Reflecting on the Outcome and Forgiveness

In the early morning hours of July 28, 2022, when the FBI showed up at my father's house on Cape Cod, they knocked on another door, too. Priscilla's. So they knock . And And when they told me they were FB I, I thought they were there for me. This is Priscilla. So I started like literally physically shaking. I started thinking in my head, it was just like you're being deported. You're gonna be deported, you know. And I think they saw that I was so scared and they told me, calm down, we're here about Alan guessing. Alan, my cousin, Priscilla's ex. And they said to me, um, Alan has been arres ted. I was like, okay, for what? What happened? And they said he's been arrested for murder for h ire. And I'm like, what's that? Like, made no sense to me . And then um the girl told me she's like, um, this is gonna be a bit shocking, but he hired somebody to kill you. You know it' s you know when you ran water through a sieve that's how I felt like I was receiving the information. It came in and went out. I didn't understand it. It wasn't like I couldn't put all that information together in one sentence and make it make sen se Alan murder me by the time we were taping this interview it had been almost a year since Alan was arrested. We were in Priscilla's apartment, not the one where she was the morning she was supposed to be killed. This one was a safe house, an address that someone who was looking for Priscilla using public records or Google or leaked databases wouldn't be able to find. The apartment was on a quiet street where the houses sit very close together and the sidewalks have hazardous pothol es. The place was a little dark, a little cramped . Sometimes you can tell when a person is used to living in a different kind of space. The furniture was a bit too large. Priscilla herself looked out of place. She's very tall, and well, she's stun ning. Whenever I've heard people try to describe her, the word regal comes up. When she walks down the street, people literally turn around to look . She demanded more room and more light, and an audience larger than me and my recording equipment on the cou ch. Priscilla was 42 at the time of this conversation. She comes from a prominent family in Zimbab we. Her father was a neighbor of the country's longtime dictator, Robert Mugabe . Priscilla had worked as a fashion model. She didn't expect to be a single mother with two kids living in semi-hiding in a house with brown carpeting and a refrigerator with a death ratt le. Talking to me now, she was still trying to absorb that this was how her fairy tale international romance end ed. Me? I was trying to puzzle out how it had beg un. Sir Hare was at Priscilla's safe house while the kids were at sch ool asking her to start at the begin ning. From serialcti Proonsdu and the New York Times, I am M. Gesson, and this is The Idi ot. I began with the story's first myster y. So can you tell me what you saw in Alan when you first met him. Wow. I think like most people that meet him, the first time you meet him, he's very charismatic. This was 2011. The party in Harari, the capital of Zimbabwe. Alan was there in business, scoping out investment opportunities for the Ukrainian oligarch. He was hustling. As my son described him once, he was an egg who knows how to talk to people. And did that seem appeal ing? It did. I'll be honest. I was 30 when I met him. It seemed very appealing. And it was like very different from anybody that I had met. So different was Alan wasn't readable to Priscilla the way someone from Zimbabwe might be. She could project her desires onto him, including her desire for suc cess. Priscilla was working at a new lifestyle magazine and had launched Zimbabwe's annual fashion week. She wanted a life that was big and fast, like Alan' s. And it's true that Alan seemed to know how to make big, fast money and spend it. The drop of a hat, and then we would go here and there and here and there. So it was very excit ing. The only strange thing that happened at the beginning of our relationship when his mom c ame R ight. One of those hiccups that happen early on in a romance and should raise a giant red flag, but somehow never do. My aunt Leland came to visit a few months into their relationship. She joined Alan and Priscilla on a trip to the countrys ide. We went on a trip to Kariba. It's a big lake in Zimbabwe. And I think it was like on the second day or something, we had a disagreement like a fight and um he left uh our room and I didn't know that he had done this but he went to his mom's room and I found him later. I I was walking past her room and she had like these doors that opened out so I just looked in and I saw him like lying on her bed and she was like lying there like stroking his hair. I found that well his head. I found that so weird. I was like, wow, this is a grown man. And like it seemed a little too intimate for me. L ike in my culture, I guess maybe because we're very distant, you don't even hug. Like you wouldn't hug your father because that's it's a little too intimate. So for an adult to be lying on his mother's bed and for her to