Text Version:
(Introduction to show begins)
TODD MATTHEWS (Missing Pieces Host): I'm Todd Matthews, this is Missing Pieces and tonight we have a conversation with Glendene Grant, an old friend. She is the mother of missing Jessica Foster. Now, I had an article that came out that, you send me notes and I kind of see what's going on with you and we wanted to do another show with you just to help keep everybody updated with what you're doing. Now we had a significant point you know. We had a Hot Case on Doe Network that came out, somebody sends in a potential match, contacts you, you contact Law Enforcement, it goes around, and now you're actually doing a DNA comparison, which is what you've wanted to do all along. It's just been delayed. So now we're back to the point where we're looking at this Jane Doe, and the first thing I wanted to do, I know you said, "I don't feel like it looks like her,” but I was seeing something a little different. I really felt it did look like her. I saw some boney points in her face that just the approximation and I thought that does look like her. But I didn't…we talked on the phone that night, and I won't say the artist's name right now because she works for a department in Florida and I don't want to get her into any kind of trouble until she has approval to speak, because that department in Florida is not working on this case. She is simply giving her professional opinion, and she did talk to you on the telephone and it was reiterated in the article that she felt confident that looking at these boney structures, that this is her.
GLENDENE GRANT – (Guest): She said…well, during our conversation, which was over half an hour long, she first said that she would put about a 95% chance, and then later on she said that there's over a 90% chance.
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: You know Todd, I just said, "Great, that leaves a 10% chance it isn't her,” and that is just how I'm looking at it.
TODD: And you know, to me, I've had people write me notes, you know because of Cold Cases (discussion group), there's 2,500 people on there and I’ve had people write me notes. They're sending well-wishes to you, hope that you're alright, wondering if it is her, will you be okay. And I said, "If it is her, she will be okay." I don't know what I hope in this case. I mean I hope to see closure. I'd like to see Jessie alive, but I'd like to see it…I want something happen for you.
GLENDENE: I know. I know, because it's been almost 2 years of just hanging on, and you know, if all we're hanging on for, is to keep getting more exposure and it turns out that Jessie is not alive, you know, she's definitely not resting in peace yet, knowing that we're not peaceful, because we don't know yet.
TODD: Yeah, because you're going to keep going.
GLENDENE: I understand. Yes, exactly. So I can understand…I think the way that my daughter, Crystal and I talked about it this morning, will probably explain it the best. You know because when I talked to Crystal this morning, it was the first time I actually talked to her in a little while because she works in a camp, she's a cook in an oil rig, so she works out of town in a camp for weeks on end, and then she comes out for a week. She just got out last night and we were talking this morning and she said, “I'm finally able to go back to work and carry on with my life, having a missing sister.” She's the oldest sister, the last one to talk to Jessie, and the closest to her in a lot of ways. They both have the same Dad, and she says, “You know, I can finally carry on with my life having a missing sister and I don't know now if I can carry on having a murdered sister,” she said, “That's different, Mom, and I don't know if I can do it.” And I said, “You know, I don't think any of us can do it, but we have to stop being selfish and if Jessie's not alive then she deserves to be found.”
TODD: Because you have a whole other job to do then.
GLENDENE: Oh, justice will have to be served, definitely.
TODD: Well, you've become an incredible advocate for the cause as well as for your daughter's case. How many emails do you have pertaining to Jessie?
GLENDENE: I have it noted down here because I just realized today how many. I knew I had lots, but I have, in just my folders for Jessie, sent and received, so they're not all just received, but 18,296.
TODD: WOW!
GLENDENE: And that's not counting the 100 or so emails I've received today, since I've had the DNA test and people were sending me back so you know, it’s closer probably to 18,500, I would say, even. It's up there. I've got 3,171 files in a folder that are documents or pictures, and you know, that's because I've kept everything, everything, and that's…and you know, I'll honestly say, there are probably thousands of other things out there if you count messages on our guestbook, and Facebook and MySpace, and all the other blogs and messages and NowPublic and everything; if you count all of those, there are thousands more. There's no way…I don't even know about some of the articles and some of the news reports. People tell me, “I saw you on Global News last night,” and I said, “Oh well, that's weird because I was on our local news.” I had no idea Global picked it up and put it across national. I don't even know until people tell me sometimes.
TODD: I know what you mean. I've heard people say that they've heard this or saw an interview or read an interview that I didn't even know that I did.
GLENDENE: Exactly.
TODD: I forgot about doing it, or they rehashed it from another interview.
GLENDENE: Yeah, that's right, that they reposted something, and I said, “You know, I did not talk to Global.”
