Someone Knows Something - S10 E5: Historias

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

David follows leads to investigate a taxi tip. And more eye witnesses who may have seen Jackie in the days after she disappeared. Or did they?...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide. Please take care while listening.
Starting point is 00:00:50 So I'm driving through Playa Coco looking for this red taxi driver. It's dark here. And there's a particular taxi driver I'm looking for. I know his cab number. I know what he looks like, and I know his name. Playa Coco at night is different, wilder and more unpredictable. I've been looking for this red cab for a while. They're all numbered, and the driver of this specific one
Starting point is 00:01:18 is popular with expats because he can speak English pretty well. I'm wondering what his reaction will be if I start talking to him about Jackie. Trying to find one specific cab four years later may seem like a long shot, but I think it's one well worth the taking. I'm just heading into the downtown area now. Pass the last speed bump before you get into town. if Jacqueline was in a cab and a driver remembers where he took her
Starting point is 00:01:52 that could really help, especially the timing of that. It could also corroborate story and narrative that we've been hearing or I have heard. I just got to figure it out. I've got to ask this driver if I can find him.
Starting point is 00:02:12 I'm going to have to park somewhere. It's muddy here. Walk down the hill and see if I can find the right cab. Hey, did you see Jacqueline? It's the only way to do it. You gotta go right up and ask people. See what I can find.
Starting point is 00:02:41 Downtown Playa-Cocco. It shouldn't be impossible to find this cab. Foka dancing. There's a cab. And it's the right cab, tucked in on a loud and busy corner. I walk right up from the front so I make sure he can see me approaching. The driver's window is open, so I stick my head in so I can be heard. Oh, hey there. Are you working tonight?
Starting point is 00:03:16 Yeah. I got a question for you. I'm doing a documentary on somebody that disappeared from this area back in 2021. From the Katsika area up there, the development. Katsike? Yeah, Kizike. Her name was Jacqueline. Jacqueline. Jacqueline. And I'm just trying to...
Starting point is 00:03:35 Somebody said they saw her in a red cab. But I'm trying to figure out if anybody... If there's a way I can find out who was working that night, that's a red cab driver. It would have been August 2021. No, but in Kaseke, I don't remember any... Anybody. The cab driver in Get Park.
Starting point is 00:03:56 So you didn't hear anybody say that they drove a woman neighbor? From Kasekeke? No, I don't. I don't know anybody of private from Bacique. Yeah, but you know who I'm talking about? The woman that disappeared, the Canadian woman? I remember, yeah, one woman that I can see in the pictures and everything, yeah? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:16 He immediately knows exactly what I'm talking about. Jackie's face was posted all over Coco in the wake of her disappearance. Yeah, and I say, I have here 10 years now. But nobody ever said, I remember taking that girl somewhere to you. You never heard anybody say that. No, no. And you didn't pick her up that night? Really, I don't know exactly examples.
Starting point is 00:04:37 I remember, I saw the, how this is the poster. Yeah, the posters. Yeah. Yeah, for the girl. But I, yeah, I don't remember her. Yeah, because really I don't know her. Yeah. This man says he didn't see Jackie or hear about her from other cab drivers.
Starting point is 00:05:00 But I still want to look a little further in the cab trade. Did one of them see her or have Jackie in their cab that night? We already are in it. Okay, I can't send a photo for WhatsApp. I'd be a question if you were to know. We already know cab companies in Coco don't keep a log of passengers, and the drivers I call suggest that they would have heard about Jackie being picked up that night if she had been.
Starting point is 00:05:27 We send Jackie's photo around the cab driver network, but none say they saw her or drove her. There are about 12 red cabs in the area now, and we're reportedly about 18 in the area in 2021. Unofficial or pirate cabs exist but are usually black, gray or white, not red in color. If someone wants to call a cab, do they call you directly or do they call a cab company? Or wait, they call to the dispatcher or sometimes they call us to our cell phones. Diego is a well-known red cab driver in the area and he says he knew Jackie and Sebastian as customers.
