S10 E4: The Red Cab

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You say that you were punched in the face. Was there any other altercation physical? Like were there any scratches or marks on your body from the interaction you had? Uh from that interaction, no. But you're probably referring to the scratch that I had on my leg.

I'm sitting with Sebastian in his backyard looking at the scar on his leg. On the day Jackie disappeared, Sebastian says she punched him in the face, causing his teeth to push through his lip. The people I interviewed didn't seem to have noticed anything. His mouth, but have mentioned noticing a deep gash on his shin, and have wondered what caused it.

Yeah I can see the scar from it actually. Yeah. Uh this was from a few days before, like I went to uh beach that's just like there at the end where they build that hotel. And it's pretty steep and it's all uh maybe not quite shale, but like those flat rocks that are like uh not staying together basically.

So coming back up I slid and uh my flip flop left my foot and I just like uh scratched that on uh those rocks, yeah. Oh okay. Okay. So there was a mark on your leg but it was from a few days before. Yeah yeah. Okay. Yeah, okay. But this isn't quite what others say Sebastian told them.

I'm David Ridgen, and this is season 10 of Someone Knows Something: The Jacqueline Ferland Smith Case, Episode 4, The Red Cat. Nos estamos tratando de conseguir el expediente de Jacqueline. Los padres están tratando de tener acceso al expediente.¿Y cómo consigo yo ese archivo entonces, Carmen? Her parents are trying to get access to Jacqueline's file. My C B C colleague Maria Jose Burgos is very persistent. She's talking to Carmen Ivania Pizarro, the lead prosecutor in Jackie's case.

The prosecutor says we're supposed to go through the press office and that everything is private. It's been this way for several months trying to get the investigative file into Jackie's case. One step forward, three back, then sideways. We need it to learn what the OIJ did or didn't do in Jackie's case. We do know that their investigation ended in 2022.

and that the file we want is archived at the criminal court. We also know that despite my FOI request, Abbotsford police have sent us nothing, and our CMP didn't investigate, they say, And tell me it's all up to the OIJ. bafflement. But our arguments are consistent. If you aren't investigating what happened to Jackie and the case is archived and the family wants it, then give it to us. ¿Y sabe con quién me puedo comunicar en el juzgado penal? So we ask again who to connect with at the court.

Que es la que tiene a cargo el correo, creo. And Karma Navanya directs us to go to someone else named Karina. So I help Gordon and Colleen draft an email for her. Now I think you're gonna have to send a new email. So let's just do it new here. Yeah. Let's do it new and I'll just dictate what to write in there. Oh, down below here. Pro type or somewhere here. Click there and push forward. And almost as if miracles existed, a bit of daylight.

Karina says she's not the one whose job it is to get us the file, but that she will help us because if it was her daughter lost. She'd want someone to help her. The Costa Rican courts email Gordon and Colleen the investigative file into Jackie's case. And we translate it. It's the first time Gordon and Colleen have been given any details about the investigation into their daughter's disappearance.

Yeah. Okay, I'll talk to you later. But will this information hold any answers for them and it's ninety something pages of submissions from police and prosecutors? In the searches, the what was found and the what was said that are outlined here, will I find inconsistencies and can we talk to the officer who wrote most of it? Ulysses Guevara. The short answer is unfortunately no. Correcto.

We've discovered that investigator Guevara was arrested by his own colleagues at the OYJ not long after I called him in December of twenty twenty four. He was arrested for allegedly extorting people. Pay up or you're guilty of a crime. I don't know if he did anything illegal or untoward on Jackie's case, but being handcuffed does make it difficult to find out. Correcto, ok, correcto. It's unfortunate because I cannot vote for the completeness of this file. Is this everything?

I'm also starting to find a series of inconsistencies in what I'm hearing in interviews and seeing in the file. So I need to verify as much as I can with investigators who were there. Fortunately, the file has a lot of other names in it, including Those of Guevara's colleagues, and I call one of them about the first thing I want to talk about.

The two searches of Jackie and Sebastian's property. Hicimos una diligencia de allanamiento, como te indiqué antes, para ingresar con los perros. Nothing turned up inside Jackie and Sebastian's house on the first superficial search of the premises without dogs five days after Jackie disappeared. Sí, pasamos de la congente de búsqueda. Ahí por el patio, por la zona sí.

