Text Me {AUDIO}

[The Black Tapes opening plays] The Black Tapes is an exploration of life, belief, faith, and occasionally, the paranormal. This season we’re focusing our lens on the work of the Strand Institute and its enigmatic founder and president, Dr. Richard Strand. From the National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale, it’s the Black Tapes Podcast. I’m Alex Reagan.CALLER ONE: I sent a tape to the Stand Institute with a ghost on it. 110% for sure. I want my million dollars! Strand is nothing but a godless fraud. CALLER TWO: So how do you explain five people all seeing the exact same spirit in the same hotel room over a twelve year period? CALLER THREE: Dr. Strand, will you marry me? CALLER FOUR: Great show you guys, keep it up. I have an amazing story about a sex ghost. I’m emailed to you. You’re gonna love it! CALLER FIVE: Dr. Strand, will you marry me? CALLER SIX: I don’t think that Dr. Strand is on the level. There’s something off about that guy. CALLER SEVEN: Thank you, thank you, thank you! You make my commute tolerable and I can’t wait to hear more Black Tapes!! CALLER EIGHT: Dr. Strand, marry me! Thank you for all of the messages, please keep sending them in. We really appreciate it. I’m going to highlight one particular message I received recently. Maybe received isn’t quite the right word. It happened when Strand and I sat down for coffee here in Seattle last week. I’m going to play it for you and then explain the situation.UNKNOWN: He’s not who you think he is.I didn’t discover the recording until the next day. I left my phone at the table and went up to espresso bar to order a drink. It was pretty busy and it took quite a while to get my coffee. It’s a video recording but the only thing that you can see is the ceiling of the restaurant. I asked Strand if anybody picked up my phone while I was away from the table. He said no, but he did leave briefly to visit the bathroom. This podcast has been generating a lot of interest and as you heard in the opening, a large number of email, audio, and video messages. Most of the messages are supportive: people excited about the show, keen to share their favorite moments or storylines. But every once in a while we come across something like this.MALE CALLER: You have no idea what Strand is capable of! W-we need to meet! Text me at (beeped out). NIC: No way. ALEX: (laughs) You don’t think I should follow up? Maybe meet this guy? NIC: I do not. ALEX: (laughing) Come on. NIC: There’s no way you’re going to meet this guy. He’s probably the person who left the creepy stalker message on your phone. ALEX: Yeah, but we might learn something new. NIC: We did learn something new. You need to passcode lock your phone. Last week Dr. Strand spoke at a conference here in Seattle. The people who organize that conference have offered him a month long residency. Apparently they offered him the job in part because of this podcast. The subject of the conference was an examination of regional mass hysteria. Strand was brought in for a case study. A case involving a mysterious video. Sound familiar? Turns out Dr. Strand’s workload during his stay is going to be very light and he’s agreed to share the content of that mysterious video: his latest black tape.STRAND: Can I get you a coffee or anything? ALEX: I’m good thanks. How are you settling in? STRAND: I love the weather in Seattle. ALEX: Are you serious? STRAND: Absolutely! I went to college up in Vancouver, I got used to it. Can’t have the trees without the rain. ALEX: (laughs) I suppose that’s true. It’s serendipitous for me, your being stationed up here, so to speak. STRAND: My publisher is over the moon. Since you launched the podcast, she’s had more than a few calls. I’m surprised she hasn’t sent you a fruit basket. She hasn’t has she? ALEX: A fruit basket? (laughs) No. But I hope that’s still a thing because that sounds awesome. STRAND: Come to think of it, it’s probably not a, a “thing” anymore. ALEX: Hey, when we were having lunch last week, this might sound a bit crazy but, did you see anybody messing around with my phone while I was up getting coffee? STRAND: No, what happened? ALEX: What about when you came back from the washroom? STRAND: What happened to your phone? (plays audio on phone) ALEX: Well? STRAND: Let me play something for you. (music with garbled vocals plays) STRAND: Did you hear it? ALEX: Um, I don’t think so. STRAND: In the 80’s the religious induced panic by convincing people there were secret messages when you played records backwards. Backward masking. ALEX: What was I supposed to hear? STRAND: The artists weren’t actually recording