Episode Transcript
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0:15
Pushkin. Hey,
0:18
it's Jake, thanks for listening to deep
0:20
Cover. I'm starting to work now
0:22
on season four, and I want to remind
0:24
you that when you sign up for Pushkin Plus,
0:27
you'll get access to binge drops of future
0:29
seasons of deep Cover and exclusive
0:31
content from other Pushkin true crime heads
0:34
like Death of an Artist, which just wrapped
0:36
its first season, as well as Lost Hills,
0:38
which is returning with their third season this
0:41
June. And of course, don't miss
0:43
early access to Revisionist History and
0:45
The Happiness Lab, which are both publishing
0:48
year round for the first time in twenty
0:50
twenty three. Check out Pushkin
0:53
dot Fm or the Apple Show page
0:55
for more information. Previously
1:00
on deep Cover, I
1:02
remember the Chief asking me, like, how far are you going
1:04
to take this? It's
1:06
said Chief, until I can interer
1:09
you asked to read, I can't clear
1:11
this tip. She just
1:13
seemed like just an average
1:15
person who got caught up in something
1:17
that got bigger than what
1:19
they ever planned it to be. I
1:22
was already in the car and we were pulling way, and
1:24
I look over and they have my whole car open,
1:27
and there's many of them, and
1:29
I think, I said, I know what this is about. I'm ester read.
1:38
Esther's arrest brought about a reckoning.
1:40
She had to face the cops, the media,
1:43
and her own family. But it
1:45
wasn't until she got down to South Carolina
1:48
that she had to face the possibility of
1:50
serious prison time. The
1:52
FEDS were prosecuting her for male fraud,
1:55
wire fraud, and aggravated identity
1:57
theft, and she got the sense
2:00
that the authorities in South Carolina
2:02
had become pretty invested in her
2:04
case. We all knew something was
2:07
going on with South Carolina, like they
2:09
were a little excited
2:11
about the case. Because
2:14
way back when this investigation first
2:16
started, before things got crazy,
2:19
before all the spy theories, before
2:21
the media frenzy, before the nationwide
2:24
manhunt. Originally, the Copson
2:26
travelers rest South Carolina were
2:28
interested in one thing, and one
2:30
thing only, what happened
2:32
to Brooke. For
2:35
Esther Reid, this whole saga had been
2:38
about finding a new self. For
2:40
her, the name Brooke Henson was a ticket
2:42
to a new life, but she shared
2:45
that name with a young woman whose disappearance
2:47
was still felt and for people
2:50
in South Carolina, that same
2:52
name Brooke Henson conjured
2:55
heartache and a lingering sense of injustice.
2:59
In some ways, Esther had no idea
3:01
what was in store for her in South Carolina,
3:04
what she had walked into, because
3:06
there the real Brooke Henson had
3:09
I've been forgotten. They held candlelight
3:11
vigils in her memory in front of the police
3:13
department and Traveler's Rest. Friends
3:16
and family commemorated her. The
3:18
local media ran stories on her, the
3:20
local cops were looking for answers,
3:23
and the federal prosecutor wanted
3:25
his day in court for
3:28
all of them. This story was far from
3:30
over, and now all
3:32
eyes were on Esther Reid. I'm
3:51
Jake Halbern and this is deep Cover
3:54
Season three, Never Seen
3:56
Again Episode
4:19
six, our season finale, a
4:22
shared name. Once
4:27
Esther was moved down to South Carolina,
4:29
two cops from Traveler's Rest paid
4:31
her a visit. They wanted to talk about
4:34
Brooke Henson, to see what Esther
4:36
knew about her disappearance. The
4:38
truth, of course, was that Esther didn't know
4:40
a thing about how or why Brooke
4:42
went missing. She'd simply found Brooke's
4:45
name on the internet. Still, the
4:47
cops they wanted to talk. These
4:50
two cops showed up where Esther was being
4:52
held. Esther's lawyer was there
4:55
too. As soon as the cops entered
4:57
the room, Esther gave them a handwritten
4:59
statement on white lined paper saying
5:02
that she had nothing to do with Brooke's
5:04
disappearance. And they start talking
5:06
and they're like, well, would you be willing to submit to a
5:09
lie detector tests? At this point,
5:11
Esther freaked. Given her high
5:13
levels of anxiety, she worried
5:15
she would fail the test. Plus
5:18
lie detector tests aren't liable to begin
5:20
with. I remember I started
5:22
having a panic attack, and like I couldn't breathe,
5:24
and I
5:27
started like ripping my clothes because I couldn't
5:29
breathe. I had a jump suit
5:31
on, and I was like scratching my neck and
5:33
I ended up back in the back corner, huddled
5:36
down, hyperventilating, and they just
5:38
