Brooke Henson MISSING since July 4, 1999 from SC [Archive]

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Grande

11-01-2007, 05:07 PM

<Snip>

Brooke Leigh Henson was known as "Brookey" to her friends. She was a fun-loving girl, who enjoyed shopping with her mother and hiking in the South Carolina mountains. In fact, she loved the outdoors -- that's the place she felt most at home. Mysteriously, on July 4, 1999, she vanished and police suspect foul play.

Police say on July 3, 1999, Brooke hosted a party with several of her friends. Unfortunately, Brooke and her boyfriend had a disagreement that night and Brooke wanted to take a walk to get some fresh air.

She left at 2:30 a.m. and planned to walk to a convenience store two blocks away. Brooke was last seen walking along Henderson Drive in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. Police have followed numerous leads since her disappearance but have been unable to find Brooke.

http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/case.cfm?id=42966

Grande

11-01-2007, 05:10 PM

Grande

11-01-2007, 05:12 PM

She told her family members that she planned to walk to Willis' store on the corner of Hawkins Road and Poinsett Highway to purchase cigarettes

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:6BIEBAk-R6cJ:www.angelfire.com/mi3/mpccn/bhenson.html+%22brooke+henson%22+%22willis%27+stor e%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

From what I can tell W.E. Willis' Store is 1.3 miles from the Henson's home where Brooke was last seen;

http://i9.tinypic.com/4mi26vl.jpg

Pauli

11-12-2007, 01:19 PM

On Tuesday, November 6th I recevied confirmation from 48 Hours, the Brooke Henson story will air on CBS Saturday, December 1, 2007at 10 p.m. ET/PT instead of November 17, 2007.
Please be sure to mark this date on your calendars and tune in for Brooke's story.
If you have made any post regarding the airing of Brooke's story please make sure the date is correct. If the date is still showing November 17th please repost the updated date and information.

Many Thanks,
Webmaster (Brooke Leigh Henson's Website (http://www.stoneysplace.com/brookehenson.html))

Pauli

12-02-2007, 06:32 PM

11/30/2007

For Immediate Release:

Brooke Leigh Henson Reward Fund grows by another $5,000.

Travelers Rest, SC, November 30- I am very pleased to announce that we have had an additional pledge of $5,000 bringing the total to $12,229.97 for the information leading to the safe return of Brooke Leigh Henson and/or information leading to the capture, arrest and conviction of those responsible for Brooke Leigh Henson's disappearance.

The money was donated by Jennifer Walker-Derby of Atlanta, GA formally of Travelers Rest, SC. She is someone who never knew Brooke Henson. However, she does know how important it is to find missing persons. Jennifer Walker-Derby, the Henson family and I encourage others to become involved in our quest for justice.
Our mission is JUSTICE for Brooke.

There is also a separate $5,000 being offered for the safe return of Brooke Leigh Henson by the Carole Sund/Carrington Foundation.

48 Hours to air missing person Brooke Henson's story and fugitive/con-artist Esther Reed's story on Saturday, December 01, 2007 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Henson Family Statement:

Our family needs to know where Brooke is and what has happened to her. We realize after 8 long years that with every day that passes the possibility of finding her alive diminishes.

We are hoping the reward is enough for the person holding the answers to come forward with information that leads us to Brooke.

Our lives these past 8 years have been horrific. It's been a never-ending nightmare. We know someone out there has the information that can end our nightmare, and we plead with them to tell us where Brooke is so we can find these answers we so desperately seek.

We will continue our search for her until she's found. We will never stop looking for our beautiful baby girl.

We plead to the person or persons responsible for Brooke's disappearance to dig deep within you, find the compassion for our family and provide the information necessary for her recovery. You can provide this information through an anonymous phone call to America's Most Wanted 1-800-274-6388. Information can also be sent to Investigator Brazier via email justiceforbrooke@trpolice.com or call Travelers Rest Police Department 1-864-834-9029.

We appreciate all the support we've received from the public, our family and friends. Your support, love and compassion will continue to give us hope as we seek justice for Brooke.

awakening2lite

03-03-2008, 02:15 PM

Accused Brooke Henson Impostor In Court

http://www.wyff4.com/news/15470499/detail.html

http://www.wyff4.com/2007/0331/11459943_240X180.jpg

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- A woman accused of stealing the identity of a Travelers Rest woman who has been missing for more than eight years made her first appearance in an Upstate courtroom on Monday.

Esther Reed faces federal charges of aggravated identity theft, wire fraud and mail fraud using Henson's name.

Reed is accused of stealing the identity of Brooke Henson, who was 20 years old when she disappeared in 1999.

Federal prosecutors read through an indictment Monday that details how authorities think Esther Elizabeth Reed Henson's identity to obtain a passport, student loans and admission to Columbia University.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins said Reed currently only faces charges in South Carolina and would only talk about the case in this state.

Reed did not enter a plea Monday and her newly appointed attorney was not present. She will remain in federal custody until her next court hearing, which could be in about a month.

Reed was arrested in early February in a Chicago suburb by U.S. Secret Service agents and U.S. Marshals.

The federal indictment against Reed said that she pretended to be Henson beginning in 2003, when she applied for and received about $100,000 in student loans.

Investigators said that Reed had attended Columbia University as a graduate student for two years under Henson's name before investigators discovered she was not who she claimed to be.

According to investigators, Reed spent more than two years posing as Henson. She applied for credit cards and a passport using Henson's identity, investigators said.

Arrest In Illinois

A tip called into the TV show "America's Most Wanted" led authorities to search the Timmons Park area in Illinois.

Travelers Rest Police Chief Lance Crowe said, "I knew it was going to happen at some point. The amount of attention and the work that was going into it, I knew it wouldn't be long that she could hide this way."

Officials told WYFF News 4 that Reed was staying at a hotel under an assumed name using an Iowa state ID.

Federal authorities said they could not comment on how they believe Reed was able to get Henson's Social Security number, but that it was not simply from looking up information on the Internet.

The indictment says that as Henson, Reed received an Ohio identification card and then took a high school equivalency test and the SAT, which eventually landed her at Columbia University.

Investigators said someone who had chatted online with Reed reported the conversation to authorities after recognizing a picture shown on "America's Most Wanted."

The Secret Service traced that screen name to someone named Jennifer Myers.

Investigators said that while posing as Jennifer Myers, Reed logged on to computers at hotels throughout the Midwest.

One hotel worker who recognized a picture of Reed, provided drivers license and tag numbers both issued in the name of Jennifer Myers.

Still Looking For Tips

Henson had some friends over to her house on July 4, 1999. After they left, she sat out on her front porch to meet her parents when they arrived home from a trip from Charlotte, N.C.

That was the last time that anybody saw her.

A reward of $12,000 is available for information about Henson's disappearance. Anyone with a tip is asked to e-mail: justiceforbrooke@trpolice.com.

Case Links: (below video reports at site)

BROOKE HENSON CASE

# 2/5/08 S.C. Tightens Rules For Birth Certificates
# 2/4/08: VIDEO: Accused Impostor Arrested 2/4/08: Identity Theft Suspect Arrested
# 11/4/07: 'America's Most Wanted' Features Case
# 3/31/07: Case Gets National TV Exposure
# 1/5/07: Investigators Seek Impostor
# 8/16/06: New Clues Surface
# 8/3/06: Woman Claims To Be Henson
# 7/5/02: Web Site Gives Family Hope
# 7/5/01: Woman's Disappearance Still A Mystery

Roamer

03-03-2008, 02:40 PM

I remember that case. Thanks for the update!

nanabillie

03-03-2008, 04:40 PM

I can't wait to hear how she decided to use Brooke's ID.

awakening2lite

03-04-2008, 12:28 PM

http://a.abcnews.com/images/TheLaw/abc_Reed_Henson_080204_ms.jpg
Esther Reed, left, allegedly assumed the identity of Brooke Henson, right, who has been missing for more than eight years. (Courtesy of FBI and Travelers Rest Police)

The following link is to a Video of the accused and a family member of Henson speaks out hoping the search and attention will continue.
http://mfile.akamai.com/12936/wmv/vod.ibsys.com/2008/0304/15480806.200k.asx

Esther Reed Appears in Federal Court
Investigators say "Mastermind Con" Stole Missing Woman's Identity

Monday, Mar 03, 2008 - 11:15 PM Updated: 07:59 AM

The stairs of the Greenville Federal Courthouse covered with cameras and reporters signaled this was no ordinary day inside.

"I'm very glad to have Esther Reed in the District of South Carolina to stand trial," Assistant US Attorney Walt Wilkins said to the crowd of media. "The case does extend all over the United States."

The case of Esther Reed. A woman investigators call a mastermind who they say they caught weaving a web of lies coast-to-coast. According to federal arrest warrants, Reed assumed identities all over, that in October of 2003, connected her here to the Upstate when she became Brooke Henson.

"Of course at first it was giving us hope that brooke was alive," Brooke Henson's aunt Lisa Henson said. Lisa says it was encouragement at a time when her family had been looking for Brooke for seven years. She disappeared from her Travelers Rest home in the early morning hours of July 4th, 1999.

"We were hopeful, especially since she was so good at what she did she was able to answer questions about Brooke's personal information," Lisa Henson said.

But instead, investigators say it was all a cruel con. They say Esther Reed took the missing Brooke's identity, got a GED in Ohio, took SAT tests in California and enrolled in Columbia University in 2004. Then they say the student loans started. Police say Reed borrowed more than $100,000 as Brooke Henson. She even had a birth certificate, social security card, passport and credit cards all in Henson's name.

"It's a little bit of a relief that they've caught up with her and she can't victimize Brooke anymore," Lisa Henson said of seeing Esther Reed face-to-face in court. "I just hope she never gets to see the light of day again.

