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Oklahoma woman discovers husband was a Canadian man who faked his death 37 years earlier in a barn fire
Deb Proctor was at work when her phone rang from an unknown number — a call that would shatter everything she thought she knew about her husband.
An investigator delivered the devastating truth to the Oklahoma woman: The man she knew as Jeff Walton was actually Ronald Stan, a Canadian man who disappeared 37 years earlier and was presumed dead after leaving behind a wife and two children.
“After gathering my composure, I went to my immediate executive and explained this bizarre phone call,” Proctor told Fox News Digital. “My colleagues were very concerned that my life was in danger, that maybe Jeff was in witness protection, and I had just blown it to some stranger who was not real, a so-called investigator.”
Proctor is coming forward with her story in the ABC true crime series “Betrayal: Secrets & Lies.” Inspired by the “Betrayal” podcast franchise, the series explores how people from across the country survive scandalous confessions, financial ruin and acts of violence, among other hardships.
“Deb Proctor’s story is an incredible exploration of what happens when the person closest to you is living a double life,” Andrea Gunning, host of the “Betrayal” podcast, told Fox News Digital. “What stayed with me the most while working on Deb’s story was not just the scale of Jeff’s deception, but the deeply human process of Deb rebuilding her life after the truth was exposed.”
It was 1998 when Proctor, a 41-year-old divorcee and mother of two sons, was ready to meet someone new. She decided to join a dating site, where she came across Walton, an Ohio State graduate and former football player who traveled and played golf — a passion of hers. She was intrigued.
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After a year of talking, they decided to meet in person. When Walton stepped off the plane and saw Proctor, he asked, “You will marry me, won’t you?”
Walton moved in a few months later. They married in 2000.
“I felt like this was a person that I loved very much,” Proctor said. “I could see us traveling together, creating a life together. I felt hopeful about the future.”
But a year into their marriage, Walton was struggling to find work. That’s when he told her for the first time that he was a Vietnam War veteran. According to the podcast, Walton claimed that at age 18, he served in the Special Forces when he was captured and held prisoner. For months, he was tortured before eventually escaping by following a stream.
“[As a nurse] I had some experience working with Vietnam vets and PTSD,” Proctor said. “It really tugged at my heart. He had also uprooted his life, given up his job as a project manager at a large industrial construction company, given up everything just to be with me. He had given up everything for love.”
Proctor’s seemingly happily ever after was disrupted. Walton, who was unemployed, suffered a heart attack requiring ongoing care. The couple struggled to cover his medical expenses. Proctor, who had worked at the VA years earlier, tried to convince her husband to seek help as the bills piled up. But he refused to get healthcare, insisting he was dishonorably discharged and wouldn’t be listed.
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“I was dumbfounded,” Proctor admitted. “That’s the biggest moment when I thought, ‘Something’s not right here.’ I couldn’t put my finger on it. I just kept insisting on going to the VA so he could get healthcare. We were going to go broke. It was just a 30-minute drive to the nearest facility. But he looked at me strangely and said, ‘I’m not going. I was in Special Forces. Because of what I witnessed and what I reported, my actions were illegal and unethical. They won’t have me listed anywhere.’”
“I kept saying to him, ‘You’ve served your country. There are records somewhere,’” Proctor continued. “But he said, ‘I will not get government healthcare.’ He got up and walked away.”
Confused, Proctor considered hiring a private investigator. But after realizing she couldn’t afford one, she put her feelings aside.
Shortly after Walton’s heart attack, he had a stroke. Then he began exhibiting signs of dementia. The medical bills continued mounting into the thousands. Proctor was his primary caretaker while working full time as a nurse to make ends meet. She began drinking to cope with the stress. As Walton’s memory worsened, she was able to place him in a funded outpatient care facility.
In 2014, Proctor received a phone call from a detective in Canada. Investigators were probing the cold case of Ronald Stan and were able to track him down through social media, according to the podcast.
