Speaker 1: Pushkin Just a quick heads up before we start. This
Speaker 1: episode contains a brief reference to suicide previously a deep cover.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm calling about a girl you might know
Speaker 1: named Brooke Henson, and he said, I wondered when you
Speaker 1: were gonna call. When my son brought her home, I
Speaker 1: knew she was troubled. It was the same Adelaide. She
Speaker 1: was the same person, regardless of the moniker that she
Speaker 1: was she was using. She had the same flaws, the
Speaker 1: same loves, the same laughs. I haven't determined that the
Speaker 1: woman in question is not our victim Brookley Henson. Her
Speaker 1: behavior fits the profile of a spy far better than
Speaker 1: that of the average identity. Back in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: there was a woman enrolled at Columbia University who claimed
Speaker 1: to be Brooke Henson, but in reality she was an impostor.
Speaker 1: She was using the identity of another woman who'd gone
Speaker 1: missing from South Carolina seven years earlier. This impostor she'd
Speaker 1: deceived Columbia University, her boyfriends, and many others. It was
Speaker 1: a hot mess. And I know this because she herself
Speaker 1: told me, told me all about it, starting with the
Speaker 1: moment that it all began to fall apart for her.
Speaker 1: I think I got a message from Columbia Security saying
Speaker 1: they wanted to talk to me, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit. A short while later, she received a call
Speaker 1: from a detective in the NYPD. He basically asked me
Speaker 1: if I'm Brooke Henson and I say yes, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: why are you listed as missing? And then I tell
Speaker 1: him like, I am running from my family. I don't
Speaker 1: want anything to do with them, and he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's fine, I'll tell the detectives down there. And it
Speaker 1: seemed like that might be the end of it. But
Speaker 1: then the detective called back because he said the authorities
Speaker 1: down in South Carolina wanted more information. South Carolina people
Speaker 1: just want to double check that you're actually Brooke Henson.
Speaker 1: So I have a couple of questions. Are you okay
Speaker 1: with that? And I was like sure, Were you like
Speaker 1: panicky at all with yeah? Oh my yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: But she was prepared. She knew a lot about the
Speaker 1: real Brooke Henson. There was a lot of stuff on
Speaker 1: the Internet about her being missing, and I had read
Speaker 1: every shred of it. The detective started asking questions about
Speaker 1: the names of friends and family members from back home
Speaker 1: and Traveler's Rest, South Carolina. She could only hope that
Speaker 1: she answered enough of these questions correctly that the detective
Speaker 1: would be satisfied, and it seemed like he got what
Speaker 1: he needed. But that didn't last very long. This detective
Speaker 1: kept calling me back and he goes, are you sure
Speaker 1: you're telling me the truth? Because he goes, I can
Speaker 1: help you, and I was like, no, no, no no, I'm
Speaker 1: telling the truth. And then he would call by he goes,
Speaker 1: you know, I know a judge, like, I'm pretty sure,
Speaker 1: like we can figure this out. Are you sure you're
Speaker 1: telling me the truth? Like, no, no no, no, I'm telling
Speaker 1: the truth. Is your like anxiety kicking in? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I'll get hives when I get really anxious,
Speaker 1: and I'll just my blood pressure goes up really high
Speaker 1: and so I'll get red and all of that was happening.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty terrible. It was, Yeah, it was one
Speaker 1: hundred percent terrible. All of this is terrible, Jake, It's
Speaker 1: all horrible. Eventually, the NYPD detective calls back and tells
Speaker 1: her that the authorities down in South Carolina are insisting
Speaker 1: on more proof. They want her to provide DNA to
Speaker 1: confirm that she really is Brokenson. She stalls. She says
Speaker 1: that she has two final papers to finish over the
Speaker 1: weekend and asks if she can possibly meet the detective
Speaker 1: at her apartment on the following Monday and then take
Speaker 1: the DNA test. The detective agrees, like, what's your plan
Speaker 1: as your Oh, I didn't have a plan at that point.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was just hoping it would all go away.
Speaker 1: I'm like just stupid, right, Like, you know, there's no
Speaker 1: there's no plan, Like I can't fix this. I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking like what if I miss them? Like what if
Speaker 1: I'm not home? Is it a big deal that they
Speaker 1: come back? Or is this like we don't have the
Speaker 1: resources for this and this isn't a big deal, Like
Speaker 1: I didn't know at that point. She finishes her two
Speaker 1: papers and then she kind of comes to her senses,
Speaker 1: has this moment when she realizes that this is not
Speaker 1: all magically just going to go away, that the police
Speaker 1: they're onto her. So she decides she's got to do something.
