Speaker 1: Pushkin previously a deep cover sort of like I got
Speaker 1: on a train track there was clearly the wrong train track,
Speaker 1: and at some point you're just thinking, crap, how do
Speaker 1: I stop this train from like going off the rails?
Speaker 1: Who went missing? Her mama was very very upset, as
Speaker 1: if she knew Brooke wasn't coming home. The NYPD cop
Speaker 1: caused and says, yep, she's broke. You can clear your case.
Speaker 1: So I said, I'm not happy with that. I want DNA.
Speaker 1: When she didn't show up to give DNA, she was
Speaker 1: in the wind, John Campbell had a million questions, like
Speaker 1: who was this mysterious student at Columbia University was increasingly
Speaker 1: convinced that she was not really Brooke Henson, that he
Speaker 1: was dealing with an impostor, especially after she ducked that
Speaker 1: DNA test, which made him wonder who was she? Did
Speaker 1: she have anything to do with the disappearance of the
Speaker 1: real Brooke Henson? And then there was the most important
Speaker 1: question of all, where was this mystery woman? Now? The
Speaker 1: obvious first move was to ask Columbia for help, So
Speaker 1: John says he reached out to the university's director of
Speaker 1: Investigations in technology, then sent him a subpoena explaining the
Speaker 1: entire situation. John requested Brooks records, including any photos, letters
Speaker 1: of reference essays, student loan forms, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And he started facts them down and I got about
Speaker 1: thirty pages or so, and then it just it was
Speaker 1: like half a sheet. And then he called me. He said,
Speaker 1: lawyers walked into this office and ripped him off of
Speaker 1: the whole file, off of the facts. So there's John
Speaker 1: standing by the fax machine with some files in his hands.
Speaker 1: He says he got a few documents, including Brooks College
Speaker 1: admissions essay, and then the transmission was interrupted. What he
Speaker 1: had so far was tantalizing. The essay said she'd grown
Speaker 1: up in a tiny town in South Carolina, and that
Speaker 1: much was true. The real Brooke Henson was from Traveler's Rest,
Speaker 1: But the essay also described a super religious childhood and
Speaker 1: that definitely didn't match up. So what was going on here?
Speaker 1: John felt if he could just get the rest of
Speaker 1: these files, he'd find the clues that would tell him
Speaker 1: who this woman really was and where she might be now.
Speaker 1: So John, he was on a mission. He just needed
Speaker 1: to out fox Columbia University. I'm Jake Halbern and this
Speaker 1: is deep Cover Season three, Never Seen Again, episode two,
Speaker 1: The Starman. According to John Campbell, officials at Columbia told
Speaker 1: him that they would no longer cooperate with him unless
Speaker 1: he got a federal subpoena. Now this is a technical distinction,
Speaker 1: but it's an important one. John had sent a state
Speaker 1: subpoena from Greenville County, South Carolina, and Columbia was basically saying, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't recognize that you're out of your jurisdiction. We
Speaker 1: need a federal subpoena. And of course I said that
Speaker 1: because they thought, well, some small town detective in South
Speaker 1: Carolina's not gonna be able to get a federal subpoena.
Speaker 1: John may have been a small town detective, but he
Speaker 1: did have some powerful connections. In fact, he knew exactly
Speaker 1: whom to call. And this becomes really important. So bear
Speaker 1: with me for a sec while I give you a
Speaker 1: little backstory. A few years before this, when John first
Speaker 1: started working on the Brook Henson case, he wanted to
Speaker 1: get an office computer. He didn't have one at the time,
Speaker 1: and he felt if he was going to pursue this
Speaker 1: case seriously, he needed one. You know, how to take
Speaker 1: advantage of things like spreadsheets and the Internet. So he
Speaker 1: asked the chief for some money to buy one. His
Speaker 1: chief apparently said, sorry, don't have the funds. John, ever determined,
Speaker 1: started making inquiries, asking other law enforcement guys, Hey, what's
Speaker 1: the best way to get a free computer, And turns
Speaker 1: out they had an answer for him. Call the Secret Service. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those agents with the earpieces who run alongside the presidential motorcades.
