Episode 5: The Searchers

going to go away. By the end of two thousand and seven, Esther Reid had been on the run for almost a year and a half. During that time, she was being chased by a number of people, including the Secret Service, the police down in South Carolina, and a private investigator with a TV crew, and so far all of them had pretty much struck out, and this left the federal prosecute around the case, a guy named Walt

Wilkins feeling rather well frustrated. I mean, we were chasing her around the country, and you know, we would look at each other and say, how how are we not finding this young girl who stole some identities? But good grief, guys, we're the federal government here. We gotta be able to do that. By this point, this young girl was now twenty nine by the way, and elusive as she was, Walt Wilkins still felt confident that she could be found.

When you have the federal government looking for you, you make a mistake somewhere along the way, you make just enough mistakes where they're going to be able to find you. What the authorities really needed was a bounty hunter. Remember Boba Fett from Star Wars Badass too, with the green body armor and the cool jetpack. That's what the FEDS needed. And there actually is an agency that you call in situations like this, the United States Marshals Service. They specialize

in tracking down fugitives. So that's who the FEDS called in, and the US Marshall assigned to the case was a guy named John Bridge, Boba fed as it were. And look, there are a lot of John's in this story, so I'm just going to call him by his nickname Bridge. Bridge looks more like a wizard than a lawman, has his huge beard, really soft spoken guy, no jetpack, but he does ride a motorcycle. How confident did you feel that you were going to find her? How can you say?

One hundred percent. One hundred percent on every investigation at work. Doesn't mean I find him every time, but yeah, I was one hundred percent. When Bridge started on the case, his first goal was to figure out who, if anyone, she was still in contact with, Like, did she have a lifeline? You know, being a fugitive stressful, You're always looking over your shoulder, You're always wondering this is today

of the day. On the one hand, it makes perfect sense to want a lifeline, but it's also a liability because whoever that lifeline is, whether it's a sister or a father or an old flame, that person can also betray you, either deliberately or accidentally. So Bridge says, in order to stay truly hidden, you have to cut everyone off. That's a hard thing to do, you know. When you it's easy to say, it's very easy to say I can cut everyone off, It's not easy to do. So

the question was did esther reed have a lifeline? Bridge hope that the answer was yes, and that he might find them. So now all hopes were pinned on John, the federal government's very own Boba Fette, the last best hope, though there actually was yet another person looking for Esther Reid arguably the person who knew her better and longer than anyone else, and who had the best insight into

why Esther was running in the first place. In this episode, I'm going to tell you both their stories, because they were both looking for Esther Reid and only one of them would find her. I'm Jake Halbern and this is Deep Cover, Season three, Never Seen Again, Episode five, The Searchers. I'm just gonna ask you. I'm just gonna ask you to start by introducing yourself and explaining how you're related to Esther. My name is Edna, and I am one of many older sisters. Edna is the other person searching

for Esther in this story. In the interest of privacy, I'm only going to use first names when talking about Esther's siblings. Technically, Edna is Esther's half sister. They had the same mom, but different dads. Edna is older by quite a bit. She was almost twenty when Esther was born. So many ways, Edna was more like a second mom than a sibling. As far as I can tell, Edna was devoted not just to Esther, but to all of

her siblings. There were a lot of them too. Nine in total, Edna says she was the hub, the connector in the family. I like to know what's going on, solve the issue. I'm a fixer. I want to control my environment and I don't like chaos, so I tend to make a plan and do it. That was her credo. No chaos, no drama, keep it neat. I mean, everybody in my family knows. When you put the mayonnaise back in my fridge, it always goes in the door. At this fight, don't stick it anywhere else because I want

it where I want it. I like things to be there when I go get them. I want to know where they are. She wants to know where the mayo is. So you can only imagine how distraught she was when Esther vanished, because she'd watched Esther grow up and even helped raise her in some ways. In the summers when they were kids, Esther and her brother EJ would stay with Edna and Seattle like a sleepaway camp in the big city. We had so much fun because they were

Montanic kids that never saw or experienced anything. Edna remembers one visit in particular, when Esther was probably about eight years old. They all took a ferry ride, visited the space needle had a ball. Even the local department store was a big hit. The escalator was fascinating to them, so if we were bored, I just walked over and to bid the ESK latter up and down, because they thought that was cool. Esther also became close with Edna's husband, Randy.

