So, a music professor from Ottawa started recording his three-year-old daught...
and turning them into songs.
“He posted them online with 36 followers.”
Millions of people have listened since then, and the comments under his videos are moving and beautiful, and this guy has some thoughts on why. On cues, Steven Spencer will tell you the whole story, why it's important to really, really listen to your children. Here that conversation now to search for cue with Tom Power 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. You say that you were punched in the face, was there any other altercation, physical, like
“were any scratches, or marks on your body from the interaction you had?”
From that interaction, no, but you're probably referring to this scratch that I don't my leg. I'm sitting with Sebastian in his backyard, looking at the scar on his leg. On the day Jackie disappeared, Sebastian says she punched him in the face, causing his teeth to push through his lip.
The people I interviewed didn't seem to have noticed anything on his mouth, but have mentioned noticing a deep gash on his chin and have wondered what caused it. Yeah, I can see the scar from it. This was from a few days before, like I went to a beach that's just like there at the
“Onward, they built that hotel, and it's pretty steep, and it's all maybe not quite”
shale, but like those flat rocks that are like not staying together, basically.
So coming back up, I slayed and my flip flop left my foot, and I just scratched that on those rocks. Okay, okay, so there was a mark on your leg, but it was from a few days before. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, okay. But this isn't quite what others say Sebastian told them.
I'm David Richen, and this is season 10 of someone knows something, the Jacqueline Furland Smith case, episode 4, the Red Cab. We're trying to consider the experience of Jacqueline, the father is trying to have access to Jacqueline's file, my CBC colleague Maria Jose Burgos is very persistent. She's talking to Carmen Evania Pizarro, the lead prosecutor in Jackie's case.
The prosecutor says we're supposed to go through the press office, and that everything is private. It's been this way for several months trying to get the investigative file into Jackie's case, one step forward, three back, then sideways. We needed to learn what the OIG did or didn't do in Jackie's case. We do know that their investigation ended in 2022, and that the file we want is archived
at the criminal court. We also know that despite my FOI request, Abbotsford Police have sent us nothing, and our CMP didn't investigate, they say, and tell me it's all up to the OIG. We email where we are supposed to email, and call where we are supposed to call, and get mostly no responses or bafflement. But our arguments are consistent. If you weren't investigating what happened to Jackie, and the case is archived, and the family
wants it, then give it to us. And Carmen Evania directs us to go to someone else, named Karina. So I help Gordon and Colleen draft an email for her. And almost as if miracles existed, a bit of daylight. Carina says she's not the one who's job it is to get us the file, but that she will help us, because if it was her daughter
lost, she'd want someone to help her. The cost to reconcords, email, Gordon and Colleen,
The investigative file into Jackie's case, and we translated.
and Colleen have been given any details about the investigation into their daughter's
disappearance.
“But will this information hold any answers for them, and it's 90 something pages of submissions”
from police and prosecutors? In the searches, the what was found and the what was said that are outlined here, will I find inconsistencies, and can we talk to the officer who wrote most of it, Ulysses Guevara. The short answer is unfortunately no. We've discovered that investigator Guevara was arrested by his own colleagues at the OIG, not long after I called him in December of 2024, he was arrested for allegedly extorting
people, pay up or your guilty of a crime. I don't know if he did anything illegal or unto word on Jackie's case, but being handcuffed does make it difficult to find out.
“It's unfortunate because I cannot vote for the completeness of this file. Is this everything?”
I'm also starting to find a series of inconsistencies in what I'm hearing and interviews and seeing in the file, so I need to verify as much as I can with investigators who were there. Fortunately, the file has a lot of other names in it including those of Guevara's
colleagues, and I call one of them about the first thing I want to talk about. The two
searches of Jackie and Sebastian's property. Nothing turned up inside Jackie and Sebastian's house on the first superficial search of the premises without dogs five days after Jackie disappeared. This investigator is speaking here about the more extensive OIG search of the property carried out almost three weeks after that. This time, with dogs trained in
human blood and remains. He says he carried out a search and entered the place with dogs went through the yard and once inside the house. Nothing inside the house or in the back yard returned any alerts from the dogs on this more extensive search. But he says they did no digging. A second investigator named Luis Fernando Vidal concurse saying that it's because the dogs did
not alert outside that the OIG did no digging at Sebastian and Jackie's property. Sebastian initially tells me that the cops cleared him.