This investigator is speaking here about the more extensive OIJ search of the property, carried out almost three weeks after that, this time with dogs trained in human blood and remains. He says he carried out a search and entered the place with dogs, went through the yard, and once inside the house. Nothing inside the house or in the back yard returned any alerts from the dogs on this more extensive search. But he says they did no digging. Y ustedes no excavaron tampoco.

A second investigator named Luis Fernando Vidal concurs, saying that it's because the dogs did not alert outside that the OIJ did no digging at Sebastian and Jackie's property. So they dug here? They dug up the back? They have to dig everything. Sebastian initially tells me that the cops cleared him. Because they dug everywhere. Because cops obviously they see like freshly moved around.

Partly by digging up his garden, digging everywhere, and that's why his backyard is so wild now and why he was burning things in the period after Jackie disappeared. I point out to Sebastian that police say they never die. Open can't clear anyone of anything. According to Oldemar Silas, search coordinator for Open, OIJ did suggest some locations that Open might look, such as the cliffs nearby. Open used pickaxes made a little bit of a little bit of a little

Mostly and didn't dig, Silas says, so much as they would sweep the surface in areas that look disturbed. And Open says they did. not do this sweeping on Sebastian s backyard property, only on adjoining properties. They say that Sebastian wouldn't let them dig in his backyard. en el jardín Dentro de la casa no nos metemos nunca porque it's a propiedad privada. Any of the work by Open on areas near Sebastian's backyard would have started almost two weeks after Jackie's disappearance.

Recall that police did run their cadaver dogs through Sebastian's backyard and that the dogs didn't indicate on anything.

But then there is the back seat in Jackie's Nissan that Alejandro the Neighbor and Krista talked to me about. It's also mentioned in the file. OIJ investigator Vidal says he remembers that they inspected the car the same day as the house, and the file continues. On September 6, 2021. A dog named Baco alerts to the presence of human blood odor on a spot in the back seat of the car. The OIJ removes a piece of the seat and it's tested. It comes up positive for blood.

The report says that it is a weak positive, and I've not been able to get any official response to what that means. There is no indication as to whose blood it might have been. And whatever the result, it wasn't enough to trigger any further police action. One could surmise that many vehicles around the world may have spots of blood in them just from day to day use. So again, circumstantial.

Okay. Um and security camera footage. Jackie and Sebastian had a security camera. I wanna find out first if they ever saw anything on that security camera, if they were ever able to see any images at all on it. Sebastián indicó que las cámaras estaban conectadas al teléfono de Jacqueline. Luis Fernando confirms that Jackie's phone password was a problem. Without it, as Sebastian told me, the surveillance camera could not be accessed.

So, thinking they could break into Jackie's phone, the OIJ took it, but they were never able to get into it, and according to the file, the OIJ was never able to access the surveillance camera and therefore see anything on it either. There is also nothing in the file about the surveillance system being taken from Sebastian as he claimed to me. So the phone has been simply stored for two years?

Jackie's phone has sat in storage since 2022 after Costa Rican authorities say they tried to break into it but were unsuccessful. After our call, Carmen the prosecutor says that an OIJ cybercrime unit has developed new tools to break phones and that they will try again. Three years later, and only it seems after we ask. And another detail I notice in the file. Did does Sebastian ever tell Luis at that time or any other time what he thought Jackie was wearing the night she disappeared?

Te mencionó Sebastián esa noche, que pensaba él que andaba puesto Jackie el día que desapareció. No, no, este...

No no, says Luis Fernando. Um we asked Sebastian what she was wearing, and he told us that he didn't remember because they had argued And then he went to take a shower. And when he got out of the shower, Jackie was already gone. The police file says that Sebastian does not know what clothes Jackie was wearing when she left, as he was showering at the time. Yet a description of what Jackie was wearing that night did emerge somewhere around. around the end of August.

Something else curious is that the physical fight, according to Sebastian, happened while he was taking a shower, not before and not after. Sebastian told O. I. J. they had an argument before she left, only on their second visit to him, Which would have been five days after Jackie disappeared. When we asked one of the investigators about the punch in the face, they tell me they did remember hearing that story at some point from Sebastian. That scar on Sebastian's leg.

