When her mom enlists her as part of a multimillion-dollar grift, 19-year-old Sasha goes along and even marries the unsuspecting man. With fake glasses, fake accents, and a very real baby named Giorgio Armani, questions swirl as to who the true mark really is.

Editor’s Note: some names have been changed for privacy reasons.

ON OCTOBER 21, 2007, a man whose millions of dollars in personal wealth should have been secure—it was literally rooted into Oregon soil—met the woman who could take it all away.

That day, Stewart Howser Jr. sat outside the Portland International Airport on a bench in the smoking area of passenger pick-up. His thin hair and pockmarked cheeks made him look older than his 59 years. His paunchy belly protruded from beneath a flannel shirt. Everything about the man whose friends and family called “Junior” belied the fact that he was worth millions. A 1,200-acre Douglas fir tree farm had been in the Howser family for generations. Junior was the only son of one of the most prominent tree-farming families in the Pacific Northwest, certainly the wealthiest in Gaston (population 676), where the ride Junior was now waiting for was supposed to take him.

Then he noticed her, sitting on the other end of that bench in that smoking section of the airport pick-up, and heard her enchanting voice. Junior’s ideal woman. To a T. Not long ago, Junior had been quizzed about what sort of lady might suit his interest. He preferred blondes. He found a British accent fetching.

She noticed him, too. “Excuse me, is your name Stewart?” she said. She had smooth features behind her dark sunglasses, and flowing blonde hair beneath a chic-brimmed hat. She even spoke with an English accent.

He had always gone by Junior, and even many people he knew in passing did not know his name was Stewart.

“I’m not a psychic,” she explained. “But sometimes there are people I can read. You’re one of those people.”

As it happened, Junior also had more than a passing interest in what others might dismiss as mystical nonsense. By his own admission, he’d been to as many psychic readers as most people have to shoe stores.

The woman told Junior now that she’d gotten up close to him, her reading of him was even deeper than she’d originally thought. She was able to guess his birthday and details about his mother.

‘What’s your name?” Junior asked, floored.

She said her name was Julia James, adding that she was a “roving Quickbooks operator” visiting from San Francisco to meet with clients. More serendipity. Junior’s tree operation was in sore need of an accountant.

Just then, Junior’s ride arrived. It was time for him to head back to Gaston. He and Julia exchanged contact info. Junior promised to be in touch.

He got into the car with Hannah Meadows, a hyper-competent 36-year-old with sleek black hair and a steely gaze who helped run the family tree farm but was more than just a business partner. She played a mercurial role in Junior’s life. He’d introduced her to various people as his best friend, his girlfriend, his accountant and occasional task manager. Hannah had Junior’s full trust, and he did everything she told him to do. A non-smoker, he’d been in the smoking area because that was where she’d instructed him to wait for her that day. She’d been the one who recently had asked all the probing questions about his ideal soulmate.

On the drive home from the airport, Junior didn’t tell Hannah about the blonde British woman who had “read” him.

He didn’t need to.

Hannah already knew all about it. She’d known about it before it happened. The meeting hadn’t been serendipitous or fated. Hannah had orchestrated it. Junior and Julia James were both puppets whose strings Hannah would pull for the next seven years, during which time she ruined one fortune, two families, and many lives.

On that day, the day of Junior and Julia’s meeting, Hannah was already bleeding Junior’s finances dry. He paid her more than $8,000 a month, a salary that Hannah herself set and raised regularly.

In short order, that sum would balloon until Hannah was extracting millions. His money, his property, his sense of family–no aspect of Junior’s life was spared.

However, that day also marked a separate starting point for Hannah. She’d been taking advantage of Junior for years. But the encounter at the airport marked the inauguration of Hannah taking advantage of her own daughter, Sasha Meadows, who just that morning donned a blonde wig, and a chic hat and marshaled her speech into the faux-English accent as Julia James at the behest of her mother.

WHEN SHE WAS SCANNING the airport doors for her mark from behind her clear-lens eyeglasses, Sasha Meadows, 17, had to try to keep her nerves in check. In stark contrast to her mother, the slender, pale teenager with large dark eyes was naturally shy, submissive, and quiet. To approach a stranger in a crowded airport to recite private facts of his life pushed her far out of her comfort zone, but she was driven by one thing: pleasing her mother.

That desire stemmed from a childhood in Sacramento, where Sasha grew up with three sisters and a brother. Sasha was pulled out of school after sixth grade by Hannah, never going back into the classroom. Almost entirely isolated, she was tethered even more to her mother’s side.

