February 20, 2023 • 28 mins
When Esther flees New York, she inadvertently ignites a media firestorm. Reporters and TV producers rush to tell the story of the Ivy League imposter: the so-called “brazen brunette beauty” and “klepto brainiac.” Unaware of the media circus, Esther holes up in motels across the country – until the story catches up with her.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin previously on Deep Cover. I think I got a
message from Columbia Security saying they wanted to talk to me,
and I was like, oh shit. I remember the chief
asking me, like, how far are you going to take this?
(00:37):
It said chief, until I can interview Esther Reid, I
can't clear this tip. I went to get a U
wall truck because I had decided I'm freaking getting out
of here. So I went upstairs, packed the quickest bag
I could pack, grab my dogs, called a cab, and left.
Would you do it to U haul? Left it here?
(00:59):
That's kind of crazy. I know, all of it's crazy.
I was scared. When Esther fled New York City. She
didn't get very far. Basically, she just crossed the Hudson
River and stopped a few miles away in Secaucus, New Jersey,
got a hotel room. She was with her two little
(01:21):
shitsus Pouchin and Odie, and they were just looking at
her the way dogs do, as if to say, what's
the plan? Boss? Like, what is going to your brain
when you're in that hotel room in Jersey? I have
no idea? I mean, that was absolute panic. I knew
I needed to get a flight and so I remember
(01:43):
I needed vet certificates for my dogs to fly. So
she finds a vet who basically certifies that these dogs
don't have rabies or whatever, and then she comes up
with a plan. She decides to fly to Ohio and
then a few weeks later catches a ride to Chicago
using a ride share that she found on craigslist. Your
(02:04):
life is like one series of ridiculous like yes, logistical
challenges like your you are on the run at this point,
that is, that's yes. I didn't necessarily view myself. I
was still hoping that it wouldn't be a big deal
and they would might be over it. So I didn't
realize I was on the run. I just kept thinking, like, well,
(02:26):
come on, I mean you you you left the U
haul in front of your apartment and I left your
apartment like you. I mean, at that moment, I was,
but I was I should did. I knew I was
on the run, but I still was thinking I can
avoid truffle, Like if I could just like lay low,
this could work out. I'm an undying optimist, and so
(02:49):
I really did think, like maybe they won't be able
to find me, just that it would become a cold case,
and like they would stop devoting resources to it and
it might have become a cold case after all. At
this point, Esther was just a missing person of interest
in a possible case of identity theft and finding her
it was all about resources, like how badly do you
(03:12):
want to find her? And unless her case became some
kind of top priority, which it currently wasn't, well, then
there wouldn't be much of a man hunt or woman
hunt as it were. As far as Esther was concerned,
she was relatively safe. Meanwhile, down in Traveler's Rest, South Carolina,
(03:32):
John Campbell was kind of at a loss. He was
supposed to be solving the case of Brooke Henson, who'd
vanished seven years before. It was now two thousand and six,
and this whole other thing with Esther read up at Columbia.
It was just a lead that John was chasing down,
a tip, a kind of side trail that he'd been
jogging down in the hopes of finding Brooke or at
(03:56):
least a clue as to what had happened to Brooke.
But Esther's trail was getting cold. She fled New York
City in the summer, and by a Christmas time, six
months later, John still had no idea where Esther was,
and he was no closer to solving the Brook Henson
case either. John's boss wanted an update. We had a
(04:16):
new chief of police, and he came in and he said,
where are we on this Henson tip thing? I said,
We're dead in the water. I mean, she didn't show
up to give a DNA sample like she said she would.
She hasn't been back to her apartment. Nobody knows, she
hadn't been to class, Nobody knows where she went. She's
in the wind, she's gone. John's boss, the chief, had
(04:36):
shared some information about the case with the local press,
but apparently they wanted more details. So the chief tells
John opened the file and let the press have whatever
they want. And I said, all right, are you sure?
Are you kidding because we'd never done that, and he's like, yeah,
we're an open book. And I said, okay, heyman, he's
(04:57):
the chief. The Travelers Rest Police Department shared what they
knew with the local press, told them that there was
this impostor who'd stolen Brooks identity and gotten into an
eye Vy league school, and for the first time revealed
her name publicly. Esther Reid. We opened the boat and
(05:19):
we told him everything we had, and man, they took
that and ran. This decision to open the file turns
out to be a huge deal. John shares the evidence
in the case history, but also his espionage theories, even
if some of those theories were half baked, and I
should note not everyone in law enforcement was buying into
(05:41):
John's ideas. Over at the Secret Service, Don Long was skeptical,
but the Secret Service wasn't talking to the media John was.
