transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:03] In the early morning hours of July 28, 2022, when the FBI showed up at my father's house in Cape Cod, they knocked on another door to Priscilla's.

Speaker 2:
[00:12] So they knock, and when they told me they were FBI, I thought they were there for me.

Speaker 1:
[00:19] This is Priscilla.

Speaker 2:
[00:20] So I started like literally physically shaking. I started thinking in my head, it was just like, you're being deported, you're going to be deported, you know. And I think they saw that I was so scared, and they told me, calm down, we're here about Allen Gessen.

Speaker 1:
[00:35] Allen, my cousin, Priscilla's ex.

Speaker 2:
[00:38] And they said to me, Allen has been arrested. I was like, okay, for what? What happened? And they said he's been arrested for murder for hire. And I'm like, what's that? That made no sense to me. And then the girl told me, she's like, this is going to be a bit shocking, but he hired somebody to kill you. You know, it's... You know, when you run 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 sense. Allen murder me?

Speaker 1:
[01:38] By the time we were taping this interview, it had been almost a year since Allen 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 potholes. 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 stunning. 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 catch. Priscilla was 42 at the time of this conversation. She comes from a prominent family in Zimbabwe. Her father was a neighbor of the country's long-time 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, in a refrigerator with a death rattle. Talking to me now, she was still trying to absorb that this was how her fairy tale international romance ended. Me? I was trying to puzzle out how it had begun. So here I was, at Priscilla's safe house, while the kids were at school, asking her to start at the beginning. From Serial Productions and the New York Times, I am M. Gessen, and this is The Idiot. I began with the story's first mystery. So, can you tell me what you saw in Allen when you first met him?

Speaker 2:
[03:44] Wow. I think like most people that meet him, the first time you meet him, he's very charismatic.

Speaker 1:
[03:50] This was 2011 at the party in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. Allen 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.

Speaker 3:
[04:05] And did that seem appealing?

Speaker 2:
[04:08] 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 interesting. He came from a very different part of the world, which I knew nothing about, which was also exciting in its own regard.

Speaker 1:
[04:27] It wasn't just exciting. It was convenient in a way. Allen was unreadable to Priscilla the way someone from Zimbabwe might be. She could project her desires onto him, including her desire for success. 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 Allen's. And it's true that Allen seemed to know how to make big, fast money and spend it.

Speaker 2:
[04:51] It's like, oh, let's go to JoBurg. I'm like, okay, you get up and you go, just like at the drop of a hat. And then we would go here and there and here and there. So it was very exciting. The only strange thing that happened at the beginning of our relationship when his mom came.

Speaker 1:
[05:09] Right. One of those hiccups that happened early on in a romance and should raise a giant red flag, but somehow never do. My aunt Laila came to visit a few months into their relationship. She joined Allen and Priscilla on a trip to the countryside.

Speaker 2:
[05:26] 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 he left 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 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, like, 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, okay.

Speaker 1:
[06:32] You see, Liana and Allen's relationship was always very close. When Allen 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 Liana to have a relationship. It was like a joke about a Jewish man and his mother. That's not a joke at all. Priscilla didn't know any of this, of course. But for all she knew, where Allen came from, 37-year-old men routinely went to their mothers after fighting with their girlfriends, and their mothers comforted them by stroking their bald heads. About a year after they met, Allen approached Priscilla's father to ask for her hand in marriage. They went through a modernized version of the lobola, the custom where the perspective groom pays a price for his bride, and now they were considered married in Zimbabwe. As Priscilla got to know Allen better, she sometimes wondered about things.

Speaker 2:
[07:30] And you know, when you hang out with a person for a while, at the beginning, the story sounds 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.

Speaker 1:
[07:46] For instance.

Speaker 2:
[07:47] I don't know how true this is, but this is a story that he liked to tell. You know, during the 9-11, when 9-11 happened, he said that he was searching 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, like, I never researched to check, but I just had my doubts, very serious doubts. I still have serious doubts. I don't know. Do you know?

