0:15

Pushkin Just

0:20

a quick heads up before we start. This

0:22

episode contains a brief reference to suicide

0:29

previously a deep cover. I

0:32

said, I'm calling about a

0:35

girl you might know named Brooke Henson, and

0:38

he said, I wondered when you were gonna call.

0:40

When my son brought her home, I

0:43

knew she was troubled. It was the

0:45

same Adelaide. She was

0:47

the same person, regardless

0:50

of the moniker that she was she

0:52

was using. She had the same

0:54

flaws, the same loves,

0:57

the same laughs. I haven't

0:59

determined that the woman in question is not our

1:01

victim Brookley Henson. Her

1:03

behavior fits the profile of a spy

1:06

far better than that of the average

1:08

identity. Back

1:17

in two thousand and six, there was

1:19

a woman enrolled at Columbia University

1:22

who claimed to be Brooke Henson, but

1:25

in reality she was an impostor.

1:27

She was using the identity of another woman

1:30

who'd gone missing from South Carolina seven

1:32

years earlier. This impostor

1:35

she'd deceived Columbia University, her

1:38

boyfriends, and many others. It

1:40

was a hot mess. And I know

1:42

this because she herself told

1:45

me, told me all about it, starting

1:47

with the moment that it all began to

1:49

fall apart for her. I think I

1:51

got a message from Columbia

1:53

Security saying they wanted to talk to me, and

1:56

I was like, oh shit. A short

1:58

while later, she received a call from

2:01

a detective in the NYPD. He

2:03

basically asked me if I'm Brooke Henson and I

2:05

say yes, and he says, well,

2:08

why are you listed as missing? And then

2:10

I tell him like, I am running from

2:12

my family. I don't want anything to do with them, and

2:14

he's like, okay, that's fine, I'll tell the detectives

2:17

down there. And it seemed like that

2:19

might be the end of it. But

2:21

then the detective called back because

2:24

he said the authorities down in South Carolina

2:27

wanted more information. South

2:29

Carolina people just want to double check that you're

2:32

actually Brooke Henson. So I have a couple of questions. Are

2:34

you okay with that? And I was like sure, Were

2:37

you like panicky at all with yeah?

2:40

Oh my yeah, of course. But

2:43

she was prepared. She knew a

2:45

lot about the real Brooke Henson. There

2:47

was a lot of stuff on the

2:49

Internet about her being missing, and

2:52

I had read every shred of it. The

2:54

detective started asking questions about

2:56

the names of friends and family members

2:59

from back home and Traveler's Rest, South Carolina.

3:02

She could only hope that she answered enough

3:04

of these questions correctly that the

3:06

detective would be satisfied, and it

3:08

seemed like he got what he needed. But

3:11

that didn't last very long. This detective

3:13

kept calling me back and he goes, are you sure you're telling

3:15

me the truth? Because he goes, I can help you,

3:19

and I was like, no, no, no no, I'm telling the truth. And

3:21

then he would call by he goes, you know, I know a judge,

3:23

like, I'm pretty sure, like we can figure this

3:25

out. Are you sure you're telling me the truth? Like,

3:27

no, no no, no, I'm telling the truth. Is your like

3:29

anxiety kicking in? Oh yeah, yeah,

3:31

Like sometimes I'll get hives when I get really

3:34

anxious, and I'll just my blood

3:36

pressure goes up really high and so I'll get red

3:38

and all of that was happening. That

3:40

sounds pretty terrible. It was, Yeah,

3:42

it was one hundred percent terrible. All

3:45

of this is terrible, Jake, It's

3:48

all horrible. Eventually,

3:50

the NYPD detective calls back

3:53

and tells her that the authorities down in South

3:55

Carolina are insisting on more

3:57

proof. They want her to provide

4:00

DNA to confirm that she

4:02

really is Brokenson. She

4:04

stalls. She says that she has

4:06

two final papers to finish over the weekend

4:09

and asks if she can possibly meet

4:11

the detective at her apartment on

4:13

the following Monday and then

4:15

take the DNA test. The detective

4:18

agrees, like, what's your plan

4:21

as your Oh, I didn't have a plan at that point. I mean, I was just

4:23

hoping it would all go away. I'm

4:26

like just stupid, right, Like, you know, there's

4:29

no there's no plan, Like I can't fix this.

4:33

I'm just thinking like what if I miss them? Like what if I'm not home?

4:36

Is it a big deal that they come back? Or is this like we

4:38

don't have the resources for this and this isn't

4:40

a big deal, Like I didn't know at that point.

