The Outlaw Ocean Introduces: The Jaclyn Ferland-Smith Case

Hey, RVA, Rich Mar here to say, you've got issues.

Infrastructure, like not having proper backup

for when there's going to be no water.

I think that's a very important conversation.

VPM's podcast, RVA's got issues is back.

Find us wherever you find your podcast.

This is a CBC podcast.

Costa Rica is a tiny lush country teaming with life.

A paradise where people can lose themselves in

or even disappear.

I'm David Rigen and I'm the host of someone knows something.

In this brand new season,

I travel to the coastal tourist town of Playa del Coco

where 41-year-old Canadian Jacqueline Furland Smith

suddenly vanished in 2021.

People who knew Jackie say they saw something

or heard something.

But no trace of Jacqueline to date has ever been found

and the truth about what actually happened to her

remains hidden from you under layers of rumor and fear.

Now here's the first episode.

Jackie, have a listen.

The following episode contains difficult subject matter

including references to suicide.

Please take care while listening.

It's okay.

This is my stuff here.

Yeah, thank you.

Hello, Dagi.

Hello, Dagi.

Hello, Haya.

Haya.

In here?

Yes.

Should I take my shoes off?

No, no, no, no.

I usually take off.

Okay, here?

Yes.

Okay.

Don't worry.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I lost my weight because I have two feet.

And my weight is already good.

Okay.

Yes, I'm here.

Thank you very much for meeting me here today

and I just wanted to meet you and talk about Jacqueline.

So whenever you're ready.

Thank you very much for meeting me here today

and I just wanted to meet you in person

and talk about Jacqueline.

Okay.

You're my interpreter.

No, Spanish.

In Spanish.

Okay.

Good.

The Canadian woman who did just that.

Gone with little trace.

I'm David Rigen and this is the tenth season of someone knows something.

The Jacqueline Furlin Smith case.

Episode one.

Jackie.

Okay, let's see.

I'm the youngest of three girls

and so Jackie is the male sister.

Sorry.

I'm already.

You feel fine and then you start talking and all of a sudden

it just comes out.

Sorry.

All right, let's start again.

Sure.

Yeah, we grew up in a farm in Abbott's Ferdout in Mount Leaman.

I've reached Candace at her home in the Northwestern USA.

She and her older sister Jacqueline, or Jackie as her family and friends call her,

grew up in BC's verdant lower mainland.

Jackie disappeared on August 17th, 2021, at the age of 40,

and she's never been found.

Growing up, we would play outside.

I remember playing tag and water balloons and jumping on the trampoline.

You know, we did all those outside fun things.

We all played sports, softball, Jackie ran track, played basketball, competitive sports.

Jackie, she was really fast, good runner, and she was really dedicated to that.

So she took it seriously and watched what she ate and was always really healthy

and just motivated to that.

Jackie was able to try practicing her healthy lifestyle in this tropical place she chose to move in 2019.

Several hours away by plane, Costa Rica.

What was the first communication you got or what was the first indication that you got

that there might be something up down there?

Well, my mom called me, and she said that Jackie's missing.

And I said, well, what do you mean?

You know, like, what does that mean?

So my parents went down to Coco, and then I went down probably.

I think it had been three weeks since she had gone missing with when I was there.

And it was sort of just this feeling of, what do we do?

You know, especially being a whole different country, different language, totally different system.

How do we find somebody here?

What do we do?

And how do we help?

And you just kind of feel like need to let a haystack.

Where do you even start?

Well, I kept on thinking that was possible that maybe she was wandering in the jungle somewhere and ended up perishing there.

But she wouldn't do that.

She would never go on jungle.

This is the first call of many I would do with Colleen and Gordon Smith, both on the line here from Abbotsford BC.

A farming couple in their mid 60s who raised cattle on a many acreed property.

I first came across Jackie's case while preparing for a family trip to Costa Rica to look at moths, fish, beetles, and birds, and try to focus on something that is not as KS.

Jackie went missing suddenly a Canadian in paradise and had an agonized family separated by borders and language.

