The Boyfriend Who Never Existed: Inside The "Bed Trick" Trial

Support for criminal comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Every six seconds, a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill over a thousand dollars, Fetch can help. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats, according to ConsumerAdvocate.org. You get paid back up to 90% of vet bills at any vet in the US and Canada, with claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to FetchPet.com/save right now for your free quote. That's FetchPet.com/save. I've been telling stories about people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle for more than a decade. But what you probably don't know is that while I was starting one of the very first true crime podcasts out there, I was also taking phone calls from my sister from an Iowa prison. This fall, I'm going back out on tour, but it's going to be very different from the criminal tours we've done before. Because this time I'm telling a story I've never told before, my own. I'll be coming to Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Raleigh, Austin, Denver, Minneapolis, LA, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, and Seattle. Get tickets at this is criminal.com/live This episode contains mentions of suicide and goes into detail about sex and sexual assault. Please use discretion. She ends up taking off her blindfold and seeing the person she's having sex with for the first time. And she describes this moment as a devastating discovery. She says it's not kai behind the blindfold. She says it's her best friend, Gail. This is criminal, I'm Phoebe Judge. And today I'm joined by writer Isabella Scott. Isabella, you wrote a book titled The Bed Trick, Sex and Deception on Trial. And it's about a trial that began in September of 2015 in Northern England. Let's talk about the trial. There's someone named Miss X and their anonymous. And then there's another one named Gail Newland, the defendant who is not anonymous. Why? Yeah, well that's a great place to start because in the UK, in sexual offenses cases, complainants are automatically given lifetime anonymity. And this actually came about in the 1970s. And it means that it's a criminal offense to publish a complainant's name or anything that can lead to them being identified. So in this case, which is a trial about sexual deception and perhaps intimate misrecognition, but you have this imbalance where Miss X is anonymized, at least in all the reporting. And Gail is very exposed. She's photographed outside the court and her name, her age, her home address is all captioned in those photographs. One evening, Miss X had called 999, which is 911 here. And a little later, she reported Gail Newland to the police. What did Miss X say happened on the night she called 999? Yeah, so this is really where kind of the complaint really begins. And Miss X says that she sort of tells a much wider story than this final evening. And it's a story that begins at university where she has a best friend, a woman named Gail, also has a boyfriend whose name is Kai Fortune. And she describes getting a Facebook request, a friend request that came really out the blue from this handsome man who was also a student. And this was Kai Fortune. And she describes really falling in love with this boyfriend over two years, but it's all through his phone, it's through his profiles, it's online. But they do eventually meet. And when they begin to meet up, he has this one request. And he asks her to wear a blindfold. And they begin to meet up this way over five months. And really we sort of arrive at the night you mentioned Phoebe, which is this night where something comes to a head. And in Miss X's account, that night, she meets up with Kai as usual. And by now, it's been a two-year relationship, at least five months of meeting up. And she says they have this routine, he comes over to our house. And she puts a blindfold on before he arrives. And they spend time together, they cuddle on the sofa, they listen to music, but they also have sex. And this is the evening that she says for the first time, in all these months they've been together, that something doesn't feel right for the first time. And she's in love with this guy, but she's never seen him with her own eyes, but she trusts him so much. But she says her ring gets caught on the back of his head. And she says she suddenly feels this hair. And she always thought his head was shaved. And she says for the first time, her trust is slipping away. And she ends up taking off her blindfold and seeing the person she's having sex with for the first time. And in that moment, she says she realizes that Kai doesn't actually exist. And all along, it's been her best friend. And this is where she says she runs from the room. And she makes this 999 call. And what does she say on the 999 call? Yes, so she calls up in this call last about 20 seconds. And when you call 999, the first thing I ask is whether or not it's an emergency. And so she's asked this question. And she says it's not an emergency. And they tell her to call the police instead. And she doesn't end up calling the police that night. And I think in her description, it's this confusing moment, this thing that's happened in her narrative. It's something that's quite difficult to name and describe. She's not in danger of violence. She's at home and she's with her boyfriend who is unveiled to be someone else. So she ends up not quite being able to sort of communicate that down the phone. And they end up fighting in the flat and they run out on the street. And the next moment is that they're caught on CCTV sort of fighting in the street. That's the next sort of record of them that night. And let's just talk about that night. What does Gayle Nulens say happened that night? Yeah, so Gayle really tells a very different story about this relationship. And in some ways it begins the same way. They're two best friends. They're in their early 20s. They're students and they meet at