Things That Aren’t There | 9

A warning to our listeners. This series contains discussion of mental illness, suicide, and domestic abuse. We're talking about, you know, 25, 30 years ago. Why is anybody interested? My memory is not what it used to be, but I can remember stuff from a long time ago better than I can last week. It's been going on how many years now? Almost 30 years. It's not like it is today where you have pictures and things like that on your phone. you can go back through to look at dates and stuff like that. You're really pressing my memory on this. You're talking about almost 30 years ago. But that's been a long time ago. I really don't believe she killed herself. She was there one day, and then all of a sudden she didn't show up. Have we uncovered a conspiracy indirectly? Too many unanswered questions. She was scared she was alive after they said she was dead. Hey, I'm plugging this in, but Jenna, you can go ahead. Jenna's the question asker. Okay, got it. She has all her questions. You ask questions, I'll see if I can answer. Awesome. I mean, I would love to just start with you introducing yourself and telling us how you knew Sue. My name is Carrie Barnett. Sue and I worked together at Elder Dodge. Most people were scared of her, I would say. Nobody wanted to cross her. If you did something wrong or if you didn't do it her way or didn't do what she wanted, she was very, I mean, you could hear her cussing at her, whatever. She didn't like anybody questioning her. I mean, she and I got a loan grad. I didn't have any problems with her, which is probably a good thing now. She was there one day, and then all of a sudden she didn't show up, and it was not like her not to show up. Then she didn't come in for the second day, and it was like, okay, somebody wanted to check on her to see where something, make sure nothing's wrong with her. I can't remember who actually went over there, but they went checking to see where she was at because she had not showed up. And that was, we never saw her again. That was the last time we ever saw her. Do you remember what year? It would have been the 96. 96? Yeah. So she was still working at Elder in 96 when she passed. Yes, when she passed, she was still working for us at Elder. Okay. She's at the Elder car dealership from 1985 to 1994-ish. And then she's unemployed for a chunk of time in 1995. And by November of 1995, she's working at the McGilvray car dealership, which is who employs her at the time of her death. Did you ever hear of her working for McGilvray? I remember her saying she used to work for McGilvray. But I don't know when or how long that she had worked for them. She had made mention she had worked for them before. How did you hear about this, this project? From Steve. From Steve. But you also saw it in the paper? Well, actually, before Steve came by, my former boss said, you're not going to believe what they found out on Sue Knight. And he told me just kind of a little bit that she was supposed to be a spy or whatever. And I was like, what? He said, sooner or later, you're going to hear more about it. It's going to come out, some more stuff. He said, it's going to be interesting when you hear what's going on. I said, all right, I'm curious now. You got my curiosity of what's going on, what happened to her. And then Steve came by the office one day and was telling me some things about it. And then my cousin actually saw it in the paper and sent me this. He said, hey, did you work there? Do you know this lady? And I was like, oh, my God, yes, I did. I was like, that's kind of scary. I was young, man. That's kind of scary to work with somebody like that and not knowing it. I mean, does that seem reasonable to you? Is that something? Well, that kind of tells you that they can blend in. But yeah, it was real interesting when I started seeing that. And he said that in the paper, and I went, oh, wow. You see these things in the movies, and you think, oh, man, how do they stick around those people? And then all of a sudden, it comes up, and you're around somebody. It's like, wow, I need to be more focused on what's going on around me. Okay, so that story that Carrie told about Sue still working at Elder when she died, that wasn't right, was it? Well, here's the thing. First of all, yes, her timeline of events is incorrect. By the time Sue died in 1996, she had left Elder and was working at McGillivray with Pat. But in the moment when Carrie was telling this story, I was questioning everything. Like, after that interview, I asked Haley to double-check the paperwork because Carrie was so confident. Her memories were so strong and specific. It made me think she was right, and I must have been wrong. And after I clarified with Haley, I reached out to Carrie again to let her know. and she said again that she thought Sue still worked at Elder until her death. Is it possible that she was working both jobs at both dealerships at once? I wondered about that too, but I asked Carrie in that interview if Sue was there every day, like a regular nine to five, and she said yes, she was there from eight to five, five days a week. So I just don't think it's possible. I just don't know how to categorize these memories that Carrie has that contradict our paper records, like the specific details she gave about everyone being surprised the first day when Sue didn't show up and then concerned the second day, and then her co-workers going to Sue's house to check on her. I've got questions about that point anyway, because now we've heard a couple of different stories about how Sue is discovered and none of them match the story that's given in the police report. So the Athens PD declined to be interviewed, but in the police report, it says that the welfare check that got the police involved was called in by her neighbor, who has unfortunately passed away. According to