In 2003, when Sasha was 13, Hannah abandoned her family to go live in Canby, Oregon, about half an hour south of Portland, where Hannah eloped with a new man named Blancey. The two ran a mystic shop out of a cramped vinyl-sided house on the town’s main drag, selling crystals and reading palms on the first floor and living on its second. Hannah Meadows was described by people who knew her as having a laser-like focus on getting what she wanted. Proactive and calculating, charming and persuasive, she was a woman with a plan. If someone was a means to her end, then Hannah morphed herself into whatever she had to be to win favor and earn trust.

For any child, being separated from her mother left a hole, and considering what a force of nature Hannah was, that hole in Sasha’s life was huge. At 15 years old, Sasha had the chance to move in with Hannah and Blancey in Oregon. Hannah’s other children moved in and out of her life. Sasha jumped at the chance to be reunited with her mother. After two years apart, she never wanted to be separated from her again.

“The daughter was totally dependent on mom, and lived with mom for the better part of her life,” said Donna Maddux, a federal prosecutor in Oregon who eventually investigated the family. Maddux emphasized the financial constraints alongside the emotional ones. “She was dependent on mom for money and probably would have done anything she asked.” Because of Hannah pulling her out of school, Sasha was ignorant of much of history, science, and math, and became more introverted over time. “When you don’t have schooling,” Maddux pointed out, “your job prospects are pretty limited.”

The shop below where Sasha now lived offered palm readings, but the real family business consisted of Hannah preying on particularly naive customers. Hannah earned their trust through psychic readings and then bilked them out of what she could. In one case, Hannah used a psychic reading she gave a man to become his confidant before confiding in him that she was going through a divorce and having financial troubles. She asked to borrow his credit card for emergencies and ran up $85,000 in charges. In another instance, a custodial worker came in to have his fortune read. Within months, Hannah convinced the janitor to pay for her lease on her Mercedes.

In 2004, Stewart Howser Jr., better known as Junior, then 57, walked into the shop and Hannah saw the ultimate mark. People who knew Junior described him as an uncomplicated man, trusting to a fault, who had trouble making friends. Junior reportedly had poor short-term memory and struggled to make simple decisions. After high school, he served in the Navy in Vietnam and then took college courses in forestry so that he could work on his parents’ tree farm. He moved into an old house on the family property, separate from where his parents lived. The old house had inadequate heat and unreliable running water. He spent most of his days working the farm’s land, staining his clothes green and brown. His lonely childhood had become a lonely adulthood.

Hannah’s relationship with her new mark quickly moved beyond telling his fortune.

In late 2006, after Junior’s father had a stroke, Hannah told Junior that she had extensive home health experience caring for her ailing elderly parents. She said that she would be happy to take on a side job tending to Junior’s dad, Senior, in his home. Relieved, Junior agreed. Soon he was paying her $8,985 a month. He also supplied the down payment for Hannah on a $915,000 house in Birkendene, an upper-crust Portland suburb.

Hannah repeatedly failed to give Senior his medication and at times left him alone in nothing but a diaper. Despite the poor track record as a home health aide, Hannah convinced Junior to let her handle the bookkeeping for the tree farm.

Now able to pilfer directly from the family tree business, Hannah jetted to Las Vegas, staying at the Bellagio, the Venetian, the Wynn. She regularly took shopping trips to Southern California, going on spending sprees at Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Ferragamo on Rodeo Drive. She bought a Mercedes-Benz, gifting it to Blancey with the license plate “ALLBIG.”

This level of the grift was like nothing Hannah had ever accomplished before. Unsatisfied, she decided her hooks were not in Junior deep enough. She had unfettered access to his cash. But she didn’t have his heart. For that she needed Sasha.

When Hannah told Sasha the plan, the 17-year-old faced a terrifying choice. On the one hand, she was asked to turn into a whole other person, physically and psychologically, to play a part and also to pull a grift in the style of her mother. Besides her wallflower personality, there were the moral qualms that came along with this. And if she refused, her mother would likely abandon her again.

Everyone knew that if someone was not useful to Hannah, they became invisible to her. Sasha was desperate to please her.

Sasha said she would do it.

“I was looking for my mother’s approval at the time when I was 17 years old, and it made me–it made her so happy when I said yes,” Sasha would later recall.