Speaker 1:
[08:21] I do know. Allen did have an internship at a law firm at the World Trade Center, but that was the summer before 9-11. Although, as I told Priscilla, the story Allen told her was familiar.

Speaker 3:
[08:34] I think I know, and that's a true story about another cousin of ours.

Speaker 2:
[08:41] Oh my gosh, you see? So I was right.

Speaker 1:
[08:47] So that's another red flag. And then there were many more. Both Priscilla and Allen accuse each other of bad behaviors. It's a pretty typical compliment 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 Allen's murder for hire trial. In the first year of their marriage, their son was born, whom again I'm calling Oh, or when needed, I'll beep his name in the tape. Soon after Oh was born, Priscilla and Allen broke up, the first time. Then they got back together. Then they broke up. Then they got back together. Allen was no longer living in Zimbabwe full time. He was spending more and more time in Russia. So their relationship now came in a series of bursts, separations, intense reconciliations, awful, it's really over, this time fights. Priscilla became pregnant again. About six months into the pregnancy, she had a miscarriage. She lost so much blood that she had to stay in the hospital for two weeks. And then Priscilla miscarried again. This time she was hospitalized for a month. She had been five months pregnant. Priscilla was determined to have another baby. She could think of nothing else. Talking about it, she used the words desperate and obsession. Allen stayed by her side through this ordeal. He offered comfort, and more than that, he offered a solution. They could find a surrogate in Russia to carry their child. So they moved to Moscow. Allen rented a huge, beautiful apartment in the center of the city. Their landlord was a famous art dealer, and the apartment itself had been featured in various magazines. From Moscow, Priscilla continued running her businesses, a restaurant and an event space in Harare. After a few attempts, a surrogate was pregnant. But Priscilla and Allen's relationship was still Priscilla and Allen's relationship. And now, the original red flag was flying higher than all of them. My aunt Lena was living in Moscow too. She was always around, she was always very clear about what she wanted, and she always got what she wanted, especially from Allen.

Speaker 2:
[11:13] 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.

Speaker 1:
[11:29] I've never seen Lena throw a tantrum, but I've seen that when it comes to Allen, Lena often got her way.

Speaker 2:
[11:35] 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.

Speaker 1:
[11:57] How long did that last?

Speaker 2:
[11:59] The entire marriage.

Speaker 1:
[12:03] My aunt Lena didn't want to talk to me for this podcast. They should talk to me about Priscilla quite a bit before Allen's arrest. There was one time she asked me for advice. How do I get Priscilla out of O's life? I counseled against trying. She seemed to take me back. Several years after that exchange, Priscilla and O moved to Moscow with Allen. And this was when Lena got particularly assertive, especially when it came to O.

Speaker 2:
[12:30] She wanted to basically be his parent. She wanted to be involved in in-depth decisions, which school he went to, what activities he did. And she would assert her involvement through Allen. So Allen and I would discuss one thing. And then tomorrow he would come back and be like, actually, let's do this, that, and that. And I'm like, why? Were you talking to your mother? You know, to be so obvious that, okay, no. His mother said something to him. She does not agree with the decision that we made. In things like that, I would just override him. And I'll just be like, no. And then I would just go ahead and do what I thought was best, what we initially agreed on.

Speaker 1:
[13:13] For instance, Priscilla says Liana didn't like the trilingual preschool that she and Allen had chosen for three-year-old O. So one day, Priscilla returned from a short trip to Zimbabwe to find that Allen had taken O out of the preschool and put him in a Russian language one, where he couldn't understand the other kids and Priscilla couldn't communicate with the teachers. Priscilla reversed the decision. But she thought that Allen had written all over it. Did you feel like Allen was trying to push you out of O's life?

Speaker 2:
[13:45] 100,000 percent.

Speaker 1:
[13:52] Things between Priscilla and Allen continued in their familiar cycle of misery. And there was also physical violence, which Allen doesn't deny. Priscilla had had enough. Allen prided himself on 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 surrogate, in a strange country, while her marriage was falling apart. And she seemed to just know that she could get through it. She was stuck in Moscow, but she didn't have to be stuck with Allen.

