Speaker 1: Pushkin just a quick heads up before we start. This
Speaker 1: episode contains a brief reference to suicide. Previously on Deep Cover,
Speaker 1: he talked about the potential for being a Russian spy
Speaker 1: going to various universities under cover. It had so many
Speaker 1: interesting elements. The more people that are looking for your suspect,
Speaker 1: the better chance you have of finding them. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing my picture and it's saying Esther Reid, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh shit, like literally, oh shit, this isn't
Speaker 1: going to go away. By the end of two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, Esther Reid had been on the run for
Speaker 1: almost a year and a half. During that time, she
Speaker 1: was being chased by a number of people, including the
Speaker 1: Secret Service, the police down in South Carolina, and a
Speaker 1: private investigator with a TV crew, and so far all
Speaker 1: of them had pretty much struck out, and this left
Speaker 1: the federal prosecute around the case, a guy named Walt
Speaker 1: Wilkins feeling rather well frustrated. I mean, we were chasing
Speaker 1: her around the country, and you know, we would look
Speaker 1: at each other and say, how how are we not
Speaker 1: finding this young girl who stole some identities? But good grief, guys,
Speaker 1: we're the federal government here. We gotta be able to
Speaker 1: do that. By this point, this young girl was now
Speaker 1: twenty nine by the way, and elusive as she was,
Speaker 1: Walt Wilkins still felt confident that she could be found.
Speaker 1: When you have the federal government looking for you, you
Speaker 1: make a mistake somewhere along the way, you make just
Speaker 1: enough mistakes where they're going to be able to find you.
Speaker 1: What the authorities really needed was a bounty hunter. Remember
Speaker 1: Boba Fett from Star Wars Badass too, with the green
Speaker 1: body armor and the cool jetpack. That's what the FEDS needed.
Speaker 1: And there actually is an agency that you call in
Speaker 1: situations like this, the United States Marshals Service. They specialize
Speaker 1: in tracking down fugitives. So that's who the FEDS called in,
Speaker 1: and the US Marshall assigned to the case was a
Speaker 1: guy named John Bridge, Boba fed as it were. And look,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of John's in this story, so
Speaker 1: I'm just going to call him by his nickname Bridge.
Speaker 1: Bridge looks more like a wizard than a lawman, has
Speaker 1: his huge beard, really soft spoken guy, no jetpack, but
Speaker 1: he does ride a motorcycle. How confident did you feel
Speaker 1: that you were going to find her? How can you say?
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. One hundred percent on every investigation at work.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean I find him every time, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: was one hundred percent. When Bridge started on the case,
Speaker 1: his first goal was to figure out who, if anyone,
Speaker 1: she was still in contact with, Like, did she have
Speaker 1: a lifeline? You know, being a fugitive stressful, You're always
Speaker 1: looking over your shoulder, You're always wondering this is today
Speaker 1: of the day. On the one hand, it makes perfect
Speaker 1: sense to want a lifeline, but it's also a liability
Speaker 1: because whoever that lifeline is, whether it's a sister or
Speaker 1: a father or an old flame, that person can also
Speaker 1: betray you, either deliberately or accidentally. So Bridge says, in
Speaker 1: order to stay truly hidden, you have to cut everyone off.
Speaker 1: That's a hard thing to do, you know. When you
Speaker 1: it's easy to say, it's very easy to say I
Speaker 1: can cut everyone off, It's not easy to do. So
Speaker 1: the question was did esther reed have a lifeline? Bridge
Speaker 1: hope that the answer was yes, and that he might
Speaker 1: find them. So now all hopes were pinned on John,
Speaker 1: the federal government's very own Boba Fette, the last best hope,
Speaker 1: though there actually was yet another person looking for Esther
Speaker 1: Reid arguably the person who knew her better and longer
Speaker 1: than anyone else, and who had the best insight into
Speaker 1: why Esther was running in the first place. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you both their stories, because they
Speaker 1: were both looking for Esther Reid and only one of
Speaker 1: them would find her. I'm Jake Halbern and this is
Speaker 1: Deep Cover, Season three, Never Seen Again, Episode five, The Searchers.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna ask you. I'm just gonna ask you
Speaker 1: to start by introducing yourself and explaining how you're related
Speaker 1: to Esther. My name is Edna, and I am one
Speaker 1: of many older sisters. Edna is the other person searching
Speaker 1: for Esther in this story. In the interest of privacy,
Speaker 1: I'm only going to use first names when talking about
Speaker 1: Esther's siblings. Technically, Edna is Esther's half sister. They had
Speaker 1: the same mom, but different dads. Edna is older by
Speaker 1: quite a bit. She was almost twenty when Esther was born.
