Someone Knows Something - S10 E3: Ex-Patriota

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

David talks to the neighbours and others in town, and tracks down security guards from Jaclyn’s gated community. Gathering the fragments. What did people see or hear? Where did Jackie go?

The ocean's astounding power is that at any moment it can change. So, if you find an hour-by-hour plan to spend a day in Halifax, take it with a grain of salt. Like at sea, best to prepare for the unpredictable, to follow currents to places you never saw coming. Let the tides keep time as they rise and fall until you forget you ever had a watch on. And then, if you're lucky, you'll completely lose your bearings. Discover Halifax. This is a CBC podcast. The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide.

Please take care while listening. The man I am speaking to is one of Sebastian and Jackie Furland's immediate neighbors in Playa del Coco. Two or three weeks ago from the chair was, I'm working probably at 10 or 11 in the morning and I was listening her asking for help well a woman I listened a woman asking for help she was screaming for help saying help just that's it help help help help so I'm going out and and I know obviously what's that that house so I talked with the security guy from the condominium and asked him,

hey man, somebody's screaming for help, asking for help. So he told me, okay, I don't, I know where is it. So we came that house because, and he told me, man, every time at the same, they're fighting. So we went there and we don't see anything and stop. The screaming woman was Jackie, the other voice, her husband, Sebastian. When investigated during similar loud altercations, the shouting would end, and Jackie and Sebastian would later emerge from their house as if nothing had happened.

Yeah. When you went over, did you see anything? No. Just a screaming. I'm David Ridgeon, and this is season 10 of Someone Knows Something, the Jacqueline Furlin Smith case, episode three, ex-patriota. Yeah, like if you're trying to report a human story, the human story is like, this has been really difficult on Sebastian.

Because it's like, I understand our parents are trying to find her, but we're also trying to move on with our life, right? About a year after Jackie disappeared, Sebastian drove through Playa Coco on his Vespa with a woman from Canada on the back, a new girlfriend he had met several months before. They'd just driven on the scooter together for 23 days all the way from Canada. Her name was Lorraine Franco, the same Lorraine who opened the door for me and who is now sitting next to Sebastian in his backyard. I came to Costa Rica before meeting me. I came to Costa Rica because I was coming for my own reasons and didn't know Sebastian at all. So you first met after Jackie disappeared?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because I was interested in volunteer work, and I was doing my own, like, six weeks of volunteering around Costa Rica. And then I came to Coco to go scuba diving. Lorraine, who ran a business as a family therapist in Canada, says she first heard about Sebastian from a friend before her trip. This would have been in December 2021, four months after Jackie disappeared. So that friend had been telling me in Canada, you should really meet my friend, Sebastian. Like, he's such a nice guy.

Probably they didn't tell me about the big sad story. Lorraine came to Costa Rica on a wildlife conservation volunteer trip starting on January 14, 2022. Before she returned home to Canada, she would meet Sebastian in, person in Playa del Coco, probably sometime in early February 2022. And when I did meet Sebastian, I thought he was really nice, I left and went back to Canada, and then we just became friends, you know, and we just started talking on the phone because I was now back in Canada, and he was still in Costa Rica. But then as I started to talk to Sebastian and date him, it was a lot of us talking on the phone about everything.

Lorraine says she kept communicating with Sebastian by phone and they eventually became a couple, meeting in person in Canada. And then some plans emerged. Like obviously Sebastian's like massively into bikes and he's massively into adventures and fun stuff like that. He had this dream to drive his Vespa that he bought in Canada one day to Costa Rica. And I'm like, yeah, that would be so cool.

I never dated anybody who did motorcycles or road motorcycles. and I have zero experience on a motorcycle, but I'm an adventurous person. We're a new couple, and so like, let's do this fun adventure. And they did, driving on Sebastian's scooter from Canada to Costa Rica, a trip that would ultimately lead to both getting matching Vespah tattoos. Their dramatic arrival in town drew attention, and some of the online community got buzzing about it,

and about a magazine article that came out around the same time. One of Sebastian's good friends from Quebec, like, loves motorcycles too, and is friends with a guy who writes for all these motorcycle magazines. So he got wind of our story of us riding on Vespa from Canada to Costa Rica, asks if he can interview us. We're like, sure, at this corner of our lives, we're just wanting to move on with our lives. We don't want to be known as Lorraine and Sebastian, the one, the guy who's like, you know, the possible murderer. The article makes no mention of Sebastian's recent past, and there's nothing about Jackie.

