Killer Story | 2. Why a Nurse?

Listen to all episodes of Killer Story ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge. Feed your true crime obsession. The Binge. Previously on Killer Story. And I'm sitting there one day and the phone rings and I pick it up. And this woman tells me that her niece is missing. And I said, we don't do missing persons. I'm thinking there is something going on here. This just doesn't sound right. We waited 24 hours and then we went to the police. We said she's missing, something happened. They just didn't believe us. An unidentified body has no name, no history, no touch points with the world, with one exception. The system that processes the dead. It was September of 1987. These boaters saw this body floating in the river and pulled her into Arizona's side of the water and then called the sheriffs. This body was Sabrina, though at the moment it was unidentified and unclaimed. A cold body drifting into the hands of the state. A local investigator explains. It was a little young girl. It appeared she had been in the water for a while. Water does awful things to people. She was placed in a secured body bag for transport to the morgue. And so a doctor did the autopsy the next day. Every body, known or unknown, must be cataloged. What takes place in an autopsy, you have to cut like around the area of your sternocleidomastoid muscle up here in your neck. And they slit down diagonally from one part of your neck and shoulder area to other side of your neck and shoulder area, your sternum. And then they do a long vertical line down your chest. As the medical examiner sliced open Sabrina's body, he went about assessing the cause of death. She was found in a river, but did she drown? When you drown, you inhale all the water, and then your lungs become like pink and spongy and watery. You know, you can squeeze them, but she didn't, you know, she had dry lungs. Her irises were occluded. Sabrina's eyes were cloudy. So they couldn't even tell what eye color she was. The blood flow causes the vessels to pop as a result of the water and the blood in her eye. The medical examiners preserve body parts that might someday allow a body like this one to be identified. It was common to cut off the hands and send them to the lab. And the doctor just took a saw, cut off her hands. right above her wrists. To get readable prints from the hands, you just place the applicable finger, dip it in ink, put it in that little square, and you start from one side of the finger, and you just roll it to the other side and hope you get good whirls and ridges. Then they would have sent those prints out everywhere. They were sent to Las Vegas, They were sent to California, all the surrounding areas to see if they had some young woman who fit her descriptors. But they couldn't find a family member to claim her. What would it take to connect Sabrina with those disembodied hands? And why would it be so important to a journalist to make sure that happens? Journalists have backstories, too. This is Killer Story. I'm Steve Fishman. Episode 2, Why a Nurse? I've been thinking a lot lately about how nice it is to have a few pieces in your closet you can just rely on. The ones you reach for without overthinking it and somehow always feel put together when you put them on. That's exactly where Quince shines. They focus on premium fabrics, thoughtful design, and everyday essentials that feel effortless and dependable even as the seasons change. I've been eyeing this Mongolian cashmere oversized crewneck sweater in Heather Gray. I just love that it has this like oversized, comfortable look that's still incredibly luxurious. It feels like the kind of sweater you'd reach for constantly. Something that's incredibly comfortable but still elevated. 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There's a reason Lyndall immediately felt connected to the mother and aunt who called about their missing girl, Sabrina Kidd, and a reason she thought she was the one to find her. To find that reason, we need to start with Lyndall's career. Lyndall Marks had an extraordinary TV news predigree. Straight out of university in Sydney, Australia, Lyndall had landed a job at Australian 60 Minutes, the most prestigious news weekly in Australia. Five years later, she was recruited to the big show, CBS 60 Minutes, one of the most prestigious TV news shows in the world. It was a wonderful, welcoming, warm, sophisticated, civilised centre for the best journalism I've ever experienced. 60 Minutes did important stories about the world's most important people. Lindell reported from war zones, rubbed shoulders with world leaders. There's so much respect for this show. You literally had to pick up a phone and say, hi, I'm from CBS 60 Minutes. And we're like, whoa. You had credibility. As you're probably gathering, Lindell enjoyed being part of the esteemed club. She admired its celebrated members. She deeply respected its journalism. But admiration, respect? Something was missing. Linda was in her 20s. She had places she wanted to go and go quickly. Yeah. Yeah, I'm ambitious. I think ambition's great. I think ambition equals passion and energy and, and, you know, love for what you're doing. I going to be ambitious till the day I die For Linda ambition meant being in front of the camera At 60 Minutes she been a producer which she sometimes thought meant doing all the work and giving the on-camera correspondence most of the credit. I really would love the experience of being on camera. She would have loved to have that experience at 60 Minutes. Oh, no. I didn't think they would ever even consider me And so when a recruiter called Lyndall out of the blue, she was primed to listen, even though he was from a very different kind of journalistic outlet. Lights, camera, scandal. Look out, Hollywood. A current affair is in town. It's a Hollywood affair. At that moment, A Current Affair was just four years old, but already a smash hit. For World Affairs was a bit ho-hum for A Current Affair. It was the leader in the new TV genre, the tabloid. And that genre lived off celebrity scandal, crime, gossip, strange diseases, psychics. In other words, our secret pleasures. At A Current Affair, news was also entertainment. The wealthy weight loss man who may be leading a scandalous secret life, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Thou shall not lie. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not kill thy neighbor's daughter. Lyndall did some obligatory hand-wringing. There had to be some whispering in the hallowed 60-minute halls, along the lines of, Is she thinking of leaving the New York City Ballet for a three-ring circus? That kind of thing. There was a lot of angst. Sure there was. But the recruiter said he wanted Lyndall on camera, going out to 30 million viewers a week, the same audience size, by the way, as 60 Minutes. He wanted to know, Lyndall, what would it take? Oh, just, you can double my salary. He goes, okay. And I went, what? Okay. That was it. So Lyndall was ready to take on a new challenge, but was she ready for a current affair? It's 1991, and Lyndall has just pushed the up button on an elevator in a Manhattan office building. She's about to enter her new workplace. No turning back now. As the elevator opened it was suddenly this you're hit with this noise this chaos lots of swearing lots of doors slamming I'm like wait what? And there are people screaming fuck you, well fuck you too and slamming the doors It was kind of a lot of anger and excitement and all these emotions mixed up in one Hey Lyndall Welcome to A Current Affair. It's a zoo. It's a crazy-ass zoo. And I thought, have I made a huge mistake? Is this going to be not my people? Is this not going to be my world? Lyndal, with her splashy degree, was probably a bit more sophisticated than the average current affair reporter. But guess what? Lyndall soon realized she loved the zoo, professionally and temperamentally. For one thing, she loved the action. At A Current Affair, there was nothing but. Lyndall would juggle five, six stories at a time. A Current Affair put two dozen segments on the air every week with just half a dozen reporters. And so the pace was relentless. Lyndall said it was like being on a treadmill. but she quickly went from complaining about the doors they were slamming and the fuck yous they were screaming to the doors we were slamming and the fuck yous we were screaming. Oh, I'm Australian. Of course I curse. I love to swear. The girl was shaking off the shackles of her pedigree. The current affair was a madhouse of all of us vying for stories reason everyone in that room, everyone that worked on that show was ambitious. We were cutthroat. We wanted to get the story and get it first. And if that meant yelling and screaming at each other and swearing and slamming doors, okay. You found you loved it? I did. I loved it. I loved it. Oh my God, of course I loved it. The most respected journalism outlets are religious about ethics. You can't pay for storage. You can't mislead. You can't threaten. The zoo, though, was not particularly pious. There was no guardrails. None. That's Dan Meenan again, Lindell's news editor. Part of his job was to negotiate the fees paid to sources. The current affair ethos was simple. Get the story no matter what. And so what did Lindell think when she wanted to investigate the disappearance of Sabrina Kidd and Dan told her to stand down? You know, I'm going to do my own thing. I am going to tell a story, whatever story I wanted to tell. I don't care what anyone says. This is the story. This is how it rolls. Why is she so attached to this story? Well, there is a reason. Lindell has a secret in her past. Something she never talks about, but can't escape. This secret gives her a special interest in finding out what happened to Sabrina. It will drive her beyond reason. We started at uni. I was doing a BA dip-ed and Lyndall was doing communications and journalism. This is Annie. Back in Australia, she and Lyndall were at university together where they became fast friends. Annie experimented with fashion. Lyndall was stories and performing. She was so into drama club, anything to do with drama. Annie's the friend we all want. She's game, happy to engage with her friends' interests. So for a while, she tried acting class too. And I've got to be honest, I hated every minute. I was so glad when it was over. But for Lyndall, acting was a passion. And there was another benefit. Through acting, she met a boy she liked. He was older and able to, I think, really enticed me with being more mature, more sophisticated than the guys my age. I loved his intellect. I love to be intellectually challenged. And she liked his attitude. He had a strong personality, stood up for himself. I love someone who doesn't let me take control in a relationship. I went, oh, that's pretty cool. We had a great start to the relationship. He was strong. He was very strong, very stocky and strong. And I think that was his way of showing off. Annie was not a fan. To me, I found him quite shallow, a know-all. You know, he knew everything. But I think Lyndall was in love with him. I guess she saw in him, oh, my God, he's a kindred spirit. Annie, good friend that she was, kept her criticism to herself. It's a funny thing to say, but she was more girly, I think, around him. Lyndall was 19 at the time, and relationships at that age are auditions. This one failed. Soon Lyndall was disenamoured. Quite quickly, he started being unfaithful and dating other girls, you know, and then I just called it off because things just weren't gelling. That was it. Curtains on that personal drama, but drama on the stage? Lyndall's still enamoured of that. One weekend, she and other actors are practising a play at their drama professor's place in the Sydney suburbs. So we all went to his place and we had the play rehearsal and the kids were asleep. and then it was maybe 10 o'clock at night or something, and everyone was leaving, and I was on the front steps of this house. I was the last to leave, and I'm about to go, but we're just chatting, and then we turn around, and there's this car with its headlights off and its engine off, and it's just coming down, creepy, so creepy, coming down the street. The street had a gradient, so it's just rolling down the street. And I looked, I went, what the hell? That's my ex-boyfriend. And it pulls over and he comes up the stairs really fast and you could almost smell the alcohol. And he goes for this professor and he pins him against a wall and I screamed out. I said, stop, what are you doing? And he turns around and he literally full fist punches me in the face a couple of times right on the bridge of my nose The ex-boyfriend disappears as suddenly as he arrived. No, I didn't know what was going on. My face, I looked and literally my nose was all over my face. There was blood everywhere. And my hands started shaking. I'm like, what? Your body's just going to, what's going on? The professor, he grabs the kids, throws them into his car. He takes me up to the hospital into emergency. It happened so fast. There was no conversation. There was no, what are you doing? There was no, oh, like, why? Why did this guy feel the need just to attack? Why? Because he was drunk. Because he just, you know, he wanted to be with me because he was angry that we'd split up. But no, he had the need to just smash my nose into my face. I ended up in hospital and I had to have surgery. They needed photos of when I was a little girl to show them what I actually looked like because it was such a bad hit. My bed was covered by a curtain because I didn't want anyone to see me. They didn't have mirrors there because they didn't want me to see myself. A friend of mine came to visit me and she just walked in and I remember the shock on her face. A terrible, terrible shock to see what was left of her face. You couldn't really see much because the severity affected everything, all the upper, her eyes couldn't open properly, just bruising and battering. Hideous. Absolutely awful. She's like, oh, hey, you know, you'll be OK. I'm like, no, this is not OK. This is not OK. I felt an incredible sadness because I could feel that it was going to have an impact on her for the rest of her life and not in a good way. Annie left. Linda was alone. And I remember this doctor, young doctor, who came in, and I'll never forget his face, I'll never forget him, and he just literally, I was sitting on my own at night and I was in tears, I'm just like, what is going on? And he came in and he opened the curtain, he just sat on my bed, he said, hey, can we talk? And he took my hand and he said, you're going to go on, you're going to do great things, you're going to be okay, you are not a victim. Don't let this shape who you are. And I think it's that experience that made me realise that I can do two things. I can roll up into a fetal position and just give up and be depressed and just go, I'm obviously not worthy. and I decided not. And I just went, I am going to give a voice to people whose lives can take a turn that they never had any say in, that is not fair. But the trauma of the attack wasn't over yet. As I was in the hospital, my father called the police and filed a report. And then it was incumbent on me to continue that, to say, right, yep, I want to take this guy into court. I am going to file a case against him. And I just went, I can't, I cannot do this. I just want it to go away. I pushed it aside because I didn't want to be the victim then. The assault did have a profound impact on Lyndall's life. She'd have difficulty trusting men. Instead, Lyndall invested in her career. Head down and work, she said. So Lyndall won't let the attack define her, but it will shape her. I'm in a position where I can do something because I'm a reporter. I want to hold out my hand and grab that story and grab that situation and say, I'm going to give a voice to this, because you know what? I didn't even give myself a voice until now. Until this podcast. I think you can hear the emotion in Lyndall's voice, the sadness, the anger. Lyndall saw herself in Sabrina. She sensed that something had happened to Sabrina, that she'd been victimized by something or someone, and certainly by a system that seemed indifferent to her fate. With Sabrina, this young girl, something was not right. I completely connected to what happened to me. I was beaten up, beaten to a pulp with an unrecognisable face. Lyndall had lent her own assailant skate free. She wasn't going to let Sabrina's story go. She was dead set on finding out what happened to Sabrina. and in doing so, get her own revenge, if only by proxy. All she had to do now was figure out how to get her editor, Dan, on board. Dan was clear about Sabrina's story, or non-story. A teenager who went missing in Las Vegas four years earlier? Hard no. Dan had bosses too, and they expected him to assign stories that had a good chance of getting on TV. So, okay, Lyndall, your heart's in the right place. Kudos. Now, get me a story I can put on the air. Lyndall understands. I was feeling unsure about the story because there was no proof. I had nothing. I had feelings, but I had no proof. I had no qualitative proof that I could take to the police or take to our lawyers and take to Dan and say, here, here is the proof. It was not a good feeling. Um, you feel like you're chasing ghosts? You don't want to chase ghosts? Lyndall, those are your ghosts. Other people can't see them. Even Dan doesn't know about Lyndall's past. Whatever was propelling her, ghosts or a sense of duty to the defenseless, Lyndall made a decision. Screw it, I need to do this story. I really feel something's wrong. Something's wrong. something's happened to this kid. I asked one of Lindell's colleagues from back then if this story was a good career move. If this wouldn't have worked for Lindell, her career at a current affair may have come to a dead end. Dan had other ideas for where Lindell should invest her energies. He had a lot of story slots to fill every week. A couple of reporters on the staff that used to Talk up a big story and always be that one interview away from getting it. Meaning he's never going to fucking get it, okay? Whereas Lindell had almost 100%. If she went out on a story, she came back with a story. Whatever the assignment. The pastor told her she was possessed by demons. Yeah, there were alien stories too. I did a story on crop circles. Some say it's magnetic fields. And then, of course, there are those who are convinced. It's the work of visitors from another planet. Dan and Lyndall became quite a team. Lyndall knew how to get a story, and Dan knew exactly what worked on television. My job was to get in there at 5.15 in the morning. USA Today used to have, in every state, they had these little stories in the back, right? I used to go through that with a magnifying glass. And I find this little story, and it's that this guy had been arrested for having sex outside his house. And then the final line was the guy saying, I half expect a current affair to be knocking on my door, and I'll tell him to go to hell. And so I called up Lyndall. I said, get your ass over to this address as soon as you possibly can. Knock on the door and say, hi, I'm from Current Affair. It was perfect for television. Out of this professional partnership, something else was developing. Dan and I just struck up a great relationship. I hadn't had any relationship with anyone for many, many years. Neither Dan nor Lyndall was a big drinker or partier. At the after-work watering hole, they might sit off to the side talking shop, reviewing possible current affair stories. In a crazy office like a current affair, Dan was someone I felt I could connect with. Dan was someone who I could talk to He would actually stop and talk to me and cared for me He was safe He felt safe In the rom-com version, imagine a Meg Ryan vehicle here. Lyndall's an outsider, intrepid but isolated, cautious. The camera catches her and Dan at the bar, off to the side, one staring at the other. In another scene, they're screening a segment crowding around the same monitor, shoulder brushing against shoulder, agreeing on the camera work. He admires her spunk. She appreciates his grit, even when he scoffs at her best idea. And then it dawns on her. And unbeknownst to me at the time, he liked me. When I realised that actually he liked me and I went, well, actually I like him too. And we had this beautiful friendship which evolved very, very quickly. Dan doesn't do things half-heartedly. He goes all in, very fast. Our first date was the Macy's Day balloons, the parade. Listen, if you're taking a girl on a first date, you can't do any better than that. We watched the balloons being blown up right by Museum of Natural History. They lay out Superman or Snoopy, and they blow him up there. They ready them for the parade the next day. It's kind of magic. Those flattened cartoon characters are spread out on the street like colorful, rubbery puddles. Then the helium goes in, and they rise, little by little, emerging from the sidewalk like a new life form. And I'm going, wow, this city's insane. and these balloons are crazy. When Lyndall's not intense, she's bubbly, talkative, fun. I just, it was very nice, and we just had a really, really good time. We really did. In the chaos of a new city and a punishing news cycle, Lyndall had found her people, or her person. I never thought any guy was interested in me. I honestly just, I just honestly didn't think I was someone that guys wanted to be with. I was the career girl. And I was the career girl by choice. And that choice was made back when I was attacked. This is the path I was on. So to have this gorgeous, handsome New Yorker paying attention to me and wooing me and buying me little gifts and making me dinner and introducing me to chicken wings that were too spicy for me. And he'd introduced me to cute little restaurants and bars and we'd be walking through Times Square and it was just the whole thing was living a dream. I did get swept up in it. Soon Dan and Linda were mostly living together. He was her boyfriend and also her boss. And as her boss, he still wouldn't okay her Sabrina project. I had one thing going for me. I could get his ear privately on the pillow. And I used that. She told Dan she just wanted to get more facts. Yes, it was me trying to cajole him into letting me get to Las Vegas. Dan still won't authorize a trip to Vegas, not on a current affairs tab. But, well, maybe there is a workaround. Then there was the idea that maybe I needed to find another way. If Lyndall can find a story out of Las Vegas, one that Dan can actually put on TV, sure. Then he can pay for the trip. and if then Lyndall took an extra day for some extracurricular research, he'd be none the wiser. I scoured the Las Vegas press to try and find some sexy stories because I knew that those sexy stories would drive the viewers. And then there it was. Jeanna Steele, the woman voted the prettiest showgirl on the famed Las Vegas strip, had a secret and she was prepared to go national with it. Lindel, what are you waiting for? Get your ass to Vegas. Cue the sound of a jet taking off. Just about everybody in Las Vegas knows showgirl Jonna Steele. She packs him in with her nightclub act and she found more fame when she won a local beauty title. Lindel Marks went to the gambling capital of America for this exclusive report, Luck Be a Laddie, tonight. Lindell had talked Jonna into telling America her secret. I was born a male, a little boy. Perfect for TV, yeah. And a perfect cover for Lindell, who now turns to her real interest, Sabrina. Lyndall calls Sabrina's two great girlfriends, Jennifer and Crystal. She'd gotten their names from Sabrina's aunt and mother. Lyndall is eager to meet them. Maybe they can provide a clue to Sabrina's whereabouts. Jennifer takes Lyndall through the details of their meeting with the police four years earlier. They'd gone to report a missing person, their friend, Sabrina. We had to go downtown. We had to wait. We had to go in the office. It was like a white room with like a little table. And you sat down and they asked you questions. They had their notes and they took the notes. The officers wrote a report. The girls signed the report. And nothing came of that, yeah. Linda figured she knew what happened. These are young girls and these are kind of party girls and they're very pretty girls. And I don't think that they were, that their stories were given any credibility. From the cops' perspective, here were two 17-year-olds saying that a girl they'd met at a party a few months earlier had gone missing. Probably one more runaway in a city full of runaways, don't you think? Four years later, when Lyndall meets them, Crystal and Jennifer are no longer teenagers. They're 21 years old, and they are still concerned about their missing friend. I was glad somebody was investigating it. And I remember being glad somebody believed us. From Jennifer, Lindell gets a clue. Jennifer mentions offhandedly what seems like a non sequitur. But the more Lindell thinks about it, the more provocative it appears. It's something Sabrina told Jennifer in the weeks before her disappearance. She said something about a nurse went to see her. Was she sick? Not that Jennifer knew. Why would a nurse go and see her? She said a nurse came and she didn't stay very long, she just did a physical. And then I'm thinking, I'm like, wait, what? It was strange, and it seemed stranger when just a few days after a nurse administered a brief physical exam, Sabrina disappeared. Lyndall had to learn more about that nurse. Next time on Killer Story. Bobby Sue actually spoke to them and they did say, yes, we think we might have something with the name Sabrina Kidd. Then I looked at it and I went, what the hell? Unlock all episodes of Killer Story ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts, all of them ad-free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series. That means all episodes, all at once. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to access wherever you listen. Killer Story is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Company No. 1. Creator and host is me, Steve Fishman. Executive producers are Linda Marks, Kevin Wardus, and Jonathan Hirsch from Sony Music Entertainment. Producers, Jackie Pauley, Hannah Beal, and Austin Smith. Production coordinator, Austin Smith. Series consultant, Emil Klein. Sound designer, Britt Spangler. Fact check, Ryan Alderman. Our lawyers are at Clarice Law. Special thanks to Emily Rasek, Steve Ackerman, Catherine St. Louis, Sammy Allison, Alison Haney, Fisher Stevens, and the glamorous Rhea Julian. We also thank our agents at WME, Evan Krasik, Marissa Hurwitz, Ben Davis, and a special thanks to Shelley Chenoy for voiceover casting. And a special, special thanks to the inimitable Emil Klein. Thank you.