backwards messages. At least not at first. But once you knew the supposed hidden phrase was, “my sweet satan,” or whatever, that’s exactly what you heard. ALEX: You think I’m hearing something on the message on my phone? It’s clearly a male voice saying, “He’s not who you think.” STRAND: Is it? (audio plays again) STRAND: Are you certain the last word in the first sentence isn’t, uh, drink rather than think? ALEX: Pretty sure. (pause) Okay, 95% sure. But isn’t the more important question, why would somebody sneak a recording onto my phone? STRAND: Is your phone set up for one touch photo? ALEX: I think so? But this wasn’t a photo. STRAND: On my phone, the video button is right next to the photo button. ALEX: Fine, but I was nowhere near my phone. STRAND: That family next to us had kids, a couple of teenage boys. ALEX: You think some kid accidentally recorded a message on my phone? A message that just happened to be acutely relevant to my current situation? ALEX: Why are you smiling? STRAND: The term “acutely relevant.” ALEX: Okay, what about it? STRAND: Perceived relevance and extraordinary coincidence, that’s precisely the argument for astrology, ESP, and the rest of it. This is the crux of almost everything we do at the Strand Institute. Someone recorded a mysterious message on my phone. Was it one of the kids at the next table or a nefarious stranger? This might remain a mystery, which is frustrating. Strand says it’s precisely this frustration of never knowing that leads us to jump to conclusions. It’s tough to argue with him on that count. I want it to be more interesting. The child accidentally recording a message isn’t satisfying to me. Strand is certainly right when he says we want to believe. And yet, that message sounds like somebody saying, “He’s not who you think.” Our tech team says somebody could have hacked my phone remotely and sent the recording. An extremely high tech listener could be messing with us. But why? The person on the message could have been referring to Strand or maybe it was Strand himself while I was away. Although he doesn’t really seem like the type. After the break, we’re going to take a look at Strand’s latest black tape. This is the Black Tapes podcast, I’m Alex Reagan, stay with us.STRAND: These images were recorded by an exterior security camera last year. ALEX: What’s the building? STRAND: It’s a bank, in a town called Charlesworth in Washington. ALEX: And what are we looking at? STRAND: The doors outside the bank. The camera looks out towards the parking lot. ALEX: Who’s that? STRAND: Just wait. ALEX: Okay, is she waiting for her? Or? Oh! What just happened? Okay, so in the video, which is actually pretty high quality footage for an outdoor security camera, there’s this woman in a black hooded robe. Or it looks like a woman, but who knows? Her back is turned to the camera when she steps onto the sidewalk. Walking toward her from the parking lot comes this young woman. She’s preoccupied looking in her purse for something, doesn’t see the hooded woman until she’s about ten feet from her. Then she stops, slowly looks up, her face, she’s… she looks absolutely horrified. Then there’s a bit of interference or, or static. Just a flicker. And it looks like the young woman maybe screams. Then, she faints. Al-although fainting doesn’t feel like the right working it’s, it’s more like she just crumbles. The hooded figure then walks off camera to the right.ALEX: So that lady fainted? What happened? STRAND: That was Fiona DeNevers, a customer service representative at the bank. She was dead when the paramedics arrived, heart attack. She was 23. ALEX: that’s pretty young for a heart attack. STRAND: It certainly is. ALEX: it looked like she screamed. STRAND: Four witnesses claim they did hear a scream, which brought a small crowd to the parking lot where they found her unconscious. ALEX: And the woman in the hood? Why didn’t she stay and help? STRAND: This is where things get interesting. ALEX: What things? STRAND: I’m guessing you’ve never been to Charlesworth? ALEX: Good guess. STRAND: And if you’ve never been to Charlesworth, I imagine you haven’t heard of the Festival of the Upside Down Face? ALEX: You imagine correctly. STRAND: In 1957, a 17 year old girl named Sarah Benning, who was bullied mercilessly by the other girls in her class, snapped and murdered the homecoming queen, Catherine Williams. ALEX: How, how very Carrie. STRAND: Of course, but Sarah Benning didn’t have telekinetic powers. ALEX: Of course. STRAND: She did, however, have a sharp knife that she used to slit Catherine Williams’ throat the night Catherine was crowned