S10 E2: Papier Maché

into Richmond, Saskatchewan, with a fleet of RVs and set up her kingdom in an abandoned school.

“So the town banded together to get the cult out by any means necessary.”

My name is Rachel Brown, and in this season of uncover, I explore what happens when a conspiracy theory lands in your backyard. The cult queen of Canada, available now on CBC Listen, and everywhere 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. Good morning. How are you? Is the fashion here? 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. Sure, it comes so early. So I got my shoes on here and it won't get you, sorry. I'm David. I'm from Canada. I'm from CBC. 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 and 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. Good, Sebastian, good morning. How are you? Good, 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. Tatoo's visible on both arms. And 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 towards 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,

pretending on. I got dragged and dirted enough and I know that if I say no to the interview, you're just going to bullshit something.

“That's not the intention here, like, yeah, but it's not, but your intentions to make money, right?”

So it's not that 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 happen? Did he investigate the husband and 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 rumour.

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 Rigin and this is season 10 of someone knows something, the Jacqueline Furland Smith case,

episode 2, Paper Mashay. Technically, like, in that story, a lot of like the eights that I got, like, from people, is just because I said that she had like mental issues. I've seen some of the stuff on Facebook,

leave and stuff and it's not seen again, you need to explain why she left. Paper just want to have like a guilty person and they just want to accuse me because yes,

“the person who was with her, yes, we all are those things, right? Like, if you want to know”

to get a deeper person look like 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 all 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 there's proofs. 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, no gay 11 years ago, because we've been to

“get our 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 encounter. So she became more stressed and then add a few bad experience at work, different jobs, right? She started to add a bit more like episodes if you can call them, right? Like, if she had no stress and/or doing great, she was the best wife ever, like she was nice to be around and everything, like I already enjoy, like the years I spent

with her, except obviously when she was sick, like because it's difficult, right? She's someone who needed stability, and my job could not really offer that to her, right? So, 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've 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 an army athlete, you're gonna live in your basement in that city. Yeah, we could come aggregate, folks. Maybe my mistake, okay, but moving into a different country, or it's more relaxed for optical, I thought would be less

“stressful and helper, because the more she outstress, 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 Cocoa condo, and started building this house, we're now sitting behind in the casique

development. So then we end up building the house here and building your house in the 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 Sebastian says that stress often manifested itself in violent opersed. But nobody's speak about like men's or abuse and beat up. There's a lot of them, they just don't speak up,

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 works. You can 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 you bruises, like in my face, neck, head and stuff, and even Gordon and Colleen, if they are honest, seen pictures of that. I press forward and Sebastian continues telling me a bit about the time before Jackie disappeared. After I called her dad to ask for help, that's basically when like everything really started to go downhill. It may be up to a few months before. I was like, I already 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. Slow downs 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 marked like obviously building a house in

Canada is stressful, but it's a pretty straightforward, right? Like he expect people to do a good job.

But here was basically there was a bunch of stupid stuff. You install ceramic tiles. If there's

one that I would chip on it or it's damaged, you don't install that. So you tell them, hey,

“this is chip like you need to replace that. So you get them to replace the tile. Then you come back,”

you replace it again by another tile that's damaged. Okay, that gets a bit annoying, like basically spend my old days here, like supervising them because otherwise that's just mistakes, after mistakes, after mistakes. But at some point like Jackie started to lose her chip on those guys and it's bad. And obviously like taking care of it, if 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 in 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 an rage and she was so angry at me that I called her dad and she basically had the feeling that I pretty much took her family away from her because like her 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 contend towards what I will call an 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? Yes, the 17th 18, okay, that day, I'm not going to say hours, okay, exactly, but just like the logical order where it's 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 the physiotherapist's appointment in

Tamarindow. Tamarindow is about 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 whether I can like avoid some of the triggers and stuff and get stuff to go, which is easier and

with my psychologist. Sebastian is referring here to his own psychologist whom he would call

“Toronto Canada. Okay, about the same time that she had ears. 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 a really like jealous and she was like, yeah, conveniently and stuff like as if like the 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 you stayed here until you're there like 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, they got the physiotherapists. So I was like who's

they? She's like, whoever's trying like to run 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 cost a rekindestigators. Because this is a new iPad and it's when all my data transferred there, because that's not the one to write 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 write, 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 12-19. 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 12-20. There is no help for me, 12-21. Please come back.

