Speaker 1: Few things are more devastating than a loved one going missing.
Speaker 1: On The Vanished podcast from Wondery Post, Marissa Jones tells
Speaker 1: stories of missing persons that have gone overlooked by mainstream media.
Speaker 1: She gets the story from friends and family of the
Speaker 1: missing person and frequently talks with law enforcement and others
Speaker 1: close to the case. Marissa wants to help families find
Speaker 1: their vanished loved ones or a sense of peace. In
Speaker 1: a recent episode of The Vanished, Marissa looks into the
Speaker 1: disappearance of James Foster Chance. The forty eight year old
Speaker 1: man from Texas went missing in March of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: last seen by his neighbors cleaning up after a storm.
Speaker 1: Devastated and without any leads, James family began searching for him,
Speaker 1: but in their search, they began uncovering clues that James
Speaker 1: was not the man they thought he was, and worse,
Speaker 1: that he may have disappeared on purpose. You're about to
Speaker 1: hear a preview of The Vanished while you're listening. Follow
Speaker 1: The Vanished on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Listen ad free by joining Wondery Plus
Speaker 1: in the Wondery app.
Speaker 2: Every neighborhood has its share of mysteries. We can live
Speaker 2: our entire lives and barely know the people just one
Speaker 2: door down. I have a summerhouse in Southampton, a couple
Speaker 2: of hours outside of New York. This part of the
Speaker 2: Hamptons is called the Bayside. It's quiet, peaceful, a place
Speaker 2: to escape from the city in the hot summer months.
Speaker 2: Sampson and Jackie Guillot have a house on the same
Speaker 2: street as me.
Speaker 3: My name is Jacqueline Guillot and we're married thirty five years.
Speaker 4: We're married fifty two years.
Speaker 2: Coming here since the eighties. Most of the houses on
Speaker 2: our street are single story with wooden clappered fronts. But
Speaker 2: there's one house on the street that stands out for starters.
Speaker 2: It's just bigger than most of the other houses. It's
Speaker 2: two stories instead of one, and it's the only one
Speaker 2: on the street with a separate guesthouse out back. And
Speaker 2: then there's the way it looks.
Speaker 3: The house is spectacular, with windows and windows and windows.
Speaker 2: Everything about it is over the top.
Speaker 3: There's a pond with goldfish, lots of fish, and a
Speaker 3: waterfall to the pond too.
Speaker 2: It's bigger, bolder, brasher than anything else on the street.
Speaker 2: In twenty ten, my wife Dawn and I bought the
Speaker 2: house next door. It wasn't long before a man popped
Speaker 2: over to our house to introduce himself. He was dressed
Speaker 2: like a maintenance man, green khaki pants, a long sleeve
Speaker 2: workshire and a faded baseball cap. He welcomed us to
Speaker 2: the neighborhood, and then he handed us a folder of
Speaker 2: press clippings.
Speaker 5: I literally just took them and said thank you. But
Speaker 5: he wanted us to have them, you know, he really
Speaker 5: wanted Joe.
Speaker 4: To have him.
Speaker 2: There were articles that a psychiatrist, doctor Isaac Hirshkoff, had written,
Speaker 2: and articles that had been written about him. In mid August,
Speaker 2: an invitation arrived to a summer barbecue next door, hosted
Speaker 2: by doctor Hirshkoff Ike. This would be the last of
Speaker 2: three big summer parties he threw every year. It was
Speaker 2: a warm afternoon. I chatted with a few people, sipped
Speaker 2: on my glass of wine, and began to wander around.
Speaker 2: At some point I found myself in the living room.