Starting point is 00:06:07 Do you think that a taxi driver in Coco, who's being, you know, probably driven by a local Costa Rican, could get away with doing something to a gringo, like a white person down there? Well, I don't think so. I'm grabbing only daytime, and there's another group coming at night. There's another ship. So I know them, but I don't know them the way I know my body's in a daytime. And do you think that word would get out, though? I mean, if something happened, do you think that someone would tell somebody? Like, is it a pretty tight group? Do you guys talk? Yes. Yes, they will.
Starting point is 00:06:46 We try to help people here. People who work in public services, they like to help tourists. Because they're helping us with our economy here, you know what I'm saying? Oro, Jackie's neighbor, says she saw Jacqueline in a red cab. Wouldn't any cabby who dropped Jackie off be desperate to tell the world where he did so for fear of being implicated? And why would Jackie take a cab this time if her car was parked in the garage, and we know from security guard she used to walk everywhere? Would she take a cab to her suicide?
Starting point is 00:07:22 If I know something for sure, I'll let you know. Thanks very much, Diego. Any time, yeah. Okay, bye-bye. Sebastian says he and Jackie didn't take taxis because, they had a scooter and a car, and that Jackie didn't have a preferred cab driver on speed dial. Also, according to Sebastian, other people did see Jackie in downtown Playa Coco in the following days. That would mean she did leave the house that night, whether in a taxi or not.
Starting point is 00:07:51 I'll have to find these people, and speak to them myself. I'm David Ritchin, and this is season 10 if someone knows something, the Jacqueline Furland-Smith Case, Episode 5, Historia. Sitting at the side of the road here in a little town in the mountains, took me a couple hours to get here. Got up at 5 early morning, sitting in front of a mega superstore, waiting for a guy named Keith to get here. Keith is another Canadian who used to live in Coco,
Starting point is 00:08:44 used to be a chef at the Coco-Nuts restaurant, and he may have seen Jacqueline in the days or on a day after she disappeared from her house. Sebastian suggested three people I talked to who he says saw Jackie after she left their house on the evening of August 17, 2021. I've already spoken to Oro, who was returning with her husband from the San Jose airport, and I still need to find a waitress named Carol, who worked at a restaurant. and Playa Coco. And then there's Keith, a chef who worked at coconuts, who should be arriving any minute now. My difficulty with sightings. If Jacqueline was seen in downtown Coco by anybody, including Keith,
Starting point is 00:09:35 why didn't many people see her in downtown Coco? It's just heading across to see this dude. Pretty noisy spot here. It's okay. Hey. How are you? How are you? Nice to See ya, Keith. Thanks for doing this. Keith is from Kitchener, Ontario, and says he's been here in Costa Rica for 17 years, working mostly in kitchens. He's now a cook at a brew pub-type place in Bihagua, about a two-hour drive inland of Playa Coco. Keith's in a light gray baseball cap with a red maple leaf, gray sweat top, and black tartan patterned shorts. Okay, so just tell me who you are as we go here and how you kind of fit into the story here. Yeah, they were both customers at the restaurant I worked at.
Starting point is 00:10:29 I worked at coconuts. Oh, okay. You were a chef or a cook? Yeah, okay. And they would always come in. Sebastian and Jacqueline? Yeah, both of them would always be in there talking. Okay.
Starting point is 00:10:39 One day I saw on the cash register, there was a flyer saying she was missing. Okay. And I said, hey, that's those people that come in here all the time. Okay, so you knew what she looked like. You knew that the person who was with Sebastian, you knew that she was Jacqueline and what she looked like. Yeah. So then, like, how is it that you made this sighting? I would just stand in front of the back of liquor store after work, and I have a drink.
Starting point is 00:11:03 So I was just having my drink there, and I saw this girl walk across the street. He pulled up in a car. Who did? Sebastian. Oh. And started asking me questions and all this. And have you seen her? People have said they've seen her around here.