Speaker 1: So many ways, Edna was more like a second mom
Speaker 1: than a sibling. As far as I can tell, Edna
Speaker 1: was devoted not just to Esther, but to all of
Speaker 1: her siblings. There were a lot of them too. Nine
Speaker 1: in total, Edna says she was the hub, the connector
Speaker 1: in the family. I like to know what's going on,
Speaker 1: solve the issue. I'm a fixer. I want to control
Speaker 1: my environment and I don't like chaos, so I tend
Speaker 1: to make a plan and do it. That was her credo.
Speaker 1: No chaos, no drama, keep it neat. I mean, everybody
Speaker 1: in my family knows. When you put the mayonnaise back
Speaker 1: in my fridge, it always goes in the door. At
Speaker 1: this fight, don't stick it anywhere else because I want
Speaker 1: it where I want it. I like things to be
Speaker 1: there when I go get them. I want to know
Speaker 1: where they are. She wants to know where the mayo is.
Speaker 1: So you can only imagine how distraught she was when
Speaker 1: Esther vanished, because she'd watched Esther grow up and even
Speaker 1: helped raise her in some ways. In the summers when
Speaker 1: they were kids, Esther and her brother EJ would stay
Speaker 1: with Edna and Seattle like a sleepaway camp in the
Speaker 1: big city. We had so much fun because they were
Speaker 1: Montanic kids that never saw or experienced anything. Edna remembers
Speaker 1: one visit in particular, when Esther was probably about eight
Speaker 1: years old. They all took a ferry ride, visited the
Speaker 1: space needle had a ball. Even the local department store
Speaker 1: was a big hit. The escalator was fascinating to them,
Speaker 1: so if we were bored, I just walked over and
Speaker 1: to bid the ESK latter up and down, because they
Speaker 1: thought that was cool. Esther also became close with Edna's husband, Randy.
Speaker 1: He was kind of like a second father. Edna says.
Speaker 1: He was a gentle giant. Randy and Esther played all
Speaker 1: kinds of board games together. Esther would talk trash and
Speaker 1: he would tell her playfully, hey, don't let your alligator
Speaker 1: mouth get your teddy bear ass in trouble. He was
Speaker 1: that kind of guy, and Esther loved him. When Esther
Speaker 1: went missing, she was twenty one years old, so not
Speaker 1: a kid anymore, but still, her disappearance turned to Edna's
Speaker 1: world upside down. And we'll get into all that, but
Speaker 1: before we do, I want to mention something. When I
Speaker 1: spoke with Esther, she told me that she was running
Speaker 1: in large part to get away from Edna, to escape
Speaker 1: her older sister. And it got me wondering what exactly
Speaker 1: happened between these two siblings, because they're falling out. Whatever
Speaker 1: caused It seemed to have so many implications about why
Speaker 1: Esther was running and how she might be found. As
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, the relationship between the two
Speaker 1: sisters started to sour when Esther became a teenager. As
Speaker 1: you may recall, this was a rough period for Esther.
Speaker 1: Her parents had separated, She was suffering from severe social anxiety.
Speaker 1: She refused to go to school. Sometimes she hid in
Speaker 1: the basement of her house instead. Edna watched all of
Speaker 1: this with concern. I saw her pull away and pull
Speaker 1: into herself more. The one person that Esther remained close
Speaker 1: to was her mother. She was truly Esther's pillar. Esther
Speaker 1: talked to me about this a lot, how her mom
Speaker 1: was the only person who really tried to understand what
Speaker 1: she was going through and who helped her cope. But
Speaker 1: to Edna, with her cut and dry, no nonsense demeanor,
Speaker 1: this all looked a bit different. They were very close.
