Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake, thanks for listening to deep Cover.
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Speaker 1: the Apple Show page for more information. Previously on deep Cover,
Speaker 1: I remember the Chief asking me, like, how far are
Speaker 1: you going to take this? It's said Chief, until I
Speaker 1: can interer you asked to read, I can't clear this tip.
Speaker 1: She just seemed like just an average person who got
Speaker 1: caught up in something that got bigger than what they
Speaker 1: ever planned it to be. I was already in the
Speaker 1: car and we were pulling way, and I look over
Speaker 1: and they have my whole car open, and there's many
Speaker 1: of them, and I think, I said, I know what
Speaker 1: this is about. I'm ester read. Esther's arrest brought about
Speaker 1: a reckoning. She had to face the cops, the media,
Speaker 1: and her own family. But it wasn't until she got
Speaker 1: down to South Carolina that she had to face the
Speaker 1: possibility of serious prison time. The FEDS were prosecuting her
Speaker 1: for male fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft, and
Speaker 1: she got the sense that the authorities in South Carolina
Speaker 1: had become pretty invested in her case. We all knew
Speaker 1: something was going on with South Carolina, like they were
Speaker 1: a little excited about the case. Because way back when
Speaker 1: this investigation first started, before things got crazy, before all
Speaker 1: the spy theories, before the media frenzy, before the nationwide manhunt. Originally,
Speaker 1: the Copson travelers rest South Carolina were interested in one thing,
Speaker 1: and one thing only, what happened to Brooke. For Esther Reid,
Speaker 1: this whole saga had been about finding a new self.
Speaker 1: For her, the name Brooke Henson was a ticket to
Speaker 1: a new life, but she shared that name with a
Speaker 1: young woman whose disappearance was still felt and for people
Speaker 1: in South Carolina, that same name Brooke Henson conjured heartache
Speaker 1: and a lingering sense of injustice. In some ways, Esther
Speaker 1: had no idea what was in store for her in
Speaker 1: South Carolina, what she had walked into, because there the
Speaker 1: real Brooke Henson had I've been forgotten. They held candlelight
Speaker 1: vigils in her memory in front of the police department
Speaker 1: and Traveler's Rest. Friends and family commemorated her. The local
Speaker 1: media ran stories on her, the local cops were looking
Speaker 1: for answers, and the federal prosecutor wanted his day in
Speaker 1: court for all of them. This story was far from over,
Speaker 1: and now all eyes were on Esther Reid. I'm Jake
Speaker 1: Halbern and this is deep Cover Season three, Never Seen
Speaker 1: Again Episode six, our season finale, a shared name. Once
Speaker 1: Esther was moved down to South Carolina, two cops from
Speaker 1: Traveler's Rest paid her a visit. They wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about Brooke Henson, to see what Esther knew about her disappearance.
Speaker 1: The truth, of course, was that Esther didn't know a
Speaker 1: thing about how or why Brooke went missing. She'd simply
Speaker 1: found Brooke's name on the internet. Still, the cops they
Speaker 1: wanted to talk. These two cops showed up where Esther
Speaker 1: was being held. Esther's lawyer was there too. As soon
Speaker 1: as the cops entered the room, Esther gave them a
Speaker 1: handwritten statement on white lined paper saying that she had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Brooke's disappearance. And they start talking
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, would you be willing to submit
Speaker 1: to a lie detector tests? At this point, Esther freaked.
