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I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. She seemed to have a perfect life, but she also had a secret.
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One that would explode into the headlines. That must be a pit in your stomach when you hear that your inmate is gone.
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Yeah, he's a very, very dangerous person. He said a prisoner had escaped and Toby was missing.
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We assume that he took her prisoner to be used as a hostage. They were concerned for Toby's safety.
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We found out that she had taken a large sum of cash and two firearms were missing from
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the house. Do you think, could she be involved in something like this? She had children, a husband.
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It seemed like it was a white picket fence type life. There is absolutely no way Toby could be involved in this.
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You see this truck. My gut feeling was telling me it was them. I said, this is our guy.
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This sounds like one of those fast and furious car chases. I was terrified that they were going to get killed.
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Very wild story. So many twists and turns, nerve-wracking, chalking. It is unbelievable.
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Here's Andrea Canning with Breakout. It was a cold February night along this isolated stretch of a Tennessee highway
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when U.S. Marshal Tony Crawford and dozens of state troopers finally spotted the woman they'd been searching for.
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I just really was trying to see inside the truck. I could see the top of her head. That's about all I could see of her.
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She was sitting in the passenger seat, terrified. A 48-year-old beloved mother of two, a cancer survivor, and community volunteer.
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Back home in Kansas, her tight-knit family desperately wanted her home safe. We were all fearful for her life.
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And justifiably so. As Crawford drove alongside the truck, he knew that if he wanted to get to her,
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he had to stop him, the man at the wheel, a convicted killer, armed and dangerous,
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who wasn't going down without a fight. He's taking you on a wild ride. Yes, it was.
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That part was the wildest chase I've ever been in. And a fitting climax to a wild, improbable story that blurred the lines between duty and desire.
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A story about breaking out of prisons, both real and imagined. This wasn't just the talk of the town, this was the talk of the nation.
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Yes it was. It was just unreal. The saga started almost two weeks earlier. when the alarm sounded and Warden David McCune learned that an inmate had escaped from the Lansing Correctional Facility.
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A very scary time. And, you know, right away, it's like, you know, who's gone? Who are they? How'd they get out? Where are they going?
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Soon, the warden had a name. John Maynard, 27 years old, sentenced to life for a carjacking gone bad.
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At the time that he committed his crime, he was only 17. Reporter Lauren Fox wrote about Maynard for the Kansas City Star newspaper.
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The carjacking turned fatal. Someone shot the driver who was in his car. And so John Maynard was a convicted murderer for his involvement in that crime.
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If he's capable of participating in this robbery that ends up in murder, then he's very capable of murder again or assault, batteries, whatever.
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He's a very dangerous person. Is your first thought, he could kill somebody out there?
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Oh, yeah, very possible. McCune put police in the area on high alert and warned the locals in the tiny prison town along the Kansas-Missouri border that a criminal was on the loose.
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We have a huge steam whistle and we'll blow that several times. And so in all the local community all know you hear that somebody's on the run.
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Just an alert, be aware, lock your doors, take all the precautions. As police increased patrols in the surrounding towns,
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prison investigators got to work trying to figure out how Maynard had escaped. Right away you start the whole search of all the interior, all the perimeter, all that.
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You look for breaches in the fence, you look for breaches in the gates or anything like that.
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They also traced every vehicle that left the prison that day and discovered that one vehicle hadn't been searched, a van.
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They have to search inside the van, underneath the van, on top of the van. and you put seismic sensors on its axles,
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it'll detect the heartbeat of a mouse. There's a mouse inside that vehicle. But this time, they didn't.
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They didn't do it. They didn't follow procedures. The van belonged to Safe Harbor,
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a nationally heralded prison program that taught inmates how to train stray dogs for adoption.
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That day, several dogs had been picked up from the prison. John Maynard, it turned out, was one of Safe Harbor's dog handlers.
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Investigators interrogated every inmate who had helped load the dogs into the van.
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They just kind of drilled down and drilled down and talked to all those folks until you finally get somebody that's willing to talk.
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Where does that lead you? Where that led was that we were very sure that he had left inside a dog crate.
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There were other inmates that knew that because, I mean, he had to get in the dog crate
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and he had to have somebody fasten it shut from the outside and then load it onto the van.
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There were fewer guards at the prison on Sundays and only two prisoner counts. The weather may have helped Maynard, too.
