Speaker 1: Before we begin, Please note this series includes talk of
Speaker 1: suicide and sexual violence. Please take care while listening. So
Speaker 1: I had to be at a friend's house in Annapolis
Speaker 1: at six and it was three, and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: got time, and I have an address, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to the house then that I could say hello,
Speaker 1: Douglass's house, right. Kim has never forgotten about Doug, the
Speaker 1: married state trooper who was in a relationship with Sandy
Speaker 1: before her death. In fact, she has amassed an impressive
Speaker 1: file on him. She's paid for background checks on his name,
Speaker 1: studied his wife's Facebook page, research the properties the couple own.
Speaker 1: She even went to the trouble of requesting Doug's training
Speaker 1: records from the State Police. And she's done all this
Speaker 1: because of her suspicion that Doug knows why Sandy was
Speaker 1: in the pollard that night. She thinks he might have
Speaker 1: been with her because in the months before Sandy's death,
Speaker 1: they had an intimate relationship, one that led, according to
Speaker 1: Sandy's writings, to a pregnancy and an abortion, and on
Speaker 1: the night of her death, Sandy was dressed up like
Speaker 1: she was meeting someone for a date. The medical examiner
Speaker 1: found quote numerous well preserved spermatozoa inside her body, and
Speaker 1: the location of Sandy's death the Pollard. It was a
Speaker 1: local cop hangout a mile from where Doug worked. In
Speaker 1: the car with Sandy was a letter for him. As
Speaker 1: much as Kim has wanted answers from Doug, she has
Speaker 1: always been too afraid to reach out to him directly,
Speaker 1: worried about how he might react to her meddling. But
Speaker 1: on her last trip to Maryland, she decided to pay
Speaker 1: him a visit. So I'm driving down this little cul
Speaker 1: de sac and I'm thinking, you know nothing, I'm not
Speaker 1: nervous or anything, and so I keep going and there's
Speaker 1: this little dinky road because I see a house out
Speaker 1: in the woods. So I've already gone down this wooded path.
Speaker 1: I'm driving down this road, and my brain must have
Speaker 1: registered the sign that said video surveillance stapled to a
Speaker 1: tree trunk was a sign that warned visitors they were
Speaker 1: being recorded. And then all of a sudden, I see
Speaker 1: his house. I trust my instincts and I just hit
Speaker 1: my brakes some now because now I'm like, I'm going
Speaker 1: deeper into the woods and it's getting a little creepier,
Speaker 1: and um, so I stopped and I start thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm getting I'm like taking a little bit too much risk.
Speaker 1: I'm going to back out. So I back out and
Speaker 1: leaving my Heart's like race in. Kim left without making
Speaker 1: contact with Doug. Her courage had only taken her so far.
Speaker 1: What Kim didn't know at the time was that Doug
Speaker 1: had recently had another unexpected visitor. Just a few days earlier,
Speaker 1: a Prince George's County Police detective showed up on Doug's
Speaker 1: doorstep asking questions about Sandy. From My Heart Radio, I'm
Speaker 1: Melissa Jelson, and this is what happened to Sandy beale
Speaker 1: An I Heart Original podcast, Chapter seven, The Unraveling. I'll
Speaker 1: come back to Doug later, but first I want to
Speaker 1: explain why Kim was in Maryland. To begin with. She
Speaker 1: had been invited to meet with a cold case detective
Speaker 1: Bernie Nelson at the Prince George's County Police headquarters in Forestville.
Speaker 1: Kim had never met Bernie before, but had known of
Speaker 1: him since two thousand and six. He's the one who
Speaker 1: answered her call when she first tried to get the
Speaker 1: police report, and he's also the one in who actually
Speaker 1: tracked it down going to Detective Sachelski's house to physically
Speaker 1: retrieve it. I mean, I've heard this man's name since
Speaker 1: two thousand and six and it's so that was kind
Speaker 1: of exciting that I was going to finally meet him.
Speaker 1: He could have just blown me off that he did.
