Speaker 1: Novel. Hey listener, here we are at our final episode.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to let you know that we are
Speaker 1: releasing our soundtrack as an EP. You can listen on
Speaker 1: all reputable streaming platforms. You can also purchase the EP
Speaker 1: by going to bandcamp dot com and searching for the
Speaker 1: Girlfriend's Our Lost Sister soundtrack. All proceeds go to our
Speaker 1: charity partner, DNA DO Project. In this final episode, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking a lot about drug addiction. We'll also speak
Speaker 1: about parental neglect, sex work, as well as acts of
Speaker 1: extreme violence, including murder. But in amongst all this darkness,
Speaker 1: you'll also hear a woman's story brought to life by
Speaker 1: the people who loved her. If you feel impact did
Speaker 1: by any of the themes while listening, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to check out our charity partner, DNA DOE Project. They
Speaker 1: work with law enforcement to identify Jane and John Does
Speaker 1: using genetic genealogy in the hopes of reuniting the bodies
Speaker 1: of unidentified people with their families. You can find them
Speaker 1: at DNADO project dot org. And one more thing, you'll
Speaker 1: probably hear more bad language from me. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the final episode, so why stop now? You know? So
Speaker 1: far on the girlfriends our lost sister. The whole thing
Speaker 1: is so horrific, it's almost like it's become this moral
Speaker 1: obligation to find her.
Speaker 2: In ninety eight, did missing persons really want to deal with?
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty nine Torso?
Speaker 3: That watch though I don't know.
Speaker 4: Hi, it's doctor Shapiro and I'd like to speak with
Speaker 4: the deputy medical Examiner.
Speaker 2: Do you mind if I send a text?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I might get something. What do you know?
Speaker 2: Could you say perpetrator for me?
Speaker 3: Who is she?
Speaker 6: Let's bring closure to another family. Let's open this door?
Speaker 2: Hello? Hi?
Speaker 3: Is this Anne?
Speaker 7: It is.
Speaker 1: When Anna reached out to Heidi Balch's family, they were
Speaker 1: pretty shocked to hear from her, and trust me, I
Speaker 1: can certainly relate to that, But despite their surprise, they
Speaker 1: agreed to talk. So Anna explains the long complicated story
Speaker 1: how a Torso washed up on Staten Island and was
Speaker 1: buried in Gilkatz's grave for nearly a decade, and how
Speaker 1: DNA testing avally proved that it wasn't Gael, and how
Speaker 1: that Torso was then buried on Hart Island until twenty
Speaker 1: and thirteen, when it was exhumed once again by the
Speaker 1: Office of the chief medical Examiners. We ask Kiti's family
Speaker 1: for records anything relating to the police or medical examiners
Speaker 1: that they would be willing to share with us to
Speaker 1: help us solve this mystery once and for all. They
Speaker 1: forward us an email which they were sent by the
Speaker 1: police back in twenty thirteen and included in there two
Speaker 1: paragraphs down is a medical examiner case number R eight
Speaker 1: nine zero five six three, which is a number some
Speaker 1: discerning listeners may recognize because it's the same number that
Speaker 1: we've had in our files for a year and a half.
Speaker 1: It's the number that all the way back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine was assigned to our Jane Do's Torso, the
Speaker 1: one that was misidentified as Gail Cats. I can't believe
Speaker 1: I'm saying this, Girlfriends, but we finally have the proof.
Speaker 1: We found our lost sister, and her name is Heidi Balch.
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Fisher and from the teams at Novel and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcast, this is the girlfriends our Lost Sister, Episode five.
Speaker 7: Her Legacy. Yes, okay, I've got a confession to make.
Speaker 1: I know. I always say I'm a Vegas girl because
Speaker 1: that's my hometown and I love a little glitz and glamour.
Speaker 1: But about seven years ago, I fell in love with
Speaker 1: the man from New Orleans and I found myself in
Speaker 1: a long distance relationship. Listener, don't fear this. One's a
Speaker 1: really nice guy. But the deal was I would spend
Speaker 1: more time out of Las Vegas if I could have
Speaker 1: a lot of animals. So we purchased a home right
Speaker 1: outside the city, and I'm happy to report that we
Speaker 1: have a shitload of chickens, two geese, a lot of ducks,
Speaker 1: five mini goats, one pet pig, two horses, and one pony.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, and we have two cats.
Speaker 7: Anna, Anna, come on.
Speaker 1: For the past week, I've been introducing my producer Anna
Speaker 1: to my menagerie. This is one of our cats.
Speaker 3: Ferguson.
Speaker 1: She's here because she looked like she could do with
Speaker 1: a good meal, but also because, and you're not gonna
Speaker 1: fucking believe this, Heidi's aunt. She lives just fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: down the road from me. I mean, you can't make
Speaker 1: this ship up.
Speaker 8: That's when it comes to people being connected through the show.