A woman who investigators say has been so many other people, today, facing what is ahead as herself.

Esther Reed will be housed here in the Upstate until her trial later this year. Currently, she is under no bond.

http://www.wspa.com/midatlantic/spa/news.apx.-content-articles-SPA-2008-03-03-0012.html

awakening2lite

03-04-2008, 12:41 PM

Feds Nab Suspected Ivy Leage ID Fraudster

Indictment Says Woman Assumed Missing Girl's Identity to Attend Harvard, Columbia

A woman accused of stealing the identity of a missing girl and using it to gain admission to some of the country's top universities pleaded not guilty Monday morning to identity theft and wire fraud charges after being arrested this weekend, federal law enforcement officials say.

Esther Elizabeth Reed was arrested Saturday by police in a Chicago suburb, where she was staying at a local hotel, said Ed Donovan of the Secret Service.

Reed, 29, is suspected of stealing the identity of Brook Henson — a resident of Travelers Rest, S.C., who disappeared eight years ago — and using it to apply for a passport, credit cards and more than $100,000 in student loans to attend Harvard University and Columbia University, according to a federal indictment.

Reed pleaded not guilty in federal court in Chicago to the charges. Federal authorities are taking her to South Carolina to face trial, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Cramer. Her court-appointed attorney could not be reached for comment Monday morning.

Reed herself had been missing since 1999, according to a Web site whose creators claim to be Reed's family members. But according to investigators, in May 2006 a Columbia University graduate student alerted authorities that a woman claiming to be Henson had applied to work for her as a housekeeper. After an Internet search, the student learned that Henson was a missing person.

Capt. John Gardner of the Travelers Rest Police Department said Reed was not a suspect in Henson's disappearance, but that he planned to interview her to see if she had any connection to the case. Investigators believe Henson, who was 20 when she disappeared, is most likely dead.

Travelers Rest Det. Clark Brazier said Reed also used the names Natalie Fisher and Natalie Bowman in 2004, around the time she was enrolled at the Harvard Extension School in Cambridge, Mass.

According to the indictment, in May 2004, under Henson's name, Reed was accepted to Columbia University, where she studied for two years. The following year, Reed allegedly received a duplicate of Henson's birth certificate in the mail, adding mail fraud to the federal charges against her.

"In her application, she said she was home-schooled, her mother was dead and she was estranged from her father. She did everything she could to appear not to have a past," said Brazier. "You think someone would have said, 'This all sounds a little strange.'"

Both Harvard and Columbia have confirmed acceptance of a student using the name Brook Henson. The colleges, like most educational institutions in the United States, don't routinely do identity checks on applicants.

"Colleges receive massive outside documentation and generally have 12 years of prior documentation proving who someone is. You'd virtually have to land from Mars not to have that sort of record," said Barmak Nassirian, spokesperson for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

"There is no reason for someone to whip out an ID to prove who they are, and colleges don't find the need to run checks," he said.

Investigators believe Reed, who is originally from Montana, learned about Henson and her disappearance from news reports and possibly parlayed a relationship with a Vermont state trooper to get additional information about Hensen, including her Social Security number.

Reed may have received some minor plastic surgery, Brazier said, "but we can't show a strong relationship that payments have been made to a particular clinic."

She was finally arrested on Saturday after local police spotted her car in the parking lot of a Tinley Park, Ill., hotel.

No Profile for ID Thief
Experts on identity theft said that ID hijackers come from all segments of the population, and that Reed's age and gender did not make her particularly unique.

"There is no accurate profile for an identity thief," Sheila Gordon, director of victims' services at the Identity Theft Resource Center, said in an earlier interview with ABC News. "This is their job; they love the rush and the money. Just because she looked innocent doesn't mean she was."

Gordon said using a false identity to apply to college was rare but not unheard of, and the greatest number of people to be victimized by identity crimes were college-aged.

"Identity theft occurs most often among 18- to 29-year-olds, and it is common for it to occur on college campuses. Typically, though, we're talking theft of credit cards, not applying to schools," she said.

Gordon also said that thieves will look through news stories or obituaries to find recently deceased people around the same age to steal their identities

http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=4238840&page=2

packy

03-13-2008, 10:08 AM

Since they say ID theft is more apt to be related to credit card theft etc., it is really odd that she went all the way with it to enroll in college and all. What was in her past that she wanted to become another person I wonder.

awakening2lite

04-10-2008, 10:00 AM

Apr 10, 2008

The woman accused of assuming the identity of a missing Upstate woman to con her way into top universities faces new federal charges in Greenville that offer more of a glimpse into how authorities allege the 29-year-old high school dropout duped those around her.

They include allegations she touted a career as a chess champion, convinced professors to write her letters of recommendation and claimed to be in the witness protection program.

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment against Esther Elizabeth Reed charging her with new identity theft and fraud charges in connection with allegations that she stole the identity of Brooke Henson -- a Travelers Rest woman who disappeared nearly nine years ago and whom police believe to be dead -- as well as the identities of five other women from across the country.

Reed, who herself disappeared in 1999 from a Seattle suburb and was arrested two months ago in Illinois to face identity theft charges in Greenville district court, doesn't appear to have had any hand in Henson's death, authorities say.

The indictment alleges that the secret lives Reed led -- using her intellect and fake identities to secure more than $100,000 in student loans -- stretch to as early as 2001.

It alleges that in March 2001, Reed assumed the identity of a woman referred in the indictment as "NF," and under that name "engaged in a personal relationship with a West Point cadet and falsely represented to individuals that she earned a living as a chess champion."

Reed began using the identity of a woman listed in the indictment as "NB" in August 2002 to attend Cal State Fullerton college in the Los Angeles area, records allege.

"As 'NB,' Reed took numerous classes at California State Fullerton College, specifically debate classes, and convinced a professor to write a recommendation to Columbia University in the name of the person known as 'BH' by falsely representing that she was in the witness protection program and was forced to change her name," the indictment alleges.

In December 2003, the indictment charges, Reed used that relationship with the West Point cadet to convince the cadet's mother, a professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, to write a recommendation for her acceptance to Columbia University in New York.

That same month, Reed used Henson's identity to earn a GED in Ohio, which she then used in California six months later to earn an SAT score good enough to be admitted to Columbia University, the indictment alleges. Over the next two years, Reed received more than $100,000 in loans to study at the university, it charges.

In July 2006, New York City police confronted Reed and she "was able to answer some of the personal family questions in an effort to verify her identity," the indictment alleges. The police asked Reed to take a DNA test, but she declined and "absconded from authorities," according to the indictment.

source: http://greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080410/NEWS01/804100336/1001/NEWS01

awakening2lite

04-25-2008, 12:39 PM

April 24, 2008

The woman accused of assuming the identity of a missing Upstate woman to con her way into prestigious universities appeared in court this morning to hear new federal charges against her in Greenville that offer more of a glimpse into how authorities allege the 29-year-old high school dropout duped those around her.

Before and after her appearance before the judge, Esther Elizabeth Reed sat quietly but curious of the proceedings of other inmates. The Washington native was bound in handcuffs and wearing thick eyeglasses, frequently peeking her head around attorneys standing in front of her and unwittingly blocking her view of the courtroom.

The new charges include allegations that she duped boyfriends and professors, moving from state to state touting a false career as a chess champion, convincing educators and professors to write her letters of recommendation and claiming to be in the witness protection program when she sought help to form another in a litany of new identities.

A superseding indictment against Reed charges her with new identity theft and fraud charges in connection with allegations that she stole the identity of Brooke Henson -- a Travelers Rest woman who disappeared nearly nine years ago and whom police believe to be dead -- as well as the identities of five other women from across the country.

Reed, who herself disappeared in 1999 from a Seattle suburb and was arrested two months ago outside of Chicago to face identity theft charges in Greenville district court, doesn't appear to have had any hand in Henson's death, authorities say.

The indictment alleges that the secret lives Reed led -- using her intellect and fake identities to secure more than $100,000 in student loans, as well as engaging in more-minor schemes such as creating fake store receipts and returning them for cash refunds -- stretch to as early as 2001.

In March 2001, Reed secured a Pennsylvania driver's permit in the name of a woman the indictment identifies only as "NF" by using "NF's" name, date of birth and social security number, the indictment alleges. As "NF," Reed "engaged in a personal relationship with a West Point cadet and falsely represented to individuals that she earned a living as a chess champion," the indictment alleges.

Reed began using the identity of a woman listed in the indictment as "NB" in August 2002 to attend Cal State Fullerton college in the Los Angeles area. "As 'NB,' Reed took numerous classes at California State Fullerton College, specifically debate classes, and convinced a professor to write a recommendation to Columbia University in the name of the person known as 'BH' by falsely representing that she was in the witness protection program and was forced to change her name," the indictment alleges.

In December 2003, according to the indictment, Reed used that relationship with the West Point cadet to convince the cadet's mother, a professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, to write a recommendation for her acceptance to Columbia University in New York.

That same month, Reed used Henson's identity to earn a GED in Ohio, which she then used in California six months later to earn an SAT college admission exam score good enough to qualify for Columbia University, according to the indictment. Over the course of the next two years, Reed received more than $100,000 in student loans to study in the university's School of General Studies, the indictment alleges.

In February 2005, Reed applied to the S.C. Department of Vital Statistics for a copy of Henson's birth certificate using an Ohio identification card, Columbia University identification and Henson's social security number, the indictment alleges. A month later, she received the birth certificate in the mail in Northampton, Mass., and a few months later applied for a passport in Henson's name, the indictment alleges.

In July 2005, Reed began working in the Ivy League school's "Vice President University Development Alumni Relations Office and was paid $10 per hour for her services," the indictment alleges.