Speaker 2: There was a fake giraft, bust, Venetian masks, plastic parrots
Speaker 2: hanging from the ceiling, even a giant gong. But what
Speaker 2: struck me most with the photographs, lots and lots of photographs,
Speaker 2: and in nearly every one of them there was ice
Speaker 2: Kershkoff with a different celebrity, ike with Henry Kissinger, ike
Speaker 2: with Ellie Wizzell, ike with Brookshields, ike with Gwyneth Paltrow,
Speaker 2: even ike with OJ Simpson. It was like one of
Speaker 2: those diners where the walls are covered with pictures of
Speaker 2: celebrity patrons. At that moment, the man himself appeared. He
Speaker 2: greeted me like a long lost friend, and said that
Speaker 2: my wife and I should come over soon for a drink,
Speaker 2: and then he was gone. Sure enough, a few days
Speaker 2: after the summer party, the same maintenance man we'd met
Speaker 2: before showed up at our door again. This time he
Speaker 2: brought an invitation for drinks. It was very formal, as
Speaker 2: if he was reading from a script. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: doctor Hirshkoff, want you to come over right at such
Speaker 2: at such a time, on such and such a day.
Speaker 5: The formality of it blew me away, and he was very,
Speaker 5: very exacting.
Speaker 4: About how it had to go.
Speaker 2: So we went.
Speaker 4: Rangeous evenings I've ever had in the Hamptons.
Speaker 2: Or anywhere else for that matter, but definitely the Hamptons.
Speaker 2: Ike and his wife Becky welcomed us in and ushered
Speaker 2: us to a round kitchen table. There were snacks laid out,
Speaker 2: carrots and celery. I served white wine.
Speaker 6: So what I remember is him talking incessantly about being
Speaker 6: a sex therapist and a celebrity therapist. And I can't
Speaker 6: remember the details, but it just really sticks in my
Speaker 6: mind that he kept going on and on about that.
Speaker 6: It was more like a monologue than a dialogue. That's
Speaker 6: what I remember. What do you remember?
Speaker 4: I just remember thinking, these people are I felt suffocated.
Speaker 2: I talked about his work.
Speaker 4: I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 5: But I remember thinking he was very brazen about the
Speaker 5: details of his life, considering we were strangers, and also
Speaker 5: considering what he does. He did talk about an NBA
Speaker 5: sports guys and yeah, a Yankees player.
Speaker 4: I just thought he lacked a lot of discretion given.
Speaker 2: His feel We listened politely as he went on and on.
Speaker 4: I just remember looking towards the door.
Speaker 2: Finally, after about an hour, I said we needed to
Speaker 2: get home.
Speaker 5: And we got up to leave, and it was very
Speaker 5: clear that I wanted a photograph.
Speaker 2: A photograph of me.
Speaker 5: I think he came out instead, Well, we'd like to
Speaker 5: get a picture of you, and it was just Joe.
Speaker 5: It wasn't Joe and I.
Speaker 2: So I let I take my picture, hit it to
Speaker 2: his wall, and then we left as fast as we could.
Speaker 5: I remember getting to her home, collapsing on a couch
Speaker 5: or something.
Speaker 2: Dawn told me she never wanted to go back. There
Speaker 2: was no sign of the maintenance man the night Dawn
Speaker 2: and I went over, but I knew he was still around.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we'd be on our deck and we'd see him
Speaker 2: outside working in the yard. When I returned to the
Speaker 2: Hamptons the following summer, I noticed something strange at the
Speaker 2: house next door. I would see the maintenance man out
Speaker 2: on the property doing his usual work in the backyard,
Speaker 2: but Ike Hershkoff was gone. I would never see him,
Speaker 2: or his wife, Becky, and the Hamptons again. There were
Speaker 2: no more summer parties. It was as if they had
Speaker 2: simply disappeared. And that's when I learned that everything I
Speaker 2: had thought i'd known about my neighbor was wrong.
Speaker 4: It's a wild story.
Speaker 2: That's the maintenance man, the guy who came to our
Speaker 2: door with the press clippings, The guy we saw working
Speaker 2: around the yard. That was Marty Markowitz, the same guy
Speaker 2: who had first gone to see doctor Isaac Hirshkoff as
Speaker 2: a patient nearly thirty years earlier