Speaker 1: But the advice was, don't just ask them for a laptop,
Speaker 1: ask to do a case with them, because apparently everyone
Speaker 1: knew do a case with the Secret Service. They seize
Speaker 1: everything and give it right back to local law enforcement.
Speaker 1: You're telling me that, like, you work with the Secret
Speaker 1: Service deliberately so that you could if you bust some
Speaker 1: guys with the computers, you can keep it. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: how you do it on the municipal level when you
Speaker 1: have no money. Now, in case you didn't realize this,
Speaker 1: the Secret Service does a whole lot more than protect
Speaker 1: the president. It also investigates financial crimes and chases down counterfeiters,
Speaker 1: you know, people who print fake money. And John's like,
Speaker 1: I can find some guys like that, because, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, at the time, there was someone in trial
Speaker 1: theer's rest passing out phony twenty dollar bills. It looked
Speaker 1: like they were being made with an inkjet printer. Anyway,
Speaker 1: John puts the word out among the local businesses. He says,
Speaker 1: call me if you see anything suspicious. So one of
Speaker 1: the businesses was Burger King and this girlfriend Burger can call.
Speaker 1: He goes, hey, those guys are back and they gave
Speaker 1: me a fake twenty again. What do I do? He said,
Speaker 1: tell will be a few minutes to their fries. He's
Speaker 1: laughing now, right, but at the time he's like, here's
Speaker 1: my big chance to bust some counterfeiters and befriend the
Speaker 1: Secret Service and you know, get a free computer. They're
Speaker 1: waiting for their fries, and we were right down the streets,
Speaker 1: so we come zooming in behind them, and we come
Speaker 1: running up to the car and the guys has this
Speaker 1: big water twenties and he crams it down into his
Speaker 1: drink and we grab the drink and everything, pull the
Speaker 1: thing of twenties up and the ink is just ripping
Speaker 1: off these guys. He's busted. They're local college students looking
Speaker 1: for some free whoppers. John calls the Secret Service tells
Speaker 1: them he's busted some counterfeit and the Secret Service is pleased,
Speaker 1: so pleased that they continue to work cases with John.
Speaker 1: Eventually they even give him an award for his work
Speaker 1: on another counterfeiting case. So the Secret Service guy said,
Speaker 1: he is such a good job on that they sent
Speaker 1: a thing up to Washington and got me thing, a
Speaker 1: citation thing. So I had that on my wall and
Speaker 1: it was signed by the director of the Secret Service.
Speaker 1: You know, he did a great job. What really made
Speaker 1: John happy, though, was back in their dorm room, those
Speaker 1: counterfeiters had a sweet computer which soon became John's computer.
Speaker 1: Score right, But the real windfall came later. Fast forward
Speaker 1: a few years. There's John standing by his facts machine
Speaker 1: with half a set of records from the woman who
Speaker 1: claimed to be Brooke Henson, and he's got a big
Speaker 1: fat snub from Columbia University, which was demanding a federal subpoena,
Speaker 1: a potential dead end for John. But turns out all
Speaker 1: John had to do was look up on his wall
Speaker 1: at that fancy citation thing from the Secret Service. And
Speaker 1: remember he had some friends, some pretty powerful friends, who could,
Speaker 1: if they were so inclined, tell Columbia University to shut
Speaker 1: up and play ball. The person that John Campbell connected
Speaker 1: with at the Secret Service is a guy named Don Long.
Speaker 1: I am an assistant Special Agent in charge with the
Speaker 1: Secret Service. I've been employed with the agency for about
Speaker 1: thirty years now, and I'm currently located in our office
Speaker 1: in Columbia, South Carolina. If Don sounds like a clean cut,
Speaker 1: no nonsense law man, well that's because he is. Don
Speaker 1: is not an obsessive Files fan or a guy who
Speaker 1: buys into a lot of conspiracy theories. In this way,
Speaker 1: you might say that he and John are kind of
Speaker 1: like opposites. Even so, Don is quick to give John props.
