> ROMANCE PREDATORS
add up: He asked for money to buy plane
tickets to fly from Spain to Michigan,
but why hadn’t he purchased round trip
tickets in the first place?
Wheaton says that she doesn’t have
a Cinderella complex. For years, when
people asked about her marital status,
she answered, “Happily single.”
“For me, it was an intellectual versus
spiritual battle,” she explains. “I was following it as an act of faith, not knowing
where God would lead me, even though
intellectually, I was thinking I need to
get rid of this guy.”
Wheaton wired Slyd more money — she
gave him $15,000 in total — so that he
and his daughter could fly to Michigan.
But Slyd, who couldn’t be reached for
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
comment for this article, told her he was
in a car accident on the way to the airport
and that his daughter was in the hospital,
near death and in need of surgery.
A man claiming to be “Dr. Matthew”
from a St. Matthew’s hospital in Spain
even e-mailed Wheaton to explain that
Slyd’s daughter was being treated.
But Wheaton decided not to send any
more money. She says she reached a
point where ignoring the red flags – like
the name of the doctor being exactly the
same as the name of the hospital and a
friend telling her the email must be fake
— became too much.
“It was just a constant conflict of feeling like I was doing stuff that didn’t
make any sense to me,” she says. “And I
couldn’t handle that any more. It didn’t
make any logical sense.”
As soon as Wheaton turned off the
cash spigot, Slyd pressured her again.
“He made it seem like it was my
fault because I wouldn’t give him any
money,” says Wheaton. “If I would have
given him $3,000, the doctor would do
the surgery, but I didn’t, so he had to
watch her die.”
Frustrated by the gu