So after digging into some of what was online about Jackie's disappearance, a mixture of what looked like hope and conspiracy peppered with a bit of factuality, I called and Jackie's parents were interested in me taking a closer look.

I asked them about the moment when they first heard that something was up.

Yeah, I just picked her myself on the lawn, getting the phone call and Sebastian.

He just said, Oh, Jackie, Jackie, you know, went out the night before didn't come back.

Sebastian Furland is Jackie's husband, age 48, from Quebec.

You know, right away we wondered, we thought, well, she'd never go out in the dark and I'm not take her own car.

Colleen and Gordon say it took them several days to get down to Playa del Cocoa.

They have appointments, so it took us a number of days, like five days to get things organized that love the cattle, that friend look after it and flights were at that time in August.

There's not a lot of flights going there.

A few days after arriving, they went to see detectives in Santa Cruz detectives from the OIG or OEHOTA, the Costa Rican version of the FBI.

Yeah, and I mean, we've got a fair bit of information.

Information that I'll hopefully be able to look at.

Once in Costa Rica, Colleen and Gordon stayed with Sebastian at the home he and Jackie built together, while some of the local volunteer and police searches for her were undertaken.

Sebastian Furland and Jackie were married for a year before moving to Costa Rica in 2019 together.

Before they spent time in different Canadian cities, including Calgary.

Sebastian had been a career vehicle technician in the Canadian Armed Forces from 2002 to 2019, and Jackie had trained at Simon Fraser University in Kinesiology.

Jackie and Sebastian's relationship started in Canada, but it's their time in Costa Rica I want to know more about.

A glance online shows many accusations and much innuendo swirling around the case and particularly Sebastian.

It's obvious that you look at family first, and Sebastian was with Jackie the night she disappeared from what I understand.

I do wonder if he'll speak to me.

Beautiful star-filled night.

I think the moon is quarter moon there, waning.

In the northwest of the country, close to the border with Nicaragua, I'm just about to go meet with one of the people that knew Jackie, not a best friend of Jackie's, but somebody who knew Jackie and who communicated with Jackie's husband, Sebastian, in the wake of Jackie's disappearance.

And her name is Krista.

Front, back. I'm assuming it's you.

Krista was a longtime administrator on the search for Jacquent Facebook page, and she agreed to meet me here in Playa del Coco.

She's taller and capable looking behind the wheel of her SUV. She's just come from a night out with friends and is wearing a black dress.

Well, I'm Krista Marshall, and I've been living here in Costa Rica since 2018.

We first came here for the quiet. We were both in the military, and upon our release, we were looking for some peace, and we had visited Costa Rica a couple times before, and we just knew that this was the place.

I actually met Jacquent on a couple of boat trips. I didn't remember her from the first one, but she remembered me, and then we ended up talking on the second one, and I thought she was very nice, very quiet, or all, but super nice.

She added me on Facebook, and then there was a new vegetarian vendor at the local market, so I'd sent her a picture of their menu, and I tried one of their items, and I let her know it was really good.

But we never ended up hanging out one-on-one.

So this is going up the hill to where their place is, right? This is, yeah, okay.

It is very dark here at night.

It is very dark. A two-track asphalt road trailing off into nothing, with fields and trees on both sides, not a lot of other cars at this time around 8 p.m.

I describe it as a foothill or terrace above the main town of Coco below.

There's no street lights on this particular road, which I think is leading to their house, or to what the house that Sebastian and Jackie build.

Yes.

See, there's a little guard house here, and I don't know if there's anybody in it right now.

Maybe, but I'm going to just park right here. There's people parked here all the time, so it should be very quiet.

Okay.

Christopher pulls over onto the side of the road far enough to be out of the way, next to a small concrete building she calls a guard house.

Nobody appears to be in it right now, and there's no gate or turnpike.

But I've heard that guards who were working at this very place might have seen something on the day Jackie disappeared, and I need to find them and speak to them in Spanish.

It's pitch black, but for a sodium light nearby that bathes us in a lurid tone, with insects providing what I find to be a life-affirming chorus in the background.