got out in the room and backed away and probably
5:40
left me alone for like fifteen minutes so I could calm
5:42
down. In the end, the cops
5:45
were apparently satisfied that Esther wasn't
5:47
to blame for Brooke going missing, in
5:49
part because Esther was able to demonstrate
5:52
that she was living in Seattle at the time. But
5:55
even if she wasn't a murder suspect, Esther
5:57
was still facing charges for identity theft
6:00
and fraud. She decided
6:02
to take a plea. So now
6:04
it was all about the sentencing, and
6:07
there were still a lot of people in vested in the outcome,
6:10
not just the prosecutor and the media,
6:12
but also Brooke's family. Her
6:14
parents kept a low profile, but
6:17
one of her aunts, Lisa Henson, sort
6:19
of became the public face of the family. During
6:22
the height of the media frenzy. Aunt
6:24
Lisa did interviews with the press, including
6:27
CNN. She basically
6:29
said that Esther's ruse had
6:31
led her to believe falsely for a period
6:33
of time that her niece was alive,
6:36
and that when she learned the truth, she was
6:38
devastated all over again. Aunt
6:42
Lisa decided to speak when it came
6:44
time for Esther to be sentenced, to
6:46
talk about the effect that Esther's actions
6:48
had on her personally. The
6:51
sentencing took place at the Federal courthouse
6:54
in Greenville. CBS ran
6:56
a story on the proceedings, and that
6:58
helped me fill out some of the details of
7:00
what happened that day. Esther
7:03
was marched into the courtroom and handcuffs
7:05
and leg shackles. She wore
7:07
a red prison jumpsuit and her long
7:09
brown hair was tied in a ponytail. The
7:12
whole day or being sentenced is very surreal.
7:15
I think the young man who got sentenced right
7:17
before me got forty eight years or
7:19
something, and I had just seen the judge like
7:21
scream at him, and an attorney
7:23
for him was screaming back. Eventually
7:26
it was Esther's turn. She remembers
7:28
coming to the front of the courtroom. Esther
7:31
knew that Aunt Lisa was off to the right, but
7:34
she didn't really see her because she had
7:36
been told that a defendant should never look
7:38
directly at a victim. When
7:40
she spoke in court, Aunt Lisa
7:43
kind of talked directly to Esther. She
7:45
said, nothing can bring
7:47
our brook home, but to know that
7:49
you are not violating her now gives
7:52
our family a sense of relief. Esther
7:55
also made a brief statement. She
7:57
took responsibility for her actions and
8:00
then asked the court for mercy, saying
8:03
I was desperate to escape an environment
8:05
I felt I could not survive. Esther's
8:09
lawyer also made a case for leniency, but
8:12
it didn't seem to go over well with the judge.
8:14
And I remember he's interrupting her and won't
8:17
let her presents her argument, and I
8:19
remember just thinking, oh my god, this is
8:21
really going to go badly, and
8:26
then the judge started to talk. Esther
8:29
braced herself. She focused
8:31
on the federal seal, you know, with
8:34
a great, big eagle, that was displayed
8:36
at the front of the courtroom.
8:38
He starts telling me basically why
8:40
he's going to sentence me the way he is. I
8:42
just remember looking at the seal and talking
8:45
to my mom. The
8:48
judge continued with his remarks.
8:50
Referring to Esther, he told the courtroom
8:53
she is a scheming criminal who
8:55
has taken advantage of people's identities
8:58
and institutions. And
9:00
then at some point he said, I'm going to sentence
9:03
you. And at that point I lifted
9:05
my eyes up and I remember he started
9:07
to say, I think a guideline
9:09
sentence in this case is acceptable,
9:12
and then I just read a
9:15
sigh of relief. In this case,
9:17
the federal guidelines led the judge to
9:19
give a sentence of fifty one months,
9:22
a little over four years. She
9:25
was also ordered to repay one hundred and twenty
9:27
five thousand dollars in debts, mainly
9:30
student loans that she had accumulated
9:32
in Brooke's name. That also included
9:34
eighteen thousand dollars in restitution
9:37
to J. C. Penny where she had run that
9:39
receipt scam, and then
9:41
she was marched back out of the courtroom
9:44
in her shackles. Afterwards,
9:48
Aunt Lisa told the press that the sentence
9:51
was not long enough. She lamented
9:53
that Esther would not look her in the eyes, and
9:55
then added, she sly like a
9:57
fox, she doesn't want to face anybody
10:00
who she's done wrong. Esther
10:07
ended up serving time a minimum
10:09
security federal prison camp. There,
10:12
she had time to think, to reflect on
10:14
her life. She wrote letters,
10:17
She reconnected with her brother EJ. And
10:19
her father too back in Montana.
