Brought me to tears: Tortoise Media’s Sweet Bobby podcast reviewed

Eleven years ago, Kirat Assi received a message on Facebook from a man named Bobby. There was a family connection — he was the elder brother of her second cousin’s boyfriend, who had recently passed away. Bobby wanted a shoulder to cry on, someone to speak to as he processed the grief of losing a sibling. Kirat obliged. They grew closer. When he had work worries, health problems, when his marriage began to break down, he told her everything. Eventually, they became lovers. Except Bobby didn’t really exist. What started as a simple message turned into a decade of deception and coercive control at the hands of a master manipulator.

In a six-part podcast series from Tortoise Media, host and investigative journalist Alexi Mostrous walks the listener through the extraordinary case of Kirat and Bobby. In the first episode, he describes it as ‘a screwed-up, crazy kind of love story filled with death, lies and witness protection programmes’.