A year later, in July 2006, New York City Police confronted Reed to ask her if she was indeed Henson, "to which Reed replied in the affirmative and was able to answer some of the personal family questions in an effort to verify her identity," the indictment alleges. New York police asked Reed to take a DNA test to confirm her identity but Reed declined and "absconded from authorities," according to the indictment.

When Reed was arrested two months ago at a Chicago-area hotel, she was using the identity of a woman referred to in the indictment as "JM," the indictment alleges. Reed assumed the identity of "JM" in December 2006 when she got an Iowa driver's license using a fraudulently made birth certificate from Kentucky and fraudulently made marriage license from Nevada, as well as using the identity of a woman referred to as "KW," the indictment alleges.

Reed used the "JM" identity to buy a car from a person in Chicago and registered the car in Iowa, the indictment alleges. Authorities arrested Reed on Feb. 2 at a hotel in Tinsley Park, a small town outside of Chicago, after the "America's Most Wanted" television show aired a segment on her.

During her time using other identities, Reed also ran up charges on fraudulently obtained credit cards and used her computer to create fake store receipts and return items for cash refund, the indictment alleges.

No bond has been set for Reed as she is in jail awaiting another hearing. Reed faces charges in Greenville, the only charges against her, because of allegations that she applied to a South Carolina's agency for a duplicate copy of Henson's birth certificate, U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins said.

She faces the possibility of 47 years in prison and more than $1 million in fines.

source: http://greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080424/NEWS01/80424040/1001/NEWS

awakening2lite

05-04-2008, 04:22 PM

Brooke Henson is featured in an episode of Missing Person Unit on TruTV. The next airing scheduled will be Saturday, May 10th @ 12:00pm, noon eastern standard time.

packy

05-04-2008, 04:59 PM

Thanks, Awake. What a con artist this girl is huh.

awakening2lite

05-04-2008, 06:04 PM

Thanks, Awake. What a con artist this girl is huh.

WY.

I wanted, as many as possible to be made aware of the airing of the episode. If only more of the missing could become feature episodes, more might be found.

Reed certainly wasted her IQ on a life of petty crimes.

awakening2lite

06-18-2008, 01:07 PM

Suspect in identity theft of missing Travelers Rest woman to seek trial delay

6/17/08

The Montana woman charged with stealing the identity of a missing Travelers Rest woman to secure more than $100,000 in student loans to attend Ivy League schools is scheduled to appear in court today with a new attorney and a request that her case be delayed.

Esther Elizabeth Reed is charged in a federal indictment with stealing the identities of six women, including Brooke Henson, who disappeared in July 1999 from her Travelers Rest home and is believed to be dead.

The charges include allegations that she duped boyfriends and professors, moving from state to state touting a false career as a chess champion, convincing educators to write her letters of recommendation and claiming to be in the witness protection program.

In a Tuesday court filing, assistant federal public defender Lora Collins said that a new attorney, Ann Fitz of Atlanta, will represent Reed and will present Reed's case for a continuance Wednesday morning.

Fitz said she will seek a change of venue for Reed's trial, citing media attention of the case, and that Reed has suffered "an underlying mental condition," the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, federal prosecutors moved to dismiss one of the charges against Reed that accused her of using a fake Social Security number to attend Columbia University in New York.

Reed was arrested in February in a suburban Chicago motel and brought to Greenville to face the identity theft charges.

source: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080617/NEWS01/80617049/-1/YOURUPSTATE

KittyMom

06-18-2008, 02:18 PM

I have to wonder if Reed might have been on some of the missing persons boards learning info on Brooke. How else would she know personal details about Brooke's family?

awakening2lite

06-18-2008, 02:41 PM

I have to wonder if Reed might have been on some of the missing persons boards learning info on Brooke. How else would she know personal details about Brooke's family?

You're on to something there, Kitty.

awakening2lite

06-18-2008, 02:48 PM

Here's the latest (IMO) excuse for identity theft:

The woman accused of assuming a missing Upstate woman's identity and a string of others nationwide to con her way into prestigious universities was acting on "a survivor instinct" spawned by a mental condition she's suffered since she was an early teen, her newly appointed attorney said today.

Esther Elizabeth Reed's new attorney, Ann Fitz, of Atlanta, told a U.S. District judge in Greenville this morning that she needs more time to prepare to represent the 30-year-old high school dropout -- who prosecutors say used her intellect to claim a false career as a chess champion and to dupe professors to secure more than $100,000 in student loans to attend an Ivy League school.

After the pre-trial hearing, Fitz told The Greenville News that she wasn't ready to disclose the nature of the mental condition and that she's "looking at options" to move Reed's trial to another venue because "some red flags have been raised as far publicity in Greenville."

U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins, who is prosecuting Reed's case, said "the government's ready for trial" and wants to keep the case here.

For seven years, Reed's family had sought her after she disappeared in Seattle in 1999 -- at about the same time 20-year-old Brooke Henson went missing after walking from her Travelers Rest home on the Fourth of July 1999. Police believe Henson to be dead but don't suspect Reed in her disappearance.

In 2006, authorities in New York notified Travelers Rest police that they had found Henson, only to determine that the woman was Reed assuming Henson's identity and using it to attend Columbia University. In February, authorities arrested Reed at a suburban Chicago motel after receiving a tip.

Henson's aunt, Lisa Henson, who this morning was being followed by a national television news magazine, said that she wants to hear Reed explain the accusations leveled against her because Henson's family isn't entirely convinced that Reed and Henson's connection wasn't more than coincidental.

A superseding indictment charges Reed with the theft of Henson's identity as well as the identities of five other women from across the country. During her time using other identities, Reed ran up charges on fraudulently obtained credit cards and used her computer to create fake store receipts and return items for cash refunds, the indictment alleges.

On Wednesday, Fitz said that Reed "wasn't acting maliciously." Fitz said that because of Reed's mental condition -- which she said manifested at the age of 14, about the time her parents divorced -- Reed's actions were driven by false perceptions.

Fitz is handling Reed's case pro bono and hopes a medical professional will conduct a free mental examination on Reed. Fitz said Reed contacted her about taking the case after Reed talked with a fellow inmate whom Fitz had earlier represented and after Reed consulted her sister, Edna.

Reed's case is being prosecuted in the Greenville federal district because of the allegations involving her defrauding government agencies in South Carolina to obtain personal information.

As early as 2001, Reed began living secret lives from state-to-state -- duping boyfriends into believing she was a chess champion, convincing professors to write her letters of recommendation to prestigious schools and claiming to be in the witness protection program.

In March 2001, Reed secured a Pennsylvania driver's permit in the name of a woman the indictment identifies only as "NF" by using "NF's" name, date of birth and social security number, the indictment alleges. As "NF," Reed"engaged in a personal relationship with a West Point cadet and falsely represented to individuals that she earned a living as a chess champion," the indictment alleges.

Reed began using the identity of a woman listed in the indictment as "NB" in August 2002 to attend Cal State Fullerton college in the Los Angeles area.

"As 'NB,' she took numerous classes at California State Fullerton College, specifically debate classes, and convinced a professor to write a recommendation to Columbia University in the name of the person known as 'BH' by falsely representing that she was in the witness protection program and was forced to change her name," the indictment alleges.

In December 2003, according to the indictment, Reed used her relationship with the West Point cadet to convince the cadet's mother, a professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, to write a recommendation for her acceptance to Columbia University in New York.

That same month, Reed used Henson's identity to earn a GED in Ohio, which she then used in California six months later to earn an SAT college admission exam score good enough to qualify for Columbia University, according to the indictment. Over the course of the next two years, she received more than $100,000 in student loans to study in the university's School of General Studies, the indictment alleges.

In February 2005, Reed applied to the S.C. Department of Vital Statistics for a copy of Henson's birth certificate, the indictment alleges. A month later, she received the birth certificate in the mail in Northampton, Mass., and a few months later applied for a passport in Henson's name, the indictment alleges.

In July 2005, Reed began working in the Ivy League school's "Vice President University Development Alumni Relations Office and was paid $10 per hour for her services," the indictment alleges.

A year later, in July 2006, New York City Police confronted Reed to ask her if she was indeed Henson, "to which Reed replied in the affirmative and was able to answer some of the personal family questions in an effort to verify her identity," the indictment alleges.

New York police asked Reed to take a DNA test to confirm her identity but she declined and "absconded from authorities," according to the indictment.

When Reed was arrested in February at a Chicago-area hotel, she was using the identity of a woman referred to in the indictment as "JM," the indictment alleges.

Reed assumed the identity of "JM" in December 2006 when she got an Iowa driver's license using a fraudulently made birth certificate from Kentucky and a fraudulently made marriage license from Nevada, as well as using the identity of a woman referred to as "KW," the indictment alleges.

Reed used the "JM" identity to buy a car from a person in Chicago and registered the car in Iowa, the indictment alleges. Authorities arrested Reed on Feb. 2 at a hotel in Tinsley Park, a small town outside of Chicago, after the "America's Most Wanted" television show aired a segment on her.

Reed's last known address is listed as 415 Highland Ave. in Florence, Colo., according to the records from the Spartanburg County Detention Center where she's being housed on no bond.

Reed faces the possibility of 47 years in prison and more than $1 million in fines.

source: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080618/NEWS01/80618025/1001/NEWS

packy

08-19-2008, 05:45 PM

http://www.wspa.com/spa/news/local/article/esther_reed_expected_to_plead_guilty_tuesday/7384/

By Carmen Coursey
Reporter
Published: August 19, 2008

The woman accused of stealing the identity of a missing upstate woman pleads guilty in Federal Court. Esther Reed’s attorney told the judge she wanted to apologize to Brooke Henson’s family, but the judge told her that will have to wait until Reed’s sentencing, which will happen in 6 to 8 weeks.

