Original subtitles

Chad is the person

I would be with for the rest of my life.

[laughs]

At some points, I felt like this was

too good to be true.

How can I have such a great life?

[dramatic music]

BROADCASTER: Chad Schipper faces felony charges.

DONIELLE: His face popped up,

and it was just like, that's impossible.

- He was really in over his head

trying to keep up with all the lies

he was telling people.

DONIELLE: I could see a gun pointed at me.

The police are in my house.

DONIELLE: He lied to me about everything.

DONIELLE: Six children, married for 17 years.

Did he ever even love me?

[suspenseful upbeat music]

♪ ♪

ANDREA: I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal,

a show about the people we trust the most

and the deceptions that change everything.

On today's show, we meet Donielle,

who had dreams of marrying a man of faith and integrity.

And she thought she had that with Chad.

But after years together, a shocking truth was revealed.

Donielle, it is so great to see you again.

- It's good to see you again too.

ANDREA: Tell me, what motivated you to reach out?

DONIELLE: I was listening to the Betrayal podcast,

and it really helped me in my journey and in my story,

where I'm actually finding out that this man

that I was in love with wasn't even the man

that he said he was.

[dramatic acoustic music]

I grew up in California in the Bay Area.

My family is really close.

I have one brother. He's older than me.

And then two sisters younger than me.

- Donielle came from a Christian,

religious background,

and she was homeschooled, but she was a typical teenager.

She dated and had a boyfriend named Billy,

but they had to break up because her dad

was transferred and they moved out of state.

DONIELLE: We relocated to Illinois.

That was a really hard time for me because

I obviously didn't know anybody in Illinois.

At that point, I was in college.

My next youngest sibling, she was going to Black Hawk.

She knew I was looking to find friends, and so

she said, "Why don't you come to the Bible study,

see if you can find a friend?" [chuckles]

RANDLIN: There's this thing called InterVarsity.

It was like a Christian fellowship group.

You would study the Bible for a little while,

pray, and just sort of fellowship

with people on campus that were like-minded

religiously as we were.

And Donielle came with me.

- Chad was at that Black Hawk Bible study.

[bright music]

He was a really, really charismatic person.

And I thought he was attractive.

- Chad was very cool and calm and collected all the time.

He had a reputation of being very smart, very kind.

I have this specific memory of a conversation

where Chad started talking about finance

and what he was studying.

And, of course, my 18-year-old self

was just completely in awe.

And I even remember having this brief thought pop

into my head like, should I be dating Chad?

That's how impressive he was.

DONIELLE: Usually after the Bible study,

we would go to a restaurant.

♪ ♪

And I remember wanting to sit next to him

and feeling the electricity if our knees touched.

He had the same kind of humor as me.

I just felt comfortable and happy when I was around him.

Our first date was a double date.

It was actually with him and my sister

and the guy she was interested in.

And it was kind of not a usual date.

It was just at our house, and we watched a couple movies.

One was So I Married an Axe Murderer.

[laughs]

- How many people have you brutally murdered?

- Brutal is a very subjective word.

I mean, what's brutal to one person might be

totally reasonable to somebody else.

- And then I made him lasagna,

and he changed the oil in my car.

Very romantic.

- She thought that was amazing because he was showing

that he was gonna take care of her.

- It was very obvious that both Chad and Donielle

were very into each other.

RANDLIN: I actually was very excited for her

when they got engaged.

We were happy for her.

- Hi, everybody. [laughs]

Thank you for throwing me this surprise shower in a box.

Yeah, he has to close his eyes.

FRIEND: Close your eyes.

- I don't think so. - FRIEND: Chad.

Chad, close your eyes. Chad.

GUEST: You can't see it until it's on.

- The white lingerie that we opened,

we didn't know who it was from.

- I want to thank you especially very much.

[laughter]

[Wagner's "Bridal Chorus"]

DONIELLE: I really enjoyed my wedding.

I was a typical girl that thought about, okay,

when I get married, I'm gonna have this kind of dress,

I'm gonna have these kinds of flowers,

these are the colors I'm gonna have.