homecoming queen. ALEX: That’s awful. STRAND: There’s more. ALEX: Great. STRAND: She sliced off Williams’ face, and as the story goes, she stitched it back on. Upside down. ALEX: Oh my god. How have I never heard of this? STRAND: It was sensational news, but it was 1957. ALEX: So they have an Upside Down Face Festival? What is wrong with these people? STRAND: A local hotel owner named Wilson Pepper, dreamt up the idea in 1985. By that point, there weren’t many people left that remembered the darkness the 1957 event cast over the town. Charlesworth had just fallen off the list of one of the most haunted places in America and Wilson Pepper wanted to keep the myth of Sarah Benning alive. ALEX: So is the hooded figure supposed to be Sarah Benning or Catherine Williams? STRAND: As the story goes, the spirit of Catherine Williams haunts the townspeople of Charlesworth as a reminder of what those girls did to Sarah Benning. The ghost of the girl with the upside down face. Most people wear standard Halloween masks, but they’re all worn… upside down. ALEX: What happened to Sarah Benning? STRAND: A few days after the prom they found her a mile outside of town. She’d drowned in the Pend Oreille River. She’d apparently thrown herself in. ALEX: Jesus. And this festival is, what, supposed to attract tourists for local business? STRAND: Wilson Pepper initially did it to keep the occasional supernatural sight-seers coming to his hotel. Now it’s really quite a tourist attraction. ALEX: I suppose it makes about as much sense as driving a hot pink tour bus into the desert to burn a giant, wicker man. STRAND: Well, celebrations like these do serve a certain social function. Like All Souls Day, the Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico, the Qingming Festival in China. Social psychologists recognize that societies oft need a way for people to expunge their fear of the inevitable. That sometimes the modes we choose to serve this function are odd because they come from our subconscious. The things that scare you will be different than the things that scare me. You can’t explain why they scare you, but they do. ALEX: So, what scares you? STRAND: Food poisoning. (Both laugh) ALEX: When is this festival? STRAND: It starts tomorrow. ALEX: You’re going, aren’t you? STRAND: I was thinking about it. Of course, I was going too. Although it did take a few minutes to convince Strand.Charlesworth is small. It feels like one of those tiny towns in a Stephen King novel, somewhere in a strange, tucked-away little corner of Maine. Charlesworth has one gas station and it hangs on the edge of town. It has one pump and no sign. I found out later that town by-laws forbid the use of lighted signage for any business. It actually seems to work, giving it a genuine small town feel. Charlesworth proper has a population of 4,300, but it feels bigger because of the tourists in town for the festival. And they are... How do you say this politely? Enthusiastic? Almost everyone’s wearing a mask, except they’re all upside down. It’s like some kind of weird farm-league Mardi Gras. Kind of Halloween meets Eyes Wide Shut.ALEX: Excuse me? WOMAN 1: Hm? ALEX: Do you think the ghost with the upside down face really exists? WOMAN 1: Uh, yeah! I saw her once when I was coming home from the bar, and uh, that was scary as sh(expletive bleeped out). WOMAN 2: She’s real, for sure! My mom drove me all the way to Michael’s in Spokane so I could make my own mask this year. See? WOMAN 3: What’s there to know? Her mouth is where her eyes should be and her eyes are where her mouth should be. MAN 1: The woman who died at the bank last year, Fiona DeNevers? You need to talk to her sister. The dead woman’s sister knows, she knows everything. MAN 2: It’s basically just a reason to get drunk. Really f(expletive beeped) drunk. I know. “Talk to the dead woman’s sister.” That’s way too enticing not to follow up on. Strand didn’t agree.STRAND: What’s Fiona DeNever’s sister going to say? If she’s looking for attention, she’ll say it was a ghost and add some cryptic nonsense to seduce you into exploring further. If she’s telling the truth, she’ll say that it was a simple case of her sister having a heart attack. Sure she was younger than normal, but it happens all the time. Several times a day in the US alone, the reason we’re talking about it at all is because it happened into a town where there is an active legend of a scary, vengeful woman with an upside down face. Sensational conclusions are almost inevitable here, I’m afraid. (pause) You’re not convinced. ALEX: You know, I think I’d like to hear the sister’s cryptic