July 12th, 2023.6:47 p.m.Chicago, Illinois.

Cassandra Vale sat in her wheelchair by the window of her thirdf flooror apartment.

She wore a blue dress she had ordered online 3 weeks ago.

Candles flickered on the dining table behind her.

Soft jazz floated from a small speaker.

The scent of roasted chicken filled the air.

She had been waiting for this moment for 18 months.

Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

She pressed them against her lap, took a breath, and watched the street below.

“Any minute now, any second.

” The buzzer sounded.

Her heart slammed against her ribs.

She wheeled herself to the intercom and pressed the button.

“It’s me, Alexis.

” His voice, the same voice that had whispered, “Good night to her through a screen for 547 days.

The same voice that had promised her a future, a second chance.

She buzzed him in, listened to his footsteps climbing the stairs, counted each one.

12 steps to the second floor, 12 more to hers.

The knock came.

She smoothed her dress, took one last breath, and opened the door.

For a single second, everything was perfect.

He stood there, tall and handsome, exactly like his photos.

His lips curved into a smile.

Then his eyes dropped to the wheelchair.

The smile froze.

His gaze stayed fixed on the chair for three long seconds.

When he looked back up at her face, something had changed.

Something cold flickered behind his eyes.

You’re in a wheelchair.

Not a question, not concern, a statement, an accusation.

Alexis, I can explain.

He stepped inside.

closed the door behind him and locked it.

In that moment, Cassandra Vale understood something she had been too hopeful to see for 18 months.

She had not invited love into her home.

She had invited her own death.

What happened inside that apartment over the next 4 hours would leave investigators horrified, a family destroyed, and an entire community asking one haunting question.

How did no one see this coming? Welcome to True Crime Story 247.

Thanks to all my viewers and subscribers for your continued support.

Stay tuned for daily true crime stories.

Don’t forget to subscribe and drop a comment below telling me where you’re watching from tonight.

But to understand how a 53-year-old widow ended up murdered in her own apartment by the man she believed was her soulmate, we need to go back back to the car accident that stole her legs.

back to the husband she buried.

Back to the loneliness that made her desperate.

And back to the very first message that made her believe love was possible again.

That message would be the beginning of the end.

Cassandra Marie Vale came into this world on September 3rd, 1970 in a cramped apartment on Chicago’s Southside.

The walls were thin and the radiator clanked through winter nights.

But there was love in that home.

More love than money, which was the only kind of wealth her parents knew how to give.

Her father, Leonard, drove a delivery truck 6 days a week.

He left before sunrise and came home after dark, his hands cracked from loading and unloading boxes in weather that didn’t care about his comfort.

Her mother, Dolores, cleaned offices for wealthy families in neighborhoods they could never afford to live in.

She scrubbed toilets and polished floors and smiled at people who never learned her last name.

They never complained.

Not once.

They worked because that’s what you did when you had three children and no safety net.

You worked until your body gave out and then you worked some more.

Cassandra was the middle child, the quiet one.

While her older brother chased girls and her younger sister chased popularity, Cassandra chased something else entirely.

Stories.

She read everything she could find.

library books, newspapers left on the bus, novels her teachers lent her when they noticed the hunger in her eyes.

She devoured romance and mystery and tragedy, living a thousand lives through pages while her real life stayed small and predictable.

She believed in happy endings.

She believed love conquered all.

She believed that if you were good and kind and patient, the universe would reward you.

She was wrong about all of it, but she wouldn’t learn that for decades.

At 24, Cassandra married Elas Vale.

He wasn’t handsome in the way movie stars were handsome.

He wasn’t rich.

He wasn’t flashy.

He was an electrician with calloused hands and a quiet laugh and eyes that crinkled when he smiled.

But when he looked at her, she felt seen.

Truly seen.

Not as Leonard and Dolores’s middle daughter.

Not as the quiet girl from the south side, but as Cassandra, the woman she was still becoming.

“I’m going to spend the rest of my life making you happy,” he told her on their wedding night.

“That’s the only plan I’ve ever needed.

” He meant at every word.

For 20 years, they built something beautiful together.

A small apartment that became a home.

inside jokes that only they understood, a rhythm of ordinary days and that added up to an extraordinary life.

They tried for children.

Cassandra wanted them desperately, a daughter she could read to, a son who would have Elias’s gentle eyes.

But her body had other plans.

The first miscarriage came in 2001.

Early, unexpected, devastating.

The second came in 2003.

further along.

Worse in every way.

After that, they stopped trying.

The grief was too heavy to carry and still hope for more.

“It’s okay,” Elias told her on the nights she cried.

“We have each other.

That’s enough.

That’s always been enough.

” And somehow, because he said it, she believed it.

Then came March 14th, 2016, a rainy Tuesday.

Nothing special about it.

Cassandra had spent the afternoon grading papers at the high school where she taught English.

She stopped at the grocery store on her way home, picked up ingredients for Elias’s favorite meal.

Pot roast with carrots and potatoes, the way his mother used to make it.

She was thinking about dinner when she pulled through the intersection at Ashland in 47th.

She never saw the other car.

a drunk driver, 32 years old, three times over the legal limit at 4:30 in the afternoon.

He ran the red light at 50 mph and slammed into her driver’s side door with the force of a freight train.

Cassandra’s world went black.

She woke up 3 days later in the ICU.

Machines beeped around her.

Tubes ran into her arms.

And Elias sat beside her bed holding her hand, his eyes red from crying.

“What happened?” she whispered.

He couldn’t answer.

He just squeezed her hand tighter.

The doctors delivered the news with the practice sympathy of people who had done this too many times.

Her spinal cord had been damaged in the impact.

The injury was at the T10 vertebrae, complete.

She would never walk again.

Cassandra was 46 years old.

In the span of one terrible moment, a moment she couldn’t even remember, her body had become a cage.

The weeks that followed were the darkest of her life.

She lay in hospital beds and rehabilitation centers staring at ceilings, wondering what she had done to deserve this.

She had been good.

She had been kind.

She had followed every rule.

And this was her reward.

But Elias never wavered.

Not once.

He learned how to help her transfer from bed to wheelchair.

He modified their apartment, installing grab bars and ramps and a shower seat.

He held her on the nights she screamed at God.

And on the nights she was too broken to make any sound at all.

We’ll get through this, he told her together, the way we’ve gotten through everything else.

She didn’t believe him.

Not at first.

But slowly, painfully, she started to because Alas had never lied to her.

Not in 20 years.

If he said they would survive this, then maybe they would.

They did survive.

For almost 2 years, they built a new kind of normal.

Smaller, harder, but still theirs.

Then came February 8th, 2018.

A cold Thursday morning.

Cassandra was in the bedroom doing her morning stretches the way the physical therapist had taught her.

Elias was in the kitchen making coffee.

She heard him fall.

Not a crash, not a scream, just a heavy thud like a bag of sand hitting the floor.

Elias.

No answer.

She wheeled herself out of the bedroom as fast as her arms could push.

Found him on the kitchen floor, face down, not moving.

Elias.

She tried to reach him, tried to turn him over, but her body wouldn’t cooperate.

Her wheelchair wouldn’t let her get close enough.

She couldn’t kneel, couldn’t bend, couldn’t do the one thing that might save the man she loved.

She called 911 with shaking hands, screamed the address into the phone, tried to remember CPR, tried to do something, anything, while she waited for help that felt like it would never come.

The paramedics arrived in 7 minutes.

It might as well have been 7 years.

Elias Vale was pronounced dead at 7:23 a.

m.

Massive heart attack.

Instant.

They told her he didn’t suffer.

As if that was supposed to help.

Cassandra was 48 years old, widowed, paralyzed, completely alone.

Friends would later describe the years that followed as a slow disappearance.

Cassandra stopped returning phone calls, stopped attending church, stopped doing anything except the bare minimum required to stay alive.

Her sister Meera visited every Sunday, bringing groceries and forcing conversations that went nowhere.

She cleaned the apartment while Cassandra stared out the window.

She made meals that sat untouched in the refrigerator.

“She was just existing,” Meera would later tell investigators, her voice breaking.

Not living, just existing.

Just like she was waiting for something.

I think she was waiting to feel alive again.

Or maybe she was just waiting to die.

For four years, Cassandra waited, alone in an apartment full of memories, surrounded by photos of the man she had lost and the life she would never get back.

Then came January 2022, a sleepless night, 3:00 a.

m.