the report, that neighbor told officers that Sue had been sick, he hadn't seen her for three days, so he went to check on her, and when she didn't come to the door, he decided to contact the Athens police. Right, but also the neighbor they list in this document as the official reporter is a different neighbor from the one they actually spoke to on the scene. I think they might have lived together. I'm not positive. So even in these official documents, there are weird little discrepancies like that. It's just so weird to me that her coworker, Pat, remembers his bosses at McGillivray calling it in. And Carrie remembers her coworkers at Elder literally going to Sue's house. And I've also heard from a friend of Sue who said she called the police that same day after going to Sue's house to check on her and then didn't get an answer at the door. Could all these things be true? I mean, Sue's neighbor could have been the one who called in the official wellness check that ended up on the police report. But Pat's bosses could have also called the police even after they had already been alerted. Carrie's co-workers could have driven by only to find the police already there. Technically, yes. But when I reached out to the Athens Police Department, they said the only call they have on file is this one with Sue's neighbors. I guess to me, if that is the case, that all of these people were involved, even though they weren't the official wellness check, I just find it interesting that they all thought that they were the called, you know, like there's something to that, I think, that maybe they've cast themselves in a larger, more plot driven role in this story. I don't know. My name is Alan Castell. I'm a cognitive psychologist and professor at UCLA, and I study memory and aging. So I'm interested in how we selectively remember important information and how we sometimes misremember information and how we can improve memory, especially as we get older. What sort of makes the human brain remember? Like, what are the triggers, I guess? Well, there's a lot of cues that can remind us of things. People often think of a smell that can trigger some memory of very remote past. But there's also things like emotion. Emotion can really make us remember things in a manner that might feel very distinct. And yet even these sorts of memories are prone to misremembering too. Even when we have this strong feeling, it doesn't necessarily mean we get every detail correct. Memory is not like a video camera. It's not like we capture everything and then can retrieve it accurately. Our memories are amazing and we can store vast amounts of information, but our memories are also selective and prone to being reconstructive. So we might, you know, think we're remembering something, but we might still be recreating that from some of the input that's in our brain. Yeah, that was sort of the next thing I was going to ask is like, how can receiving new information alter the memories we think we have? Each time we recall a memory, we strengthen some aspects of that memory, but can also intrude with other details that might make sense or what others have said. And then it becomes almost a source memory challenge. Like, is that what I said or is that what someone said to me? Why am I remembering this? So in some ways, we we kind of fill in the blanks more. And oftentimes that's adaptive and helpful, but that can sometimes lead to some inaccuracies as well. You know, two people might remember the same event in very different ways. doesn't mean one's right and one's wrong. And I think, you know, that's why you do want to get as much information as possible, but also be aware that we need to think of memory as not always being an exact replication of the past. Are there any ways in which we can tell? Are there observable signs that someone is or is not retelling a memory accurately? Yeah, I mean, that's always the difficult thing. Like, there's no such thing as a good lie detector test. And sometimes people misremember things, but not with the intention to be deceiving. And so it's tough to know, first of all, if someone's remembering something accurately, but also are they misremembering it, you know, because that's just how memory works or they're misremembering it deliberately because they don't want to remember certain things. So they might misremember things on purpose to try and remember something in a more positive light. So I think sometimes the things we think are indicative of a good memory might not necessarily be that. And that's why juries are sometimes swayed by people who are confident. And the truth is, you know, just because they keep recalling the same memory doesn't mean it's accurate. And if they then recall things that they didn't recall earlier, it doesn't necessarily mean it's inaccurate. it. It's interesting that you brought up the confidence factor, because I feel like in my journey with trying to figure out the truth of this story, that has been a really big factor in whether I, in on a scale of trustworthiness, where I put someone's memory. Yeah, I mean, confidence and accuracy often do go hand in hand, but there are reasons and ways you can change people's confidence, make them feel more confident, even though they're not accurate. And by the same token, sometimes people can be accurate when they're not confident. And often this is for details, you know, like I don't remember the color of the car or whether he was wearing glasses or not. But you remember that it was a man over six feet tall, something like that. Yes. But there's situations where they might misremember certain details and that becomes embedded in the memory. And this is known as the misinformation effect, where you can actually fairly reliably introduce details. and they're usually details, not main portions, and then have people misremember those details, you