Burns Park

have been someone else? We're trying to figure that out. Each person who we've talked to about Ebbie revealed some new information about who she was and what she was doing before she disappeared. We've found out that she hung out with a lot of different people in groups, and some of these people didn't even necessarily know each other. There was Danielle, her old friend from school who she sometimes stayed with during the week. Then there was Eric, who Ebbie hung out with in a group with some

other friends and eventually dated. Then there were C and L. Ebbie seemed to know C pretty well, while L was more of a friend of a friend. But as we dig in with each person, we keep finding more and more circles of people, and we're realizing that there may be people out there who we haven't found yet. It seems like Ebby was going to meet someone at the park, and if we can figure out who it is, everything might fall into place. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is hell

and gone. When I talked to Eric, he had a theory about what could have happened to Ebby. When he talked to Ebbie that last time on Sunday, Remember, he said she sounded exhausted. She sounded impaired in some way, out of it and incoherent. I think you were saying she seemed like she was out of it or she'd been roofeed or something. Right, Yes, Like, that's why I think she might have passed out at work up too,

because of the sound. We know that Ebbie had smoked pot in the past, and that at some point she was on a couple of different types of prescription drugs. But could Ebbie have taken something else, even accidentally, that contributed to her death. Yes, Ebbie could have very well overdose phone drugs. She took drugs. That's the road thing like and now was like around the time where Fedanar

was like, people didn't even know what fed was. You know, so is that's the very you got to understand why the police felate she could you know, this could have happened to her. Like the rest of the nation at the time, Little Rock was experiencing an increase of death due to overdose. Fentnyl was making the news, especially after Prince's death, but back in twenty fifteen it was not as well known as it is now in the region. Fentnyl is a synthetic opioid, and it was developed as

a painkiller and anesthetic. Because it's so strong, up to one hundred times stronger than morphine, the potential for accidental overdose can be huge. Sometimes fentnyl is added to other drugs, so people can overdose on fentnyl and have no idea that they overtook it. Based on how Ebby sounded to Eric and also what Trevor said about his call with her, it does seem like Ebby was in some sort of very altered state. We talked to toxicology expert doctor Barry

Guston about the signs of fentnyl overdose. Well, the first thing you have to understand what the effects are on the body when it's taken in a normal doses. The normal doses between twenty five and fifty micrograms per dose. We're talking micrograms rather than milligrams. It's one thousand of a milligram a microgram, so it's very small. So it's effect on the body is the same effect as any opioid. You get pain relief, you relaxed, and it get s dated.

Some people might get a little nauseous from it. But when you take an excess amount of it, the amount it's an access will produce stupor cause the skin to be called and clammy. The person might go into a coma. It causes respiratory failure, leading usually leading to death. And in the fenel does something else that's interesting that no other opioid does. It causes an abnormality in the chest wall and the diaphragm. It causes what we call chest

wall rigidity. And what that does is it makes the breathing very very difficult, because if you can't expand your chest wall or your diaphragm, you're not going to be able to breathe. So not only does it depress respirations that you can have a respiratory arrest. It also makes it very difficult to breathe because you can't have normal excursion of your chest wall and your diaphragm. And is it possible for someone who might be overdosing to pass

out and then wake up and then pass out again? Now, okay, so once they're out there out Basically, once they're out, they're out. Our case was back in twenty fifteen. Can you just talk a little bit about was fitine present in twenty fifteen? Oh? Yeah, Fentinel's been around along a long time. And you have to think of it this way. Opioid overdose deaths I've really become an epidemic in the

United States. It's a terrible, terrible scourge. And what you have to think about is the opioid overdose death can't come really three waves. The third wave began in around twenty thirteen and we started seeing a ute spink up and overdose deaths from these synthetic opioids and have been number one culprit. There is fentyl. There's been counterfeit pills.

