The transcription details a complex catfishing and coercive control scam experienced by Kira. After initially being told that her online acquaintance, "Bobby," was shot and died, she later learns he is alive and in a witness protection program. This marks the beginning of an elaborate deception that unfolds over years. The catfisher, posing as Bobby, resurrects the character and initiates a romantic relationship with Kira, fabricating continuous severe health emergencies like strokes and clots to manipulate her emotions and guarantee her attention. The relationship intensifies into coercive control, with "Bobby" becoming increasingly possessive and jealous, monitoring Kira's activities and isolating her from friends and work. Experts note the classic patterns of love bombing and strategic withdrawal used to foster dependency. Communication is carefully managed through text and voice-less Skype calls, likely to avoid leaving identifiable evidence. Despite the obvious fictional elements and red flags, Kira becomes deeply emotionally invested, with the scam taking a severe toll on her mental and physical health before the truth is uncovered.
Just a quick heads up before we get started. This episode contains descriptions of coercive control and some strong language. Did you know anything about this witness protection program that he was in? I did actually, yeah, I did. I thought it was really, really odd. I think that it's like a mafia movie, isn't it? It's like, you know, goodfathers or something, you know? So this is when the story starts to get weird, like really weird. You remember, in November 2013, Kira got a message to say that Bobby, this handsome cardiologist, she'd been speaking to online, had been shot. He got into a coma, and then a few months later, he died. Well, it turns out it wasn't that simple. So it was kind of like, you'd hear her talk about him a bit, but then because of this whole thing about witness protection, it would go quiet for a long time. She wouldn't hear from him. So there was a period when Bobby got shot, and then he was in a coma, and then he started to get better. But then he died. Did he die? And then. *laughs* At 2, he comes back alive three weeks later. Yeah, he's alive because he's been put in witness protection. Where was it with the US? Bobby wasn't dead. He was alive. And not only that, he was in witness protection. You know, like in the movies. Friends of Kira, like Niren and Sarah, who you just heard, they struggled to peace this period in Kira's life together. And they're not the only ones. Even after reading hundreds of pages of legal documents, I have trouble navigating this world. This mix of fact and fiction, fantasy and reality. It can get pretty disorientating. But not for Kira. She remembers every detail. One day after Bobby had passed away, it must have been but may probably, I think, where I had a message from. SC. Bobby's widow. By the way, we're referring to some of these people, like Bobby's widow, by their initials, for legal reasons. SC, who had been told to fly to New York from Nairobi. So she was in New York, and she said to me, "I had to know something, but she couldn't tell me, and I had to speak to Simran." Simran, that's Kira's younger cousin. And I was like, "Okay, what do I need to know? I'm not really that close that I needed to know anything, but I was just being there for her." And while I was at work, then about half an hour later or so, Simran called me. And I remember taking my phone, leaving the office going out onto the piazza to take the call. And Simran told me that Bobby was actually alive, and he'd been in witness protection, which was a bit of a shock, because he died. Yeah, I just dumb struck, speechless. By May 2014, the catfisher, the person scamming Kira online, had brought Bobby back into her life. He'd been resurrected, and this was when the scam really ramped up, the sophistication, the number of characters, and soon, the emotional blackmail. In a few years, the catfisher's control over Kira would become almost absolute. I'm going to tell you exactly how that was able to happen. But to do that, I'm going to take you through what happened from Kira's perspective, what she thought was happening. Because I don't think you can understand how this deception worked, unless you put yourself in Kira's shoes, and ask yourself, at each stage, what would you do? I'm Alexey Monstrous from Tortoise Media, you're listening to Sweet Bobby. Episode 2, Witness Protection. Even after Bobby turned up in New York, it