Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder - Ep. 122 | Interview With Twice Kidnapped Survivor | Jan Broberg

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

I sit down with Jan Broberg to hear her story, directly from her. To support/donate and find more information about her foundation, check out all the important links below. The Jan Broberg Foundation  ⁠janbrobergfoundation.org⁠  Donate ⁠ janbrobergfoundation.org/donate⁠  Newsletter Read past issues ⁠janbrobergfoundation.kit.com⁠ Socials Trauma Interrupted (podcast) — Instagram @traumainterruptedpodcast Trauma Interrupted (podcast) — YouTube @TraumaInterrupted Jan Broberg (personal) — Instagram @janibroberg Jan Broberg (personal) — YouTube @janbroberg  Jan Broberg (personal) — TikTok @janbroberg  Jan Broberg Foundation — Instagram @janbrobergfoundation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1974, in the small town of Pocatello, Idaho, 12-year-old Jan Broberg was kidnapped by a man her family knew and trusted, a close family friend, a fellow church member, a man her parents considered family. And two years later, he took her again. And many people know the outline of this story from the Netflix documentary abducted in plain sight, which left millions of viewers asking the same question. How could this possibly happen? And the answer is grooming. Robert Birch told, nicknamed B by the family, didn't just target Jan. He spent years methodically earning the trust, affection, and loyalty of her entire family, positioning himself so deeply inside their lives that by the time the abuse began,

the people who loved Jan most couldn't see what was right in front of them. And that's what makes her story so incredibly important and also incredibly uncomfortable because it wasn't a failure of love. It was a masterclass in manipulation. One that could happen to almost any family. And the documentary told her story in 90 minutes, shaped by strategic editing and framed for shock. But this interview is different,

and this is really why I wanted to sit down with her. Jan is so incredibly lovely and well-spoken, and I just wanted her to be able to tell her story in her way, and she does it beautifully. She walks through how the grooming unfolded step by step and how each member of her family was targeted differently, and how she was abducted twice in how she survived, and how she has spent her life since, making sure other families can recognize what hers couldn't at the time. And today, Jan is an actor, an author, a speaker, and an advocate.

And she produced the Peacock series, A Friend of the Family, based on her family story, and she founded the Jan Broberg Foundation, which supports survivors of childhood abuse on their healing journey and works to educate families and communities on preventing abuse before it happens. And you can learn more and find more resources at the Jan Broberg Foundation.org. But without further ado, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce Jan Broberg in her own words. The proceeds from this ad will be going to the Jan Broberg Foundation. Let's take a quick pause to talk about one of my favorite sponsors and just

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Whether I'm in the gym or running errands or just walking the dogs side. It's really nice to be able to hear what's going on around me. I really appreciate that feature. So they've honestly just become part of my daily routine. The bone conduction headphones are the perfect back-to-school companion. So click the link in the description box or go to buyrecon.com slash kmkBC to get 20% off. Thank you so much to Raycon for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel and let's get back to it. Are you? Good. Thank you so much for being here. Well, I'm very happy to be here.

Chris, thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. And I just, you know, if I'm your first guest here, I feel a lot of pressure. There's no pressure. But really, I'm really, first and foremost, I'm just, I'm a survivor and I'm a mother. And then I'm an actress. I do, that's my, you know, I have a lot of passion there. And I started a foundation for survivors.

It's a survivor-led movement that has three pillars, awareness, community. and justice. And we just want to collect 10 million survivor voices, whether you ever come and do one of our programs, they're free for healing and for, you know, mitigating trauma or teaching, you know, at your school, about grooming, not to the kids, but to the adults, the parents, the educators. We have these programs that fit into prevention and also building a survivor community that has support so healing can happen and then justice trying to get the laws to match the crime. Yes. And that's lacking.

Yeah, holding perpetrators accountable and also having, you know, resources for survivors to heal. And, you know, it's a proven fact that we lose out on a couple million dollars over our lifetimes because of childhood trauma and abuse. So those are the things that we're. working on and we want a lot of people to just know that they're welcome. Come as you are, where you are, and let's heal together, let's advocate together, let's change public policy together, and we need a lot of voices to do that and support. So I'm just honored to tell my

story and be here. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you yet, and we'll get right into your story. Hi, I'm Jan Brobert. My life has been full of a lot of different experiences that have led me to where I am today. I was born in Pocatello, Idaho, small community, knew all of our neighbors, had a wonderful childhood with a wonderful, you know, the neighbors, the congregation, my sisters, my parents. Just I grew up in a lovely, you know, neighborhood, a time of life where you went out on your bikes on Saturday morning with all your friends from the neighborhood. And you went to the park and you went to one person's house for lunch and you came maybe home with all the friends for dinner at yours and nobody ever worried. How big was the community? Probably 25, 30,000 people.

Okay. So Pocatello, Idaho has grown now. It's much bigger. And then you grew up in the LDS community as a LDS church, right? How was that? Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you know. It was wonderful in my community, in my world. It gave a lot of purpose, a lot of service happened through that organization in our various, you know, whether it was the kids group or the, young men's or young women's group when you're kind of a teenager. We had a lot of good activities. We did trips together. We really had a nice time. And my parents were really involved and really active. And they served in all kinds of different leadership organizations. Like my mom was the president of the Relief Society at one time, which is the women's organization. And that's all service

oriented. So that was great to watch her do things. And she'd drag us along. And my dad was also in leadership where he would make sure that on Sunday we took a plate of food to this person and that person. And, you know, my parents were really, they were really service-oriented people. I learned a lot from them. And from that community. It has a really good organized base of support when somebody's in crisis or in need. Yeah. I mean, I'm assuming that means that trust was just there automatically. Automatically. We just grew up trusting everyone around you. And most of our neighbors went to church, even if they didn't attend our church. Most everybody at that time in the world, in that size of a community, they all, because I had friends that were Presbyterian and Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist and also the Greek Orthodox.

I had a couple of friends. And so, and one friend, my friend Lisa, she was a Methodist, you know. So it was like even if you didn't go to the same church, you all kind of felt like you could trust everybody, I guess, because everybody pretty much at that point, you know. Same values, same morals, same sense of service. Yeah, that makes sense. Even the neighbors that moved in a little bit later in my childhood, but, you know, they were from,

I think they were from Iran, and the nicest people, he was a professor at the university, which was just across the street. So Idaho State University was just like right there. And the big mini dome, the big football stadium that's enclosed called the mini-dome, that we watched it being built as kids, you know. Wow.

And so when they moved in, I mean, they bring us, oh gosh, baklava and all these cool things that we'd never eaten before. And I don't know, we were friends with everybody. That's wonderful. And you did feel like you could trust everyone. My parents certainly had an open door policy, you know, and especially when, you know, we met people and they're in your same congregation, you really feel a sense of trust, because it's already meant to be a place.

of trust. Of course. And this was in the late 60s and early 70s at this point. Right. So also, just that kind of time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It was trusting everybody. And really, our home was warm. It was comfortable. But yeah, you felt like you could have people come over. And I mean, some of my greatest memories were in that tiny kitchen, which I had no idea. It was so small. You never do as a kid. Oh my gosh. I went back there. I went back there to face all my fears. on a little, another documentary that's out there on Peacock called A Friend of the Family True Evil. And I was with Andrea Canning. And we went all over to all the places where I had fear.

And when I walked into the kitchen, I'm like, how did we fit a table in here? I mean, literally, it was so small. Anyway, yeah. And my dad, he was a florist. He owned a flower shop. And my dad is an identical twin. And Kitty Corner from the flower shop was Key Bank and Trust, which my uncle, his twin brother, worked at. And so they were famous in Pocatello. They had grown up there.

My mother came from a different part of Idaho, American Falls, Manan, different smaller, even smaller towns. But my dad and my uncle, you know, would get together for lunch. Every day when they'd leave work, they'd go to my grandma's house down, you know, right. I mean, it was like a tradition and they'd spend 30 minutes with their mom and have a little, I don't know, cookies and milk. I don't know what I did. And then dad would be home and we'd have dinner together. I mean, it was a very traditional life, but everybody knew my dad and my uncle. They would walk on their hands to school. And then they played the piano together.

So they would do duets. So in Rotary Club, for example, you know, they're playing duets on the piano and the men are singing from the Rotary Club, you know, songbook. Everybody knew my parents. Being a florist, you meet people on their best days, you know. Somebody's getting married and on their Saturday. days when somebody passes. And my dad knew how to care for people in a really genuine way. Yeah. And people loved him. We had to have two funeral services for him.

Because there's so many people that loved him. There were so many people. Yeah. And we stood there as girls and my mother at the second funeral that was in Pocatello. The other one was in the city where he died and he made an impact there too, you know, even though he was retired. But that was kind of the, I had wonderful parents. And now they're both gone. It's weird. The first interview I've had like this since my mother passed just a few months ago. I'm so sorry for her loss.

I'm so sorry. And she had Alzheimer's. She had Alzheimer's severely. And especially the last couple of years, my dad had passed away in 2018, November of 2018. And he'd already started telling me, your mom has, you know, and my grandmother, her mother. had had it and got to the point where she had to be in a home and would just kind of mumble she'd see you and you know didn't say words anymore and so you know we were all afraid of that so she got her degree in social work and this was after you were already an

adult yeah we're already she's already got all of her girls in school and then she decides I think I should do more with my life you know yeah and that's what she ended up doing and she placed we have I mean through all the boxes I've been going through hundreds of letters and cards and pictures of all the children that either had to be taken out of an abusive home and were put in foster care, but she knew every foster family. She was, they, and many ended up adopting. So about, I didn't know it was as many, but it was like 275 children. Wow. That were, that she helped that process and do the adoptions and all of that and kept in touch.

And people would send her gifts and cards. And, you know, she was very quiet about her success. She was never out front. That wasn't her personality. For my dad and the flower business, he was a creative like me and it's passion. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful?

You know, whatever. He's just very much that kind of personality. And I'm very much like him. I have a pretty good mix. You have grace and elegance and you're extroverted and that's a beautiful combination. Pretty loud and passionate. That's okay.

That's good. Yeah. And I have my two sisters. I have two younger sisters. Yeah, and you're the eldest. I'm the oldest. Two years apart. Yeah.

Then comes Karen. Then comes Susan. Okay. And we all feel the same way about our parents. They were special. Just wonderful, growing up. And did your mom, do you think, did she go into social work because of? I don't know.

Maybe. She never said that, but I know I always felt like my mother carried this kind of, you know, I'm a woman of faith. I'm this person, and how could I have let somebody, you know? And we can talk about all these things. My parents obviously were open books. By the time everybody was ready to tell the story, they all told the truth. And I think that's why it went viral in the first place, because you don't see that all the time.

No. And my parents were so honest. In fact, I have relatives that are like, why didn't you cut that out? You're not such a good person or your mom's so wonderful. and we feel bad. I'm like, I asked them, and they both said, look, if something that we, whether it was a mistake we made or something that we did right,

or how you don't see the predator because they're your best friend, whatever, if people can learn something from our story and see themselves in our story, and that helps them, that's what we want. We want more children to be protected. We want people to see. the groomers, the predators, before they do the worst.

And they were both really willing to tell the truth. Yeah, no, I think the honesty does so much service. All this context matters so much. Yeah, so I feel like she had that little bit to answer that question completely. That little bit of guilt, like I could have, I should have, you know, those things that we do to ourselves in hindsight. And I think that was part of it that she wanted to make sure she made it. impact and that she made a difference in the lives of children. So you have a beautiful childhood happening and then you're around, what was it, 11 or 12 when you meet this other family? Yeah,

we actually met him. We actually met him and his wife and five children at church. And I was nine, almost 10. I was nine and a half. It was the, I don't know, my birthday's in the summer. And we, We had met them, you know, earlier, like maybe six months earlier, but we didn't do our first activity with them until I was right around my 10th birthday. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And when you met them, I'm assuming it was like meeting any other family that just came in.

It was warm. Yeah, it was warm. It was really just so much fun. Yeah. And I have a little diary. I should have brought it because it's falling apart. And I didn't fill it in all the way. I did start, my dad gave it to me. It was just a little diary. And I have the date. He gave it to me in

1971 or two or something running that time period. And there are so many entries about what we did with the Birchstow family. You know, we were all friends. You know, that was the thing that was so remarkable about having them move in. Because their oldest four were boys, but their oldest three boys were almost exactly the same ages as me and my two sisters. So yeah, I was, I was nine. Karen would have been seven. Susan was only five. And he, I think immediately saw the opportunity because we just lived within a block and a half of our two families. And I believe that they identify their next victim or their next subject pretty early on, at least the slow burn of this particular criminal pedophile. But it took almost, what, three years? I mean, and we had done hundreds, hundreds of

activities. How soon after you met them were, what did the friendship start? So really within that, like I said, about six months, we'd met him and seen him at church. And, you know, there was definitely a connection already and, you know, because we're all in the same Sunday school classes with their boys, you know, we're all kind of doing our own little Bible studies and whatever, you know. And I think probably about six months is really right around the time that we had our first major, what I remember, activity. And they had invited, there's a thing we do in the LDS Church encourages families to have a family night. Like once a week, do something with your family at home, together, you know, sing a song,

do an activity, have a lesson, have treats. That was sort of the first thing we did with that family. We had a special and what they did. They invited us to their house. And we sat on the living room floor with a big picnic blanket. And we did dinner on the floor. We sat around. I can't remember we fond d'ed.

And then she was a really good cook. And I remember that the activity was to actually, I think, was to make the cookies. And I still use her recipe to this day. Oh, wow. And I have it in her handwriting. Oh, wow. You know, and there's the chocolate chip cookie recipe. We were very close.

And that was sort of the first memory I have. I'm not sure that was the first activity we did. So was most of those first times together was it all with the family? Oh, yeah. It was just a family gathering. Yes. And that went on for. you know, two years. And sometimes it would be just me and his oldest son, because we were the same

age in school and whatever. We'd sometimes do homework together or whatever. And then eventually, as school started again in the fall, by that fall, you know, after that experience, I swear it was in maybe late spring, early summer, right before my birthday. But by fall, we had done enough things that my dad would go to work early. Like he ran afout, you know, he owned and ran. a flower shop. And so he had to be there early. Whereas this guy, we called him B, by this time, okay? So Bob, they were both named Bob, my dad, and B. And he had a furniture store in town, and it was on the front page of the newspaper, just black and white, but his picture was in it, with a customer sitting on one of the couches. He was the new furniture store owner in town.

So there were so many reasons not to be alarmed, but that's generally how it really is in the real world and especially today. You just don't know that you're sitting and spending time with and growing to love and trust this person who's eventually going to kidnap your daughter. And you don't, they look normal. It's really, that's my message more than anything in telling my story is it looked so normal. You assume the values are the same. You know, you both go to the same church, whatever. I really look back at that whole grooming. Really, it was a grooming process because he was busy getting close to my dad.

You know, they both worked in businesses that were basically his business was a little farther from my dad, my uncle, you know, his twin brother, my uncle Dick. They were real close together. But his was a little farther away, you know, blocks. away, but he'd often just stop in the store and say, let's go to, you know, come on, Bob, let's go lunch, you know, and dad had opened the till and take out a $10 bill and I'll say go to lunch. And he was, he had a plan. Yeah.

But none of us knew that. We just thought we were becoming best friends. And so I did things with all of his children. And then eventually, and my mom really liked his wife, they would do things and be in the same circle of some service thing that they were doing from church or whatever. She was very shy. His wife was very quiet and kind of shy. My mother was reserved, but she wasn't shy. So they got along really well as well. And so, you know, by the time, you know, two years have gone by, I mean, we all consider these guys really our best friends. Now, my best friend, who is still my best

friend to this day, had moved in to the neighborhood around the same time. We were nine. We were both in fifth grade. And she, Caroline, all these years, many, many years, you know, over 50 years, has she been my best friend. And it's interesting because I did a lot with her. And sometimes I can remember her saying, are you, the birth tolls come wait. We're. doing blah, blah, blah, or something. There was always, and there were several other people, some of our friends as kids that were like, you're always doing stuff with them. And I actually found a letter from Elaine Hoffman, who was, they were one block through the block, and then the birchstolds were one more block up the side. And we played with their kids. I didn't really

have anybody my age, but my sister Karen and Susan, they both had really close friends in the Hoffman family, and I found a letter from Elaine Hoffman, and she said, I have to write out my feelings and my thoughts because I'm afraid you'll take it wrong. We feel like we've been replaced by the Birchthold's. You don't spend enough time with us, and we miss you. And it was a really sweet letter, but it was pretty direct. And she said, we just want you to know that we're here, we love you, and we don't know how to kind of get into this inner circle with you and the Birchstoltz. Because Is it really what? He was very methodical.

Looking back, you don't see it as it's happening. But as we look back on the story, he was creating a special relationship with every, with all the family members who really mattered, which was my mother, my father, and me. And also with Karen and Susan, but looking back, you can see how he would sometimes, especially Karen, he would just leave her kind of out. Oh, interesting. Because Karen at age, now 10-ish, was developing. She was becoming a young lady. I was years away from puberty. And Susan was very much like me. She was very tiny. And that was his thing. And he used that in the brainwashing. Looking back, you can see it so clearly. But you don't see it.

When you're in the middle of it, you're thinking, gosh, these guys have a boat. Yeah. They have snowmobiles. They have a trampoline. Right. You know, my dad was a florist. We never went without. But we didn't have extra.

There wasn't a lot of that, you know. We weren't poor. We were medium. And he utilized all of those things. So we went on boating trips, you know, our families together. We went on the snowmobiles and up to a cabin, you know, out in the mountains. and we did a lot of activities with them. And we slept over and slept on the trampoline, you know, with all the kids.

And we'd knock ourselves out playing night games with all the kids in the neighborhood. But then we'd have the sleepover, you know. So nothing about any of it felt false, felt scary. It's like you have to imagine, you know, your sister or brother or somebody in your own family. that you trust so much. You could never see them doing anything nefarious to your child. Yeah. You know, never.

