“The Journey,” a Five-Part Audio Investigation from The New Yorker

A woman who acts as a surrogate, carrying a child for someone else, is said to be going on a “journey.”

Kayla Elliott started her surrogacy journey at the age of twenty-six. She gave birth to a baby girl for a wealthy couple living in a mansion in L.A. County. The couple told her that they already had one child, who desperately wanted a sibling. But nothing about the situation was as it appeared.

Kayla soon learned that the couple already had twenty other children, most of them under the age of three, who had also been carried by surrogates. After one of the children was taken to an emergency room with head injuries, the police got involved, and then the F.B.I. As the scandal unfolded, the surrogates for the couple began to find one another.

Who was this mysterious couple, and why had they collected so many children?

“The Journey,” a five-part audio series coming September 15th, unravels what was going on inside the couple’s mansion and exposes a scheme that threatens the surrogacy industry.

New Yorker subscribers get early, ad-free access to all five episodes.