Heroin is laced with fentyl, Cocaine is laced with fentyl, And the problem is that these deaths that are occurring are deaths when the individual doesn't know that they've been ingesting fentyl. So the overdose victims are dying after unknowingly ingesting the ventyl. That's the problem, right. They're more fentyl related deaths now per period of time than cun and automobile related deaths combined. So these deaths are no longer being treated by the government as accidental death. They're being

treated as homicides. Well, my last question, and which you partially already answered, really is what drugs do spentil appear in. I know you mentioned heroin, cocaine pills, what about marijuana? About hot Yes, mentioned marijuana too, And I guess there's no real way to know what you're buying. There isn't. Even if an accidental overdose contributed to Ebbie's death, it doesn't explain everything. Why was she in that pipe? We'll

be right back. An overdose does not explain everything. I understand why the police feel like she could have you know, this could have happened to her off ofs. But basically what I'm trying to say, I see why they can say, oh, yes, she overdose, But how can you say somebody put theirselfs in the pipe. We've also been getting more details about

the towel that was found near Ebbie's car. Lee, the neighbor who called in the end in car, let Laurie know that from the beginning she believed that the way the towel was positioned was suspicious. In a text to Laurie, Lee wrote that she saw a red towel laying flat out beside the back passenger tire, and she wondered if someone could have used it to slide themselves down into the drain. Now, there are two ways to access the storm drain that leads down to the thirteen inch wide

pipe where Ebby's body was found. Whoever put her down there could have lifted the manhole cover, then put her there and closed the cover afterwards. But there's also another possibility. The gutter that leads down to that drain is wide and angles pretty sharply downward, so Ebbie could have slid down that way, or someone could have pushed her down

that way. Lee said that she told the original detective on the case, Roy Williams, that she believed the towel could be a significant clue from day one, I said the towel was used for something she wrote. Lee says that after she talked to the police, they basically dismissed the towel. They seemed to think that Ebby could have been hanging out outside her car or sitting on it.

But on October twenty fifth, twenty fifteen, according to a historical weather day to website, the temperature and Little Rock would have been in the fifties. That seems very cold for a teenager to get out of the car and hang out. Why wouldn't she have stayed inside her car? Did something scare her or did something happen there that caused her to get out, something unexpected that would have caused someone else to slide her into that manhole using

that towel. Eric's theory was that Ebby could have overdosed and then it could have been an accident, and then the person or people she was with just panicked. If they did, could they have made a split second decision to get rid of her body and then put her on too that towel? But who was even with Ebby that day? There's a photo when Ebby Instagram that she posted about a week before she went missing. She's in her car in a park. It's Burns Park in North

Little Rock. Compared to Chalmant, Burns Park is huge and it's one of the many parks that Ebbie liked to hang out in. And in that photo she's not alone, she's with a guy and the caption reads made a new friend. When Laurie saw this photo for the first time, she immediately knew who this guy was. His name is Leo. We've confirmed with multiple sources that Leo and Ebbie used to hang out, but according to Laurie, when Leo was questioned by the police in twenty fifteen after Ebbie disappeared,

he told them he didn't know Ebby. So we're trying to find out more about him where he is now if he'll talk. Leo is also showed up in Ebbie's phone records after she went missing. He called a couple of times. And Leo is also someone who Eric mentioned as being potentially a guy who Ebby might hang around within that park. So for all those reasons, we're trying to find Leo. But Leo is turning out to be

hard to find. Mike can't find him on his PI database and even though we have a last name, we can't find anyone with that exact name who would be the correct age. But finally, after making some calls, I get a message on Instagram from someone who says they know Leo. Well, are you guys okay? If I record this, By the way, I don't have to use it. I don't have to use it. We're not using this source's

name because they're scared. They said that Leo moved to the Little Rock area from Hot Springs when he was seventeen, and that for a period of time he attended Central High School. The source says that Leo did hang around in a group that included Ebby and some guys. The source did not know the guys, but describe them as African American. The source said that Ebby, these guys, and

Leo would all go to parks together. One of the things we've been trying to figure out too, is like there's a friend group who were kind of around on Friday night, and it seems like Leo. I'm just trying to figure out where he fits into it, because definitely I think that he was going to the park with her, either that park or another part maybe Burns Park. But he was going to the park with her. I just can't figure out how he's connected to the guys on

Friday night, like if he knew them. Was Leo part of the group that Ebbie was with on Friday night or could he have been around on Saturday or Sunday. According to the source, Leo was hanging out with Ebbie in the days before she went missing, and at some point he got a call from her where she seemed to be very distraught. Well, if he got when he got the call where he was really distraught, did he ever say anything about what the call was about what

happened during that call? Did Ebbie call him to tell him about the sexual assault or could it have been something else. We'll be right back. I know there's a little off the subject, but apparently there was a big Like Laurie. Tommy Hudson called Laurie yesterday and said, was Katherine trying to say that the security guard did something to Ebby? And Laurie's like, no, She was asking why the story didn't match, and He's like, well, nothing could