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The day of the escape was very cold. People didn't want to be outside. They were ready to get the dogs in the van
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and get them out of there. What they didn't know, of course, was that John was in one of the dog crates And that investigators believed instantly put the driver of the van in harm way The founder of Safe Harbor a woman named Toby Young
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She was one of the most popular and trusted volunteers at the prison. And perhaps the reason the guards let their guard down.
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Are you thinking Toby's life could be in danger? Oh, absolutely. Because we figured he's in for murder in the first place.
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And so I just had visions of, as they get away from here driving away, he pops out of the box and takes her literally hostage.
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And then how long before he's done with the hostage? Just gives you chills and fear of what could happen.
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Fears that Toby Young, who set out to help prison inmates, may be the victim of one.
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When we come back... Her family, desperate. People were trying to call our cell phone and there was no answer.
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We were just fearing for the worse. Warden David McCune was horrified. Not only had a dangerous criminal escaped his maximum security prison,
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he was possibly holding a hostage. Toby Young, the leader of the prison's successful dog training program.
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A woman so beloved, the inmates even gave her an endearing nickname, the Dog Lady.
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She seemed like a model volunteer. Absolutely. Good background, great career, strategic planning.
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I mean, husband's on the fire department and good family. Now, McCune had to break the terrible news to Toby's family.
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Her brother, Tom Phelan, could barely comprehend it. You had to pinch yourself, say, all right, yeah, this is real.
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This is really happening. Were you trying to reach out to her? Was everyone in the family trying to call her?
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Oh, yeah. People were trying to call her cell phone, and, you know, there was no answer, and we
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were just fearing for the worse. Toby's siblings got together at their parents' place.
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There were lots of them. Toby was the oldest of seven children. Was Toby someone that you all looked up to?
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Was she the kind of sister who set an example? She was. She did set an example. She set an example that was very hard for the other kids to reach.
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She led a model life as an adult, too. While working full-time, Toby graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in business administration and accounting
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and rose through the ranks to become a manager at Sprint. But Toby was most proud of her two sons, whom she raised with her firefighter husband, Patrick.
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They'd built a life together in this beautiful home. She met Pat in high school, and they dated freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year,
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and then they married a few years after that. This was really the definition of high school sweethearts.
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Did they seem like a happy family? Yes, they did. They seemed like the ideal, perfect family.
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Toby also had her fair share of hardships, Tom said. She struggled to find a job after Sprint unexpectedly downsized and laid her off.
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Then she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. After she recovered and her kids went off to college, Toby took stock.
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She decided to dedicate herself to serving others by establishing Safe Harbor. Do you think that is sort of a testament to her personality, that kind of gentle soul?
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Oh, exactly. She loved taking care of animals and she loved taking care of people.
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And this dog program gave her a release and gave her a reason to carry on. Did it kind of give her that extra kick in her step when she kind of found this calling?
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Oh, yes, definitely. Definitely. It gave her a purpose. It seemed to complete her.
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But now, on that cold February day, it seemed like Toby could lose it all, especially after her husband called law enforcement with some alarming news.
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During that conversation with her husband, you know, we found out that she had taken a large sum of cash
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and two firearms were missing from the house. Ray Stewart, a member of the Fugitive Task Force hunting John Maynard,
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theorized the inmate had forced Toby to drive to her house to get the weapons. If so, he had just turned from dangerous to armed and dangerous.
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When you throw a firearm into the mix, that does up the game a considerable amount,
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knowing that he had two firearms. And, of course, the question in everybody's mind is, is he willing to use them?
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And now that John Maynard had money as well, was Toby expendable? Her husband feared the worst.
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Of course, these types of situations, you can never guarantee what's going to happen in the end.
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And I just remember telling them, you know, hopefully everything will turn out all right.
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And, you know, hopefully we'll bring her back safe. They missed a chance to do just that a few hours after the escape.
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An off-duty prison employee who was unaware that Maynard had escaped saw him at a nearby Walmart and wondered what a man sentenced to life was doing in a store.
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By the time he realized what was going on and called for backup, Maynard had disappeared.
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So close. Are you just consumed by this 24-7? Oh, yeah. I just hanging out there in the office, listening for the phone, listening on the radio, just
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listening for everybody. The reports are coming in from the investigators. I just praying, you know, let this be one of the tips that gets us there.
