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What's up? What's up? Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Good afternoon. Whatever time you're
listening in, wherever you're listening from, shout out to the Spotify listenership, Apple
and Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and YouTube if you're watching in. Thanks. Coming live from my
voice to your phone, headphones, TV, or car stereo, your attention could have been anywhere
in the world, but it's here right now. Let's take a moment and be present and recognize that it is
now right now whether you're working running exercising cleaning laying down flying driving
guest on a podcast be grateful we're alive baby failure can be frightening however as
winston churchill reminds us success is all about going from failure to failure without losing
enthusiasm this is i will not lose podcast where we set out to prove everything is learned from
failure and we must persevere and recognize it as one step closer to success i'm your host tony
Ortiz and we are joined today by Heidi Markow of the Beginning Over Foundation. How are you today?
Hi, I'm good. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. We've been trying to link up for a little bit now.
This was definitely a story that I wanted to allow you to come on and share. So Beginning
Over Foundation, tell me a little about it. Okay, so Beginning Over Foundation. So it was
founded in 2005 after my sister robin was killed by her husband it was um something that i just felt
needed to happen you know it was like okay so all of a sudden you get a phone call your sister's
dead and i think from that moment i don't even know how like beginning of a foundation was born
but i had no idea that it was even going to be born it was just something you know through my
research and just where the system failed my sister and where it was failing other people,
I just felt that something more needed to be done. And then I started looking around at what
like government run nonprofits were doing and there's limitations. And I don't believe that
victims of domestic violence, victims of crime should have limitations. There shouldn't be a
roadblock in any victim's journey, whether it's being someone who is abused verbally or somebody
who's physically abused or a mother fighting for her children. There should not be roadblocks.
There should always be a door open. The court system should be a place, a soft place for
victims to fall. It should not be a place that sets them up for failure. So through my research
and through talking with many, many victims,
there was just no way that I could sit back and not do something
to at least make a difference, to affect change somewhere.
So here we are today.
It's been a long road, and the journey has been quite rocky.
So you're an advocate for domestic violence victims.
You've been doing that for 15-plus years.
And that's God's work.
It is. I feel that more so now than ever because of what I've been through. Yes, absolutely.
Right. We're going to get into that. I wanted to paint a picture for our listeners who don't know
you. We had met over a decade ago. I know we were trying to, it was so long ago, we were trying to
put a finger on it, but it was at a fundraiser back, maybe I want to guess 2011 or 2012. It was
around that time. Yeah. And you had been doing this work for a while. That's when I got familiar
with your story and we had gotten together. So did you want to elaborate on when you said that
the system failed your sister? Well, okay. So after my sister was killed, I received a phone
call from a reporter from the Bucks County morning call. And the reporter had said to me,
Hey, Heidi, did you know that your sister's husband tried to kill his first wife with a pickaxe?
And and from then it was just like, OK, well, there's another punch in the gut because my sister didn't know that that happened.
And his case was buried in protection from abuse or like piles, because once a protection from abuse order expires, it's just it's gone.
And anyone that wants to know anything about somebody that they're dating, you have to go to every county courthouse that this person lived and basically go to the protection from abuse office and say, hey, I'd like the records.
You know, could you tell me if so-and-so ever abused anyone?
That's hard.
People just don't do that.
So then, you know, the story, you know, more things started coming out that, you know, she didn't tell anyone that she was abused.
I mean, I don't know if she was abused all the time or, you know, if this was just a one time incident she had left on a Tuesday night on June 14th, moved out that afternoon, moved into an apartment that morning, Wednesday the 15th.
Her killer parked his car about a mile away from her new apartment, walked to her building, waited outside for her to leave and pushed her back inside.
And, you know, there was a struggle and a fight.
And the reason I know all this is because her killer called me that whole entire day because he was on a there was a manhunt for him.
It was the largest manhunt in Bucks County history.
So he was calling me and telling me and the, the, what was going on and, and, um, said that he had pushed her down and that she had gotten up and was fighting and he stood over her and shot her and said, bitch, you deserve to die.
That was probably like, I don't talk a lot about that because I can still hear his voice crying.
And, you know, so there was a very short period because this was a 12 hour manhunt for him.
The schools were on lockdown.
There were armored tanks, you know, the tanks that they were driving through town, helicopters searching for him, you know, because he was they were afraid he was going to just kill.
Because when you're in that state of mind, you're you're homicidal at that at that time.
So he ended up shooting her and locking her in her apartment to die.
When help got there, they should have busted the door down.
But again, that's where I believe that there was some failure because I was told because after she was killed, I went to I wanted to know everything.
I wanted to meet with the EMTs, the people that were first on scene.
But they did say, you know, Heidi, we did everything we could.
We got there, she was still shallow breathing and she had a very weak heart rate, but she
ended up passing, you know, and then later on, 12 hours later, he ended up, we were on
the phone and we were talking and I heard this noise and I thought, oh, it sounded like
he killed himself.
