Speaker 1: Before we begin, please note this series includes talk of
Speaker 1: suicide and sexual violence. Please take care while listening. It
Speaker 1: was it was just a strange turn of how it
Speaker 1: all unfolded anothers right now. I know all the people
Speaker 1: feel difference. I'm just putting my feelings out there. This
Speaker 1: is a crazyness that we were told you can do it.
Speaker 1: It just didn't know a lot of things just didn't
Speaker 1: so some of the stuff I'm about to tell you,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're pissed now, you're going to get
Speaker 1: even more piste off because I never knew anything and
Speaker 1: you never said it's it's like for you to hear
Speaker 1: all of this, well else not what I want to hear,
Speaker 1: but if it gil is what it is. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not fine. Bullshit. Yeah. Shot from My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Melissa Jolson and this is what happened to Sandy
Speaker 1: Beale an I Heart original podcast, Chapter eight, Good Grief.
Speaker 1: The first time I went to Maine to meet with
Speaker 1: the Bell family. It was summer and the drive from
Speaker 1: the airport was lush and green. It was on this
Speaker 1: trip when Ronnie, Sandy's youngest brother, asked me what I
Speaker 1: hoped to achieve with the podcast when Sandy's mother, Joanne,
Speaker 1: gave me the coat her daughter was wearing on the
Speaker 1: night of her death, and when I first got real
Speaker 1: sense of Sandy as a person, the Sandy the family
Speaker 1: described to me, she was fearless. Five months later, I
Speaker 1: flew back to Maine with my producer to see the
Speaker 1: Bells in person again. It was late fall and the
Speaker 1: trees were a mix of orange and brown and green.
Speaker 1: I was returning under different circumstances than my first trip.
Speaker 1: This visit had a particular objective to observe and record
Speaker 1: an emergency family meeting that Kim had called. Kim wanted
Speaker 1: to share with the Bells what she had come to
Speaker 1: believe was true that Sandy had died by suicide. The
Speaker 1: meeting was set to take place at Sandy's brother Steven's home.
Speaker 1: To set the scene, imagine a tidy ranch style house,
Speaker 1: a kitchen teeming with food, two small dogs running around underfoot.
Speaker 1: I arrived before the rest of the family and made
Speaker 1: small talk with Stephen and his wife. Soon, Michael and
Speaker 1: his wife showed up with Joanne, who was wearing suede
Speaker 1: cowboy boots bedazzled with rhyan stones. We hugged, talked, about
Speaker 1: booster shots and COVID variants, and we waited together for
Speaker 1: Kim right I'm gone phoned in. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is really You can hear the nervousness in Kim's
Speaker 1: voice leading up to this meeting. She was really worried
Speaker 1: about how the Beals would respond to what she had
Speaker 1: to tell them. She didn't know if they'd see things
Speaker 1: her way, or if they'd reject her position and judge
Speaker 1: her for siding with the police. For decades, there's been
Speaker 1: a collective story that they all agreed on around Sandy's
Speaker 1: death that whatever happened to Sandy, she hadn't died by suicide.
Speaker 1: Kim had previously been part of the group, In fact,
Speaker 1: the leader of the group, the one pushing to reopen
Speaker 1: Sandy's case, convinced that there was something there. Now, she
Speaker 1: worried that she had blown Sandy's death up into something
Speaker 1: it wasn't and wasted their time, added extra pain to
Speaker 1: their suffering. She knew the Bills loved her and were
Speaker 1: appreciative of all her work, but there was a part
Speaker 1: of her that was scared she would need to beg
Speaker 1: for their forgiveness. My notes are like I was really
Speaker 1: hoping that I'd have time to sit down and get
Speaker 1: really but it's it's just been too hard. It is,
Speaker 1: do you have Within a few minutes of Kim's arrival,
Speaker 1: the group migrated into the living room and took seats
Speaker 1: around a boom mic that I had brought. It was
Speaker 1: a strange dichonomy, the most intimate of conversations undertaken with
Speaker 1: the knowledge that everything was being recorded. Kim sat in
Speaker 1: a large, pillowy recliner that seemed to swallow her frame.