actually be it just seemed very peculiar. I saw that and I was like, o kay. You see, Lena and Alan's relationship was always very cl ose. When Alan was going to college and then law school, all the while living with his mother, we used to say that he was missing out on being young. When he moved in with a girlfriend in Ukraine, we joked that he finally got far enough from Lena to have a relationshi p. Priscilla didn't know any of this, of course. But for all she knew, where Alan came from, 37-year-old men routinely went to their mothers after fighting with their girlfriends, and their mothers comfort them by stroking their bald head s. About a year after they met, Alan approached Priscilla's father to ask for her hand in marri age. They went through a modernized version of the labola And now they were considered married in Zimbab we. As Priscilla got to know Alan better, she sometimes wondered about th ings. And you know when you hang out with the person for a while, at the beginning, the story sound original. And then after a while, it's like, oh my God, he's telling that story again. And this time it's got a little bit more added in it. You know, so it started to become like that. For instance. I don't know how true this is, but this is a story that he liked to tell. You know, during the nine eleven, when nine eleven happened, he said that he was working for a law firm that was in that building and that he only escaped that whole situation because he didn't go to work on that day. And I I just kind of found it I don't know. Do you know? I do know . Alan did have an internship at a law firm at the World Trade C enter. But that was the summer before nine eleven. Although, as I told Priscilla, the story Alan told her was fam iliar. Um I think I know. And that's a true story about another cousin of ours. Oh my gosh, you see. So I was right . So that's another red fl ag. And then there were many more. Both Priscilla and Alan accused each other of bad behaviors. It's a pretty typical complement of transgressions. Whether either of them was right or whoever was right first, it's clear that things got bad fast. Obviously here, in this interview. This is Priscilla's side. But much of what she told me she has also laid out in legal records there are a lot, in both US and Zimbabwean courts, and in testimony related to her custody cases, and eventually her testimony in Alan's murder for higher trial. In the first year of their marriage, their son was born, whom again I'm calling O or when needed, I'll be hisep name in the tape. Soon after O was born, Priscilla and Alan broke up the first time. Then they got back together. Then they broke up, then they got back toget her. Alan was no longer living in Zimbabwe full time. He was spending more and more time in Russ ia. So their relationship now became in a series of bursts. Separations, intense reconciliations, awful it's really over this time fig hts. Priscilla became pregnant again , but six months into the pregnancy she had a miscarri age. She lost so much blood that she had to stay in the hospital for two we eks. And then Priscilla miscarried aga in. This time she was hospitalized for a month. She'd been five months preg nant. Priscilla was determined to have another baby. She could think of nothing else. Talking about it, she used the words desperate and obsess ion. Alan stayed by her side through this ordeal. He offered comfort and more than that, he offered a solu tion. They could find a surrogate in Russia to carry their child . So they moved to Mos cow. Alan rented a huge, beautiful apartment in the center of the city. Their landlord was a famous art dealer, and their apartment itself had been featured in various magaz ines. From Moscow, Priscilla continued running her businesses, a restaurant, and an event space in Har ari. After a few attempts, a surrogate was preg nant. But Priscilla and Alan's relationship was still Priscilla and Alan's relations hip. And now the original red flag was flying higher than all of them. My Aunt Lena was living in Moscow to o. She was always around, she was always very clear about what she wanted, and she always got what she w anted, especially from Alan. She would make him do things or she would yell, have a tantrum, and he would have to change plans. So many times we made plans and he would have to change them because his mom wanted to do something different or she felt left out, etc . I've never seen Lena throw a tantrum, but I've seen that when it comes to Alan, Lena often got her way. Like on almost every holiday that we went on, I don't know if you recall, she was always with us. That was not because I enjoyed having her around, but it was because I knew that she would make his life harder if she didn't come . And I didn't want to make things more difficult for him, so I gave in. How long did that last ? The entire marri age. My Aunt Lana didn't want to talk to me for this podcast. Though she talked to me about Priscilla quite a bit before Alan's arrest. There was one time she asked me for adv ice. How do I get Priscilla out of O's li fe. I counseled against trying. She seemed taking ab ack. Several