Speaker 1: Given her high levels of anxiety, she worried she would
Speaker 1: fail the test. Plus lie detector tests aren't liable to
Speaker 1: begin with. I remember I started having a panic attack,
Speaker 1: and like I couldn't breathe, and I started like ripping
Speaker 1: my clothes because I couldn't breathe. I had a jump
Speaker 1: suit on, and I was like scratching my neck and
Speaker 1: I ended up back in the back corner, huddled down, hyperventilating,
Speaker 1: and they just got out in the room and backed
Speaker 1: away and probably left me alone for like fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: so I could calm down. In the end, the cops
Speaker 1: were apparently satisfied that Esther wasn't to blame for Brooke
Speaker 1: going missing, in part because Esther was able to demonstrate
Speaker 1: that she was living in Seattle at the time. But
Speaker 1: even if she wasn't a murder suspect, Esther was still
Speaker 1: facing charges for identity theft and fraud. She decided to
Speaker 1: take a plea. So now it was all about the sentencing,
Speaker 1: and there were still a lot of people in vested
Speaker 1: in the outcome, not just the prosecutor and the media,
Speaker 1: but also Brooke's family. Her parents kept a low profile,
Speaker 1: but one of her aunts, Lisa Henson, sort of became
Speaker 1: the public face of the family. During the height of
Speaker 1: the media frenzy. Aunt Lisa did interviews with the press,
Speaker 1: including CNN. She basically said that Esther's ruse had led
Speaker 1: her to believe falsely for a period of time that
Speaker 1: her niece was alive, and that when she learned the truth,
Speaker 1: she was devastated all over again. Aunt Lisa decided to
Speaker 1: speak when it came time for Esther to be sentenced,
Speaker 1: to talk about the effect that Esther's actions had on
Speaker 1: her personally. The sentencing took place at the Federal courthouse
Speaker 1: in Greenville. CBS ran a story on the proceedings, and
Speaker 1: that helped me fill out some of the details of
Speaker 1: what happened that day. Esther was marched into the courtroom
Speaker 1: and handcuffs and leg shackles. She wore a red prison
Speaker 1: jumpsuit and her long brown hair was tied in a ponytail.
Speaker 1: The whole day or being sentenced is very surreal. I
Speaker 1: think the young man who got sentenced right before me
Speaker 1: got forty eight years or something, and I had just
Speaker 1: seen the judge like scream at him, and an attorney
Speaker 1: for him was screaming back. Eventually it was Esther's turn.
Speaker 1: She remembers coming to the front of the courtroom. Esther
Speaker 1: knew that Aunt Lisa was off to the right, but
Speaker 1: she didn't really see her because she had been told
Speaker 1: that a defendant should never look directly at a victim.
Speaker 1: When she spoke in court, Aunt Lisa kind of talked
Speaker 1: directly to Esther. She said, nothing can bring our brook home,
Speaker 1: but to know that you are not violating her now
Speaker 1: gives our family a sense of relief. Esther also made
Speaker 1: a brief statement. She took responsibility for her actions and
Speaker 1: then asked the court for mercy, saying I was desperate
Speaker 1: to escape an environment I felt I could not survive.
Speaker 1: Esther's lawyer also made a case for leniency, but it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to go over well with the judge. And
Speaker 1: I remember he's interrupting her and won't let her presents
Speaker 1: her argument, and I remember just thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is really going to go badly, and then the
Speaker 1: judge started to talk. Esther braced herself. She focused on
Speaker 1: the federal seal, you know, with a great, big eagle,
Speaker 1: that was displayed at the front of the courtroom. He
Speaker 1: starts telling me basically why he's going to sentence me
Speaker 1: the way he is. I just remember looking at the
Speaker 1: seal and talking to my mom. The judge continued with
Speaker 1: his remarks. Referring to Esther, he told the courtroom she
Speaker 1: is a scheming criminal who has taken advantage of people's
Speaker 1: identities and institutions. And then at some point he said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to sentence you. And at that point I
Speaker 1: lifted my eyes up and I remember he started to say,
Speaker 1: I think a guideline sentence in this case is acceptable,
Speaker 1: and then I just read a sigh of relief. In
Speaker 1: this case, the federal guidelines led the judge to give
Speaker 1: a sentence of fifty one months, a little over four years.
Speaker 1: She was also ordered to repay one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars in debts, mainly student loans that she
Speaker 1: had accumulated in Brooke's name. That also included eighteen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in restitution to J. C. Penny where she had
Speaker 1: run that receipt scam, and then she was marched back
Speaker 1: out of the courtroom in her shackles. Afterwards, Aunt Lisa
Speaker 1: told the press that the sentence was not long enough.
Speaker 1: She lamented that Esther would not look her in the eyes,
Speaker 1: and then added, she sly like a fox, she doesn't
Speaker 1: want to face anybody who she's done wrong. Esther ended
Speaker 1: up serving time a minimum security federal prison camp. There,
Speaker 1: she had time to think, to reflect on her life.