Speaker 1: I went to get a U wall truck because I
Speaker 1: had decided I'm freaking getting out of here, and I
Speaker 1: was going to pack up my apartment. I still thought
Speaker 1: like I could come like this is gonna down, I
Speaker 1: can come back, It'll be urry. Her plan was to
Speaker 1: pack up her place, move everything into storage, and then
Speaker 1: grab her two dogs, Pooching and Odie, and disappear for
Speaker 1: a while. And so I rented the truck and I
Speaker 1: took all the money I had it out of my
Speaker 1: account and I think they probably had my accounts flagged.
Speaker 1: And so by the time I got back to my apartment,
Speaker 1: I pulled around the corner of my unhaul truck and
Speaker 1: there were New York City cops knocking on the door.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh shit, because she's too late.
Speaker 1: The cops are there. So now she has a choice
Speaker 1: to make either a run for it or B just
Speaker 1: turn herself in, tell the cops everything about who she
Speaker 1: really is. No choice is tempting. It's second nature, actually,
Speaker 1: because she's been more or less on the run for years.
Speaker 1: But the problem is Pooching and Odie. They're inside the apartment,
Speaker 1: and no matter what, she cannot leave her dogs. So
Speaker 1: it's gotta be b turn herself in. So I pulled
Speaker 1: over in front of a fire hydrant and I walked
Speaker 1: around the block, and by the time I got around,
Speaker 1: they were gone, and so I was like, oh, So
Speaker 1: I went upstairs, packed the quickest bag I could pack,
Speaker 1: grab my dogs, called a cab, and left. Would you
Speaker 1: do it to? You? Haul? Left it here? It's not
Speaker 1: I don't want people to think that Mead chuckling is.
Speaker 1: I don't think any of this is funny. It's just
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and whatever. But yeah, I just left it there.
Speaker 1: That's kind of crazy. I know all of it's crazy.
Speaker 1: I was scared, and this decision to run for it,
Speaker 1: more than anything else, it's what makes this story go
Speaker 1: bat shit. It's the decision that confounds everyone, the authorities
Speaker 1: down in South Carolina, the Secret Service, the assistant US Attorney.
Speaker 1: Because now it's got them all thinking, who leaves a
Speaker 1: U haul idling at the curb? Why is this woman running?
Speaker 1: What is she hiding? Because it's got to be something big, right.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Halbern and this is deep Cover, Never Seen Again,
Speaker 1: Episode three. The Impostor. This woman the one I'm speaking to.
Speaker 1: The impostor. She's gone by many names, including Natalie Fisher,
Speaker 1: Natalie Bowman, and Brooke Henson. Her real name, well, I
Speaker 1: should say her birth name is Esther Reid. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to call her Esther. That's the first name that
Speaker 1: she goes by. Currently. Esther lives in a small city
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest. We started talking months ago. I
Speaker 1: eventually went out there to visit her, and she told
Speaker 1: me that only four people in her city knew her
Speaker 1: full back story, well five if you counted me. And
Speaker 1: in this episode, we're going to take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into her side of the story because at this point
Speaker 1: you've heard from John Campbell, You've heard his theories, his
Speaker 1: suspicions that this mystery woman was not just an identity
Speaker 1: thief but a spy who seemed to be on the run.
Speaker 1: And Esther was on the run, but what she was
Speaker 1: running from, well that's complicated. Back in the early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: Esther Reid was a young girl in a small town
Speaker 1: in Montana. She lived in a tiny two bedroom house
Speaker 1: with unfinished walls. Outside, there were chickens, geese, rabbits, goats,
Speaker 1: and a big garden. She says her dad was a
Speaker 1: serious man. My dad is very, very very religious, and
Speaker 1: so like there was no TV in the house. We
Speaker 1: weren't really allowed to listen to any music that had
Speaker 1: a beat, anything with a drum beat was considered satanic
Speaker 1: or evil, so we weren't allowed at school. Her father
Speaker 1: didn't allow her to wear pants. Instead, she wore homelesspun dresses.
Speaker 1: Her mom was the fun one, always making up games
Speaker 1: and telling them stories. When I think about my mom,
Speaker 1: I just remember hers right in her effervescence, and she
Speaker 1: was just so amazingly loving and kind and giving. Esther
Speaker 1: told me stories where her mom seemed like a magician.