A few minutes later, found out that he did take his own life then as he was surrounded
by the SWAT team in Quakertown.
So yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So since that day, I think I've been, I've just been on a mission.
You know, I wrote a law called Robbins Law that has been sitting in local legislator's office since, oh, geez, that's got to be since 2008 sitting there.
So Robbins Law mimics Megan's Law. It's really a no brainer. I don't understand it.
Robbins Law would do just what Megan's Law does, and you must be convicted of a crime of domestic violence.
So that would put you into an online database to see who you're dating, what this person has done.
Again, it's not somebody that has a PFA.
Robbins Law is those that have been convicted of a crime of domestic violence.
Yes.
So then it can't be weaponized.
I mean, that is a no-brainer.
Yeah.
Well, it's been sitting.
And the last correspondence that I have in an email was from her, I guess one of her secretaries said that she thinks that it should be me that needs to get out there and get this law passed.
So that was kind of a little bit of a setback for me because isn't that what we as taxpayers pay our legislators to do, to get out there and get the law passed.
So it was introduced by Representative Beyer back, I believe, in 2008.
So that's how long it's been sitting.
And I really haven't pursued it because as we're going to get into more of this, you're going to see why my work was stalled for over seven years.
Oh, my.
I had read about a documentary beginning over.
Mm-hmm.
Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?
that was oh geez that was that was quite a long time ago too that was a uh something that kind
of got started and never finished because of what had happened later on moving forward but
you know the documentary got started um it started like how the foundation started and
then went into my sister's murder and it kind of didn't cover anything after that because of
you know, just, just the work that I was trying to do and having the time to, to finish it.
What keeps you going to keep doing this? I mean, I must, I know there was a bit of a setback and
we're going to get into that. And now you're back in full swing. You're newly invigorated.
I am. What keeps me going is the constant contact that I get from victims that are not getting
their justice. And, you know, there's so much that needs to be talked about. You know, we need
shelter programs and we need services like that. But what keeps me going is because I am able to
do what these government run nonprofits can't do. Let me give you an example. So for many years
until I got stumbled up. Uh, I was going to court for victims with victims, doing all the
investigating, meeting with them for months, learning who these people are that I'm representing,
making sure that as I represent them, that my integrity and my work is going to be able
to be true, that I'm going to have the evidence that I know this person to be a good human being,
a good mother and is truly a victim of domestic violence. So I started doing that and I started
going to court as a non-attorney and beating attorneys because I studied the law. I was
specific to domestic violence, the violence against women's act. I knew the codes. I knew
what to ask for, what not to ask for, what victims could do. I would empower them. I would inspire
them. So, um, that the, the, the constant contact from people and not just in the state of
Pennsylvania, I had people reaching out to me from across the country for help because what
people don't understand is that an advocate from a shelter program, they're limited,
limited to what they can do, what their services are, because you have to understand that the local
shelter programs are trickled down you have the national national coalition against domestic
violence down to so it's then you have the pennsylvania coalition which was the first
coalition against domestic violence in the in the country and then you have your uh other local
coalitions that you know handle local so they're kind of their hands are tied regionally um their
their hands are tied because they're getting their funding from the people that they would
fight against. Like for instance, if you have a local advocate from a local nonprofit shelter
program or any other that, that is getting their funding from the government and these local,
um, county offices, if an advocate, if I was getting funding from Northampton County or
lehigh county or the government and i went in there to fight against these big guys i would
lose my funding makes sense what happened to me when we will get into is because i fought back
i was not going to be controlled by money you even even big businesses that give funding out
i don't want their money if they're going to control what i can do what i can say and how i
can help people. If you're not going to let me get out there and kick some ass in the court system
and really help victims, I don't want your money. My voice is free. And that is why after I went
through what I went through, I came back and I thought I was going to close my nonprofit after
my fight that I went through. And I thought, I won. Why am I going to close my nonprofit now?
I won. I freaking won. And it's like, no, now my voice is free. I'm coming back the way I came in with no money, with little bit of funding. And I'm going to use my voice because people need to know the truth about government run nonprofits, the court system and corruption.
And, you know, and I hate to use that word because it's so negative.
And I wanted to come in here organic and holistically because I did a lot of work to get to where I am to be well.
And, you know, even people need to know.
Our legislators are out there.
Who is taking, Tony, who is taking a stand?
Do you know how many times I had asked local legislators?
to just support me. I have the truth. I will be that strong person next to you,
even though you're supposed to be the one strong because you're being paid by the taxpayers to
change laws, to pass laws. What's happening now with a lot of the local legislators is
they just get in there and they do what they need to do. I want a legislator that's going to get
there and piss people off, make a change and fight for victims. Somebody needs a platform.
to stand up for victims. Domestic violence lends its own platform for that because there's so many
arms to domestic violence. You have your mental illness, you have false allegations, you have the
children in child protective services. They're getting involved and these people are all paid
by tax dollars. False allegations are the child protective services. Let me just tell you
something about them. Revenge seekers, people who want to seek revenge against their victim,
they're going to make a phone call to child protective. They're going to say, oh, my,
you know, she's a bad mother or you need to go investigate. And they have these women,
people are losing their children falsely. And most of our tax dollars are going to false
allegations. And that's a whole other story that needs to be addressed. But local legislators,
they don't want to touch it because it's going to cause trouble. It's going to shake the system up.
It's going to piss people off. But if we don't do that, there will be no change. So I am here and
I'm back today to answer your question. What's what sparks me to be back all the above everything
that I just spoke about. Yeah. And I, what I went through, Tony, I feel that I'm untouchable now.
And I don't and I say that humbly. I don't say that with arrogance. I say that because I'm bringing on like everything that I'm going to tell you is the truth. As a matter of fact, Tony, we set up a website. It's called Save Beginning Over. And it was sent out.
And first of all, let me just tell you, Tony, I want to thank you because I was very afraid that after we did our initial interview for me to come on here, that you would think I'm not interviewing this girl because this story is like and it is big.
It's too big that I would, it would, we would need a month to really go over each one of the victims that were like, that were not heard.
And for you to take on the story, I thank you so much because it's, it's brave of you to, to do it because I won't mention names because that's not, I'm not here to, to, to hurt anyone.
I'm basically, I'm here to tell, to tell the story.
and um so thank you for allowing me to do that you're welcome that's what it's here for
i'll tell you what i saw on your beginning over foundation i saw you at post and you had said um
after seven plus years i'm ready to tell the story from a really good place a place of peace
and honesty i'm ready to tell the honest to god truth about corruption abuse of power
bullying and malicious intent. Um, so I'll let you get into it, provide this platform for you
to, I mean, it's one thing that I can do, you know, monetarily, I can't donate to the foundation,
but like you said, voice is free, voice is powerful. So, um, and yeah. And, and, you know,
Tony, for me, listen, I have a new life now. I fought, I won, I fought back. I wasn't going to
be trampled on. I wasn't going to be silenced because, you know, the story, listen, there's
a whole lot to what I've done and there's a whole lot, the whole journey, the whole 17, 18 years.
Think about starting something out of complete tragedy, doing amazing work and winning along
the way, being recognized by Nabisco as one of the top advocates in the country, then being
recognized by the Bar Association. I won the Bar Association's Liberty Bell Award.
That Liberty Bell Award is typically given to attorneys, judges that hold dear to them
the law and fighting for others. I'm a founder of a nonprofit. Okay. So somebody saw something in me
then being recognized by Godiva and winning the whole across the country, the Godiva award.
And that was through international voting. They came in and they followed my story and my work.
And then being invited to ring the NASDAQ closing bell with some of the biggest people. And then all
All of a sudden, you're this person on the rise, this advocate that is out there kicking ass, holding people's feet to the fire, judges, district attorneys, false allegation makers, calling them out.
All of a sudden, you get NBC investigates because no one's listened to you.
They storm a courthouse for you.
they're calling people out getting people thrown in jail fighting fighting attorneys and winning
for these women as a non-attorney somebody who has self-taught herself to do investigations
to fight attorneys then all of a sudden get a get get in trouble from the attorney general's
office because nobody locally could shut me up or shut me down so here comes the attorney general's
office with this fake victim that gets involved with me. This fake victim has destroyed the lives
of not just, well, she didn't destroy my life. I mean, she actually empowered me because I made
a promise to these other nine victims of hers. And listen, I support women. Research me. I'm
the biggest supporter of women empowerment but i found out that women are abusers too
women do bad things and there's some guys out there that are abused too but the majority of
my work is through women and helping them but this one particular victim so-called victim that
we'll get into was referred to me ironically through the the north hampton county district
attorney's office to help her, saying that I'm the only one that could help her. Anyway, this
same person made up all these lies, ironically, about me, had all of a sudden, now the attorney
general's office is involved in investigating this little nonprofit girl. And in the beginning,
I thought, oh, they're just, you know, I thought they just wanted to look at my books. Here you
go tony i sent i had one one bank account one and after every transaction in and out i wrote next
to what it was spent for what i even had victims sign like if i went to court for them and took
them to lunch or bought them some i made each victim sign receipts that's how good i was at
record keeping okay so after all of this all of a sudden i'm this big investigation and i'm like
and then i don't even know what i'm being i honestly didn't even know what i was being
investigated about that's what i was going to ask what were the allegations i was never told
so all of a sudden this one investigator this woman from the attorney general's office is asking
me for all my books. There you go. Sent them everything, every single bank statement,
every single receipt, every single thing that they asked for. This went on for over seven years,
Tony. They investigated me for seven years. They weren't really investigating me. What they were
doing is they were stalling my work, shutting me up. So I wouldn't do any more work. You understand?
So Heidi would stay out of the courts. Heidi wouldn't be bringing any more cases that they were suppressing, any more victims that they were suppressing. Heidi was going to just, we're going to keep her silent for a while.
so then it got deeper and deeper and then they started accusing me of stealing this
money and stealing that money until then there was a um i had a um what do you call it like an
audit like a professional audit done outside came back clean everything came back clean
sent them all the financial statements from the accountant because i didn't keep my books the
accountant did so bank statements all gave them everything they wanted tony it was nothing was
ever good enough they strangled me so then this so-called victim that i tried to help
um started making up lies more lies i don't know if it was a collaboration
to to shut just to shut me down they wanted to shut me down so it took me seven years of fighting
so after like the first or second year I had enough so I wrote an email to this first investigator
and I said please I said please let me go I need to do my work I don't know what more you want from
me these are all lies here's everything and then I said then I threatened to sue them I said this
is harassment. This is, so then all of a sudden they send in another investigator, senior deputy
assistant attorney general, so-and-so. They invite me down to, they invite me to Harrisburg
to talk to me. I'm like, okay. I, at this point, I'm like, kind of know what's going on, but then
I kind of don't, they get there and they start seriously interrogating me. There was no mention
to me that I could bring an attorney. They didn't, there was nothing because I didn't have an
attorney. Cause I thought I didn't do anything wrong. I'm just going to keep on giving them what
they want. So I get there and they start asking me questions and then I'm starting to catch on
this person that's trying to get me in trouble is working with these people.
And then all of a sudden she says, everything was in good intentions. Everything that I tried to do
was always good. And all of a sudden, if you remember that case in New Jersey, where there
was a homeless man and there were two people that were raising money and they raised, I think like
four hundred thousand dollars right i do remember and i said oh i said honestly i said this is for
my sister i said i i don't know what you're talking about she goes oh she goes well that
case in new jersey with she goes that started out with good intentions as well tony i sat back man
i sat back and i folded my arms and i just thought i'm done here because this is criminal they're
accusing me of doing some criminal things. So I left fast forward seven, we were going into
eight years that these people were on my, I don't even know what they were doing. So they,
they spent taxpayers dollars. So then I threatened, I said, if you don't stop, I'm going to
tell the taxpayers. So I, in this email, I said, how would the taxpayers like to know that you
have been investigating an innocent woman. At that time, it was five years. I said, for over five
years, I said, how would the taxpayers like to know about this so-called victim that she has
nine other victims? One of her victims, honest to God, just got out of jail, was incarcerated.
He was doing 10 to 20 years for a crime that I believe he did not commit, was part of,
but this person created her own injuries because she was the aggressor the violent one had nine
other criminal uh criminal uh i don't know if there were convictions but they were criminal
allegations uh no she was brought up on the charges but always let go so nine of them
i housed this victim out of the goodness of my heart found out then i had after i found out when
all these victims came forward about this one serial false allegation maker nine of them nine
people so the man that she i believe through all my investigating and all of i have documents
she admitted in a sworn document to northampton county investigators two of them i have it
highlighted and if anybody has any questions about this i have all the evidence i'll i'll
send you the documents exact words were well i can't say exact because it's not in front of me
um she admitted that she lied because she was afraid to admit that she was going to commit
suicide they got into an altercation her and her partner i think it was her husband it was her
husband, jumped on him, fell, got injured pretty badly. So she admitted to investigators that she
lied how the injury happened. So for all the years that this man was in jail, I was sending
this evidence to the North Hampton County District Attorney's Office and the Attorney General's
office. Not only that, Tony, after I started getting into this case, another woman that was
a caregiver for this person, because she's injured on her own, I believe, you know, I'm not saying
that this man didn't have anything to do with it, the altercation. And if you read the story,
it sounds pretty damaging to him. But if you see the evidence, you'll see that she did admit to
lying, changed the story multiple times, got lots of funding for these injuries. Um, so then she had
a caregiver after I stopped. So I kicked her out of the housing that I had her in because I walked
in, there was marijuana, there was so many horrible things going on, changed the locks,
kicked her out. She went for, to another caregiver, that caregiver, after she found out that this
person was a liar and was doing bad things selling drugs out of the house and i'm and this you can't
make this stuff up it's all true court documents affidavits excuse me um so this uh girl calls me
in the back of a police car and says heidi you need to help me they just arrested me this person
false allegation, serial false allegation maker lied. So this caregiver went as every other
caregiver that she has now and in the past and moving into the future, there's probably many
others out there that have been falsely accused by this girl. So this false allegation maker is
incapable of getting her own prescriptions. So, I mean, even when we were taking care of her,
we had somebody doing this stuff and at that time the person that was working for us to help
with this girl there were 36 oxycontin pills gone when we came back the next day
so i believe it was they were selling selling selling them so our caregiver was going to be
her target so i kicked her out and got rid of her i thought i'm done with her this is bad
So the next caregiver got arrested because the girl was kicking her out of her house and this serial false allegation maker told her, and I have the affidavit because another caregiver heard this girl and her sister plotting and planning against this caregiver that they were going to set her up.
They did set her up. So, and how does one, this one victim, this serial false allegation,
false victim has a direct line to the attorney general's office. Has them get video footage
of this caregiver picking up this person's medication, picks up this medication,
and that's all they needed. They arrested this girl for picking up this woman's medication
because she couldn't do it herself as everybody always does for her, got arrested. She wanted to,
so this girl, they would not listen to her evidence. I have it, would not listen. She was
arrested. I believe two or three times, uh, the district attorney in Lehigh County was supposed
to go to the magistrate to hear the case. Never showed up. This girl was bought to
Lehigh County court, was forced into signing a plea deal, paying fines because of this
false allegation. I don't know if she's still paying the fines today, but they told her,
if you do not sign this, you will not be able to further your career to becoming a nurse.
that's me i was the target i was the one for over seven years that fought this girl because i said
i will be the one to take her down i will be the one so now we have that's so it's me
the the person that just got out of jail doing i think he did 10 to 15 years this other caregiver
and then there are other caregivers that came to me that she did the same thing too and i'm sure
they're still out there. There's still more out there. But there's also 36 false reports to CPS
against two other people. And I want to know how can CPS go to the same residence all the time
without having, and from the same person. Do you believe in karma?
I believe that there is good karma for those who do good in this world. And I believe that
there's bad, there's karma that gets the ones that are doing bad. Now, will this person ever
receive her karma? I don't think so because she uses her disability that I believe she created
on her own, um, to get what she wants everywhere she goes. How, how does one person have a direct
line to, to win and get money? She was rewarded. When I settled my case out of court with the
attorney general's office, they awarded her $5,000. They fined my nonprofit $42,000, Tony,
but they found no wrongdoing. You know why they fined me? They said, because I had bad
record keeping. Tony, my records were meticulous, but I was told we were, we were supposed to go
to settle because this has been an ongoing fight with them. I would not, so they gave me seven
agreements over seven years. The attorney general's office wanted me, they wanted to silence
me. Okay. So let's get into, gosh, this story is so big. One serial false allegation maker
created a living hell for me. And all I did was I, I went to her because I thought she was a true
victim of domestic violence i thought that her husband created these injuries and i felt horrible
for my mom's a paraplegic she's she's she's she has ms and so i think that played a little bit on
me and when you read the news stories that how this this this injury happened you think god this
is a really bad guy when in turn Tony he is not I had the the opportunity to interview talk to
the family and him and I got the whole story and you don't have nine people of the same
the same serial false allegation reporter maker and you have nine victims that never got their
justice tony nine and i'm sure there's more of there's more out there but nobody would ever tell
my story no one would ever tell the story because i know more would come forward so let's fast
forward so i fought the attorney general's office for over seven years and they had nothing on me
So I said to them, I said, if you don't stop, I'm going to tell the taxpayers that you're investigating an innocent woman for over five years.
Tony, after I did that, after I said I told them what they need to do, I said, how about investigate this, investigate that?
Like I had all these cases.
Tony, 10 days later, I got a notice that they were shutting my nonprofit down.
You know why?
Because it was revenge.
I pissed them off. They were like, who are you? Who are you to tell us what we need to do? We're
the attorney general's office. You know, we're the investigators. We're these people. Tony,
they sent me a shutdown letter along with, okay, so once I told them that I was telling the
taxpayers that they're investigating an innocent person and how much money it was, and I have the
documents, Tony, they sent me a bill for 365 or $362,000 that they, I was supposed to pay.
And you know what it was going to cover? It was going to cover the fees that the taxpayers paid
them to falsely investigate me. Okay. So let me get this straight. One of the investigators
were, I think he was getting paid, oh geez, I believe it was $685 an hour. And his assistant
was being paid $175 an hour times seven years. They were billing me that because
I guess what I'm trying to say is if you fight them, they're going to take you down. It doesn't
matter. They're going to do whatever they can. So Tony, when I got that bill, it was around my
grandson. I can remember because it's like I spent his whole seven years of watching him grow,
fighting the attorney general's office. That's how the timeline works for me. So I remember
getting that notification that I was going to have to pay back all that money. My daughter,
And it's really sad. It kind of is very sad for me. I got in such a dark place and it made me realize how people commit suicide. You know how the pressure like I had the highest power in this state harassing me falsely for over seven years.
So my daughter calls me or texts me that day and says, hey, mom, we're going.
And my family, I didn't tell my kids about any of this because they didn't need to know.
Because, you know, first of all, it was humiliating to me to be accused of all this stuff when all I wanted to do was do good.
And to help somebody who I thought was a true victim.
Really, honestly, that was where my, I mean, the things that I did to try to help even rehabilitate her.
we donated personally furniture so all everything that I and my daughter donated to make this condo
this girl lived in in a condo we put her in because I thought that that's how much she
deserved because her husband injured her you know so I got she got five thousand dollars Tony
because they said that I stole her belongings.