Speaker 1: She wrote letters, She reconnected with her brother EJ. And
Speaker 1: her father too back in Montana. She read books and
Speaker 1: took long walks around the prison's outdoor track. She'd gotten
Speaker 1: there to that moment, in that place because she had
Speaker 1: been trying to escape her own past, and she chose
Speaker 1: to do that through a series of deceptions. I lied
Speaker 1: and lied and lied and lied because I was in danger,
Speaker 1: in mentally in danger right like I was not mentally
Speaker 1: healthy in the environment I was living in, and I
Speaker 1: knew I needed to get out of that. She says,
Speaker 1: looking back, it was a terrible way to handle things,
Speaker 1: and that many people were harmed by her actions. You
Speaker 1: know my pain was visited, My trauma was visited on
Speaker 1: so many people. My actions caused damage to so many people,
Speaker 1: and it's a burden to to know you harmed people
Speaker 1: and to not be able to do anything about it.
Speaker 1: During her time in prison, Esther often thought about Brooke Henson.
Speaker 1: Esther says she always felt a certain kinship with her
Speaker 1: based on what she had read about Brooke online. She
Speaker 1: knew they'd both struggled as teenagers and dropped out of
Speaker 1: high school, and she also thought a lot about Brook's mother.
Speaker 1: Esther worried that by stealing Brook's identity, she dredged up
Speaker 1: the past and caused her pain. I think because I
Speaker 1: lost my mom, and so I understand the pain doesn't
Speaker 1: go away, there's no healing, and so the thought that
Speaker 1: my acts made that agony worse for her it's really hard,
Speaker 1: I think, because I'm intimately aware of what it's like
Speaker 1: to miss the person you loved most in the world.
Speaker 1: In two and eleven, Esther was released. The prison bought
Speaker 1: her a bus ticket back to Portland, Oregon, where her
Speaker 1: brother and sister were now living. There were no journalists
Speaker 1: or news crews waiting as she left, no fanfare of
Speaker 1: any kind. She was just a woman on a bus
Speaker 1: headed west back into obscurity. We'll be right back. The
Speaker 1: man who started this whole investigation was John Campbell, the
Speaker 1: small town detective from Traveler's Rest, South Carolina. Over the
Speaker 1: course of his investigation, John became convinced that Esther Reid
Speaker 1: was a spy. He'd enlisted the help of the Secret Service.
Speaker 1: He'd contacted Army CID its Criminal Investigation Division, and he'd
Speaker 1: pursued every possible lead, telling his chief and Traveler's Rest
Speaker 1: that he couldn't and wouldn't rest until he himself questioned Esther.
Speaker 1: But that day it never came. By the time that
Speaker 1: the authorities arrested Esther, John was no longer working for
Speaker 1: the Traveler's Rest p D. He'd taken another job in
Speaker 1: law enforcement, and so he never got a chance to
Speaker 1: question her, which was hugely frustrating for John. In fact,
Speaker 1: when I visited John in South Carolina this past summer,
Speaker 1: he told me that he still believed in his spy
Speaker 1: theories that they might be true. Honestly, this kind of
Speaker 1: amazed me. There were so many holes in this theory.
Speaker 1: There was no actual proof of espionage. The prosecutors never
Speaker 1: pursued it, and of course it never came up in
Speaker 1: court because the case never went to trial. But John says,
Speaker 1: that's exactly the point she did in a spy move.
Speaker 1: She pleded straight up to all the chargers and never
Speaker 1: answered any questions about what she did, never had anything
Speaker 1: in open court. So that's brilliant. In one of my
Speaker 1: many conversations with John, I asked him point blank, wasn't
Speaker 1: there a much simpler explanation than espionage, one that made
Speaker 1: fewer leaps of logic? He said, Oh, you're talking about
Speaker 1: Akham's razor. In case you're not familiar with that theory,
Speaker 1: it basically says, if you're debating between multiple competing theories,
Speaker 1: the one that makes the fewest assumptions is usually correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I told John, Aham's rais is exactly what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: John being John quickly made a reference to The X Files,
Speaker 1: the show he loves about the paranormal. You know the
Speaker 1: truth is out there anyway. In one episode, one of
Speaker 1: the agents refers to Akham's Raiser as quote Akham's principle
Speaker 1: of limited imagination. John told me that all too often
Speaker 1: law enforcement officials lacked imagination. We close our mind off
Speaker 1: to anything but the facts. And if you close down
Speaker 1: all those possibilities, you're going to miss something. Isn't it possible?
