Abby Hernandez: Victim or Conspirator?

**Discussion beings 9:07**

On October 9, 2013, 14 year old Abigail Hernandez disappeared while walking home from school in North Conway, NH – a small town with a population of about 2000.  The school librarian reported seeing her walking in the direction of her home at 2:30 PM, and she was not seen again for nine months.  While she was missing, her mom never gave up the search for her – convinced that she was alive and being held against her will.  Her father on the other hand, claimed that she had likely just runaway.  The only sign of life was a letter mailed to her mother, which was received nearly a month after the disappearance – letting her know that she was alive and apologizing for leaving.  This letter, as well as the lack of crime in NH, led to the accepted belief amongst the locals that Abby had likely conspired to willingly disappear.  The public was outspoken with their disdain for the young girl, and what they perceived to be a drain on finances and resources spent looking for her.  It was known that she likely couldn’t have survived on her own - did she have an older boyfriend that she had run away with?  Theories had circulated around the school that she had fled due to a teen pregnancy.  Conspiracy theories only got worse 9 months later when she walked through the front door of the home she shared with her mom and sister.  She was wearing the same clothing she had been wearing when she disappeared.  She refused to tell anyone where she had been or what had happened to her.  So what really happened in those missing 9 months?  Was Abby the victim of a terrible crime?  Or the perpetrator of a horrendous conspiracy?

Transcript

Welcome.

We've got a guest today.

Yeah, his name's Murphy. Murphy, say hello.

I'm Murphy.

Hey. That's how Murphy talks in my head.

This is not a themed episode, but it's releasing on Veterans Day. So, Kait, anything you wanna say?

We love our vets. Here on 3SchemeQueens, and thank you to Burmanboy. And Megan, who has served in the United States military.

And Megan, who's also served in the United States military, but no longer currently does it, which is the definition of a veteran.

We have a lot of people in our lives, so thank you to everyone in our lives who have served. And in our area, these kids are getting the day off school, and for sure what we need is less school for our children.

So, well, in our area, we do have a lot of vets, so maybe they want them to celebrate with their family.

They want their free lunch, Megan. Free lunch at Outback.

My uncle always took us to Golden Corral. Yes.

Because it was free on Veterans Day?

Yeah.

Did he get a styrofoam box?

I think so, yeah.

So is it time for our drink check?

Drink check. Our drink check today is from Compass Coffee.

Sponsor us.

Yes, please sponsor us. It's my favorite coffee place in the DMV. I don't know where else they are.

I think they're just in the DMV. They're really good, and they'll ship their beam wherever.

Ship your beam. No, I like their lattes because they don't use a lot of sweetener. Sometimes when I go to Starbucks, I have to be like, can you only do one pump?

Yeah, I think Starbucks actually makes theirs very sweet.

But I only get a coffee with oat milk in it, and I like it because the coffee is like... I feel like Starbucks is just so dark and burnt.

Well, do you ask for certain roasts?

No, usually if I go, what I've been doing now is getting an Americano because it's not as dark.

But I would like to tell the story about this because Colleen, I was on my way here, and I said, I will pick up coffee for us, and we can have either Starbucks or Compass Coffee. Because Megan is famously someone who doesn't...

She likes Starbucks better than Compass. I would not say she doesn't hate coffee.

I don't know about that, but I do think that it depends on the vibe. Kait likes Compass also because you can get the tiniest little cup. She likes to get the...

What size is that?

It's eight ounces.

An eight ounce of coffee. Yeah, perfect. And I'm down.

I've been there. But I feel like if you want coffee, that's where you go. If you want a specialty drink, I just feel like Starbucks is where it's at.

Well, I think that...

Well, this is research. The reason why Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts and all these places do so well is because when people want to go get their coffee, they know exactly what they're getting. Yeah.

Like they can go to a Starbucks in Seattle versus a Starbucks in DC, and it's the same, which is like what people want.

That brown sugar oatmeal shake and espresso.

Exactly. So I don't... I agree.

I think that that's like something that people like.