The point is, once John started talking, he said something
in motion, a media juggernaut. Pretty Soon everyone would know
about Esther Reid, and finding her would become more than
(06:03):
just a priority for law enforcement. It would become a
reality TV show of sorts, a content test to see
who could find her first. I'm Jake Albert and this
(06:29):
is Deep Cover Season three, Never Seen Again, Episode four,
(06:58):
a very sophisticated gale. So the local TV station down
in Greenville, South Carolina runs its story and right away
John Campbell's phone rings. On the other end was a
guy named Tom Colbert from California. Tom was a former
(07:19):
news guy, used to work for CBS and Paramount, but
now he had his own business. He worked closely with
local journalists. They would feed him tips and then Tom
would pass the best ones along to the big media outlets.
Tom charged a finder's fee, of course, and he gave
a cut to the local news guys. He was basically
a middleman and Tom he was good at his job.
(07:42):
Some people called him the gem hunter because Tom he
found the gems. Anyway, Tom gets this tip from a
TV reporter in Greenville about the Esther read story, and
right away he calls John Campbell to get his take
on Esther. He talked about the potential for being a
(08:02):
Russian spy going to various universities under cover. It had
so many interest elements, the fact that it could be
involved with espionage. That wasn't clear to me until John
really laid it out and said, no, I really think
this gal has a different name for other reasons. I
(08:23):
thought it was maybe just for money, trying to get
into bank accounts now, and he said, no, this is
a very sophisticated gal. This was John's pet theory that
Esther was a spy. He stressed the fact that Esther
had dated several military men, including two West Point cadets
and a Naval Academy midshipman and that she seemed to
(08:43):
be a master at creating aliases and then vanishing. Tom
was intrigued. I mean, there are a lot of people
stealing names, but something dealing with espionage spies, that was
a fascinating, fascinating development and opened my eyes. Tom jumped
on the story. Within a day or so, he sent
(09:06):
out a press release. It told the story of how
John Campbell was tracking down a mysterious con artist. It
quotes John as saying she's incredibly bright, articulate, and a conniving,
manipulative person, almost to the point of being pathological. The
press release also says that Esther seduced several military men.
(09:27):
It adds quote Reid allegedly has been funded through mysterious
money orders for years from sources in Germany and Italy.
She has told lovers she is a professional chess player.
The press release had a long list of contacts, including
John Campbell, Esther's sister, and also the Fleischmann's, her ex
(09:48):
boyfriend's parents. Three days later, Esther was on the front
page of the New York Post. The banner headline was klepto,
brainiac id thief scams colleges. The article heralded her as
a brazen brunette beauty. It included comments from both John
Campbell and Ian's Fred Fleischman suggesting that Esther was a spy.
(10:14):
The article ended with a quote from John saying, the
one million dollar question is where she turns up next?
And is who? It was kind of like the old
children's game Where in the world is Carmen San Diego,
only a version that was spy themed and a bit
sexed up. The article had some facts and a lot
(10:34):
of conjecture. It made for great reading. That's what really
set off a firestorm of the phone ringing. John suddenly
had to balance being a detective, a spokesman, and a
dad because he had a toddler at the time. I
have a little office in the police department, and I'd
(10:56):
be there for hours and hours an hour, So my
son's like on the floor playing under my desk, playing
with his hot wheels in the hallway and stuff like
that while I'm on the phone with the press. For
a while, it basically became a full time job for
so anybody they call, I talked to anybody they could
get me on the phone, and I talked for days straight.
(11:17):
The phone rang for days NonStop from reporters, and when
people couldn't get ahold of me, they just published whatever
somebody else, whatever I told somebody else. There's all kinds
of things that say, John Campbell said, my idn't even
talked to that guy in my whole life, not even
who that is. You know. As the newspaper clippings piled up,
things got serious. A grand jury formally indicted Esther. This
(11:41):
happened in September of two thousand and seven, roughly a
year after Esther fled. New York City prosecutors charged her
with fraud and identity theft. They said Esther fraudulently obtained
a copy of Brooks birth certificate, applied for US passport,
and took out more than one hundred thousand dollars in
student loans. And with this indictment, Esther officially became a
(12:06):
federal fugitive. Meanwhile, forty eight hours the CBS News Show
picked up the story. They decided to do a full
hour segment on Esther Reid. In fact, they ultimately did
two segments, and I want to share some excerpts from
both of them. Capture the Queen to Night's forty eight
Hours mystery, the producers hired a professional sleuth to track
(12:31):
Esther down. My name is Stephen Rombaum. I'm a private
investigator and I am currently hunting for us to read.
Over the course of his career, Stephen had chased after
some pretty serious bad guys, including Nazi war criminals. Now
Stephen told viewers about his latest target. This is a
woman that completely reinvented herself from being a chubby Montana
(12:55):
high school dropout to an attractive IVY League co ed
able to conn her way into Harvard, into Columbia, going
to military balls at West Point. She is certainly not
above using her feminine wiles to get whatever she wants.