Speaker 1: The danger as though, that your imagination runs away with
Speaker 1: things and leads you too far from the facts. Could
Speaker 1: you could? Yeah, you always have to have somebody to
Speaker 1: rain you in if you get too far out. But
Speaker 1: so who rained you in when you were a traveler's rest?
Speaker 1: You know, in this particular thing, the ester read case,
Speaker 1: there wasn't. I don't remember anybody rained yet. John is
Speaker 1: also haunted by another mystery. He still wants to know
Speaker 1: what happened to Brooke Henson. He believes that Brooke was murdered.
Speaker 1: So it is virtually everyone that I talked to in
Speaker 1: Traveler's Rest, including the town's current chief of police. His
Speaker 1: name is Ben Ford. Chief Ford has been trying to
Speaker 1: solve this case, even though at this point it's been
Speaker 1: cold for more than twenty years. He talks regularly with John,
Speaker 1: even though John's not officially part of the investigation anymore.
Speaker 1: The two men seemed to share an obsession. Chief Ford
Speaker 1: took command in twenty and eighteen, and right away he
Speaker 1: made this case a top priority. At one point, he
Speaker 1: searched Brook's old home looking for clues. John Campbell was
Speaker 1: there too. They hope that maybe, just maybe they might
Speaker 1: find an important clue that had been overlooked, a clue
Speaker 1: that would break the whole case open. They didn't find it.
Speaker 1: They also began another round of interviews, trying to find
Speaker 1: someone who might know what happened to Brooke. One person
Speaker 1: of interest was Ricky Shawn Shirley. He was Brooke's boyfriend
Speaker 1: and he was with her the night that she went missing.
Speaker 1: If you recall, Brooke left him a note that night
Speaker 1: saying follow me if you care. Chief Ford hoped that
Speaker 1: Sean Shirley might finally sit down with him and tell
Speaker 1: him everything he knew. But that never happened, Remember I
Speaker 1: told you. As part of the renewed investigation, the cops
Speaker 1: searched Brook's old house. That happened September thirtieth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Well a day later, Sean Shirley died, and then a
Speaker 1: mysterious video was posted online. It's no longer up, but
Speaker 1: I found someone who had a copy of it. In
Speaker 1: this video, you can see Sean Shirley sitting by himself
Speaker 1: in a darkened room. He's staring dead ahead like he's
Speaker 1: in a trance. Then he turns to the camera and whispers.
Speaker 1: When you listen carefully, it sounds like he might be
Speaker 1: saying help. Then the video ends. It's extremely creepy and
Speaker 1: it's hard to know what to make of it. According
Speaker 1: to the local police, Sean's death was ruled an accidental overdose.
Speaker 1: Button true Traveler's Rest fashion dark theories spin The video
Speaker 1: is fueled speculation that maybe his death wasn't an accident,
Speaker 1: maybe something more sinister happened, but those are just speculations.
Speaker 1: The bottom line Sean Shirley, the guy people hoped had
Speaker 1: the answers, he was now dead. At this point, both
Speaker 1: Chief Ford and John Campbell believe that if they could
Speaker 1: only find Brooks remains, they might solve this crime once
Speaker 1: and for all. They have theories about where to look,
Speaker 1: one place in particular, and the frustrating part is they
Speaker 1: just can't get to it. When I was in Traveler's Rest,
Speaker 1: John Campbell took me there to the spot where he
Speaker 1: thinks Brooke may have been buried. To get there, we
Speaker 1: hopped in his suv and took a drive down a
Speaker 1: lonely road. The tidy streets of town quickly morphed into deep,
Speaker 1: thick woods. You can get an idea about how big
Speaker 1: the area is, how what a vast amount of land
Speaker 1: there is, and how sporadic the houses are. So let's
Speaker 1: you're talking about late at night. If you had to
Speaker 1: get rid of a body out here, in the chances
Speaker 1: of you're running into anybody everybody's seeing, it would be
Speaker 1: pretty pretty slam. Eventually, John pulls his car over to
Speaker 1: this side of the road. We're pretty high up on
Speaker 1: a hillside at this point, and we have a view
Speaker 1: down onto a sprawling field with a bunch of large
Speaker 1: concrete structures. This is This is a typical water trap plant,
Speaker 1: and there's a couple covered domes where water is treated.