You know what? I only need one pumpkin spice latte for the year. Okay?

But I want that. When I want it, I'm like, that's what I want. Then winter comes, I want my almond milk sugar cookie latte.

Again, I just need one. I'm done. But so sometimes when Kait's like, let's go get coffee, and I'm like, oh, you know what the vibe is right now?

Is that seasonal drink.

Seasonal bevy. Yeah. I don't get the sweet stuff.

I just want coffee with oat milk.

Also though, when you don't put none of that sugar crap in my coffee.

I will get a brown iced shaken brown sugar latte every now and then.

Also, though, we all agree that when you don't feel well, what you want is a medicine ball.

Oh, yeah.

I introduced my manager to that. She was like, I've never heard of this. I'm like, you got to get one.

Not even a secret item anymore.

No.

But can you say medicine ball?

I still say medicine ball.

And they know what you mean.

I mean, I usually order on the app, but I feel like when I am face to face ordering, I think one time someone kind of looked at me funny and like the other person was like, they want to.

It's like a honey citrus tea. And then I will say too that they changed the tea and...

It's not as strong.

And I will say that the various Starbucks in my neighborhood, there's only one that I go to to get it. Yes. The other two, even though Kate just said, you know what you're getting, I do feel that I don't know what I'm getting with that.

Yeah, there's been a couple in this neighborhood as well that like some of them put peppermint in there.

Yeah, I do think it's supposed to have peppermint.

It's supposed to have mint.

It's a, no, well, it's an add-on. Like mint is the add-on. Anyway, so I get up to the window, Colleen says she wants a cookie latte.

I said I think it was a cookie latte.

So I get up there and I look at the menu and the guy goes, what do you want?

It's a drive-through by the way. He goes, not like what do you want? But like in the way that they say it.

And I go, oh, you don't have a cookie latte. And he goes, no, we don't. And I go, oh, I'm getting call me for my friend.

And oh, no, she wanted a cookie latte, but you guys don't have one. And you know what? There's no one behind me in the drive-through line.

Do you mind if I just call my friend?

The extra details.

And he goes, no, that's okay. And I call Colleen and I'm like, they don't have it. They have these things.

And so she got an iced apple cider.

Cider donut.

Yeah, iced cider donut latte.

That's exactly what I wanted. I thought it was a cookie.

And anyway, but I just drove around. And then I thought about how Megan tells me all the time that I give entirely too many details to counter workers.

The famous story is when we were ordering coffee at like a little roadside coffee shop. And she was like, and then I also need like a black coffee. And then she had to tell the person, it's for my husband.

He's back there. He's working with my children. And I was like, they don't, just order the black coffee and we're dust.

She's like, that's my man.

You know what?

I also give my mom a lot of crap out too much information, but details, but she has taken the feedback.

It's like I can't stop.

Yeah, I know. So now I'll be like, mom, did you have to do tell the whole story? And she's like, no, no, no.

No, no, no.

That's right.

Well, I did pull around to the front and then he goes, here's your, here's the coffee, the ice, the donut coffee, whatever it's called.

And he goes, you know, maybe the cookie was a specialty item. And I don't really, I, I thought about trying to make you something that tasted like it.

Oh, I know.

And he was like, but I couldn't, I just didn't want to mess it up. So I'm sorry. This is like what we have.

And I was like, that's okay.

It's what I wanted.

You would not get that service at Starbucks.

No, you wouldn't.

You couldn't say at Starbucks, I want to whatever. And then someone just like wings it.

No.

Yeah.

And you know what, though? At Compass, I've never sat in the line.

No. Yeah, that's true.

Can we talk, the last time we went to Compass, I got a lavender latte. But it was green.

It was green, not purple. And can we talk about the anxiety I had in that coffee shop, guys?

Sometimes when the three of us are together, the two of them perseverate on something, and the discussion can go on for 20 minutes.

We could not understand why my lavender latte was green.

She said, it tastes good. It tastes like a lavender latte.

I said, if it tasted bad, I might have spoken up, but it tastes fine. Let's get the heck out of here.