“Partly by digging up his garden, digging everywhere, and that's why he's back here to”
so wild now and why he was burning things in the period after Jackie disappeared.
I point out to Sebastian that police say they never dug on his property and he then says
that it was the open group or fake police as he calls them who did the actual digging. Open is the non-profit search group who were called into help look for Jackie but they are not affiliated with police so suffice to say open can't clear anyone of anything. According to Old Omar Silas, search coordinator for open OIG did suggest some locations that open might look such as the cliffs nearby. Open used pickaxes mostly and didn't dig
Silas says so much as they would sweep the surface in areas that looked disturbed. And open says they did not do this sweeping on Sebastian's backyard property. Only on adjoining properties, they say that Sebastian wouldn't let them dig in his backyard. And we also found the house of Sebastián in the garden. In the garden we don't know why it's a property that I have and I'm not sure.
Any of the work by open on areas near Sebastian's backyard would have started...
after Jackie's disappearance.
“Recall that police did run their cadaver dogs through Sebastián's backyard and that the dogs”
didn't indicate on anything. But then there is the back seat in Jackie's Nissan that Alejandro the neighbor and Krista talked to me about. It's also mentioned in the file. OIG investigator Vidal says he remembers that they inspected the car the same day as the house and the file continues. On September 6, 2021, a dog named Baco alerts to the presence of human blood odor on a spot in the back seat of the car.
The OIG removes a piece of the seat and it's tested. It comes up positive for blood. The report says that it is a weak positive and I've not been able to get any official response to what that means. There is no indication as to who's blood it might have been and whatever the result it wasn't enough to trigger any further police action. One could surmise that many vehicles around the world may have spots of blood in them just from day to day use.
So again, circumstantial and security camera footage Jackie and Sebastian had a security camera. I want to find out first if they ever saw anything on that security camera if they were ever able to see any images at all on it. If they were still in the car and the car was in the car, then the phone was in the car. Luis Fernando confirms that Jackie's phone password was a problem. Without it as Sebastian told me the surveillance camera could not be accessed.
So thinking they could break into Jackie's phone, the OIG took it, but they were never able to get into it.
And according to the file, the OIG was never able to access the surveillance camera and therefore see anything on it either. There was also nothing in the file about the surveillance system being taken from Sebastian as he claimed to me. So the phone has been simply stored for two years. Jackie's phone has sat in storage since 2022 after Costa Rican authorities say they tried to break into it, but were unsuccessful. After our call, Carmen the prosecutor says that an OIG cybercrime unit has developed new tools to break phones and that they will try again.
Three years later and only it seems after we ask. And another detail I noticed in the file.
“Did Sebastian ever tell Luis at that time or any other time what he thought Jackie was wearing?”
The night she disappeared? We asked Sebastian what she was wearing and he told us that he didn't remember because they had argued and then he went to take a shower and when he got out of the shower, Jackie was already gone. The police file says that Sebastian does not know what closed Jackie was wearing when she left as he was showering at the time. Yet a description of what Jackie was wearing that night did emerge somewhere around the end of August.
Something else curious is that the physical fight according to Sebastian happened while he was taking a shower not before and not after. Sebastian told OIG they had an argument before she left only on their
second visit to him which would have been five days after Jackie disappeared.
When we asked one of the investigators about the punch in the face, they tell me they did
“remember hearing that story at some point from Sebastian. I don't know why the punch in the face”
would be omitted from the police reports. Something else not mentioned there. That scar on Sebastian's leg. The very first day that I met up with Sebastian, he had a very large gash going down his shin. I don't see mention of scars in the file but the one on his leg has come up in a few interviews. Jackie's friend, Krista.