university. And over two years they become extremely close. But in Gayle's version, she says that quite early on. In fact, the very evening they met, they met in a gay bar and they came out to each other. And she says the beginning of their relationship, it begins with the fact that both of them are in the closet. And what she tells is really a story about the closet, a story about shame and hidden sexuality. And she says over these two years, they're in a secret relationship. They're falling in love. And they hide this relationship from the world. They pass as friends. And nobody knows that behind this friendship, they are girlfriend and girlfriend. But the story does get a bit more complicated because Gayle explains that, you know, even though they've come out to each other and they're in a closet together, things don't necessarily get that much easier. They really struggle with their sexuality. And they begin to use this figure, Kai Fortune, this fictional boyfriend. They begin to use him in a number of ways. He's a cover story, a way to sort of hide their relationship. But also he's a kind of a shared fantasy and they begin this sort of dialogue through which Kai allows them to make their relationship for them a bit more bearable. And by the time we get to this final evening, they've begun having sex and meeting up. And it's a similar story to Miss X's, but there's one key difference. There's never a blindfold. And that's one of the big sort of the most fundamental differences between these stories. It's that Gayle says everyone's eyes were open. Miss X always knew who she was having sex with. But on this final evening, you know, it's been two years. They're in this secret relationship. And Gayle, by now, she really wants to come out to her parents. And she's close to them despite her secret. And she wants to tell them she's a lesbian. She wants to tell them about Miss X. And she wants to tell them about Kai. And just a few days before this final argument, you know, she says this to Miss X and they really disagree on the subject. Miss X is not ready to come out. She's just not ready for it. she feels that Gail is breaking the pact and they have this big argument. By the time we get to this Sunday together, Gail describes the same routine that she comes over and they're being together in private as lovers, but she says they seem to make up after this argument, but she says Miss X, she just seems very quiet and she keeps asking if she's okay, but Miss X says she's fine and they end up having sex and Gail says just as she's putting away the dildo that Miss X starts shouting and she says that Miss X switched, that's her word, she says she's shouting and accusing her, she's saying what the hell is this and she says Gail says she's confused and she's she's really starting to get scared and they end up fighting and pushing each other with Miss X calling 999 and with them running into the street. What happened? What does Gail do once she drives away? She drives around, manically, she says she has a panic attack, she's completely distressed about this argument, these terrible things, they've said to each other on the street and she ends up driving to a canal outside the town they live and she actually makes a suicide attempt, she jumps into this body of water, but she's okay. Yeah, she's okay, somebody sees her and the canal isn't as deep as she imagines and she's pulled out and she's given clothing and an ambulance comes and she's taken to hospital, but she does really she's really damaged her ankle, but she she survives. And so initially Miss X calls 911, but they say she says it's not an emergency, but Miss X does follow up with the police and does report that a crime has been committed. What crime was Gail Newland accused of committing? Well, Gail is accused and prosecuted for this quite rare and actually quite old offense that's known as sexual fraud or rape by deception and it's quite a complex crime, the idea is that you consent to sex at the time, you enjoy it, but you later discover something about that person, perhaps you were lied to or you were misled in some way and that means your consent wasn't informed and in British law there are certain deceptions which if proved in court can make consent invalid and they can retrospectively turn sex into rape. Gail Newland had tricked Miss X into thinking that she was male and that this was heterosexual sex and Miss X had no idea that that that that isn't what it was. Yeah and that's exactly what Miss X is saying. She believed she was meeting up with her handsome boyfriend, a man whom she'd fallen in love with. She believed that every time she had sex she was having sex with this man and she was having heterosexual sex and she was having straight sex and that she was completely deceived by Gail each time. She didn't know that it was her best friend, she didn't know it was a woman and she didn't know it was a pildo. You mentioned that they had met a few years before, so this is where the two stories diverge which is that Gail Newland says that from very early on they had a romantic sexual relationship and Miss X says that she had a very close friendship with Gail Newland but it was always a friendship throughout the whole time of them knowing each other. That's what she believed. Yeah that's exactly right so in Miss X's story there's these two completely different relationships in her life. She has this friendship with Gail, as students, as best female friends, they describe each other as besties and they do all these trips and rituals together and they play sports together and she has this other relationship with her boyfriend, Koi Fortune and that's sort of how the stories really diverge but according to Gail it's all one thing. She says when they first meet they speak about their sexuality and these two stories that are divided in Miss X's narration are united. Gail says they're best friends and at the same time they're having a secret relationship and a kind of private dialogue and almost a roleplay that's