In September 1977, a barn fire killed several pigs. Stan, then 32, disappeared. Although human remains were never found, Stan was declared legally dead in 1986. However, the case was reopened in 2014. Using modern investigative technology, the Ontario Provincial Police discovered that Stan was alive and living in a rural part of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma under a new name, “Jeff Walton.” He later admitted the truth to police.
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“I thought to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve just spilled my guts, and now I’m in danger, he’s in danger,’” Proctor said about the phone call. “I felt like I was in somebody’s movie. I thought, ‘Who am I? Who was I married to this entire time?’ I was outside of my consciousness.”
Proctor immediately went to the Cherokee Nation Marshals Service. After an investigator made several phone calls, she confirmed that every detail was true. Stan had faked his death in a fire, abandoning his wife and two children.
Proctor stayed with a friend and immediately filed for divorce.
“I did love him,” she admitted. “But it was all an illusion. He was not the man I thought I married. Nothing was real.”
Proctor said that Walton, now identified as Stan, made numerous calls to her and repeatedly tried to text her. She said that in one voicemail, Stan told her, “If you want to play hardball, then come on.” He also tried contacting one of her sons and emailed several of her friends and colleagues.
“I had nothing else to say to him,” Proctor said. “But I was frightened. I remember walking out of my home and into the woods, where there was a worn-down pathway with a small seating area. I also noticed lots of cigarette butts. I don’t know. I just thought he was coming back to harm us. What if he was preparing to burn our home down because I knew about him burning down his place in Canada?”
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She also wondered whether he was planning another escape.
According to the podcast, the statute of limitations for arson had expired in Canada. It also noted that too much time had passed for Stan to face identity fraud charges in the U.S.
In the series, Proctor said that Stan never apologized. The calls stopped, and she never heard from him again. In 2019, Proctor said his son reached out to her to say that his father had died.
Today, Proctor supports victims of domestic violence in her community. She also remarried a longtime friend and fellow golf enthusiast.
“I never intended to do this again,” she said with a laugh. “But the gentleman I married, Richard, is absolutely the sweetest, kindest, most loving person I’ve ever known in my life. It’s a love that I’ve never experienced before. It’s genuine.”
If there’s one message Proctor hopes audiences take away, it’s this: Don’t ignore that nagging feeling.
“Pathological liars, they’re a dime a dozen,” she said. “They walk among us. Some people fall for them more than others, but it can happen to any one of us. If something doesn’t feel right, dig out the truth.”
Senators will now go without pay during future government shutdowns, but for many, they don’t need the paycheck.
The Senate unanimously agreed to forgo their paychecks during future shutdowns, with the money being withheld until a deal is struck to reopen the government. But much of the upper chamber is populated with lawmakers who are already wealthy before their time in office.
“There are some members who are very independently wealthy that their congressional paycheck is a rounding error to their investments,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital. “Fine, I’m not pejorative of that at all. But we need to actually end government shutdowns.”
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In the last year, Congress has been unable to keep the government open twice. The first time for 43 days, and the most recent for 76 days.
Republicans worry that before the midterm elections, and before the rule change becomes official, that Senate Democrats may again try to shutter the government to gain a political edge. They hope that the rule change, pushed by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., is at least enough to convince some lawmakers not to do it.
However, nearly three-quarters of the Senate are millionaires, according to an analysis of financial disclosure data reviewed by Fox News Digital and first reported by NOTUS, meaning the fear of missing a paycheck may not be enough to quell the desire to score political points.
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“It certainly doesn’t stop future shutdowns,” Lankford said. “It just says, ‘Hey, people are not being paid, we’re not being paid either.’”
Others were more optimistic that by installing the new guardrails on themselves, it could open the door to future legislation that may take shutdowns off the table entirely — like Lankford’s bill that would automatically extend government funding on a temporary, two-week basis if lawmakers miss the mark.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, who is one of the wealthier members of the Senate, believed that the success of Kennedy’s resolution could open the valve to his legislation that would dock members’ pay during shutdowns.
“It’s about brick by brick, rebuilding confidence in the institution,” Moreno told Fox News Digital.