He was kind of like a second father. Edna says. He was a gentle giant. Randy and Esther played all kinds of board games together. Esther would talk trash and he would tell her playfully, hey, don't let your alligator mouth get your teddy bear ass in trouble. He was that kind of guy, and Esther loved him. When Esther went missing, she was twenty one years old, so not a kid anymore, but still, her disappearance turned to Edna's world upside down. And we'll get into all that, but

before we do, I want to mention something. When I spoke with Esther, she told me that she was running in large part to get away from Edna, to escape her older sister. And it got me wondering what exactly happened between these two siblings, because they're falling out. Whatever caused It seemed to have so many implications about why Esther was running and how she might be found. As far as I can tell, the relationship between the two

sisters started to sour when Esther became a teenager. As you may recall, this was a rough period for Esther. Her parents had separated, She was suffering from severe social anxiety. She refused to go to school. Sometimes she hid in the basement of her house instead. Edna watched all of this with concern. I saw her pull away and pull into herself more. The one person that Esther remained close

to was her mother. She was truly Esther's pillar. Esther talked to me about this a lot, how her mom was the only person who really tried to understand what she was going through and who helped her cope. But to Edna, with her cut and dry, no nonsense demeanor, this all looked a bit different. They were very close. But my mom babied her a lot. And I know I'm an older sibling thing this about a younger sibling, and we all say that, but she really did. In

many many ways. Esther was a very little girl, even at eighteen. That bluntness is kind of Edna's trademark. I talked about this with their brother EJ. He was close with both of his sisters and witnessed their dynamic. I think Edna kind of ran over Ester. I don't know if it's intentional or just when. Like when a horse walks by and knocks you over. It definitely hurts you, but did the horse means to do it? And I

think that's kind of how Edna is. She's just a force of nature and she doesn't intentionally hurt people, but quite often they are damaged in her wake. The tensions between Esther and Edna really came to a head around the time her mom's cancer came back. They were all living in Seattle at the time. Edna, being the family fixer, jumped right in. She became her mom's caregiver twenty four to seven. It was exhausting, and it went on for years.

As their mom's health worsened. She spoke handedly with Edna about matters that were emotional but also practical, like what would happen after she was gone. Apparently their mom was very concerned about Esther as thigs got worse. I remember my mom telling me that you need to watch her. You need to take care of her. She's going to need to be taken care of after I die. That was always her verbages, you need to take care of her and watch out for her because she's going to

have a hard time. What did you say to your mom in response, I mean, she's part of my family. Of course, I'm going to watch out for her. That's what we do. You know, our whole family does that with each other. You know, that's what family does. At one point, Edna had to go away for a quick trip, and she asked esther to stand in for her, to stay at the house and to look after their mom. Esther told me about this. My mom was having a really bad time with the chemo. It was just awful.

And then I remember she goes, I can't do this, and I remember being like, what do you mean you can't do Like what are you talking about? And then I remember she said, even for you, I can't do this. And then I mean, I think, rationally I knew that that meant that she had chosen to just to die. When their mom finally passed, it hit the two sisters very differently. Ej their brother, saw it this way. Edna was taking care of mom. So when mom died, then

suddenly n they got her life back. But my mom died for Esther, I think Mom was just the pillar of Esther's life, and when she was gone, it was difficult to find her way. Afterwards, Edna invited Esther to move in, but it didn't go well. They fought about matters large and small, like I don't need to put the silverware in the silverware drawer the white ware. I don't need to hang the dish towel up exactly how