Speaker 1: John is a very thorough investigator. If you had a
Speaker 1: case that you wanted somebody to really turn over every
Speaker 1: single stone to look for a possible suspect, you would
Speaker 1: certainly want someone like John on the case. Don says
Speaker 1: that back in two thousand and six he wanted to
Speaker 1: help John if he could, and he was intrigued by
Speaker 1: the Brook Henson case, but he couldn't just fire off
Speaker 1: a federal subpoena as a favor to John. This was
Speaker 1: a serious matter, and if the Secret Service got involved,
Speaker 1: it would become an active partner in this investigation. So
Speaker 1: Don's first question was, what is this case exactly? Don
Speaker 1: says he conferred with the assistant US attorney in Greenville,
Speaker 1: who would be prosecuting this case if it went forward,
Speaker 1: and the two of them they debated what to do.
Speaker 1: In the end, it was decided that they should open
Speaker 1: up a fraud and identity theft investigation and see what
Speaker 1: was in those files at Columbia. And just like that,
Speaker 1: John now had a partner, Don Long, the Secret Service agent.
Speaker 1: And even though this was now technically a federal investigation,
Speaker 1: John was still, as he told me, a backseat driver.
Speaker 1: I might add, a very active backseat driver. So off
Speaker 1: goes that federal subpoena kind of amazingly, Columbia University rejects it. Basically,
Speaker 1: Columbia just tells the assistant US attorney, a guy named
Speaker 1: Walt Wilkins, sorry, no dice, and what lost his mind?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? Your Columbia University, This is a
Speaker 1: federal grand jury subpoena. If you can't give us these records,
Speaker 1: you come down to talk to the judge and explain why.
Speaker 1: It wasn't clear why Columbia was refusing to cooperate. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was just trying to protect the privacy of a student,
Speaker 1: or perhaps, as Don Long speculated, the university was embarrassed
Speaker 1: that it had possibly been duped by an impostor. I
Speaker 1: reached out to Columbia University, by the Way, and they
Speaker 1: declined to comment. In the end, Don flew up to
Speaker 1: New York to speak with officials at the university in person,
Speaker 1: and at long last, Columbia relented. A little while later,
Speaker 1: investigators had the complete records for one Brooke Henson. The
Speaker 1: records from Columbia included a bunch of documents. There were
Speaker 1: two admissions essays. Together, they presented an intimate portrait of
Speaker 1: a young woman who claimed to be Brooke Henson. I
Speaker 1: asked my producer, Amy Gaines, as she would read from
Speaker 1: these essays. My young life consisted almost entirely of events
Speaker 1: that would take place inside four church walls. My parents
Speaker 1: didn't feel that a public education was the right place
Speaker 1: to teach their children about the world and the skills
Speaker 1: it would take to survive in that world. Along with
Speaker 1: three other children, my brother and I were educated under
Speaker 1: the tutelage of my mother and another woman from church.
Speaker 1: In spite of what is considered by others to be
Speaker 1: a horrific environment to educate children. Somehow, my brother and
Speaker 1: I excelled in our academic surroundings. Weird right, because the
Speaker 1: real Brookhanson she grew up in a house without a
Speaker 1: lot of rules, with laid back parents. The essay goes
Speaker 1: on to say the moment that truly defined her life
Speaker 1: was when her mom was dying of cancer. She says
Speaker 1: she took care of her mother and that in her
Speaker 1: spare time, she found solace by playing chess online. I
Speaker 1: loved to dive into a world filled with sixty four squares,
Speaker 1: thirty two pieces, and a never ending supply of new
Speaker 1: combinations to learn and master. This black and white world
Speaker 1: made sense to me. I was in control of strategy,
Speaker 1: of risk, and ultimately of death. When her mother passed away,
Speaker 1: she said something within her shifted. After I came to
Speaker 1: terms with losing her and living my life without her,
Speaker 1: I felt very free in a strange way. I saw
Speaker 1: the world as something I could explore and conquer. I
Speaker 1: never really looked outside my little town and my little
Speaker 1: life until that life had disappeared. I was no longer
Speaker 1: an option for me. John Campbell read all of this
Speaker 1: with great interest. But what was it exactly? Seemed like
Speaker 1: a work of fiction, confirmation that they were dealing with
Speaker 1: a con artist. After all, the real Brooke Henson was
Speaker 1: a free spirit who liked to hang out and party
Speaker 1: with her friends, not some Christian who played chess. Even so,
Speaker 1: John found himself wondering could this possibly be true at
Speaker 1: least some of it, Like did the real Brooke Henson
Speaker 1: have some secret life that he didn't know about? Was she,
Speaker 1: for example, a chess player. John forced himself to be
Speaker 1: methodical about the whole thing, and just to vet this properly,
Speaker 1: I called Travel's Dress High school and I said do
Speaker 1: you have a chess team? And lady over a Travelers
Speaker 1: risso fell out of the chair when she stopped laughing.