Speaker 1: She conjured joy even in tough situations when no one
Speaker 1: could sleep in the sweltering heat. She rallied the kids
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night to make fudge. Another time,
Speaker 1: the kids were having a water fight, and instead of
Speaker 1: breaking it up, she dragged a hose into the house
Speaker 1: and soaked them. My mom was definitely a lemons into
Speaker 1: lemonade girl, and really definitely the happiness is what you
Speaker 1: make of it. Esther says her parents' relationship was very
Speaker 1: business like like. She only remembers seeing her dad hug
Speaker 1: her mom a few times, and it was like that
Speaker 1: right up until the day that their marriage effectively ended.
Speaker 1: Like the way my dad told her he wanted to divorce,
Speaker 1: as he wrote her a letter, And I think at
Speaker 1: that point they had been married eight years, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a letter, I think on a Friday, and he
Speaker 1: put it in her purse and she found it when
Speaker 1: she got to work, and he basically said, this isn't working.
Speaker 1: I would like you to take Esther and move out,
Speaker 1: and he wanted her gone by Sunday. Esther was twelve
Speaker 1: when this happened. She and her mother moved out and
Speaker 1: life didn't get any easier for her. A year or
Speaker 1: two later, ESS's mom was diagnosed with colon cancer. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Esther started high school and hated it. Not the schoolwork.
Speaker 1: She was very bright and she actually had a photographic memory.
Speaker 1: It was the social aspect of going to school that
Speaker 1: was just really tough for her. She dreaded it, in fact,
Speaker 1: so she played hooky as much as she could. Her
Speaker 1: mom typically left the house early each morning for work,
Speaker 1: and instead of going to school, Esther often just stayed
Speaker 1: in the house. One week, when her mom stayed home
Speaker 1: from work, Esther had to improvise. I would pretend to
Speaker 1: go to school. And then we had a part of
Speaker 1: our basement that was unfinished, and I had a little TV,
Speaker 1: a little black and white TV that I had bought
Speaker 1: at a garage sale, and I put that back there
Speaker 1: and I spent that whole week down there. At the time,
Speaker 1: Esther felt something was off, but she just didn't know
Speaker 1: what it was. She knew that she needed a loane
Speaker 1: time to recharge. She described it to me kind of
Speaker 1: like hibernation. It was only years later that Esther would
Speaker 1: learn she had a social anxiety disorder. Eventually, Esther and
Speaker 1: her mom decided to move to Seattle. Esther continued to
Speaker 1: struggle there, and she no longer had the support of
Speaker 1: the small town community that she and her family had known.
Speaker 1: She dropped out of high school in her junior year.
Speaker 1: Her mom insisted that she get a job, so she
Speaker 1: started working at a nursing home. Esther did have a
Speaker 1: bunch of older siblings, but at this point, the only
Speaker 1: real constant in her life was her mom. My mom
Speaker 1: was really the only person I was really close to.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had friends, but it's very difficult when
Speaker 1: you have undiagnosed, untreated social anxiety to be friendly with someone, right.
Speaker 1: You just felt uncomfortable around everyone. And my mom was
Speaker 1: really the only person who knew I had these issues,
Speaker 1: and so she kind of managed life for me. But
Speaker 1: then when she was seventeen years old, her mom's cancer
Speaker 1: came back. Esther watched her mom struggle for the next
Speaker 1: few years, and by the time she was twenty, her
Speaker 1: mom had died. I was incredibly depressed. I've just lost
Speaker 1: my mom. I have no contact with really anybody who's
Speaker 1: able willing to help, you know, thinking about killing myself
Speaker 1: all the time. I did not care about anything at
Speaker 1: that point. I didn't care about myself. I didn't care
Speaker 1: about anybody else. I just wanted to die so I
Speaker 1: could see my mom. So really, there was no There
Speaker 1: was definitely no future thought. It's just survival. She couldn't
Speaker 1: hold down a steady job, her car was repossessed. She
Speaker 1: didn't have a reliable place to live, so she slept
Speaker 1: on the floor at a friend's place for a bit.
Speaker 1: It was during this time that she did something pretty desperate.
Speaker 1: I was working for like maybe a week two I
Speaker 1: don't think it was two weeks, so I didn't I
Speaker 1: was not able to work for two weeks, so maybe
Speaker 1: like i'd been there for four or five days, and
Speaker 1: then I stole my coworker's purse. She had it sitting
Speaker 1: on like the nurses station. The purse had a bunch
Speaker 1: of credit cards and a driver's license. Then Esther showed
Speaker 1: up at a department store claiming to be that coworker.