So the area that Jackie lived, can you just describe the area? What's it like? Is it a new development, and how far from town is it?

So it's a little remote, like it's on the mountain in between Pleistel Coco and Plei Hermosa, and there's a couple of different ways to get there.

There's the main route, and then there's a back road that goes up Kaseke Hill to the Kaseke development.

There's some beautiful houses, it's pretty open, you don't see a lot of fences.

There's quite a bit of building going on right now, but in 2021 a lot of these houses that are built now weren't up here.

Jackie and Sebastian lived in a condo for a while in Coco, but then according to Gordon, they tired of the condo life, and it was too busy with all the renters coming and going, and they wanted more space.

So in 2020 they began construction of this new place, a house in the Kaseke development.

Okay, so if we can just go buy the house and see if Sebastian's there, that would be great.

And if hopefully he is, and I'll go see him tomorrow, maybe he'll want to help try to find out where Jackie is.

That would be amazing. The number one reason I want to talk to him.

I asked Krista how she found out that Jackie had disappeared.

So I saw a post on our local chitchat group from Sebastian saying that she was missing.

What day was that?

I believe it was Tuesday or Wednesday, and he said that she had been missing for over 24 hours, I believe, at that time.

So I asked what we could do to help, and Sebastian, he ended up meeting up with me, and telling my husband, myself, the circumstances around how she went missing.

For the first year after this happened, I was kind of a mess because how can a woman just go missing?

And us put out all that effort to find her, and she's still missing.

It just doesn't compute to my brain, you know?

I don't know Sebastian really personally, you know, I spent time with him during the search, and I walked away with not the best taste in my mouth.

Because he talked a lot about her mental health.

Krista makes reference to messages that she says Sebastian showed her that were from Jackie on the day she disappeared.

Messages that he said showed she had lost it and was distressed.

Krista doesn't have any copies, but I'd like to see them for myself. Soon, I hope.

Oh, and this is the horse right here.

Oh, it's got lights on.

It sure does.

Okay, so what's the entrance that drive right there?

Yes.

Before I undertake any interview, I like to make sure I'm making the best possible approach for success.

Make the luck come to me, and knocking on a door late evening with a microphone, probably not the best good faith gesture.

So the door is accessible through the front there somehow?

Yeah, the door is right there.

Okay, yeah, all right.

All right, I'll be knocking on the door tomorrow.

Good luck.

If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed?

In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed.

But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it.

It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories.

I'm Helena Maryman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.

What did they miss the first time?

The history bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to this very special edition of Pipito Live.

Actually, a special edition is nothing but a call for help.

Now missing.

A video posted to YouTube on September 5, 2021 by a radio personality named Eve Malette.

His show called Pipito Live says its purpose is to serve the expat community and to provide a live window

on all the beauties and treasures Costa Rica has to offer.

But this episode is about Jackie.

Today, we invite Sebastian Fela to share with us his story and his emotions,

concerning the disappearance of his wives.

Sebastian Fela, thank you for according to this interview.

Your wife, Jatin Smith Fela, has now disappeared since August 17th.

Yes.

Put us into context and to what you remember and what happened.

Okay.

To make a long story short, she had issues with too much stress and things like that,

a kid that has her to have paranoia as we speak.

And she had other stuff happening also in the same day.

So that like, really stress her out.

And she started slowly to basically, like, lose it literally.

Like, I want to die and that kind of stuff.

And I tried to reason her and she just lost it on me while I was in shower.

And by the time I basically came back to myself and what the hell happened there.

And drive myself and get out of shower, she was just gone.

As an investigative artifact, this video is the same as any news item

documenting the aftermath of a disappearance or murder.

Some make a living, dissecting videos like this for any inflective tell or error.

Are the people making sense of a terrifying story that they experienced

or is something else going on?

Well, what we didn't know, Jack had a doctor in Ontario and they were there.

And the doctor said she had to get so effective disorder,

not schizophrenia, paranoia, or schizophrenia.

But mostly anger issues, highs and lows.

But she did have something, you know, right?

In 2019, Jackie was diagnosed with schizophrenia effective disorder

by a Canadian doctor, according to records.

Schizophrenia effective disorder is diagnosed in people who show a mix of

schizophrenia symptoms like hallucinations or delusions,

along with mood disorder characteristics like mania or depression.

According to the Mayo Clinic, a person with schizophrenia effective disorder

may talk about or attempt suicide.

People diagnosed with schizophrenia effective can be treated with medication

and get other supports that make life manageable.

A report dated February 14, 2019 by Dr. Antoni Basinski

of Osaga Beach, Ontario states that Jackie's schizophrenia effective disorder

is manifesting in hallucinations, paranoia, and delusions.

And goes on to say, in particular,

Jacqueline's stress levels are elevated in situations of requiring her to interact with strangers,

social interactions, and any change to a routine environment.

She does not adapt to changes to her routines

and avoids interpersonal interactions when possible.

Medications for anxiety and depression

and for schizophrenia disorders are mentioned in the documentation,

but I don't know what Jackie may or may not have been taking

at the time of her disappearance.

Medications mentioned in the documentation include

esitalopram for anxiety and depression,

and aropiprizole for schizophrenia and bipolar disorders.

Well, Jackie, she was a really high-functioning person.

You wouldn't know that to anybody around her as some of your friends thought.

She was the nicest person.

Besides her, we interviewed neighbors and they all liked Jackie.

She said hi and hi to the kids.

And she was vegetarian going to vegan and exercised every day.

She did stuff.

She had to write down what she's going to do that day,

paddle boarding, core work, bike riding,

maybe four things she'd do every day.

And then she would cook up the special vegan vegetarian food there

and she really was healthy and looked after herself.

So, well, if you knew all the stuff that she accomplished

and you can't be, well, you'll, if you're doing that.

Right?

They had all of her safety, the psychiatrist says,

she had all of her safety skills with her or whatever.

You know, so she wouldn't be going out in the dark

without her own, you know, in a dark place there.

But a healthy, active lifestyle doesn't mean

that someone isn't struggling beneath the surface.

Jackie's text messages could show a sunny demeanor.

Jackie would text her parents,

sent them photos of trees in her backyard

showing their growth was pride.

Happy birthday messages, nature shots,

lizards, butterflies, electric sunset photos.

June 10th, 2021, 820 AM.

I appreciate the good things you have done for me.

I'm also sorry for my reactions that hurt you.

Love you too.

June 20th, 2021, 1020 AM.

Happy Father's Day, have a nice day.

Hard emoji.

August 1st, 2021, 139 PM.

Hi, happy birthday to Dad.

We were busy landscaping this morning

just cooling off in the pool now.

If you have time to Skype, let me know.

August 6th, 2021, 429 PM.

We are in Drake Bay, almost at the Panama border

on the Pacific coast.

Green parrots, scarlet macaws, and two cans

were in the trees beside our patio this morning.

August 15th, 2021, 1037 AM.

The bananas, law, they were shorter than me.

Gordon replies, wow, that's unreal.

We'll be great to have the fruit from everything.

Jacqueline, yes, thumbs up emoji.

Sebastian makes claims that Jacqueline

suffered from mental illness of some sort

and paranoia, and he mentions that.

They would all point it out to be a late word.

When he worked, it was.

So, to those people who may say or think

that you have something to do with her disappearance,

what do you respond?

I would just have to say to those people,

obviously they don't know me, okay,

but I have nothing to prove to them.

They can just come here instead of complaining

and like see the airport for doing.

So, just come here and see.

Sebastian has always denied having anything to do

with Jackie's disappearance.

So, Jacqueline speaks English.

So, if by any chance Jacqueline would see this video,

it's about saying what would you like to tell her now?

I would like to tell her that I just want her to be happy, okay?

And if being happy for her like is not with me, okay,

it's fine.

I think that's the definition of love right there.

The rough notion so far is that Jackie left her house

on her own at night and didn't return.

If Jackie just left when Sebastian was showering like he says,

it apparently wouldn't have been the first time

that she walked out.