Speaker 1: Her feet didn't quite reach the floor, and she kept
Speaker 1: readjusting her position, trying to get comfortable. I think that
Speaker 1: the answers that I'm going to give you today will
Speaker 1: naturally make that a closing place. Anyway, there are still
Speaker 1: some answers that need to happen, but I think as
Speaker 1: far as the story is concerned, it's shifted, and so
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that we get more information after this, and
Speaker 1: but we may not. So I just want to kind
Speaker 1: of share with you what we've uncovered in the past
Speaker 1: few months since we saw you in June. Anyway, Armed
Speaker 1: with her notes, Kim began recounting her conversation with Bernie.
Speaker 1: She told them how she went in fighting with a
Speaker 1: head of steam, arguing and asking critical questions. She told
Speaker 1: the family how they discussed Sandy's efforts to become a
Speaker 1: police officer and ride alongs that she did, likely as
Speaker 1: part of an official Explorer program. And so I'm just
Speaker 1: listening and I said, well, what about the Explorers program.
Speaker 1: I'm like, so explained that. He said it was a
Speaker 1: way that we encouraged people in high school to come
Speaker 1: became cops seek for and they're having a hard time
Speaker 1: recruiting new police officers, so they were going to the
Speaker 1: high schools, hence the ride along program and the Explorers.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, so, you have a girl that wants
Speaker 1: to be a cop, and she's doing everything you guys
Speaker 1: asked her to do. She told them how Bernie acknowledged
Speaker 1: that there was likely serious sexual misconduct taking place, and
Speaker 1: how she was disarmed by his compassion and his frankness.
Speaker 1: He said, if I was on the watch, they would
Speaker 1: have all been terminated because I wouldn't have put up
Speaker 1: with any of that. And I'm like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you you see all these questions that we have, everything
Speaker 1: we've already talked about, no answers have been given. All
Speaker 1: these different things that are discrepancies, and you can see
Speaker 1: from our point of view that we have questions. He's like,
Speaker 1: I absolutely see from your point of view all of this,
Speaker 1: everything you're saying makes sense. I watched Kim as she
Speaker 1: attempted to replicate her conversation with Bernie, trying to create
Speaker 1: the same conditions that had led to her own awakening.
Speaker 1: She spoke calmly and carefully, referring often to her notes,
Speaker 1: before she got to the piece of evidence that had
Speaker 1: clicked everything into place for her. To help them visualize
Speaker 1: the scene, she printed from the Internet a picture of
Speaker 1: an old Ford Pinto, just like the one Sandy used
Speaker 1: to drive. So if you look at this, this is
Speaker 1: the steering wheel, so it matches up if you were
Speaker 1: to brace it. There here you can pass that if
Speaker 1: you were to brace it. It's it just started feeling
Speaker 1: like making sense to me that that she did use
Speaker 1: that that's the only possible way that she could have
Speaker 1: pulled that trigger, as if it was had support of something.
Speaker 1: But when he said that the gunpotter was on the
Speaker 1: steering wheel and it was spray and back, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: he goes they He said, Kim, we can't we can't
Speaker 1: deny the trajectory of this. When when he said the
Speaker 1: there's gunpowder on the steering wheel, that was kind of like,
Speaker 1: that's kind of very futable. So it was almost like
Speaker 1: a an Aha moment, like a wake up call of
Speaker 1: oh my god, that could possibly really be true. At
Speaker 1: this Kim pivoted away from the forensic evidence and started
Speaker 1: speaking from her gut. She now had a new understanding
Speaker 1: of Sandy and her last month, and she shared this
Speaker 1: with the Beals, how she believed Sandy had been used
Speaker 1: and abused by men in power, and how this had
Speaker 1: broken her. I think someone was there before. I think
Speaker 1: she was alone then, And this is just my my
Speaker 1: knowing her and thinking through the situation. It's dark, it's
Speaker 1: twenty seven degrees outside, she just had sex with somebody.
Speaker 1: She's alone, she's trying to get out, and I think
Speaker 1: the trying to get out was possibly the straw that
Speaker 1: broke the camel's back, and she just said fuck it.
