Part 4: A Back and Forth Thing
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I'm Barbara Schroeder, and now, Episode 4 of Bad Bad Thing. In early March of 2018, a few weeks after her husband Mark told her he was in love with another woman, Janere Gerardo started working out at a gym, something she'd never done regularly before. She also went to a hair salon to get some new blonde highlights. And one night, while Mark wasn't at home, she took off all her clothes and started taking provocative pictures and videos of herself.

She sent them to Mark in a folder she titled "Exposed." He did not respond as she had hoped. Do you want me? You want... I want a version of you. I want an old you, but older... You show me these photos and it does bring back memories. Give us a chance to fix it. Give us a chance to reconnect. You don't find me appealing. You don't find me attractive. You don't want me anymore. You don't even like me. You are miserable.

She lights your fire. She makes you feel young. You're excited. It's all fresh. You're getting to know each other and you are in love with her. In love, which means you love her deeply. So much so that you are protecting her at all.

levels. You are not doing any of that with me. You don't love me or want me. I do love you. And you want her. She lights up your life. She lights up your life and you can't not not have her in your life. Which is what I want you to feel for me. So this isn't happening for us. And we're right in the middle of it. Again, I'm not trying to give you hope, but I'm letting you know, if you don't want to hear me say that again, I won't say it. I don't

Want to make a mistake? Sorry, they moved. I didn't get my attention. Mark and Jenner's conversation gets derailed here for a second because Mark saw some animals outside the car window. Throughout their marriage, Jenner had often accused Mark of having an undiagnosed attention deficit disorder. Everybody's jumping straight up in the air. There's two of them. They're either flirting or fighting. I can't tell which. A lot of rabbits. There's one in this room. Everybody's squirming.

Keep coming here. But after a short break from this difficult conversation, Janair went right back to trying to squeeze the truth out of Mark. It's not fair, Mark. I really want you to be honest with your feelings. I am being honest about my feelings. I am. If it's not fair, then again, if you force me to make a decision, I'll make a decision. Make it.

Really? I'm not going to force you, but you know what you want. You're using that as a threat. Because you're forcing me, because you won't let me think about it, you would be the separate. That's what you really, really want. So that's just you not being honest with yourself. It's a back and forth thing. Isn't that true? Isn't that what you really want in your heart? If it was and I was committed to it, I would do it. But also...

Maybe I can't because I can't hurt you. I don't know, Javier. Does that make me weak? I don't want to be together because you don't want to hurt me. I want you to be together because you love me. I do love you. And I can love you and divorce you. Separate from you. I would still love you. All the things that we have. And I want you to be with me. You're not going to give me my answer on that? I'm sorry, what's the question? Are we over? No, I wouldn't go to therapy if we were over.

Here's Dr. Romney again. As I read the story, I thought there is nothing in the world worse that Mark could have done than stayed in couples therapy, played this role of maybe we're going to work on the marriage. And I'm going to keep working on this with Meredith. And I'm going to keep seeing her constantly stoking Jenner's sense of abandonment, victimization and despair. That point to me was the absolute pivot.

While Mark Gerardo was stuck in neutral about his future, Meredith Sullivan Chapman was in full speed-ahead mode. Her divorce was almost final. She'd found a new place to live and would be moving soon. And best of all, she no longer had to worry about being fired from her job because she'd been offered a new one at a new school, Villanova University. Meredith assumed Mark was on the same page as she was and would be getting a divorce soon so they could be together.

She was dreaming of the day they would both be legally single and could go out on a real date, one where she could get dressed up and take Mark's breath away when he saw her. And at some point in the night, he'd ask her to dance to her favorite song, the one called Perfect. Meredith made a few more changes in her life. She dropped her married name and was now just Meredith Solomon again. She took off her wedding rings and suggested to Mark that there was room now to put something else on her finger, a promise ring.

Jannere heard every word of that conversation. So the day when I was talking about putting like something else on here. Yeah. There's part of me that I don't want to do the getting married thing again, but I would absolutely melt if there was a day that came around that he did gesture like that. What does it say? It's a promise. That's all it is. That's all it is. Promise to love each other and don't do it anymore.

I promise to be us and to be real. I promise to be honest. I promise to call it when it's time to call it. We never have to call it, but yeah. You did something like that gesture-wise. That's all it is. And that's not necessarily like that in the next few months, in the next year. It's just that's... Is that okay to say? It's only from my heart. It's all I've ever wanted.

