0:15

Pushkin. This

0:20

is a story about a young woman who ran

0:22

away from home. At least

0:25

that's how it all started. I think

0:27

people think that I had this master plan and I went

0:29

out and did it, and like, you know, like

0:31

it's not fun,

0:34

right, You're constantly scared. You have no support,

0:36

you have no one to talk to, which is part

0:38

of the reason it got so carried

0:40

away. Like if I had just talked to somebody,

0:44

they would have been like this is crazy. Along

0:47

the way, there were plenty of moments where

0:50

she could have stopped running, but

0:52

she didn't. Sort

0:55

of like I got on a train track. There

0:58

was clearly the wrong train track, and like

1:00

my train is running away, and at some

1:02

point you're not thinking crap,

1:05

how do we get off this train track, or just thinking crap,

1:07

how do I stop this train from going

1:09

off the rails? You know, just

1:11

kept making a horrible decision after horrible decision

1:14

after horrible decision, just

1:16

trying to keep the train from crashing and killing

1:18

me. At that point, we're

1:24

going to come back to this woman and go deep

1:26

into her story, so you'll hear more

1:28

about all that, but not just

1:30

yet, because this is actually

1:32

a story about not one,

1:35

but two young women who vanished

1:37

at about the same time. The

1:39

two of them were roughly the same age, but

1:42

in so many other ways they could not

1:44

have been more different. One

1:46

grew up in rural Montana, where

1:48

she was raised in a sheltered, devoutly

1:50

religious home. She was shy

1:53

and kind of a nerd. The

1:55

other was a kind hearted free spirit

1:57

from South Carolina. She partied

2:00

often and sometimes hung out with a

2:02

rough crowd. They both

2:04

disappeared in nineteen ninety nine. Their

2:07

families searched for them but didn't find

2:09

many clues, and then improbably

2:13

their stories collided when a lone investigator

2:15

got involved and quickly became

2:18

obsessed. I think of

2:20

a situation as a sweater. So

2:23

sometimes you have a loose thread

2:25

and you pull the thread and you get a knot. And

2:27

sometimes you pull a thread and it just keeps

2:30

unraveling and you just keep falling

2:32

invulnent bulling. This investigator

2:35

was convinced that the fates of these

2:37

two young women, the free spirit

2:39

and the nerd, were linked, and

2:42

that by solving one of their cases

2:45

he might also solve the other. Not

2:47

just that he suspected that

2:49

one of them was a master of deception,

2:52

a highly trained chameleon who

2:54

conned her way into the ivy leagues. He

2:56

began an investigation that ultimately drew

2:59

in the Secret Service, the US

3:01

Marshals, and the Justice Department.

3:04

The media soon got wind of this, Allegations

3:06

of murder, fraud, and spaje

3:09

swirled. Eventually, a

3:11

nationwide manhunt got underway, all

3:14

because of this one investigator and

3:17

his hunch. Now,

3:19

given the gigantic scope of all

3:21

this, you might think that our investigator

3:24

worked for some big city police department

3:26

or a fancy federal agency, or

3:29

maybe even an international outfit like Interpoll.

3:32

Nope, he was a small town

3:34

cop who'd just become a detective.

3:37

He didn't have a partner, or for a while

3:39

even a computer. But he was

3:41

doggedly stubborn, almost

3:44

perversely. So I

3:46

just pulled a thread and it just kept

3:48

going and going and going to the whole thing unraveled.

3:51

I get it. I love pulling on threads.

3:54

As a journalist. I've done this so many times,

3:57

pulled and pulled until I've lost

3:59

track of what I was originally looking for

4:02

or whether it was worth it. And sometimes

4:05

most of the time, in fact, it's not.

4:08

But every once in a while

4:10

there's a set of facts. It's so irresistibly

4:13

curious that I just can't let go.