Yeah. And then he also planted in their conversations just, you know, between him and my dad, you know, and he told my dad that he'd had an aunt that he said, oh, yeah, I was just a little kid when I had sex with my aunt, you know, and my dad's like, what? You know, but we don't have the words yet. We don't, I mean, we've heard of my parents said we had heard of a child. child molester, but we had no idea what a pedophile was. We'd never heard the word. And even the FBI agent, our dear friend, who, you know, got involved with this case right from the beginning

and stayed friends with us all through our lives, he said, well, I think it's having a fixation on a child, but I have to go look it up in the manual, you know. And he was a young, new FBI agent. He was also about my dad's age. You know, it's really interesting because you look back and You can see it so clearly. Yeah. But when you're in the middle of it, it looks like somebody you already trust. Yeah. They look like they showed up like family.

They were, we were as close to that family as we were to my Uncle Dick and who my Uncle Dick and Aunt Carolyn, also, the twin brother, had four boys and then a little girl. Just like the Birch told, four boys and then a little girl that came later. And in that, both of those families, we were so close to our cousins. You know, we almost matched them in age, the first oldest three boys. And then, you know, our cousin Kathy came along later and we were taking care of her. She's just a little girl. And so it felt very, it felt natural. Yeah, just routine.

It was just routine. It felt like, oh, this fits. They want to go on another outing for, on this Saturday, up to the American Falls Reservoir and take the boat. And of course we want to go. Yeah. You know, we have pictures. And we're all together.

Yeah. I mean, my parents are there. We're all there. My father, to his credit, and didn't know what he was feeling or thinking, but about six months before the first kidnapping, they had planned a trip to go to Seattle, the Burtstolds. And they had invited me to go. They said, we have room for one more person in the car. They have a station wagon, I think, in the car. And we're going to go see a play.

I think it was like, no, no, Nanette, or something. something like that, a musical. But it's a professional company, and I was already a little actress. I had started at age seven. Oh, wow. Yeah. I did my first audition when I was seven, and I turned eight over by the birthday, and I played Gretel in the sound of music. And guess who was Maria, the, you know, Maria von Trapp, was Elaine Hoffman. Okay. So she played Maria, and she came to the house. I remember it very clearly and said, I'm going to take Jan. And she says, she has a really good voice. She's sung in church. I think I was singing a song in church the first time the Birch Toads came to church. Oh, wow. I believe that that would have been about the right Sunday and that he just, that was it.

He just looked at me singing that song, a little tiny girl, and I think he decided that's the one. But I know there was another girl before me. So it wasn't well known by anybody in the church or anybody in the neighborhood that he had history. Yeah. No, oh, no. Nobody knew anything. No, nothing like that. All I know is looking back, there was a girl that was about three years older than me, went to the same church, and that she was the babysitter. And that's kind of the next piece of this story. She would be the babysitter for the birds tolds when they would go out with my parents or whoever, you know. And at some point, she stopped being their babysitter. And now me and Jerry, his oldest son, now we were in charge of babysitting all the kids. And And, you know, and there was a ton to do. It was mostly fun. I think we were pretty nice, but maybe not. I don't know.

I'd get a little power. And, you know, no, you can't do that. You can't. Yeah. I'm in charge. I'm in charge. And I was always an in charge person anyway. Ask my sisters.

Classic oldest sister. Yes, exactly. But they would go out. And then we were the babysitters. And then this woman or, you know, girl at the time who would have, when I was nine, she would have been 12. You know? So, and then all of a sudden around age 14, she's done, and then we start being the babysitters, is that her father, who was in leadership in the church, ended up calling my mother.

I think my dad maybe had passed, maybe not, because he was older than my dad. But anyway, I just know my mother told me the story of him calling her on his deathbed and just saying, I want you to know that, you know, I knew a little bit more because he had been disciplined. So they would call it disciplined by the church. But it was for something that had happened in a whole different state, like in Star Valley, Utah. You know, we were in Idaho. He said, I knew because there was a little notation, you know, on his church record. You know, there was something there.

And my mom never asked him outright. but she said, I believe that you might know because of what happened to your daughter. And he said, something did happen, but then we cut everything off. Because back in that day, nobody, there was, there wasn't really, if something inappropriate happened to his 12 or 13 or 14 year old daughter, mostly if she probably, I doubt she said anything, but if he said, something and then asked her a question and she shut down and, well, she would have felt like it was her fault, right, for one thing. But also, that I believe would have been kind of the extent of it.

But he said, I knew a little more. I wish I had said more because I watched, because he was right there in our same congregation, I kind of watched this friendship. But I didn't know, no. I didn't know for sure. But everybody loved him. I mean, for sure, nobody thought, including my parents, No one thought that he would hurt me. You know, he was setting them up to, you know, trust him, like telling him, telling them the darkest things about his life and talked about this aunt. She was only a few years old of me. I was probably six or seven.

I don't know. We had sex. And my dad's like, you know, and she was 10 or 11 or whatever. And that was definitely a thing, but my dad felt sorry for him. Right. You know, it wasn't a thing like he could be this, you know, something's wrong with him. He's the victim in that. Yeah, because he's the victim.

Yeah. Exactly. So that was one of the stories. And then another story that I know he told my dad and I think my mom talked about how he had depression, you know. And really, we didn't have a lot of other words. Depression was sort of a catch-all phrase. Yeah. You know, nobody was talking about any of the nuanced, you know.

Mental health. Of mental health. Mental health wasn't even a word. Yeah. We'd never put those words together. Yes. That happened when I was like in my 30s. I mean, literally. And so, but he talked about having these blues, you know, the blue moods and they call it depression. And I have to go see a specialist in California in Beverly Hills.

And he would disappear. And again, everybody, his wife included, thought he was going there to, and maybe he was. I don't know. Right. Maybe he wasn't. You don't know. We have no idea if that was true or not true. But he talked about that.

that and that was, you know, some sympathy and, you know, his wife sometimes would say, well, you know, he has these highs and these lows because he was so gregarious, you know, another thing that he set up. But in the fall, by that first fall of knowing them, he had said to my mom and dad, look, I'm a block and a half up the street. Let me pick up the girls for school. It's on my way. I'll drop all the kids off at school. And then I'll be almost to my furniture store. So you don't have to make that trip. And me make the trip too. I'll just do that.

And we're like, oh, yeah, sure. And so he would come to our back door, literally open the back door. It was never locked and yell into the house. It's going to be a great day, Broberg. And us girls would be coming running up from the basement where me and Karen had a bedroom and Susan from the back, you know, on the main floor floor. Her bedroom was there. And we'd all jump in the car and he'd take us down to school.

Yeah. You know? Was that one of the first. instances where, or the main ones where he could get you just alone with your sisters, but away from your parents. So that's the first little, I'll just drive them. Yeah. He's an uncle at this point, basically.

Yeah, he is. He's like an uncle. I'll just drive them to school. It's no big deal. Yep. Your parents are really helpful. Uh-huh. He's being helpful.

Yep. It doesn't seem like a big deal. Exactly. That's the first stepping stone because I know we get up there. Yeah. And then it gets to points where we're having sleepovers and all that, which we'll get to. Right. But that.

is. That was like the first little stepping stone. And because then, you know, maybe the, he'd make all of his boys sit in the back and maybe one of us girls. And then we, and, you know, then I was always, I was always allowed to sit in the front seat. Right. You're the oldest. I was the oldest girl. So I got to sit up there. And so if not, you know, me scooting to the middle, because we had that. Our cars didn't have a console in the thing, you know, it was just one seat. You know, I'd scooch in and I'm sitting right by him and maybe Karen's right here, you know, maybe Susan in the backseat, because she's the youngest in the grade school, and we're the oldest. You know, I'm getting ready to go into sixth grade, and then I go into seventh grade,

and that's the year that he kidnapped me the first time. And so, you know, fifth and sixth grade, off we go, he would often turn and say something to me, and all the kids have gotten out of the car, and he'd say something. You know, tell me how that, you know, try to get a little personal thing. Yeah. You know, and looking back, it was just, how is your homework going? Can you need to any help with that? Yeah. You know, I had allergies. All of us girls had allergies.

That was another thing that he did. Oh, how are your allergies today? You know, and just these kinds of things. And then he was the one that said, oh, I have this allergy specialist in Salt Lake. Let me take the girls. You can come with me, Marian, but let's get the girls up to this and get the scratch test and get them their allergy medicine. And sure enough, we did that.

And sure enough, we had an allergy capsule. Mine was green and yellow. And that's the exact capsule that I took as an allergy pill and the exact one that he emptied and put the sleeping medication in when he was picking me up to go horseback riding. Here's your allergy pill. And switched it so that I fell into a very deep sleep. There was a period of time where he was able to sleep in your bed. So that was probably about the year before, about a year before.

for the first kidnapping. Okay. So he had told my parents he had all this depression and that he was seen a professional in Beverly Hills because that's the only place that had a therapist for depression or whatever. And definitely we had nobody like that in Pocatello, maybe in Salt Lake, but nothing in our town.

And so he told his wife and my parents, you know, all part of the story, I'm going there, I'm speaking with a therapist about this depression thing. So how he framed. that was I now have been told by this therapist, I have to listen to these tapes, you know, you have the big earphones and these these tapes. And what I have to do is I'm supposed to lay by a person that was the same age and the same sex as the person who I have now told them, this is when my depression started. So he framed it all inside of depression. But now that I think

back, it sounds like the aunt. If the aunt, if he was five or six. and the aunt was 10 or 11 and female. And so he said, I'm supposed to just, you know, because that's when my depression started. It started because of these experiences that happened with my aunt, who was only a few years older than me. And I have to listen to the tapes while I'm laying by somebody that's reframing my, apparently my brain or something.

And so the door was open. It wasn't closed. He was not under the covers. He was on top of the bed. So some of those things. Okay, that's fine. And my mom would sometimes walk in with laundry or she was ironing downstairs. And she put things away in my bedroom while he's laying there listening to his tapes, you know.

And they really did think that he was trying. Some sort of therapy. Whether that is true that a therapist told him that, the only thing that I know is that one of the talk shows that I was on with a doctor behind the scenes, before the cameras rolled and we were on the stage, he told. told me, I said, you know, these are the parts, this is during 2019, after the documentary came out and I was going on all the talk shows and interviewing constantly. And that doctor, he said, what are the things that you're, what's the feedback been like since this documentary came out?

And I told him, I said, they go crazy about my parents. Like, my parents are so stupid because of those tapes and, and I said something else. I can't remember. I gave him a couple of examples. And I said, it's so hard on me because I had such wonderful parents. And they weren't stupid. But we didn't have a therapist. I mean, we didn't even call them that.

We called them counselors. Yeah. You know, there was no such thing as mental health. That word just appeared. Those two words together just appeared like 25 years ago. I'm like, there was none of that. And he said, well, you know, he said, and he was a doctor, a psychotherapist kind of doctor. And he said, that was a therapy.

There was something, whether he made it up and knew that there was a therapy or if he really did see somebody in California that told him to do that, but he told me that it was a therapy that they thought would reprogram somebody's brain, the by association, something by association. And he said, it only lasted for maybe two or three years and then it was debunked that it didn't work. It didn't happen. It wasn't effective. But he said whether it was for that, for depression, or whether he knew he had a problem with little girls, young girls, and maybe he was talking about that, maybe it was that, maybe he was trying. He goes, I don't know, but there was a therapy early on in psychotherapy

as that was coming into its getting its legs, you know, in the early 70s, because it had only started, I mean, late 60s is when any of that started to even, you know, be a thing. So anyway. So he would multiple nights a week just or days? Yeah, it was usually, you know, it was usually after he'd come down to the house after we were all, us girls had been tucked into bed, you know, kind of thing. And he would just lay out talking about, I never remember him being there.

I don't even remember. I was asleep. Oh, interesting. And so nothing, I don't think anything actually happened to me during that time, but it was just one more thing of him trying to get into those good graces. of my parents and being, you know, whether he thought it was going to help him with something that nobody really knew about. But maybe that therapist did and maybe that was it.

Or if he really was trying to fix his depression or if it was all just a big scam. You know, but that was interesting when that one doctor told me that, I didn't know that was a thing. He said, so a lot of people may not realize that there were lots of experimental things that were done in the early years of psychotherapy. and we continue to make breakthroughs and changes to therapies as we learn more and more. And I was so happy that he said that. I was like, oh, I never would have known.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, he was never under the covers. The door was never shut. My parents really weren't dumb. Yeah. But they also would not have been thinking that anybody was doing that to a child. That was like out of the, there was just no possibility of that. There's no realm of, yeah, there's just not a world of which happened.

Of course. But people never talked about sexual abuse. They talked about physical abuse. So what happens in this year I'm turning 14 is he gets in touch and says, I've got this, I bought a fund center. I've moved to Jacksonville, Wyoming. I want you to come and work for me this summer. Jerry's going to be there too. So I go.

I call a yellow cab, you know. and run up the stairs from the basement. Mom's gone to the grocery store. I called the cab right as soon as she's left the house. Karen and Susan are like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm going to go work for B. I'm going to Jackson Hole where he has the Fun Center and I'm leaving and tell Mom and Dad not to come and find me.

Well, of course, that didn't work out so well. Yeah. But anyway, I did leave and I did go to the Pocetelo airport on my own, because he had sent me a whole lot of cash, and my mother got back from the grocery store and Karen and Susan said Jan left she's going to go work for me at the fun center and my mom is like totally like completely

Karen said it was like she was catatonic like she went into this state got us all in the car and drove like a maniac to the airport left us sitting in the car while she rushed into the airport it's a very tiny airport I mean there's only one gate one thing and yet go outside to get on the little tiny plane. And I was standing already had, already had the ticket, already was in that doorway when she came in and she goes, and she's telling the person, that's my daughter, she's not allowed to get on the plane. And they're like,

well, what are we supposed to do? She had the money. She got a ticket off she goes. I'm already through the security thing, the little bit of security they had back then. And I'm already going out the door and I just held up my hand with this big wad of cash. I'm like, see ya. And I literally walked down and got on the tarmac and got up on the plane. and flew to Jackson Hole, and then he picked me up there. And I was there for maybe, maybe a week, maybe a week to 10 days. Well, my parents called the police. Okay.

Okay, what are we going to do? How are we going to get her back? And eventually, basically what the police did is they went, you have got to get that girl home or we're going to throw you in jail. And I don't know if that was true. I don't know if they would have had the whatever to do so, but he was still awaiting the trial. the trial for the, I mean, the first kidnapped.

Yeah, like you said, that, that, I don't know, I'm sure maybe it had been, like, here's your 15 days, because that's going to happen right after, anyway, I'm not, I can't tell you for sure, but how it went. But anyway, so he, he brought me home, and it had been my birthday. I had my 14th birthday, and he had given me a sewing machine. And my dad was so furious. And my dad was sitting there, and apparently there was a police officer that was kind of out of sight, and they were watching. Like if he pulls a gun or if anything happens that we could arrest him, we will.

But he didn't do any of that. He just basically stopped the car, got all my birthday presents out. I'd already been to his house with all the kids. They'd all wish me happy birthday. And well, now Jan's got to go home. or to wherever he stopped along that route. I had seen the family in Ogden. I got out.

My dad's in our car. He's in his car and he puts all the stuff out. And I leave the car. And my dad gets out of the car and he's looking at the pile of stuff and he's looking at me and I'm so mad. You know, it's ridiculous. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to work. Make my own money.

You know, I'm playing the part really, really well. And my dad, as Burge told me, tore out of the parking lot. My dad didn't even get to say two words to him. He was just, he was so mad. He's like, where did you get this? I'm like, this was my birthday present, you know? You just,

oh, I can't remember. Everything at the back and, oh, my gosh. And then just drove me, you know, just a block away, two blocks away, you know, home and just didn't know what to do, how to, and then by the 10th of August, I was gone. Yeah.

Again. So that was how that ended. Yeah. With the relationship he had with your mother and your father, did that happen first where he crossed that line with them? Was that before or was that? So it's in two different time periods. And my dad, of course, kept it all a secret. He didn't say anything, the masturbation thing that happened between him and Birch told.

And it was before, and I. believe it was probably about six months before. Because looking back now and knowing the timeline, I think that one of those, I don't know if there were several, my dad said it was only, that was it, you know, that happened before the first kidnapping. And my dad started to pull away. I think he felt, you know, of course he did, he felt guilty about that. And it was just, it was in a car and they'd been out to lunch or dinner or something. And, you know, he could make you feel like he were 16. 17 years old, and my dad grew up with a bunch of cousins and a twin brother. And, oh, it's not a big deal.

Just I get nothing from my wife. Just relieve me. It's basically how my dad. Robert said that to your dad. Yeah, how he said it to my dad. Because my mom and any of us, girls, we really didn't know exactly what had happened. He just said, oh, it was just something stupid and I feel terrible about it. And I'm going to go talk to the bishop and, you know, repent.

And, you know, that's how he later, not at that moment. but later in time when we're now young adults and and mom is trying to write the story and I'm talking to her from my college dorm room about what was happening and she's writing everything down and putting it into our book our first stolen innocence book so none of us really knew the details of that and and my dad I think carried that guilt and shame of that experience or the maybe it happened two or three times I'm not sure to be honest but that guilt to the day he died. I think he tried to make up for it. He was always very, you know, faithful and tried to serve and do all the things. And he was such a wonderful father, you know,

but I think he felt like I should have seen the monster. And why would I ever, you know, that just, you know, it really haunted my father. I know that it did. And I talked to him about it. And he said, look, he said, if people, whatever their opinion is of that mistake that I made, if it makes one person understand that maybe this person that's getting close to you and is trying to, you know, lure you into some sort of sexual behavior, maybe they're really after your kid. Mm-hmm. He said, I would never have thought that.

Why would you? I felt terrible about what I did. I went and I did my repentance process and I really, you know, but he said, I told, I told her the whole story because I feel like at this point in my life, you know, you know, and I did, know, I don't know, you get older, you know you're going to die. I should leave all the truth on the table so somebody else might save their child and might see something that I did not see. So that was hard on me. And then with my mom, that short-lived affair with him happened in between the two kidnappings. And people just go out of their minds. They're like, but he'd

kidnapped the daughter. I was like, look, if you understand how much was already set up, including the alien story and all that that we're going to talk about. Yes, yeah. All of that was set up long before this kidnapping happened. I mean, the stories and the everything. I said, he had stood by my mom in the kitchen, waiting for the girls to come running and get in the car for school every day for years, you know, and whispering in her ear, talking to her about, you know, her hopes and dreams and plans and what's wrong and what's right with your marriage and, you know, how people do. Getting his claws in. Getting his claws.