Speaker 1: And so, on a brisk morning in October, Bernie and
Speaker 1: Kim finally met in person, wearing masks. Due to the
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic. Kim wasn't permitted to record their conversation, but
Speaker 1: she invited her sister along and she took diligent notes.
Speaker 1: I've used these contemporaneous notes, interviews with Kim, and written
Speaker 1: responses from PG County to create this account of the meeting.
Speaker 1: So this is eleven o'clock on Monday morning, and he
Speaker 1: guess he asks, so how did all this podcast stuff happen?
Speaker 1: And uh so he was very interested, and UM I
Speaker 1: encouraged him and like, I really think it's in your
Speaker 1: best interest to allow them to interview you. Because he's stating,
Speaker 1: he goes, well, we don't think that we should have
Speaker 1: to do it because we've done our due diligence and
Speaker 1: we've done everything that we can and the powers to
Speaker 1: be believed. There's nothing else that we can do, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, what, how can how can you say you've
Speaker 1: done everything? I've got all these questions, and we've had
Speaker 1: questions for years. Kim was excited, but nervous. A previous
Speaker 1: meeting with the state police years ago had left him
Speaker 1: feeling intimidated. She brought with her a list of questions
Speaker 1: for Bernie so that she wouldn't forget what she wanted
Speaker 1: to say. And this guy was calm and and was
Speaker 1: wanting to educate me on his part on how they
Speaker 1: saw it. Bernie told her that the department had coal
Speaker 1: cases and very hugh staff to work them all, but
Speaker 1: he had taken the time to get familiar with Sandy's case.
Speaker 1: He knew, for instance, about the ride along notations in
Speaker 1: Sandy's calendar, the names and numbers of local police officers
Speaker 1: in her address books. Kim told Bernie what she thought
Speaker 1: that a number of cops had taken advantage of Sandy
Speaker 1: pursuing inappropriate sexual relationships with the teen, and to her surprise,
Speaker 1: he didn't dispute it. He agreed that at the time
Speaker 1: seventy seven, the climate was not there for females to
Speaker 1: be police officers, and they didn't want her, They did
Speaker 1: not want females to be there. He agreed that all
Speaker 1: these officers were inappropriate. None of their behaviors were was becoming,
Speaker 1: and today they would have all been terminated, or at
Speaker 1: least they should have been in his opinion, and Nelson's
Speaker 1: going on, don't condone any o their behavior. He was
Speaker 1: disgusted as we were talking, and I just was floored
Speaker 1: that he was being so accountable. Bernie told Kim that
Speaker 1: he understood why the Beal family was so suspicious of
Speaker 1: PG County Police given the circumstances, and he came across
Speaker 1: a sincere to him and he's like, I understand why
Speaker 1: you guys doubt everything. He also credited him with the
Speaker 1: amount of stuff she'd been able to dig up on
Speaker 1: her own, acknowledging her fierce commitment to the case. He said,
Speaker 1: you've done your homework. He said, you did a good
Speaker 1: job with this, And he's like, that's another reason that
Speaker 1: I wanted to follow through, because I knew you're not
Speaker 1: gonna let me go here. While Bernie was telling him
Speaker 1: all of this, there was another cop in the room,
Speaker 1: Detective McDonald. He remained fairly quiet throughout the meeting, Kim
Speaker 1: didn't even know why he was there until he started
Speaker 1: telling her about his recent visit to Doug's house. Just
Speaker 1: days earlier, Detective McDonald had surprised the retired state trooper
Speaker 1: at his home and questioned him about his involvement with Sandy.
Speaker 1: I was able to confirm with PG County Police that
Speaker 1: this visit took place, so um McDonald called him outside
Speaker 1: the house and he said we I questioned him for
Speaker 1: an hour and a half. An hour and a half,
Speaker 1: that's a long time to visit with somebody, according to McDonald.
Speaker 1: Doug admitted that he'd had a relationship with Sandy, but
Speaker 1: he downplayed its significance. He said he did not know
Speaker 1: she was pregnant. He did not know she had an abortion.