TYPICAL MOMS across town may have been showing typical teens how to carry themselves in a long dress for a homecoming dance, or how to walk in high heels. Pygmalian-style, Hannah needed to dress Sasha up in a new identity. Outfits modeled in front of mirrors had to be stylish without being intimidating. Hannah also had to find the perfect blonde wig. Nothing too wild or exotic, which could scare away the down-to-earth Junior, just long and straight. Sasha tried on glasses, too, which made her look professional and competent, and helped disguise her in case she ran into anyone who knew her. The wig and glasses also served to distract from the fact that Sasha was the spitting image of her mother.

Hannah knew that in addition to fair-skinned blonde women, Junior had a fascination with British accents. In a warped version of mother-daughter movie nights, watching English movies and shows and listening to British radio ad nauseam could help implant phrases and pronunciations in Sasha’s subconscious. A crash course in speaking with an English accent also included using a mirror to retrain facial muscles. Acting magazines and books overflowed with tips. Dropping the jaw was crucial. Exercises meant to loosen the jaw had to be repeated over and over. Reshaping the mouth, especially pushing both corners of the lips forward, also influenced the accent. Sasha would have to walk around making kissing shapes with her lips.

After introducing her Julia James persona at the airport and announcing that she happened to be an expert in Quickbooks, Junior asked to hire her to help Hannah manage the farm’s finances. She became a regular presence at Junior’s home on the tree farm, which was described as “dilapidated.”

Meanwhile, Sasha had to keep expanding her character beyond her initial scripted appearance. She had to pick more outfits that were attractive, but also always modest. A linen pantsuit, a knitted sweater. Hannah, meanwhile, wore name-brand sportswear like Adidas, and jogging leggings, dressing like a mom in the leafy suburbs, which she more or less was, though Junior could not know he was witnessing moments of mother-daughter bonding right in front of him. Most of the time, Hannah and Sasha tried to avoid being at Junior’s house at the same time. When not in Canby, Hannah often stayed in the Birkendene McMansion paid for with Junior’s money.

Gaston, Oregon, represented a culture shock for Sasha. She’d spent most of her life near Sacramento and then in the small but popular city of Bend, Oregon. The primary hub of social life in Gaston was the One Horse Tavern, a bar whose name nods to the far-flung character of the town. Life on the 1,200-acre tree farm wasn’t one of isolation, but it was relatively close.

Soon after becoming a fixture at the Howser property, Sasha came to Junior with a problem. She told him—in her faux English accent she always maintained— that her visa was about to expire and that if she did not get a green card soon she’d have to go back to England. Hannah and Sasha convinced Junior that he could help by eloping with Sasha and then later on make the marriage official so she could stay in the country.

Eager for companionship, Junior agreed to solve Sasha’s green card problems. He paid for her to return to England for six weeks and upon her return Hannah organized a wedding ceremony. As Hannah looked on, Junior and Sasha exchanged vows and rings.

Hannah could beam with pride as she looked on–for very different reasons than most mothers at their daughters’ weddings. In her case, her pride came from having transformed Sasha into a world-class grifter.

“Every single detail my mother told me what to say and how to say it,” Sasha said later. “She told me how she wanted me to dress and act and talk. All I did was listen.”

SASHA NOT ONLY HAD to contend with keeping up her false character, but also with leading a double life, as the young adult entering her twenties tried to establish her own identity away from the farm. With the experience of posing as a British financial professional surreal and disorienting, not to mention exhausting, she seized opportunities to meet people her own age who could get to know the real Sasha. For a few hours or days at a time, she could block out the existence of Julia. She even met a man and they began dating.

During absences from Junior’s house, Sasha explained that her bookkeeping jobs required her to work in other states, a booming sham career to keep track of while going about her sham marriage.

For Hannah, Sasha’s breaks from Junior’s house served a purpose, reducing the chances for Sasha to slip up, which allowed Hannah to keep tighter control over their ruse.

For others who encountered Junior, the whole marriage was a mystery. At Junior’s high school reunion, a cousin recounted being shocked when she saw a seating arrangement that said Stewart and Julia Howser.

Junior explained that he’d gotten married, but he had to keep it a secret until his new wife sorted out her immigration issues.

With Hannah’s influence on Junior and coaching of Sasha, Junior was somehow convinced that the marriage should be platonic. Still, Junior seemed to have found the companionship for which he desperately longed. The couple celebrated holidays together, traveled to tree farm conventions, and vacationed at Multnomah Falls, about 45 minutes from Canby. They always traveled as a party of three with Hannah Meadows.