Speaker 1: But my mom babied her a lot. And I know
Speaker 1: I'm an older sibling thing this about a younger sibling,
Speaker 1: and we all say that, but she really did. In
Speaker 1: many many ways. Esther was a very little girl, even
Speaker 1: at eighteen. That bluntness is kind of Edna's trademark. I
Speaker 1: talked about this with their brother EJ. He was close
Speaker 1: with both of his sisters and witnessed their dynamic. I
Speaker 1: think Edna kind of ran over Ester. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's intentional or just when. Like when a horse
Speaker 1: walks by and knocks you over. It definitely hurts you,
Speaker 1: but did the horse means to do it? And I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of how Edna is. She's just a
Speaker 1: force of nature and she doesn't intentionally hurt people, but
Speaker 1: quite often they are damaged in her wake. The tensions
Speaker 1: between Esther and Edna really came to a head around
Speaker 1: the time her mom's cancer came back. They were all
Speaker 1: living in Seattle at the time. Edna, being the family fixer,
Speaker 1: jumped right in. She became her mom's caregiver twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven. It was exhausting, and it went on for years.
Speaker 1: As their mom's health worsened. She spoke handedly with Edna
Speaker 1: about matters that were emotional but also practical, like what
Speaker 1: would happen after she was gone. Apparently their mom was
Speaker 1: very concerned about Esther as thigs got worse. I remember
Speaker 1: my mom telling me that you need to watch her.
Speaker 1: You need to take care of her. She's going to
Speaker 1: need to be taken care of after I die. That
Speaker 1: was always her verbages, you need to take care of
Speaker 1: her and watch out for her because she's going to
Speaker 1: have a hard time. What did you say to your
Speaker 1: mom in response, I mean, she's part of my family.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm going to watch out for her. That's
Speaker 1: what we do. You know, our whole family does that
Speaker 1: with each other. You know, that's what family does. At
Speaker 1: one point, Edna had to go away for a quick trip,
Speaker 1: and she asked esther to stand in for her, to
Speaker 1: stay at the house and to look after their mom.
Speaker 1: Esther told me about this. My mom was having a
Speaker 1: really bad time with the chemo. It was just awful.
Speaker 1: And then I remember she goes, I can't do this,
Speaker 1: and I remember being like, what do you mean you
Speaker 1: can't do Like what are you talking about? And then
Speaker 1: I remember she said, even for you, I can't do this.
Speaker 1: And then I mean, I think, rationally I knew that
Speaker 1: that meant that she had chosen to just to die.
Speaker 1: When their mom finally passed, it hit the two sisters
Speaker 1: very differently. Ej their brother, saw it this way. Edna
Speaker 1: was taking care of mom. So when mom died, then
Speaker 1: suddenly n they got her life back. But my mom
Speaker 1: died for Esther, I think Mom was just the pillar
Speaker 1: of Esther's life, and when she was gone, it was
Speaker 1: difficult to find her way. Afterwards, Edna invited Esther to
Speaker 1: move in, but it didn't go well. They fought about
Speaker 1: matters large and small, like I don't need to put
Speaker 1: the silverware in the silverware drawer the white ware. I
Speaker 1: don't need to hang the dish towel up exactly how
Speaker 1: you're going to hang it up. I don't need to
Speaker 1: stack the plates exactly how you're going to stack them.
Speaker 1: And I know that maybe I put the bread on
Speaker 1: the left side instead of the right side. Like She's
Speaker 1: just a very very critical human being and after a while,
Speaker 1: like you just are like can you just get off me?
Speaker 1: This may sound like ordinary stuff, the sort of fight
Speaker 1: that happens when any house guests stays too long, but
Speaker 1: for Esther, it was darker than that. Because of her
Speaker 1: social anxiety, Esther says she needed space, time to recharge,
Speaker 1: which Edna wouldn't give her. And of course, she had
Speaker 1: just lost her mom, who was her refuge. And even
Speaker 1: though Edna cared for her. She was a Rickley substitute.
Speaker 1: So Esther moved out and then she was truly alone.
Speaker 1: Esther says from here she went into a tailspin. Couldn't
Speaker 1: hold down a job. She says, she was homeless, crashing
Speaker 1: with friends or wherever she could. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: incredibly depressed. I've just lost my mom. I have no
Speaker 1: contact with really anybody who's able willing to help, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking about killing myself all the time. Like at that point,
Speaker 1: it's just survival, like just get through the day. Several
Speaker 1: months passed and Edna hadn't heard much from her sister.