4:17

And I suppose it doesn't matter

4:19

whether you're a journalist, or a detective

4:22

or just a nosy neighbor. So

4:24

many of us believe that great mysteries

4:27

lurk in the periphery of our lives. So

4:30

when we find an especially curious thread,

4:33

we keep pulling because we

4:35

won't be satisfied until we've

4:37

unraveled at all. I'm

4:54

Jake Albern and this is deep

4:56

Cover, Season three, Never

4:59

Seen Again, Episode

5:23

one, The Dark Corner.

5:31

The detective that I told you about. His

5:33

name is John Campbell, and

5:35

he's just about the friendliest guy I've ever met.

5:38

He has whispy brown hair and a boyish

5:40

grin. He wears a pair of those wraparound

5:42

sunglasses that dads always wear a

5:44

little league practice. He's also

5:47

got this goofy and totally lovable

5:49

laugh that he breaks into all

5:51

the time. So not an old

5:53

timey lawman. In fact, one

5:55

of the first things that he tells me is that

5:57

he doesn't care for guns. When I retire,

6:00

I can't wait to put this in a drawer. I mean, this is

6:02

this is a this is the thing I banged

6:04

my elbow on all the time. So

6:07

it's not about carrying a gun. I carry gun because

6:09

we have to. I'd rather be like Andy Griffith and

6:12

just be shared without a gun. I

6:14

met John Dunnan Traveler's Rest, South

6:16

Carolina, where he lives. This,

6:18

by the way, it was also the hometown of the

6:20

free spirited young woman that I told you

6:22

about, one of the two that went missing

6:26

back in the early two thousands, when our

6:28

story really starts. John

6:30

was the town's loan detective. I

6:33

asked him what this was like. He told

6:35

me that back then this was truly

6:37

a sleepy backwater. Traveler's

6:40

Rest was almost a dry town. We

6:42

had one bar and one liquor store,

6:45

and the liquor store closed I think at eight

6:47

or nine o'clock at night. The bar closed

6:49

at midnight, and we rolled up the

6:51

streets and the only problems we ever

6:54

had was at the bar, and

6:56

so we shut the bar down two or three

6:58

times, took their license. Outside of

7:00

town, well, that was a

7:02

different story. The

7:06

thickly wooded slopes quickly

7:08

rose of the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

7:11

The land was steep and craggy.

7:14

Some called it the Dark Corner.

7:17

For generations, it was known as a place where

7:20

Mountain folk brewed moonshine and

7:22

lived by their own rules Mountain

7:25

Justice. By

7:27

the nineteen nineties that had begun to change.

7:29

Newcomers were arriving, retirees

7:31

and the like, but the Dark Corner

7:34

remained a place where it wasn't wise to venture

7:36

at night or turned down a road you didn't

7:38

know. I talked

7:40

to one local who told me he once

7:43

found a great big log blocking the road

7:45

with a stack of dog skulls on it,

7:48

and then he just knew better

7:50

turn around. John

7:57

says that occasionally the Mountain folks

7:59

would just show up at John's

8:01

office. Here, this roar of a truck would

8:03

come in, and people would pile out, and they'd say,

8:06

we're looking for the law, you know, And Mountain

8:08

Justice had fail and they had to come to

8:10

into town to find some

8:12

law enforcement for the police and

8:14

Traveler's Rest. The key was

8:17

basically to secure the town's perimeter.

8:20

So I called Traveler's Rest of the circle of

8:22

wagons. So we had seven square miles

8:24

that was like a circle of wagons in our little

8:26

town, and we kept all the crime out of our

8:28

little circle out into the county

8:30

bushed it out. Wait, so your job was basically

8:33

just like make sure that the criminals

8:35

stayed out of the circle. Yeah, pretty

8:37

much. Did you ever like like tell

8:40

guys like not in here your other Oh yeah, what

8:42

did you say? This is our town out?