No, we asked the employee, Kait and I, the employee said, yes, that is correct.

That's a great color.

Then we walked about 10 minutes home in the entire walk home.

I was going through color theory in my mind. I was like, okay, lavender is purple. I saw the bottle.

It was a purple syrup. My coffee is brown. Where did the green come from?

Yeah.

We couldn't figure it out.

We Googled it.

We couldn't figure it out.

And as usual, the conversation ended when Megan said, I cannot effing talk about this anymore.

Megan was like, stop talking about it.

Yeah. I don't know how you just can move on. Yeah.

How do you move on from that? Colleen and I, you left the room and we were like, but how is it?

Yeah. And to this day, I don't know. I think I ended up calling my sister, who's an artist.

And I was like, Erin, cover theory, walk me through this. And she's like, I don't know, they must have put something different in your cup of coffee.

Okay. So guys, I just, I went up to New Hampshire last weekend at Live For Your Die. My friend Colleen.

Not me. Her and her husband, Dan, have an annual friendsgiving. And so I went up for the friendsgiving and people were asking about the podcast.

We're famous.

And they actually suggested this story.

And so we're going to talk today about the case of Abby Hernandez. Oh, I feel like we know this case.

It's more recent.

It is 2013.

No, I'm getting it confused with Gabby. Abby Jimenez, who writes books.

Yes.

Yeah.

They're also getting her confused with Gabby. Gabriella Rico Jimenez, who is one of our most popular episodes, guys.

Yeah.

I can listen to that one.

But Megan is going to give us the details about Abby Hernandez from New Hampshire. Yes.

But as a New England local, I definitely remember seeing this on my Facebook free page because I have mutuals of some sort, or it was just going viral locally, the search for her. Yeah.

So I think it was very big in New England. Yeah. So yes.

On October 9th, 2013, 14-year-old Abigail Hernandez disappeared while walking home from school in North Conway, New Hampshire, a small town with a population of about 2,000.

The school librarian reported seeing her walking in the direction of her home at 2:30 PM, and she was not seen again for nine months.

While she was missing, her mom never gave up the search for her, convinced that she was alive and being held against her will. Her father, on the other hand, claimed that she had likely just run away.

The only sign of life was a letter mailed to her mother, which was received nearly a month after the disappearance, letting her know that she was alive and apologizing for leaving. Whoa.

This letter, as well as the lack of crime in New Hampshire, led to the accepted belief amongst the locals that Abby had likely conspired to willingly disappear.

The public was outspoken with their disdain for the young girl and what they perceived to be a drain on finances and resources spent looking for her.

It was known that she likely couldn't have survived on her own, so did she have an older boyfriend that she had run away with? Theories had circulated around the school that she had fled due to a teen pregnancy.

Conspiracy theories only got worse nine months later when she walked through the front door of the home she shared with her mom and sister. She was wearing the same clothing she had been wearing when she disappeared.

She refused to tell anyone where she had been or what had happened to her. So what really happened in those missing nine months? Was Abby the victim of a terrible crime or the perpetrator of a horrendous conspiracy?

Immediately, I think sex trafficking.

I actually don't know if I know the full results.

I just remember her being missing. So I was thinking sex trafficking as well.

That's my thought, sex trafficking.

I would just like to say that North Conway has a lovely gentleman who does moose tours.

Okay. Well, someone who has spent a lot of time in, one of my best friends lives up there. I feel like I have been there a number of times.

I have traveled to New England a number of times. And where are the damn moose?

Okay. You have to go when it's bold.

I have been there to see the dog sleds. And I've been there to see the ice fishing. So I feel like I've been there.

Okay.

Well, can I give you the tidbits? Because I saw six moose in one night.

Okay. You said you have to go at like 2 a.m. or something.

You have to go really, really late.

And like from midnight to like 2 in the morning. And it has to be kind of in the wintertime because they are attracted to the salt on the roads.

So in New Hampshire, if you drive on a certain highway, there's a salt center with like mounds of salt you can see from the road, and they'll just be there licking the salt.