Speaker 2:
[14:23] So I just told him, okay, that's fine. You continue to do what you're going to do, but do not come near me. You're not my husband anymore. I do not. I'm done. I'm done. And he actually said to me, oh, I don't think that you're serious. I don't think you're going to leave because you like this lifestyle too much. And I was like, you think that my sanity is worth any kind of lifestyle?

Speaker 1:
[14:55] They tried living together apart in a giant apartment. That didn't work. Allen started staying with Lena in what used to be our grandmother's apartment. By the time their baby, who again I'm calling Elle, was born, in November 2018, Priscilla was dating someone new. Eventually, Allen seemed to get used to the separation and was even starting to talk about their post-divorce, post-Russia future. One day, he suggested they could all move to the United States. Priscilla thought that might work. She could get an MBA, become an American entrepreneur. And then, just a few days after this conversation, Priscilla got a text from Zimbabwe. In terms of what happened next, she testified to much of this in court and legal filings I've reviewed. A manager at her restaurant had quit. She had to go home for a few days to deal with the crisis. She flew to Zimbabwe. The kid stayed with Allen. Elle was five years old. Elle was seven months. Priscilla was gone for just four days. When she landed back in Moscow and turned on her phone, it pinged with a bunch of WhatsApp messages.

Speaker 2:
[16:00] It's like, okay, let me look and see what this is. It was like a lot of messages from him. And then I opened it and like my heart, it just sank, I actually had to go to the bathroom. I just burst out crying.

Speaker 1:
[16:15] The messages informed Priscilla that Allen had left the country with Elle, and that Elle was with her nanny. After she composed herself, Priscilla rushed to their apartment.

Speaker 2:
[16:24] Everything is gone.

Speaker 1:
[16:26] Allen had cleaned out the entire place, all the furniture, the walls were bare, closets empty. These details were new to me. I knew that he took Elle, of course. But I didn't realize that Allen had gone scorched earth on Priscilla herself. So he actually took all your clothes or some of your clothes?

Speaker 2:
[16:45] He took 90 percent of my clothes. He packed a suitcase for the clothes that he thought I would need. He said that these are the things that you're going to need.

Speaker 1:
[16:56] Here's what Allen had determined Priscilla would need. Some casual clothes and two pairs of sneakers. His plan was that Priscilla and the baby would move out of their apartment in Mosca 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 English. Can you describe the house?

Speaker 2:
[17:23] 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 fixed the hot water. So you don't need to worry that 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.

Speaker 1:
[17:45] And by oven, you mean a wood-burning stove that maybe could keep part of that space warm. It's not a winterized house.

Speaker 3:
[17:55] But he is in, at the end of June, thinking about you staying there through the winter.

Speaker 2:
[18:01] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[18:02] How did that make you feel?

Speaker 2:
[18:05] I thought it was absurd because I actually obviously had no idea the lengths or the extent of his plans.

Speaker 1:
[18:15] Priscilla scrambled to find a place to live in Moscow. And then, according to lawsuits, police reports and court testimony, Priscilla became aware of odd things happening with the businesses she and Allen shared in Zimbabwe. She learned that she had been removed as director of a company that owned a property there, the property where she and Allen 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 sale. 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 card.

Speaker 2:
[18:55] It is almost a way of... 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 home. You're breaking me down completely all in one go. It's insane.

Speaker 1:
[19:23] I had thought that this was all about Oh, about who had control of the schools he went to and the books he read. But now that I was talking to Priscilla, it sounded like Allen was really going after her, punishing her. Priscilla says she knew why. Because she had chosen to end the marriage. In one of their fights, Allen had told her that it wasn't fair, that if they broke up, her life would get better and his would get worse. Priscilla didn't disagree exactly. Her calculations showed the same thing.

Speaker 2:
[19:51] I had a home, I had kids, I had a business, everything was going well. The only negative was him. 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 discarded. So he took it very badly, as though I had thrown him away, and 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 fair.

Speaker 3:
[20:39] So what did you think his plan was at this point?

Speaker 2:
[20:43] To destroy me.