According to information I have found,

Jackie had left the house before

and stayed at Tamarindo Sheraton

and one set coes in Haco,

a beach town in Costa Rica.

But she wasn't found at either place this time.

Well, he said she's done this before,

but she never did it for two nights.

She did it a few times for one night.

I guess they had an argument she would go with the hotel.

And then the anonymous issue was okay.

Sebastian served in Afghanistan in 2009-2010,

and sometime upon return began a process of claim related to PTSD,

ultimately retiring in his mid-40s in 2019

on long-term disability.

He received the General Campaign Star,

South West Asia Decoration,

and the Canadian Forces Decoration

for serving 12 years with good conduct during a service.

Some feel Sebastian may know more about what happened to Jackie.

Others who know him well say heart of gold.

Where is the truth and how can you find it?

She might have went to a hotel for a night,

but she always called back and told Sebastian,

she's okay and she'll be back in the morning.

At this time she didn't take her car

and where they live up there,

it's really dark and away from town.

You just don't go out.

Right, I'm walking on the road.

So we started not to believe the story.

Had Sebastian ever called you before

when Jacqueline had left the house like that?

No, we just heard about it later or something.

So if this happened the year earlier,

and he says in the YouTube video,

Sebastian let it happen before going to a hotel,

I'm safe, you know, she would call.

He never called you and said,

oh, Jacqueline's left.

I don't know where she is.

This happened, she left and she called, she's okay.

He never called to reassure you

or to tell you that she had disappeared before this.

No, no, no.

Okay.

I mean, do you ask what made this occasion different?

In your head, like, why would he call this time,

do you think?

I never really thought about that angle of a tent

while he called that time.

Yeah, I get it because she hadn't come back.

Jackie disappeared sometime in the latter part

on August 17th, 2021.

Sebastian called Jackie's parents late day on the 18th

and a missing report was filed with police on August 19th.

Jackie had said left behind her cell phone,

her credit cards,

and her wedding ring at her house

on the evening of August 17th, 2021.

I'll need to get into those details and confirm that.

I kind of had two thoughts go through my mind.

Jackie's sister Candace upon hearing that Jackie was missing.

One was that she'll be back.

You know, she'll be back.

She's probably just mad and she'll be back.

Or maybe she killed herself.

Those were the two things that were the only two options

in my brain that I thought at the time.

I was thinking that we would find her

and then physical evidence would go from there.

That yes, suicide was still an option,

but there were other options,

and so I think I was just focusing on the finding card.

She never really wanted to be on medication.

She also wasn't happy because the medication made her gain weight

and so she was heavier than she had been, probably ever.

So, you know, it's just like anybody, you know,

you have the side effects of medication you have to deal with

and then you have to decide whether the side effects are worth the medication.

And so she was on medication for a while there.

Things seemed like they were going well,

but she decided that she would like side effects of the medication

and so she did go off after a while.

I asked Candace for her thoughts on Sebastian.

He was, how, what's the right word?

Somebody who came across when you first met him,

you were like, okay, very opinionated

and confident, self-assured, arrogant,

if I didn't think like anything

or horribly negative about it at the time.

It just was like, wow, he's really opinionated.

I would get messages or phone calls about fights

that she had with Sebastian or problems

that maybe she or a fight that she had with mom and dad.

I don't remember hearing any physical part.

She would talk about the things that they would say to each other

and it was sounded really low, low, horrible fights.

It sounded like they both were having issues.

Things like, you know, you should kill yourself

and I, you know, I hope you die.

I just horrible things that you would never want

somebody in a relationship to be in a relationship like that.

Some of the texts I've seen that Jackie sent to Candace

show what Jackie said she was experiencing with Sebastian.

This one from October 14th, 2019.

Yes, we always fight now because we don't agree on a lot of things

but they never get resolved because he just loses it

often leaves but he has never left all night or for good or ignored me.

And a final one from April 28th, 2021.

Sebastian has told me at least a hundred times that he will kill himself

and that the only good thing is that it will be my fault.

There is no way to know if Sebastian actually said these things

and I hope to ask him about it when I see him,

along with the timings of everything that happened.