TODD: (Laughs)
GLENDENE: Because I would know. Global is our national news and our CFJC is our little Kamloops local news that I've been on 3 dozen times, you know. That's probably exaggerating, but I bet you 15 times I've been on it and I've been on Global just a couple of times. There's a big difference between the two, but I did talk to a reporter from Global, Francis Silvaggio, he's the reporter that went down to Las Vegas with us last January and did a huge story. As a matter of fact, the story that he did, they promoted it all throughout the Superbowl weekend last year. All February, through Superbowl weekend, then on the day of the Superbowl my brother called me and told me that he just saw a commercial in the midst of Superbowl halftime. It was probably a 30-second commercial talking about my daughter's missing case and the story in Global that was coming up Monday and Tuesday. And I was absolutely flabbergasted because I've heard how hard it is, or how expensive it is, to get a commercial, that's an actual commercial, on the Superbowl in the halftime, let alone them promoting their own story about my daughter, but at the time I didn't even know. I couldn't…I don't even watch football, but I assure you I would have watched football just to see that, if I had of known, but I didn't even know. So it's been quite unbelievable, I mean, just since I last talked to you in February, there was the Global TV, Las Vegas ‘CityLife’ article promoted so many tips and people calling in with best wishes. We had a bounty hunter who has offered his services; he's been working with us now for almost a year. There's another woman, who works in Las Vegas, she used to be a Private Investigator and she has reinstated her license and she's helping us to gain. It's absolutely unbelievable. And then almost right after that we hear from ATLAS, and ATLAS is not technically the investigative team for Jessie's case, but they are involved in her case, as far as all the information that the police get, ATLAS gets. And the quote that ATLAS gave, that to me, it's stuck in my mind from the very moment Terri Miller said it, “Jessie's case has so many Human Trafficking indicators,” and the only way they can actually get the case as an ATLAS case, where they are head investigators, is if they have somebody who can come forward and name somebody in particular, preferably Peter Todd is who they are talking about and testify against him, so that they can charge him with pimping, prostitution, living off the avails of prostitution, and for Human Trafficking. That is exactly what they told me, and without that, it's still in the hands of North Las Vegas as a missing person case. Mind you, she did go to an Endangered Missing, but that's still fine with us because we have, with ATLAS getting all of the news that everybody else gets in the police departments, that means that FBI and all the of the other departments that make up ATLAS, like VICE and ICE and the Attorney General and all of the Police Departments of Clark County and Southern Nevada, a tremendously powerful group of people. They all have meetings and my daughter’s case is discussed at these meetings so as far as I’m concerned, that’s second best to having them as lead investigators on her case.
TODD: Well, you don’t get the kind of exposure that you’ve had in this, without working it. You have to work it. These people are not just doing this; you have to stay on top of this.
GLENDENE: You have to stay on top of it and I hear over and over and over, and I relate to what they say, is that the cases that get the most attention are the ones where the families or the mothers just won’t leave them alone. And that’s really sad because there are some people that don’t have a Mom, perhaps…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …or whose Mom doesn’t have a computer, perhaps; or whose Mom is too distraught to be able to do this, or she’s sick. There are a lot of reasons why someone may not have someone there to do this for them but it’s not like everybody doesn’t want to, but it’s fortunate, I suppose, for the Moms that do, like myself, and Natalee Holloway’s Mom, and all the Moms who just didn’t quit and won’t quit. That’s just what we do. We’ve got that in and we have the capabilities and we’re lucky.
TODD: You’re lucky in that sense, and I see, I know for a fact that it’s easy to say that the blond-haired, blue-eyed girls got all the attention, well, it isn’t the case in your case; you’ve worked it.
GLENDENE: No. I’ve worked my fingers to the bone on this computer and you know, to say the word ‘lucky’ when you’re talking about having a missing child, you have to put it into perspective, that is a very weird word for me to use, to consider myself ‘lucky’ in any way, shape or form…(Glendene apologizes for coughing)…because I don’t feel ‘lucky’. I feel ‘lucky’ when we get attention and when we get things and I feel like Jessie deserves it, you know. Sometimes I get jealous when I see other girls getting the attention but then again, I withdraw from that because I know it’s there because it’s deserved.
TODD: And I imagine that there have been a few people jealous of the attention that you’ve been able to get, but you’ve earned every bit of it, I know you’ve earned every bit of it.
GLENDENE: Well, I would sure like to be like Natalee’s Mom where we had a $1,000,000 reward. She must have felt like 1,000,000 bucks, herself, at that point, because sometimes you just, you know every time you can get something more and when you have as much attention as they had on Natalee’s case, it’s really hard to keep getting more. I feel like there’s a lot more in Jessie’s case because we haven’t gone that far and I just see all the attention on Natalee’s case, and I look at them as my role models to keep going. They have a daughter who went to another country and went missing, and I have a daughter who went to another country and went missing, and I just follow in the steps of them, and I’m sure that I hope for them that they had someone’s footsteps to follow when this first happened to them because without someone else’s leading, you know you go in circles and you just get lost.
TODD: Well I think they’ve hit a ceiling and until something is found to compare it to, and you have that now. You know this Jane Doe has helped you get your DNA into the database that you wanted to get in all along, and obviously it’s bringing enough attention to their Jane Doe to be irritating to them because of some of the inquiries that they’re getting.
GLENDENE: Well all I can say is that I hope that that is the reason why they perhaps get Jessie’s DNA test done right away and not have to wait.