10:21
She read books and took long walks
10:23
around the prison's outdoor track. She'd
10:27
gotten there to that moment, in
10:29
that place because she had been trying
10:31
to escape her own past, and
10:33
she chose to do that through a series
10:35
of deceptions. I
10:37
lied and lied and lied
10:40
and lied because
10:43
I was in danger, in
10:46
mentally in danger right like I was not mentally
10:49
healthy in the environment I was living
10:51
in, and I knew I needed
10:53
to get out of that. She says,
10:55
looking back, it was a terrible
10:57
way to handle things, and that many
11:00
people were harmed by her actions. You
11:03
know my pain was
11:05
visited, My trauma
11:07
was visited on so many people. My
11:10
actions caused damage to so many
11:12
people, and it's a burden
11:14
to
11:18
to know you harmed people and
11:22
to not be able to do anything about
11:24
it. During her time
11:27
in prison, Esther often thought
11:29
about Brooke Henson. Esther
11:31
says she always felt a certain kinship
11:33
with her based on what she had
11:35
read about Brooke online. She
11:38
knew they'd both struggled as teenagers
11:40
and dropped out of high school, and
11:43
she also thought a lot about Brook's mother.
11:46
Esther worried that by stealing Brook's
11:48
identity, she dredged up the
11:50
past and caused her pain.
11:53
I think because I lost my mom,
11:56
and so I
12:00
understand the
12:02
pain doesn't go away, there's
12:06
no healing, and so the thought
12:08
that my acts made
12:10
that agony worse for her
12:14
it's really hard, I
12:18
think, because I'm intimately aware of what it's like
12:20
to miss the person you loved most in
12:22
the world. In
12:31
two and eleven, Esther was
12:33
released. The prison bought
12:35
her a bus ticket back to Portland, Oregon,
12:37
where her brother and sister were now living.
12:40
There were no journalists or news crews
12:43
waiting as she left, no fanfare
12:45
of any kind. She was just
12:47
a woman on a bus headed west
12:51
back into obscurity. We'll
12:55
be right back. The
13:05
man who started this whole investigation
13:07
was John Campbell, the small town
13:10
detective from Traveler's Rest, South
13:12
Carolina. Over the course
13:14
of his investigation, John became
13:16
convinced that Esther Reid was
13:18
a spy. He'd enlisted the
13:21
help of the Secret Service. He'd
13:23
contacted Army CID its
13:25
Criminal Investigation Division, and
13:27
he'd pursued every possible
13:29
lead, telling his chief and Traveler's
13:32
Rest that he couldn't and wouldn't
13:34
rest until he himself questioned
13:37
Esther. But that day
13:39
it never came. By the time
13:42
that the authorities arrested Esther, John
13:44
was no longer working for the Traveler's Rest
13:47
p D. He'd taken another job
13:49
in law enforcement, and so he
13:51
never got a chance to question her, which
13:54
was hugely frustrating for John. In
13:57
fact, when I visited John in South
13:59
Carolina this past summer, he
14:01
told me that he still believed in
14:03
his spy theories that they might be
14:05
true. Honestly, this
14:08
kind of amazed me. There were
14:10
so many holes in this theory. There
14:12
was no actual proof of espionage. The
14:15
prosecutors never pursued it, and
14:17
of course it never came up in court because
14:20
the case never went to trial. But
14:23
John says, that's exactly
14:25
the point she did in a spy move.
14:28
She pleded straight up to
14:30
all the chargers and never answered
14:33
any questions about what she did, never
14:35
had anything in open court. So
14:38
that's brilliant. In one of my many
14:40
conversations with John, I asked
14:42
him point blank, wasn't there
14:44
a much simpler explanation than espionage,
14:47
one that made fewer leaps of logic?
14:50
He said, Oh, you're talking
14:52
about Akham's razor. In
14:56
case you're not familiar with that theory, it
14:58
basically says, if you're debating between
15:00
multiple competing theories, the
15:03
one that makes the fewest assumptions is
15:05
usually correct. Yeah, I told
15:07
John, Aham's rais is exactly
15:09
what I'm talking about, John
15:13
being John quickly made a reference to The
15:15
X Files, the show he loves about
15:17
the paranormal. You know the
15:19
truth is out there anyway.