Speaker 1: She had added her own photo to the ID. The
Speaker 1: credit card had been reported as stolen, so when Esther
Speaker 1: tried to use it, she got arrested. Esther pled to
Speaker 1: the charges. She had to pay a fine, and she
Speaker 1: got off with a year of probation and three days
Speaker 1: in jail. This actually wasn't the first time she'd stolen
Speaker 1: from somebody. In the wake of her mom's death, she
Speaker 1: swiped a check book from her sister Edna and wrote
Speaker 1: some hot checks in her name. Edna also lived in Seattle,
Speaker 1: and Esther saw her from time to time, but they
Speaker 1: had a rocky relationship, and it only got rockier after
Speaker 1: the whole stolen checks incident. As far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: Esther's mom was the lynchpin to absolutely everything, and without her,
Speaker 1: Esther's life just derailed, popped right off the tracks, and
Speaker 1: rattled onward toward the abyss. Esther felt like there was
Speaker 1: nothing left for her in Seattle. I think at that
Speaker 1: point it probably felt like I could run away from
Speaker 1: my problems, right like if I don't if I don't
Speaker 1: think about my mom, and if I'm not living in Seattle,
Speaker 1: then it won't be so painful, and like maybe I
Speaker 1: can get over it. So she just left town, didn't
Speaker 1: really tell anyone where she was going, just kind of vanished,
Speaker 1: bought the cheapest plane ticket she could find, which was
Speaker 1: to Salt Lake City. She found an inexpensive place to
Speaker 1: stay a weekly rental, and she hold up there for
Speaker 1: a while, but she kept getting these messages from her family,
Speaker 1: especially from her sister Edna, who wanted to know where
Speaker 1: are you. Esther says, in her highly anxious state, she
Speaker 1: felt as if she were being stalked. She says. One
Speaker 1: of her other sisters threatened to call the cops on her,
Speaker 1: apparently just to intimidate her. What. Esther wanted space to
Speaker 1: hibernate a bit away from her family, and suddenly this
Speaker 1: didn't really feel like the escape that she had envisioned,
Speaker 1: because she wanted a clean break with her own past,
Speaker 1: a clean break with being Esther Reid. And eventually she
Speaker 1: came up with a solution. She decided to start using
Speaker 1: the name of someone she knew, a girl back in
Speaker 1: Seattle named Natalie Fisher. She knew a decent amount about Natalie.
Speaker 1: Esther says at some point she had access to Natalie's
Speaker 1: wallet and saw her social Security number, and don't forget Esther,
Speaker 1: she had a photographic memory, so she knew some of
Speaker 1: Natalie's vital information, and what she didn't know she figured
Speaker 1: out online. She then obtained a birth certificate in Natalie's
Speaker 1: name and eventually got an ID and then on paper
Speaker 1: at least she was Natalie Fisher. Pretty bold right not
Speaker 1: to mention illegal. What's the logic that's going through your
Speaker 1: brain when you're doing this. I always just viewed it
Speaker 1: as me using a different name. I never thought I
Speaker 1: was her or anything. I mean, I changed my name
Speaker 1: before I left all the time. I hated the name Ester,
Speaker 1: so I was you know, when I was a little girl,
Speaker 1: I wanted to go by Herford, and you know, changed
Speaker 1: my name to Elizabeth or Liz or so it just
Speaker 1: didn't My name didn't make me who I was. I
Speaker 1: never viewed it like that. I just always saw it
Speaker 1: as I get to be me and like she can't
Speaker 1: find me. She's talking about her sister, Edna, who'd been
Speaker 1: trying to get in touch with her. But as I
Speaker 1: see it, it was far more than just Edna. It
Speaker 1: was the co worker who's purse she'd stolen, and the
Speaker 1: high school in Seattle that she'd avoided, like the plague,
Speaker 1: and the hole that she found herself in after she
Speaker 1: lost her mom. With a new name. She put all
Speaker 1: of that in the past. There was no connection to
Speaker 1: it now, no point of reference, not even a set
Speaker 1: of nine digits on a Social Security card. Or at
Speaker 1: least that's what she told herself the past. It had
Speaker 1: been erased, and as Esther put it, I get to
Speaker 1: be me whoever that was. Esther left Seattle in the
Speaker 1: fall of nineteen ninety nine, and she drifted around for
Speaker 1: almost two years. I don't know exactly how she was
Speaker 1: making ends meet. This period in Esther's life is kind
Speaker 1: of a black hole. I only have her version of events.
