Last month, the
RFT broke the story that a soap opera star living in the St. Louis area has been accused of borrowing money from numerous women and never repaying it. Stephen Martines, a St. Louis native who appeared on
General Hospital and
Burn Notice, also allegedly took $15,000 from a local pool repairman to develop a book/movie about the man's late son. The pool repairman says he now believes it was all a scam.
Now
KSDK has aired a segment on the allegations in our cover story, scoring on-camera interviews with
RFT writer Robert Langellier as well as Ashley Dayley, a St. Louis woman who filed a restraining order against Martines in California.
In the piece by reporter Casey Nolen, Dayley details the toll her relationship with Martines took on her — and the impact of Langellier's cover story.
Dayley was a 22-year-old hairstylist when she met Martines. She says they dated for just four months, but it took six months to get him to let her go. "He kept following me, finding me, so I moved back to St. Louis," she says.
In Nolen's report, she also accuses Martines of credit card fraud. "He has no problem finding out your social security number; he opened credit cards under my social," she says. "He literally lived off everybody else's money."
As a result of the
RFT investigation, Dayley tells Nolen, she's connected with other women like herself — and now has new perspective on what she endured. "As soon as the story came out, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, there are these fourteen other women," she says. "Stephen probably didn't think we'd all find each other, and I think it's awesome that we've all come together in this situation."
See the complete
KSDK piece below, and also
read our February 28 cover story.
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