Speaker 8: This feels like the craziest example. You know, down the road,
Speaker 8: go down.
Speaker 1: The road, going only four minutes away. I think this
Speaker 1: is crazy. Throughout the series, we said that we want
Speaker 1: to learn who our lost sister is, but all we
Speaker 1: could find were gruesome details about her death, and today
Speaker 1: we're hoping to find out about how she lived from
Speaker 1: the people who knew her and loved her. What is
Speaker 1: it this? Oh, it's says, isn't it cute? Drible cuts?
Speaker 1: Is that a dinosaur? I think that's a bird. Could
Speaker 1: we get out of the car and walk through an
Speaker 1: old wooden gate towards a clapboard building with a porch
Speaker 1: and a rocking chair. The front yard is full of
Speaker 1: luscious greenery that's dripping from the heavy Louisiana rainfall. Him, Carol, Carol, Hello.
Speaker 5: Me too, Rita, Rita.
Speaker 1: We're greeted at the door by Rita, or Rusty to friends.
Speaker 1: She's Heidi's aunt by marriage. Rusty's one of those beautiful
Speaker 1: older women who just radiates a gentle, calm, warmth and
Speaker 1: understated wisdom.
Speaker 3: It was a church.
Speaker 6: What is it you can now tell?
Speaker 1: I said it, as if we didn't have enough coincidences
Speaker 1: back in the day, this converted church. It was called
Speaker 1: Saint Anna, I mean, and come on, Rusty has lived
Speaker 1: here for decades. And as the first person to ever
Speaker 1: call it home. She says, you can feel the energy
Speaker 1: of people in the building, and I can believe that.
Speaker 1: She guides us through the house with its navy floorboards
Speaker 1: and persian rugs lit up through the stained glass windows.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely stunning. As we're taking it all in, we're
Speaker 1: joined by Anne.
Speaker 9: I mean, I'm here, so nice to meet you.
Speaker 1: She's Heidi's cousin and Rusty's niece. Her dog says hello too.
Speaker 5: This looks like friendly, but just telling her how to jump.
Speaker 1: This looks like my dog.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yes, just like my dog.
Speaker 1: Anne and Rusty seem to be cut from the same
Speaker 1: Bohemian cloth AND's about eleven years older than Heidi. She's
Speaker 1: in her early seventies. Now she's a wood turner and
Speaker 1: artist and talks about driving around in a van for
Speaker 1: half the year seeking adventures while she still can.
Speaker 3: So now we get to where its one.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're coming to.
Speaker 5: The worm area.
Speaker 1: We were there On a dining room table surrounded by fruit, salad,
Speaker 1: hot coffee, and granola bars are photos of Heidi and
Speaker 1: her family throughout the years. There's one of Heidi as
Speaker 1: a toddler being cuddled in the backseat of a car.
Speaker 3: She was two there and I was twelve.
Speaker 1: This is Lyle. She's an sister and another cousin of Heidie's.
Speaker 1: Her wavy white hair is effortlessly tied back, and she's
Speaker 1: wearing a pair of loose fitting traditional Nepalese trousers.
Speaker 10: We had a big record of the Singing Nuns and
Speaker 10: we would dance to this song, and there was one
Speaker 10: in particular we loved, and little two year old Heidi
Speaker 10: would go over to the record player very delicately, lift
Speaker 10: up the needle, put it back on the groove where
Speaker 10: the song like. She never scratched the record, she never
Speaker 10: missed putting it in the right place. I was just
Speaker 10: amazed at her dexterity. We must have danced to that
Speaker 10: song like a hundred times. I think it was a
Speaker 10: song called Dominika Nika. Anyway, you can tell how much
Speaker 10: we loved each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this dancing little girl with a family of gorgeous hippies.
Speaker 1: This isn't the story I was expecting. Here with Heidi's relatives,
Speaker 1: I get a sense of a life she could have led,
Speaker 1: full of art and color and music. I wish we
Speaker 1: could tell that story, but that's not how things worked
Speaker 1: out for Heidi. So what happened. To understand that, we
Speaker 1: first need to learn about Heidi's parents, Tom and Gretchen,
Speaker 1: who met in California in the early nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: There was a ten year age gap.
Speaker 9: She was twenty two and Tom was thirty two or whatever,
Speaker 9: and he was not living a life that was about
Speaker 9: having children or finding a wife.
Speaker 10: My understanding was that he was just kind of a playboy,
Speaker 10: and so I think he just liked to have sex,
Speaker 10: and he liked to go out with different women, and
Speaker 10: he wasn't looking for a relationship.
Speaker 3: And she got pregnant.
