Original subtitles

My name is Tim Evans.

I'm an investigative reporter and editor

at the Indianapolis Star newspaper.

And much of my work focuses on child abuse and sexual abuse.

As a journalist, as a storyteller.

The Jared Fogle story is intriguing.

I worked on this investigation

and published several stories about Jared Fogel's activities.

And I thought I was a star.

I was like, "Oh, I made it now."

But then my brother Jared has to trump me.

And he did one and he gets his up there.

The public regarded Jared as a celebrity.

He would go places, you know, schools.

Kids would be cheering,

lining up for autographs to shake his hand.

So one thing I've learned,

you could never outdo Jared.

But Jared Fogle, he used his power,

his popularity to ingratiate himself

with the people he abused.

I'm trying to raise a lot of money for...

For the urban initiative, for Little League.

And always excited to be back here in sunny Los Angeles.

He came across as a very inspirational person.

A guy who lost a bunch of weight eating sandwiches.

Then from that and he was able to capitalize

and make a career and make a small fortune.

Subway's business was completely transformed.

They ended up making $8 billion or something ridiculous.

You made yourself a millionaire.

I think we see time and time again

that fame and celebrity, access to money

can be a destructive mix.

Jared Fogle used his popularity,

set up the Jared Foundation.

The Jared Foundation provided education and events for schools

to talk about healthy eating, exercise.

Okay, I'm here at Soldier Creek Elementary

with none other than Jared, The Subway Guy.

I'm trying to get the word into as many kids as possible

just about the importance of making healthy choices.

The person running that foundation was Russell Taylor.

If you wanted to have someone around your charitable foundation

who was trustworthy and not a risk...

the last thing in the world you would want

was Russell Taylor involved in it.

Russell Taylor was a personal train wreck waiting to happen.

Jared Fogle had met Russell Taylor

at one of these community events

where Fogle was the primary speaker.

Russell Taylor is working for the American Heart Association.

Taylor offered to write a speech for him, that went well.

And from there, it wasn't long

until Fogle offered him a job leading his foundation.

I think Taylor was kind of a hustler.

He was smooth, more of a player,

and had some game that Fogle didn't have.

They were close. They traveled together often.

They had kind of a double life on the road,

promoting a good lifestyle for young people.

And then at night,

they both kind of fed into each other's addictions and problems.

Jared Fogle finds Russell Taylor.

They became a toxic combination with each other.

And that's why everything that follows comes into place.

Russell Taylor came into our life

when he was dating our mother, Angela Taylor.

Our mom met Russell on Facebook

and they were speaking via Facebook for a while,

and then we took a trip to Chicago,

and that's where we first met Russell.

I was about ten, and Christian would have been about 13.

I just remember he was very tan

and he had dark hair.

He seemed nice.

He was very flashy.

Very charismatic. Very, um...

Very charming.

Very.

After our mom met Russell,

I think a lot of good things started to happen.

When we moved to Salem's Creek, I was excited.

The house was a lot bigger.

It felt very upper class to me at least, you know.

Coming from lower-middle, it was very fancy.

And all the other houses we lived in,

Christian and I had to share a room.

I finally got to have my own space.

It was awesome.

Russell's passion was definitely film.

Our whole basement was actually themed as a movie theater,

and he had pictures of classic films everywhere,

and he loved making his own movies.

Russell actually had his own little production company

he called Blue Out House Studios.

Had his own logo and everything.

- It was a little weird, though. - It was.

You know, because he made a specific video of me playing softball.

It's just of all these different angles of me,

like, playing softball, you know,

like some of my teammates

and my coaches and stuff, you know?

I mean, nobody else's parents ever did something like that.

So I think to me,

it felt a little weird because it was just like...

- I felt eccentric. - It felt extra.

It did.

I guess like producing films is like his thing.

- So maybe that's just... - It's his hobby.

His way of like, yeah, of just being supportive.

My mom's parenting changed when she met Russell...

from being this strict Christian woman

going to church every Sunday

to this partying, carefree person I had never met before.

It was almost awesome in a way,

because I felt, wow, like our mom's our friend.

She encouraged us to drink alcohol, smoke weed,

allowed us to have parties at their house.

I'm talking like multiple bottles of hard liquor.

I'm 15. She's what, 12, 13?

When you're a teenager, you want to have a good time.

You want to feel like an adult.

It seemed great on paper...

But in all reality...

It was the complete opposite.

I was at a crossroads.

I had evidence of Jared saying

what he wanted to do sexually to children.

It was too much for me to deal with on my own.

I was going straight to the FBI.

Upon arriving at the FBI office in Sarasota, Florida,

I was introduced to Agent Billings.

And I shared all the details.

And the recordings.

After only about a minute,

she said, "Is this who I think this is?"