Cassandra lay in bed staring at the ceiling the way she had stared at a thousand ceilings since the accident.

Her phone glowed on the nightstand.

She picked it up, started scrolling, and somehow through the fog of insomnia and loneliness, she found herself downloading an app she had heard about on television, HeartLink, a dating app for people over 40.

She told herself she was just curious, just looking, just passing time, until sleep finally came.

She created a profile, uploaded photos from before the accident, photos where she was standing at Elias’s company picnic, walking through Grant Park on a summer afternoon.

Whole.

She didn’t mention the wheelchair.

It wasn’t deception, not really.

It was protection.

She had tried online dating once before, right after Elias died.

A moment of weakness, a desperate grasp at connection.

She had been honest then.

put everything in her profile.

The accident, the disability, the wheelchair.

The results were devastating.

Men who had seemed interested vanished the moment they learned the truth.

Conversations that had been warm and promising went cold mid-sentence.

She was ghosted so many times she lost count.

One man had the cruelty to be direct.

Sorry, he wrote.

I’m not looking to be someone’s caretaker.

So this time, Cassandra decided to do things differently.

She would lead with who she was, the teacher, the reader, the woman who still believed in love despite everything life had thrown at her.

She would tell the right person about the chair eventually.

When it felt safe, when she knew they saw her first.

When she was certain they wouldn’t run.

That decision would cost her everything.

If you’re already feeling drawn into Cassandra’s story, take a moment to hit that like button and subscribe.

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Now, let’s continue.

His name was Alexis Thorne.

At least that’s what his profile said.

35 years old entrepreneur based in Miami, divorced, no children, looking for something real with someone who understood that life doesn’t always go according to plan.

His photo showed a handsome man with dark hair and kind eyes, the kind of eyes that seem to hold secrets and sorrows and depth.

His bio quoted Hemingway, “The world breaks everyone and afterward some are strong at the broken places.

” Cassandra loved Hemingway, had taught him for 15 years, had underlined that exact quote in her own worn copy of A Farewell to Arms.

She swiped right.

He messaged her within the hour.

I see you’re a Hemingway fan, too.

What’s your favorite? She replied without hesitation.

The sun also rises.

You for whom the bell tolls, though I’ll admit, a farewell to arms destroyed me.

And just like that, they were talking.

The messages started slowly.

Safe topics, books, movies, music, the kind of small talk strangers make when they’re testing the waters.

But within weeks, the conversations deepened.

They talked every day, then every hour, then all the time, messages pinging back and forth like a heartbeat she had forgotten she needed.

By March, they were video calling every night.

Alexis always had an excuse for the camera angle.

work stress, bad lighting in his hotel room, spotty Wi-Fi during his business trips.

The image was grainy, pixelated, but she could see enough.

The dark hair, the kind smile, the way he leaned toward the screen like he was trying to get closer to her.

She didn’t think twice about it.

She was too busy falling.

He shared his wounds with her.

A childhood in foster care, bounced between families who never quite wanted him.

A marriage that ended when his wife cheated with his business partner.

Years of building something from nothing only to watch it crumble.

She shared hers the accident, the years in the wheelchair, the husband she had buried, the loneliness that felt like drowning in a room full of air.

“I’ve never felt this connected to anyone,” she texted him one April evening in 2022.

“You see me?” “I see all of you,” he replied.

“And I’m not going anywhere.

” She cried when she read those words.

Actual tears streaming down her face in the dark of her bedroom.

Someone saw her.

Someone understood.

Someone wasn’t going to leave.

She had no idea those words were part of a script.

A script he had used on six other women.

A script designed to do exactly what it was doing.

Make her trust him completely.

The first request came in June 2022.

I’m embarrassed to even ask,” Alexa said during a video call, his face tight with what looked like shame.

“But I had an investor pull out at the last minute.

A deal I’ve been working on for months.

I’m $500 short of making payroll this week.

” “I can help,” Cassandra said immediately.

“No, I couldn’t ask you to.

You’re not asking.

I’m offering.

” She wired the money within the hour.

$500.

It felt good to help.

It felt good to be needed.

He paid her back two weeks later.

Every penny.

She felt foolish for even worrying.

The second request came in October.

His mother needed emergency surgery.

A hip replacement.

Insurance wouldn’t cover all of it.

He was $2,000 short.

“I hate this,” he said, his voice cracking.

“I hate that I can’t take care of my own family.

” “Let me help,” she that that’s what partners do.

She sent the money and he thanked her with tears in his eyes.

He promised to pay her back as soon as his next deal closed.

He never mentioned paying her back again.

The third request came in December.

An investment opportunity.

A sure thing, he said.

Double their money in 6 months.

All he needed was 5,000 to get started.

This is our future, Cassandra.

This is how I’m going to take care of you.

She sent it.

every dollar.

By summer 2023, Cassandra had wired Alexis Thorne over $18,000.

Money from Elias’s life insurance policy, money from her retirement savings, money she couldn’t afford to lose.

Her daughter Emily, from a brief relationship before Elias, called her in July with concern in her voice.

Mom, something feels wrong.

Why hasn’t he visited you? Why haven’t you met in person? He’s busy.

He’s building something for our future.

Have you told him about the wheelchair? Silence.

Mom, I’ll tell him when the time is right.

Emily’s voice softened.

Mom, if he really loves you, it shouldn’t matter.

I know.

I know it shouldn’t.

But people are cruel, Emily.

You don’t know how cruel they can be.

Then maybe he’s not the right person.

He is.

I know he is.

The time to tell him would never be right.

because there would never be enough time.

In May 2023, Alexis proposed they finally meet in person.

Cassandra’s heart soared when she read the message.

Then it sank into her stomach like a stone.

She still hadn’t told him.

She started to type the truth a dozen times.

Sat staring at her phone, cursor blinking, fingers frozen.

Deleted every attempt before she could hit send.

Finally, she made a decision.

She would tell him in person, face to face.

She would explain why she had waited.

She would make him understand that the chair didn’t change who she was.

He loved her.

He would understand.

He had to.

I want to see your world, Alexis said when they discussed the details.

I want to see where you live, where you dream, where we’re going to build our life together.

She agreed.

Set the date.

July 12th to 2023.

For 6 weeks, Cassandra prepared.

She cleaned her apartment until it sparkled, bought new clothes, had her hair done for the first time in years, practiced her confession in the mirror until the words stopped shaking.

There’s something I need to tell you.

Um, I was in an accident.

I use a wheelchair now.

I should have told you sooner, but I was scared.

I was scared you would leave.

She whispered it to herself every night, believing that when she finally said it out loud, everything would be okay.

She had no idea she was practicing for a confession that would never be heard.

She had no idea she was preparing for her own murder.

July 10th, 2023, 2 days before everything ended.

Ruth Patterson had lived in the apartment next to Cassandra’s for 11 years.

She had watched her neighbor go through the accident, the rehabilitation, the funeral.

She had seen the light go out of Cassandra’s eyes and stay out for longer than anyone should have to endure.

But that Tuesday morning, something was different.

Ruth was checking her mailbox in the lobby when Cassandra wheeled past, humming.

Actually, humming a song Ruth didn’t recognize.

Something soft and hopeful.

Good morning, Ruth.

Ruth nearly dropped her electric bill.

Cassandra was smiling, not the polite empty smile she had worn like armor for the past four years.

A real smile, the kind that reached her eyes and made her whole face look younger.

Cassandra, you seem different today.

I feel different.

Cassandra’s cheeks flushed pink.

I’m meeting someone, someone special.

He’s flying in from Miami on Thursday.

Ruth would later tell police about this conversation.

She would sit in an interrogation room with coffee going cold in her hands, replaying every word.

She was glowing, Ruth said, her voice cracking.

I hadn’t seen her smile like that since before her husband died.

She told me she was finally going to meet the love of her life.

I was happy for her.

God help me.

I was so happy for her.

Ruth asked if Cassandra needed help preparing the apartment.

Cassandra declined.

She wanted everything to be perfect, personal, intimate.

This is something I need to do myself, she said.

But thank you for everything for all these years.

Ruth didn’t know why those words felt like a goodbye.

She wouldn’t understand until much later.

That afternoon, Cassandra made a list.

She wrote it by hand on a yellow legal pad, the same kind she had used for lesson plans during her teaching years.

Flowers, lilies, his favorite wine.

