Someone Knows Something - S10 E2: Papier Maché

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Sebastién reveals some of the cracks beneath he and Jaclyn’s relationship and tells the story of what he remembers from Jackie's last day. 

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always overdelivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairro.com.

This is a CBC podcast. The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide. Please take care while listening. Good morning. How are you? Good. Is Sebastian here? Yeah.

Come on. Oh, thanks. It's around 8.30 a.m., but the woman who has answered the door in bare feet, green tank top, dark blue shorts, and Paisley house dress, seems well into her morning routine. Cheerful, with shorter black hair, she's wary of me, now, at least. I don't think I'm the person she was expecting. It's sort of come so early.

Sorry, I got my shoes on here. I don't want to get your floor. I'm David. I'm from Canada. I'm from CBC. Oh, okay. I'm just going to see that. Sure.

Lorraine goes into a back bedroom and I can hear low voices. I've come here to speak. to the man she lives with, Sebastian Furland. As the story goes, his wife, Jackie, disappeared from the house I'm standing in right now on August 17, 2021. And since then, Sebastian has been the subject of much intrigue and suspicion, as people in Jackie's family and the community try to make sense of what happened that night.

But trying to make things make sense in a cold case can be tricky. It can lead to a new truth, one perhaps more compelling or convenient, but also potentially unfactual. Sebastian, good morning. How are you? Yeah, I'm okay. Sebastian has come around the corner seeming to have just woken up. He's bald and lean in black shorts with colorful triangular patterns and a gray tank top, tattoos visible on both arms.

I'm from CBC in Toronto. Here's my card. This is a beautiful place. Sebastian says nothing but beckons, then silently, leads me, downcast and slow, back out the front door and then along the side of the house toward the back. Lorraine stays behind with a kind of polite but tense smile on her face. We arrive at a flourishingly overgrown backyard area with an adobe red cement patio surrounded by painted yellow walls,

and Sebastian drags over some lawn chairs across the concrete pad we're standing on. I got drag and dirt enough and I know that if I say no to the interview, you're just going to bullshit something. That's not the intention. Yeah, but it's not, but your intentions to make money, right? So obviously you're going to make me look bad. There's always a new person who get in the picture and it's like, oh my God, what did that happen?

Did he investigate the husband? stuff. There is a lot of talk about Jackie's husband, now lawn-chaired in front of me, but not much real reporting about him or the case. I want to get past all that and the numbing hum of rumor. It's distracting and deflective and like a kind of propaganda that can shield what's actually underneath. What facts can Sebastian provide? Was he or the case investigated and by whom? what was his relationship with Jackie like, and most germane, does Sebastian know anything more about the day or night of Jackie's disappearance.

I'm David Ridgeon, and this is season 10 if someone knows something, the Jacqueline Furland Smith case. Episode 2, Paper Machet. Technically, in that story, a lot of, like, the aids that I got from people It's just because I said that she had like mental issues. I've seen some of the stuff on Facebook. There's been a lot of accusations. A lot of hate.

It's just that your wife, like, leave and stuff, and it's not seen again. You need to explain why she left. People just want to have, like, a guilty person, and they just want to accuse me because, yes, I'm the person who was with her. Yes. we all heard those things, right? Like, if you want to know the guilty person look for, like, the closest to them, or look at the husband, right?

Like, all those stereotypes, right? And the people that I get, they comments from, are all people who never met me, never met her. Which is kind of sad, but it's, I guess that's the courageous people of Facebook. It's not like, oh, the beautiful princess was walking in the park, and left not to be seen again. Yes, she was beautiful, she was intelligent, but she was also mentally ill.

It's diagnosed and deathproofs. Despite his misgivings, Sebastian is sitting more across his chair rather than in it, relaxed, and listening to his deep voice tone, I make careful note of not only what he says, but how he says it. In the YouTube video, Sebastian appears in just a couple of weeks after Jackie disappears.

