“Love Trapped”: Bachelor Paternity Scandal Podcast in Talks for TV

Love trapped host Stephani Young was wedding dress shopping in Arizona in September 2023 when she first heard about the headline-making case against former star Clayton Echard The Bachelor. The article in the American Suntitled “Baby Mama Drama?”, detailed how an unnamed ex-girlfriend of Echard claimed she was pregnant with his twins and demanded he take a paternity test in court documents.

“I remember thinking – and I’ve said it to Clayton’s face ever since – ‘Oh, that seems about right,'” Young says. The Hollywood Reporter. “I didn’t watch his season. I had just seen clips online, and his reputation as The Bachelor preceded him.”

Echard, then 28 years old and a former NFL athlete, had finished his 26th season on the popular ABC series with an unfavorable lead, to say the least. After telling his final three contestants that he loved them all and slept with two of them – a big no-no on the decades-old franchise – he left the show’s single and fans didn’t hold back their feelings on social media.

“If you look online and they ask you, ‘Who are the most hated bachelors?’ — I’m still on the list, admits Echard, who starred in the reality series in 2022, while chatting with THR earlier this summer. “I received death threats and people attacked me by the thousands. There was a point where I really blamed the show for everything. But I have to take responsibility,” he says. “The version of me that people saw on TV was a version that I had made up, the version that I thought everyone wanted me to be.”

No one would blame Young for his reaction in that moment, not even Echard. But that headline was just the beginning of a bizarre three-year legal saga that still continues. It’s a story just as crazy as any episode of The Bachelorand he attracted an even wider audience with Young’s hit podcast from iHeartPodcasts and Glass Podcasts, which has racked up more than 25 million views to date.

Love trapped details the investigation that ultimately revealed how this anonymous ex-girlfriend — later identified as Laura Owens — attempted to trap Echard into a relationship by altering an ultrasound image and other medical records, and fabricating a pregnancy video. According to an initial ruling, she repeatedly lied under oath during hearings in paternity and related protection order cases. During a legal proceeding, now infamous online, she is seen adjusting what appears to be a fake pregnancy belly and drinking from a large Monster Energy can.

Echard does not deny a relationship with Owens, although it was extremely brief. In 2022, after completing his bachelor’s degree, he moved to Arizona to begin a career as a real estate broker. That’s when he met Owens, the daughter of longtime San Francisco radio host Ronn Owens, and engaged in what he describes as a one-night stand, during which they had oral sex. “Laura first contacted me via LinkedIn,” Echard recalls. “If I wasn’t single, I don’t think I would have appeared on his radar.”

After the banter, Echard said he never had sexual contact with Owens again. Although she tried to continue the relationship, he had moved on – until, several months later, she filed for paternity. “I sat down and was like, ‘Who is this girl? “, he said. “We looked at her Instagram and the last 20 men she followed were either athletes or very successful local guys. All good-looking. She was targeting successful men in the area.”

Nearly two years after this paternity accusation was made public, radio journalist Young was approached by Glass Entertainment in May 2025 to host what would become the Love trapped Limited series podcast.

“I remember hearing about this story. I love the intersection of true crime and pop culture, and I was like, ‘Sign me up.’ I’m in,'” Young says of hosting what started as a 10-episode weekly release that quickly became the #1 podcast on Apple after launching on February 26, 2026. Love trapped remained in the Top 10 Apple Podcasts for over 30 weeks. It peaked at #1 on Top Series and #3 on True Crime, and in July the series was named one of the best of 2026 so far on Apple Podcasts. He is now eligible for a nomination for the 2027 Golden Globes.

Young had a background in radio, storytelling and podcasting, but admits she was in uncharted territory hosting a project of this scale that required a significant amount of research.

Its preparation, which began in June 2025, consisted of pre-interviews with content creators like Rush hour host and comedian Dave Neal, whom Young calls one of the “torchbearers of this story,” alongside Bachelor franchise blogger “Reality Steve” Carbone and YouTuber Schnitzel Ninja, all of whom participate in the podcast, which has since expanded to 27 episodes including “Bonus” listens to follow the ongoing Owens case. A new episode will be released the week of October 19, with a final episode planned after that.

Young also recorded more than 40 hours of conversations and interviews with Echard, who had previously registered on Love trapped as Glass approached Young. “He was ready to tell his story. I was just the lucky one who got to do it,” Young says. “The person I know Clayton today is not the person I saw on TV.”

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When Glass first arrived at Echard, the former reality TV star was struggling to reclaim his own narrative. When the paternity case made headlines, Echard began receiving emails from production companies interested in telling his story, but it was unsuccessful. “In the beginning, a lot of companies that didn’t impress me withdrew because they were afraid of being sued by Laura,” he says. “Then Glass came along and said, ‘Hey, we’d like to do a podcast and a documentary.’ A narrative podcast.

Echard was attracted to the idea of ​​a long-form investigative podcast produced to a high standard. Glass Podcasts, launched in 2019, is a division of Glass Entertainment Group, which has produced award-winning unscripted television shows and films for over 20 years. Founder and CEO Nancy Glass has enjoyed a string of successes in recent years, since pivoting to the true crime genre, adapting her true crime podcasts into docuseries – Treason, Burden of Guilt And The Curse of America’s Next Top Model among them.

An investigative journalist and true crime obsessive herself (she was the last person to interview notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the early ’90s before his death), Glass says she and her award-winning production team, which includes her podcast leads Andrea Gunning and Ben Fetterman, know a good story when they see one.

“Podcasts are theater of the mind. They’re evocative and really touch your emotions. None of our detective stories involve murder – they always involve emotions,” says Glass. THR of their slate.

And there was a reason she wanted to tell Echard’s story. “There was no doubt in my mind that Clayton was telling the truth all along,” she says. “He is incapable of inventing things. That’s what got him into trouble on The Bachelor. He’s a guy who always tells the truth, for better or for worse.

Echard wasn’t worried about opening up, but he was hesitant to trust another group of producers after his experience on The Bachelor. Once Young was hired, Echard reached out. “I said, ‘I’ll be honest with you. You’re going to have your work cut out for you. There’s a lot of work here,'” he recalls of their first conversation. “‘You’re really going to have to want to do this and also, I have trust issues with producers because of my past experiences. I would really like to believe that you’re going to be a producer that treats me more in a way that I would want to be treated.'”

The result was their 40 hours of audio recording, “and she probably talked to me for another 30 hours,” he says of their collaboration.

“Clayton was extremely vulnerable and available,” says Young. “Every time I had a question, I could contact him and I had an answer. Every time I wanted him to do another interview, he was available. Knowing this history, imagine the awkward conversations we had to have? They were difficult conversations and he was incredibly vulnerable.”

When Young began working on Love trappedOwens had just been indicted on seven criminal charges in the state of Arizona related to her relationship with Echard. After a trial in June 2024, a family court in Maricopa County, Arizona, ruled that Owens was never pregnant with Echard’s twins as she had falsely claimed. The judge in that case, Justice Julie Ann Mata, saw a pattern of behavior and remanded Owens for further criminal investigation, which ultimately resulted in his criminal indictments in 2025 and his subsequent guilty plea on August 28, after several delays, thus avoiding a trial that had originally been set for January 2026.

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