15:22
In one episode, one of the agents refers
15:24
to Akham's Raiser as quote Akham's
15:27
principle of limited imagination.
15:30
John told me that all too often
15:33
law enforcement officials lacked imagination.
15:37
We close our mind off to anything but
15:39
the facts. And
15:42
if you close down all
15:44
those possibilities, you're going to miss something.
15:47
Isn't it possible? The danger as though, that your imagination
15:50
runs away with things and leads you too
15:52
far from the facts. Could you could? Yeah,
15:55
you always have to have somebody to rain you in if
15:57
you get too far out. But
16:00
so who rained you in when you were a traveler's rest?
16:02
You know, in this particular thing, the
16:06
ester read case, there
16:09
wasn't. I don't remember anybody rained
16:11
yet. John
16:19
is also haunted by another mystery. He
16:21
still wants to know what happened to Brooke
16:23
Henson. He believes that Brooke
16:26
was murdered. So it is virtually everyone
16:28
that I talked to in Traveler's Rest, including
16:31
the town's current chief of police. His
16:33
name is Ben Ford. Chief
16:36
Ford has been trying to solve this case, even
16:38
though at this point it's been
16:40
cold for more than twenty years. He
16:43
talks regularly with John, even
16:45
though John's not officially part of the investigation
16:48
anymore. The two men seemed
16:50
to share an obsession. Chief
16:53
Ford took command in twenty and eighteen,
16:55
and right away he made this case
16:58
a top priority. At one point,
17:00
he searched Brook's old home looking
17:02
for clues. John Campbell was there
17:04
too. They hope that maybe,
17:07
just maybe they might find an important
17:09
clue that had been overlooked, a clue
17:11
that would break the whole case open. They
17:14
didn't find it. They also
17:16
began another round of interviews, trying
17:19
to find someone who might know what happened to
17:21
Brooke. One person of interest
17:23
was Ricky Shawn Shirley. He
17:26
was Brooke's boyfriend and he
17:28
was with her the night that she went missing. If
17:30
you recall, Brooke left him a note that
17:33
night saying follow me if you care.
17:37
Chief Ford hoped that Sean Shirley
17:39
might finally sit down with him and tell
17:42
him everything he knew. But
17:44
that never happened, Remember
17:46
I told you. As part of the renewed
17:48
investigation, the cops searched
17:51
Brook's old house. That
17:53
happened September thirtieth, twenty
17:55
nineteen. Well a
17:58
day later, Sean Shirley
18:00
died, and then a
18:02
mysterious video was posted online.
18:06
It's no longer up, but I found someone
18:08
who had a copy of it. In
18:10
this video, you can see Sean Shirley
18:13
sitting by himself in a darkened
18:15
room. He's staring dead ahead
18:18
like he's in a trance. Then
18:20
he turns to the camera and whispers.
18:22
When you listen carefully, it sounds
18:24
like he might be saying help. Then
18:27
the video ends. It's extremely
18:30
creepy and it's hard to know what to
18:32
make of it. According
18:35
to the local police, Sean's death
18:37
was ruled an accidental overdose. Button
18:40
true Traveler's Rest fashion dark
18:43
theories spin The
18:45
video is fueled speculation that maybe
18:47
his death wasn't an accident, maybe
18:50
something more sinister happened, but
18:53
those are just speculations. The
18:55
bottom line Sean Shirley, the
18:57
guy people hoped had the answers, he
19:00
was now dead. At
19:05
this point, both Chief Ford and
19:08
John Campbell believe that if they could
19:10
only find Brooks remains, they
19:12
might solve this crime once and for all.
19:15
They have theories about where to look, one
19:17
place in particular, and the frustrating
19:20
part is they just can't get
19:22
to it. When
19:25
I was in Traveler's Rest, John
19:28
Campbell took me there to the
19:30
spot where he thinks Brooke may have
19:32
been buried. To get there,
19:34
we hopped in his suv and took a drive
19:36
down a lonely road. The tidy
19:38
streets of town quickly morphed into
19:41
deep, thick woods. You
19:43
can get an idea about how big
19:46
the area is, how what a vast
19:48
amount of land there is, and
19:50
how sporadic the houses
19:53
are. So let's you're talking about late
19:56
at night. If you had to get rid of a body
19:58
out here, in the chances of you're running into anybody everybody's
20:00
seeing, it would be pretty pretty slam.