But after the hearing, Ann Fitz, Reed’s attorney, spoke on her behalf.

“She didn’t mean to hurt anybody,” Fitz said. “She never had the intent to hurt anybody.” (More at link)

nanabillie

01-02-2009, 01:26 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a79SCmvhRmc

sarahhod

01-15-2009, 06:36 AM

Sentencing set in theft of missing SC woman’s ID

http://www.goupstate.com/article/20090114/ARTICLES/901140247/1083/NEWS01?Title=Sentencing_set_in_theft_of_missing_SC _woman_s_ID_

The Associated Press

Published: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:47 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:48 p.m.

GREENVILLE — A Montana woman who pleaded guilty to stealing the identity of a missing South Carolina woman in order to attend an Ivy League school is to be sentenced next month.

Court records show a sentencing hearing for Esther Elizabeth Reed has been set for Feb. 11.

Reed pleaded guilty in August to federal fraud and identity theft charges. She faces up to 47 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

Reed was indicted in 2007 for using Brooke Henson's identity to get into Columbia University. Investigators have said they do not think Reed was involved the Traveler's Rest woman's disappearance in 1999.

Prosecutors have said Reed began juggling six false identities in 2001. Reed's lawyer said her client stole identities to escape a painful past.

sarahhod

01-15-2009, 09:56 AM

Sentencing set in theft of missing SC woman's ID

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2009/01/14/news/state/58-missing.txt

By The Associated Press

GREENVILLE, S.C. - A Montana woman who pleaded guilty to stealing the identity of a missing South Carolina woman in order to attend an Ivy League school is to be sentenced next month.

Court records show a sentencing hearing for Esther Elizabeth Reed has been set for Feb. 11.

Reed pleaded guilty in August to federal fraud and identity theft charges. She faces up to 47 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

Reed was indicted in 2007 for using Brooke Henson's identity to get into Columbia University. Investigators have said they do not think Reed was involved the Traveler's Rest woman's disappearance in 1999.
Prosecutors have said Reed began juggling six false identities in 2001. Reed's lawyer said her client stole identities to escape a painful past.

awakening2lite

02-11-2009, 01:07 PM

Reed sentenced to four years for stealing TR woman's identity

By Eric Connor • STAFF WRITER • February 11, 2009

Esther Reed told a judge this morning that she was "desperate to escape" from her family when she stole a missing Travelers Rest woman's identity and conned her way into Ivy League schools, racking up more than $100,000 in student loan debt.

U.S. District Judge Henry Herlong sentenced the 30-year-old Reed to just over four years in prison today on identity fraud charges and referred to her attorneys' efforts to paint her as a mentally tortured fugitive, "very creative."

Reed will have to pay $125,000 in restitution and will be monitored by the government for three years once she's released. There is no parole in the federal prison system.

Reed stole the identity of Brooke Henson, who went missing from a party in Travelers Rest on the Fourth of July in 1999. Police believe Henson is dead.
Reed was arrested last February outside of Chicago after nearly a decade living under assumed names -- duping boyfriends into believing she was a chess champion, convincing professors to write her letters of recommendation to prestigious schools and claiming to be in the witness protection program.

One of her attorneys, Ann Marie Fitz, told the judge before sentencing that Reed's reason for stealing Henson's identity and those of several others wasn't typical, because she actually wanted to live a different life and not just run up debt.

Instead, Reed was trying to escape her family after years of emotional abuse and suffering personality disorders, Fitz said.

"The motive in this case was very unusual," Fitz said.

In preparing Reed's defense, her attorneys prepared a sentencing report explaining why the high school dropout assumed other identities and conned her way into prestigious schools.

"The answer," the attorneys wrote, "to the question of why the defendant would adopt various identities, not for the purpose of financial gain, but for the purpose of living her life free from her past, is simple: Because of her mental state, she felt as though she had no other choice."

Reed grew up the youngest of seven children in a small Montana town of just under 2,000, her attorneys wrote.

Her father, the attorneys wrote, was a "strict Baptist" who forbade her to watch any television or movies, and she was sheltered from the outside world as she was home-schooled until 5th grade and all her friends were restricted to being family members.

In the 8th grade, Reed went to live with a sister, whom the attorneys wrote was "neglectful, controlling and emotionally abusive," according to the memorandum.

By 10th grade, panic and anxiety disorder began to set in, Reed dropped out of school and moved to nearby Washington to live with her mother, who had separated from Reed's father, the attorneys wrote.

Reed enjoyed living with her mother and found work as a nursing assistant -- a job she had to give up when her mother became ill with cancer and later died in 1998 when Reed was 20, the attorneys wrote.

"At this time, the defendant's world fell apart," the attorneys wrote. "She lost the one person who, she felt, truly understood and loved her unconditionally."

Reed, who had been convicted of petty crimes, disappeared from Washington in 1999 and began stealing identities, according to court documents.

As early as 2001, Reed began to live secret lives that would find her criss-crossing the country and deceiving people virtually everywhere she landed.

In March 2001, Reed secured a Pennsylvania driver's permit in the name of a woman the indictment identifies only as "NF" by using the woman's name, date of birth and social security number, a federal indictment alleged.

As "NF," Reed "engaged in a personal relationship with a West Point cadet and falsely represented to individuals that she earned a living as a chess champion," the indictment alleged.

Reed began using the identity of a woman listed in the indictment as "NB" in August 2002 to attend Cal State Fullerton college in the Los Angeles area.

"As 'NB,' she took numerous classes at California State Fullerton College, specifically debate classes, and convinced a professor to write a recommendation to Columbia University in the name of the person known as 'BH' by falsely representing that she was in the witness protection program and was forced to change her name," the indictment alleged.

In December 2003, according to the indictment, Reed used her relationship with the West Point cadet to convince the cadet's mother, a professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, to write a recommendation for her acceptance to Columbia University in New York.

That same month, Reed used Henson's identity to earn a GED in Ohio, which she then used in California six months later to earn an SAT college admission exam score good enough to qualify for Columbia University, according to the indictment.

Over the course of the next two years, she received more than $100,000 in student loans to study in the university's School of General Studies, the indictment alleged.

In February 2005, Reed applied to the S.C. Department of Vital Statistics for a copy of Henson's birth certificate, the indictment alleged.

A month later, she received the birth certificate in the mail in Northampton, Mass., and a few months later applied for a passport in Henson's name.

In July 2005, Reed began working in the Ivy League school's "Vice President University Development Alumni Relations Office and was paid $10 per hour for her services," the indictment alleged.

In 2006, authorities in New York notified Travelers Rest police that they had found Henson, only to determine that the woman was Reed assuming Henson's identity and using it to attend Columbia University.

Police asked her to give a DNA sample, but she declined and fled, the indictment alleged.

Reed assumed the identity of "JM" in December 2006 when she got an Iowa driver's license using a fraudulently made birth certificate from Kentucky and a fraudulently made marriage license from Nevada, the indictment alleged.

Reed used the "JM" identity to buy a car from a person in Chicago and registered the car in Iowa, the indictment alleged.

Authorities arrested Reed in February 2007 at a hotel in Tinsley Park, a small town outside of Chicago, after the "America's Most Wanted" television show aired a segment on her.

During her time using other identities, Reed ran up charges on fraudulently obtained credit cards and used her computer to create fake store receipts and return items for cash refund, the indictment alleged.

However, Reed's attorneys wrote that, all along the way, she repaid debts and maintained the same family history, just with a different name.

Reed has since been diagnosed with panic and borderline personality disorder, and her attorneys have asked that her mental disabilities be taken into account during her sentencing.

"She made desperate decisions which she recognizes were wrong," her attorneys wrote, "and is attempting to make right."

She was prosecuted here because she scammed a South Carolina state agency to get Henson's personal information.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090211/NEWS01/90211005/1069/YOURUPSTATE01

sarahhod

02-12-2009, 05:50 AM

Missing SC woman's family: ID thief won't change

By SUSANNE M. SCHAFER – 11 hours ago

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — Lisa Henson got some satisfaction from facing the thief who used her missing niece's identity to scam her way into an Ivy League school.
"You in no way are, or were, similar to the loving girl we all knew," Henson told Esther Reed about her niece, Brooke Henson. "Nothing can bring our Brooke home, but to know that you are not violating her now gives our family a sense of relief."
Reed was sentenced Wednesday to more than four years in federal prison for stealing multiple identities and faking documents to gain entry to three colleges, including Columbia University under Brooke Henson's name. Authorities do not believe Reed had anything to do with the South Carolina teenager's disappearance in 1999 in a case that is still open.
Reed pleaded guilty in August to federal fraud and identity theft charges and asked for mercy at her sentencing, contending she sought a made-up world to escape a difficult family life.
"I was desperate to escape an environment I felt I could not survive," Reed said, speaking in a strong voice as she stood before the judge in handcuffs, leg shackles and red prison jumpsuit, her long, dark brown hair tied in a ponytail.
It was the first time the 30-year-old Montana woman had voiced her reasons for juggling at least six identities and fooling officials at Columbia, Harvard and California State University at Fullerton with fake documents.
"I accept full responsibility," she told U.S. District Judge Henry Herlong.
Reed, of Townsend, Mont., was able to fake Henson's identity in part because her long brown hair and build somewhat resembled the 19-year-old, who disappeared after a Fourth of July party.
Lisa Henson said Reed clearly had shown no regard for the feelings her missing niece's family.
"She's shrewd, but I don't think she's going to change," Henson said, shaking her head.
Police were tipped off to Reed in June 2006, when she tried to get a job as a housekeeper in Manhattan using the name, birthday and Social Security number of the missing Henson.
Reed began posing as Henson in October 2003, obtaining an ID card in Ohio using the Travelers Rest woman's information. Two months later, Reed took a high school equivalency test in Ohio using Henson's name and received a degree.
Then, she took a college entrance exam in California, using her score to apply for admission to Columbia in 2004, where she spent two years as a graduate student under Henson's name, studying criminology and psychology.
She also used Henson's name to get student loans up to $100,000 and to submit an SAT score of 1400, which the highly intelligent Reed earned on her own, investigators say.
Columbia University spokesman Robert Hornsby said officials at the New York school would have no comment on the developments of the case.
In a court filing Friday, Reed had argued that a too-strict family upbringing, the separation and divorce of her parents, her mother's cancer death and a "very neglectful, controlling and emotionally abusive" elder sister who "repeatedly told her she was evil," had contributed to her depression and anxiety disorders.
Reed made the same plea to Herlong, trying to persuade him to show leniency in her sentencing. He dismissed the argument as "creative" and ordered Reed to spend 51 months behind bars, pay $125,000 in restitution, and be monitored for three years following her release from prison.
U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins said the government was satisfied with the result of the case.
Herlong said Reed was physically and mentally fit enough to work to pay off her fines in $500 monthly payments.
"She is a scheming criminal who has taken advantage of people's identities and institutions," Herlong said. He added that she had used "very sophisticated means" to obtain fraudulent government documents, credit cards and multiple identities over several years and states.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jejSjRcWI_gzi_fd6r6nwsoXAwQwD969LQB80

sarahhod

02-12-2009, 06:15 AM

Esther Reed: How an Ordinary Girl Faked Her Way Into the Ivy League (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicky-ward/esther-reed-how-an-ordina_b_166118.html)

Today in a courtroom in South Carolina, Esther Elizabeth Reed's fantasies finally ended. The 30-year-old brunette, who has spent eight of the past ten years on the run, often entering Ivy League schools under adopted fake identities, and evading cops with an extraordinary web of deception, faces up to over four years in prison.
For one man, Jon Campbell, a slight, sandy-haired tenacious investigator in the police department of the tiny town of Travelers Rest, South Carolina, it is the end of what became an obsessive case resembling the plot of Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks as the FBI detective Carl Hanratty always hotly in pursuit of his prey. Campbell was Reed's Hanratty.
In the summer of 2006, Campbell received a phone call from a police officer in New York. Campbell was informed that Brooke Henson, a beautiful young woman who had disappeared in peculiar circumstances from her family home in Travelers Rest in the early hours of July 4, 1999 when she was just twenty -- and had since become the town's only unsolved missing person -- had been found. She was, so Campbell was informed, an honors student at Columbia University, and Ivy League school on New York's Upper West Side.
New York police had gone to seek out the young woman on the Columbia campus after a New Yorker from whom she had been seeking part-time employment doing housework had Googled her and seen she was listed as a missing person on the Internet. Brooke Henson told police who interrogated her that she had no desire to be reunited with her family since she was a victim of domestic abuse. She wanted to be left alone to get on her with studies. She was very convincing. The New York police officer told Campbell that they intended to close Ms. Henson's file.
Campbell replied that they could close the case if they liked but there was no way the woman they had found was the real Brooke Henson. "Take some DNA" he suggested. "The Brooke Henson I knew could never have got into Columbia" he said into the phone. The girl he knew was a high-school dropout, a party girl.
Something in his voice made the New York officer go the extra mile. The next day Campbell's phone rang again. Brooke Henson had failed to show for her DNA test. Campbell wasn't surprised.
When, weeks later, New York cops forced entry into her apartment, they tripped over a pile of calling cards from New York officers. They had been dropped through the mailbox. They found no hair, no trace of anything that would have DNA. But they did find a video card, signed in Boston, Massachusetts, bearing the name "Natalie Bowman."
Once again they called Campbell and relayed their findings. Who was the young woman if it wasn't Brooke Henson? Officially this was his case. Campbell rolled up his sleeves and went to work. A 40-year-old graduate of Bob Jones university, he was more anxious than anyone to solve a mystery that had preyed on his mind and exasperated him for years.
Back in 2001, he had been assigned the case and handed two boxes of "indecipherable" material. He had re-interviewed dozens of local people and taken DNA samples to try to solve what had really happened to Brooke Henson and found himself thwarted at every turn.
"Everyone in this town had a theory about what happened to Brooke," he said. "But none of them was right."
Particularly exasperating for him were the prank calls. There was a medium who claimed to have seen her body beside "yellow rope" and then there was the inmate from a neighboring jurisdiction who got cops to drive him around in the pouring rain and dig.
He was pretty sure Brooke Henson had been murdered and he thought he knew who had done it and even probably where. He had just never found a body -- much to his chagrin.
So, he was intrigued by whoever this impostor was, pretending to be Brooke. Maybe she had information that could help him; maybe she had known the young woman. First he had to find out who she was.
He began a lonely few months of phone calls and paper trails. He called Kim Finnergan, head of security at Columbia. Finnergan was helpful at first but then stopped sending him documents once the school got "lawyered up." Thereafter they cited privacy laws. Campbell had to get a federal subpoena to force them to continue to help him. It was like pulling teeth.
He learned there were two Natalie Bowmans. One was a dead end, in that she is a bona fide medical graduate student at Columbia and a former graduate of Harvard. Another one showed up, before two years at Columbia, in Harvard's records. He saw she had been on the debate team there in 2002. From there she had apparently vanished. Harvard had no record of her graduating. Like Columbia, Harvard was not helpful. But Campbell learned that in both places her file was flagged as a victim of domestic abuse. It is possible both knew "Natalie Bowman" or "Brooke Henson" was not her real name.
Campbell retraced the steps of Harvard debate team in 2002. Harvard had taken on West Point. A few more phone calls led him to Natalie Bowman's former boyfriends -- cadet officers who had been on West Point's debate team and who had since left to take senior military postings, including the supervising of others in Iraq.
He called the parents of one young man, in Detroit. Finally he got the name he was looking for; the young man's parents believed the woman calling herself Natalie Bowman was really one, Esther Reed. They'd seen her driver's license, which been issued in Seattle.
In the fall of 2006, Campbell called cops in King County, Washington. They traded photographs of the woman who had posed in New York as Brooke Henson and others of Esther Elizabeth Reed, a young woman who had last been seen in Seattle, in 1999. She had been convicted of credit card fraud and then broken off contact with her family, who had wondered if she'd been killed.
A corpse had been found in Peasley Canyon, Washington, and until 2004, when DNA showed otherwise, local police believed it was Esther. When that was ruled out, police had speculated she'd been a victim of the "Green River Strangler," discovered to be Gary Ridgeway, a serial killer convicted in 2003 of murdering 48 prostitutes over 25 years in King County.
Both woman bore an uncanny resemblance to one another. Both were slim and pretty with long lush dark hair. But Reed looked slimmer and had a more impish look; a wider smile and a knowing twinkle in her eyes.
Seattle police sent Esther Reed's half sister, Edna Strom an email asking if the attached photograph was her sister. Strom got the email and gasped.
It was.
Thus began further investigation that got Campbell really riled up. Although theoretically the story of Esther Reed was not his case, as he pieced together her narrative in an attempt to learn how her path had crossed Brooke Henson's, the tale grew more and more remarkable.
How had Esther Reed, once an overweight high school dropout gotten herself into Ivy League schools -- as someone else? Why had she taken on someone else's identity, if not to rob them. Had she known her alias? How had she obtained the relevant social security numbers? How had she survived?
When finally it broke in the New York Post in January 2007, it jump-started the TV crews of America's Most Wanted and news networks everywhere. Everyone wanted to know the same questions:
Boyfriends talked of cash being wired from Germany and the Netherlands: were these real?
And what had been the real subtext of her romantic relationships with men in the military? Was she a spy? There were so many peculiarities about the case that did not make sense.
"From a criminal standpoint we rarely find somebody who assumes somebody's identity for any period of time," says Det. John Urquhart of King County, Washington. "Typically they will do it long enough to clean out the bank accounts and then off they go. But she's done this for a long period of time, more than once, to live as those persons."
*****
Esther Elizabeth Reed was born on March 8, 1978, in the tiny town of Townsend, Montana, the youngest of eight children. Her father, Ernest "Ernie" Reed, was a woodworker and farm laborer. He married a woman named Florence when he was 32 and she was 40 and a single mother with seven children and two marriages behind her. Edna, one daughter, says that of her mother's four husbands, Ernie, a god-fearing Baptist, was by far, the most reliable, a truly good man. "My mother was a wonderful, attractive person," Edna says, "but she didn't have the best taste in men."
Though never affluent, Ernie made sure there was food on the table for his family, which mainly consisted of Esther and her brother, EJ, two years her senior, since the other children were mostly grown. She was a "pretty baby" according to another half-sister, Lori Devaney. But as she grew, Esther somehow never fit in, according to both Lori and Edna, partly because she was always a little overweight, and partly because she was so much younger than her half-siblings. She was always, says Lori, "manipulative... the kind of girl who when told not to touch something would put one finger on it to test boundaries."
James Theriault, who taught Esther in high school, wondered for a long time if the girl was being abused, because she was so reclusive. "She had this shell," he says. So he put her on the debate team, and noticed that she was "highly intelligent" and outstandingly good. Her brother EJ would later tell police that it didn't matter which side of an argument she was told to argue -- she was equally good at everything. "She could convince you it was daylight outside in the middle of the night," Sergeant Urquhart recalls EJ Reed telling him. EJ also told Edna that he gave up playing games like chess with his sister pretty early on -- she was way too good for him.
Yet her grades were poor. "She thought she was too bright for high school," says Lori. "[She thought] that the teachers were wasting her time."
Meanwhile life at home was rocky. In 1991, after Ernie's health deteriorated following a bout with meningitis, he and Flo separated. In 1992 Flo had surgery for cancer. In 1995 she moved out of Townsend and took Esther to Lynwood, near Seattle, where Esther enrolled in high school for just one year before dropping out. Weakened by her pain medication, Flo's grasp on Esther slipped. "The rest of you will be fine, but watch out for Esther," she told Edna as she was dying. Edna wasn't sure why their mother was so concerned. But as she was going through her mother's possessions, following her death in August 1998, she found a document that shocked her. It showed that Esther had been on probation for stealing (with a group of friends) in Townsend. Suddenly things started to add up for Edna, who was letting her sister live with her.
Edna and her husband and daughter would habitually throw loose change in an old jug for their annual vacation. It had gotten to the point where it was so full it was almost too heavy to lift. Suddenly the money vanished. So too did her daughter's tooth-fairy money; then Edna's purse went missing. By then Esther had moved out.
In the late spring of 1999 the police notified Edna that someone was cashing her checks... and then in June they arrested Esther as the culprit.
