part 2 ✶ the lethality threat (post-separation, the saga continues)

part two → the kill zone in real time
sam lee lowe · survivor & whistleblower · single mom under permanent restraining order
october 2024 → july 2025

let’s get one thing straight up front: just because i’m sarcastic and publicly documenting this nightmare doesn’t mean i’m not absolutely terrified. i am.

this isn’t drama for clicks; it’s real life. and the stakes are painfully simple:

i could have been killed.

my north★western mutual advisor had a legal and ethical duty to safeguard my financial interests. instead, she quietly stepped off my account with zero notice or explanation right as my marriage imploded — no formal recusal, no professional heads-up. i later learned (via a new, actually neutral rep) she bailed because of her personal conflict of interest: an undisclosed relationship with my husband. you know, the same husband whose conduct toward me had already escalated to strangulation and forced hospitalization — violence that could easily have killed me.

that’s not just sketchy; that’s, in my view, legally f*cked. here’s why it’s so dangerous:

→ when you’re fleeing domestic violence — especially from someone violent, unstable, and obsessively controlling — every scrap of information and access matters.

→ he had already proven capable of lethal-level violence when challenged. by late 2024 he’d broken into multiple homes to stalk me, hacked my email and social media, and even weaponized the police against me whenever i wouldn’t do what he wanted.

→ he had strangled me during pregnancy. (newsflash: non-fatal strangulation is one of the top predictors of later homicide.)

→ by the time i got a permanent fro, we all knew he wasn’t playing around. he was exactly the kind of guy who could snap. he was dangerous.

one more glaring flag for the clueless:

→ upon being assigned a new advisor (let’s call her katie), the difference was night-and-day. suddenly i got zoom meetings, actual phone calls, real-time text messages, direct emails, documented communications — you know, the way a normal fiduciary operates. she reached out to me, the client. imagine that.

by contrast, what did i get from jessica t.?

✦ no zooms.
✦ no phone calls.
✦ no texts.
✦ no direct emails (at least none that weren’t later scrubbed).

in fact, i didn’t even have a working phone number for her. our only substantive communication was that instagram dm thread — because although she was formally my advisor, she never bothered to contact me through any supervised channel at all. not even a “welcome” message when she took over my accounts.

she had full access to my medical records, financial history, and policy details. she was authorized to manage my infant’s life insurance policy. and she never once made direct contact with me about any of it:

→ not when i gave birth (aside from that uninvited personal visit — which, again, she arranged with him, not me).

→ not when i was hospitalized for complications and injuries he caused.

→ not when i was diligently paying premiums on three policies that had her name on every confirmation email.

but you know who was getting her constant attention? my husband.

she was blowing up his phone — daily texts, facetimes, sending him job leads, even watching my instagram stories from her account like a hawk. she clearly knew how to reach people; she just chose not to reach me.

it never occurred to me in the moment how absurd this was, because i was drowning in a hell of abuse and exhaustion. i remember thinking, well, she must be handling things in the background? i truly could not process that my own “advisor” was ghosting me. i mean, who expects that scenario?

in hindsight, it looks a lot less like neglect and a lot more like deliberate silence to avoid exposing her conflict.

it was intentional non-contact.
selective access.
a wall built between me and my own financial info — while she kept an open line to the man abusing me.

and the company had the nerve to later call that situation “kind of awkward” because “they were really close.”

lol. nah. that’s structural deception. and it cost me everything.

when i finally got the courage to cut ties with him, i was petrified.
this man was threatening me constantly:

• threatening to have me arrested (on false charges),

• threatening to sue me for defamation for telling the truth,

• threatening to publicly humiliate me,

• actively stalking my every move.

we were in imminent danger. so i did what survivors are told to do:

i locked everything down. private accounts, new passwords, zero contact, full protective orders. i went as off-grid from him as possible.

and my financial rep knew this.

→ she knew because i posted warnings and updates about it (for my safety, and yes, she watched every one).

→ she knew because she eyeballed every single tro update and every plea i made to northwestern mutual to intervene once i realized their rep’s conflict had amplified my peril. (she was literally watching my instagram disclosures in real time, while ignoring my actual messages to her.)

the audacity is mind-bending: she felt entitled to lurk on my personal posts about my marital abuse and trauma — consuming my desperation like entertainment — all while she never acknowledged me as her client or as a human in danger.

she never once reached out to say anything. not “are you okay?” not “i need to tell you something important about your policies.” nothing.

she just watched me suffer, silently, for months.

you’d think someone so tuned into my every social media post about being abused might have, i don’t know, spoken up? especially since she caused many of those financial and safety issues by aiding my husband. but no. she took advantage of every abusive dynamic from the shadows, even as she remained the named manager of my child’s life insurance (a policy which, by the way, vanished when i left him).

i trusted this woman with our financial security. i showed her respect. i gave her my money. and in return:

• she ran our family’s policies exclusively through secret chats with my husband (while i was postpartum and being abused).