Something expensive.

We’re celebrating dinner.

Pot roast.

The recipe from mom candles.

The vanilla ones from the bedroom music.

Jazz playlist.

The one he likes dress.

The blue one.

It makes my eyes look bright.

She spent $300 she couldn’t afford on flowers and wine and groceries.

She cleaned the apartment until her arms achd from pushing herself back and forth across the hardwood floors.

She dusted picture frames and scrubbed baseboards and organized closets that no one would ever see.

She wanted everything to be perfect because after Thursday, everything would be different.

After Thursday, she wouldn’t be alone anymore.

The night of July 11th, Cassandra barely slept.

She lay in bed staring at the ceiling, the same ceiling she had stared at for 4 years of lonely nights.

But tonight, the loneliness felt temporary.

Tonight, she could see the end of it.

She rehearsed her confession in the darkness.

“I need to tell you something.

I was in an accident.

I use a wheelchair now.

I should have told you sooner, but I was scared.

I was scared you would leave.

” She whispered it over and over until the words stopped shaking.

Until they felt almost natural until she could almost believe they wouldn’t destroy everything.

At 3:00 a.

m.

, she finally drifted into a restless sleep.

She dreamed of walking, of running, of dancing with Alexis in a kitchen that looked like her mother’s.

She woke at dawn with tears on her pillow and hope in her chest.

In 14 hours, that hope would be dead.

And so would she.

July 12th, 2023, the day of the arrival.

Cassandra was awake before sunrise.

She showered with extra care using the expensive shampoo she had been saving for a special occasion.

She dried her hair and actually styled it, something she hadn’t bothered with in years.

She applied makeup for the first time since Elias’s funeral.

The woman in the mirror looked almost like her old self, almost like the woman in the photo she had posted on Heartlink, almost whole.

At 10:00 a.

m.

, she started cooking.

The pot roast took hours.

She wanted the apartment to smell like home when he arrived, like comfort, like the future they were going to build together.

At noon, her phone buzzed.

Boarding now.

See you soon, beautiful.

Her heart stuttered.

This was real.

This was actually happening.

She texted back with trembling fingers.

Can’t wait.

I have so much to tell you.

She meant the wheelchair, the confession she had been rehearsing.

the truth she should have told him 18 months ago.

She didn’t know that 2,000 mi away, a man named Derek Allen Wells was sliding her message into a folder labeled current investments alongside conversations with five other women.

She didn’t know that he was annoyed.

The flight had been delayed by 2 hours.

He had spent the layover in Atlanta checking his other targets.

Two of them were getting suspicious.

One had started asking questions about why they hadn’t met in person yet.

Another had mentioned talking to her adult son about him.

He needed this trip to pay off.

He needed Cassandra to deliver.

The flight landed at O’Hare International Airport at 2:15 p.

m.

11 minutes late.

Alexis Derek collected his carry-on bag and walked through the terminal with the easy confidence of a man who had done this before because he had dozens of times different cities, different women, different names.

He checked his phone, a message from Cassandra.

Just checking if you landed safe.

He typed back, “Just landed.

Can’t wait to see you.

” He didn’t feel anticipation.

He felt calculation.

$18,000 so far.

She had mentioned a life insurance policy from her husband, retirement savings, maybe equity in the apartment if she owned it.

He could stretch this for another 6 months if he played it right, maybe a year.

He took an Uber to her address, watched the Chicago skyline pass through the window, checked his reflection in his phone’s camera, practiced the smile he had perfected over years of deception.

The Uber dropped him at a brick apartment building on a quiet street.

Workingass neighborhood, clean but not wealthy.

He noted the lack of a dorman.

No security cameras in the lobby.

Good.

He stood outside for a moment, rolled his shoulders, became Alexis Thorne, the entrepreneur from Miami who quoted Hemingway and promised forever.

Then he walked inside.

The stairs creaked under his feet as he climbed to the third floor.

He counted the steps without thinking about it.

12 to the second floor.

12 more to the third.

Apartment 3B.

He knocked.

He heard movement inside.

The soft horror of wheels on hardwood.

Wheels.

The door opened.

For one second, everything was perfect.

She was there.

Cassandra, the woman from the photos, older than she looked online, but they always were wearing a blue dress that matched her eyes, smiling with so much hope it was almost painful to see.

Then his eyes dropped.

The wheelchair.

He felt his smile freeze on his face, his carefully constructed expression locked in place while his mind raced.

Wheelchair.

She was in a wheelchair.

18 months of messages and calls, and she had never once mentioned a wheelchair.

His eyes traveled down the metal frame, the footrests, the wheels that had carried her to this door.

When he looked back up at her face, her smile had faltered.

She had seen the change in his expression.

“You’re in a wheelchair.

” The words came out flat, accusatory, nothing like the warm voice he had used in their calls.

Alexis, I can explain.

Can I come in? She nodded, wheeling backward to make room.

He stepped inside, closed the door behind him, locked it.

The click of the deadbolt was loud in the sudden silence.

Cassandra’s apartment was exactly what he had expected.

Small, clean, filled with the artifacts of a lonely life.

Photos of a man who must have been the dead husband.

Bookshelves overflowing with novels.

A dining table set for two.

Candles flickering.

Dinner waiting.

She had prepared for a romantic evening.

She had no idea what was about to happen.

You’ve been lying to me,” he said.

His voice had changed.

“Colder, harder.

” The mask was slipping and he hadn’t decided yet whether to put it back on.

“No, I just I was going to tell you to for 18 months, Cassandra, 18 months of talking every day, video calls.

I thought I knew everything about you.

” He gestured at the wheelchair, and you hid this.

I was scared.

Her voice broke.

I was scared you would leave if you knew.

I tried to tell you so many times, but I couldn’t find the words.

He stood over her, looking down.

The power dynamic was obvious, intentional.

He liked how small she looked from this angle.

You were scared, he repeated.

So, you lied.

It wasn’t a lie.

I just I wanted you to see me first.

The real me before you saw the chair.

The real you is in the chair, Cassandra.

That’s the reality you hid from me.

Tears were streaming down her face now.

The romantic dinner she had prepared sat untouched.

The candle she had lit with such hope flickered in the growing darkness.

I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry, but I’m still the same person you’ve been talking to.

The chair doesn’t change who I am.

He stared at her for a long moment.

She watched his face, searching for the warmth she knew from their calls.

The kindness she had fallen in love with.

She didn’t find it.

What she found instead is something she had never seen before.

Something that had been hidden behind careful camera angles and practiced expressions and a voice that knew exactly what she wanted to hear.

Contempt.

Here’s a question for you.

What do you do when you realize the person you trusted most has been looking at you like a problem to be solved? For the next hour, the man Cassandra knew as Alexis dropped every pretense.

He moved through her apartment with the efficiency of someone taking inventory, opening drawers, checking closets, lifting cushions.

He wasn’t looking at her anymore.

He was looking at her things.

Where’s your laptop? Cassandra blinked, confused by the sudden shift.

What? Your computer? Where do you keep it? In the bedroom on the desk.

Alexis, what’s happening? What are you doing? He didn’t answer.

Just walked to the bedroom and returned with her laptop under his arm.

Password.

Alexis.

Password.

Cassandra.

His voice was different now.

No warmth, no charm, just cold efficiency.

Lis Marie 95, she whispered.

their wedding date, a password she had never changed because changing it felt like letting go.

He sat down at her dining table, pushing aside the romantic dinner she had spent hours preparing.

He opened the laptop and started typing.

What are you doing? Checking the accounts.

What accounts? He looked up at her with something like amusement, like she had told a joke that wasn’t quite funny enough to laugh at.

You really don’t understand yet, do you? She shook her head.

She didn’t.

She couldn’t.

Her mind was still trying to reconcile the man in front of her with the man she had been talking to for 18 months.

Let me explain something to you.

He leaned back in the chair.

Her chair, Elias’s chair, the chair where her husband used to sit for dinner.

Do you know how much money you’ve sent me over the past year and a half? Cassandra’s stomach dropped.

What? 18,247.

I keep very careful records.

He turned the laptop to show her a spreadsheet, column after column of dates and amounts.

Her name was at the top.

Below it, other names she didn’t recognize.

You’re actually one of my better investments.

Most women tap out around 10,000.

The room tilted.

Cassandra gripped the arms of her wheelchair to keep from falling.

Investment.

That’s what you were.