Speaker 1: When Tom's mother, who the family all called Nana, found
Speaker 1: out about the pregnancy, she told Tom that he had
Speaker 1: to do the right thing and marry Gretchen. She felt
Speaker 1: like it was the only way to give the baby
Speaker 1: a proper start in life. In the photos from their
Speaker 1: wedding day, Gretchen is six months pregnant in a sixties
Speaker 1: coat and a beehive hairdoo. Tom's in a pale suit
Speaker 1: holding a glass of champagne. He looks like a deer
Speaker 1: in the headlights. Heidi's born a few months later in
Speaker 1: California on January seventh, nineteen sixty four. But within in
Speaker 1: a few months, Tom and Gretchen's marriage is over and
Speaker 1: Heidi gets stuck between two miserable parents.
Speaker 2: What struck me about Gretchen was how bitter She was
Speaker 2: kind of toxic, and Tom became bitter as well. But
Speaker 2: Tom was bitter about a lot of things. So both
Speaker 2: parents full of that bitterness, really created an environment that
Speaker 2: wasn't even close to the atmosphere baby needed. There was
Speaker 2: no nurturing, there was no making the baby fly up
Speaker 2: in the air and catch her, or having fun or
Speaker 2: anything like that.
Speaker 1: At one point, a local woman is hired by the
Speaker 1: family to look after baby Heidi, but before long, according
Speaker 1: to Heidie's cousins, this woman takes Heidie's Nana to one side.
Speaker 1: She tells her that from what she's seen at Gretchen's apartment,
Speaker 1: she thinks Gretchen will be the death of Heidi and
Speaker 1: that the family should get rid of her to protect
Speaker 1: the baby.
Speaker 9: She said, you know, I have people in my neighborhood
Speaker 9: who know how to take care of these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, So let me get this straight. This
Speaker 1: devout Christian nanny is suggesting that they put a hit
Speaker 1: out on Heidie's mom.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Nana was shocked, and of course Nana said no,
Speaker 9: and you know, it wasn't even a consideration.
Speaker 1: Nana didn't give up, though. The family tells us that
Speaker 1: she tried to take custody of Heidi but was unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: So in the end, she did whatever she could to
Speaker 1: make Heidi's life as normal as possible. Whenever she came
Speaker 1: to visit, big family meals with freshly pressed tablecloths, cute
Speaker 1: girly dresses, riding up and down the curb on a
Speaker 1: shiny new bike, some money or toys at birthdays and Christmases.
Speaker 1: But back home with Heidie's mom, things weren't as right.
Speaker 1: The family told us they suspected that Gretchen was working
Speaker 1: as a sex worker from her apartment. They heard from
Speaker 1: people that she had different men over while Heidi was there,
Speaker 1: that she only had beer in the fridge. One time,
Speaker 1: the cousins say Heidi came to Nana's house with a
Speaker 1: cigarette burn on her. It's important to point out here
Speaker 1: that we can't fact check these claims because we believe
Speaker 1: Gretchen has passed away, and records show that Tom, Heidi's father,
Speaker 1: died in twenty twenty three. We do know that Gretchen
Speaker 1: told the detective who looked into Heidie's case that she
Speaker 1: was going through a rough patch back then. It all
Speaker 1: came to a head when Heidi was five. Gretchen turned
Speaker 1: up at Tom's front door one day and said she
Speaker 1: couldn't deal with raising Heidi anymore. She then walked away
Speaker 1: and left the little girl to live with her equally
Speaker 1: uninterested father.
Speaker 9: Tom did come home at night, and Heidie had learned
Speaker 9: by six or seven to take a frozen dinner out
Speaker 9: of the freezer and turn on the oven and make
Speaker 9: it for herself.
Speaker 1: Heidie's cousins Lyall and Robert show us some more pictures
Speaker 1: of Heidi.
Speaker 10: She's not so old in this picture, and you can
Speaker 10: see that face is someone's gone through.
Speaker 11: Some Yeah, she was just obviously really lonely.
Speaker 5: I mean, you look at these photos and there is
Speaker 5: like a clear change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, she is just a normal.
Speaker 3: Happy, cute kid when she's like two three.
Speaker 12: In these ones, and then there is something about her
Speaker 12: eyes that just goes Yeah, that's.
Speaker 5: What I say.
Speaker 10: I feel like if we put all these pictures in
Speaker 10: chronological order, you almost see the light go out in
Speaker 10: her eyes.
Speaker 1: At school, Heidie's teachers noticed there was something wrong too.
Speaker 1: In one of her report cards from first grade, it
Speaker 1: says she almost never smiles. I believe she needs a
Speaker 1: great deal of affection right now. But there are also
Speaker 1: signs of Heidi's creativity and potential. One of her teachers
Speaker 1: says she was an excellent reader who loved the Chronicles
Speaker 1: of Narnia. They also say she was a talented writer,
Speaker 1: producing many fine stories and poems with the wit and
Speaker 1: humor that was unique to her. There are moments in
Speaker 1: these reports that show flashes of Heidi's personality, a headstrong
Speaker 1: young girl who simply wastes too much time doing what
Speaker 1: she pleases instead of paying attention. One report from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, when she was eight, says that if Heidi
Speaker 1: continues receiving the love, help, and understanding she has seen
Speaker 1: from school and home, then I believe she will make
Speaker 1: even greater social progress. But the love she received at
Speaker 1: home didn't come from her dad. That was all Nana,
Speaker 1: who continued to play a key maternal role in Heidi's life,
Speaker 1: especially at Christmas when Heidi would go and visit. There
Speaker 1: are real sweet photos of her sitting on Santa's knee.