- Everything was perfect.

[laughter]

[applause]

- It was just a fun, happy time.

[laughter, applause]

- I was really in love.

[laughter, chatter]

This was the person I would be with for the rest of my life.

[laughs]

We were so happy.

I could never have imagined what was on the horizon.

RANDLIN: Donielle and Chad moved to Erie, Illinois,

to a little small house. It was cute.

Perfect for them.

[upbeat piano music]

♪ ♪

DONIELLE: Erie is just this little small town.

Everybody pretty much knows everybody else.

It's just a really beautiful, quiet place to live.

- Chad's family was sort of like a big family

in their church.

TIM: Chad grew up in that church.

They were very much involved in doing skits

for different occasions to help younger kids learn

in the church through comedy.

- Sorry. I didn't see you.

Could I--could I not see you again, sometime?

- Um, I guess.

I--I'd have to ask my mom and dad, though.

TIM: They were very much a great example

of a Christian married couple involved in a church.

- Well, did you find anything else at Walmart?

- [as Arnold Schwarzenegger] No, it was too difficult.

I had to keep looking up all the time.

- Why was that?

- I was watching for falling prices.

TIM: Donielle and Chad were never separated.

They were always lovey-dovey,

holding hands, kissing, being together.

♪ ♪

BARBIE: He was an awesome husband to her.

He treated her with so much respect and kindness

and was loving towards her.

- I gotta comb my hair. A mess. Look at this.

- There was no question that Chad and Donielle

were going to have a bright future.

- So maybe later tonight, huh?

- [laughs] Get off me.

- After they got married, Chad decided

to become a financial advisor and start his own business.

And he did really well.

The family had everything they wanted.

- At some points, I felt like this was too good to be true.

How can I have such a great life?

[tense music]

One day, Chad came home,

and he sat me down on the couch,

and he was like, I have to tell you something.

- Donielle didn't know what to expect,

but what Chad said next blew Donielle's world apart.

[tense music]

ANDREA: Donielle and Chad were at the beginning

of a perfect marriage, and one day, Chad came home

and said he needed to talk,

and he admitted to having an encounter

in a bathroom with a man.

DONIELLE: At first, I was shocked.

I didn't really know the true Chad.

I felt betrayed.

Why are you telling me this?

Why is this happening at the beginning of our marriage?

And I never really got, like, a full answer to that.

It was always just vagueness.

But he seemed to me like he was really sad about it

and that he was really distraught.

♪ ♪

And he said he wanted to make it better.

I felt like, anything that's going on,

I want to help him with, not just throw him away.

- For Donielle, it was an internal struggle

between her head and her heart.

There was what she should do, after learning about

Chad's infidelity, which was leave,

and what her heart wanted, which was to stay.

DONIELLE: We ended up going to marriage counseling.

And in one of my sessions, I remember the counselor

saying, you are not in any way obligated

to stay in this marriage.

In fact, I would advise you to not stay in this marriage.

But I was adamant that I wanted to stay in the marriage

because I had made a vow. I had made a promise.

It was just a couple of months later

when I found out I was pregnant.

[ultrasound device whooshing]

I was jumping for joy.

My daughter was born, and her name is Grace.

RANDLIN: When Doni and Chad got pregnant with Grace,

they'd been trying for a while,

and she'd been getting really discouraged

because we all wanted to have kids really bad.

And so I know it was a very big deal for her.

DONIELLE: I found out that I was pregnant again

with Christopher very soon after Grace was born.

That was always my dream, to be a mom.

Somebody told me when I was little,

they remember me saying that when I got married,

I wanted to have 12 kids. [laughs]

You know, my dad is one of 12,

so that's probably where I got it from.

But I had six kids with Chad.

Chad was a good dad.

- He played with his kids.

He held the babies all the time.

- Tuckered out, hard day swimming.

DONIELLE: [chuckles] She loves her daddy.

- And you want daddy to tickle you?

[gasps] Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle.

Everybody wave.