Speaker 1: She says she worked odd jobs, short term gigs that
Speaker 1: she found on Craigslist, and that she eked out a
Speaker 1: modest existence as Natalie Fisher. The way she described it
Speaker 1: seems like she was adrift, no purpose, no plan other
Speaker 1: than being who she once was. But when she looked
Speaker 1: back on her past, it wasn't all bad. There was
Speaker 1: something she felt shed done well. Things she felt good about.
Speaker 1: And one of them was, if you can believe it,
Speaker 1: being on a high school debate team. Now it might
Speaker 1: be thinking, could someone who has paralyzing social anxiety really
Speaker 1: thrive on a debate team, And the answer it turns
Speaker 1: out as yes, those were my people. I just felt
Speaker 1: very comfortable among those individuals. Plus they were all like
Speaker 1: little brainiac nerds like me, So it wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 1: All of my quirkiness or idiosyncrasies that I hadn't been appropriate,
Speaker 1: least socialized when I was a kid, those things didn't
Speaker 1: stand out and make me a weirdo among that crowd.
Speaker 1: Back in high school, when she wasn't playing hooky, she
Speaker 1: actually participated in debate tournaments and she loved it. Also,
Speaker 1: for someone with social anxiety, debate was the opposite of
Speaker 1: a cocktail party, that's my take. Anyhow, there was a
Speaker 1: strict format that dictated when things would happen, opening statements, rebuttals,
Speaker 1: closing remarks. Everything was so clear. Plus it was also
Speaker 1: intellectually engaging. She says that it overrode her social anxiety.
Speaker 1: For Esther, the world of debate tournaments was a world
Speaker 1: that made sense, and so she decided to go to
Speaker 1: debate camp, the Arizona Debate Institute. She arrived at the
Speaker 1: Twin Palms Hotel in Tempe, pink exterior, tiny balconies, obligatory
Speaker 1: palm trees, and a lobby packed with lots of precocious
Speaker 1: college students getting ready to debate. You take one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty college students from all across the country that
Speaker 1: have not generally met before in lock. I'm in a
Speaker 1: hotel for two weeks and high pressure situations. It's exactly
Speaker 1: what you think be like. That's John Brushky, the organizer
Speaker 1: of the debate camp. It would really get up and
Speaker 1: go to the lectures because they wanted to be at
Speaker 1: the lectures. Then they would work from like noon till midnight,
Speaker 1: and they neither decided they're going to pull an all
Speaker 1: night or to finish their research or you know, socialize.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a Nerds version of spring Break. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: a Revenge of the Nerds Tempe, Arizona edition. So this
Speaker 1: is the scene that Estra walked into posing as Natalie.
Speaker 1: John still remembers when he first met her. So her
Speaker 1: narrative was, I make my money playing competitive chess and
Speaker 1: I kind of live a nomadic life, right, so we
Speaker 1: were trying to get what's your home address? That was
Speaker 1: a question we couldn't get out of her registration. John
Speaker 1: remembers that this nomadic young woman, she was ambitious. She
Speaker 1: told him that she wanted to win a national debate championship,
Speaker 1: you know, when she wasn't playing pro chess. So a
Speaker 1: bit odd perhaps, but hey, this was Revenge of the
Speaker 1: Nerds Tempe edition. Esther's story. It wasn't all made up.
Speaker 1: She actually did spend many of her days playing chess online.
Speaker 1: Chess is an escape for me. I would play it
Speaker 1: for hours and people would be like, why are you
Speaker 1: doing that? So she came up with an answer to
Speaker 1: that question, a lie that became part of her fictional biography.
Speaker 1: She told people she was a professional chess player, which
Speaker 1: was a good lie, of course, because Esther knew a
Speaker 1: lot about chess. She was slowly crafting her own semi
Speaker 1: fictional narrative, and she was learning when lying stick to
Speaker 1: the truth right, because as she toyed with the details,
Speaker 1: adjusting them here and there, she learned the dangers of
Speaker 1: straying too far from the truth. Like one time some
Speaker 1: guy chatted her up and she improvised a bit too much,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I'm going to a tennis
Speaker 1: tournament because oh, you're a teenis plan? I was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a tesselayer. This was a problem because Esther didn't
Speaker 1: actually know that much about tennis, and also once Ali
Speaker 1: was out, it spread. I mean because then once you
Speaker 1: tell people, then they're like, oh, you know what she does?