20:03
Eventually, John pulls his car over to
20:05
this side of the road. We're pretty
20:07
high up on a hillside at this point, and
20:09
we have a view down onto a sprawling
20:11
field with a bunch of large concrete
20:14
structures. This
20:16
is This is a typical
20:18
water trap plant, and there's a couple covered domes
20:21
where water is treated.
20:23
This is the watershed for Greenville
20:26
City. When Brooke Henson
20:29
went missing back in nineteen ninety
20:31
nine, this water treatment plant
20:33
was still being built, and both
20:35
John and Chief Ford have gotten
20:38
a number of tips over the years that
20:40
this is where her body was buried, interred
20:43
in the concrete. They've
20:45
learned that several people who are with
20:47
Brook on the night that she vanished were
20:49
working here building the plant,
20:52
so they would have had easy access
20:54
and could have hid her body and freshly
20:56
poured concrete. The
20:59
problem is there's so much concrete
21:01
in this facility, tons and tons
21:03
of it, that it would be very difficult to find
21:06
her remains. Now, in recent
21:08
years, with vances in technology, there
21:10
are some really good ground penetrating radars
21:13
which might help a lot, But
21:15
so far the town hasn't been able
21:17
to make this happen. There's
21:21
one final reason that John thinks
21:23
that Brooks body maybe here at
21:25
the water treatment plant. He
21:27
says, every time he comes up
21:30
here, he's being watched,
21:32
and that right then when I was standing
21:35
with him, we were being watched.
21:38
We've already been spotted because
21:40
three or four cars have passed by here and they're
21:42
calling around. Is already somebody shaking their shoes that we're
21:44
looking? Come on, do you really believe
21:46
that that has happened over and over and
21:48
over again every time we've
21:50
come up here, John
21:52
says. The proof is that every time
21:55
he or Chief Ford come up here, right
21:57
away someone dials up the police department
22:00
and says, you're looking in the wrong
22:02
place. The body's not there.
22:05
Those people watch just trying to throw you off the trail.
22:07
Yeah, this is Look
22:09
at this somebody slowing down. What's going on?
22:13
That's that's the rumor mail right there that if
22:15
it wasn't the three cars before that one's calling
22:17
already, that was a painting truck. That was like, already
22:20
know somebody, and they're calling somebody who knows somebody.
22:23
That's hard for me to believe. Well,
22:27
what it does for me is it tells
22:29
me that this is this is a tip
22:31
that hasn't been fully vetted. And
22:34
until we drag a sled down air
22:36
and get an image
22:38
that what's under that concrete, then
22:41
this tip is still not completely
22:44
vetted. You
22:55
can probably tell I didn't buy John's
22:57
whole theory about us being watched and
22:59
that someone would call in and say, you
23:01
boys are looking at the wrong place. It
23:04
felt too much like well, an episode
23:06
of the X Files. But
23:09
then lo and behold, when
23:12
we checked in with Chief Ford, he told
23:14
us that when we were up there, his phone
23:17
rang and an informant called in with
23:19
a tip saying that the body was
23:21
buried elsewhere. It
23:24
was a surreal moment, felt
23:26
a shiver run up my spine, and
23:28
I started wondering who else
23:30
in this town was watching us or
23:33
watching me, and what did they
23:35
know about brooks disappearance. For
23:38
a moment, I felt like I was in one of those
23:41
movies where the journalists asks too many
23:43
questions and then late at night, there's
23:45
a knock at the door. Silly,
23:48
I know, but that's the
23:50
thing about conspiracy theories. They're
23:52
seductive. They kind of cast
23:54
a spell on you. Later
23:59
that evening, I got back to my Airbnb and
24:01
came to my senses, took a shower,
24:04
had a beer, called my wife. But
24:07
I'm not going to lie to you. Some part
24:10
of me kept on waiting for a knock
24:12
on the door. For
24:20
the Henson family, at least the members
24:22
I spoke with, the lack of closure
24:24
is hard. Brooks' parents
24:26
have both passed away, but her cousins,
24:29
Pattie and Holly Henson, have spent
24:31
years trying to keep the memory of their cousin
24:33
alive and hoping that maybe
24:36
they'll find out what happened to her. They
24:38
told me that they did not harbor bad feelings
24:41
towards Esther Reid, a real contrast
24:43
to Aunt Lisa. They said that, if
24:46
anything, they were grateful that Esther's
24:48
story, with all its notoriety, had
24:50
drawn attention to brookes case, not
24:53
that it's done a lot of good so far. They
24:55
hoped for a while that Brook's old boyfriend,
24:58
Sean Shirley, might come forward with new
25:00
information, or that the police would
25:02
finally break the case open. It's
25:04
been frustrating for them. I
25:06
asked cousin Holly about the investigation
25:09
as it now stands. How optimistic
25:12
or confident do you feel that
25:14
they're ever going to find out what
25:17
happened to Brooke and where her body may
25:19
be. Not very confident
25:21
at all. I don't think they
25:23
will. Why do
25:25
you say that it's
25:28
been this long Sean Shirley
25:30
is now dead. I
25:33
feel like when he died, I remember
25:37
having tears because I was like, well
25:40
it's over now, We're never gonna find Brooke.
