Unmasking the Monster S.35 Ep.2

Katie Mitchell (0:00)

Hi, everybody, this is Katie.

Jake (0:01)

And this is Jake.

Katie Mitchell (0:02)

And you're listening to A Date With Dateline. Kimberly is not with us today.

Jake (0:09)

She's doing big things.

Katie Mitchell (0:10)

Should I just leave it at that? I want to make it mysterious. She might have to.

Jake (0:14)

I feel like if people read the newsletter, this might be like a plug. Let's just get a really early plug-in for Patreon. If you read the newsletter, you know exactly what Kimberly is up to.

Katie Mitchell (0:25)

We have a newsletter.

Jake (0:27)

Uh-huh.

Katie Mitchell (0:28)

Okay.

Jake (0:29)

Apparently, I read it, you don't.

Katie Mitchell (0:31)

Oh, wow. Okay. So, Kimberly is off in New York being very fancy. She's doing LibraFest with Mary Payne, and she's also, is it debuting, previewing, trying to get financial backing for a musical that she wrote.

Fancy. This is the previews. She's in previews.

Jake (0:52)

I'm not a theater guy. You're the theater guy.

Katie Mitchell (0:55)

It's a staged reading slash singing. I don't know what that's called for musicals. It's amazing. Anyway, she is so much fancier than anyone ever knew.

Now, you know. But she's not here this week when we're doing this unbelievably sad, timely, yet somewhat uplifting kind of hopefully hope for change case. Right?

Jake (1:22)

Right.

Katie Mitchell (1:23)

Is that what we'll call it?

Jake (1:24)

Okay.

Katie Mitchell (1:26)

We are in season 35, episode 2, hosted by our bestie Blayne. This debuted October 2nd, 2026 and it is called Unmasking the Monster.

I'm going to do a content warning at the very top of this because we are going to be talking about sexual assault and rape. So that is this entire story. You have been warned. If this isn't for you, it's not for you. Don't listen. Please take care of yourself.

Jake (2:00)

Yeah. Do that.

Katie Mitchell (2:01)

Thank you.

Jake (2:02)

It's a rough one.

Katie Mitchell (2:03)

It is. I'm going to go into some detail because Dateline also goes into detail. Good for Dateline. They're not shying away from the hard stuff. So we open this episode with a home video of a little girl and her mom. Blayne says, for as long as she can remember, Andra Beatty has felt lucky to have a mom like hers. And it's very cute. Andra, who is very much now a grown woman in her interview with Blayne, describes her mom as loving and as the kindest person she knows. And that was always apparent in spite of everything. And Blayne emphasizes the word everything.

And while Andra may not have known what everything was growing up, she could feel it. She could feel a dark chapter from her mother's past that managed to creep into their everyday lives. Oh no.

I was already very, very worried. Andra says that they were the only family that she knew that locked their doors and the garage and set the alarm on their home at all times. And Andra was determined to find out what the mystery was in her mother's past.

Jake (3:20)

Everybody, please lock your doors.

Katie Mitchell (3:22)

Lock your doors even if you are in the safest neighborhood ever.

Jake (3:25)

Yeah. It's just, you got to do it.

Katie Mitchell (3:28)

I am looking at direct members of my family when I say, lock your doors.

Jake (3:34)

Same, my household.

Katie Mitchell (3:36)

Oh my goodness.

Jake (3:36)

The door, you lock it on the way out. It's how it works. Then we come in, you unlock it and then you lock it back up. It's very simple.

Katie Mitchell (3:43)

If Oliver takes the trash out, there are times when I have already locked the door.

Jake (3:48)

Yeah.

Katie Mitchell (3:49)

He cannot get back in and is like, why did you? I said, because it's instinct. Right. It's like a seatbelt. You just put it on.

Jake (3:57)

I agree. It's part of the procedure of leaving or coming or going. It's just part of it.

Katie Mitchell (4:04)

This is what we do. Okay. Blayne said she knew that this was different than all of her friends, and she was determined to find out what this mystery was in her mother's past. Because Blayne says, sometimes a daughter doesn't just carry her mother's story. Sometimes she has the power to rewrite it. Okay.

This is looking good. Let's rewrite this story. Whatever this dark chapter is, we're going to rewrite it. So let's go back to Cincinnati. We're in Cincinnati, 1989, and we get some amazing aerial B-roll of these really brightly painted houses. Did you see them?