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

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0:31

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0:34

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0:36

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0:38

which is returning with their third season this

0:41

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0:43

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twenty three. Check out Pushkin

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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