A woman who lied about having sextuplets — allegedly to cash in on neighbors’ generous donations of money and gifts — said her husband believed for months that she was pregnant.
But a day after the couple tearfully confessed to the hoax, Sarah Everson refused to say how she kept Kris Everson from finding out.
“He had no clue I wasn’t pregnant until a couple of weeks ago,” Everson said Thursday in a brief cell phone interview with The Associated Press.
Police Chief Aaron Ambrose said the couple had taken in about $4,000 through a bank fund, a post office box established to receive mailed gifts and an online PayPal account that allowed visitors to the couple’s Web site to give money. The Web site has since shut down.
Police sent their reports to prosecutors for possible criminal charges against the Grain Valley couple. Van Buckley, spokeswoman for Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders, said he did not expect an announcement of any charges until Friday at the earliest.
Ambrose said detectives told him Sarah Everson furthered her ruse by overeating.
“She told them she gained about 40 pounds,” Ambrose said, adding that she had told detectives she duped her husband until about a month ago, which would have been around the time the couple had claimed the babies were born.
He said it was not clear exactly when Sarah Everson confessed to her husband, but it was sometime around March 8, when the couple said the babies were born. Attempts to reach Kris Everson by phone Thursday were unsuccessful.
The hoax came to light after the Eversons’ story was printed Monday on the front of The Examiner in Independence with a photograph of the couple holding six one-piece baby outfits.
Sarah Everson, 45, allowed an Associated Press reporter into her home, showing off the tiny nursery ready for her four boys and two girls, awaiting their discharge from intensive care. She told of the surgeries two of the babies would undergo, detailed her discomfort during her pregnancy and even showed photographs of her baring her pregnant-looking midsection.
Kris Everson, 33, had been telling co-workers since December that his wife was pregnant with multiple babies, said Cathi Christina, human resources manager at Haldex, where Kris Everson used to work on the assembly line. A spokeswoman refused to say whether he quit or was fired.
Now, Christina said, his former co-workers don’t know what to think.
“There’s just a mixed bag of emotions,” she said. “We feel sorry for them in some regards. They’re just, what’s the word for it, far off base on how they went about getting help. There’s some anger — disbelief they did it.”