A woman met her husband at a Bible group. Six children later, she discovered that he had kept a couple captive in the basement

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• After meeting at a Bible study group, Danielle Showey and Chad Schipper settled into a life that felt “too good to be true.”

• Nearly two decades into their marriage, Skipper was arrested for a shocking crime that turned their family of eight upside down.

• Now their story is being examined in a new episode of Hulu Betrayal: Secrets and Lies Title “Bible Study Hijacker”

When Danielle Showey first met Chad Schipper at her sister Randyn’s college Bible study meeting, she couldn’t have predicted how their lives would end.

Showvay looks back at the beginning of their relationship in Episode 3 of the eight-part documentary. Betrayal: Secrets and Lies Titled “The Bible Study Kidnapper,” premiered April 12 on ABC. She recalls with a laugh that on their first date, the two watched a movie — including So I Married an Ax Murderer – She was interested in her sister’s time with her sister and the boy.

“He was very smart, very kind,” Showey and Schipper’s college friend, Barbie Dungund, recalls in the episode.

Showay and Shipper tied the knot and settled into a life that Showay remembers thinking was “too good to be true.” Not long after, Skipper came to his wife with a horrifying confession: he had had a “sexual encounter with a man in a public bathroom.”

Although a marriage counselor advised Showay to leave Shipper, she was determined to make the relationship work, and a few months later, she learned they were expecting their first child, a daughter named Grace.

The Erie, Ill., couple welcomed six children together during 17 years of marriage. moved to a larger home, as Schipper’s financial advisory business grew. In the new house, Shipper had an office on the first floor in which he spent long hours—often working at night and sleeping downstairs, much to Showay’s dismay.

At one point, he tried to form a business relationship with a couple from his church who had just come in big. After several meetings, Larry and Connie Van Oosten refused to work with Schipper, believing that he was still too early in his financial career. At this point, Schipper decided to start renovating and buying rental properties for additional income.

Schipper was spending a lot of time away from home – always explaining his absence as having to do with one of the tenants. One night in 2017, things took a turn when one of the couple’s children saw a car he didn’t recognize approaching their home. At the same time, Shipper texted his daughter Grace to wrap the handle of the sledge hammer in black electrical tape. While the teenager thought it was a strange request, she obliged and was told she would receive “special treatment for a job well done,” she recalls in the episode.

A few nights later, Showey awoke to loud noises as police officers searched the house searching for her husband – and asking questions about the Van Oosten’s.

It turned out that Schipper – using a sledgehammer prepared by his daughter – broke into the Van Osten home in the middle of the night and abducted the elderly couple using a Taser, duct tape to cover their mouths and eyes and handcuffs. To communicate with them, Schipper used a voice recorder and at one point asked them: “Where is your God now?”

Skipper then took the couple to a bank and forced Connie to go inside and cash a check for $350,000. According to the episode, he tells her that if she doesn’t, he’ll kill Larry. While inside the bank, Connie scribbled a note on a church flyer in her purse and slipped it to the teller. note, which triggered a police search for Van Oosten’s whereabouts, saying she was in trouble.

“We’ve dealt with a lot of violent crime, but this one was bizarre. It was almost like an episode. criminal mind“, Chris Andres, retired captain of the Illinois State Police, says.

Because the check was made out to an LLC linked to Schipper, police voided it. After the car crash, Schipper was taken to a hospital where he immediately confessed to the kidnapping.

During a search of one of his homes, police found a room with a television screen broadcasting security footage and could see an elderly couple chained to the wall, blindfolded, in a concrete room. They then found a steel door in a room in the house that led to a soundproof underground cellar.

In a police interview included in the episode, Schipper tells the police that he “felt desperate” and was “trying to buy time” due to his failing business. It was also revealed that Shipper embezzled money from his clients, stole money from various family members and forged documents to borrow money from his parents’ house. According to police, the money he was trying to get from Van Ostens was how he planned to pay off his debts.

Schipper was eventually sentenced to 60 years in prison, a result Showey’s father, Tim Mohs, calls “glorious.”

Faced with a divorce that conflicted with Showay’s beliefs, she knew it was “the only safe option” for her and her children. Shipper tried to contact her through letters from prison, even pretending to be a Southern woman to try and persuade her to forgive him – all to no avail. Showey has not spoken to her since her arrest.

“I had a really hard time figuring out what was real,” says Showey. Navigating her new life, she reconnected with her “first love,” Billy, whom she dated as a teenager, and married.

“Our mother has grown up a lot, she’s a strong person, she’s very confident,” says Grace. “She laughs a lot now, especially now that Billy is in our house. I see so much happiness in her that I’ve never seen before. I love her laugh so much.”

New episodes of Betrayal: Secrets and Lies Airs weekly on Sundays at 10pm on ABC and streams the following day on Disney+ and Hulu

Read the original article on People