That’s what all of you are.

He gestured at the spreadsheet.

Lonely women with money and no one to spend it on.

You fit the profile perfectly.

Widow, isolated, desperate for a connection.

He shrugged.

The wheelchair is new information, though.

That wasn’t in any of your social media profiles.

You You researched me? Of course I researched you.

I researched all of you.

How do you think I knew you loved Hemingway? How do you think I knew exactly what to say to make you trust me? Every conversation they had ever had began to replay in Cassandra’s mind.

Every shared interest, every perfect connection, every moment where he had seemed to understand her in ways no one else ever had.

All of it calculated, all of it designed.

You were an investment, he continued.

A good one.

But investments have to pay off eventually.

And you, he gestured at her wheelchair.

You just became a problem.

What do you mean a problem? He stood up, walked toward her slowly.

She wanted to wheel backward to put distance between them, but she was frozen in place.

The plan was simple.

Build trust, extract money, eventually fly out here, play the devoted boyfriend, and convince you to add me to your accounts.

Maybe even marry you for access to that life insurance policy you mentioned.

Widows are easy that way.

They want to believe someone loves them again.

He crouched down in front of her wheelchair, bringing his face level with hers.

But that plan requires a certain arrangement.

A woman who can walk.

A woman who can be seen with me in public.

A woman who doesn’t require special accommodations everywhere we go.

The cruelty of his words hit her like physical blows.

I’m not what you wanted.

You’re not what I can use.

There’s a difference.

He stood up again, looking down at her.

So now I have to figure out what to do with you.

You can just leave.

Take whatever’s in the accounts and go.

I won’t tell anyone.

He laughed.

That short ugly sound she would hear in her nightmares if she lived long enough to have them.

You won’t tell anyone.

You sent $18,000 to a stranger on the internet.

And you won’t tell anyone because you’re embarrassed.

You hid your wheelchair because you were ashamed of yourself.

You’re not going to go to the police and admit what happened here.

He was right.

She knew he was right.

The shame was already burning through her, hot and consuming.

So just go, she whispered.

Please, just leave me alone.

I will, but first we’re going to empty whatever’s left in your accounts, and then we’re going to discuss that life insurance policy.

For the next 2 hours, Alexis Thorne systematically dismantled every belief Cassandra had held about her life for the past 18 months.

He wasn’t an entrepreneur.

He was a professional romance scammer who had been doing this for almost a decade.

He wasn’t from Miami.

He moved constantly, staying a few months in each city, using coffee shops and hotels and Airbnbs as his office.

The mother who needed surgery, she had died when he was 12, ovarian cancer.

He had used her death in his scripts ever since, finding that sick parents generated the fastest sympathy.

The failed marriage, he had never been married.

The story was borrowed from a true crime documentary he had watched on a flight to Phoenix.

The business setbacks, there was no business.

There never had been.

His only business was this, finding lonely people and bleeding them dry.

You were number seven, he said casually, scrolling through his phone.

Out of the current batch, there were three others before you.

There will be others after.

Cassandra sat frozen in her wheelchair, unable to process what she was hearing.

The world she had constructed so carefully over the past 18 months was collapsing around her, and she couldn’t find solid ground.

Why are you telling me this? He looked up from his phone.

For a moment, something flickered in his eyes.

something that might have been human because it doesn’t matter anymore.

Those words would haunt the investigators who later reviewed this conversation.

They would play them over and over trying to understand exactly when Derek Allen Wells had decided that Cassandra Vil would not leave this apartment alive.

Let me show you something.

He sat down next to her close enough that she could smell his cologne.

The same cologne she had imagined on her pillow.

the same scent she had associated with safety and love and future.

He held up his phone, started scrolling through message threads.

This is Linda.

She’s 61, retired school teacher in Tampa.

She thinks I’m an investment banker working in Singapore.

He showed Cassandra the messages, heart emojis, pet names, plans for a future that would never happen.

She sent me $3,000 yesterday, her social security check.

He swiped to another conversation.

This is Margaret, 58, divorced, lives alone in a townhouse in Austin.

She thinks we’re getting married next spring.

She’s already bought a dress.

Another swipe.

This is Patricia, 49.

Her husband doesn’t know she’s been talking to me for 2 years.

She sent me almost $30,000 from their joint account.

When he finds out, their marriage is over.

But that’s not my problem.

Cassandra felt sick.

The pot roast she had spent hours preparing sat cold on the table.

The candles had burned down to stubs.

The jazz playlist had ended long ago, leaving only silence, and the sound of her own ragged breathing.

“Please,” she whispered.

“Just go.

Take what you want and go.

I won’t tell anyone.

I swear to God, I won’t say a word.

” He studied her face.

Really looked at her for the first time since he had walked through the door.

That’s the problem, Cassandra.

You’ve seen my face.

You know my name.

Well, one of my names.

And you? He gestured at her wheelchair.

You’re not exactly going to chase me down if I walk out that door.

I won’t tell anyone.

You keep saying that, but how can I trust you? You lied to me for 18 months about the wheelchair.

How do I know you won’t lie again? How do I know you won’t pick up the phone the second I leave and call the police? Because I’m ashamed.

The words tore out of her.

Because admitting what happened means admitting how stupid I was, how desperate, how pathetic.

Tears streamed down her face.

I can’t tell anyone about this.

I can’t let my daughter know.

I can’t let my sister know.

They humiliation would destroy me.

He nodded slowly.

That’s what I’m counting on.

But something had shifted in his expression.

A calculation behind his eyes that made Cassandra’s blood run cold.

The problem, he said slowly, is that shame fades.

Today, you’re embarrassed.

But 6 months from now, a year, you might decide that justice is more important than your pride, you might decide to talk.

I won’t.

I promise I won’t.

And I’m supposed to believe you.

The woman who lied to me for a year and a half.

That was different, was it? He leaned closer.

You hid something important from me because you thought it would make things easier.

Because you thought I wouldn’t find out.

Because you thought you could control the situation.

He stood up, walked to the window, looked out at the street below.

I do the same thing, Cassandra.

The only difference is I’m better at it.

Cassandra’s phone sat on the dining table just a few feet away.

If she could reach it, if she could dial 911, if she could get a message to someone, anyone.

She wheeled toward it as casually as she could manage.

Her hands trembling on the wheels, her heart pounding so loud she was sure he could hear it.

Don’t.

She froze.

He hadn’t even turned around.

He was still looking out the window, watching the street below.

Don’t, he repeated.

I can see your reflection in the glass and I can hear your chair moving.

The wheels squeak.

She stopped.

Her hand inches from the phone.

I was just You were just trying to call for help, which tells me everything I need to know about your promises.

He turned around, walked to the table, picked up her phone, and slid it into his pocket.

Let’s make this simple.

His voice had changed again.

Harder, more final.

You’re going to give me access to your accounts, all of them.

Whatever’s left.

There’s barely anything left.

I sent you everything I had.

Not everything.

You mentioned a life insurance policy from your husband.

That’s for my daughter.

When I die, she I don’t care about when you die.

I care about now.

You can cash out the policy early.

Take the penalty.

Transfer me the funds.

That’s $40,000.

That’s Emily’s future.

That’s $40,000.

That’s about to become my present.

Cassandra started crying.

Real sobs that shook her whole body.

Please, Alexis.

Please.

I’ll give you what’s in the accounts, but leave the insurance.

Leave something for my daughter.

He crouched down in front of her wheelchair again, looked into her eyes, and for one flickering moment, she saw something that might have been the man she thought she knew.

The man who quoted Hemingway, the man who promised her a future.

Then it was gone.

You should have told me about the chair, Cassandra.

Things could have been different.

Different? How? I would have ended this months ago before you got so attached.

Before you sent so much money, before you He paused, something like genuine emotion crossing his face.

Before you started to matter, I mattered.

He stood up, turned away.

When he spoke again, his voice was flat.

It doesn’t make a difference now.

The next hour passed in a blur of violation.

He made her log into her bank accounts, checking, savings, the small investment account she had started when Elias was alive.

He transferred everything to accounts she didn’t recognize.

Offshore, he said, untraceable.

He made her log into her retirement fund.

$47,000 she had been saving for two decades, gone in three clicks.

He found the small safe in her closet, made her give him the combination, took the $800 in emergency cash and the gold bracelet Elias had given her for their 10th anniversary.