A turning point came during one of the periodic meetings Sasha would have with her mother in Canby, an hour away from Junior’s house, where they could evaluate and alter their plot behind closed doors. In these meetings, at least, Sasha could bask in her mother’s undivided attention. This time, they had to discuss not how to hide the truth from Junior, but something Sasha was hiding. She had become pregnant with her actual boyfriend’s baby, and she was starting to show. Her mother could have flown off the handle, as the pregnancy could have meant a premature end to their long con and an end to the cash flow from Junior.

When Hannah Meadows found herself in a hole during a grift, she dug deeper. Instead of panicking, Hannah had a new and ambitious idea to escalate the scam. They would convince Junior that he was having a baby, and Hannah could finally make the entire Howser family fortune her own.

THE PREGNANCY TWIST was a tricky proposition, considering the relationship between “Julia” and Junior reportedly remained an emotional con, not a sexual one. Hannah would have to orchestrate the new maneuver using the scam’s greatest assets: Junior’s naivete and obliviousness.

Following instructions, Sasha told Junior that she wanted to have a child, asking him to be the father as a sperm donor. Junior readily agreed, providing a donation into a receptacle that looked like a cooking pot filled with dry ice. Once Junior’s semen was deposited into the pot, it was stored in Junior’s refrigerator. Hannah picked up the material and told Junior the insemination procedure would be done in California. The next time Junior saw Sasha, like an episode out of the Bible, she was noticeably pregnant.

Another problem arose. Details about Sasha’s boyfriend remain obscure but despite Sasha’s attempt to juggle her two lives, red flags accumulated. When their baby was born, he refused to let her take the baby to Gaston. Hannah had to control the chaos in her mind. Fortunately for her plans, one of Sasha’s sisters, Samantha, had recently had a baby and agreed to loan the baby to her mother.

When Sasha managed to arrange to introduce Junior to “his” son, he had dark hair and was bigger than a newborn, because by that time he wasn’t quite still a newborn, and, bizarrely, he had already been named without consulting Junior. He was named Giorgio Armani, after Hannah’s tastes in luxury goods. Hannah said that she would be happy to help out as a nanny, for an additional salary of course.

In a video taken of one visit, during which Hannah brought little Giorgio to see Junior when Sasha was away, the baby calls Junior “dada,” which Hannah had “trained” him to do, and Junior says to the camera, addressing Sasha, “Giorgio and I sure miss you.”

Junior was more emotionally vulnerable than ever after his father died of a stroke in a nursing home, which Hannah had placed him in two days before his death.

For Sasha, there was something different in the experience of watching her mother simultaneously manipulate the grieving man and Sasha’s nephew–Hannah’s baby grandson. It was heartbreaking. Sasha remained caught up in a complex situation with her partner over her child. Pretending to be a mother to another baby while her actual child was elsewhere brought into focus a crossroads, and a big question: could she provide her child the love and stability her mother had failed to?

At the memorial service for Senior, Junior introduced the attendees to his child, Giorgio Armani, whom he gushed over. Hannah was present, but Sasha could not bring herself to be there. Junior insisted on delaying the service for half an hour while waiting for Sasha, trying to reach her on the phone. During a eulogy, he apologized for his wife’s absence. It is not hard to imagine Hannah’s anger. In small acts of defiance, Sasha was pushing back against Hannah’s control.

“I always wanted out of pretending to be Julia James,” Sasha later explained her mindset, “but being out meant no more mom. She would take us out of her life if we did not listen to her.”

ELIZABETH CRUTHERS was a detective for the white-collar crime team with the Portland Police Bureau. She was a straight shooter with a beaming smile. Through her years on the force starting as a patrolwoman, she developed an astute eye for signs of deceit.

Not far from her home, she often passed a vinyl-sided business on her way to work. Outside, a sign promised palm readings for $25. But another detail began to catch the detective’s eye. She happened to notice fancy cars parked in front. At one point, two of the cars, with a combined worth of almost a quarter million dollars, were parked side-by-side. Why were cars that cost a fortune parked there, of all places?

She decided to look into the ownership of the cars. She also alerted a colleague, Steve Floyd of the Canby Police Department, that she suspected something odd was going on related to the cars and the business. The investigation ran into some brick walls early. But Cruthers trusted her gut, as did those who worked with her, and had learned that “the only limits to fraudsters are their imagination.”

SASHA STARED into the dull glow of the computer screen, surrounded by checkbooks from various accounts. She had to learn to use Quickbooks, the accounting software she had claimed to be proficient in so that she could generate documents that would have otherwise been handled by the CPA the Howser family had been using for years. Hannah had instructed Junior to fire the actual accountants.

Her mother’s grift outdid itself as the scheme entered its fifth and sixth years. Tired of Mercedes and Lexus, Hannah bought a quarter-million dollar Ferrari convertible and a $330,000 Bentley. The plates on the Bently and the Ferrari were MRBIG and MRBIG1 respectively. On one trip to the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Hannah added to a growing Rolex collection, this one going for $63,670.

Hannah and Blancey took a $400,000 summer tour of Europe, dining at the Eiffel Tower before heading to Monte Carlo, where they stayed in an $1800-a-night hotel and hung out in black-tie attire at the Billionaires Club. From there their itinerary checked off the major cities of Italy: Rome, Venice, Florence, and Sicily.

Sasha did not jet around Europe. She was not invited, left behind in Oregon to play her part and enable her mother’s schemes.

The longer Sasha spent with Junior, the more it would have become obvious to anyone but him that the outgoing clairvoyant Julia James whom he met at the airport was nothing like the woman he was married to. She was uneasy and withdrawn. A Howser family member recalls being at an event with Stewart and “Julia.” Stewart advised this family member against bothering to speak to Julia or even trying small talk.

“She’s too shy for conversation,” Junior told his relative.

“That’s a little strange,” the wife of one of Stewart’s cousins remarked in response.

“Well, she’s British,” Stewart said as if this explained the peculiarities away.

Junior, of course, never doubted his wife’s intentions. In fact, months after his father’s memorial service that Sasha missed, he had the gravestone engraved to include reference to Senior’s “daughter-in-law” Julia and “grandson” Giorgio.

Junior’s accounts which once contained millions of dollars dropped down to $100,000. After Hannah wrote a check to herself for the remaining six figures (she had her own checks printed with Hello Kitty designs), she needed Sasha to squeeze out of Junior his last remaining asset: the Howser Tree Farm.

At her mother’s direction, Sasha called Junior’s realtor, Pat Griffith, introducing herself as Junior’s wife. In the coming days, Junior met with Griffith numerous times, always accompanied by either Sasha or Hannah. Sasha came to the meetings in her wig, sunglasses, and hat, though the realtor said Sasha seldom spoke at these meetings and when the realtor did communicate with Sasha it was mostly via text messages, which allowed Hannah the opportunity to take over exchanges when useful–in the process ensuring Sasha was doing what she was asked. At one meeting with the realtor, Junior arrived with Hannah, whom he introduced as his son’s nanny. They were in the process of selling off almost 1,500 acres of land. At one point in Griffith’s office, Junior seemed to be giving the deal a second thought and wouldn’t sign the paperwork in front of him. Then, Hannah whispered in his ear in a way that Griffith described as pushy. Junior signed the contract. Griffith wondered why Junior was taking business advice from his son’s nanny.

In 2013, Sasha, now 23, was desperate to reclaim her life. Hannah’s response to her daughter’s agony was to double down. She decided that for a second time, they would make Junior think that he’d fathered a child. Hannah again put him through the process of a fake sperm donation. This time, because she wasn’t pregnant, Sasha wore a fake baby bump. Unlike with his “son” Giorgio Armani, Sasha promised Junior the chance to name his daughter. He decided on Gloria and ordered a vanity license plate with the names of his children on it.

Sasha’s reservations became intractable, her conscience plaguing her. She avoided the Gaston house whenever possible. Midway through the false second pregnancy, Sasha told Junior that she’d miscarried, a symbolic moment for a young woman depicting the loss of a fictional daughter while wrestling with her broken relationship with her mother. She had begun the con as a minor and was now in her mid-twenties. Looking into a mirror without her wig and glasses, and without Sasha’s trademark hat, she would have seen a person who was becoming subsumed in every way. Though the grift was, in an objective sense, succeeding beyond measure, the illusory bond Sasha seemed to have discovered with her mother at the outset had fallen apart.

At the direction of Hannah, Sasha continued to account for fictitious maintenance and upkeep costs to the tree farm to disguise her mother’s splurging. Ironically, having long been deprived of an education by her mother, Sasha had been forced to master the faux profession imposed on her–the scheme itself had ended up giving her unintended vocational training.

An opportunity presented itself that for the first time in her life would require her to stake out agency and independence from her mother. In the endless spreadsheets piling up on the hard drive, she could leave electronic breadcrumbs that could form an escape hatch, through the guise of the very character her mother had trapped her in.