Speaker 1: She pleased tenant and I'm like, gosh, shit, you know,
Speaker 1: like it just it would eventually get me in trouvel
Speaker 1: So she quickly realized better to stick with the chess story,
Speaker 1: and it worked well. At the debate camp, she spun
Speaker 1: her tail, she made some friends, and she even won
Speaker 1: an award for her performance as a debater. Afterwards, she
Speaker 1: started talking to John Brushki, the debate coach, about attending college.
Speaker 1: In addition to running the debate camp, John was a
Speaker 1: professor at California State University Fullerton. He encouraged her to
Speaker 1: apply there. For Esther, it was a moment of hope
Speaker 1: and possibility. For two years, she had felt lost, but
Speaker 1: suddenly her life seemed to have traction. Esther soon started
Speaker 1: to make plans to move to California and take classes
Speaker 1: at cal State Fullerton. She stayed in touch with her
Speaker 1: friends that she'd made in Tempe, her people, as she
Speaker 1: called them. At one point she met up with them
Speaker 1: at a debate tournament in Washington, d c. At Catholic University.
Speaker 1: And this is where she met Ian Fleischman. You may
Speaker 1: remember him. He was the handsome young cadet from West
Speaker 1: Point who became her boyfriend. Esther was struck almost right
Speaker 1: away by his thoughtfulness. He's a very good listener. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll tell people something and like they'll kind of listen,
Speaker 1: but really they're only waiting for their moment to interject.
Speaker 1: And Ian's not like that at always very genuine and
Speaker 1: this feeling, this sense that she had about him, it
Speaker 1: only grew with time. Like Ian's the type of guy
Speaker 1: that would change your oil and fill up your gas
Speaker 1: tank and check to make sure your tires, you know,
Speaker 1: aren't bald or you know. He's just very caretaking. Caretaking
Speaker 1: that's something that she hadn't had much of since her
Speaker 1: mom died, and esther she felt cared for by Ian's
Speaker 1: family as well. She visited the Fleishman's back in Michigan
Speaker 1: on a few occasions. They were just so kind and
Speaker 1: like I made cinnamon rolls one morning for everybody, and
Speaker 1: super lovely, like I don't know if it's coming across
Speaker 1: by absolutely adored their entire family. Esther says Ian's mom,
Speaker 1: Shirley Fleishman, was an especially lovely person, kind and nurturing,
Speaker 1: just like Ian. Shirley was also a university professor, and
Speaker 1: when she heard about Esther's dreams of going to college,
Speaker 1: she encouraged her. Esther says she was actually staying at
Speaker 1: the Fleishman's house the night before she took the acts.
Speaker 1: That night, she was kind of freaking out when Shirley
Speaker 1: gave her a pep talk. She said, you know, you've
Speaker 1: got to calm down. You're going to do great tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't think so. And then
Speaker 1: she's like, any school is going to be lucky to
Speaker 1: have you, And I just remember looking at her and
Speaker 1: like nobody had ever said anything like that to me.
Speaker 1: Ian's father, Fred Fleischmann, was a different story. Esther says
Speaker 1: that Fred was suspicious of her from the beginning, that
Speaker 1: it didn't seem to believe her whole story about being
Speaker 1: a professional chess player, and that at one point he
Speaker 1: searched her car and went through her possessions. It was
Speaker 1: almost like Ian's parents saw the two different sides of
Speaker 1: Esther read One of them looked at Esther and saw
Speaker 1: the best in her, all the promise of what she
Speaker 1: could be, while the other saw only the worst, the
Speaker 1: lies and the trouble that she would bring. And in
Speaker 1: some ways they were both right. Esther was intent on
Speaker 1: going to college, but she foresaw problems. She knew eventually
Speaker 1: she'd need to provide a social Security number and that
Speaker 1: might tip off the real Natalie Fisher that someone was
Speaker 1: using her identity. And then I came up with the
Speaker 1: brilliant idea of I need a social Security number that
Speaker 1: nobody's using. And at that point I knew you couldn't
Speaker 1: actually use the social security number of somebody who was
Speaker 1: declared dead. So I came up with the idea, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe all I could use the number of somebody who's missing.