be further from the truth. Like he's been lie detected. Someone gave him a lie detector test, and I just was kind of like, you know, okay, but how do we know that? Did he say he gave him a lie detector tests? No, we don't know who did or if anyone did. And I'm just not believing what the police are saying because we know they've gotten so much wrong that I really don't I mean, these are logical questions you'd be asking anyone at this point. So anyway,

just letting you know that's going on. Even with our questions about the security guard and about several other people, it still looks like the LRPD or no longer going to work on the case. In Detective Bruce Maxwell's words and an email to Laurie, quote there is no more work to be done on the case end quote. But it's strange because Bruce is also confirmed that he has no idea where Ebbie was on Saturday night. And another question that hasn't been answered is what about Ebbie's phones.

So this whole time, there's been a question about whether Ebbie could have had a second phone, and now it looks like she definitely did have a second phone. Laurie told us that shortly before Ebbie went missing, Ebbie switched her phone with another friend, of hers. The friend who Laurie believes that Ebbie switched phones with is Kaylee, the same friend who searched Chamant Park with her mom right

after Ebbie disappeared. They're the ones who smelled decomposition. They call the police and according to Kayley and her mom, law enforcement kind of blew them off and said it must have been an animal or something else. But it seems now that that could have been a hugely important tip.

The fact that Ebbie could have switched phones with a friend of hers has never been brought up in our conversations with police, and if Ebbie did switch phones with a friend, then that friend could have access to some

information that has never been seen. So that could be very significant because apparently some of the messages in the cloud, like Kaylee was still getting Ebbie's messages in the cloud and some of her data and pictures, which could be very significant because if that was going on, then Ebbie's phone could have had some of Kayley's data and the police have been saying that they had, like Bruce Maxwell recently said he went through six thousand photos on Ebbie's

phone that apparently no one had looked through, and he's basing his timeline on those photos. So my question would be, can we be absolutely sure that those were Ebbie's photos and weren't corrupted with some of the other data from you know, Kayley's phone. I don't even know if he's aware of that. I don't think Bruce has spoken to her, And I'm also wondering why doesn't he just, you know, call Kayley and say, hey, can you look through these photos and tell me if any of them are you

or yours. The only thing I would ask is if she does allow us to look at the phone, we need to ask her if she factory reset that phone anytime between now and then. Did you just get a new phone and just kept that phone and it's been off or have you? Like we need to know some things about the phone. If it's an older iPhone, you

may still able to pull data off of it. Some of the newer iPhones when you factory reset it may it renders the data cryptographically inaccessible, which means you need to go to a lab in order for them to pull all the old data off of it. But if like it's still there and some of that stuff is there, we can rip the handset. If Kayley will allow us to do it. I mean, we can turn that over

to law enforcement if if we so desire. After we look through the data, I put out a call to Kayley and we made a plan to talk sometime in the next few days. Though we have not yet been able to identify the two men who were patrolling with a security guard, we do have some more information. People have been texting and calling our tipline now that the podcast is coming out, and Laurie has also been getting calls. Some of them say they have information about the case.

I know from Laurie. I just I've seen the message you sent her and I guess, just tell me what you what you know? Well, a few years ago, this is Leslie. She met Laurie through her hairdresser because she went to the same salon where Laurie worked. So I've sat next door while she's getting my hair done for years and talking to her name and would run in and out when she was yumping heavy within my son's graduating class at Central High School and so she would

have graduated with him. So it was very personal to all of us, especially since she went missing from a par park our pool and that was where her car was found. After Ebbie went missing, Leslie did whatever she could to help Laurie. I put up posters, you know, everywhere I went, thinking that perhaps she was being trafficked. We were just very, very very upset about it. And I kept saying, I I just can't believe the story

of being trafficked. Did search for her? My husband and I and my friend and I would go up there and walk around, and I would just get the hairs in the back of my neck would stand up. And when I went over there, and I just said, something bad happened here, and they need to figure this out, and why are they not looking for her more diligently. Leslie lives in Shannall Valley, in a neighborhood very close to Schalmont Park, So she was part of the neighborhood

that Guy Hooper regularly patrol. And this is why she called me. She tells me she's not seen anyone matching the description of the young black men who Michael mentioned seeing that day when he went to look for Ebbie shortly after she went missing. But Leslie said she does know for a fact that there was someone else who