8:45

Take that up the mountains. John says

8:48

this strategy it worked. Not

8:50

much happened in the way of major crime in

8:52

Traveler's Rest. But then

8:55

one day, something rather

8:57

sinister happened in this small town,

9:03

something that broke the humdrum rhythm of

9:05

daily life. A twenty year

9:07

old girl went missing. Her

9:10

name was Brooke Henson. She

9:12

vanished from within the town's limits, inside

9:15

the circle of wagons, and her

9:17

disappearance would ultimately send John

9:19

Campbell on an epic quest.

9:23

It would become a huge case, a

9:25

national case, and John,

9:27

the small town detective who hated

9:30

carrying a gun, would be at

9:32

the center of it all. The

9:38

day before Brooke Henson went missing,

9:40

John Campbell says he saw her on the

9:43

street totally by chance. It

9:45

was July of nineteen ninety nine. John

9:49

wasn't a detective at the time, he was still

9:51

just a patrolman making the rounds.

9:53

He remembers that day crisply, and

9:56

he recounted it to me while we were driving

9:58

around town together in his truck. When

10:01

I saw Brooke. She

10:04

was walking down this street

10:07

here, close to her house, and

10:09

she turned around and looked at me right

10:12

about right here. It was where I saw her.

10:14

And so that's her house where that sign is,

10:17

it's your driveway. The street

10:19

that we're on, where Brooke used to live,

10:22

is shrouded in thick, tangled vegetation.

10:25

The woods thrum with the buzz of cicadas.

10:28

We pull up to Brook's old house. This

10:30

is the front of the house as you can.

10:33

You can't see it. I mean, it's completely

10:35

over her own. Was it always this overgrown? The

10:37

front was grown up, but it

10:39

was no You could see the house and everything,

10:42

but you can't even tell there's a house in there. Yeah,

10:45

I mean it looks like like Radley's

10:47

house from To Kill a Mockingbird. It's almost

10:50

abandoned looking now. John

10:52

didn't really know Brooke, but other

10:54

people who did described her to

10:56

me as easygoing, kind,

10:59

free spirited. She shopped

11:01

at thrift stores, wore Doc Martins

11:03

and flannels. She was a huge fan

11:06

of Nirvana. She dropped out

11:08

of high school and in the summer of nineteen

11:10

ninety nine, she was still living at home

11:12

with her parents. Now

11:14

I've gone through a bunch of accounts of what happened

11:17

the night she went missing, including

11:19

the original police report, which

11:21

was basically a statement from Brooke's

11:23

mom, But there's not a whole lot

11:25

that we know for sure. What

11:27

we do know is that she disappeared

11:30

early on the morning of July fourth.

11:32

There'd been a party at Brooke's house that night.

11:35

Her boyfriend, a guy named Ricky

11:38

Sewn Shirley, was there, and

11:40

apparently the two of them were

11:42

fighting. According to the

11:44

police report. At two forty three

11:47

am, Brooke told her mother, quote,

11:49

I'm getting out of here. Her mom

11:52

told her it was too late to wander about. Brooke

11:54

replied, quote, I'm not going anywhere.

11:57

I'm just seeing what he'll do. I'm messing

11:59

with Sean. Brooke

12:01

then left the house. She set off

12:04

into the night. She

12:06

never came home. In

12:09

the morning, Brook's mother found a

12:11

note on her bed. It was intended

12:13

for Sean, her boyfriend. It read,

12:16

I'm walking follow me if

12:18

you care. The

12:27

million dollar question, of course, is

12:30

this where did she go? And

12:32

there are a lot of theories about this. But the

12:34

theory that I heard most was that she was

12:36

headed to a nearby store. Apparently

12:39

Brooke went there from time to time to get

12:41

cigarettes. This is the store where

12:43

she was headed, by the way, the

12:46

store right here behind us gas

12:48

station. Yeah, to get cigarettes. Like,

12:51

why would she go to the store. She would have known

12:53

the store was closed because it was

12:56

like two thirty in the morning, so that store was

12:58

not open at that time. Well, she would

13:00

have known the store was closed. Also,

13:03

I mean those roads,

13:05

it's it's dark

13:08

here that night. Yeah, and especially

13:10

back then, we rolled the streets

13:12

up at nine o'clock and travel's rest. I mean, there was

13:15

nothing going on at night in this

13:18

town. The

13:27

whole thing was more than a little mystifying.