Speaker 1: She said, no, honey, we don't have any kind of
Speaker 1: a chess chess club. And Travel's rass Travels Dress is
Speaker 1: for their football. I don't have a chess club. They
Speaker 1: never had a chess club. You don't even find anybody
Speaker 1: in this area that plays chess. But even if these
Speaker 1: essays were all lies, they were lies that might prove
Speaker 1: useful down the road. He didn't need to be a
Speaker 1: detective to see that. I myself have always believed the
Speaker 1: old adage the best liars always stick close to the truth,
Speaker 1: and so maybe this imposter, whoever she was, was a
Speaker 1: chess player who was raised in a strict Christian home
Speaker 1: and who lost her mother at a tender age. Maybe
Speaker 1: these were clues that needed to be taken seriously, a
Speaker 1: glimpse into who this mystery woman really was. There were
Speaker 1: other clues in the Columbia records. The young woman claiming
Speaker 1: to be Brooke Henson had gotten her ged she had
Speaker 1: aced the SATs, but once she arrived at Columbia, she
Speaker 1: often failed to attend class. In an email, she confided
Speaker 1: in her academic advisor, I haven't decided whether I will
Speaker 1: attempt school next year at Columbia, but clearly I will
Speaker 1: need to take a closer look at the financial aspects
Speaker 1: of it. She ends by saying, sometimes being without my
Speaker 1: mom is tough when I have a big decision to make.
Speaker 1: The picture that emerged was of an ambitious young woman
Speaker 1: who was struggling. At some point in the investigation, John
Speaker 1: got his hands on a rather curious photo. It looked
Speaker 1: like it was taken at a military school, and it
Speaker 1: showed a slender young woman dressed in a formal gown,
Speaker 1: the sort you'd wear to a gala. The woman didn't
Speaker 1: really look like Brooke Henson. She was standing next to
Speaker 1: several sharply dressed cadets. John studied the photo closely, so
Speaker 1: I had a loop like a photographer's loop, and I
Speaker 1: had this picture, and I'm down on this picture like this.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the movie The Good Shepherd. John,
Speaker 1: by the way, loves making pop culture references, especially to
Speaker 1: spy stories. In The Good Shepherd, there's this CIA agent
Speaker 1: played by Matt Damon, who spends much of the movie
Speaker 1: analyzing magnified images from this one mysterious photograph. Anyway, John
Speaker 1: was determined to figure out, among other things, where was
Speaker 1: this photo taken. Kept narrowing down based on what was
Speaker 1: on their uniforms. I sent the picture to VMI, the Citadel,
Speaker 1: several other places that were military colleges. In one picture,
Speaker 1: you could see they had a sash. He said, we
Speaker 1: don't wear sashes. And wear sashes. The architecture in the
Speaker 1: back was an arch Nobody had that. And eventually we
Speaker 1: got back to West Point, so there was a West
Speaker 1: Point connection. But John didn't know exactly what to make
Speaker 1: of that. There was one other document in the Columbia
Speaker 1: Records that caught the attention of both John Campbell and
Speaker 1: also of Don Long at the Secret Service. It was
Speaker 1: a letter of recommendation for Brooke from a professor named
Speaker 1: doctor Shirley Fleishman. The letter mentioned that Brooke had visited
Speaker 1: her home, that she was a friend of her son.