The very first day that I met up with Sebastian, he had a very large gash going down his shin. Um I don't see mention of scars in the file, but the one on his leg has come up in a few interviews. Jackie's friend, Krista. And he told me that he had slipped while walking up

hill from Playa Penka, which is this beautiful beach near here, but it has a gravel hill and it is slippery. I've fallen down the hill, so it was very believable to me that he could have slipped while going up the hill and cut his leg. The same story Sebastian tells me, but Gordon says he got a different story. That Sebastian got it while snorkeling. Did he say to you while snorkeling he got it? He said while snorkeling and then another. Slipped going down the hill or slipped coming back up.

He says he first saw Sebastian two days after Jackie disappeared on the evening of the nineteenth. That's actually the part I was going to mention. Uh the only thing that seemed a little strange, out of the ordinary, was that Sebastian had some injuries, mainly on his legs, not deep wounds, but visible.

him why he had those injuries on his legs and I think if I remember correctly also on one of his hands. He told us that he liked to surf, okay, in the ocean, and that he had a small accident with some rocks, that he had slipped and hit the rocks of the ocean with his legs. And the wounds were already starting to heal, not like from that same day.

I don't remember if it was both arms, but I believe he did have a similar wound on one of his arms. They were wounds that looked like well, it was believable because they look like scraping type injuries. Uh on his hands. On one hand he definitely had a wound, and it was similar to the ones on his legs. And he told me, it's just that I had an accident. I fell on some rocks here at the ocean, and as I came out of the water, I hurt myself.

Hurt while surfing in the ocean and as Sebastian got out of the water, and scratches on at least one arm and a hand. He talked more than he should. And I asked him what happened to his leg, right? I asked him why his leg was so fucked up. Travis, another Canadian expat in the area, who owns a local restaurant.

We are sitting next to a small pool at night. Every now and then a large light colored bat swoops down over it and seems to skim a drink, but nobody comments on it. Travis says he spoke to Sebastian about a week after Jackie disappeared. Okay, so what did his leg look like? It looked like he fell off of a fucking motorcycle. Right? Yeah, yeah, it looked it you know. I've seen some motorcycle accidents and it looked like you know, I I've only ever seen him on a motorcycle, so I figured

He fell off his motorcycle. So was it actively bleeding? That's another question. I I can't say whether it was actively bleeding. I just saw that his leg was fucked up and asked him what was going on. Was there a bandage on it? No. It was just like there was a sort of a bloody scar or Yeah, it was just side of his calf. The side of his calf was like fucked up.

It wasn't my problem. I was just asking him if he fell off a motorcycle and he said, No, a dog did it, and I'm like, okay. Right, that's it. So he told you that a dog did it? He said that he said that a dog took a run at him on the beach.

So you asked the question, what the fuck did you do with your leg or whatever? You said it that way. What the fuck Yeah, like what the fuck happened? Did you fall off your motorcycle? Right? Like him falling off his fucking motorcycle, right? Yeah. It's just like All I remember he's just like, no dog get it and I'm just like Okay, right?

While snorkeling, while surfing, hurt on rocks in the ocean and slipping going up the hill or going down the hill, could arguably all be within the same realm of experience or a translation or recall. Dog bite at the beach is a different matter. The scar I'm seeing doesn't look like a dog bite, but I'm no expert. Assuming everyone is telling me the truth, could their memories be so mixed that all of these explanations are put down to time or bad memory, or is something else going on?

A young marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night. Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok Unexpected. I'm Josh Bankowitz and this is Trace of Suspicion. from day line. Trace of suspicion to start listening. Did Sebastian ever tell you what happened that day? Did you ever talk to Sebastian about what happened to Jacqueline? Sebastian te contó alguna vez.

I've come at night to visit with Anna here in Playa Coco. Jackie hired Anna sometime in the fall of 2020 to paint something in their new home. I have to use a phone translator to communicate. Anna has led me past some of her works in progress. bright tropical scenes hanging off the walls, and is now sitting on a very worn couch, wearing a light blue top with pink buttons. And flip-flops.

