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Sympathy Pains · iHeartPodcasts

Bethany

April 13, 2022·31 min·2 clips
When a pastor and family members arrived at Camp Summit to confront Sarah with evidence of her fabrications, she stood up from her wheelchair, walked to their van, and drove away without a word.
New campers arrived on Sundays. The excerpt drops into a fall 2015 cabin as Bethany and the other counselors work through the mess and noise of unpacking. One camper sits in a power wheelchair in the middle of the room, dressed in soft pink and soft clothes. Her name is Sarah. She tells them she has muscular dystrophy and can barely move from the neck down. She still has a little arm control, enough to use the toggle on her chair and steer herself around the room. Sarah says she is thirty. She also says she has a nursing license and lives with her mother in southern Illinois, in a town not far from St. Louis. Bethany clocks her as someone whose world may not have stretched far beyond that small Illinois town. Nothing about the moment plays big yet. It is all practical: bedding, clothes, bags, directions. Bethany moves between campers while a caregiver unpacks for Sarah, following her instructions because Sarah cannot do it herself. A CPAP machine turns up, another plain detail of the care around her body. Then Sarah points to another suitcase and asks someone to open it. Inside are things for the cabin, crafts, maybe snacks, the kind of stuff that pulls people toward her fast.

As heard by us

A calm camp arrival scene gives the episode its sharpest details, from Sarah's power wheelchair to a CPAP machine and a carefully packed suitcase.

Sympathy Pains is at its best in the quiet arrival at camp. Bethany and the counselors move through a busy cabin while new campers unpack during a session in fall 2015. Sarah, a young woman in a power wheelchair, introduces herself and says she has muscular dystrophy.

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Why you'd press play

You want a patient, detail-led true-crime story where a camp arrival and a first meeting already feel loaded with meaning.

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