wasn't like he was a massive deal in Kira's life. She was dating, she was going out, and she had her job. Bobby was more like a story you tell your work colleagues, like, "You're not going to believe what happened to my friend." And for a few months, it even seemed like Bobby was getting better. But then he got sick again, really sick. And at this point, Kira felt like she could offer him some support. What I know is when somebody's that unwell and when somebody needs your help, you help them. There were blood clots, strokes, he was partially paralyzed and unable to speak properly, and deep anger, which is actually quite common in patients who've been through a trauma. At one point, Bobby even tried to kill himself. One of the nurses found him just in time. But how did Kira know all this? Well, Bobby was sending her messages on Facebook, messages like this one. "I don't deserve you guys, so please don't bother. I do miss you all, but I don't deserve it." But she was also getting regular updates on Bobby's condition from his friends and his family, as well as his consultants at the hospital. Usually, Kira would reply with voice notes, short recordings you can send instead of a text message. "As if we were being too much the last couple of days, the last of you, Cuban." And what's amazing about these voice notes is that we can basically listen in a real time to how their relationship unfolded. "I don't like you feeling like this." Over the months, Kira found that she could offer Bobby something they couldn't. Out of everyone, Bobby seemed to respond best to her. So, she found herself being the one to tell him off if he drank too much. Praying for him before a risky operation. She was slowly becoming Bobby's crutch. "Something's bothering you and I can't work out what it is and using you to not be able to work it out either. Are you just not well? Do you just have a bad feeling about something that you can't put your finger on?" Those first years, 2014 and 15, some other pretty weird stuff was happening as well. Bobby's wife started acting oddly. She flew over to beat by Bobby's side in New York, and then she disappeared for a few days. She was all turning up with no explanation. And Bobby, he started drinking a lot, sneaking out of hospital to drink in bars and getting into fights. To Kira, it seemed almost like he was daring her to give up on him. "He was on a vengeful, challenging, I'm going to kill myself and let's see what you guys are going to do about it. It was very much that way. That was his mindset and it was really disturbing." And this continued until one day, about seven months after he returns from the dead, Bobby confesses his feelings for Kira. "So I think somebody had said something that he likes you or something. I think those hints had been dropped in the past. I needed to deal with stuff. I had a lot going on. And he was not well. He just wasn't in the right state of mind. He didn't know what he was saying as far as I was concerned. He was very delicate, fragile. I think we'd had him sectioned in the hospital at one point." When I hear Kira talk like this, it's so clear to me that she believed in this created world. And to an extent, still does. You can hear it in how she speaks about it. That in her mind, an element of it is all still real. I think I did at some point say to him that I don't think you're, you know, what you're saying kind of thing. But then I had the whole thing is you're belittling my feelings. And you're just telling me they're not real I am. I do know what I'm saying kind of thing. And then he started telling me how far back his feelings from me went. I think it's worth pointing out something here. Bobby's declaration of love. That came four years after his first contact with Kira. This wasn't some whirlwind love affair. This was a slow burn. Whoever was behind this deceit, they were patient. A few months later, on Valentine's Day 2015, Kira and Bobby officially became a couple. And even then, Kira had reservations. Now obviously I do did have feelings for him. Whether they were the right kind or feelings. Question mark, massive question mark. Because everybody kept saying to me and then his life expectancy was so short, we knew he wasn't going to last for months. He could die with this next operation. And so it was a case of he deserves happiness for the time that he's got left. And it's not like I can do anything physical with him or anything like that. So it's that I wasn't worried about that side of things. It was more. Granting his feelings.
