Worlds Collide | EP 9

Stephani Young (0:02)

When Mike Marraccini ended his year and a half long entanglement with Laura Owens, he wanted to be done with her.

Mike Marraccini (0:09)

I deleted everything on my phone. I didn't want to read her name. I didn't want to see her face. I just wanted to forget about that chapter in my life, because it was a really hard time for me.

Stephani Young (0:21)

But years later, Mike would find out that his experience with Laura was the beginning of a pattern, one that thousands of people online had become obsessed with. Maybe most invested of all was Dave Neal.

Dave Neal (0:35)

It was almost like Laura had this dam that she was holding up with her own hands. Leaks were coming out and she was very much like a cartoon, just doing her bed, duct taping this thing shut, and then this laptop came out of nowhere.

Stephani Young (0:48)

Mike Marraccini's laptop. It had been gathering dust and storage for almost five years.

Dave Neal (0:54)

When I think of Mike's laptop, I just think of it like sitting alone in a giant room in a museum with just a spotlight sitting on it.

Stephani Young (1:02)

Mike had no idea that all the information he deleted could be recovered and that the memories he tried so hard to forget would soon become critical evidence.

Dave Neal (1:13)

They found thousands of pages of documents, but more telling was just to show how damaging Laura was to Mike. They unearthed things he had forgotten actually happened.

Stephani Young (1:29)

I'm Stephani Young and this is Loved Trapped.

In the last episode, you heard about Laura's year and a half long relationship with Mike Marraccini. Laura planned a trip to Iceland. According to Mike, it was part of the radio show he'd been developing with Laura. The trip was paid for.

Mike Marraccini (2:12)

It was lined up with things to do the entire time we were in Iceland. So from start to finish, there was an event every single day of something to do to report back on at the end of the trip for the podcast.

Stephani Young (2:28)

Today, he wonders who actually footed the bill for their trip to Iceland. After recording multiple episodes of the radio show with Laura, he asked her when he could expect to see compensation.

Mike Marraccini (2:40)

I brought up that we were just working for free, and I had spent like 50 plus hours on these podcasts, being part of the edits, being part of the research, and that I wasn't going to do any more work for free.

Stephani Young (2:55)

After he set this boundary, he says Laura sent him some money directly.

Mike Marraccini (3:00)

I was paid one time, I think it was like $1,600 from Laura. I never got paid through a station.

Stephani Young (3:08)

The radio contract Mike had been waiting for never came to fruition.

After that, he walked away. But looking back almost 10 years later, he wishes he'd never gotten on that plane to Iceland. From what he remembers, the flight there was miserable.

Mike Marraccini (3:25)

We're like maybe two hours in the flight, she's hysterically crying, hysterically crying. This is probably like at midnight, people around us are all turning around looking at us, and she's like lifting off my headphones and saying, he socked me.

Stephani Young (3:43)

Laura has a very different version of what happened on their Iceland trip. She told her story five years later in a now infamous TEDx talk.

Laura Owens (3:52)

He said that he didn't want to end our relationship, but I couldn't understand why he didn't want to when he treated me like he hated me. He said that I brought it out of him, that it was my fault, that he'd never been violent before he met me, that I was responsible for his transformation from the all-American boy to American psycho.

Stephani Young (4:11)

Anyone can start a TEDx chapter. The one Laura applied to speak at was something called TEDx Mercer Island HS Women. HS seems to stand for high school.

The chapter Laura spoke at was organized by three high school sophomores based in Seattle. On their website, the organizers say their goal was to empower women in the Seattle area. We don't know how Laura found this specific group or how she became a speaker there, especially because Laura doesn't appear to have any ties to Seattle. But once her TEDx talk was published, Laura seemed to think she was making a name for herself.

She included the link to her TEDx talk in her email signature. She also sent the link to Greg Woodnick, the lawyer who was representing Greg Gillespie at the time. This was her proof of her status as a public figure. Here's Woodnick.