- Yay! [laughs]

- Okay, is that good?

ANDREA: Donielle was a stay-at-home mom.

That meant Chad was the sole provider

for the family, which was fine because he was doing so well.

DONIELLE: The house that we were living in

at that time, it was good.

It had the right amount of rooms for everyone.

But Chad always liked bigger and better.

[soft upbeat music]

And he had his eye on a big house

that had quite a bit of land attached to it.

He really wanted that property.

He had an office downstairs.

His office was where he conducted

his financial advising business.

And he would work long hours to the point

that he'd be in that office until way into the night.

And I'd ask him, why are you in here so late?

What he told me was that he was dealing with clients.

I was like, how are you dealing with clients

in the middle of the night? Aren't they sleeping?

Shouldn't you be sleeping? [chuckles]

[tense music]

And so there were a lot of nights where I would be

alone in bed, he was in his office downstairs,

and I would be wondering why I'm not having

a husband sleeping next to me.

♪ ♪

But when I would approach him with it,

it almost seemed like he was annoyed

that I was approaching him about it.

He just said, "Well, maybe I'll just stay out longer.

Maybe I'll just come to bed less than that."

And it really, really hurt me

because I felt like if you really love someone,

why in their time of crying to you,

saying that they want you,

would you say, well, I'm gonna do that less then?

It didn't really make any sense to me, and it really hurt.

ANDREA: What was more important

than spending time in the night with Donielle?

Never in her wildest dreams could she imagine

what he was actually doing.

ANDREA: Donielle and Chad

went through a lot in their marriage.

First there was the infidelity,

and now he was no longer sleeping in their bed,

and he was sleeping in his office.

So she went to her church for comfort.

[soft music]

Donielle and Chad were members of the Erie Christian Church.

Chad had been going to this church since he was a kid,

so he knew everybody so well,

including Larry and Connie VanOosten.

- And we know that, in all things,

God works for the good of those who love Him

and who have been called according to His purpose.

ANDREA: The VanOostens were elders in the church.

They ran Sunday school.

- Make sure you get a relationship with Jesus Christ.

- They were prominent members of the community.

They had a number of businesses,

and they had just sold one

and were coming into a lot of money.

And that was of interest to Chad.

DONIELLE: I found out that he was trying

to get them to be his client.

ANDREA: Chad really wanted the VanOostens as clients.

And they met a couple times, and he made a presentation,

but ultimately they decided to not go

with him because he was too new

to the financial world.

Based on interviews with Larry and Connie,

his plan didn't make sense.

Having the VanOostens and their money

would have been a great financial win

for Chad's business.

But since he didn't get the deal,

he started looking for additional ways

to generate income.

So then Chad decided to get into real estate.

And he took all of his money,

started buying properties,

renovating them, and then renting them out.

♪ ♪

DONIELLE: All of his rental properties were things

that he purchased without me.

He went and found them.

He decided whether he would purchase them or not.

And so often, I didn't, like, know anything about it,

other than the fact that he had purchased it.

Honestly, I didn't even need to worry about it.

We had everything that we would ever want.

I enjoyed life.

I felt like I was finally living the life

that I wanted to live.

- I mean, they had this huge house, cars,

lawn equipment. So they're doing very well.

DONIELLE: That's when a lot of times,

he would be gone longer than I had expected.

When I would question him, where were you?

There were several times he told me, oh,

this rental property had a sewage problem, and so

I had to go deal with that, or a washing machine

broke down, so I had to fix it.

Oh, my phone must have lost its battery,

or, you know, I forgot to plug my phone in,

or I shut my phone off, and so I didn't hear it ringing,

or I left it in the car. There was always a reason.

- By this point, Chad and Donielle had been married

for almost two decades.

They'd been through a lot,

but things were about to get weird.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

DONIELLE: One time, it was the middle of the night,

and one of my kids, Christopher,

saw a car pull up into our driveway

that he didn't recognize.

Said it was silver.

Christopher saw Chad briefly,

and his reaction was one of surprise.

Like, what are you doing up?