Speaker 1: Then one day she got a call from the police.
Speaker 1: They told her they just arrested a thief who'd stolen
Speaker 1: a purse and they'd found one of Edna's blank checks
Speaker 1: on her. The cops to know if Edna knew the culprit.
Speaker 1: So nice of all, there is a person, well do
Speaker 1: you know a person called Esther read and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a nice sister. This came as a shock and
Speaker 1: it also cleared up something for Edna. You see, a
Speaker 1: while back, someone had stolen Edna's check book and had
Speaker 1: written some hot checks in her name, but Edna never
Speaker 1: figured out who that was. She never suspected that her
Speaker 1: own sister was to blame, but now she learned that
Speaker 1: after Esther moved out, she'd actually broken into her house
Speaker 1: through a window and grabbed her check book. At this point,
Speaker 1: Esther had gotten herself in a real pickle. The police
Speaker 1: had busted her for stealing a purse from her coworker.
Speaker 1: The coworker was pressing charges, so Esther had to appear
Speaker 1: before judge. On the day of the hearing, Edna down
Speaker 1: to the courthouse too, just so she could see her
Speaker 1: sister because it had been months since I had last spoken.
Speaker 1: At the hearing, Esther caught a break. The judge gave
Speaker 1: her probation and three days in jail. Afterwards, Edna tracked
Speaker 1: down Esther in the parking lot and confronted her because
Speaker 1: even though she wasn't pressing charges, she still had beef
Speaker 1: with her sister. Edna says, in the heat of the moment,
Speaker 1: she was very upset. I don't feel anger. I feel betrayal.
Speaker 1: And that's the hardest thing I think is the feeling
Speaker 1: of someone you love and loves you back, but do
Speaker 1: that to you. You don't do that to people you love,
Speaker 1: you just don't. Edna confronted her about the stolen checks,
Speaker 1: and her only response was, well, I didn't think it
Speaker 1: would affect who excained. The bank would take care of it,
Speaker 1: and it's like, so that makes it okay. I remember
Speaker 1: her saying, you're so lucky I didn't testify against you.
Speaker 1: She said, I wanted to say so many things up there.
Speaker 1: You're not sorry for anything, and she was just like
Speaker 1: going off on me. Edna's whole thing was tough love,
Speaker 1: and she genuinely wanted to fix things, put the mayo
Speaker 1: back where it belonged, get Esther's life back into shape.
Speaker 1: She kept calling and emailing Esther. Edna told me she
Speaker 1: wasn't very soft and compassionate. She felt like her little
Speaker 1: sister needed to get her shit together and she wanted
Speaker 1: to help. But to Esther, this didn't feel like help
Speaker 1: at all. It felt more like harassment and judgment, which
Speaker 1: she didn't want, which she was desperate to get away from.
Speaker 1: In fact, the one person who might have fixed all
Speaker 1: of this was their mother, but she was gone, and
Speaker 1: this seemed to underscore the tragedy of it all, because
Speaker 1: there was no one left to keep the peace between
Speaker 1: the two sisters or to help Esther get back on
Speaker 1: her feet. After this fight in the parking lot, Esther
Speaker 1: took off. She did not want to be accountable to
Speaker 1: me for what she did, so in a way, me
Speaker 1: confronting her, I feel kind of I don't know if
Speaker 1: it made her run away, but she didn't want to
Speaker 1: face it. Weeks passed, than months, then years, and Esther
Speaker 1: never returned. She just took off. I mean it just
Speaker 1: and she was totally gone. All the while, Edna recalled
Speaker 1: what her mom had asked of her before she died.
Speaker 1: She was very concerned of what would happen to Esther
Speaker 1: when she was gone. Of course, I felt like I
Speaker 1: let my mom down because I didn't take the enough
Speaker 1: care of Esther and she took off. Edna tried to
Speaker 1: find her. She eventually filed a missing person's report with
Speaker 1: the police. At one point, the authorities even found a
Speaker 1: body that they thought might be her. They did a
Speaker 1: DNA test, it wasn't Esther, and so the mystery lingered.