All while she sat helpless in her chair, watching her life be dismantled, watching everything she had worked for disappear into the pockets of a man who had never existed.

“That’s everything,” she said when it was over.

That’s all I have.

He checked the accounts again, verified the transfers, nodded.

The life insurance policy.

I told you I can’t.

You can call the company tomorrow.

Take the early withdrawal.

Tell them you have a medical emergency.

They’ll process it in a few days.

And then what? You just leave.

He didn’t answer.

Just looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read.

Alexis, Derek, whatever your name is.

She was too exhausted to cry anymore, too hollowed out to feel anything except a dull spreading numbness.

What happens after I give you the insurance money? You go back to your life, I go to mine, and you never contact me again.

Why would I? You’ll be worthless to me, bled dry.

Nothing left to take.

He shrugged.

That’s how this works.

That’s how it’s always worked.

She wanted to believe him.

wanted to believe that this nightmare had a boundary and ending.

A point where she could pick up the pieces and start over.

But something in his eyes told her different.

Something had changed when he walked through her door and saw the wheelchair.

Something had shifted in his calculations.

She wasn’t just an investment anymore.

She was a problem, and problems had to be solved.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she said.

He looked at her, considered, nodded toward the hallway.

Door stays open.

I can’t.

I need privacy.

There’s a process with the chair.

I don’t care.

Door stays open or you hold it.

She wheeled toward the bathroom, her mind racing.

There had to be something.

Some way to signal for help.

Some way to escape.

The medical alert bracelet on her wrist caught the light.

She had forgotten about it.

A small device connected to a monitoring service.

If she pressed the button, they would call to check on her.

If she didn’t answer, they would send emergency services.

She pressed the button while she was in the bathroom, held her breath, waited.

A small green light blinked.

The signal had been sent.

Now she just had to survive until help arrived.

She took her time in the bathroom, moving slowly, making noise, trying to seem normal while her heart hammered against her ribs.

When she wheeled back into the living room, he was standing by the window again, his back to her, his phone pressed to his ear.

“Need a few more days.

She’s got insurance money coming, but it takes time to process.

” A pause.

“No, I’ll handle it.

This one’s more complicated than I expected.

” He hung up, turned around, and stopped.

His eyes dropped to her wrist.

to the medical alert bracelet she had forgotten to hide to the small green light that was still blinking.

What did you do? Nothing.

It’s nothing.

It just He crossed the room in three steps, grabbed her wrist, saw the device.

You called for help.

No, I didn’t.

I just accidentally You pressed the button.

There’s a light.

You triggered an alarm.

He yanked the bracelet off her wrist, threw it across the room.

It hit the wall and fell behind the couch.

That was a mistake, Cassandra.

His voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper.

That was a very big mistake.

They’ll just call.

I won’t answer.

They’ll think it was an accident.

Or they’ll send someone to check.

How long does that take? 20 minutes? 30? She didn’t answer.

She didn’t know.

He pulled out his phone, checked the time, made a decision, and Cassandra Veil understood with terrible clarity that she was not going to survive this night.

“I was going to leave you alive,” he said quietly.

“I was going to take what I needed and disappear.

You would have been too embarrassed to go to the police.

” “Most of them are.

The shame keeps them quiet better than any threat I could make.

” He walked to the dining table, picked up the lamp cord she had used to create ambiance for their romantic dinner.

But you just had to push that button, didn’t you? Please, please, I’m sorry.

I won’t tell anyone.

I swear on my daughter’s life.

It’s too late for that now.

He wrapped the cord around his hands, testing the strength, finding the right grip.

You know what the problem is with people like you, Cassandra? You believe in things.

You believe in love.

and second chances and happy endings.

He moved toward her.

The world doesn’t work like that.

It never has.

Please, please don’t do this.

You did this to yourself.

You lied about the chair.

You pressed that button.

You made choices.

And choices have consequences.

He was behind her now.

She couldn’t turn the wheelchair fast enough to see him.

Could only hear his breathing, feel his presence, sense the cord in his hands.

For what it’s worth, he said softly.

I wish things had been different.

The cord went around her neck and Cassandra Veil’s world went dark.

The cord bit into Cassandra’s throat at 10 Orzo2 p.

m.

In the movies, strangulation looks quick, clean.

A moment of struggle and then silence.

But the reality is different.

The reality is 4 minutes that feel like 4 hours.

Four minutes of fighting for every breath that won’t come.

Four minutes of clawing at hands that won’t let go.

Four minutes of watching the world narrow to a single point of light that grows smaller and smaller until it disappears entirely.

Cassandra fought despite the wheelchair.

Despite the disability that had stolen her legs 7 years ago, despite everything that had already been taken from her, she fought with everything she had left.

Her arms swung backward nails raking across Dererick’s forearms.

She felt skin tear beneath her fingers, felt the wet warmth of his blood on her hands.

Her body thrashed against the wheelchair, the metal frame scraping against the hardwood floor she had cleaned so carefully that morning.

She tried to scream, but the cord was too tight.

Only a thin weeze escaped her lips.

A sound barely louder than a whisper.

a sound no one would ever hear.

Her hands found his face.

She clawed at his eyes, his cheeks, anything she could reach.

He grunted in pain, but didn’t let go.

His grip only tightened.

“Stop fighting,” he hissed in her ear.

“It’ll be over faster if you stop fighting.

” But she couldn’t stop.

Some primal part of her brain had taken over.

The part that didn’t care about dignity or acceptance or peaceful endings.

The part that only knew one thing.

survive.

Her vision began to blur.

The edges of the room grew dark.

The photos on the wall, Elias on their wedding day, her parents at her graduation, her daughter as a baby, became smears of color that meant nothing.

She thought of Emily, her daughter, the baby she had given up when she was too young to raise her, the woman who had found her 20 years later and forgiven her, the only family she had left.

Emily would find out about this.

Emily would learn that her mother had been murdered by a man she met on the internet.

Emily would carry that knowledge forever.

The thought gave her one last surge of strength.

She twisted in the chair, throwing her weight to the side.

The wheelchair tipped.

They both went down.

For one moment, one precious moment.

The cord loosened.

Cassandra gasped.

Air rushed into her lungs.

Fire and salvation and hope.

But Dererick recovered faster.

He was on top of her now, his weight pinning her to the floor.

The cord went around her neck again, tighter this time, angrier.

You just had to make this difficult, he said through gritted teeth.

You just had to fight.

She couldn’t fight anymore.

Her arms had stopped responding.

Her legs had never responded.

She lay on the floor of the apartment she had shared with her husband, staring up at the ceiling she had stared at for thousands of lonely nights.

The last thing she saw was the smoke detector, the small white circle with its blinking green light.

She had changed the batteries last month.

She had been so careful about safety.

She had been so careful about everything except the one thing that mattered.

At 10:06 p.

m.

, Cassandra Marie Vale took her last breath.

She was 53 years old.

She died on the floor of her own home, 18 in from the wheelchair that had defined her life for 7 years.

She died beneath photos of people who had loved her, surrounded by the artifacts of a life that had been stolen piece by piece.

She died alone, betrayed, afraid, and her killer stood over her body, breathing hard, checking his watch.

He had work to do.

Derek Allen Wells had killed before, not people, but versions of himself.

Identities he had worn and discarded when they became inconvenient.

names and histories and personalities he had built from scratch and abandoned without a second thought.

But this was different.

This was permanent.

This was a body on the floor and blood under fingernails and a countdown clock ticking toward discovery.

He looked at Cassandra’s still form.

Her eyes were open.

Her face was purple.

The cord had left deep marks on her throat that would tell investigators exactly what had happened.

For a moment, just a moment, something flickered in his chest.

Something that might have been regret or fear or the distant memory of the person he might have been if life had gone differently.

Then he pushed it down, locked it away, became the machine he needed to be to survive.

First the scene, he grabbed the edges of the bookshelf and pulled.

It crashed to the floor, scattering novels across the hardwood.

He swept his arm across the kitchen counter, sending dishes and glasses shattering against the tiles.

He overturned the coffee table, knocked lamps off end tables, pulled cushions from the couch.

It had to look like a robbery, a home invasion gone wrong.

Random violence that had nothing to do with romance scams or online dating or 18 months of calculated manipulation.

He found a hammer in the kitchen drawer and used it to break the window from the inside.

Stupid mistake.

Forensics would be able to tell the glass fell outward.

But he was running out of time.