years after that exchange, Priscilla and O moved to Moscow with Al an, and this was when Lena got particularly assertive, especially when it came to oh uh she wanted to basically be his parent. She wanted to be involved in in-depth decisions, which school he went to, uh, what activities he did, and she would assert her involvement through Alan. So Alan and I would discuss one thing. And then tomorrow he would come back and be like, uh actually let's do this, that, and that. And I'm like, wh y? Were you talking to your mother? You know, it'll be so obvious that okay, no, his mother said something to him, she does not agree with the decision that we made. And things like that, I would just override them and I'll just be like, no. And then I would just go ahead and do what I thought was best , what we had initially agreed on. For instance, Priscilla says Lena didn't Alan had chosen for three-year-old O. So one day, Priscilla returned from a short trip to Zimbabwe to find that Alan had taken O out of the preschool and put him in a Russian language run, where he couldn't understand the other kids and Priscilla couldn't communicate with the teach ers. Priscilla reversed the decision, but she thought it had Lena written all over it. Did you feel like Lena was trying to push you out of li fe? One hundred thousand per cent things between Priscilla and Alan continued in their familiar cycle of misery. And there was also physical violence, which Alan doesn't den y. Priscilla had had en ough. Alan prided himself in solving complicated problems, but listening to Priscilla, I had the impression that she was the one who could be practical under stress. She was about to have a baby with a surg She was stuck in Mosc ow, but she didn't have to be stuck with Al an. So I just told him, okay, that's fine. You continue to do what you're gonna do, but do not come near me. You're not my husband anymore. I do not, I I I'm done. I'm d one. And he actually said to me, Oh, I don't think that you're serious. I don't think you're gonna leave because you like this lifestyle too much. And I was like, You think that my sanity is worth any kind of lifesty le. They tried living together apart in a giant apartment. That didn' t work. Alan started staying with Lena in what used to be our grandmother's apart ment. At the time their baby, who again I'm calling Elle, was born, in November 2018, Priscilla was dating someone new. Eventually, Alan seemed to get used to the separation and was even starting to talk about their post divorce, post rush of fut ure. One day he suggested they could all move to the United St ates. Priscilla thought that might work. She could get an MBA, become an American entreprene ur. And then, just a few days after this conversation, Priscilla got a text from Zimb abwe. In terms of what happened next, she testified to much of this in court and legal filings I've revie wed. A manager at her restaurant had quit. She had to go home for a few days to deal with a crisis. She flew to Zimbabwe. The kids stayed with Alan. O was five years old. Elle was seven month s. Priscilla was gone for just four days when she was I opened it and like my he art it just sank. I I actually had to go to the boss room. I just burst out c rying. The messages informed Priscilla that Alan had left the country with O and that Elle was with her nan ny These details were new to me. I knew that he took O, of course, but I didn't realize that Alan had gone scorched earth on Priscilla hers elf. So he actually took all your clothes or some of your clothes? He took 90% of my clothes. He packed a suitc ase for the clothes that he thought I would need. He said that these are the things that you were going to need. Here's what Alan had determined Priscilla would need . Some casual clothes and two pairs of sneak ers. His plan was that Priscilla and the baby would move out of their apartment in Moscow and move into our grandmother's dacha, a summer cottage. By which I mean half of a summer cottage. By which I mean two small rooms in a kitchen outside the city where no one speaks Engl ish. Can you describe the house ? Oh yes, oh yes, by the way. In his message to me, he wrote to me because there was no hot water at some point there at the house. He was like, Oh, we've fixed the hot water. So you don't need to worry that it's uh it's going to be cold because winter was coming. We fixed the hot water and there is the oven. You will be able to stay warm through the winter. And by oven you mean a wood burning stove that maybe could keep part of that space warm. It's not a winterized house. Um and but he is in at the end of J une thinking about you staying there through the winter. Yes. How did that make you feel? I thought it was absurd because I actually obviously had no idea the lengths or the extent of his pl ans. Priscilla scrambled to find a place to live in Mosc ow. And then, according to lawsuits, police reports, and court testimony, Priscilla became aware of odd things happening with the business that she and Alan shared in Zimbab we. She learned that she had been removed as director of a company that owned a property there. The