During the summer of 1999, Edna sat in the visitors' gallery at the courthouse in Kent, Seattle, where she watched Esther plead guilty to the credit card theft. Esther was sentenced to 35 days in jail, which had been converted to community service. Grudgingly, through her fury, Edna noticed that her younger sibling had gotten thin and "beautiful" -- the result of diet pills and jogging. Outside after the proceedings the two sisters had it out. Edna asked how, given their Baptist upbringing and everything the family had been through, Esther could have behaved like this? Stealing her own baby niece's tooth fairy money? Esther shrugged: "Because I didn't think you'd really mind and because I could," were more or less her answers, according to Edna.
(Court papers filed by Reed's lawyer alleged her sister had called her "evil" and claimed this subsequently triggered panic and anxiety attacks in the young woman).
But emails from Esther to Edna offer a different insight into her amoral outlook, more or less the Bad Seed syndrome. "Usually there has always been something in my life that I hadn't admitted to that I had done, so guilt was nothing new for me" she wrote. "Ever since I was a young kid, I have had urges of steeling [sic]. Most of the time I can overcome them. But as I got older, the things I took got bigger and the schemes I pulled to get them got worse. When I was fourteen I learned how to lock myself up in a little box and I had no idea how to unlock it..when I steel [sic], I am able to shut off all feeling ...it bothers me, but not like it should.
She goes on: "Sitting in a jail cell will tell you there is a little bit more wrong than just saying "no" will fix... something inside of me is different. I don't want to be the girl who let life pass her by because she was too afraid to live it."
She signed herself "Liz," not Esther, a sign of a new start.
*****
Later that summer Esther emailed her sister Edna that she'd quit working in nursing homes and was thinking of a career in the military and that she had taken up chess and was playing in tournaments. Her last email to Edna was in October, 1999.
By then Edna and Lori were also receiving irate emails from one of Esther's ex-boyfriends, Johnny Fisher, who was owed thousands of dollars in rent. Fisher had a sister, Natalie, then living in Germany. Esther enrolled as Natalie Fisher in a summer debate tournament in Arizona, where her abilities caught the eye of John Bruschke, the debate coach at Cal State Fullerton.
Bruschke suggested "Natalie" enroll at Cal State as an adjunct student -- because that way she could sign up for classes more cheaply. She would not end up with a degree, but she could sign on to the debate team. She said she would finance this with her winnings from chess tournaments.
Bruschke was puzzled when Esther enrolled at Cal State, not as Natalie Fisher, which is how she had known her, but as Natalie Bowman. However he didn't pry. The debate team at Cal State Fullerton was no stranger to members with mixed-up backgrounds says Brushke. "We are kind of a place where people with unpleasant lives, but talent, find their way," he says.
But even by Cal State standards Natalie Fisher/Bowman developed a reputation as a "crazy" girl among her peers. She was highly interested in the opposite sex, recalls both Bruschke and her philosophy teacher, Mitch Avila. But her relationships were extremely short-lived even by student standards, noted Brushke.
She was considered odd. "She didn't trust anybody" says one of her debate team colleagues. One time "Natalie" complained to Brushke that the debate team had gotten bawdy and out-of-hand en route to a tournament -- but when he looked into the matter he discovered that she had been the ringleader of the bawdiness. So why would she have complained?
Avila says she was clearly way beyond the rest of the philosophy students in his class. "It wasn't remotely clear what she was doing there... she already knew all this stuff" he says. He was so suspicious he even checked her work for plagiarism but came up empty. In 2003, at her request, he wrote her a letter of recommendation under the name Brooke Henson, because, she told him, she was being stalked and needed to change identities while she applied to a new college.
She wrote to him about the matter:I was in your philosophy, I think 100, class last fall. I was the debating chess player. Anyways, last winter I decided to transfer from Fullerton to Loyola University in Chicago. In between I went back to playing chess to get the money to pay for a school like that and I acquired a bit of a stalker. Things got fairly complicated and I wasn't able to attend Loyola for safety reasons, so I am now in the process of applying again, but to Northwestern and a couple of other better schools. Apparently my scores allow me into better schools than I thought. I will explain it better in person, but its a tricky situation and I know you once said you write letters of recommendation for students and I am in need of a good one.Avila says he agreed to her request "because when you have a student facing you who says she is being stalked it's very difficult to fight that... you tend to believe her."
Neither Mitch Avila nor John Brushke were surprised when they read recently that their former student had gotten into Columbia and Harvard. "She was absolutely bright enough" says Brushke, adding that she didn't strike him as a petty criminal: "Here's the thing about a debate team... you are driving and hanging around with someone for 12 hours then you are living with them and are spending 16 hour days where you are in hotel rooms having meals with them, ...if her intentions had been to steal, she had ample opportunity."
In 2003, according to Detective Jon Campbell, Esther, as Natalie Bowman, somehow joined the Harvard debate team. Records show that the real Natalie Bowman had debated for Harvard in 1999 and then went on to Columbia Medical school. This Natalie was in Peru when Esther impersonated her in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to Campbell.
Why would Esther bother to get into Ivy League Schools under an assumed identity, when she could have used her considerable talents for more lucrative -- or insidious -- purposes is a question perplexing police. "If you are looking for motivation for Natalie, her character is very much like Kate in Lost," says Brushke. James Theriault was left wondering why she felt she needed to be anyone else since, in his opinion, "she was quite bright enough to get into Harvard on her own... I can speculate that maybe she wanted to be somebody else." Jon Campbell believes she is some sort of honey trap.
*****
Her phone text messages show that Esther/Natalie/Brooke dated many men while she was traveling the country debating, playing chess and attending college. Many of them were in service. Her text messages imply she was most serious about someone named "Tim," a Naval Warfare Officer stationed on a ship out of Everett, Washington. "Tim" gave her a ring, she wrote in an instant message to one ex-boyfriend. Yet she was flirting with her correspondent, even as she told him that the ring meant a great deal to her -- her first "diamond."
Among the cadets at West Point, she had flings with Daniel Ebarb, Kyle Brengel, in 2006 stationed in Alaska, and Ian Fleishmann, then supervising officers in Iraq.
Fleishmann's father, Fred, from Michigan, was suspicious of his son's new girlfriend -- then calling herself Natalie Fisher -- right from the start. While she was clearly smart and attractive she was very reticent when it came to information about herself.
"The guys were not involved with her seriously -- they were in this for wild sex," explains Det. Campbell. "They've all been interviewed -- and none of them passed on any classified information. If they had, that would be considered a very serious -- as in treasonable -- offense by the army; it's clear that did not happen."
In 2002, while dating Ian Fleishmann and visiting him at his parent's home in Michigan, Fleishmann's mother, Shirley, a professor at Annapolis, backed their car out of the garage and accidentally hit Natalie's red Honda Accord. Strangely, the young woman refused to give her insurance details or ever cash a check that Fleishmann wrote for two and a half thousand dollars. Fred Fleishmann couldn't understand why the young woman wouldn't let him take the car to get it fixed. He also wanted to give her a map of the area and went out to his driveway to put one in her glove compartment while she and his son were at the beach. To his astonishment, he found several driver's licenses, including Esther Reed's.
He started to pay more attention to the young woman, particularly when she suggested that she and his son share a cell phone so they could speak regularly (West Point hours don't allow much free time) and the bills came to his home. He noticed that she was calling all the time -- and from all over America."She claimed she was playing chess tournaments, but I wondered," says Fleishmann, who looked up the tournaments and saw no sign of her.
Meanwhile, his son was growing weary of the girl's barrage of phone calls and they lost touch. Detective Campbell says Ian Fleishmann has subsequently told him that "Natalie" became a pest.
Last fall, out of the blue, Fred Fleishmann received a call from Jon Campbell inquiring about the young woman his son used to date. According to Campbell, Fleishmann said wryly "I'd been wondering when my phone was going to ring about her."
*****
"The Box" is the name of an essay that investigators took from the hard drive of a computer belonging to one former West Point cadet Esther dated named Kyle Brengel, once stationed in Alaska. Though it isn't the essay that Esther Reed used to impersonate Brooke Henson to get into Columbia in 2004 -- for that, according to Det. Campbell, she cleverly took biographical details off the Brooke Henson website -- the two-page text was clearly a practice effort.
Some of it reads as follows:When I tell people my life story, I have never received a response not laced with either shock or disapproval. My parents were extremely strict Southern Baptists. Unless someone followed their strict code of conduct, I wasn't allowed contact with them. This isolation was achieved by raising me in a small town in South Carolina with a population of one thousand people... I was educated in a private setting situated in our twenty -five member church. To complete my protection, during my school day, five foot dividers were placed on each side of the five student's desks line against the wall....
Even though I was never forced to understand the concept of the box, I have learned some of the answers to my questions. A box is slowly constructed around every child by every person they've ever crossed paths with. A teacher telling a child he can't learn that until the fourth grade places a brick in a child's wall... an older brother's friend pushing him away from the table saying he can't play chess because he's too young and would never understand it adds mortar to the bricks already in place...