The medical alert had been triggered almost 20 minutes ago.

Someone would be calling soon.

Someone might already be on their way.

Second, the evidence.

He wiped down every surface he could remember touching.

the door handle, the dining table, the laptop he had already packed in his bag, the wine glasses she had set out for their romantic dinner.

But he was rushing, and rushing meant mistakes.

He missed the lamp he had picked up to examine, missed the drawer pole in the bedroom, missed a dozen other surfaces where his fingerprints remained, invisible, but damning.

He grabbed his bag, checked it quickly.

Her laptop, her jewelry, her phone, the $800 in cash, everything valuable he could carry.

He looked at her body one last time.

“You should have told me about the chair,” he said to no one.

“Things would have been different.

” Then he walked to the back door of the apartment.

The one that led to the fire escape.

The one that would let him disappear into the Chicago night without being seen by anyone in the lobby.

At 10:23 p.

m.

, Derek Allen Wells slipped out of Cassandra Vil’s apartment and vanished.

Behind him, the candles she had lit with such hope burned down to nothing.

The pot roast she had spent hours preparing grew cold.

The wine she had chosen so carefully remained cked, and Cassandra lay on the floor, her dead eyes staring at a ceiling she would never see again.

The phone rang at Lifeguard Medical Alert Headquarters at 9:48 p.

m.

Not a phone call, an electronic signal.

A distress beacon from a device registered to Cassandra Vale, 53, Chicago, Illinois.

Emergency contact: Emily Chen.

Medical conditions: paralysis from T10 spinal injury.

History of depression, possible fall risk.

Protocol was clear.

When a distress signal came in, operators attempted to reach the client by phone.

If no answer, they tried again.

After three failed attempts, they dispatched emergency services.

Sandra Mitchell had worked the overnight shift at Lifeguard for 6 years.

She had handled thousands of alerts.

Most were false alarms.

Clients accidentally pressing the button while getting dressed or testing the system to make sure it worked or simply forgetting they were wearing it.

But something about this one felt different.

The signal came in at 9:48.

Sandra called Cassandra’s home phone at 9:49.

No answer.

She called again at 9:52.

No answer.

She called the cell phone on file at 9:55.

It went straight to voicemail.

Protocol said she should dispatch emergency services after the third failed attempt, but Sandra waited.

Sometimes clients were in the bathroom.

Sometimes they had fallen asleep with the television on.

Sometimes they just needed a few extra minutes.

She called the home phone one more time at 10:01.

No answer.

She dispatched emergency services at 10:03.

It would take the ambulance 44 minutes to arrive.

44 minutes that might have made a difference if they had come sooner.

44 minutes during which Derek Allen Wells was staging a crime scene and wiping down surfaces and slipping out into the night.

44 minutes that would haunt Sandra Mitchell for the rest of her career.

The EMTs arrived at 10:47 p.

m.

Marcus Rodriguez had been a paramedic for 12 years.

He had seen death in all its forms.

Car accidents and overdoses and heart attacks and violence.

He thought he was immune to shock.

He was wrong.

The apartment door was unlocked.

That was the first sign something was wrong.

The second sign was the smell.

Not death, not yet, but something chemical.

Fear maybe, or desperation.

Chicago Fire Paramedics, Marcus called out, pushing open the door.

We received a medical alert from this address.

No response.

He stepped inside.

His partner, Jenny Okonquo, followed close behind.

The apartment was in chaos.

Furniture overturned.

Books scattered across the floor.

broken glass glittering in the light from the hallway.

“We’ve got a possible break-in,” Jenny said into her radio, requesting police backup at.

She stopped.

“Marcus had stopped, too.

Cassandra Veil lay on the floor beside her wheelchair.

Her eyes were open.

Her face was discolored.

And around her neck, still tight even in death, was a lamp cord that told the story of her final minutes.

Marcus knelt beside her, checked for a pulse he knew he wouldn’t find.

Her skin was cool.

Not cold yet, but cooling.

She had been dead for less than an hour.

“She’s gone,” he said quietly.

Jenny was already on the radio, her voice professional, even as her hands shook.

“We need homicide at this location.

Female victim, apparent strangulation.

Scene is not secure.

” Marcus stood up, looked around the apartment, the overturned furniture, the broken window, the scattered belongings.

It looked like a robbery.

It was supposed to look like a robbery, but something didn’t fit.

Something about the the way the body was positioned.

Something about the wheelchair lying on its side, just out of reach.

Something about the scratches on the victim’s hands.

Defensive wounds.

He realized she had fought back.

This wasn’t a random home invasion.

This was something else entirely.

The police arrived 11 minutes later.

The homicide detective arrived 23 minutes after that.

And the investigation that would eventually bring Derek Allen Wells to justice began with a single question.

Who was Alexis Thorne? I want to pause here and thank you for watching.

If you want to support this channel and get exclusive content, consider joining our membership.

The link is in the description below.

Now, let’s continue with the investigation that would bring Cassandra’s killer to justice.

Detective Maria Santos had worked homicide for 14 years.

She had investigated gang shootings and domestic violence and drug deals gone wrong.

She had seen the worst of what humans could do to each other.

She had learned to look at death with professional detachment, to see bodies as puzzles to be solved rather than people to be mourned.

But something about Cassandra Veil’s apartment made her pause.

It wasn’t the violence she had seen worse.

It wasn’t the staging she had seen plenty of killers try to make murder look like robbery.

It was the dinner table.

Two place settings.

Candles burned down to stubs.

A bottle of expensive wine still cked.

A pot roast that had gone cold hours ago.

This woman had been expecting someone, someone she cared about, someone she had prepared a romantic dinner for, and that someone had killed her.

Santos pulled on her latex gloves and began to work.

The first inconsistency, the broken window.

Glass fragments on the fire escape outside, not on the floor inside.

The window had been broken from within.

Someone had wanted it to look like a break-in, but they had gotten the physics wrong.

The second inconsistency, the scattered items.

Books and papers spread across the floor in patterns that were too even, too deliberate.

Real burglars made real messes.

This mess had been curated.

The third inconsistency, the victim’s hands.

Deep scratches on her palms.

Blood under her fingernails.

DNA evidence that would eventually match a man named Derek Allen Wells.

She had fought back hard.

Whatever had happened here, it wasn’t quick.

Santos knelt beside the body, studied the marks on Cassandra’s neck.

liature strangulation.

The cord was still in place.

The killer had left it behind, probably too panicked to think about removing evidence.

“Who are you meeting tonight?” Santos murmured to the dead woman.

“Who did you trust enough to let into your home?” “The answer came from an iPad on the kitchen counter.

” “The laptop was gone, taken by the killer,” Santos assumed.

“But the tablet remained, overlooked in the chaos.

Santos bagged it as evidence and sent it to the digital forensics lab with a priority flag.

What they found would crack the case wide open.

Forensic analyst David Park had been working digital evidence for 8 years.

He had recovered deleted texts from philandering spouses and traced cryptocurrency through dozens of wallets.

He had seen the digital footprints people left behind, the trails of data that told stories their owners thought were hidden.

Cassandra Veil’s tablet told a story of loneliness and hope and devastating betrayal.

The Heartlink app was still logged in.

Park began scrolling through the messages, his stomach sinking with every screen.

18 months of conversation, thousands of messages.

A relationship that had developed from casual flirtation to deep emotional intimacy to financial entanglement.

The man’s name was Alexis Thorne.

His profile said he was 35 years old, an entrepreneur from Miami.

His photos showed a handsome man with kind eyes.

His messages showed something else entirely.

Park tracked the financial transfers first.

Wire transfers from Cassandra’s accounts to a series of offshore banks.

$500 in June 2022, $2,000 in October, $5,000 in December.

The amounts increased over time.

The total 18,247 classic romance scam pattern.

Build trust, extract money, disappear.

But this scammer hadn’t disappeared.

He had shown up.

He had come to her apartment.

And then he had killed her.

Parks cross referenced the accounts with federal databases.

The offshore banks were associated with a network of fraud operations spanning multiple states.

The trail led through shell companies and fake identities and digital deadends.

But forensic accounting isn’t about following the money.

It’s about finding the mistakes.

And Derek Allen Wells had made a mistake.

One of the accounts, a small one used for minor expenses, was linked to a prepaid debit card.

That card had been used to buy coffee at a Miami Starbucks.

The transaction included a phone number for the rewards program.