developing through this figure that is Koi Fortune. Who was Koi Fortune? One of the sort of complex parts of this story is that Koi wasn't a figure that was invented after Gail and Miss X meet. Koi has a much longer story and that story is related to Gail and related to the closet and she describes first using Koi as a teenager when she's 13 years old and so she knows she's a lesbian and she's struggling with her sexuality and she begins to enter chat rooms and to speak first as a boy and then as Koi and he really develops over many years, he begins to get social media profiles and he also gets a phone number. She uses pictures of guys, she finds on the internet, he makes friends, she speaks the girls but Gail insists that before she meets Miss X she's always had these online relationships with people far away. She's never had this encounter and she claims Miss X as the first person, she tells about Koi but Koi by the time these friends meet this first encounter between Gail and Miss X, Koi is quite a sort of fleshed out figure, he's a persona, he's an identity and he's handsome and he's charming and he's he's really quite a romantic guy, he writes love songs professionally, he's into poetry, he's got these gentleman ways, he's popular and gorgeous in a way that Gail feels she can't be and in a way that Miss X really desires. Gail will say I created this other persona, it was an online persona, how there's no, she's not denying that, but how, how did Koi fortune this idea or this so-called man meet Miss X? Miss X's story is very different to Gail's, Gail says they met at a gay night and although Miss X agrees that she went to that night in the summer of 2011, she says she doesn't remember meeting Gail there and she says it wasn't Gail, she met that summer, it was Koi, it begins online with this Facebook request and that's really how it develops this online relationship, they're speaking on the phone, they're texting every day and she's frustrated that he's not on campus, he's he's never around and she says that Gail she meets later, she actually says that Koi introduced them, he said that Gail was an odd friend. Why is he never around? I mean you know what does why can't they see each other for 18 months? Well that's the thing, Koi is often making excuses and there's a few key reasons and and one is that he's he's bunking off, he has a rich uncle in Monte Carlo that he's always visiting, another is that he's sick, he gets right ill when he's at university and another is that he develops this great shyness especially after his illness and he's often making excuses and Miss X finds this, this really frustrating but she loves him and she overlooks this and in fact she loves him so much that in December 2012, before they even meet for the first time, Miss X and Koi get engaged, he sends her an eternity ring and the post, it's a ring that's a symbol of never ending love and and and they're engaged and and this makes her even more keen to meet him, she's she's told her friends that she's met him already, she sort of fipped to them and she's she's just desperate to meet him and and he suggests meeting up with a blindfold and the first meeting happens on Valentine's Day 2013, Gayle also describes this part of the relationship, you know they've got this public friendship and they're also falling in love and what I find so moving is she often describes Koi in exactly the same way, this tenderness towards him, this way she can be with Miss X, this dialogue they have that makes them feel comfortable, that makes them feel normal even but she says you know bye 2013 she wants to meet up in person with misex too and and be coy for her but she doesn't really know how she's nervous because she's a virgin she's never kissed a girl before and she says you know how can I meet as coy she doesn't know how to do it but in in Gail's tale she says you know misex wants to so badly she wants to try this this this wave meeting she talks about a dildo and and and eventually they they meet on Valentine's Day of course in misex's story it's the first time they meet and she wears a blindfold why did misex say that coy had asked her to wear a blindfold? misex says that coy he's delaying meeting he's had this illness and he says to her that his muscles have wasted away so in his pictures he's this kind of dream guy he's handsome he's mussely he goes to the gym he's gorgeous and and he says he's embarrassed he's embarrassed that his body isn't what it used to be and there's a lot of dramatic things happening in his life and one of these is this illness he has and another is a car crash and from this crash he has has scars over his body and he feels that he you know is initially he doesn't want misex to see these right away and he's so subconscious that he he asks for a blindfold and in fact misex says that when they meet for the first time she thinks he's come from the hospital to see her and she says that you know she's wearing a blindfold but she believes he's got bandages on on parts of his body and and that he's on lots of medication and he's very sick at this time but she wants to meet him and she loves him and she's willing to overlook all these conditions just to have this moment with him and she never takes the blindfold off she says actually that first time on Valentine's Day when Clyde come from the hospital and he'd climb the stairs and that had this first kiss in her bedroom and then he leaves she says that she decides to look out the window and she wants to catch a glimpse of him on the street and when the defense barrister says what did you see misex says that she saw Gail and it's a it's a strange moment she says that she she believed that Gail was picking Kai up and she said Gail was helpful like that she said that that she thought Kai was in the passenger seat already and perhaps she couldn't see him but it's a strange moment and it's something that the defense barrister you know he he says to her like you know this doesn't make sense you know Kai leaves and you look out the window