kind of dying wish in a way. So I cared about Bobby a lot. I loved him as a friend, as a brother, or whatever it was, not as a brother anymore. But what was I going to lose by making a very sick man happy? But the thing is, whatever the crisis, Bobby always seemed to be able to pull through, and over time their relationship developed, and eventually Kira was one over. Despite having a boyfriend in hospital in New York with live threatening injuries, who remember she'd only ever met once back in that Brighton nightclub, and who couldn't even tell her the name of his doctor for security reasons, despite all of that, Kira felt head over heels. You mean everything to me? You could hear it in her messages to him at the time. She's besotted, invested, and listening to them makes me realize that despite all these red flags and all the obstacles, some part of her just wanted to believe that all of this could have a happy ending. I love you. I missed you so much today, sweets. So much. I really hope you're not too down. Today I caught myself smiling for no reason. Then I realized I was thinking about you. This is torture. I love you so much. Please don't ever forget. I know a few people in long distance relationships, and it's not always easy, battling time zones and months apart, but most of them make it work. And even though this was definitely an odd situation, there were parts of it that feel familiar. Bobby and Kira would have these long Skype calls, some lasting 13 hours at a time. They'd log in in the evening, talk for a bit, and then fall asleep, listening to each other breathe. A friend of mine used to do that actually with his girlfriend in America. There was an extra reason too. The Skype calls meant that she could listen out in case Bobby had a medical emergency. But even as their relationship grew stronger, there was one thing about Bobby's Skype calls that never changed. He never turned his camera on. Still it was in a very modern way, romantic. If they couldn't be in the same bedroom, then the Skype calls were the closest thing to it. And they had date nights together too. They cook a meal and watch a printus on TV, giggling together on different sides of the Atlantic. Kira in her bedroom in London, Bobby in a hospital in Manhattan. During this period, Kira even recorded and housed this for devotion, an entire Harry Potter book for Bobby, just so he had something to listen to. Harry heard from Hogwarts once any morning about a week after he arrived at the burrow. He and one went down. And they messaged constantly about everything, about buying a house together, about what they would call their children, about what their families would say when they knew. But mostly about when Bobby was finally going to come to the UK. If they're positive, you know, we'll be together really soon. You see, Bobby kept promising to come home, back to London. He wanted to transfer to a hospital closer to Kira, where he could restart his medical career as a cardiologist. Just trying to work out how long it's going to be, if I can see you. Kira kept getting excited. This was a voice note she sent to Bobby around that time. This time next week in a week you could be here. Wow. Wow. So deciding what I should be wearing to pick you up. Oh, I'm so excited. But here's the thing, something always got in the way. There was always a reason he couldn't travel. So do you mind just starting off just introducing yourself for the podcast, telling us a bit about who you are and what kind of work you do? I'm Professor of Public Protection at the University of Gloucestershire. I specialize in coercive control and homicide. My name is Jane Muntensme. coercive control is when someone uses threats or manipulation to isolate a victim or to take away their independence. And what Bobby was doing was something pretty typical in a controlling relationship creating barriers. The research suggests in an ordinary relationship, you might meet someone, you know, that thing. I love at first sight. That has a shelf life. It develops into something else. It develops into something more grounded and maybe stronger and more mature. But where there are barriers to the relationship reaching a conclusion, that stage can last much, much, much longer and retain that intensity. It never gets to that stage really where it's developed into, you know, a mature, equitable relationship between two people. Every month that went by, the volume of messages from Bobby increased. If Kira wasn't actually on her phone, she could hear it buzzing away in her bag or in her car. It was Bobby, making himself heard. And you might be wondering, heard how? Because Bobby mostly typed. Yes, he did speak over Skype, but his voice there was just a whisper. One of his operations damaged his vocal quality said. And this year, when Kira downloaded all her Facebook messages between her and Bobby, it became clearer that this might have been deliberate. This lack of voice. We've got literally thousands of examples of Kira's own voice notes. But none of Bobby's. Because Skype doesn't save calls and he never recorded any voice notes himself. When I started away through this all, I began to wonder how purposeful this all was. Did the person behind this deceit not want their voice preserved? There is one way you can hear Bobby. It's through the bleeps of his messages coming in. It's quite ethereal, like something from another world. Did you hear the bleeps? That's the capfisher. By now, Kira was really into Bobby. And look, there are two adults trying to make a relationship with long distance. And obviously, I