Speaker 1: Joanne had been listening intently. Now she interrupted, I think
Speaker 1: you're right. I think the last hurrah was she was
Speaker 1: trying to get out. Joanne's words they rushed out of
Speaker 1: her as though they had been waiting to be released.
Speaker 1: I think she just said a kid, she had already
Speaker 1: been rejected, she had already had the abortion. And I
Speaker 1: think the whole thing just blew up. And maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: and uh, I kept that tomorrow itself for a look. Now,
Speaker 1: I did not expect to hear Joanne agree with Kim
Speaker 1: and acknowledge so openly that she believed if Sandy had
Speaker 1: died by suicide. And I got the sense that Kim
Speaker 1: had given her permission to say the hard part out loud,
Speaker 1: and that it came as a tremendous relief. The room
Speaker 1: was quiet. Everyone seemed to be reflecting on the Sandy
Speaker 1: that they knew, each of them conjuring their own memory
Speaker 1: of Sandy and trying to square Kim's new story with
Speaker 1: their own. And then Stephen broke the silence. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be the man out. I dispute what the guy says.
Speaker 1: I'm flat asked the spear that I don't think she'd
Speaker 1: put the goddam gone on a steering oil. And yes,
Speaker 1: they can replicate it, they don't want to replicate it.
Speaker 1: I can put a man on a goddamn who and
Speaker 1: they could replicate that. I know I'm saying Sandy did
Speaker 1: not shoot herself. I'm gonna go to my freaking grave
Speaker 1: saying that. You know, and it's compelling. I'll give you that.
Speaker 1: You know, the guys trying and I get that he's
Speaker 1: trying to be empathetic with our situation. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry he's selling. I ain't buy it. No Thick again,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Sorry. Stephen left the room upset, but about
Speaker 1: five minutes later he came back and rejoined his family. Uh,
Speaker 1: trust me, in folks, I'm not trying to you know,
Speaker 1: it's nothing about anybody. I take issue with what it
Speaker 1: is or trying to say. And you know, and I
Speaker 1: understand if you know other people don't share my stance.
Speaker 1: I get it. You know this is something that I
Speaker 1: you're right there, I gotta graph with all my own
Speaker 1: Right now, I don't see it yet. You know, maybe something,
Speaker 1: it might take something, a little something else to make
Speaker 1: me see the light. You know, maybe I'm seeing what
Speaker 1: I want to see. I don't know. Could be, but
Speaker 1: right now I do not know. You're not going to
Speaker 1: convince me that she did it. As the family continued
Speaker 1: to talk, the sun streaming in the windows and filling
Speaker 1: the room with light. It felt as though I was
Speaker 1: seeing them shift and adjust their beliefs in real time,
Speaker 1: torn between two versions of an event that had to
Speaker 1: find their lives. Even Joanne, who had sounded so sure
Speaker 1: at first, vacillated returning back again to the police dug
Speaker 1: and all the sketchy behavior she witnessed in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of Sandy's death. Sometimes she seemed to travel this distance
Speaker 1: between suicide and murder in the same breath. Stephen was
Speaker 1: the most vocal about his views, while his brothers Michael
Speaker 1: and Ronnie quietly contemplated the situation without giving much away.
Speaker 1: They listened, nodded, winced at times, and then Ronnie spoke
Speaker 1: up in his calm and reserved way, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: for forty four years and nine months, we've tried like
Speaker 1: every scenario. Did she did, she not, she didn't, Why
Speaker 1: she didn't, Who's responsible? We don't know. Then, I guess
Speaker 1: we're never gonna know. Even if somebody come forward today,
Speaker 1: yeah I did it. No one's going to jail, especially
Speaker 1: an other than guys. Yeah, pops, right, Yeah, So in
Speaker 1: my mind, I think we've come to the end of
Speaker 1: the room. When loves the girl I watched the Bills
Speaker 1: leave that meeting with Kim with a demanding task ahead.
Speaker 1: They could choose to believe what Kim now believed, that
Speaker 1: Sandy died by suicide, or they could continue with the
Speaker 1: story they believed for decades, and I can understand why
Speaker 1: they take the latter route. Both stories were compelling, both
Speaker 1: were possible, and the journey to replace a long held
Speaker 1: belief with something new and contradictory is not an easy one.