Speaker 1: This is the watershed for Greenville City. When Brooke Henson
Speaker 1: went missing back in nineteen ninety nine, this water treatment
Speaker 1: plant was still being built, and both John and Chief
Speaker 1: Ford have gotten a number of tips over the years
Speaker 1: that this is where her body was buried, interred in
Speaker 1: the concrete. They've learned that several people who are with
Speaker 1: Brook on the night that she vanished were working here
Speaker 1: building the plant, so they would have had easy access
Speaker 1: and could have hid her body and freshly poured concrete.
Speaker 1: The problem is there's so much concrete in this facility,
Speaker 1: tons and tons of it, that it would be very
Speaker 1: difficult to find her remains. Now, in recent years, with
Speaker 1: vances in technology, there are some really good ground penetrating
Speaker 1: radars which might help a lot, But so far the
Speaker 1: town hasn't been able to make this happen. There's one
Speaker 1: final reason that John thinks that Brooks body maybe here
Speaker 1: at the water treatment plant. He says, every time he
Speaker 1: comes up here, he's being watched, and that right then
Speaker 1: when I was standing with him, we were being watched.
Speaker 1: We've already been spotted because three or four cars have
Speaker 1: passed by here and they're calling around. Is already somebody
Speaker 1: shaking their shoes that we're looking? Come on, do you
Speaker 1: really believe that that has happened over and over and
Speaker 1: over again every time we've come up here, John says.
Speaker 1: The proof is that every time he or Chief Ford
Speaker 1: come up here, right away someone dials up the police
Speaker 1: department and says, you're looking in the wrong place. The
Speaker 1: body's not there. Those people watch just trying to throw
Speaker 1: you off the trail. Yeah, this is Look at this
Speaker 1: somebody slowing down. What's going on? That's that's the rumor
Speaker 1: mail right there that if it wasn't the three cars
Speaker 1: before that one's calling already, that was a painting truck.
Speaker 1: That was like, already know somebody, and they're calling somebody
Speaker 1: who knows somebody. That's hard for me to believe. Well,
Speaker 1: what it does for me is it tells me that
Speaker 1: this is this is a tip that hasn't been fully vetted.
Speaker 1: And until we drag a sled down air and get
Speaker 1: an image that what's under that concrete, then this tip
Speaker 1: is still not completely vetted. You can probably tell I
Speaker 1: didn't buy John's whole theory about us being watched and
Speaker 1: that someone would call in and say, you boys are
Speaker 1: looking at the wrong place. It felt too much like well,
Speaker 1: an episode of the X Files. But then lo and behold,
Speaker 1: when we checked in with Chief Ford, he told us
Speaker 1: that when we were up there, his phone rang and
Speaker 1: an informant called in with a tip saying that the
Speaker 1: body was buried elsewhere. It was a surreal moment, felt
Speaker 1: a shiver run up my spine, and I started wondering
Speaker 1: who else in this town was watching us or watching me,
Speaker 1: and what did they know about brooks disappearance. For a moment,
Speaker 1: I felt like I was in one of those movies
Speaker 1: where the journalists asks too many questions and then late
Speaker 1: at night, there's a knock at the door. Silly, I know,
Speaker 1: but that's the thing about conspiracy theories. They're seductive. They
Speaker 1: kind of cast a spell on you. Later that evening,
Speaker 1: I got back to my Airbnb and came to my senses,
Speaker 1: took a shower, had a beer, called my wife. But
Speaker 1: I'm not going to lie to you. Some part of
Speaker 1: me kept on waiting for a knock on the door.
Speaker 1: For the Henson family, at least the members I spoke with,
Speaker 1: the lack of closure is hard. Brooks' parents have both
Speaker 1: passed away, but her cousins, Pattie and Holly Henson, have
Speaker 1: spent years trying to keep the memory of their cousin
Speaker 1: alive and hoping that maybe they'll find out what happened
Speaker 1: to her. They told me that they did not harbor
Speaker 1: bad feelings towards Esther Reid, a real contrast to Aunt Lisa.
Speaker 1: They said that, if anything, they were grateful that Esther's story,
Speaker 1: with all its notoriety, had drawn attention to brookes case,
Speaker 1: not that it's done a lot of good so far.