Speaker 1: I came up with lots of dumb ideas, but this
Speaker 1: one is the one that I settled on. She searched
Speaker 1: missing persons websites for a while until she found a
Speaker 1: post that looked promising. It was for a woman named
Speaker 1: Natalie Bowman. Esther says she found all kinds of information
Speaker 1: about Natalie online. Her mom had posted a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff. You know. She was like, please help me
Speaker 1: find my daughter. And I understand that, right if you
Speaker 1: are a desperate mom trying to find your daughter, you're
Speaker 1: putting up report cards, you're putting up like pictures with
Speaker 1: her best friend, and you know, whatever you can find.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, I bet that's a social
Speaker 1: Security number. To Esther, she seemed like a good candidate.
Speaker 1: And then there was the name Natalie. It was convenient.
Speaker 1: It would be an easy switch from Natalie Fisher to
Speaker 1: Natalie Bowman, and so Esther she just went for it.
Speaker 1: She would now tell people that her name was Natalie Bowman.
Speaker 1: Esther says there were moments when she saw how crazy
Speaker 1: this all was. There were times when I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you can just go back and use your
Speaker 1: own name and stop doing all of this stuff, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you could just go to a new school, apply as
Speaker 1: you and stop this because you're not in any trouble.
Speaker 1: But at this point she was so deep into this deception.
Speaker 1: She was a professional chess player, though some had heard
Speaker 1: it was tennis. She had to change her name to
Speaker 1: escape a maniacal stepfather, though she told one boyfriend she
Speaker 1: was in the witness protection program. Her last name was
Speaker 1: Fisher or was it Bowman or was it Henson? She
Speaker 1: was from Montana or was it South Carolina. He was
Speaker 1: a lot to keep track of all of these lies
Speaker 1: and half truths. The fact and the fiction were hopelessly intertwined,
Speaker 1: and there seemed to be no straightening it all out.
Speaker 1: Using her new alias, Natalie Bowman, she took classes at
Speaker 1: cal State Fullerton. She joined the debate team, made some friends,
Speaker 1: but if she felt any sense of relief, it didn't
Speaker 1: last long, because pretty soon her alias began to fall apart.
Speaker 1: Esther learned that someone else was earning money and accruing
Speaker 1: Social Security benefits under Natalie Bowman's name. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: the real Natalie Bowman, or maybe it was another identity thief.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter. Point was this alias? It was no
Speaker 1: longer safe to use. So what did Esther do? She
Speaker 1: went back to the internet looking for yet another missing girl,
Speaker 1: someone who was still listed as missing, but who in
Speaker 1: all likelihood was deceased. Like, how much time did you
Speaker 1: spend looking for her? Oh? My gosh, I mean it
Speaker 1: took months to find somebody. I mean that's the way
Speaker 1: it probably was, six or seven months. Why did it
Speaker 1: take so long? Well, like, I mean, a lot of
Speaker 1: different pieces have to be in place, right, Like I
Speaker 1: didn't they needed to be about my age. I didn't
Speaker 1: want it to be a recent disappearance because I kind
Speaker 1: of wanted like it to be calm so I could
Speaker 1: live in peace. Then one day she was browsing a
Speaker 1: missing person's website and she found a post for Brooke
Speaker 1: Henson from Traveler's Rest, South Carolina. When you found her,
Speaker 1: were you pretty certain right away? Or did you kind
Speaker 1: of like wrestle with it for a bit? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: I wrestled with it forever. I mean, you're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to do something that's impossible. Esther and
Speaker 1: I talked about this a lot, how she could justify
Speaker 1: stealing these identities, and how she rationalized lying to so
Speaker 1: many people, especially to people like Ian and his family,
Speaker 1: people she cared about and who cared about her. She
Speaker 1: explained that all of this really came from feeling like
Speaker 1: her family was stalking her to the point that it
Speaker 1: felt like emotional abuse. But she didn't think that anyone
Speaker 1: would really take that seriously. So she made up stuff
Speaker 1: that she did think people would take seriously, like the
Speaker 1: violent stepfather's story. Basically, Esther felt that these lies were
Speaker 1: the only way she would ever be understood. When I
Speaker 1: think about all of this, I feel for her. I mean,
Speaker 1: what a lonely place to be. But I also can
Speaker 1: help but think about the consequences, about all the damage
Speaker 1: that these lies would inevitably cause. Esther eventually left cal
Speaker 1: State Fullerton and moved east. First, she went to Boston,
Speaker 1: where she even took a class at Harvard Extension School.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like the IVY Leagues on training wheels. Eventually,
Speaker 1: she set her sights on Columbia University and New York City.