Starting point is 00:11:19 Oh, no. I saw this crazy girl walking around here. Because that could be her. I'm like, she had blonde curly hair. So the person you saw was not Jacqueline. No, because it was blonde curly hair. Quite tightly curled? So Keith didn't see Jacqueline, after all,
Starting point is 00:11:36 but he does offer his opinions about Sebastian at the time. And Sebastian was saying, well, if it was wet out of the shower, it would have been curly. Apparently this girl had been down there and they said, yeah, she was a little crazy, but her parents came and took her back home. And so Sebastian was the first person to come and ask you if you'd seen her around? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:00 Okay. Yeah. Okay. And did he ask you any other questions about her or just say that could be her and then leave? That was pretty much it. That could be her. Kind of talked a little bit. I'm like, how are you doing?
Starting point is 00:12:10 Any luck? He's like, no, no. I think there was about three or four people that had said. They saw her at the liquor store where I was and they saw her walking down towards the beach, which was the same direction this girl was going in. This other woman that Keith saw is allegedly named Jocelyn. I have seen a photo of her, and while she has similarities with Jackie and her slimness and her hair color, even height, Jocelyn has a large tattoo on her hand, curly hair, and her face is not Jackie's.
Starting point is 00:12:42 Despite that, Jocelyn was the subject of some mistaken identity sightings in the aftermath of Jackie's disappearance. Jocelyn was seen drinking around Pliococo in the bars and on the beach. Keith wonders why Jackie wouldn't have been seen if she was in fact in cocoa after she disappeared. And if there's a picture at the coconuts bar and she walked by the coconuts bar where she'd always go in to drink. And nobody noticed?
Starting point is 00:13:09 Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of odd to me. Did you hear anything else in the aftermath about stories? I'm not talking about rumors, but any kind of credible stories about what might have happened to her or anything.
Starting point is 00:13:24 like that. No. Keith tells me that he doesn't buy Sebastian's story that Jackie just wandered away and disappeared. Okay. I mean, that's it. I mean, you have been raised as one of the big eyewitnesses of maybe having seen her. I know, which seems odd to me, especially being, I've already said that it wasn't her and it was curly blonde hair.
Starting point is 00:13:50 Yeah. And I believe it's Sebastian building his story to try and do it. this to cover up whatever he did. Okay? That's my opinion. Keith messages me a few weeks after I see him in Costa Rica to tell me that Sebastian showed up with some friends, writing what he says were Harleys at Keith's Mountain Restaurant, not long after I left. That's a two-hour drive from Playa del Coco. Keith says Sebastian came to the restaurant and sat drinking beers for a bit, then walked out looking through the kitchen door at Keith. Sebastian said hi. high and Keith replied high, then Sebastian left with his friends. Keith says he has never seen Sebastian
Starting point is 00:14:35 there before. Sebastian tells me when I ask him that he was just having a beer with friends at Keith's bar in Biagawa and didn't know Keith worked there. Carol was the last of the three people Sebastian told me had seen Jackie after she disappeared from the house on August 17, 2021. Carol, a local, used to work at the Santorini restaurant in Playa Coco. Hello, Carol, we're talking to people who say they saw Jackie after she disappeared. We were told you saw her. Yes, I thought I had seen her.
Starting point is 00:15:36 I used to work at a restaurant called Santorini. It's in Playa Coco Centro. They would always come eat there. Always a couple that looked in love and relaxed. On the day I saw her, I had gone to the liquor store to buy some cookies and some snacks to share with my co-workers, so I was at the register paying, and I looked toward the door and thought I saw her. Carol sees someone she thinks is Jackie waiting outside. Since I recognized her, I greeted her with a wave, just a simple hand wave, but when I went outside, she was no longer there.
Starting point is 00:16:14 Did she say hi back? Did she say hi back? She smiled at me. The all-important question is, if this was Jackie, when was this sighting? I honestly don't remember exactly, but I saw her alone that day, like standing at the liquor store by herself. I didn't see her with her husband. When some days later, Carol sees a Facebook post about Jackie going missing, she messages Colleen and Gordon and tells them she might have seen Jackie and mentions that there is
Starting point is 00:17:04 video surveillance at the store. They should check the cameras. The OJ says no confirmed studies. Yeah. No, no confirmed studies. Police didn't see Jackie on tape. Carol says she went more than once to the store around this time and wonders if the OIJ was looking at the right day. Both Carol and Keith's recollections add up to some great uncertainty.
Starting point is 00:17:34 Did Carol see Jackie? Did she see her after August 17th? If Carol saw the same blonde woman that others reported seeing near the liquor store, we now know that it was probably not Jackie. The OIJ file says that they looked into all reports of Jackie being seen but determined that there were no credible sightings of her after August 17th, stating these sightings were investigated and discarded. Was the OIJ thorough and meticulous?
Starting point is 00:18:05 I received a message personally from a woman who said that they didn't want to give their name because they were afraid, but she said that she personally met Jacqueline at a local bar. Jackie's friend Krista says there was one sighting that seemed very intriguing to her, next to a local watering hole on the beach called Claudio Iglorias. This woman who sent me the message said that she was there that day and that Jacqueline was sitting with a group of males, one of them being a guy named Michael and that the woman had introduced herself to Jacqueline.
Starting point is 00:18:55 And she said that Jacqueline was sitting there quietly, not much to say while the guys were like drinking and laughing. And so she said that she introduced herself. And the woman said that her name was Jackie. and she she said that Jacqueline said that she was from Canada and then the Michael guy
Starting point is 00:19:22 cut off the conversation he had said that Jackie was his girlfriend and then he cut off the conversation between the two women. Now this would have been before Jacqueline went home for supper because this was during the day like around three, two or three in the afternoon.
Starting point is 00:19:40 Okay. So I told Colleen and Gord, and I also told the private investigator that they had. The investigator is Douglas Barantes, the man who sold Colleen and Gordon a condominium within weeks of Jackie's disappearance. I tried to get Barantis to talk to me on this trip, but he developed some kind of heart condition and said he was unavailable. I'm unaware of anything he might have discovered in his investigation. Krista searches for and finds Michael in Coco at the very same bar he was supposedly with Jackie at,
Starting point is 00:20:16 and he is questioned. So did Michael say that he saw her? He said that he had seen her running on the beach. But that day? Sorry, no, he said he was not sitting with her that day. But he knew who she was because he had previously seen her running on the beach. To get a definitive answer, I try to call Michael.
Starting point is 00:20:42 No answer. Then go through his friends and former employer, but he doesn't want to talk. The former employer, named Janie, does, though. Janie recalls hearing that Michael said the woman was smoking, something Jackie did not do. And he said that the woman wasn't Jackie. Michael also said he knew what Jackie looked like because he had seen her running on the beach sometimes in the mornings.
Starting point is 00:21:08 Colleen and Gordon, too, spoke to Michael. and he told them that the woman wasn't Jackie. And the woman sounds to me to be the same woman people were mistaking for Jackie at the time. Another case of mistaken identity. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed,
Starting point is 00:21:42 hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. It's going to see a guy named Frank Evans here in Playa Coco. It turns out he lives just down the street from where I'm staying. Frank's somebody who knew Jacqueline and Sebastian.
Starting point is 00:22:26 He used them quite well, I guess. And Sebastian gave me, yeah, Frank's name as a sort of character reference. I'm going to walk up on him here. Yeah, hey. Anywhere you like, man. It's good. How are you doing? Thanks, Frank, for meeting me.
Starting point is 00:22:48 Well, thank. Okay, I'm going to have a drink. Do you want something? No, I'm fine. Just go ahead, Frank. Frank is relaxed and tropically clothed, balding with a big smile and bushy eyebrows. there's a Guinness book-sized collection of booze lined up behind him on a shelf.
Starting point is 00:23:06 I guess I wanted to talk to people that know Sebastian and can talk about him and their relationship and what was going on with them. And there's a lot of opinions, you know. Everybody, you know, like I know there was a lot of condemnation at the outset and there was a lot of suspicion. But he was involved. But I've known him literally when he first arrived and, quote,
Starting point is 00:23:31 Costa Rica, you know, the guy's got a heart of gold. I mean, no question. Jackie, when I met her, everything seemed pretty normal. Like we would share meals here, and often I would be invited to go to wherever they were living and we have a meal together. And then it just started getting further and further and further apart and that was less socialization. And well, she came with Sebastian.
Starting point is 00:23:58 I mean, I saw her at the pool over at my condominium, and, wow, this girl's got a great figure, and, you know, both of them were athletic, you know, outdoing, and surfing and whatever they could do. So you never saw them apart. They were always, like, attached at the hip. I saw it always as a very positive, you know, nice relationship. And I got along with him very well, and I got along with her very well. And I was just, like, friggin' blown away when, you know, Sebastian calls.
Starting point is 00:24:28 me, it's just like, Jackie's missing. I was like, what? I haven't seen her for whatever it was, two days, and whatever he told me at that time. And I think what do you mean missing? You know, like he just don't grasp that. And... Do you remember the date that he called you?
Starting point is 00:24:47 God, no, no. How many, or how many days afterwards it might have been? No. Okay. No. I mean, it was several days after, but I saw him him probably a week and a half two weeks after and he came here and I mean the guy is skinny anyway and like he was like wow really skin so I made him sit down and eat and I forced him to have
Starting point is 00:25:11 food because he hadn't been eating he hadn't been sleeping and you know he's very particular about what he eats anyway but he was he was totally devastated I mean just you could see it in his face, you can see it in his physical being. He wanted to resolve whatever the hell it was. It's clear that Frank has known Sebastian for a long time and considers him a friend. His perspective on Sebastian aligns closely with Sebastian's girlfriend, Lorraine's point of view, a man of concern and care. We would go on search trips, and we would drive around the neighborhood. We drive into all the little barrios. And you know, I'd have you seen. seen this person. We had a picture of Jackie and...
Starting point is 00:26:01 Bars or whatever. Everything. We went everywhere. We went all of them down the beach. We talked to all the homeless people, you know, and we're thinking, you know, somewhere that's got a piece of clothing. There's got to be... Something. Some trace, you know. The fact that she left her belongings behind, very odd. And... Like her phone and her ring? Yeah. Like, you know... That to me struck me as I don't want to be found. So there was no phone to trace me by.
Starting point is 00:26:38 There's no other way of, you know, tracking me down. And there was so much speculation that many of the people suspected that Sebastian was involved in some, you know, bad dealings with her. But never saw them fight. Did he ever mention anything about pushing or like an argument escalating? I have never heard that that happened. I can't imagine that Sebastian would do that. I think he may restrain.
Starting point is 00:27:11 So if he's being hit, he's going to grab her hand and stop her from hitting him. But I understood that she was aggressive. But again, it's what Sebastian told me. I never saw it. Yeah, of course. Did he ever tell you or did you ever know Jackie to have left at other times? No. Stormed off or?
Starting point is 00:27:35 No. No, that's the only time that I had heard that she had just gone, poof. You're in Nicaragua and nobody knows who the heck you are. You're in Panama and nobody knows who the heck you are. And you can disappear pretty easily, I guess, if you want to. The OIJ file says that the General Directorate of Immigration, reviewed Jackie's migration movements, and it was determined that she did not leave the country.
Starting point is 00:28:04 And the Canadian Embassy confirmed that Jackie did not enter Canada. I never had an inkling that there was any hostility from Sebastian's side to Jackie. And I never saw anything on Jackie's side towards him. They seemed always to be a happy cup, you know? Jackie yourself was pretty strong, would you say? I would say she was very high. athletic, very attractive girl.
Starting point is 00:28:31 And I just feel quite honestly that there's no way that he could have done something malicious towards Jackie. I mean, if he wanted to, just walk. You know, he's got lots of resources. He's a smart guy. One incredible thing is accident or something, some accident happens, but. And somebody's hiding it, you know, it's possible.
Starting point is 00:28:57 I mean, and we don't really know what we don't know. And speculating about it is stupid because it doesn't get you anywhere. So facts are important. My experience and just in my gut feeling was, you know, seeing him afterwards and the reaction and then the physical change, you know, that would not be the norm if you were involved in something wrong, right? He was trying everything from my point of view to try and find her. Hey, Pete, it's Dave Ritten. I reach Pete on the phone only after I leave Costa Rica.
Starting point is 00:29:52 Pete's an American who owns and runs several businesses in the Playa Coco area, including the Coconut's Bar. He knew Sebastian and Jackie, and he says they would come into his bar regularly. And did you talk to them as sort of friends or just customers? Friendly acquaintances, yeah, I definitely knew them and talked to them. We weren't close. I didn't have them over at the house for dinner or anything like that, but friendly customers
Starting point is 00:30:17 he was always pretty mild you know very calm and uh she was very bright and bubbly and she liked to talk with kind of whoever wanted to talk with her is how it felt like she was very open and um
Starting point is 00:30:34 just a a bright person is what it seemed like and uh he was kind of the opposite he was friendly but not nearly as he was always like i don't know how you put it just one one mode you know monotone very mild this happened again at coconuts at my restaurant also on the main street in front of a lot of people uh at least two times that they had gotten in very very heated arguments and i would say she was the one who was physically upset and was
Starting point is 00:31:09 leaving she seemed to be the one who was more angry he was always very calm didn't really have much of a reaction. I could tell he was he's saying something, whatever it was to piss her off. We never got involved, but it was to the point where I think I actually asked them not to come back at coconuts
Starting point is 00:31:31 at one point because it was so ugly. So I think it was really three times that I saw them get into serious arguments and it was that third time at coconuts where they were really screaming at each other. Remember she was outside the bar yelling at him inside. Okay.
Starting point is 00:31:46 And did he ever come and talk to you about anything in particular? Did you ever come? Oh, okay. So tell me about that. So after she went missing, this was where it got strange for me if my wife went missing. I would be devastated. I'd be doing everything I could define her. And the behavior that I got from him was not that.
Starting point is 00:32:09 It was very much like, I don't want all this attention on me. I don't want this to, you know, it's almost like I just. wanted to be over with. It certainly didn't seem that he had the demeanor of someone who just lost the love of their life, is how I felt. And then it was maybe four months after she went missing that he got in touch with me, and he wouldn't text it. He said, I need to have a phone call with you, and I have a few missed phone calls from
Starting point is 00:32:40 him in my context. I look back to see if there was any written message about this, but then I had remembered my wife reminded me. He wanted to meet with me in person. So I was at coconuts one day, and the meeting was very nonchalant. It wasn't something we had planned. And we just happened to see each other. He was just there having beers. And he said, hey, can I talk to you? And he said, hey, I'm looking for a job for my girlfriend. And that kind of caught me off from the garden. This request from Sebastian would have been about four months after Jackie disappeared. And this girlfriend is not Lorraine.
Starting point is 00:33:18 Maybe he just means a friend of his that, you know, no, he meant a romantic girlfriend that was living in Tamarindo, I guess. She wanted a job at my restaurant, but she wasn't legal. I don't know. I remember being really just uncomfortable. And he had been drinking. This girl that he described was, you know if he said she was Venezuelan and Nicaraguan, but he was like proud.
Starting point is 00:33:44 It was like, I'm sleeping with this new girl down in Tamarindo, and she wants to come move in with me, and I need to find her job up here. And I keep taking my moped back and forth to Tamarindo, and it was like a joke, is I don't want to keep driving my moped back and forth. I want her to come up here and work somewhere nearby. This girl is not the one who he's living with now, by the way.
Starting point is 00:34:08 It was a different girlfriend. I never met her. I was kind of, I never got back to him, of course. It was just so shocking that he would even ask that. Sebastian tells me that this conversation with Pete did happen, and I hope to get into more detail from him on this if I can. And at that point, you know, I guess I, you know, I'm not, my gut told me, like, it's obvious that he had something to do with it.