Speaker 1: At family gatherings, everyone would wonder about her. You get
Speaker 1: together and everybody's there, but she's missing, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's like we're not complete she was just always missed.
Speaker 1: Because that's the thing about Edna. She was gruff and forceful,
Speaker 1: the horse that might knock you over, but she did care.
Speaker 1: And the uncertainty of it all ate away at her.
Speaker 1: And it's like, I need to know. I need to
Speaker 1: know if she's dead or alive. I just need to
Speaker 1: know that she's okay or she's gone. I mean, the
Speaker 1: wondering was very hard. And this wondering, this state of
Speaker 1: not knowing, continued for almost seven years until about two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. At that point, the authorities contacted Edna
Speaker 1: and she learned that her sister was in fact alive,
Speaker 1: that she had attended Columbia University posing as Brooke Henson,
Speaker 1: but that she was once again on the run. Edna
Speaker 1: wanted to help the authorities find Esther, and it seemed
Speaker 1: like Edna was, in theory a great resource, but at
Speaker 1: this point she hadn't heard from Esther in years. Esther
Speaker 1: Reid did not appear to have a lifeline. She had
Speaker 1: cut everyone off, but she'd actually done one better than that.
Speaker 1: She'd hit the reset button once again. She'd dialed up
Speaker 1: yet another identity, which meant once more she was a
Speaker 1: few steps ahead of Edna and John Bridge and all
Speaker 1: the other people who were looking for her. John Bridge,
Speaker 1: the US Marshal, the boba Fette of the federal government.
Speaker 1: He'd reached a dead end because esther she did not
Speaker 1: seem to have a lifeline. So Bridge knew he'd need
Speaker 1: another strategy. I did use creativity in this investigation, but
Speaker 1: that kind of goes into the areas that I can't
Speaker 1: really discuss the process. Bridge told me that he couldn't
Speaker 1: get into the exact methods that he used, basically the
Speaker 1: tradecraft that the US marshals used to find people. What
Speaker 1: he could tell me was that he eventually discovered a
Speaker 1: trail of breadcrumbs on the internet. I was able to
Speaker 1: basically put pinpoints on a map. They were like spots
Speaker 1: and time, just very brief glimpses into what she was doing. Basically,
Speaker 1: he figured out when and where she was on a
Speaker 1: few occasions. The only problem was that by the time
Speaker 1: he had this intel, it was a year old, so
Speaker 1: a pretty cold trail, right, But that didn't matter to Bridge.
Speaker 1: What he was looking for were identifiers like what name
Speaker 1: was esther using now, what kind of car was she driving?
Speaker 1: And what state was her driver's license from that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So Bridge took a very close look at
Speaker 1: the places where she'd been at those pin points on
Speaker 1: the map, and a few of them were businesses, So
Speaker 1: he got a list of all the customers at one
Speaker 1: of those businesses on a given day, and then what
Speaker 1: he did was he'd compared that to other businesses that
Speaker 1: she'd been to on other days, and by comparing a
Speaker 1: few different lists, he was able to identify a name
Speaker 1: that popped up on all of them, Jennifer Myers. She
Speaker 1: was using Jenni Meyers, Jennimrie Meyers, Jennifer Meyers. She would
Speaker 1: like construe that different ways when she would give her
Speaker 1: name to people. Using this info, he was able to
Speaker 1: determine that she had gotten a driver's license from Iowa,
Speaker 1: and then he figured out what kind of car she
Speaker 1: was driving, a nineteen ninety three green Subaru Legacy, and
Speaker 1: from there Bridge says he knew it was just a
Speaker 1: matter of time before he found her. He began to
Speaker 1: gather more current pinpoints for his map, and in the
Speaker 1: early winter of two thousand and eight, he came to
Speaker 1: believe that she was occasionally in Tiny Park, Illinois, just
Speaker 1: outside of Chicago. So He called the police department there
Speaker 1: and told him to keep an eye out for that
Speaker 1: green Subaru and its driver, one Jennifer Myers. Where did