nonsense. Despite Strand’s misgivings, I tracked down the sister of Fiona DeNevers and what she had to say took me in a direction that I didn’t expect. This and more after the break. You’re listening to the Black Tapes podcast, stay with us.Fiona DeNevers died of a heart attack just over a year ago in the parking lot of a small bank in Charlesworth. She was only 23. Her older sister, Crystal, married and moved with her husband to Sacramento, where she works as a primary school teacher. I explained what we were doing with the podcast, and after a few polite email exchanges, she agreed to meet see me.ALEX: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me about your sister. I’m sure it’s been a tough year for your family. CRYSTAL: Has it only been a year? I-It feels like a long time ago. ALEX: Did you speak with Fiona on a regular basis? CRYSTAL: (sigh) I’d like to, to clear something up before we go any further? ALEX: Oh, sure, of course. CRYSTAL: I know the rumors going around Charlesworth about our family and Catherine Williams and all that. ALEX: Okay? CRYSTAL: You know, my grandmother wasn’t part of that group. People just assume that because they-they want a better story to hang their nasty, gossipy hats on. ALEX: Okay, what group? CRYSTAL: Um. It, it sounds like you’re hearing this stuff for the first time. ALEX: Well, yeah, I just started asking questions. CRYSTAL: You, you do know who my grandmother was, don’t you? ALEX: I’m sorry, I don’t. CRYSTAL: My grandmother’s name was Linda DeNevers, she was a friend of the homecoming queen. ALEX: Catherine Williams? CRYSTAL: Yeah. ALEX: So what is it about this group and Catherine Williams? If you don’t mind me asking. CRYSTAL: Um, well. Rumor has it that the ghost of Sarah Benning has been haunting the families and the descendants of everyone who tormented her while she was alive. ALEX: So I was told that the festival was about Sarah Benning’s revenge. Cursing the ghost of Catherine Williams to haunt the townspeople of Charlesworth. A reminder of what they did to her. CRYSTAL: Okay, well, that’s what they say. But they got it wrong. ALEX: The ghost story that’s central to Charlesworth’s annual festival is, is wrong? CRYSTAL: I know I know. It’s like adding another layer of crazy on top of crazy. ALEX: Well (laughs)... CRYSTAL: In every reported sighting of the woman who has her eyes where her mouth should be and her mouth where her eyes should be, it’s the face of Catherine Williams they report seeing. ALEX: Yes. CRYSTAL: But it’s not Catherine Williams, it’s Sarah Benning. She’s… she’s wearing Catherine Williams face. ALEX: Upside down? CRYSTAL: Yeah. ALEX: Did she… ever talk about what happened? About Sarah? CRYSTAL: Um. Yeah, once. All this, uh, the Sarah Benning talk drove our grandmother crazy. She’d punish us something terrible if we ever brought it up. But, um. T-there was one time, she’d been drinking and she was deep into some kind of melancholy and… ALEX: What did she tell you? CRYSTAL: Well, she, she said that she laughed and she joined in when the others picked on Sarah Benning. I, I mean she had to or else they would have picked on her too. She told us that she often saw her. ALEX: Who? CRYSTAL: It was always through a window. Um, grandma would be washing the dishes or watching tv and then she’d just get a, a dark feeling, you know? And then she’d look up and she’d see that upside down face staring at her. ALEX: Catherine Williams? CRYSTAL: Well, um, see this is where it gets interesting. Um, there was this one day she-she looked up and she saw Catherine Williams standing in her garden just outside the kitchen window. She tilted her head, like, like a dog, you know? And then uh, well she, she slowly peeled off her face. It, it was Sarah Benning. She was wearing Catherine Williams’ face. And she held it out for grandma to see. ALEX: Your grandmother told you all this? CRYSTAL: Yeah. Um. A-and there’s one more thing. ALEX: What? CRYSTAL: After Sarah killed Catherine, she didn’t sew Catherine’s face back on Catherine. ALEX: No? CRYSTAL: No. (pause) She sewed Catherine’s face on her own. But upside down. ALEX: How did your grandmother know that? CRYSTAL: Well, she said that she saw Sarah Benning. It was the night of the prom. She was walking down the street. I-I was only 14 when my grandma told us all that. Fiona was... 10? We didn’t we didn’t sleep for a week after that. ALEX: And how was your grandmother’s mental state when she told you the story? CRYSTAL: Oh, grandma was sharp, right up until the end, if that’s what you’re thinking. ALEX: How did your grandmother die? CRYSTAL: She. Um. She jumped off the