Previously on season four of Frozen Truth, a young mother and her son disappear
seemingly into the raging Missouri River at Bismarck, North Dakota on a Saturday night
in November nineteen ninety six. Sandra Jacobson had taken her youngest son to her
parents' house for the evening, but it had taken them much longer than the
forty five minutes from their home in Center, North Dakota to arrive at the
child's grandparents in Bismarck, and along the way. We've learned from the lead
detective on her case at the time that Sandra Jacobson called the Bismarck Police Department.
According to the detective, Sandra was reporting some kind of occult activity in
Center. When Sandra and five year old John finally did arrive at her parents,
Sandra seemed to be in somewhat of a frantic state, according to accounts
from her parents, who are now both deceased. Sandra insisted that before the
visit continued, she needed to go get gas for her vehicle. Her parents
reluctantly allowed her to go, but only if Sandra agreed that they could take
her to a doctor immediately. Afterwards. Sandra's car was found the next morning
on the banks of the Missouri, and there has not been a confirmed sighting
of either mother or young son since they remain missing and their case is still
unresolved. This is Frozen Truth, Season four, Episode four. I'm Scott
Fuller. We've introduced some aspects of Sandra that will be hard for many of
us to relate to. One of my jobs in this season is to mitigate
some of that by bringing you as complete an understanding of Sandra Jacobson as is
possible now. Following episode three, I received emails from numerous mental health experts
and people who otherwise work in the field who are very intrigued by Sandra's medical
history. As am I, some of that information may be impossible for us
to acquire, especially now, but at the very least, my job is
to give the tools that we need for empathy for perhaps a troubled person in
Sandra that we may not otherwise have. Crazy being the pejorative word here,
The problem the majority of the population seems to have with crazy is threefold.
A many of us, myself included here, don't understand mental illness and may
not have personal experience with it, even those who have some experience with it
in their lives. In fact, nobody understands the human minds completely, and
that makes it difficult to associate with or empathize with people who are mentally ill.
B When a person suffering from mental illness commits a crime, let's say
it provides for the rest of us an easy explanation. How often have we
heard that person just snapped? None of us cope with avoid in explanation very
well. That much about our brains is known. Humans require explanation. It's
a biological imperative that's been handed down to us from eons. Our brain constantly
is trying to determine in an instant what just happened, in order for it
to determine for us whether or not something is a danger to our own selves.
Perhaps every single serial killer is mentally ill to some degree, but our
explanation society's rationale is simple, they're just crazy. For many of us,
mental illness may as well be deep outer space. Maybe we don't want to
understand it completely because that knowledge, the perspective that would be gained from that
knowledge, would bring fear and a sense of helplessness, and humans avoid both
of those things at all opportunities. And see Finally, there are those who
suffer from mental illness or love someone who do, and while they may have
personal experience and thus perhaps a better understanding than most, the subject is of
such a personal pain and significance for that person that even for them sometimes it's
avoided out of emotional protection. Detective Tim Turnbull, the lead on the Sandra
and John Jacobson disappearance for the Bismarck Police Department, now retired, who we
spoke to in episodes two and three of this season, believes that Sandra led
or forced her five year old son into the water that night and the two
of them drowned. And he may be right at the moment there is no
evidence to the contrary. But in taking on this case, I'm taking on
the responsibility of becoming essentially the first reporter to cover this case in any depth.
So my obligations beyond those I have to you as a listener, which
I take seriously, but there are, you might say, greater obligations of
mine in taking on this case. They are to Sandra and her baby boy,
John in equal parts, and as the parent of now seven and four
year old children, of my own. I can understand that finding out what
happened to Sandra and John and their missing person's case may not be enough.