That's so cute. I just feel like I've done a couple New England road trips, and there are just like moose crossing signs everywhere, but I've never seen them.

It was the night of my life.

That's my conspiracy theory. There are no moose in...

Oh, I peeked way too early with that moose strip. That was the highlight of my life.

I went to Alaska and saw a ton of moose.

Yeah, they're way more north than people realize. Like, I was surprised I actually even saw them in Conway. So, like...

I can't remember if I was in Conway or North Conway, but...

Thinking we're going to talk about, we're going to reference a Walmart here later. And I was like, Colleen, I texted her, I was like, was that the Walmart we went to? And she was like, no, that was in Concord.

And I thought I was at the scene of the crime, which is also how I felt every time I drove through the White Mountains.

Oh, yeah.

And I try to picture Maura Murray.

Did you go up Washington?

Like, he was here. Colleen got married at the top of Mount Washington.

Oh, it's so pretty. We drove our 12-person van up that.

So Abigail Hernandez, who went by Abby, was just a few days shy of her 15th birthday at the time that our story takes place. That morning, she had dressed in a striped sweater, black leggings, and new boots.

The boots are important because these were a brand new pair of heeled boots her mother had just purchased for her as an early birthday gift. And so everyone says that, like, all day long, she was complaining about her feet hurting.

So she left the high school at the end of the school day around 2:30 p.m. This is captured on, like, CCTV at the school. Right.

She usually rode the bus, but she also lived close enough to walk, and oftentimes that's what she would do. She would just walk. Her mom, Zegna, got home from work, and Abby wasn't home, so her mother went to the school to check on her.

But she was told by the librarian that they had seen Abby leave on foot hours prior. At this point, she said she was mostly concerned she had fallen and broken her leg or got appendicitis or been hit by a car. So she called the local hospital.

Those were dramatically very different.

Well, she was just thinking, like, she was thinking, like, there's something has happened to her, but it was probably like a medical emergency.

Okay, no, I'm with you.

And so she called, I assume, there's probably only one hospital in this area, right?

Because I do know from my New England experience, there's a lot of, like, critical access hospitals.

Yeah, far and few behind.

So she said she, like, called the hospital and she wasn't there. And so this is when she started to get panicked. And so she immediately filed a police report.

So it's like 7 p.m., you know, four and a half hours after she was last seen, which we also have to give the police in North Conway a lot of credit because usually in true crime stories, it's like the police blow them off, right?

And they're like 48 hours.

Yes.

But like people took this seriously.

It's a very small town too.

So at this point, they were able to retrieve that CCTV footage from the high school that showed Abby leaving the school on foot at 2:29 p.m. and heading the direction of her home.

They then received cell or reviewed cell data, and they were unable to track her cell phone, but the last ping had been about a mile from her home at 3:07 p.m. The last text she sent was to her boyfriend Jimmy at 2:53 p.m.

and it was just a hard emoji, and this was received by him while he was on the bus on the way home. So Jimmy Campbell was just like another high schooler.

Yeah, 13, 14-year-old kid, and there was really like nothing red-flaggy about the relationship, so he was kind of pretty quickly ruled out as being involved. After this, the trail ran cold, and nobody knew where Abby was.

Her mom fought hard to find her, but her father claimed that she had likely just run away, posting the following on Facebook. It became obvious that you ran away, and that raises the question, what did you run away from?

I am guessing that you ran away from your home life.

Now, this is her father.

Her parents were divorced. She lived with her mother. So people are like, is he implying like something was up with her mom?

Yeah. On November 6th, nearly a month after Abby's disappearance, her mom, Zegna, received a letter which was postmarked October 22nd. The letter said, Dear mom, I miss you and love you so much more than you could imagine.

There are a lot of little hearts after each sentence. A little heart. I'm sorry.

I did this. I've seen the newspaper and TV news, and to answer your questions, yes, I'm alive. I am safe and I'm healthy.

Please stay strong for me. I'm staying strong for you. I've come to realize all along with love and courage, hope can speak louder than fears.