property where she and Alan had a house and their businesses. And now her businesses were being forced out. A neighbor told her the property was recently put up for s ale. Soon Priscilla says she was struggling to get access to money. Later in federal court, Allen confirmed he and his business colleagues had Priscilla removed from their company, and that he had canceled her debit c ard. It it is almost a way of um you know when somebody strips you of your humanity, shows you that you're not in control of anything. You've taken my child, you've taken the clothes off my back, you've taken my h ome. You' re breaking me down completely all in one girl I had thought that this was all about oh, about who had control of the schools he went to and the books he re ad. But now that I was talking to Priscilla, it sounded like Alan was really going after her, punishing her . Priscilla said she knew why. Because she had chosen to end the marri age. Get better and his would get worse. Priscilla didn't disagree exactly. Her calculations showed the same thing. So when I got rid of him, I essentially got rid of the only negative that I had in my life, which would mean that my life would now improve. I was happy, I was stress-free. But for him, because he was not ready to give up this relationship or to let go of everything, he felt discard ed. So he took it very badly, as though I had thrown him a way. And uh he was in pain and I was not in pain. I on the other hand was happy that this was finally over. So he didn't think this was f air. So what did you think his plan was at this point? To destroy me From the moment she landed in Moscow and got the barrage of WhatsApp messages from Alan, Priscilla had a single goal: to get O back. She found herself in an adventure horror movie, or just in a nightmare. The kind where you're trying to get somewhere, but things keep getting in the way, and these things get weirder and bigger as you try to whack your way through them, and it just goes on and on and on. First, she has to get out of Russia. For that, she needed to get Elle's documents. That took five month s. Now she could leave, but she couldn't go straight to the United States. She and Elle both needed visas and for that Priscilla needed to go to Zimbabwe to apply at the US Embassy there. What started happening next? It's so dizzying that I'm not going to be able to hit every note, every threat, every attack, every eviction, every police report, every court hearing, and every arrest that make up the saga. All of them, Priscilla believes, orchestrated by Al an. Some of it I should say Alan denies. I'll note where I can when court documents and witnesses corroborate Priscilla's account and where they don 't. But these are the highlights, or lowlights, I gu ess. As soon as Priscilla and Elle returned to Zimbabwe, Priscilla was able to stop the sale of the house she had lived in with Alan. I immediately moved back into our house. So Alan hired some bouncers that came and attacked me. Like these huge guys. They beat me up and threw me off the property and told me if they if I came back, they would harm me. This was covered in the Zimbabwean press. A photo of Priscilla with a bloody eye was splashed across multiple news sit es. In one news story, two of Priscilla's relatives who say they were there during the attack claim men stormed the property and threaten ed them. It's not clear who these men were, or who they worked for. Alan denies that he hired them. The property was now being managed by Alan's lawyer and one of his business partners. They didn't want to talk to me for this story. But the whole thing was harrowing, and the message was cle ar. Get out. But Priscilla? I didn't leave. They came back. Tried to do the same thing. I still didn't leave. And consistently after that things kept happening. Drugs were planted in my house as well, cocaine. I can confirm Priscilla was arrested for cocaine possession during this period. I cannot confirm this cocaine was plante d. But when Priscilla went on trial for this drug charge, she was acquitted. The news article quoted the judge saying that whoever tipped off the police had quote scores to sett le. Alan said it wasn 't him. Okay, next. This story involves Priscilla's nanny, who didn't want to talk to me. But according to Priscilla, she noticed that the nanny started acting stran ge. She stopped taking Elle out for walks. Priscilla probed. The nanny was reluctant to spe ak. So then she came to me and she said, Well, these people approached me and they told me they would give me money if I would give them love when I'm out on one of our walks. So I'm afraid because I said no that they're just going to try it anyway, that they will just come and take her. So I was like, oh, okay. So obviously she no longer went for any walks. We tightened security more. And then I was picked up after dropping her off at sch ool. One morning, Priscilla says she took Elle, who was fifteen months old, to nursery school when the police snatched Priscilla off the street and took her to a maximum security women's prison, notorious for having inhumane condition s. Priscilla