Wouldn't be enough if indeed, Detective Turnbull has been right all along, there
is an essential nuance that we must do our best to uncover and explain over
the next six months of this season, because if indeed a mother drowned her
child and herself in that way on that night, it could not have been
out of lack of love for him. It should not be explained away so
simply as she snapped, how could a mother do that to a child she
loved? I understand it's counterintuitive, but I'm certain it's the truth. I
am certain that Sandra Jacobson loved her boy John, and so we have two
mysteries running parallel paths in this story. Now, what happened to Sandra and
John maybe just the water's surface in this case, Why it happened, maybe
the silence undercurrents Below in a rough outline of twenty episodes that were planned for
season four, to be released over ten months of this year. I won't
say I was necessarily planning this one, although I was somewhat anticipating it.
I've received many emails about this case already, which is good. So far,
nobody who has reached out to me has heard of this case before,
which is even better. One email so far, just one, asked the
question, basically, what about the cult? What if Sandra actually saw something?
Obviously a thought I'd had before two, even if it goes against my
better instincts. I've been thinking about something lately that's been bothering me, the
prioritization of victims in our society, through the media and even through law enforcement
and the judicial system. Sometimes that's a fact that might be unavoidable, and
I'm not on a crusade along those lines, but it's tragically depressing. Nonetheless,
maybe especially from my perspective. I've worked in media for all sized companies
for my entire career. If I've ever been naive about anything in this business,
cynical though I might be by nature like most reporters, which by the
way, is not a virtue I'm entirely proud of. But if ever I've
been naive about something, it's when I came to understand that facts don't get
ratings or listeners or sell newspapers. Fear is what works as an example,
if Sandra and John Jacobson had been abducted from a ten thousand square foot home
in bel Air, California, you'd all know their names, but they didn't.
They disappeared in a river in North Dakota. On top of that,
Sandra may have been suffering from mental illness, so you haven't heard their names.
I'm sad to say that's just the way that works. Empathy for Sandra
Jacobsen and her son demands that we take her seriously. She may or may
not have been able to provide useful information to us about her eventual disappearance if
she was in an altered state of mind before she disappeared, But we shouldn't
assume that what she believed to be real wasn't real to her. And whatever
is real to Sandra Jacobson, whether it's real or not, has to be
a part of our full understanding of her disappearance. So it's not that I
watch a lot of TV, and I don't watch all the true crime shows
or the documentaries, but I do enjoy specific subgenre. Some people unwind with
sitcoms or reality shows. I like investigative true crime with an element of mystery.
That's my thing. And recently I was watching the new Netflix stock that
was just released, Sons of Sam. I already know enough about the case
and the murders and David Berkowitz, but this documentary sucked me in because it
only starts there. The rest of it is about a reporter who spent his
life pursuing a theory that David Berkowitz did not act alone in the Son of
Sam killings, and so it was compelling enough. I got through a couple
episodes. In episode three, the nineteen seventy four murder of Arliss Perry is
brought up. Arlis was a nineteen year old woman who was murdered inside a
church in California in what might be called a ritualistic fashion. Her death was
originally determined to be a suicide. But if it was, it's the only
suicide by pickaxe to the back of the head I've ever heard of. And
oh, by the way, the handle of the axe was broken and missing.
Yeah, suicide anyway. I was just passively watching this while doing other
things. I wasn't even really watching, I wasn't even looking at the screen,
And as the show was discussing Arliss Perry's murder in more detail from across
the room, I thought I heard this. There had been a rumor in
Bismarck shortly after Arles had died. There was allegedly occult there, and she
had gone with a friend to try to convert these people to Christianity. Wait
a minute. When you cover cases like I do for Frozen Truth, you
live with every moment of the day. That's not to say I think about
them every second, but they're always there, and so I'm doing the math.
This documentary talks about the son of Sam murders. That's in the early
eighties. Arles Perry was killed in seventy four. The Jacobsen's disappeared twenty years
after that. So it's not related to my case, right, but it
might lead to one thing. So I rewound. There were a lot of
mysterious things happening in North Dakota. Christally are on my Not Air Force Base.
There had been a rumor in Bismarck shortly after Arles had died. There
was an allegedly the original occult there, and she had gone with a friend
to try to convert these people to Christianity. There was speculation that she was
somehow with their church was meeting with these people to try to bring them along,
and maybe she saw something that they didn't want her to know, a
box. But without any specific information, where were we to go with it?