Speaker 1:
[20:52] From the moment she landed in Moscow and got the barrage of WhatsApp messages from Allen, Priscilla had a single goal, to get Oh 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 had to get out of Russia. For that, she needed to get Elle's documents. That took five months. 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 Allen. Some of it, I should say, Allen 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 guess. As soon as Priscilla and Allen returned to Zimbabwe, Priscilla was able to stop the sale of the house she had lived in with Allen.

Speaker 2:
[22:08] I immediately moved back into our house. So Allen 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 I came back, they would harm me.

Speaker 1:
[22:26] This was covered in the Zimbabwean press. A photo of Priscilla with a bloody eye was splashed across multiple news sites. In one news story, two of Priscilla's relatives who say they were there during the attack, claim men stormed the property and threatened them. It's not clear who these men were or who they worked for. Allen denies that he hired them. The property was now being managed by Allen'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 clear. Get out. But Priscilla?

Speaker 2:
[22:59] 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.

Speaker 1:
[23:12] I can confirm Priscilla was arrested for cocaine possession during this period. I cannot confirm this cocaine was planted. But when Priscilla went on trial for this drug charge, she was acquitted. A news article quoted the judge saying that whoever tipped off the police had, quote, scores to settle. Allen 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 strange. She stopped taking Elle out for walks. Priscilla probed. The nanny was reluctant to speak.

Speaker 2:
[23:46] 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 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 school.

Speaker 1:
[24:17] One morning, Priscilla said she took Elle, who was 15 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 conditions. Priscilla immediately suspected that this was a ploy. Directed by Allen, to somehow get Elle.

Speaker 2:
[24:35] Then I called my lawyer. I told him what was happening. I called a driver that I had who had a car. He immediately went and he picked up the nanny and they drove them to the prison.

Speaker 1:
[24:46] Yes, to the prison. 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 concrete floors and no running water.

Speaker 2:
[24:58] And my lawyer told me that he had just been served some documents that Allen filed applying for immediate custody. Which means that it was basically all planned, that they would probably steal the s***, he would get a court order allowing him custody, and then he would probably leave with her whilst I was incarcerated.

Speaker 1:
[25:19] Priscilla also testified to this later at Allen'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 released. Allen 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-being. Priscilla had been back in Zimbabwe for only four months, and she had already been beaten up, evicted, forced out of business, arrested, and arrested again. So this is March 2020? Is this just before the pandemic?

Speaker 2:
[26:07] I was so lucky because March 30th is when lockdown began. I got out that weekend just before March 30th.

Speaker 1:
[26:19] Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, that's after the break. It was 2020, and Allen had filed for full custody of O. The case was stalled because of COVID. Priscilla's American lawyer had filed her case under the Hague Convention, but this too was on hold now. They both waited, Priscilla and Zobabeh, temporarily relieved from her nightmare sequence of struggles, and Allen in Massachusetts, perhaps frustrated by being unable to pursue his custody claims. 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? This 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 Allen and Nana and Oh visiting frequently. My dad got an oyster license. Oh became an oyster enthusiast. We all got closer. The rest of the world receded. In the summer of 2021, Priscilla got word that her Hague petition was finally scheduled for a hearing in US District Court in Boston. Priscilla's lawyer arranged for a visa and raised the money to get Priscilla to the US. It had been two years since Allen took over from Russia.

Speaker 3:
[27:52] So when was your court date?

Speaker 2:
[27:54] It was on the 3rd of August, I arrived on the 1st of August. And I think Allen was very surprised to see me.