She gathered some of the materials,

walked out of the room...

and then three agents came back in.

They were not only shocked,

they couldn't believe someone of his stature would say these things.

They agreed he needed to be investigated.

But there was a problem.

What I did could, in fact, be seen as a crime.

Legally, you are supposed to get

prior consent from someone before recording them.

The tapes would not hold up in court.

It was their belief

that I had broken the law.

I could face possible felony charges.

The only thing that would save me was to work with them.

They wanted me to continue doing exactly what I was doing.

Talking with Jared and recording him.

The only difference was that for legality purposes,

I was shown what to say in the start and end of all the recordings.

Everything had a protocol.

They gave me no choice.

I had to become an undercover asset for the FBI.

Why do you think the FBI needed you?

The FBI needed me

because I was already in.

They said, "You are already talking to him.

You were able to get this evidence.

We want you to continue doing what you're doing."

It was very scary because it made what I discovered real.

I think undercover work is probably one of the most important investigative tools

that law enforcement has.

I'm Bob Hamer. I spent 26 years in the FBI.

Many of those years were in an undercover capacity.

Investigating sex crimes.

When you're undercover, you are right there,

one-on-one with the target of your investigation.

You have them making criminal admissions.

And that's much more valuable than circumstantial evidence.

The calls, they became more and more revealing,

Jared eventually started sharing with me in great detail

what he would do with children.

When Jared boasted about having sex with minors,

it was beyond disturbing.

Monster is too kind of a word.

When Jared would say these things,

how do you know that this wasn't fantasy?

What Jared did was not fantasy.

What he said, what he confessed to,

what he shared, what he wanted to do.

That was real.

Having that desire, that attraction to children is not a crime per se.

It becomes a crime when you act out upon that attraction.

The FBI wanted evidence of names,

places,

where he was going.

But specifically,

they wanted to find the victims.

I had to play a role.

I pretended to be someone who I was not,

who I hated.

So that he would open up to me

and I could get on tape what I needed for the FBI.

When I would acquire information

through conversations with Jared,

I had to meet with the agents and make the drop.

We met in an abandoned parking lot.

In the middle of the night.

And it was very eerie.

I look across the parking lot in front of me

and on the other side, these headlights, slowly blinking.

You do a handoff.

And then they're gone.

And then you're alone.

The reason for the covert nature of these exchanges

is to protect the witness.

You don't want the witness being seen with a law enforcement agent.

In my undercover capacity, I would meet with my case agent

in the back of buildings, in parking lots, in grocery stores

to make sure that I wasn't being followed,

that he wasn't being followed

and that there was no one that could observe the two of us meeting.

Should Jared ever find out

that I was recording him,

and capturing incriminating evidence against him,

what would he do to protect himself?

What lengths would he go?

I was in deep.

I was scared.

I was frightened.

We knew Russell worked for somebody to do with Subway

because it was Subway everything.

It was Subway bags, Subway T-shirts.

I think he even had Subway shoes.

So when we asked, he finally said,

"The guy I work for is Jared Fogle,

you know, the guy who lost all the weight on Subway."

And to us, that was really cool.

It was his life,

whether that was texting Jared

or on the phone with Jared, or emailing Jared.

It was just always about Subway.

He traveled a lot with Jared.

They went to Vegas a few times.

They went to Vegas. They went to Thailand.

Russell having this job impacted our life.

We got to travel more.

We went on vacation.

We got to really have experiences in life.

We didn't really have that growing up.

It was fun, though. I had fun.

The first time I met Jared in person

was when we went to dinner with him.

It was pretty nerve-wracking

because, you know, he's just famous.

You know, a lot of people know him.

He's got a lot of money.

Definitely a VIP.

He seemed very shy and, you know, kind of reserved.

Like, he just had this very careful personality.

No, he talked, but he wasn't very outgoing.

He was more of a listener. More of a watcher.

I would describe Russell and Jared's dynamic

as Jared's the producer,

Russell is the director, making a movie.

Jared was the money.

Russell did the job.

I think when Jared became more involved in our lives,

it was almost like we had more to talk about.

We had more to kind of show off to our friends.

We felt cool.

You're like, "Oh, I know all these famous people.

My stepfather knows Jared Fogle and he's like our uncle.

He's like family. He comes to family events.

We go to his house."

It just was very glamorous. Very glamorous.

Without Jared,

Russell wouldn't have that house on Salem Creek.

He wouldn't have the job or the opportunities that he had.

I definitely would say Jared had a hold over all of us.

Jared would call most often late at night.

I would struggle with getting any sleep at all

because as soon as these recordings were made,

I had to make the drop.

It could be as often as once or twice a night.

It was very difficult on my family

because there was just too much going on.

Mommy wasn't there as often as I should have been.

The investigation,

it put a strain on our relationship.