You know? Arles Perry was from Linton, North Dakota, south of
Bismarck, and apparently had recently returned to Bismarck in mid seventies to confront and
convert cult members. This doesn't necessarily mean that a cult existed in Bismarck then,
let alone twenty years later, when Sandra Jacobson called the police to report
a cult the night she disappeared. It's a coincidence. And I know a
rabbit hole when I see one, But I'm going in anyway. That's coming
up next. In nineteen eighty a man named Lawrence Pastor wrote a book called
Michelle Remembers. Pastor was a psychologist in Canada who eventually married one of his
patients, and his book was one of the most influential and unfortunate in modern
American culture. Michelle Remembers as about one of his patients, a girl he
was treating in nineteen seventy six, Michelle Smith, as she's called in the
book, who had suffered a miscarriage, which left her extremely depressed. She
told Pastor that she felt she had something important to divulge to him, but
couldn't remember what it was. Eventually, through hypnosis and let's say controversial regressive
memory methods, Michelle Smith recounted a story the detailed satanic ritual abuse that allegedly
occurred in the nineteen fifties when Smith was five years old, at the hands
of her mother. It was the first book on the topic of what we
now call satanic ritual abuse. In fact, the book coined the term,
and Pastor was instantly considered an expert on the subject. The public reacted to
Pastor's book with fascination and horror. But more importantly, the public believed every
word of the book and eventually extrapolated those few therapy sessions from one troubled patient
into every unresolved act of evil in society, a phenomenon that since has been
referred to as the satanic panic. But if Laurence Pastor lit the match,
the US media fanned the flames. The public couldn't get enough. The most
disturbing an increase in teenage homicides and suicides with ritualistic or Satanic overtones, animal
sacrifices, birds, dogs, church desecrations and burglaries, chalicis stolen. They
use them to drink the blood of their sacrifices. Do you still believe in
Satan? Yeah? Agan come into you and make you do wicked stuff and
weird things like that, like, for instance, hurt people, hurt your
family. Television specials covering Satanism the eighties would pull unbelievable ratings. One nineteen
eighty eight, Geraldo rivera hour long show called Devil Worship, exposing Satan's underground,
pulled a thirty share. That means of all the TVs turned on in
America on that night, almost a third of them were tuned to Satanic panic.
That's a ratings number that would rival broadcasts of the Super Bowl today.
Maybe the culminating effect of Satanic panic came in nineteen eighty three, the mother
of a young child who attended a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, reported
that her child had suffered ritual abuse at the hands of her strange husband and
a teacher at the preschool. Questioning of that students and other students revealed other
sordid details which were as disparate and different as they were outrageous. There were
claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and of children being flushed down
toilets into secret rooms where they would be abused and then cleaned up and presented
back to their parents, and the public drank it in horrified. After all,
the details were so specific. Surely nobody could make something like that up,
right, except maybe a child. The children in the McMartin preschool case,
we're not lying about their experiences out of any nefarious reason. The information
that they given had been in response to leading questions by counselors and investigators,
and some of those children became afflicted with what's now termed false memory syndrome.
It's a belief in something that did not happen that's as strong and real as
a memory of something that did happen. The McMartin preschool case led to several
trials that eventually led to acquittals and dismissals, but the damage had been done
Inevitably. Parents from across the country reported similar instance of abuse at the hands
of daycare providers to their local authorities, and this is important to remember to
police seeking to solve bazaar are crimes in their communities believed in the Satanic panic.