Trying to find out what can I do. Which we're all human, you know. That's exactly right. And she's the person that she is. She's caring. She's. And, yeah. 100%.

Yeah. And so that all happened previous to anything else happening. So when I was brought back, you know, takes me. I'm strapped to a bed. Alien voice is playing in my ear. I've already seen the papers that, he would bring to the house and put on the table while I'm doing my homework, you know, and oh, look, another UFO sighting.

And sure enough, there's a little disc in black and white thinking, you know, that's kind of scary, but he would tie it all back into the gathering of Israel. And we know that things are going to be really bad before the second coming of Christ and all these things. Things that maybe you had heard in church, but it wasn't really concentrated on. I didn't go to a church that was fire and brimstone. Fire and brimstone now. It wasn't like that. It was pretty much love your neighbor and do a lot of service. And, you know, Heavenly Father loves all of his children. That was pretty much how I grew up. But there were those things that, you know, talked about, you know, the coming of days and the end of the world and the second coming and revelations. And, you know, there were parts that would get talked about by somebody. But it wasn't like I knew anything much about it, except that he would always tie anything that that he wanted to plant in my little brain in a way that. that didn't look like he was trying to do anything.

Just so blasé. It was so blase. And then he talked to my mom about it. Yeah. And I'm sitting there listening to what they're saying and looking at the picture and the paper and thinking, well, it does make sense that there would be life on other planets somewhere out there in the universe. To me, you know.

He's in him. He would tell stories. Like some of the stories when we were all there, all the kids and mom, dad, all of us were there. One in particular that he talked about was Gail, his wife. had grown up on a farm in a really tiny town and that one day her father saw this big circle kind of cut out of the ground like they used to talk about flying saucers with the crop circles yes and he talked about that and he said and you can ask gal i mean her dad said the car never worked the same that his car went funky and and out of control and there was like light and then this this

but there was the next day when it wasn't dark outside he went back and there was this big circle in the crop, in the field. And I mean, you told that to all of us. And I remember my dad kind of saying, okay, don't scare my children. They stop with the nonsense. You know, something like that. But he had already done all those things. And what were we watching on television?

I dream of Jeannie. Bewitched. Let's see. What else had that kind of thing lost in space? You know, there were a lot, the Jetsons. Yeah. We were watching. That's what we were watching.

And it was the race to space. And there was a lot of. talk about possibly finding life on other planets and trying to get to the moon and all. I mean, he just knew how to use whatever was there to twist it in the mind of a 9, 10, 11 year old. Yeah. So when I woke up in the back of this moving motorhome, you know, that's going down the road, it's night, it's dark, and my wrists and my ankles are constrained, leather

straps. I can't get up. I can't move. I'm all of, I don't know, 70 pounds, 65, 70 pounds at this point. Maybe soaking wet. I mean, I'm tiny. And I can't move, except I can kind of pull my upper body up and there's a curtain in the motorhome. There's a partition. You can't see beyond the, you know, where in the back, there's usually a bed and then there's a little bathroom. I could see that there was something like a bathroom but I didn't know for sure but I could lift up my head and move the curtain enough to see that it looked like, look like desert like a big tall, you know, that. And was it moving at this point? Yeah, and it was moving. It was moving when I woke up and I don't know how long I had been knocked out. And there was a what looked like, kind of like an

intercom or something like that. It was, it's just white. box, I want to find the exact model someday so that I can put that to rest. But it was there and it was on the little edge of the curtains and the, I don't know, there was a little lip, a little window or maybe it was a little shelf, I don't know, but it was sitting right there. Maybe it was on the back of the pillow. But it was back behind me, but I could kind of see where the sound was coming from. And what I woke up to was this high-pitched staccato, kind of a female voice. And it kept repeating basically the same script. It would come, it would go over and over the same script. It was like a loop. But it felt like when I first woke up, I didn't even realize that it was a loop, I don't think,

because it was so terrifying. It was this, and they called me female companion, female companion. It was like this high-pitched, monotone voice. Like, anytime there'd been an alien represented in some television way, kind of that same thing. So you would know. Yeah. That's the only reference you would have. That's it, you know.

And I immediately, everybody's like, well, how long was it before you were brainwashed? I'm like, I don't know, 10 seconds. Well, it wasn't 10 seconds. It was years. Right. It really was. And then that was it. I thought, I've been kidding.

by a UFO. They've come here to Earth and they've taken me. And that, that messaging that went through that loop of calling me female companion, you have a very special mission. We've been watching you since you were born. We have your favorite foods. They're in the cooler. I'd wake up. I'd go back into a deep sleep. Then I'd wake up and the restraints were off. Go get some food. Use the bathroom. I would. You know, and sure enough, there's the tuna fish sandwich and the almond joy bar and the fresca, no, not fresca, squirt, squirt, or the quench, something like that. And it was all there in the little cooler, and like this little cooling.

And I'd eat and then, you know, their instructions were always going to eat and go to the bathroom, then lay back down. And sure enough, I would pass out again. Obviously, the food was drugged as well, but I was eating and grateful. for that, I guess, and then I'd wake up and I'd be restrained again. And this went on for about, I think it was about two, maybe two and a half days before they instructed me. This is a point when the motorhome was parked and I have no idea where we are, but I know that I would wake up in the motorhome's moving usually at night. The instructions were we want you to go

to the front of the motorhome, and there you will meet the male companion. And of course, I'm terrified. I have no idea what that means, but okay. And so get up and the partition is gone. It's been removed. And so I go to the front of the motorhome and there on the little couch is B. You know, like my uncle, my favorite person, you know, he's so much fun. It's B. And he's covered in blood and cuts and the whole bit and all over his arm and even on his face and his neck and he looks dead. I think he's dead and I'm shaking him and I'm like, you know, B, you have to wake up, you know, and I'm and then just all these things come spilling out of my mouth. You're the male companion. I don't know what it means, you know, but you have to, you're, and I'm the female companion.

I'm telling him all of this and we're sitting finally and I'm, you know, bandaging up his wounds and I'll get a towel. And I mean, oh my gosh, he's the best or the worst actor I've ever worked with. I've done a lot of theater and film in my life. And I'm telling you, he had everything down to the detail. And I don't think it's really all that hard to brainwash a person, to be honest. If you isolate someone, you control all their information, their basic necessities. You know, they depend on you for food, for water, for all the, basic things and you can take their religious dogma that they've grown up with you can take that

and just bend it a little bit a person especially a child yes they they're going to do whatever you tell them to do from that point on which is exactly what happened that's exactly how everything else unfolded yeah he he acted naive in this moment though he acted as if he didn't know what was going Oh, yeah, he had a whole story. I woke him up and he wasn't dead and all of that. And oh, my word, Jenny, Dolly. He called me Dolly, which he had given all of us a nickname. And we were going out to the ranch, you know, to go horseback riding.

Because this was the lead-up. That's the lead-ups to this story. So he had invited me to go horseback riding. And, of course, you know, mom and dad knew and everything seemed copacetic except that it was a school night. Okay. And he had to go out and measure a wall or do something. because he had furniture for this, you know, and they have a ranch, and I'd been there before, I believe.

I think it was the same place that he was talking about. Not that was his plan. But I have to go out there and measure some stuff. And so Jan's getting really good on the horse. And I know Bob can't go because he's so definitely allergic to horses. And I can just pick her up after her piano lesson. And I'll just take her out there and I'll have her home before dinner. Bob doesn't even have to know because my mom was like,

no, she can't go. It's a school night. And my dad, about six months earlier, because that's when I believe, that that sexual encounter, that masturbation encounter thing had happened. And I think my dad started to just pull away probably because he felt guilty, he felt bad about all of that. And also, I think he was seen more clearly, like, maybe this guy isn't quite so good for us to spend all this time. You know, we've already seen the Hoffman's. We've barely spent any time with my, you know, our cousins, you know, my dad's twin brother and his family and we're close.

You know, these are people we're close to already before they ever come. And I think my dad just had that feeling like, this is too much. He had had that feeling. I know in that summer that because the trip that they had asked me to go on, my dad was so against it. And then, well, we're not, we're just not going to go. We've already bought the tickets for the play. And I know Jan would do that.

You mean, she's a marvelous actress. We've seen her now as Oliver. The next big play I did was I played Oliver in Oliver. And, you know, she made everybody cry when she's saying, where is love? We all cried in the audience, you know. And you're just denying her this wonderful experience. And now my, on none of my kids, I'm not going to take any of them. We're not going to go.

She's guilt with me. Just guilted my dad. And he was like, I really don't want her to go. But if you're not going to take the family, because you have to have Jan see this play along with, okay, you know, my mom really is the one that convinced dad to just let me go, let her go. So on that trip, which was a really, it really was a fun trip. I'd never been to Seattle before, saw the play. It was so amazing.

And I knew that's what I wanted to do. You know, it was all that. But at one of the restaurants early on, well, in the car, on the trip, first of all, I don't know if he on purpose had poked a hole where the carbon monoxide that from your engine, there's a, anyway, I loved to be by a heater. Like I would spend hours in my mom and dad's bedroom. There was a heater on the wall. And it was, and then the dresser was right there.

So I could create this like fort. I'd put the blanket, this puffy pink blanket that we had that was, you know, know, lightweight. And I put it in the drawer and shut the drawer, and then I could get it over behind the pillow where I was laying there with all my stack of books from the library. Anytime we went anywhere with him, even on school days sometimes, I would shrink down from the seat and sit by the heater in the car. So I believe what happened is that I was probably in the front seat between his wife and him. And I probably scrunched down and got really close to the heater. And I I don't know.

Maybe he drugged the food that I ate at the restaurant. I don't know. But we had stopped to eat and had a place to stay because the drive is a long way. It took a couple days to get to Seattle. And I just passed out on the table, basically. I just, you know. So however it happened, because also now, now I know this, is that one of the other boys, one of the littler boys,

also kind of passed out and was like head on the table at the restaurant and totally asleep. And he said, well, let me, let me take, I'll take, I think it was Joey, I'll take Joey and Jan back to the room, you guys finish eating and then, you know, blah, blah, blah, because obviously they're exhausted. You know, I'm not sure how we were so exhausted, but so exhausted that we were out. And we went back, he took us to the hotel. What I remember is this, this, this image of a naked, a naked person, a man, was definitely a man. I remember an image.

And that's, that's all I could remember for years and years. And then later, when I was doing some, you know, some work on my healing and going through various experiences, then I remembered for sure the face was Birch told. And for sure, it was him having put me in a bed at the hotel room and him had been laying by me and had gotten up and stood up because somebody had knocked on the door. He took all the keys. So they had to knock when the rest of the family got there. They didn't have a key. And him, you know, putting clothes on and then going to the door. And then Joey, I don't know, or whoever the other, there was another kid in a different,

in a different bed that was totally passed out also. And I remembered more, you know, but it took me getting to that point when I could take that implicit memory and make it more explicit that for sure it was him. So anyway, that was one of the experiences. And then up in Seattle going to the show and how he let, I think he let Jerry, like, he let us drive, like in a parking lot. and then he let me drive, but I was too short. And I know that had to have been within that six, that six months before he took me that my dad had kind of put his foot down, like we're

spending too much time. We need to, you know, pull back. This is too much. You know, because it was two and three times a week that we did stuff with them, you know. It was a lot. Yeah. Hundreds of activities. Yeah. That event happened. So that's the first time you went away with them alone. without your family? Well, without anybody in my family or where I was just with his family. Or just that was the only trip. Or he could isolate you in that circumstance. In that circumstance.

But there was another time that I ended up going up to Salt Lake with him to pick up some furniture. He had hired me, you know, my first little job was dusting the furniture at the furniture store. And so my mom would drop me off to do my little dusting job and he'd pay me my dollar an hour or whatever it was, 50 cents, I don't know. And then she'd go run errands or whatever, and then she'd come back and get me and, you know, take me home. And I remember, I remember him always when nobody was kind of in the store, him wanting to play games. Like he'd, you know, twirl me around, like on an office chair that had wheels, you know, and he'd, you know,

almost like play hide and seek and just, you know, like he was a kid like me. Yeah. And not thinking anything of it at the time. He was just super fun that you'd look back on it and you're like, oh, these are all the classic signs of somebody grooming your child, you know, but nobody was there. You know, it's just me and him. And he had an employee that I remember reading in one of the police reports. And one of the employees at that furniture store that he owned had said, you know, there were times where I thought, he's acting like he's 10 years old, you know, and playing games with this, you know, 10-year-old or 11-year-old, you know, this around dusting and it always made me feel uncomfortable, you know, but nobody, who do you tell? What do you say? You don't even know,

you don't even know what a pedophile is or never heard the word grooming, you know, when everybody's like, in fact, I meet people all the time. They're like grooming, what do you mean? Like dog grooming or grooming yourself? I'm like, you know, grooming people, brainwashing people in a six stages of grooming, you know, and we teach that now. We'd go and teach those things to people. Yeah, there's, it's interesting when you look back and you see the number of people that had, you know, that funny feeling or like, yeah, I never really wanted him around my kids or, or, you know, around me. And he was just too much all the time, you know. All the pieces unfortunately fit together and make sense looking back at it. But when you're sitting here and

explaining, well, this happened and then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened because this happened over and it's just such an unfortunate just amount of events that led up to something that could really happen to anybody yes and it's a lot of people failing you but not knowing that they're failing you right a lot of people that should have spoken up yeah and hopefully people that watch this can be like oh okay well it's better to say something none not to say something yeah he's acting a little weird or she's something. Yeah, if you see something or you feel something, Burchstold specifically has so many of the same hallmarks as a cult leader.

Yes, it does. Everybody loved him. He was so service-oriented. He was always helping somebody, you know, giving them a great deal on their furniture, you know, handyman. I mean, he was, he set himself up so that people would defend him in the long run. And people are doing that still to this day, and he's dead. And I'm not the only little girl. Yeah. I've met one other who was after me, and I know the names of, I've actually met two that were after me, and I have three other names of girls in police reports that I know after me, and I have two before me, and their names, plus the one that I think I know who it was in Pocatello.

So, you know, this is a serial, you know, serial predator, whatever the right terminology is, serial pedophile. But he's a criminal. And anybody that does things like this to a child is a criminal. And so as hard as it is to say that about grandpa or about your own father or mother or grandmother, those are the four most, those four people are responsible for 74 or 75% of all abuse of children. Then after that, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, step-parent parents. When you got abducted that first time, and you were supposed to go horseback riding with Robert.

And then your dad was feeling a certain way about it. And then he was, so Robert was saying, don't tell dad about it. Yeah. And your mom was saying, it's fine. Just go. Yeah. Basically, he talked her into it.

And she said, okay, Bob's going to be mad. But okay, just go. Just make sure you're back before dinner, before dad gets home from the flower shop. You know, he had pretty long days. That's a hard, that's a pretty hard business. It seems all smells and roses. He worked.

He worked hard. It was a good 10-hour day, mostly. You know, he was there before eight. And usually home maybe. around six. So it was a good, we all loved being at the flower shop, though. And it makes me sad that my dad had so much just pain and he just didn't deserve it. I just can't imagine having a child go missing and not knowing where they are. And those first about 72 hours when we didn't get back from horseback riding, immediately, what are they thinking?

that he kidnapped me? Heavens, no, he's our best friend. They're thinking, did they get in a car accident? Right. Did he go on one of his tangents and just take Jan, maybe he just took her down to Salt Lake, or maybe he went up to Brigham City to get some things. He had relatives and people,

and he would do sort of those things. He'd do little disappearing acts. You know, maybe he's, you know, but they certainly didn't think this man has kidnapped our daughter. So this was on, I think it was Thursday, I think this was on a Thursday. I think my piano lessons were on Thursdays. If not, it was Wednesday.

It was one of those. It wasn't Friday yet. And so when we didn't get back, you know, they're calling, Gail, you know, from your phone on the wall. Have you heard from Bob? You know, they're not back. You know, now it's seven, now it's eight, now it's ten.

No, I'll come down. So then Gail comes to the house and, of course, I have. I don't know anything except that I've been kidnapped by aliens. That's all I know is that that's where I'm at. You know, and I'm barely 12. I just had my 12th birthday. This is in the fall.

So I'm about 12 and two or three months old. And very, I'm a, I'm, I'm innocent and I'm pretty naive, but I'm not stupid. I've done lots of plays by this time. I'm very much a people pleaser, which is also something to watch out for if your child, is that. I wanted to be with the adult. I wanted to converse with them. I wanted to be in the next show. And, you know, I, yeah, it's interesting because people think it's only vulnerable children. Like, it's a single mom, and now she has to work a lot, and the child's a turnkey kid. And they think that that's that. And it's just not like that, especially with abuse. Now, maybe with kidnapping,

I don't know, but I'm just saying in the world of abuse, it has no No box. There's no box. There's no box it fits in. Yeah, they'll fit you into that box. Yeah. They know how to make it all work in their favor, and then you're gone, and then everybody's like, they're in an accident, something's happened, and then Gail, his wife is like,

oh, please don't call the police. You know, you know how Bob is, you know how he can do, how he just, you know, he just, you know, that's his wife. Yeah. That's not, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So she's down at the house, you know, kind of in her pajamas and robe, and, you know, like,

were so close, these families, he would never, you know, I mean, something had to have happened, you know, or he went off his little depression thing and maybe he went to relatives. So anyway, okay, well, you know, okay, I guess we'll all go to bed and we'll wait till morning and then here comes the morning and dad hasn't slept all night. Mom's not slept all night either and they're worried and so they call Gail and they're like, we have to call. We have to call somebody. Something's wrong. Please don't, but they said, well, I'm sorry, gal, we're going to call. So my mom's sister in her husband, my uncle-in-law, uncle-in-law's family had somebody that worked for the police department in that American Falls area.