Speaker 1: This seemed promising. Maybe the Fleischman family could tell them
Speaker 1: more about who this young woman really was. When I
Speaker 1: called mister Fleshman, I said, I'm John Campbell, I'm with
Speaker 1: Travels Verst Police Department. I'm calling about a girl you
Speaker 1: might know named Brooke Henson. And he said, I wondered
Speaker 1: when you were going to call And I said, what
Speaker 1: do you What do you mean when I was going
Speaker 1: to call him the world? How would you know that
Speaker 1: I was going to call him? He said, when my
Speaker 1: son brought her home, I knew she was troubled. According
Speaker 1: to John, mister Fleishman told him that this young woman,
Speaker 1: this Brooke Henson, had dated his son for about a year,
Speaker 1: and at that time his son was a cadet at
Speaker 1: West Point. After the break, what John Campbell and Don
Speaker 1: Long uncovered when they spoke with the Fleshman's So far,
Speaker 1: everything I've told you about the mysterious woman fleeing Columbia
Speaker 1: University and then John Campbell fighting to get her college records,
Speaker 1: all of that happened in two thousand and six. Now
Speaker 1: we're going to turn back the clock a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: to two thousand and one. Picture this scene the quad
Speaker 1: at Catholic University in Washington, DC, A big green expanse
Speaker 1: with leafy trees and gray stone buildings. There were lots
Speaker 1: of excited college kids strutting about. They were here for
Speaker 1: a debate tournament. One of these students was a nineteen
Speaker 1: year old named Ian Fleischmann. Ian was a cadet at
Speaker 1: West Point, where he was on the policy debate team,
Speaker 1: and it was here on this quad at Catholic University
Speaker 1: that Ian first spotted her. She was a very attractive woman,
Speaker 1: relatively short, brown hair. She had a great smile and
Speaker 1: a fun laugh. I remember that. So they get to talking.
Speaker 1: She introduced to herself Natalie. I knew her as Natalie.
Speaker 1: Natalie was not competing. She had debated another tournaments in
Speaker 1: the past, but that day she was just there hanging
Speaker 1: out with some friends. She told Ian that she wasn't
Speaker 1: currently enrolled in college, and that she had a pretty
Speaker 1: unusual job. She introduced herself as a professional chess player,
Speaker 1: which was interesting because I had never met a professional
Speaker 1: chess player. Natalie said she had a manager in Germany
Speaker 1: and that she traveled around the country playing in tournaments.
Speaker 1: Ian was intrigued. Soon after this, they started dating, which
Speaker 1: wasn't so easy because they didn't live near one another.
Speaker 1: Natalie always seemed to be on the road traveling for
Speaker 1: her job, and Ian well, he was at West Point
Speaker 1: where he had a strict curfew and couldn't leave campus
Speaker 1: without a pass. So they chatted online and talked a
Speaker 1: lot over the phone. Ian remembers leaning out his dorm
Speaker 1: window to get a better cell signal and talking late
Speaker 1: into the night, long after lights out. His roommate, David Labovich,
Speaker 1: remembers hearing some of these conversations, and he also chatted
Speaker 1: with Ian about his new girlfriend. But David, he wasn't
Speaker 1: entirely buying Natalie's story, you know. He shared with me
Speaker 1: the little detail of, oh, she's a professional chess player,
Speaker 1: but she's got this manager that has all the money,
Speaker 1: and if she needs money, she has to email him
Speaker 1: and he has to respond and give her the money.
Speaker 1: It was this really odd and I remember saying that
Speaker 1: to Ian at the time. It's like, yeah, man, something
Speaker 1: about that just doesn't seem right. David is quick to
Speaker 1: add that Ian is a really smart guy, extremely talented.