4:43

She finishes her two papers and

4:45

then she kind of comes to her senses, has

4:48

this moment when she realizes that

4:50

this is not all magically just going to go

4:52

away, that the police they're

4:55

onto her. So she decides

4:57

she's got to do something. I went

4:59

to get a U wall truck because

5:02

I had decided I'm freaking getting out of here, and

5:05

I was going to pack up my apartment. I

5:07

still thought like I could come like this is gonna down,

5:09

I can come back, It'll be urry. Her

5:12

plan was to pack up her place, move

5:14

everything into storage, and then grab

5:16

her two dogs, Pooching and Odie,

5:19

and disappear for a while. And

5:21

so I rented the

5:23

truck and I took all the money I had it out of my

5:25

account and I think they probably had my accounts

5:27

flagged. And so by the time

5:29

I got back to my apartment, I pulled

5:32

around the corner of my unhaul truck and there were

5:34

New York City cops knocking

5:36

on the door. And I was like, oh

5:37

shit, because she's too late.

5:40

The cops are there. So

5:43

now she has a choice to make either

5:46

a run for it or B

5:48

just turn herself in, tell the cops

5:51

everything about who she really is. No

5:54

choice is tempting. It's second

5:56

nature, actually, because she's been more or

5:58

less on the run for years. But

6:00

the problem is Pooching and

6:02

Odie. They're inside the apartment,

6:05

and no matter what, she cannot leave

6:07

her dogs. So it's gotta be b

6:10

turn herself in. So I pulled

6:12

over in front of a fire hydrant and

6:15

I walked around the block, and by

6:17

the time I got around, they were gone,

6:20

and so I was like, oh,

6:24

So I went upstairs, packed the quickest

6:27

bag I could pack, grab my dogs,

6:29

called a cab, and left. Would you do it to?

6:31

You? Haul? Left it here? It's

6:34

not I don't want people to think that Mead chuckling

6:36

is. I don't think any of this is funny. It's

6:39

just uncomfortable and whatever. But

6:42

yeah, I just left it there. That's

6:46

kind of crazy. I know all

6:49

of it's crazy. I was scared,

6:53

and this decision to run for it, more

6:56

than anything else, it's what

6:58

makes this story go bat shit. It's

7:01

the decision that confounds everyone, the

7:03

authorities down in South Carolina, the

7:06

Secret Service, the assistant US

7:08

Attorney. Because now

7:10

it's got them all thinking, who

7:13

leaves a U haul idling at

7:15

the curb? Why is this woman

7:17

running? What is she hiding? Because

7:20

it's got to be something big, right.

7:39

I'm Jake Halbern and this is

7:41

deep Cover, Never Seen Again,

8:08

Episode three. The

8:10

Impostor. This

8:16

woman the one I'm speaking to. The impostor.

8:19

She's gone by many names, including

8:21

Natalie Fisher, Natalie Bowman,

8:24

and Brooke Henson. Her real

8:26

name, well, I should say her birth

8:28

name is Esther Reid. And

8:31

I'm going to call her Esther. That's the

8:33

first name that she goes by. Currently. Esther

8:36

lives in a small city in the Pacific Northwest.

8:39

We started talking months ago. I

8:41

eventually went out there to visit her, and

8:43

she told me that only four people in

8:45

her city knew her full back story, well

8:48

five if you counted me. And

8:51

in this episode, we're going to take a

8:53

deep dive into her side of the

8:55

story because at this point you've

8:57

heard from John Campbell, You've heard his theories,

9:00

his suspicions that this mystery woman was

9:03

not just an identity thief but a spy

9:05

who seemed to be on the run. And

9:08

Esther was on the run, but

9:10

what she was running from, well

9:13

that's complicated. Back

9:16

in the early nineteen nineties, Esther

9:18

Reid was a young girl in a small town

9:20

in Montana. She lived in a

9:22

tiny two bedroom house with unfinished

9:25

walls. Outside, there were

9:27

chickens, geese, rabbits, goats,

9:29

and a big garden. She says her

9:32

dad was a serious man. My

9:35

dad is very, very very

9:37

religious, and so like

9:39

there was no TV in the house. We

9:42

weren't really allowed to listen to any music that

9:45

had a beat, anything with a

9:49

drum beat was considered satanic or

9:51

evil, so we weren't allowed at

9:54

school. Her father didn't allow her to wear pants.

9:57

Instead, she wore homelesspun dresses.

10:00

Her mom was the fun one, always

10:02

making up games and telling them stories.