And so they called, they called Uncle Leonard, and he called that person that he knew in the police department and gave them the story. and has there been any reports? No, no reports. No car wrecks, no nothing. And he was like, well, did they check going like off the side of the road? Because there's a lot of, you know, Idaho's hilly and there's ditches and there's, you know, well, no, we haven't done that, but I'll tell them, you know, that maybe we need to do a wider search now that we've heard this, that they're missing.

Okay, and give us a few hours, you know, whatever. So they go through part of that day and waiting and, and still, you know, no news and no nothing. And pretty soon, mom and dad, by that evening, which I believe, or late afternoon, it was, I think, a Friday. And they're like, okay, now they've called back from the police that they've done a wider search,

but they don't think they haven't seen anything. They can't find any broken down cars or anything like that. At that point, okay, we got to call the FBI. and how they thought to do that. I have no idea because that's not like a part of our lives either, really, truly. And, I mean, my parents had never stepped foot into a courtroom, right? They don't know anything except maybe they had a speeding ticket once. I don't know.

But when you're totally naive to the ways of the law and how it works. So my mom looks up in the yellow pages and it says that the Hokotello has this regional office of the FBI. She calls, nobody answers. It's the weekend. If there's a real emergency, call this number in. I think it was Montana, you know, or something, Wyoming or Montana. It was somewhere else, some other state. And that's your closest, you know.

So, okay, well, let's just wait and see if there's more news. So now that night goes by and they're like, we'll be back in the office on Monday. It's basically what they're recording or it's had some kind of a recording. Okay, well, they'll be back on Monday. Oh my gosh, what are we going to do for two? days, surely they'll get back and we'll find them. Anyway, what ends up happening is they call the other office by the next day, and they're like, okay, now tell us all the details of everything you know about this person. And they're like, well, he's one of our closest friends, and he has a wife

and five children. And he owns a furniture store, and he was going out to measure some, you know, for some furniture placement at a home, and they have horses, and he was taking our daughter horseback riding. He was taking your daughter horseback riding. Tell us about that. Well, Jan loves horses, but I'm allergic. That's my dad. And, you know, my wife, I didn't want her to go, but, you know, we've caved in, let her go because she loves it. She was begging. And so we're just worried that maybe they've been in a car accident, but we can't find any evidence of a car accident. Okay. Okay, we're going to assign somebody to this, and you'll, you'll hear from them shortly. So then another day goes by, and then the next morning, whether that was Sunday or Monday morning,

here comes our FBI agent who was the dear friend. They come in the house and they get all the reports of everything. And then they, I don't know what kind of a search they did, but that was the very first thing that happened is they found his car down, not just in a little ditch, but down like a, almost like a place where you can drive down to see a reservoir. Because everyone's assuming he took the car to take you. But in reality, he took an RV. In reality, he took an RV. Right.

And so by the time that they found the car with the broken window and, you know, shattered glass and some blood on that window. Wasn't my blood, but it was his. Then they all got really concerned. So he took you in the car at first to know horseback. riding. Right. Drugged you with the allergy pill. Yeah. And you black out. And then he switches, he destroys his own car, meets up where the RV is and then takes you in the RV. Right. Okay. Yeah. So he's put me in the RV and work on. So as they do a further investigation, they're like, we see these tire tracks that are not a car size. We're thinking maybe there was a

motor home of some sort, some kind of RV. That's sort of one of the first pieces of evidence that they They were like, okay, he could have switched cars because there's more than one set of tire tracks. Yeah. And anyway, so there was that. And then I can't remember if it was after Mom and Dad told Gail that that's what they had seen, that she said to Mom and Dad, well, I wasn't supposed to see this and, you know, didn't want to tell him, but, you know, of course, because now she's worried. But she said, I drove past, you know, where there's the...

those storage units, those great big storage units kind of close to the store. I was looking for him. He was gone. He said he was working late. So I went down because I was going to take him something to eat. I think she said something like this. I remember my mom telling me. And I was taking him something to the store, but he wasn't at the store.

And so she said, so I got thinking, well, where could he be? And we have a storage unit. And so I went over there, and it was close. and I went over to the storage unit and I saw him inside of a different unit and there was an RV so he

he acquired the RV and she didn't know she had no she said I thought he was I thought he was maybe he was going to be a present a surprise for Christmas that he was working on it

because he was down underneath it he was probably wiring the thing with the anyway she saw him down on the ground he didn't see me and I left you know thinking, oh, it was, you know, just down from where we have a storage unit with furniture.

I wasn't in the RV. It was before. She had seen this, like, before all of this happened. But she, whether she was hoping it wasn't related or whether she really just didn't think of it until that tire tracks, I don't know. I have never been able to get her to talk to me. I wish she would. It would help so many other women.

Yeah, because I mean, I was going to ask if she was aware at all. I think she could have been. I never wanted to say that or admit that until later. I mean, much later, like literally, like in the last like four years that happened before all of this. We were having a sleepover on the trampoline. And I remembered one piece of this, but I didn't remember the whole thing until much later. Again, in my own healing journey, in my own narrative therapy, in my own, you know, I want to feel better, I want to do better, I want to have better. That's what I tell people. Do you want to have better? Do you want to do better? Do you want to be free of how this is running your life and you don't even know? Come, come, come, survivor. Come over here. Be loved and be better and get this healing journey on its way. And I was doing some work like that. And what I remembered about this night where all of us kids were sleeping on the trampoline. The only thing that I had remembered was that I had gone in the house crying,

And this is before the first kidnapping. I had gone in the house crying, and Gail woke up from the bedroom and came, came out, heard me crying. And she said, oh, Jenny, what's wrong, you know? And I said, well, I don't know. I'm all twisted up, you know, because my panties were not where they were supposed to be. And my had some kind of pajamas, nightgown, something on. And it's summer day. It's hot, hot, we sleep, you know, I mean, it's hot and warm, but we're all in sleeping bags.

The only part of that experience that I had remembered up until that time was her coming and getting me and saying, well, you come on in and you sleep with me in here in my bed, in the master bedroom. And that's all I remembered of that experience until I had another something that I was working on. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, I do remember that Birch told was on the trampoline. I don't remember him being inside my sleeping bag. I remember him being out there because he had told all the kids, I'm going to tell you some scary stories, and then you go to sleep, and then I'll go inside. But I remember when I woke up, I saw him there.

And then I just went inside. You know, I just went in. And after I was in and she had told me to come sleep with her, we're standing out kind of in the living room, right off the little hallway to the bedroom. I had a step down. And so I remembered at this point, I remembered him coming to the door and coming in.

He said, I got up to go to the bathroom and I'm looking out the window. This, you know, their master bedroom could see the backyard and the trampoline. And he said, I could see Jan was down there just twisting and turning and it kind of kicked her sleeping back. So I went down there to pull the sleeping bag over her. And I, and the part that really got me that I remembered is I, is I looked at him and then I looked at her and the look on her face, there was a look on her face that when I saw it as an adult,

when it came to me, that explicit, implicit memory became explicit, I could see her face and I recognized that look as an adult woman. Like she was looking at him like Potentially again Yeah Because again already Yes because they'd already moved several times She knew about it I'm assuming

Or at least a part of it Something And I had never I had never given her One ounce of That she might have known something She may not have ever seen anything But for sure

They had moved several times before they ended up in Pocatello. And of course, she's a stay-at-home mom. No training to have a career. What do people do? I mean, they literally don't, they don't know what to do. What will I do? Yeah, I mean, it's not uncommon today.

And I'm not saying, I mean, obviously we can't say anything because we don't know for sure, but it is not uncommon for a wife specifically to stay in a relationship. Yeah. Like that, which is extraordinarily sad. It is. for the child. Yeah. And I have had several on my podcast who have talked about that.

Yeah. So there might have been something there when you first got abducted where she maybe, maybe, like there was just a, well, I don't want him to get caught in something that might be happening. Right. That could be something that was happening. Yeah. Because it's, again, it's just from looking from the outside in, it's like, that's so odd why she wouldn't want to know where her husband is with a little kid or, or, you know, and I mean, obviously steps. were taken within the 24 hours. Yeah.

And nobody knows about the, you know, kids need to be found, hopefully in the first 48, all that kind of stuff. Amber alerts aren't a thing. No. So that experience happened before the kidnapping. So now back to the motorhome. So now everybody goes down, apparently, they get the door open and there's no more motorhome. That was the beginning of the real search and the,

beginning of, you know, and he was, by that time, that would have been three, about three days, about 72 hours has gone by. And he has just barely crossed me as his son. He had clothing for me to put on. I found him, cried, we have to do this thing. You're the male companion. I don't know what this even means. I have no idea that he's going to now, you know, repeatedly for years. But, but, you know, that's what it is. And we have to do what they say. And we have to do what they say. you know, because if we don't, then, you know, the story was that, I think this is interesting, too. So I know I keep going off on tensions, but because I get all the time in the world with you. It's okay.

Yeah. This story is so interesting because how he took the religious background of me, you know, my Christian religious background, and took parts and pieces of that to make this all make sense to this little brain, because we fill in the gaps. That's what we do. Of course. Our brains do that. And so, you know, when he says, well, what did they say?

Like, why would they call you a female companion? I said, well, they said that my mother is my real mother. My biological mother, we would say today instead of real mother. But I said, my real mother. And, you know, my mother's name is Mary. Okay. Mother Mary. Uh-huh.

My mother's name is church. Yep. Grop in the church. Mary. But my father. isn't my father. My father is like Joseph. He's a caretaker. He's supposed to take care of me and he's taking good care of me because my mother was overshadowed by a being from this other planet, like the God being, you know, that being. And that's how my mother had me. And now I'm

supposed to, I'm half alien and half human and I am supposed to save this alien planet. They're dying. They can't have children. They're having all these issues. I mean, I think of all the different science fiction stories I've heard, you know, throughout my life. And I'm like, this was a good one, you know. Especially for me. And the guilt that's on you, it's like, I'm in, I have to save a planet? Yeah. Like all these lives? It's this huge weight. And I take my, and I take my, and I take my, and I take my world seriously and my responsibility. I was a very responsible child. And I'm like, so we have to do whatever they say so that we can save the planet. I'm going to have the child that's going to save their planet, like Jesus. Okay. So I'm in the middle of a Mary Joseph and Jesus story. And apparently

you're the male companion. I don't know that those next pieces are going to be as they were, but that's what I would tell him. He didn't even have to tell me the story. I mean, it's just amazing what your mind will make up so you can survive or so you can make sense of something, which is why we need critical thinking. Really bad right now in 2026. When there's evidence, you've got to believe it. You don't just shy away from the truth because it's too ugly or it's too hard. I just, well, I can't deal with it so I just won't believe it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. So he didn't even need to put the pieces together because they were all there already because it's been years, even before he came around. You grew up in the church. That's the main story. Yep. Basically. It is. You know, that's the story. That's the story. Yeah, for a little Christian girl. All these alien little seeds that he put and then that's you. So you wake up with him. You're in the RV together and then you're traveling to Mexico. Mexico. And so the first thing that he did when we got to that, before we got to the border, there is he dressed me up. And he had clothes and he had a birth certificate of his son. And he said, do you just sit right there and just with the ball cap on and what he had me in? He goes, you know, this is my son. Here's the, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And that's how we got across the border into Mexico. And the FBI hasn't even shown up yet. Right. So you're out of the country. We're out of the country already. And in 1974, you know, 74, that was pretty complicated. Yeah, absolutely. You know, on a lot of levels.

So anyway, that's how that all unfolded. I think the interesting part now, as we get into Mexico, he has this amazing way of, you know, charming whoever was in the, you know, the RV park. You know, we'd park in different cities. and be there for days or, you know, in Mazatong, we were there for a long time, it seems like. I remember just thinking, oh, this just feels normal, you know? It was like just those few things that they had no idea what was going on. They thought he was my father. That was the story.

He made sure that, you know, in the tapes, the alien tapes and all the stuff that they were saying, just this is, we tell people this is the father, even though he's your male companion. He had things in the motor home. like, oh, like they told me to get these books that they, they put, they, the aliens put these books here in the motorhome and he'd get out the books and it'd be like, you know, something about sex and 101 positions or something like that, literally. It was some of those early books. I think I heard this in another interview, but to acquire that RV, did he sell his business?

Okay, so yeah, he was planning on just running away with you forever. Yeah. And not only did he sell his business, nobody knew he had sold his business. So here's his poor wife and part of the deal in that business, which I learned about all this much later, like in the last, I don't know, 10 years probably. And he had made a deal with the guy that was buying his business, the guy had the motorhome. And that became part of the deal. And that's how he acquired the motorhome. and his wife had no idea that he'd sold the business.

What was she going to do? What a monster. To just build up this family and to take away your childhood and so many other girls' childhood. And just to be able to shut off like that, it's just. No, it really is. It's really something. It's a very interesting thing. You wonder, because he talked about being, he had to sleep outside in the barn and it was cold with his one brother.

because whether it was a step father or something like that, but there were all these things that he talked about about his own childhood, to my parents, never to me, but I've read about all those things and the various things, and you're like, well, maybe something really bad did happen to him, you know, with the aunt and, you know, not that that gives a person license to harm another child, but it gives you understanding and it makes you want to heal all the late.

years, you know, all the generations, all the things that intergenerational trauma does. You want to be the one that's going to break the chain. Absolutely. In your story or your life, in your children and grandchildren. And yet it's very hard. A lot of my trauma showed up through those early years of getting married and divorced. And it traumatized my son. Yeah.

Who's had his own story, you know, that he's going to tell someday. And his addiction was... was the symptom of trauma, losing a father, losing a father figure, losing a step-sisters, one who literally died. And then that was a good marriage. And those were our best years, and he had four stepsisters. And then we ended up divorced again. And it was very traumatic when she died. He was 16. She was 18. And she was his best friend, too, had all the cute friends. and his life is just now going so well, and he's helped me with so many things,

you know, that I wouldn't be doing a podcast, another book, you know, a foundation, a program within that, you know, within the foundation is really based on his experience in recovery. That was kind of a, that pressure of having the entire world of another planet on my shoulder, shoulders was also very motivating for me to do whatever I had to do because I took it seriously. And by the time I was found that first time and all the variety of experiences from, you know, trying to get through the sexual assault part that had to happen if I'm going to have the child, but I would just look up at the little leaves, you know, through the little vent fan thing

and try to count the leaves and just try to go somewhere else. And it's interesting how much you can survive, I guess. How are, you know, we're built to survive. Absolutely. For sure. Absolutely. But if you're stuck in survival mode, it's going to make you sick. And eventually, in some way or another.

So, yeah, that was something. Those days and moving around and having kind of a, you know, a smattering of fun and going to the, you know, the canteena and having to the, you know, the canteena and having the Shirley Temple. And yet probably it was spiked because pretty soon the square, black and white squares on the ground looked like they were coming up. And I was trying to dance and I'm like, oh, I think I'm on the floor, you know, and I'm this 12-year. old, this little shrimpy tiny, 12 year old with her dad. And I just look back on all those experiences now, and I think I don't know, I don't know that every, you know, sexual predator is as calculating or as sophisticated or it plans it like he did.

But he was, you know, I hate to call him smart, but he was, you know. Absolutely. It sounds like it was an immense years of planning. Yeah. Which is terrifying. It was. Absolutely terrifying. I mean, he literally, so that when I got found, when I was found, and that was a scary experience, we're in the motor home.

Yeah. All of a sudden the door. What length of time is this now? This would be. The first one. The first one was about, I think it was about 45 days. 45 days. And it's just kind of repeat the same.

Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, 45 or somewhere 47, maybe with the first couple days as well. I can't remember, but it's right in that time period. Because now that was in October. It was my mother's birthday is October 16th. And I believe that he had said to her, because it was written on a calendar that we found,

going out for milkshakes this weekend for mom's birthday. And that was with the Burt Shultz. We were all going to go for milkshakes for mom's birthday, and it was on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and that that was coming up on the weekend. And he kidnapped me right there, 17th, 18th, right there after her birthday. So we're asleep. It's the middle of the night.

And all of a sudden, pounding on the little motorhome, you know, door. And pretty soon, before really either of us got to the door, they had kicked the door open. And here came in the Federallis and basically grabbed him and called him by. name, you know, with an accent. And of course, I was terrified and put him in the backseat of this kind of little, almost like a little mini bus kind of thing. It was like a, anyway, I was a police car vehicle, but he was in the back seat, in the middle. I could see him because I was put in the front seat in between two other officers. And I could see his eyes in the rearview mirror. I could see him looking at me and, you know, kind of like going over the rules, you know, in his

eyes. I could see him, you know, and the rules were, don't tell anybody about what's happened and about them. And then to make matters even more interesting in the story, they take us all to this, you know, to one of those very typical what you see in the movies, like a courtyard type of prison. So it's got a big courtyard in the middle and then there's, you know, prison cells around And then there's an office and they put me in this little room, very small little room with one chair. That was all those in there. And at the time, I didn't speak Spanish. I do now.

But at the time, I was just totally in the dark. And not knowing that word was getting back to my parents that we found her, we found him, you know, in Mexico, not knowing any of that was happening. and about, I don't know how long, maybe 12 hours had gone by because now it's like late afternoon like the next day, so maybe more like 16 hours had gone by because this was definitely after midnight. So anyways, getting four or five o'clock, I think, in the afternoon because I remember I was really, really hungry and I hadn't eaten anything. And all of a and they come in and they're like, come with us. You know, they're trying to be nice, I'm sure,

but I'm so scared where are they taking me. And they take me down into where he was in a cell. And this one guard, I guess, it was the guard, let him talk to me for just a couple of minutes. And I was outside the cell, but I was, you know, standing there and it was, you know, it was dark and it was musty and there was water kind of trickling down the walls. It was really scary for me.

And he basically went over the rules. The rules are you don't talk about the relaxing sleeping medication. You don't talk about trying to have a baby. You don't talk about them. And the fourth rule was, there were four rules. We'll talk about them. Oh, and you can't have any relationships with any other male companions, including your dad or boys at school.