Speaker 1: I think that we faced this kind of crossroads many
Speaker 1: times in life, and we you know, again, we're given
Speaker 1: the choice between the safety of holding onto what we
Speaker 1: know or the ambiguity of releasing what we thought we
Speaker 1: knew and reaching for something a little more adequate, recognizing
Speaker 1: that that that process is not a comfortable one. Robert
Speaker 1: Niemeyer is a professor of psychology at the University of
Speaker 1: Memphis and an authority on bereavement in grief. Well, of course,
Speaker 1: this is a larger question that goes beyond grief and bereavement.
Speaker 1: We can hold onto our own views, sometimes almost in
Speaker 1: a kind of hostile stance of refusing to accept the
Speaker 1: alternative story, and that's the path of defensiveness and sameness
Speaker 1: and anger and resistance. But the other is the path
Speaker 1: of grieving, may be coming to terms with the reality
Speaker 1: of tragedy in life and the impermanence of love and
Speaker 1: the ambiguity of of our position as human beings. Kim
Speaker 1: let go of what she had believed, and it was
Speaker 1: really painful. She told me that she felt as though
Speaker 1: she was grieving Sandy's death all over again. For a family,
Speaker 1: I understood the cost of changing their minds to accept
Speaker 1: that Sandy had died by suicide required them to redefine
Speaker 1: their understanding of her as a person and, by extension,
Speaker 1: their relationship to her. It often, especially in the case
Speaker 1: of traumatic loss, shakes up our assumptive world, as we
Speaker 1: call it. That whole world of assumptions about how life
Speaker 1: is or should be. Our sense of justice, our sense
Speaker 1: of control, our sense of the reality we thought we
Speaker 1: were living, or the reality of a loved one we
Speaker 1: thought we knew, can be deeply unsettling, as we have
Speaker 1: to essentially revise our life narrative, the story of who
Speaker 1: we are and whose we are, in the context of
Speaker 1: often a significant and and and soul shattering loss. The
Speaker 1: dramatic thing for them, of course, is that they have
Speaker 1: experienced the shattering of their narrative, their story, not once,
Speaker 1: but twice, forty or four years apart. Robert explained to
Speaker 1: me that grieving a suicide often brings up complicated feelings
Speaker 1: for families, such as guilt and anger the failure to
Speaker 1: protect or save that person, particularly if we are a parent,
Speaker 1: particularly if we are an older sibling, where we feel
Speaker 1: some duty of care toward this vulnerable person, and somehow
Speaker 1: we missed the signals. We we didn't have the you know,
Speaker 1: the deep understanding of what was happening for them at
Speaker 1: the time that might have led us to make a difference.
Speaker 1: All of that is denied us, and so we're left
Speaker 1: with a struggle to realign the relationship with them, um
Speaker 1: and to figure out how they fit into our lives. Now.
Speaker 1: What I hope it brings though, is compassion of her
Speaker 1: as the young woman she was attempting to move into
Speaker 1: a life that had its own audacious and probably chaotic
Speaker 1: and likely complicated dimensions. Ironically, they have ended up having
Speaker 1: to sort out those complications for her in in a
Speaker 1: proxy way as they attempt to make sense of her life,
Speaker 1: maybe at a time that she herself could not making
Speaker 1: sense of Sandy and the complications she was struggling with.
Speaker 1: Is what I've tried to do with this podcast and
Speaker 1: the complications in Sandy's life, they had something in common.
Speaker 1: They all revolved around law enforcement, and so in a
Speaker 1: way did her death, which I think is telling. I
Speaker 1: found myself returning to a single page in Sandy's full
Speaker 1: police file where Detective Shosholski cataloged the evidence in Sandy's
Speaker 1: car and specifically the items sitting on her dashboard. The
Speaker 1: items on her dash they all had to do with cops.