He starts off by talking about Jackie's mental state, and here with me, he also starts the same way. I push further, asking for a bit of history between him and Jackie in the run-up to her disappearance. At the beginning, okay, 11 years, because we've been together almost, 11 years, I think, close to that, she was, like, perfect. According to Sebastian, Jackie lost work in Canada,

making their finances more reliant on his income. So she became more stress and then had a few bad experience at work, different jobs, right? And she started to have a bit more, like, episodes, if you can call them, right? Like, if she had no stress and were doing great, she was the best wife ever.

Like, she was nice to be around and everything. Like, I really enjoy, like, the years I spend with her, except obviously when she was sick, because it's difficult, right? She's someone who needed stability, and my job could not really offer that to her, right? I'm just honest about that. Sebastian says he convinced Jackie to take basic training and join the Canadian military to access benefits and job security,

but that again, with his own job in the military as a sergeant mechanic and frequent absences, even more stresses were caused in their relationship. Eventually, they made the decision to live and basically retire early here in Costa Rica. Sebastian himself left the Canadian forces in 2019. Yeah, I have PTSD, okay, and my PTSD is basically that, the stuff that I've seen, basically, and just the general stress related to the army is disturbing my sleep pattern.

basically so I don't sleep like a normal person at all. I end up having a bit more like social anxieties and stuff like that. Example, if I'm in public and there's too much noise or like a bit people pushing around like I'm really not comfortable, I need to leave. Or just being at the restaurant with people behind my back, I'm not comfortable. I still do it so I keep my comfort zone bigger. because if you don't do that, you end up like a hermit. You're going to live in your basement and not see anyone.

You become agoraphobic. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Maybe my mistake, okay, but moving into a different country or it's more relaxed tropical, that would be less stressful and help her because the more she had stress, the worse she was, right? But Sebastian says it didn't work out to be more relaxed.

especially when they got out of their Playa del Coco condo and started building this house we're now sitting behind in the Kaseke development. So then we end up building the house here and building your house in a third world country with language barrier and stuff, obviously ended up being stressful. Basically, like my plan to reduce our stress level completely backfired and end up being much more stressful for, Yeah.

Sebastian says that stress often manifested itself in violent outbursts. But nobody speak about like men who are abuse and beat up. There's a lot of them. They just don't speak up, right? She used to smash my head on the ceramic tile and stuff like that. She was an athlete. She was strong. And as a man, what do you do? Like, you can do anything. You call the police because you get beat up And the police are going to take you away

They don't take the wife It's the way it worked You can't do anything You just let yourself being beat up So you never went to the hospital with any of the injuries No, but there's actually tons of people Who saw me with huge bruises Like in my face, neck, head and stuff

And even Gordon and Colleen, if they are honest Seeing pictures of that I press forward and Sebastian continues, telling me a bit about the time before Jackie disappeared. After I call her dad to ask for help, that's basically when everything really started to go downhill. It may be up to a few months before. I was like I really need your help, like it's going out of control.

Sebastian says things got worse after he called Jackie's parents a few months before she disappeared. While Sebastian was paying for most of the house construction, documentation I've seen shows that Jackie was managing many aspects of it. Slowdowns and shoddy workmanship led to regular disputes between contractors and both Sebastian and Jackie. Sebastian says that Jackie's mental health worsened during this period to the extent that he decided to call her parents and ask for help.

It was more key, like obviously building out of... in Canada is stressful, but it's still pretty straightforward, right? Like, you expect people to do a good job. But here was, like, basically, there was a bunch of stupid stuff. Example, you install ceramic tiles. Yeah. If there's one that have a chip on it or it's damaged, you don't install that. So you tell them, hey, like, this is chip.

Like, you need to replace that. So you get them to replace the tile. Then you come back, they replace it again by another tile that's damaged. Another chip. Okay, that gets a bit annoying. I basically spend my old days here, like, supervising them, because otherwise there's just mistakes after mistakes after mistakes. But at some point, like, Jackie started, like, to lose her shit on those guys,

and it's bad. And obviously, like, taking care of someone like that is not a single person's job. And put that in a foreign country where she don't speak the language, makes it much difficult. Colleen and Gordon say that Jackie did most of the project supervision and not Sebastian. And they also say that the framing of Sebastian's phone call for help was around the difficulties of the construction project and how stressful it was. But Sebastian implies that it was about Jackie's mental state in particular.