patrolled the area regularly with Guy Hooper. This is extremely surprising to me because during this entire investigation, no one has ever mentioned this other person even mentioned which is why see the thing for me, And I'm sorry, that's why I said look that up. The person who patrolled regularly with Guy Hooper was his son, Josh. Leslie said she never had a good feeling about them. She says they'd drive around and beat up cars and often patrol

around dusk. Then there was another unsettling incident she remembered about them. I do believe it was before twenty eleven. He was involved, and I believe his son was for him at the time. This was on the news. But anyway, there was a robbery outside of Chanal, not really in Chenal proper. He and his company they saw somehow a robbery and progress at a pharmacy and chased the people and they chased him into one of the Chanal neighborhoods and in the process of this, somehow someone ended up

getting shot and killed. Of the robbers, there's two or three of them by one of the Hoopers. Leslie can't find the newspaper articles about this now, but she and her family also had another unfortunate encounter with the hoopers. We had a personal experience with him that was bad and where my son was involved. He was a last guard at one of the fools here and when he was a senior, I mean between senior and college summer,

you're very young. And he and his friends were out running around and he said, Hey, I've got to the pool. Do you want to go to the pool? And they're all like, go, oh, yeah, of course, you know there should be doing that. He was an employee, but he did go there after hours and let him in. Leslie's son and his friends went into the pool without permission after hours, not the pool at Shawmont Park, but a pool in a neighborhood nearby. But apparently after they went

in there, the hooper spotted them. And what happened next was extremely disturbing. They came in there and they basically, you know, made him get on their their knees and said, you know, y'all are in really big trouble and I could have blown your head off and said this multiple times, and the police came. And I don't know who calls the police. I don't know if David, I don't know who did. But the police came and said you know,

you need to calm down. Security guards are supposed to de escalate situations, and according to the source we spoke to from the homeowners association, the reason they had a security guard around there in the first place was mainly to deter crime, not to detain people. And when the police came, Leslie says that even they were telling the Hoopers they needed to calm down, and he was like

insistent that they give them all tickets. We had to go to court over it, and here fine, which is mean he lost his job, and that's fine because he did break the rules and he shouldn't have been there after hours. But I mean, the people of the court couldn't believe it that this had made such a big deal about this. Then the police even said, you know, this is your overboard on this. This is crazy. These kids have done. All they're doing is sitting there talking

around the pool. They really weren't doing anything. Leslie said that most of the people in the neighborhood, especially after incidents like these, didn't like the Hooper's patrolling. She said she didn't really even understand why they needed to be there in the first place, but she admitted people were reluctant to complain about them because of what she described

as a fear of retaliation. Leslie remembers the day when Ebbie's body was found, and then when they found her, I was like, I drove past and I saw it. I was like, oh my god, They've found her finally, and she's right there right what we all said. She probably was the entire time. And it's just so so awful for Laurie and Michael and everybody in Trevor and everybody hear us that have suffered so long. After Ebby's body was found and with the information and her general

feeling about the Hoopers, Leslie called Tommy Hudson. Anyway, I called Tommy Hudson. Oh no, when maybe three years ago, after they discovered Every's body and all this came out about him seeing her at the you know, there was a couple of conflicting stories from him. Leslie told Tommy about the story with the Hoopers and her son and the robbery case from twenty eleven. When I did tell Tommy Hudson, he said, well, I'll check into that, but you know, he kind of shouted off to his other officers.

Says that na I heard about this where the Hoopers shot someone and they said, no, no, we don't have any record. We don't know. I said, well, you need to look into that because it was on the news. I don't know how it could not be there. How in a world did that story get lost? And I've said the Tommy when he was on the case and said you have to look at him. But oh, he has been cleared, that's what he said. And I said, well,

I don't know how. I told him my stories and he was like, well, I'll look into that, and then nothing ever came about. I never I said, well, here's my number, and he never called me back. So who is Josh Hooper? Unlike his dad, he's fairly easy to find on social media. He apparently lives in Sherwood, Arkansas and runs a foreign company. We find his address and we also found a phone number for Leo. It's time to make some calls. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Hell

and Gone. Helen Gone is a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio. It's written and hosted by me Katherine Townsend and produced by Gabby and Mike Doubt. Our executive producers are Brandon Barr Else Crowley and Virginia Prescott. Mix and Master is by Ryan Peoples and our music is by Ben Sale. If you have any information regarding Ebbie's case, please call our tipline at six seven eight six three two six one five nine. School of Humans, School of Humans