know, a week or two later, even a year later. And so, you know, those details fit with a narrative that the person might have had, but they weren't actually seen or experienced. And I think that's what's interesting about memory is that I can, you know, we do these memory experiments where I'll show you a list of words and all of the words are related to the word window, let's say. But the word window is not presented on the list and people reliably recall the word window. And when you point that out to people, they're a little bit surprised, but they're also like, oh yeah, well, now I know why I did it because I was making images for these things. Or sometimes they won't believe you. They'll think, I think the word was on the list. You must be tricking me. And you have to show them that, well, you know, you're not lying. You're just doing what most people would do. It's that we fill in the blanks and I think our brain kind of tries to keep us focused on things such that we remember the general main important aspects. And we might forget certain details or even make up certain details to fit a story. At the end of the day, you have to remember, I think memory, maybe it's evolved or it's adaptive to remember not every detail, but what is impressive about memory is that we can remember the things that usually matter the most to us Remember the big things So basically nothing is real Nothing is truth How do we know anything for sure? Our brains are made of mush and can't be trusted. I think that's a pretty black and white way of looking at things. You know, I think it's better to say, I don't know, whenever I interview somebody somewhere in my head, there's a scale of one to 10 as to how much I trust what they're saying. And it's rarely a one and it's rarely a 10. It's more like, oh, this person's an eight or a nine or this person's a two. I mean, I think you can start to approximate the truth by sort of surrounding it by talking to a bunch of people. But one person's account of things really can't be trusted. That actually does make me feel a little bit better just because we have talked to a lot of people throughout this process. They haven't all corroborated each other, which makes it very confusing. I mean, to be honest, our story has more discrepancies than consistencies. Some people say she smoked, some say she didn't. Several people have said she didn't take pills, even though her house was full of pill bottles. Everyone's timeline is a little bit different. We can't even say for sure what color her hair was. Yeah, I think the thing to remember is that even if some of the details don't match up between all of the people we've talked to, There are a lot of big picture things that do match up. Like with Carrie, we've heard from a few other people that Sue's job at Elder did end suddenly. So it makes sense that Carrie has this memory of showing up to work one day and Sue just being gone. It's just that it happened a few years earlier. And then I'm sure she experienced a big shock when she heard about Sue dying and heard about how she was found because she didn't show up to work and no one had heard from her in a few days. So it makes sense to me that with 30 years of time passing, she's conflated these two memories. Plus, she saw that article in the paper a few years ago where Steve talks about being Sue's executor, and the article speculates that she could have been an assassin. Like, I'm sure that influenced her too. And I know that with this particular story, it's hard because so much of the information we have is just what we've heard from people, and our actual physical records are pretty limited, but I think it's a matter of laying these memories on top of each other and on top of the records that we do have and seeing where the points do or don't match up. And that makes me think of the house thing that we've been dealing with. Yeah, the house thing. Why don't we, let's catch everybody up and make sure we're on the same page. So all this started when Caroline made a quick trip to Athens. And while she was there, she took pictures of the various properties where Sue lived. But when she sent me a picture of the house that Sue died in, it was a completely different house than the house that I was taken to by Steve and Jamie on that tour the first time we talked to them. Which we now know is the house next door. And it's not like they were easily mistaken for each other. Like one is white wood and one is red brick. Let's just puzzle through this. We know Sue's address for this house, but the name of the streets whose house was on actually varies depending on which records or websites you're looking at. So theoretically, it could be one of about four different names. The certificate of sale that I have found that was in the briefcase, this rent-to-own contract, says that the property was purchased in 1984, and it outlines which plot of land it was that she was purchasing. And that would be lot four, which is the land the brick house is on, which is why I'm adamant that like, it doesn't matter. Whatever is on lot four is what Sue had and lot four is the brick house. And I went through all of the property records and it's always been lot four. So that's why I'm convinced she was definitely renting to own this piece of property. So maybe the houses used to look incredibly similar. Is there a way, like, could you, would you be able to take like the wood or vinyl siding off of a house and replace it with brick siding. Well, yeah, actually a lot of brick houses are actually brick veneer. So like when you see a brick house, it's not usually a house made of brick. It's usually a brick facade on a wood house. So, so maybe it was not a brick facade at the time. Maybe it was a wood facade similar to the house he showed us. Let's just take a moment to appreciate that at this point, we've got a woman with about