immediately suspected that this was a ploy, directed by Alan, to somehow get Elle. Yes, to the pris on. Priscilla needed to be able to keep her eyes on Elle, and as it turned out, because Elle was younger than two, Priscilla could ask to be incarcerated with her. In a prison with And my lawyer told me that he had just been served some documents that Alan filed applying for immediate cust ody. Which means that it was basically all planned that they would probably steal the he would get a court order allowing him custody and then he would probably leave with her whilst I was incarcer ated. Priscilla also testified to this later at Alan's trial that he was behind the whole thing. According to Zimbabwean court documents, Priscilla's arrest was officially related to the property dispute. During her time in jail, her businesses were evicted for good. After two weeks Priscilla and Elle were rele ased. Alan denies that he orchestrated anything. He did file for custody of Elle, yes, as soon as Priscilla was arrested. But he says it was just out of concern for Elle and her well-be ing. Priscilla had been back in Zimbabwe for only four months, and she had already been beaten up, evicted, forced out of business, arres ted, and arrested aga in. So this is March 2020? Is this just before the pandemic? Yes. I was so lucky because March 30th is when lockdown began. I got out that weekend just before March 30 th. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlanti c. That's after the bre ak. It was 2020, and Alan had filed for full custody of O. The case was stalled because of COV ID. Priscilla's American lawyer had filed her case under the Hague Convention, but this too was on hold now. They both waited, Priscilla and Zababa, temporarily relieved from her nightmare sequence of struggles, and Alan in Massachusetts, perhaps frustrated by being unable to pursue his custody claim s. In the meantime, he was working on some sort of scheme to bring a shipload of PPE to the United States. Remember there were shortages of masks and other protective equipment? The scheme didn't work out. During the first year or so of the pandemic, all of us spent more time on Cape Cod. My baby brothers attending college remotely, me and my kids, and Alan and Nana and O visiting frequently . My dad got an oyster license. O became an oyster enthusiast. We all got closer. The rest of the world receiv ed. In the summer of twenty twenty one, Priscilla got word that her Hague petition was finally scheduled for a hearing in U.S. District Court in Boston . Priscilla's lawyer arranged for a visa and raised the money to get Priscilla to the U S. It had been two years since Alan took O from Russ ia. So when was your court date? It was on the third of August. I arrived on the first of August . And I think Ellen was a very surprised to see me . The lawyer had warned her that the Hague Convention case would take weeks or months, and now she also had to deal with Alan's custody case in family court. It would all surely drag on. But to Priscilla just coming to the US felt like a vic tory. Finally, she was in the same country as her son. She would see him. For most of the 25 months of their separation, Priscilla had only sporadic contact with O. In their early phone calls, he seemed fine. Happy and To put O on a shelf. Well, she worked on advancing her hate convention case and simply getting herself an L from one day to the ne xt. I'd met Priscilla only a couple of times before all of this started. Once was in twenty eighteen, just a year before after Alan left Russia with O. Alan, Owen Priscilla came to visit New York. Alan was running around with watts of cash, really stacks of cas h. From what I understood, he had spent a decade and a half living in cash economies, and And now he was trying to reestablish himself as a financial citizen of the United St ates. He was opening bank accounts and brandishing shiny new debit cards like they were some sort of achiev ement. I remember Priscilla looked a little lost, as did O, who never left her side . It was Priscilla's first time in the U S. Back then I didn't think much of any of this. Not about Alan's general agitation or his apparent indifference to the way his wife and child spend their time on a family trip while he was bus y. I noticed that O had extreme separation anxiety in relation to Priscilla. He was just four years old. Some kids are like that. Then that kid was torn away from his mother Now he was e ight, and more than a quarter of his life had passed without Prisc illa. When did you see him for the first time? I saw him that weekend on the Sunday for the first time . It was. It's so strange . I almost can't remember how I felt. I know I didn't cry. I couldn't cry. I think I just looked at him. I just stared at him for a wh ile. Can you describe that meeting? I mean you had to meet outside, I think, right? Yeah. We met at a little tea house in the town where Alan was living. Uh Con cord. It's called uh Concord Tea Cakes actually. So he was sitting outside. I saw him sitting there and he was sitting by himself. Uh Alan was inside the shop . When I c when I approached him, I