“That's what you say here. This is 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, 12-21. No, you are not. This 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 12-23. 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 12-24. 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. 145, right? So it jumps from 12-24. No, and then you say, "Do you want me to meet you somewhere at 116?" She says fuck you asshole, 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 the 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 Tamarind though. 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.

me 244, 246. No, let me help. And then at 2553, I got an email message that my DMX cannot be processed. No message from Jackie between 246 and 553. DMX is a digital identification issued to foreigners by Costa Rica and is required for banking and other official X-pat activities. You've done numerous things to me over and over again while I'm the one punish 635. So,

fuck you and your perfect mom and ex-girlfriend, which is better than me and looks never do or say anything

that I do. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck, with a bunch of apps and a bunch of views and then that's it. According to what I'm shown, Jackie's text to Sebastian stop at 635 pm. 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, tell 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'd try to call, yeah, I'm outspoken. She wouldn't have answers like I told you not to call me, you know what I'm about, like all that stuff. So, at some point, after let's see an hour, whatever, like the time for her to drive back, she was not here. So, I went to Tamarindow and checked like

all around. Like, I don't normally replace, she likes to eat or stuff. So, like, I check all around. Tamarindow 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 pm. With a rival, some time around 2 or 230 pm. I asked Sebastian if he went to the physio therapist'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 did you ever speak to the person in Tamarindow and said did she come here?”

Those people are like doctors, right? So, like, unless you're the police, then I'm going to tell you stuff, right? Yeah, like, they have to respect people's privacy. I find Tatiana and call her to hear her perspective on what might have happened during the appointment with Jackie. Hi. 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 did I saw her? That was the fifth or the sixth. Okay. It comes to my office because she had, in that time, a planter facility that was she say. 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, don't remember how many times, but I remember once. She came alone and did he, well, 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?

Who? The police, OIG. 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 TV and muscle, and that hurt 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

whatever she told me, she just told me, I want to finish the session. I don't feel well, please, and we finish and she just she gone. Okay. So when she laughed, did you,

“did she say she was leaving because of pain or did she tell you why she was leaving early?”

She was like, like, very angry with me. I was super surprised for me because she was super

relaxed, always say, I mean, always say, hi, with good mood and was, she was upset that they

and just she said, and told me, I don't pay you for the session and said that I told her no problem. So Jackie, when she was saying she was upset, I mean, did she see him upset when she came into the office before you started, was she upset then? No, no, she, she doesn't talk, she doesn't talk too much, actually. Just hello, good morning, that's it, and that morning, no, was normal like the other days. Okay. Was at the end? Okay. And at the end of the session, when she started to feel pain and she

said, stop that hurts, 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 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 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 what 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,

“it's a way 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. Who's your favorite writer of all time? And if you could sit down and have dinner with them, what would you ask? It might be tough to get a dinner date, but I can try to give you the next best thing. I'm Matteo Roach. On my podcast bookends, I sit down for honest conversations with some of today's literary stars. People like Zady Smith can fall it, RF Quang and Louise Penny.

Whether you love books or just want a new perspective on your everyday, check out bookends with Matteo Roach wherever you get your podcasts. I get messaging and checking if I'd like

message from or like basically seeing that she's back or whatever and 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 of 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 there again. 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 our like a time that like took hold down. Because like to be honest,

like I ate 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 see you went alone in the town. Yeah, yeah. Coco and eight out of restaurant. 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.

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 die, her, don't look for me, her fuck-offs, and her good-bye.

When I came back, she was still in the same condition, basically like a staff, like to the

point where like her green eyes were literally black. Like so, and I seen that multiple time. Obviously, again, when she's like that, it's not the right time to talk. So I just went to shower and what I was in the shower. She came and started to take toilet paper from the toilet overseas, right beside the shower. She started to take toilet paper and like throw it at me in the shower. Like, so like, like paper mache basically, right? 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 expected that, right?”

Yeah. So I just like took like a piece of paper and just throw it away. Like, to start doing that, it's like a disaster. Then she should not stop. She got towards me and punched me in the mouth and my forehead like tucked it, like, like, went through my lip. Like, so it was like a stun. Obviously, right? You don't expect to be at an amount when you're in the shower and getting thrown toilet paper at. Was it like a fist punch or a fist punch? Yeah. So when she's in that

lead and she's almost tall like me. So she's strong like that, right? After that, I was like,

by basically what the fuck happened. Like, there's nothing else to say basically, you're like,

like, this is bad. And did you start to feel yourself getting angry at that time or just

“upset in a way that, uh, which is such a set of, obviously. But like, uh, anybody who knows me,”

okay, like, I spent 20 years in the army and I can't even scream that 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 look, she was not there. So, uh, next thing I noticed is, uh, in front of the couch, we have, uh, not a man or whatever. You hold that, like, put your feet, uh, or engagement ring was there.

And, uh, or phone. So I was like, this, like, really weird, but like, it's not the first time

to that she get angry and leave and spend it. They are too at the hotel, right? Like, or just park yourself, like a kilometer from here. And, uh, which she live or phone and bring up on those occasions, too, or just this time, uh, she'd have her engagement ring before, okay? But not the phone. That's far as I know. So, uh, so obviously there was no way I could contact her, she had no phone. I took my bike and, uh, went like everywhere, like, to look and stuff. And, uh,

it's about what time at night. This was, I would say, keep between seven or nine, like, around that time. Yeah, 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 a hundred percent 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. Hey, like, right beside my bed, there are the two things, uh, really, I'm like two commits beside it. Oh, because I was okay, like, I'm basically, like, hanging from that, like, like, like before, like, somebody say, or do anything and push me over the edge.