Speaker 1: There was the duty rig for carrying police equipment, a
Speaker 1: lone business card from a Pig County cop, clippings about
Speaker 1: police officers, presumably from a local newspaper, and a card
Speaker 1: showing the shift's schedule. I thought it was strange that
Speaker 1: Sandy would store so many items, including a belt, on
Speaker 1: her small dashboard. Wouldn't they fall down when she drove?
Speaker 1: As I read and re read this list, picturing the scene,
Speaker 1: I suddenly imagined Sandy placing the items there ceremoniously surrounding
Speaker 1: herself with police paraphernilia to make a statement. I had
Speaker 1: long been suspicious of the location of Sandy's death because
Speaker 1: of who hung out there. But I could now see
Speaker 1: how the pollard might have been a symbolic choice by Sandy. Doug,
Speaker 1: the state trooper, the instructors and the Explorer program, and
Speaker 1: the cops who called Shallski. I think a good many
Speaker 1: of them hurt Sandy. They took advantage of her youthful passion,
Speaker 1: her blind ambition, and her desire for acceptance. As she
Speaker 1: wrote in her letter to Doug, I never want another
Speaker 1: man to ever want me. I just want to leave
Speaker 1: and forget the pain. Sandy was looking for love and
Speaker 1: she found cruelty. The police they didn't have to murder
Speaker 1: Sandy to be complicit in her death, and I think
Speaker 1: they deserve some of the blame for the loss of
Speaker 1: a teenage girl. I think there are people who know
Speaker 1: exactly what happened to Sandy. They just don't want to
Speaker 1: talk to me, And back then they didn't want to
Speaker 1: talk to the Bills either. To me, this is the
Speaker 1: tragic heart of the story. For all the questions, the
Speaker 1: Bells had their people with answers, if any of the
Speaker 1: police officers who knew Sandy had been brave enough to
Speaker 1: talk to the Bells, if Prince George's County police had
Speaker 1: launched a misconduct probe in the wake of Sandy's death
Speaker 1: and been transparent with her family. And if anyone had
Speaker 1: listened to the bills, really listened to what they had
Speaker 1: to say, then maybe forty five years of doubt and
Speaker 1: uncertainty might have been avoided. Maybe Sandy she could have
Speaker 1: been put to rest. In the weeks and months after
Speaker 1: we all gathered a main I reached out to the
Speaker 1: Bells periodically to check in on how they were doing.
Speaker 1: I was curious how they had processed the new information,
Speaker 1: but I was also hyper aware that their capacity for
Speaker 1: an interest in discussing Sandy's case with me was coming
Speaker 1: to a close. Us My investigation had found answers, but
Speaker 1: not the answers that they had necessarily wanted, since they
Speaker 1: were somewhat let down, although they never missed an opportunity
Speaker 1: to express gratitude for my work. Here's what Stephen had
Speaker 1: to say when I called him one afternoon. I'm just
Speaker 1: going on with with life, really, I mean kind of
Speaker 1: going status quote. I mean, was suation normal? Um, that's
Speaker 1: not it. I don't know what else to say. I
Speaker 1: know myself, I've always saw it all along and we're
Speaker 1: never going to really get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 1: And it was nice as you know, trying to get
Speaker 1: to where we got now, which was which is good.
Speaker 1: But uh, just it's for me. I'm always going to
Speaker 1: have questions and it's never gonna be really quite resolved
Speaker 1: to my satisfaction. Kim's epiphany for meeting with Bernie, it
Speaker 1: hadn't really changed anything for him. I had those gut
Speaker 1: feelings when you know, when you just kind of know something,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I'm looking at through jaded eyes. Maya,
Speaker 1: I'm so jaded, you know, I need to look at
Speaker 1: it through a different lens. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 1: When I reached Michael, the oldest of the Bill brothers,
Speaker 1: he agreed with Stephen and told me he still has
Speaker 1: significant questions about the gun. So you still you still
Speaker 1: believe that probably someone else does involved. Sure, I certainly do.