Speaker 1:
[28:07] The lawyer had warned her that the Hague Convention case would take weeks or months. And now she also had to deal with Allen's custody case in family court. It will all surely drag on. But to Priscilla, just coming to the US felt like a victory. 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 excited for his new adventure in America. But then he began asking her when she was coming to get him. These conversations got too hard. Once Priscilla was back in Zimbabwe, she decided, as she said to me, 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 next. I had met Priscilla only a couple of times before all of this started. Once was in 2018, just a year before Allen left Russia with O. Allen, O and Priscilla came to visit New York. Allen was running around with wads of cash, really stacks of cash. From what I understood, he had spent a decade and a half living in cash economies, and now he was trying to reestablish himself as a financial citizen of the United States. He was opening bank accounts and brandishing shiny new debit cards like they were some sort of achievement. I remember Priscilla looked a little lost, as did Oh, who never left her side. It was Priscilla's first time in the US. Back then, I didn't think much of any of this. Not about Allen's general agitation or his apparent indifference to the way his wife and child spend their time on a family trip while he was busy. I noticed that Oh 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 eight, and more than a quarter of his life had passed without Priscilla. When did you see him for the first time?

Speaker 2:
[30:00] 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 while.

Speaker 1:
[30:22] Can you describe that meeting? I mean, you had to meet outside.

Speaker 3:
[30:26] I think, right?

Speaker 2:
[30:28] We met at a little tea house in the town where Allen was living. Concord is called Concord Tea Cakes, actually. So he was sitting outside. I saw him sitting there and he was sitting by himself. Allen was inside the shop. When I approached him, I could actually see that he was shaking. He just seemed so small and so scared.

Speaker 1:
[31:01] What had her little boy been thinking for the past two years? Why did he think his mother wasn't with him? What had Allen told him? Oh, knew that Priscilla had been in prison. What other stories about her had taken hold in his mind?

Speaker 2:
[31:14] And I kind of felt, I felt hopeless in a way, you know? I just said hi. I didn't try to touch him because I could tell that he was scared. So I just said hi. And then I just sat next to him and I let him kind of come to me.

Speaker 3:
[31:36] Do you remember anything he said to you?

Speaker 2:
[31:39] 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?

Speaker 1:
[31:51] I said, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[31:53] They make it in Zimbabwe. 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 water. 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 way they were, if you could remember simple things like that.

Speaker 3:
[32:17] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[32:20] 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 consent. 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 racism. 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 awkward. O was this new kid now, a kid who wore fedoras and brogues and had a pension for old movies. L was in every way his opposite, plump, boisterous. Her English was spotty, but this didn't 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 L, Priscilla was getting to know O, and on December 20th, finally, the federal judge ruled in the Hague Convention case. He didn't hand Priscilla an outright victory, but he wrote in his decision that Allen had brought O to Massachusetts without his mother's consent. 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 worried. Allen had withdrawn his custody lawsuit from family court.

Speaker 2:
[33:55] And she was like, Priscilla, when was the last time you spoke to O? 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 Allen?

Speaker 1:
[34:06] She had not. O was supposed to be at school, but he was not. When Priscilla called, the school told her that Allen had told him in the morning that O was sick.

Speaker 2:
[34:16] I immediately started trying to call O on his tablet. He picked up and then cut off right away. And then I tried to call again. Tablet was off. Then I tried to call Allen. He wasn't picking up. I texted him. And he was like, he will message me back later. And I said to him, I'm supposed to pick up O 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 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 away.

Speaker 1:
[34:56] Priscilla worried the court was going to close soon. Her lawyer had to hustle too.

Speaker 2:
[35:01] She quickly drafted some documents, some emergency orders, and an affidavit. And she drove like the wind. And at that time, you know, they're closing up, and 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 border authorities to stop him, if they see him.

Speaker 1:
[35:44] Now someone had to make sure Allen knew the stop order existed. The police had gone to his house. No one was home, of course. Priscilla says Allen had blocked Priscilla's number, and he had fired his lawyer.

Speaker 2:
[35:56] I was just totally delirious throughout this whole thing. But Abigail, my lawyer, kept saying, Priscilla, think, think.

Speaker 1:
[36:01] 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 by WhatsApp. Within minutes, two blue check marks appeared indicating that Allen had read the message. His response, she says he blocked her old Zimbabwean number too. Priscilla had spent two and a half years trying to get her son back and he was gone again.

Speaker 2:
[36:34] So the investigator who was in charge of the case in Concord started calling, calling, calling, calling, calling Allen. Allen wouldn't respond, then he left him a voicemail saying that he was going to call the FBI if he didn't answer. Allen immediately called him back. I actually have an email that Allen sent him. Do you want me to show it to you?