TODD: Maybe we could get that expedited a little bit; everybody deserves it, but the likeness is…I think that’s why I had somebody say, “Well, Todd, do you want to see a likeness in this?” and I thought, “No, I really don’t.” I want Jessie to walk through your door.
GLENDENE: Uh huh.
TODD: But I’m looking at this artwork again and I felt like I see more of a likeness than you do. I don’t see enough to say, “It’s her. Case closed.” No, I do not. I think the body looks a little more Hispanic.
GLENDENE: I do too.
TODD: But now the other girl that we’re comparing it to that is another possibility for this Jane Doe, looks less Hispanic.
GLENDENE: She does look less Hispanic but I think that the teeth look more alike.
TODD: Yeah, and I’m looking at that and actually we’re continuing to look at photographs of teeth from different angles because I’d like to find something in the meantime, and I think that kind of keeps us busy while we’re waiting on DNA.
GLENDENE: That’s right.
TODD: So we’re going to keep flipping those things around and I’ll have more things to show you and you’re going to stay in touch with the forensic artist because it’s not proven if it’s her or not, I think it’s just something to satisfy your…this time.
GLENDENE: There are a lot of things I have been doing.
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: I found out where the Jane Doe was found and I went onto the Google map and I discovered that Kilgore in Gregg County, Texas, is only about a 2 ½ hour drive from The Colony, it’s the name of a small city that Peter Todd has been connected to and so that was another thing that bothered me because in all the whole wide world, this girl was found only a 2 ½ hour drive from the town in Texas that Peter Todd is connected to.
TODD: Well both ladies do have a very strong resemblance, Jessie and the other girl.
GLENDENE: And the other girl, her boyfriend, from what I understand, his name was connected to a house that was also in The Colony, Texas, so both girls, perhaps the men that they were with at one time lived in The Colony, Texas, which is only 2 ½ hours from Kilgore.
TODD: Now that girl’s family, have you made contact with her family?
GLENDENE: Oh yes, I’ve been in contact with her family since Jessie first went missing, and the way it happened is my brother saw her on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and we just kind of…you know how the Internet works, and I found the parents’ phone number and I phoned and left a message, and exactly 24 minutes later I got a phone call back, and the Mom had told me that even though they lived in New York and I live in British Columbia, Canada, and we’re at opposite ends of the continent in two different countries, we both had heard about each other’s daughter, because both of our daughter disappeared from Las Vegas within a year of each other and both of our daughters resemble each other, and both of our daughters have a very similar background, in the way that they were taken away from the families and the families weren’t aware of what was going on and the girls just went missing. The way that she heard about Jessie in New York was there was a police officer in Las Vegas, who was not an actual officer on the case but had heard about the case, and just in his opinion, reminded him of this girl, Lindsay, so he phoned her parents and by the time I contacted them, they were aware of Jessie’s disappearance. That was back at the start of all of this and so now you could almost say that her and I have been good friends for almost 2 years. Lindsay disappeared May 5, 2005 and so it will be 3 years in May since she disappeared and 2 years since Jessie disappeared, in March. And you know what always bothered me was that Lindsay on May 5th of 2005, and Jessie was brought to Las Vegas May 13th of 2005, and I just get the creepy crawlies up and down my spine that Jessie was taken to replace this girl. And it’s probably not true…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …but it’s just one of those things that just, even now…
TODD: You can’t put it out of mind, can you?
GLENDENE: Yeah. It makes my skin crawl because just to think that not even a year later, you know, now Jessie’s gone, so it’s just…and both girls just disappeared without a trace.
TODD: Isn’t strange how you already knew that family and now you’ve got even stronger connections.
GLENDENE: Oh, exactly. Well as soon as I told Lindsay’s Mom about this, she said, “Well, if you think that it looks like Jessie, then it must also look like Lindsay,” and so she had the Henderson Police Department send in Lindsay’s DNA. She went missing from, well she was last seen in Las Vegas, but because these girls they go missing in Las Vegas, but if they live in Henderson or North Las Vegas, that’s actually where they have to report them missing from…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …so that’s another thing that’s a good thing because both Henderson and North Las Vegas are small areas and they have one-tenth the crime that Las Vegas Metro does.
TODD: Absolutely.
GLENDENE: And so having these girls there, they’re not one of thousands, they might be one of dozens instead. You know in Kamloops here we have 100.000 people and you know how you have your case file numbers…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …well when we got our file for North Las Vegas, the file number was 06-9384, and the one for Kamloops is 2006-9538, it’s only within the hundreds of a difference.
TODD: Wow.
GLENDENE: So by that there were 9,000 some odd crimes reported and filed in those first three months of the year and if it had have been Las Vegas, it probably would have been 25,000 instead of 9,000, so we’re very ‘lucky’, again that word, that some of these things have happened. You know, ‘lucky’ that is a smaller police department, ‘lucky’ that there are less cases, so when stuff does get sent to them, they…at least Henderson moves on it, I’m not quite so confident in North Las Vegas, and I hate to say it, but I sometimes don’t think that they’re on things like they should…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …and it makes me feel bad to say that because when I say that, it means that I’m talking about my own daughter’s case, and that doesn’t make me feel very good.
TODD: Well your whole world is in their hands.
GLENDENE: Exactly, and I just don’t think, you know…
TODD: It’s scary to think that.
GLENDENE: But after one year, the only thing we had back in March of last year was the Internet and the media. There was hardly any work, very few tips, hardly anything, and then the media and the Internet just got us going. It really got us going because then in April of last year is when the ‘Montel Williams Show’ finally contacted me back after months of playing tag, so to speak. They kept saying, “Oh maybe we’ll get you on a missing persons show, maybe we’ll get you on a Sylvia Browne show.” Then they decided to do a Human Trafficking show and they thought Jessie’s story would be perfect for that, and I’m so grateful that they did, because she’s not simply a missing person, and though I really wouldn’t had cared if they got us on a Montel’s favorite dog tricks show, as long as her story got on Montel. And so when it did get on a Human Trafficking show and I ended up meeting Tina Frundt from Polaris Project, and Tina actually ended up being a CNN Hero, on CNN TV when they had the heroes. One day I was watching it and there she is and they had where you could vote for the hero that you choose and I voted for her. You know we’ve got our Facebook account set up so that if anybody makes donations, it goes to the Polaris Project, because you can’t have them going to your own trust fund or anything like that. You have to choose a registered foundation so we chose the Polaris Project because I’ve actually to Tina, and you know when the time comes and Jessie comes home and Jessie’s alive, they’re reading and willing to start working with her because their job is to work with survivors of Human Trafficking. So I met her, Tina, and I also met Christina, who both of these women were victims of Human Trafficking and survivors, and a couple of other people who I met on that show, another survivor and another person who, when he was a young kid, his mother was a prostitute and his father was a pimp, and he grew up in that life, and when the time came and he had gotten arrested and realized that he did not want to live this life. He started working with the police as part of his rehab program, to go around and speak to people and try to educate them on what these pimps look for…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …and how these pimps can get these girls and how they can convince these girls who were born and raised with dreams, like Jessie, to fall for anything that they did, and that’s what he did, and that’s what he was telling people on the Montel Show. I’m sure that his life could be in some danger with this because he had a lot of friends who are pimps and prostitutes, you don’t want to think that they’re not going to trust him anymore. So it was a really good experience to be on that show because of the people that I met and to also get Jessie’s word out like that. You know, to tell you the truth, I thought it was way too professionally done, and they herded you in and out of there too much like cattle.
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: I still don’t care because I’m still grateful and they are saying that they’d like to do a follow-up on Jessie’s story and I’m hoping they do, and they can herd me in and out of there like cattle all they want, but they do 3 shows a day, so they really have to.
TODD: It really is like herding cattle, though.
GLENDENE: It really is. You know when you come out of your show, your stuff isn’t even where you left it, it’s down by the door. They give you your little bag with goodies, T-shirts and hats and pictures, and they put you in a limo and take you back to your hotel, and you’re there until your flight leaves, which my flight didn’t leave until the next day, so it was really ironic, because the Montel Show came up so fast. It was like, “Okay, we’re going to do a show, we’ll let you know.” The next day it was, “Okay, you’re leaving on Tuesday,” and this was Sunday, and I was like, “What?” So the show was being taped on Tuesday, I believe it was, and I had actually had a radio interview with 630 CHED up in Edmonton, booked on that Tuesday night, I’d been booked for almost a month. I told them about this and they said, “Well maybe we can get someone to fill in for you and they also had information from North Las Vegas, Tim Bedwell, lined up to be on there. So it turned out, I get there, and they say to me, “We couldn’t get you a flight out after so you’re going to have to stay the night and leave in the morning. Well, if that wasn’t a blessing in disguise, because I did the interview from the hotel in New York.
TODD: From New York, yeah.
GLENDENE: And that was the second time that Timothy Bedwell was quoted saying that Peter Todd has a lot of money and no legal source of income. I still am amazed that this is in print and on the radio and this man has never been investigated by at least the IRS, if nothing else.
TODD: Where is he at right now?
GLENDENE: From what I know, he’s in Las Vegas. I phoned him on Christmas day and I said, “Hi Peter. Merry Christmas.” And he said, “Who’s this?” And I said, “It’s Glendene,” and he went, “Who?”
TODD: (Chuckles)
GLENDENE: I said, “It’s Glendene, it’s Jessie’s Mom, you know, Jessie Foster.” And he said, “Oh, how did you get my phone number?” And I said, “What the matter, Peter, am I not allowed to have your phone number?” He said, “No, that’s not the point. I just wonder how did you get my number.” I said, “That’s not the point. The point is, I haven’t heard from you. You haven’t offered to help us with the reward. You don’t help us with the investigation. What am I supposed to think?” And then he…he always complains that his life has been ruined by Jessie’s disappearance because everybody thinks he’s involved and people call him a pimp and stuff.
TODD: Well, can he prove otherwise? I mean if it has ruined his life certainly if he had some other explanation for it.
GLENDENE: Exactly. We’re waiting to hear.
TODD: I mean if he even said, “Guys, I’m going to help you. I want to help you.”
GLENDENE: “I want to help you because it will clear my name. Not because I want to find Jessie.” I don’t even care if he wants to help us to find Jessie, why doesn’t he want to do something if he’s so innocent and feeling railroaded, all he has to do is just step up. Step up to the plate, offer your help, sell one of your houses and give us some of your profits.
TODD: Well if his life is ruined, what’s he got to lose? Absolutely.
GLENDENE: Well, you know the good thing about it is, with all of that, one of our major national newspapers in Canada, ‘The Globe and Mail’, did an article http://www.jessiefoster.ca/index_files/GlobeandMailApril042007.htm on all of that, and you know what was funny about ‘The Globe and Mail’ article? Cathryn Atkinson, they reporter, she said to me, “You know I’m so happy that we can help you. If there is anything else, call me, and keep in touch with emails.” So I kept emailing her, like you know because you’re on the same email, all my Internet and media contacts and people with missing person organizations all get the same emails all the time, and you know because you’re in that list so you know what I mean, and Cathryn called me up at the end of December and said that they wanted to do another story and she said to me, “Do you know how ironic this is?” She said, “It’s hard to get a story in ‘The Globe and Mail’, and I don’t want to sound like it’s a snobby paper, but it’s really hard to get a story in this paper, and it’s even harder to get two stories in this paper,” and they did a second story http://www.jessiefoster.ca/index_files/GlobeandMailJanuary12008.htm, and then just on the 22nd of this month, three weeks later, they did a third story http://www.jessiefoster.ca/index_files/GlobeandMailJanuary222008.htm, and this is in our national newspaper, ‘The Globe and Mail’ which is hard enough to get in once. But we not only got in once last April, we got in twice in January of this year, so Jessie’s case has become as well known in Western Canada as I want it to be, at least in North America. I have to include Eastern Canada, just because I think it’s only right, I don’t think she’s there, but I certainly think I’d like to saturate the entire United States with the knowledge of Jessie’s disappearance. Again, like Natalee Holloway’s name got out, you know I would really like to see Jessie’s name. I mean if you only look at it like two beautiful, young women who left their country, went to another country and went missing, and if you forget the fact that Jessie got somehow drawn into the sex trade, you know, because a lot of people say that the stories are not alike because of that. Well, the stories are alike because Natalee didn’t choose to have anything happen to her, and Jessie didn’t choose to have anything happen to her, and what they did in the days and the hours before their disappearance, should not have become the rest of their lives, and they should not be held any differently in the light because of it. Jessie should not be held in any disrespect because she was forced to work in a sex trade, and if I could even dare say, as a mother, that maybe she chose initially to be in the sex trade, she certainly was trying to choose otherwise when she had all of her stuff packed up and was ready to leave when she disappeared.
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: If there was any choice at all, that would have been way at the beginning and that choice was taken from her when she tried to leave. I still don’t quite see Jessie choosing that, but you know, God help me, I could be wrong.
TODD: Well, people make mistakes.
GLENDENE: By the blinding lights, she may have made a mistake, but obviously somewhere, something happened, because all of her stuff was packed and she was ready to leave when she disappeared, and everything was gone that Jessie owned, except her hair dryer and her makeup left in the bathroom, and as far as I’m concerned, that just makes it look more like somebody grabbed her, perhaps after her shower and most likely before she did her hair and makeup and had a chance to throw them into her bag. And because all of her stuff was packed because she was leaving, all of her stuff had to be taken. It would have looked a lot more suspicious if the police had showed up and found Jessie gone and all of her stuff packed, than to find Jessie gone and all of her stuff gone.
TODD: You know people make mistakes.
GLENDENE: They do.
TODD: You know, but I don’t think that anybody would have chose…she’s gone, I mean.
GLENDENE: That’s right, and regardless of what got her there in the first place, it’s regardless, and if anybody wants to try to guess, because that’s all we can do right now is guess, if she was convinced, if she was swindled, if she was blackmailed, if she was paid, we don’t know why Jessie went down there first, all we know is that when I talked to the owner of the escort agency and the owner of this escort agency told me that she would say, “Little girl, you’ve got to leave here. You’ve got to go back to Canada. You don’t belong down here.” And Jessie would look at her and say, “I’m afraid to leave,” and she would show her bruises, and the same woman said the me, “You know what, we were all afraid of him.” She gave me her condolences, her and all the girls that know Jessie, thought that Jessie was murdered. They all knew Jessie was afraid and they all thought Jessie was murdered from the beginning. I am the one that got them thinking that perhaps she was Human Trafficked and that also made sense to them.
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: It hadn’t occurred to them at first because they knew the situation Jessie was in. Jessie had told them that she was afraid. So when you’re afraid and you go missing and all your stuff is packed because she was going to leave, and all your stuff goes missing with you, but the hair dryer and the makeup, which would be the very last things you did before, you know, before a woman is done getting ready, she’ll do her hair and her makeup…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …because when you get out of the shower, perhaps throw on some clothes, or even a housecoat, you haven’t done your hair and your makeup yet, so if you’re going away, you haven’t packed them. And if she had have done her hair and her makeup, they would have been packed and they wouldn’t have been left there in the bathroom on the counter, leaving me one of the biggest clues in the world, on the very first day. It’s the very first thing Peter told me. It’s the first thing he told me, “Jessie took everything that she owned and she left me, except her hair dryer and her makeup.”
TODD: Wow.
GLENDENE: I said, “Peter, phone the police,” because Jessie did not take off and take everything she owned and leave behind her hair dryer and her makeup. And to this day, I bet you that he regrets saying that she left those things behind.
TODD: He shouldn’t have told you that.
GLENDENE: No. He shouldn’t have because, to me, that was a huge mistake.
TODD: Well, if we get back to the Jane Doe, if that Jane Doe, and it’s hard to pick these things out ahead of time, but what if that does turn out to be her? Is that going to be something…and like I said, I have a lot of people write to me through Cold Cases and say, “Can she handle it?” Can you handle it?
GLENDENE: Yeah, I can handle it. I mean I have to handle it.
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: You know I’m helping my daughter raise her daughter now, she’s going to be a month old tomorrow, and they live in our home and you know my daughter is young and she’s doing it on her own, so I’m depended on, by more than just grown people…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …now it’s another little baby and my husband needs me because we’re on the verge of bankruptcy because I’m not able to work much and the bills don’t always get met so he does need me to get back to work and probably not just part time like I’ve done for the last year. I was off work for about a year and then back to part time for about a year and with stuff like this and days like today, I just don’t go in and it’s hard. Nothing that he would ever give me a bad time about; because he could never, but I am the one who pays the bills around the home out of ease for everyone, and I am the one that sees that it doesn’t quite stretch all the time. I suppose if you look at all the basic necessities that could be done in life; I would be able to cope through them all. I would have my moments, because I have my moments now. My best friend, Brenda Rose, lost her son when he was 16 years old, he was hit by a car on his bicycle right in front of her eyes and it’s been 5 ½ years and we take turns laughing and crying about our kids and our life. But I see her carrying on and I see that she is still a mighty strong woman and so I take a lot of strength from her. When I was 14, my 24-year-old sister died. It was completely different, she had leukemia and died, she had no choice and nobody did anything to her and, you know, I see my Mom survive and I survived as a sister, who had a sister who died, and it’s just a whole lot different because if this is Jessie and she’s burned, it means that she wasn’t accidentally killed and…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …that she didn’t just run away. It means that she was murdered and we just have no idea what it’s like to be the family of a murdered loved one. You know we know what it’s like to be the family of a missing loved one.
TODD: Well things will shift I think, you know I think that you’ll continue to work just as viciously as you’re working now, but it will take a different focus.
GLENDENE: Oh, it will. I mean if this…we’ll do two scenarios, if this is not Jessie, so that means that we know there is still now a chance, as always, that Jessie’s alive and we keep going, only we keep going stronger because…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …that Jane Doe wasn’t found until October. That means there were several months between the disappearance and that body, and that means that there’s still…you know I would hate to think that Jessie was alive for a long time and then killed because we didn’t find her in time.
TODD: Yes.
GLENDENE: That, to me, is a nightmare.
TODD: I thought of that because of the time frame from that, and that meant that she was alive for this amount of time.
GLENDENE: Yes.
TODD: And you were looking.
GLENDENE: Yes. So that’s something that’s always kind of weighed on me. There are so many things, I mean Jessie…(Glendene coughs and stops to get water)…I’ve been neglecting my water.
TODD: You’ve been neglecting yourself for a long time, I think.
GLENDENE: I think that’s true.
TODD: Now, Jane Doe, was she…if she remains a Jane Doe, is she going to be special to you?
GLENDENE: Oh, yes!
TODD: She’s done a lot for you.
GLENDENE: You know she’s going to be…right now I think about a lot of missing people, I pray for a lot, I get emails and I respond. There are a lot of people who have missing people, but I really have a connection to Lindsay Marie Harris, for the reasons that I told you about that sometimes I think they took Jessie down there and replaced Lindsay with her, and I feel now that Jane Doe is going to be another one where I’m going to have that connection with. If Jane Doe is not Jessie and she’s not Lindsay, then right now we’re going to have to find Jessie and find Lindsay and find out Jane Doe’s real name.
TODD: So you’ve got three girls that you’re worried about right now in particular that could even, they could truly be related; these cases could be related.
GLENDENE: They could be related, and if you look at the girls’ pictures, the girls could be related.
TODD: Because they’re all beautiful girls.
GLENDENE: They’re all beautiful girls, and they are similar enough that they could be mistaken for each other by a forensic artist.
TODD: Because they’re close, and in the past, now I talked to the artist yesterday, but in the past, without DNA, without the possibility of comparing dental records, could this be enough to say a positive ID with just these close similarities, and you know that possibility was real and that makes me wonder if before DNA came along, how many times was somebody actually buried as a positive ID, when they really didn’t know?
GLENDENE: That’s right.
TODD: And how is that affecting cases still today, the long-term cases?
GLENDENE: That’s right.
TODD: That we think are closed.
GLENDENE: Well that means that that person would still have a missing family member...
TODD: Yeah. They’re still looking.
GLENDENE: …because it’s the wrong person, yeah.
TODD: They’re still looking and somebody’s in a grave, and I’m actually working on a case that’s tied to East Tennessee that very well could be that same situation. We could have somebody buried in the ground as a legitimate death and could be connected to a case that I’m actually working on right now in East Tennessee, and knowing, what are you supposed to do? Do you get everybody that was buried in a time frame? You can’t.
GLENDENE: Yeah.
TODD: You cannot do that and that means that part of this data will forever be lost, no matter what I do, until Resurrection Day, we will not know, no matter what we do.
GLENDENE: That’s right.
TODD: But we must look, we must continue to look.
GLENDENE: Always. Jessie’s 24th birthday is coming up. It seems really sad to me that the last time I saw Jessie, she was 21 years old. I don’t know how she changed at all as a 22-year-old, and now shortly, I won’t have seen her at all through her 23rd year and I don’t like that, you know. I don’t like that. I used to get my kids’ portraits done every year, and just to think that you don’t even know how your child looks or what their hairstyle was or, you know, did she have a pimple that day, you know like all the things your girls talk to you about.
TODD: You know you remind me so much of my own mother, and to show you how close we are to my mother, we live next door, and I’m 37 years old and she’s still like that. You know I don’t know what she would do if I was gone. I had a brother and sister that did pass away as infants and I saw what it did to her, and her connection with me and my brother that did continue to live, that tightened that bond, and she was very over-protective and still is over-protective and protective of my children.
GLENDENE: Yeah, that’s good.
TODD: It’s crazy, but I’m thinking that if she had to deal with what you have to deal with, I don’t know if she could. I think she would melt down.
GLENDENE: That’s not true though because I think…well actually I was going to say, I think that I probably would have thought that too, but I’ll tell you something that, I suppose…and you know how sometimes we’re always so hard on ourselves, and we really don’t compliment ourselves a lot, but I have been told by a lot of people for years and years that I’m very well organized and I’ve got it together and I could handle pretty well any situation, my sister always has told me that I would never be able to handle it if anything happens to our Dad…
TODD: Uh huh.
GLENDENE: …our Mom passed away 10 years ago this March, and it was really hard and my sister is the youngest sister but she’s always been kind of like…well, she’s way taller than me and she always gets mad if I call her my little sister…
TODD: (Chuckles)
GLENDENE: …so I have to call her my younger sister, because I’m 5’4” and she’s 5’11” so you can tell there’s a difference there, but she’s always been the strong one, that way also. People have, literally, always thought that Barbara is the older sister, she’s always just seemed like the older sister, the protector, and it’s kind of ironic in a way how it’s been with her and I, and sometimes it’s just her and I are the only people who know that I’m the older one. We could be in a whole room of people and every one of them would assume that she was my big sister, and she says that if anything ever happened to Dad that she does not think I can handle it, and she’s never said that about Jessie, because I think she knows how strong I am but I think she knows that I’m not ready to have anything happen to him, you know.
TODD: Well every human being that’s ever lived, has lost somebody. Apparently we’re designed to be able to do that so we will live through everything we have to endure in life.
GLENDENE: Exactly. As much as you would hate to think about it, you would get through it.
TODD: Now, I’m going to ask you one more question. Lindsay’s parents, do you think that it will be possible that we actually do an interview with them?
GLENDENE: I could always ask her. I know that they’re getting a renewed sense of wanting to get her name out there. I have a couple of emails from her recently because we’re keeping in touch.
TODD: I’d love to tie these three cases together, symbolically, if they’re not physically connected, but to actually use each one of them to help try to bring more attention to the other, because I think now forever, especially in the news media, they’re going to be connected one way or another.
GLENDENE: That’s right.
TODD: And I know that there is strength in numbers.
GLENDENE: That if one or another gets some coverage, all three will get coverage, and that is actually a really good way for it to go because that’s three times the coverage.
TODD: Well, originally, I intended to try to get both of you in the same episode, but I thought, “No, I need for you to have your own time, your own space to talk, but I can connect the episode together so they cannot be separated.” They’ll be linked indefinitely and I think that that’s going to help all of them and possibly I can twist somebody’s arm to comment on Jane Doe in Texas. I’ve got a couple of ideas with that and I think I want to try to work on those and see where we can go with that.
GLENDENE: Well, I also wanted to find out, and I’m wondering, maybe even you would know how we can do this, why it is that I haven’t got an answer…Jessie’s teeth have caps on the eyeteeth, and how do I go about finding that out in the meantime? I’ve asked Detective Molnar if he can find out and the only response he gave to me was, “Well, I haven’t got an autopsy report.” Well I didn’t ask that.