25:43
I asked cousin Patty what it would
25:45
mean to her if they could find Brooks remains.
25:48
I feel like it would mean everything. I feel like she
25:51
deserves justice. She
25:53
didn't ask for what happened to her.
25:56
She was a free spirit just because
25:58
she liked
26:01
a party and hung out with the wrong
26:03
crowd. She didn't deserve
26:06
to be just
26:09
dumped and forgot about. I'm
26:11
sure if that was your daughters, you
26:13
know you wouldn't want that either. By
26:18
most accounts, the investigation
26:20
into Brooke Henson's disappearance failed
26:23
very early on. John Campbell
26:25
told me that initially the Traveler's
26:28
Rest Police department didn't recognize
26:30
this as a possible murder, and by
26:32
the time they got serious about all this, they
26:35
missed their best chance to solve the case.
26:39
I heard versions of this from other people
26:41
too, who Traveler's Rest. They
26:43
told me that because Brooke was a high
26:45
school dropout and seen as a party
26:47
girl, that her case wasn't taken seriously,
26:50
at least at first. Brook story
26:53
only truly caught the attention of the public
26:55
in a big way when it intersected
26:57
with Esther reads. It's
27:01
interesting because Esther was also
27:03
a high school dropout who for a long
27:06
time existed in the margins of
27:08
society, living a transient
27:10
life, struggling with her social anxiety.
27:13
It was only when she fled Columbia University
27:15
and was depicted as a spy and
27:18
a seductress that suddenly
27:20
everyone seemed to care. Sun
27:42
is shining, and Spokane it is
27:45
for the first time in a week. Well
27:47
did shine yesterday, but before that
27:50
it was not funny. This
27:53
past spring, I spent a week with Esther
27:55
in Spokane, Washington. That's
27:57
where she lives these days. On
27:59
this occasion, I was driving with her to
28:02
work. Everybody here is very very
28:04
nice. I noticed that super friendly when about
28:06
running or walking. Yeah, that
28:08
part is familiar to how To where
28:10
I grew up in Montana. Everybody's very nice
28:13
and kind. For
28:15
the most part. Esther is
28:17
in her mid forties now, and
28:19
she has a new life. She has friends,
28:22
a good job, a home, even
28:24
a new dog, a little shit soon named Louis.
28:27
She's also gone through therapy, which
28:29
has helped with her social anxiety. In
28:32
the car ride that day, we talked about
28:34
all kinds of things, like I asked
28:36
her if she ever saw herself getting married.
28:39
M don't. I don't know that. I believe in
28:41
marriage. I wouldn't
28:44
be opposed to it. I would
28:46
never change my name. That's
28:50
kind. Now, that's kind of ironic.
28:52
Well, I'm very attached to Matthews now. I mean it's
28:55
I know it is ironic. I would change my first name
28:57
in a heartbeat. She goes by Esther
28:59
Matthews now. She made the switch
29:02
after she got out of prison. One
29:04
last name change, this time legally
29:08
before a judge Eventually
29:11
we arrived at Gonzaga University.
29:14
Nice. We arrived
29:16
in one piece. That's always good. And
29:19
this is where Esther works. She's now
29:21
a professor here, Professor Esther
29:24
Matthews. After getting out
29:26
of prison, Esther went back to school.
29:28
She got her PhD in criminology
29:31
and landed a job teaching, first
29:33
American University and then
29:35
here at Gonzaga.
29:38
Esther gives me a little tour of campus,
29:40
and as she does, she tells
29:42
me about her academic research. She's
29:45
done a number of in depth ethnographic
29:47
investigations of prison life, including
29:50
a close look at several solitary confinement
29:53
units. She's also interested
29:55
in reentry, looking at how we
29:58
as a society can best help people
30:00
as they returned to their communities. I
30:02
always knew I would like researching, and
30:05
then I was like, oh, I can teach to research. That's
30:07
fine. And then I started
30:09
teaching. And my students
30:11
are just the most fabulous,
30:15
lovely human beings on the planet.