Speaker 1: In fact, Ian was such a good student that he
Speaker 1: was rewarded a set of gold stars, which he wore
Speaker 1: on his uniform. There was a term for guys like
Speaker 1: Ian at West Point Starman. They were the guys who
Speaker 1: were going places. All that being said, David suspects the
Speaker 1: Ian was perhaps blinded by love because he missed other
Speaker 1: slightly suspicious things about Natalie. One other kind of odd
Speaker 1: thing that she did was she sent him some cookies
Speaker 1: and said, hey, these are you know, homemade cookies. And
Speaker 1: I remember looking at him and I was like, Ian,
Speaker 1: those are suspiciously round, Like she just got the little
Speaker 1: two cookies and just cut them up and baked them.
Speaker 1: Ian says his old roommate, well may have been onto something.
Speaker 1: I mean, like in retrospect, where would she have made
Speaker 1: these cookies? Right? Like she was living out of her car,
Speaker 1: traveling the country, going I mean, you know, she did
Speaker 1: always like to stay in like extended state places. But
Speaker 1: I doubt you can use those kitchenettes to make perfectly
Speaker 1: round cookies. But at that point, Ian said he had
Speaker 1: already bought into Natalie's whole story, that she was a
Speaker 1: chess champion with a German manager who traveled the country
Speaker 1: and occasionally hung out at debate tournaments. And so if
Speaker 1: you start with the acceptance of that as you as
Speaker 1: your starting point, some of these small minor things over time,
Speaker 1: I think you know, it's easy to gloss over, right,
Speaker 1: because you've you've already accepted the most ridiculous thing as
Speaker 1: true and honestly, when you're dealing with somebody that you
Speaker 1: genuinely care for, that you have spent a long time
Speaker 1: building up a relationship with, I think it's easy to
Speaker 1: miss a lot of those, you know, smaller things, or
Speaker 1: to forgive them, because you trust the person enough to
Speaker 1: accept the excuse or the explanation that they give you.
Speaker 1: Natalie talked a little bit about her own family. She
Speaker 1: told him about her mother, who had died and whom
Speaker 1: she adored, and a bit about her stepfather too. She
Speaker 1: said that he was abusive, that he was stalking her,
Speaker 1: and that occasionally he would find her and she would
Speaker 1: have to flee. At one point, she told Ian about
Speaker 1: an incident that he had found her someplace in Tennessee
Speaker 1: in a hotel room and threatened her with an iron,
Speaker 1: like to beat her with an iron. All of this
Speaker 1: was upsetting to in. I mean, it didn't really have
Speaker 1: the option to essentially run to her to protect her,
Speaker 1: and so that, I mean that did tug out my heartstrings.
Speaker 1: At some point, Ian says, she told them that she
Speaker 1: was changing her name from Natalie Fisher to Natalie Bowman,
Speaker 1: same first name, just a different last name. Ian says,
Speaker 1: as best as he can recall, she said that she
Speaker 1: was doing this to protect herself, which made sense to
Speaker 1: Inn under the circumstances, and for him, it didn't change
Speaker 1: who she was. It was the same Natalie. I mean,
Speaker 1: she was the same person, regardless of the moniker that
Speaker 1: she was she was using. She had the same flaws,
Speaker 1: the same loves, the same laughs. On several occasions, Ian
Speaker 1: brought Natalie home to meet his parents. He said that
Speaker 1: his mother, Shirley Fleishman, welcome Natalie into their home with
Speaker 1: open arms. I mean, everyone's going to tell you that
Speaker 1: their mom is the most loving and caring person in
Speaker 1: the world right. But for me, my mom is I
Speaker 1: think the most loving and caring person, and she unconditionally
Speaker 1: accepted and love Natalie because of the relationship that I
Speaker 1: had with her. And this relationship between Ian and Natalie
Speaker 1: was serious and at times tumultuous. It was an emotional relationship.
Speaker 1: From the moment we met, I think there we were,
Speaker 1: you know, madly in love or fighting or somewhere in
Speaker 1: between or both at the same time, for the course
Speaker 1: of a year or so before we eventually broke up.