So Stephen the private eye, he hits the road looking
for Esther. It's pretty wild, actually, because at this point
(13:19):
there's the official law enforcement search for Esther Reid being
led by the Secret Service and John Campbell, and then
there's the made for TV version of this search being
led by Stephen and along with him one of the
show's hosts, Peter van Zand how do you begin, Well,
we begin by finding out everything we can about her background,
(13:39):
her alias's, places, where she's lived. Rombaum heads first to
Esther's last known address, the Manhattan apartment where she was
living as Brooke Henson, and then we see Steve Rombaum
going through Esther's abandoned possessions. Thank goodness, Sir, Landlord saved
(14:00):
all of this. This is just extraordinary. It's everything a
private eye could hope for, a treasure trove of documents
from Esther's life as Brooke. She left behind her credit
card bills, her bank statements, her phone bills, countless countless leads.
So Steve is gathering some pretty important clues about where
(14:22):
Esther might be. Good old fashioned detective work. But there
are other moments when the story feels pure tabloid and
it's less about financial crimes and more about Esther's personal life.
Here's the show's host, Peter van Zant again, and some
of her targets were the men she was dating. How
many men do you think esther Rita has gone through.
(14:43):
I'm aware of about a dozen. They talked about her
like she was some sort of femme fatal, and that's
kind of the vibe throughout these two episodes. The producers
pick up on the whole spy theory and run with it.
They get a hold of some instant messages between Esther
and one of her West Point boyfriends. In the exchange,
(15:03):
the boyfriend says that he's been studying maps and timelines
in his military science class. Esther wrote back, I want
to see it when you're finished. Steve the Private Eye
gives his analysis on this too. This is a classic
method of espionage, using sex and using intimacy to get
(15:25):
this sort of information. I mean, this is Mata Hari.
One oh one, Mata Hari. I want to dive into
this reference for a sec Mata Hari was an exotic
dancer who was accused of being a spy during World
War One. In old photos, she's dressed as a belly
(15:46):
dancer wearing a jewel encrusted bra. Doesn't look a thing
like Esther Reid, and yet there's some really interesting parallels.
Mata Hari was actually a Dutch woman named Margarita Zella.
She too was running from a troubled past. Parents divorced,
mom died. She was left with relatives she didn't care for,
(16:08):
so she invented herself. Told some she was a Javanese
princess and others that she was an Indian temple dancer.
During the war, a French intelligence officer became convinced that
she was a spy. There wasn't a ton of proof,
but in the end she was executed by a firing squad.
(16:33):
Since then, she's become a legend, a stock character, like
the mean stepmother or the evil CEO. And the thing
about stock characters is we believe in them, We look
for them, and we call them out even when the
facts don't add up. Hello, yeah, oh great, Okay, I
(16:59):
think we're destinesses. We're going oh if if not, I'm
not reducing. I reached out to Steve Rambaum, the Private Eye.
I was still wondering about the whole spy thing. Like
back then, how serious were people in the media and
in law enforcement about this espionage theory. They were concerned that,
(17:23):
you know, maybe she's a spy for Iran, Maybe she's
a spy for this, you know, Russian. Both of those
things actually came up. I'll confess I left, but not
everybody laughed. Steve says he never really brought into the
idea that Esther was a spy or a master criminal
of any kind. I mean, you know, this was not
(17:46):
a young female Bernie Madoff who stole millions. You're talking
about defrauding the scholarship system and getting a fake birth
certificate and building a false identity. I can introduce you
to probably ten thousand people who've done who've done the
(18:07):
same or worse. So I asked him, what was it
then about the ester Reid case that the media was
so keen on number one, she was a young female,
that they were able to make it look like she
was one step ahead of the combined investigative forces of America,
which I have to tell you wasn't true because federal
(18:29):
agents were working on bigger cases and didn't think that
this was, you know, a major national security event until
everybody made it look like that. And then there was
the spy story and the whole perception that she was
a fem fatal, not to mention the fact that she
had conned the ivy leagues. Basically, as far as I
could tell, it all just made for good TV. Steve
(18:52):
told me that he didn't want to bad mouth the
media because of all the good he's seen it do.
I'll be very honest. I'm not going to be hypocritical
and deny this. I've worked with the media dozens of
times to get important and urgent matters, you know, into
the public eye and kind of nudge law enforcement. These
(19:12):
were cases where kids had gone missing, or where Steve
is tracking down alleged war criminals, important matters that had
been overlooked, stories that Steve felt should be at the
top of the media food chain. I think moving Esther
Reid to the top of the food chain was, you know,
a weed bit cynical. Wow. Do you feel like you
(19:35):
were a part of that at all? Sure? Sure, I
mean I was working a case. I did not say
anything during that case to anyone that was in the
slightest bit exaggeration. We'll be right back. When Steve Rombaumb
(20:06):
was filming for forty eight hours and criss cross the
country tracking down Esther Reid, he remained confident in his mission.
I would be very surprised the Freedom Finder. If I
didn't genuinely believe that, I wouldn't be daring enough to
say it on television. But by the time the first
forty eight hours special aired in December of two thousand
(20:27):
and seven, Steve hadn't founder and the story, which is
getting bigger and bigger. Around the same time, the legendary
TV show America's Most Wanted also ran a story on
Esther and some other female fugitives too. They called the
episode Bad Girls. America's Most Wanted was a big deal
(20:48):
back then, especially if you worked in law enforcement. Like
if you got your case on that show, it greatly
increased the chances that you'd catch your fugitive because so
many people watched the show and then called in with tips.
