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She Tied a Shoe-and Counted Heartbeats to Escape Kidnapper · Missing person stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: A pink canvas sneaker, size 6, standing upright in the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: mud beneath a pedestrian bridge. That detail alone stopped Rebecca
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Williams cold at 7.43 in the morning on August 14th, 2019.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: The shoe was not lying on its side. It was
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: not wedged against a root. It was balanced, deliberate, pointing
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: straight up and attached to it 12 feet above in
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the drainage grate was a cord pulled taut and a
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: folded note written in dried mustard. That note would end
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: a six-day search. It would put a man in handcuffs
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: before noon. And it would reveal that Lisa Ward, 48
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: years old, had been engineering her own rescue from inside
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a windowless room, counting heartbeats in the dark to decode
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: a generator's timing, working a shoelace, through a floor drain
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: for two hours while her wrist bled. She had nothing
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: but time, one sneaker and a packet of mustard. To
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: understand what Lisa Ward built in that room, it helps
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: to understand who she was in the world outside it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: She had lived in Palmore, Ohio for 22 years. Her
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: apartment on Almeiden Avenue was modest, organized, the kind of
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: place where the TV remote had a designated spot. She
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: worked as a purchasing coordinator for a hospital supply company,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: a job that required her to track inventory across multiple vendors,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: catch discrepancies before they became problems, and hold timelines together
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: under pressure. Her colleagues described her as methodical. That word
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: would come back later. Every Thursday, without exception, Lisa drove
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to Sutter Heights to visit her aunt, Patricia Owens, 71
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: years old, who had suffered a mild stroke in February
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of 2019. Lisa brought Thai food from Broad Mill Avenue.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: She stayed until Patricia was settled. She always left between
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: 9 and 9.30 in the evening. It was a routine
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: built on care. It was also, as Detective Megan Osborne
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of the Palmore Police Department would later note, a routine
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: that could be observed and timed from the outside. On
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the evening of Thursday, August 8th, 2019, Lisa stayed a
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: few minutes later than usual. The battery in Patricia's television
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: remote had died, and Lisa replaced it before she left.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: A small thing. She stepped out of her aunt's front
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: door at approximately 8.50 in the evening and walked to
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: her silver hatchback, the one with the cracked driver's side mirror.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Parked on the street, the rear right tire was flat.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: She crouched down to look at it. A retired mail
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: carrier named Walter Inge was walking his dog nearby and
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: noticed her kneeling beside the car. That was the last
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: confirmed independent sighting of Lisa Ward. At 8.54 that evening,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: her cell phone pinged a tower two blocks from Patricia's house.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: After that, the phone went silent. It was never found.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Patricia Owens called Lisa's workplace the next morning when her
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: texts went unanswered. When the office confirmed Lisa had not
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: come in, Patricia called the Palmore Police Department. The report
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: reached Detective Megan Osborne at 4.17 in the afternoon on Friday,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: August 9th. Osborne, 41 years old, had spent 11 years
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: in the department's missing persons unit. She had worked cases
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: that resolved in hours and cases that dragged for years.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: She knew the difference between a woman who leaves without
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: telling anyone and a woman who disappears mid-routine. Lisa Ward's
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: bank account had not been touched. Her cat had not
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: been fed. Her Thursday ritual had simply stopped, mid-step, on
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a darkened street in Sutter Heights. Osborne pulled the case
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: file and drove to the scene herself. What she found
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: on Kellerman Road over the next 72 hours would push
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: her to the edge of what probable cause could justify
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: and what it couldn't. But that was still days away.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Right now, all she had was a flat tire, a
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: missing woman, and a neighborhood that had lost its lights.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: The tire was the first image that didn't fit. Forensic
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: examiner Paul Abrams processed the rear right wheel on August 11th.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Road hazards follow a pattern. A nail or screw enters
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: through the tread band, the contact surface, because that is
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: where rubber meets pavement. This puncture entered through the sidewall.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Abrams described it in his report as consistent with deliberate
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: introduction of a roofing nail. He stopped short of certainty.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: His exact language was possibly deliberate, not conclusive. Possibly, that
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: single word, possibly, would define the next four days. Osborne
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: had the tire. She had Walter Inge's statement about a
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: white work van parked near the corner at approximately 8.30
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: that evening. Inge had not seen the driver. He had
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: not read a plate. In the dark, in a neighborhood
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: that had lost power at 9.03, a white van was
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: almost nothing. Almost. She also had the blackout itself. The
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Sutter Heights transformer failure had dropped the block's lights at 9.03
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and restored them in stages over the next 95 minutes.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: That timing was never challenged. What it meant was this.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Wherever Lisa Ward was taken, she was taken in the dark,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: on a street her captor had already scouted, because there
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: is something Abrams' tire report does not tell you. Two
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: months before August 8th, on approximately June 26th, a home
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: health aide named Sandra Hoyt was driving along Kellerman Road
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: when she spotted a man standing beside a white van
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: with his hazard lights on. He asked her to call
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: a roadside service. She did. She drove away. She thought
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: nothing of it. The man's name, as Andrews later confessed,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: was Kevin Andrews. He was 34 years old, a contractor
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: for a company called Bellwether Climate Services. He was not
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: broken down. He was studying the road. He was counting
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the minutes between passing cars and watching how deep the tree-lined,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: sat on either side of the property at 4418 Kellerman Road,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: a house he had been renting since March. Sandra Hoyt
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: did not take down the plate number. She did not
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: file a report. That detail will matter. Hold it. Osborne's
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: team was working outward from the Sutter Heights neighbourhood when
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: she received a new data point on August 13th. A
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: welfare check request had come in on a residence at
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: 4418 Kellerman Kellerman Road, two officers, including a patrolman named
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Chris Doyle, drove out. Andrews answered the door. He was cooperative.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: He showed them the front rooms. He said nothing unusual.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Doyle noted two things in his report and flagged them
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: to Osborne directly. First, a portable generator was running in
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: the side yard. There had been no storm, no reported outage,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: no reason for a generator on a clear August afternoon. Second,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the interior of the house carried a strong smell of bleach.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Doyle wrote both observations down. Osborne read them the same day.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: She applied for a search warrant that afternoon. The magistrate
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: on duty denied it. Probable cause, insufficient. A generator running
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: on a clear day, bleach, a possibly deliberate puncture. A
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: white van a witness had seen. It was not enough.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Not legally enough. Not yet. What broke the case open
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: did not come from Osborne's investigation. It came from inside
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the house. At 7.43 in the morning on August 14th,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: a woman named Rebecca Williams was walking the Sutter Creek
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Greenway near the Fenwick Street pedestrian bridge. She noticed something
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: in the mud below the bridge. Embankment. A pink canvas sneaker.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Size 6. Women's. It was standing upright. not lying on
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: its side. Standing, the lace was threaded upward through a
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: drainage grate, twelve feet above. Pulled taut, the lace had
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: not tangled in the grate by accident. It had been
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: guided through, coil by deliberate coil, by someone working from
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the other side, from below, in the dark. Folded into
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the mesh of that grate was a scrap of brown
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: paper bag. Written on it in dried mustard were fifteen words. K.E.N. House.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Kellerman Roar Generator. Runs 9 minute then. Stops. Lisa. Ward.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: The note had travelled approximately a quarter mile through the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: storm drain infrastructure connecting to that bridge embankment. The sneaker
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: had floated with it. Osborne received the call at 8.14.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: She was at the drainage outlet mapping the upstream path.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Before 8.45... Every pipe segment pointed back to a single
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: property on Kellerman Road, 4418. Now consider what Lisa Ward
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: had done to write those 15 words. She had been
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: held in a windowless room with a cement floor, in
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: total darkness. wrists bound to a metal shelving unit with
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: cable ties. The heat in August in an enclosed room
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: is not a metaphor. It is a physical force. She
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: had no phone, no cock, no light source. What she
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: had was her own pulse. She counted heartbeats, until she
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: could distinguish a pattern in the generator noise. The machine
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: ran for approximately nine minutes, then cut for roughly 45
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: seconds before restarting. The cut was not scheduled. It was
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: a wiring error. Andrews had connected the backup circuits without
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: isolating them from the municipal supply. When utility power returned,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the two systems fought each other and briefly tripped. Lisa
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Ward mapped that flaw in complete darkness over approximately two days.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: She did not know she was mapping it. She was surviving.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: The precision came later when she understood what the pattern meant.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: On what she estimated was her sixth morning, she heard
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the van pull away from the property. She found the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: sneaker along the wall's edge. She found the floor drain.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: She found the mustard packets on a supply shelf. She
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: worked the lace through the drain grate for close to
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: two hours. The ligature mark on her left wrist, documented
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: at the hospital four days later, was the physical record
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: of that effort. She launched the sneaker and the note
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: into the drain and waited. Picture the property at 4418
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Kellerman Road on the morning of August 14th, before the
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: warrant arrived. A house set back behind mature trees on
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: a rural county road. A generator running in the side yard.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Bleach smell so strong, two officers had noted it in
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: separate reports and somewhere in the infrastructure below the floor.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: A drainage system that had just carried a message a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: quarter mile to a pedestrian bridge. If you work backward
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: from the note alone, you reach Andrews within minutes. The
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: name is on the paper. The road is on the paper.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: The generator detail, nine minutes, then stops, matches exactly what
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Doyle had observed. From the front yard two days earlier,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Osborne did not need a theory. She needed a judge.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: She had one by 9.15 that morning. Officers entered 4418
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Kellerman Road at 11.07. They found Lisa Ward in the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: room Abrams would later describe in his physical evidence report.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: No windows, cement floor, metal shelving unit anchored to the walls.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: industrial-grade cable ties. Lisa was dehydrated, 11 pounds lighter than
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: her driver's license photo, with a raw wrist and dried
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: mustard still under her fingernails. Kevin Andrews was arrested at
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: a job site in Eastport at 11.41. He did not resist.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Now here is what the case looked like before the
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: sneaker reached that bridge. Every physical thread Osborne had built
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: over six days pointed toward a deliberate abduction. The sidewall puncture,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the van, the blackout timing, the bleach, and the generator
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: at Kellerman Road. But none of it was enough to
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: open the door. The system had stalled at probable cause,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and the only way through that door was from the inside.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Think about Sandra Hoyt stopping her car on Kellerman Road
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: in late June. Andrews standing beside his van, hazard lights blinking,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: asking a stranger to call a tow. Hoyt had helped
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: him and driven away. She had given him exactly what
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: he needed, confirmation that a stranger could park on that road,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: ask a favor, and attract no suspicion. He had been rehearsing.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: That detail, a woman who stopped to help a man
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: with a broken-down van, is the detail that carries the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: full weight of what Andrews built. He had spent months
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: selecting the locations, He had spent months watching it, and
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the one moment of apparent vulnerability on that road had
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: been a performance. What the investigation could not have known,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: and what Andrews had counted on, was that the performance
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: would be invisible. No plate, no report, no reason to
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: look twice. The flaw in that calculation was not investigative.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: It was architectural. He had run a generator through an
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: unshielded circuit, and that electrical mistake became a clock. And
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Lisa Ward, 48 years old, in the dark, with a
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: packet of mustard and a single shoe, read that clock
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and sent the answer out through the floor. There is
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: no neat theoretical alternative here. The record is complete. Andrews
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: confessed on September 7th to the puncture, the reconnaissance, the abduction,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: and something else. Something that had been sitting in a
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: locked steel cabinet in that garage for The entire time,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: officers had stood in the front yard. A wallet, a
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: set of keys, a woman's watch. Paula Henning had disappeared
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: in April 2018, 15 months before Lisa Ward was taken.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Her remains were found on September 3rd, 2019, on a
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: property where Andrews had performed HVAC maintenance, 18 miles outside Palmore.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: The cabinet in the garage was the only thing linking
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: him to her disappearance. It had been there when Doyle
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: stood in the front room and smelled the bleach. It
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: had been there when the magistrate denied the warrant. The
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: note got the door open. The cabinet was what waited
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: behind it. Detective Osborne received the call at 11.07 in
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: the morning. On August 14th, officers breached the door at
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: 418 Kellerman Road and found Lisa Ward, on the floor
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: of a converted garage, dehydrated, 11 pounds lighter than she
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: had been. Six days earlier, a ligature mark cut into
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: her left wrist. She was alive. 34 minutes later, Kevin
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Andrews was arrested at a work site in Eastport. He
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: did not resist. He was 48 years old. She was
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: 48 years old. Neither detail appears in the official record
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: as meaningful. Both are Andrews was held without bail. The
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: investigation moved quickly after that. Officers executing the search warrant
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: found the locked steel cabinet in the garage. Inside, a wallet,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a set of keys, a woman's watch. Those objects belonged
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: to Paula Henning, 29 years old, who had been missing
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: since April 2018. 15 months. Her name had never intersected
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: with Lisa Ward's case until that morning because there was
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: no reason publicly, to connect them. On September 3rd, 2019,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: investigators recovered Paula Henning's remains on a rural property 18
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: miles outside Palmore, on land where Andrews had performed HVAC maintenance.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: The forensic work confirmed what the cabinet had already suggested.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Andrews had been there before Lisa Ward. Paula Henning had
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: not survived. Andrews confessed. on September 7th. The confession was complete.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: He acknowledged puncturing the tire deliberately. He acknowledged the reconnaissance
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: visit to Kellerman Road in late June. The generator, the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: unshielded circuit, all of it. He acknowledged the abduction of
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Lisa Ward. He acknowledged the murder of Paula Henning. There
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: were no gaps in what he said. The record from
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: that point is closed. In February 2021, The court sentenced
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Kevin Andrews to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Two counts of kidnapping, one count of first-degree murder and
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: related charges. The sentence will not be revisited. The sneaker,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Lisa's pink canvas shoe, size 6, found standing upright in
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the mud beneath the Fenwick Street pedestrian bridge at 7.43
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: in the morning on August 14th, was entered into evidence.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: After sentencing, Detective Osborne coordinated its return. Lisa Ward said
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: she did not need it back, but she knew where
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: it was. That detail is not incidental. The sneaker was
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: not just the mechanism that carried the note. It was
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the object around which Lisa Ward organized her survival for
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: six days in total darkness. She could have used the
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: shoe for any number of things. She chose to make
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: it a vessel. She chose to make the cord a
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: transmission line She estimated the window, she estimated the distance,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and she was correct. The fact that she knew where
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the shoe ended up is not a statement of attachment.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: It is a statement of authorship. Lisa Ward still visits
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: her aunt Patricia on Thursdays. Patricia Owens is 71 years
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: old and lives in Sutter Heights. Lisa brings food. The
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: routine that Kevin Andrews surveilled, the pattern he used to
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: select her, The schedule he mapped over months of observation,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: that routine is still hers. She did not abandon it.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: There is something worth sitting with in that fact. Andrews
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: spent months studying the predictability of Lisa Ward's life as
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: a vulnerability. She spent six days in a room with
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: no windows turning his predictability, the generator, the circuit, the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: nine-minute cycle, into her exit. What he used against her,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: she reversed. And then she walked back into her life
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and kept the Thursday visits. Paula Henning does not have
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: that option. She was 29 years old. when she disappeared
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: in April 2018. The family waited 15 months before anyone
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: connected her name to a property on Kellerman Road. And
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: they waited longer still for remains. The cabinet in Andrews'
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: garage held her wallet, her keys, her watch, her reduced-to-inventory,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: locked in steel while Andrews went on working contracts across
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Palmore County. She was the reason the system had missed something.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: She was also the reason the confession was as complete
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: as it was. When the cabinet was opened, there was
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: no version of the truth Andrews could construct that survived it.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Both women deserved the same outcome. Only one of them
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: got it. Detective Megan Osborne worked the case from the
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: moment Patricia Owens called on the afternoon of August 9th.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Eleven years in the missing persons unit means Osborne had
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: worked cases that ended badly. She pushed the warrant request
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: on August 13th and was denied. She pushed again after
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the sneaker. The second request went through. That gap, the
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: 24 hours between a de-dyed warrant and a recovered woman,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: is the one number in this case that has no
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: clean answer. The forensic examiner's report on the tire described
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the puncture as possibly deliberate, not definitively. The record is
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: honest about what it cannot prove. The confession made the distinction, academic,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: but the word possibly is still in the file. It
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: is worth knowing that the investigation moved, as far as
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: it did, on evidence that was, at several points, technically inconclusive.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Lisa Ward was 48 years old when she was taken.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: She is still in Palmore. She still drives. The record
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: does not say whether the car is the same silver
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: hatchback with the broken side mirror. It does not need to.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: What the record says, however, is this. On the morning
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: of her sixth day in captivity, Lisa Ward heard a
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: van pull out of a driveway. She calculated the time
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: she had. She found a shoe. She wrote her name
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: in dried mustard on a torn paper bag. She threaded
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: a shoelace through a floor drain in the dark. She
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: let go. Three days later, Rebecca Williams crouched down by
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: a muddy bank under the Fenwick Street Bridge. and found
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: a pink canvas sneaker standing upright, lace-taught against a drain grate.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Twelve feet above, the note was still folded inside. That
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: is the whole of it. A woman in the dark,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: counting seconds, refusing the obvious conclusion that no one would
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: find her. Refusing it so completely that she sent the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: answer out through the floor. This show is made by Obermedia.