In the first episode of The Con: Kaitlyn’s Baby, we’re introduced to doulas Amy and Katie, who provide holistic, emotional support to pregnant women alongside medical professionals like midwives. During Covid times, this service was conducted over the phone. As labor can take days and famously doesn’t operate on a 9-to-5 schedule, doulas can build up an intense relationship with their clients, even from afar.
That’s what happened to Amy and Katie with their client Kaitlyn, a 24-year-old delivering a stillborn baby that was the result of rape. Both quickly bond with the young woman, admiring her courage and dark humor in the face of trauma. But as the labor progresses, things start going terribly wrong. Kaitlyn requires emergency surgery and, after the birth, she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Horrifyingly, she is then assaulted, again, in the back of an ambulance. Listening at the other end of the telephone line, the doulas are frantic and helpless.
Slowly, however, strange details make them wonder if all of this isn’t happening as Kaitlyn claims. The sheer scale of tragedy Kaitlyn has endured starts to seem ridiculous (both doulas mention that if they hadn’t been so wrung out from sleepless nights on the phone with her, they’d have picked up on the signs more quickly). After more than a week of emotional exhaustion, Amy and Katie come to a shattering realization: none of it was real. Kaitlyn was never even pregnant. They’ve been tricked — and, as it turns out, they were far from the only ones.
The core question driving this six-part podcast is: why? Kaitlyn had many victims, and none of them were ever asked for money. That complicates the case on many levels — emotionally, legally, logistically. Amy, Katie, and the others hadn’t been defrauded of their savings, but somehow that made the experience feel crueler, more personal. It was as if Kaitlyn sought the specific pleasure of tricking them, of taking advantage of their kindness.
Once Kaitlyn was caught, this also made sentencing a more difficult prospect. The courts didn’t seem to know how to legislate a case that didn’t involve either physical violence or financial loss. The women Kaitlyn targeted suffered real consequences, and they are consequences that, as several of the doulas interviewed mention, will roll downhill to people who never even met her. It hadn’t occurred to any of the doulas before that someone would try to trick them in such a way; now, future clients will be viewed with a suspicion they won’t deserve. Their whole professional ecosystem, built very much on the sharing of trust and intimacies, has been undermined by one troubled woman.
At the end of every episode of The Con: Kaitlyn’s Baby, host Sarah Treleaven restates that she could not get Kaitlyn to agree to appear on the program. That’s not surprising; though it’s even-handed as possible considering the circumstances, the show isn’t exactly complimentary and is largely populated by people whose lives Kaitlyn adversely affected.
Treleaven herself goes light on the editorialization. Most of the voices you hear belong to the wronged doulas, and people who knew Kaitlyn in her youth, who contextualize her as much as they can. It’s to Treleven’s credit that she centers their voices above her own, and gives them space to explain the effect their encounters with Kaitlyn had on them in their own words.
Nevertheless, that we never get to hear from Kaitlyn directly leaves a void in the show. It’s such an unusual case, her actions were so outside the realm of normal, that it’s undeniably frustrating that we don’t get to listen to her explain herself. We want to understand, but all we can do is guess.
At just six episodes, with the shortest lasting less than twenty minutes, Kaitlyn’s absence adds to an overall feeling of slightness. And yet, considering the psychologically complex nature of what she did, the lack of closure also seems fitting. Even if Treleaven had managed to get Kaitlyn to talk, given her history of pathological lying, it’s doubtful we would have gotten the truth.
Though the lack of answers means that The Con: Kaitlyn’s Baby isn’t as satisfying as some of its true crime peers, the show’s genuine attempts to try to understand the inexplicable, and its eventual willingness to make peace with ambiguity, gives it a different kind of staying power.
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Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can find her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Paste, and her Letterboxd page.