Speaker 1: The breakup happened in part because of biography. Natalie decided
Speaker 1: she wanted to go to college in California, and she
Speaker 1: essentially gave me the ultimatum of quit West Point and
Speaker 1: moved to California while I go to cal State Fullerton
Speaker 1: and get my degree or we're going to break up.
Speaker 1: And I seriously considered leaving West Point. So there was
Speaker 1: in a star student at west Point, literally a starman,
Speaker 1: and he was going to walk away from that for her.
Speaker 1: Ian wrestled with his decision, and then one day it
Speaker 1: all came to a head. One of my mentors, you know,
Speaker 1: from the debate team, eventually found went out into the
Speaker 1: field at West Point during a field exercise that summer,
Speaker 1: found me in my tent and dragged me off into
Speaker 1: the woodline to yell at me and tell me that
Speaker 1: I was making a terrible mistake if I thought that
Speaker 1: I was going to leave to the military to run
Speaker 1: off to California after some girl, so Ian State at
Speaker 1: West Point, and they broke up, but it didn't end aadle.
Speaker 1: In fact, after the breakup, Natalie even reached out to
Speaker 1: Ian's mom, Shirley Fleishman, to ask for a letter of
Speaker 1: recommendation to Columbia. Shirley was a university professor, so this
Speaker 1: letter would carry some weight. Now you may be thinking
Speaker 1: that's weird who asks their ex boyfriend's mother for a
Speaker 1: letter of rec But here was the really weird part.
Speaker 1: Natalie explained that to protect herself, she had changed her
Speaker 1: name once again. She was now going by Brooke Henson, Yes,
Speaker 1: the very woman who went missing from Traveler's Rest, South
Speaker 1: Carolina back in nineteen ninety nine. So Shirley Fleischman agrees
Speaker 1: to help. She writes a letter of recommendation, and this
Speaker 1: is the letter that both John Campbell and Don Long
Speaker 1: find in the Columbia records. The letter that leads them
Speaker 1: to the Fleishman's. When they finally connect, they learned much
Speaker 1: of what I've just told you. Ian's dad, Fred had
Speaker 1: been suspicious of Natalie for a long time, so suspicious
Speaker 1: that he'd been looking for clues about who she really was.
Speaker 1: He shared his suspicions with investigators when we spoke to him,
Speaker 1: Fred turned over a very important piece of evidence. That's
Speaker 1: Don the Secret Service agent. He says that Fred claimed
Speaker 1: on one occasion he had to move Natalie's car. It
Speaker 1: was blocking his driveway. As I recall, it was like
Speaker 1: a one lane driveway, and we went in the car
Speaker 1: to move the car of the way to get his
Speaker 1: car out. He was a little bit suspicious of her anyways,
Speaker 1: and he looked in the club box and he found
Speaker 1: an ID for Esther Reid. Esther Reid? Now who is that?
Speaker 1: Once again the plot had thickened, The authorities scrambled to
Speaker 1: figure out who Esther Reid was. Turns out she was
Speaker 1: yet another missing woman, roughly the same age as Brooke Henson,
Speaker 1: who had vanished from Washington State back in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: the same year that Brooke had gone missing. So what
Speaker 1: the hell was going on here? John Campbell had an
Speaker 1: initial hunch, Mike, this is a serial killer, because I
Speaker 1: got people who I can't I have somebody using somebody's names.
Speaker 1: I got Brookinson, I know, I'm pretty sure it's dead.
Speaker 1: I got Natalie Bowman, I can't find her. I got
Speaker 1: Natalie Fisher, I can't find her. She's disappeared. And I
Speaker 1: got Esther Reid and she's a missing person. But that
Speaker 1: theory didn't hold up because eventually, with a little more digging,
Speaker 1: John concluded that two of the women, Natalie Fisher and
Speaker 1: Natalie Bowman, were in fact alive. As how as the
Speaker 1: investigators could tell, this mystery woman was still out there.