13:30

How does a young woman vanish off a small

13:33

town street in the dead of night en

13:35

route to a store that's not even open. Even

13:39

the note that she left was enigmatic.

13:41

Follow me if you care. Brooks's

13:47

parents are both deceased now, so

13:49

I couldn't talk with them. Instead,

13:51

I had to rely on what few clues I could

13:54

glean. Brooke's mom did file

13:56

a report with the police the day after

13:58

she went missing, but at first

14:01

the police didn't do much. Seems

14:03

like no one did. A few missing posters

14:05

went up, that's about it. No

14:08

one was sounding alarms. I

14:11

spoke with Brooks's cousin, Holly

14:13

Henson about what she remembers from

14:15

this time. I

14:17

was staying out a friend's house in Marietta,

14:19

just above Traveler's Drest, and

14:22

her mom took us to the gas station

14:24

and I saw a missing poster with

14:27

Brooks picture and name on it. So I

14:29

told my dad and

14:32

brooks family had never told us

14:34

that she was missing, but she had

14:36

just went missing. Kind of odd,

14:39

right, This is how she learns

14:41

about her cousin's disappearance, But

14:44

cousin Holly says that her family and

14:46

Brooks had kind of grown apart

14:49

in the years leading up to her disappearance.

14:51

Holly's mother told me that she disapproved

14:54

of brooks parents of the way that they raised

14:56

their children, allowing them to drink

14:59

and party and come and go as they pleased,

15:01

like there were no rules. She did

15:03

not want that for her own kids. But

15:07

when they learned that Brooke had gone missing, they

15:09

rushed over. Everyone went cousin

15:12

Holly, her sister, Patty, their

15:14

mom. They wanted to show solidarity

15:17

to help if they could. When

15:19

they showed up, the scene at Brooks house

15:22

was somber. We were just all sitting

15:24

in the livenary and it was just the

15:27

whole thing was just weird. It was quiet, nobody

15:30

was really saying anything. That's

15:33

Brook's other cousin, Patty. She

15:36

and Holly both remember the silence.

15:38

Some of Brooks friends were present, sitting

15:41

there mutely. Brooke's mother was

15:43

on the sofa just crying. From

15:45

the way they described it, it was like a vigil

15:47

for someone who died. The

15:50

odd part was that Brooke had just

15:52

gone missing. It wasn't all that unusual

15:54

for Brooke to just go off and disappear for a few

15:56

days, visiting friends or whatever. Here's

15:59

cousin Holly again. Brooke was allowed

16:02

to come and go as she pleased.

16:04

She could be gone for two or three days. And you know,

16:06

there wasn't cell phones back the end, and

16:09

her parents wouldn't really know where she was. But

16:12

when Brooke went

16:14

missing, her mama

16:16

was very, very upset,

16:19

as if she knew Brooke

16:21

wasn't coming home. The whole

16:23

gathering at the Henson House left

16:25

a chilling impression on Holly and Patty's

16:28

mother mary Anne Henson. She was

16:30

Brook's aunt. It was very

16:32

eerie. It was something

16:35

I don't want to ever experience again.

16:38

According to Aunt Mary Anne, the

16:41

only person who seemed to be doing much

16:43

of anything was this one guy

16:45

that someone had invited. He was

16:47

walking through the house, going

16:49

through Brooks possessions. Who

16:51

ever got him? I'm not even sure. And

16:54

I don't think he was really an investigator.

16:57

I mean, they said he was, but he

16:59

was an odd person. He was an older

17:02

man, creepy, but they

17:04

said he was kind of like a psychic too.

17:09

He would just like pick her things up.