Speaker 1: The police. Uh they're pretty good, you know, they can
Speaker 1: they can dig sh it up, and they can they
Speaker 1: can bury stuff. So I'm sure there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that's buried. No one's gonna know about it. Ronnie,
Speaker 1: the youngest of the Bills, he just wanted to put
Speaker 1: the whole thing behind him. He's getting married soon, starting
Speaker 1: a new chapter of his life. If he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to go there anymore, Like you said in the meeting,
Speaker 1: he considers at the end of the road. I came
Speaker 1: to understand through my conversations with the brothers that it
Speaker 1: was very possible the family would be living with these
Speaker 1: conflicting stories of Sandy's death and therefore her life forever,
Speaker 1: and maybe that was all right. Well, we've seen over
Speaker 1: and over now really twenty five years of search, the
Speaker 1: majority of people are resilient to almost anything. George Banano
Speaker 1: is a psychologist at Columbia University. His research focuses on
Speaker 1: how human beings coped with bereavement, loss, and other potentially
Speaker 1: traumatic events. You know, everybody's moved on and lived their lives,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's now a person four decades in
Speaker 1: the past who they loved or who they had complex
Speaker 1: relationships with, and now they have a kind of a
Speaker 1: a very complicated story about that person. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's probably enough distance that they can probably say, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll maybe hold both of these But you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be as crucial or as
Speaker 1: critical and their wet to their well being to have
Speaker 1: a clear picture anymore in a sense, the need to
Speaker 1: have them reconciled as maybe long past. George's research has
Speaker 1: found that most people possess a natural resilience to trauma
Speaker 1: and loss. The person is able to, uh, you know, concentrate, laugh,
Speaker 1: do what they need to do, um, take care of
Speaker 1: people they love, and be cared for by people they love,
Speaker 1: and they love them, you know, be close, have intimate interactions,
Speaker 1: and they you know, they're able to experience joy, and
Speaker 1: they're able to experience pain, and they're able to be
Speaker 1: to think about other things, um and and they simply
Speaker 1: continue on with their life. They don't forget the person.
Speaker 1: They just you know, continue living the life in the present.
Speaker 1: And if you think about it, I mean, beings have
Speaker 1: been around for a long time and we've thrived all
Speaker 1: over the planet, and we've always been able to keep
Speaker 1: moving on and keep going. That's just human nature. Kim
Speaker 1: has moved houses since she visited the Beals in Maine,
Speaker 1: resettling in a country home halfway between Houston and Austin.
Speaker 1: Being in the country has helped, she said. The blue
Speaker 1: bonnets and wild flowers are out the trees outside her
Speaker 1: house are over three years old. She keeps a photo
Speaker 1: of Sandy on her desk, but she's put her files
Speaker 1: about the case out of sight in a closet, still
Speaker 1: close enough to access if she needs them, but not
Speaker 1: lining the walls of her bedroom like they used to
Speaker 1: Sandy's case. It's been a source of consistency in her
Speaker 1: life for decades, something to focus her boundless energy on,
Speaker 1: give her purpose, and now she considers it over. She's
Speaker 1: let go for the most part. She has answers, though
Speaker 1: she says she still needs to find closure. She wants
Speaker 1: to go back to the Pollard and have a ceremony
Speaker 1: there to say goodbye before the family meeting. One of
Speaker 1: Kim's biggest concerns was disappointing Joanne. She feared that spending
Speaker 1: all those years investigating the case had prolonged Joanne's pain
Speaker 1: and stood in the way of healing. It's been a
Speaker 1: long time, hasn't it fighting? It's a long time fighting it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm most concerned mostly about you. I've had
Speaker 1: a few weeks to process it, and I'm still struggling
Speaker 1: with it. So just grieving, you know, I know what
Speaker 1: you mean. I was just telling I think it was Melissa,
Speaker 1: that this might be the last sit in that I
Speaker 1: might sit in. It depends on how I feel at
Speaker 1: the time, you know, because it drums everything back up.
Speaker 1: It's hard and it's hot, and that's why it is.
Speaker 1: But the journey it had bonded the two women. I
Speaker 1: got the sense that Joanne was profoundly touched by the
Speaker 1: years that Kim had spent in service to Sandy. She
Speaker 1: was trying to hold people accountable, and she had kept
Speaker 1: Sandy's memory alive. We've come a long way with this.