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While Department of Corrections officers and U.S. Marshals were searching for Maynard
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and Toby, other investigators were trying to find out if anyone outside the prison was
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helping Maynard evade capture. So they interviewed his family and friends, but found no evidence any of them were involved.
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Next, they turned their attention to the prison staff. Could one of their own have helped Maynard?
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We know it happens. I couldn even hazard a guess in 30 years how many staff that we disciplined or let go because of overly familiar relationships
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I mean, it's a number, quite a number. But as far as they could tell, no staff member had helped him escape.
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And that left one person whose actions they couldn't yet account for, Toby. You trusted her?
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Yeah, sure did. If he only knew. Coming up, a critical discovery at a storage unit, and the break that will change everything.
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All these pieces of the puzzle started to come together and we're telling a story.
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Absolutely. When Dateline continues. A day into the hunt for John Maynard, investigators concluded no one close to him had helped him escape.
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But any investigator worth their salt had to check out Toby. As unlikely as it seemed, was she somehow involved?
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Toby is the kind of person who never broke any law, never broke any rule. She was an ultimate rule follower.
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Michael Mooney is an author and journalist who wrote about the prison break for The Atlantic magazine.
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I think everything about Toby's life up to that point had led people to believe that she was kind of safe and trustworthy.
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But the closer they looked, the more investigators were forced to confront the most astonishing possibility,
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that this rule follower was a rule breaker. Shortly after the escape, investigators made several rather curious discoveries.
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The prison administrative officer told them that staff had noticed Toby and Maynard were spending a lot of time together.
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Some of the staff had talked to my ex-o that, hey, you know, they just seem to be a little too close.
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And I know, you know, he talked to her about that. You've got to be very careful about those appearances.
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But everything was under the microscope now, including this. In addition to the cash that her husband reported missing,
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Toby had emptied her retirement account to the tune of $40,000. She also went on a shopping spree at Walmart,
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Target, and a Cabela's sporting goods store. So there's this security footage of her at Walmart buying men's clothing
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and a lot of snacks that a teenager might want, like Twizzlers and chocolate-covered donuts.
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They see her at Cabela's buying men's clothing. More than that, camping in survival gear and maps.
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When investigators asked her husband about those purchases, he told them the family didn't have any trips planned
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and Toby hadn't bought him any new clothes recently. The clothing that she was buying at Walmart and Capellos would not have fit her husband.
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There were other items that clearly weren't for Toby's husband. Black hair dye and an electric razor she bought at Target.
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And two burner phones she bought at Walmart. The next day, police got their biggest break yet.
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They learned Toby had rented a storage unit on the outskirts of town about a week before the escape.
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They discover her van inside the storage unit. They discover tire tracks leading away from the storage unit.
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Investigators believed those tracks were from the getaway vehicle, an SUV or a truck.
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Finding this really changed the investigation in a pretty significant way. Investigators now wondered
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Instead of being Maynard's hostage Could Toby be his accomplice? They found the answer in her cell phone bill
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There were hundreds of calls to an unknown number They traced it to a phone They believe Toby smuggled into prison for Maynard
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This was like the first major line that Toby crossed She brought him a phone And then they talked for something like 12,000 minutes
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Over the next couple of weeks Something like 200 hours and they text messaged all the time.
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There was one morning where Toby's husband found the phone that she had and it had received text messages that said something like,
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good morning, I love you. Investigators added the secret phone calls and texts to a long list of evidence against Toby.
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The demure housewife was looking more like a desperate housewife. All these pieces of the puzzle started to come together and were telling a story.
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Absolutely. A story of a forbidden romance. Right. Toby's not really the kind of person you're thinking, oh yeah, she's the one that would have a relationship with an inmate.
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You know, the married mom who started the dog program. I mean, how much more of a loving, caring person can you have?
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I don't know. It's just almost unfathomable. Are you feeling some anger that she did this to you?
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I betrayed and just misled, a violation of trust. But the warden still believed that Toby's life could be in danger.
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Inmates will be manipulating you. And even if her view of it was we have a very romantic relationship,
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we're having this great future together if we just get away with this, many, many times it's not reciprocal.
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I mean, Toby might have trusted this man, but I know that you sure didn't. Nope, sure did not.
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Coming up, three states away. My gut feeling was telling me it was them. A chance sighting leads to a wild chase.