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Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., another of the Senate’s wealthiest members, contended that lawmakers shouldn’t hold federal workers “hostage based on what we’re doing.”
Over the past several months, hundreds of thousands of federal employees went without pay. And in the case of workers under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they went without paychecks twice.
“Hopefully it’ll get people to focus on getting [appropriations] done, because, you know, we don’t have a process to get this stuff done,” Scott told Fox News Digital.
Meanwhile, Kennedy, who successfully pushed Senate Republican leadership to put the bill on the floor, viewed its success as progress.
But it’s not as far as he wanted to go.
“Look, if I were king for a day, I would pass a bill that doesn’t suspend member pay, it forfeits member pay during a shutdown,” Kennedy told Fox News Digital. “And I will also include in the bill a prohibition against members leaving Washington while we’re in a shutdown. But I don’t have the votes to do that. So I’m doing as much as I can.”
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Diners ditching bottles of wine for the table as healthy living and rising costs reshape restaurant habits
People aren’t ordering a bottle of wine for the table the way they used to, according to a new report. But industry experts say restaurants are making up for the revenue shortfall in other ways.
“We believe habits have shifted away from a group ordering a bottle of (typically red) wine to share with dinner in favor of the individuals in the group choosing their own preferred drink,” Liberty Wines, a U.K.-based distributor, reported in its “Premium On-Trade Wine Report 2026.”
The reasons for the new trend are myriad, say experts. More consumers are prioritizing healthy living, culinary options and conscious spending.
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The U.S. wine industry is grappling with one of its most painful downturns in decades as younger consumers cut back on drinking and baby boomers age out of the market, as Fox News Digital reported earlier this year.
To recoup the hit from fewer bottle orders on their bottom lines, restaurant operators are raising prices elsewhere.
“What we’re seeing now is a real push into non-alcoholic spirits and zero-proof programs that carry the same price point as a craft cocktail,” Sri Divel, founder of California-based marketing and brand strategy firm The Culinary CMO, told Fox News Digital.
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“These aren’t the soda-and-lime mocktails of 10 years ago,” Divel said. “These are muddled, multi-step builds — far more intricate than what we’re used to seeing, with house-made syrups, fresh herbs, smoked elements, the works.”
The non-alcoholic drink takes the same time and skill to build as a $16 cocktail, Divel said.
So it commands the same price — “and the guests get a real experience instead of feeling like they’re being penalized for not drinking. Operators who lean into this are protecting their check averages and giving the non-drinking guest a reason to come back.”
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Monika Elling, CEO and founder of New York-based zero-sugar Prosecco company Lo Secco Prosecco, told Fox News Digital that restaurants “have priced drinks to no longer align with long-accepted, aggressive markups.”
Elling relayed an eye-watering bill she and a colleague received when they recently went out for drinks.
“She had an $18 mocktail, and I had a $27 martini,” Elling said. “The total with tax was $49, plus tip. We did not eat, yet we paid over $60 for two drinks.”
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Rather than going big on a bottle at a restaurant, Elling said that “people are opting to drink at home, pregame. [They’ll] drink one glass during dinner — no longer two drinks or a bottle of wine.”
“Two glasses at $14 to $18 each feels manageable,” Divel said.
“An $80 bottle feels like a commitment. The bottle used to be the default for a table of four. Now it’s the exception. Throw in the fact that guests can pull up the retail price on their phone and see your markup in real time, and the bottle is getting a much harder look than it used to.”
Vinny Catalano, the “vinfluencer” behind the California-based “Vines with Vinny” Instagram account, said he’s begun to see non-alcohol bubbles being offered “at prices comparable to alcoholic beverages.”
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Asked about the wine-drinking experience by the glass compared with a bottle, Catalano said, “If the wine has been opened that day and served the same day, then there’s little difference in the taste of the wine.”
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What is lost, though, Catalano told Fox News Digital, “is the romance of the experience of popping a bottle table-side.”
He added, “I feel that more bottles would actually be sold if people weren’t intimidated about talking to sommeliers.”