Speaker 1: That feel like glimpses of childhood joy. One time, Heidie's aunt,
Speaker 1: Rusty remembers when they were all at Nana and Grampy's house.
Speaker 2: Grampy was kind of a grumpy He was the one
Speaker 2: who decorated the tree every year, that was his tradition,
Speaker 2: and the tree that he brought in that year had
Speaker 2: a bird in it, a live bird.
Speaker 1: Grampy rescues the bird from the tree and brings it outside.
Speaker 1: But while he's.
Speaker 2: Gone, Nana said, let's have some fun on it, so
Speaker 2: they started decorating the tree. Graffy was gone, and Heidi
Speaker 2: was delighted. It was just wonderful to see her spirit
Speaker 2: dancing around.
Speaker 1: But then the worst thing that could happen happened. Grampy
Speaker 1: retired and decided he wanted to move to Florida, eleven
Speaker 1: hundred miles away from Ohio.
Speaker 10: Nana just was wringing her hands about moving so far
Speaker 10: away from Heidi, but.
Speaker 1: Grampy's word was law in their relationship and she had
Speaker 1: no choice but to go.
Speaker 10: So there was no longer visits to Nana's house, where
Speaker 10: there really was stability and home cooked meals.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy two, Heidi loses regular contact with the
Speaker 1: most important and loving figure in her life. A few
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen seventy six, the family are gathered
Speaker 1: together for a golden wedding party. Looking at a photo
Speaker 1: from the day, you can see twelve year old Heidi,
Speaker 1: who looks like a young Jodie Foster, but to her
Speaker 1: cousins she seems almost unrecognizable. She's already had several run
Speaker 1: ins with the law and is experiencing things that her
Speaker 1: older cousins can't even imagine.
Speaker 10: She was worried that she was pregnant and that she
Speaker 10: might have hepatitis from shooting up with a dirty needle.
Speaker 3: I went into shock.
Speaker 10: I felt like I had gone from being the cousin
Speaker 10: who's ten years older who can lead the dancing, to
Speaker 10: feeling like I was a country bumpkin who had no experience.
Speaker 1: It was clear to everyone that Heidi was on a
Speaker 1: downward spiral, and her father Tom seemed to be doing
Speaker 1: nothing to stop it. Around that time, her aunt Rusty
Speaker 1: stepped in. She moved Heidi in with her and her family.
Speaker 11: No.
Speaker 2: I thought, well, I could help her. No, and I
Speaker 2: tried to give her some ground rules while we're at
Speaker 2: the house, and she resisted everything. It was this bubble
Speaker 2: that she was in. It seemed that it couldn't be penetrated.
Speaker 1: So she really protected herself, like with a shield of
Speaker 1: armor around her.
Speaker 2: She did.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Heidi was forced to attend a reform school in Ohio,
Speaker 1: and for a while she was doing doing well. Heidi
Speaker 1: seemed to thrive with a bit of discipline and structure.
Speaker 1: She was a naturally bright young girl and started advancing
Speaker 1: in her education again.
Speaker 11: And then the story goes that Tom came to visit her.
Speaker 11: This is Robert, and he took her away. He took
Speaker 11: her back. Tom had this thing about bucking the system,
Speaker 11: you know, fuck the man. He hated any kind of authority,
Speaker 11: and so I think he valued that in Heidi too
Speaker 11: and encouraged it.
Speaker 1: Back in Toledo with her dad, Heidi wanted out. At
Speaker 1: just fourteen years old. She told her dad Tom she
Speaker 1: was moving to California to follow her dreams of being
Speaker 1: an actress and a model. She said she could get
Speaker 1: a ride with some long distance truck driver she had met.
Speaker 1: Heidie's family couldn't believe Tom was okay with it.
Speaker 11: You can't allow your daughter to just go and get
Speaker 11: in a car with anyone. These are grown men. You
Speaker 11: can't do it.
Speaker 2: You can't do it.
Speaker 11: And he's just like, got this dumbass smile and a
Speaker 11: drink in his hand and a pipe. He was, in
Speaker 11: a weird way, proud of her independence.
Speaker 1: But there was no talking to Tom or to Heidi.
Speaker 1: And so in nineteen seventy eight, with their dad's consent,
Speaker 1: fourteen year old Heidi gets in the truck with this
Speaker 1: random guy and sets off to make it big in California.