Curiously, the whole thing is written as if Sebastian has never been to Costa Rica before, and Sebastian is referred to as having been batching it for nearly five years before finding Lorraine and using an underpowered street scooter to brave the wilds of Central America with her. It's Lorraine who provides most of the explanation for this. like obviously we're doing our best to just go through our life and just be Lorraine Sebastian like the fun couple who are just nice people we don't want to have that legacy following us everywhere we go so we didn't tell that guy any of that stuff so we get interviewed by that guy on the phone and we don't really mention our past you know so when he's writing up the story he's the one that put in there about Sebastian being a bachelor right we didn't tell him that he had been single because he was widowed or because his wife went missing. Like, that's, like, horrible.

It has nothing to do with a bike story. And so we just told him our side of the story. And I read the story after it published. And I went, oh, shit. And I said, you got to call that guy and ask him to correct that line. Because if I was her family, I'd read that story and want to throw up

and want to strangle you because it makes you come off as this gallivanting bachelor. Who's never been to Costa Rica before? It makes it sound like he's never been here before, too. It just made him sound like, oh, he's like, he's had his bachelor days. And meanwhile, I was like, yeah, that's not exactly Sebastian.

Sebastian's the guy who was a loving, dedicated, devoted husband of 12 years who lost his wife and she was missing. And he wasn't like this swinging bachelor. That's not why he was single. He was single because he was, in my mind, like, is more widowed. Lorraine and Sebastian call the author and ask him to change the article, and it is modified, revising out the Bachelor reference, but still with no mention of Jackie, as far as I can see.

The author has declined to be interviewed. I'd like to know why he wrote the article that way. I wonder, too, what's been going on under this roof since Lorraine arrived. Does Lorraine know anything about Jackie or her disappearance? And I didn't really need to know much of the story other than I know my instincts and my intuition and I also understand mental health. So it is not something that many couples would even stay together for.

It's a hard story because, I mean, my family found out that I was dating Sebastian and, like, we have nothing to hide. But then my aunts and uncles go and just start, like, Googling his name and then find out all the stories of it him, and then they basically just start freaking out that I'm dating this serial killer, and oh my God, do you know who you're dating? So then I had to then do damage control

and try to help them feel safe and comfortable. Her mom used to work at... Lorraine lives here with Sebastian, and he's sitting next to her now. The honest way she discusses these very personal details are striking, and Sebastian doesn't seem to react in the negative, so I think he's heard this before. Obviously, I feel blessed that I get to live here

because this is the house that him and his ex-wife built together, and I'm like the person that gets to live here. But I'm okay with that, because I feel like I'm part of this story as much as like we all have a story that just leads somewhere, and now this is where I am, and I'm meant to be here, and he's meant to be here, and we're meant to be here.

And I'm very, like, comfortable with that knowledge. You know, Elixabash is a wonderful human, right? And he's everything that you would expect. Like, he is extremely loyal. He's extremely dedicated. Everything about his history of Jackie is, it makes sense. And he has not given his side of the story. And I keep saying, like, you have every right to defend yourself

because you are the person in the story that should, be commended, not the one who's thrown under the bus because of the years that you took care of her. Like this wouldn't be inconsistent with the theory of you being the killer when actually it would have been way easier for you should have left her for so long. You know, this was not the straw that broke the camel's back. He endured way more like bruises. I am drawn to Lorraine's open thoughtfulness and sense of kindness, and I believe that she believes everything she's saying.

calling. Colleen and Gordon told me that Sebastian had been speaking to a counselor in Toronto before Jackie disappeared, but both Sebastian and Lorraine assure me that she is not that counselor. Jackie's parents also told me that Jackie was upset, that Sebastian was allegedly speaking to an ex-girlfriend on the phone as well, and Jackie's perfect girlfriend text on the topic likely refers to this, but I don't think Lorraine is that person either. I do wonder about Lorraine's comment regarding the straw that broke the camel's back, but set this aside for now and turned my attention back to Sebastian to find out more about the aftermath of Jackie's disappearance. So did police ever come to you, the CR police ever come to you and say that they

thought that, you know, you look suspicious? Did they get you in a room and try to grill you and go through questions? They interviewed me, yeah, for sure, because they came with dogs, obviously. When I reported everything, okay, obviously. That same night, they sent, that's called OEOTA, like the OIJ here. So those guys came and investigated and searched the whole house from top to bottom, search the car, the lot around the house, the neighbor's lot. Then they interviewed me for hours. Yeah.

And then they came more than once, actually, because every time they were thinking about something, they would come with more questions, right, and stuff like that. So you have a surveillance camera here, and it's outside the house? I do, but those are cheap stuff from Costco. So they don't really work well. They pretty much, okay, you've seen the edge, right? so there's always something that move.

So you get like thousands of pictures of the edge, the trees, a bird, a spider. And then you walk in front and it doesn't see you. And Gordon and Colleen actually like said like that, like I did not share the stuff. Okay, I don't have the password for that, okay, because that was like Jackie who had that, okay? but there's like an investigator who came and get like the box and they check the thing. They say that I'm hiding stuff. No, I'm not.

Those guys came and got the box. I still don't have the box back. So like they check what was in there. Okay, regardless of what they see, like they came back to me and they told me that whoever that was, that there was nothing of interest on the camera. They said they were able to see what was on the camera?

Yeah, but the cameras are outside, right? So, like, what they saw is most likely or, like, going out with a bag, like I said exactly at that time. I'm trying to connect with the Costa Rican authorities and will hopefully be able to confirm what I'm hearing here. Obviously, they're not going to say that, yes, I've been investigated. Yes, they came here with dogs.

They smell everything. And just for the recorder, I'm just going to say it. But when you find something in ancient Egypt that's like 6,000 years old, they know if there was blood somewhere. Like they can't smell it with like a dog. Dogs are that good. Even dog, I used to have a beautiful garden there, which is, like you said, it's wild now because they dog everywhere.

Because cops, obviously, they see, like, freshly moved dirt, like, which is a garden. The few documents I have seen say that the OIJ first speak to Sebastian in person on August 19th when he officially reports Jackie missing to police. Then OIJ speaks to Sebastian again the next day on the 20th, this time at the house, but they do not search it. OIJ returns again five days after Jackie disappears on August 22nd to talk to Sebastian some more and finally conduct a superficial first search of the premises. Nothing unusual seems to have been found on. on the 22nd. How superficial is a superficial search. In the absence of police, I'll need their

files to even begin figuring out what was done or not. So Sebastian posted on chit-chat that Jacqueline was missing and I reached out to him seeing if there was anything that I could do to help. And right away, I organized a search, like with people from our community. There were searches across the area undertaken by volunteers soon after Jackie disappeared, organized in large part by Jackie's friend Krista. We met in Koko and we had designated search areas for different groups and we sent everybody out from there and we conducted that over a couple of days and then when we, I honestly thought that we would find her right away.

The ground search organized. by Krista started on August 27, 2021. Drones were locally used by Krista and a friend of Sebastian's too. Nothing was found. Two days later on August 29, 2021, a team of search experts arrived that Krista says she called in. I contacted a guy I know Victor who volunteers with an organization called Open. Open, which stands for the Organization for National Emergencies, seems to be a semi-professional, or at least semi-organized search and rescue outfit. A couple days after that, the team was here on ground, so we had to find lodging and food for them and other gear to support them, like machetes.

We ended up getting them rubber boots because these are guys walking through the jungle, and snakes are always an issue, and, you know, just general search and rescue gear. And how many days was a search conducted for Jackie after she disappeared? I believe it was a full three-week period. And that was land and sea? Yes. Did anybody come up with anything? Did they find any remnant of clothing or any item that might have belonged to Jackie or any item at all?

Nothing at all. And these guys were repelling off cliffs. They found an old wallet that had... had been sitting, you know, at the bottom of this cliff for, it appeared to be a number of years, but there was never a single sign of any belonging of Jacqueline's. We were hoping to find her flip-flops or anything. And then how was it decided to sort of wrap up the searches? Well, two weeks into the search, Sebastian asked to shut it down.

but I was not prepared to give up yet because there were still some areas that needed to be searched. Krista says Sebastian told her that the search was expensive, food and accommodation for searchers, but also told Krista that some crew members were trying to scam him. There were also some questions being generally raised about the experience level of the searchers, with some talking about ghosts and others using the equivalent of divining rods

to douse for Jackie. Community donations for the search dried up as time went on with no progress. The official search lasted three weeks and on September 19th, 2021, it ended with no sign of Jackie.