you're going to hang it up. I don't need to stack the plates exactly how you're going to stack them. And I know that maybe I put the bread on the left side instead of the right side. Like She's just a very very critical human being and after a while, like you just are like can you just get off me? This may sound like ordinary stuff, the sort of fight that happens when any house guests stays too long, but

for Esther, it was darker than that. Because of her social anxiety, Esther says she needed space, time to recharge, which Edna wouldn't give her. And of course, she had just lost her mom, who was her refuge. And even though Edna cared for her. She was a Rickley substitute. So Esther moved out and then she was truly alone. Esther says from here she went into a tailspin. Couldn't hold down a job. She says, she was homeless, crashing with friends or wherever she could. I mean, I was

incredibly depressed. I've just lost my mom. I have no contact with really anybody who's able willing to help, you know, thinking about killing myself all the time. Like at that point, it's just survival, like just get through the day. Several months passed and Edna hadn't heard much from her sister. Then one day she got a call from the police. They told her they just arrested a thief who'd stolen a purse and they'd found one of Edna's blank checks

on her. The cops to know if Edna knew the culprit. So nice of all, there is a person, well do you know a person called Esther read and I'm like, oh, yeah, she's a nice sister. This came as a shock and it also cleared up something for Edna. You see, a while back, someone had stolen Edna's check book and had written some hot checks in her name, but Edna never

figured out who that was. She never suspected that her own sister was to blame, but now she learned that after Esther moved out, she'd actually broken into her house through a window and grabbed her check book. At this point, Esther had gotten herself in a real pickle. The police had busted her for stealing a purse from her coworker. The coworker was pressing charges, so Esther had to appear

before judge. On the day of the hearing, Edna down to the courthouse too, just so she could see her sister because it had been months since I had last spoken. At the hearing, Esther caught a break. The judge gave her probation and three days in jail. Afterwards, Edna tracked down Esther in the parking lot and confronted her because even though she wasn't pressing charges, she still had beef with her sister. Edna says, in the heat of the moment,

she was very upset. I don't feel anger. I feel betrayal. And that's the hardest thing I think is the feeling of someone you love and loves you back, but do that to you. You don't do that to people you love, you just don't. Edna confronted her about the stolen checks, and her only response was, well, I didn't think it would affect who excained. The bank would take care of it, and it's like, so that makes it okay. I remember her saying, you're so lucky I didn't testify against you.

She said, I wanted to say so many things up there. You're not sorry for anything, and she was just like going off on me. Edna's whole thing was tough love, and she genuinely wanted to fix things, put the mayo back where it belonged, get Esther's life back into shape. She kept calling and emailing Esther. Edna told me she wasn't very soft and compassionate. She felt like her little sister needed to get her shit together and she wanted to help. But to Esther, this didn't feel like help

at all. It felt more like harassment and judgment, which she didn't want, which she was desperate to get away from. In fact, the one person who might have fixed all of this was their mother, but she was gone, and this seemed to underscore the tragedy of it all, because there was no one left to keep the peace between the two sisters or to help Esther get back on her feet. After this fight in the parking lot, Esther

took off. She did not want to be accountable to me for what she did, so in a way, me confronting her, I feel kind of I don't know if it made her run away, but she didn't want to face it. Weeks passed, than months, then years, and Esther never returned. She just took off. I mean it just and she was totally gone. All the while, Edna recalled what her mom had asked of her before she died. She was very concerned of what would happen to Esther

when she was gone. Of course, I felt like I let my mom down because I didn't take the enough care of Esther and she took off. Edna tried to find her. She eventually filed a missing person's report with the police. At one point, the authorities even found a body that they thought might be her. They did a DNA test, it wasn't Esther, and so the mystery lingered.