could actually see that he was shaking. What had her little boy been thinking for the past two years? Why did he think his mother wasn't with him? What had Alan told ham. Oh knew that Priscilla had been in prison. What other stories about her had taken hold in his mind? And I kind of felt I felt helpless in a way, you know. I just said hi . I didn't try to touch him because I could tell that he was scar ed. So I just said hi . And then I just sat next to him and I let him kind of come to me. Do you remember anything he said to you? He asked me for this porridge that he used to like. Like it kind of he had loved it since he was a baby. And he called it blue porridge. He just said to me, Did you bring blue porridge? I said, Ye ah. They make it in Zimbab we. And I had carried it with me. He asked me to make it for him, like immediately. And I did, like in a little cup with warm w ater. I made it for him and he ate it. And yeah, I knew that he would slowly remember me and things would get back to where they were if he could remember simple things like that. Ye ah. Allen had filed for full legal and physical custody. In his lawsuit, he claimed that Priscilla had neglected Elle and taken Elle to Zimbabwe without his cons ent. He portrayed Priscilla as a cocaine user and serial burglar who could barely stay out of jail. She came from a volatile country with high crime rates and an unstable economy. Oh, and he mentioned the dispossession of white farmers in Zimbabwe and accused Priscilla of anti white racis m. Against all this, Priscilla was arguing for at least some time with her son. The judge allowed Priscilla to visit O for two hours twice a week. After three months, Priscilla started to get O for overnight visits. These were still awk ward. O was this new kid now, a kid who wore fedores and brogues and had a pension for old mov ies. stop her from making clear demands of everyone she met, mostly to get picked up. They gradually got more comfortable with one another. O was getting to know Elle, Priscilla was getting to know O, and on december twentieth, finally, the federal judge ruled in the Hague Convention c ase. He didn't hand Priscilla an outright victory, but he wrote in his decision that Alan had brought O to Massachusetts without his mother's cons ent. Priscilla could take this finding to family court now. It could change everything . The day after the federal judge made his ruling, Priscilla got a call from her lawyer. The lawyer sounded worr ied. Alan had withdrawn his custody lawsuit from family co urt. And she was like, Priscilla, when was the last time you spoke to Ar? I was, and I told her yesterday. I dropped him off at school yesterday. And she was like, Have you spoken to him at all today? Or Alan? She had not . He picked up and then cut off right away. And then I tried call again, tablet was off. Then I tried to call Alan, he wasn't picking up. And I said to him, I'm supposed to pick up arm from school today. Why didn't you tell me he was sick? I just spoke to the school. He didn't respond. And then he became unavailable. I called my lawyer and I told her and then she was like okay drop whatever you're doing drive to family court in law right now I was in Worcester it's an hour a way. Priscilla worried the court was going to close soon. Her lawyer had to hustle too. She quickly drafted some documents, some emergency orders, and an affidavit, and she drove like the winter. And at that time, you know, they're closing up and um, the judge's clerk was like, 'Oh, what is so urgent?' She was like, 'No, this is urgent. This child has been abducted before. This needs to happen now. We have to get in front of the judge now. We saw the judge, and so she issued the orders. The order that we applied for was a stop order, like for him to not leave Massachusetts. If he has left Massachusetts, for him to return, to put him on the no-fly list, and to alert berord authorities to stop him if they see him. Now someone had to make sure Alan knew the stop order existed. The police had gone to his house. No one was home, of co urse. Priscilla says Alan had blocked Priscilla's number, and he had fired his la wyer. I was just totally delirious throughout this whole thing, but Abigail, my lawyer kept saying Priscilla think, think. Priscilla tried everything, including sending a copy of the judge's order to my father. Eventually it occurred to her to use her old Zimbabwean number to send the order up by WhatsApp, and within minutes, two blue check marks appeared, indicating that Alan had read the mess age. His response ? She says he blocked her old Zimbabwean number two. Priscilla had spent two and a half years trying to get her son back, and he was gone aga in. So the investigator who was in charge of the case in Concord started calling, calling, calling, calling, calling Aaron Allen. Alan wouldn't respond. Then he left him a voicemail saying that he was going to call the FBI if he didn't answer. Alan immediately called him back. I actually have an email that Alan sent him. Do you want me to show it to you ? Of course I did. So yes, here is the S ure. Thank you for your call earlier today. I