When I spoke with Don Long, the Secret Service agent,
he told me he was actually surprised that Esther made
(21:08):
it onto the show, which makes sense to me. I mean,
she was not a domestic terrorist, or a serial killer
or a bank robber, but be that as it may,
she was now on everyone's radar. The fact that this
was highlighted on America's Most Wanted certainly raised or elevated
(21:28):
the level here within the Secret Service. It also enlightened
me on some investigative steps I could take to highlight
the case even more within my own agency. Don talked
to his superiors at headquarters in DC and made the
case that Esther should also be on the Secret Services
Most Wanted list. They agreed and put her on the list.
(21:52):
The way Don saw it, he had a job to do,
and this helped him do it. The more people that
are looking for your suspect, the better chance you have
of finding them. Esther's face and her story were now everywhere,
and the FEDS had made it clear capturing her was
officially a priority. So you're probably wondering at this point
(22:15):
what was Esther doing while all this was happening, Like,
how was she processing this media circus? Well, the short
answer is it took a while for the circus to
get underway. Esther had actually been on the run for
a year and a half by the time the first
forty eight Hours story ran, and during all this time
leading up to that, Esther cut off all contact with
(22:38):
her old friends. Did you stay in touch with anyone
during that time? No? Absolutely, nobody knew where I was
at nothing. Did you make new friends? You were just
like solo with my babies? Yes, with two dogs. Wow,
(22:58):
that's a long time to be solo. Yes, it was
a very very bad period. Esther stayed at cheap rentals
and motels, mainly in the Midwest. She says she squeaked
by for money. She had this little trick where she
bought clothing at J. C. Penny on sale and then
found a way to return the merchandise for the full price.
(23:21):
She says she was just taking advantage of a loophole
in the system. I think it's safe to say it
was a scam. During this time, she pretty much became
a shut in. She says she was laying low hoping
this would all just blow over. And to be honest,
this is a part of her story that I didn't
fully get, Like, wasn't she googling herself? Part of it
(23:43):
may have been denial, but Astor also told me that
she worried that by inputting certain search terms about herself
that she might tip off the authorities and give away
her location, so she didn't do it. Then one day,
she was up in Michigan staying at a motel. She
was in her room with her dogs watching TV when
(24:05):
a very brief segment on Fox News came on featuring her.
And I remember seeing my picture and it's saying Esther
read and I was like, oh shit, like literally, oh shit,
this isn't going to go away. Esther says his segment
was short, but it told her enough. Told her that
(24:28):
the authorities were looking for her, and they had started
connecting the dots, uncovering at least some of the aliases
that she'd used. I knew they would probably be able
to figure out that I wasn't Brookentson, but I didn't
think they would connect Brookentson to Esther read. Up until then,
she had believed that her aliases would help keep her safe.
(24:49):
She held on to all of her paperwork, all of
her fraudulently obtained ideas. Yeah, I hold on to everything
you had, your like Jason Bourne wallet with all your IDs. Yes,
it was hidden in the bottom of my trunk right,
always kept it. But she realized that none of that
would keep her safe any longer. In fact, those ideas
(25:09):
were now a liability. Immediately, I went and cut up
every piece of idea I had on me, and I
cut it all up like the little scissors, into tiny
little pieces and flushed them. Wow, you were really pretty well.
I thought like they might be coming right this moment,
you know, like I don't handle panic very well. Clearly,
(25:30):
there were so many instances where Esther could have come clean,
turned herself in quietly without much fanfare, and maybe straightened
everything out. But not now. So you cut all these
up and flushed them on the toilet. And then what
I think? Then? I just thought on the bed and panicked.
(25:57):
Esther didn't know the full extent of it or how
it had happened. But this thing, this story, it had
grown building momentum like a tsunami. A local TV report
ring Greenville, South Carolina, had tipped off Tom Colbert, the
gem Hunter, who then brought it to the national media.
Before long, it was a newspaper cover story, then fought
(26:20):
her for cable news, and finally a full blown hour
on one of America's best known TV shows. There were
no longer any easy outs, no explaining this away. Yeah, sure,
maybe she was no Bernie made off. And yeah, perhaps
the espionage theory was just that a theory, but at
(26:40):
this point didn't matter. The public was now hooked, and
so were people in positions of power. They were all
looking for the mystery girl, the Mata Hari and Esther
she was it. The question now was there any place
left for her to hide? Next time on deep Cover,
(27:04):
I mean, we were chasing her around the country, and
you know, we would look each other out. How are
we not finding this young girl who you know, stole
some identities. But good grief, guys, we're the federal government here.