Many of them. The media, too, apart from the ratings that
these kind of stories would get, also believed in this phenomena. In large
part, journalists won Pulitzer Prizes for this work in the eighties. The New
York Times in nineteen eighty eight speculated quote hundreds of children might have been molested
and subjected to Satanic rituals in the McMartin preschool case alone. There has always
been a discontented counterculture in American society. It's manifested itself in anti war movements,
free love, even the gay rights movement, and astrology. The occult,
in a similar but different way in the nineteen eighties and nineties was a
home for those who didn't fit in well anywhere else. It appealed to people
who were seeking a place to belong in a time in America when mainstream Christianity
was still much more mainstream in society, Satan was the culture to mainstream Christianity,
just as in the fifties and sixties, drugs free love were counterculture to
a Rockwellian Americana of the nineteen forties and fifties, to understand how the entire
society lost its mind for ten years and saw blood drinking, animal sacrificing sons
and daughters of Lucifer behind every nefarious act in their neighborhood. Understand what we
did not understand about the key aspects involved criminology. At the start of the
Satanic Panic. The FBI barely knew what a serial killer was law enforcement,
God help you for a local sheriff's deputy searched your bedroom and found a pentagram
on the wall. Case closed. For more on that, see the case
of the West Memphis three. Also mental illness and the treatment of it.
Not to mention how the religious backlash to alleged widespread Satanism of the moment treated
the issue. Church leaders everywhere were let's just say not, disincentivized from preaching
a fear and a wariness to their congregations in the heartland. You need Jesus
now more than ever. Those are all factors in the facts of what we
now call this Satanic panic. But as I said, facts don't sell papers.
Fear does. And in one sense, you can't blame the public.
You're getting it from your law enforcement. You're getting it from your city officials,
you're getting it from the television, you're getting it from your pastor how
can't it be true? But it is a little darker than that. Child
abuse has always happened. Deranged killers have always existed, probably even more so
then than now, as we've since gained understanding of how to identify these few
dangerous people earlier on before they spend a whole adult lifetime ruining lives. The
evolution of our understanding behind these crimes within the human mind has progressed along side
of it, and the counterculture that attracts disaffected teenagers mostly also appeals to very
adult and very bad people. So the Satanic panic was just that, a
panic, But like every scary story, there was an element of truth to
it. Hiding inside that fever of American society in the nineteen eighties were surely
more than a few legitimate monsters along those lines. Rumors are mostly false,
which means they're somewhat true. It seems that rumors of the occultant of all
places in America, Bismarck, North Dakota, had persisted for decades at the
time of Sandra and John Jacobson's disappearance. These rumors like every rumor were mostly
baseless, it would seem, but as you heard the man say, there
were some strange things going on in North Dakota at the time. These are
the local rumors, as paneled by the Bismarck Tribune. In nineteen eighty nine,
a feature appeared quoting the perspective of random men and women, from waitresses
to dairy farmers. Here's what the locals we're saying. Quote. I have
heard it is a problem, especially in the southeast part of the States.
The Satanists have a house there that's all painted up weird. I've heard a
lot of rumors. Satanism is bad, and it is a problem. The
burden for making sure that kids don't get mixed up in it is on the
parents. If they do a good job in directing their kids in religion,
then there shouldn't be a problem. One sixteen year old put it like this,
Yes, it is a problem. People and animals are getting killed because
of it. I don't believe in it, but I know it's out there.
Satanism is a bunch of garbage, that's what it is. I've heard
about it being around here. It's not something to play around with. And
from a fifty year old female accountant. I believe it exists, and I'm
sure it's here. I personally haven't had any contact with it, but what
I hear from the rumors on the street, I believe it is here.
I'm not sure if Satanism is a problem or not. Dickinson, North Dakota.
In nineteen eighty eight, a local pastor lobbies state lawmakers to investigate Satanism
after rumors of a so called blood city scene circulate from a rural town.
Telephone poles are said to be somehow turned upside down, and a quote very
dead dog is supposedly found nearby. Bismarck, North Dakota. Nineteen eighty nine,
a local group organized to stop Satanism holds its first regular public meeting at
the Ramada Inn, Bismarck, North Dakota. Nineteen ninety, A thirty year
old man is arrested for rape following an alleged attackable woman outside of town.