And did Sebastian take part in the actual searches himself? To your knowledge? To my knowledge, no. Like he wasn't out searching through the bushes and stuff like that. He was, you know, back at the house.

house. He drove the team members to different search areas and would drop them off and so act as a taxi kind of. I was there everywhere all the time. I asked Sebastian about the searches. And before the cops even, like, did the search and stuff, we were like basically 15, 16 hours, like a day, like us driving those guys around so they can search like a bigger like a perimeter around the house and it lasted like close to three months like by the end okay like myself I was like I just can't do that anymore I'm going to die it's that demanding and it's also when you're

doing that like you're always like night and day basically talking about that like it's it's extremely demanding and difficult, right? Yeah. Sebastian says he was on a boat that searched an area at sea where things collected, known as the garbage line. I ask him about some of the local freshwater lagoons and rivers, but he doesn't recall what was searched in that regard. Meanwhile, the OIJ conducts an additional search at Sebastian and Jackie's place on September

6th, 2021. almost three weeks after Jackie disappears. Colleen and Gordon Smith. Three weeks later, and I thought, well, what are they going to find? Jackie lived in the house. And another odd thing was Sebastian had a mop with a pale of chlorine in the house,

you know, which I thought was a little odd. And then he had Colleen to clean the... ...to do some stuff and then we realized after we shouldn't have cleaned to anything. Without access to police or the file, I can't say whether or not clean. cleaning the house affected any evidence, and bleach in the bathroom is pretty common. But investigatively, one would want a location to remain as it was on the night someone disappeared

from it as much as possible. Three days and certainly three weeks before searches are conducted is a long time. There's a healing element in salt, in sweat, in tears, in the ocean. In Halifax, being surrounded by salty water and fog is just enough grit, to help polish away the pressure of to-do lists, to just make time for things that feel good, to let the salt cure whatever ails you. Halifax could be the break that finally leaves you feeling like you took one, as long as you're willing to rub salt in your wounds.

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We'd love to talk, business. Ulysses Gavira, the lead OIJ investigator on Jackie's case, told me on a call that I needed to contact his superiors to get any more information. After lots of flack, back and forth and getting nothing of value from anyone superior, SKS producer Maria Burgos and I try calling an OIJ office manager. Aniela Sirdas is more forthcoming and maybe not so incredibly tells us that nothing new has been added to Jackie's case file since 2022. And then Aniella offers something else.

The name of a key prosecutor, Carmen Ivanya Pizarro. In Costa Rica, prosecutors oversee the criminal investigation and evaluate the evidence to look for foul play, so maybe Carmen Ivanya can help. Jackie's file has been dismissed and archived at the courts, Carmen says. And the upshot of that, maybe there's a chance we can get our hands on it. We ask if she has Jackie's cell phone and she says she does, but getting at that phone or anything else will still take a bit more doing. I've sent a freedom of information request to the Abbotsford, BC Police, from Jackie's hometown, whom I know did some work on the case.

and there's still a lot more people to talk to here in Costa Rica. Turn right on VEA 151. Just heading up to the development where Jackie and Sebastian had built their house. Yesterday I talked to Sebastian and his new partner, Lorraine, and today I'm heading back to talk to the neighbors. My GPS is overheating, so I've got to somehow cool this car down so that I can actually get there. Back to Playa Del Coco for more active investigation. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. Can we chat or do you want to park or something? No, no, no, no, no. I was running to come and talk to you. I'm sorry to have you waiting. No, no, there's no problem at all. Could we talk away from the idling car? idling car?

It's gotten dark, and from what I can see, the man who has just driven up to me outside his own house looks like he has just come from a long day at work. I'm the neighbor. I live, yeah, right next to them, we have a... He's another neighbor of Sebastian and Jackie's who's asked to be anonymous because he fears for his family's safety, and I'm calling him Alejandro. Alejandro moved in with his young family just a few weeks before Jackie disappeared. Unfortunately, I didn't get to know Jacqueline too much.

She was always really nice. She was always outside. She was always really happy. She was always working on the house, on the garden. She would talk to the kids. She would be very empathetic. She was always smiling and she was always working really hard. And Sebastian, I never talked to because I only talked to Jacqueline, was, you know,

pretty decent, like he didn't engage too much. He would be like outside too. You'd see how they're trying to get onto something with the house together and all that. And that was actually pretty nice to see. And Sebastian was always behind, never talked, and with an angry face. Alejandro doesn't know why Sebastian and Jackie were fighting or what happened to Jackie. But he does have some theories that include suspicions. about Sebastian's backyard after Jackie went missing.

Why am I very suspicious about behind the backyard? Because I have a lot of dogs. And the dogs, as soon as I opened the gate, would go to the, let's say, backside on the right-hand side of the, like, glass part of the garden. There is a place where he had, like, a bunch of logs, and I could let my dogs go out, and my dogs would always go to the exact same place.

He continued burning things on top of it, but there was something burned underneath. And he could see birds all over until I got scared and I started going around the house with a shotgun. What birds were you saying? What kind of birds? Vultures, big pink heads, and they're like all the time on top of the house.

On top of the house? All the time on top of the house. My kids are afraid of it. I'm afraid of it. They're always on top of the house. I have found one neighbor across the street who says vultures used to appear at their own property too. But nobody else other than Alejandro is able to say they saw vultures at Sebastian's.

The first ones that came and investigated was Oijota. Oijota is the Costa Rican, let's say like FBI, the governmental entity that should take charge of all these things. And they were all right in front of his house. And when I passed, I stopped. And they were like, okay, so we can't for sure say it was him, but he has his car hidden inside of his garage. And he has blood all over the front seat of the passenger. And then he is not willing to share the surveillance videos of the house or the cameras and all that.

And I'm like, for sure, it was him, it was him. Alejandro comes off as exaggerated to me and his conclusions are speculative though it's obvious that he is actually fearful and suspicious of Sebastian after speaking to the OIJ Alejandro says he became so concerned about Sebastian that he decided to confront him

and then next time he comes by I go with the shotgun again and I knock on the door and I tell him motherfucker I see you close to my house and fucking kill you You went over with your shotgun? Oh, yeah. It's not legal.

I don't care. Really? I don't give a shit. Taking a shotgun into any situation seems like the best way to accelerate it in the wrong direction. Sebastian says this interaction never happened. But if it did, I'm not sure I fully understand Alejandro's decision to confront Sebastian in this way. There's also no way of knowing what he was actually told by OIJ, if anything. Krista adds even more nuance by telling me a story that offers some more potential detail about blood in the car.

During the search, my husband and I got into the car to go for breakfast one morning while all the guys were out searching. And I have my little dog with me, and she actually pointed a spot in the back seat and was digging furiously at it and sniffing it. Now, during the search with the Oyhotas dog, they did that point. cutting a spot out of the backseat of the vehicle. And when I was in the backseat, it was covered with a vehicle cover, you know, like a seat cover. Okay. And they cut cutting out a spot, but I don't know whatever happened with that.

Okay. And how do you know that the police cut that spot out? Sebastian told me. He told you. Okay. And did he ever say anything about results, or did you ask him particularly about results of that? He said that he didn't know what the... the results were.

Colleen and Gordon also say they saw Sebastian burning things in the days following Jackie's disappearance, but Sebastian says the police cleared him. They dug everything. And that brings me to another accusation I got because that garden was made of wood frame and stuff. So after it got all destroyed, sorry, I got really depressed and stopped actually using it. So instead of letting it grow wild, like I used. all the wood that was there and burn it for days on the neighbor's lot.

Then it got me accused that, oh, like, he burned the body, like, and like, just stupidness after stupidness, if you want. So, yes, dogs came here and clear me. Clear the car. Clear the house. Clear the lot. Cleared him, the house, the lot, and the car. I'd still like to see what happened with the seat cover.

I wonder how old it was, why it was put on top of the original. cover, and why both Krista's dog and the police dog might have alerted to it. Hi, sir. You can hear me? Yes. Is this Alonzo? Yeah, that's me? Yeah. And... Nice to meet you. All right. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much. Alonzo, the gate guard. Gordon and Colleen mentioned to me that he might have seen something on the day Jackie disappeared. He wants to work on his English on the call, even though I say he can speak Spanish. Do you remember seeing Jacqueline on the day she disappeared? partner, he saw her, and, well, he was in the gauge, right?