Starting point is 00:34:39 He was just very dishe demeanor. I was like he was happy. I think he snapped and it was probably something in the spur of the moment, heat of the moment. They were fighting physically. And he, whether it's an accident or just went overboard, it's kind of how I feel. I don't think it's premeditated. It sounds like they got into a physical fight and, you know, whatever. There's a thousand places that he could have been within two hours and back.
Starting point is 00:35:11 It wouldn't be terribly difficult to hide somebody. like that here, and have them not be found. Pete's theories aside, he doesn't know what happened to Jackie. And he doesn't know the person in Tamarindo he says Sebastian asked the favor for, or how long Sebastian might have been seeing her. But he says it's not terribly uncommon in the region for people to have partners on the side. I ask Pete for his thoughts on Jackie's disappearance. It's incredibly difficult to just do that too, right?
Starting point is 00:35:47 I mean, it's suicide. I don't think many people really, they're probably trying to get found, right? I mean, you're not, nobody's that good at not getting found, especially for suicide. That's crazy. The investigation wasn't thorough at all from what I understand. But, you know, whatever, who knows?
Starting point is 00:36:08 Indeed, who knows? A small expat community far from home can be a beacon of support, but also a concentrated and divisive. rumor mill. Jackie's case is no exception and after all of the theories, assertions, and stories, there are still questions and inconsistencies. So here's what we know. Jackie Furlin Smith disappeared sometime after leaving her appointment with her physiotherapist Tatiana in Tamarindo Costa Rica on August 17, 2021. Jackie left upset and messages I've been shown by Sebastian
Starting point is 00:36:47 from across that afternoon, show this. Jackie was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and reportedly was not taking any medication at this time. She suffered from serious symptoms exacerbated by stress or in social situations that included paranoia, delusions, and depression. I think Jackie was likely the one who used her credit card between 6 and 7 p.m. at the surf shop, but I can't be 100% on it.
Starting point is 00:37:15 After that, the information was, gets even hazier. Jackie might have been seen arriving at the Kaseke development by Michael the gate guard between 6.30 and 7.30 p.m., waving, hello, but we cannot confirm that date. Sebastian says he looked for Jackie and Tamarindo, but he didn't go to the clinic she was at. Sebastian has multiple stories about what he did when he arrived back in Pliacoco area that evening. He ate supper at home, or ate out. He saw Jackie first, then left, and returned, or he only saw her when he returned from supper at the Palm's restaurant. Then there was an argument, a fight back at the house.
Starting point is 00:37:57 The order of events there is also unclear to me. After, Sebastian says Jackie walked out, leaving her phone and ring behind. A neighbor says she saw Jackie in a taxi that night around 8 p.m. is positive she did now, despite being initially unsure in the months immediately afterward. but no taxi driver or dispatcher remembers picking Jackie up or hearing of her being in a red cab that night. And I couldn't reproduce seeing anyone in a car under similar conditions. Then there's the fight that night, the punch in the face, Sebastian says he got from Jackie. People noticed scratches and a scar on him in the following days, and the stories about that seem variable.
Starting point is 00:38:39 How did he get them? Jackie's parents say Sebastian pushed Jackie. He says it didn't happen that. way, though Jackie's texts suggest that he could be unpredictable. Others who know Sebastian well say he has a heart of gold. Sebastian says there is a video of Jackie leaving that night. There isn't. He says that there are people who saw Jackie. Keith didn't see her. Carol might have, but the date is unclear, and many saw a different person that was not Jackie. In fact, there are no confirmed sightings of Jackie anywhere after August 17, 2021.
Starting point is 00:39:16 according to police documents. All of it adds up to questions that I need to take back to Sebastian. I need to talk to him again. 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.
Starting point is 00:40:09 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.
Starting point is 00:40:37 If you're looking for more investigations, check out The Con, Each season focuses on stories about scammers and con artists, a podcast exposing the art of deception. Find the con wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca.

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