TODD: Hmph.
GLENDENE: Couldn’t he pick up the phone and say, “By the way, did this girl have caps on her eyeteeth?” because Jessie has caps on her eyeteeth and had braces for years and when she got them off, she got caps on her eyeteeth and from then on her teeth were perfectly straight and you wouldn’t know that those teeth are caps, but they are.
TODD: Perhaps I could find that. That might be something very possible.
GLENDENE: Oh good, because it would really be good.
TODD: And this is not airing tonight so we’re talking in past tense when we’re doing this interview, so to anybody that’s listening to this, this has probably already transpired by now, but I think that that is something that I can look at.
GLENDENE: Okay.
TODD: Anything else that you have to say to add to this because I have a feeling we’ll be interviewing you again at some point in time.
GLENDENE: Oh good, and any time that you can I want to let you know that we appreciate it all. Well, there a lot, I mean there’s…in August of this year, there was a book that came out and it’s called ‘MISSING! – The Disappeared, Lost or Abducted in Canada’ and it was written by Lisa Wojna, she’s from a little town outside of Edmonton, and she wrote this book about several, many missing people in Canada, and Jessie is in Chapter 6, called ‘Las Vegas Bound – Follow your Daughter Home’ and it was a very good story.
TODD: And if you can twist her arm, we’ll interview her here. We’ll do an interview with her and talk about all the cases in her book and give her an entire hour.
GLENDENE: I don’t think you’d have to twist Lisa’s arm very hard. I think she would be honored to do it.
TODD: Well, if you’ll extend the invitation to her…
GLENDENE: I will.
TODD: …that would be yet another case that we will talk about Jessie and a lot of other people and I think that’s another connection, so that’s four, four very strong connections here. We’re going to build your network.
GLENDENE: Good. I can certainly contact Lisa and get her to call you right away or email you right away?
TODD: Email will be best and we’ll just set up something and try to get it done as quickly as possible and get everything together. We’ve got to keep building this thing, we’ve got to keep building. My whole thing, when I’m looking back at the core data with what we’re working on, people that go missing, they’re from one country and they go missing in another.
GLENDENE: That’s right.
TODD: Back and forth. We know that some of the people in the United States must be from Canada, so we cannot look within our borders only.
GLENDENE: Well the databases need to be built and they need to be combined and they need to be, if not combined, at least accessible by the other.
TODD: Well, we’re working on a few things and I’m hoping to open the doors between the United States and Canada as much as possible. We’re working on the NamUs.gov project here in the United States and I’m getting to be a panelist on that working group so I actually get a vote when we talk about some things and Canada has come up before in some of these and I’m going to keep pushing it. I think that we need a way to cross-reference.
GLENDENE: Yes.
TODD: We must do it, and I know the RCMP is working on, or I’ve heard that they’ve been working on National Database for Canada for missing and unidentified persons but I think we need to keep pushing that and it needs to be something that is going to interface with the United States system; it cannot be separate and un-connected, in every way, shape or form they must be something that we can actually connect to try to find these links. We must try to get these people back home.
GLENDENE: I know, because there are enough missing people out there who are alive, that we should at least be able to find the names of the ones who are dead.
TODD: Absolutely.
GLENDENE: Because that’s all we have for the time being, are the remains, and I was told today that each one of those swabs that they took from me for the DNA, was going to cost about $2,500 to process.
TODD: That’s a lot.
GLENDENE: It’s ridiculous that it costs so much money for somebody’s family member to be brought back to them, for all of their…you know it just frustrates me when it gets to something like that.
TODD: You’re exhausted. You’ve had a busy day.
GLENDENE: It makes me frustrated, and I could keep saying it over and over, but eventually I just keep saying the same thing because it’s really…all we need is for everybody to work together. There are many other countries and other continents that can join in eventually, but at least why not start with Canada and the United States.
TODD: Well we’ve got to tear down that border first because that’s the easiest border to cross right now.
GLENDENE: It is, and that’s what I don’t get. At least we can do that.
TODD: I mean, even this phone call tonight, it wasn’t considered an international call, it’s a domestic call.
GLENDENE: That’s right. And you know what, I work for a high-speed Internet company out of the United States, and when they have digital phones, it’s free to Canada, United States and Puerto Rico.
TODD: Wow.
GLENDENE: To them, that’s local calling. That’s pretty good nowadays when you consider local calling doesn’t even have to be in the same country, let alone the time zone.
TODD: We’re getting to be a very small world.
GLENDENE: And it is getting smaller and smaller.
TODD: Can you think of anything right now, and maybe this would be a good parting statement, could anything worse have happened to you than what’s happened with Jessie? Not knowing where your child is?
GLENDENE: Nothing worse. If my child had have been struck by a car in front of my eyes, like my best friend’s child, you know 2 years ago, we would have been well into our mourning stage.
TODD: You could have been to the point where you were able to kind of…the not knowing, is the difficult part. Goodnight everybody and stay safe. Talk to you next week.
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