17:11

I remember him picking up the hairbrush,

17:14

and I mean, it

17:16

was like a bad movie. Becausin.

17:19

Patty was also confused about the

17:21

whole thing. I feel like, why weren't

17:23

the police there? Are

17:25

they? I don't understand

17:28

why the police weren't there. It was the whole thing

17:30

was weird. That

17:32

night, when she got home, she says she

17:34

had a dream. It was one of

17:36

those dreams that was so vivid and

17:39

life like that it felt like it was really

17:41

happening. I was getting up to go to the bathroom

17:44

and the shower curtain was cracked,

17:47

and I kind of looked and

17:50

did a second look, and it looked like muddy water

17:53

and the bathtub. And

17:56

then I got down on my knees

17:59

and Brooke was coming up

18:01

from the water and

18:04

she was grabbing my arms like she was scratching

18:06

my arms. And then

18:08

I said, who did this to you? And she

18:11

said, Sean Charlotte his first

18:13

name and his last name, Sean

18:18

Shirley. That was Brooke's boyfriend,

18:20

the guy who she left the note for. They'd

18:23

been having a fight the night the Brook disappeared,

18:25

and apparently their relationship was

18:28

a turbulent one. According to

18:30

cousin Patty, he'd hit Brooke on

18:32

a few occasions, and there are

18:34

other accounts that he was violent. Three

18:36

days after Brooke went missing, Sean

18:39

was actually arrested on a separate matter.

18:41

He was charged with criminal sexual

18:43

conduct in the third degree. He

18:46

eventually pled down to lesser charges.

18:49

The one time that the cousins met him,

18:52

they didn't get a good feeling from him, so

18:55

cousin Patty's dream it felt

18:57

spot on, like it just confirmed

18:59

her worst fears. In

19:02

the coming weeks, as Brooke remained

19:04

missing, rumors began to circulate.

19:07

One of them was that on the night of her disappearance.

19:10

Brooke had gone to a party in the mountains

19:13

in the Dark Corner. Aunt

19:16

mary Anne told me that her husband Patrick

19:18

was determined to have a look checked

19:20

this place out. After all, he

19:23

was Brooke's uncle and he felt he should be

19:25

doing something. Before going,

19:27

he visited Brooks parents to see

19:29

if they might help. Apparently

19:32

they didn't want to come. Brooks

19:35

daddy said, happy hunting. I

19:38

mean, this is my

19:40

family, and I'm about to cry because

19:43

that that's very odd. Happy

19:46

honey. And I can't even imagine not

19:48

hunting from my shore friends. I

19:52

talked with Uncle Patrick. He

19:54

told me that he went up to the Dark Corner anyway

19:57

to have a look. Eventually

19:59

he found the place where the parties supposedly

20:01

happened, a cabin back

20:03

in the woods. A man answered

20:06

the door. He was shirtless and

20:08

had nipple pierce. The

20:10

man said that Brooke was at the beach. Uncle

20:13

Patrick didn't believe it. He

20:15

kept searching, but he didn't find

20:17

her, not even a trace. It

20:21

would be just one of many dead ends in

20:23

this case. No one could find

20:25

Brooke, not her family or

20:27

the Traveler's rest police or

20:29

that creepy psychic investigator. She

20:32

was gone.

20:39

It was roughly two years later, two

20:41

years after Brooke Henson's disappearance,

20:44

that John Campbell was promoted from patrolman

20:47

to detective. It was

20:49

at this point, in two thousand and one,

20:51

that he became the principal investigator

20:53

in the case. By

20:55

then, the case was cold. John

20:58

says he reviewed the files, but many

21:00

of the witness statements, which were handwritten,

21:03

were actually illegible. John

21:05

spoke with people who had partied with Brooke the

21:07

night she went missing, but their stories

21:10

were often convoluted and conflicting.