My isolation gifted me with the ability to only comprehend the limitations I discovered through failure of one of my ideas or experiments. No one's disapproval or doubt ever hindered me from attempting anything my little imagination could concoct. If I thought I could do something, I would attempt it until I was successful... my personal philosophy quickly turned into: "whatever you say, but as soon as you leave, I'll find a way to do it.
*****
In 2004, Esther somehow got access to Brooke Henson's social security number. Jon Campbell says she did so through police computers in Vermont. "She must have been with someone who had access to them," he says. Records showed him that the number was run twice; "It's what we call a "ping," says Campbell. "You run it once and you wait. Do you get a reaction?" If you do then you know it's a hot number and you'll get a phone call... If nothing happens, you run it again, and you're good to go." Because Brooke Henson was not listed on a national "wanted" list, no one had bothered to flag her file, which meant no red flags went off when someone ran her social security number.
In the fall of 2004, armed with letters from Professor Mitch Avila and Ian Fleishmann's mother, a professor at Annapolis, a yarn about domestic abuse, and calling herself "Brook" without an "e," Esther got in to Columbia -- before she had obtained a copy of the real Brooke Henson's birth certificate from South Carolina's Department of Health and Education -- which took two attempts, according to Campbell.
Her essay to the school "talked about her mother dying," says Campbell. "It has bits of truth from her real life woven into a story tailored to fit what she thought Brooke's life might have been like. Brooke's life was no where near the life Esther described though."
She attended Columbia from 2004 to 2006. Her grade point average was 3.2216. She took courses in intro-developmental psychology, organizational psychology, social cognition, emotion and gender in Muslim studies, sociology of the US economy, introduction to psychology, introduction to political thought, origins of humanity, criminology, algebra, human rights and social justice, university writing, and astrology.
"Weird" said Campbell looking at her choice of courses and the fact that she withdrew from many of them in mid semester. "Completely weird."
He was not alone in finding her behavior incomprehensible. In the summer of 2005, through the online dating service Match.com, she met a New York-based firefighter, a handsome dark-haired young man, who had lunch with me, but asked to keep his identity anonymous.
"Brook" and he first got together at a downtown bar. She'd been wearing a blue turtleneck and blue jeans, and she made no bones about what she wanted from him: sex. "She was not the kind of girl you would take home to meet your mother," he says bluntly.
Yet, although he never intended having a serious relationship -- she traveled far too much to play in her alleged chess tournaments, on top of which she said she had a boyfriend "somewhere in the South" (the fireman got the impression he "didn't treat her well") -- he was put out when she frequently avoided seeing him, citing a social phobic disorder. "She would repeatedly tell me she couldn't see me until the end of the semester, yet she would call all the time," he says.
They quarreled.
As proof of her illness, in 2006, she sent him a letter written by a psychologist at St Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, stating that she had been treated for "social phobia," and that this would be interfering with her studies at Columbia. "Brook" wrote to the firefighter that obviously the doctor "exaggerates my stuff a bit to make sure Columbia gets off my back.... my gp and the number of Ws should let you know this is probably a pretty big priority in my life right now."
The firefighter last saw her in the summer of 2006. In January when the news stories broke, he found himself reading about her in the New York Post. He saw her photograph and was shocked. It had not occurred to him to check up on her.
*****
For the real Brooke Henson's family, 2007 was a year of intense highs and lows. First, in the summer there was the news that Brooke was alive -- which, in itself, was remarkable.
If you drive on a bright, cold winter's day along US 276, a wide empty road that climbs north from Travelers Rest, you see the looming contours of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There is woodland on both sides of the road, and the signs point out the way to "bible camp" and the local carpenter. It all seems quaint and friendly.
But it was on this road, sometime after 2 am, on the weekend of July 4, 1999, that Brooke Henson, one of the town's prettier girls, vanished. She was last seen walking toward the Willis store, the only store in the center of the sprawling town, to buy a packet of cigarettes.
It was a Saturday night, and the 5'4" brunette had earlier gotten into an argument with her boyfriend, Shaun Shirley, 30, a good-looking local contractor. He had had regular run-ins with the cops, according to his long rap sheet, which listed among other felonies, sexual assault of minors and lynching.
That evening, Brooke's parents -- Martin, a former brick mason and Cathy, who worked at the local Eckerd's pharmacy -- had returned from an Allman Brothers concert in Charlotte to find Brooke in tears on the porch. She was dressed in shorts, a tank-top, and flip flops, a silver watch on one wrist, a silver bracelet on the other. She told her father she was going to break up with Shirley and leave town. Her father wasn't sad. He, like many in the local community, was afraid of Shirley, who had acquired a reputation as someone not to mess with.
"I'll be back in five years," Brooke told her father, according to Christie Metcalf, Brooke's aunt.
Metcalf came to talk to me in the Travelers Rest police station, a small nondescript building in the middle of town, where the less dangerous prisoners hang out around tables with the police officers. "We just knew something wasn't right the next day," Metcalf, a blonde in her fifties, says. "But we couldn't get the police to take it seriously." After all, Brooke had run away from home before. "It was three weeks before the police treated it as a missing person's case and began a search mission and, by then, we'd had rain, so what were the dogs going to find?"
The present generation of police admits their predecessors mishandled the case. "The lieutenant... should have turned the case over to the sheriff's office and never even taken a report. If he had done that, then homicide detectives would have been doing the interviews of the suspects and witnesses rather than patrol officers with zero experience in solving murder cases," says Campbell.
The Hensons' marriage fell apart in the wake of their daughter's disappearance. Martin, ill with multiple sclerosis, became a recluse. For five years, he believed his daughter would return. Cathy quit her job and suffered from debilitating anxiety. When Campbell arranged for her to take a DNA blood test he had to carry her to the car.
In 2002, Christie Metcalf befriended a woman named Tammy Welch, who recommended they put up the website for Brooke. Tammy sought help from a medium, who had a vision of Brooke at the bottom of a well, with a yellow rope nearby. Now, every year on July 4th, the family holds a vigil at the police station, reminding officers of their failure. (Brooke is the only missing person in the area who has never been found)
Detective Campbell was more than a little frustrated.
Campbell is convinced Brooke was murdered -- not near Travelers Rest, but up near River Falls, a beautiful spot where young people liked to party. The person Campbell really wanted to question was Shaun Shirley, who was hauled into police custody the weekend of Brooke's disappearance for "abusing two minors." Shirley swiftly "got lawyered up" and had nothing to say, according to Campbell. He is now lives up near the mountains.
Campbell planned to re-interview another former boyfriend of Brooke's, whom she had dated before Shirley. "There was a story she was planning to run away with him and that's why she was killed," Campbell says. But he died of an overdose before Campbell got to him. "It was ruled a suicide," says Campbell. "Some people think he was killed."
Thus, last summer when Campbell got the call from New York, he was never likely to believe it. He might not have believed in retrospect how hard a slog it would be to piece together what happened to Esther.
Now he believes it unlikely the two women ever met. "I think Esther was just looking for a new ID and came across Brooke's story online."
Ironically, Brooke's biography only got pasted on the Internet in 2004, thanks to the zeal of Tammy Welch, and Esther's own story got put there too, on police computers, thanks to her sister Lori's bad dreams...
Tragically, Brooke Henson's family was euphoric when they first heard she had been found. "We believed it because her father had said she would be back [after five years], because she had said that was what she was going to do," says her aunt, Christy Metcalf. The family then learned there was an impostor out there pretending to be her.
"It was the most devastating feeling," says Metcalf's friend, Tammy Welch.
A new detective took over the Brooke Henson investigation, following the promotion of Det. Jon Campbell from the local station to the state's Law Enforcement Division. Campbell said he would help out where he could.
The limelight gave the local police an incentive to retrace old steps, re-interview everyone -- and to rebuild fences with the community. "We are hoping with this attention we can find out what happened to Brooke," says Christy Metcalf, adding that the family would like to talk to Esther Reed to discover what she knows, if anything, about Brooke Henson. At the time of this writing, no meeting ever took place.
Esther Reed's family was relieved to learn that she was alive -- their last communication with her had been a typed letter from Oklahoma City in 2002, which they had feared was sent from someone else -- but they were concerned.
The federal Secret Service sent its data on Reed to the South Carolina District Attorney who could then issue a federal arrest warrant.
In February 2007, there was a report that Reed had been seen in a restaurant in San Francisco. Edna Strom did not believe it. "Whatever she has gotten herself into, I just want her to turn herself in," she says over breakfast in a hotel in Portland, Oregon. "She's at the point when she knows she will have to pay for whatever she's done, but she can still get her life back... start over."
Over on the other coast, Jon Campbell was more cynical. "This girl knows what to do, how to do it, and she will already be several steps ahead of the authorities," he says.
The slow pace of the investigation had driven him a little crazy. This is a man, after all, who took his wife to the spy museum in Washington D.C. on their honeymoon. He admitted that, despite the better pay, he was sad to have been promoted off the case. But he was confident that authorities would eventually find Reed. "Yeah" he says coolly. "I think so. Eventually."
He was right. Last January, Reed, was picked up outside Chicago. This time she surrendered willingly. Did she have regrets? Would she do it again? "I wouldn't say I was tired of running from the law," she told officers.
But as of now, the law is done with her.