Speaker 1:
[36:52] Of course I do.

Speaker 2:
[36:55] So yes, here is the email. Dear Sergeant Yang, would you like to read it?

Speaker 1:
[37:01] Sure. Thank you for your call earlier today. I would like to clarify a few items.

Speaker 3:
[37:10] First, Attorney Wendy Hickey was...

Speaker 1:
[37:13] This was a remarkable document. Allen acknowledged that the detective had advised him to communicate through his lawyer. But he was determined to make his case. According to him, this was not a kidnapping. They have a home in Massachusetts, Allen's email explained. O studied his 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 had been too much litigation, not good for the kids. He was just taking care of things. So yes, in case you missed it, Allen acknowledged that he had taken O out of the country. But surely the police detective would understand. The police detective who was investigating this is a case of possible kidnapping. Oh my god, there's more. Page two. You can imagine my distress and disbelief when an Axe-Barté order, of which I know very little, tells me to surrender my son to an unknown fate. To the extent that you have free time and interest, all of this has extensive documentary support. Allen wrote that Elle, who was with Priscilla, was not doing as well as O. She had moved eight times in the past two and a half years. Her mother had been arrested on drug charges. And the baby had even spent time in prison with her mother. Right. Allen was using what Priscilla had had to go through in Zimbabwe to paint her as an irresponsible, unfit parent. As a parent to a parent, you try to protect your kids from harm. Please feel free to call or write with any inquiries. Kind regards, Allen.

Speaker 3:
[38:44] Wow. Would you like to interpret this?

Speaker 2:
[38:51] Remember those stories that I told you, he's so excellent at weaving. This is another, this is a classical example of that story. If you're an outsider reading this, it sounds plausible. It sounds actually very logical. 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. Without the facts.

Speaker 1:
[39:22] 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. It seems so stupid, so ham-fisted, so delusional, that the only logical explanation I could think of for this illogical approach is that Allen actually believed that he didn't kidnap Owen. Maybe he, for one, believed himself. To Priscilla, the most frightening thing about the letter was that Allen clearly had no intention of coming back anytime soon. After the frenzy of trying to get the court order and reach Allen, and after this email, she could only wait. Christmas came and went, then New Year's, and still they were gone. It turns out that Liana and Allen and Oh spent a couple of weeks vacationing in Canada, staying at a fancy hotel, skiing. Then they headed to the Montreal Airport. They had tickets to London. From the time the three of them entered the Trudeau International Airport, law enforcement were tracking them. When Allen, Liana and Oh tried to board, the agent told them to wait by the gate. 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 nowhere. One officer came up from behind and lifted Oh up in the air, straight out of his seat and over the back. Another got in front of Liana, blocking her access to Allen and Oh. And the rest of them slammed Allen on the ground and handcuffed him. There was a lot of yelling. On the ground, on the ground was what Oh remembered hearing. Then the officers led Oh away. His dad was lying on the ground face down, his grandma was screaming too, and trying to hand him things. The officers let him take the violin. Now, whenever the subject of Canada comes up, O says that he had a wonderful vacation there and loved the snow. He never mentions what happened at the airport, and I don't want to ask him. But from what I can gather, he must have been very upset, terrified for his dad. The officers took him to see Allen 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.

Speaker 2:
[41:59] And so he was in foster care for two nights, and I spoke to him on the phone, but he was just being, just acting like a happy normal kid, but he wasn't eating. That's what the woman who was taking care of him told me. She's like, he's acting like he's okay, but he's not eating.

Speaker 1:
[42:18] Priscilla didn't have a Canadian visa, so she couldn't just fly to Montreal to pick up O 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 music. They just drove. 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 swap. Priscilla says O was his chipper and amiable self until they got into the car.

Speaker 2:
[42:52] As soon as we closed the door, he just started talking. It's like he erupted. And he just started talking and crying and explaining to me what had happened. And he asked me why it had to happen. And then he asked me if I had sent them, because Allen told him that I was the one who was trying to get him.