We ought to be able to do that. Deep Cover
(27:35):
is produced by Amy Gaines and Jacob Smith. It's edited
by Karen shakurge 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 Weissberg.
(27:58):
I'm Jake Calbern s
Pushkin previously on Deep Cover. I think I got a
message from Columbia Security saying they wanted to talk to me,
and I was like, oh shit. I remember the chief
asking me, like, how far are you going to take this?
(00:37):
It said chief, until I can interview Esther Reid, I
can't clear this tip. I went to get a U
wall truck because I had decided I'm freaking getting out
of here. So I went upstairs, packed the quickest bag
I could pack, grab my dogs, called a cab, and left.
Would you do it to U haul? Left it here?
(00:59):
That's kind of crazy. I know, all of it's crazy.
I was scared. When Esther fled New York City. She
didn't get very far. Basically, she just crossed the Hudson
River and stopped a few miles away in Secaucus, New Jersey,
got a hotel room. She was with her two little
(01:21):
shitsus Pouchin and Odie, and they were just looking at
her the way dogs do, as if to say, what's
the plan? Boss? Like, what is going to your brain
when you're in that hotel room in Jersey? I have
no idea? I mean, that was absolute panic. I knew
I needed to get a flight and so I remember
(01:43):
I needed vet certificates for my dogs to fly. So
she finds a vet who basically certifies that these dogs
don't have rabies or whatever, and then she comes up
with a plan. She decides to fly to Ohio and
then a few weeks later catches a ride to Chicago
using a ride share that she found on craigslist. Your
(02:04):
life is like one series of ridiculous like yes, logistical
challenges like your you are on the run at this point,
that is, that's yes. I didn't necessarily view myself. I
was still hoping that it wouldn't be a big deal
and they would might be over it. So I didn't
realize I was on the run. I just kept thinking, like, well,
(02:26):
come on, I mean you you you left the U
haul in front of your apartment and I left your
apartment like you. I mean, at that moment, I was,
but I was I should did. I knew I was
on the run, but I still was thinking I can
avoid truffle, Like if I could just like lay low,
this could work out. I'm an undying optimist, and so
(02:49):
I really did think, like maybe they won't be able
to find me, just that it would become a cold case,
and like they would stop devoting resources to it and
it might have become a cold case after all. At
this point, Esther was just a missing person of interest
in a possible case of identity theft and finding her
it was all about resources, like how badly do you
(03:12):
want to find her? And unless her case became some
kind of top priority, which it currently wasn't, well, then
there wouldn't be much of a man hunt or woman
hunt as it were. As far as Esther was concerned,
she was relatively safe. Meanwhile, down in Traveler's Rest, South Carolina,
(03:32):
John Campbell was kind of at a loss. He was
supposed to be solving the case of Brooke Henson, who'd
vanished seven years before. It was now two thousand and six,
and this whole other thing with Esther read up at Columbia.
It was just a lead that John was chasing down,
a tip, a kind of side trail that he'd been
jogging down in the hopes of finding Brooke or at
(03:56):
least a clue as to what had happened to Brooke.
But Esther's trail was getting cold. She fled New York
City in the summer, and by a Christmas time, six
months later, John still had no idea where Esther was,
and he was no closer to solving the Brook Henson
case either. John's boss wanted an update. We had a
(04:16):
new chief of police, and he came in and he said,
where are we on this Henson tip thing? I said,
We're dead in the water. I mean, she didn't show
up to give a DNA sample like she said she would.
She hasn't been back to her apartment. Nobody knows, she
hadn't been to class, Nobody knows where she went. She's
in the wind, she's gone. John's boss, the chief, had
(04:36):
shared some information about the case with the local press,
but apparently they wanted more details. So the chief tells
John opened the file and let the press have whatever
they want. And I said, all right, are you sure?
Are you kidding because we'd never done that, and he's like, yeah,
we're an open book. And I said, okay, heyman, he's
(04:57):
the chief. The Travelers Rest Police Department shared what they
knew with the local press, told them that there was
this impostor who'd stolen Brooks identity and gotten into an
eye Vy league school, and for the first time revealed
her name publicly. Esther Reid. We opened the boat and
(05:19):
we told him everything we had, and man, they took
that and ran. This decision to open the file turns
out to be a huge deal. John shares the evidence
in the case history, but also his espionage theories, even
if some of those theories were half baked, and I
should note not everyone in law enforcement was buying into
(05:41):
John's ideas. Over at the Secret Service, Don Long was skeptical,
but the Secret Service wasn't talking to the media John was.
The point is, once John started talking, he said something
in motion, a media juggernaut. Pretty Soon everyone would know
about Esther Reid, and finding her would become more than
(06:03):
just a priority for law enforcement. It would become a
reality TV show of sorts, a content test to see
who could find her first. I'm Jake Albert and this
(06:29):
is Deep Cover Season three, Never Seen Again, Episode four,
(06:58):
a very sophisticated gale. So the local TV station down
in Greenville, South Carolina runs its story and right away
John Campbell's phone rings. On the other end was a
guy named Tom Colbert from California. Tom was a former
(07:19):
news guy, used to work for CBS and Paramount, but
now he had his own business. He worked closely with
local journalists. They would feed him tips and then Tom
would pass the best ones along to the big media outlets.