Speaker 1: He didn't pay for any any abortion. Doug confirmed that
Speaker 1: the Pollard where Sandy was found dead was a local
Speaker 1: hangout for state troopers and a place Sandy had gone before.
Speaker 1: The Bills, including Kim, had suspected this for years. He
Speaker 1: told McDonald that Pepco Utility yard was the common spot
Speaker 1: for Maryland State Police that gathered and it was called
Speaker 1: don't know what that means, but the spot was called.
Speaker 1: He said, girls, including Sandy, would come and socialize with
Speaker 1: the cops. He said it was kind of like a
Speaker 1: groupie thing, like they followed a band, and that the
Speaker 1: cops would just s gather there. But that was the
Speaker 1: extent of the information Doug would share about Sandy. He
Speaker 1: denied being in the pollard the night of Sandy's death
Speaker 1: or having anything to do with it. He said he
Speaker 1: had not been in the pollard that evening. He said,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that she was dead until my supervisor
Speaker 1: brought me in a few days later. He said, my
Speaker 1: supervisor reported to me, and then I was questioned That
Speaker 1: Maryland State Police did interview him made him do a polygraph.
Speaker 1: Doug stated that after Sandy's death, his employer, the Maryland
Speaker 1: State Police, opened an internal investigation on his relationship with
Speaker 1: the team. He said he was polygraphed to determine if
Speaker 1: his actions violated the agency's code of conduct. So Doug
Speaker 1: was questioned back then, but not by Prince George's County
Speaker 1: Police who were investigating Sandy's unnatural death. Rather, he had
Speaker 1: to answer to his employer, who probably learned of the
Speaker 1: improper relationship from Detective Sachelski. All of this it happened
Speaker 1: behind the Bill's back. Joanne, Sandy's mom, was never informed
Speaker 1: about this investigation, despite the fact that she called the
Speaker 1: state police looking for Doug and expressed her concerns about
Speaker 1: the relationship. I want to know what else they learned
Speaker 1: from him, and I'm sure it's stuff they didn't want
Speaker 1: me to know because it was going to hurt my feelings.
Speaker 1: In Kim's eyes, Doug had always existed in this protected bubble, untouchable,
Speaker 1: living above the law. Now learning that he hadn't completely
Speaker 1: evaded scrutiny that he was compelled to explain his relationship
Speaker 1: with Sandy on his front law no less, it left
Speaker 1: her feeling elated. To be clear, Kim didn't believe that
Speaker 1: Doug told the whole truth, and she had so many
Speaker 1: more questions for him, but it felt like a small
Speaker 1: victory that he had acknowledged and confirmed his relationship with Sandy,
Speaker 1: because this was something I had tried to get him
Speaker 1: to do to no avail. Doug never responded to my
Speaker 1: many letters and emails, even though I have an email
Speaker 1: tracker and I could tell that someone had read my
Speaker 1: messages often many times soon after I sent them. But
Speaker 1: Doug wasn't able to ignore a detective on his doorstep,
Speaker 1: and so four decades after Sandy's death, he was forced
Speaker 1: to remember her. The cold case detectives never explained to
Speaker 1: him why they visited Doug, And I can't say for
Speaker 1: sure because Prince George's County police declined to make anyone
Speaker 1: available for an interview. But my instinct just not that
Speaker 1: they suspected Doug of murder, but that they wanted to
Speaker 1: show the bills that they've done something, because despite the
Speaker 1: recent visit to Doug's house, the PG County Police Department
Speaker 1: was still convinced that Sandy died by suicide. He stated
Speaker 1: that they believed that there was no foul play, that
Speaker 1: no further investigation needed to be done, and they didn't
Speaker 1: need to investigate anything further because they felt there was
Speaker 1: nothing criminal in nature. Bernie told her that based on
Speaker 1: the forensic evidence at the scene of Sandy's death, it
Speaker 1: was indisputable that she died by suicide. But Kim had
Speaker 1: seen all the same evidence as Bernie and had come
Speaker 1: to a dramatically different conclusion. And we're going back and
Speaker 1: forth arguing, and he's like no, and so I pull
Speaker 1: out all my notes and I put them out there.