And I found out later that Chad texted my daughter

to wrap dark electrical tape

around the handle of a sledgehammer.

GRACE: And he asks me to wrap

until there's no yellow showing.

I was like, uh, okay,

that's a little weird, but you know what?

I'm gonna wrap that sledgehammer the best I can.

[chuckles] So I did.

And then I sent him a picture when I was finished.

He told me that I did a good job

and that I was gonna get a special treat.

- Why would you need your 14-year-old

to wrap a sledgehammer in black electrical tape?

DONIELLE: Just a few days afterwards,

in the middle of the night,

I heard a really loud bang, bang, bang,

and I thought I heard glass breaking too.

[glass shatters distantly]

Then I heard, "Police. Hands up in the air."

[tense music]

I had my glasses off, so I could not see very well.

And as I walked down my hallway from my bedroom,

I could see a gun pointed at me.

I just remember just being so scared and so confused.

♪ ♪

So my whole body was shaking,

and they wouldn't even let me wake up my kids.

They had to go wake 'em up.

GRACE: I remember the knocking.

It was really loud.

And then they kicked the door in,

and I was absolutely terrified.

♪ ♪

DONIELLE: And then they said,

"Do you know where your husband is?"

No, I think he's sleeping downstairs.

He's not?

Do you have a hiding place in your house?

Do you know the VanOostens?

Why are you questioning me about the VanOostens?

Why are you in my house with a gun at my head?

[suspenseful music]

DONIELLE: It was the middle of the night,

and the police are in my house.

I could see a gun pointed at me.

I felt like I was watching or in some kind of

awful horror movie.

And they had started asking me lots of questions

about the VanOostens that didn't make sense to me.

Why would you be asking me about

my Sunday school teachers?

They took me over to the police station

into a interrogation room,

and they were asking me all kinds of weird questions like,

do you know what kind of business your husband was in?

I knew that he was in the financial business,

but I didn't understand how that

related to the VanOostens.

And they would never give me an answer

to any of those questions.

ANDREA: At this point, the VanOostens

were missing for three days.

And the rumor around town was that they

were victims of a crime.

[ominous music]

- My name is Chris Endress.

I'm a retired captain with the Illinois State Police

Division of Criminal Investigation,

and I was the Lieutenant of Major Crimes

for the State Police at the time.

Larry and Connie VanOosten, they're certainly

the least likely people that would ever

be victims of a violent crime.

However, the only thing that did elevate their risk

was their finances.

ANDREA: According to police,

in the middle of the night,

a masked intruder with a device

to disguise their voice breaks into the VanOostens' home,

kidnaps them, and drives them to the bank.

MARISSA: Once the kidnapper arrived at their bank,

he took the blindfold off of Connie

and told her to go get a check from their bank

for $350,000.

And if she didn't, he threatened to kill Larry.

ANDREA: While she's in the bank,

Connie pulls out a church flyer from her purse.

Despite her and her husband being in grave danger,

Connie has the presence of mind to slip a note to the teller

saying that she is in trouble.

And if she doesn't give this a try,

she doesn't know if she and Larry

will ever live through this.

CHUCK: After she had safely left the bank

with a cashier's check,

those bank employees had called the police.

- And that is when a whole abduction alert

is put in place for Connie and Larry.

[tense music]

- When this thing kicks off, we know who our victims are.

We have no idea who the suspect is.

CHUCK: We found some surveillance footage

that showed a good picture of the car that he was driving.

It was an early '90s Chevy Caprice.

CHRIS: We had a suspect vehicle.

We didn't have a license plate.

But we did have the name of the LLC

that was put on the cashier's check.

It was called the Store Edge.

The registered owner of the Store Edge

was Chad Schipper.

♪ ♪

CHUCK: So then we just ran his name through the databases

and found out that he owned a 1992 Chevy Caprice.

So then we knew we had our suspect.

CHRIS: And once we had Chad identified,

we learned that he owned several properties.

We started deploying surveillance

at all those properties.

ANDREA: The police have multiple homes

that they could search for the VanOostens,

and they didn't know which one they were at.