six different names that we know of, a missing death inquest, and we can't even seem to nail down the name of the street she lived on. Like, this is the squishiest story ever. And everything is like that. There's so... I don't know if it's common or if it's just the small town Texas of it all, but I feel like all of the paperwork and tangible evidence and records that we have have some sort of weird catch like that or just don't exist or were destroyed in a flood or a fire or they don't go back that far or they haven't moved to digital yet. And so we can't access that unless we go to a storage unit in the middle of nowhere. And we have to get the one woman who has a key to the storage unit and she only works on the third Thursday of every month. Like it's absurd. Yeah, pretty much. And this is where I do understand if Steve were the executor and he was trying to figure all this out back in 1996 and did not have the abundance and accessibility of online records that we have now, which has saved my butt so many times, you know, I can understand where this would start to feel like she's purposely withholding things or falsifying things about her identity because it is so hard to find how these threads connect. And I also, again, Steve and Jamie, when they talk to us about the house, when they talk to us about any of these things, I get the sense that they really believe what they're saying. Me too. I'm glad that you said that because I really do feel that way too. I just think it's like Dr. Castell said, memory isn't like a video camera, right? It's not completely accurate. So, I mean, I think we should ask them about it. But to me, the most likely explanation here is that they just made a mistake about the house. Especially because we don't know what it looked like back then, right? Like, it could have looked exactly like that White House in 1996. We just have no idea. And the Brick House is literally right next door. Yeah. you're probably right. We just need to ask them. So these are various houses we're trying to figure out if she lived in or not. Do any of these look familiar to you? That's the house. That's the house that she died in. Right. Okay. But it didn't look like that. No. But that's the house she died in. Okay. Yeah. Okay. The house that we actually have records of her living in is this one, which is actually that brick house next door to the one that you showed us. I wonder if they renumbered it. The lot that she had on her contract was the one where that brick house is now. She wasn't living in that. That's weird. But I will say, I talked to Tony about it and he said that he drove by because he lived with her in that house and fixed it up and they were there for a long time. He did say that he drove by recently just sort of getting nostalgic and wanting to see what it looked like. And he said that it used to be wood like the one next door. The new owners have re-bricked it. Oh, okay. So it didn't used to be wood. It was definitely wood at the time. It's brick now. So do you think it's possible that because it's brick now and you remember it being a woodhouse that you showed us the woodhouse next door, but it was actually that one it could be but i sure oh so you're saying the one that she lived in is now brick oh i i don't not that big yeah but let me look at it again no i wouldn't i wouldn't have said that either no it's it's this one the one with the carport in front so this is the one that we have actual paper records of her living in this lot with this house but it used to be wood and that next house too is what i thought it was yeah the one next to it is the one that y'all showed us, and it's literally right next door. That's the one I remember. Okay, well, um... So you think it was this house? I still think it was, but, I mean, that's what it looked like. That's what I remember it being. And I'll be able to tell, because it's kind of catty-cornered across the street from where Mata lived. Yes, right. We'll have to go look at it. I never even thought about it. I was just almost sure when we saw it that that was her house. All right, so I also wanted to talk to y'all about the computers. There are ways to electronically seize data from a computer. But why? If the person has passed away, send three agents over there, kick in the door, and take the stuff. Basically, we learned that it is really, really difficult to fully wipe a computer remotely. To wipe a computer remotely, they would have had to have been dialed into the internet, and you would have had to establish a connection to them, both of which were possible but not easy to do. And we sort of described what Yael saw that night in the house, and his very first question was, was there a power surge that caused the computers to crash? There is a fine difference between a hard drive that has crashed and a hard drive that has been wiped. Power surges can also cause a hard disk failure. That could explain both a hard disk failure as well as the booting up. Larry Beeman was a very sharp individual. He kind of wrote the articles for Macintosh in this area. And he made his own computer programs in 1996. And he said somebody had done it off-site, crashed the hard drive. Well, you weren't in a place to question him anyway. He was an expert in our area and a dang good one. So he would know. Y'all don't think that that's a reasonable explanation, that it would have been a power surge that sort of caused them to push back on? No. Okay. No, not the way it was operating. I mean, it was definitely hot and running. And, you know, but I mean, I don't know. It's so long ago, but I just, I do remember distinctly we turned off all the lights in the house. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember any of the lights in the house coming on or anything like that. So if the surge would have come on, then, you know, wouldn't have just done that. It would have turned some lights on, too. Right. Well, I do remember you saying that you thought that the power from the computers made the lights dim. I'm wondering if instead of, like, a surge, it could have been a dip. And so the computer, like, maybe the computer was already on and then lost power and then came back on. What do you think about that? Honestly, I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't have any idea, but if a power surge would have happened, it would have been. I just wanted to go home. We also talked to a former CIA agent. One of the things that she told us is that the CIA would not be the agency that called or surveilled U.S. citizens. She also said that if they did call, they would never identify themselves as the CIA. She said basically a way that you know that someone is lying about being in the CIA is that they tell you that they're in the CIA. And see, I thought that same thing. Yeah. That was a, you know, thing that was cautious about it. And that's why I thought, hey, this guy's just trying to get a body or something out there. And so that's what kind of got me confused, too. It was pretty weird. I mean, it was. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm wondering if there's a possibility that the agency, like the three letters were different from CIA. But I distinctly remember saying CIA because I repeated it I mean we were having dinner which we normally never answered the phone I mean otherwise he would not be eating dinner with us I'd be accused of talking too much. Yes, yes. And so we were all, and then Steve just gets up and answers the phone, and we all just sat there. And when he came back, that's when he said, Daddy, did you just say CIA? He said, yes, do you know what that means? And he said, yeah. And then Steve had to be very careful because we had a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old. And so you have to be so careful. And we just froze. His little eyes got really big. And then when he said, are you in trouble? Right. I thought, well, he definitely knows what the CIA is. I was going to tell you all about this in case you didn't know because it was very surprising to me when we found it. But there is a life insurance policy from 1993 where she lists you as her executor, which is several years after she would have made that will, which means she still remembered that you were listed as the executor several years later in 1993. And she never told you about it at all. Never knew anything about it. I didn't even know I was an executor. I know. Well, what do you think about it? What do you think about that? I don't know. But I never was that. I never told her anything. yeah and I didn't find out until after she's dead so but when you're in a small community it's like family whether you know them or not they're still from Athens you treat people as if they were your family here because you live in a small community and that is definitely one thing about a small community now you hurt when your people your neighbor hurts you you you help when you can help and you just roll up your sleeves and say we're going to get involved if that's what they wanted You know, this is what I've been saying the whole time. They really do seem to be telling us the truth as they see it, which just goes back to the perception thing. Like, even when presented with these things that might contradict them, their memories are so vivid and strong. Yeah. I mean, I kind of do understand, like, this is a story that they've been thinking about for 25-plus years. And I understand how difficult it is to change that and to change the narrative that you've had in your head for so long. Yeah. And for a moment, Steve did say that maybe he got the house wrong, but then he changed his mind pretty quickly. And then later after this interview, Caroline and I and Steve and Jamie all drove by those houses. And I was riding with Steve and he again, we went to the White House and he was like, this is definitely the house. I remember this house. Yeah, that was definitely interesting because, Jenna, you were in the car with Steve, but I was in the other car with Jamie when we drove by. And at the same time, Steve was telling you, no, I was definitely right the first time. The Whitewood house is definitely the house. Jamie was in the car with me saying, well, maybe it wasn't that house. Now I'm not so sure. I don't totally remember. Maybe you're right. Yeah, I think that's why it's bugging me so much. Like, he feels very strongly about the White House in a way that he hasn't really for a lot of the other things that we've presented him with contradictions for. Yeah, I wonder if this just feels so foundational, you know? Like, if this was this traumatizing thing that he's described it as to find out that you've been remembering it wrong, I imagine would be a little unsettling. And it's hard because obviously we don't want someone to agree with us just for the sake of agreeing. But I think it brings up a really interesting question, which is like, what does it take for someone to realize they are incorrect or to change their mind? And that feels like a much bigger, more complicated question. Yeah, it's hard because they have been willing to change their minds on some aspects. But I think you're right, Haley, that a lot of these things are really foundational. And I mean, they're telling us what happened. Like, these are their memories and they're very strong. And something I keep thinking about is how a lot of the stranger things they've told us were actually told to them by people they trusted, by authority figures. Like, Slick was a sheriff, an ex-Texas ranger. And Steve says Slick told him Sue was involved in something international and that they were being surveilled. Their phones were tapped. Same with the computers. Larry Beeman was a computer expert in