This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

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

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.

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.

It was almost like Laura had this damn that she was holding up with her own hands.

The 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.

Mike Maruccini's laptop.

It had been gathering dust in storage for almost five years.

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.

Mike had no idea that all the information he'd deleted could be recovered,

and that the memories he'd tried so hard to forget would soon become critical evidence.

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.

I'm Stephanie Young, and this is Love Trapped. There's no way out.

...