Speaker 1: California was the furthest fourteen year old Heidi Bulch had
Speaker 1: ever been from her family. Like so many other teen girls,
Speaker 1: she had aspirations of being a star and an actress
Speaker 1: or maybe a model. She didn't have all the details
Speaker 1: figured out yet. Heidi's family don't know much about her
Speaker 1: life at this point, but what they do know is
Speaker 1: that she never made it big in Hollywood. We're pretty
Speaker 1: sure that she didn't book any acting gigs, and she
Speaker 1: decided that at five foot one, she was too short
Speaker 1: to make it as a catalog model. So, at age sixteen,
Speaker 1: Heidi packs up her life and once again, with her
Speaker 1: father's blessing, she decides to move, this time to New
Speaker 1: York City. When Heidi arrives in the Big Apple, her
Speaker 1: dreams have changed, well kind of, because of her height.
Speaker 1: She thinks she might have better luck as a hand
Speaker 1: and face model, so she starts putting a portfolio together.
Speaker 1: Picturing a sixteen year old Heidi alone in New York,
Speaker 1: it makes me think of my own daughter when she
Speaker 1: was sixteen. She was still in school, she was learning
Speaker 1: to drive a car and starting to think about colleges.
Speaker 1: As a mother, it's hard for me to understand how
Speaker 1: anyone could let their child go off alone into a
Speaker 1: city as dangerous as New York in the eighties, Heidi
Speaker 1: no doubt considered herself pretty street wise, and in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways she was, but she was also just
Speaker 1: a kid in need of some love and guidance. According
Speaker 1: to her family, Heidie's dad paid the rent on a
Speaker 1: studio apartment for her, but he never visited. Heidi was
Speaker 1: left to fend for herself. Her life became increasingly turbulent.
Speaker 1: She was falling deeper into the throes of drug addiction,
Speaker 1: and she got arrested multiple times. According to her cousin, Robert,
Speaker 1: who was living in New York at the time. Within
Speaker 1: a few years of being in the city, Heidie found
Speaker 1: herself an infamous Island jail Rikers her robbery and assault.
Speaker 11: Heidi was a tough character by that point, so she
Speaker 11: prided herself in knowing how to navigate being in Rikers
Speaker 11: and she would ask for different things like socks and cigarettes,
Speaker 11: whatever underpants, and she could barter use them to her advantage.
Speaker 11: But she took real pride in being able to handle herself.
Speaker 1: After Heidi came out of Rikers when she was around
Speaker 1: twenty one, her family arranged for her to go to
Speaker 1: Florida for a few months to stay with Nana. While there,
Speaker 1: she spoke about getting clean and even got her high
Speaker 1: school ged. But this brief respite from her life in
Speaker 1: New York didn't last. Once she returned to the city,
Speaker 1: she fell back into her old ways. She'd stop buy
Speaker 1: and visit her family, who were living in the city,
Speaker 1: every once in a while for dinner or to get
Speaker 1: a few extra bucks, but they weren't seeing very much
Speaker 1: of her. A lot of her life was a mystery
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 11: We knew she was addicted to drugs and using her
Speaker 11: sexuality in some way.
Speaker 9: She was really on the downward spiral, and it may
Speaker 9: have even been around a discussion about being a sex worker.
Speaker 9: She just came out with this statement. She said, well,
Speaker 9: you know, I'm a lesbian.
Speaker 1: But after coming out as a lesbian, Heidi suddenly marries
Speaker 1: a man.
Speaker 9: She met this guy who was attempting to get a
Speaker 9: green card and struck a deal.
Speaker 1: Allegedly, he gave Heidi fifteen hundred dollars to marry him.
Speaker 1: It seems very much like a business transaction. As far
Speaker 1: as we know, there was no real relationship. Heidi's addiction
Speaker 1: continued to spiral. At various points in the mid to
Speaker 1: late eighties, her family tried to step in.
Speaker 9: I was living in New York and my parents, Heidie's
Speaker 9: aunt and uncle were making one more effort to try
Speaker 9: to get her into drug rehabilitation. And the last night
Speaker 9: before she said she would go, and my folks were
Speaker 9: going to take her. They had gotten a hotel room
Speaker 9: about a half a block away from where they lived.
Speaker 9: I remember being in the hotel room and Heidi was
Speaker 9: going into the bathroom like every twenty minutes, and you know,
Speaker 9: it was sort of obvious that she was taking drugs.
Speaker 9: She was using needles and heroin by that point, and
Speaker 9: I remember seeing her legs in her arms in that
Speaker 9: way that really advanced drug addicts have pustules of sores.
Speaker 9: And it was already that she had had an AIDS diagnosis,
Speaker 9: and she wanted a smoothie and I said, well, I
Speaker 9: can go over to Orange Julius, you know, one of
Speaker 9: those corner store places in New York, and get you one.
Speaker 9: And she said, you know, I'm organic.
Speaker 12: That's great, and it was just so funny, like it
Speaker 12: was like, oh my god, she's organic, and she wasn't
Speaker 12: there the next morning.