Her heading out all the time.

And when she is home, being secretive and hiding in a room,

all she told me was that she was working with the FBI to catch a bad man.

But I had no idea who the bad man was.

I did try asking her numerous times.

Who I'm supposed to be afraid of? Who's after us?

What did they do?

What are they going to do?

But she never gave me an answer.

You cannot tell the children the full story.

First of all, it was top secret.

And you can't risk compromising an investigation such as that

because you put hundreds of children at risk.

Plus, it's a nightmare.

Children are not equipped to understand something like that.

So you have to piecemeal what you share with them.

I'm not sure if she thought she was protecting me,

but not giving me someone to, you know, be afraid of,

it's just makes me, like, want to be afraid of everyone.

Every stranger is a dangerous person.

I was home alone with my sister, pretty much all the time.

It was just very scary.

Thinking there's someone after you

someone that's targeting you,

that can do a lot to someone's head.

My sister, she became pretty unstable

and she'd have like, outbursts

and just wasn't behaving like her usual self.

She became quite angry, anxious.

If there was someone at the door that we didn't know,

she, like, really freaked out.

She just wasn't as happy and outgoing as she used to be.

Conversations with Jared just got darker and darker.

Just the darkest things that you could even imagine.

There's this one phone call

about his trip to Thailand that still lives with me today.

When I heard what Jared was telling me,

my soul was blackened.

He would frequently see this young boy.

I believe he was around 10 or 11 years old.

He was very descriptive.

And Jared wasn't just abusing children in Thailand,

he was doing it here in the United States.

This was his playground.

As soon as we hung up the phone,

I would just start throwing up.

I never want to go through that again.

I just need a minute.

Sorry.

I felt as though I had given

what I thought was rock-solid information

to the FBI numerous times over the course of years.

I couldn't understand what the holdup was.

The reason he wasn't charged,

at that point, was there was no overt act.

When he talked about traveling to have sex with children.

There's no proof that he actually did that.

I had this friend that Russell was very adamant about Jared meeting.

She would have been 15 at the time.

So me and my friend, we went to dinner with Jared.

On the way up there,

of course, Russell was hyping Jared up

and, you know, making it seem like

this was going to be a big deal.

We got there and it was just very casual.

Jared really didn't open up too much.

He was very selective about the things

he would say and the moves he would make.

It wasn't as exciting as Russell had made it out to be.

After that dinner, you know,

I started hearing more about Jared's interest in her.

Jared would send Russell text messages.

You know, he would make comments about her breasts,

about her looks, and having sex with our friend.

You thought it was weird at the time?

I just looked at it as...

they're just perverted.

You know, you have that pervy uncle

like you're like, "Oh, I got a pervy uncle, you know?"

But it was more than that.

I had mentioned Jared's comments to my friend.

She was very taken aback by that.

She got very uncomfortable very quickly

and she kind of questioned me about it.

You know, and was, "Why is he saying these things about me?"

I instantly felt awkward and uncomfortable

because it was like in that moment

that I kind of started to realize

that maybe something isn't right here.

Listening to what Jared had to say

really started to take a toll on me.

I'm feeling very stressed,

more stressed than I've ever been in my life.

Three years playing my part with Jared,

and regardless of how much information I was able to collect,

he wasn't being stopped.

I'm just really trying to reach out to kids in this trip.

And now I essentially travel the world and just share my story.

See that?

He would be a motivational speaker at the schools.

He would go on tour.

Give it up for Jared from Subway.

He would be a special guest at sporting events.

But you know what, Jared?

I'm not a fan of yours.

Jared used his position as a celebrity

to gain the trust of children.

The FBI and I knew who he really was

and what his true desires were.

But the public had no idea.

I feel like I can do anything.

It affected my health tremendously.

It was interfering with my ability to make a living.

And then something happened

that ripped my whole family apart.

I kept a diary.

Within those pages were times I spoke with Jared on the phone

documenting each phone call.

One evening, I arrived home...

there was something that was amiss

and I couldn't put my finger on it.

Someone had been in my office.

There was a disarray of torn papers.

This was one of my journals.

I just started becoming very anxious

because my children were the only ones in the house, besides me.

Come to find out, it was my daughter.

There were things in that diary

that no child should ever read, especially your own child.

She was frightened. She didn't understand.

It changed her.

It changed her way of thinking about me as her mom.

The relationship with my daughter,

because of this investigation,

crumbled almost beyond repair.

She had a lot of anger and she felt as though I abandoned her.

I needed to stop.

I needed to remove myself from this situation

because I needed to protect my children.

So together with the FBI, we came up with an endgame

where we hoped to catch Jared in the act.

We would lure Jared here to Sarasota

for a children's party that I was setting up.

It was, in effect, a fake birthday party for my son.

It was a sting operation.