Speaker 1: Maybe her real name was Esther Reid or maybe not,
Speaker 1: but she appeared to be a serial identity thief who
Speaker 1: just kept on taking over new personas the question was why,
Speaker 1: because there was no obvious motive. It just didn't make sense.
Speaker 1: She was enrolled in Columbia University as brook Hanson. So
Speaker 1: it's an IVY League school. It costs tons of money
Speaker 1: to us there. Why would you enroll under an assumed name.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. As soon as the gigs
Speaker 1: up your degree is worth. You don't have a degree anymore.
Speaker 1: It's about you, So why would you spend all kinds
Speaker 1: of money doing that? John felt that all of these deceptions,
Speaker 1: so elaborate, so involved, had to serve some grander purpose,
Speaker 1: like they had to be covering for something. He briefly
Speaker 1: considered the possibility that this woman was a drug mule,
Speaker 1: but then he turned to another theory, the one that
Speaker 1: he ultimately came to believe was true. And here's how
Speaker 1: he came to it. He learned that this mystery woman
Speaker 1: had dated another West Point cadet and a Naval Academy midshipman.
Speaker 1: Hypothesis began to form in his mind. As he saw it,
Speaker 1: she was targeting military personnel, not just that. Look at
Speaker 1: who Ian Fleischmann was a starman. What's more, apparently this
Speaker 1: mystery woman had a manager or a handler overseas who
Speaker 1: sent her money, and she seemed to be a master
Speaker 1: at creating and maintaining aliases. So John typed up an
Speaker 1: email to the US Army CID, the Criminal Investigation Division.
Speaker 1: He laid out all the facts and began to explain
Speaker 1: his most promising theory about the mystery woman. At Columbia,
Speaker 1: he read that email back to me. Here's part of it.
Speaker 1: The motives of this woman are not clear. It does
Speaker 1: not appear that she uses her stolen identities for monetary gain,
Speaker 1: but actually adopts the identities in order to live near
Speaker 1: US military personnel and attend universities. While I am not
Speaker 1: prepared to say this woman is a spy acting on
Speaker 1: behalf of a foreign country, her behavior fits the profile
Speaker 1: of a spy far better than that of the average
Speaker 1: identity thief espionage. That's what John was intimating, Perhaps more
Speaker 1: than intimating. John read over what he'd written to Army
Speaker 1: investigators and then hit send. At this point, John had
Speaker 1: followed his leads a very, very long way from Traveler's Rest,
Speaker 1: South Carolina. This had started off as a search for
Speaker 1: Brooke Henson, a kind hearted young woman who'd gone miss
Speaker 1: and perhaps was murdered. Now it looked as if Brooke
Speaker 1: were just one of several people whose identities had been stolen,
Speaker 1: and if John's hunches were correct, the perpetrator of all
Speaker 1: this was a spy. John held on to the hope
Speaker 1: that if he could just talk to Esther Reid, he
Speaker 1: would find the answers to so many of his questions,
Speaker 1: and that she might have some intel about what had
Speaker 1: happened to the real Brooke Henson, but that was a stretch.
Speaker 1: This was quickly turning into a wild goose chase following
Speaker 1: a tip that was taking him far away from his
Speaker 1: original case. I remember the Chief asking me, like, how
Speaker 1: far are you going to take this? It said Chief,
Speaker 1: until I can interview Esther Reid, I can't clear this
Speaker 1: tip next time. On Deep Cover, it never occurred to me,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, that I would get caught, or could get caught,
Speaker 1: or that anyone would get hurt. I mean, I figured
Speaker 1: if I lived as Brooke for the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: nothing would ever happen. Deep Cover is produced by Amy
Speaker 1: Gaines and Jacob Smith. It's edited by Karen shakerge mastering
Speaker 1: by Jake Gorski. Our show art was designed by Sean Karney.
Speaker 1: Original scoring at our theme was composed by Luis Gara,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Arthur Gomfort's Special thanks to Milobelle, Greta
Speaker 1: Cone and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Jake Albert