On August 29th, the day the bigger open group search began, Anna saw Sebastian. She says that Sebastian told her that Jackie punched him in the mouth, but she couldn't see any bruise there or sign of it. You saw scratches in the antebrush. On both arms. And his husband, Harold, a tall and skinny constructor. construction worker with dark hair and a blue shirt and tan pants.

Has come to join us too. He was also at the search with Anna and saw Sebastian. They both say they noticed scratches on Sebastian's forearms. Were you guys together on the day? You went to see Sebastian, and you noticed the scratches on his arms? Estábamos aquí en Adico, que llegó esa famosa... So Sebastian came and he had a bruise. I saw a kind of bruise here. A bruise on his arm next to one of his tattoos.

Harold says that as Sebastian talked to them he would try to cover his arms and the scratches. He describes three elongated scratches on Sebastian's right arm. about three centimeters long. They were about a week old, he says, and healing. I leave Anna's and the next day head back up to Cacique. I want to get a better sense of what Sebastian did across the day Jackie disappeared. On the way, I replay the sequence of events of the night Jackie went missing as people. have told me.

So the window of Jacqueline being kind of out of hand and not being seen to my knowledge is after that appointment to Tatiana, the therapist, and then possibly Alonzo sees her, then she He arrives according to Sebastian at the house. He then arrives after he says being in Tamarindo to look for her after not going to Tatiana's place. Comes back, sees Jackie there, they have another argument.

Maybe he goes to dinner first, maybe not, maybe dinner after, or he eats with Jackie. Then at some point he is there at the house with Jackie after he comes back from Tamarindo. Gets in the shower, she's in the sand. Same sort of state of mind he says. And then the toilet paper throwing happens, the punch in the face happens. Jacqueline punches Sebastian, he says in the face. Arguments, continues, and then Jack

Is gone, says Sebastian, and he never sees her again. Comes out of the shower, she is not in the room. And 400 meters, turn left. A scar and scratches seen on Sebastian after Jackie disappears are circumstantial, and one thing may have nothing to do with the other. But people see scratches, and the questions occur. So she leaves the house. But then what? She can't have simply vanished off the face of the earth.

We're looking for the men of the house. Okay, good. Just get him to tell us his name too, so that I know his name. Of course. I've met with a Costa Rican translator out front of a home next to Sebastian and Jackie's house. An empty lot separates their places, and it is this empty lot that Sebastian was seen doing some of his burning on. But we aren't here to talk about burning. We've knocked on the door of a family who may have seen something on the evening Jackie disappeared.

August 17th, 2021 I ask Carlos about his neighbours, Jackie and Sebastian. Yeah, well we we've been neighbor since uh they moved here. Since they started building the house so we knew them. You knew Jacqueline? Yeah yeah. Oh well. I knew. So tell me about Jacqueline. Jacqueline. Um I didn't know much of her because she was she she was like very shy, you know. Ah okay. Every time I approach you or whatever, you know, we just hello, how are you? you know, but no no

Further than that, you know? Um Seba Sebastian? Sebastian. Sebastian. I uh knew him a little bit more. He's a little bit more A little bit more even though he's also very uh quiet, yeah, it's not like that bad, you know. But I tell you something the day that happened fortunately we were

Coming back from San Jose. I was coming from Spain. I'm from Spain. Uh I flew to San Jose and my family was waiting for me in San Jose to bring me here. Okay. So the night we arrived here, I was asleep in the car and my wife Okay. Um it seems like we when we drive here we saw a taxi coming out with a person behind it. So when we heard about that and the time that happened, we thought it might be Jacqueline. So did she see Jacqueline? Hmm, not really. She saw a person behind, but um Oro.

Colleen and Gordon told me that when they spoke to Carlos's wife, named Oro, she couldn't be sure what she saw that night, and at one point she said to them that she thought it might have been a dream. Carlos also seems to be doubtful. He asks Oro to come to the door. White striped shirt and white caprice has just come into view in the doorway. Carlos turns to her and

I was telling them that when we came back, you remember you saw a cab drive by with someone behind, but you can't be sure it was Jacqueline, right? No era ella. No, it was her, I told the parents, says Oro. to which her husband Carlos replies in surprise It was her? It was Jacqueline. He saw Jacqueline. Because it was the first time I ever saw her uh without a smile. She was very upset.