Okay, so Alonzo didn't see Jackie that day. It was apparently his partner. Sir, I want to tell you something. Sebastian, he never told us she was disappeared. That's happening. I think it was Tuesday. So we call Oyota. They come to here. And they ask, you know about, you know about, This woman because he's disappeared and blah, blah, blah. And it was in that moment we received the news. She was disappeared. He never told us nothing, sir. Sebastian tells me that he expected Jackie to come back that night.

So perhaps because of prior experiences of Jackie leaving or him leaving, it might explain why Sebastian didn't immediately raise him. alarm bells in the community. The guards say that they heard about Jackie disappearing from the police days after she vanished. Just on my way to the guard house that's just down the hill from Jackie and Sebastian's place. Hopefully I can speak to Alonzo and his partner, but what they say they saw on that day. I spoke to Alonzo on the phone, but I really wanted to talk in person. just passing the house that Jackie and Sebastian built here.

There's a hedge in front of it now that wasn't at the time. So it's hard to see the house to see a garage behind there. I make arrangements to meet in person with Alonzo and the other guard Michael. Just a little guard house. I think there's three guard houses in total. This is the sort of most active one that I've seen. Some of them are completely inoperative. Hello. Is Alonzo here?

Ah, well. Alonso. Alonso? Hi. Is this your partner that was here? Yeah. So he's Michael. Okay, Michael.

David. Hi, Michael. So I want to know what Michael saw on the day it was August 17, 2021. Well, what the question is, if you remember the last time that you've I saw, I was,

He was entering there like at 6.5 or more or less. 6.45, maybe. Or there, something. He entered, me saluded. Oh, in the car of her. No more. So, um, he said, that day he saw her about,

he said, six stories, coming in. In her car? Yeah, in her car. Okay, driving in. She wave or? Is she happy? Did she happy?

She waved? She waved? Yeah. Michael says that around 6.30 p.m., Jackie came in, waved at him from her car, and drove on pass to her house. Back in 2021, Michael said he couldn't remember whether it was the 16th or 17th when he saw Jackie, and that he saw her drive by a little later, around 7 or 7.30 p.m. Michael also said back then that he thinks he saw Jackie drive to her. garage and that he did not see her leave again.

There is another route that you can walk or drive to or from the house, so not seeing Jackie or the car pass again just means past Michael at the guardhouse. But Michael does see something else pass by. No, more. Then, more tard, I saw a car, a taxi, and me pareseo, see to her in the car, and I came to see her. Michael says that later on, he saw a taxi. taxi drive past the guardhouse.

And he saw somebody behind the seat back in the taxi, but he's not sure if he was her or another person. Okay, and what time was that taxi? Do you remember the time? Time of the taxi, we remember, more than. No, no, me recall. No, sir. You don't remember?

No, no. Late, late, or like, many hours later, or just a couple hours later? Minutes, one hour. Like one hour, more or less or a minute. Oh, sorry. One hour, he said. Yeah. And the part of the other, it was a person that me

came to see her. Yeah. He said in the back of the sea was somebody, but he can't tell us, yeah. Man or woman? He said only that it was somebody in the back of the taxi. Sebastian said that a neighbor saw a taxi on the night Jackie disappeared as well.

I wonder if it's the same sight. So the taxi, you must have known the taxi driver because there's very few taxi drivers, right? Did he recognize the taxi driver? You recognize the taxi? Taxi rojo, just. No. He doesn't remember. It's a red.

It's dark. It's red taxi, though? It was a red taxi, okay. Seeing Jackie come past in her car between 6.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m. on either the 16th or 17th seems a reliable sighting to me. If on the 17th, it matches roughly with the approximate surf store receipt timings of when Jackie would have been returning from there. Michael says he saw Jackie drive in from the Hermosa direction, which would have been the shorter distance to arrive from the surf shop. Not seeing Jackie leave and then seeing a taxi go

by with a person in the back, but he doesn't know who, is less exact. Has he ever talked to Sebastian ever? After you've talked with Sebastian? No, and no I've not been with Sebastian. Oh, okay. And did you ever see them fighting or arguing or any kind of interaction between them? If you've ever,

that they'd have a discussion? One of the bestino me that they'd heard some gritos there. He said one time the neighbor called him because the, him because the neighbor heard somebody was green on the house. You went to see her. Yes, I went, but I didn't see nothing.