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Units started falling into play. Not only marked units on the ground, but helicopters.
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Toby Young had turned from a woman who had never committed a crime to an apparent criminal on the
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run. Investigators issued a warrant for her arrest. The warden called the family to deliver the news.
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We're shocked thinking that they have to be wrong. They have to be wrong. This can't be right.
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This is not the Toby I know. Exactly. There's no way. I just was filled with questions on why she would do something like this.
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I had no idea, but I knew that she was my sister and that I loved her. It's one thing for her brother to support her as this is unfolding.
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It's another thing for her husband because this is a betrayal. It's looking more and more like a betrayal.
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Pat was devastated, just like the rest of the young family. They were absolutely devastated, and I can't blame them.
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What does Pat tell their sons about what mom has done? Yeah, it was very hard on the sons.
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It was extremely hard on them. They couldn't understand it. I mean, that was their mom.
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It didn't take long before this intriguing local story. The mother of two adult boys, a wife of 30 years.
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blew up into national news. No one close to Toby Young says they know why Toby would suddenly throw away her past and future.
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Toby Young's family... We had international attention on this one. It was making the European newscasts
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all over the world virtually. The killer and the dog lady. Despite the suspicion that Toby had fallen in love
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with John Maynard, her family believed he had manipulated her, that she was the victim.
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She had always been a loving mom. I don't think that they thought that she would willingly leave her two adult sons
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without telling them where she was going. And we just simply don't have any idea why or how this happened.
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The family decided to hold a press conference. Yeah, we were just trying to plead with her to give herself up.
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We were still fearful for her life, and we wanted her to turn herself in. But the days ticked by, and no one had heard from Toby.
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The national manhunt involving dozens of agents had hit an impasse. At any point did you start to think, we're not going to catch them?
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It certainly crossed our mind that you go over time and there's very, very few times across history that they don't eventually get caught.
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It's very rare. Sure enough, investigators got a promising lead. Calls traced to Maynard's cell phone led them to a used car dealership on the outskirts of Kansas City.
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Kansas City. The salesman remembered a woman who vaguely resembled Toby buying a truck around the
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time of the escape, but her hair color was different and her name was Molly Rose. Investigators
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believed that was Toby incognito. So we learned that she had purchased a used Chevy Silverado
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pickup truck. We also received information that she actually had the registration and she wanted
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and it's sent to a specific address in Tennessee. The address was a lakeside cabin in rural Tennessee, more than 600 miles away.
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It's a pretty remote location, so not a lot of activity. It was the off-season, and so we knew there wasn't going to be probably a lot of people there.
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So it's a great place to hide. The fugitive task force blanketed the area, and a SWAT team headed to the cabin.
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Meanwhile, U.S. Marshal Jason Ladd was cruising the parking lot of a nearby mall,
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keeping an eye out for Toby and Maynard. Suddenly, he spotted a white Silverado.
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You know, it appeared to be driving like they wasn't from around there. They were putting their blinkers on in such a fashion,
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and they would hit their brake lights, and it was obvious that they were lost. My gut feeling was telling me it was them.
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Marshal Ladd followed the truck onto the interstate and called for backup. The further we proceeded north, the more units started falling into play.
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Not only marked units on the ground as far as vehicles, but the middle district of Tennessee, these guys, they had helicopters.
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This operation just keeps picking up steam. Quickly. Police dash cam video captured the unfolding high-speed chase.
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Ladd's colleague, Tony Crawford, assumed the lead position. And when everyone was in place, he drove alongside the truck to get a closer look.
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I was looking at his face, and as best I can remember, he had smirk on his face.
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A little funny grin on his face, looking down at me a little bit from the truck.
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He recognized John Maynard, but was Toby with him? And there, riding shotgun. Yes, she was.
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And this is Toby. Coming up, an extraordinary conversation. Toby Young opens up about it all,
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from how things started with John Maynard. This was something I'd been craving forever.
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To the moment she realized she might have made a horrifying mistake. Were you scared?
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I thought, I don't know who this person is. When Dateline continues. news. Toby Young had been found sitting alongside an escaped convicted murderer in a truck
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barreling down a Tennessee highway. Just then this police car sped up from around behind us
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and cut over in front of us and slammed on their brakes. And John said, these are trying to kill us.