At family gatherings, everyone would wonder about her. You get together and everybody's there, but she's missing, you know, and it's like we're not complete she was just always missed. Because that's the thing about Edna. She was gruff and forceful, the horse that might knock you over, but she did care. And the uncertainty of it all ate away at her. And it's like, I need to know. I need to know if she's dead or alive. I just need to know that she's okay or she's gone. I mean, the

wondering was very hard. And this wondering, this state of not knowing, continued for almost seven years until about two thousand and six. At that point, the authorities contacted Edna and she learned that her sister was in fact alive, that she had attended Columbia University posing as Brooke Henson, but that she was once again on the run. Edna wanted to help the authorities find Esther, and it seemed like Edna was, in theory a great resource, but at

this point she hadn't heard from Esther in years. Esther Reid did not appear to have a lifeline. She had cut everyone off, but she'd actually done one better than that. She'd hit the reset button once again. She'd dialed up yet another identity, which meant once more she was a few steps ahead of Edna and John Bridge and all the other people who were looking for her. John Bridge, the US Marshal, the boba Fette of the federal government. He'd reached a dead end because esther she did not

seem to have a lifeline. So Bridge knew he'd need another strategy. I did use creativity in this investigation, but that kind of goes into the areas that I can't really discuss the process. Bridge told me that he couldn't get into the exact methods that he used, basically the tradecraft that the US marshals used to find people. What he could tell me was that he eventually discovered a trail of breadcrumbs on the internet. I was able to basically put pinpoints on a map. They were like spots

and time, just very brief glimpses into what she was doing. Basically, he figured out when and where she was on a few occasions. The only problem was that by the time he had this intel, it was a year old, so a pretty cold trail, right, But that didn't matter to Bridge. What he was looking for were identifiers like what name was esther using now, what kind of car was she driving? And what state was her driver's license from that kind

of thing. So Bridge took a very close look at the places where she'd been at those pin points on the map, and a few of them were businesses, So he got a list of all the customers at one of those businesses on a given day, and then what he did was he'd compared that to other businesses that she'd been to on other days, and by comparing a few different lists, he was able to identify a name that popped up on all of them, Jennifer Myers. She

was using Jenni Meyers, Jennimrie Meyers, Jennifer Meyers. She would like construe that different ways when she would give her name to people. Using this info, he was able to determine that she had gotten a driver's license from Iowa, and then he figured out what kind of car she was driving, a nineteen ninety three green Subaru Legacy, and from there Bridge says he knew it was just a

matter of time before he found her. He began to gather more current pinpoints for his map, and in the early winter of two thousand and eight, he came to believe that she was occasionally in Tiny Park, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. So He called the police department there and told him to keep an eye out for that green Subaru and its driver, one Jennifer Myers. Where did the name Jennifer Myers come from? That? Again, I want

to be very careful here. Interestingly, there were things that Esther wouldn't tell me either tradecraft, I guess you could call it. Esther insists that she didn't want to glorify what she did or how she did it, or have anyone else following her footsteps. So she was pretty tight lepped here. But I was able to piece together much of what I wanted to know by combing through court records. Basically, she obtained a birth certificate in one state and then

created a fake marriage in another. That way, she cooked up a completely fictional identity, and this new identity worked for a while until the winter of two thousand and eight. At the time, she was intently Park, Illinois, just one of the many places where she stayed as she moved about the Midwest. One day, she was in her car, she'd been driving around, had been pulling up to a stoplight and there was a cop car and you know how like there's two lanes and normally he would pull

up next to me, flush with me. He kind of stopped at the back of my car and I was like, is he fucking run in my plate? The answer was yes, he was fucking running her plate, and pretty soon us Marshall john Bridge knew exactly where she was. About two weeks later, Esther was passing back through Tinley Park. She was in her car, headed for lunch at Arby's. She grabbed her food and then headed back to the motel

where she was staying. And it was a crazy day in town because totally by chance, there had been a mass shooting in Tinley Park that very morning. A gunman had walked into a local department store and killed five women in cold blood. So there are now cops everywhere. As Esther drove back to her motel, she saw squad cars, but she'd heard about the mass shooting, so she didn't think any of these cops were looking for her. So she gets back to her motel room and a short

while later there's a knock on the door. She opens up and two cops are standing there. They were like, Oh, we're just checking IDs, and I was like, oh, yeah, you're probably looking for the person. The person meaning the shooter because she figured there was some kind of door to door search going on. Turns out these two cops had spotted her Subaru, called it in and learned that its owner, Jennifer Myers aka Esther Reid, was a federal fugitive.