their area. And Steve said he looked at Sue's computers and said that they had been wiped remotely. And by all accounts, this was also a very difficult and stressful and scary process for them. Like they were in a part of town they weren't comfortable in, in a dead woman's house. Then they get these weird phone calls and a big warning to walk away. But they still have like a house to clean and debts to pay off and an estate to settle. Like, none of this was easy, so no wonder this has stuck with them for so long. My name is Jerry Beyer. I'm the Governor Preston E. Smith Professor of Law at the Texas Tech University School of Law. And my specialty is wills, trusts, and estate planning. When you were looking over the will and the probate documents, did anything stand out to you as particularly unusual? Well, yes. It's very badly done. If a student submitted this will to me in class, I mean, I teach an estate planning class where they draft a real person's will. I don't think they'd pass. Do you want to know why? Please, please. OK, well, you don't even need to have a lot of expertise to understand the problem. Take a look at Article 3. It says the executor shall sell all the property of my estate for cash. That's wonderful. And then it says what to do with it. That's wonderful. But then later, it says to do other stuff with property which you already said was supposed to be sold. Article 4 talks about what to do with the cat. But all of that's too late. You already said to sell it. Remember, a pet is just a piece of property and normally would have fallen within the general provision of Article 3 where all property is to be sold. It is an internal conflict in the will. The executor for this will wasn't actually very close with the decedent. How common would it be for someone to have their executor be someone that they really don't know very well? That is very situational dependent. Some people like to pick people that they know because they have a greater grasp of what's in the estate. Others would prefer somebody a little more detached so they would be more neutral. This person was to get paid for so doing so it would be a job. Remember, being an executor of a will is no big honor. It is a big hassle with lots of liability exposure. I typically tell people if someone asks you to be the executor of a will, follow what I call the cocaine rule, which is just say no. I mean, it is not a good thing to do unless you're being paid for it or you can't get out of it between other than love and affection. So as long as Steve Barksdale agreed to it, which obviously he did, it doesn't really look that unusual. He actually had no idea that he was listed as the executor until after she died. Now, just as a piece of advice, you never want to name anybody as an executor unless you've checked with them first and made sure that they're willing to do the job. Otherwise, what if he had said, no, I don't think she named an alternate. Did she name an alternate? I don't believe so. Could he have said no? Sure he could. There is absolutely no obligation to accept the job just because you're named. So it looks like the estate is very small. And then he sold all the property, divided the money between the two charities, and was out of there. So it could have been very easily done. Right. So one of the other interesting things is that these beneficiaries actually weren't charities. They were for-profit businesses. Were they supposed to be notified? They both said that they had no idea that they were beneficiaries in the first place. Back then, there was no requirement after the probate of a will to notify the beneficiaries. There is now a procedure where once the will is probated, beneficiaries have to get notice. But prior to that, that did not exist. How does an executor find out what their responsibilities are? Does anyone check in? How do you even start as an executor? Well, it would not be expected that a layperson would have any idea of what they're supposed to do. You should pay a lawyer to do it for you. And even if the estate is small and you can't afford a lawyer, go to a legal aid clinic in your community. Go to a law school that has a clinic in it to help you. Even though in Texas it is easy, you need to know what you're doing. That's why I said earlier, cocaine rule. Say no. Yeah, you're right. It feels like a massive burden, honestly. It is. It's a massive burden. I cannot believe that Steve could have just said no to this. And I feel like Steve definitely didn't know that because I remember we asked him before if he considered saying no, and he told us he didn't even know that was an option. I know. Yeah, the idea that he could have said no. I mean, honestly, it does kind of cast some of his decisions in a different light for me. I've said it before, if someone I knew, like if someone in my family got a call saying they were responsible for dealing with the estate of somebody they hardly knew, they would have probably made one phone call. You know, they would have hired someone else to deal with it and that would be that. So, I mean, it was enlightening to hear someone so well-versed in estate law say outright that this job is kind of a pain in the ass. But he also said that Steve had a responsibility to do everything reasonable to get as much as possible out of Sue's estate, which I find so interesting because what is considered a reasonable amount or what a reasonable person would do in this situation. Yeah. I think you're right, Jenna. Some people might just make one phone call and say that was reasonable and that was enough. So Steve definitely did a lot more than that. I do think it's interesting, too, that Jerry said that besides being poorly done, the will and the probate were pretty normal. Right. And this feels like a good time to bring up the cat. Oh, yes. Pretty please. I would love to talk about this