You have to cut all those off because I'm the only one that you can have any relationship with. So just isolating me further? Yeah, just isolating me further, making sure I remembered the rules, because if we don't follow the rules, then we'll be vaporized. Okay. That was, there was. Yeah. And there were other things that kind of went along with that, like throughout this 45 days,

like, well, if you can't complete the mission, then Susan, my little sister, then she'll be taken. Oh, wow. Or if you break one of the rules, Karen, my middle sister, she'll go blind. And for whatever reason, her eyes were always a really important thing for her. You know, and he just knew what things, I guess, to put in there. And it wasn't coming from him. Of course, it was coming from the aliens.

And that if I had a relationship with my dad, he would be removed, which I knew meant he would be killed. And so, you know, all of a sudden you're trying to save a whole planet and you're trying to protect all the people you love most in your family, you know. So I get back into the room. I'm still hungry. Now it's getting, you know, into the early evening and I still haven't had anything to drink or eat. And then one of the really sweet experiences, which is, again, why I can say, no matter what your religious beliefs are or are not, I don't care. It's fine. It's all good kind of thing. But this was a really cool experience because the network inside of the LDS church is so well connected that about 8 o'clock at night, maybe, it was still light outside. But it was probably

about that time. And all of a sudden there were two Mormon missionaries that came to the jail with a bag from McDonald's. Oh, because they're already in Mexico. Because they're already, yeah, that must have been their area. Yeah. where they were doing missionary work. And somehow them got to all the right people. And they were like, take the girl something to eat. I don't even know how they knew I was hungry. But I guess they probably knew that there's not much of food in a prison.

And so they brought that in a milkshake, a strawberry milkshake. And I just remember being so happy. I'm so hungry. And, you know, it was a few little things like that that would happen that I do think, you know, the impact of just some small, something small that happens along your way, it saves you in some way. You know, there's something about it that, that somehow, you know, you could keep going. And then by the next, the next morning, midday of the next day, and again, I just sat in that same little room on a chair all night. And I just put my feet up on the chair because there were

some little tiny holes in the baseboards. And the little mice would come out and run around the perimeter of the room and then go back in. I just, you know, I just was, I couldn't, I didn't know what they were saying. I knew I had had something to eat. And I hoped that they would come back. And I told them to please come back. And they said, they were the ones that told me. They said, your parents know where you are.

And they're coming to get you. Oh, so they came to Mexico to come get you. And my parents got on a plane and flew to Mexico. Mexico. Okay. So you are rescued from Mexico. Yes. Your parents see you and you go back home. What happened after? Well, the reunion with my parents was, you know, kind of like a movie. You know, the excitement of seeing them. I was, I was so excited to see them and hugging my mom, but kind of avoiding hugging my dad. But he put his arms around both of us. And then my whole thing was, well, what about me? We have to get him out of here. He has to come home. I mean, that's how. that all went. But eventually they said, well, we can't do that. We can't do it right now. We've got to take you home. And then we'll see if we can get him back home. And of course, any question of, did he hurt you? No. You know, did he touch you? No. Gross. I mean, you know,

I was the perfect, I was the perfect cover for him. But because I really did believe I was being watched again, like the aliens could see me all the time. And so, by the time I got home, and of course it was, again, I think my uncle Dick, dad's twin brother had picked up Karen and Susan and had taken them to the airport in Salt Lake where the plane from Mexico was coming. And it was even more dramatic than our little movie on our nine-part stories on Peacock. It was like literally screaming from two ends of a pretty large airport. even at that time in Salt Lake and just them seeing me and, Johnny!

I'm screaming. And that was, I could cry about that. That was a really sweet reunion with my two little sisters. Things that I didn't know about then that I know now, the school had a huge assembly. It was the junior high school. I was supposed to be the drill team leader and my good friend. She had to take over the drill team because I was missing and I didn't go back to school until January. But they had a big assembly.

don't bother the Brobert girl. And, you know, so I felt even more like an alien at school because nobody talked to me. You know, and I'm trying to be the drill team leader again. And I just, I look back on how well I played the part. Like, everything was okay. And that's what, that's what kids do. Yeah. You know, they figure out how to, they want to fit in with Robert.

What happened to him? No, he's now been detained in Mexico for a number of weeks. then they finally get him back and he's now in jail in Pocatello, down at the jail, which is right across the street from where the library was that we go riding our bikes to get the books. And how long was he in prison and what was the sentencing? People, I think, often get the idea that, oh, well, good, he's in your Pocatello jail, that's it. Well, no. They posted bail.

He got out. But before he got out, I remember taking on my bike because I don't drive yet. I'm just 12 years old, taking my bike to go to the library, but going to the jail and dropping off a basket of little goodies for him, you know, and a little note from me. And so many of these notes and the little things that he somehow got to me, like these little, almost like those little precious moments, characters, but they were from the 70s. I don't think it was that. But they were like that and these little books that they would have and he would find a way to to sign it and somehow get it to somebody that was getting out of jail or something.

And then somebody would hand it to me on the school grounds that I didn't even know. But they knew who I was. But it was very interesting how much he kept in touch with me. And the contact was pretty consistent, even after he was out. And then where did I see him next? Well, in church with his family, of course. Wow. And your parents were all still in Pocatello.

My mom and dad, especially my dad. was like, we're not doing anything, even though, you know, he said I, you know, I had a depressive event, and I just kept driving, you know, we had stopped to see the horses. I did my thing and measuring, and I don't remember any of that. I don't think that's true, but that he had done those things, and then we kept, and then I just started going the wrong way, and I was in this deep depression, and I just kept driving, and now all of a sudden I'm like at the border of Mexico, and I just thought, oh, who cares? I'm just going in here and goes,

and then you guys called the FBI. Now I can't come home. I had to keep running because you know what they would have done. They would have thrown me in jail for the rest of my life. So they blamed them? Yeah, so he had all the story to blame that my parents had a big story about him and his depression and that he would have come back, but then they called the FBI.

Now what am I supposed to do? Anyway, and then all the while playing the party. of the male companion with me, and getting letters to me and little books, all these things that I would get from mostly at school. So that's all how he's in contact. Plus, him and his wife and his family are sitting in church, however many Sundays later,

after he's processed through the jail and there's bail and he gets out. And so I'm seeing him, and so I'm making sure I'm not sitting or touching my dad, And, you know, I'm just not talking to any of the boys, even his own boys. I'm friendly, but, you know, I'm trying to follow all the rules. Right. And everybody's kind of like, what's wrong with Jan? You know, but she's just, but in reality, the way things go, he comes back.

I've already been interviewed and said, no, he didn't do anything. We just went on vacation. He said that it was okay with you guys, that we could go on a vacation. And it was fun. And then I said nothing because I didn't want anything bad to happen to my family or to myself or to him. And I truly believed this, that I am now in this, you know, very important mission. You know, it's like being a missionary. Like, I have a mission to save a dying planet.

I'm in it with him. That's the way it is. And I know that he loves me and cares about me and, you know, kind of like, this is how it has to be. Yeah. And so I'm living that reality silently because no person. I told no one, not my best friend, not my sisters, not my parents. Nobody has any idea that he has, you know, even going to the doctor. And they've court ordered it and I had to be checked out the whole thing.

No, of course, I'd never had any kind of a, you know, female exam before. And I'm still, I'm a very, very small child body. But I basically just got through that. And the doctor said, well, we can't find any damage. And it looks like the hyphen is still intact. I mean, I hope I can be graphic. Yeah, no, it's fine. And I was like, of course not.

You know, I was very, I was very good at playing the part because I really was afraid that they would take Susan, that if I messed up. And that was a big motivator. And also because I felt a very strong sense of purpose. Like, you know, that was just who I was. as even a kid. You know, I was the little girl defending the littler girl on the playground.

I just really played this part really well and like everything was fine. And other than the relationship with my dad being like, no, don't touch me. You know, don't, you know, and he, I think he sensed maybe something had happened, but he also didn't know who to tell, what to tell. I wasn't talking. And mostly he just didn't do it. But I had had a very affectionate childhood with my parents and with him. I think it was incredibly hard on him.

And so that's when all that started, that distancing and not talking to boys and not having any friends and not bike riding with the boys. And nobody could like me. And I still did the plays. and that's where I did a lot of my therapy, I think at the time was getting on stage and playing apart and being able to cry or scream or laugh or whatever it was.

I do believe that saved my life in a lot of ways. And I'm a big advocate for the arts and how important it is for kids to be involved in. Yeah. You know, so I was very successful in school. I got all the, you know, I went that direction. Yeah, even after that. It was like, I'm going to get the,

straight A's and I'm going to nose to the grindstone. And when the notes would come from somebody at the new junior high school, which I'd barely been in before I was kidnapped, you know, seventh grade was junior high. And I am now back and I've missed the whole, basically the whole first semester. And I'm trying to be the drill team leader. And I don't know anybody. It's January. And I would get notes from somebody that I didn't know. And they would tell me that take your bike, go to such and such phone booth and sit on the floor. And at this time, the phone will ring, answer the phone. I mean, it would give me specific instructions.

And I would do exactly what it said. I'd get home from school. I'd do my homework. I'd be like, oh, bye, Mom. I'm going to go on a bike ride. I'll be back in a little bit. And I would ride my bike over to the phone booth here or the phone booth there. There were a couple of them that weren't too far.

And I'd sit on the floor until the phone would ring. And on the other end of the line, it was either female companion. It was either the alien voice. Or it was virtual. So when he gets out of jail, obviously your parents, at least your father, has backed off of him a little bit. A lot. My dad never let him in the house again. Right.

But it is during this time period between the first and the second where he gets closer to your mom. Yes. He incessantly called the house during the hours of the day when he knew my dad would be at work. He would call 15 times. And my mother would be like, okay, I don't want to answer the phone if it's him because now this is the pattern. And, you know, the one time she'd pick up the phone, she goes, you've got to stop calling. Well, just Marianne, just let me tell you. Just let me tell you what happened.

Yeah. You know, and once in a while, there she would. She'd listen, I had this depression. All that I could think about was you. You know, here I am with Jan and she's in the kitchen, you know, making some food for us. And, you know, and I just could see you standing there. I just really, really, I'm so in love with you. I wish I had met you first.

I mean, he had all the things to say. And my mom's like, well, you didn't. And, you know, I'm glad that you're okay. And I'm glad that you're back. And, you know, my mother is still this person like everybody else. Well, he didn't hurt her. I mean, you're not going to press charges, you know, like as if people actually press charges. We don't press charges.

You know, they decide if they're going to press charges, you know, the FBI and all of that. And they did go forward. They were like, no, he did take a child across a country's border into Mexico. We are going to, we're going to do this kidnapping charge and we're going to do it, even if you guys do all the wrong things, which my parents had. no idea what was right or wrong. They don't know anything about the court system. So it's during that period of time, I would say within about four to five months of me being home, like by that next summer that they have moved. They've moved out of Pocatello and they've moved to Ogden, Utah,

which is about, I'd say, two hours or so from Pocatello. And they've moved. Well, now they don't just have me trying to see our friends. Now they've got Karen, who is so close to his second son, Jimmy. I mean, I've found letters from her in these boxes of things that I've been unpacking that, Jimmy, I'm so mad at my dad. I don't know why he won't let us. We're going to come and see you. Our mom is going to bring us down and we're going to see you, you know, and you and you and I, we're going to someday we'll probably get married. And I mean, literally, these sweet in so many times. I mean, so many things. And somebody intercepted it before she ever sent it because it was in my mom's boxes of things.

So pressure on my mom, pressure from him on the phone, calls every day. Expressing his love. Feelings and love. And of course, Jan was driving me crazy. I'm practically glad that the FBI finally found us and got us home. She was going to make me nuts. Right. But Marianne, I could just see you and we should be together.

I know you have feelings for me. And of course, my mom did. you know, he had made sure of all of that before it ever happened, for any of it happened. He had done that little compromising things and put those things in place, like you said, so that there would be something that he could blackmail my parents with. Well, now he's working on my mom. He's already got something on my dad. And basically my mom took us to Ogden maybe three or four times over the course of the next,

that summer and whatever, against my dad's will. I mean, he was mad. He did not want us going. But she said, well, you know, Robert and Gail are now separated. I think they're getting divorced. Okay. So that had happened. And so we're just going to Gales and the kids and kids to see their friends. You know, the girls are so homesick. I didn't know that. So they separated. Yeah, they did. And they eventually divorced. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement. And nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system.

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have to come and see what I've been doing. Oh, no, and it was jewelry. Anyway, so I remember one time, me and mom, both of us, went with him to go see what he was selling. Oh, you just come with me. You know, the kids are playing. Just come with me. I want to show you. And so we went with him. And this is another one of those experiences that I look back on. And I am like, well, I know exactly what was happening because my mother talks about this experience. And we went whatever to see whatever.

And they goes, oh, I need to stop by my apartment. He was now living in an apartment. I need to stop by there and grab some stuff. Oh, I have some bracelets. I have some bracelets that I want to get to Jan, Karen, and Susan. All of us have some bracelets. Oh, and one for you too, Marianne. So we go to his apartment.

He gets us both, I don't know, something to drink, some sort of a soda. I don't know what it was. But obviously there was something in it because my mother tells this story of sitting in that, and it was kind of one of those spinning kind of chairs. Yes, that were popular. And she said, I just remember putting my head back. And at one point, I opened my eyes, but I didn't really lift my head up. And I remember just seeing him, and he was shirtless, he had pants on.

But I think she said he was shirtless, and he was walking across the living room where I was sitting. And I remember trying to turn my head to see if you were sitting in the other one, the other little chair, like twisty chair. And she says, I don't remember seeing you. I just remember putting my head back and going back and just I couldn't keep my eyes open. And she said, so whatever that 20, 30 minutes was, the other thing that she said was that he, when we got up to leave, you know, and apparently I was awake as far as she could tell, but she was loopy and she was kind of stumbling. You know, and of course, I would have willingly done whatever he told me I had to do, you know, so if he was. doing something sexual, you know, with me. I don't remember it.

Cognitively, it still is just an implied thing. But he made fun of her. He goes, oh, man, for a lady, for a woman who doesn't drink, you're sure stumbling around. What's the matter with you? Right. You know, like, and mom's like, I don't know. It's like, I've got a headache.

And anyway, and she said, not until, you know, years later, did I look back on that and go, he drugged me in that hour and a half or whatever that we were gone. and then back over and played with our friends and then mom took us home. And so about, I would say, probably towards the end of that six-month period of time is when my dad, he just put his foot down. He said, if you keep taking the girls, if you keep going to see that family, that man, you know, we're going to get divorced.

I'm going to, you're endangering our kids. I don't know what's wrong with them. I don't know what's happened, but something's wrong. Okay. My dad just knew it. He was very firm. My mom was like, you're being ridiculous. So anyway, at one point, he, Bersch told, got in her on the phone, said, please come down.

I want to lay everything out for you so that you can see, you know, exactly what had happened. You know, he'd already said a bunch of things. He said, but I want you to see for, like, for how long, you know, that I have been in love with you. And why? And what? And I'm going to tell you all the things. You know, and my mom was like, okay. So she goes and she said, and that was the time when I met him in a parking lot of a cafe.

But then he said, just follow me to where I live. And he was in another motorhome by this point, I think. But she said, and I stayed too long and it got too late. And there was too much, there was just too much of all the feelings and the tension and that whole thing, you know, when you're fighting something for this many years and you know you love your husband and your kids, but you're fighting this attraction to somebody. Many women were attracted to him.

And she said, and then, you know, he just leaned over. He kissed me, put his hand on my leg and my knee, and then moved it up my thigh. She said, and the rest is what happened. And she said, and I, and it happened, she told me there were about six interludes, you know, she said, but a couple of the times, we did not ever go as far as sex,

but there were about three or four times that we did. And she said it was after about the sixth time that I got home and your dad, he just, without me ever saying anything, he knew. He knew something was very, very wrong. And he said, you've been down there. You've seen him. And she said within 48 hours, there were papers on our table that they were divorced from my dad.

I'm divorcing you and I'm taking the girls. And it about killed him. I mean, he cried every day and my mother too. And so when that happened, she went to see her mom. It was also in another little city close to Ogden, but about maybe, you know, three quarters of the way to Ogden from Pocatello, so an hour and a half away maybe from our home. So she, she went to spend some time with her mom. And while she was there, her little sister, Eileen, my mom has, there's three girls in the family

of nine, six brothers and three girls. And my mom's the middle. And her younger sister, who had been through a really rough marriage by that point, she came and just to grandma's house. And she just said, I told you, Mom, she was an idiot. There was nobody nicer than Bob Robert that she could ever be married to. And my grandma said to her before she had dementia Alzheimer's, she was like, Marianne, if you don't fix this and go home, she goes, I like Bob better better than I like you. You better figure it out and get it fixed. You better fix this. And she said, there was something about my little sister who'd been through hell in her first marriage. And my mother, that started to shake something out of me.

The reality check? Yeah, something. And she said, and a couple other things that my grandmother said to her, she said, he's using you. She said, he's not a good man. I've known it since the minute that I met him. Robert. Yeah. Robert's not a good man.

You know, he's a snake. She said something like that. And my mom kind of was taken aback and finally started really thinking about the whole thing. By the time she came back, it was maybe two weeks. And in that two-week period that she was gone, dad told us, I don't remember this the way Karen, my sister, who has a really good memory. And when dad sat us down, I don't really even remember this and told us that he and mom might be getting divorced.

And Karen said, I just remember saying, dad, nobody gets divorced. We didn't have one friend. We had one friend that had divorced parents in that time period in our neighborhood, in our world. And Karen was like, you can't do that. You have to work it out, Tadb. You have to. We can't, you know, and I don't remember anything but just sitting there and just quiet, not knowing anything about my mom and Bertschild, just knowing that I'm still the female companion and I've got a mission and I'm like feeling responsible for everything, but saying nothing, right? Yes. And it was just, oh, all the tears and everything.