Please don't lose hope. Hang in there for me, mom. I had a dream where I came home and gave you the biggest hug ever.

I don't know if it matters, but I like to think that it does. Please don't forget that I love you. Please give Sarah a hug for me and tell her that I love and miss her very much.

I pray to God that dreams will come true. Love, Abby. And she'll doodle a flower and a butterfly.

How would you interpret that letter?

To me, it sounds like she's being held against her will, being allowed to write to her mom.

That's what it sounds like to me.

I think that's a handwritten letter.

Yeah. We'll talk a little bit more about the DNA test and all that. But I will say, I think they didn't initially release this letter to the public.

They said they were afraid either if she had snuck this letter out against her will, and want anybody to know that, or they didn't want copycatters to start writing letters.

When they said, hey, this letter came, they didn't release that entire thing as I read to you. And they were like, oh, pretty much said, like, I'm alive and I'm sorry. And so I guess if that's all you hear, maybe you're like, that's weird.

She wrote a letter that says, I'm alive and I'm sorry. It sounds like she run away. But when you actually read the detail, like the full thing, it sounds like, yeah, her saying that she's praying and please, please keep praying at the live.

That doesn't sound like she is threatened.

It sounds like she's coding information to her mom in the text. It sounds like that was very much like proofread before it was sent.

I agree. I'm sure you'll have these details, but did they cross compare to other handwriting examples?

So investigators swabbed the letter for DNA. They confirmed that Abby's DNA was on this letter. And they confirmed that the letter was written by Abby.

And while her mother agreed that the handwriting was hers, she said the message did not read as if her daughter had written it. It didn't sound like her. So this letter was apparently written October 22nd and postmarked October 23rd.

But I couldn't find where it was postmarked from.

Mail? Track set?

They stamp, you know, when they stamp, you put your stamp on the mail. What's it called when they stamp the mail?

Hand-canceled?

No, canceled, because you hand-cancel for a wedding, right? Because you don't, it's about the stamp. I was about to say, I set by a real fan of Summer Right Turnpike.

Yeah.

Yes, and so when they stamp, so next time you get a piece of mail, you look at it.

That's, stamp it so you can't reuse the stamp. And that stamp that gets stamped over the stamp you've stuck on has the location of like where was the post office is.

Yeah.

What does it mean to hand-stamp it? Like you just avoid the stamp? I don't think I realize it was a stamp that puts out on the letter.

I thought they went through machines that printed on it.

But that is, it does. If you hand-cancel it means it's, yeah.

If you hand-cancel, it still stamps over the stamp, but it doesn't run it through the machine. The machine will destroy your wedding invitation.

Okay.

That's when people talk about hand-canceling.

Oh, I want to hand-stamp a letter now.

Protect delicate mail.

I want to ask them to hand-stamp a letter now.

Okay. You didn't even know letters were stamped to begin with.

Well, yeah. I mean, I saw that it was printed on it, but I don't know what I thought those numbers meant. You know what?

So, post office gives me so much anxiety.

I think I'd get up there and be like, just mail it.

You need to.

Mail.

Kait going to the post office is almost as stressful as the DMV. For me also, hearing her talk about...

And then it's always like when she does some of these adult things, like goes to the DMV or goes to the post office, she has to send out a mass text and be like, you guys would be so proud of me.

I did it.

I went in and I mailed a package.

Yeah.

She's like... Anyway, sorry for that tangent.

So the deal is though, that while this letter was post marked October 23rd, her mom did not receive it until November 6th because it wasn't delivered to their home. It was delivered to like a PO box that her mom had.

So her mom had to go check the PO box at the post office or whatever. And she found this letter. So she immediately took it to the police.

And as I mentioned, the police were like, we are going to keep this hush hush because we don't want her to get punished. We don't want copycat letters, that kind of thing.

Eventually, since there was no progress being made in finding her, police did alert the public to the letter and encourage people to look at their friends and neighbors and let them know if they had any suspicions, as they were convinced that Abby

was still alive. Which this also gives Unabomber, we've talked about it so many times when they were like, here's the letter, tell us if you recognize it. They also did that with Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper.