30:18
Esther says she loves how compassionate and
30:20
non judgmental her students are, and
30:23
she's told them a lot about herself, including
30:25
her troubles as a teenager, her struggles
30:28
with social anxiety, even her time
30:30
in prison. What they don't
30:32
know, what hardly anyone knows, is
30:35
exactly why she ended up in prison. The
30:37
whole Esther Reid's story, with all
30:39
its tawdry, tabloid melodrama,
30:42
she just hasn't gotten into it, really.
30:45
But every once in a while someone
30:47
connects the dots, figures out that Professor
30:50
Esther Matthews is in fact
30:53
Esther Reid. She'll get a call
30:55
or an email out of the blue, and
30:57
so finally last fall, she figured
31:00
why not take the reins tell her full
31:02
story on her own terms. So
31:05
what do you do in this situation when you're
31:07
a professor? A talk
31:09
at a symposium? Right? And she happened
31:11
to be organizing a big event to Gonzaga
31:14
and thought this could work. So
31:16
she invited all of her students, all of
31:18
her colleagues, anyone who wanted
31:20
to come.
31:23
On the day of the event, a crowd gathered
31:26
at a large lecture hall on campus. Esther
31:29
aka Professor Matthews stood
31:31
at the front of the room. Okay,
31:33
So, like I said, I'm gonna go probably
31:36
till about ten after she
31:38
starts by telling the crowd straight
31:41
up that this isn't going to be easy for
31:43
her. I also have social anxiety
31:45
disorder, and
31:47
I'm going to try to be unapologetically
31:50
anxious. But I'm going to talk about a lot of different
31:53
facets of my life
31:55
and my experience in custody. She
31:57
hits a button on her laptop and an
32:00
image flashes onto the movie screen behind
32:02
her. It's a picture of a woman
32:04
and a toddler standing in a garden
32:06
framed by pine trees. It's summertime.
32:09
The woman is in jeans and a blue, short
32:11
sleeved shirt. This
32:14
lovely woman is
32:16
my mom, and this is me as
32:19
a little baby growing up.
32:21
This is our house in
32:23
Montana. And
32:26
I will talk about many different
32:29
identities that I've had, but the only identity
32:31
that I claim is
32:33
her daughter, and
32:37
I will likely get emotion. Esther
32:41
also explains how after her
32:43
mom passed away, she cut ties
32:45
with her family to escape a situation
32:48
that was toxic for her. The
32:50
thing I became infamous for is
32:53
that I didn't want my family to
32:55
find me, and so I started taking on
32:57
the identities of other
33:00
individuals. There's another
33:02
image on the screen now. It's
33:04
a collage actually, including a
33:06
picture of Esther and a boyfriend from
33:08
West Point, climbing Mount Washington,
33:11
Esther dressed up for a party, surrounded
33:13
by other twenty somethings, and
33:15
then there's a snapshot of Esther's ID
33:18
from Columbia University. I
33:20
don't even remember how many people's names
33:23
I used, but at one point I was
33:25
Natalie Fisher, at one point I was Natalie
33:27
Bowman. Then it came
33:29
Brooke Henson. What I would do
33:33
as I would get identification in their name,
33:35
and then I would try and start over stealing
33:37
all of these identities, Esther explains
33:39
eventually landed her in prison. But
33:42
that is the hard part of my story, and
33:45
I now want to switch to
33:47
the good part of my story, which is kind
33:49
of another life shift. Once
33:51
I was released from custody, I
33:54
had to start to think about how I was going to rebuild
33:57
my life as Esther Reid, which you're
33:59
probably thinking, you're doctor Matthews, So
34:02
I'll explain. You
34:07
can hear that little murmur from the audience,
34:09
like folks are processing what she just said, because
34:12
this is actually the first time she's
34:15
mentioned the name Esther Reid. Remember,
34:18
everyone here knows her as Professor Matthews.
