One hundred twenty five years ago, a dignified man with a prominent mustache made
the second notable discovery of his unique career, as it were. The dignified
man was named Jacob Brower, and mister Brower had found a niche, a
niche for settling disputes, but unique disputes, disputes of origins, for want
of a better description. You see, there was that time, not too
terribly long ago, when we didn't know about the origins of many things.
In some respects were still in that time today, I guess, but I
digress. The origins of the day were the reins of rivers, two of
them this nation's two largest rivers, which are also among the most mighty on
the planet, the Mississippi and the Missouri. But the origins of those waters,
the places where those rivers start, are far from mighty. They are
humble. The headwaters of the mightiest raging fresh water in our land are nothing
but actually just tiny streams, And our mustached man, mister Jacob Brower,
was the first person to discover the actual headwaters of not only the Mississippi River
in Minnesota, but also the Missouri River in remote Montana. That is a
feat of naturalism that can't be equaled before or since. Brower actually traveled up
both of those waterways in his lifetime and did not stop until he reached the
literal trickling spring beneath the land, from which eventually two massive tors of millions
of gallons came. This fantastic I think that any one person did such a
thing, not once, but twice. What an amazing storyteller this mustached mister
Brower might have been. But most of those stories would have died with him
in nineteen oh five. But the rivers, which predated his existence by eons,
of course, have many stories which have yet to be told. Of
the mighty Missouri River, a man named George Fitch once said, there's only
one river with a personality, a sense of humor, and a woman's caprice.
A river that goes traveling sideways, that interferes in politics, rearranges geography,
and dabbles in real estates. A river that plays hide and seek with
you today and tomorrow, follows you around like a pet dog with a dynamite
cracker tied to its tail. That river is the Missouri River. In season
four of Frozen Truth, we will be imploring the Missouri to give up one
of her secrets, if in fact she possesses it. From the remote location
in Montana where Jacob Brower one hundred years ago discovered the actual origin of the
Missouri, we go from that points one hundred years downstream, one thousand miles
downstream into a car that was parked alongside its banks. The key to that
car was still in the ignition the possessions of the woman who owned the car.
The purse of the woman who owned the car was on the front seats,
undisturbed. But the woman had disappeared seemingly into the Missouri River, at
least it was tempting for police to believe she had. But this woman the
night before had not been alone or missing when she'd been last seen in Bismarck,
North Dakota. Her five year old son had been with her as well
as the early winter son rose over what was called the Dakota Territory when that
mighty river's birthplace had finally been found. Still missing was thirty six year old
Sandred Jacobsen and her young son John. And this is where you and I
answered the story. Welcome to season four of Frozen Truth. I'm Scott Fuller.
Obviously, we've covered three cases so far. Season four will be our
fourth, and the cases that we have covered previously all have something in common
at least one main line in common, and that is that they were nationally
known. I picked those cases because I was familiar with them before, and
I was familiar with them before because they're nationally prominent cases. A La Reynolds
disappeared right in that era of Nancy Grace and cable news covering such stories every
single night. That was right when Ala disappeared, so she got all that
national coverage. Jody Who's in true just because of the victimology who she was,
and I think the mysterious circumstances of her disappearance sessed people, and people
remain addicted to that case to this day and to a lesser degree Amy Robechtel.
And only because she disappeared in such a less populous state, the least
populous state in the country. Is her case not more prominent, probably,
But at the time that case got national media coverage, and it certainly has
since. It was not necessarily intended and in hindsight wise for me to choose
such prominent cases to investigate, especially right out of a gate with the podcast,
and one of you sent me a message on Facebook here in the last
couple of weeks, and thank you to the woman who did, because it's
been bouncing around in my head since when I a few weeks ago came on
and expressed what we wanted to accomplish with season four. I've evolved in One
of my evolutions and realizations has been that there are thousands of these cases that
practically nobody has heard of, and they are no less mysterious, They are
no less fascinating many of them, and none of them are any less tragic.
They are all worthy of investigation, arguably more so than cases which have
already been investigated. And that realization for me, not that I have regrets
about the first three seasons of this show, but that realization for me took
three years. That little story. I opened the episode with Jacob Brower.
Interesting, man, it's there is kind of a historical slide into our case
along the Missouri River, but it's there for another reason as well. At
the time that Jacob Brower discovered the actual headwaters of both of those rivers,
the Missouri and the Mississippi, already had established headwaters someone had done that job
before, and Brower challenged that, and then he proceeded to go and to
find the actual origins of both of America's mightiest rivers. He did what nobody
else had done. He just went a little bit further. Now, if
you'd take a prominent case, a case it's been covered, extensively, investigated
extensively, your pick, your top five most talked about cold cases growing up
in Colorado all used John but a Ramsey. The chances of new information in
the John but a Ramsey case being uncovered at this point, after all these
years, after all those eyes, after all that's been said and speculated,
is very long, because many people have been looking. But there are many
cases, of course, which have not been as thoroughly investigated, and again
are no less mysterious and of course no less tragic. So this show is
here as entertainment. I mean, it's here to give you something to listen
to, to become also informed by and inspired by and all that. But
if you're going to pick a case, you might as well pick one that
deserves the attention. For want of a better phrase, I'm reminded of the
Robert frost Lyne about the road less traveled by, and if there is a
difference that we can make along the way, it will be on that road
less traveled. Of course, people have heard of Sandra and John Jacobson's disappearance.