Speaker 1: For years, Kim had been compiling what she believed were
Speaker 1: the most compelling pieces of evidence that cast doubt on
Speaker 1: the theory of suicide. Now Kim went over each point
Speaker 1: one by one. There was the gun discovered without any fingerprints.
Speaker 1: There was the cardboard found under Sandy's tires, which indicated
Speaker 1: to Kim that Sandy was trying to leave. There was
Speaker 1: the fact that Sandy's body was discovered so close to
Speaker 1: her boyfriend's place of work, and yet he was not
Speaker 1: interviewed by Prince George's County Police as part of the
Speaker 1: death investigation. There was the sperm inside sandy, sperm which
Speaker 1: could now be tested for DNA and could potentially solve
Speaker 1: the question of who was last with Sandy. But most importantly,
Speaker 1: there was this strange location of the gunshot wound. Why
Speaker 1: would Sandy, who was left handed, reach across her body
Speaker 1: to shoot herself in the right side. So we get
Speaker 1: into the trajectory part, and I told him that I
Speaker 1: didn't understand how one could shoot themselves in the manner
Speaker 1: that you're saying, and if she had in fact committed suicide,
Speaker 1: and he goes, she was she was shot in the stomach.
Speaker 1: I'm like no. Ever since I met Kim, she has
Speaker 1: described the bullet as having penetrated Sandy's right side and
Speaker 1: exited through the left side of her back. Kim is
Speaker 1: not wrong, but when you look at the evidence a
Speaker 1: little more closely, a more nuanced picture emerges. According to
Speaker 1: the autopsy report, the entrance wound was in Sandy's abdomen
Speaker 1: less than three inches to the right of her midline,
Speaker 1: not in her flank as Kim had described it. It's
Speaker 1: a slight difference, but an important distinction when it comes
Speaker 1: to visualizing how someone would inflict such an injury. To
Speaker 1: be told that she was mistaken about the location of
Speaker 1: the entrance wound, even by a small distance, was genuinely
Speaker 1: confusing for Kim. And she and I said, but she
Speaker 1: couldn't have. Possibly, she couldn't have. She couldn't be contortionist
Speaker 1: and do this. And he's like him. She took the gun,
Speaker 1: she braced it on the steering wheel, and she used
Speaker 1: her thumbs, and she she put it to her stomach
Speaker 1: because it was a direct shot to the stomach. It
Speaker 1: went through right here, and it came right out the
Speaker 1: back behind her, her back. The trajectory of the bullet
Speaker 1: had never been explained to him in this way. Instead
Speaker 1: of traveling from right to left, Bernie showed Kim that
Speaker 1: the path of the bullet really moved from front to back.
Speaker 1: There was a deviation of about five inches, but that
Speaker 1: could be accounted for by the angle of Sandy's body
Speaker 1: or the angle of the gun, or a combination of
Speaker 1: the two. And he says, um, but there was gunpowder
Speaker 1: on the steering wheel. And I'm like what. And it
Speaker 1: was kind of like this thing came at me where
Speaker 1: all of a sudden things were becoming clear. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean there was gunpowder on the steering
Speaker 1: wheel And he goes, yes, there was a spray of
Speaker 1: gunpowder on her hands, the gun on the on the
Speaker 1: steering wheel and forward. And I'm like, oh god. Kim
Speaker 1: had never heard about gunpowder being on the steering wheel
Speaker 1: of Sandy's car. The detail wasn't in the police report,
Speaker 1: and no one had ever mentioned it to her before,
Speaker 1: but now she imagined it. What he said was that's
Speaker 1: how it got in her hands, that everything goes backwards,
Speaker 1: that this the gunpowder sprays back. That's what they said.