Speaker 1: This move also presented her with one more chance to
Speaker 1: come clean, to dispense with all the aliases and lies,
Speaker 1: and just apply as herself. So why didn't she? I
Speaker 1: asked myself that all the time. I just like, there's
Speaker 1: absolutely no reason I could not have applied to Columbia
Speaker 1: as ester Reid. Because her true objective, she says, was
Speaker 1: simply to reinvent herself. Like I have been just trying
Speaker 1: to start over and like go to school and like
Speaker 1: get life back on track, and so why Natalie Fisher,
Speaker 1: why Natalie Bowman, Why why? But really all those questions
Speaker 1: or why not Esther read? But at this point she
Speaker 1: hadn't been Esther read in name or otherwise in years.
Speaker 1: In that time, she had criss crossed the country, had
Speaker 1: a few different boyfriends, gone to college or started to anyhow,
Speaker 1: And by the spring of two thousand and six, Esther
Speaker 1: was really settling into her identity as Brooke Henson. She
Speaker 1: was in her second year at Columbia. She had taken
Speaker 1: out some student loans in Brooke's name to help pay
Speaker 1: for school. She had obtained a copy of Brooke's birth
Speaker 1: certificate and with that she had applied to get a
Speaker 1: US passport in Brooks name. And by the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a federal crime. She had her challenges at Columbia.
Speaker 1: Sometimes her social anxiety was so bad she just hole
Speaker 1: up inside her room. But then she started seeing a
Speaker 1: mental health professional for the first time and it really helped.
Speaker 1: Things didn't work out with Ian, she was in a
Speaker 1: new relationship. She says, she had support of friends who
Speaker 1: genuinely cared about her. She had an apartment to dogs,
Speaker 1: and at that moment happily ever after seemed well possible.
Speaker 1: You may be thinking, really she thought this was going
Speaker 1: to work, And the short answer is yeah. It never
Speaker 1: occurred to me, quite frankly, that I would get caught
Speaker 1: or could get caught, or that anyone would get hurt.
Speaker 1: I mean, I figured, if I lived as Brooke for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life, nothing would ever happen. And
Speaker 1: that's when the phone rang, with the New York City
Speaker 1: Police Department on the other end, asking if she really
Speaker 1: was Brooke Henson, and all those other probing questions, and
Speaker 1: if she'd take the DNA test. And then finally that
Speaker 1: moment on the street with the cops in her doorstep
Speaker 1: and the U haul idling by the curb, then that
Speaker 1: narrow window of opportunity when the at least seemed to
Speaker 1: walk away for a moment, leaving her just enough time
Speaker 1: to grab her bags and her two dogs and run
Speaker 1: for it. Initially, she did what all fugitives do when
Speaker 1: they're fleeing New York. She went south to Jersey, and
Speaker 1: from there, once again she vanished. The funny thing about
Speaker 1: wanting to vanish is it only really works. Sometimes occasionally
Speaker 1: someone just disappears and is forgotten. But other times the
Speaker 1: strategy backfires big time because the act of vanishing is
Speaker 1: so mysterious and creepy that it actually calls attention to itself.
Speaker 1: Truth is, we love vanishing stories of a certain type,
Speaker 1: especially if they're about celebrities or people who vanish in
Speaker 1: a dramatic fashion. Just think Amelia Earhart, dB Cooper, Jimmy Hoffa,
Speaker 1: even Aaron Burr's daughter, Theodosha Burr, who disappeared in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirteen Google her people are still talking about where she went.
Speaker 1: Point is you vanish or you run for it? Well,
Speaker 1: that's catnip for law enforcement like the Secret Service or
Speaker 1: the US Marshals or even the Travelers RESTPD. It's also
Speaker 1: catnip for the media because it asks the question, screams
Speaker 1: it really, why are you running? And what don't we
Speaker 1: know about you? If I hadn't run, I don't think
Speaker 1: any of this would have happened next time on deep Cover.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of people stealing names,
Speaker 1: but something dealing with espionage spies that was a fascinating,
Speaker 1: fascinating development and opened my eyes. Deep Cover is produced
Speaker 1: by Amy Gaines and Jacob Smith. It's edited by Karen
Speaker 1: Shakurge mastering by Jake Gorski. Our show art was designed
Speaker 1: by Sean Karney. Original scoring at our theme was composed
Speaker 1: by Luis Gara, fact checking by Arthur Gomfort's Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Nil Lobell, Greta Khne and Jacob Weissberg. I'm Jake
Speaker 1: Calper