And he told me that he had slipped while walking up a hill from Plyapanga which is this beautiful beach near here but it has a gravel hill and it is slippery. I've fallen down the hill so it was very believable to me that he could have slipped while going up the hill and cut his leg.
The same story Sebastian tells me but Gordon says he got a different story.
That Sebastian got it while snorkeling. Did he say to you while snorkeling he got it? He said while snorkeling at another time he told us when he slipped on the trail going down there on the trail. slipped going down the hill or slipped coming back up. Another variation of the story of Sebastian's scar comes from the eyewitness account of a Y.J. investigator Luis Fernando.
He says he first saw Sebastian two days after Jackie disappeared on the evening of the 19th.
“That's actually the part I was going to mention. The only thing that seemed a little strange”
out of the ordinary was that Sebastian had some injuries mainly on his legs not deep wounds but visible. We asked him why he had those injuries on his legs and I think if I remember correctly also on one of his hands. He told us that he liked to surf in the ocean and that he had a small accident with some rocks that he had slipped and hit the rocks of the ocean with his legs and the wounds were already starting to heal not like from that same day. I asked about the scratches on
the hand that Luis says he noticed. I don't remember if it was both arms but I believe he did
have a similar wound on one of his arms. They were wounds that looked like well it was believable because they looked like scraping type injuries on his hands. On one hand he definitely had a wound and it was similar to the ones on his legs and he told me it's just that I had an accident. I fell on some rocks here at the ocean and as I came out of the water I hurt myself. Hurt while surfing in the ocean and as Sebastian got out of the water and scratches on at least one arm
and a hand. He talked more than he should and I asked him what happened to his leg right
I asked him why his leg was so fucked up. Travis another Canadian expat in the area
who owns a local restaurant. We are sitting next to a small pool at night. Every now and then a large light-colored bat swoops down over it and seems to skim a drink but nobody comments on it. Travis says he spoke to Sebastian about a week after Jackie disappeared. Okay so what did his leg look like? It looked like he fell off of a fucking motorcycle right yeah yeah it looks you know
I've seen some motorcycle accidents and it looked like you know I I've only ever seen him on a
“motorcycle so I figured he fell off his motorcycle. So was it actively bleeding?”
That's another question. I can't say whether it was actually bleeding I just saw that his leg was fucked up and it has some one was going on. Was there a band of Jonah? No it's just like there was a sort of a bloody scar or yeah it was just side of his calf. Side of his calf was like fucked up. It wasn't my problem. I was just asking if he fell off a motorcycle and he said no a dog did it and I'm like okay right that's it. So he told you that a dog did it? He said that
he said that a dog took a run at him on the beach. Okay so you asked the question what the fuck did you do with your leg or whatever you said it that way? What the fuck? Yeah like what the fuck happened? You fall off your motorcycle and he said like that that's
“I think that would be kind of funny. Yeah right like him falling off his whole”
motorcycle. Yeah just like all I remember he's just like now dog get it and I'm just like okay right. While snorkeling, while surfing, hurt on rocks in the ocean and slipping going up the hill or going down the hill could arguably all be within the same realm of experience or a translation or recall. A dog bite at the beach is a different matter. The scar I'm seeing doesn't look like a dog bite but I'm no expert. Assuming everyone is telling me the truth could their
memories be so mixed that all of these explanations are put down to time or bad memory or is something else going on. You want to send me to Michael Thompson who bought the whole A.B. dropped out and testified against them and you think I'm going to go there and convince him to re-can. Let's talk to you. He has created this illusion of who he is. I was just stunned that I would have a conversation
This with an ex gang leader.
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“Did Sebastian ever tell you what happened that day? Did you ever talk to Sebastian”
about what happened to Jacqueline? I've come at night to visit with Anna here in Playa Coco. Jackie hired Anna sometime in the fall of 2020 to paint something in their new home. I have to use a phone translator to communicate. Anna has led me past some of her works in progress. Bright tropical scenes hang off the walls
and is now sitting on a very worn couch wearing a light blue top with pink buttons,
shorts and flip flops. On August 29th the day the bigger open group search began Anna saw Sebastian. She says that Sebastian told her that Jackie punched him in the mouth, but she couldn't see any bruise there or sign of it. Anna's husband Harold, a tall and skinny construction worker with dark hair and a blue
shirt and tan pants, has come to join us too. He was also at the search with Anna and saw Sebastian. They both say they noticed scratches on Sebastian's forearms.
“Were you guys together on the day you went to see Sebastian, and you noticed the scratches on his arms?”
So Sebastian came and he had a bruise. I saw a kind of bruise here. His arm next to one of his tattoos. Harold says that as Sebastian talked to them, he would try to cover his arms and the scratches. He describes three elongated scratches on Sebastian's right arm, about three centimeters long. They were about a week old he says and healing.
I leave Anna's and the next day head back up to C.K. I want to get a better sense of what Sebastian did across the day Jackie disappeared.
“On the way I replay the sequence of events of the night Jackie went missing as people have told me.”
So the window of Jack on being kind of out of hand and not being seen to my knowledge is after that appointment to Tatiana the therapist and then possibly Alonzo sees her then she arrives according to Sebastian at the house. He then arrives after he says being in Tamarindo to look for her after not going to Tatiana's place. Comes back sees Jackie there they have another argument.
Maybe go to dinner first maybe not maybe dinner after or he eats with Jackie. Then at some point he is there at the house with Jackie after he comes back from Tamarindo. Gets in the shower she's in the same sort of state of mind he says and then the toilet paper throwing happens the punch in the face happens. Jack on punches Sebastian he says in the face
arguments continues and then Jack on his gone says Sebastian he never sees it again.
Comes out of the shower she is not in the room. A scar and scratches seen on Sebastian after Jackie disappears are circumstantial and one thing may have nothing to do with the other but people see scratches and the questions occur. So she leaves the house but then what she can't have simply vanished off the face of the earth. We're looking for the main of the house.
Okay. It's going to retell us his name too so that I know his name. Of course. I've met with a Costa Rican translator out front of a home next to Sebastian and Jackie's house an empty lot separates their places and it is this empty lot that Sebastian was seen doing
Some of his burning on but we aren't here to talk about burning.
We've knocked on the door of a family who may have seen something on the evening Jackie disappeared
August 17th 2021.
“I ask Carlos about his neighbors Jackie and Sebastian.”
I didn't know much about Jackie. I didn't know much her because he was like very shy you know. So every time I approach her whatever you know we just hello her you you know but no we didn't go further than that you know. Sebastian. Sebastian I knew him a little bit more.
He's a little bit more. He speaks more. You know he's also very quiet. It's not like that but you know.
But I told you something the day that happened. Fortunately we were coming back from San Jose. I was coming from Spain. I'm from Spain. I feel you to San Jose and my family was waiting for me in San Jose to bring me here. So the night we arrived here I was sleeping the car and my wife was driving okay and it seems like when we drive here we saw taxi coming out with a person behind. So when we heard about that I'm the time that happened with 30 might be Jackie.
So did she see Jackie? Not really. She's so a person behind but I'm all right. She'll tell you because I was asleep so I'm not sure. Calling and Gordon told me that when they spoke to Carlos's wife named Oro she couldn't be sure what she saw that night and at one point she said to them that she thought it might have been a dream. Carlos also seems to be doubtful. He asks Oro to come to the door.