The dots had finally connected well done John Bridge, So at this point the two cops at her door were hip to what was going on. Esther wasn't She confidently hands them her Jennifer Myers ID. The cops take it, call it in, and then tell Esther something to the effect of this isn't coming up valid. The cops are just standing there in the doorway at this point holding her ID, and I was like, what, no, no one has to even like this is a good one, like you should use it. And he runs it again and

he's like no, ma'am. And then they came in the room and I was like, oh, shoot, if they're coming in the room, it's like, they don't really have the right to come in my room if must not making some serious trouble. Then they snap handcuffs on her, lead her outside and it was a scene. Esser says. The parking lot was full of squad cars, cops everywhere. Some were standing by her subaru, others were gathering up her

two dogs. The cops marched her over to a squad car, got her in the back seat, and that's when reality began to set in. I was already in the car and we were pulling way, and I look over and they have my whole car open, and there's many of them, and I think, I said, I know what this is about.

I'm Aster Reid. After all these years and years of running and passing herself off as other people, she just tells these two cops who she really is, says, I'm Aster Reid, and this gets well, pretty much no response at all, at least initially. Estra says, these guys they didn't want to get into it with her because, as she would soon discover this matter, it was way bigger than them. So the local cops they took her down to the police station, and the mood there was frenetic.

I'm sitting there and I can tell everybody is like excited and adrenaline is running, and they're all, you know, there's a big deal to them, and so I'm kind of freaking out. She says. There was a cop going through her suitcase, putting her stuff into little plastic evidence bags. And finally Esther spoke up and I said, you know, I have a book in my suitcase. Can I read a book? And there was a sergeant and he's like, yeah,

it's fine, you can read a book. Eventually, that sergeant he came back and he explained he had to take her fingerprints. Esther still remembers him. She says he was about fifty, with light brown hair and a kind way about him. I tend to wear my feelings on my face and he goes, you know, it's going to be okay. He's like, I know, it looks like it's a big deal and everybody's making a big deal. But he's like, I've been working law enforcement a long time and this

is really not that big of a deal. And he kind of gave me the sense that he was he was fatherly. It's fat made me feel a lot better. Later that night, the cops found a place for Esther to sleep, and so they ended up taking me. I think it was probably to a drunk tank. I've never actually been held in any place like that, but I didn't have anything, like there was no toothbrush, no blankets,

nothing like there was a matin. That's it. So she's in the drunk tank where she has a moment to herself, a moment to process what's happened, and she's just hoping that maybe the kindly middle aged sergeant was right and this wouldn't be as big a deal as it seemed. But that hope it was or it lived. The next day, some Secret Service agents came to get her to take

her to court. There was a bay that they could have pulled the cock cart into and got me in the car, and instead they had it outside the bay so the media could get their walk of shame picture. Was there a big media presence? Oh yeah, they were absolutely. It was massively crazy. And they were clearly like strutting a little bit and like we got her, and you know, there were at least thirty reporters. They were very very close to me, like they were right up on me.