21:13

John suspected that Brooke had been murdered,

21:16

but without a body, it was difficult

21:18

to build a case. He surmised

21:21

that her boyfriend, Sean Shirley played

21:24

a role in all of this. The Travelers

21:26

Rest police did bring Sean in

21:28

and interview him, but he was never

21:30

charged. There's no detailed

21:33

records of what was said, but apparently

21:35

Sean offered no useful information.

21:39

At one point, John thought he almost

21:41

had the evidence to prove Sean's guilt.

21:44

It came from an informant who gave

21:46

him a tip. One guy came to me and said,

21:48

I saw a confession written

21:51

by Sean Shirley in a

21:53

box in a wall

21:56

behind a brick. That's right. This

21:58

guy who knew Sean Shirley

22:00

claimed that he'd been in Sean's house poking

22:03

around when he'd found this note. Here's

22:06

what the informant told John. I was

22:08

looking for drugs. I knew he kept

22:10

his drugs in the basement. I went down there, I pulled the

22:12

brick out. There was a little box.

22:14

I opened the box. There was a folded

22:16

up note in there, and it was basically a confession

22:19

saying that he killed Broke. Sound

22:21

far fetched maybe, and

22:23

John was never able to get to the bottom of it.

22:26

The problem was the tip from this

22:28

informant was cold. The

22:30

informant had waited too long to tell

22:33

the police about what he'd seen, so

22:35

when John went before a magistrate to

22:37

ask for a search warrant, the judge

22:40

nixed it, said too much time

22:42

had passed. That's the most frustrating

22:44

thing in the world to think there

22:47

is a confession in a box in

22:49

behind a brick in the wall,

22:52

and I can't get the legal permission

22:55

to go in there and get it. I mean, as part of you wonder if that's

22:57

still behind that brick, the house in

23:00

there anymore? So the

23:02

house is burned down, so it's not there anymore.

23:05

And that's kind of how it went with this case.

23:08

There were these missing moments, but

23:10

they never seemed to pan out. There

23:13

were times when John got these

23:15

tips that Brooke actually was alive.

23:18

There were sightings, people who claimed they'd

23:20

seen her. After all, Brooke's

23:22

face was on a whole bunch of missing posters.

23:25

It was always some kind of vague

23:27

sighting that, you know, I saw

23:29

her at a phone booth in at the

23:31

Outer Banks or something like that. You know, how

23:34

do you follow up on something like that. There's nobody there

23:36

now. But it was just enough to give the family

23:38

a spark of hope, and it would give just

23:41

enough question as to whether or not she was actually

23:44

dead. And

23:47

then one day, in June of two

23:49

thousand and six, almost seven

23:51

years after Brooke Henson had vanished, John

23:54

got a big break. It was a

23:56

phone call from a state law enforcement

23:58

official. He said, I think I

24:01

found your girl, and she's alive. She's in

24:03

New York. And I said, really

24:07

more on that after the break. Okay,

24:21

so it's two thousand and six. John

24:23

gets his big break, a call saying

24:25

Brooke Henson is alive. And

24:28

the state law enforcement official, the one

24:30

who called John here's the deal

24:32

with him. He was a point of contact

24:35

in this case, worked for the state of South

24:37

Carolina, and his name in a phone number.

24:39

It was on one of the Brook Henson missing posters.

24:42

Someone had seen this poster online

24:45

and called in a lead, a very

24:47

promising lead. The callers

24:49

said that Brooke Henson was now

24:51

living in New York City in Manhattan,

24:54

where she was a student at Columbia

24:56

University. The caller provided

24:59

Brooks home address, an apartment

25:01

on West one hundred and eighth Street, and said

25:03

that the Brook who lived there had the

25:05

same date of birth as the Brook from South Carolina,

25:09

that she also looked like the Brook and

25:11

the missing poster. John

25:13

couldn't wrap his head around any of this. It

25:16

didn't make sense. Brooke Henson

25:18

had dropped out of high school and vanished

25:20

in the hills of South Carolina seven

25:23

years ago. How is she now a student

25:25

at Columbia University in Manhattan. The

25:28

only thing that John could think of was that this

25:30

was some kind of elaborate stunt, and

25:32

that when he tracked down this woman, this Columbia

25:35

student, she'd explain everything. Eventually,

25:38

John got in touch with a cop, and the NYPD

25:41

who agreed to help him out, said

25:44

he would find this Brooke Henson character and

25:46

see what the deal was. So anyway,

25:49

the NYPD cop figures

25:52

out who she is, intercepts her between classes

25:55

and asked

25:57

her who she is, you know, if

25:59

she's really Brooke Henson. She said, I am Brooke.