Speaker 1: They hoped for a while that Brook's old boyfriend, Sean Shirley,
Speaker 1: might come forward with new information, or that the police
Speaker 1: would finally break the case open. It's been frustrating for them.
Speaker 1: I asked cousin Holly about the investigation as it now stands.
Speaker 1: How optimistic or confident do you feel that they're ever
Speaker 1: going to find out what happened to Brooke and where
Speaker 1: her body may be. Not very confident at all. I
Speaker 1: don't think they will. Why do you say that it's
Speaker 1: been this long Sean Shirley is now dead. I feel
Speaker 1: like when he died, I remember having tears because I
Speaker 1: was like, well it's over now, We're never gonna find Brooke.
Speaker 1: I asked cousin Patty what it would mean to her
Speaker 1: if they could find Brooks remains. I feel like it
Speaker 1: would mean everything. I feel like she deserves justice. She
Speaker 1: didn't ask for what happened to her. She was a
Speaker 1: free spirit just because she liked a party and hung
Speaker 1: out with the wrong crowd. She didn't deserve to be
Speaker 1: just dumped and forgot about. I'm sure if that was
Speaker 1: your daughters, you know you wouldn't want that either. By
Speaker 1: most accounts, the investigation into Brooke Henson's disappearance failed very
Speaker 1: early on. John Campbell told me that initially the Traveler's
Speaker 1: Rest Police department didn't recognize this as a possible murder,
Speaker 1: and by the time they got serious about all this,
Speaker 1: they missed their best chance to solve the case. I
Speaker 1: heard versions of this from other people too, who Traveler's Rest.
Speaker 1: They told me that because Brooke was a high school
Speaker 1: dropout and seen as a party girl, that her case
Speaker 1: wasn't taken seriously, at least at first. Brook story only
Speaker 1: truly caught the attention of the public in a big
Speaker 1: way when it intersected with Esther reads. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: Esther was also a high school dropout who for a
Speaker 1: long time existed in the margins of society, living a
Speaker 1: transient life, struggling with her social anxiety. It was only
Speaker 1: when she fled Columbia University and was depicted as a
Speaker 1: spy and a seductress that suddenly everyone seemed to care.
Speaker 1: Sun is shining, and Spokane it is for the first
Speaker 1: time in a week. Well did shine yesterday, but before
Speaker 1: that it was not funny. This past spring, I spent
Speaker 1: a week with Esther in Spokane, Washington. That's where she
Speaker 1: lives these days. On this occasion, I was driving with
Speaker 1: her to work. Everybody here is very very nice. I
Speaker 1: noticed that super friendly when about running or walking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that part is familiar to how To where I grew
Speaker 1: up in Montana. Everybody's very nice and kind. For the
Speaker 1: most part. Esther is in her mid forties now, and
Speaker 1: she has a new life. She has friends, a good job,
Speaker 1: a home, even a new dog, a little shit soon
Speaker 1: named Louis. She's also gone through therapy, which has helped
Speaker 1: with her social anxiety. In the car ride that day,
Speaker 1: we talked about all kinds of things, like I asked
Speaker 1: her if she ever saw herself getting married. M don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I believe in marriage. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be opposed to it. I would never change my name.
Speaker 1: That's kind. Now, that's kind of ironic. Well, I'm very
Speaker 1: attached to Matthews now. I mean it's I know it
Speaker 1: is ironic. I would change my first name in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: She goes by Esther Matthews now. She made the switch
Speaker 1: after she got out of prison. One last name change,
Speaker 1: this time legally before a judge Eventually we arrived at
Speaker 1: Gonzaga University. Nice. We arrived in one piece. That's always good.
Speaker 1: And this is where Esther works. She's now a professor here,
Speaker 1: Professor Esther Matthews. After getting out of prison, Esther went
Speaker 1: back to school. She got her PhD in criminology and
Speaker 1: landed a job teaching, first American University and then here
Speaker 1: at Gonzaga. Esther gives me a little tour of campus,
Speaker 1: and as she does, she tells me about her academic research.
Speaker 1: She's done a number of in depth ethnographic investigations of
Speaker 1: prison life, including a close look at several solitary confinement units.
Speaker 1: She's also interested in reentry, looking at how we as
Speaker 1: a society can best help people as they returned to
Speaker 1: their communities. I always knew I would like researching, and
Speaker 1: then I was like, oh, I can teach to research.