Pauline and Gordon say that soon after their arrival to look for Jackie

things got weird.

They had been staying with Sebastian and had even helped him clean up the place

when police calling and Gordon say, took them aside

and told them to leave the house.

That's when they told us they took us inseparably

obviously from Sebastian and said, get out of the house now.

You want to look really?

Get out of the house now?

We're not scared of them.

Even so, Colleen and Gordon say they took the advice of the police

and left the house that day.

Gordon then says the OIG told him something else.

Then they interviewed Sebastian and then they interviewed us

and the boss, they were lean forward and said to us,

Sebastian was involved in her disappearance.

They think that Tom Husband Sebastian was involved.

I'll try to talk to police and get their opinions first hand.

Maybe get my hands on their investigative file.

Sebastian was never charged or arrested and it's over two years later

so time to go find him and see if he can help me solve what happened to Jackie.

And it's the next morning, heading to see Sebastian at the house I was at last night.

Then we can start the process of getting all the questions out

and seeing if there's any answers to them.

It's hot here.

Nice, I don't know, about 28 degrees already.

Keep it on the Pacific coast.

And we'll see what Sebastian has to say.

Does the car have a flat tire as my next question?

And north east I'm highly glaciated toward Avonita Central.

Brutanacio Nal Secundario 151.

Got it.

So just on my way up into the sort of foothills around Playa Cocoa.

Good dog.

That's a nice dog, nice black and white dog on their street here.

Oh, your name, but he doesn't seem nice.

There's lots of stray or unhomed.

Other animals here, dogs and cats.

But I think Costa Ricans.

Continue for one and a half kilometers.

Care for them quite a bit, even if they are stray.

I'm not sure Sebastian's going to want to talk to me.

There's many reasons why he might not want to talk to me.

This case has happened 2021.

He may not want to talk about it at all because he feels like he's gotten past.

Jack is just appearance.

Or there might be other reasons and we can never really guess those.

So if Sebastian does not want to talk to me,

it doesn't necessarily mean anything if he doesn't want to talk to me.

It's lots of reasons not to say something.

Here's one of the guard houses unoccupied.

This development has guard houses.

And this one here is unoccupied.

I'm just pulling up to.

Now I'm just going to do a drive by the house here.

And just sort of see what I can see from the house.

As is my practice.

In 200 meters, your destination will be on the left.

Some guys looking at me there.

Getting my business cards ready here.

Take off your sunglasses.

Let's just listen for.

Check, check, hello.

Hi.

Hello.

Oh, shit.

My batteries are going low.

Crap.

Okay. I'm going to have to change the batteries.

Good thing I checked.

Good thing I brought extras.

Check, check, hello. That's good.

Let's go on my go over my shoulder here.

Thanks for looking less threatening, but I'm not.

Check, check.

Good morning.

How are you?

Good.

It's Sebastian here.

Someone knows something is hosted, written and produced by me, David Rigen.

The series is also produced by Maria Jose Burgos.

Sound designed by Evan Kelly.

Natalia Ferguson is our transcriber.

Emily Canal is our digital producer.

Chris Oak is our story editor.

Our executive producer is Cecil Fernandez.

Tonya Springer is the senior manager and RF Nurani is the director of CBC Podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of someone knows something early on the CBC True Crime YouTube channel,

or for early and ad-free listening, subscribe to the CBC True Crime Premium channel on Apple Podcasts.

Just click on the link in the show description.

If you're looking for more investigations, check out the past seasons of someone knows something.

There are nine cases you can binge listen to now.

Season 8 investigates the disappearance of Angel Karlek, a young Indigenous woman from Whitehorse, Yukon.

Season 9 revisits my investigation into the murder of Christine Heron and the conviction of the man who confessed to her murder.

Find someone knows something on the CBC True Crime YouTube channel, or wherever you get your podcasts.

That was the first episode of the brand new season of someone knows something, the Jacqueline Furlin Smith case.

Episode 2 is waiting for you right now.

Just search for someone knows something, wherever you get your podcasts.

And be sure to follow the feed so you don't miss an episode.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.