Hawthorne Hill was supposed to be a dream.

An elite equestrian facility, a decorated Olympic coach, and a young rider willing to do whatever it took to make it to the top.

But behind the scenes, that picture perfect setup was starting to crack.

What started as a professional relationship slowly unraveled into something much more personal and much more volatile.

Music into something much more personal and much more volatile. Hey guys and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a true crime podcast featuring myself,

Mandy and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I am doing well. How are you? I'm doing really good. I took

my longest walk since before I had hip surgery today. I took a 45-minute walk. Yeah. With a weighted vest,

I was like feeling like I was doing it all. So if I am in bed all day tomorrow, you'll know why. But actually, I felt really good. It was so nice. Great for my brain. Great for my body. Very happy. I love that. It's funny. I was actually wondering. I thought about that recently that I haven't really caught up with you and asked you over an update about how things have been going since you have been recovering from your surgery. I know it's been several months now. And you had said in the beginning, you know, it's going to be several months before I'm able to do things. So I'm super happy to hear that you were able to take such a long walk. That's awesome. Me too. It was beautiful morning. It was perfect. And I was just over the moon by the end of it. So I was so, so excited. I love it. I love it. And I was

excited this week because Melissa, we finally got some rain this past week. Well, really, it was yesterday.

We got some crazy rain. And it has been so dry here in Florida. We've been in like a legitimate

drought and it just has not rained very much,

but it rained a lot yesterday. We had some crazy wind. I don't know, like some of my like tree

limbs were down. It was pretty crazy. We actually had a real storm. We had tornado watches and all

kinds of stuff. Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, I love it. But it is another beautiful day here today, early

May. I'm excited. Melissa, the story we're talking about today, I'm excited to get into because

it's one that I think a lot of our listeners will be a little bit familiar with maybe because

there is a documentary out on Netflix about this right now. And it's a really good one. So I'm sure we'll talk about that. I've seen it. You, I assume, have also seen it. So I'm sure we'll talk about that as we kind of get into the story today. So to set the scene, we're heading into Long Valley, New Jersey, specifically to a place called Hawthorne Hill. And if you were to see it back in 2018, you would think this was an

absolute paradise. It's nestled in this quiet valley about an hour outside of New York City,

and the man who owned it, whose name is Michael Barrison, called this his sanctuary. And he didn't

just buy the place, he really breathed it into existence. He designed it as a full equestrian

campus and even built a lot of it with his own hands. And it truly was idyllic, peaceful, and very

prestigious. So to understand why being at Hawthorne Hill was such a big deal, you have to understand

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