Speaker 1: the name Jennifer Myers come from? That? Again, I want
Speaker 1: to be very careful here. Interestingly, there were things that
Speaker 1: Esther wouldn't tell me either tradecraft, I guess you could
Speaker 1: call it. Esther insists that she didn't want to glorify
Speaker 1: what she did or how she did it, or have
Speaker 1: anyone else following her footsteps. So she was pretty tight
Speaker 1: lepped here. But I was able to piece together much
Speaker 1: of what I wanted to know by combing through court records. Basically,
Speaker 1: she obtained a birth certificate in one state and then
Speaker 1: created a fake marriage in another. That way, she cooked
Speaker 1: up a completely fictional identity, and this new identity worked
Speaker 1: for a while until the winter of two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: At the time, she was intently Park, Illinois, just one
Speaker 1: of the many places where she stayed as she moved
Speaker 1: about the Midwest. One day, she was in her car,
Speaker 1: she'd been driving around, had been pulling up to a
Speaker 1: stoplight and there was a cop car and you know
Speaker 1: how like there's two lanes and normally he would pull
Speaker 1: up next to me, flush with me. He kind of
Speaker 1: stopped at the back of my car and I was like,
Speaker 1: is he fucking run in my plate? The answer was yes,
Speaker 1: he was fucking running her plate, and pretty soon us
Speaker 1: Marshall john Bridge knew exactly where she was. About two
Speaker 1: weeks later, Esther was passing back through Tinley Park. She
Speaker 1: was in her car, headed for lunch at Arby's. She
Speaker 1: grabbed her food and then headed back to the motel
Speaker 1: where she was staying. And it was a crazy day
Speaker 1: in town because totally by chance, there had been a
Speaker 1: mass shooting in Tinley Park that very morning. A gunman
Speaker 1: had walked into a local department store and killed five
Speaker 1: women in cold blood. So there are now cops everywhere.
Speaker 1: As Esther drove back to her motel, she saw squad cars,
Speaker 1: but she'd heard about the mass shooting, so she didn't
Speaker 1: think any of these cops were looking for her. So
Speaker 1: she gets back to her motel room and a short
Speaker 1: while later there's a knock on the door. She opens
Speaker 1: up and two cops are standing there. They were like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're just checking IDs, and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're probably looking for the person. The person meaning the
Speaker 1: shooter because she figured there was some kind of door
Speaker 1: to door search going on. Turns out these two cops
Speaker 1: had spotted her Subaru, called it in and learned that
Speaker 1: its owner, Jennifer Myers aka Esther Reid, was a federal fugitive.
Speaker 1: The dots had finally connected well done John Bridge, So
Speaker 1: at this point the two cops at her door were
Speaker 1: hip to what was going on. Esther wasn't She confidently
Speaker 1: hands them her Jennifer Myers ID. The cops take it,
Speaker 1: call it in, and then tell Esther something to the
Speaker 1: effect of this isn't coming up valid. The cops are
Speaker 1: just standing there in the doorway at this point holding
Speaker 1: her ID, and I was like, what, no, no one
Speaker 1: has to even like this is a good one, like
Speaker 1: you should use it. And he runs it again and
Speaker 1: he's like no, ma'am. And then they came in the
Speaker 1: room and I was like, oh, shoot, if they're coming
Speaker 1: in the room, it's like, they don't really have the
Speaker 1: right to come in my room if must not making
Speaker 1: some serious trouble. Then they snap handcuffs on her, lead
Speaker 1: her outside and it was a scene. Esser says. The
Speaker 1: parking lot was full of squad cars, cops everywhere. Some
Speaker 1: were standing by her subaru, others were gathering up her
Speaker 1: two dogs. The cops marched her over to a squad car,
Speaker 1: got her in the back seat, and that's when reality
Speaker 1: began to set in. I was already in the car
Speaker 1: and we were pulling way, and I look over and
Speaker 1: they have my whole car open, and there's many of them,
Speaker 1: and I think, I said, I know what this is about.