Yeah. So by the, and he said, she's going to go. Your mom's thinking. about it and what we need to do. And of course, he made it very clear. You know, I don't, I don't think we should have a relationship with the Birchold family. Their dad did something very bad by taking Jan. It's really a bad thing. And, and I'm like, oh, well, Daddy didn't do anything? You know, I'm always playing the part. Yes. So your parents are separated. Yeah. And then do they get back together? Yeah. So what happens is we're all crushed and, oh, this can't happen. By the time my mom comes back from that visit and being there with her mom, she's figured it out. She's like, something is wrong with him. Something is not right. I don't know what. I don't know

what he's done. I don't still not really ever considering that maybe he would abuse me because that is just something nobody thought possible. But knowing that something was wrong, that he was manipulating her. And she finally came back. And luckily, for us girls, we all happen to be in the kitchen. And the kitchen looks, there's a big arched doorway, and it looks down to the dining room. And then beyond that is the front door, dining room, front door to the house. And then the living room and the fireplaces down and the other end. And you can see it all from the kitchen. And we all happened to be in the kitchen. I don't know if we were working on homework around our tiny table. I have no idea how it fit in there.

But we were there because we witnessed when my mom came home and she didn't come through the back door the way that, you know, they always came in the house through the back door. And that was the beginning of the kitchen or go down the stairs to the basement right there at the back door. She came to the front door. And she rang the doorbell, like kind of thing. She's visiting. Like she's visiting. We didn't know it was her because we're sitting out. We're not looking out the kitchen window or anything.

And so dad opens the door and there's mom. And we're all like, who is it? and he didn't say anything. And then he kind of stepped back into the dining room and we're all watching. And she came, she stepped in. She knew that she could step into the door, through the door. And she just put her arms out to my dad. And she said, oh, Bob, I've been such a fool.

I'm so sorry. You know, I love you. I love my family. I love my daughters. this is where I want to be. And my dad just disintegrated into sobbing and my mother too, and then they just hugged each other and held each other. And we all got to witness that.

And that was really another one of those moments in my life where I learned everything I needed to know. Yeah. By their example, by how forgiveness was there and contrition and love and humility. It was humility. Yeah. It was all right there.

It was demonstrated for me. You know, so those things that when I say I got everything that I ever could have needed or wanted from my parents, I really did. And that was a great example in a moment in my life that I'll never forget. From that point on, they were united. And then a whole other year almost goes by. And I'm still hearing from virtual. He shows up in my bedroom, my downstairs bedroom. Yeah.

That he divided. It used to be one great big room. This was after now. So they're back together. Right. And then Birch told us coming back into the home. Yes, but without them knowing. Without knowing.

It happens in the middle of the night. Right. And I don't know he's coming. Okay. He's obviously got a key to our back door. Yes. Because they locked the doors, I think, after that. I do believe that was happening.

Yes. Didn't change the locks. But anyway, at two different times, very vivid. memories for me. So now I'm going into my 14th birthday. But during that year, there were two times that I remember him coming and being, standing in the doorway of my bedroom and the way the bed faced I could see him, or from my hanging chair, one way or the other. I can't remember, but I remember the first time and I woke up because the voice, the alien voice, on the speaker. The speaker was in my room.

Oh, wow. So he must have set it up. I must have been wired. I don't know if he had done that when he did the handyman work to divide our bedroom. So we would each have our own room and I was in the very back room. That was before. We kind of skipped that part. Before the first kidnapping.

Yep. During this, which sorry, we're jumping around. Yeah. Before the first kidnapping, well, he was telling your parents he needed therapy and he was in a dark place. He said, and correct me, if I'm wrong. that part of his therapy was hanging out with you. Yes, yes. Okay, so all of that.

Okay, so that's very interesting. Yes, this is how this all unfolded. That's another part in the first documentary that people go there. Yeah. Okay, so as we were getting older, we got our allergy pills, you know, and now we're getting older. He has a furniture store, and he's like, you know, he's like, would you guys want to have your own bedroom?

I mean, I do handyman stuff all the time for people, and then I got the furniture wholesale. And, of course, I wanted my own room. I was about that age. And you're in a big room together. Huge room. Yeah, one big, long, huge room. I wanted it.

I don't think Karen ever wanted it. I'm not sure if she was like, oh, that might be. Okay. Anyway, so then he, handyman, tool belt, whole thing, put up the big wall. So I don't know if he wired it in advance. I don't know how much of all that was going to happen. He already knew. about and had planned. They came on. It woke me up, scared me to death. It's now in my home home,

in my downstairs bedroom, which is in the back corner of the house with two small windows, one on the outside wall here and the outside wall here of the backyard and the side yard. And I'm just catatonic. I mean, truly the sound of that voice, I was so scared of that that sound. So anyway, that happened, and I'm just staring, you know, into the darkness, and all of a sudden, in the doorway, there's a figure and there's no shoes on his feet. That's what I remember. Oh.

That he didn't have any shoes on. And it's just socks. And he was standing there, and he said, they told me that they would transport me here. Oh. Okay. Now he's living in Ogden. whatever but now he's in my room and then it happened one other time those two times and then one the second time when he left i found um i found a i don't know if it was a notebook or if it was just a

folded piece of paper and and it said um hide hide this and so i put it in the pillow case of my hanging cherub which he had also had built for me and the blue velvet hanging chair with the big round pillow on the sides and I hit it inside there and I don't know if I read it at the time or anything I just hit it like it said I just always did whatever it said whatever you know and I hid it away and then within about I don't know if it was another month or two then I was to take this letter out this thing out and I was to copy it in my own handwriting And that's how I wrote the letter, and I was supposed to copy it exactly. And so, like, he had words misspelled on that letter.

I didn't misspell words. Right. And it was like, you know, dear Bob and Marianne, I can no longer live in this house with your screwed up morals. And then the instructions, which I got through a phone booth message, a phone booth message from him. And then on the actual paper itself told me to pack a backpack. what to put in it and write this letter on this paper and sign your name and then leave the letter

on your on your bed and then forget the backpack and it'll be in your closet keep it in your closet and i'll tell you when to do that or you'll know that this is the night to you have to stage a fight with your parents i want you to get really really mad at your mom and dad and just scream and yell and go down to your bedroom and slam the door and don't answer the door and tell you don't want them to come in and you don't know when you're coming out the whole thing so that's what i did i did it just like i was told to and left the letter on the bed and that night of the fight and they had come down and mom had brought me a tray of food just leave it by the door i don't you know I remember all those things happened.

And I remember my dad coming down and knocking on the door when it's really late. I said, I'm not answering the door. And he's like, well, I just want to tell you that I'm sorry. And that, you know, he just had something to say that was real sweet, you know, right? Never, never, never during this whole almost two years of me treating my dad 180, so different than I ever had had before. He never pressured me. He just came back with step in front of a moving train for you, honey. I don't know what's wrong, but I love you, you know, even with just no affection, nothing.

I did nothing. And so anyway, he just, again, you know, I'm sorry that something we did hurt you or hurt your feelings and we love you. And I'll have mush and toast ready in the morning, you know, for breakfast. and I was like, okay, you know, just kind of this way. And that was the night that Birchtoe came in his, I think he had by then a Black Lincoln Continental by then. And he left the car running, kind of pulled over a little bit. But, you know, it's the middle of the night.

Nobody's outside in my little town anyway. And he came to the bedroom window. And he said, make sure both the windows are unlocked and I'll help you. And he helped me leave, get out. through the bedroom window in that little isolated bedroom that he had created for me and help me, you know, pull the, you know, pull the bed over, you know, do this, do that so that you can get up high enough and, you know, because they're just little windows that's kind of the top of the room in those old basements. So anyway, that's how I, that's how it happened the second time.

Yeah. And then I got into the Black Lincoln and we drove away. and I remember partway he was taking me to California and he told me that and he goes, you're going to stay with a family there that they're going to take care of you until school starts. And then I've got you ready to be enrolled into this. It was a Catholic boarding school. An all-girls school. Yeah, all-girls school, Flint Ridge, Sacred Heart Academy. And I've been back to visit that place too and look at it.

It seems so massively large. and it's just not. Yeah. You know, but I mean, it was, it still is there. So I stayed with this family and part of the way, I remember him letting me drive part of the way. And somehow there was some, it wasn't an accident, it didn't hit his car, but we almost hit a car.

Well, I was sitting on his lap driving because he, you know, of course, I'm a kid. I think that's so cool, you know, and he's an idiot. So anyway, I'm sitting there. And that was the time when I hit the steering wheel and I still have a little scar from my little. I have two scars on my nose. One of them was from that and one of them was from a play that I did later. And the drop, the bar from the drop of the backdrop, you got caught on something.

And I kind of went like this and it landed on my, I made my nose bleed. And I think it broke my nose. So I had a little scar on my nose from this thing. and silly things that I do remember. And then I went to this house and they had this little cute, little attic bedroom. And just like your brain does,

I looked at them and thought, oh, I think they're aliens. I would have those experiences. Like one of the nurses in the doctor's office when they were checking me out. And I looked at her and the way she looked at me and these huge blue eyes and darker hair. And then somebody in an office one time,

jet black hair with these really, really blue eyes. And both of those times I thought, oh, maybe that's Zeta, maybe that's Sethron. I'd look at different people. And when I got to that house, again, it felt like maybe the husband, maybe he's one of the aliens because of how, I don't know why, but your brain just fills in the blank. Well, he clearly kept popping you full of it, whether it was the PAY phone, whether it was the speaker in your room, all of that. So that makes complete sense. So he drops you off with this family, which I'm assuming you have a new alias now because you're going to be. I'm Janice.

I'm missing persons or missing children. Yeah, what was your name? Janice Tobler. Right. And for all I know, he told them the same story that he told the nuns. Right. Which is that I don't know, because I just played along with I'm supposed to be here and he's my dad. And then they're going to put me into the same boarding school where their daughter is.

From what we know now about at least the nuns, I don't think they've ever been able to locate the family that I was with for about two and a half weeks. Because the first hold would come back and forth. you know, he'd come on the weekends. And so getting back to the whole idea of what happened to him after the first kidnapping, that's just about to come up. Right. He's now done a second kidnapping. And now the first kidnapping, he is sentenced for, you know, something with a minor, whatever,

kidnapping. I mean, he gets some sort of a charge, but because of all the time he served in Mexico jail and in Pocatello, Idaho jail, he's only sentenced to 15 days in jail. That's his whole thing. And when does it happen? About a week or two after I'm in the boarding school. Okay. I'm now in the boarding school.

He's come each of the weekends and got me in the school. And he had told the nuns that my mother had been killed in Laos. There was a big crisis over in Lebanon and Laos and whatever something was going on. And he had told them that my mother had been killed and that he was in the CIA and that they needed to. to protect me and my identity that for sure they couldn't tell anybody that I was in that school. So these sweet nuns that take me into this boarding school, they are so kind and protective and all of these things. You know, her mother's been killed, the whole thing, and they were really sweet to me. And at first I had a room all by myself for about a week. And then a girl from

Japan, Jacinta, I have her letters. That's why I can remember her name. But she was my roommate. and she spoke very little English, but her name was Jacinta Lobo. And she would, sometimes when I would be crying or something in my bed, you know, and she didn't know why she would come over and she'd be, oh, Jen, sweet tears. Oh, now happy tears. She would do these sweet little things. She has no idea what's going on in my life. And so I think about things and people like that along the way that I'm like,

I wish somehow you could know that that was you that did that for me. helped you help me you know yeah yeah and so she was my roommate and didn't speak too much english but very smart and and i was you know start at school and again you know immersing myself in school making sure i was getting good grades and going to the the little dining hall and all the things of that helped so much give me some kind of normal in between the weekend visits where he'd then take me away you know, for two or three days, do the awful things. And then I'd come back and go back into school. And I look back and I'm like, it all feels like a story that I'm telling now. But it was all real, you know? And I'm like, man, just the little things that people do and they don't know what's going on with you,

but how much those things matter to be kind. Absolutely. In every aspect of everybody's life, you don't know what anything is going through. I'm in school. And about the third week and or maybe I don't know. I don't have a real good timeline in my brain, but he let me know I'm not coming. I can't come this weekend. You know, I'm going to be, I'm going to be gone. And then I'll come the next weekend. So I won't see you this week or the next week. It's 15 days. He's going to jail. I have no idea that this is the time until I'm looking at all these records. And I'm like, that's why he didn't come. He never told me as this kid, you know, that's 14 and this boarding school, which was, I wasn't a Catholic.

Yeah. But I learned the rosary. I went to Mass every day. And I acted like I knew everything, you know. And all those things added to my acting skills, I guess. You played the part. I played the part. Yeah.

And I look back on that and I'm like, wow, here's the record of when he was in jail serving his 15 days for the first kidnapping. He's already kidnapped me the second time. And I'm in this boarding school. And this is the dates that he serves his time in jail. It's wild when I look back on the story. It's crazy. And how?

So I'm assuming the FBI gets involved again. Yeah, they do. Mostly Pete Welsh. Because they're like, look, they listen. He knew when my parents called and said, she's gone. Here's the letter. He came to the house. He's like, they're like, yeah, of course.

It's virtual. We know it is. Right? But we don't know. Yes. Because we don't have any kind of evidence. And Pete's like, okay, because it was such a. chaos the first time when there's a missing child in the newspapers and the reporters and the people

outside of your house and the drive by your house and all the stuff that was happening, which I didn't know any of saying about. Because of all of that, this time, because of this, we kind of have to list her as a runaway because of how this letter reads. But we all know she's not a runaway. So, of course, we're going to start watching him. We're going to make contact. And then my parents eventually hired a private investigator who also did a bunch of things. And many times he would call on the phone on his own and he's like, I heard from Jan, literally say this to my mother. Oh, because he only calls during the deck.

He's acting like you ran away. Yeah, like I ran away. She was calling him. Yes. And then I called him. She needs money. She's living hard. She's on drugs.

She's prostituting herself. He's telling us to my parents. My mother said I almost laughed out loud. I said, do you know how Jan cried? I mean, she didn't say this to him, but she's like, every time Jan has, ever had to have a shot. It's as if, you know, you're cutting off her finger. She cries and she tries to be brave and she hates needles. She's like, yeah, she's using drugs, hard drugs. And she's prostitering yourself, really? Well, hmm. Okay, so they're not buying it at all. No, not they are, they know it's him.

Right. But nobody can keep following him. Like they'll follow, like they'll, they'll have people staked out by this apartment that he has and somebody comes out and goes in their car or whatever. But he's got himself in disguise. He comes back and they still don't think it's him. And then they're like, well, he hasn't come in or out for like three days. That seems weird, but whatever. And so all of these kinds of things, they know where he has a motor home. They know where his apartment is.

But they can't follow him. He literally has done this. My mother, who now knows he's the devil, along with my dad, she does her own investigating. she goes and gets as many reports from the little local police department or then she'll go to like she made hundreds of phone calls she made hundreds of phone calls she would get the records from the people that had boarded the plane and somehow she had an inn and somebody let her see the names because she was like i'll recognize if he's got an alias and the name and how many passengers were there was there a girl with a man you know there were certain things that she and she would go through, and any of them that looked like they could be suspect, she'd make a phone call. And she did that with with airplane records, with schools. She had, I don't know if it was a proper dream or something, but she told me one time, she said, there was something that happened in, I don't remember what, when she thought,

maybe he's put her in a school. She had that thought without him saying anything, because he was always, yeah, divine. It was divine, whatever. And so then she started calling schools. She called hundreds and hundreds of different schools. She sent, I mean, back in the day, what do you do? Well, you make, I have the little letter. And she put a little school picture in it.

And here's her, you know, cut out and got 30 school pictures. And she sent them to 30 different schools. And do you have this student? She's missing. Our daughter is missing. And she said, I heard back from maybe half a dozen is all. But I sent to all 30 until all your school pictures from that. that year were gone. And one of them that came back and they sent the picture back,

and they said, we're so sorry about your missing daughter. And we decided to send the picture back in case you needed to send it on to some others. You know, I mean, you're doing things in a way that. Investigative, proactive. Right. But in the way you can do it in the 70s. Yeah. Yeah. She's boots on the ground. My mother started calling schools. And when she heard the woman's voice at the Merrimount School, she said, I had this overwhelming. Again, it had to have been some sort of divine intervention. I had this overwhelming feeling, Merrimount. And then she talked to that lady that answered the phone.

And she said, no, I'm sure we don't have that. But can I send you a picture? And yes. Anyway, she said, I just knew there was just something that came over us or me with that one phone call. And she said, and so then we narrowed that search. And I started calling other places. is in our private investigators started doing research and pretty soon they it took them going to Flint Ridge Sacred Heart Academy three times what three new pictures and newspaper articles and this little

girl's been kidnapped before is this the man no no that's not because they thought oh my god guys coming because he's got it all set up I'm CIA and if you tell people that my daughter's here and they they're the bad guys and then they're going to torture her to get to me So those sweet nuns were like, no, nope, she's not here, but they knew from, because something else happened where they followed him and they knew he got, he landed in California under this name, Tobler. I think that they, they said he's going by the name Tobler, but his real name is Robert Birch told. Anyway, and then they found me. And they sent the, what do you call the person that's your main, like, for your city, like the city attorney, but not that guy, the one that's over the police. He was the one who came after they had seen enough evidence to go, yeah, she is here. Is she really a kid? I mean, they were just mortified.

I bet. And so he came. They called me from a class. The nuns were really nice to me. And they always made sure I had extra food or extra things because, you know, I don't know. I guess that's how you say we love you. Yeah. You know, in a boarding school.

Anyway, and I got to go into the school there. Do you remember Little House on the Prairie? Yes, of course. You're very young. No, I watched Little House on the Prairie. Okay. So I watched it religiously because he had given me this little tiny TV. It was about the size of a VCR.

And so at night, when Jacinta was asleep or whatever, I would get under the covers in my little bed. turn the TV on and it had a little earphone plug in an auxiliary so I had these little over the head earphones and Birchstold's given this to me and I get under there and I get the antenna out of my covers and I go out the side and I could pick up two shows yeah I could pick up Charlie's angels oh no another good show on the prairie great shows I know they were full of strong girls and women and I was thinking of me and I was like wasn't that like divine oh absolutely think about it. And I'm like, it was so good for me.

Absolutely. They had purpose and so did I. And I was hard, but I was doing it. I was doing my mission. It was what I was supposed to do. And it was just, it's amazing to me. Little things like that. So that's one of my favorite memories. And of course, my sweet little Jacinta, who could barely speak English. So she was so sweet to me, wrote me little letters and notes. I still have those in all my boxes of stuff. And someday I'm going to try to find her. I know she was from Japan. That's all I know. And then the other thing that I remember was being in class with the girl that goes blind in Melissa Sue Anderson was a girl that went to that boarding school. And then she would be gone sometimes because she was filming. And of course, I had been watching Little Isles on the Prairie, like, you know, religiously.