So I was like, I might as well be ready. So that's awesome. Uh, it's mostly Gordon and Colin. You know, push me there, basically. Uh, that for like months before my bed, I'd be side my bed,

I think my parents deserve better. And that story almost killed them, like, basically even.

So as if they lose me on top of that, like, they're bad. You know, it's so, that's if I did not add 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 Candace in October 2019,

talk about Sebastian leaving and also our suggestive of an outburst he had. Jackie's version of the event reads as follows. October 24th, 2019, 802 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 left because the situation with Jackie was escalating. Back to August 17, 2021. So she leaves here what's the option here, if you leave what what would have like if he she walked out the door, she took her car. The car is a great Nissan Micro 4 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 then in social media and I'm gonna say it at the beginning okay like that's where like people like we're like 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 looks like a smaller grocery bag or something and the description, she was dressed exactly like I said then her air were exactly the way I said. So our neighbors saw her leave the house.

At that time, but we saw it in ourselves and this is confirmed and even my former in laws are like get aware of that so they won't say it online or anything but obviously it didn't like do anything. A few weeks later when interviewed by Papito 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 were in a bun like always pretty much.

She was wearing a tank top, like a sport tank top, like fast-riding fabric, like basically right about that color like teela or agua, with short shorts and a flip-flop. Photos of the teo flip-flops were circulated on Facebook around August 29th. 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 play a coco. The other thing okay like following that like in the next I believe three days

she was seen by people and go go air like people who know air for like years. So it was obviously her. It was not like some random person who was like oh I see her. It was people who know

“but that's why like the three person who know her personally. Obviously no it's her because they”

were not talking about that girl who was drunk on the beach who were talking about your wife.

Yeah one of them okay was his name was a key. I don't know his second name. He used to be the chef at

Coconates and then the other was waitress at the restaurant Santorini. Her name is Carol. Yeah. Well to begin with, we are looking for an information about the separation of

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 cost of reconversion of the FBI or OIG. Oh we hold that. 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. And so we can't talk about this case?”

Ulysses says no, we're not allowed because of politics and that I need to contact the director of the OIG 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, its family, friends, eyewitnesses and Sebastian. There's also something else in Jackie's timeline. Some receipts on Jackie's credit account laid on the day she disappeared.

Did they offer something? One at Walmart for about $17 US dollars around $433 P.M. And the other two receipts for a total of about $65 US dollars at Tienda Landauava, a popular surf shop about 45 minutes

from Coco. The first receipt there comes according to the OIG at around 6 p.m. and then another

around 650. 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 call down and talk to salespeople who say they 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 4 or 5 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.

“Do you know what was purchased there at that time? Apparently they asked us if this was”

her signature on the receipt they had that but it wasn't her signature. This is from a girl and she's a girl with a sign like that. You can read her name. Jackie's phone would have been texting Sebastian about dimax 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 surface

that this dynamic may at times have been too sided. In a text from Jackie to Candace her sister dated December 2019 Jackie describes a pushing incident and says Sebastian also grabbed my

it's smelled. I asked Sebastian about this fight. That's yes I remember that she did not want

like to let me go out of the bedroom or just so she always thought okay that the towels were like

“this key 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 managed never to be seen by anyone and they would do stuff to her to brush or her clothes making those and her clothes and stuff or like wiping their ass with the towel or 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 see and she was like getting all warmed up and like aggressive and stuff so she pushed me on

the floor like in that ceremony floor like so I know it's just falling from a dead but it's not fun so I came back on the bed she did not three times I remember well and then like I gave her like a

“bit of a push like eight stuff not and yes like my am in the dark 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 were drinking back all right he knocked her down and she said she says the washroom knocked her down he said no I pushed her and Jackie said no

we knocked her down that's the second time it's all I talked to Sebastian you guys later as the

better not happen again you know and and show what was his explanation what did he tell you at that incident when he said he pushed her down or she told you that what did he say to you did he 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 we won't happen or whatever but you know so and on a fun thing before we he told us once or twice in the middle of the night there that he was been a commit suicide too or something you know we had the one they called and he said he was going to commit and we had to talk them out of a switch I just tell him you'll feel better in the morning I said and I just 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. That was fine so Jackie told us that he was an narcissist and the gaslighting her I didn't even know what gaslighting was I had to look it up and try to figure it out from the explanation you know saying one thing

and then changed and then after and finally the gaslighting 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 our anchor issues there are sometimes when the OIG told them to leave Sebastian's house calling in Gordon's search 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 calling in 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 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 yet 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

produced by Maria Jose Burgos sound designed by Evan Kelly Natalia Ferguson is our transcriber

“Emily Canal is our digital producer Chris Oak is our story editor our executive producer is”

Cecil Fernandez Tonya Springer is the senior manager and RF Nurani is the director of CBC podcast

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