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He floored it and he took off. As John Maynard drove even faster with dozens of state troopers in pursuit,
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Toby wondered what had brought her to this moment. Why had she made the fateful decision
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to help Maynard break out of prison? When I pulled up that day, I was kind of sick to myself.
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And part of me was excited about what was going to happen, and part of me was wishing that it had never gotten this far.
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It's hard to really even imagine the excited part. I mean, you're about to blow up your life.
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Yes, but I felt like my life needed to be blown up in some way. It didn't make sense, but I don't think love very often makes sense.
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You heard it right. Toby says this is a love story. She says she first noticed John Maynard about a year and a half earlier
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as she was walking across the prison yard. He was walking straight at me, and he stuck out his hand, and he said,
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Hi, I'm John Maynard, and I want to be your next dog handler. Maynard soon joined Toby's program.
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Nothing happened between them until about a year later when Maynard came to Toby's rescue.
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She was being threatened by an inmate who had cornered her. I was terrified. And then I saw John Maynard kind of swaggering up, you know, from behind this inmate that was accosting me.
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And I felt this sense of relief because I thought, oh, now here comes somebody that will help me.
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Toby started spending more time around Maynard, who was 20 years younger. We would have these really deep conversations about, you know, life and the world.
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and this was something I'd been craving forever and somebody to just have conversations with.
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And then, around six weeks before the escape, they crossed the line. We were just setting up for a dog event
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and he just leaned over and kissed me. It was like I was on cloud nine. It just made it, like, unquenchable.
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There would be no more kisses after that, but Toby had fallen hard for Maynard. When people start falling in love, they...
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change. There's a big smile on their face. Was your husband thinking, what the heck is going on
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with Toby? I do think he noticed a difference, but he couldn't put his finger on it. And then
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at one point he said to me, you know, if I didn't know better, I would think you're having an affair.
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Toby said by that point, what had seemed like the perfect marriage was really a dead end one
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and that their relationship had been in a slow decline for 20 years, ever since they tragically lost their daughter shortly after birth.
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We never really dealt with losing Emily, and, you know, we just kind of buried it and moved on.
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And I think when you have something buried that's so significant, it's just a wound that doesn't heal.
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Despite their growing divide, Toby and her husband quietly went about living their white picket fence life.
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She focused on raising her sons, became an avid soccer mom, and like so many women, was the glue that held her family together.
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But she never felt appreciated. I was just invisible because I was trying to be a good person,
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and I knew I was invisible to my husband, and it just felt like everybody knew they could depend on me to do something,
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so they just quit even regarding me at all. Then she lost her job and battled the cancer.
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By the time her grown kids had moved out of the house, Toby says depression set in.
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I would be driving somewhere, and I would think, oh, I could just pull over into the front of that semi-truck, you know, and just be done.
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And I would find myself thinking, where did that come from? What is it that you think you need to get away from?
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The answer, she realized, was her marriage. So when Maynard suggested Toby help him escape so they could be together,
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She couldn't help but think, what if? Is a part of you wondering, there's a chance that I'm being manipulated right now,
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and I am just a way for him to escape? I didn't think that at all. I just thought he was madly in love with me, and I knew I was crazy in love with him.
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And I remember thinking well if this escape works or even if it doesn work I not going to have to stay in this marriage Well Toby Toby you can get divorced I know You don need to break an inmate out and run away with this person to escape a bad marriage
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I do know that. So many women, I'm sure, have had that feeling of, I just want to get away from it all.
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But you do realize this is nuts. It is crazy. It's totally nuts. But that's the path I chose.
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About a month before D-Day, she and Maynard came up with a plan. Maynard would lose weight, 25 pounds to be exact,
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so he could fit into a cardboard box that could fit into one of Toby's dog crates.
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Then Toby rented the storage unit, emptied her bank accounts, disguised herself as Molly Rose to buy the getaway truck,
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then silently bid farewell to her old life and to each of her sons. I think as a mom, that's the hardest part for me,
00:29:01
is that I couldn't say goodbye to my children. It was definitely the hardest part.
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And I don't know how I thought that that would work. On that Sunday, Toby nervously drove the safe harbor van to the prison.