And even if they did find them,

they didn't know if they would be dead or alive,

because Chad already had the money.

CHRIS: And we also have investigators

at the VanOostens' home.

While they're processing the crime scene,

officers see what looks like the suspect vehicle

drive past the property.

[suspenseful music]

OFFICER: Whiteside, he's taking off.

CHRIS: They pull out after his car,

and that leads into a multi-county pursuit.

[sirens blaring]

[indistinct radio chatter]

The pursuit ends with a pretty bad crash.

CHUCK: After the crash, Chad Schipper was taken

by ambulance to the Illini Hospital.

He had some internal injuries, broken ribs,

a dislocated elbow.

I didn't have to press him hard at all.

I just basically asked him.

I said, "What are we doing here today?"

And he just went right into, well,

we're here today because I kidnapped

the VanOostens for money.

ANDREA: If they're taking Chad at his word,

the police know where Larry and Connie are.

But they don't know what shape they're in.

They've been missing for three days.

It's crucial to find them as soon as possible.

[tense music]

CHRIS: A group of FBI agents and our state police agents

descend upon this home.

They make entry into the house.

They don't find Larry and Connie.

♪ ♪

In one of the spare bedrooms is a large TV monitor.

They're looking at the screen.

They can see Larry and Connie inside a concrete room

with no stairs.

♪ ♪

This monster built

a soundproof prison cell,

and he had Larry and Connie shackled standing up.

The officers on scene are wondering,

if they're under surveillance, are they here somewhere,

or are they somewhere else?

We have no idea where the VanOostens were.

[tense music]

CHRIS: The officers on scene in the house,

they can see Larry and Connie on the TV screen.

And they start doing another search of the home.

They open the hallway coat closet.

The flooring in the closet doesn't match

the flooring in the hallway.

They lift up that flooring,

and they find a big, steel-plated door.

They break this lock,

lift the hatch that led to a soundproof

prison cell in the basement of the house,

and find Larry and Connie

bound and blindfolded.

CHUCK: They were handcuffed to the wall,

and they were standing there for a number of hours.

One of them was just hanging

by their wrist from the wall there

'cause they couldn't stand anymore.

CHRIS: There was cameras

in every corner and a microphone

so that he could listen to them,

and he could see them,

and he could speak to them in a creepy, cryptic

voice modulator that he had.

♪ ♪

This is my opinion.

I don't think there's any way he's gonna let them go.

What's the benefit in releasing them?

CHRIS: They were never gonna get let go.

And I'll always believe that.

But what was important to me was that our victims are safe.

They're alive. We have our suspect in custody.

Now we can start putting the puzzle together.

How did this happen?

ANDREA: As detectives interview him,

they learn step-by-step

how disturbing this crime actually was.

- Chad entered the VanOostens' home using a sledgehammer.

[suspenseful music]

He broke into a basement window,

walked inside, and sat at the kitchen table for hours.

Chad enters a bedroom that Larry's sleeping in.

CHRIS: He wakes up Larry, deploys his Taser.

[electricity crackling]

He takes steps to control Larry first.

- He then grabs Connie,

has her handcuff Larry,

puts duct tape on their mouth, duct tape on their eyes,

uses his voice box and says, "Where is your God now?"

INTRUDER: [distorted] Where is your God now?

♪ ♪

- And that's when Chad drives Connie to her bank.

- Detectives learn Chad had been envisioning this crime

for a long time, and he had planned every detail,

down to his own daughter wrapping the sledgehammer.

GRACE: When I heard our dad had used the sledgehammer

that he asked me to wrap to commit this crime...

[sighs] My whole world crumbled.

That really hurt me.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- My husband has all of a sudden

been arrested for kidnapping.

It was his arrest that was the first thing on the news.

BROADCASTER: A Geneseo man accused of kidnapping

a Whiteside County couple.

Schipper took the couple to their bank

and forced them to get a cashier's check.

They were later taken to a soundproof shelter

in the basement of one of Schipper's rental homes.