Speaker 1: You have dog and dog and dog and dog. There's
Speaker 1: been many things that I have thought of and thought
Speaker 1: of and and just like we all have questions, but
Speaker 1: we'll probably never get all the answers. We've had a lot,
Speaker 1: We've learned a lot. I understand why the bills still
Speaker 1: have questions, because I do too. There's still so much
Speaker 1: unknown about the network of police officers whose phone number
Speaker 1: Sandy wrote down in her address books, police officers who
Speaker 1: took her on ride alongs and drove her home at
Speaker 1: night after hanging out at the FOP lodge. But I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure I know how she felt when she died.
Speaker 1: Because she wrote about it. I've reread her note to
Speaker 1: Dug many times, and what's clear is how alone, used
Speaker 1: and powerless she felt. It's a stark reversal from where
Speaker 1: she was when she began policing, described by her friends
Speaker 1: and family as strong, ambitious, and secure. The main criticism
Speaker 1: I've heard about my podcast is that it's anti cop,
Speaker 1: that if a team girl was victimized in an Explorer
Speaker 1: program that was in the nineties seventies and doesn't reflect
Speaker 1: on what's happening now. But I want to tell you
Speaker 1: about another Sandy. Sandra Burchmore died by suicide during the
Speaker 1: pandemic while pregnant, allegedly with the child of a married
Speaker 1: older cop who was an instructor in the Explorer program
Speaker 1: she had attended. A misconduct probe launched in the wake
Speaker 1: of her death has resulted in the resignation of one officer,
Speaker 1: with two others placed unpaid leave. I think there are many,
Speaker 1: many more Sandy's out there, girls and women who have
Speaker 1: been sexualized, mistreated, and eaten up by a police culture
Speaker 1: where masculinity reigns. Sandy wasn't an anomaly, Joanne. She still
Speaker 1: has questions. She still hopes that Sandy Sheridan will come forward.
Speaker 1: She still believes that Doug was in the pollard the
Speaker 1: night Sandy died. She even had a dream about him
Speaker 1: recently where she confronted him outside a courthouse and gave
Speaker 1: him a piece of her mind. But ultimately she's come
Speaker 1: to accept the possibility that Sandy died by suicide. She
Speaker 1: thinks that Sandy was consumed by hurt and felt as
Speaker 1: though she had no one to turn to, and she
Speaker 1: blames the police for putting her daughter in this position.
Speaker 1: Thinking back to when Sandy died, the worst part was
Speaker 1: the not knowing, she said, having only the fragments of
Speaker 1: Sandy's story and not being able to put them together
Speaker 1: in a way that made any sense. Today, she's learned
Speaker 1: how to live with them, not knowing, the lingering ambiguity,
Speaker 1: the unanswered questions. She's found a way to put all
Speaker 1: that to the side, diffuse it of its power. Maybe
Speaker 1: she wasn't supposed to know everything, she said, It's just
Speaker 1: how it is, and she's at peace. So anyway, it
Speaker 1: was a hard time, and I don't know, we've been
Speaker 1: through enough a lot in this family. I say the
Speaker 1: Lord was good to me to give me a life
Speaker 1: to live this long. I waited two pounds and three
Speaker 1: ounces at birth. They told my mother and father I
Speaker 1: wouldn't live twenty four hours. And here I am Eddie too.
Speaker 1: Joanne hopes she'll see Sandy in heaven, but for now,
Speaker 1: she's put the whole thing in a good place. She
Speaker 1: needed to. She's a fighter, always has been, but it
Speaker 1: was time for her to stop. Well, Honey, I've got
Speaker 1: to let you go. Okay? What Happened to Sandy Beale
Speaker 1: is hosted by Me Melissa Johnson. It's written and produced
Speaker 1: by me and Katrina Norvell. The podcast is edited by
Speaker 1: Aboo Safar, sound designed by Aaron Kaufman. Jason English is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Research and production assistance by Merissa Brown.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Duncan Radell, Bethan Macaluso, Nikki Etre, and
Speaker 1: Pete Monica. To find out more about my investigation, follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at quasimato. That's qu A s I
Speaker 1: M A d o