{"id":780070,"date":"2026-05-07T17:04:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/780070\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T17:04:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:04:20","slug":"chicago-journalist-has-chart-topping-podcast-with-love-trapped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/780070\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Journalist Has Chart-Topping Podcast With ‘Love Trapped’"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 The subject of \u201cLove Trapped,\u201d<\/a> which currently resides at the top of the Apple podcast charts<\/a>, offers this warning about his story in the series\u2019 first episode:<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time you think it couldn\u2019t get crazier, it just does. You have the dating contracts, you have forged medical documents. \u2026 There are so many layers to this story that you peel back one, [thinking it] couldn\u2019t get crazier \u2026 oh, surprise, there\u2019s another layer. And it just keeps going: restraining orders, the criminal investigation and also just the hope, at the end of it all, that someone\u2019s going to be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speaker is Clayton Echard, who was the lead on one of the most unpopular seasons of ABC\u2019s \u201cThe Bachelor\u201d (episode one of \u201cLove Trapped\u201d is titled \u201cAmerica\u2019s Most Hated Bachelor\u201d). After his unsuccessful run on the 26th season of the reality show, Echard was living in Scottsdale, Arizona, when he had a one-night hookup with a woman, although they did not have sexual intercourse, he said. Nevertheless, soon after, the woman told Echard she was pregnant with his child. It only gets stranger and more convoluted from there.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove Trapped\u201d is a production of Glass Podcasts and iHeartPodcasts and is hosted by Stephani Young, who lives in Chicago but is an Arizona native.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I found out about this story, I was actually shopping for a wedding dress in Arizona in September of 2023,\u201d Young told Block Club. \u201cAnd I remember that\u2019s when I first saw the news, when it was public about Clayton. It was the Sun article that came out on Sept. 18, 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article was titled \u201cBaby Mama Drama? Bachelor Clayton Echard\u2019s ex-fling demands he take paternity test in court case after she becomes pregnant with twins.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Young is a longtime journalist who had also worked at Chicago station 101.9 The Mix for several years. She already had a podcast history as the co-host of 2021\u2019s \u201cIf the Walls Could Talk \u2026\u201d<\/a> about the troubled history of the city\u2019s Edgewater Hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we probably interviewed over 100 people for that podcast,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, we definitely use that experience of interviewing and trying to find people to talk to for this podcast as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s totally different subjects. But the the research and the interviews and the building relationships with the sources, that\u2019s all the same. I used a lot of information from my last job at Scripps News to help with this one, and then obviously broadcasting. I was on The Mix for almost 10 years. So that played a role in me being able to host it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a journalist, Young felt strongly that she could be impartial covering the \u201che said, she said\u201d story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI covered the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee [in 2024], and I also covered the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I was at both of them in person, in Milwaukee, in Chicago, doing both,\u201d Young said. \u201cSo when I came into this story, one of the things for me was, \u2018I\u2019m going to look at facts, I\u2019m going to look at the information.\u2019 And the facts told a story, pretty quickly, that she just had no credibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that first episode, Young states, echoing Echard\u2019s sentiments, \u201cI had no idea how big this story really was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so many jaw droppings in this podcast,\u201d she told Block Club. \u201cUltimately, it\u2019s a paternity scandal, right? That\u2019s what this story is. And typically those have a pretty black-and-white answer. And this is not that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s surprising to find out that there are more victims. I think it\u2019s surprising to find out the lengths this person will go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Journalist Stephani Young interviews former Bachelor Clayton Echard for the \u201cLove Trapped\u201d podcast. Credit: Provided<\/p>\n

Clayton Echard felt that he had been done a disservice by the producers on \u201cThe Bachelor,\u201d with edits that made him out to be less a hero, more a villain. So when Young reached out to cover his story, he was understandably wary, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spent so much time with Clayton over the last year, and I can genuinely say that the edit he got on \u2018The Bachelor\u2019 is not who he is now. \u2026 I think he got a rough edit, but he\u2019s a genuine person,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s authentic, he\u2019s caring and he has been incredibly kind to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Echard\u2019s story spreads incredibly far \u2014 into the press, into the courtroom, into the discovery of other victims, aided by \u201cdozens of citizen sleuths and armchair investigators,\u201d as the podcast puts it, via Reddit and other Internet sites. <\/p>\n

Young and legal experts quoted on \u201cLove Trapped\u201d give those armchair detectives a lot of credit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the community that has come from this story and that the guys have had around them has been such an important part of the process,\u201d Young said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m talking about their families, their friends, the support system they\u2019ve had to help get them through this.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m also talking about the world of the internet that came together to support these men; I mean, this is one of those stories about internet detectives. You know, they\u2019re online finding information. They\u2019re online sharing information. They\u2019re helping the case. \u2026 For me, it\u2019s the community and how people can come together even though something bad has happened. It\u2019s the support that you have around you that gets you through these things, and the stuff that you can find on the internet, like the research that they were able to do to find this woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of Clayton\u2019s attorneys said it best. He\u2019s like, \u2018They are better than any private investigator that I hired.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously, Young couldn\u2019t say too much ahead of the \u201cLove Trapped\u201d finale, but she promised that the 12th episode, which drops Thursday, would reveal a considerable amount about court cases tied to the scandal and the future of the podcast itself.<\/p>\n

But Young did agree to answer this question: How is Clayton Echard today, after this horrendous, years-long ordeal?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is doing great. He got a house in Phoenix,\u201d Young said. \u201cHis whole family lives there. I just talked to him this morning. He\u2019s doing a lot of real estate stuff in Arizona, and to me, he seems happy. He seems like he\u2019s on the other side of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLove Trapped\u201d has just been named the \u201cPick of the Month\u201d in the True Crime category<\/a> on Apple podcasts. The season finale drops Thursday. <\/p>\n

Support Freedom of the Press<\/strong><\/p>\n

Independent journalism like this only exists because of readers like you.<\/strong> This World Press Freedom Day, help Block Club raise $20,000<\/strong><\/a> to fuel high-impact investigations that hold Chicago\u2019s institutions and leaders accountable. Make your tax-deductible donation here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 The subject of \u201cLove Trapped,\u201d which currently resides at the top of the Apple podcast charts,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":780071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[648,960,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-780070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116534383892019568","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}