And then now I'm watching it under my covers at the boarding school. And there she is sitting there with those blue eyes. And I'm like, we're in the same class and at the same table and I would talk to her. And I was like, oh, I just want to do what she does. I want to be an actress. Yeah. And then you'd go up to do that? Yeah.

So then George Shell came from our police department, our legal, whatever, and he's the one who brought me home. And I was so mad leaving the place and telling the nuns that I love you and I want to be here and I'm coming back and don't know why they're taking me. I'm, you know, to the end, I was Janice Tobler until the nuns came and actually came to our home in Pocatello because they were testifying in court and all of that, which happened over the next two years. I was gone for over three months. Almost four. On the second kidnapping. Yeah, because I was gone from about the 10th of August until again, all right, before Thanksgiving,

you know, that's how it went. And so that was my ninth grade year. And luckily, I had a couple of teachers that really were my friends and that really loved me. And because again, I'm not talking. I still, there's all, I'm not 16 until the story comes out when I'm 16. I'm 14. That was like D-Day for me. So I come home, the little nuns come. I remember Sister Maria Torres came. As the year goes on, I keep getting messages from him, same kind of ways, people at school. Now I'm in high school, you know, ninth grade into 10th grade. Is he out of, not in prison? Oh, he's not in prison? It's just like he gets arrested and then he post bail and now he's out again. And now he's sending you stuff again.

Oh, yeah. You know, that's the life. I didn't see. He didn't show him my bedroom that year, but I got lots of different notes from him telling me, again, to go to the phone booth and the alien voices on the other end and writing my bike and coming home. But I was really involved in school. So I had a lot of play practices and a lot of choir rehearsal early morning in the gate. city singers. I did all those things in high school, especially. I was really busy. And during that period of time, I don't know if he was losing interest, but he didn't contact me quite as often,

but I did see him. There were times when I left in Idaho, you get your permit to drive. I got it right around my 14th birthday going into my 15th birthday. Like I was already in the driver's training and stuff. So by the time I was 15, I had a driver's license. So I would take the little car and he would send a note and I was supposed to meet him somewhere. Sometimes it was in that mini dome parking lot, the big football stadium. It was just really literally, you could walk to it from our house, but around the back of it, backside.

And he'd be there. And then he'd take me away and we'd go off to the reservation or whatever. and it was often that he would take me in his car to where he had his motor home. And there again would be the, you know, sexual assault and all the trying to have the mission before I'm 16. Got to save the dying planet. This still continues all through that year. I mean, I don't know when house arrest started, but nobody's watching him or the... I mean, I don't know.

I mean, you're a kid, so obviously you don't. Yeah. My God, did the justice system fail? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. And my poor parents, because on that second one, that was when he had his attorney who was also just in our neighborhood, somebody that had come into my dad's flower shop many times. And all of a sudden, now she's his attorney. And she's saying, well, you know, why don't you guys come and talk to me?

Because he's been telling me stories about things that happen between you and Marianne. And, you know, he really, you know, I'm hoping that we can get this settled outside of court because, you know, we don't want, we don't want to come out that Bob's a homosexual and whatever. My mom's like, Bob is not a homosexual. And still not really ever having heard from my father's lips what happened with Birchtold. Yes. So, of course, that's what is planted in my mom's mind. So they go down to talk to her, you know, not knowing that they should never talk to.

His attorney, they don't know any of this. Of course, now the FBI and the police, they're all like mad at my parents. You're so stupid. What did you? Well, she said that if we just struck a deal, then it wouldn't all have to go to court. They just wanted to go away for you. Yeah, they wanted to go away for all of us. The summer of my 16th birthday, I've seen him, you know, on and off several times, you know, maybe only five or six times during that whole, you know, year.

and of course there's a new trial going and whatever. And what ended up happening was when I went to this theater camp, they had a five-week-long theater camp at BYU for, I think you had to be at least a sophomore in high school, but it was for sophomore, juniors, and seniors. And I was a junior. And I went to the camp. I don't know how my parents let me go, but I begged and begged, and it was so great.

It was so in my element of doing things. And I was supposed to contact him when I got there so that we could, you know, see each other. And I tried a couple of times. And but then he would say, well, I can come on this time. And I would be like, I have play practice. And once you go out of the, you can't get out of the dorm, they kind of lock you in, so to speak, because we're, you know, and so anyway, trying to find a time a couple of times, it never happened. I never saw him.

And then my 16th birthday was happening right before the final play was happening like the first week of August and my birthday's July 31st. And so I hadn't seen him and all of my family was coming down to see the show. And then they went for a few days and then they were taking all us kids in the camp back home. And basically, as I had my 16th birthday, I knew that I was supposed to have had a baby by my 16th birthday. That was what they had said. And half of me was like, maybe I'm going to be vaporized. Maybe I won't even get to do the play. I just really didn't know.

I hadn't heard from him. And I'd had so many great experiences at this camp and doing what I loved and with other kids. And there was a boy that kept following me around. that was in the camp. I had a scene with him in the play, but I, you know, I avoided boys. I'd done everything I was supposed to do. Oh, yeah, everything still that I was supposed to do. And, but we would have a break from the play practice, the dinner break or a, you know, half an hour break. And we all went down to the bowling alley that had an ice cream bar. And I was, you know, behind this boy. And we were all getting our ice cream and doing that and then we'd go back.

for the last part of the night. And he paid for my ice cream. And I mean, I didn't ask him to. I was so shocked, I knew something terrible was going to happen. I tried to be normal, you know, ate my ice cream. And then I said, I don't feel good. I have to go back to my dorm room. And they said, that's okay.

You just go and rest your part. We're not going to concentrate on that tonight. You just go rest. And so I went back to my little dorm room. my roommate who had been in the theater camp had been sent home because she didn't follow any of the rules. I followed all those rules and all these other rules, all the rules. Anyway, and so I just laid on my bed and I cried and I was like, oh no, please don't hurt my family. Please don't take Susan.

I didn't know he was going to do that, you know, kind of all of this sort of thing. And fell asleep and then woke up the next morning and my parents always called me every morning before I would leave for the day they would call. And so, you know, I got up and I went down to where the phone was, you know, down the dorms, down into the office area and talked to my mom and dad. And everybody was okay. Everything was fine. And then my mom said, but we did have a little thing that happened with the two dogs, Tiffy and Bandit were our two dogs. And they're sick. And I don't know if I fed them something bad, but both of the dogs are sick. And I'm going to be taking them. over to the vet today. And then I was like, oh, no, you know, and I thought that was me. Oh, I thought what happened with the boy, this is what they're doing. They're going to kill one of my dogs.

And I kind of cried, and mom says, oh, I think they're going to be okay. I just wanted you to know, you know. And so then I hung up and I went about my day at the camp. And then she said, we'll call you tonight as well. So on my dinner break, I went back and sure enough, they called. and I talked to him again, well, Tiffy's not good. She's staying at the vet for the night. They're a little worried about her, but bad that's back home and doing fine and whatever.

I think maybe I fed him something bad. And then later on, I found out from my sister Karen that they had seen some girls that were in front of our house. And she said, and I swear that they were coaxing the dogs to come over to them and trying to be, you know, like they were being nice to the dogs. She said, but I think those girls were the ones that poisoned the dogs. I think that somehow they were hired by Birchtol. That's what she thinks. I don't know if that's true or not. But my mom said maybe I fed him something and it poisoned him,

but Tiffy had to spend the night. So then I was really upset again. She goes, I'll call you in the morning. You know, because I was so upset. She's like, I was like, oh, it's my fault. It's my fault. She's like, it's not your fault. You're not even here.

If anybody's fault, it's my fault. I've probably fed him something bad. I think everything's going to be okay. Bandit's fine. We'll see what happens with Tiffy. And so the next morning, when she called, And I talked to him and she said, Tiffy's coming home. She's fine.

Bandit's fine. Everybody's fine. And she just knew she should, she knew through that gut feeling that sometimes a parent might have. I just need to keep in touch with her. And I need to keep talking to her. Having no idea what is going on in my mind and in my world. None. Zero.

Nobody knows anything. And so when she called and told me that, it was like the first time, in almost four years practically to the day. I mean, this is August. I was kidnapped the first time in early October. And so I'm just a month away from that, you know, a month or two away from that same four years. And I had that thought. And I tell everybody when I go and speak or talk to people, that first thought of a brainwashed person is maybe this isn't real. Yeah. Because I had basically started making plans for how I was going to tell Susan about the mission because now I'm 16. Right, because she's the next one that's supposed to continue it. Oh gosh. I knew my dad had

bought a gun. I knew where he kept it. And I had planned on going back if telling Susan and if she didn't want to do the mission, then I would kill her, and then I would kill myself. Because I didn't want to be vaporized. I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded terrible. Is that burning from the inside out? Is it like boiling hot water? What is it? You know, but it was scary to me. And so anyway, I just remember after those two things, the ice cream miracle, I call it, and then the dog miracle. and my mom just telling me, you're not even here, it's not your fault, and whatever, I had that first thought, before I tell Susan, kill her and kill myself, I better make sure this is real.

I had that. But then the second thought that a brainwashed person has is, oh, I'm just kidding, I'm sorry, I know you're watching me, I'll do everything you tell me, please don't hurt my family. That's the, that for me, brainwashed person. That's the second, right there. Yeah. But it was enough of a moment, and I'd had no moments like that, until that moment. And from that point on, after the play was done, and the family came, and I got back home, back into school, and that would have been my junior year.

Going back into my junior year, I was 16, I just kind of started testing the waters. It was like I'd talked to a boy at school. I, you know, I let a boy sit by me when I was playing a piano thing for, literally for a kid's baptism. And I was playing the piano, the hymns or whenever this kid was getting baptized. And this guy I didn't really know that very well. He just came up and sat by me. He goes, you do you do a really good job, pulling him? I like, thanks, you know.

But just little things like that, nothing big. But by the time October rolled around and the homecoming dance or the first dance in school, basically, your first school dance. My friend Jan, she had a cousin that was coming to town that was a cousin of her boyfriend. She had a boyfriend and everything, which I never even held a boy's hand, never had a boy in my life. But she's like, his cousin is coming. Would you come and go with him so we can go on this big, it was like eight of us on this double, triple, quadruple dates to this dance. We're all going to go together. We're going to go together. We're going to go eat and we're going to go to the dance, but he doesn't have anybody to go with. Would you go with him?

And I thought, well, that's not quite the same as having a boy asked me to a dance. Okay, that's big step. I'm going to do it. I said yes. And we danced with each other and all the things, you know, other people. You didn't have to just dance with that one person, although that was kind of the way it was. And I got back home and I came in the front door because that's where he dropped me off. And I hugged him. I didn't kiss him or anything. I didn't know him, really. and said, thank you, that was fun. That was scary, hugging a boy, and that I'd never see again.

Yeah. You know, but I remember walking through that same front door when my mother had walked through when she came home from grandmas. My dad was sitting in his chair right there, which was the first thing you see in the living room, then the piano's over here, and dad's lazy boy chair, and he was sitting in the chair,

and he was kind of asleep. And I opened the door, and I walked in, and there's my dad, that person who loved me unconditionally, and I'm thinking in my head, this isn't even real. I don't think this is real, but what if it is? And I just haven't caught up to me yet. I didn't know for sure, but I just was like, and I went over and I sat on the arm of his chair.

And, oh, Dan, he wasn't fun. You know, he was waiting up for me. Did you have a good time and doesn't touch me or do anything? You know, but asked me all the right questions, and I told him it was fun and that we had a great time and danced and, you know, all the things. I bed over and I give him a tiny little kiss on his forehead. I said, yes, I had a great time. Thanks for waiting up, Dad.

You can go to bed now. And gave him a little kiss. Walked past their bedroom. Mom's sleep in bed. Walked past Susan's bedroom. Susan's home and sleep in bed. She's not missing. And then walked back down to the last bedroom on that floor.

that's up the main floor. There was the bathroom there, but I didn't even go into the bathroom. I just went into the bedroom and in my gany sack dress and my platform shoes. And I just stared at the ceiling and just like, no, just tears just kind of started running down my face. And I'm like, who am I? What am I? If this isn't real, what just happened to me? You know, it's all these weird conflicting. Just the washing over.

I mean, there's relief on some level. There's also like this loss of purpose. And then all the years that I lost with kind of my dad and my sisters, really, all of it. And friends and parties and dates and whatever. I don't know. It was a very weird, not like people would think. Like it's all just one. Oh, yay, yippie, it's over.

It's not like, it wasn't like that. Yeah. And I just laid there until I thought. all sleep on top of the bed. I mean, you had a whole childhood to mourn. Yeah, yeah. Gone. I know how I was, if I was ever going to tell anybody, I didn't know what to do, literally

had no idea, you know. And it's interesting how something like that, that kind of experience and that prolonged, you know, sexual assault and abuse and grooming and brainwashing and being missing away from your family. It's just all the things that you now are supposed to maneuver. And you really truly have no idea where you start or what you do or do you do anything. You just keep pretending like everything's fine and you just are normal. And that's pretty much what you decide you want to do.

You just want to be normal. And then I really, truly, I didn't tell anybody anything for a while. when did he what because trial obviously happened yes and then the trial did happen and he pled it was a new plea in the court system mental defect and he pled mental defect and he was and everybody thought all that he'll be in a mental institution for years he was out before even one year had passed she was released because of course he charmed everybody like yeah i've had some depression and i did these stupid things. And of course, his story just knew how to say the right things to every mental health care professional, which we didn't have those words, but whoever was at the mental

hospital, you know, I mean, psychiatry had started and psychoanalysis, those things were there. But, you know, I do a lot of reading. I think that's helped me, you know, a lot with my healing. And when I read Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, and it's really dense reading, it's not an easy read, but reading some of the things that he was going through in the late 60s and early 70s with becoming, you know, in the psychiatry and psychoanalysis things, and he worked in a mental hospital. And one of the stories that he told was so interesting. He said, I'm working with all these women who are, you know, catatonic or, you know, mentally just broken down and sobbing and all these, you know, extremes and whatever. And they're doing shock therapy, you know.

And he said, and I just didn't like it. I just felt like I don't think we should be doing that. And so he said, I started just a simple list of about three questions that he started asking every woman that was there that he was studying and trying to, to help. This was part of the early days. And he said, I don't know why I knew to ask or how I knew, but I did. I started by asking them if they had been through anything in their childhood or as a young, you know, a young woman or whatever. And across the board, every single one of them had been through some kind of major sexual, usually, assault or abuse. And then, you know, and then there was another question and was a family member, okay, was it, can you tell me if it was a parent? And he said, just in

their answers of these few short questions, I started to put together like, this is some unfinished part of the mind that's trying to get closure without saying those words. Yeah, and that's how that all became and how it lived in the body and it's still, and it does. And until you on purpose, do something to heal those wounds and those things, and it's a process and it's ongoing, it runs you. You know, it runs the show. Absolutely. And so, you know, when you're tired of what happened to you running the show and you can put the piece together and say, I don't think I ever really did that.

And that's where I got to in my 30s. Like, there's still things because I was going through relationships and marriages and I couldn't figure it out. And then it finally all clicked. I have a lot of unfinished work that I have to do. And even though it's unfair that I have to do the work because of what somebody did to me, it's the way it is. And when I finally did and got the right therapist and understood trauma and figured it out and did a lot of reading, a lot of self-help books that helped me and then having the right therapists

along the way. and then eventually finally getting into EMDR and then somatic healing and all those things. You know, I really am in that place now where I'm ready to help every survivor and to also change the way our legal system. It's just pathetic how often survivors are not believed, perpetrators are not held accountable, and thus the cycle continues. because until you're believed and you can heal, you're going to pass that on. I just interviewed someone on my show that is a, you know,

is a therapist, you know, and is also, like, licensed in modalities, like somatic healing and things like that. And she's just like, it lives in the body until the body knows where to put it and how to release it until it's processed through. Yeah. You really, honestly, you try really, really hard to have the relationships, the work life, the balance, all these things.

And you just can't have it until you actually clear out the channels. Yeah, it's hard to make your brain feel safe. Tell your brain feels safe and your brain knows that it's safe. And then it doesn't have to be on high alert. And all the things that that stress and that trauma store in the body makes you sick. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, in one way or another.

Yeah, absolutely. So that's really where I'm at now is trying to be able to do that. For Birchtold, when he, because he ended up passing away. Yes. He ended up taking his own life. Yeah, he took his own life after he showed up. And this was not the first time that he had tried to find me and been in touch with me. But when my mother and I wrote our stolen innocence, the first book,

and we self-published it, and it was out there. We were asked to speak at a conference, and my face was on a poster, talking about my childhood experience, and it was for a group of women and their daughters at a university also. I've had several of those, and this one was at the university in my town where I was living, and they had asked me to come and speak and bring the books,

and they had just barely been published. And so there's about a thing. thousand women and their daughters. Earlier in my life, he had found me when I worked in Florida at Disney World. I was a performer. I did 12 different shows. It was a swing. I did every, you know, not, not the princess parts. I'm not perfect enough for that. You are. I'm not. You are too. But I, but I sang and danced and acted. I was the, you know, Miss Lily at the Diamond Horseshoe. And then I sang at Epcot Center in 12 languages and danced with the dancers. I had a great time. But he found me during that.

period of time in my life and I and I was I mean I never saw him but he was trying to reach me and contact me because he now wanted to get married and he had had me married to him in Mexico. I wasn't there. Yeah, right. You know, I was not at present. Yes. But he had had two stand-ins and he gave me a ring and the whole thing. I still have the little ring that he gave me. It still sits in one of my little jewelry boxes to remind me. And how far when you were 12. I was 12. Yes. But because of that, I guess that was his excuse that he had to have my permission to marry this woman. I mean, this is years later. Oh.