26:02

I am a victim of domestic violence,

26:04

and I'm just

26:07

hiding out here and

26:10

I don't want anybody to know. Don't

26:12

tell my family. So the

26:14

NYPD caused and he says, yep, she's

26:16

broke. You can clear your case. So

26:21

much of it added up, the name, the

26:24

date of birth, the general likeness

26:26

of the photo, even the fact that she was

26:28

fleeing domestic violence. It

26:30

was a little hard to fathom. But wasn't

26:33

it possible that when Brooke Henson walked

26:35

out the door that night, away from Sean

26:38

Shirley and her life in Traveler's Rest,

26:40

that she just kept on going. Did

26:42

what Americans have done from the very beginning,

26:45

reinvent themselves, defy everyone's

26:47

expectations, start anew. Sure,

26:50

says John, that's reasonable enough.

26:53

He sees how another cop might have

26:55

accepted this and let it go at that if

26:57

it hadn't been me who had been with the police

27:00

appartment since ninety nine and knew the case

27:02

as well as I knew. If you've been

27:04

somebody that just been hired, you know, we had a lot

27:06

of turnover and everything. Someone said, oh yeah, we found

27:08

her case

27:10

closed, And honestly,

27:13

this could have been the end of the story right here.

27:16

But in a way, John had been waiting

27:18

his whole life for this moment. Let

27:21

me explain you see. John

27:23

loves mysteries and spy novels too,

27:25

the weirder the better. He's a

27:28

huge fan of The X Files, the show

27:30

starring David Duchovny that tells us the

27:32

truth is out there. John

27:35

loves stories about aliens, paranormal

27:37

activity, and vast government conspiracies,

27:40

and he's looking for them pretty much always.

27:43

He told me, back in the nineteen nineties,

27:46

everyone was looking for the Unibomber, you

27:48

know, the mysterious madman who wrote a manifesto

27:51

and sent bombs in the mail. John

27:54

studied the case obsessively, and eventually

27:57

he became convinced that he had

27:59

found the Unibomber. He even called the

28:01

FBI. They didn't take him seriously,

28:03

and it turns out John was wrong. Then,

28:07

in nineteen ninety five, a domestic

28:10

terrorist blew up a federal office building

28:12

in Oklahoma City. It was

28:14

huge news. The authorities

28:17

found their suspect, Timothy McVeigh.

28:20

John claims that he found an accomplice

28:23

tracked him down. Again.

28:25

He called the FBI, but again

28:27

they didn't take him seriously. And

28:30

to this day, John questions

28:32

how the FBI handled this, Like,

28:35

what were they hiding? Look?

28:39

John is the first to acknowledge that conspiracy

28:41

theories are seductive, sometimes

28:43

dangerously. So I've known people who

28:45

are absolutely consumed by

28:48

a conspiracy theory and you

28:50

can look at them, I'm like, that guy's nuts, you

28:52

know, John, Some people might think that

28:54

about you. Yeah, all they do, So

29:01

you get the picture. John was not

29:03

the type of guy who was going to walk away

29:05

from an unsolved mystery. Sure,

29:07

maybe he'd watched one many episodes

29:09

of The X Files, but something

29:12

about this Brooke Henson situation in

29:14

New York City just didn't

29:16

feel right to him. So he

29:18

decided that he wanted to create a test

29:21

to see if this really was Brooke

29:23

Henson. He consulted

29:25

with someone in the Henson family and came

29:28

up with a set of questions that only

29:30

Brooke would know. The answers too, like

29:32

what is your late uncle's name and what

29:35

is your brother's best friend's name. He

29:37

asked the NYPD to contact Brooke

29:40

and pose these questions. They

29:42

agreed. A short while later,

29:44

John says the detective called back and

29:46

basically said, Yep, she answered

29:49

most of the questions correctly. Seems

29:51

to be her. So I said, I'm

29:53

not happy with that. I want

29:56

DNA DNA.