Tom charged a finder's fee, of course, and he gave
a cut to the local news guys. He was basically
a middleman and Tom he was good at his job.
(07:42):
Some people called him the gem hunter because Tom he
found the gems. Anyway, Tom gets this tip from a
TV reporter in Greenville about the Esther read story, and
right away he calls John Campbell to get his take
on Esther. He talked about the potential for being a
(08:02):
Russian spy going to various universities under cover. It had
so many interest elements, the fact that it could be
involved with espionage. That wasn't clear to me until John
really laid it out and said, no, I really think
this gal has a different name for other reasons. I
(08:23):
thought it was maybe just for money, trying to get
into bank accounts now, and he said, no, this is
a very sophisticated gal. This was John's pet theory that
Esther was a spy. He stressed the fact that Esther
had dated several military men, including two West Point cadets
and a Naval Academy midshipman and that she seemed to
(08:43):
be a master at creating aliases and then vanishing. Tom
was intrigued. I mean, there are a lot of people
stealing names, but something dealing with espionage spies, that was
a fascinating, fascinating development and opened my eyes. Tom jumped
on the story. Within a day or so, he sent
(09:06):
out a press release. It told the story of how
John Campbell was tracking down a mysterious con artist. It
quotes John as saying she's incredibly bright, articulate, and a conniving,
manipulative person, almost to the point of being pathological. The
press release also says that Esther seduced several military men.
(09:27):
It adds quote Reid allegedly has been funded through mysterious
money orders for years from sources in Germany and Italy.
She has told lovers she is a professional chess player.
The press release had a long list of contacts, including
John Campbell, Esther's sister, and also the Fleischmann's, her ex
(09:48):
boyfriend's parents. Three days later, Esther was on the front
page of the New York Post. The banner headline was klepto,
brainiac id thief scams colleges. The article heralded her as
a brazen brunette beauty. It included comments from both John
Campbell and Ian's Fred Fleischman suggesting that Esther was a spy.
(10:14):
The article ended with a quote from John saying, the
one million dollar question is where she turns up next?
And is who? It was kind of like the old
children's game Where in the world is Carmen San Diego,
only a version that was spy themed and a bit
sexed up. The article had some facts and a lot
(10:34):
of conjecture. It made for great reading. That's what really
set off a firestorm of the phone ringing. John suddenly
had to balance being a detective, a spokesman, and a
dad because he had a toddler at the time. I
have a little office in the police department, and I'd
(10:56):
be there for hours and hours an hour, So my
son's like on the floor playing under my desk, playing
with his hot wheels in the hallway and stuff like
that while I'm on the phone with the press. For
a while, it basically became a full time job for
so anybody they call, I talked to anybody they could
get me on the phone, and I talked for days straight.
(11:17):
The phone rang for days NonStop from reporters, and when
people couldn't get ahold of me, they just published whatever
somebody else, whatever I told somebody else. There's all kinds
of things that say, John Campbell said, my idn't even
talked to that guy in my whole life, not even
who that is. You know. As the newspaper clippings piled up,
things got serious. A grand jury formally indicted Esther. This
(11:41):
happened in September of two thousand and seven, roughly a
year after Esther fled. New York City prosecutors charged her
with fraud and identity theft. They said Esther fraudulently obtained
a copy of Brooks birth certificate, applied for US passport,
and took out more than one hundred thousand dollars in
student loans. And with this indictment, Esther officially became a
(12:06):
federal fugitive. Meanwhile, forty eight hours the CBS News Show
picked up the story. They decided to do a full
hour segment on Esther Reid. In fact, they ultimately did
two segments, and I want to share some excerpts from
both of them. Capture the Queen to Night's forty eight
Hours mystery, the producers hired a professional sleuth to track
(12:31):
Esther down. My name is Stephen Rombaum. I'm a private
investigator and I am currently hunting for us to read.
Over the course of his career, Stephen had chased after
some pretty serious bad guys, including Nazi war criminals. Now
Stephen told viewers about his latest target. This is a
woman that completely reinvented herself from being a chubby Montana
(12:55):
high school dropout to an attractive IVY League co ed
able to conn her way into Harvard, into Columbia, going
to military balls at West Point. She is certainly not
above using her feminine wiles to get whatever she wants.
So Stephen the private eye, he hits the road looking
for Esther. It's pretty wild, actually, because at this point
(13:19):
there's the official law enforcement search for Esther Reid being
led by the Secret Service and John Campbell, and then
there's the made for TV version of this search being
led by Stephen and along with him one of the
show's hosts, Peter van Zand how do you begin, Well,
we begin by finding out everything we can about her background,
(13:39):
her alias's, places, where she's lived. Rombaum heads first to
Esther's last known address, the Manhattan apartment where she was
living as Brooke Henson, and then we see Steve Rombaum
going through Esther's abandoned possessions. Thank goodness, Sir, Landlord saved
(14:00):
all of this. This is just extraordinary. It's everything a
private eye could hope for, a treasure trove of documents
from Esther's life as Brooke. She left behind her credit
card bills, her bank statements, her phone bills, countless countless leads.