and you see Gail but she says she thought Kai was in the car already Gail is driving off and that she never she never tried to look again will be right back to listen without ads join criminal plus at patreon.com/criminal support for criminal comes from home chef it's back to school season and that means it's time to get back into the swing of things home chef makes home cooked meal simple and affordable by delivering fresh food and easy to follow recipes that actually taste good it's not one size fits all home chef has more than 30 meal options each week with choices for different tastes and dietary needs I got to try home chef recently and the meals were quick and easy to prepare great for those busy days when it's hard to find time for shopping and meal prep and people really love it home chef is rated number one by users of other meal kits for quality convenience value taste and recipes for limited time home chef is offering our listeners 50% off and free shipping for your first box plus free dessert for life go to home chef.com/criminal that's home chef.com/criminal for 50% off your first box and free dessert for life home chef.com/criminal must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. Support for criminal comes from bombers there's nothing like a good pair of thoughtfully made socks. Bombas has a whole line of pro-level sports socks made for specific activities like golf yoga the gym and socks for every kind of runner. You might know I'm a runner and I've tried bombers for myself. Their ones socks are soft and comfortable with the cushioning in the heel and toe. I forget I'm wearing them which is how it should be. And their run pro socks are great for summer runs since they're made for warmer weather. On top of their sport socks and great basics like t-shirts, underwear and sandals bombers makes the best soft and supportive compression socks perfect for all your summer travel. They also have a great mission. For every item you purchase an item of clothing is donated to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchase equals one donated with over 200 million donations in counting. Head over to bombas.com/criminal and use code criminal for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com/criminal. Code criminal. Let's check out. At one point misex says that she went on a trip with Kai. Yeah they both agree that one Sunday they did something different and they go on a trip in in Gail's car. According to Gail they're going to her parents house and her parents house is not so far away from the city they live in and she says her parents are away and this time they're going as misex and Kai and it's a kind of day trip together. Misex is the count of this trip. It's much more strange in bewildering. She says that Kai wants to take her on a trip but she's got to wear the blindfold and she describes getting into his car the car he's borrowed from Gail and she describes putting sunglasses on top of the blindfold which they did because they were worried that drivers buy might think she was being kidnapped or something when they saw the blindfold and she describes going on this trip in a car but she says she doesn't know where she goes because she can't see and she says they drive for a little while and she gets out and she doesn't even know if it's a house she says it's a building and he takes her in and there's some kind of outdoor area and they end up sunbathing and the defense baritite he says you know as a friend you've been to Gail's family home many times you knew you knew where you were going and she she's dominantly denies it she says I didn't know I had the blindfold on I thought I was with Kai I could have been anywhere. The defense and prosecution are both talking a lot about different identities about blindfolds but they also the legal teams also spend a lot of time focused on the specifics of the sex that Miss X and Gail Newland or had why was that in very very detailed ways tell me a little bit about why that was so important to to both legal teams. Yeah it becomes a really big focus of the trial and there are these two kind of key exhibits really one is a black eye mask found in Gail's bedroom and the other is a dildo and this dildo is actually held up in court it's held up by the baristas and it becomes a really a key focus of the trial this question of whether Miss X should have known that she was having sex with a dildo whether she could have been fooled in the way she alleges and so the dildo is very important to the defense team and you know one of the arguments the defense team make is that this allegation is just ludicrous it's it's it's the defense barista says it's literally incredible it's incapable of belief and one of the factors of this kind of impossible story he claims is the dildo and so across the trial Miss X is cross-examined about the feel of the dildo about her previous sexual history and the other penises she's had sex with the idea being that you know she should have known what's what when it comes to the prosecution the blindfold is is really important because of course Miss X's story only made sense if Miss X never saw Kai who would have been instantly recognizable as her friend and there's a focus on the blindfold which Miss X wears and the fact the game. was just such a skillful storyteller that she had created such a vivid character of Kai with all these stories about the illness and the stories about his shyness that by the time that they meet in person, she's in control of the situation and she's able to not only allow Miss X to believe that this figure, this Kai is real but also it accuses her of wearing a sort of costume and this costume consists of a hat which Gail wears on her head to hide her long hair and it consists of a swimsuit that she's accused of wearing which is Miss X says she believes is some kind of medical contraption and also the dildo which is a sort of worn as a strap on and the prosecution alleged that these kind of devices were able to trick Miss X who didn't always