10:05

When I think about my mom, I just remember

10:08

hers right in her effervescence,

10:11

and she was just so

10:14

amazingly loving and kind

10:16

and giving. Esther told

10:18

me stories where her mom seemed like a

10:20

magician. She conjured joy

10:22

even in tough situations when

10:25

no one could sleep in the sweltering heat.

10:27

She rallied the kids in the middle of the night

10:29

to make fudge. Another time,

10:31

the kids were having a water fight, and instead

10:33

of breaking it up, she dragged a hose

10:36

into the house and soaked them. My

10:39

mom was definitely a lemons into

10:41

lemonade girl, and really

10:44

definitely the happiness is what you make of

10:46

it. Esther says her parents' relationship

10:49

was very business like like. She only

10:51

remembers seeing her dad hug her mom a

10:53

few times, and it was like that

10:56

right up until the day that their marriage effectively

10:58

ended. Like the way my dad

11:03

told her he wanted to divorce, as

11:05

he wrote her a letter, And I think

11:07

at that point they had been married eight years, and

11:09

he wrote a letter, I

11:11

think on a Friday, and he

11:13

put it in her purse and she found it when

11:15

she got to work, and

11:18

he basically said, this isn't

11:20

working. I would like

11:22

you to take Esther and move out, and

11:24

he wanted her gone by Sunday.

11:30

Esther was twelve when this happened. She

11:32

and her mother moved out and life

11:34

didn't get any easier for her. A

11:36

year or two later, ESS's mom was

11:39

diagnosed with colon cancer. Meanwhile,

11:42

Esther started high school and hated

11:45

it. Not the schoolwork. She was

11:47

very bright and she actually had a photographic

11:49

memory. It was the social

11:52

aspect of going to school that was just really

11:54

tough for her. She dreaded it, in fact,

11:57

so she played hooky as much as she

11:59

could. Her

12:01

mom typically left the house early

12:03

each morning for work, and instead

12:06

of going to school, Esther often just

12:08

stayed in the house. One week,

12:10

when her mom stayed home from work, Esther

12:13

had to improvise. I would

12:15

pretend to go to school. And then

12:17

we had a part of our basement that

12:19

was unfinished, and I had a little TV,

12:22

a little black and white TV that I had bought at

12:24

a garage sale, and I put

12:26

that back there and I spent that whole

12:28

week down there. At the time,

12:31

Esther felt something was off, but

12:33

she just didn't know what it was. She

12:35

knew that she needed a loane time to recharge.

12:38

She described it to me kind of like hibernation.

12:42

It was only years later that Esther would

12:44

learn she had a social anxiety disorder.

12:48

Eventually, Esther and her mom decided

12:51

to move to Seattle. Esther

12:53

continued to struggle there, and

12:55

she no longer had the support of the small

12:57

town community that she and her family

12:59

had known. She dropped

13:01

out of high school in her junior year. Her

13:04

mom insisted that she get a job, so

13:06

she started working at a nursing home. Esther

13:10

did have a bunch of older siblings,

13:12

but at this point, the only real

13:14

constant in her life was her mom. My

13:17

mom was really the only person I was really

13:19

close to. I mean, I had friends, but it's

13:23

very difficult when you have undiagnosed,

13:26

untreated social anxiety to be

13:28

friendly with someone, right. You just felt uncomfortable

13:31

around everyone. And my mom

13:33

was really the only person who knew I

13:35

had these issues, and so she

13:37

kind of managed life for

13:40

me. But

13:43

then when she was seventeen years old,

13:45

her mom's cancer came back. Esther

13:48

watched her mom struggle for the next few years,

13:51

and by the time she was twenty, her

13:53

mom had died. I

13:56

was incredibly depressed. I've

13:59

just lost my mom. I

14:01

have no contact with really

14:03

anybody who's able

14:06

willing to help,

14:11

you know, thinking about killing myself all

14:13

the time. I did

14:15

not care about anything at that point. I

14:17

didn't care about myself. I didn't care about anybody

14:19

else. I just wanted to

14:22

die so I could see my mom.

14:24

So really, there was no There was definitely

14:27

no future thought. It's just survival. She

14:34

couldn't hold down a steady job, her

14:36

car was repossessed. She didn't

14:38

have a reliable place to live, so she

14:41

slept on the floor at a friend's place for a bit.