Speaker 1: That's fine. And then I started teaching. And my students
Speaker 1: are just the most fabulous, lovely human beings on the planet.
Speaker 1: Esther says she loves how compassionate and non judgmental her
Speaker 1: students are, and she's told them a lot about herself,
Speaker 1: including her troubles as a teenager, her struggles with social anxiety,
Speaker 1: even her time in prison. What they don't know, what
Speaker 1: hardly anyone knows, is exactly why she ended up in prison.
Speaker 1: The whole Esther Reid's story, with all its tawdry, tabloid melodrama,
Speaker 1: she just hasn't gotten into it, really. But every once
Speaker 1: in a while someone connects the dots, figures out that
Speaker 1: Professor Esther Matthews is in fact Esther Reid. She'll get
Speaker 1: a call or an email out of the blue, and
Speaker 1: so finally last fall, she figured why not take the
Speaker 1: reins tell her full story on her own terms. So
Speaker 1: what do you do in this situation when you're a professor?
Speaker 1: A talk at a symposium? Right? And she happened to
Speaker 1: be organizing a big event to Gonzaga and thought this
Speaker 1: could work. So she invited all of her students, all
Speaker 1: of her colleagues, anyone who wanted to come. On the
Speaker 1: day of the event, a crowd gathered at a large
Speaker 1: lecture hall on campus. Esther aka Professor Matthews stood at
Speaker 1: the front of the room. Okay, So, like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go probably till about ten after she starts
Speaker 1: by telling the crowd straight up that this isn't going
Speaker 1: to be easy for her. I also have social anxiety disorder,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to try to be unapologetically anxious. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about a lot of different facets
Speaker 1: of my life and my experience in custody. She hits
Speaker 1: a button on her laptop and an image flashes onto
Speaker 1: the movie screen behind her. It's a picture of a
Speaker 1: woman and a toddler standing in a garden framed by
Speaker 1: pine trees. It's summertime. The woman is in jeans and
Speaker 1: a blue, short sleeved shirt. This lovely woman is my mom,
Speaker 1: and this is me as a little baby growing up.
Speaker 1: This is our house in Montana. And I will talk
Speaker 1: about many different identities that I've had, but the only
Speaker 1: identity that I claim is her daughter, and I will
Speaker 1: likely get emotion. Esther also explains how after her mom
Speaker 1: passed away, she cut ties with her family to escape
Speaker 1: a situation that was toxic for her. The thing I
Speaker 1: became infamous for is that I didn't want my family
Speaker 1: to find me, and so I started taking on the
Speaker 1: identities of other individuals. There's another image on the screen now.
Speaker 1: It's a collage actually, including a picture of Esther and
Speaker 1: a boyfriend from West Point, climbing Mount Washington, Esther dressed
Speaker 1: up for a party, surrounded by other twenty somethings, and
Speaker 1: then there's a snapshot of Esther's ID from Columbia University.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember how many people's names I used,
Speaker 1: but at one point I was Natalie Fisher, at one
Speaker 1: point I was Natalie Bowman. Then it came Brooke Henson.
Speaker 1: What I would do as I would get identification in
Speaker 1: their name, and then I would try and start over
Speaker 1: stealing all of these identities, Esther explains eventually landed her
Speaker 1: in prison. But that is the hard part of my story,
Speaker 1: and I now want to switch to the good part
Speaker 1: of my story, which is kind of another life shift.
Speaker 1: Once I was released from custody, I had to start
Speaker 1: to think about how I was going to rebuild my
Speaker 1: life as Esther Reid, which you're probably thinking, you're doctor Matthews,
Speaker 1: So I'll explain. You can hear that little murmur from
Speaker 1: the audience, like folks are processing what she just said,
Speaker 1: because this is actually the first time she's mentioned the
Speaker 1: name Esther Reid. Remember, everyone here knows her as Professor Matthews.
Speaker 1: So she starts to explain how she became professor Matthews
Speaker 1: how after getting out of prison, she found a job
Speaker 1: in the construction industry, started taking classes, got her b A,
Speaker 1: and her PhD. Became a professor of criminology who studies
Speaker 1: the challenges that people face when they come home from prison.