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After the dogs and the dog crate were loaded into the van, she drove back out, past the guards, past the barbed wire,
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fearing what would happen next and hoping a little that it wouldn't and i did say john are you in
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there and he didn't answer and i thought oh thank god he's not in there and i'll just go do a dog
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adoption and we don't have to do this thing and then i heard this manacle laugh and i thought oh
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crap he is in there and i pulled over and i just stopped and then he's you know popped his arm out
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of the box that was in the crate and said, drive, Toby, drive. They traveled at night,
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mostly on backcountry roads. But then, just 15 minutes from their hideaway, they got lost,
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and Toby saw a side of Maynard she'd never seen before. He said, you know, I don't know why I
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brought you along if you can't even figure out directions. And he was all upset and mad, and he
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was driving the truck really fast and swerving. Were you scared? I was scared at that moment. I
00:30:23
I was really scared because I thought, I don't know who this person is. By the time they arrived at the cabin they'd rented,
00:30:30
he was back to the charming, caring man she'd given up her life for. And here, for the first time, there were no guards or prison walls to keep them apart.
00:30:40
So what's it like finally being able to be with the man you're in love with? It was beautiful, and it was wonderful, and it was probably the best part of our relationship,
00:30:50
was the intimate part of our relationship. that you were finally able to share a bed together.
00:30:56
Yes. You know, I felt so loved and I felt so treasured and I felt so worthy. And, you know, at that moment I thought, well, it was all worth it.
00:31:08
Everything you'd done, you'd say goodbye to your family, your children, your mom and dad,
00:31:14
possibly that you could go to prison. At that moment, it felt like this is why I did it.
00:31:20
They passed the days playing cards and board games. Over romantic dinners by candlelight, they made plans to create new identities and start a new life, perhaps in Boston.
00:31:31
But it wasn't meant to be. They had made a mistake in their plan, a big one. Remember, Toby had given the car dealer her hideaway address in Tennessee.
00:31:41
This is the definition of almost a dumb criminal. That's right. No offense. It turns out I wasn't a very good criminal, I think.
00:31:49
And apparently not that good at hiding either. In disguise, they snuck into town from time to time to eat at a steakhouse, buy a guitar for Maynard,
00:31:58
and then finally to see a movie and buy a GPS at the mall, the same mall where U.S. Marshal Jason Ladd spotted their truck.
00:32:06
The first thing I noticed is there's a police car blocking the entrance ramp to the highway,
00:32:12
and I said wow there must be some wreck up ahead or something And John said oh baby this is for us This is all for us Coming up a white knuckle ride could turn deadly
00:32:27
He cut left and shot across the median. And then we all turned and went across the median.
00:32:33
And then, what Toby has to say now to those she hurt. So many people feel betrayed by you.
00:32:43
The chase was on. Reality, in the form of dozens of police cars and two helicopters,
00:33:03
was in hot pursuit of Toby and about to bring her two-week odyssey with John Maynard
00:33:08
to a sudden and possibly deadly conclusion. Everything was like slow motion then, and I couldn't hear anything.
00:33:16
It was this weird kind of vortex I was in. I couldn't hear anything, and there were sirens everywhere.
00:33:22
And I looked over at John, and he was talking, but I couldn't hear him. He cut left, and he shot across the median.
00:33:33
And then we all turned, and everybody went across the median. He passed a semi-truck on the shoulder, but his wheels went off into the grass.
00:33:46
And when he came back up on the pavement, he lost control of the truck. That's the truck on dash cam video swerving off the road.
00:33:56
Now they were heading toward a tree at 100 miles per hour. I was praying the whole time, please God, just let me die when we hit that tree,
00:34:04
because I can't deal with all this. But they didn't crash. Saplings planted along the highway slowed their momentum,
00:34:13
and they glided to a halt. John said, I have to get out of the car, baby, or they're going to shoot.
00:34:19
And he said, I love you, and then he got out of the car, and I could hear officers yelling, put up your hands.
00:34:25
All your worst fears were being realized. I was a criminal, and I was being treated like a criminal.
00:34:32
and like a celebrity. Her two weeks on the run had made Toby infamous. Was it just love that brought you and John this far?
00:34:41
I don't want to talk about that right now. I will at some point. I don't want to right now.
00:34:49
John Maynard got 10 years tacked onto his life sentence. He's always insisted that he never force Toby to help him escape.
00:34:57
John didn't like that the media portrayed him as this manipulating scumbag. Lauren Fox received a letter from Maynard with his side of the story.
00:35:05
He said that he loved Toby with all that he was, and if he had manipulated her, there would have been no reason for him to stay with her after the escape.
00:35:15
Back at the prison in Kansas, Warden McCune breathed a sigh of relief, but he still felt betrayed.
00:35:22
Toby left a wake of just battered emotions. It's an excellent way to put it. It was, you know, do you even understand the depth of the harm and the trauma and the emotional hurt you put on people with this?
00:35:38
So many people feel betrayed by you. Yes, they do. I mean, I betrayed so many people's trust and love.
00:35:46
I let the people down who cared about the dog program. I let the people down who worked at the prison.
00:35:51
I let my family down. Did you ever speak with your husband after the arrest? I talked to him once.
00:35:57
He said I'd ruined his life and his life was over. We reached out to Toby's now ex-husband who didn't respond.
00:36:05
But he exchanged emails with journalist Michael Mooney and told him he'd never taken Toby for granted and always supported her.
00:36:11
I don't think Toby's husband thought there was anything wrong with the marriage.
00:36:14
I don't think he thought of their relationship as neglect-filled or bad in any way.
00:36:20
Toby pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting an escape and smuggling a cell phone into prison She and her husband divorced the day before she was to start her sentence The 27 months she spent behind bars were tough
00:36:34
She said she was placed on suicide watch three times. I was so broken and so, I didn't know how I was going to make it through all this.
00:36:42
Every now and then she got a love letter from Maynard. One of them was like, oh, you know, I wish I could ride in on my white horse and rescue you from that prison they're keeping you in.
00:36:53
But wasn't the fairy tale over at this point? Yeah. And finally I got to the point where I was like, you know, I am done with this.
00:37:03
When she got out, Toby wanted desperately to repair the relationship with her two sons.
00:37:08
But that proved impossible. Her older son kept his distance, and just a year after her release, her youngest son died of cancer.
00:37:17
You know, when I went to visit him in the hospital, I told him that I always loved him, and I never stopped loving him.
00:37:23
And he said, I know, Mom. I know you love me. And I asked him if I could give him a hug, and he said no.
00:37:31
I mean, when you hear a story like that, it wasn't worth it. No. Toby says she's written letters to many of the people she hurt, asking them to forgive her.
00:37:47
Not many have responded, but one did. Warden David McCune. Hello, Dave. Hi, Toby. How are you?
00:37:54
I'm good. I didn't think I'd meet you here again. I know. Toby wanted to apologize in person, so he asked the now former warden if he'd meet with her,
00:38:03
socially distanced due to the pandemic, at the place where it all happened. He said yes.
00:38:08
I want to tell you, you know, that honor is something that's very respected and earned and not given lightly.
00:38:17
And I know how much trust you put into me. And I betrayed that. And I'm so, so sorry about that.
00:38:24
I appreciate hearing it. And I mean, if this moment is kind of what brings a little additional ability to put it behind.
00:38:34
Yes. Then it's worth it. I wonder about the other people, because forgiveness is also about contrition.
00:38:41
Yes. I hope that in some way it can be made up to them to some degree as well. Yeah, I would like that.
00:38:50
Looking back, do you blame John Maynard for this? I don't blame John Maynard, because if I blame John Maynard for this, then that would make me a victim.
00:39:01
And I am not a victim. Toby decided to see John Maynard one last time, hoping that would help her finally come to terms with her mistake.
00:39:13
So 10 years after their whirlwind romance, she sat across from him in a prison visiting room.
00:39:18
It was really, really good because it was truly closure, you know? It was just good to be able to sit down and fill in the blanks and then walk away.
00:39:29
Today, Toby has remarried, happily this time, she says, And she wrote a memoir, Living with Conviction, that she hopes can inspire all women who are facing desperation and guide formerly incarcerated women to productive lives after prison.
00:39:45
I want to share my story to help women unleash themselves. We have these emotional prisons that we built ourselves, and we have the key to unlock them and be free of them.
00:39:56
What is the lesson here for women who feel trapped like you did? If you ignore the need to make a change until you become desperate, then you make the wrong kind of change.
00:40:07
Acknowledge you need to change something and then move forward and do it in a healthy way.
00:40:12
If I had had the insight and the strength to do that 15 years ago, I could have picked a much healthier way to change my life.
00:40:25
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.