Esther was arraigned in federal court. Then she was taken to a federal holding facility. And here a correctional officer took her up to a cell. The gentleman who escorted me up, he shoved his finger in my face, not in like a mean way. But he goes and you, young lady, you need to call your family, and I'm like, okay, Like you, Clay, don't know what's going on. I haven't talked to my family in ten years or something like. I literally just got arrested, dude, like, chill out. Eventually,

Esther and Edna did get on the phone. I just wanted to hear her voice, you know, and say, yeah, you're okay. It was kind of ironic, really, this whole saga began because Esther was in essence, running from her older sister Edna. In the intervening years, she'd taken on several identities, attended an Ivy League school, been chased by the Secret Service, become infamous, and now the end of it all, the first person she really had to answer to was her sister. Edna had a lot to tell

Esther about what had transpired in the past decade. There was a lot of things that happened in that ten years are probably the ten hardest years of my life, from the time my mom died and yeah started with her dying, and I lost many people in the next five years. Over the phone, Edna relaid the news explained that since they'd last spoken. She'd buried two brothers, a brother in law, a best friend from high school, and her husband, Randy. I think the hardest thing I told

her in that conversation was that Randy's died. Randy was the gentle giant he used to play board games with Esther, the one she'd laughed with and talk trash to, the one who would tell her jokingly, Hey, don't let your alligator mouth get your teddy bear ass in trouble. Randy and Esther had always been close. He was one of the few people that kind of got me. And so even after things were bad with me and Edna, me and Randy would still like came play video games or whatever.

And so Randy was going to add to me and she I mean that he had died, and that's when I started crying hysterically. As far as I could tell, for almost a decade, Esther had managed to forget her old life, to shut it out, both the good and the bad, though I suspect she hadn't forgotten it completely, that it lurked on the periphery of her consciousness like

a smudge on the horizon. The shadowy tree line in the rear view mirror the very thing that kept her moving, all the memories of her parents separation and her dying mother and her heart edged sister, but her past. But that hadn't all been bad. There'd been good things too, like her brother e J and Randy, And somehow the news of Randy's passing it seemed to underscore that this life and this world that she'd left behind hadn't ceased to exist, that it quietly played on without her, and

there were things she'd thinks she could never get back. Eventually, the federal authorities moved esther down to South Carolina, after all, that's where this investigation really began, and more importantly, where the prosecutor was based. So first she flew to Oklahoma City, then took another flight to Atlanta, and from there she had to be taken by car down to South Carolina. Her escort for this trip was John Bridge, you know

Boba Fett. Bridge says he volunteered for this assignment. You know, I wouldn't normally be doing a transport from Atlanta to South Carolina, but I kind of, you know, I was kind of hoping to learn, right, I mean, you can be a great investigator. You can be a mediocre investigator, but you won't become a better investigator unless you learn from the investigation. Bridge and Esther both remember this car

ride and told it was actually very pleasant. We kind of small talked a little bit, and then you know, it's about a two hour drive. I think there was some silence for part of the journey as well. How did she compare to the person that you had imagined? She just seemed like, you know, somebody's sister, you know, just an average person who got caught up in something that got bigger than what they ever planned it to be. Esther says that at one point Bridge talked a bit

about his own job. He goes, I'm not normally assigned to find people like you. He goes, normally I focus on big stuff. And he goes, I just had to meet the person that they put me on. And then he goes, why couldn't you just use the name? Ester Read? What did you say to him when he said why couldn't you just use the names? I say the same thing always. I asked myself that every day there's no

good answer. But for many people, including the authorities down in South Carolina, this was a question that demanded an answer, much remained unresolved. Detective John Campbell still wanted closure. He and the other folks and traveler's rest wanted to know what, if anything, could be learned about the fate of Brooke Henson next time on our season finale, the whole day or being sentenced is very surreal. She didn't ask for what happened to her. I feel like she deserves justice.

We close our mind off to anything but the facts, and if you close down all those possibilities, you're going to miss something. Isn't it possible to danger as though that your imagination runs away with things and leads you too far from the facts you could Yeah, I lied and lied and lied and lied. Deep Cover is produced by Amy Gaines and Jacob Smith. It's edited by Karen shakergy mastering by Jake Gorski. Our show art was designed by Sean Karney. Original scoring at our theme was composed

by Luis Gara, fact checking by Arthur Gomperts. Special thanks to Mia Lobell, Greta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Jake Calbern Ta