was wondering about the physical side of things. Your relationship with Bobby to develop an intimate side as well? Yeah. We had an intimate relationship, but it wasn't obviously not physical. And there was no people like sworded details, but there were no photos or videos or anything. Yeah. So there was nothing like that at all. For Kira having an intimate relationship like this was a really big deal. It took a lot for her to trust someone in that way. There's a lot about those early months in Kira's relationship, which seem happy. Reading Harry Potter having date nights. But when I tell experts about it, they tell me things that make these events take on a much darker perspective. Because specialists like Jane Monkton Smith recognise that all of this is part of a pattern. So in coercive control, generally speaking, there is a stage right at the beginning that in the early relationship, and it's often referred to as the honeymoon stage, where one or both people will be representing themselves as maybe a little bit different to who they actually are. They're going to put themselves in the best possible light. And very controlling people will want to be able to establish their control over a person incredibly quickly. So what they tend to do is bombard the other person with romance and love and that kind of thing, which can be very persuasive. But they will often pull back all of a sudden to make that person crave the attention again. So they'll give them all of this attention, which the person is loving and is producing dopamine and all these wonderful things, then they'll just withdraw it purposely, purposely. And that person will then do anything for them to crave to get that attention back again. And that can create a cycle. And when you take a step back and look at Bobby and Kira's relationship from the outside, you can see it. The love bombing messages, the promises, the last minute disappointments. I just want to hold you in my arms and never let you go. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Instead, I let you down and hurt you badly. And it only got worse. By the end of 2015, Bobby had become more and more controlling. Bobby's always calling me and it got to the point where like I tried to call you who
you're in a call with, a phone line was busy, who are you talking to? Can you have everything I did? Can you absolutely everything I did? - Every time Kira didn't do exactly what Bobby wanted, or she questioned the relationship or something Bobby was telling her, or even just did something for herself, like getting her eyebrows threaded without telling him, something would happen. He would freak out or even worse, and have a stroke or some sort of medical emergency, and often Kira would be on the other end of the phone when that happened. Between 2015 and 2018, Bobby went from one health crisis to the next. - All these things were constantly happening. He's had a mini stroke, he's had a death. He's got another clot in his head, he needs to be operated, and these big things became normal. I can't keep a track of how many, I mean, it was the norm. (soft music) For Kira, it was terrifying, worrying about, sometimes even listening to, the person she loved, jolting from one near death experience to the next. - In a situation that is only online, your choices are limited, aren't they? And if you really think this person's gonna leave, you're probably gonna start panicking, so you're gonna do something big and dramatic. I've seen in some cases that as somebody's walking out the door, they'll suddenly get a marriage proposal, to bring them back. If this is online, if somebody's feigning a heart attack, you have distracted them from leaving you. They're not gonna walk out and leave you, now they're gonna get an ambulance, they're gonna worry about you, there's gonna be follow-up, they're gonna, how are you? They have guaranteed contact. Given them time to manipulate the situation back into their hands. - And it wasn't just the constant emergencies or guilt trips, Bobby got jealous, like really jealous, of Kira's On Kira's radio show, of things she was posting on Facebook. - You're not as innocent as you make yourself out to be, biggest fucking joke. - Even if her friends. I wasn't even allowing my friends to hug me, to comfort me. I feel like just don't touch me. I belong to Bobby, because I was scared of what he might think, even though he didn't know I was there. I just wanted to be very clear. I wanted the lines to be very clear. This is not, you know, I was just so scared of being accused of doing something wrong. - Did she ever talk to you about any behavior on Bobby's part that you thought was controlling? - Yeah, I think she did. - Now you're saying I remember. Yeah, when he was quite controlling, when he was quite possessive. And I thought that's a bit odd as well. If he's not here to see you, why is he controlling? Why is he possessive? Basically, she would dance to his tune, which is really annoying for me. It's like, who is this guy, you know? To make you, my friend, behave in this way, to become so subservient and kind of like fear, it felt like she was acting at a fear of upsetting him. - If Bobby didn't like how she was behaving, he would even threaten to cheat on Kirat with his nurse, a woman called Maria. - Fuck it, I'm going out with Maria for a walk. Don't bother calling me tonight. I might be with her. - Pretty soon, Kirat was signed off work because of stress. She lost weight, a lot of it. She stopped talking to her friends. She fell out with Harvey, her best friend. She even quit her