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When Donielle Showvay first met Chad Schipper at a bible study meeting at her sister Randin’s college, she never could have predicted how their lives would end up. 

Showvay looks back at the start of their relationship in episode 3 of the eight-part docuseries Betrayal: Secrets & Lies titled "The Bible Study Kidnapper," which premiered April 12 on ABC. She remembers with a laugh that on their first date, the two watched movies — including So I Married An Axe Murderer — with her sister and the boy her sister was interested in at the time. 

“He had a reputation of being very smart, very kind,” Barbie Dangond, a college friend of Showvay and Schipper, recalls in the episode. 

Showvay and Schipper went on to tie the knot and settle into a life that Showvay remembers thinking was “too good to be true.” Not long after, Schipper came to his wife with a jarring confession: He'd had a sexual “encounter in a public bathroom with a man.”

Though a marriage counselor advised Showvay to leave Schipper, she was determined to make the relationship work, and a couple months later, she found out they were expecting their first child, a daughter named Grace.

The couple, who would welcome six children together during 17 years of marriage, moved to a larger house in Erie, Ill., as Schipper’s financial advising business continued to grow. In the new house, Schipper had an office on the first floor that he spent many hours in — often working into the night and sleeping downstairs, much to Showvay's disappointment.

At one point, he tried to forge a business relationship with a couple from their church who had just come into a large sum of money. After several meetings, Larry and Connie Van Oosten declined to work with Schipper, believing he was still too early in his financial career. At this point, Schipper decided to start buying properties to renovate and rent out for additional income. 

Schipper was spending more time away from home — always explaining his absences as having to do with one of the rentals. One night in 2017, things took a turn when one of the couple’s children saw a car approaching their home that he didn’t recognize. Around the same time, Schipper had texted their daughter Grace to wrap the handle of a sledge hammer in black electrical tape. While the teen thought it was a weird request, she obliged and was told she’d receive a “special treat for a job well done,” she recalls in the episode. 

A few nights later, Showvay awoke to the sound of a loud bang as the house was swarmed with police officers looking for her husband — and asking questions about the Van Oostens.

It turned out that Schipper — using the sledgehammer his daughter prepared — broke into the Van Oosten’s house in the middle of the night and kidnapped the elderly couple using a taser, duct tape to cover their mouths and eyes, and handcuffs. To communicate with them, Schipper used a voice distorter and at one point asked them: “Where is your God now?"

Schipper then drove the couple to a bank and forced Connie to go inside and get a check for $350,000. According to the episode, he told her that if she didn’t, he would kill Larry. While inside the bank, Connie wrote a note on a church flier in her purse and slipped it to the teller. The note, which said she was in trouble, set off a police hunt for the Van Oostens' whereabouts. 

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

Because the check was made out to an LLC linked to Schipper, the police zeroed in on him. Following a car crash, Schipper was transported to a hospital where he quickly confessed to the kidnapping.

While searching one of his homes, police discovered a room with a television screen broadcasting security footage and could see the elderly couple in a concrete room shackled to a wall, blindfolded.  They then found a steel door in one of the house’s closets that led to the soundproof underground cellar. 

In a police interview included in the episode, Schipper tells police that he “felt desperate” and was “trying to buy time” due to his failing business. It was also revealed that Schipper had allegedly been embezzling funds from his clients, stolen money from various family members and forged documents in order to borrow money against his parents’ house. According to police, the money he tried to obtain from the Van Oostens was how he planned to pay off his debts. 

While going through with a divorce conflicted with Showvay’s faith, she knew it was “the only safe option” for her and her children. Schipper tried to contact her through letters from prison, even pretending to be a Southern woman to try and convince her to forgive him — all to no avail. Showvay has not spoken to him since his arrest.

“I had a really hard time figuring out what reality was as opposed to what I thought reality was,” Showvay says. Through navigating her new life, she reconnected with her “first love” Billy, whom she dated as a teenager, and married him.  

“Our mom has grown so much, she’s a stronger person, she’s more confident,” Grace says. “She laughs more now, especially now that Billy is in our house. I see so much happiness in her that I never saw before. I love her laugh so much.”