would like to clarify a few items. This was a remarkable document. Alan acknowledged that the detective had advised him to communicate through his lawyer. According to him, this was not a kidnapping. They have a home in Massachusetts, Alan Z. O. studies violin there, and all his toys are there. So of course they'd be coming back. They had just gone to Canada for a short winter vacation. There'd been too much litigation, not good for the kids. He was just taking care of things. So, yes, in case you missed it, Alan acknowledged that he had taken O out of the country. But surely the police detective would understand . The police detective who is investigating this is a case of possible kidnapp ing. Oh my god, there's more. Page two. You can imagine my distress and disbelief when an oxparte order of which I know very little, tells me to surrender my son to an unknown f ate. To the extent that you have free time and interest, all of this has extensive documentary support. Alan wrote that Elle, who was with Priscilla, was not doing as well as O. But she had moved eight times in the past two and a half years. The judge will be able to do it. Her mother had been arrested on drug charges. And the baby had even spent time in prison with her mother . Right. Alan was using what Priscilla had had to go through in Zimbab we to paint her as an irresponsible unfit parent. As a parent to a parent, you try to protect your kids from har m. Please feel free to call or write with any inquiries. Kind regards, Al an. Wow. Um would you would you like to um interpret this? Remember those stories that I told you he's so excellent at weav ing? This is another, this is a classical example of that story. If you're an outsider reading this, it sounds plausib le. It sounds actually very log ical. If you have no idea of the facts, you'd say, okay, wow, this woman must be awful. This man is trying to save his child. And it all seems to make so much sense. What struck me about this letter is that Allen, who has a law degree, is acknowledging the existence of a court order, but seems to assume he can convince a police detective it's okay to violate it. Seems so stupid, so ham fisted, so delusional, that the only logical explanation I could think of for this illogical appro ach is that Alan actually believed that he didn't . Maybe he, for one, believed hims elf. To Priscilla, the most frightening thing about the letter was that Alan clearly had no intention of coming back anytime so on. After the frenzy of trying to get the court order and reach Alan, and after this email, she could only wa it. Christmas came and went, then New Year's, and still they were g one. It turns out that Lena and Alan and O spent a couple weeks vacationing in Canada, staying at a fancy hotel, ski ing. Then they headed to the Montreal Airport. They had tickets to Lond on. From the time the three of them entered the Trudeau International Airport, law enforcement were tracking them. When Alan Lena and O tried to board, the agent told them to wait by the g ate. They sat down , and pretty soon a group of officers appeared. From what I can gather, there were eight or more of them, seemingly out of nowh ere. One officer came up from behind and lifted O up in the air, straight out of his seat and over the back. Another got in front of Lena, blocking her access to Alan and O. And the rest of them slammed Alan on the ground and handcuffed him. There was a lot of yell ing. On the ground, on the ground, was what O remembered he aring. Then the officers led O a way. His dad was lying on the ground face down, his grandma was screaming too, and trying to hand him th ings. The officers let him take the viol in. Now, whenever the subject of Canada comes up, O says that he had a wonderful vacation there and loved the s now. He never mentions what happened at the airport, and I don't want to a sk him. But from what I can gather, he must have been very upset, terrified for his d ad. The officers took him to see Alan wherever it was that he was temporarily held at the airport, and perhaps, I don't know this for sure, he calmed down a bit. Then the officers took O to a foster family who would look after him until Priscilla could come and get him. And so he was in foster care for two nights, and I spoke to him on the phone, but you know, he was just being like, you know, just acting like a happy normal kid but he wasn't eating. That's what the woman was taking care of him what told me. She's like he's acting like he's okay but he's not eat ing. Priscilla didn't have a Canadian visa, so she couldn't just fly to Montreal to pick up Ode that day. Instead, she and a friend drove to the border. It's a drive that normally takes about four hours, but it was snowing, so it took them forever . They didn't talk at all . They didn't listen to mus ic. They just dro ve. At the border, Priscilla had to wait for someone to drive O over to the US side and hand him over. Like in one of those movies about a prisoner sw ap. Priscilla says oh was his chipper and amiable self until they got into the car. Started talking, it's like he erup ted. And he just started talking and crying