Regardless, Jackie, Sebastian says, became very upset that he had called her parents. Then, like she basically got furious and she never cooled down from that. She was like literally enraged and she was so angry at me that I call her dad. And she basically had the feeling that I pretty much took her family away from her because like now her family was like, oh, our daughter is sick and stuff and like that kind of stuff. I want to keep moving deeper here. There is an obvious gulf between Jackie's parents and Sebastian in both directions that can tend towards what I will call and...

unhelpful bias against each other. And I don't want to dwell too much too soon on anything that might take me away from the central question on everyone's mind. So then the day of the 17th, what happened that day? Yeah. The 17, okay, that day, I'm not going to say hours, okay, exactly, but just like the logical order where like stuff happened. Okay. In the morning, she had the physiotherapist okay, I'm saying morning, it may be around noon, but like before lunch. She had a physiotherapist's appointment in Tamarindo. Tamarindo is about an hour, 15 minutes from here. Okay.

So I myself normally go with her for appointments because most of the time everybody speaks Spanish, so it makes it easier. And she had like a really big tendency to be anxious. and stuff. So normally if I'm weather, I can avoid some of the triggers and stuff and get stuff to go easier and smoother.

So that specific day, I checked my calendar before she leave and had an appointment with my psychologist. Sebastian is referring here to his own psychologist whom he would call in Toronto, Canada. Oh, okay. At about the same time, that she had hers. So that kind of started, like, right there, actually.

Because when I told her I have an appointment and I can go, she kind of became, like, really, like, jealous. And she was, like, yeah, conveniently and stuff, like, as if, like, had a fake appointment, like, to cheat on her with, like, someone while she was gone or whatever. So that was already a bad start. So she went to her appointment. and I stayed here.

I stayed there. My appointment was on the phone. So while I was having my appointment, she started to send me text and stuff, okay. And the text that started, if I'm right, it started, oh, they got the physiotherapist. So I was like, who's they? She's like, whoever's trying to ruin my life.

I was like, okay. but like then I was like what's going on. Across the day, Sebastian says he and Jackie texted each other and the messages that Sebastian eventually shows me are screen captures from a phone he no longer has. From the screen caps, which do not show the sender's full name, I'm still able to construct a rough timeline of the texting. I cannot confirm that Jackie or Sebastian wrote any of the messages

or on what device they were composed on, but my opinion is that the messages were likely written on Jackie's phone and on the phone Sebastian had at the time. I read the messages as I am shown them because Sebastian declines to give them to me as files, although he says he gave these exact text copies to Costa Rican investigators. Because this is a new iPad, and it's when all my data transferred there, because that's not even the right here.

Jackie's message is first composed just after an appointment with her physiotherapist in Tamarindo, whose name is Tatiana. So I told you they got to the physiotherapist now 12-13, who they, that's you, who they, right? Whoever's destroying my life. It was not fine today. What happened? That's you. No, they got her to put the needles in nerve spots, and she said it was the same she always does,

but it wasn't. She did one spot, and it was severe pins and needles all over my foot twice. Sebastian tells her his appointment is now starting and Jackie continues saying what happened during her appointment My appointment starts now 1219 She said she was doing the same thing And if it was responding like that she can't do them Then I said I was not paying

Plus she had her assistant do everything else Who answered the phone during the appointment Without any explanation I'm not coming back I'm ready to die Goodbye That's 1220 There is no help for me

1221. Please come back. That's what you say here. The green one says. I deserve to commit suicide. I'm a horrible person who needs to be punished with an E at the end severely for everything I ever did, 1221. No, you are not.

The green says. This person is just leading me to the right answer. They are right. I don't deserve anything good to ever happen to me. I'm done. Sorry for wasting your life. They did this after I told, the doctor yesterday about the needles working.

They must have paid her to do this to me, 1223. I can't win and I can't live. They win. Everyone wins. I'll be gone. Take care and enjoy your life. Don't look for me. 1224.