14:44

It was during this time that

14:46

she did something pretty desperate. I

14:48

was working for like maybe a week two

14:51

I don't think it was two weeks, so I didn't I was not

14:53

able to work for two weeks, so maybe like i'd

14:55

been there for four or five days, and then I stole

14:58

my coworker's purse. She had it sitting on

15:00

like the nurses station. The

15:02

purse had a bunch of credit cards and a driver's

15:05

license. Then Esther showed

15:07

up at a department store claiming to be

15:09

that coworker. She had added

15:11

her own photo to the ID. The

15:13

credit card had been reported as stolen, so

15:16

when Esther tried to use it, she got arrested.

15:19

Esther pled to the charges. She had

15:22

to pay a fine, and she got off with a year of

15:24

probation and three days in jail.

15:27

This actually wasn't the first

15:29

time she'd stolen from somebody.

15:32

In the wake of her mom's death, she swiped

15:34

a check book from her sister Edna

15:36

and wrote some hot checks in her name. Edna

15:40

also lived in Seattle, and Esther saw

15:42

her from time to time, but they

15:44

had a rocky relationship, and

15:46

it only got rockier after the whole

15:48

stolen checks incident. As

15:51

far as I could tell, Esther's

15:53

mom was the lynchpin to absolutely

15:56

everything, and without her,

15:58

Esther's life just derailed, popped

16:01

right off the tracks, and rattled

16:04

onward toward the abyss. Esther

16:09

felt like there was nothing left for her in Seattle.

16:12

I think at that point it probably felt like I

16:14

could run away from my problems, right like if

16:17

I don't if

16:19

I don't think about my mom, and if I'm not living

16:21

in Seattle, then it won't

16:24

be so painful, and like maybe I

16:26

can get over it. So

16:31

she just left town, didn't really tell

16:33

anyone where she was going, just kind

16:35

of vanished, bought the cheapest plane

16:37

ticket she could find, which was to Salt

16:40

Lake City. She found an inexpensive

16:42

place to stay a weekly rental,

16:44

and she hold up there for a while, but

16:47

she kept getting these messages from her family,

16:50

especially from her sister Edna, who

16:52

wanted to know where are you.

16:55

Esther says, in her highly anxious state,

16:58

she felt as if she were being stalked. She

17:01

says. One of her other sisters threatened

17:03

to call the cops on her, apparently

17:05

just to intimidate her. What.

17:07

Esther wanted space to

17:10

hibernate a bit away from her family,

17:13

and suddenly this didn't really feel

17:15

like the escape that she had envisioned, because

17:18

she wanted a clean break with her own past,

17:21

a clean break with being Esther Reid.

17:24

And eventually she came up with a solution.

17:27

She decided to start using the name of someone

17:30

she knew, a girl back in Seattle

17:32

named Natalie Fisher. She

17:34

knew a decent amount about Natalie. Esther

17:37

says at some point she had access

17:39

to Natalie's wallet and saw her social

17:41

Security number, and don't forget

17:44

Esther, she had a photographic memory, so

17:47

she knew some of Natalie's vital information,

17:49

and what she didn't know she figured

17:51

out online. She then obtained

17:53

a birth certificate in Natalie's name and

17:56

eventually got an ID and then

17:58

on paper at least she was Natalie

18:01

Fisher. Pretty bold right

18:03

not to mention illegal. What's

18:06

the logic that's going through your brain when you're doing

18:08

this. I always just viewed it

18:10

as me using a different name. I never

18:14

thought I was her or anything.

18:16

I mean, I changed my name before I left all

18:18

the time. I hated the name Ester, so I was

18:20

you know, when I was a little girl, I wanted to go by

18:23

Herford, and you know, changed my

18:25

name to Elizabeth or Liz or so

18:27

it just didn't My name didn't make

18:29

me who I was. I never viewed it like

18:32

that. I just always saw it as

18:34

I get to be me and like she

18:36

can't find me. She's

18:40

talking about her sister, Edna, who'd

18:42

been trying to get in touch with her. But

18:45

as I see it, it was far more

18:47

than just Edna. It was the

18:49

co worker who's purse she'd stolen, and

18:51

the high school in Seattle that she'd avoided,

18:53

like the plague, and the hole that

18:56

she found herself in after she lost her mom.

18:59

With a new name. She put all

19:01

of that in the past. There was no

19:03

connection to it now, no point of reference,

19:06

not even a set of nine digits on a Social

19:08

Security card. Or at least

19:11

that's what she told herself the

19:13

past. It had been erased, and

19:16

as Esther put it, I get

19:18

to be me whoever that

19:20

was. Esther

19:37

left Seattle in the fall of nineteen ninety

19:40

nine, and she drifted around for almost

19:42

two years. I don't know

19:44

exactly how she was making ends meet.