beloved radio show. - It is the fun of a show. - Do you remember a time when all this was happening when you saw her and you were shocked by how she looked? - Yeah, I was actually shocked to how much weight she lost because she was really thin. I obviously don't want to go on about it, 'cause you know, you don't want to make a fear of conscious about it, but I was like, oh my God, she's really lost a lot of weight. Yeah, she didn't look. She didn't look good. - You knew she was stressed, you knew she wasn't eating properly and she would say she's not eating properly. And it's the sort of thing like, we'd meet up for lunch and I'd be like, "Kirat, you need to eat more, 'cause you're wasting away." - Some of the stories Kirat tells me they're hard to hear. Between 2015 and 2018, particularly, Bobby's control escalated. There was one time in 2016, when Kirat started getting chest pains and Bobby pressurized her into having a mammogram to check for cancer. He was a cardiologist after all, why wouldn't she listen to him? And he promised her that he would be there in person in the UK by the time the appointment came round. So Kirat booked it, but yet again, Bobby broke his promise. He didn't get to London on time. But that wasn't the worst bit. Kirat went for the appointment on her own and it was a pretty scary experience. Later, when Bobby heard that her consultant happened to be male, he freaked out. How dare she let another man touch her like that. By April 2016, Bobby had made no fewer than six promises to Kirat to come to the UK and all of them broken. But on the seventh time, he seemed to be serious. It was now more than a year into their relationship and Kirat's family was starting to ask questions. This time, Kirat pulled out all the stops. I bought new things for the house, like new bins, sorted out a new cutlery and crockery. Totally repainted the kitchen units, stripped them down, took them into the garage, and I was beaten. She arranged to take six weeks off work, most of it unpaid. She even had her bathroom redone, all for Bobby. A little bit mad. But, all because of you, baby. It's all because of you, but you know, it is because of you. The cat left. And then, a few days before Bobby was due to arrive, he picked a fight with her over the phone. Something wasn't right, and I just kept saying, "What's wrong?" And suddenly, while he was arguing with her, Bobby had a huge heart attack with Kirat on the other end of the line. And then, the line goes dead. And I was shaking and I was in tears and I was just screaming for him down the phone and getting nothing back. Distraught, Kirat rushed home. She threw some clothes in a bag and drove to Heathrow Airport. She had to make sure Bobby was okay. But then, literally as she was at the check-in desk about to book a ticket, one of Bobby's cousins calls her. An older woman called K.B. Maybe you were in the wrong. K.B. suggests to Kirat. Bobby was stressed out about coming to see you, she says, and his heart gave out. In other words, it's your fault. Kirat was devastated. (gentle music) Do you know where the term catfish comes from? I'm not talking about what it means here to trick someone online using fake identities. I'm talking about how it was coined. I mean, why catfish? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, it comes from a story about fish and specifically about cod shipped from Alaska to China. On the way, the cod is kept alive. They're stored in big tanks on the ship. But by the time the cod gets to China, the flesh tastes bland and mushy. And then one fisherman had a genius idea. If he could find a way to keep the cod swimming, then maybe he could improve the taste. So he put a catfish in the tank with the cod. Catfish eat cod, so now the cod had a reason to swim. And as a result, they stayed fresh. And now I've looked into this story a bit, this catfish origin story, and here's the thing. It sounds pretty unlikely, doesn't it? I mean, wouldn't you just get one massive catfish left in the tank at the end of the trip? And actually, there's very little evidence to suggest that the story is true. It actually comes from a documentary film in 2010, the one that eventually became the popular MTV show Catfish. In the film, the husband of a woman who is revealed to be creating all these fake identities online, he tells this story in order to justify her actions. What he was saying was, like the catfish, his wife made life more interesting for the people she tricked. So maybe even the term catfish is a type of catfish, a positive spin on a behavior that can actually have devastating consequences. Last year, a group of US psychologists found that nearly one in four women and one in three men admitted to catfishing online to one extent or another. Given that 40% of relationships now start online, that's a lot of potential for harm. Even though I know that catfishing is a very real problem, that didn't mean I always found it easy to listen to care out story. I mean, I had a lot of questions. Like, how come care out didn't get to say,