It's one of the most prominent in North Dakota. But I wonder how
many of you of her of this case, probably because it's in North Dakota.
But here's the thing, a woman in the prime of her life,
a mother and her young son, and her son who have not been seen,
heard from, discovered, uncovered since. And oh, by the way,
that was twenty five years ago. So we will travel to the heart
of the Dakotas and we will take the road less traveled in search of what
we look for on this podcast, what actually happened. There's an area of
Bismarck, which is a city that was founded along the Missouri River. It
features a series of road and rail bridges that traverse the water, sort of
one right next to another. Sandra Jacobson's nineteen ninety gray Honda Civic was found
on a Sunday in November nineteen ninety six by itself aside the river. Sandra
and her five year old son John had been last seen the night before at
Sandra's parents house in Bismarck. Sandra herself didn't live in Bismarck. She actually
lived in a town called Center, about forty five minutes away. On that
Saturday night, November sixteenth, nineteen ninety six, Sandra and John went to
visit her parents at her parents' house for dinner. At some point, Sandra
told her parents she had to go geet Gas and that was the last time
that she was seen. According to initial reports, her car was found in
an area that locals at that time called Centennial Beach on the Missouri River,
and it was found that next day, Sunday. And the car is the
first thing that draws you into this case, Such a plain, practical car
sitting silently early on a Sunday morning, just obediently waiting. The car is
open, the doors are not locked. The key Sandra's car key is still
in the ignition, and right there on the passenger scene is Sandra's purse.
The purse at first glance, appears to be untouched, and all of her
possessions still seemed to be inside of it. But of course, where is
Sandra, and almost more intriguingly, where is John? The two of them
when they were last seen were reported to have been wearing winter clothes, at
least when they left Sandra's parents' house. Sandra had been last seen wearing a
light blue sweatshirt, blue jeans, brown lace up boots, and a dark
brown down jacket. Five year old John was wearing a hunter green winter coat
with blue cuffs. And in twenty five years from then to now, no
trace of either mother or son has been confirmed. No clothes, no other
possessions, certainly no bodies. And that is a fascinating circumstance which begs about
a dozen questions. Of course what happened to Sandra and John being at the
top of the list, but also the car. How did the car get
to that spot along the river where it was found just several hours after the
two had been last seen. Is that where Sandra parked? It? Is
that where she left it? And if so, obviously what happened to them
next? Or did someone else leave the car there to be found. Sandra's
parents apparently reported her missing only hours after she was last seen later that night.
It was not initially reported what time the next day on Sunday, that
the car was found, but one of the first things investigators did is search
the river. The county dive team searched that section of the Missouri where the
car was found, from one bridge to another. According to the first newspaper
accounts, on that search, they found nothing except one reported shoe, and
there isn't much in the initial reporting about the shoe, but it must be
a child size because it was reported that there's a belief it might have belonged
to John, although apparently this was never confirmed. So in the muddy river
next to the car is found one shoe and nothing else. In November nineteen
ninety six, Bismarck police put out some details about their missing people in the
press, and within a few days there were some tips. In the meantime,
at the scene, one local detective had come up with his own theory.
Bismarck Tribune quotes police detective Tim Turnbull. This is from the Bismarck Tribune.
This particular account is several months after the disappearance itself. Bismarck Police detective
Tim Turnbull believes Jacobson walked or jumped into the river with her son that night,
because there have been no clues that she staged her disappearance or was abducted.
That's interesting. So of all the possible outcomes, So of all the
possible outcomes, that they were abducted, or that they ran off, or
something else less obvious, this detective believes the two of them entered the river
together, that they were abducted or ran off, or something less obvious.
We need to find out why this detective thought the most likely scenario was this
woman parked her car and drowned herself and her five year old son in a
river in winter at night. So we need to talk to Tim Turnbull.
Frozen Truth is a featured podcast in the Spring twenty twenty one issue of Spoken
Blossom some magazine, a publication by John's Media Collective out of Colorado. John's
mission is to cultivate community through information and inspiration. John's family of lifestyle platforms,
events, and organizations align together to ignite passion and purpose. You can
learn more at John's Mediacollective dot com, That's Jaunt Mediacollective dot com and check
out Frozen Truth in the Spring twenty twenty one issue of Spoken Blossom magazine.
I have reached out to Detective Tim Turnbull, who is now retired hoping to
hear back. But in the meantime, let's examine this apparent theory that he
has as best we can from afar, and the first step in doing that
is to gather the appropriate data. So let's get a context for what we're
talking about. Let's get a likelihood of that scenario in which Sandra and her
five year old son enter the water on their own accord that night at night,
in the dark, in November, and try to figure out how likely
that might be, just as a starting place, not as an answer for
the specific case, but just as a starting point. Apparently, more than
eight hundred people die every day from drowning. It's one of the most common
causes of death of children in fact, worldwide, especially for those children under
five. There are dozens of such cases in them the US every day as
well. There are specific high risk factors, the most high risk factors for
drowning, though don't apply to our case. For example, men are more
likely to drown than women. Access to water is another risk factor, whether
you live by a big body of water or any body of water, or
in your profession like being a fisherman, something like that, and Sandra's car
was found next to the river, but she is not high risk in that
way either. There's no flood disaster in this situation. There is no evidence
that they planned travel by boat that night. There are other risk factors that
are mentioned by the WHO that we don't know about in this case, whether
they're applicable or not, for example, alcohol use, medication use, But
it does not seem like Sandra and John were high risk for drowning. The
first time I read Detective Turnbull's theory that, granted he was coming up with
on that day, was at the time he did not have twenty five years
of hindsight on his side. But what jumped out to me, just from
my anecdotal reporting experience, is this, Let's say Sandra and John did enter
the water somehow on their own accord. Let's say there was no crime committed
there, and the two of them drowned twenty five years later, where are
the bodies? I mean, that was my first thought. The depth of
the Missouri River changes all the time, and it's different everywhere, but at
Bismarck, as a rule of thumb, it's about ten feet deep there and
pretty strong currents. It is a dangerous body of water, there is no
question. But after so long, it seems to me like the bodies would
have turned up by now, And that's a dicey assumption. We can't make
it because it's a very important assumption to make. We can't just write off
drowning and go off chasing other theories in this case, just because we think
the bodies should have turned up by now, and when you're trying to prove
that assumption using probability, it's actually a statistical dilemma that we have here because
we don't know and have no way of knowing, how many bodies of drowning
victims are simply not found ever because they have never been found. It's a
paradox. Maybe almost every drowning victim is eventually found, maybe a good percentage
of them are actually never found their bodies. It's been, again my anecdotal
experience, that drowning victims and rivers especially are found within usually a few days,
a few weeks. I'm even aware of a case here locally where it
took eighteen months to find the body in a smaller river here than the Missouri,
but twenty five years on a river that is well used commercially. It
is well recreated on for most of the year, So we can't quantify how
likely that theory is that Sandra and John's bodies are still somewhere in the Missouri
River and just haven't been discovered in two and a half decades. We need
to proceed with an open mind, but it seems so unlikely. And on
top of all of that, I mean, there's just basic common sense.
The Missouri River is a dangerous river. A surprising number of people people die
in it every year, but most of those deaths occur in the summer.
So I went back between nineteen ninety and two thousand and I for every drowning
case at that point in the Missouri River at Bismarck that I could find,
and I found several, but every one I found during that ten year period
where between the months of May and September. And one woman who died actually
ironically three weeks before Sandra and John were last seen, she drowned on the
Missouri River as well. In this case, it's dark, it's winter,
it's November. The temperature in Bismarck, North Dakota, at ten pm on
November sixteenth, nineteen ninety six was fourteen degrees with a twenty to twenty five
mile one hour wind, and that puts the windshill below zero four below windschill.
What are they doing out there? If they drown? If you're wondering,
maybe they wandered out onto the ice for some reason that I can't imagine.
But the Missouri River does not typically totally freeze over a space. Actually,
early in the winter, if it's cold enough for long enough, a
river like that will freeze and form ice jams. But high temperatures in the
week leading up to this disappearance in November were in the twenties, mid twenties,
upper twenties. It was not cold enough to have frozen the Missouri.
There would have been some ice, maybe even a lot of ice on the
river, but it would not have been totally frozen over. There would have
been some open water at this point. Obviously, we'll try to find as
many people as we can who are more familiar with the scene from that day
in nineteen ninety six. But right now I'm left with a question. Actually,
I guess it's more of a statement that nobody in their right mind is
getting into that water under any circumstances on their own, especially with their young
child under those conditions, and nobody in their right mind is a figure of
speech. But we can also turn it into a question because it turns out
earlier that night, the night that she disappeared with her son, Sandra Jacobson
called the police and what she told them would lead the investigation in an entirely
different direction. Thank you for listening to season four, episode one of Frozen
Truth. It is good to be back. Thank you also to our Patreon
supporters for making this show possible. On location productions like this one deep dives
that go to the place and talk to the people, It is just more
expensive. And season four again simply would not be possible without our Patreon supporters,
and there are great benefits to being a member early shows, early access,
commercial free access, and also exclusive content that you won't hear in the
main show. You can visit patreon dot com slash Frozen Truth to become a
supporter. Find the link in the show notes. Frozen Truth is written,
edited and produced by me Scott Fuller. I'll also put my email address in
the show notes for anyone who wants to reach out to me about this case.
Please do if you have any information about this case. Please contact the
North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation at seven oh one three to eight five five
zero zero or the Bismarck Police Department at seven oh one two two three one
two one two episodes of Frozen Truth this season will not be released on a
regular schedule, but episode two is planned for release on Wednesday, March seventeenth,
happens to be Saint Patrick's Day. So I'll talk to you then,
Patreon supporters, sooner than that, and thank you for listening.