19:47

This period in Esther's life is kind

19:49

of a black hole. I only have her

19:51

version of events. She says

19:54

she worked odd jobs, short term

19:56

gigs that she found on Craigslist, and

19:58

that she eked out a modest existence

20:00

as Natalie Fisher. The way

20:03

she described it seems like she was

20:05

adrift, no purpose, no

20:07

plan other than being

20:09

who she once was. But

20:12

when she looked back on her past, it

20:14

wasn't all bad. There was something

20:17

she felt shed done well. Things

20:19

she felt good about. And one of them was,

20:21

if you can believe it, being on a high school

20:23

debate team. Now it might be thinking,

20:25

could someone who has paralyzing social anxiety

20:28

really thrive on a debate team, And

20:30

the answer it turns out as yes,

20:33

those were my people. I just felt very

20:36

comfortable among those individuals.

20:38

Plus they were all like little brainiac nerds

20:40

like me, So it wasn't a big deal.

20:43

All of my quirkiness or

20:46

idiosyncrasies that I hadn't

20:49

been appropriate, least socialized when I

20:51

was a kid, those things didn't stand out and make

20:53

me a weirdo among that crowd. Back

20:55

in high school, when she wasn't playing hooky,

20:58

she actually participated in debate tournaments

21:01

and she loved it. Also,

21:03

for someone with social anxiety, debate

21:06

was the opposite of a cocktail party, that's

21:09

my take. Anyhow, there was a strict

21:11

format that dictated when things would happen,

21:14

opening statements, rebuttals, closing

21:17

remarks. Everything was so

21:19

clear. Plus it was

21:21

also intellectually engaging. She says

21:23

that it overrode her social anxiety.

21:26

For Esther, the world of debate tournaments

21:29

was a world that made sense, and

21:31

so she decided to go to debate

21:33

camp, the Arizona Debate Institute.

21:39

She arrived at the Twin Palms Hotel

21:41

in Tempe, pink exterior,

21:44

tiny balconies, obligatory

21:46

palm trees, and a lobby packed

21:48

with lots of precocious college students

21:51

getting ready to debate. You

21:58

take one hundred and twenty

22:00

college students from all across the country

22:02

that have not generally met before in lock. I'm

22:04

in a hotel for two weeks and high pressure situations.

22:07

It's exactly what you think be like. That's

22:10

John Brushky, the organizer

22:12

of the debate camp. It would really

22:15

get up and go to the lectures because they wanted to

22:17

be at the lectures. Then they would work

22:19

from like noon till midnight, and

22:22

they neither decided they're going to pull an all night or to finish

22:24

their research or

22:27

you know, socialize. It

22:29

sounds like a Nerds version of spring Break.

22:32

Yes, exactly, a

22:34

Revenge of the Nerds Tempe, Arizona

22:37

edition. So this is the

22:39

scene that Estra walked into posing

22:41

as Natalie. John still

22:43

remembers when he first met her. So her

22:46

narrative was, I make my money playing

22:48

competitive chess and

22:50

I kind of live a nomadic life, right, so we were

22:53

trying to get what's your home address? That was

22:55

a question we couldn't get out of her registration. John

22:58

remembers that this nomadic young woman,

23:00

she was ambitious. She told

23:02

him that she wanted to win a national debate

23:05

championship, you know, when

23:07

she wasn't playing pro chess. So

23:10

a bit odd perhaps, but hey,

23:12

this was Revenge of the Nerds Tempe edition.

23:18

Esther's story. It wasn't all made

23:20

up. She actually did spend many

23:22

of her days playing chess online. Chess

23:25

is an escape for me. I would play it for hours

23:27

and people would be like, why are you doing that? So

23:30

she came up with an answer to that question, a lie

23:32

that became part of her fictional biography. She

23:35

told people she was a professional chess player,

23:37

which was a good lie, of course, because Esther

23:40

knew a lot about chess. She was slowly

23:42

crafting her own semi fictional

23:44

narrative, and she was learning

23:47

when lying stick to the truth right,

23:49

because as she toyed with the details,

23:52

adjusting them here and there, she

23:54

learned the dangers of straying too far from

23:56

the truth. Like one time some

23:58

guy chatted her up and she improvised

24:01

a bit too much, and I

24:03

was like, oh, I'm going

24:05

to a tennis tournament because oh, you're a teenis

24:07

plan? I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm a tesselayer.

24:10

This was a problem because Esther didn't

24:12

actually know that much about tennis, and also

24:15

once Ali was out, it spread.