and explaining to me what had happened. Then he asked me why it had to happen, and then he asked me if I had sent So I was responsible for him being slammed down on the ground like that. And I had to explain to him that, you know, when I wasn't able to pick him up from sch ool, it was already a bad thing. So I don't decide on my own what happens. But the same way that there are rules at school that you have to follow, it's the same thing in life. There are rules that you have to follow. And if you don't follow them you get a timeout at school you have to sit in the cor ner so Papa did a bad thing he didn't bring you back when you were supposed to come back and so right now he's gonna be on time out I'm trying to imagine this. They're driving away from the Canadian border. It's snowing. Priscilla's exhausted. She's sick with COVID to o. She has spent the last two and a half weeks trying to find her child aga in, because Alan has taken him aga in. After all Priscilla went through, first in Russia and then in Zimbab we. But this drive marks a turning point . Oh is in the car with Priscilla, and Alan is in detention in Can ada. Who knows where Lena is? For the first time in two and a half years, no one is coming between Priscilla and her son. In fac t, after Alan has so grossly violated their temporary custody agreement, Priscilla now has full legal and physical custody of O. And I'm trying to imag ine, what would I do in this situation? What would you do? Would you eviscerate the bastard? Or would you say that he was taking a time out? Because he'd broken the rules, like in school . I suppose Priscilla expected Alan to be in the kids' lives after this, despite all he'd done. But then, six months later, when Alan was arrested for hiring someone to murder her, she continued taking uncanny care with the way she talked to the kids about him. She said that he was arrested because he broke the rules aga And almost a year later, when we were talking in her little ho use, she still hadn't told the kids that Alan had tried to have her k illed. Part of it was that she hadn't figured out a way to talk about it. That wouldn't scare the k ids. But that wasn't all of it. Priscilla told me that she wasn't only protecting the k ids. The one th ing that you also need to know is I don't hate Al an. So I'm not motivated to say, oh, he' s like this, he's like that. I don't hate him. I feel sorry for him for some reason. It's an odd, it's an odd feeling. Like I feel sorry for him because I feel like it takes a certain level of sadness or deep, like very, very, very de ep unhappiness with yourself or with who you are to allow yourself to do certain th ings to care so little about the outcome of or like for you to be e vil, you cannot think very highly of yours elf. And I think you probably suffer more as an evil person knowing who you are and the things that you're capable of and having to live with that in your mind every day. That is some unattainable level of um of big for me. It's so hard to explain. It is so hard to explain I've tried to understand how she can feel that way towards someone who tried to have her k illed. Loved him. She did tell me that she still felt something for him. And that part of her was hoping that what he had done wasn't tru e. That some explanation would emerge that would make her feel a little saner and sa fer. I think most of my family was hoping for some version of this to o. Some piece of evidence that wouldn't exonerate Alan necessarily, but would make what he'd done seem a little less hor rible. All that wishful think ing seemed like nonsense to me, honest ly. I figured the one thing that would put an end to it was Alan's trial. That's next time, on the idi ot. Someone's got it in for me. The idiot was recorded and written by me, M. Gaston, and produced by Daniel Guillemeth with Andrey Barzenpe and Lika Kramer of LibreLibel Studios. Our editor is Julie Snyder. Additional editing by Ira Glass and Sari Kaney. Research and fact checking by Ben Phelan and Marisa Robertson Texter. Original score by Alison Leighton Brown. Additional music from Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. The show was mixed by Phoebe Wang with additional mixing by Catherine Anderson. Additional production by Phoebe Bennett. At serial productions, and Dave Chubu is our supervising producer. Mac Miller is our associate producer. Video production by Sean Devaney. Art direction from Kelly Doe. Art by John Fern. Creditors music by Bob Dyl an. At the New York Times, our standards editor is Susan Wesling, Legal Review by Alamine Sumart, Dana Green, Jackson Bush, and Tim Ty. Our Senior Operations Manager is Elizabeth Davis Moore, and Sam Dolnik is Deputy Managing Editor of the New York Tim es. Special thanks to Katherine Fenelosa, Suzanne Bennett, Nina Lawson, Maddie Maselo, Nick Bittman, Kyle Grandillo, Nancy Updake, Cory Beach, James Thatcher, Pablo Delcon, Dominique Bodden, Brian Ritehout, Stowe Nelson, Susan Beachie, Annabel Davis, Jeffrey Moyne, and Anthony Roman . The Idiot is a production of Serial Productions and the New York T imes. It's the one that you still know how to break