roof. I thought I had heard every type of ghost story. But here I was, in a town with a festival essentially celebrating a grisly murder from the 50’s, with a ghost wearing the face of a dead homecoming queen. Upside down. I needed some more information. What if I could speak with someone that was actually there back in 1957. And that’s exactly what I did. Kind of. After the break.ROSEMARY: Fortunately, Mrs. Rhinehart, she was the librarian before me, transferred every single copy of the Charlesworth Register to microfiche. What was the date again? That’s Rosemary Wilkins, head librarian at the Charlesworth Public Library, and the unofficial town historian. Her mother went to school with both Benning and Williams, although Rosemary said her mother was never really close with either of them.ROSEMARY: Here it is! Stayed on the front page for over a week. In a town this size, it was the talk for quite a while, as you can imagine. It’s all awful. That’s what makes this festival of… I can’t even say the name of it. It’s well, it’s more than tacky. The whole thing is just plain cruel. ALEX: To Catherine Williams’ family? ROSEMARY: To everyone. The Bennings lost a daughter too. Although we all forget that. She was obviously a very sick girl who needed help. But back in those days there was no such thing. Everyone just thought she was a monster. ALEX: So I take it you won’t be partaking in the festivities? ROSEMARY: Not me, no. I guess some of the newer business owners like it, but those of us with deep roots here, well, we don’t like to think about what happened. In a big city, like Seattle, something like this is a blip. Do you know how many murders have happened in Charlesworth since 1957? ALEX: Um, one? ROSEMARY: None. ALEX: If you don’t mind, I would love it if you could sort something out for me. ROSEMARY: I’ll do my best. ALEX: Okay, so most people agree that the town legend involves a ghost. Some say it’s Catherine Williams and others say Sarah Benning. And I’m not saying that you believe in any of this stuff, but who do you think it is? Catherine or Sarah? Or perhaps a better question is- who do you think it’s supposed to be? ROSEMARY: If you ask Wilson Pepper who started this whole… thing, it’s Catherine Williams. That made sense to him, so that’s the story that he told. But those of us who lived here back then, we know the truth. ALEX: And what’s the truth? ROSEMARY: It’s Sarah Benning. ALEX: Okay. ROSEMARY: And you’re mistaken about one thing. ALEX: Oh? ROSEMARY: It’s not a ghost. It’s Sarah Benning herself. Or at least that’s what they say. ALEX: Sarah Benning herself? ROSEMARY: Nobody told you about the graves? Somebody actually did tell me about the graves. Kind of. It turns out Strand had texted me right after I left the library. He had been doing some digging of his own, figuratively, not literally. He was waiting for me at the Sheriff’s Office when I arrived.OSENGA: Charlesworth is the safest place in Eastern Washington, always was, except for that one day back in 1967. That’s Sheriff Boyd Osenga. I don’t know why I was expecting an older man, but Osenga is young, maybe 40. He was in primary school when Wilson Pepper launched the festival. But he knew the town’s history, every resident’s name, first and last. He and Strand were drinking whiskey together like old friends when I arrived. I don’t know why, but Charlesworth is the type of town where you want the Sheriff drinking whiskey during the day. Not a lot, maybe just one, right around 4 pm.OSENGA: They billed it as the place to move your family. Where everyone knows their neighbors. No crime, no problems. Just peace and quiet. The Williams murder in 1957, well that kind of darkness changes everything. It’s like all of the bad things that should have happened over the regular course of the town’s history saved themselves for that one day back in 1957 at the Charlesworth high school prom. ALEX: I’m sure you’re familiar with the myth surrounding the case. OSENGA: The Benning girl comes back to get her revenge on the families of them folks who bullied her. Yep. Feels like it’d never go away. ALEX: So right there. I noticed you said the Benning girl and not the ghost of the Benning girl? OSENGA: Ghost? Zombie? Whatever you wanna call it. When the dead are disturbed like that, people get to talking. STRAND: Grave robbing? OSENGA: Groundskeeper at the cemetery found Sarah Benning’s grave all dug up. Nothing left of her remains. ALEX: Oh, wow. OSENGA: Turns out, Benning’s wasn’t the only grave desecrated. ALEX: Catherine Williams? OSENGA: That’s right. STRAND: They took her body as well? OSENGA: Not her