So when I was a teenager, I had a dream that my Prince Charming was at UD and he just listened to me and he swept me off my feet and I couldn't figure out what it was. My mom's like, Oh, it means you're going to meet a guy from Delaware. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, there was a guy and like,

We, like, work together. You are. I'm dead... Nope, I'm not bullshitting you. I am dead serious. You can ask my mother to... Get out of my car! Stop. And she was like... She's like, oh, you work for the project. And I was like, yeah, that's what it must be. Work for the project. Out of my car! Stop. Stop. And... You know it isn't. Come the time. You and I have been in this, like... Oh, maybe there's something more phase. Yep. That's all I can think about. It's all I can think about. And I'm... I'm the hopeless romantic who... I had...

No intentions of this being what happened when I interviewed you at all. I didn't think that working at UD this would ever happen. I thought I was already there. But I remember getting married. And I was like, that's not quite it. And there's something else to this. I just feel like I keep coming back to...

All of the things I did of being connected to you, to you were for a reason. Like, I kept sticking it out and sticking it out. And if you were to ask anybody, I felt more joy, more excitement this fall than I ever did before. This guy. This guy. When you call me that, oh my God. Oh my God. Don't mean to use it, and it just, like, comes out. I asked Mark what he said to Meredith at that moment that got her so emotional, and

He said that when he and Meredith were alone, he wouldn't use her full name. He would simply call her M. And Meredith loved that because, she told Mark, no one had ever been so tender with her. It made her feel so special and loved. She saved Mark's voicemails. Four times he called me that. I replayed them. I think in the case of Meredith, after what happened,

Mark has been struggling with in his marriage, the volatility, the difficulties with communication, the, you know, again, all the challenges that were apparent in his marriage. In Meredith's voice, you hear the youthful zeal

which is why all of us had our first big crush in high school, right? That life is absolutely full of promise. And you can hear that in Meredith's voice, that just sort of pure, undistilled, adolescent zeal for love that doesn't feel like it has been as sullied and spoiled. Mark, in some ways, wants to bring that back.

and is, again, blinded almost by that, I don't know, you want to call it grandiose, if you want to call it childlike fantasy of the perfect love story. And in that, though, is not integrating this story of Janair. Mark and Meredith were oblivious to the fact that Janair had started recording them again. They still didn't know about the GPS trackers or that she'd begun writing in a journal about all of their intimate conversations.

Here's an actor reading from Janeer's journal. I recorded him talking on the phone to her yesterday, Sunday morning, about a dream he had of her and the best sex he'd ever had in his life. His underwear sure looked like he had sex with her.

He spent all morning this Monday morning before work researching olive green bikinis to buy her and a tank top from Amazon. He's horned up and wants to buy her gifts and a $600 promise ring and wine and dine and sex her up. Oh, he just left at 840. It takes 45 minutes to get home. Jenner was also spending a lot of her time these days trying to come up with sneaky ways to make Meredith's life miserable.

One of her first ideas, she wrote this letter to Meredith's new bosses at Villanova. I implore you not to hire Meredith Chapman. Rescind while you still can the offer you just gave her as your next assistant vice president of marketing and creative services. Meredith Chapman is having an affair with a married man, my husband. You should consider a more honorable and moral candidate.

There has to be a better person out there for this role. Please, please, please don't tell Meredith that I did this or show her the letter. This is not a joke. I'm a real person. Nothing happened, though, after Jenner sent that letter. So she tried something else. She started stalking Meredith online, repeatedly sending follow requests to Meredith's social media accounts. Meredith was so frustrated, and she sent Mark this text. Actors are reading their exchange.

I'm sorry to cause problems. I really appreciate you saying something for me. Of course. I have nothing to hide. I just want her to respect my privacy. I could block her on everything, but I haven't because I feel like it would cause unnecessary drama. Do it. I understand. It's on channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest. You don't deserve to be harassed. That's actually a good word for how I'm feeling with the constant checking of my accounts by her. I'm definitely saying something. It's enough.

Mark texted back a hashtag to Meredith, heartstrings. And then he went and had a talk with Janair. He told her to stop harassing Meredith.

Janair was so insulted, but she still couldn't understand why, if Mark cared so much about Meredith, he wasn't asking for a divorce. Personally, I think staying in two messy relationships is really never an option. I think that the courageous step is to decide, where am I going to put my authentic effort here? And I think a lot of people look at infidelity stories as either or. It's either your marriage or it's the new lover.

What people don't entertain is story number three, which is maybe this is a wake-up call that neither of these situations are healthy for you. And the best thing you could do is a stint by yourself. To me, infidelity is a wake-up call that people might actually need to spend some time alone. We'll take a break here. But when we get back, what Mark Gerardo said when I questioned him about why wasn't he able to leave his marriage or stop the affair.

Jenner sent Mark this email. She was trying to push him to do something about this mess that he'd made. You still cannot make decisions for yourself, even when the answers are clear in front of your face. You'll come back to the same place in the circle of life and time with her or someone else. This relationship is already becoming similar to ours. She's a strong woman, as I was. You will eventually not want to let her down and avoid conflict anymore.

Then you will stop being truthful. You actually are making an effort to communicate your concerns and share your feelings like an adult with her and be honest with her. Aside from withholding the fact we had sex four times since I've been here. It is not the relationship with Meredith that will save you, Mark. I have loved you heart and soul since our first kiss to today. 24 years. I have...

A lifetime of love and passion and emotion and memories to say goodbye to and somehow get rid of. This is a daunting task that I can't handle. I am so broken and drowning that I cannot see the light or the point. I don't want a life or a future with you if you cannot love me back. That's just pushing my head back down in the water I'm already treading.

I don't want to be a backup plan or be the cause of your misery. I asked Mark during one of our interviews, why wasn't he making a decision about who he wanted to be with or to maybe spend some time alone? He explained it to me like this.

When he was around Meredith, he felt like he would be able to tell Janair he wanted a divorce. But then, when Mark was with Janair, well, he would waver. They had such a rich history together, and she was fighting so hard for their marriage, like the time she sent him a folder titled Despair. And inside were about a dozen photos Janair had taken of herself as she was weeping. She would use the phrase, I'm scratching and clawing with any method possible, and she would...

She was giving a dog a bath at a pet store and a song came on and she took a video of herself crying to it. It was a song, In Your Eyes, which was a song from our wedding. And I can imagine how crushing that must have felt to hear that. And she sent it to me to, you know, to crush me and it did. But that's not...

It's not the type of thing that makes you want to just stop everything and just, okay, let's get back together again because of this. The song is playing. I fell for her and I felt awful for the pain that she was going through. And then she would send me photos of herself crying in the same thing. It just tore me up to see those.

It is there because I don't know where my heart is. I know how I feel. I mean, this is going to hurt. It is.

If you said, I'm done, I'm out, I'm leaving, I would be okay with that. I would feel potentially down the road, well, fuck, what did I do? There's that risk. But today, you said, I'm done, I'm not taking any more of this, I'm leaving. I'll figure it out. Or I'm going to live with my dad and I'll figure it out. I'm okay with that. So what does that say? You don't want me at all. I said there's a possibility of that.

I also, I look at you last night and go, what have I done? I'm hurting this person. And I'm the cause of this unbelievable pain. It makes me feel awful. But that's just a consequence of it. It's not, that has nothing, your guilt, feeling bad for me, still doesn't change the way you feel of not wanting me, not wanting to be with me. It doesn't flip it like that, but it certainly puts a...

whatever back in your court gives that that kicks open that door what door i'm guilting you to stay with me but you don't want to stay with me no i there's nothing there just flip it switch and go oh you're right what was i thinking i'm sorry i hurt you let's work things out if but it did work on me it's going to take those kinds of things i guess but then if i'm doing it just for the

No, I don't know. This is what I'm wrestling with. That's why their decisions have not been made. But if I'm not even in your heart and there is nothing there, be honest. Don't, you want me to have a definitive, and I'm sorry it's not definitive. In many ways, Janair and Mark were at cross purposes, right? So Janair was trying to save the marriage. In essence, keep the patient alive, as it were, okay? Mark was working on being confused, right?

You know, so their psychological resources were going into different vessels. They didn't have truly the shared investment in saving the marriage. He's very indecisive. You know, and that indecision was really the undoing of him and Janair. Mark did try once around this time to break things off with Meredith in order to truly focus on his marriage. I had put together in my own head these scenarios. What if we did this? What if we did that? And scenario one...

as it became known, was I was going to take a 90-day break. Meredith and I were taking a 90-day break. Janair was going to earnestly try to gain employment in Delaware. And we were going to go to counseling and just give it a really hard try before we decided to end it. Mark even wrote an email to Meredith to explain why he wanted a break. I asked Mark to read some of it. What will our lives look like in a month, in a year? Can we sustain and grow our personal relationship long-term?

Turns out Mark wrote the email, but he never sent it to Meredith. Instead, he went to her in person to try and break things off.

And that didn't go well. He didn't follow through. And Jenner recorded a selfie video about what happened. He actually, police said that he actually told Meredith it was over and they had to stop because his job had to be his number one focus. I don't think he told her that his plans were to work on our marriage. He said she doubled down and fought for him. What the fuck have I been doing? I'm in pain.

on a cliff by my fingernails for four months, fighting for any resources I had. - It was a mistake of a thousand mistakes. That was the point at which a choice needed to be made, even if he said, and this is where he lacked the courage, "Meredyth, I'm putting us on ice until I'm fully out of the relationship with Jenn Air, and then and only then."

Will I proceed to do this? But he was sort of the, you know, cake and eat it too model. And he tried it. He told Meredith, we're not going to see each other for 90 days and that lasted for a day. A day. That's exactly right. And that it was, it's those lacks of courage that really, that in many of these infidelity situations end up being an undoing. No matter what I do or what I didn't do or he was always going to look for a way out. How can you?

Discomfort is part of being a grown-up.

Listen, nobody goes out and seeks discomfort, but it's growth, right? All growth happens in the place of discomfort, whether it's in our relationships, in our lives, in our careers, whatever it is. And that the real courage is saying this isn't working and I'm holding this person back and holding myself back. It's time to let it go in the most respectful way possible. You got to be real psychologically healthy to pull that one off.

Jenner did eventually manage to make Meredith's life more difficult, but not by design. It happened by accident. Mark had left on an out-of-town trip, supposedly for business. Jenner figured he was probably with Meredith, and she texted him, asking if he was with her. Mark insisted he wasn't.

Janair texted back, I'm not doing well. Mark didn't seem to care. So despite the fact Luke Chapman didn't want to talk to her anymore, Janair contacted him anyway. She said it was urgent. He called her back. Janair sounded frantic. She begged Luke to please tell her if he knew where Meredith was. Luke didn't appreciate the call, and Janair recorded the fallout.

Hey.

And then he said, I guess we're going to have to figure this out. And I was like, you know what? I just signed my papers today. And in my counter to you, I chose not to put all the questions I have about finances and to not go into your possible misconduct for four to five years. And I was like, I didn't do that because I thought, and I thought we both were in agreement. This isn't going to work and let's move on.

And he went into it again from the call he got when he was away. And he doesn't know what I'm doing running around town. I appreciate the calls. And yeah, it was smart that you didn't get into the finances. But I'm going to take you down with this because I got a call on vacation. Like, how many times are you going to tell me you got a fucking call and that you don't trust me now? This is like, I just realized today, I'm like, this is about to get really nasty. Yeah.

And it was the one thing that I thought was going to be able to be OK. She's not going to do it. I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm just I'm telling you, this is the life. This is what I now have. And it just sucks. In Meredith's case, despite sort of her rosy cheeked being in love, her house of cards collapsed and it collapsed rather quickly.

Her husband, when he got wind of what was happening, rather quickly filed for divorce. And then her lover asked for a 90-day break. So what was a fantasy, the entire life started collapsing. And so for Meredith...

she was likely experiencing her own sense of despair and concern and confusion as anyone would. And it's, you know, again, that's the cycle though, right? Like when people are falling in love in these extramarital situations, it often feels as though they've reinvented love again and against the backdrop of a marriage that just isn't working. And it almost is a technicolor love story because it's in such marked contrast to their rather impoverished marriages.

And then when the wake up call hits, it invariably is not particularly romantic. And in Meredith's case, it really got very ugly very quickly. And it must have been incredibly destabilizing for her. It's going to be brutal. Brutal. I'm sorry. I don't... Okay, I'm just like, I'm just at the point where I'm like, I just, I can't get out soon enough. Yeah. Okay.

And like I said, it's not your problem, but it's just you're the only person who knows what's going on. You're my problem. You're not my problem. I mean, your problems are my problems. Let's put it that way. At least that's the way I feel it, see it. And obviously my wife is causing these problems for me.

I have to apologize and I will continue to apologize. I didn't say anything to get an apology at all. I know you didn't. I know. But I can't help but feel bad and apologize. It's my natural instinct. It's our thing. We say we're sorry. I know, we do. We do. I'm sorry. I'll stop saying I'm sorry. We care, actually.

It was around mid-March now of 2018, and this was when Mark found another one of Jannere's audio devices sewn inside of his coat pocket. He lost his temper, and he yelled at Jannere that she had promised to stop recording him, and if this was all she could do, she was nothing to him. Nothing. Mark stormed out of their apartment and met Meredith for a drink. When he told her what had just happened, Meredith urged him to leave Jannere.

But Mark replied it wasn't that easy. Janair didn't have a place to go, and he needed to make sure she landed on her feet. He owed her that after 24 years of marriage. Meredith didn't like what she was hearing. She told Mark that all women should be able to take care of themselves and not rely on a man. But she understood Mark's predicament and agreed to be patient with him. He was a good guy, trying to do what he thought was the right thing.

Meanwhile, Janair, who was at home, alone, pressed the record button on her phone's camera. Nothing. Nothing. And I don't matter. He's right. I don't matter. He thinks I'm trash. He thinks I'm stupid. She's so smart. Before he left, he corrected my grammar. He said I used a word incorrectly. And I did. I did.

If that last part was hard to hear, Jenner was saying, my life is such a waste. I don't deserve it anymore. And that is why on this night, March 15th of 2018, Jenner went up to the top floor of their apartment building. But once she opened the window, she actually stopped filming for a moment and she took a photo. She sent it to a former coworker she hadn't talked to in a long time.

And while it looks like Janair is planning to jump out of that window, the sudden interruption of an elevator arriving caused Janair to back off. And when the neighbor stepped out and saw her, Janair's plans changed. She went back downstairs to her apartment and waited for Mark to come home. Here's what happened when he walked in the door.

She made me believe that she was attempting, that she was going to throw herself out of a seven-story window. And she led me up to actually find the open window. And she didn't do it. She was back down in the apartment. And then when I went to go down in the apartment, she said, I'm going to do it. And she started to run past me and say,

She knew she couldn't get by me. It was just a little hallway. And so I grabbed her and I held her. We fell to the floor. And, you know, eventually she kind of snapped out of it. And she kind of came to and she said, I'm OK. I'm OK. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. And then she realized that she kind of showed her cards and she said, please don't institutionalize me.

And I said, OK, I won't. But you've got to go see a psychiatrist. You need to get medicated. I need you to talk to your parents and tell them what you've done and what you were thinking. And she agreed to do those things. Coming up next, Nyla Neely is about to see that photo Janir sent and the sad message she had written. That's on the other side of this break. We'll be right back.

I woke up in the morning on the 16th, I think. And of course, before I get out of bed, the first thing I do is roll through all my social media and everything. And I see that I've got a Facebook message from Jenea and it is just a photo taken. It's nighttime and it looks like a parking lot at the bottom of a, you know,

tall-ish building, I don't know, somewhere between, what, say, like six to ten stories up or something like that, just by my guess. And it just had the message underneath it, please tell Mark to come home to me. So this must have seemed almost like a non sequitur, like, wait, what? We haven't talked in a while? Absolutely. I mean, it was completely out of the blue, very, very strange. I mean, I got a very sick feeling in my gut when I saw it, and I thought, what's going on here? Um,

The first thing I did after I sat there thinking, what am I going to do about this? And I...

I contacted Mark. I think I texted him to say, "Hey, I got this really strange message from Janair last night overnight. Like, what's going on?" And his response, "Yeah, we had a pretty rough night. Janair really needs a friend. Could you just like call her and just be her friend?" So I messaged her after that. I messaged her back through Facebook and said, "Hey, is everything okay?" And we eventually ended up on the phone where she said, "Well, it is now, but

You know, last night she told me that she was thinking about jumping out the window and that's, she had sent me the photo from the window. Did she explain why she was so sad? Did she? Yeah, she did. So it was weird because she, she talked about how much she loved him and about how awesome he was, but that how much of an asshole that he had become. I mean, she just said that he was kind of, it was weird. Yeah.

Because she talked about both present tense. He's an awesome guy and he's a jerk. All the same, like, sentences. And it seemed to be, like, irreconcilable with each other, the opinions that were coming up. It was almost like there were two people talking about him. She talked about what had happened. She told me all the details about him getting the job and meeting this woman, Merida, and how she had, she was everything that

Jenner was supposed to be or had been but just a younger better version who had more of her stuff together and was an amazing person so of course he would fall in love with her and but she still wanted to be together and she wanted like she wanted him to end that and and all these things she just it was confusing I mean I'm even having trouble talking about it right now because it just it wasn't linear like none of it was linear

Nyla was wondering why Janir had reached out to her. Janir said it was because she and Nyla had once talked about suicide. She was thinking about a conversation that she and I had had in the fall and like, wait a minute, I should check in with Nyla before I do this. And what was the conversation that you had in the fall? So in 2017, I... 2017 was a really weird year for some reason. I was not particularly...

I had one of my friends had killed himself in June of 2017. And I had two other acquaintances who also took their lives. And then another young person who I know came to me saying that he wanted to take his life. And it was just...

I know that was all just really stunning to me. And so I had posted on Facebook, you know, things about suicide and saying, hey, if you want to talk about this, I'm always here. I'm always here for you. And even at that time, Janair had reached out to say, hey, are you okay? I mean, like, why are you posting these things? I think this is strange. And you know what? You're an awesome person. Everybody loves you. And she just said all these really loving things to me.

And so I think that's the conversation that she went back to that,

you know, messaging back and forth that she thought I should contact Nyla. How interesting. She had the compassion to reach out to you thinking that you might be. Absolutely. She had that. She had that, that definitely had that capacity. I mean, she could be a very loving, caring person. What do you do then? Do you just, do you just like back off or what do you. No. So based on what I just told you about having friends who had killed themselves and going through a lot of that all at once, I, I,

So in that initial phone call with her,

when she said that she didn't want to, that she did the night before want to kill herself, but she was fine now. And she, you know, they had had a really good conversation. She thought everything was going to go better or something like that. I asked her, had she been thinking about it for a while? Was she still thinking? I went through some of these questions that are,

Are you thinking about killing yourself? And you use the language killing yourself and not, you know, checking out or even just suicide because killing yourself is something that makes people really like, oh, wake up and go, okay, this is what I'm thinking of or not thinking of. And she said, yes, I have. You know, I'm not right now. And I'm like, well, okay, so...

If you had, you know, if you were still planning on it, what would you do? Somewhere along the lines of what is your method? Are you planning? Do you have a plan? What is the method that you're going to use? Do you have this? Do you have the means, the tools, the whatever that you want to? So if someone says, I'm thinking about poisoning, you know, I'd like to poison myself. That's how I'd like to go. Then you say, well, do you have access to poison? You just go down that road and try to like get them, which seems really counterintuitive, right? Like,

I think I thought before I read that, I always thought if you ask anything like that, you're giving someone those ideas. But what I've learned is in reality, they've already got all that in their heads. So you're just forcing them to reckon with it and actually have it outside their heads with another human being. In her case, she said, no, you know, I didn't jump out the window because what I really think I would like to do is shoot myself, which was just like, and she said, I would like to get a gun and shoot myself.

And it was shocking to me because she had been so staunchly anti-gun that it just seemed like such a

departure from who she was to say that. And it was shocking to me. So I had to kind of compose myself a little bit. And I asked her if she had one and she said no. And I asked her if she was planning to get one and she said no. And so, you know, the conversation fizzled a little, like not fizzled, but we sort of ramped down from there. Like it just seemed like she was answering the questions in a certain way that meant that I didn't have to keep pressing, you know,

So we moved on and I encouraged her that if she started feeling more toward like, yes, if those plans, if you start putting those plans into action, please call someone, call 911, call a suicide hotline, call someone you trust, do anything, you know, do something about it. Don't actually go through with it. And she reassured you? Yeah, she did. I'm seeing a therapist. I do not have a gun. I don't plan to do this. I, you know, all the answers were no.

that she gave me that she was moving forward. Janier followed through on all of her promises to Mark. She called a therapist and a doctor to get a prescription for antidepressants. And once again, she assured Mark that she would stop her recordings. She also promised she would no longer talk to Luke Chapman.

Janair also called her parents back in Indiana to tell them what had happened. They wanted to fly out to Delaware immediately to come and get her. But she told them not to bother. Mark was being good to her right now.

Then Janaire reached out to her new online acquaintance. Hi, Samantha. I actually had a mental breakdown last week, which was pretty bad. But maybe that was rock bottom to go up. Not sure. Breakdowns? Normal? Really? I melted down for sure. I hope you can stabilize soon. Do you have any family nearby who you can lean on? My family is trying their best long distance, but God love them. They're toxic for me.

No emotional IQ. I have a few people helping me here locally and a few therapists. Talking is great, but since I'm unemployed, I really can't take care of myself and am a burden to everyone. I just don't have the means to start my life over. Well, I'm no therapist, of course, but if you're not already, get on some antidepressants now. Super helpful.

Then book yourself an appointment with a therapist for you, not couples counseling for you. I am scheduled to see a psychologist who can prescribe me something. I do need it. Thanks for reaching out, Samantha, and for the friendly support when I need it most.

Janair went to all of her doctor and therapy appointments, and she began taking the antidepressants. But she told Mark she didn't like the way they made her feel. And it was right around this time that she recorded another one of her selfie videos. This one is the most haunting one of all. Janair is staring straight into the camera, not saying a word, rarely blinking even, for almost three full minutes.

The entire time, her fingers are tracing lines and wrinkles on her face over and over. What was most striking, though, was the beginning of the video. Her touching her face. It was as though she was trying to remind herself she was really there. And in that, one could interpret it

Almost like a loss of identity or a very fragile or fragmented identity. After that long silence, Jenner finally begins speaking. I can't recover from most egregious treatment. Mark, it's not even about falling in love with someone and having an affair. It's the way he thinks of me, despises me. I have no grounding to know what...

March 20th, 2018, four days after Jenner told Nyla she did not have a gun, Jenner Gerardo drove to a gun store and bought one. And then she signed up for target practice. She didn't tell anybody about the gun. She didn't write about it in her journal or mention it in her videos. Jenner was, of course, still recording Mark. And she noticed his conversations with Meredith these days seemed pretty mundane. And she wondered, maybe he really had cooled it with her.

You say you got to get a new bank account today? I have to go to the bank because I just need to... My bank account was linked to being a UD employee. But then again, she also thought maybe Mark and Meredith were on to her, toying with her, pretending their romance was over. So one night while Mark was sleeping, Jenner took his phone off the table and then quietly crept over to Mark and gently lifted his thumb, pressing it to the unlock button. She was in.

She saw an app that she'd never seen him use before, Snapchat. She opened it and saw hundreds of intimate text conversations. Janair screen grabbed them all. These are actors reading some of the exchanges between Mark and Merida. Five words, Mark, you are my person. I want to build a new life with you. I love you so much. We are in so deep. Our connections are on every level. I've never had someone like you in my life.

I don't want to let you go, ever. God knows you're good for me. How am I good for you? You make me believe in the future. I want to be better. You believe in me. You don't take me for granted. Shall I go on? I could be your friend and you'd have all that. How am I good for you as, say, your girlfriend? I see your point, but if you were just my friend, those things wouldn't be as deeply meaningful. I want to share you with friends and the world.

to do things with you alone that we will remember forever. I miss you, and I hate not talking for even just a few hours. So deep in love with you. Shortly after finding all of those secret Snapchat conversations, Janir was home alone one night. Mark had gone to a local Starbucks after dinner, supposedly to prepare for a job interview the next day. A few hours later, Janir looked at the clock. Starbucks had been closed for a while now, and Mark still wasn't home.

So she drove over to the coffee shop. It was empty, nobody inside. But next door was a wine bar. Janair wondered maybe Mark was in there with Meredith. Janair drove into the parking lot, and sure enough, there it was, Meredith Sullivan's gray convertible. Janair had reached her limit. She was going inside to confront Meredith for the first time in person. I need retribution for what he doesn't deserve, to be happy with her.

Ever. She needs to be erased. Meredith deserves a special place in hell for what she did. Thanks for listening. In the next episode, the confrontation and what Janair wrote to Mark in her last texts. That's coming up in episode five.