DONIELLE: I was thinking, no,

they've got the wrong Chad Schipper.

That's impossible.

My life is upside-down.

RANDLIN: When she said he kidnapped someone,

we were just shocked.

None of us had any clue that he would be capable

of doing anything like that.

♪ ♪

DONIELLE: It was really difficult

because it was like everything that I had known

and thought I'd known of this person

that I loved with all my heart was not that person.

Six children. Married for 17 years.

Did he ever even love me?

I had a really hard time

figuring out what reality was,

as opposed to what I thought reality was.

- Chad was living a life that his spouse

and children knew nothing about.

DONIELLE: From the point where my kids were taken

out of the house and I was interrogated,

my kids never stepped into that house again.

I didn't want them to go back into the house.

I had to go in the house and get things cleaned up.

ANDREA: Finally, after all these years,

Donielle could go into Chad's office

where he had been isolating himself

and dig through his secrets.

- We learned how seriously bad

he was at managing people's finances.

Chad was sort of a failed businessman.

He wasn't doing well.

And he had borrowed a lot of money

and taken on a lot of credit card debt.

- Chad wasn't just lying to Donielle about their finances.

He was embezzling money from his clients.

And over time, the theft grew and grew.

[suspenseful music]

TIM: When we went through everything in his office,

he had credit cards from more people

than you can shake a stick at.

DONIELLE: We had found a credit card

that he had fraudulently gotten

from his parents, like signed his name

on his parents' credit card.

TIM: His parents had paid their house off.

He forged paperwork to borrow money against that house,

a lot of money.

- His parents ended up suing him for almost $400,000.

- He stole money from his parents,

from his grandma, his uncle, my brother,

from somebody in the church.

- Chad had stolen so much money from his clients,

and they wanted to see returns.

And so that's where the VanOostens come into play.

Because according to Chad's interview with police,

he needed $350,000 to pay back his clients.

When they decided not to work with him, he got desperate

and decided to kidnap them.

- We found notes at the house.

He had been planning this, writing out every detail

for a very long time.

DONIELLE: Turns out, there was planning

for that dungeon that he built.

There was just some weird notes on there about, you know,

soundproofing and different items

to shop for that didn't make sense.

Everything that we had found in the office

was just a complete betrayal.

CHRIS: We've dealt with a lot of violent crime,

but this one was bizarre.

It was almost like an episode of Criminal Minds,

where it's like, it's taken up a notch,

you know to make it extreme,

that it seemed like it was a movie,

but it was real.

- Chad not only betrayed his wife, his family.

He betrayed the entire community of Erie.

People thought they knew who he was,

and he was someone completely different in the end.

DONIELLE: I remember pulling off my wedding ring

and throwing it. That's it.

I'm done.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

DONIELLE: Being married to somebody like that,

obviously, my whole life has been turned upside-down.

Life isn't what you thought it was.

I had a really hard time trusting people.

Going through the process of divorce

was very difficult for me because of my strong faith

and because when I made those vows, that was it.

[somber music]

- But I knew that it was the only way I could move forward,

and it was the only safe option for me and for my kids.

During one of our divorce proceedings,

Chad actually wanted custody of the kids.

How would that work with him in jail?

But I don't know.

Typical narcissist, like textbook.

- Chad was charged with felony home invasion,

aggravated kidnapping, and unlawful restraint.

- The evidence was overwhelming against Chad.

It would be difficult for him to go to trial.

REPORTER: It was an emotional day

for the VanOostens, but in the end,

they got the justice they were looking for.

42-year-old Chad Schipper sentenced to 60 years,

the rest of his life in prison.

TIM: We couldn't cheer. It was in a courtroom.

But when we got outside the courtroom, we did.

[soft piano music]

It was glorious.

He was 42 at the time.

He ain't coming home.

GRACE: When I heard that his sentence was 60 years...

I was glad

because that meant that if he was angry

about being in jail, if he was angry about

my mom divorcing him, he wouldn't be able

to act on it.

DONIELLE: I specifically do remember being

in the courtroom with him.