cat. So there's been this idea bouncing around since 1996, since that first phone call from the Justice of the Peace telling Steve that he was Sue's executor, actually, that Sue's will was strange because she left everything to her cat. But that's not technically true. Right. Yes. There was a cat named in the will, Mr. Foster, but he is not listed as a beneficiary. There's just instructions for his care included in Sue's will. So basically, it explains that her beneficiaries are the Henderson County Veterinary Hospital and the Cedar Creek Medical Associates Professional Center. And then it goes on, there's a separate section that says, I direct that my executor shall give my Persian cat, Mr. Foster, to Henderson County Veterinary Hospital, Incorporated, in order that the clinic can place my cat with a single retired person who is knowledgeable of caring for Persian cats and who would provide a good and loving home for him So yeah she deeply cared about this cat but she not trying to give him stacks of money Yeah that really sweet actually Yes that the sweetest thing ever that she just really wanted her cat to, like, comfort an older person. And the heartbreaking thing is that we just don't know what happened to that cat. I mean, the will was written in 1987, so chances are that the cat was no longer around. But we have heard that she maybe had other cats during this time, And remember, Steve didn't know he was the executor for a couple of weeks after she died, so there's just really no telling what happened to the cat. Yeah. What I keep thinking about is, first of all, how did this idea of the will going to a cat start? And was it an actual misunderstanding of the will, or did Judge Adams just tell Steve that as a joke or something? I have no idea. but what I find more interesting is that it's lasted for so long. Like this was one of the first things I ever heard about this story is that Sue left everything to a cat. Me too. And like, isn't this just a little microcosm of my current existential crisis? Like these small weird details take hold, even if they're mistakes, even if they're misunderstandings, even if they're misremembered, and they all add up to make this larger picture of something truly strange and mysterious and scary. Why did you come to Athens of all places? I found that weird. People don't just show up to East Texas. People don't just disappear. And some little Hicksville town in East Texas in the Piney Woods is a good place to disappear. She didn't really talk about herself or her family. There was a whole bunch there that she just wasn't unpacking and she wasn't going to talk about. She would look at me and say, okay, we're not talking about that anymore. Felt like she was preparing me not to be surprised if she just disappeared. She told me she got relocated to the United States because the family that she was married into was part of royalty of some sort. There was something in her past that she didn't want showing up on her doorstep. What happens if I get killed? I want to make sure my stuff's taken care of. She was either on the run from somebody or witness protection or something to that point. sharpshooter, doesn't talk about her background in a part of the world that nobody comes. She had four or five different pieces of identification, and they all had different names. When she came to work for him, she gave him a social security number. It came back, well, that's not the right one. And so she would give him another one. They said that she drank a bottle full of prescription pills. I'm like, she didn't like taking pills. She drank very little. Every once in a while, she'd have a glass of wine. And that's what made the whole deal about the bottle of whiskey beside her bed the night she committed suicide. Between the pills and the whiskey, all that don't add up. Three o'clock in the morning, the phone rings. A woman says, this is Sue, I'm okay. My buddy that was dating her and a guy from the CIA called him. This is so-and-so with the CIA. We just want to let you know we're getting the body in Dallas. We'll take care of everything from this point on. And they told him, do not dig into this. They said that she had been dead four days when they found her. I remember somebody telling us later on that her body would not have been in that shape. I had talked to her a day before that, so I knew that wasn't right. And nobody I know saw her body. I never saw her body after she passed. There is a lot of mystery involved. There is a lot of unanswered questions. Maybe while you're in it, each odd thing, you just take it at face value. But when you look back on it and you just see one after the other. And by the way, your mind plays tricks on you when you start doing stuff like that, because you start making up these grandiose things. And then when you don't know a lot of details, your mind will fill in what it thinks it should be. Conspiracy series, it's like a fortune cookie. You can always put it to whatever's happening. There's always a way of rationalizing it and making it real. So after hearing all of this, all of the things we've learned and the things we've found out, what do you think? Well, I think, you know, it is what it is. We live through it. We live what we live through. And I still, I can sit there and go, we still don't have an answer on a lot of these things. And I can only deal with what I will live through. And I lived through this. I mean, I did. And so the reality of it is, is that we've, there's something still missing, you know, and we don't know the truth. We might not ever found the truth. Just about everyone said that there was something that they didn't understand or there was something that was weird or there was something that was unexplainable. Yeah. Like, in my mind, there had to have been a reason that everyone felt that way. Do you know? it's just it's