• she onboarded me as the paying customer for policies in the very week i was in the hospital having our baby – when i was weakest – and never mentioned that i wouldn’t actually “own” what i was paying for. (funny how she remembered to come hold my newborn a week later, but not to give me her number or any disclosure.)

• she never formally disclosed that she was too close to him to be objective.

• she never recused herself or even informally said, “hey, i have a conflict here.”

• she never told me she was stepping away at all. in fact, she quietly quit the firm and left the state shortly after — and i got zero notice that i no longer had a representative.

• she left no forwarding contact. no transition plan. just vanished.

• and through it all, she never stopped watching my life behind the scenes.

instead of behaving like a professional, she:

→ secretly changed the ownership of 2 out of 3 policies (including our infant’s) into my unemployed husband’s name, so i had no access or rights – even though i was listed as the payor funding them.

→ slipped away from the firm without a word to me, leaving me effectively unrepresented and unwittingly tethered to policies controlled by my abuser.

→ provided no formal update or referral, leaving me to discover far too late that i had no advocate inside the company.

→ continued to creep on my social media daily – from oct 2024 to july 2025 she was glued to my locked-down instagram stories – silently surveilling a domestic violence survivor she had helped corner, all while pretending i didn’t exist professionally.

→ and when i finally dm’d her in mid-2025 to confront some policy issues (after piecing together her conflict), she stonewalled me. left me on read, never opened the legal messages. within days, she deleted several of her social media accounts that she’d just been using to watch me. no response, no closure.

✨ tell me how that’s not malicious, or at least grossly indifferent.

✨ tell me how that doesn’t feel like stalking from where i’m standing.

✨ tell me how that’s not textbook fiduciary abuse energy.

✨ because honestly? babe, that’s straight-up creepy.

like — did you really think watching me post my bruised, pregnant face (injuries caused by your “friend”) while you stayed complicitly silent was okay? did it not register that was f*cking problematic? watching a horror unfold that you helped enable… and saying nothing?

yo. what.

and let’s be crystal clear: by the time i fled, i was already in fear for my life. this man had assaulted and strangled me while i was pregnant — conduct that could have killed me — all while i was funding his career, his car, his groceries.

so what do you think he’s going to do when i finally call him out and leave a permanent public record that he’s a violent abuser? yeah. he’s going to lose it. that’s why everything here is so dangerous and why her role pouring fuel on the fire is so despicable.

it’s maddening, because clearly none of these people grasped the lethality risk they were playing with. not a single one. they treated this conflict like gossip, a joke. “haha, isn’t it awkward the rep is besties with the client’s hubby?” meanwhile, i’m over here literally with my life on the line, and they can’t be bothered to disclose a damn thing. did no one think to take a step back and say, “hmm, pregnant abused spouse, raging unstable husband… maybe this is dangerous?”

because of her closeness to my abuser – and the firm’s utter failure to treat it seriously – there was an ongoing, reckless risk that she could have passed along my private info to him at any point. maybe she did. maybe she didn’t. intentionally or unintentionally, it doesn’t really matter for my risk:

that kind of leak could get me killed.
✦ it’s life-threatening.
✦ it’s grossly negligent.
✦ and it’s legally indefensible.

also, let’s talk about timing. the timing of certain events is sketchy as f*ck:

→ the very moment i made a vague, non-identifying hint on my social media about “a conflict” at northwestern mutual (so cryptic that no outsider would know who i meant), guess what happened? my estranged husband — who had been deliberately dodging child support for 8 months — suddenly sends a payment. out of the blue. within 45 minutes of my cryptic post.

he had just days prior denied a venmo request for that same amount (it was an old request i’d sent, which he ignored). but as soon as i publicly allude to his little insurance secret? ding. payment received. it’s like i pushed a button. not subtle, you two. not at all.

the most chilling part? i can’t fully verify what i suspect, because northwestern mutual has stonewalled every attempt i’ve made to get answers. they won’t confirm or deny if she was romantically involved with him or if they were together in that period. but public records seem to place my husband’s physical location in her city borough at a very interesting time: specifically, right when i was emailing northwestern’s compliance department begging for confirmation that my former advisor wasn’t actively colluding with the man i have a final restraining order against. i forwarded them proof of her ongoing surveillance of me weeks prior. i spelled out why i was worried, without even knowing they might have reunited in person.

i didn’t want to “overreact,” but damn – this is not a joke. writing all this out publicly is a huge risk to my safety; i know every new detail i expose probably enrages him further. but what choice do i have? if she was actively in contact or back together with him while stalking my socials and i’m desperately asking the firm for help… the liability and negligence here are off the charts. it’s literally the stuff of ethics trainings and true-crime podcasts. and i refuse to shut up about it.

remember: this man claims to live across the country from where that public record pinged him. and this same man swears under oath he can only afford $100 / month in child support (while somehow funding cross-country trips, lawyers, and luxury hobbies – curious, right?). the lies are thick, but the truth is seeping out through the cracks.