Yep. So both parents offered separate awards, rewards totaling $60,000 as they both believed that Abby was still alive. But as I mentioned, kind of different ideas of what had happened.

Dad offered an award after posting about her just purposely running away.

That's what it said.

Weird.

Well, it's probably just like, we want you back.

Yeah. Come back.

Yeah.

But with the news that Abby had been writing letters to her family, people began to question what had really happened and conspiracy theory started to swirl.

Eight months after that, she walked up the steps to her home in the clothes that she had last been seen wearing and walked in the front door of her home. She had just walked in, she heard her mom on the phone and she was like, Hey, mom.

Oh, my gosh.

She refused to tell anyone where she had been, prompting the public to fill in the blanks.

And in her first media interview, she told the Conway Daily Sun that she saw the news updates on her case and that gave her hope that people were looking for her.

So everyone's like, I'm sorry, you were held against your will, but you're like writing letters, you're watching TV, you're reading the newspaper.

So it's not a good captive.

People were questioning this whole situation. So here are the theories. Abby was a runaway.

In general, right, we know from our true crime, that's generally what people think, which is why I'm so impressed they looked for her so quickly, that it's a teenager.

I think in general, that's sort of what people assume, that this was just a runaway of her own free will. And I think her father did not help things by his, you know, Facebook statements.

When she was last seen on the CCTV, she just had her school bag slung over her shoulder, but no other items with her. There was nothing missing from her home that would indicate that she had run away.

In fact, she had cashed that she'd been saving, and she left it behind. Also, she'd been playing in a birthday party in three days. And I guess all day long, she'd been discussing, like, her invite list and what they were going to eat and all that.

So what 13-year-old is going to like... Running away from that. Yeah, running away three days before this party that she's, like, all about.

Her mother was always adamant that she had not run away. She said Abby was a popular girl. She loved sports and animals.

She had a boyfriend that was considered to be a good guy. And again, like I said, he was... This young kid was, like, pretty quickly cleared.

Her friends and family said she was generally content. One friend mentioned that she had some discord with her father, but that since she lived full-time with her mother, it wasn't really difficult to just, like...

It's not like she was, like, miserable at home because she had issues with her dad. Right. This theory was also perpetuated by the fact that the FBI and law enforcement had called her a missing person in all of their press.

And whenever they were like, when you say missing person, do you think runaway or foul play? And they didn't really want to clarify.

So if you hear missing person, do you think foul play or runaway? I think foul play.

Well, I guess, but they didn't want to be... They wouldn't be more specific, which I think is why people were like, why won't they just say?

Okay. So my thought is, with all this detail that you're giving me, is that she knew her captor, and this is a theory of mine, and they made a decision to run away together. I had to be ended up being a really controlling person.

And then when she sent the letter, it was like, I'm actually being held captive, and this is not a good place for me to be. That's what it kind of sounds like.

I'm thrown off by her having a boyfriend, because I would have thought she would have been, like, interacting with an old man on line.

Right, that's what I mean.

These are, those are my next two theories.

Oh, okay.

So, but, because 2013, she's fresh on line.

Okay, so then the other theory, which could kind of go into her being a runaway, but again, once we talk, we talk conspiracy theories, so as far as conspiracies go.

Someone, I mean, she was 13 years old, so she probably wasn't out to write the autographs. Someone else have been helping her.

Yes.

And so the theory is, was she in a relationship with someone other than her little 13 year old?

Other than me.

Older guy.

Jimmy.

Yes. And the local rumor was that she was involved in some form of an online relationship with a man in his mid 20s, and that she had voluntarily disappeared.

Now I'm thinking older than that.

Older than 20?

Yeah. I'm thinking like 50s. Creepy.

That is very creepy.

Well.

Yeah.

But investigators found no evidence of concerning internet activity or evidence that she had an older boyfriend. So that was sort of ruled out. And then there were theories that, you know, again, she was gone for nine months and then she came back.