Oro friendly and kind with short dark hair and brown eyes white striped shirt and white capries has just come into view in the doorway. Carlos turns to her. I was telling them that when we
“came back you remember you saw a cab drive by with someone behind but you can't be sure it was”
jack on right? No it was her. I told the parents says Oro to which her husband Carlos
replies in surprise it was her. I saw her and it was quite awkward because it was the first time
I ever saw her without a smile. She was very upset. Yes. And you're sure it was the same night she disappeared. We didn't take the passport. Where were we coming from? We do check and it was the same night of Jackie's disappearance. Carlos seems like he is hearing some of this for the first time. Because I saw her because it was around 8 at night. It was at night and I saw the taxi. The red cab and I thought to myself that's weird. A cab at night on this area that's not very common. That's
“why that's why I checked. And we met each other right on the bump. Okay just over here.”
On the security. That's what we both stopped and that's when I glance and I just because I was curious. Who is? Who is in there? And I saw her and she looked back at me and she was very so mad and I was like okay. Can you get a taxi without using your phone here? So there's some way you can get a taxi without because she didn't have her phone with her. She loved her phone over here. So do you think she called it and then walked outside or how much? No, it's not normal to
do you know that taxi is going on? No, you have to call it taxi. No, you have to call it taxi. But maybe she called it before and then with her, I think it's a ride she just ran away. I left the phone behind that. That might be because there is no way that taxi is going on here. But I looked up because the caps don't are normal. And usually everyone who lives here has a car or something because you need it. You need it. You know what I'm going around.
If Jackie was in a cab, how did she get it? She'd left her phone behind something that needs to be looked at more closely. Okay and so nothing else and then did you ever talk to Sebastian about any of
This?
Puerto Rico. No, what are you? The parents, her parents, you can take them and I told them.
“Okay. And they were like, "Are you sure I'm not going to come?" I was like, "Okay, let me check.”
Let me think about it." And then they came again and I said, "Yes, I'm sure. I'm positive that I saw her." Okay. It was your mind that I know. It was around 8.30. It was my mind. The person in the car was alone. She was like, "Whoever the pass, she was alone?" She was on the back. Okay and it was a red cab. Did you recognize the driver? No. No way. He had so many red cabs. They're all red. They all red. Yeah, they were all right. They were all right. They were all right. They were all right.
They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all right. They're all
So don't think they have to record the records of... They should have. They should have. They should, but he's got the right guys right now. But they might. I don't know. Oh, hello. How are you? I'm fine. Okay.
“Thank you. I have two things to tell you.”
The translator calls the red cab company, or one of the companies that use this red cabs,
and we try to find out if any records are saved. She's asking a record of... When we say that the taxi is there, it's the VIP. But we are told that records are not kept. For example, if we were to take a taxi for a taxi, if we were to take a taxi. If we were to take a taxi, if we were to take a taxi, if we were to take a taxi.
No, no. Okay. I'll try to dig into the red taxi a bit more, and I want to try and experiment. But before that, I get a call from another neighbor named Kevin, who says they have security footage too. My camera system reports up to 30 days.
So after she went missing, and there was all the rumors running around,
and that there was a taxi that came in to pick her up. So I just took it upon myself to look. The night that she went missing, I watched almost every three or four or five hours. Like my camera actually only records when there's movement. But this one, because there's some vegetation in front of it,
records almost continuously. Immediately after she went missing, within a day or two, I have camera around my house. And my one camera, I can actually see where if she came out this way, in a car or walking at night, I would have picked it up on my cameras.
And I sat one time for four or five hours and watched every single minute on those cameras. Hmm. And that's how it took.
“You think the Jackie if she walked into town would have walked by your camera?”
Oh yes. Kevin's camera was pointed at the road at a point that anyone walking or driving to her from Coco would have been seen. The other direction of the road went past the guardhouse with Michael in it. Kevin says he went through his surveillance tape from August 17 up to midnight
and says there is no sign of Jackie in the footage. He didn't save any of his camera files unfortunately, but Kevin also had a private security guard standing on the road all through that very night until morning. What did he see? I hope you saw someone passing on the night that you look curious.