The purpose of the sting

wasn't really to have a birthday party.

Should he suspect this is an FBI sting,

who knows what he would do to the children?

The purpose was to prove

that he was willing to cross state lines

to engage in sex with a person under 18 years of age.

The travel proves the intent.

But Jared needed to take the bait.

Jared became quite interested.

He wanted me to invite all their friends and their siblings.

Jared was very excited

and was rattling off ideas

on how to prepare the kids.

And he was, at this point, teaching me how to groom children.

Jared had a very specific strategy

when it came to children.

Who to select, who was the most vulnerable.

Jared would ask about my children's friends

and then their siblings, their ages.

Do I catch anyone looking at me?

What do I see?

During a specific phone call,

he said something so shocking,

it just repulsed me to the core.

The content is hard to listen to.

When Jared mentioned my kids...

was...

like a shot to the heart.

They were in his crosshairs.

They were in his mind, in his thoughts.

Repugnant.

He made me feel...

so much hatred towards him.

Well, now, Jared, you are traveling around the country talking to kids.

So we can just get to them and continue to get to them at an early age.

And I speak to children all over the country

and actually all over the world now.

We love you, Jared!

He changed my life.

Jared Fogle.

In my undercover capacity,

I would never involve my family.

In her situation, it was much different

because he had already known

that she had children

before she actually conducted her investigation.

So these were real children, not imaginary children.

So that made it much more difficult.

I just wanted to run and never turn back.

But I had to hold it together.

The sting was supposed to be a way

we would finally be able to get Jared off the streets.

But last minute...

Jared's schedule changed.

So instead of a week out...

he would be there within the next two to three days.

So I contacted the FBI

and they could not ramp up

and be ready in 48 to 72 hours.

I begged him, "Jared, please come on Friday.

That's the only time."

And he just couldn't do it.

The party never came to fruition.

How did that make you feel at that point?

I was very frustrated.

This was that chance. We had it.

It was at our fingertips and...

Then it was gone.

Even as a professional undercover agent,

it's disappointing when it doesn't happen.

She has poured her life into this investigation.

She is emotionally attached

because of her children's involvement.

So when this didn't come through,

it would have been emotionally devastating.

The investigation definitely had an effect on her.

She became more withdrawn.

She slowly became less of a bubbly person.

I was worried about my kids

throughout the entire investigation.

But now I was...

worried beyond measure.

They were in his line of sight.

As time went on, I became terrified by Jared,

by what he was capable of.

So I thought to myself,

"What would Jared do?"

Jared had the money,

the position,

powerful players that supported him.

That frightened me.

If he ever found out what I was doing,

what would he do?

When did you start to notice a change in Rochelle?

I was on the air doing my own show.

Rochelle came in one night

and she had like, an overcoat on.

She had no makeup on.

Her hair was all disheveled, which was totally flustered

and totally out of character for her.

She wasn't bubbly Rochelle.

She said, "I'm gonna tell you something,

but you cannot tell anyone."

And look in her eyes was terror almost.

"Jared from Subway wants to see pictures of my kids naked.

And if I don't, he's going to kill me."

My first thought was, "She's got a screw loose."

And that's when she hit me

with "There's black vans following us."

It's just classic schizophrenia.

"There's vans following me.

They're after me, they're after me."

I thought it was so farfetched,

so out of the ordinary.

I said, either she's crazy

or she's telling the truth.

As much as I tried to keep it all together,

I was pulled apart.

The emotional turmoil that it took on me.

I had breakdowns.

I had no one... to talk to.

Sorry.

My life was spiraling out of control...

and he was still out there.

Police dogs...

I won't forget that day

that Russell got arrested.

That is the day my life turned upside down.

Russell Taylor, the former executive director of the Jared Foundation,

was arrested, accused of possessing and producing child porn.

Russell Taylor is accused of recruiting underage girls

without their knowledge to produce porn.

I was in high school...

and I see on my phone, I had a call from my mom.

That was weird.

I don't usually ever get calls from her during school.

So I called her back.

"Hey, Mom. I hadn't seen your call."

She said, "I can't talk right now."

"Why are you whispering?"

She said, "Russell's been arrested."

"What do you mean, he's been arrested?"

She said, "I can't talk about it right now.

Just look it up on the internet."

I just put Russell Taylor, Indianapolis.

And first thing that pops up big

was Russell Taylor, pedophilia, child pornography.

It said, "possession of child pornography."

I didn't really know what that meant.

So I'm thinking, okay, like,

"Did he have like some kind of picture or video or something of, like,

a little kid that maybe he shouldn't have"?

But it was even worse.

A search of Taylor's home in April

revealed more than 500 explicit images of children.

That's when we realized

the people you think are the closest to you

are actually the most dangerous.

Because what we found out was...

pure nightmare.