Speaker 1: And I don't know in anything about it. But as
Speaker 1: he's telling me this, my whole body's I went, oh God,
Speaker 1: this is you know. It was the first time I
Speaker 1: was able to see that it's a possibility. And I
Speaker 1: just was like, I started crying, and I we only
Speaker 1: had masks on, so all I could see was his eyes,
Speaker 1: and his eyes were watering up too. At that moment,
Speaker 1: Kim's certainty in the facts that she had been repeating
Speaker 1: for so many years started to break apart. It was
Speaker 1: a disorienting and destabilizing feel line. She was able to
Speaker 1: glimpse an alternative version of events for Sandy's death that
Speaker 1: made just as much sense as the one she had
Speaker 1: believed for so long. After Kim and her sister left
Speaker 1: the meeting, they drove immediately to the pollard where Sandy
Speaker 1: had died. They sat in the car, their heads buzzing
Speaker 1: with the information that just received, and it was here
Speaker 1: that Kim's sister began talking. We went straight from there
Speaker 1: to the Pepco utility yard to just kinda like debrief
Speaker 1: and and chill and look um, and she just got
Speaker 1: very sad. She's like, I wish that I just knew.
Speaker 1: I wish that I could have just told her that
Speaker 1: this two she'll pass and this doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1: But I know exactly what she was going through if
Speaker 1: she was sitting in that car by herself. Kim's sister
Speaker 1: confided that she had been in Sandy's position before. She
Speaker 1: had too, had thought of suicide a number of times
Speaker 1: during her life. Kim later described this moment to me
Speaker 1: as one of the most vulnerable she had ever shared
Speaker 1: with her sister. Kim listened to her sister talk while
Speaker 1: looking out at the Pollard. She had visited the location
Speaker 1: nearly a dozen times as part of her investigation into
Speaker 1: Sandy's death, and she had pictured all the ways Sandy
Speaker 1: could have died at the hands of another. Now she
Speaker 1: saw the scene through her sister's eyes, She's like, Kim,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that the desire to commit suicide
Speaker 1: is really hard and um, it's not a pleasant place
Speaker 1: to be and I know exactly what she was tormented
Speaker 1: with at that moment. I was in Spain on vacation
Speaker 1: when all of this was happening, and my phone lit
Speaker 1: up with a text from Kim. She had gone right
Speaker 1: from the Pollard to the airport, and as she waited
Speaker 1: for her flight back to Texas, she gulped down a
Speaker 1: glass of wine, and she texted me this line quote,
Speaker 1: I think she committed suicide. When I read this, I
Speaker 1: was stunned. I had told him a lot of information
Speaker 1: over the last few months that complicated the story she
Speaker 1: believed about Sandy's death. She took it all in stride,
Speaker 1: but her confidence in her stance remained strong. Now she
Speaker 1: had completely reversed her position, abandoning a belief that had
Speaker 1: driven her for so long. This belief, it was a
Speaker 1: part of Kim. It dictated how she spent her free time.
Speaker 1: It reached into her professional life and informed how she
Speaker 1: identified with her clients. It molded her personality. How could
Speaker 1: a single meeting change her mind? What could Bernie have
Speaker 1: said or done to persuade her? I mean, look, think
Speaker 1: about you know yourself and what you believe about this story, right,
Speaker 1: or like, what would it take to convince you of
Speaker 1: a different narrative? And I think when you think about
Speaker 1: it that way, you realize that, you know, getting entrenched
Speaker 1: in the system of beliefs is actually shockingly easy. Like
Speaker 1: that's what we do as human beings. Steven Sloman is
Speaker 1: a professor of cognitive linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University.
Speaker 1: He studies how people think. How do you actually change mind?
Speaker 1: The traditional way to think about it is that if
Speaker 1: you just see enough evidence, then finally you'll change your mind.
