021 and I'm sitting on my couch with a glass of wine and a book, a text message within a group thread chimes on my phone. The thing is, this and a few other group threads had been busy for months venting about what had happened, replaying conversations we had had with Kayla, and speculating about what the truth actually was. There were little things that bothered us all - stories she told us that didn't match up, blatant lies about things she had done or said, and a very clear attempt to keep us all from becoming close to one another. You see, Kayla enjoyed being friends with each of us, separately. We didn't see it then but as we put together all of our experiences it was clear she was triangulating. This is a method narcissists often use to maintain control over relationships by limiting information being passed between the other parties. This way the narcissist is the only one with all the information and can use that information to manipulate the others. In my experience Kayla maintained relationships with parents in the HHP group that were beneficial to her. She did not make time for people who couldn't offer her something for her time. I would see this quite obviously in the final year we were friends. She would tell me that this mom was only in her relationship to have more kids, or this other mom had suicidal thoughts and she was their only confidant, another didn't have any other friends besides her, another had no one to help with their absolutely wild children. All of these "friends" of hers she claimed consumed so much of her time she had no time left for herself. Yes, her kind, ever-giving, saintly heart. The loss mom who was doing it all so much better than the rest of us. It's sick really, if you imagine winning at the game of grief over the death of your child. She was though. Her birthday parties for Hope were exquisite.
Private candlelit yoga classes, beautiful brunches, flower bouquet arrangements, custom candles, and always a perfectly custom cake from the absolute best baker in town. No detail was left out. The fonts for the invitations, the perfect pantone color of purple, her beautiful photos of Hope that had you wondering how something so beautiful could be gone.
This had gone on for years, and none of us had ever dared speak a word out loud to her or one another about how her efforts made us feel. Why would we? She is a grieving mother who does not have the support of the father, or other children to take care of. She has the time to do it, and she feels like she is the sole person keeping her daughter's memory alive. We might understand better if we were in her shoes. We as a group as well as the organization truly preached that however your grief shows up and however you want to honor it is valid. It is a personal experience and we were there to support it. But later, after so much of this had come out and we were free to speak to one another, our real feelings finally were exposed.
It was rare to see any photos of Hope besides the perfectly curated ones posted online. She would share the professional ones privately among some of us, and there were just the two that Kayla had said she captured on her phone from the night Hope was born. The one shown, and the one she had sent to me as proof of existence. More often than not, it was the professional photos that would be shared between Kayla and the other moms.
The efforts quickly turned from trying to decide if she was lying to figuring out to what extent she was lying. By this time, I had gotten in contact with Drew and his girlfriend because we were finally all on the same page, and the same side. His version of events of the night/day Hope was born were vastly different from the tale that Kayla had spun for us all. It was jaw dropping to say the least as he detailed his relationship with her, and the circumstances to which they agreed on co-parenting their daughter. The victim role she portrayed herself as for years quickly crumbled over a matter of hours as we sat and talked with him. We still didn't know the full story though, and neither did he. A father, living this life as a bereaved dad for years only to then have that entire title taken from him, a daughter taken from him, again. He only ever wanted the truth. He wanted to live his life and love his daughter separately from Kayla because maybe he knew deep down what type of person she was. Maybe he knew he was better off maintaining a space between himself and the mother of his child. Whichever might be the case, we were all committed to finding out the answers.
It had been a gnawing detail. These beautiful, professional photos of Hope. They had to be done by someone. Kayla maintained to me that it was a close friend who is a photographer who had moved away shortly after. To others it was another friend, to others it was the nurses at the hospital. Regardless, the search was on to find where these originated.
Then, boom. Ahna finds them. The original photos of a precious baby girl, living and breathing in California. This baby was born in April of 2017 and had a photo shoot done shortly after with the exact same floral muslin blanket Kayla had been so connected to. The baby had dark hair, long beautiful lashes (that Kayla spoke often about), a perfect nose, and cute little lips that were not at all the typical dark ruby red color that accompanies a stillborn baby. If you have never had a stillbirth or been around a baby who has died, as most people haven't, you wouldn't know some of these excruciatingly painful details. The bits that parents don't share on social media or among friends or family members. The specific pieces that haunt them about how their babies change so quickly after they die. Their skin and lips among the very first sign. But not Hope. Hope was perfect, even in death. She was the picture of perfection just as Kayla had crafted her grief.
It was easy to compare the photos we had, and the photos she sent out on Christmas cards and memorial announcements to the photos online of this baby. For the folks who think all babies look alike, you might think "ok, so it's a baby, they are both girls with dark hair". But once you are a parent, and you have seen your baby brand new in your arms, they ALL look different, so different. The crazy thing that stuck out to all of us was that this baby's name was Kailah.
Either Kayla did in fact get pregnant have a baby and give it up for adoption to this nice family in California, and they graciously named the baby after her....or Kayla sort of stole this baby's identity. I legitimately tried to wrap my head around the adoption theory. What if she had? What if she gave her up, and didn't want to tell Drew? Crazier things have been done certainly. It would make sense. But why after we desperately tried to help her would she continue to keep it a secret? More questions just streaming through all of us as we processed the images. There had to be a way to find out if that was the case. Because if it was, a person would grieve that child, certainly not in the same way, but there would be grief. But there are legal hurtles as well she would have had to navigate without the father's consent to the adoption, and there are no records of these either.
Kayla manufactured this story and this baby. She needed to find each and every piece to complete the picture of a pregnancy, a birth, a death, and a memorial. This included all the items she had shown my daughter and I that day in our house. Her ring with breastmilk and ashes had to come from somewhere.