And this is, you know, it's years later. My son was born. I was 27. I had a hard time getting pregnant. And I tried in vitro twice. I'm just telling all my story because I think everybody other should know that there are ramifications that continue to be hard throughout your life. It doesn't end. He died.

or after you rescued, you have your whole life to go through. Yeah. And so he found you with the book. And was he angry? Yes, very angry. And so what he did is he came and he papered the one time, this was before this time, he found out that we were writing a book. We weren't even published yet.

And he went to Pocatello from wherever he was living at the time and papered all the people in my mother's parking lot. She became a social worker. was working for the state of Idaho and put these horrible flaggers around all the neighborhoods around my parents' home when they were still living there. And this terrible, it was just grotesque what he wrote about, you know, but in reality, he also confessed that he took me. I mean, it was right there and I'm like, oh my gosh, he's just as smart as I thought. He's just a total narcissist. Absolutely. Narcissus. And Dr. Romney, when I was on her show, she said, who was not only a narcissist,

sweetie, but he was a true pathological liar and a psychopath. Absolutely. I was like, oh, that's good to know. I've given him too much credit. Anyway, so yeah, so there was that that happened. And then when I was going to go do this conference, he sees my name, my, and then he contacts me in Florida. It's before my son was born.

Then we're writing the book. And after that thing in Idaho and papering all the neighborhoods, he's a lot of, you know, around my parents' home where they still lived with this grotesque, it was just awful. And then he now sees my picture on a poster because, unbeknownst to me, he only lives an hour away from where I now have moved to. Okay. And I'm remarried, and I have four stepdaughters and my son. And, you know, here he comes again.

And he ends up coming to that university campus. By the time that they decided to let me go ahead and do the speaking engagement, he runs into, the campus police are there. The police in the city of St. George have all been alerted that he might show up because he said so. And then all my friends that were in Baca had come, the Bikers Against Child Abuse Group. They all had come to my house on their motorcycles. And I go in my car, drive to the conference, and they're all around me. We're protecting her. You know, and I get to the campus and I go in to do my speech.

And in the meantime, two stepdaughters that he had married another woman, he had been divorced from his wife, I don't know if he'd been married several times, or if this was the woman that back in the day I'm going to marry her and I need your prediction. I don't know if it's the same woman. I don't know. But one of the stepdaughters had seen my book because it had just come out and a few had gone out and somehow somebody saw the pictures that were in the middle of the book and had sent one to a stepdaughter who had run away at 14 to find her dad in Idaho. And then they came back and got her younger sister from her mother's house who's married to this man who plays Santa Claus in the community.

And yeah, uh-huh, has little kids sitting on his lap. And the older sister, you know, tells the dad, you know, about the abuse of the guy that, you know, mom's married to. He gets those two girls away from him. Well, somebody from that community sees the book with the picture and sends a book to her. And she's now contacted every Broberg in the phone book until she finds my mother. Okay. And she says, this is him.

This is that stepdad. This is, and I haven't spoken to my mother for, I don't know, eight years or something. I haven't even seen her. She never believed me and my little sister. And I want to meet you. And she came to this conference that I was speaking at. And because she was there meeting me and my mom in person kind of for the first time for me, I think mom had met her maybe once before.

She was the person that identified with her, the lady, the woman who gave me birth, she wouldn't even call her her mother. The lady who gave me birth just walked through the door. She's that woman over there with the sunglasses on. So we knew that his current wife was there. And then shortly after he came in a van and with a firearm, brandished one of the Baca guys, who also was a carrying, had a permit to carry. He identified the gun exactly.

Birchtole ran into a different Baca member, put him in the hospital. I had to have surgery. That's what made the little tiny blurb in USA Today in Utah, because that's where I was living at the time. And then he goes to jail. And then he goes to a trial that doesn't happen for almost two years. Of course. Because that's how it all works. And then he gets found guilty, not for little girls.

No. No. For having a firearm. Yes. Because he has a firearm and he's a restricted person. He is supposed to sign a sex offender registry, which he had not done in his town. There were two misdemeanors and three felony charges. And he was found guilty for all of them. and they released him to the custody of the police

who then drove him to the border and then the other police picked him up from the border to get him into Nevada from Utah and when that, he was in his own truck because he had a health condition, a heart condition or something, they were going to do the sentencing after the holidays because this was like, again, right before Thanksgiving or right around that time.

So they were going to get through the holidays and then he was coming back to be sentenced And when he was handed off at the border, he took his truck as that was supposedly happening. And he raced into a campground or something up in the Nevada. Yeah. And he took his own life. Yeah. Yeah.

So he didn't even serve the time. But he would have been served. He would have been sentenced to years. Hopefully. I'm assuming. I mean, I can't imagine how he couldn't. Because I literally was in the, not on that trial, but after he showed. he showed up at that conference, I went and got a stocking injunction. I applied for a stocking

injunction because I was afraid he was going to be around, you know, my kids and they're here at the, they're here at the school. And here he is. He's living an hour away from me. I had no idea. And he showed up. He showed up to fight the stocking injunction on his own with no attorney. Here's my sister and attorney. Here's a stack of documents this high that she's got it all. It's all the kidnappings, all these many more documents we have now for doing the documentary that we did, the second documentary, and the nine-part series. We have even more. But that brief that my sister compiled was at least this big.

Oh, my goodness. And it's sitting there, and I'm shaking, like I'm 12 years old, when he, I mean, he's sitting this close as you are to me. We're both facing a judge up here, and he's this close. And I haven't seen the guy. you know, he's tried to find me several times. I mean, this has happened, but I've never seen his face again or been in close proximity to him that I know of.

And it was in that courtroom. And I'm trying to be really, really brave. But I'm just shaking like this. Until he says this made me so mad. And then all of a sudden the mama tiger came out of me. And he basically just, he said, well, I just have one more question that I'd like. you to ask her. You know, how much money is ABC paying her for her story? You know, I've heard that she's just making a lot of money with all of these lies she's made up. And it made me so mad.

And I don't know what happened, but something took over that little 12-year-old that was shaking in fear and just wrapped her up and said, I got it to you, honey. And I just pointed my finger and I looked straight at him and I said, Mr. Birch told, the only reason I am telling my story is to protect other children from monsters like you. You know, and it was like, you know, I don't know what it was. And certainly, no, I have never been paid big money for my story. I have told it over and over and over again, and I will continue to do it if it's going to help one other parent or child see,

through, get through, survive, come, find help, move on with your life, break the chain and hopefully put it in better laws and protections for children. You know, that's what my foundation's about. And so that experience of sitting this close to him and having that, you know, and I do a lot of inner child work still today. I mean, I'll probably go back to the, you know, this lovely darling hotel where we're staying. And I'll probably get in the bathtub. You know, if I were home, I'd light some candles.

I might put on some music. might read a little bit, but that happens, you know, when I talk about it. Not because it's like affecting me again, but I'm not triggered, hardly ever anymore. But I do know that I have to care for myself and that I'm worth it to take 90 minutes. Yeah. And decompress and, you know, realize I'm safe. I have a good life. I have things in my life set up so that I can be happy and hopeful, and I can spread that as much as telling my story. I just want people not to be alone. But that was a really great experience for me,

because I really didn't think I had much left to do because I'm an accomplishing machine, right? I'm a doer, and I had gotten a lot of things done, and I continued to do that in my life, but I didn't really know how much was still left, kind of unsaid or undone until after I started telling my story. And then I started to, you know, go to retreats and to therapy and EMDR and those things happened later for me. And they do for most people. And most people are functional. And they're like, how do you take time for yourself? You've got to

do the laundry and make dinner and go to your job and whatever. And I'm like, yeah, and if you don't figure that out, it will catch up to you. You can only shove it down for so long. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. It's true. I just think so many people are going to be able to take even just a piece of what you're saying and take it home with them and be able to work on things or be able to talk to someone.

And I think that's so important. It is. So thank you so much. And I mean, you've gone through all of this. And then you came out on the other side and you've built this beautiful foundation. Thank you. And you're doing such good work. Most survivors stay in survival mode way too long and don't even realize it or recognize it because it's how you have learned to operate and survive.

And it's just part of the every day. But if you find yourself looking for, gosh, why can't I find, why do I look up the wrong kind of guy? You know, why am I constantly? Because that was me. It just wasn't. I mean, I had a couple of good guys in there. I'm not saying that all of them were, not that it was necessarily their fault, but were we the right match? Couldn't have been because I wasn't all here yet.

I wasn't able to do things in relationships that I can do now. And that's because of what happened to me. So if you want something, you know, if you want to feel better and if you want to have better, and just do better in life. You want something better because you just know things keep crashing and burning, whether it's a job, a relationship, friendships, you know, there's a reason. Really, your brain isn't even fully developed until you're 25, 26 years old. So all of the manipulation, all of the things that have kept you silent or feeling shame, those are not yours. They are there because of someone else that did something,

to you that was not your fault. And even like you're saying, even into your adulthood, but especially if your brain hasn't totally developed, you are not responsible for that kind of narcissist, for that kind of sociopath. You know, the criminal mind of a pedophile and the criminal ways that people act towards children, and what they do to them is so hideous. And until you find a group of people, you can't heal in isolation, you can do some things, but you will not ever get to where you want to be alone. So just doing it with your own mind or reading a book, it's good.

You need a community. Yes, community. People who believe you. First and foremost, be believed, believe somebody. And then sit with empathy and listen. If you can find one person to do that, that's the beginning, I really feel. And then all of the other things, like within the foundation, we have a trauma, a framework for trauma recovery, which is just think AA or something like that, very similar. But it fills in the gaps where it's dealing with childhood, tweenhood, teenhood, trauma, and the things that go along with that throughout your life.

And they keep kind of cycling back up and around and you wonder, why can't I? get ahead. Why can't I get a better job? Why do I never have any money? Why don't I have a relationship? I want a relationship. I can't ever seem to stay in it. They're always the bad guy, you know, the narcissist or the abusive, they're abusers, and now I've tried to leave and I still can't figure this out. It's taking the time to do that. So our time program is within our online community called Survivor Circle. So that's part of the foundation. It's free. Both things. They're free. So if you can't afford a therapist, come, come be with us. That's wonderful.

And really, our third part, we have the awareness program, which is about grooming and teaching adults. Because no matter how much you try to teach a kid or a tween or a teen, they think they're in love or they think they're just, it's a puppy. I was just trying to, you just don't, you just can't. Your brain isn't developed enough to understand the subtle maneuvers of brooming. Manipulation. Yeah.

Oh, gosh. You're not going to, you're not going to see it as a kid. kid. And it's so important now with the internet and... Yes. I mean, there's so many avenues for exploitation and abuse and all the things. So that's our awareness program. We have an education program called Spot Six, spotting the six stages of grooming. So as an adult or a school, you could have us come and do the presentation on that. And we've got three schools we presented in Sunnyvale, California, and we're going back into three schools in the fall to do this presentation for the adults, the teachers, you know, the social workers and the people that

have to see it and have to intervene before the worst happens. That's the prevention. That's the awareness and prevention pillar. The next one is for survivors. It's the community. It's building awareness, then building community with other fellow survivors who want to not only get better and feel better, but they also want to do something. They want to advocate. They want to change this for the next generation. They don't want the same things that happen to them to happen to their children, their grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, and all the people around them that they know,

this is just in my family. It's going to go forever if I don't stop it, you know, because that's where it mostly lies, and it's everywhere. So that community of survivors is where we want to collect 10 million signatures. if you don't do anything else, but come to our website. I just sign the thing, you know. Check the box. I'm a survivor.

It happened in Florida. I was 12. No, that's all we ask. And we'll keep you in touch with when we're going to take 10 million signatures and go to Washington and say, we're going to change laws. This is a survivor-led movement, our foundation. It's all survivors. It's survivor-led.

Every person that leads a program is a survivor of child. childhood trauma or abuse or shame. Those are the things, those two pillars, awareness, community, and then that last one is justice. That's our last pillar. And we're going to, that's what we're going to do. You know, that's going to be. That's what this world needs right now.

Like, I mean, just your story alone, hearing how the justice system dealt with it and how everybody around you didn't know or wasn't educated enough. And everybody can watch it and be like, oh, they just failed as parents. They fail. Those police officers, they failed. It's like, no, it's just education and knowledge and taking the initiative like you're doing and actually trying to make a change. It's one thing to say it. It's one thing to come on here and tell your story, but you're actually going out and doing it.

And I think that's just so amazing. That's what we need support. We need people to come and be a part of our movement. You know, we've had a few movements. We had the Me Too movement and a few other things that come, but they kind of come and go. And I'm like, no, it's because we're still not getting to the root of the huge problems in life. They come from childhood trauma. Yes, that's the right.

They don't come because you're an alcoholic and now you need help. Alcohol came. It's a symptom of this. You know, addiction is a symptom of this. Cutting is a symptom of this. All of the failures in our financial lives and in our relationship lives comes from this. It really does. Even domestic violence, the number one predict.

that you will be in a domestically unsafe, violent, perhaps violent, but unsafe situation, is that you've already experienced abuse. And most likely from family. Yes, and you just somehow move towards something familiar? I don't know how it happens, but that's the truth. That's the one constant. It's all you know. And a lot of people just don't get help, and a lot of people don't talk to anybody.

Yep. And, I mean, that's what your foundation does. And, I mean, you guys can go click the link and go look at the foundation site. And there's so many avenues for help there. There is. To help people and for you to help. If you are a survivor or you have a survivor in your life and you want them to have a pathway forward, then you come and you donate here so that we can do that.

Or you come and you sign up, sign to just get our newsletter and to be on the list to be counted. I'm a survivor. I'm not going to tell my story to anybody publicly. I'm never doing what Jan just did today. fine, but I want somebody to know that I'm one of those numbers. I'm one of the 60 million plus adult survivors, which does not take into account how many of our children, tweens, teens and young adults are being assaulted and abused right now. It's not even taking into count.

And if it really is, you know, one in four, we think it's closer to two in four women and girls. And if it's really, you know, one in, they see. say six, which I think it's more like one in four boys because of all the people who never are disclosed and don't talk about it. That's a lot of people. You know, that's 25% at the very minimum. Twenty-five percent of all of our children, tweens, teens are being assaulted. They're being abused. They're being trafficked, exploited, and harmed. And that just, that's just the mushroom. And we had to shrink this down. Yeah.

So that's why we're concentrating on those three things. Awareness, community, and justice. Amazing. It's free. Survivor Circle. Just go to my foundation and then put slash circle. So Jam Broberg Foundation slash Circle. We'll just mom, make sure to put it in description as well.

Yeah. And come there and be with other survivors, other childhood trauma survivors. And it doesn't matter if you're male, female. It doesn't matter if you're gay, bye, trans. we don't care, we love you, we want you to know you're not alone and what happened to you really does matter and it really does impact your life. And without other people who can, who can, you know, understand because we've been there, it's really hard to heal in isolation. We really don't believe it's possible. It's even been scientifically proven. It's not possible.

You can do some things. But as long as you're isolated and you're still living in that aftermath of that. But we have a great, everything is inside the circle. We have a great program. It's like a recovery, trauma recovery program. And you do it in a small group, you know, like eight to ten people in a little cohort. It's called time, trauma, interrupted, mitigated. That's what we are doing there. We're mitigating that trauma and expressing it. So trauma, interrupted, mitigated, expressed is our trauma recovery. It's a framework that you could kind of compare to other like AA programs or something. But, you know, it's, you have a few other people in there that get it.

You're doing some narrative therapy. You're doing some, you know, you're doing a bunch of things in just that one hour, that 90 minutes a week. You deserve it. For one thing, give yourself that time. And if you can't afford some of the other kinds of therapies that cost money. Someday we're going to have sanctuaries for survivors. Yeah.

And in those sanctuaries, there will be EMDR provided. There will be, you know, therapists. There will be our time program, but you'll be able to do it in person. You know, we want to, we have, we have a lot of things that we are already doing, and they're basically putting together like this online model of how we could actually help survivors, domestic violence survivors, who most likely have a history of abuse somewhere along the way before they got to that. but a place where you can come, you can live, you can be with the animals.

You know, we want a sanctuary like that. And we want them all over the United States and all around the world. That's amazing. Well, that's, I mean, you guys know where to look at the foundation. Do you have any other, anything else you want to talk about? Let's see. I have a podcast. Yes, you have a podcast.

I wouldn't mind people listening to that and subscribing. That would help us. We'll put it on screen, but where can they find. Well, we're everywhere. Wherever you find podcasts, it's called Trauma Interrupted. Yes. with Jan Broberg. Amazing.

Your hostess, right? Yes. And what we do is we tell other people's stories. We do interview survivors. We also interview clinicians, doctors, people that have expertise in trauma-informed practices and seeing what works and how to help. Most of them have their own stories, too. So we always find out that, oh, yeah, that started with my own childhood trauma.

And now I'm a this and I'm a that. and I'm helping other people. So we have that, you know, survivors, clinicians, and then, you know, an expert or somebody that's written a book or we have a lot of that. Yeah. Lots of amazing. Maybe you'll come on my podcast someday. Yeah.

I would love to. Really? I would love to. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. That would be amazing. Good. Okay.

We're going to set it up for sure. Because you're so loved. So are you. I'm so honored that I've got to be here. Your story has touched my heart in so many ways. Oh. I know. See, I made it through almost.

I'm trying to cry. But I just, I love everything you've done and I really appreciate it. Thank you. And it's really amazing. I made it till yes. That's really good. You did a good job. I'm always crying from like sentence one. No, you're amazing. You got to be it. Thank you so much. Because I see you. I see. I know. Whether I know, no, or I just know, because when you have the heart to do what you do and to interview people like me and to talk about, you know, these true crime stories, I think almost all of them have an element of this in them. Yes. And it is a crime.

And it has touched our lives, you know, personally. And then also people that we love. Yes. You know? And I appreciate that you're tender and you're a real person. I have. I swear. This whole time I was like, I guess I got to be a rock.

But I can't by the end. That's that it is. That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. It makes you even more lovable. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much. Absolutely. For being on. And you know where to find her.

And yeah, thank you, Chris. This was a true pleasure. Yeah, me too. You're a remarkable young woman. Thank you. You have a lot of good that you've done already and I can see how much more there is to come. And I just hope I can be a little part of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. All sorts of things. Okay.

Thank you.