Speaker 1: I think it's very clear that's false. In fact, in
Speaker 1: the literature, there are people who propose what are called
Speaker 1: backfire effects. You take people who feel strongly about an issue,
Speaker 1: and you show them evidence that's inconcern assistant with their view,
Speaker 1: and in some conditions, people come to feel even more
Speaker 1: strongly the way they felt before, despite the evidence. If
Speaker 1: you bombard someone with information that challenges their beliefs, they're
Speaker 1: likely to double down on their original stance. But listen
Speaker 1: to them, really listen, and the opposite might happen. Research
Speaker 1: shows that people who are genuinely listened to feel safer
Speaker 1: in the conversation and experience less anxiety. As a result,
Speaker 1: they're less defensive and better at seeing both sides of
Speaker 1: an argument, and they walk away from the conversation with
Speaker 1: a more nuanced perspective. But if we're talking about how
Speaker 1: to approach an individual to change their minds, well, the
Speaker 1: first thing you do is you acknowledge where that person
Speaker 1: is coming from. Right, You don't have to agree with it,
Speaker 1: but you have to give the person a sense that
Speaker 1: you understand and them, and you understand their values. Right,
Speaker 1: if you can acknowledge their most sacred values first, that's
Speaker 1: a really good entryway. Then the person feels respected and
Speaker 1: feels like they're talking to someone who understands them. So
Speaker 1: that's step one. Hearing this, it sounded almost exactly like
Speaker 1: what Bernie did. Kim told me how he acknowledged that
Speaker 1: PG County police had mistreated Sandy and how wrong it was.
Speaker 1: He didn't try to minimize it or shrug it off
Speaker 1: as every other police officer had in the years. Kim
Speaker 1: had been asking questions. Step two is not to enforce
Speaker 1: your own view on the person. What you have to
Speaker 1: do is sort of elicit. You have to be kind
Speaker 1: of platonic about it. That is, you have to elicit
Speaker 1: that person's perspective and then start asking them questions so
Speaker 1: that they can see themselves where the inconsistencies are in
Speaker 1: their story. And then if you can fill them in,
Speaker 1: you might very slowly gradually be able to sort of
Speaker 1: turn the corner and allow them to integrate the information
Speaker 1: with a different narrative, a new narrative. I thought of
Speaker 1: Sandy's gunshot wound. Kim had walked into the meeting believing
Speaker 1: one thing about its trajectory and was shown gently that
Speaker 1: she was mistaken. I wondered if that moment opened the
Speaker 1: door to her being able to see other possibilities. Narratives,
Speaker 1: you know, have have teeth that sink into all aspects
Speaker 1: of our lives, especially when they concerned really important things
Speaker 1: like the death of a child. You have all of
Speaker 1: this knowledge that's kind of sitting together in this tight
Speaker 1: little story, and you have to loosen up the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and then when it falls part, it falls apart as
Speaker 1: a whole and reshapes as a whole. What Kim experienced
Speaker 1: in that meeting with Bernie may best be described as
Speaker 1: an epiphany. And I don't think it was the individual
Speaker 1: revelation of gunpowder on the steering wheel that triggered this change.
Speaker 1: I think it has a lot more to do with
Speaker 1: how she was treated during the meeting and what Bernie
Speaker 1: was able to offer her recognition, acknowledgement, a sympathetic ear
Speaker 1: I was heard, and I was disarmed with his empathy
Speaker 1: and his um compassion. I just I mean, I I
Speaker 1: just was blown away, and then I don't know, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, maybe it was his demeanor and the way
Speaker 1: he was presenting it opposed to how it was presented
Speaker 1: in the past. Kim's previous experience with Prince George's County
Speaker 1: police was dotted with contentious interactions, instances where she was
Speaker 1: brush off or treated as a nuisance. All the things
Speaker 1: she had found suspicious, Sandy's address books, the ride alongs,
Speaker 1: her close connections to local police officers were dismissed as insignificant,
Speaker 1: and Kim was made to feel as if she was
Speaker 1: losing it seeing things that weren't there. For the first time,
Speaker 1: a PG County police officer acknowledged that she was justified
Speaker 1: in her suspicions. Sandy's involvement with police was relevant, it
Speaker 1: did matter, and Bernie went so far as to say
Speaker 1: that it may have contributed to Sandy's decision to take
Speaker 1: her own life. So I was focused on these eyes,
Speaker 1: and his eyes were just kind and he cared, and
Speaker 1: it was like he could see the pain and he
Speaker 1: could even I mean, he he felt the pain. He
Speaker 1: wasn't in tears, but he just had those eyes and
Speaker 1: they were so compassionate that it was there was a
Speaker 1: connection of you really gotta get it was like, you
Speaker 1: really have to believe me. It was like he was
Speaker 1: almost begging me, you know, almost get yourself out of
Speaker 1: this misery that you're in, because it's just the truth.