29:58

I mean, you got to hand it to him. That's

30:00

ballsy. He's a small town detective

30:03

from South Carolina. He's got evidence

30:06

of plenty that this is Brooke Henson, and

30:08

he's telling the ny NAH,

30:10

I don want DNA. Kind of amazingly,

30:13

the NYPD agrees. I

30:16

don't fully understand why exactly they

30:18

did, but they did. The NYPD

30:21

says they'll reach out to her, try to make

30:23

arrangements to get some DNA.

30:25

The woman Brooke agrees,

30:28

They set a date, and then

30:31

she simply vanishes. When she didn't

30:33

show up to give DNA, she

30:35

was in the wind. She never went back

30:37

to the apartment that she was living in. She

30:40

never showed back up to class. She was gone,

30:42

and at that point we had no idea who she was,

30:45

no idea, and

30:48

that right there was

30:50

the thread dangling

30:53

like an invitation of sorts. But

30:55

what to do with it? Well, for starters,

30:58

what was this exactly a missing

31:00

person's case? Or was it two

31:02

missing people? Or was it a

31:04

case of stolen identity? Or

31:06

was it a murder case with a mysterious

31:08

spect who was now on the run? Impossible

31:11

to say. As a detective, John

31:14

knew that these categories were important, but

31:17

this case didn't fit neatly into any of

31:19

them. So what was John supposed

31:21

to do? He didn't work for the FBI

31:24

or the US Marshals. He was

31:26

just a small town detective from the mountains

31:28

of South Carolina. He says he

31:30

had a travel budget of about a thousand bucks.

31:33

His official jurisdiction was just a

31:35

few miles in diameter. This

31:37

case was way out of the circle

31:39

of wagons. But that

31:41

hadn't really stopped him before, had it. I

31:44

mean, he'd gone after the unibomber and the

31:46

Oklahoma City bomber too, but

31:49

that he'd done on his own, almost

31:51

as a hobby. He had a

31:53

real claim to this one. This

31:57

was his case, his

31:59

thread, and damned if

32:01

he wasn't going to pull on it. Coming

32:07

up this season a deep Cover.

32:10

I said, I'm calling about

32:12

a girl you might know named Brooke Henson,

32:15

and he said, I wondered when you were gonna

32:17

call. When my son brought her home, I

32:20

knew she was troubled Natalie. I

32:23

knew her as Natalie. She introduced herself

32:25

as as a professional chess player. There

32:27

are a lot of people stealing names, but

32:30

something dealing with espionage spies,

32:33

that was a fascinating, fascinating

32:36

development. We were chasing her around

32:38

the country and you know, we would

32:40

look at each other said, how are we not finding

32:43

this young girl who could grief?

32:45

Guys, we're the federal government here. We gotta be able to do

32:47

that. I think I got a message

32:49

from Columbia Security

32:52

saying they wanted to talk to me, and

32:54

I was like, oh shit. Deep

33:20

Cover is produced by Amy Gaines and

33:22

Jacob Smith. It's edited

33:24

by Karen Shakurgee mastering

33:27

by Jake Gorski. Our show

33:29

art was designed by Sean Karney. Original

33:31

scoring at our theme was composed

33:33

by Luis Gara, fact checking

33:36

by Arthur Gompert's Special

33:38

thanks to Mia Lobell, Greta Cone,

33:40

and Jacob Weissberg. I'm

33:43

Jake Albern