He was all right. And Sebastian was talking with some tracts in the trastero. When he goes there to see what's happening, the Sebastian, he called Sebastian but he didn't answer. But he said Sebastian was watching the dish or something in the kitchen.

Okay. And have you ever seen them arguing or fighting? Did you... Yeah. They have a... I don't know what kind of problem with the people who was building the house. And I remember I was here, exactly.

And they was... Grass and friend... They having a little scooter. And she was a screened and hitting him in the back because she was in the back. She was hitting him in the back. Yeah. And she was hitting him in the back, Josephine.

Oh, Jacqueline was hitting... She was hitting... She was hitting with his hand in the back to Sebastian. She was... I don't know, she was fighting or something. So he was hitting Sebastian? Yeah, she was. The surveillance cameras. Did you ever see anything on any surveillance camera here that showed Jacqueline leaving?

No. Sebastian, Jonathan and the house, they have camera. when I heard that version when they asked, you know, to see the camera, he said, oh, Jackie has the passport, she knows everything about this. I don't have control, yeah. I really went through by cameras because we have security cameras at the house. But someone does have some footage from around the time Jackie disappeared, a neighbor across the street named Ramee Aldana.

In fact, Ramey says that in 2021, she was the only neighbor in the immediate area who had security cameras. So, nobody has a shot of Jackie leaving the house, let alone leaving the house with a bag, like Sebastian told me. We pour through the footage Ramey sends, but because her camera is aimed closer to her house, not every car or motion event seems to trigger it. There are no recordings of Jackie or Sebastian on August 16th or 17th. There is a shot of Sebastian on the 18th around 1130 a.m. on his scooter, and on the 15th there is a shot of Jackie's car returning home around 7 p.m. It could be surmised that Michael the Guard is actually remembering seeing Jackie drive by on

the 15th from this evidence because it is similar timing, but impossible to say because whoever is driving the vehicle cannot be seen. Rame says she has talked to all the neighbors about Jackie, and I ask what she thinks about her disappearance. We're inclusive. You know, it's right next door. Somebody disappeared. It's a killer somewhere, so I need to know what's going on.

And I think it was faultfully. I really think so. I don't think she just walked away, like this is what they were saying. That she just walked away. No way. No way. No way is an opinion from Rameh. Someone who tells me she doesn't know,

Jackie or Sebastian beyond waving. Still, theories of how no way happens are still fewer and further between than I would like. I wonder what Sebastian himself thinks happened. Has anyone ever asked him? I did not kill her, obviously, yes. So, but who am I to convince anyone? Like, people want to see me as the guilty and stuff,

and whatever I do, they're going to think it's me. So even if I say something in their head, it's going to be to prove that it's not me and like to try to say something, whatever. And if I say, don't say anything, they still think the same thing. So it's basically wasting my life trying to convince those people. They want to hate me and they want me as a witness. They will. In thinking about the case and maybe in thinking about Jacqueline, what do you think happened?

I'm probably the person who know her the most, right? So, like, I would say since she was, like, really afraid of pain and stuff, but, like, she was, like, tormented and didn't want to live anymore, and it's been like that for quite a while. I would say she loved the ocean, so she probably went for a swim, like, like, planning on swimming until she cannot come back. Until she can't come back. I can't imagine many things that might be harder to do.

Swim past where you know you cannot return, at night in an ocean, alone. Others have disappeared from the same Costa Rican shoreline, and days later the tide has brought them back. The beach sands have held them. Would there be no sign of Jackie? Other cases have taught me that bodies in water can start to disarticulate in a surprisingly short time, the fingers, hands and head first. then at the waste. Sharks and other fishes may not consume everything. Could Jackie have died by suicide with the intention that no part of her would be found?

Maybe. As I'm sitting with Sebastian, these thoughts go through my mind, and I notice on his leg a scar. In the days after Jackie disappeared, other people noticed it too, but at that time, it was a new, deep gag. Someone knows something is hosted, written, and produced by me, David Ridgin. 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 more CBC True Crime, check out Uncover from CBC Podcasts.

There are over 30 seasons to binge listen to right now. See of Lies takes you inside the mind of a digital. devious scammer whose trail of destruction crosses continents and decades. Find investigations and more by searching for uncover wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.