body. (pause) Just her face. ALEX: Okay, that’s disgusting. OSENGA: (laughs) I’m just kidding. They took her body too. Of course, half the town thought it was Wilson Pepper behind the whole thing. He’d been trying to get his crazy festival off the ground, and it wasn’t really catching on with the locals, as you can imagine. But after the grave robbings and all the brand new ghost sightings, well… it was a boon to Pepper’s business. ALEX: So they said they saw the ghost of Catherine Williams? OSENGA: Sure, or Sarah Benning. STRAND: Some people said they saw Catherine Williams, others Sarah Benning? OSENGA: There were… various reports. A lot of sightings. ALEX: Of those two girls specifically? OSENGA: That’s right. ALEX: But… how do they know what the girls looked like? It was 30 years earlier. STRAND: Oh, I dug up some copies of the local paper from the 80’s. Turns out, Wilson Pepper, who we know was having a hard time getting his festival off the ground, put the Benning story back in the paper. ALEX: Okay. STRAND: Front page, both girls’ pictures. He owned the paper, so that wasn’t really a problem. ALEX: So I assume your predecessor investigated Wilson Pepper? OSENGA: Of course, but Pepper had a strong alibi. He wasn’t even in town that week. He was at some leadership seminar for the Eastern Washington Business Association. ALEX: So what do you think happened? OSENGA: What do I think? I think Pepper got some people obsessed with the Williams murder all over again. And some nutjobs desecrated a cemetery to make it look like the ghost stories were true. STRAND: (laughs) ALEX: What are you smiling about? STRAND: What? ALEX: Thank you for your time, Sheriff. He sent a copy of the recording away for analysis, but Strand didn’t think he was going to find anything technically wrong with the video of Fiona DeNevers. Was it just a young woman having a heart attack? Who was the strange figure in the video and why didn’t they stick around to help? Did Wilson Pepper hire somebody to dig up two graves just to launch the most ridiculous and creepy festival in Washington? I suppose we’ll never know. All we can do is decide for ourselves. Which brings us back to Richard Strand. Last week I spoke with Strand about his personal life, including the fact that his wife disappeared under somewhat mysterious circumstances.ALEX: Do you mind talking about what happened with your wife? STRAND: Not at all. There’s not much to tell I’m afraid. She disappeared on the highway. We were driving down the coast to Big Sur, stopped at a gas station, I went into pay, and when I came back, she was gone. ALEX: That must have been horrifying. STRAND: It was. Well, my producers managed to track down Strand’s ex-wife’s parents. I spoke with them last night.ALEX: Hi, can you hear me? JUNE: Yes! LAWRENCE: We can. ALEX: Great. So like my producer mentioned, I’m working on a story about Richard Strand. I’m really sorry about what happened with your daughter. JUNE: Thank you for saying so. ALEX: So if you’re okay to get started, I’d like to get your comments regarding Dr. Strand’s ex-wife, your daughter’s disappearance back in 1997. JUNE: Her name is Coralee. ALEX: Oh, of course, I’m sorry, Coralee. LAWRENCE: He did it. JUNE: We don’t know that for sure. LAWRENCE: We know for sure. ALEX: What makes you say that? LAWRENCE: Look, he’s an ungodly man, an atheist if you can believe it. ALEX: You believe he’s responsible for Coralee’s disappearance? LAWRENCE: Her murder! JUNE: Lawrence! LAWRENCE: What? JUNE: We don’t believe she’s dead. ALEX: You think she might still be alive after all these years? JUNE: We got a, um, a postcard a couple of years ago. LAWRENCE: They got the wrong address. ALEX: You think the postcard was from your daughter? LAWRENCE: No! JUNE: It’s Coralee’s handwriting. LAWRENCE: It’s printed, not written. JUNE: I’ll get it. LAWRENCE: The postcard is nonsense, they had the wrong address. You know, his own daughter thought he did it. ALEX: Charlie? LAWRENCE: That’s right, Charlie. She had enough sense to get as far away from him as soon as she could. I suggest you do the same. JUNE: Here it is. LAWRENCE: She’s not interested in your ridiculous theories, June. She’s interested in the facts. JUNE: You know who you sound like? LAWRENCE: A person who makes sense? JUNE: You sound just like him. LAWRENCE: Him who? JUNE: Richard. ALEX: Mrs. Jacobson sent a picture of the postcard, it’s a beautiful mountain scene. And on the back was a stamped postmarked in Big Arm, Montana. And a simple message. The message reads, “Thinking of you.” I called the Jacobsons back to discuss. ALEX: Hello? Mrs. Jacobson, can you hear