touch Kai, she says sometimes her hands were tied behind her back but she also says they clasped hands and she rubbed his arms up and down and the myopic focus on sexual acts, it's really a feature of a sexual offences trial because these crimes, these allegations, these offences that have to be proved come down to this question, despite this relationship, despite these two years it comes down to whether or not Miss X knew she was having sex with a dildo or a penis. - And her best friend? - Yeah and her best friend and that's what's so important to the defence in a way, this idea of despite all the strange evidence that is brought against Gail there's a dossier which shows two years of text messages as Kai and there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, there's a lot to make sense of that's difficult to make sense of but when it comes to these meetings in person this idea and this is what the defence argue that any sensible person would have known that their best friend and their boyfriend were the same person and the defence you know it draws out the similarities between Gail and Kai who ultimately had the same body, they had the same voice, they had the same smell and this was a bloody that Gail knew very well, a person that she was hanging out with as a friend almost every day. - In the following days after the 999 call, after the confrontation on the street that has Gail going off and ending up going off the bridge are Miss X and Gail in contact with each other or are they texting often? - Gail you know after her attempted suicide, after she's out of hospital the next day she's calling Miss X over and over again and she's also sending her desperate text messages apologising and Miss X doesn't answer any of these texts at first and she does end up writing back to Gail and saying you raped my heart, you raped my soul you should be locked up and so she accuses Gail and really what she writes in these messages is very close to the story she tells a trial which makes them very important evidence and meanwhile Gail is furiously apologising she begs Miss X to take her back and she says that she told lies to hide lies and that she will pay for it and she already is and these become really kind of important messages for the prosecution who try and argue it's a kind of confession of sorts that she is admitting that she's done wrong she's admitting to the deception and they become a huge part of debate at trial the defense and also Gail say that she's talking about the closet, she's talking about the secret life Gail also says these are the worst days of her life she's just trying to kill herself and she's just panicking and she'll say anything to get Miss X back but of course the prosecution say these are messages that reveal Gail's guilt what did the jury end up deciding? well after this sort of trial it's about a week and a half long and eventually they go to deliberate and they deliberate for about six hours which is a moderately long time they ask for the dildo to be examined in the jury room and eventually they deliver their verdicts and they find Gail guilty and these are shown to be majority verdicts so ten jurors agreed and two descended and this is a feature of this sort of UK justice system since the 1960s you can have a majority verdict but this is the legal limit and there has to be at least ten jurors who agree and what was Gail's new incendence? she sentenced about a month later and she's given eight years and this has seemed to be a very high conviction rate she's put on the sex offenders register and she is sent to a maximum security prison but commentators you know immediately notice that the judge had given more lenient sentences to pedophiles in his court and just the year before for example a former schoolmaster who had been convicted of abusing 24 boys under the age of 13 he was given six years and nine months there was a retrial what happened? so Gail insists she's innocent even at the moment of the verdict she's sobbing in the dock she's saying how can you send me down for something I haven't done and from jail she immediately launches an appeal and this has heard a year later and the appeal is successful which is quite unusual and the appeal judges they rule that the conviction is unsafe which means there's a flaw in the proceeding and they actually point to judge Dutton's summing up they say he put too much focus on intentional deception and it leads to a real retrial that happens another year later so in June 2017 and in lots of ways the trial is very similar of course you have a new judge you have a new jury you even have a new prosecuting barrister although Gail's defense barrister says the same the Dildo is bought out again this time Miss X gives evidence from behind a curtain which is a sort of measure that's available for especially vulnerable witnesses by request and eventually the jury go to deliberate and this time the deliberation is much longer they deliberate for 17 hours and 25 minutes so this is really a significant deliberation and eventually they deliver their verdicts and Gail is found guilty again and this time it's also a majority verdict but it's 11 to 1 this time and the sentence was the same her sentence is slightly reduced by the new judge stockdale and this time as of the last trial there are mitigating factors which is when the defense will show psychiatric reports and at the last trial there were similar reports but this time there are more diagnoses and Gail is diagnosed with asperger syndrome which is a form of autism and also with gender dysphoria and her sentence is reduced to 6 years well thank you very much for speaking with us thank you so much for having me on the show Isabella Scott's book is The Bed Trick Sex and Deception on Trial you can find a link in our show notes and don't forget that in addition to listening here you can also watch all of these Tuesday conversations on YouTube just go to youtube.com/criminalplus or click the link in our show notes I'm Phoebe Judge thanks for listening