No, you say. Do you want me to meet you somewhere? And then it's fuck you, asshole. Keep all your shit and find someone else to torture. 140. 145, right? So it jumps from. 1224, no, and then you say, do you want me to meet you somewhere at 116? She says, fuck you asshole,

at 144, keep all your shit and find someone else to torture at 145. The Jackie side of these messages shows someone in obvious distress with signs of paranoia. Then Sebastian comes back. And at 231, it's the green comes back. I just want to help. I'm not having anything to do with those things. Where can I meet you, please? I'm in Tamarind. Oh, I guess Tamarind. Looked everywhere and can't see you. I will stay a few hours. Let me know where you are, please. Then Jackie replies. The answer at 241. I'm not in Tamarindo. I told you not to look for me. 242. What do you want me to do? This is not a solution. 242. There is no solution. Sebastian. 243. This. And then my phone will die. Just forget about me. My phone will die.

Just forget about me 244, 246. No, let me help. And then at 553, I got an email message that my Dymex cannot be processed. No message from Jackie between 246 and 553. Dymex is a digital identification issued to foreigners by Costa Rica and is required for banking and other official expat activities. You've done numerous things to me over and over again while I'm the one punished 635.

So fuck you and your perfect mom and ex-girlfriend, which is better than me and wooks never do or say anything that I do. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck with a bunch of Fs and a bunch of yous, and then that's it. According to what I'm shown, Jackie's text to Sebastian stop at 635 p.m. If these texts are from Jackie, we have a sense of her being extremely upset. She makes threats that she will kill herself and not to look for her, tells Sebastian to fuck off.

But then what happened? I want to know more about what was going on while these messages were being exchanged, and of course afterward. Across this period of messaging, Sebastian says he tried to call Jackie. I tried to call, yeah, multiple times. She would not answer. like I told you not to, like, call me, blah, blah, blah, like all that stuff. So at some point, after, let's say, an hour or whatever, like the time for her to drive back, she was not here.

So I went to Tamarindo and checked, like, all around. Like, I know normally the place she likes to eat or, like, stuff. So, like, I check all around, right? Tamarindo is a small tourist-developed town of around 6,000 people, about an hour and 20 minutes south of Playa Coco and good traffic. Sebastian took his scooter, and I estimate that the timing of this departure would have been around 1 p.m., with arrival sometime around 2 or 2.30 p.m.

I asked Sebastian if he went to the physiotherapist's clinic, since that was where Jackie had been when she went into town. It seemed an obvious place to start. But Sebastian says he didn't bother. Oh, Physio, so do you ever speak to the person in Tamarindo and say, did she come here? Those people are like doctors, right? So, like, unless you're the police, they're not going to tell you stuff, right? They have, like, they have to respect people's privacy.

I find Tatiana and call her to hear her perspective on what might have happened during this appointment with Jackie. Hi, Tatiana, can you hear me? It's David. How are you, David? I am good. Thank you very much for doing this again. If you could just tell me what your memory is of that day when Jackie, first of all, had Jackie been to see you before? Yes, that was, I don't remember exactly, but was the fifth or sixth session that I saw her. That was the fifth or the sixth. She comes to my office because she had in that time a planter fasciitis. That was she said. and yeah, just we're working on that issue for the last three weeks before that day. Okay. And when she came before, did Sebastian, her partner, come with her?

Yes. I don't remember how many times, but I remember once. She came alone, and did he, we'll circle back, but did Sebastian come to see you that day? No. That day, no. And do you remember, did Sebastian come to see you any other day after that day? No, never again. He never came back to talk to you. No. Okay. And did police come and talk to you?

The police, O-I-J. The police, no. Okay, like ever. Never, ever. I asked Tatiana to describe specifically what happened during the appointment. I used the needle in the posterior tibial muscle and that hurts her. I remember and she told me stop doing that, that hurts. And yes, that was, and actually we finished the session after that because she told me that hurts.

We finished with a massage and then she goes. When she told me that hurts Tatiana or whatever she told me, she just told me. I want to finish the session. I don't feel well. Please. And we're finished and she just, she gone. Okay. So when she left, did she say she was leaving because of pain?

Or did she tell you why she was leaving early? She was like very angry with me. Was super surprise for me because she was super. Relax, always say hi, I mean, always say hi with good mood. And was, she was upset that day. And just she told me, I don't pay you for this session, etc. I tell her, no problem. So Jackie, when she was saying she was upset, I mean, did she seem upset when she came into the office?

Before you started, was she upset then? No, no, no. She doesn't talk. She doesn't talk too much. actually. Just hello, good morning, that's it. And that morning, no, it was normal like the other days. Okay. It was at the end. Okay. And at the end of the session, when she started to feel pain and she said, stop, that hurts. Was she, how was her behavior like? Was she aggressive towards you? Or did she say things that you didn't understand to you? Or she was, she was aggressive in the way

she talked to me. She doesn't do any, don't touch me or push me or whatever. That kind of, not, not kind of like behaviors, but she, she talking like never, I hear before. Okay. And when she left, did she say something rude to you, like, you know, fuck off or was she mean to you? Or did she just say goodbye, I'll see you next time?

Or how did it end? No, just, no, just goodbye. I mean, she left. So, that's what I did. And then, taking a breath, Sebastian prepares himself to get into the last crucial part of the day. The last time that he says he saw Jackie alive. Ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often.

You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairot.cairot.com. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear off. about transferring your business when the time comes.

Because at Desjardin Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. I kept messaging and checking if I had, like, message from her, like, basically saying that she's back or whatever. And I'm not sure about what time I came back.

By that time, I think I got back here about dinner time maybe around that time. So dinner time. I'll map out the timings as I go and figure out when this dinner time might have been. So you came back and she was here. And then what happened after that? Okay, she was here. Okay. Normally, okay, like when people are like really like angry and stuff,

it's not the right time to have a conversation. So since I didn't eat anything all day at that moment, I just went in town and eat, like, just to get her, like, a time bit to cool down. Because, like, to be honest, like, I hate fighting, so I don't want any part in that. Like, anybody who knows me, no, I don't like fighting, and I don't want to fight, like, period. So, yeah. So you went alone into town down here, Coco, and ate at a restaurant. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. What Sebastian tells me is different from what others say he told them about what happened when he first got home from searching Tamarindo. In this version of the story that he tells me, he comes home, sees Jackie, assesses she is still upset, leaves for town to eat around dinner time, he says, then returns again sometime after that, over an hour later. In a different arrival version, Krista recalls hearing that Sebastian, arrives and stays home to eat with Jackie. Gordon says he heard that when Sebastian returned home, nobody was there, so he went into town and picked up some food and brought it back, and Jackie was there when he returned with it. In the version Sebastian tells me, where he goes to town

to eat, Sebastian mentions the name of the restaurant he went to as being the palms, but I haven't yet been able to find anyone who worked there at the time or who knew Jackie or Sebastian. In any version of the story I have heard so far, Jackie has returned home after texting Sebastian, her I'm ready to dies, her don't look for me's, her fuck-offs, and her goodbyes. When I came back, she was still in the same condition, basically, like, pissed off, to the point where, like, her green eyes were literally black.

Oh, and I've seen that multiple time. Obviously, okay, again, when she's like that, it's not the right time to talk. So I just went to shower. And while I was in the shower, she came and started to take toilet paper, like, from, because the toilet, obviously, is right beside the shower. She started to take toilet paper and, like, throw it at me in the shower. Like, the rolls? Like, like, paper moshy, basically, right? Oh, okay.

But, like, in a shower, like, toilet paper make quite the mess, right? So I was like, like, what the fuck is going on? Like, it's like, nobody expect that, right? Yeah, yeah. So I just, like, took, like, a piece of paper and just threw it away. Like, stop doing that. It's, like, it's a disaster. Then she would not stop.

She got towards me and punched me in the mouth, and my four, like, top teeth, like, went through my left. Like, so I was, like, a stun. Obviously, right, you don't expect to be it in the mouth when you're in the shower and getting thrown toilet paper at. Was it like a fist punch or a fist punch? So, and she's an athlete, and she's almost tall like me, so she's strong. Like that hurt, right?

After that, I was like, basically what the fuck happened? Like, there's nothing else to say, basically, you're like, this is bad. Did you start to feel yourself getting angry at that time, or just upset in a way that when she punched? upset obviously, but like anybody who knows me, okay, like I spent 20 years in the army and I can't even scream at people even though I was paid to do it. By the time I cleaned the mess, I came out of shower, dry myself and I looked, she was not there. So next thing I notice is in front of the the couch, we have an ottoman or whatever you call that, like to put your feet. Her engagement ring was there and her phone.

So it was like, this is like really weird, but like it's not the first time too that she get angry and leave and spend a day or two at the hotel, right? Or just park herself like a kilometer from here. Would she leave her phone and ring up on those occasions too or just this time? She'd have her engagement ring before, but not the phone. As far as I know. So obviously there was no way I could contact her. She had no phone.

I took my bike and went everywhere to look and stuff. It's about what time at night? This was, I would say, between seven or nine, like around that time. It was already dark. A lot of different things are said to have happened in this afternoon to late evening window of Sebastian arriving home and Jackie arriving home and thereafter. I'll have to do more digging to see if I can figure out which if any version is 100% true. I wonder again about the punch in the face. Sebastian has already said he would not be the type to escalate.

And you're not the type that would fight back in that situation, you say? No. Sebastian goes on to tell me that he made preparations for his own suicide immediately after Jackie disappeared. Okay, like right beside my bed, I had two things of alien to commit suicide. Oh. Because I was, okay, like, I'm basically, like, hanging from that, like, like, before, like, like, somebody say or do anything and push me over the edge. So I was like, I might as well be ready. That's awful.

It's mostly Gordon and Colleen who pushed me there, basically. I had that for like months before my bed, beside my bed. Like I was like, I was basically staying in life at that time, staying alive because I think my parents deserve better. And that story almost killed them, like basically even so if they lose me on top of that, like they're bad, right? So that's, if I did not have my parents and a few friends here, Like I'm telling you, I would have used a propane tank probably before calling the cops.

Right? That was at that point, right? At this point, Sebastian takes a few deliberate breaths and adjusts in his chair. It's a moment we all need, and I take it, before continuing. Through speaking to Jackie's friends and family, I've discovered that when Jackie left on two or three occasions, she would return. Sebastian himself has left before for periods of time and admits this to me. Some messages from Jackie to her sister Candice in October 2019

talk about Sebastian leaving and also are suggestive of an outburst he had. Jackie's version of the event reads as follows. October 24th, 2019, 8.02 p.m. Sebastian left me at a restaurant in town tonight for a reason I have no idea about, without money, and so I got a ride with a local to our condo. He left me with no money at night and didn't even care. Then when I came back and asked what happened, he lost it and threw his phone on the floor and then left on the Vespa without a helmet. WTF. Hopefully he returns okay, geez, can we just have a normal life, please? Sebastian has told me that this incident 100% happened.

He threw his phone down so he couldn't be reached, he said, and he's a little. He said, and he left because the situation with Jackie was escalating. Back to August 17th, 2021. So she leaves here, what's the option here if you leave? What would happen? Like if she walked out the door, she take her car? The car is a grey Nissan micro four door registered to Jackie, but both she and Sebastian drove it.

No, she did not take the car, actually. So the thing, okay, that was, again, Eden and social media. and I'm going to say it. At the beginning, okay, like, that's where, like, people, like, were, like, accusing me of bullshit and stuff. But it was confirmed by the neighbors there on that side. And she saw her leave the door with a small bag, like that looked like a small, like a small grocery bag or something.

And the description, she was dressed exactly like I said, and her air were exactly the way I said. So our neighbors are leave the house. At that time, between seven and nine and seven. And this is confirmed. And even my former in-laws are like aware of that. So they won't say it online or anything. But obviously I did not like do anything.

A few weeks later, when interviewed by Pepito Live, Sebastian provides an exact description of what he says Jackie was wearing that night. And now he says something similar to me. Do you remember what she was wearing? I know that there's been descriptions of her. I just want to get it from you to know what the description is. Her air wearing a bun, like always pretty much. She was wearing a tank top, like a sport tank top, like fast-drying fabric, like basically, right?

About that color, like teal or eye cogwa, with short shorts and flip-flop. Photos of the teal flip-flops were circulated on Facebook around August 29. I make a note to talk to the neighbors about what they might have seen. Sebastian also says there were sightings of Jackie over the following days in Playa Coco. The other thing, okay, like following that, like in the next, I believe, three days. She was seen by people in Cocoa, like people who know her for like years. So it was obviously her. It was not like some random person who was like, oh, I seen her.

It was people who known her. But that's why the three person who know her personally, obviously no, it's her. Because they were not talking about that girl who's drunk on the beach. We're talking about your wife. Yeah. One of them, okay, his name was Keith. I don't know his second name. He used to be the chef at the coconuts.

And then the other was waitress at the restaurant Santorini. Her name is Carol. Yeah. My question, we're going to start. We're looking information about the disappearance of a cadence of Playa Coco, and she's called Jackie Ferland Smith. My questions for Sebastian will continue.

So far I've found him open and motivated, but also deeply frustrated with his points often emerging from a place of anger. But to get some clarity on Jackie's disappearance from another perspective, I reach out to the Costa Reconversion of the FBI, or OIJ, OIJ. After several attempts,

an officer named Ulysses Guevara answers his phone. He's one of the men in the room, Jackie's parents say, when they were told that Sebastian was a viable suspect. I was the investigator who handled the case, he tells me, and CBC producer Mandy Sham. We ask if he's able to talk to us about it.

So, we could not be able to talk about this case? No, no, no, they're not allowed, because of politics. Ulysses says, no, we're not allowed because of politics, and that I need to contact the director of the OIJ in Costa Rica, a fellow named Randall Zuniga.

So I make plans to do that and also to contact Canadian police, including the RCMP. But until police can talk to me about Jackie and what might have happened to her, it's family, friends, eyewitnesses, and Sebastian. There's also something else in Jackie's timeline. We had the amount, right? Yeah, it was $99 or $100 at both places.

Some receipts. on Jackie's credit account late on the day she disappeared. Did they offer something? One at Walmart for about $17 U.S. dollars around 4.33 p.m. and the other two receipts for a total of about $65 U.S. dollars at Tienda Landova, a popular surf shop about 45 minutes from Coco. The first receipt there comes, according to the OIJ, at around 6 p.m., and then another around 6.50.

But the RCMP review of Jackie's credit card statement shows only one charge at the surf shop at 633 p.m. Regardless, Jackie's card was used at the shop in the same approximate window. We called down and talk to salespeople who said they were. We called down and talk to salespeople who say they were. worked in the surf shop in 2021. They remember seeing Jackie in their store. We ask if they remember anyone else in the store with Jackie, and they do remember seeing her there with a man,

but cannot be sure what he looked like or the exact date. I asked Sebastian whether he and Jackie had ever been to the store, and he said they had visited it together about four or five times. It's difficult to say for sure that it was Jackie using her card on the 17th of August, but they did know her as a customer and recognized her when they saw her missing person flyers. They say that police never spoke to any of them. Jackie's parents, Gordon and Colleen, believed that Jackie wasn't the one using the credit

card. Somebody used her credit card at Walmart and another store. Do you know what was purchased there at that time? Apparently, it was, they asked us if this was her signature. on the receipt. They had that. But it wasn't her signature. It was just from the scribble,

and she took from sign like that. She'd write the written. I already sold that to places up her usual signature. You can read her name. Jackie's phone would have been texting Sebastian about Dymex at the time

the 6 p.m. and 6.50 p.m. receipts were documented at the surf shop. I'll need to check into this carefully. It's unclear from the receipts what was purchased and if we assume Jackie used the card, what does shopping on the way home, probably for upscale clothing, mean for her state of mind? Also, where is Jackie's phone that was left behind and what might it reveal? Pings off towers, her locations across the day.