24:18

I mean because then once you tell people, then they're

24:20

like, oh, you know what she does? She pleased

24:22

tenant and I'm like, gosh, shit, you know,

24:24

like it just it would eventually get me

24:26

in trouvel So she quickly realized

24:29

better to stick with the chess story, and

24:31

it worked well. At the debate camp,

24:33

she spun her tail, she made some friends,

24:36

and she even won an award for her performance

24:38

as a debater. Afterwards,

24:40

she started talking to John Brushki, the

24:43

debate coach, about attending college.

24:46

In addition to running the debate camp, John

24:48

was a professor at California State

24:51

University Fullerton. He

24:53

encouraged her to apply there. For

24:56

Esther, it was a moment of hope and

24:58

possibility. For

25:00

two years, she had felt lost, but

25:02

suddenly her life seemed to have traction.

25:05

Esther soon started to make plans to move

25:07

to California and take classes at

25:10

cal State Fullerton. She stayed

25:12

in touch with her friends that she'd made in Tempe,

25:15

her people, as she called them. At

25:17

one point she met up with them at a debate tournament

25:20

in Washington, d c. At Catholic

25:22

University. And this is where

25:24

she met Ian Fleischman. You

25:26

may remember him. He was the handsome

25:28

young cadet from West Point who became

25:31

her boyfriend. Esther was

25:33

struck almost right away by his thoughtfulness.

25:38

He's a very good listener. You

25:40

know, sometimes you'll tell people something and like they'll

25:42

kind of listen, but really they're only waiting for

25:44

their moment to interject. And

25:47

Ian's not like that at always very genuine

25:50

and this feeling, this sense that she had

25:52

about him, it only grew with time.

25:55

Like Ian's the type of guy that would change

25:57

your oil and fill up your gas tank and check

26:00

to make sure your tires, you know, aren't

26:03

bald or you know. He's just very

26:05

caretaking. Caretaking

26:07

that's something that she hadn't had much of since

26:09

her mom died, and esther she

26:12

felt cared for by Ian's family as

26:14

well. She visited the Fleishman's

26:16

back in Michigan on a few occasions. They

26:19

were just so kind and like

26:21

I made cinnamon rolls one morning for everybody,

26:24

and super lovely, like I don't know if it's

26:26

coming across by absolutely adored

26:28

their entire family. Esther

26:31

says Ian's mom, Shirley Fleishman,

26:33

was an especially lovely person, kind

26:36

and nurturing, just like Ian. Shirley

26:39

was also a university professor, and

26:41

when she heard about Esther's dreams of going

26:43

to college, she encouraged her. Esther

26:46

says she was actually staying at the Fleishman's

26:48

house the night before she took the acts.

26:51

That night, she was kind of freaking out

26:54

when Shirley gave her a pep talk. She

26:57

said, you know, you've got to calm down. You're

26:59

going to do great tomorrow, and I was like, I

27:02

don't think so. And then she's like, any

27:04

school is going to be lucky to have you, And I

27:06

just remember looking at her and

27:09

like nobody had ever said anything like that to

27:11

me. Ian's father,

27:14

Fred Fleischmann, was a different story.

27:17

Esther says that Fred was suspicious of her

27:19

from the beginning, that it didn't seem

27:21

to believe her whole story about being a professional

27:23

chess player, and that at one point

27:25

he searched her car and went through her possessions.

27:30

It was almost like Ian's parents

27:33

saw the two different sides of Esther read

27:35

One of them looked at Esther and saw the best

27:37

in her, all the promise of what she

27:40

could be, while the other saw

27:42

only the worst, the lies and

27:44

the trouble that she would bring. And

27:47

in some ways they were both

27:50

right. Esther

27:53

was intent on going to college, but she

27:56

foresaw problems. She knew eventually

27:59

she'd need to provide a social Security number

28:01

and that might tip off the real Natalie

28:03

Fisher that someone was using her identity.

28:06

And then I came up

28:08

with the brilliant idea of I

28:10

need a social Security number that nobody's using.

28:13

And at that point I knew you couldn't actually

28:16

use the social security number of somebody who

28:18

was declared dead. So

28:20

I came up with the idea, oh, maybe all

28:24

I could use the number of somebody who's

28:26

missing. I came up with lots of dumb

28:28

ideas, but this one is the one that I settled

28:31

on. She searched missing

28:33

persons websites for a while until

28:35

she found a post that looked promising. It

28:38

was for a woman named Natalie Bowman.

28:41

Esther says she found all kinds of information

28:43

about Natalie online. Her

28:45

mom had posted a whole bunch of stuff.