Speaker 1: I'm Aster Reid. After all these years and years of
Speaker 1: running and passing herself off as other people, she just
Speaker 1: tells these two cops who she really is, says, I'm
Speaker 1: Aster Reid, and this gets well, pretty much no response
Speaker 1: at all, at least initially. Estra says, these guys they
Speaker 1: didn't want to get into it with her because, as
Speaker 1: she would soon discover this matter, it was way bigger
Speaker 1: than them. So the local cops they took her down
Speaker 1: to the police station, and the mood there was frenetic.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and I can tell everybody is like
Speaker 1: excited and adrenaline is running, and they're all, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a big deal to them, and so I'm kind
Speaker 1: of freaking out. She says. There was a cop going
Speaker 1: through her suitcase, putting her stuff into little plastic evidence bags.
Speaker 1: And finally Esther spoke up and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a book in my suitcase. Can I read
Speaker 1: a book? And there was a sergeant and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fine, you can read a book. Eventually, that sergeant
Speaker 1: he came back and he explained he had to take
Speaker 1: her fingerprints. Esther still remembers him. She says he was
Speaker 1: about fifty, with light brown hair and a kind way
Speaker 1: about him. I tend to wear my feelings on my
Speaker 1: face and he goes, you know, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 1: He's like, I know, it looks like it's a big
Speaker 1: deal and everybody's making a big deal. But he's like,
Speaker 1: I've been working law enforcement a long time and this
Speaker 1: is really not that big of a deal. And he
Speaker 1: kind of gave me the sense that he was he
Speaker 1: was fatherly. It's fat made me feel a lot better.
Speaker 1: Later that night, the cops found a place for Esther
Speaker 1: to sleep, and so they ended up taking me. I
Speaker 1: think it was probably to a drunk tank. I've never
Speaker 1: actually been held in any place like that, but I
Speaker 1: didn't have anything, like there was no toothbrush, no blankets,
Speaker 1: nothing like there was a matin. That's it. So she's
Speaker 1: in the drunk tank where she has a moment to herself,
Speaker 1: a moment to process what's happened, and she's just hoping
Speaker 1: that maybe the kindly middle aged sergeant was right and
Speaker 1: this wouldn't be as big a deal as it seemed.
Speaker 1: But that hope it was or it lived. The next day,
Speaker 1: some Secret Service agents came to get her to take
Speaker 1: her to court. There was a bay that they could
Speaker 1: have pulled the cock cart into and got me in
Speaker 1: the car, and instead they had it outside the bay
Speaker 1: so the media could get their walk of shame picture.
Speaker 1: Was there a big media presence? Oh yeah, they were absolutely.
Speaker 1: It was massively crazy. And they were clearly like strutting
Speaker 1: a little bit and like we got her, and you know,
Speaker 1: there were at least thirty reporters. They were very very
Speaker 1: close to me, like they were right up on me.
Speaker 1: Esther was arraigned in federal court. Then she was taken
Speaker 1: to a federal holding facility. And here a correctional officer
Speaker 1: took her up to a cell. The gentleman who escorted
Speaker 1: me up, he shoved his finger in my face, not
Speaker 1: in like a mean way. But he goes and you,
Speaker 1: young lady, you need to call your family, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: Like you, Clay, don't know what's going on. I haven't
Speaker 1: talked to my family in ten years or something like.