ONCE AN INVESTIGATION opened after the sleuthing of Detective Cruthers of Portland and Detective Floyd of Canby, they knew they had stumbled onto something huge. But they needed a roadmap. Subpoenaing financial records, they found one in the form of Sasha’s electronic ledgers, filled with evidence of wrongdoing. It remains impossible to ascertain what parts of her accounting represented half-hearted attempts to disguise the embezzlement, and which were courageous poison pills left behind to stop her mother.

After several months in early 2014 trying to piece together what happened to the Howser family fortune, investigators showed up at the house in Gaston. They sat down with Junior, who told them about his wife and child. The investigators made clear to him that they believed he was being systematically defrauded and financially exploited.

Junior, remarkably, tipped Hannah and Sasha off about law enforcement’s interest in their affairs. Hannah jumped into action, arranging to meet with Junior at locations, including a Marriott harborside hotel, away from the eyes of law enforcement agents. She instructed Junior to write a letter to authorities headed “I am not a victim,” and including, “I will not press charges… I just want all of this [investigation] stopped.” Hannah stood over him, ripping up drafts of the letter until she was satisfied, ordering him to leave the letter for his lawyer.

She told Junior to rent a car and to leave behind one of the cars he normally drove at a shopping mall. She explained that they were going to drive to Area 51 together, a place that Junior had always wanted to visit because of its alleged connections to aliens. Junior was excited, preparing for the surprise road trip.

Meanwhile, authorities raided Hannah’s shop, finding Hannah and Sasha preparing to flee. Their suitcases were packed and waiting by the front door. They had discarded their old iPhones for burners. Investigators found “Julia’s” blonde wig and glasses between the mattress and box spring of her mother’s bed, and a second blonde wig hidden in a drawer.Hannah had stuffed $36,000 into three envelopes and then made Sasha hide the envelopes in her underwear. The search uncovered five Rolexes but did not recover the $63,670 Rolex. Hannah’s high-end vehicles, her mansion in the Portland suburbs, the luxury goods stashed at the shop–it all pointed to fraud on a massive scale, soon estimated between seven and 20 million dollars.

Authorities were unable to determine why Hannah had been planning to drive Junior to Area 51 in the Nevada desert, remarking ominously in the case documents that the “arrest warrants interrupted whatever plan Hannah Meadows intended to carry out that day.”

The investigation revealed that even Junior had seemed confused at times about what was real and what was not in what the investigators called the “false world” created around him. At one point, Junior and Hannah had met with an attorney so that Junior could sign a revised will which said that in the event of his death, all his assets would go to Hannah. Curiously, in a section of the will titled “Family,” Junior stated that he had no descendants. He also attested on his will that he was not married, while wearing a wedding ring from his marriage to “Julia James,” perhaps manipulated into doing so by Hannah. This was possibly a prelude to Hannah cutting Sasha off from the financial gains altogether. Stranger still, Hannah spent much of the time at the office Christmas party flirting openly with the attorney, suggesting to him that the two of them strike up a romantic relationship.

Within a year of the arrests, Hannah pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and failure to file personal income taxes. At her sentencing, both Maddux and the judge lambasted her for not only deceiving a vulnerable man but also enlisting her child and grandchild in the crooked enterprise. She received an eight-year sentence.

As part of a plea agreement, Sasha only pled guilty to the conspiracy charge. She was sentenced to two years and nine months. The lighter sentence took into account that Sasha was both a victim and perpetrator of the crime. The biggest mark of all, perhaps, was Sasha, for believing that her mother would finally show her the love she always craved.

At her sentencing, the judge asked Sasha if she had anything to say.

“My mother asked me to do something… and I listened,” she said. “My mother used me.”

On the eve of Sasha’s formal sentencing, Junior requested an audience with her.

Donna Maddux, the federal prosecutor, helped arrange the meeting, explaining to a judge that Junior still longed for the family he thought he had found. Prosecutor Maddux thought that perhaps Junior speaking to Sasha as Sasha–without the wig, without the Mary Poppins accent–would help him move on.

The attorneys present at the meeting, limited by their profession as to what they can say, reported only that they felt the meeting helped Junior achieve some closure. The prosecutor expressed appreciation to Sasha for agreeing to do it, even though doing so did nothing to reduce her sentence.

RYAN KRULL is a staff writer at the Riverfront Times, St. Louis’ alt-weekly. His journalism has appeared in The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg CityLab, and many other outlets. He is also an adjunct professor of Communication at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

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