That phone number was registered to a man named Derek Allen Wells.

35 years old, originally from Detroit.

Current address unknown.

Criminal record, fraud, identity theft, one count of assault that had been pleaded down to a misdemeanor.

No history of violence until now.

Detective Santos got the call at 3:00 a.

m.

We’ve got a name, Park said.

Derek Allen Wells.

Goes by at least six aliases, including Alexis Thorne.

He’s been running romance scams for at least 8 years.

usually targets women over 50, widows, divorcees, anyone who looks lonely and has money.

Has he killed before? Not that we know of.

This would be his first murder.

But Maria, there’s something else.

What? He’s still active.

I found messages on the victim’s tablet referencing other women, other targets.

I cross- referenced with some FBI databases and found at least five other victims currently being scammed by this guy.

Santos felt the familiar surge of adrenaline that came with a break in a case.

Names and locations.

I’ll send you everything.

But Maria, these women don’t know.

They think they’re in love with him.

They think he’s going to marry them.

They have no idea what he really is.

Then we need to find him before he decides another one of them is a liability.

The hunt began.

The FBI joined the investigation within 48 hours.

Romance scams crossed state lines, making it a federal matter.

More importantly, the bureau had resources that local police departments didn’t.

facial recognition software, international cooperation agreements, and a database of known scammers that stretch back decades.

Derek Allen Wells had been careful.

He used burner phones and VPNs and anonymous email accounts.

He never stayed in one place long enough to establish patterns.

He paid for everything in cash, but he wasn’t careful enough.

The prepaid debit card that David Park had traced led to other cards.

Those cards led to hotel reservations.

The hotel reservations led to surveillance footage.

And the surveillance footage showed a face.

The same face from Alexis Thorne’s dating profile.

The same face that had smiled at Cassandra Vale through her phone screen for 18 months.

The same face that was the last thing she ever saw.

The FBI released the image to law enforcement nationwide.

Every airport, every bus station, every border crossing had his photo.

He was on every watch list, every database, every radar.

Derek Allen Wells had nowhere left to run, but he didn’t know that yet.

3 weeks after Cassandra Vale’s murder, Derek was living in a Miami Beach hotel room.

He had paid for 2 weeks upfront using cash he had stolen from Cassandra’s apartment.

He had been lying low, waiting for things to cool down, planning his next move.

He still had four active targets.

Linda in Tampa, Margaret in Austin, Patricia in Houston, Susan in Atlanta.

Each one sending him money, each one believing they were in love.

He had considered cutting his losses and disappearing, starting over somewhere new with a new name and new targets.

But the money was too good.

He was so close to several big payoffs.

He just needed to be careful.

On the morning of August the 3rd, 2023, he woke to the sound of pounding on his hotel room door.

FBI, open the door.

We have a warrant.

For one long moment, Derek considered the window.

Fifth floor, probably survivable if he landed, right? Probably.

But there were sirens outside.

Blue and red lights flashing against the building across the street.

They had the building surrounded.

He opened the door.

Derek Allen Wells, you are under arrest for the murder of Cassandra Vale.

You have the right to remain silent.

Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

They found Cassandra’s jewelry in his suitcase, her phone in his jacket pocket, her blood on a shirt he hadn’t bothered to throw away, and on his laptop they found everything.

Records of every woman he had ever scammed.

Spreadsheets tracking their finances.

Their vulnerabilities, their breaking points, scripts for conversations designed to build trust and extract money.

Photos and videos used to maintain the illusion of romance.

$247 victims spanning 8 years.

$31 million stolen.

And one woman murdered because she was brave enough to press a button.

Derek Allen Wells was extradited to Illinois to face charges.

The trial began in January 2024.

The Franklin County courthouse had seen its share of sensational trials, but the case of Illinois vers Derek Allen Wells drew crowds that spilled out onto the sidewalk.

Reporters from national outlets camped outside the building.

Victim advocates organized vigils.

And somewhere in the gallery, five women who had loved a man named Alexis Thorne sat together, united by their shared devastation.

Prosecutor Angela Morrison had been trying cases for 22 years.

She had sent killers and rapists and career criminals to prison.

But this case felt different.

This case was about more than one murder.

It was about a system of exploitation that prayed on the most vulnerable members of society.

It was about loneliness weaponized.

It was about trust betrayed in the most intimate way possible.

It was about Cassandra Vale who had survived losing her legs and losing her husband and losing her hope only to be murdered by the man who promised to give that hope back.

Morrison’s opening statement lasted 47 minutes.

She walked the jury through Cassandra’s life.

The workingclass childhood, the decades of marriage, the accident that changed everything, the husband she buried, the isolation that followed.

She walked them through the scam, the calculated approach, the manufactured connection, the financial exploitation that stripped away everything Cassandra had saved.

And she walked them through the murder.

The dinner Cassandra had prepared with such hope.

The door that opened onto betrayal, the cord that ended her life.

Cassandra Vale was not a perfect victim, Morrison told the jury.

She made choices some might question.

She hid her disability from a man she thought she loved.

She sent money she couldn’t afford to lose.

She believed in a fantasy that seems obvious in retrospect.

She paused.

Let the silence stretch.

But Cassandra Vale did not deserve to die for those choices.

She did not deserve to be strangled in her own home by a man who had spent 18 months pretending to love her.

She did not deserve to take her last breath on the floor alone, betrayed, afraid.

Morrison pointed at Derek, sitting at the defense table in his orange jumpsuit.

That man took everything from Cassandra Vale, her money, her dignity, her hope.

And when she became inconvenient, when she pressed a button that might have brought help, he took her life.

The defense will tell you this was an accident, that things got out of hand, that Dererick Allen Wells never meant to kill anyone.

But the evidence will show you the truth.

Derek Allen Wells is a predator who spent 8 years hunting vulnerable women.

Cassandra Vale was his 247th victim.

She was also his last.

Because Cassandra Vale fought back.

She scratched his arms.

She triggered her medical alert.

She left behind evidence that led investigators straight to her killer.

In her final moments, Cassandra Veil did what she had done her entire life.

She refused to give up.

She refused to go quietly.

She refused to let the man who destroyed her win.

Today, you have the opportunity to honor that fight, to ensure that Derek Allen Wells never hurts another woman again.

to tell the world that loneliness is not a crime, but exploiting it is.

Cassandra Veil deserved love.

She deserved happiness.

She deserved a second chance.

She didn’t get any of those things, but she can still get justice.

And that justice is in your hands.

The defense strategy was predictable.

Attorney Richard Hoffman had defended difficult clients before.

drug dealers and embezzlers and men accused of crimes that made headlines.

He knew the playbook.

Create doubt.

Humanize the defendant.

Shift blame wherever possible.

Derek Allen Wells is not a murderer.

Hoffman told the jury in his opening statement.

He is a flawed man who made terrible choices.

A man who grew up in poverty and learned to survive by any means necessary.

a man who found himself in a situation that spiraled out of control.

He painted Derek as a product of circumstance, foster care, absent parents, a system that failed him at every turn.

He wasn’t excusing the fraud that was indefensible.

But murder, that was something else entirely.

Cassandra Vale was angry when Dererick arrived at her apartment.

Hoffman argued he she had been lying to him for 18 months about her disability.

When he discovered the truth, she became aggressive.

She attacked him in the struggle that followed.

She was accidentally killed.

This is not murder.

This is a tragedy, a terrible, preventable tragedy that began with lies on both sides.

The strategy might have worked with a different jury, a different case, a different victim.

But the prosecution had evidence that the defense couldn’t explain away.

The financial records showing years of calculated exploitation, the spreadsheets tracking hundreds of victims, the scripts for manipulation found on Derek’s laptop, and most damning of all, uh, the scratch marks on his arms, the DNA under Cassandra’s fingernails.

The 4 minutes of strangulation that pathologists testified could not have been accidental.

Accidental death does not leave ligature marks.

The medical examiner stated, “Accidental death does not require sustained pressure for 4 minutes.

” What happened to Cassandra Vale was deliberate, intentional, calculated.

The jury deliberated for 6 hours.

They returned with a verdict of guilty on all counts.

First-degree murder, wire fraud, identity theft, five counts of financial exploitation.

Derek Allen Wells showed no emotion as the verdict was read.

He had spent his entire adult life wearing masks.

He wore one now.

The mask of a man who felt nothing, who cared about nothing, who had already accepted whatever came next.