Yes. And you're sure it was the same night she disappeared? We do check and it was the same night of Jackie's disappearance. Carlos seems like he is hearing some of this for the first time. I remember uh because I saw I saw her because it was around eight at night.

It was at night and and I saw the taxi, the red cab, and I thought to myself, that's weird. A cab at night on this area. That's not very common. That's why that's why I checked. Of course. And um We met each other right on on the bump. Okay, just over here. Okay. On the uh with the the hut the security hut. The security I mean. That's why I we we both stopped and that's when I glanced and I just because I was curious.

Who is in there? Who is who is in there? And I saw her and she looked back at me and she was very mm-mm.

Okay. without using your phone here? Is there some way you can get a taxi without'cause she didn't have her phone with her. She left her phone over here. No. So do you think she called it and then walked outside or how is she? No, it's not normal to do a taxi bus no driver. No, no, you have to call a taxi in order to exactly

But maybe she called it before and then when the dice tickets arrived she just ran away and left the phone behind. I don't know. Exactly. That might be. That might be because there is no way a taxi. That's why I looked uh looked up because the cat It's not normal. No, it's not. And usually everyone who lives here has a car or something because you you you need it. You know to move around.

If Jackie was in a cab, how did she get it? She'd left her phone behind. Something that needs to be looked at more closely. Okay. And so nothing else. And then did you ever talk to Sebastian about any of this? Nobody asked me anything about it. Nobody came here to talk to us. Nobody. The parents, her parents, they came over.

And I told them. Okay. And they were like, are you sure? Are you sure? I was like, okay, let me check. Let me think about it. And then they came again and I said, yes, I'm sure. I'm positive that I saw her. Okay. Nine. The time no. It was around eight, eight thirty. It was nine. My memory is not the person in the car was alone. She was like whoever the pat she was alone. Yeah, she she was on the back. Okay, and it was a red cab? Do you know? Did you recognize the driver? No. No.

They had so many restaurants. It was a red card. They're all red. Are they all red? Yeah, they're all red. They're red. They are part. Like unofficial. But the official wall. So it was an official it was an official title. It was an official card. So don't they have to record the records of They should have uh that's what I was saying. They should, but this is Costa Rica so I thought it. But they might, I don't know. Hola buenas,¿cómo está?¿Me escucha?

The translator calls the Red Cab Company, or one of the companies that uses Red Cabs, and we try to find out if any records are saved. But we are told that records are not kept. Como por ejemplo si pedimos un taxi para cacique,¿cuánto duran en eh quién hizo ese taxi, ese, ese, ese por ejemplo, quién hizo ese viaje? Ah no más, eso no, no, okay.

I'll try to dig into the red taxis a bit more, and I want to try an experiment, but before that I get a call from another neighbor named Kevin who says they have security footage too.

my camera system records up to thirty days. So after she went missing and there was all the rumors running around and that there was a taxi that came in to pick her up. So I just took it upon myself to look the night that she went missing, I watched almost every three or four or five hours. Like my camera actually only records when there's movement. But this one, because there's some vegetation in front of it, records almost continuously.

Immediately after she went missing, within a day or two, I have cameras around my house and my one camera I can actually see what I'm saying. If she came out this way. In a car or walking at night, I would have picked it up on my cameras and I sat one time for four or five hours and watched every single minute on those cameras. You think that Jackie if she walked into town would have walked by your camera? Oh yes.

Kevin's camera was pointed at the road at a point that anyone walking or driving to or from Cocoa would have been seen. The other direction of the road went past the guard house with Michael in it. Kevin says he went through his surveillance tape from august seventeenth up to midnight and says there is no sign of Jackie in the footage. He didn't save any of his camera files, unfortunately, but Kevin also had a private security guard standing on the road all through that very night until morning.

What did he see? No, lo decís los mismos carros de siempre. The guard named Victor standing on the road to Coco that night didn't see Jackie, although he knew her, and says he did see her walking about fifteen days before she disappeared. I recuerdo you that he went one of the time in a motor. Victor also says that around one AM he saw Sebastian, but he cannot confirm one hundred percent that this is the early morning of august eighteenth.