Speaker 1: A Heidie's life in New York was, to put it,
Speaker 1: mildly unpredictable. But in amongst all the chaos, there was
Speaker 1: one person in her life that she would never bail on,
Speaker 1: her beloved Nana. Every January on her birthday, Heidi would
Speaker 1: call Nana and they catch up a little.
Speaker 9: And Nana would say, oh, I want to send you
Speaker 9: a check, and you know, it's so nice to hear
Speaker 9: from you, and you know, it was kind of a
Speaker 9: way to know that she was alive and well.
Speaker 10: And it was nineteen ninety when she doesn't call Nana,
Speaker 10: and now it's been a year almost and so everybody
Speaker 10: was knowing something's going on.
Speaker 1: Increasingly worrying for Heidi's welfare, Nana reaches out to Heidie's
Speaker 1: green card husband to see if he's heard from her,
Speaker 1: and he.
Speaker 9: Said, oh, yeah, she's fine. You know, she's over on
Speaker 9: the Alphabet Land Avenue A, and I haven't really seen
Speaker 9: her seen her, but I know other people have seen
Speaker 9: her and just led Nana on. That went on for
Speaker 9: a number of years, and so Nana was not suspecting anymore.
Speaker 9: She believed it and said, oh, well, she's just like
Speaker 9: in more trouble and you know she's she's on drugs.
Speaker 9: Because the fake husband was reassuring Nana for his own
Speaker 9: self interest, that she was alive. Nana died in nineteen
Speaker 9: ninety six, so she never knew whether Heidi was really
Speaker 9: missing or.
Speaker 12: Not, and probably it was better that way for Nana.
Speaker 3: Oh, without a doubt.
Speaker 1: When Nana died, these calls stopped and Heidi's family were
Speaker 1: left wondering what happened to her. Robert tried to console
Speaker 1: himself with fantasies of Heidi having turned her life around.
Speaker 11: My narrative, the thing that I hope was that she
Speaker 11: joined a cult and she was like in Arizona and
Speaker 11: changed her name to Sunbeam. And you know, she was
Speaker 11: gotten clean and healthy.
Speaker 1: But as time went on, nobody had spoken directly with
Speaker 1: Heidi for several years, the family began to wonder whether
Speaker 1: something serious had happened. Throughout the nineties, the family tried
Speaker 1: to make Heidie's father, Tom, file a missing person's report,
Speaker 1: but he.
Speaker 10: Refused because of his dislike of any authority, Like that's
Speaker 10: why he kept telling our mom, no, don't report it yet.
Speaker 10: Somehow he maybe was scared or just disliked the police
Speaker 10: so much or something.
Speaker 1: I can't understand how any parent could go years without
Speaker 1: knowing if their child is alive or dead and do nothing.
Speaker 1: The rest of the family felt torn. They were desperately
Speaker 1: worried for Heidie's welfare, but they wanted to respect Tom's
Speaker 1: wishes as her father, so they stood by until eventually,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, Heidie's aunt Robin, took matters
Speaker 1: into her own hands.
Speaker 9: My mother just couldn't stand it anymore, and so she
Speaker 9: just decided I have to report her missing.
Speaker 1: Over the years, the family checked in with the police,
Speaker 1: but there was no sign of Heidi anywhere. There also
Speaker 1: wasn't any media attention, not like there was in Gail's case.
Speaker 1: Heidie's face didn't appear in the news or on a
Speaker 1: milk carton under missing. I have to wonder if it's
Speaker 1: because Heidi was a sex worker and a drug addict.
Speaker 1: She wasn't a perfect victim, and maybe she reflected backup
Speaker 1: people the kind of life they wanted to hide away from.
Speaker 1: Given how much Heidi means to me, to Anna, to Mindy,
Speaker 1: to Elaine, to all of us girlfriends, it's heartbreaking to
Speaker 1: think that for so long her story was just ignored.
Speaker 1: Until twenty thirteen, when Heidi's ain't Row gets a very
Speaker 1: important visit for.
Speaker 3: Hope Well detectives knocked on her door and said, could
Speaker 3: this be your niece?
Speaker 9: My mother took one month with the pictures and she said,
Speaker 9: that's Heidi.
Speaker 1: This was when the family learned that Heidi was dead
Speaker 1: and that the serial killer Joel Rifkin was responsible for
Speaker 1: her murder.
Speaker 11: And then my sister Anne, she got right on the
Speaker 11: commuter start investigating and she tells me, you know, Heidie
Speaker 11: was decapitated.
Speaker 1: It was all so much darker, so much more heartbreaking
Speaker 1: than they ever could have imagined.
Speaker 11: I mean, it was one of those moments though, where
Speaker 11: were you when you found out? When the towers came
Speaker 11: down or whatever?
Speaker 10: It was definitely shocking. It was, I mean, kind of
Speaker 10: knocked my breath out.