28:47

You know. She was like, please help me find my daughter. And

28:50

I understand that, right if you are a desperate

28:52

mom trying to find your daughter, you're putting up

28:54

report cards, you're putting up like pictures

28:56

with her best friend, and you know, whatever

28:59

you can find. And I was like, oh, I bet that's

29:01

a social Security number. To

29:03

Esther, she seemed like a good candidate. And

29:06

then there was the name Natalie.

29:09

It was convenient. It would be an easy switch

29:11

from Natalie Fisher to Natalie

29:13

Bowman, and so Esther

29:16

she just went for it. She would now

29:18

tell people that her name was Natalie

29:20

Bowman. Esther says

29:23

there were moments when she saw how

29:25

crazy this all was. There

29:27

were times when I was like, you know,

29:30

you can just go back and use your own name

29:32

and stop doing all of this stuff, right, Like, you

29:34

could just go to a new school, apply

29:37

as you and stop this because

29:39

you're not in any trouble. But

29:42

at this point she was so deep

29:44

into this deception. She was

29:47

a professional chess player, though

29:49

some had heard it was tennis. She

29:51

had to change her name to escape a maniacal

29:53

stepfather, though she told one boyfriend

29:56

she was in the witness protection program.

30:00

Her last name was Fisher or was

30:02

it Bowman or was it Henson?

30:05

She was from Montana or

30:08

was it South Carolina. He

30:10

was a lot to keep track of all

30:12

of these lies and half truths. The

30:16

fact and the fiction were hopelessly

30:18

intertwined, and

30:21

there seemed to be no straightening it all out.

30:27

Using her new alias, Natalie

30:29

Bowman, she took classes at cal

30:32

State Fullerton. She joined the debate

30:34

team, made some friends, but

30:36

if she felt any sense of relief, it

30:39

didn't last long, because pretty

30:41

soon her alias began to fall apart.

30:44

Esther learned that someone else was earning

30:46

money and accruing Social Security benefits

30:49

under Natalie Bowman's name. Maybe

30:52

it was the real Natalie Bowman, or maybe

30:54

it was another identity thief. It didn't

30:56

matter. Point was this alias?

30:59

It was no longer safe to use. So

31:03

what did Esther do? She went

31:05

back to the internet looking for yet

31:07

another missing girl, someone

31:10

who was still listed as missing, but

31:12

who in all likelihood was deceased.

31:16

Like, how much time did you spend looking for her? Oh?

31:18

My gosh, I mean it took months to find

31:20

somebody. I mean that's the way it probably

31:22

was, six or seven months. Why did it

31:24

take so long? Well, like, I mean, a

31:26

lot of different pieces have to

31:29

be in place, right, Like I didn't they

31:32

needed to be about my age. I

31:34

didn't want it to be a recent disappearance

31:36

because I kind of wanted like it

31:39

to be calm so I could live

31:41

in peace. Then

31:43

one day she was browsing a missing person's

31:46

website and she found a post

31:48

for Brooke Henson from Traveler's

31:50

Rest, South Carolina. When

31:52

you found her, were you

31:54

pretty certain right away? Or did you kind

31:57

of like wrestle with it for a bit? Oh?

31:59

No, I wrestled with it forever. I mean,

32:01

you're trying to figure out

32:03

how to do something that's impossible. Esther

32:07

and I talked about this a lot, how

32:09

she could justify stealing these identities,

32:12

and how she rationalized lying to so

32:14

many people, especially to people

32:17

like Ian and his family, people

32:19

she cared about and who cared about her.

32:22

She explained that all of this really

32:24

came from feeling like her family was

32:26

stalking her to the point that it felt

32:28

like emotional abuse. But

32:31

she didn't think that anyone would really take that

32:33

seriously. So she made

32:35

up stuff that she did think people would

32:37

take seriously, like the violent

32:40

stepfather's story. Basically,

32:43

Esther felt that these lies were

32:45

the only way she would ever be understood. When

32:49

I think about all of this, I

32:52

feel for her. I mean, what

32:54

a lonely place to be. But

32:56

I also can help but think about the

32:58

consequences, about all

33:00

the damage that these lies would

33:03

inevitably cause. Esther

33:12

eventually left cal State Fullerton

33:14

and moved east. First, she went

33:16

to Boston, where she even took a class

33:19

at Harvard Extension School. It was

33:21

kind of like the IVY Leagues on training wheels.