The guard named Victor standing on the road to Coco that night didn't see Jackie, although he knew her and says he did see her walking about 15 days before she disappeared. Victor also says that around 1 a.m. he saw Sebastian. But he cannot confirm 100% that this is the early morning of August 18th. Sebastian says drives up on his scooter and stops close to the guard hut.
At this point Victor says it had become foggy. Sebastian appears to look out toward the ocean for a moment, then turns back the way he came toward his house. From where Sebastian stopped one can't see much, and at night nothing of the ocean or really of the town below.
I asked Sebastian about this and he said he was most likely looking for Jackie. Without the confirmation of timing it's just another possible detail. Going on Victor the guard says he didn't see any red cabs and adds that red cabs don't like going that way because it is so steep.
What this all means to me is that Jackie probably didn't walk to Coco as she ...
by Kevin's guard Victor and Kevin's camera on one end and Michael the guard on the other.
So if Jackie left the house that night,
“was it in the red cab seen by Oral the neighbor?”
Some way up to the area where Sebastian and Jackie built their house. It's about eight o'clock at night. This is about the time that supposedly Jackie left the house. And it's also the time that the neighbor says she was returning from the airport
and saw Jackie in the back of a red taxi looking upset.
And so I'm just going to try to test whether or not something like that could be seen. So I'm trying to figure out exactly how somebody might see into the back of a car. But it is the same level of darkness right now.
“Actually there's a car coming along right here.”
And this is about the spot where she says she saw the taxi in the back of the taxi. So this is a taxi approaching, can you see in the back? All I see is dark. There is absolutely no way somebody could see in the back of a car. Here's another vehicle coming outside of the motorcycle. But I can't even see who's riding the motorcycle and that went right past me.
That's quite telling. I'm not sure somebody could have seen inside of vehicle like that to see who was riding in the back. I really, and I slowed down right at the speed bump just as the person passed. So I don't know what to make of that. Anyway, here we are up here. Just do it to pass the house again.
I try it again a few times, even try it going downhill to see if I can see into approaching cars. But I can't. It's not scientific and there are variables I don't even know.
“But the speed bump is big and you have to slow down.”
The car I looked into had clear windows. The darkness is the same. In this imperfect experiment at least there's nothing I can identify outside of maybe a human outline crouching there in a back seat. That's interesting. I mean if at most you could see the outline of a person. And you have to try really hard to strain to see that person. That was a pretty good place in my ambience here.
Pretty quiet up here. You can hear a few voices in the houses. Pretty quiet. As I stand on the road near Jackie's house, I try to imagine hearing the sounds of that night. The natural cadence of the place, ocean, far off, insects, traffic in the distance. It's relaxing and calming, but it does bring a question to my head as I look over at the house.
How does Jackie's departure work? Call the taxi, put the phone down, go fight with Sebastian in the shower, then leave. And by the time you're out the door, the taxi is waiting, or fight with Sebastian, then call the taxi, leave your phone behind, then walk out and stand outside until the taxi comes. Or fight, then leave the phone and just walk out, no call, and there's a taxi that happens to be driving by, so you hail it.
And then you go to a new life somewhere, and never use your identity or bank accounts or talk to your family or friends again, or you take a cab to kill yourself somewhere else.
Why not do it right where you are at home? I don't know. I'll try to talk to some taxi drivers, including one I've heard some local stories about, maybe they heard something. And I'll try to track down the people who Sebastian says, "Saw Jackie, after she left the house."
[Music]
Someone knows something is hosted, written and produced by me, David Rigen.
“The series is also 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 Podcasts.”
You can binge all episodes of someone knows something early on the CBC True Crime YouTube channel,
or for early and add 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 investigations, check out my other podcast, The Next Call, conducted almost exclusively through a series of strategic phone calls. Each call dictates how I will investigate cases and follow leads. There are three seasons available to binge listen to now. Find the next call wherever you get your podcasts. [Music]
For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.