So Steve is gathering some pretty important clues about where
(14:22):
Esther might be. Good old fashioned detective work. But there
are other moments when the story feels pure tabloid and
it's less about financial crimes and more about Esther's personal life.
Here's the show's host, Peter van Zant again, and some
of her targets were the men she was dating. How
many men do you think esther Rita has gone through.
(14:43):
I'm aware of about a dozen. They talked about her
like she was some sort of femme fatal, and that's
kind of the vibe throughout these two episodes. The producers
pick up on the whole spy theory and run with it.
They get a hold of some instant messages between Esther
and one of her West Point boyfriends. In the exchange,
(15:03):
the boyfriend says that he's been studying maps and timelines
in his military science class. Esther wrote back, I want
to see it when you're finished. Steve the Private Eye
gives his analysis on this too. This is a classic
method of espionage, using sex and using intimacy to get
(15:25):
this sort of information. I mean, this is Mata Hari.
One oh one, Mata Hari. I want to dive into
this reference for a sec Mata Hari was an exotic
dancer who was accused of being a spy during World
War One. In old photos, she's dressed as a belly
(15:46):
dancer wearing a jewel encrusted bra. Doesn't look a thing
like Esther Reid, and yet there's some really interesting parallels.
Mata Hari was actually a Dutch woman named Margarita Zella.
She too was running from a troubled past. Parents divorced,
mom died. She was left with relatives she didn't care for,
(16:08):
so she invented herself. Told some she was a Javanese
princess and others that she was an Indian temple dancer.
During the war, a French intelligence officer became convinced that
she was a spy. There wasn't a ton of proof,
but in the end she was executed by a firing squad.
(16:33):
Since then, she's become a legend, a stock character, like
the mean stepmother or the evil CEO. And the thing
about stock characters is we believe in them, We look
for them, and we call them out even when the
facts don't add up. Hello, yeah, oh great, Okay, I
(16:59):
think we're destinesses. We're going oh if if not, I'm
not reducing. I reached out to Steve Rambaum, the Private Eye.
I was still wondering about the whole spy thing. Like
back then, how serious were people in the media and
in law enforcement about this espionage theory. They were concerned that,
(17:23):
you know, maybe she's a spy for Iran, Maybe she's
a spy for this, you know, Russian. Both of those
things actually came up. I'll confess I left, but not
everybody laughed. Steve says he never really brought into the
idea that Esther was a spy or a master criminal
of any kind. I mean, you know, this was not
(17:46):
a young female Bernie Madoff who stole millions. You're talking
about defrauding the scholarship system and getting a fake birth
certificate and building a false identity. I can introduce you
to probably ten thousand people who've done who've done the
(18:07):
same or worse. So I asked him, what was it
then about the ester Reid case that the media was
so keen on number one, she was a young female,
that they were able to make it look like she
was one step ahead of the combined investigative forces of America,
which I have to tell you wasn't true because federal
(18:29):
agents were working on bigger cases and didn't think that
this was, you know, a major national security event until
everybody made it look like that. And then there was
the spy story and the whole perception that she was
a fem fatal, not to mention the fact that she
had conned the ivy leagues. Basically, as far as I
could tell, it all just made for good TV. Steve
(18:52):
told me that he didn't want to bad mouth the
media because of all the good he's seen it do.
I'll be very honest. I'm not going to be hypocritical
and deny this. I've worked with the media dozens of
times to get important and urgent matters, you know, into
the public eye and kind of nudge law enforcement. These
(19:12):
were cases where kids had gone missing, or where Steve
is tracking down alleged war criminals, important matters that had
been overlooked, stories that Steve felt should be at the
top of the media food chain. I think moving Esther
Reid to the top of the food chain was, you know,
a weed bit cynical. Wow. Do you feel like you
(19:35):
were a part of that at all? Sure? Sure, I
mean I was working a case. I did not say
anything during that case to anyone that was in the
slightest bit exaggeration. We'll be right back. When Steve Rombaumb
(20:06):
was filming for forty eight hours and criss cross the
country tracking down Esther Reid, he remained confident in his mission.
I would be very surprised the Freedom Finder. If I
didn't genuinely believe that, I wouldn't be daring enough to
say it on television. But by the time the first
forty eight hours special aired in December of two thousand
(20:27):
and seven, Steve hadn't founder and the story, which is
getting bigger and bigger. Around the same time, the legendary
TV show America's Most Wanted also ran a story on
Esther and some other female fugitives too. They called the
episode Bad Girls. America's Most Wanted was a big deal
(20:48):
back then, especially if you worked in law enforcement. Like
if you got your case on that show, it greatly
increased the chances that you'd catch your fugitive because so
many people watched the show and then called in with tips.