frustrating that we can't find anything concrete that proves anything and I am grateful that we've been able to sort of like narrow the scope a little bit by talking to these experts and seeing what they know and allowing us to to sort of like connect the dots where we can and unconnect them where they might not be connected that feels really useful to me but it is frustrating to not really have an answer in that regard, for sure. I just don't think that we'll ever know. The thing is, there are a bunch of weird details that don't make sense. And maybe they point to something enormous, like a spy story or a woman on the run. But the thing I keep thinking about is that maybe they just point to someone who liked keeping people guessing and had some secrets she didn't want to share, you know, and then died before she could give anyone answers. And if she was trying to keep those things secret, what does that say about us? Do you know what I mean? Like us digging into those secrets and trying to uncover the truth. I mean, we're affecting her legacy. You know, the town is talking about this now. They're talking about Sue and talking about her out loud, You know, where it seems like before it might have been more hushed. And now we've added to her story and uncovered information about her that her friends and family didn't know before. Yeah, and I don't think that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think that's just the place that we find ourselves. I do think, or at least hope, that we've given some kind of closure to the people who remember her. And something I've been thinking about, too, is that the version of this story where Sue was a super spy who either didn't die and is still out there somewhere or did die after leading a crazy life is incredible and wild. But the other version where the paperwork got messed up and she wasn't great at paying her bills and came to a place in her life where she was depressed, that's a much more hopeless story. Yeah, it is interesting that you make the distinction between like the hope of it all because it is a much more hopeful story to be like what Carrie told us when we interviewed her. And she was like, you just never know if the person next to you at work is secretly a spy. You know, like there's some hope in that. There's something hopeful about making an ordinary life extraordinary in retrospect, Dino. And there's something a lot less hopeful about sort of having to confront the ordinariness of a regular person's life. I do think that there's something hopeful about finding the extraordinary in that, you know, looking at an ordinary person's life and being like, wow, wasn't it amazing that she lived? But it's definitely not the same. You know, it's a bittersweet hope. The thing that gives me hope, and I think the best thing to come out of all of this, is finding answers for Stuart and Lisa. Yeah, I actually got some exciting news about the family situation today. Oh, awesome. Tell us. Well, I've been working on trying to find Sue's other child or children. We had heard that she had had a son sometime before Lisa. So I searched a bunch of databases based on, you know, general years and the area Sue was in at the time. and I came up with three potential matches for children. The first two weren't a match, but I got the final birth certificate today and it says Mother Susan Pat Perkins and her address is on there and everything. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah, I'm really excited. It doesn't list any information for the father, but at the bottom of the birth certificate, it says adopted. There's an adoption registry in the UK. So if we put Lisa on that registry as an adopted child searching for siblings, then if he's on there too they might be able to connect them. Next time on Undercover of Night. I mean we all want to avoid grief if we can, right? There's a lot of mystery to this thing called life and I've got to learn to live in the mystery and in the unknown. Okay, here's what we know and some things we haven't been able to fully explain. For you guys to get all this information, for me, it just builds this picture of my mom's life. I mean, without you guys, we wouldn't be together. The good that's coming out of this is we have created a new family. We've given closure. And what better thing than an executor has to do? I told you I wouldn't do this, but here I am. I'm back. I'm speaking to you, the listener, because I have a few things to say. Hi, Jenna. Jamie was right. You and Jamie were right. It is the brick house. This is Steve Barksdale, in case you're wondering, who is this person? Hi, Jenna. We hope you're doing well, but I just wanted, we just ran into the models, and we got it confirmed. It is that brick house that's been re-bricked, and that is the house. So, anyway, just wanted to let you know. Talk to you later. All right, I'm going to see if I can do all this from memory. Our executive producers are Caroline Hamilton, Sharita Lynn Solis, Heather Mansfield-Jernigan, Ted Barnhill, Aaliyah Tavakolian, and Keith Reynolds. Yeah, wrong order, but I think you got, you also, did you get universal production music? Ah, damn it. Okay, mix, sound design, and original music by Will Short with additional music from Universal Production Music. And then I'm going to read this one because I want it to be right. Special thanks to Dr. Alan Castell and Dr. Jerry Beyer for sharing their expertise with us. You can read more about memory by reading Dr. Castell's book, Better With Age, The Psychology of Successful Aging. Oh, I forgot all the extras. Okay. If you have any information on Sue Knight, you can email us at infosuenight at gmail.com. If you or someone you know needs support, go to apple.com slash here to help for resources. Follow on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. Oh, that was harder than I thought.