Sebastian, he says, drives up on his scooter and stops close to the guard hut. At this point, Victor says it had become foggy. Sebastian appears to look out toward the ocean for a moment, then turns back the way he came toward his house. From where Sebastian stopped, one can't see much, and at night nothing of the ocean or really of the town below.

I asked Sebastian about this and he said he was most likely looking for Jackie. Without the confirmation of timing, it's just another possible detail. Going on, Victor the Guard says he didn't see any red cabs and adds that red cabs don't like going that way because it is so steep. What this all means to me is that Jackie probably didn't walk to Coco, as she would have been seen by Kevin's guard Victor, and Kevin's camera on one end, and Michael the guard on the other.

So if Jackie left the house that night, was it in the red cab seen by Oro, the neighbor?

Stun my way up to the area where Sebastian and Jacqueline built their house. It's about eight o'clock at night. This is about the time that supposedly Jacqueline left the house and it's also the time that the neighbor My neighbor says she was returning from the airport and saw Jacqueline in the back of a red taxi looking upset. And so I'm just gonna try to Test whether or not Something like that could be seen.

So I'm trying to figure out exactly how somebody might see into the back of a car, but it is the same level of darkness right now. Actually, there's a car coming along right here. And this is about the spot where she says she saw the taxi in the back of the taxi. So this is a taxi approaching. Can you see in the back? All I see is dark. There is absolutely

Absolutely no way. Somebody could see in the back of a car. Here's another vehicle coming. It's happening to the motorcycle, but I can't even see who's riding the motorcycle. And that went right past me. That's uh That's quite telling. I'm not sure somebody could have seen inside a vehicle like that to see who was riding in the back. I really and I slowed down right at the speed bump just as the person passed. So I don't know what to make of that.

Anyway here we are up here just about to pass the house again I try it again a few times, even try it going down the hill to see if I can see into approaching cars, but I can't. It's not scientific, and there are variables I don't even know, but the speed bump is big and you have to slow down. The car I looked into had clear windows. The darkness is the same. In this imperfect experiment at least, there's nothing I can identify outside of maybe a human outline crouching there in a back seat.

Okay, that was interesting. Yeah, I mean if if if at most you could see like the outline of a person. And you'd have to s try really hard to strain to see that person. That's gonna be some ambience here. Pretty quiet up here. You can hear a few voices in the in the houses, but It's pretty quiet.

As I stand on the road near Jackie's house, I try to imagine hearing the sounds of that night. the natural cadence of the place, ocean far off, insects, traffic in the distance. It's relaxing and calming, but it does bring a question to my head as I look over at the house. How does Jackie's departure work? Call the taxi, put the phone down, go fight with Sebastian in the shower, then leave.

And by the time you're out the door the taxi is waiting? Or fight with Sebastian, then call the taxi, leave your phone behind, then walk out and stand outside until the taxi comes. Or fight, then leave the phone and just walk out. No call, and there's a taxi that happens to be driving by, so you hail it. And then you go to a new life somewhere and never use your identity or bank accounts or talk to your family or friends again, or you take a cab to kill yourself somewhere else.

Why not do it right where you are? At home. I don't know. I'll try to talk to some taxi drivers, including one I've heard some local stories about. Maybe they heard something. And I'll try to track down the people who Sebastian says saw Jackie after she left the house. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by me, David Ridgen. The series is also produced by Maria José Burgos. Sound designed by Evan Kelly. Natalia Ferguson is our transcriber.

Emily Cannell is our digital producer. Chris Oak is our story editor. Our executive producer is Cecil Fernandez. Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and Arif Nurani is the director of CBC Podcasts. You can binge all episodes of someone knows something early on the CBC True Crime YouTube channel, or for early and ad-free listening. Subscribe to the CBC True Crime Premium channel on Apple Podcasts. Just click on the link in the

Show description. If you're looking for more investigations, check out my other podcast, The Next Call, conducted almost exclusively through a series of strategic phone calls. Each call dictates how I will investigate cases and find out. There are three seasons available to binge listen to now. Find the next call wherever you get your podcast. For more C B C podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcast.