This is not an update episode of Frozen Truth. This is a thought experiment
I guess dealing with our season four case, the nineteen ninety six disappearance of
Sandra and John Jacobson from Bismarck, North Dakota. That's coming up next.
I want to go over something that bothers me a lot about the Sandra and
John Jacobson disappearance. This is our season four case of Frozen Truth. This
week we passed the anniversary day to the commemoration date of Sandra and John's disappearance
November the sixteenth. The year was nineteen ninety six, and we've covered the
basics of the case so far earlier in the year earlier in the season of
season four Frozen Truth. Just for a brief rereecap because it has been a
while since we've released an episode. Sandra and John lived in Center, North
Dakota. Sandra was thirty six at this time. John was five years old.
That night before Sandra took John to her parents' house, Sandra, as
we've discussed earlier, had a history of mental illness, and when she arrived
at the house, her parents recognized in her some of those symptoms, and
so her parents who have since both passed away, implored her to go to
a hospital and they would watch John, and Sandra agreed, but she first
insisted on going to get gas. In some kind of a compromise. I
guess her parents were thinking. They allowed her to go get gas, not
just her, but she took John with her to go get gas. We've
talked to the first investigator on this case, Tim Turnbull of Bismarck Pete.
He says they do ever a seat of her going to a gas station to
get gas. But then Sandra didn't come home to the parents' house and so
at about ten pm that night they called police. This is fortuitous from the
standpoint of most missing persons cases because Sandra and John were both reported missing farce
er than in your typical missing person's case ten o'clock that same night, so
police were aware that she was missing along with a young child. Her car
was not found until the next morning. It was found on the banks of
the Missouri River, kind of a boat launch area. It's not very far
off a highway. It's visible to some homes in the area. And when
the car was found, Sandra and John are nowhere to be seen. They
search the river. Eventually they find a shoe that they believe belonged to John,
so a child size shoe, and when they go about searching the car,
they find some of Sandra's belongings on the passenger side seat. You can
go back and listen to Detective Turnbull's description of the car when he went through
it on that day in ninety six. I'll tell you what bothers me most
about this case so far. They found the driver's side door open, not
open as in unlocked. It was left, and that's always bothered me from
the moment I read that detail about this case before we even talked to Tim
Turnbull, Because first of all, that car was sitting there, presumably all
night, and it was dark after she left. It would have been dark
in November, but there are roadways and there are homes, and nobody called
that car in. The police actually stumbled upon it the next day. But
the more I think about the door, the more bothered I become, because
I can't make the door make sense. There are only three basic scenarios of
what could have happened to Sandra and John based on where the car was.
Scenario one is Sandra put the car there. Detective Turnbull's theory of basically murder
suicide, that Sandra killed her son and herself via drowning in the Missouri River
and that explained to the car being there. Scenario two would be Sandra put
the car where it was found, but there's a third party involved at that
spot. Scenario three would be something happened to Sandra and John elsewhere and a
third party put the car where it was found. It's the only three possibility
for generally how the car could have been found there. A big problem with
this case, especially so many years later, is there is no evidence of
a crime having occurred, minus the shoe that was found. So just the
abnormality of the shoe if it was John's being found, and also the car
being there and her stuff being there and both of them not being there.
But very importantly, there's no blood. There is no indication of a struggle,
there's no indication that anything happened exactly. And so then you apply Ockham's
razoring. You say, all right, here's Sandra's car, John's missing,
Sandra's missing. There's a raging Missouri river right here where the car was parked.
Sandra parked the car here, walked into the river and drowned John.
And that assumption is bolstered a little bit when they find John's shoe what they
believe is John shoe and the river on the search the next day. I'm
not certainly going to argue with that that's the supposition of Tim Turnbull, the
detective on the case. But I'm also not going to inherently assume it necessarily
because we'reth this crossroads, you know, and it's fine to go down any
of the three trails that you want to explore as long as you can find
your way back if you don't find any evidence. So we're standing at this
crossroads and I'm looking and metaphorically and what I'm looking at as a sign as
a guidepost for our three trails is the thing that bothers me most about this
case. Actually, earlier this week, I couldn't sleep because of this detail.
That is the door of the car, the driver's side door is found
open. Now, really really think about that. I've said before, the
detective Turnbull may well be right about what he assumes to have been the outcome
of this case. And he does an outright say this is what happened.
It's just his assumption so many years later in absence of anything else. But
let's go with that trail for a moment. Sandra parked the car, got
John out of the car, drown him. Essentially, what is the scene
saying in reference to the outcome? How can you look at the scene and
explain using what you can see, maybe what you can see, how a
hypothesis would have happened. Now, let me just say this thought experiment takes
you to a very very dark place, and if you don't want to participate,
that's totally understandable. In the process of trying to figure out seen from
any of our cases, what might have happened or what might else have happened
that we haven't thought about and could explore more. Theory A that Sandra and
John entered the river because of Sandra, and that is how they died.
First back up, too, we know they got gas. So at what
point along the way would this intent have been formed in Sandra's mind? It
would seem strange to me that if that was your intent at your parents' house
or before that, you would go get gas, even if in her mind
she is protecting her son, which is the only way that this scenario makes
sense. That Sandra was actually protecting John from something, because remember the very
bizarre twist in this case. Before Sandra Jacobson arrived at her parents' house,
she had called police in Bismarck to report a cult activity in Center, North
Dakota, presumably not being able to trust the police in Center because they're involved
in whatever this occultish conspiracy would have been. She might be then attempting to
protect John from the impending danger of the cult. This is in Sandra's mind.
But if that was the case at any time before leaving her parents' house
to go get gas, why would you go get gas? It's not required
for the protection of John in Sandra's mind, In fact, you want to
waste no time. The priority of your child's safety would be first and foremost,
even if it's just the perceived safety of your child. And if you're
taking some kind of evasive action on a mission, as it were, to
save your son, even if it is by drowning him hypothetically, then why
would you stop for gas? My assumption then would be again, under this
scenario, this is all just thought experiment, It is all hypothetical. But
under the assumption that Sandra did drown herself and John. That intent would have
been arrived at I think after she got gas, which is kind of fascinating
by itself. Something happened that she saw outside the car, something happened inside
her brain that she felt she had to take that drastic action. It would
seem to me that that intent would have been arrived at before she parked the
car, though, because otherwise, why is she parked there? She is
not acting as a person in danger necessarily until she gets gas. What is
her frame of mind after she fills up the car with gas? Is she
looking for this spot for whatever her motivations are to save her son maybe in
her mind? Or is it a place that she sees opportunistically and decides this
is the spot, this is where I'll go. I don't see another reason
for her to have pulled the car to where it was found. So,
if we do assume that this intent of Sandra Jacobsen's under this scenario formed after
the gas, it must have been formed before she parked the car. If
it is formed before she parked the car, then she parked the car there
with the purpose of doing what she hypothetically would have done, then this is
why the door bothers me so much. In actually every scenario, but especially
this scenario, Sandra Jacobson is driving the car, we can assume, but
we also know where John is. He's not in the front based on her
items being found in the front. That's where a purse was, That's where
the receipt was. John's in one of the two back seats. How does
Sandra Jacobson remove herself from the car removed John from the car with the driver's
side door being left open. One of the things we instinctually do all of
us is closed car doors, because we have done it ten twenty thousand times.
The only exception of this would be an extreme urgency, something that requires
so much urgency that don't have time to close the door as you otherwise would.
Then, under this scenario where Sandra Jacobson is intending to harm or in
her mind maybe save John who is in the back seat, you have to
get him out of the car. This could be accomplished in basically two ways.
He can get himself out or you can get him out. So does
he open the door, get out himself and close his door? And if
so, why has not Sandra closed her door? If he was apprehensive and
reluctant to get out, and for whatever reason Sandra had to forcibly get him
out. That is the door that should be open, or both of them
should be open. In other words, Sandra parks the car, opens her
door, leaves her door open, opens his door to extract John from the
back seat. He's struggling. That's going to take up both of your hands.
You would at least find his door open because of the habitual closing the
door. He could even see a scenario where Sandra parks the car sort of
in a rush, alarming John in the back seat. She opens her door,
slams up behind her, opens his, and then her energy is focused
on extracting John from the car. So the wrong door is open. The
only other way around that is that John was in the front seat, but
her stuff is in the front seat, So why is he in the front
seat as well? He's five, He shouldn't have been running in the front
seat anyway, of course he could have been, but her stuff is in
the front seat. Maybe she said along the way, come up, sit
by mom, because this intent had been formed after the gas station, and
she's concerned and wants to keep him even closer maybe, And there are even
worse scenarios that I've imagined that might explain why only one door was opened.
For example, both doors were initially closed. Sandra's intents toward John becomes apparent
to John and it scares him, and he outruns her and tries to get
back into the car using whatever doors closest, which might be the driver's side
door. He opens it, she's able to get him away from the car.
Possibly, This to me, is the biggest lever of doubt in the
sand Ran John Jacobson case. In our season four case, that car door
being opened opens up other possibilities. That driver's side door being found open,
I think is more easily explainable with a third party being involved. Trouble is,
there's no evidence of a third party otherwise, and the door itself is
not necessarily evidence of a third party. But then you keep going, and
a third party being involved would also explain why their bodies haven't been found in
the Missouri River. One of the things we have not done yet is a
database of how many remains south downstream of that point in the Missouri have been
found, and try to see how many of those have been identified and that's
going to be over the course of basically from then until now. Obviously something
you hope police would have checked on. So there is no doubt that what
Detective Turnbull has hypothesized happened could have happened. That door bothers me a lot.
I would love your thoughts and theories on this. I'll put the email
address in these show notes for this episode. I'll put the email address in
the show notes too for anybody who might have information about this case or knows
somebody who knows somebody about this case. I want to make sure that my
contact info is available to anybody that can use it. So thank you for
listening, and we will talk again soon