me? JUNE: Yes. My-my husband’s here and he’s on the speaker. LAWRENCE: Hello. ALEX: Hello! So first of all, thank you so much for sending the picture of the postcard. JUNE: You’re welcome, of course. ALEX: The message on the card is… it’s pretty straightforward JUNE: (pause) “Thinking of you.” She’s thinking of us. LAWRENCE: Somebody was thinking of someone, but it has nothing to do with us. JUNE: Her favorite place in the whole world was Colorado. She always said that-that one day she-she would go and live in the mountains. LAWRENCE: She was nine years old. JUNE: I know it was from her! ALEX: Is there anything else? Uh, maybe something a bit more specific that makes you think your daughter sent the postcard? JUNE: Th-the handwriting is a perfect match. LAWRENCE: It’s printing! And it’s not a perfect match. ALEX: Mr. Jacobson, back in 1997, you indicated that you thought that Richard Strand was responsible for your daughter’s disappearance. It sounds like your opinion on that hasn’t changed over the years. LAWRENCE: It hasn’t changed at all. ALEX: How can you be so sure? LAWRENCE: Look at the evidence. He was the only one with her at the time. She was planning on filing for divorce. JUNE: Well, we don’t know that for sure. LAWRENCE: She was thinking about it. JUNE: They were… they were going through some issues but divorce was never on the table. ALEX: What kind of issues? JUNE: Coralee wanted to have more children, Richard didn’t. He already had Charlie uh, with that girl from Canada. Coralee loves Charlie, we all love Charlie like h-like her own. LAWRENCE: She asked me to find her a lawyer. JUNE: That was for something else. It wasn’t for the divorce. LAWRENCE: So you say. ALEX: Was there anything else? LAWRENCE: (pause) The police thought he did it. ALEX: At first, but they did change their focus after the first phase of the investigation. LAWRENCE: What kind of husband disappears for five days when his wife vanishes? Wouldn’t you want to stay in touch with the police? With the people searching? The people who care? ALEX: Strand disappeared? LAWRENCE: For five full days. Strand’s legal team seems to be able to keep that part out of the press. After that, the serial killer story took over. ALEX: Did Strand offer any kind of explanation? LAWRENCE: You’ll have to talk to him. JUNE: After he got back, we’d already taken… what did the lawyer call it? A-an adversarial position by then. ALEX: Okay, um, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Do you think you might forward a sample of Coralee’s handwriting for me to take a look at? JUNE: Yes, of course. ALEX: Great, thank you. We had a handwriting expert take a look at six samples of Coralee’s writing and printing and compare them to the postcard. The results were inconclusive. I’ve asked my producer Nic to look into what it might take to hire an investigator to dig into Coralee Strand’s case. More on that next week. But for now, we’re left with one big question. What makes a worried husband disappear for five days right after his wife’s vanishes? Next week, I ask Strand that question directly. But first, there’s one more thing.ALEX: Hello? Mrs. Jacobson? Are you okay with me recording this conversation? JUNE: Yes, of course. I was speaking with Mrs. Jacobson, guiding her through the scanning and emailing of her daughter’s handwriting samples when she offered some additional information regarding Strand’s disappearance and what followed.JUNE: It’s hard to say. T-there were so many things that seemed confusing at the time. ALEX: Well, why do you think he disappeared for five days? JUNE: I have no idea what he was thinking, but it wasn’t long after he got back that the police turned their attention to the highway serial killer and by then we had Charlie to worry about. ALEX: Charlie? Charlie Strand? JUNE: Yes. ALEX: W-what happened with Charlie? JUNE: She showed up on our doorstep a couple of days after her father got back, asked if she could stay with us for a while. ALEX: Did she say why? Or what happened? JUNE: She wouldn’t talk about it, she told us she didn’t have a father anymore. Next week, I’ll be speaking with Strand about those missing five days and a lot more. Plus, a new Black tape case takes us to a real live exorcism. It’s the Black Tapes podcast, I’m Alex Reagan, we’ll be back again next week.The Black Tapes Podcast is a National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale production, recorded in Seattle and Vancouver. Produced by Nic Silver, mixed and engineered by Alan Williams and Samantha Paulson. Edited by Nic Silver and Alex Reagan. Executive producers Paul Bae and Terry Miles.