Speaker 1:
[43:16] The subtext, of course, was that it was Priscilla who had called the police who arrested Allen.

Speaker 2:
[43:21] 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 school, 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 corner. 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 going to be on timeout.

Speaker 1:
[44:02] I'm trying to imagine this. They're driving away from the Canadian border. It's snowing. Priscilla is exhausted. She's sick with COVID too. She spent the last two and a half weeks trying to find her child again, because Allen has taken him again. After all Priscilla went through, first in Russia, and then in Zimbabwe. But this drive marks a turning point. Oh is in the car with Priscilla, and Allen is in detention in Canada. 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 fact, after Allen has so grossly violated their temporary custody agreement, Priscilla now has full legal and physical custody of Oh. And I'm trying to imagine, 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 had broken the rules, like in school. I suppose Priscilla expected Allen to be in the kids' lives after this, despite all he had done. But then, six months later, when Allen was arrested for hiring someone to murder her, she continued taking uncanny care with the way she talked to the kids. She said that he was arrested because he broke the rules again. And almost a year later, when we were talking in her little house, she still hadn't told the kids that Allen had tried to have her killed. Part of it was that she hadn't figured out a way to talk about it, that wouldn't scare the kids. But that wasn't all of it. Priscilla told me that she wasn't only protecting the kids.

Speaker 2:
[45:39] The one thing that you also need to know is I don't hate Allen. 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 feeling. I feel sorry for him because I feel like it takes a certain level of sadness or deep, like very, very, very deep unhappiness with yourself or with who you are to allow yourself to do certain things, to care so little about the outcome of, or like for you to be evil, you cannot think very highly of yourself. And I think you probably suffer more as an evil person, knowing who you are and the things that you are capable of, and having to live with that in your mind every day.

Speaker 3:
[46:50] That is some unattainable level of big for me.

Speaker 2:
[46:59] It's so hard to explain. It is so hard to explain, but this is how I genuinely feel.

Speaker 1:
[47:08] I've tried to understand how she can feel that way towards someone who tried to have her killed. I thought maybe she still 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 true, that some explanation would emerge that would make her feel a little saner and safer. I think most of my family was hoping for some version of this too. Some piece of evidence that wouldn't exonerate Allen necessarily, but would make what he had done seem a little less horrible. All that wishful thinking seemed like nonsense to me, honestly. I figured the one thing that would put an end to it was Allen's trial. That's next time on The Idiot. The Idiot was reported and written by me, M. Gessen, and produced by Daniel Guillenet, but Andrei Barzienze and Liko Kremer of LibreLibo Studios. Our editor is Julie Snyder. Additional editing by Ira Glass and Sarah Keeney. Research and fact checking by Ben Phelan and Marisa Robertson-Texter. Original score by Allison Leighton-Brown. Additional music from Dan Powell and Marian Lozanoff. The show was mixed by Phoebe Wang with additional mixing by Katherine Anderson. Additional production by Fieh Benham. At Serial Productions, Andrei Chubu is our supervising producer. Mac Miller is our associate producer. Video production by Sean Duveini. Art direction from Kelly Doe.

Speaker 3:
[48:51] Art by Jung Fern.

Speaker 1:
[48:52] Credits music by Bob Dylan. At The New York Times, our standards editor is Susan Wesley. Legal review by Alamin Soumar.

Speaker 3:
[49:00] Dana Green, Jackson Bush, and Tim Tai.

Speaker 1:
[49:02] Our senior operations manager is Elizabeth Davis-Morner. And Sam Dolnik is deputy managing editor of The New York Times. Special thanks to Catherine Fenellosa, Suzanne Bennett, Nina Lawson, Maddie Marcello, Nick Bittman, Kyle Grandillo, Nancy Obdek, Corey Beach, James Thatcher, Pablo Delcon, Dominique Bodden, Brian Rideout, Stowe Nelson, Susan Beachy, Annabel Davis, Jeffrey Moyne, and Anthony Roman. The Idiot is a production of Serial Productions and The New York Times.