Sebastian's version of events shows Jackie to be the aggressor and he the victim. But was that always the case. My investigation has surfaced that this dynamic may at times have been two-sided. In a text from Jackie to Candice, her sister, dated December 2019, Jackie describes a pushing incident and says, Sebastian also grabbed my breast and twisted it and pushed me tonight after I asked him about the towel and he denied that it smelled. I asked Sebastian about this fight. that yes I remember that she did not want like to let me go out of the bedroom okay so she always thought okay that

the towels were like basically I don't know that people were coming when we're not there and opening the door and stuff and like for whatever reason they manage never to be seen by anyone and they would do stuff to her toothbrush or her clothes making those in her clothes and stuff or like wiping their ass with their towel stuff. So yeah, at some point like yeah, like she was arguing and like, oh, you're doing that to me,

you're doing that to me, like always the same story, right? And I tried to sleep and she was like getting all wound up and like aggressive and stuff. So she pushed me on the floor like and that's her I make sure. all right. So I know it's just falling from a bed, but it's not fun. So I came back on the bed. She did that three times if I remember well. And then I gave her like a bit of a push, like I stopped that. And yes, like my aunt and the duck where like her breast was. And Colleen and Gordon also have a similar story that they say they heard directly from Jackie.

Well, they had a night when they went out and came back. Oh, that he knocked her down. She said, Sebastian knocked her down. He said, no, I pushed her in Jackie. He said, no, he knocked her down. That's the second time. And so I talked to Sebastian a few days later. I said, that better not happen again.

You know, and so. What was his explanation? What did he tell you at that incident when you say he pushed her down? She told you that. What did he say to you as an explanation for that? Sebastian tells me that he only remembers one such incident and that Jackie ended up falling down because he says she was screaming at him

and in his words was out of control. He says Jackie at one point blocked the door and then she fell down when he opened it. He says that he did not push Jackie. Well he said, oh, yeah, okay, sorry, you know, it won't happen or whatever, but, you know, so... And one thing before, he phoned us once or twice in the middle of the night there

that he was going to commit suicide too or something, you know. The one night he called and he said he was going to commit. And we had to talk come out of and say, I'd just tell him it was... You'll feel better in the morning. And I did say maybe you two have to go your separate ways. And then it was okay. Sebastian says he was suicidal because Jackie was, in his opinion, increasingly going nuts. And the call to her parents was a cry for their help more than anything.

And it was fine. So Jackie told us that he was a narcissist and gaslighting her. And I didn't even know what gaslighting was. I had to look it up and try to figure out from the explanation, you know, saying one thing and then changing that after, gaslighting her and trying to make her think she was losing her mind or something, you know. So, and she was a pretty bright lady there. And like I say, she had that struggle with her anchor issues there sometimes.

When the OIJ told them to leave Sebastian's house, Colleen and Gordon searched for a place to stay. They found a condo for sale owned by a man who said he was a retired local investigator who promised to help them look for Jackie. They bought the condo, but I'm not sure how much investigation this fellow did, and I'll try to talk to him. In the back of their minds, Colleen and Gordon said was that if Jackie returned, they would be there to offer her some support and a place to stay. I'll be trying to find and speak to the people who say. I'll be trying to find and speak to the people who Sebastian says, saw Jackie. And also to a person named Frank, Sebastian suggests, who knew them well at the condo they

used to have to get his thoughts on what might have happened. Do you think she wants to be involved? Yeah, that's why she's there. Okay. So can I involve you in this? And what about Lorraine, the woman who answered Sebastian's door? Over the course of my interview with Sebastian, she's appeared in the background, listening, patient, concerned.

And I think she wants to say something. Someone knows something is hosted, written, and produced by me, David Rigen. The series is also produced by Maria Jose Burgos, sound design by Evan Kelly. Natalia Ferguson is our transcriber. Emily Cannell is our digital producer. Chris Oak is our story editor. Our executive producer is Cecil Fernandez.

Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and Arif Nurani is the director. of CBC Podcasts. You can binge all episodes of someone knows something early on the CBC True Crime YouTube channel, or for early and ad-free listening, subscribe to the CBC True Crime Premium channel on Apple Podcasts. Just click on the link in the show description. If you're looking for another series to listen to,

check out Understood from CBC, from the making of Elon Musk to the Pornhub Empire, understood goes deeper than the daily headlines and find stories at the intersection of business, technology, and culture. Find understood from the CBC everywhere you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca.com.