Speaker 1: I literally just got arrested, dude, like, chill out. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Esther and Edna did get on the phone. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to hear her voice, you know, and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're okay. It was kind of ironic, really, this whole
Speaker 1: saga began because Esther was in essence, running from her
Speaker 1: older sister Edna. In the intervening years, she'd taken on
Speaker 1: several identities, attended an Ivy League school, been chased by
Speaker 1: the Secret Service, become infamous, and now the end of
Speaker 1: it all, the first person she really had to answer
Speaker 1: to was her sister. Edna had a lot to tell
Speaker 1: Esther about what had transpired in the past decade. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of things that happened in that ten
Speaker 1: years are probably the ten hardest years of my life,
Speaker 1: from the time my mom died and yeah started with
Speaker 1: her dying, and I lost many people in the next
Speaker 1: five years. Over the phone, Edna relaid the news explained
Speaker 1: that since they'd last spoken. She'd buried two brothers, a
Speaker 1: brother in law, a best friend from high school, and
Speaker 1: her husband, Randy. I think the hardest thing I told
Speaker 1: her in that conversation was that Randy's died. Randy was
Speaker 1: the gentle giant he used to play board games with Esther,
Speaker 1: the one she'd laughed with and talk trash to, the
Speaker 1: one who would tell her jokingly, Hey, don't let your
Speaker 1: alligator mouth get your teddy bear ass in trouble. Randy
Speaker 1: and Esther had always been close. He was one of
Speaker 1: the few people that kind of got me. And so
Speaker 1: even after things were bad with me and Edna, me
Speaker 1: and Randy would still like came play video games or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so Randy was going to add to me and
Speaker 1: she I mean that he had died, and that's when
Speaker 1: I started crying hysterically. As far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: for almost a decade, Esther had managed to forget her
Speaker 1: old life, to shut it out, both the good and
Speaker 1: the bad, though I suspect she hadn't forgotten it completely,
Speaker 1: that it lurked on the periphery of her consciousness like
Speaker 1: a smudge on the horizon. The shadowy tree line in
Speaker 1: the rear view mirror the very thing that kept her moving,
Speaker 1: all the memories of her parents separation and her dying
Speaker 1: mother and her heart edged sister, but her past. But
Speaker 1: that hadn't all been bad. There'd been good things too,
Speaker 1: like her brother e J and Randy, And somehow the
Speaker 1: news of Randy's passing it seemed to underscore that this
Speaker 1: life and this world that she'd left behind hadn't ceased
Speaker 1: to exist, that it quietly played on without her, and
Speaker 1: there were things she'd thinks she could never get back. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the federal authorities moved esther down to South Carolina, after all,
Speaker 1: that's where this investigation really began, and more importantly, where
Speaker 1: the prosecutor was based. So first she flew to Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: then took another flight to Atlanta, and from there she
Speaker 1: had to be taken by car down to South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Her escort for this trip was John Bridge, you know
Speaker 1: Boba Fett. Bridge says he volunteered for this assignment. You know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't normally be doing a transport from Atlanta to
Speaker 1: South Carolina, but I kind of, you know, I was
Speaker 1: kind of hoping to learn, right, I mean, you can
Speaker 1: be a great investigator. You can be a mediocre investigator,
Speaker 1: but you won't become a better investigator unless you learn
Speaker 1: from the investigation. Bridge and Esther both remember this car
Speaker 1: ride and told it was actually very pleasant. We kind
Speaker 1: of small talked a little bit, and then you know,
Speaker 1: it's about a two hour drive. I think there was
Speaker 1: some silence for part of the journey as well. How
Speaker 1: did she compare to the person that you had imagined?
Speaker 1: She just seemed like, you know, somebody's sister, you know,
Speaker 1: just an average person who got caught up in something
Speaker 1: that got bigger than what they ever planned it to be.
Speaker 1: Esther says that at one point Bridge talked a bit
Speaker 1: about his own job. He goes, I'm not normally assigned
Speaker 1: to find people like you. He goes, normally I focus
Speaker 1: on big stuff. And he goes, I just had to
Speaker 1: meet the person that they put me on. And then
Speaker 1: he goes, why couldn't you just use the name? Ester Read?
Speaker 1: What did you say to him when he said why
Speaker 1: couldn't you just use the names? I say the same
Speaker 1: thing always. I asked myself that every day there's no
Speaker 1: good answer. But for many people, including the authorities down
Speaker 1: in South Carolina, this was a question that demanded an answer,
Speaker 1: much remained unresolved. Detective John Campbell still wanted closure. He
Speaker 1: and the other folks and traveler's rest wanted to know what,
Speaker 1: if anything, could be learned about the fate of Brooke
Speaker 1: Henson next time on our season finale, the whole day
Speaker 1: or being sentenced is very surreal. She didn't ask for
Speaker 1: what happened to her. I feel like she deserves justice.
Speaker 1: We close our mind off to anything but the facts,
Speaker 1: and if you close down all those possibilities, you're going
Speaker 1: to miss something. Isn't it possible to danger as though
Speaker 1: that your imagination runs away with things and leads you
Speaker 1: too far from the facts you could Yeah, I lied
Speaker 1: and lied and lied and lied. Deep Cover is produced
Speaker 1: by Amy Gaines and Jacob Smith. It's edited by Karen
Speaker 1: shakergy 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 Gomperts. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Mia Lobell, Greta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Jake
Speaker 1: Calbern Ta