When I spoke with Don Long, the Secret Service agent,
he told me he was actually surprised that Esther made
(21:08):
it onto the show, which makes sense to me. I mean,
she was not a domestic terrorist, or a serial killer
or a bank robber, but be that as it may,
she was now on everyone's radar. The fact that this
was highlighted on America's Most Wanted certainly raised or elevated
(21:28):
the level here within the Secret Service. It also enlightened
me on some investigative steps I could take to highlight
the case even more within my own agency. Don talked
to his superiors at headquarters in DC and made the
case that Esther should also be on the Secret Services
Most Wanted list. They agreed and put her on the list.
(21:52):
The way Don saw it, he had a job to do,
and this helped him do it. The more people that
are looking for your suspect, the better chance you have
of finding them. Esther's face and her story were now everywhere,
and the FEDS had made it clear capturing her was
officially a priority. So you're probably wondering at this point
(22:15):
what was Esther doing while all this was happening, Like,
how was she processing this media circus? Well, the short
answer is it took a while for the circus to
get underway. Esther had actually been on the run for
a year and a half by the time the first
forty eight Hours story ran, and during all this time
leading up to that, Esther cut off all contact with
(22:38):
her old friends. Did you stay in touch with anyone
during that time? No? Absolutely, nobody knew where I was
at nothing. Did you make new friends? You were just
like solo with my babies? Yes, with two dogs. Wow,
(22:58):
that's a long time to be solo. Yes, it was
a very very bad period. Esther stayed at cheap rentals
and motels, mainly in the Midwest. She says she squeaked
by for money. She had this little trick where she
bought clothing at J. C. Penny on sale and then
found a way to return the merchandise for the full price.
(23:21):
She says she was just taking advantage of a loophole
in the system. I think it's safe to say it
was a scam. During this time, she pretty much became
a shut in. She says she was laying low hoping
this would all just blow over. And to be honest,
this is a part of her story that I didn't
fully get, Like, wasn't she googling herself? Part of it
(23:43):
may have been denial, but Astor also told me that
she worried that by inputting certain search terms about herself
that she might tip off the authorities and give away
her location, so she didn't do it. Then one day,
she was up in Michigan staying at a motel. She
was in her room with her dogs watching TV when
(24:05):
a very brief segment on Fox News came on featuring her.
And I remember seeing my picture and it's saying Esther
read and I was like, oh shit, like literally, oh shit,
this isn't going to go away. Esther says his segment
was short, but it told her enough. Told her that
(24:28):
the authorities were looking for her, and they had started
connecting the dots, uncovering at least some of the aliases
that she'd used. I knew they would probably be able
to figure out that I wasn't Brookentson, but I didn't
think they would connect Brookentson to Esther read. Up until then,
she had believed that her aliases would help keep her safe.
(24:49):
She held on to all of her paperwork, all of
her fraudulently obtained ideas. Yeah, I hold on to everything
you had, your like Jason Bourne wallet with all your IDs. Yes,
it was hidden in the bottom of my trunk right,
always kept it. But she realized that none of that
would keep her safe any longer. In fact, those ideas
(25:09):
were now a liability. Immediately, I went and cut up
every piece of idea I had on me, and I
cut it all up like the little scissors, into tiny
little pieces and flushed them. Wow, you were really pretty well.
I thought like they might be coming right this moment,
you know, like I don't handle panic very well. Clearly,
(25:30):
there were so many instances where Esther could have come clean,
turned herself in quietly without much fanfare, and maybe straightened
everything out. But not now. So you cut all these
up and flushed them on the toilet. And then what
I think? Then? I just thought on the bed and panicked.
(25:57):
Esther didn't know the full extent of it or how
it had happened. But this thing, this story, it had
grown building momentum like a tsunami. A local TV report
ring Greenville, South Carolina, had tipped off Tom Colbert, the
gem Hunter, who then brought it to the national media.
Before long, it was a newspaper cover story, then fought
(26:20):
her for cable news, and finally a full blown hour
on one of America's best known TV shows. There were
no longer any easy outs, no explaining this away. Yeah, sure,
maybe she was no Bernie made off. And yeah, perhaps
the espionage theory was just that a theory, but at
(26:40):
this point didn't matter. The public was now hooked, and
so were people in positions of power. They were all
looking for the mystery girl, the Mata Hari and Esther
she was it. The question now was there any place
left for her to hide? Next time on deep Cover,
(27:04):
I mean, we were chasing her around the country, and
you know, we would look each other out. How are
we not finding this young girl who you know, stole
some identities. But good grief, guys, we're the federal government here.
We ought to be able to do that. Deep Cover
(27:35):
is produced by Amy Gaines and Jacob Smith. It's edited
by Karen shakurge 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 Weissberg.
(27:58):
I'm Jake Calbern s
Host
Jake Halpern
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