And I remember at one point, he was looking over

at me and mouthing the words, "I love you."

And I remember thinking, no, you don't love me.

It's just another lie.

And it made me feel really gross for him

to be mouthing that to me.

Like, how dare you say that to me.

ANDREA: Chad got a hefty penalty,

60 years without parole.

And the DA decided not to bring any other charges

against Chad because he was already serving, essentially,

a life sentence, and the VanOostens got justice.

DONIELLE: So I have not spoken with him since his arrest.

But Chad wrote me a lot of letters from jail.

[tense music]

All of them were full of manipulations.

ANDREA: So, Donielle was receiving letters

from Chad for a while, and then

she started getting letters from an individual

named Elouisa Mae.

Elouisa Mae was a character that Chad created,

like this Southern lady that was really proper.

Here's a sample of what was written in those letters.

"Donielle, it is good to be

"a-talkin' with you again, missy.

"I pray you are a-doin' well.

"I hope your little ones are a-findin' time to be kids

in this world we are a-livin' in."

- This Elouisa Mae character, her husband had been arrested

or had done something for which Elouisa Mae

did not forgive him, and because of that,

her husband had killed himself,

and this Elouisa Mae was really concerned for Donielle

because she felt that Donielle might be going down that path.

And if she didn't forgive Chad and take him back

as her husband, then Chad might kill himself.

ANDREA: "Enough chit-chat.

"Down to brass tacks, sugar plumb.

"What Charlie did caused our family to suffer,

"but what I did destroyed our family.

"I thought I was being brave when I ended our marriage,

"but I was still being a coward.

What I really needed to do was to forgive."

- It was obviously Chad saying, you better take me back

or I'm gonna do something.

- How she should grant him forgiveness.

- When you're writing, even if you have that accent,

you don't write it as the accent.

[laughs]

CHRIS: He's writing these letters,

trying to pull on their heartstrings,

that this woman went through a similar experience,

and she found it in her heart to forgive,

and these letters are trying to convince them

to have some sympathy.

ANDREA: What I really think is,

I don't think he thought very highly

of Donielle and her intellect,

and I think that Chad thought that he could manipulate

Donielle into doing whatever,

or it just shows that

he's completely divorced from reality.

[somber music]

DONIELLE: A lot of the time that I spent

right afterwards was trying to understand my healing process,

and how am I gonna move forward from this?

I did a lot of self-help reading,

and in the midst of that,

I also think that God gave me peace.

It's an indescribable quiet that I felt in my soul.

It's gonna be okay.

And over time, I moved on.

RANDLIN: Donielle and I had--

every once in a while, we would talk about love

and whether or not she would ever find love again.

And she was always, absolutely not.

I have no interest. I cannot trust anyone again.

And then, actually, not that long later,

she pulled me aside and she said,

"So, I've sort of been talking to Billy."

And I was like, Billy? That's awesome.

[gentle music]

DONIELLE: Billy and I met when we were teenagers.

But we were really young and our lives just

kind of went separate ways.

And then after all of this happened,

we started talking through text,

and the talks got longer.

I had started having feelings for him.

Turns out, he also had feelings for me.

Our relationship just developed,

and he ended up asking me to marry him. [laughs]

And I'm now married to the first love of my life, Billy.

[laughs]

♪ ♪

GRACE: Our mom has grown so much.

She's a stronger person. She's more confident.

She laughs more now,

especially now that Billy is in our house.

I see so much happiness in her that I never saw before.

I love her laugh so much.

- Donielle is a much stronger person

since this whole thing happened.

She's so strong now.

ANDREA: Donielle, I'm so grateful

that you reached out to us.

- It was really important for me.

I want people to know that

even if they don't find love again,

they can still find joy again.

I was finding joy in lots of things,

my children, lots of things that I really, really enjoyed.

And then finding Billy again was

just like icing on the cake. [laughs]

ANDREA: Yeah.

It's such a cute love story, I have to say.

- And I want people to know that they can

build themselves up and have a happy life again.