Speaker 1: Trying to come to terms with what's happened. The family
Speaker 1: seek out as much information as they can. They come
Speaker 1: across old news articles about Heidi's death before she was identified,
Speaker 1: articles they may have read a few years previously, without
Speaker 1: knowing the connection they had.
Speaker 10: I think I saw the headline that said head has
Speaker 10: aids and I just felt like I couldn't talk about it,
Speaker 10: or I just didn't, you know, I didn't know how
Speaker 10: to process it. I didn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1: The callous, in dismissive way Heidie was spoken about by
Speaker 1: the press after her death is a fucked up mirror
Speaker 1: image of the way Joel Rifkin saw her and his
Speaker 1: other victims. He spoke about it in the book From
Speaker 1: the Mouth of a Monster.
Speaker 10: I didn't read the whole book, but I have it
Speaker 10: in my mind that he said, well, I picked these
Speaker 10: kind of girls because no one's looking for them. They
Speaker 10: don't have families that care.
Speaker 7: And that just.
Speaker 10: Felt like a dagger in my heart to be well,
Speaker 10: how long did it take for us to report it.
Speaker 10: We wouldn't have known, like within a week or two,
Speaker 10: because no one was in that close touch with her.
Speaker 10: But by that summer we could have said, we should
Speaker 10: get some help in case we can't find her. You know,
Speaker 10: if we had reported it, maybe it would have led
Speaker 10: to him being caught.
Speaker 3: There'd be sixteen other women still alive.
Speaker 1: Lyle Robert and Anne have been trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how their cousin, the girl they shared Christmases with, who
Speaker 1: played the danting nuns on repeat until the record nearly
Speaker 1: wore out, who had dreams of being a star, how
Speaker 1: it is that she could have gone down so a
Speaker 1: different road to them.
Speaker 10: It makes me realize that intact, consistent, reliable love that
Speaker 10: our parents gave us, How valuable that is, how important
Speaker 10: that is. Like I could be right where Heidi was
Speaker 10: if I had had Uncle Tom.
Speaker 11: And I mean she did have love from Nana, yeah
Speaker 11: and whatever Tom, in a weird way, there were little
Speaker 11: pockets of it, you know, So she wasn't completely deprived.
Speaker 11: I'm not. It's we're just still trying to sort it
Speaker 11: out and figure it out, Like, how does a life
Speaker 11: go so wrong? You know, how does that happen?
Speaker 1: After the twenty and thirteen police investigation, all of Heidi's remains,
Speaker 1: including her torso, were finally reunited and cremated as one.
Speaker 1: The family had some kind of closure, But what they
Speaker 1: didn't know until we came along was that Heidi's torso
Speaker 1: had been buried for nearly ten years in the grave
Speaker 1: of Gail Cats. So we thought it fitting to introduce
Speaker 1: them to the woman who visited her all those years,
Speaker 1: Gail's sister Elaine.
Speaker 2: Hi, Hi, we have something terrible in common.
Speaker 6: I am so sorry, thank you, I am so sorry
Speaker 6: to you.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 9: I think that it's only since we got connected with
Speaker 9: Anna and learned the story of the misidentified torso and
Speaker 9: realized that there was a lot of peace that we
Speaker 9: have felt knowing that somebody loved her and buried her,
Speaker 9: and that she was cared about for a period of time,
Speaker 9: when for twenty five years it was a total mystery.
Speaker 6: You know, Heide's torso gave my family an enormous amount
Speaker 6: of peace and closure.
Speaker 2: Burying her.
Speaker 6: We finally felt that, you know, we had some part
Speaker 6: of my sister back. So thank you for lending her
Speaker 6: to me and my family.
Speaker 2: That's a big heart that you have.
Speaker 9: We know and appreciate that there was loving energy going
Speaker 9: her way.
Speaker 2: In Heidi's story, that means a lot.
Speaker 1: As we end the call with the Lane, the Louisiana
Speaker 1: sky is getting dark. Still strew across the table in
Speaker 1: front of us are the documents and photographs. It gives
Speaker 1: us snapshots in the Heidi's too short life, and it
Speaker 1: might be the rainstorm or maybe the spirits in the
Speaker 1: house that Rusty talked about. But the lights start to
Speaker 1: flicker on and off, and the conversation turns to what
Speaker 1: Heidi would make of all of this.
Speaker 9: At one point, when she was in her teen years,
Speaker 9: she said to me, you know, what I really want
Speaker 9: is to be on the cover of a magazine and
Speaker 9: have my mother see me on the cover of a
Speaker 9: magazine when I'm famous. Like the motivation was to be
Speaker 9: discovered by her mother. Yeah, and she's not a famous
Speaker 9: hand model or an actress who's doing brilliant work.
Speaker 3: But maybe this is the legacy we've been waiting for.