Speaker 1: When Kim texted me, quote, I think she committed suicide,
Speaker 1: it was a bold statement, and in our following conversation
Speaker 1: she sounded confident that she now knew the truth, but
Speaker 1: letting go of a core belief after all those years.
Speaker 1: It's not a linear process. There were days, minutes, hours
Speaker 1: where her suspicions resurfaced and her doubts rushed back in,
Speaker 1: only to later subside like a pendulum swinging back and forth.
Speaker 1: She texted me about the experience, quote, I find myself
Speaker 1: shifting often from knowing she was killed and grieving how
Speaker 1: much she was really hurting. Kim was undergoing the painstaking
Speaker 1: process of rebuilding her understanding of Sandy's death after her
Speaker 1: tightly wand belief had started to unravel. I'm still struggling
Speaker 1: with the transition of changing the words from killed too,
Speaker 1: took her life or whatever that's different, because it does
Speaker 1: I still have that resistance in my head to it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to believe that that's the truth, but
Speaker 1: I do know that what she was facing was really horrible.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about like letting some of that
Speaker 1: stuff go? I feel like I let her down, but
Speaker 1: I feel like a fool that I still have questions. UM,
Speaker 1: I feel like I wasted your time, and I feel
Speaker 1: like I wasted the Beal's time because it just felt
Speaker 1: like a why did you make this into something that
Speaker 1: it wasn't. I don't know. That's what I've been struggling with.
Speaker 1: After Kim flew home to Texas, she knew she had
Speaker 1: to tell the rest of the bills what she now
Speaker 1: believed about Sandy's death, but she didn't want to do
Speaker 1: it over the phone. She couldn't bear the thought of
Speaker 1: having four individual conversations where she tried to put into
Speaker 1: words what had happened during her meeting with Bernie, and
Speaker 1: so she packed her bags once again and booked a
Speaker 1: flight to Maine. Before leaving, she penned an email to
Speaker 1: Bernie to say thank you. He rolled back right away.
Speaker 1: Here's Kim reading some of his email. And as I
Speaker 1: said before, I'm very sorry about what happened to Sandy.
Speaker 1: She was put through far too much by people who
Speaker 1: should have known better and whom she trusted and looked
Speaker 1: up to. It is shameful and it's caused a young
Speaker 1: lady with a promising future to die at a very
Speaker 1: young age. I hope that answered your question satisfactory, and
Speaker 1: please don't hesitate to let me know if you have
Speaker 1: any other questions. Have a safe trip. What happened on
Speaker 1: that trip is on our next and final episode. We've
Speaker 1: come along way with this, but you, Doug and Doug
Speaker 1: and so in my mind, I think we've come to
Speaker 1: the end of the row when the lads are dropped.
Speaker 1: What Happened To Sandy Beale is hosted by me Melissa Jolson.
Speaker 1: It's written and produced by me and Katrina Norvell. The
Speaker 1: podcast is edited by a Bousafar, sound designed by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Jason English is our executive producer. Research and production assistance
Speaker 1: by Marissa Brown. To find out more about my investigation,
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at quasimato. That's qu a s
Speaker 1: I am a d oh. Thanks so much for listening.