The female victim tells police through a priest that persons or demons unknown entered her
home, attacked her, and then punched holes in the wall of her home
and drew upside down crosses and pentagrams all over the house. Devil's Lake,
North Dakota, nineteen ninety one, the school board of Devil's Lake High School
moves to change the nickname of their sports teams. They will no longer be
called the Devil's Lake Satan's Bismarck, North Dakota, nineteen ninety three. Parents
of students in the Bismarck School district calls school officials in mass demanding they address
issues of Satanism in the classroom after one student questions a passage of the Crucible
in class. The same year, a teacher at the high school is accused
of and eventually fired, four inappropriate conduct with the students. The public blames
Satanism, among other things. Wappat in North Dakota nineteen ninety four, a
fifteen year old girl is found in her room dead by hanging. The girl's
dolls had similarly been hung next to her. One of the girl's friends tells
police quote all witches die by hanging. Bismarck, North Dakota. In nineteen
ninety eight, two years after the disappearance of Sandra and John Jacobson, a
support group called Parents Rock is formed. Rock is an acronym for reclaiming our
community's kids. The group supports bettering children through quote everything from sexuality to satanism,
to gain activity to tough love. I could go on, but this
timeline shows that Satanism or rumors of Satanism, was very much an undercurrent in
Bismarck, not just in the nineteen eighties, but also in the nineteen nineties,
in the years leading up to Sandra and John Jacobson's disappearance, and even
after. Bismarck, North Dakota in the nineties was the sort of community whose
local paper featured its own pull out faith section. On Halloween nineteen ninety six,
just a few weeks before Sandra and John disappeared, a story appeared on
the front page of the Faith section of the Bismarck Tribune. The story was
about a safe and family friendly Halloween party being offered by a local church.
One of the organizers is quoted in the article, we have to be careful
as believers not to lump all Halloween participants together. The bulk of people aren't
aware that Satanism exists and that Halloween nights inevitably end with the reports of both
human and animal sacrifices around the country. That was the tenor of the community
in Bismarck, North Dakota, at least to a degree at the very time
that Sandra Jacobson called the police to report satanic activity and Center and then disappeared.
It has been reported that violent Satanic cults existed in Bismarck as early as
the mid seventies, but if they did, none of their exploits appeared in
the local news at that time. We may have not yet and may never
be able to get to the bottom of specifically why Sandra Jacobson called the police
to report that ongoing occult activity in Center, North Dakota a few hours before
she disappeared. But we have determined this much. Whereas in the rest of
the country the Satanic panic mostly came and went in the nineties, in Bismarck,
North Dakota, it arrived early and it stayed. The Bismarck Catholic Diocese
reportedly began employing an exorcist in twenty eleven. Thank you for listening to this
episode of the Frozen Truth podcast. To steal a line from one of my
favorite podcasters of the moment, Tyler Mayhan Co is his name. The only
thing I'll ask you to do to help out our season is to share it
with one person individually, email them about it, private message them about it,
show them how to down mode it. That will go a lot further
in raising awareness for the case we're covering in season four than even posting it
to hundreds of people would be. I think. If you're looking for more,
please consider supporting Frozen Truth on Patreon as well. You'll get access to
all sorts of behind the scenes info and commentary from me. For example,
this case, the Sandra and John Jacobson case, was not the original case
I had chosen for season four. I'd actually started work on a different case,
and our Patreon supporters sort of walked with me through that journey. Eventually,
I did choose this case, obviously, and that was the right choice.
But it so happens that this week there was an arrest in that other
case that I eventually chose not to cover. So if you want to catch
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our cases, you can support us monetarily at patreon dot com slash frozen truth,
or you can just google Patreon frozen truth and you'll find it and to
those who can't or don't want to support monetarily. That's perfectly fine with me
too. I'm just glad you're here. This case hasn't been covered like it
should have been, and it's not simple easy to break grounds on something that
nobody else has covered, but that's what we're doing, and just by listening
or supporting that effort. Thank you for your patience with the episode releases as
our investigation continues, and for telling friend about this season. If you have
any information about the disappearance of Sandra and John Jacobson from Bismarck, North Dakota
in November nineteen ninety six, please contact the State Bureau of Criminal Investigation or
the Bismarck Police Department. Frozen Truth is written, edited, and otherwise produced
by Scott Fuller. Thank you for listening.