But when Emily Chen took the stand during the sentencing phase, something cracked.

Emily was Cassandra’s daughter, the baby she had given up at 19.

The woman who had found her two decades later and rebuilt a relationship that spanned the distance and the years.

She had lost her mother twice.

Once to adoption, once to murder.

“I want to tell you about my mother,” Emily said, her voice steady despite the tears streaming down her face.

“My mother was abandoned by her own parents.

She was given up by a woman who wasn’t ready to raise her.

She spent her entire childhood feeling unwanted, unworthy, unloved.

But she never became bitter.

She never stopped believing in people.

She never stopped hoping that somewhere out there someone would see her for who she really was and love her anyway.

When she lost the use of her legs, she didn’t give up.

She learned to navigate a world that wasn’t built for her.

She adapted.

She survived.

She kept hoping.

When she lost her husband, she didn’t give up.

She grieved.

She struggled.

But she kept hoping.

And when she found a man online who seemed to understand her, who seemed to see past the wheelchair to the woman inside, she let herself hope one more time.

Emily looked directly at Derek.

You didn’t kill my mother because she hid her disability.

You killed her because she pressed a button that might have exposed you.

You killed her because she was brave enough to fight back.

My mother survived losing her ability to walk.

She survived losing her husband.

She survived years of loneliness that would have broken most people.

She didn’t survive trusting the wrong person.

She hid her disability because the world taught her that disabled people don’t deserve love.

Because every time she was honest about who she was, people ran away because she wanted just once to be seen as a whole person before she was reduced to a wheelchair.

She was wrong to hide it.

I know that.

But she didn’t deserve to die for it.

Emily’s voice broke.

She took a breath.

Continued.

Derek Wells didn’t just take her money.

He didn’t just take her life.

He took her hope.

He took the last chance she had to believe that love was possible.

And for that, I hope he never knows.

A moment of peace.

Judge Patricia Morrison delivered the sentence on February 14th, 2024, Valentine’s Day.

The irony was not lost on anyone in the courtroom.

Derek Allen Wells, the judge said, her voice carrying the weight of decades on the bench.

I have presided over many trials in my career.

I have seen criminals of every kind, but I have rarely encountered someone as calculating, as remorseless, and as dangerous as you.

For 8 years, you prayed on vulnerable women.

You studied them.

You learned their weaknesses.

You exploited their loneliness for financial gain.

You treated human beings as investments to be managed and discarded.

And when one of those investments threatened to expose you, you killed her.

Cassandra Vale was not a perfect person.

No one is.

But she was a human being who deserved to live out her days in peace.

Instead, she died on the floor of her own home, strangled by a man she trusted.

You have shown no remorse for your actions.

You have offered no apology to the victims you exploited.

You have accepted no responsibility for the life you took.

Therefore, this court sentences you to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The gavl came down and Derek Allen Wells was led away in handcuffs, finally paying the price for the devastation he had caused.

In the months following the trial, something unexpected happened.

The five women who had been scammed by Derek, Linda, Margaret, Patricia, Susan, and Joyce stayed in touch.

What began as shared trauma became genuine friendship.

They supported each other through the shame and the grief and the slow process of rebuilding.

And they called themselves of the sisterhood that they met for coffee.

They talked on the phone.

They reminded each other that they weren’t stupid or desperate or pathetic.

They were human beings who had been targeted by a predator.

Cassandra’s sister Meera created a foundation in her name.

The Cassandra Veil Foundation educates vulnerable populations about romance scams.

They partner with dating apps to implement better verification systems.

They provide support groups for victims who are often too ashamed to seek help.

Their motto, loneliness is not a weakness.

Trust is not a crime.

The medical alert company that had monitored Cassandra’s distress signal changed their protocols.

Before operators waited for three failed call back attempts before dispatching emergency services.

Now any signal followed by non-response triggers immediate dispatch.

The change might save lives.

It came too late to save Cassandra.

And Emily Chen wrote a book.

The last hope was published in spring 2025.

It told her mother’s story not as a cautionary tale, but as a tribute to a woman who never stopped believing in love despite everything life threw at her.

The dedication read, “For my mother, who taught me that hope is not weakness.

It is the bravest thing we do.

” Was Cassandra wrong to hide her disability? Some would say yes.

Honesty is the foundation of any relationship.

By concealing her wheelchair, she started the relationship on a lie.

She gave Dererick the leverage to feel deceived, to justify his anger, to frame himself as the victim.

But others understand why she did it.

In a world that often treats disabled people as burdens, as objects of pity, as less than whole, can we blame someone for wanting to be seen as a person first? Cassandra had tried honesty before.

It had brought her nothing but rejection.

Men disappeared the moment they learned about the wheelchair.

Conversations ended mid-sentence.

She was reduced to her disability before anyone took the time to know her heart.

So, she made a choice.

A choice that many people in her position have made.

A choice born not of deception, but of desperation, of hope, of the deeply human need to be loved for who you are rather than dismissed for what you can’t do.

Was it the right choice? Perhaps not.

Was it an understandable one? Absolutely.

Cassandra Vale didn’t hide her wheelchair to trick anyone.

She hid it to give herself a chance.

A chance to be seen.

A chance to be known.

A chance to be loved.

She deserved that chance.

She deserved someone who would have accepted her chair as easily as they accepted her love of Hemingway and her terrible taste in wine and her habit of staying up too late reading.

She deserved a second chance at happiness.

Instead, she got Derek Allen Wells.

And for that, there is no one to blame but the predator who targeted her.

Here’s a question for you.

one that doesn’t have an easy answer.

What would you have done in Cassandra’s position? Would you have been honest from the start, knowing that honesty had brought you nothing but rejection? Would you have hidden the truth, hoping to find someone who would see past it? Would you have given up on love entirely, resigning yourself to a life of loneliness rather than risking another broken heart? There are no wrong answers, only human ones.

What we know is this.

Cassandra Vale was a woman who believed in love, who believed in second chances, who believed that somewhere out there, someone would see her for who she really was.

She was right about that.

Someone should have seen her.

Someone should have loved her.

Someone should have stayed.

She just gave her heart to the wrong person.

And that is not her fault.

It was never her fault.

Some stories don’t end with justice.

Some stories end with gravestones and foundations and awareness campaigns that come too late for the person they’re meant to honor.

Cassandra Vale is buried next to her husband in a small cemetery on Chicago’s south side.

Her headstone reads, “Beloved mother, sister, friend.

She never stopped believing.

” Emily visits every Sunday.

She brings flowers, liies, her mother’s favorite, and sits on the bench beside the grave.

Sometimes she talks, sometimes she just sits in silence, remembering the woman who gave her up and found her again and taught her that love is worth the risk.

The wheelchair sits in Emily’s garage.

Now, she couldn’t bear to donate it, couldn’t bear to throw it away.

It’s just there, a reminder of everything her mother overcame and everything that was taken from her.

Derek Allen Wells will spend the rest of his life in prison.

He will grow old behind bars.

He will die there, forgotten by a world that has moved on.

But he will never forget Cassandra Vale.

Because in his final moment with her, when the cord was tight and her struggles were weakening, she looked him in the eye and she said three words that he will hear in his nightmares for the rest of his miserable life.

I forgive you.

Not because he deserved forgiveness, not because she was weak or foolish or naive, but because Cassandra Vale was a woman who believed in redemption, who believed that even the worst among us could change.

who believed until her very last breath in the fundamental goodness of human beings.

She was wrong about Derek Allen Wells.

But she was right about herself.

And that is how we should remember her.

Not as a victim, not as a cautionary tale, not as the woman who was murdered because she hit her wheelchair, but as a woman who loved, who hoped, who fought, who never stopped believing even when the world gave her every reason to give up.

That is Cassandra Vale’s legacy and it is a legacy worth remembering.

What would you have done in Cassandra’s position? Would you have hidden the truth to protect yourself from rejection? Or is honesty always the answer even when it makes you vulnerable? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

I want to hear from you.

And if this story moved you, if it made you think about the people in your life who might be suffering in silence, then share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Because loneliness is not a weakness.

Trust is not a crime.

And the people who need love the most are often the ones predators hunt first.

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And remember, in a world full of Derek Allen Wells, be the person who sees the wheelchair and stays anyway.

Be the person who loves without conditions.

Be the person Cassandra Vale deserved.

Thank you for watching.

Stay safe out there.

And never stop believing in love.