suspicious that Bobby had never sent her a video, and if Bobby was shot in Kenya, why did he turn up in New York? Why was he in witness protection in the first place? And why could other people, like his ex-wife, go to see him but not Keerat? There's no denying it. There were a lot of holes in this story, so I was thinking, is Keerat just a bit gullible? And then I learnt more about the scam, how creative it was. The sophistication, it's almost admirable. I'll give you one example. One day, Bobby asked Keerat to help him choose some clothes for his baby son. We were picking up clothes from my mother-care and things like that, and then when pictures had been shared of him with Bobby, and then obviously he then shared them with me of his son, he'd be wearing some of the clothes with Picked. Let's just talk through what happened. Bobby and Keerat go online to shop for baby clothes, and then a couple of weeks later, Keerat received some pictures of the baby wearing the clothes they'd chosen together. So that must mean Bobby was real, right? Because how could that happen if he wasn't? This is always one of the first stories I tell people when I talk about the case, and I think about it a lot because I think it gives you a real insight into the person behind all this and how they operate. Here's what actually happened. Remember I told you in episode one that Bobby was real, as in there's a real Bobby out there who is separate from the character that Keerat is speaking to. Well, the catfish has somehow got hold of his photos, including a photo of Bobby's real son wearing some baby clothes. And somehow they've managed to work out where these clothes were brought from, and then had tricked Keerat into thinking that she had chosen the clothes herself. The catfish had reverse engineered the whole thing. And there's a second reason why Keerat was ready to believe Bobby, and it's probably the most important one of all. As I mentioned in episode one, Bobby was far from the only person speaking to Keerat at this point. He was just one of a cast of characters, and this cast was made up of dozens of people. Like the time when Keerat joined a Facebook group with about 20 members of Bobby's extended family, some of whom Keerat recognised. You know, I was really happy that he was doing this obviously because he was taking the step into introducing me to his family. Bobby had promised to introduce her, and he said this was a good way of doing it. And there was loads of banter and jokes in there about Bobby and his cooking and his behaviours and the things he'd done and liked in the past. Most of the characters were friendly to Keerat. It was nice. Everyone was really nice and warm and welcoming apart from one of the sister-in-laws who's very close with their seat. She left the group. She was apparently loyal to Bobby's ex-wife and didn't like Keerat for that reason. But she was fake too. They were all fake. The key bit here is that in total, dozens of different characters were used to trick at. All of them interacting with each other as if they had autonomous lives. Some of them totally imagined some of them based on real people. And the capfisher was behind all of them. These characters, they'd come in and out of Keerat's life on and off stage as they were needed. But most of the time, she was speaking to a much smaller group of people. If you think of the dozens of cousins and their husbands as a supporting cast, they were also the main players. In a film, these guys would be the stars. And at any time, Keerat was speaking to about four of them, not including Bobby. There was Bobby's ex-wife, SC, R.N., who was also a medic and who was by Bobby's bedside for much of his treatment, K.B., an older cousin of Bobby's, the one who talked to Keerat at the airport, and Y.J., another cousin, but this time a male and much younger. And they all had very different characters, and they were all constantly texting, messaging and phoning Keerat like all of the time. And Keerat would talk to her friends in the real world about Bobby too, like Nearin and Sarah or her cousin Simran or Harvey, her best friend. When I was reading the witness statement, Keerat had to give me an actual spreadsheet to keep up with all these names, so I'm certainly not going to expect you to remember all of this. But the important thing is that all these characters work together. They existed to confirm each other's allegations, even when they seemed unbelievable. In domestic abuse cases, this type of behaviour, it's called toxic triangulation, making something seem real by having more than one person tell it. The catfisher had another tactic too, Bobby started talking directly to Keerat's family, like her mum and her brother, even her cousins, feeding them snippets of information, which they would then tell Keerat it was a positive reinforcement loop. Anytime Keerat started to doubt something, someone she trusted told her it was true. I've spent days talking to Keerat about what happened to her, immersing myself in her relationship with Bobby. But I still only have Keerat's version of events, and I know I need to speak to the other person at the centre of all this. I need to speak to the real Bobby, the person whose whole identity had been stolen by the catfisher. Now, I've always known there was a real Bobby and a fake Bobby, but what I still don't know at this point is exactly how much the real one knows what's his role in all of this. One of the people I've been speaking to during this investigation is a lawyer called Amrit. He's been helping Keerat, and he also knows Bobby. And for weeks I've been asking Amrit to pass on a message to Bobby, and finally, one day, he says yes. He tells me he's meeting Bobby in person very soon. He's not exactly sure when, but he'll give me a call as soon as it happens. And I'm nervous because if Bobby says no, then that's a big piece of the puzzle that I'm never going to see. Now, the thing with investigations like this is that nothing ever happens quite how you plan it. So when Amrit does call me, I'm in a really loud restaurant. And I miss the call. And this is