Speaker 1: She has a lot of thoughts about this. She's on research,
Speaker 1: for example, on the word inmate, how people react more
Speaker 1: favorably to hearing that a person is being released from
Speaker 1: prison versus an inmate. Another problematic word, she says, is
Speaker 1: rehabilitation because it suggests that we need to cure people
Speaker 1: to somehow alter who they fundamentally are. I have not
Speaker 1: been rehabilitated, right, I received resource and I had opportunities. Right,
Speaker 1: nobody rehabilitated me. I am the same person who is
Speaker 1: a risk taker. I am still sassy, I am still defiant.
Speaker 1: I still don't like authority. I'm still that same person.
Speaker 1: I just have resources and support to help me build
Speaker 1: a life that means more to me than what one
Speaker 1: of my friends calls burning the house down. I love
Speaker 1: to burn the house down, right, That's my favorite thing
Speaker 1: to do. But I just do it an illegal way. Now, right,
Speaker 1: with my research and all of this supports her belief,
Speaker 1: underscored by both her research and her experiences, that words matter.
Speaker 1: So today these are my words. Right, I'm a professor,
Speaker 1: I'm a researcher, I'm a scholar. We can be those
Speaker 1: things if you stop calling us the other things. When
Speaker 1: she's done, she asks for questions. A man raises his
Speaker 1: hand and ask about her current name, Esther Matthews, as
Speaker 1: if to say, where did that come from? I know
Speaker 1: you keep this is spice, but I wanted to know
Speaker 1: the Matthews verse. Oh oh, so my mom is Florence Matthews.
Speaker 1: So finally, when I got off probation, I was able
Speaker 1: to change my name illegally, this time from Esther Reid
Speaker 1: to Esther Matthews. But I would much rather have changed
Speaker 1: my first name and last name, but I didn't think
Speaker 1: the judge would go for that because I really liked
Speaker 1: being Natalie. But next to now, I'm stuck with Esther.
Speaker 1: But I wish I had said Natalie Matthews. But whatever,
Speaker 1: I can't have everything I want, right, Does anybody else
Speaker 1: have another question? We love you, Esther, and that was it. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: students and other panelists from the day's events came up
Speaker 1: to her, thanked her for her talk, told her they'd
Speaker 1: see her later. To her students, she was still who
Speaker 1: she'd always been, perhaps who she was always meant to be.
Speaker 1: Professor Esther Matthews, her mother's daughter. All of this made
Speaker 1: me wonder who Brooke Henson might have been, who she
Speaker 1: might have become, if she'd ever emerged from that darkened
Speaker 1: road in Traveler's Rest all those years ago. Follow me
Speaker 1: if you care, She'd scrawled on a handwritten note like
Speaker 1: a traveler's prayer, the hope that when we are gone,
Speaker 1: our absence will be felt, and should we not return
Speaker 1: in time, they will search. Ben Ford of the Traveler's
Speaker 1: Rest Police Department is still working diligently on the Brookhnson
Speaker 1: case to find out what happened to her. If you
Speaker 1: have any new information that might be helpful, please contact
Speaker 1: him at Ford at t R police dot com. Deep
Speaker 1: Cover is produced by Amy Gaines and Jacob Smith. It's
Speaker 1: edited by Karen shakerje mastering by Jake Gorski. Our show
Speaker 1: art was designed by Sean Karney. Original scoring and our
Speaker 1: theme was composed by Luis Gara. Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts.
Speaker 1: Additional thanks to Milo Bell Jill Gillette, Travis Dunlap, Roya
Speaker 1: Reese Tammy and Patrick Welch, Ryan Beasley, Roger Jewel, Franklin Schneier,
Speaker 1: Ben Ford, Jeff Emlick, Natalie Fisher, Natalie Bowman, Meghan Kennedy
Speaker 1: and Alicia Via Gonzaga University, and the team at Claris
Speaker 1: Law at Pushkin Special thanks to Sarah Knicks, Daphne Chen,
Speaker 1: Sarah brug Air, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Morgan Rattner, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Isabella Narvaz, Mary Beth Smith, Jordan McMillan, Meghna Row, Sophie Crane,
Speaker 1: Peter Clowney, Edith Russello, Heather Faine, John Schnars, Carrie Brody,
Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori, Christina Sullivan, Jason Gambrel, Leta Mullad, Gretta Cone,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. I'm Jake Halper