sarahhod

05-08-2009, 11:10 AM

Friday, May. 08, 2009

ID thief: Mother's death led to identity thefts

The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The Montana woman who stole the identity of a missing South Carolina woman to attend an Ivy League school says she became a criminal after her mother's death.
In transcripts released Friday by CBS News' "48 Hours Mystery," Esther Reed says she took on the identities of others to start over. The 31-year-old Reed says she would change identities as the real people closed in on her scheme.
Reed pleaded guilty in August and was sentenced in February to more than four years in federal prison for stealing multiple identities and faking documents to gain entry to three colleges.
She attended Columbia University under the name of a missing Greenville teenager, but authorities don't think she had anything to do with Brooke Henson's 1999 disappearance.
Reed is serving her sentence in West Virginia.

http://www.thesunnews.com/575/story/891903.html

sarahhod

05-10-2009, 05:35 AM

Brook Henson’s 8 Years Missing

Sunday, May 10, 2009 at 12:01 pm

http://www.apakistannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/brook-hensone28099s-8-years-missing.jpg

Wednesday, July 04, 2007 marked the 8 year anniversary of Brooke’s isappearance. Nothing has changed since that tragic night 8 years ago. Brooke is still missing, her friends and family still love and miss her very much. Even though there are many sites featuring Brooke, this is the official site. Some of the sites appear to be the official site have incorrect information concerning Brooke. While you are here please sign the guestbookOn Sunday July 4, 1999 Brooke Leigh Henson “Brookey” a 20 year old, daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin from Travelers Rest, South Carolina disappeared. It’s been 8 years since the nightmare began for the Henson family. Please enter the site for the story of Brooke Henson. Maybe by seeing the story online someone will come forward with the answers to all the questions that have been plaguing the minds of so many since Brooke’s disappearance.
Some may ask who is Brooke Henson. Brooke at the time of her disappearance was a normal fun loving girl, she enjoyed going shopping with her mother, she enjoyed hiking at River Falls in northern Greenville County, and she enjoyed hanging out with her friends at Bald Rock. Brooke for the most part was a laid back, go with the flow homebody. Brooke is what I would call a naturalist, she didn’t wear make-up, and she had a natural beauty that came from within. She enjoyed being outdoors with the sun beaming down on her face and the wind blowing through her hair. I’m guessing some people would even refer to this beautiful human being as somewhat of a hippie chick, a free spirit living in a world gone mad.

http://www.apakistannews.com/brook-henson%E2%80%99s-8-years-missing-119778

awakening2lite

07-17-2009, 05:17 PM

Person of Interest?

Rickey Shaun Shirley

D.O.B - 9/26/1977

Last known CONFIRMED address (summer 2006)
500 Tugaloo Rd Travelers Rest SC

Last UNCONFIRMED address;
[undisclosed] Roper Mountain Rd
Greenville, SC

Criminal Record in Greenville County, South Carolina;

3/5/1996 LYNCHING / LYNCHING - SECOND DEGREE
7/12/1999 SEX, CRIM SEX COND, THIRD DEGREE (GS)
8/6/1999 ROBBERY, STRONG ARM ROBBERY (GS)
8/6/1999 LYNCHING / LYNCHING - SECOND DEGREE
1/11/2001 MINOR /CONTRIBUT TO THE DELINQUENCY OF M
5/23/2001 ASSAULT / ASSAULT OF A HIGH AND AGGRAVAT
4/11/2002 DRUGS / POSS. OF OTHER CONTROLLED SUB. I
1/9/2003 DRUGS / POSSESSION CRACK, CRANK OR ICE
2/25/2002 ASSAULT / ASSAULT AND BATTERY, ABHAN
9/30/2005 Vehicle / Poss., conceal, sell., or dispose of stolen vehicle, value $5,000 or m
6/16/2006 Drugs / Manufacture, distribution, etc. methamphetamine or cocaine base, 1st

I was re-reading posts on this thread and thought I would add how SC defines lynching and the range of penalty it carries.

EXCERPT

Lynching

Lynching as defined in South Carolina is not what most people think it is. While this crime may have been created to stop actual hangings, many police officers will charge someone with Lynching even if there are simply more than two people fighting. Lynching has severe penalties including a mandatory minimum of three years in prison and up to forty years depending on the degree you are charged with SC Code 16-3-210. (http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t16c003.htm)

http://www.greenvillecriminaldefenselawyer.com/lawyer-attorney-1382413.html

PatC

07-20-2009, 10:58 AM

Thanks for that, A2L. When I read "Lynching" I was really startled. My first reading of the statute caused me pause too, since it referred to being part of a "mob"! From your link:

SECTION 16-3-220. Lynching in the second degree.

Any act of violence inflicted by a mob upon the body of another person and from which death does not result shall constitute the crime of lynching in the second degree and shall be a felony. Any person found guilty of lynching in the second degree shall be confined at hard labor in the State Penitentiary for a term not exceeding twenty years nor less than three years, at the discretion of the presiding judge.

SECTION 16-3-230. "Mob" defined.

A "mob" is defined for the purpose of this article as the assemblage of two or more persons, without color or authority of law, for the premeditated purpose and with the premeditated intent of committing an act of violence upon the person of another.

SECTION 16-3-240. Members of mob guilty as principals.

It is permissible to infer that all persons present as members of a mob when an act of violence is committed have aided and abetted the crime and are guilty as principals.

I have to say I'd never have thought to use the term "mob" related to two people. The definition of "Members of mob..." is pretty loose to me. I'm picturing a situation where there is a bar room fight that is taken out to the parking lot. It would seem that LE could round up everybody present, whether in the fight or just watching (and cheering for one or the other party), and charge them with Lynching in the Second Degree. :z0tdntknw:

PatC

07-20-2009, 11:27 AM

Anyone interested in this case should read the excellent HFTM Blog article written by our own Awakening2Lite

http://helpfindthemissing.org/blog/?p=45

awakening2lite

07-20-2009, 09:54 PM

Thanks for that, A2L. When I read "Lynching" I was really startled. My first reading of the statute caused me pause too, since it referred to being part of a "mob"! From your link:
SECTION 16-3-220. Lynching in the second degree.

Any act of violence inflicted by a mob upon the body of another person and from which death does not result shall constitute the crime of lynching in the second degree and shall be a felony. Any person found guilty of lynching in the second degree shall be confined at hard labor in the State Penitentiary for a term not exceeding twenty years nor less than three years, at the discretion of the presiding judge.

SECTION 16-3-230. "Mob" defined.

A "mob" is defined for the purpose of this article as the assemblage of two or more persons, without color or authority of law, for the premeditated purpose and with the premeditated intent of committing an act of violence upon the person of another.

SECTION 16-3-240. Members of mob guilty as principals.

It is permissible to infer that all persons present as members of a mob when an act of violence is committed have aided and abetted the crime and are guilty as principals.

I have to say I'd never have thought to use the term "mob" related to two people. The definition of "Members of mob..." is pretty loose to me. I'm picturing a situation where there is a bar room fight that is taken out to the parking lot. It would seem that LE could round up everybody present, whether in the fight or just watching (and cheering for one or the other party), and charge them with Lynching in the Second Degree. :z0tdntknw:

As you have probably guessed, I posted that excerpt because lynching is often associated with a noose. I have since asked the local PD and the lynch charge can be made if three or more people are in a fight. It is a serious charge with a stiff penalty, but is often reduced to a lesser charge.

It isn't uncommon to hear about the charge in SC.

PatC

07-22-2009, 04:43 PM

As you have probably guessed, I posted that excerpt because lynching is often associated with a noose. I have since asked the local PD and the lynch charge can be made if three or more people are in a fight. It is a serious charge with a stiff penalty, but is often reduced to a lesser charge.

It isn't uncommon to hear about the charge in SC.

I certainly give me goose bumps to even READ it. :hide:

awakening2lite

07-22-2009, 06:39 PM

(this is from the blog thread)

I'm sorry I misunderstood your question, PatC.

It's my opinion she was abducted, either on the way to WE Willis store, at the store parking lot, or on her way back home. I think U.S. 25 plays a large roll in this missing case and I didn't read anything to indicate it was followed up on as a possibility.

There were so many things that went wrong in the investigation of her case, including IMO the investigator's belief that she was murdered (without any solid clue), and how that might have influenced the course of investigation.

Sometimes, things are as simple as they seem. I believe she was abducted sometime after 2:30 am, on the morning of July 4, 1999. There has never been any evidence of a murder, the only solid fact is the location and the fact she vanished. She is still out there, she may be alive.

nanabillie

07-27-2009, 02:52 AM

nanabillie

07-27-2009, 03:02 AM

http://www.uwgb.edu/4e/news3.asp

Article about Identity theft in Ivy League School. Mostly about Ester Reed.

awakening2lite

07-27-2009, 04:48 PM

The blog was great, Awk2. I agree with everyone else, you are a talented writer.
I had a question but would not ask until I found a link to substantiate what I thought I remembered.
http://www.readersroom.com/coldcase.html
Supposedly the boy friend had slept at her house all night. I wonder what his explanation was for not letting her parents know she didn't come home?
There was also a note that supposedly Brooke left. It seemed as if it was intended for the boyfriend. You would think he would have hidden it, or taken it with him when he left.
What do you think? Or should this be at the blog site?

Initially the investigation was mistakenly handled by patrol officers who interviewed many of the people in the case. Detective Campbell remarked the lieutenant should have turned the case over to the Sheriff's office and it would have been handled by the trained investigators of the homicide unit, not patrol officers. This was one of the mistakes on the case.

The current staff deeply regrets the mistakes of their predecessors.

When it eventually landed on the desk of investigator Detective Jon Campbell, he tried to interview Shaun Shirley, Brooke's boyfriend, but when he learned of it he quickly called an attorney.

http://helpfindthemissing.org/blog/?p=45
see references listed at HFTM blog