so annoying because I don't know how many more opportunities I'm going to get. So I try and call Amrit back. But he's not picking up. And then eventually, he does. Hi. I look so sorry about that. Bobby is understandably nervous, but he might be willing to talk. And I'm excited, so I call Claudia, part of the team working on this series, to let her know. So we have to kind of go through some processes, like he's still a bit anxious, so we have to go down to Brighton to see him. That's amazing. And did he give a kind of a time frame for this? Is it tomorrow, is it next week? It seems like step by step we're getting closer to Bobby. Back in Kirat's world, she was also getting closer to Bobby, the fake one. I just wanted him here and that was kind of the be all and end all. And he seemed to finally understand. And he just said, I think this is the way it happened. I hope I'm not confusing. It would say so many other times. He said he was coming, but it was a case of literally, I need you here and that's it. And he was like, I'm coming. This is our year. Love you so much. By March 2018, three years into their relationship, and eight years after Kirat first started to speak to Bobby online, he finally arrives in London. So much had happened since the first time he was going to come and how many times he was going to, I don't know how many times he was going to come, I've never counted to be honest. After all those years of broken promises, in Kirat's mind at least, all that hardship was about to be over. Next week on Sweet Bobby, a big part of the puzzle falls into place as the catfisher is revealed. Would you characterise the relationship between Bobby and Kirat as a coercive control relationship? I characterise it as high risk coercive control. What's your name by high risk? High risk of Kirat suffering some kind of harm. Serious harm. And last question, have you ever met, read or come across anyone like. I think that for me is probably the most invested and obsessive controlling personal environment that I've seen personally. I think she needs prosecuting. Personally, I think she needs prosecuting because if everybody thinks this is the end and she will never behave like this again, they're wrong. She will.
reported by me, Alexi Monstrous, produced by Gary Marshall, with additional reporting and production by Claudia Williams. Sound design is by Carla Patela. The executive producer is Basha Cummings.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Kira is deceived by an online catfisher posing as "Bobby," a cardiologist who fakes his death, enters witness protection, and then re-enters her life with a complex backstory of severe health crises.
Over years, the scam escalates into a coercively controlling relationship where "Bobby" uses emotional manipulation, fabricated medical emergencies, and jealousy to isolate Kira, impacting her health, job, and friendships.
Experts analyze the relationship as a classic pattern of coercive control, involving love bombing, creating barriers to meeting, and inducing dependency through cycles of attention and withdrawal.
The catfisher meticulously avoids leaving voice evidence, communicating primarily through typed messages and whispered Skype calls, deepening the deception.
Despite numerous red flags and the entirely online nature of the relationship, Kira becomes emotionally invested, believing in the fabricated world and hoping for a happy ending.
Summary:
The transcription details a complex catfishing and coercive control scam experienced by Kira. After initially being told that her online acquaintance, "Bobby," was shot and died, she later learns he is alive and in a witness protection program. This marks the beginning of an elaborate deception that unfolds over years.
The catfisher, posing as Bobby, resurrects the character and initiates a romantic relationship with Kira, fabricating continuous severe health emergencies like strokes and clots to manipulate her emotions and guarantee her attention. The relationship intensifies into coercive control, with "Bobby" becoming increasingly possessive and jealous, monitoring Kira's activities and isolating her from friends and work. Experts note the classic patterns of love bombing and strategic withdrawal used to foster dependency.
Communication is carefully managed through text and voice-less Skype calls, likely to avoid leaving identifiable evidence. Despite the obvious fictional elements and red flags, Kira becomes deeply emotionally invested, with the scam taking a severe toll on her mental and physical health before the truth is uncovered.
FAQs
Coercive control is when someone uses threats or manipulation to isolate a victim or take away their independence, often seen in controlling relationships.
Kira was shocked when Bobby was reported dead, then learned he was alive and in witness protection, which deepened her emotional involvement and confusion.
Red flags included Bobby's constant medical emergencies, jealousy, controlling behavior, and never turning on his camera during Skype calls, which isolated Kira.
The catfisher used love bombing, creating barriers to meeting, and feigning health crises to maintain control and intensify Kira's emotional dependence.
Kira experienced significant stress, weight loss, social isolation, and eventually quit her job and radio show due to the manipulative dynamics.
The absence of Bobby's voice recordings, with only typed messages and whispered Skype calls, suggests the catfisher may have deliberately avoided leaving identifiable evidence.
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