“I always engage the sommelier, talk about what we’re planning to eat, wine regions I like — and give a price cap of what I’m willing to spend. I have always gotten a great result, especially at places with big wine lists.”
Another option for people looking to keep the wine-bottle tradition alive while cutting costs is to bring their own bottle and pay for corkage, Catalano suggested.
Alison Sweeney has “no regrets” about getting away from the “rat race” that is Los Angeles.
In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, the 49-year-old actress spoke about her latest Hallmark movie, “Best Served Cold: A Hannah Swensen Mystery,” which she wrote and executive produced – based on the Hannah Swensen mysteries series of books by Joanne Fluke.
The actress also touched on the reason she chose to move out of Los Angeles to Arizona, noting the move came from “really wanting to create a great environment for my kids,” saying she doesn’t “regret it for a second.”
“One of the first things I noticed about myself was how less stressed out I was,” she explained. “They don’t call it a rat race for nothing, right? Like when you’re in those big cities and there’s always this energy and lots of people thrive on it, but I had reached my max capacity, and it was starting to really like weigh on me and be a source of real stress to me all the time.”
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She explained that their life in Arizona is “a lot more laid back,” noting that she is able to “work from home a lot more now” instead of going to the studio every day for different projects, including “Days of Our Lives.”
The “Romance at Hope Ranch” star and her husband “make a point of sort of appreciating” the slower-paced lifestyle.
“Now we’re here and our kids go to school, and we go to the school events, and we are learning to play golf, and we’re enjoying a lot of trips and travel and I go up to Canada to work, but there is a peaceful net.“
Her latest movie is the 14th installment in the Hannah Swensen franchise. Looking back on the success of the films, Sweeney called it “lightning in a bottle,” saying sometimes, as an actor, “you just can’t believe how lucky you are.”
When reflecting on the success of not only this franchise, but Hallmark movies in general, Sweeney said their focus on fun movies where “you probably know it’s going to be okay at the end” lends to the rewatch ability of the films, and gives them something positive to watch, noting if “you want to watch bloodshed, it’s out there, it’s happening.”
“When I meet people about these movies, I love hearing them say like, ‘oh, that scene,’ and then they can quote little sections of it or little funny lines that are their favorite moments,” she said.
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She added: “And that to me is like the most satisfying thing about being a part of a franchise like this is the longevity that allows people to approach you about a movie four years ago, five years ago, and they can just rattle off their favorite. Moments along the way and then you feel like oh, we’re really doing this together.”
Her movie, “Romance at Hope Ranch” went on to become the #1 Most-Watched Cable Entertainment Program on Saturday and #1 Most-Watched Cable Entertainment Program for the Week in key demographics, and her film, “Sugar & Vice: A Hannah Swensen Mystery reached #1 Most-Watched Cable Entertainment Program on Saturday and #2 Most-Watched Cable Entertainment Program for the Week in key demographics.
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The latest movie, Hannah, a baker turned amateur detective investigates the murder of a key witness in a high-profile forgery case, and the disappearance of the lead prosecutor in the case. She and her primary love interest in the film and prosecutor, Chad, work together to solve the mystery before the killer strikes again, and their case falls apart.
“Best Served Cold: A Hannah Swensen Mystery” premieres Saturday, May 16 at 8 pm on Hallmark Channel, with streaming available the next day on Hallmark+.
Sweeney promises “a bit of growth in the relationship between” the two leads, explaining she “wanted this movie to be about Chad” and his work in the courtroom, straying from the movie’s “traditional plots and storylines to really make it about this courtroom drama.”
Having written the last four movies in the Hannah Swensen movies, Sweeney has developed a stronger connection with the character, telling Fox News Digital, “I love developing characters that people relate to.”
“I love little nuggets of things that people can relate to and identify and have fun with,” she said. “So I love the characters for those kinds of dynamics, the family dinners that they have together where they’re kind of solving the mystery, but also.”
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“Best Served Cold: A Hannah Swensen Mystery” also stars Victor Webster and Barbara Niven, and was produced by Sweeney, Craig Baumgarten and Lighthouse Pictures.
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