The couch that we donated, the chair that we donated,
the bedroom furniture that we donated.
That's what they got me on.
They said that I, when in fact, I gave her four months
to pick all the stuff up that was in storage.
And I have documents from, I had to hire constables
because I was being threatened, Tony.
I mean, it was horrific.
what i went through so so where was i a part of this so i was she was rewarded five thousand
dollars they her reward for falsely accusing everybody was five thousand dollars from my
hard work non-profit so i was fined for bad record keeping tony i kept meticulous records
as you could see if I send you the website. So the website that we created was the, the whole
seven plus years of investigating on me, all the email correspondence back and forth,
all of the evidence of nine victims that they ignored real evidence, Tony, it's not,
it's not made up evidence. It's documents that I pulled from the courts that would prove the
innocence of these people. These, okay. So I won. So they say they settled out of court with me
because I, I was fined. The foundation was fined $42,000 for bad record keeping. Cause that's all
they had on me. As a matter of fact, I have in a document from one of the investigators that says
we are under no obligation to look at your evidence. I have that in document. They are
under the obligation tony if you're a victim of crime and your local government isn't helping you
where do you go you go to the big guys right they couldn't help anyone they didn't want to
look at any of the evidence let me just tell you something about the the guy that was in jail
doing 10 to 20 for crime he was part of but didn't commit and didn't um he wasn't the catalyst yeah
Correct. Correct. Correct. Did not. And she admitted that he didn't. But they ignored all
that. He spent 10 years of his life, two children he didn't get to see. 10 years. Now, the reason
that no one would listen to the story, because Tony, the nine victims are part of Lehigh County
and Northampton County. Do you think that the big guys are going to look at evidence that might
put a domino effect in the courthouse or that might everybody would lose their jobs
like come on yeah people that ignore evidence so today you asked me like what what what inspires
me to keep going i'm not done yet those nine victims need their justice and let me tell you
when the story gets out and you know i'm not mentioning names not because i'm worried about
slander or anything because it's true. I have the evidence. It's because I don't need to
because it's over. It's done. But what I will do, I will continue to work with these victims that
didn't get justice because let me tell you. So after I got that bill of $365,000, they sent me
seven agreements. That was agreement number one. I'm not signing it because it's all lies.
I said, I'm not signing it.
I'm not.
I'm just not.
No, no, no.
So then number two, and all of these agreements are on that website.
All the malicious stuff that they said and all the lies that they said about me, each one of them could have and should have been sued for slander.
But because I settled and signed off, I mean, I'm kind of pissed off that I did that now, but I didn't have anyone that was willing to fight and go the distance.
Tony.
Right.
Okay, so in the final hours, I had an attorney from Bucks County near Philadelphia that believed in me.
My first meeting with her, when I showed her the evidence, I left there.
I was on such a high.
This was after five, six years of me fighting on my own.
She said to me, and I'll never forget it.
She said, Heidi, if this is all true, which it was, the damages are incalculable.
I'm thinking, oh, my God.
OK, I know that word sounds really big, you know, incalculable damages.
And she was going with me.
She believed in it.
She had the evidence, too.
All of a sudden, we're through a year going through it and they're fighting me.
And OK, so we were to go to court on a Tuesday, on the Thursday.
So the previous Tuesday, yeah, that previous Tuesday, I went to Northampton County because I was pissed off.
I wanted to get everything I could because I wanted to be so prepared because I knew I was going to win.
And if I didn't settle out of court and I would have won in the court of law.
so my the attorney said to me Heidi if the damages are incalculable and I was like all right cool
because I'm gonna win because everything here is true I have all the evidence I'm all ready let's
go agreement number three agreement number four I didn't sign I said nope nope I'm not signing I'm
not signing I'm not signing the threats kept coming in so the final one was they accused me
of stealing $200,000. I'm like, okay, where is this? And please show me where they couldn't show
me where accountant printed out my, we, I had an accountant that kept meticulous books. I didn't,
I mean, I just gave all the information. So all the financial balance sheets, month to month
sent stack like this, send it off to them. They did not know what to do. Month to month,
everything balances, balances, nothing's missing, slander right there. So they maliciously came
after me because I didn't have an attorney. As soon as I got an attorney, so let's fast forward
then to that Tuesday, I went and got all the evidence. Thursday, Thursday, I thought, all
right, you know what? I'm going to, I tried. So, I mean, I contacted every single media outlet
across the country tony 2020 i mean everybody was interested interested so that thursday before our
tuesday hearing at court after seven settlement agreements that i would not sign because they
were all false it implicated that i did something wrong and i didn't and i wasn't gonna do it so
especially with no evidence they found nothing so my question to them was you investigated me
for seven years now you didn't find anything in year number one you didn't find anything in year
number two year number three every every other month send us your bank statements attorney
general's office i was sending them their bank my bank statements okay six months go by they
didn't find anything oh heidi sorry we uh had other things of higher priority this is emails i
got um can you send us the bank statements your recent bank statements okay sure here you go i was
an open book tony with everything so year number three they found nothing year number four they
found nothing year number five all this time taxpayers are footing the bill for them to
investigate somebody who's innocent instead of going after all the evidence that they had to
save nine victims from a serial false allegation maker year number six no nothing year number seven
they found that my question is if you didn't find something on like isn't there a statute of
limitations on harassment and like investigating on somebody like after you investigate somebody
after a year you don't find anything two years three years for so what they did tony was they
silenced me for seven years. They wanted to suppress me, shut Heidi up, shut her down,
whatever from, from talking, from, from doing any more work. So that Thursday, um, I thought,
you know what, I'm going to find a way to contact the Dr. Phil show, you know, even if I have to
like do whatever. So set something up and had the Dr. Phil show call North Hampton County.
to help me to do something. That was Thursday call to get all the information that either later that
day or the next day is then I got a text message from my attorney that said, Heidi, I got the
weirdest email from the investigator. I'm going to be sending you in a pleasant, pleasingly or
pleasantly surprising settlement document so it took media that was going to cover
the story on tuesday to get me to get me to let them tony when when she when my attorney
said that they said that i remember saying oh my god i said is this good and she said and you know
course my attorney says Heidi it is good and here's the thing okay it was good Tony but I
still lost the fine of the three hundred and sixty five thousand dollars and crushed me tried to
crush me so here we are today I won and I sit back and I think did I really win because I think that
I was sold out in the final hours from me fighting for over seven years of false allegations from a
man who was incarcerated. I think he was 10. He was supposed to do 20. I think he did 15
to a girl that was thrown, arrested in front of her children. This, this is one person able to do
this and how does this one person have a direct line to control everyone is what I want to know
I would have been able to tell that story and they stalled me for seven years helping people
and I'm back I don't know in what capacity I'm going to come back you know I often thought
about running for a a seat you know um you know legislative seat because the platform that i have
that no one will be no one is brave enough to take the stand domestic violence domestic homicide
listen when my sister was killed i made a promise and i could not break that promise
I remember before I sent that email to the first investigator that, you know, when I said, why don't you investigate this?
I said, please believe me.
Like I was bet, Tony, I begged for somebody to listen to me and no one would listen.
What they did was they kept on making me feel worse.
They kept on accusing me of doing things that I didn't do.
I, I wanted to come into this doing good, and I'm going to come out of this doing good.
But you can't imagine somebody being brave enough to take a stand. They need to hear that over 70%
of our court's time is spent dealing with domestic violence related issues. There was a study done by
the judge national judges association they even proved it that 70 of the time abusers are
able to convince authorities to give them sole custody of children now we know this but why
isn't there change tony child protective services their number one calls are false allegations
We as taxpayers are paying these people to go knock on the doors of innocent people
out of revenge. Come on. Listen, I can talk to somebody and I can tell like that who the abuser
is. Who? Why? Because I'm trained. People need to start listening. Listen, you victims of domestic
violence need a voice and as i was getting into this i was saying you know who is going to take
a stand so i was thinking about i mean many times during this whole thing boy what am i you asked me
what i'm going to do now with the foundation yeah okay so i'm using my voice my law robin's law has
been sitting since 2008 i believe 2007 2008 there's not a legislator that has been willing
to even talk about it they've been willing to write it up and get it introduced reintroduced
every year but since i was told that i need to go and get it done myself i thought okay well
maybe i will as the number one issue is it and this is maybe more opinion but you have way more
facts than i do are we getting better than we were generations ago no tony we've stalled it's
nothing is being done there's a real need for you it's a real need thank you i i i feel
i feel empowered tony to go back into doing something i don't know what it is i have a
cringy feeling though to like walk into a courthouse again but as far as um victims
i don't know what i want to do you know i know that there's so many of them i know that
that that victims are losing their children left and right children are being lives are being
destroyed by our court system you know the the these kids that grow up they need to be the voice
the next generation of voices the children that were taken from the safety of the non-abusive
parent and given to the abusive parent these children i want to know where they are the grown
children that this happened to. They need to tell and talk about it. They need to tell the judges
what they've done to them, what they did. You know, I have a bunch of those people from doing
this work for 17 years. Those kids are now grown adults. They know what happened to them. But you
know what the problem is, Tony? We go to book learned people with college degrees. There is
no college degree needed when you've been a victim of domestic violence or when you've done the work
that I've done. And as a matter of fact, the district attorney said to me, after I had one
of my cases with three wives, he was finally arrested, brought me into his office and he said,
Heidi, do you want a job? He goes, what do you do? He was probably joking, you know, because he
couldn't even believe that the evidence that I was able to get. And you know, Tony, I was able to get
what i needed because the victims liked me they believed in me they allowed me into their life
they allowed me into their homes they allowed me to see the way they live the way that they
mothered their kids and you know showed me the evidence the evidence that is often ignored
good for you and give yourself a round of applause oh geez i i need help getting back into it though
you know i've been it's been a long a long road maybe we'll get you set up with a podcast
that would be getting over podcast yeah you know i've thought about that too tony and i i've
thought about seriously getting out there in one of these elections and throwing my name in the ring
and you know i don't have that college degree you know but i have i i do believe that i have
what it takes to make a difference and to use the platform of domestic violence.
And oh, I was going to get into domestic homicide. So there's 10,000 children a year plus that lose
a parent to domestic violence. Where are these kids, Tony? They're out there. Why isn't anyone
talking to them? The news media, they take the big story. Oh, this so-and-so was killed by
so-and-so and leaves orphans. These children are called orphans. They're not orphans.
Let's not call them orphans. You hear the story and most of the families,
grandparents raising the children, aunts and uncles raising the kids, who is supporting them?
Where is their financial help? So when I was really big in the foundation doing my work,
We were we had camps for these kids, Tony. We had sisters, sisters meeting sisters of loss, mothers connecting with mothers, fathers and fathers.
We would get together. And even though the children didn't really talk about the parent that they lost or both parents, essentially they lose.
They would hug each other because they felt like one.
it's it's a different community when you are faced with homicide and and like i met so many
beautiful people and my goal was when i won the godiva award they asked me what i wanted to do
and i wanted to connect families across the country tony i won ten thousand dollars that
doesn't do too much you know if you if you're thinking you want to connect but i did what i
could do i did i did local camps but my goal was to one day you know domestic violence we're never
going to eradicate it we really aren't what we can do is we can change laws and we can change
the way victims are handled in the court system um but what we really need is we need to
these families of homicide. Tony, if you think about it, over 10,000 children a year,
where are they? Where are the mothers of loss? Where are the fathers that lost their daughter?
Where are the aunts, the uncles, the brothers, the sisters? Where are all these people? They're
hurting. They're hurting. So my goal was really essentially, I wanted to get into that. So we were
paying, um, locally when there was a domestic homicide, we were paying funeral expenses
because when my sister was killed, that was the biggest thing. It was like,
now she had two children and it's like, who's going to pay for this? Like, what are we going to
do? So I got this idea. Okay. So whenever we had a local homicide, we, the foundation would pay
for the funeral expenses or part of the funeral expenses. So we were raising money to do that.
we were holding camps, but my ultimate goal would be to connect across the country,
families of homicide and hold camps, yearly camps where we could fly people into certain locations,
the families and everybody could just meet and we could do wellness retreats, things like that.
So, Tony, as you can see, I mean, we need to raise. So I'm really thinking whether I get on the platform of changing laws and things like that, or if I just go back into my world of giving victims of families of homicide a voice. Domestic violence, homicide. It's the number one killer of women across the country, more than car accidents, more than, you know, rapes.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
I did not know that.
And so, you know, it's just we need more shows like you, Tony.
We need people who are willing to talk to us little guys, shows that aren't afraid to expose injustice.
And, you know, it's not that I even I don't have revenge.
The revenge is not mine.
That is not why I wanted to talk to you.
It was more to move on.
Well, let's move forward.
worry about the future victims you can help the future families you can help i mean you can come
out on the other end healed i i don't think of it as winning i mean if she's physically
incapacitated and has to live it's hard to cover up lies the easiest thing to do is to just tell
the truth and then you always remember that's something i would have said i don't i don't try
to be an agent of karma i kind of let that figure itself out and don't change anything it happens
naturally right yeah and even if you're not there to see it even if you don't care whether or not
it happens just to be able to move forward in your own journey i'm glad i could be a part of
your healing process and i and i appreciate you and i wish you much success what you're doing here
is amazing. And I, I know that lives can be changed through, through you. If anyone wants
to help, they can go to the website. It's beginningover.org and you can read all about
our work, what we're doing, any fundraisers that are coming up, how you can donate and where that
donation is going to be used, where it's going and what it's going to be used for can be found
on our website. Super cool. Yeah. You know, there's much more, but you know what, you help me
tell what I needed to tell, you know, about what goes on in our court system and, and, and, and
just for people to maybe be more aware of where their tax dollars are going. You know, you, you
help me and this is now I can move forward and I can continue the healing process, but more
importantly, I can move on now. And, and you've helped me really decide what direction I need to
go. So thank you. Thank you for your time. And I wish you the best of everything with your new
podcast. Yeah, absolutely. All right. This is I Will Not Lose Podcast, where we set out to prove
everything is learned from failure. We must persevere and recognize it as one step closer
to success. We had Heidi on. She told her story of resilience and fighting the attorney general
for seven years and her work with domestic abuse as an advocate and founder of the Beginning Over
Foundation. To support her cause, we will have a donation link in the episode description on
YouTube as well as Spotify or wherever you're listening to this. Your contribution is appreciated.
Thank you for listening.