Speaker 9: Maybe this is being on the cover of the magazine
Speaker 9: in some weird way, and I think she will be
Speaker 9: represented now with a story. It's more than the blood
Speaker 9: and gore on the internet.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that you all are telling it. I also
Speaker 2: have the sense that the girlfriends are growing in numbers. Yes,
Speaker 2: and count me in.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 1: I'd like to think that, Gail and Heidi, you're just
Speaker 1: friends somewhere in the ethers.
Speaker 14: I was thinking that too, in the ethers, but maybe
Speaker 14: it was like a destiny right thing and a divine intervention.
Speaker 1: Today, Heidi's ashes are scattered underneath a palm tree somewhere
Speaker 1: in Florida. It's nice to imagine her there, soaking up
Speaker 1: the sun. Finally at peace. I'm back on the shores
Speaker 1: of Staten Island, where Heidi first entered our story. Mindy
Speaker 1: and Anna are with me. The three of us are
Speaker 1: gathered here one final time, in this beautiful, slightly melancholy
Speaker 1: spot to say goodbye. We started this journey with one
Speaker 1: mission to find our lost sister, and now that we've
Speaker 1: not only found her but named her two, we're here
Speaker 1: to give her a proper sendoff. So we're gonna do
Speaker 1: it in the only way we know how. Very Jewish,
Speaker 1: a little slap dash with a lot of heart.
Speaker 4: In the Jewish tradition, if you visit a grave site,
Speaker 4: you leave a stone, and I think we should leave
Speaker 4: a stone here.
Speaker 10: I love that.
Speaker 14: Let's leave the snow.
Speaker 2: Where are you going to place it?
Speaker 1: I'm going to go down there, walking right out to
Speaker 1: the water's edge. Mindy gently lays down the stone.
Speaker 5: Is that something you say when you do this?
Speaker 1: Normally you say yes? Score? Jitsker is a special memorial
Speaker 1: prayer for the departed, where you say the name of
Speaker 1: the dead you wish to honor. It means may God remember,
Speaker 1: But sadly and a little ironically, we don't remember the words.
Speaker 2: Okay, Siri, can you say y?
Speaker 10: Score?
Speaker 1: Okay? How to get your credit report?
Speaker 12: Now?
Speaker 1: We warned you slap dash, But eventually Mindy finds what
Speaker 1: she's looking for. So, dear listener, we'd like you to
Speaker 1: join us in taking a moment to remember.
Speaker 8: Heidi, balch okay, are you ready.
Speaker 13: Showcat on me? Moments an don't gonna.
Speaker 2: Should be.
Speaker 5: Taken sho.
Speaker 4: Heidi, okay, shall oh that's any one?
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's enough.
Speaker 1: There's there's gotta be a shorter one. I'd like to
Speaker 1: imagine that Hidie and Gil are looking down on us
Speaker 1: from the ethers, both of them laughing at me. Mindy
Speaker 1: and Anna as we awkwardly make our way off the beach,
Speaker 1: leaving behind two unassuming stones just on the water's edge,
Speaker 1: one for Heidi and one for Gail. This story is
Speaker 1: for all of us. It's for Gail and for her
Speaker 1: sister Elaine. It's for Anne and Rusty and Lyle and Robert.
Speaker 1: But most of all, this story is for Heidi Balch,
Speaker 1: who is no longer our lost sister. Because we found you, Heidi,
Speaker 1: and we will never forget you. The girlfriends Our Lost
Speaker 1: Sister is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more
Speaker 1: from novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Carol Fisher, and our chief investigator is Mindy Shapiro.
Speaker 1: To find me on social media, search Carol A. Fisher
Speaker 1: That's Carol with an E. The season is written and
Speaker 1: produced by Anna Sinfield and Lee Meyer. Our assistant producer
Speaker 1: is Madeline Parr. The editor is Joe Wheeler. Max O'Brien
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Our fact checker is Dania Suleiman.
Speaker 1: Production management from Sharie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design,
Speaker 1: mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempsen and Nicholas Alexander music
Speaker 1: supervision by Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander. Original music composed
Speaker 1: and performed by Luisa Gerstein and produced by Louisa Gerstein
Speaker 1: and Nicholas Alexander. The series artwork was designed by Christina Limkuhl.
Speaker 1: Story development by Anna Sinfield. Willard Foxton is creative director
Speaker 1: of Development. Our executive producers at iHeart Podcasts are Katrina
Speaker 1: Norvel and Nikki Etour special thanks to Canter, Daniella Guessenheit,
Speaker 1: and Leona Hamid, plus Elie Canter, Carrie Lieberman, and Will
Speaker 1: Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carly Frankel and
Speaker 1: the whole team at WME, and a special shout out
Speaker 1: to Vince Hayward, my life partner in True Crime for
Speaker 1: taking on the role of girlfriend's confidante and lead tech support.
Speaker 1: The Girlfriends will return with the brand news story and
Speaker 1: a new host soon.
Speaker 3: Novel