The photos themselves certainly weren't enough even if they were cropped to perfection. But, if these professional photos of Hope were not in fact Hope, then what baby did she take a selfie of herself with in the two photos from the hospital?
What was real through this whole thing was how betrayed we all felt. The money, whatever version of Hope's existence, if any, her constant lies between her friends, it was all coming out fake. Among other lies we found out she was actually let go from her job at the hospital for being in places she did not have access to, and the house she sold that she didn't need any more wasn't actually her house at all, but had been renting space in from a friend. The money she claimed she made on the home sale was helping her pay for her beautiful downtown apartment. This and so many other lies had us shaking our heads and asking "why?" Why keep lying about all of this little stuff that doesn't matter. None of us heard from her after the embezzlement came out. Right up until that day though, Kayla would call some of the moms and warn them that these "lies" were being spread about her, and if we could all just stand by her, she would appreciate it. And everyone did. We all were trying our best to support her then, and then nothing. Not a word again to any of us.
Everywhere we turned another lie found its way to the surface, but with it an explanation as well. The hospital bands I had seen had to have come from somewhere, the hand and foot molds, the stillbirth certificate, it all had to be collected somehow. Piece by piece we figured it out. By having conversations with one another we were able to identify who had given her access to what. The hand and foot molds could easily belong to another family since she had created them a handful of times - I had even helped with the last set. Did we actually need two or three sets to "make sure" we got a good one? The hospital bands finally clicked into place when I looked at my own for comparison. The bands I had for Henry and myself were white also with little pink and blue bears on them. We delivered at the same hospital so it stands to reason they would be the same, but they weren't. Kayla's were white with the same detail information on them as mine, but instead of little bears there were pink and blue footprints. Curious. I don't work in a hospital of course and figured it might be like any other vendor product - occasionally swapped out to try a new brand or a new version. Perhaps that accounted for the small difference. But it didn't. Conveniently, the hospital bands at the alternate hospital system did in fact have pink and blue footprints on them. The hospital system that allowed Kayla all the freedom and access she "needed" to provide doula services to the families there. It wouldn't be impossible to get access to storage. The hand and footprint sheets she showed me were also different from mine, but I never had anything to compare hers to. Finally, the stillbirth certificate fell into place. The day after we confronted her in early June with our concerns about the rumors Kayla texted at least two moms to ask them to see a photo of their documents. She claimed she was helping another loss family navigate the process. Jackie sent a photo with her hand covering some of the information. The other mom did in fact send over the photo to her.
I will not share the photo here to maintain this mother's privacy, but the photo was a piece of paper that had been folded and was laying crosswise on top of a filing cabinet. The filing cabinet Kayla had told me was at her lawyer's office. She had simply edited out the words to include Hope's information and leave the father's name blank. There it was. The last shred of proof that had made me so undeniably certain that this baby existed. The piece that sent me on a quest to fight for Kayla and defend her name, was faked. A lie just like all the others. What was next? What other ridiculous things would we uncover. I truly hoped this might be the last of it. But of course, it wasn't. Our conversations and screenshots of messages we had shared with Kayla continued to compound and we kept shaking our heads at each new realization, each new revelation of a story that wasn't what each of us had heard from her. Our friendships and relationships mending in truth, after being split by lies for so long.
Then a realization that shook me to my core more than any had so far. A text thread between Kayla and Lindsey as Lindsey was preparing to have a memorial ring made for herself with her son's ashes in it.
Kayla is letting Lindsey know that the ashes will not look as you expect. They will be white. But the tiny bag Kayla pulled out and showed me that day at my house was absolutely NOT this bag. They did NOT look like this even remotely. I could not believe what I was seeing. She had told me hers were dark, I had seen dark black and grey ashes in that bag. She absolutely did NOT go to a funeral home to have them sift through them for her. The funeral home did that for me, for Henry's ashes. She was there with me. Then she was at my house with me while I stepped away for a few moments to gather myself. These are absolutely not hers. So best case scenario here is that she grabbed the small bag of ashes and snapped a photo using Hope's perfect baby blanket again, and maintained that they were hers from the photo. Worst case, she actually took the ashes and kept them, or had them put in her own ring. Considering the artist maintained there were cremains in that ring I am quite concerned the latter might be the real truth. I did report this information to the police in the hopes that at some point they would be looking at her possessions to return things that may have been stolen from the organization. Perhaps they would recover her laptop with financial information we needed, the keys to our office she refused to return, the keys to my cabin I had lent her for a weekend away and she continually stalled on getting back to me, or even our mail key for our post office box. All things she could have easily returned but didn't. It was my hope that at some point she would be honest or forthcoming even slightly so that the organization didn't have to suffer anymore from her actions. During the police investigation at one point, she supposedly agreed to send the ring and the ashes back to me, but claimed they were not Henry's. I almost laughed when the investigator told me she said they weren't Henry's. To this point I haven't uncovered much that was actually ever true in any conversation I had ever had with her. What actual insanity would have me believing her this time. Unsurprisingly, I still have not received any of these items after several attempts to write via certified mail, text, and email. I will have to live with the not knowing. I will have to live with the aching hole that is already missing my son, to now wondering if I in fact do have the entirety of his precious remains. There is no statute that exists in the state of North Dakota to make it a crime to steal ashes. Since they were not on cemetery property, nor do they technically hold any financial value this is simply not against the law. The discoveries and the heartbreak don't simply end here. Follow along for the next chapter, "Building a case, and a baby".
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