33:24

Eventually, she set her sights on Columbia

33:26

University and New York City. This

33:29

move also presented her with one

33:31

more chance to come clean, to dispense

33:34

with all the aliases and lies, and

33:36

just apply as herself. So

33:39

why didn't she? I asked myself

33:41

that all the time. I

33:45

just like,

33:47

there's absolutely no reason I could not have

33:50

applied to Columbia as ester Reid. Because

33:53

her true objective, she says, was

33:55

simply to reinvent herself. Like

33:57

I have been just trying to start over and

34:02

like go to school and like get life back

34:04

on track, and so why Natalie

34:06

Fisher, why Natalie Bowman, Why why?

34:09

But really all those questions or

34:11

why not Esther read? But at

34:13

this point she hadn't been Esther

34:16

read in name or otherwise in

34:18

years. In that time, she

34:21

had criss crossed the country, had a few different

34:23

boyfriends, gone to college or

34:25

started to anyhow, And by

34:27

the spring of two thousand and six, Esther

34:30

was really settling into her identity as

34:32

Brooke Henson. She was in her

34:34

second year at Columbia. She had

34:37

taken out some student loans in Brooke's name

34:39

to help pay for school. She had

34:41

obtained a copy of Brooke's birth certificate

34:44

and with that she had applied to get

34:46

a US passport in Brooks

34:48

name. And by the way, yeah,

34:50

that's a federal crime. She

34:52

had her challenges at Columbia. Sometimes

34:55

her social anxiety was so bad

34:57

she just hole up inside her room. But

35:00

then she started seeing a mental health professional

35:03

for the first time and it really

35:05

helped. Things didn't work out

35:07

with Ian, she was in a new relationship.

35:11

She says, she had support of friends who

35:13

genuinely cared about her. She had

35:15

an apartment to dogs, and

35:17

at that moment happily ever after

35:19

seemed well possible.

35:22

You may be thinking, really she

35:24

thought this was going to work, And the short

35:26

answer is yeah.

35:29

It never occurred to me, quite

35:31

frankly, that I would get caught or could get

35:33

caught, or that anyone would get hurt.

35:36

I mean, I figured, if I lived

35:38

as Brooke for the rest of my life, nothing would

35:40

ever happen. And

35:46

that's when the phone rang, with the New York

35:48

City Police Department on the other end, asking

35:50

if she really was Brooke Henson, and

35:53

all those other probing questions, and

35:55

if she'd take the DNA test. And

35:58

then finally that moment on

36:00

the street with the cops in her doorstep

36:02

and the U haul idling by the curb,

36:06

then that narrow window of opportunity

36:08

when the at least seemed to walk away for a moment,

36:11

leaving her just enough time to grab

36:13

her bags and her two dogs and

36:16

run for it. Initially,

36:18

she did what all fugitives do when they're fleeing

36:20

New York. She went south to Jersey,

36:23

and from there, once again she

36:26

vanished. The

36:30

funny thing about wanting to vanish is

36:32

it only really works. Sometimes occasionally

36:35

someone just disappears and is

36:37

forgotten. But other times

36:39

the strategy backfires big time

36:42

because the act of vanishing is so mysterious

36:45

and creepy that it actually calls

36:47

attention to itself. Truth

36:49

is, we love vanishing stories

36:52

of a certain type, especially

36:54

if they're about celebrities or people who

36:56

vanish in a dramatic fashion. Just

36:59

think Amelia Earhart,

37:01

dB Cooper, Jimmy Hoffa,

37:04

even Aaron Burr's daughter, Theodosha Burr,

37:06

who disappeared in eighteen thirteen

37:09

Google her people are still talking

37:11

about where she went. Point is

37:13

you vanish or you run for it?

37:16

Well, that's catnip for law enforcement

37:19

like the Secret Service or the US Marshals

37:21

or even the Travelers RESTPD. It's

37:25

also catnip for the media because

37:27

it asks the question, screams

37:29

it really, why are

37:31

you running? And what don't

37:33

we know about you? If

37:37

I hadn't run, I

37:39

don't think any of this would have happened next

37:45

time on deep Cover. I

37:47

mean, there are a lot of people stealing names, but

37:50

something dealing with espionage spies

37:53

that was a fascinating, fascinating

37:56

development and opened my eyes.

38:22

Deep Cover is produced by Amy Gaines

38:24

and Jacob Smith. It's edited

38:27

by Karen Shakurge mastering

38:29

by Jake Gorski. Our show

38:31

art was designed by Sean Karney. Original

38:34

scoring at our theme was composed

38:36

by Luis Gara, fact checking

38:38

by Arthur Gomfort's Special

38:41

thanks to Nil Lobell, Greta Khne

38:44

and Jacob Weissberg. I'm

38:46

Jake Calper