34:21
So she starts to explain how she became
34:24
professor Matthews how after
34:26
getting out of prison, she found a job
34:28
in the construction industry, started
34:31
taking classes, got her b A, and
34:33
her PhD. Became a professor
34:35
of criminology who studies the
34:37
challenges that people face when they
34:39
come home from prison. She has a
34:42
lot of thoughts about this. She's
34:44
on research, for example, on the word
34:46
inmate, how people react more
34:48
favorably to hearing that a person
34:50
is being released from prison versus
34:52
an inmate. Another
34:55
problematic word, she says, is rehabilitation
34:59
because it suggests that we need to cure
35:01
people to somehow alter who
35:03
they fundamentally are. I
35:06
have not been rehabilitated, right, I received
35:08
resource and I
35:10
had opportunities. Right, nobody rehabilitated
35:13
me. I am the same person
35:16
who is a risk taker. I
35:18
am still sassy, I
35:20
am still defiant. I still don't
35:23
like authority. I'm still that
35:25
same person. I just have resources
35:27
and support to help me build
35:29
a life that means more to me than
35:32
what one of my friends calls burning the house down. I
35:35
love to burn the house down, right, That's my favorite
35:37
thing to do. But I
35:40
just do it an illegal way. Now, right, with my research
35:44
and all of this supports her belief,
35:47
underscored by both her research and
35:49
her experiences, that words
35:51
matter. So today
35:54
these are my words. Right, I'm a
35:56
professor, I'm a researcher, I'm
35:58
a scholar. We can be those
36:00
things if you stop calling us the other
36:02
things. When she's done,
36:04
she asks for questions. A
36:07
man raises his hand and ask
36:09
about her current name, Esther Matthews,
36:12
as if to say, where did that come
36:14
from? I know you keep this is spice,
36:16
but I wanted to know the Matthews
36:19
verse. Oh oh, so my
36:21
mom is Florence Matthews.
36:23
So finally, when I got off probation,
36:25
I was able to change my name illegally, this
36:28
time from
36:30
Esther Reid to Esther Matthews.
36:33
But I would much rather have changed my first
36:35
name and last name, but I didn't think the judge would go
36:37
for that because I really liked being Natalie.
36:40
But next to now, I'm stuck with Esther.
36:44
But I wish I had said Natalie Matthews.
36:46
But whatever, I
36:48
can't have everything I want, right, Does
36:52
anybody else have another question? We
36:56
love you, Esther, and
37:02
that was it. Afterwards, students
37:04
and other panelists from the day's events came
37:06
up to her, thanked her for her talk, told
37:09
her they'd see her later. To
37:11
her students, she was still who
37:14
she'd always been, perhaps
37:16
who she was always meant to be. Professor
37:19
Esther Matthews, her
37:21
mother's daughter. All
37:34
of this made me wonder who Brooke Henson
37:36
might have been, who she might have become,
37:39
if she'd ever emerged from that darkened
37:41
road in Traveler's Rest all
37:44
those years ago. Follow
37:46
me if you care, She'd scrawled
37:49
on a handwritten note like a
37:51
traveler's prayer, the hope
37:53
that when we are gone, our absence
37:56
will be felt, and should we not
37:58
return in time, they
38:00
will search. Ben
38:41
Ford of the Traveler's Rest Police Department
38:44
is still working diligently on the Brookhnson
38:46
case to find out what happened to her. If
38:49
you have any new information that might be helpful,
38:52
please contact him at Ford
38:55
at t R police dot
38:57
com.
39:21
Deep Cover is produced by Amy Gaines
39:23
and Jacob Smith. It's edited
39:26
by Karen shakerje mastering
39:28
by Jake Gorski. Our show art
39:30
was designed by Sean Karney. Original
39:33
scoring and our theme was composed
39:35
by Luis Gara. Fact checking
39:37
by Arthur Gomperts. Additional
39:40
thanks to Milo Bell Jill
39:42
Gillette, Travis Dunlap, Roya
39:44
Reese Tammy and Patrick Welch,
39:47
Ryan Beasley, Roger Jewel, Franklin
39:50
Schneier, Ben Ford, Jeff
39:52
Emlick, Natalie Fisher, Natalie
39:55
Bowman, Meghan Kennedy and
39:57
Alicia Via Gonzaga University,
40:01
and the team at Claris Law
40:03
at Pushkin Special thanks to Sarah
40:06
Knicks, Daphne Chen, Sarah
40:08
brug Air, Eric Sandler,
40:11
Maggie Taylor, Morgan Rattner,
40:14
Nicole Morano, Isabella
40:16
Narvaz, Mary Beth Smith,
40:18
Jordan McMillan, Meghna Row, Sophie
40:21
Crane, Peter Clowney, Edith
40:24
Russello, Heather Faine, John
40:26
Schnars, Carrie Brody,
40:29
Carlie mcgliori, Christina
40:31
Sullivan, Jason Gambrel, Leta
40:34
Mullad, Gretta Cone, Jacob
40:37
Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. I'm
40:40
Jake Halper
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