Be pregnant.

Gone to a pregnancy camp.

That was the real one.

That was the real theory amongst like her classmates, it sounds like, was that just again, I think even before the nine months, they were like, there were some theories like her friend was saying that people were thinking she was pregnant.

She could have left already pregnant, delivered and then come back. But she's 13, what, she just get her period?

There was like an eight-year-old or something in like South America or Central America.

That had to be Abby. Yeah, never mind.

An eight-year-old? That's so sad. I don't like that at all.

Anyways, yeah, I don't know, I don't think she's pregnant.

Her mother explicitly denied the pregnancy rumors and her best friend said, she said, like, I knew her really well and I promise you it was not possible for her to say I love her pregnant.

So the people closest to her were like, that's not the case. No. So it sounds like though you guys at this point are leaning toward what the New Englanders were thinking at the time.

Yeah. Maybe met someone online, either had this boyfriend, they left willingly, maybe then it wasn't willingly, maybe then she was like, this is not really what I want to be doing, but now I'm stuck.

But you confirm she has no weird online activity though. But yeah, it can't be that. Unless it's somebody she knows.

Well, Kait said she thinks it's someone she knows.

I'm also thinking of that Netflix documentary that was like a three-part documentary, three episodes of the girl that was kidnapped.

The American Nightmare?

American Nightmare.

I don't think I know that one.

Yes.

That one is really good.

Yeah.

Our spoiler alert here.

It's really good.

Yes, our spoiler alert. And she's like kidnapped in the middle of the night, and he's like drugged or whatever. And then anyway, she ends up being let go and like shows up at her parents' house.

And then won't talk.

Abby did eventually tell her story, because as I said, she came home and she wouldn't tell anyone anything. And people were like, again, that's suspicious. But she'd eventually tell her story.

Here is her version of events. The day she went missing, Abby had missed the bus by a matter of seconds. As she was texting her boyfriend and limping along in her new shoes, 34-year-old Nate pulled up in a car and offered her a ride.

She had never seen this person before. Would you say yes to that? She says like, we hitchhiked all the time.

It's a small town, her feet hurt. And usually when she hitchhiked, the person who picked her up was someone she knew, because there were only 2,000 people in the whole town. The way I'd be walking barefoot, but also...

Take your shoes off.

I would have walked barefoot.

Yeah, I would have too.

Oh, my God.

Was it cold?

Anyway.

When did we say it was? October? No, October?

Oh, it could be pretty cold.

I mean, I was in New Hampshire and people were getting fried.

At the end of October, everyone was like, you're overdressed. And I had my biggest winter coat on. I was like, it is so cold.

It was also so windy.

Okay, so she got into this 34-year-old man's car.

And she said, like, as soon as honestly, like, where is her safety plate? You know, I think she ended, I mean, that was not a good move, but she ended up being very smart.

Oh, good for her. She played.

I'm looking forward to this.

So she said that, like, pretty quickly, she's in the car and she's, like, not comfortable.

Weirded out.

And he pulls into, like, a parking lot. And he was like, okay, well, you know what, I live pretty close, so I'm just going to hop out here, thanks so much for the ride. And he pulled a gun on her.

Oh, he pulled the gun, he said. If you try to scream or try to escape or make any effort to escape, there will be consequences.

Oh, no, girl.

He placed handcuffs around her wrists, a T-shirt over her face to blindfold her. And he took her phone and she said she could hear it shattering as he broke it in an attempt to prevent police from tracking him. He had her crouched down out of sight.

And when she tried to look out the window to see where she was, he used a stun gun on her leg.

Holy heck.

She was removed from the car and thrown onto a dirty mattress.

Oh no.

And then her blindfold was removed.

Oh no.

And she was in this room with a padded soundproof walls and a metal floor. And her captor was wearing a creepy gold Halloween mask.

He covered her eyes with tape, again a T-shirt and a motorcycle helmet before sexually asphaltening her for the first of what would be many times.

My God. Oh my God.

Over the next nine months, she lived in a dark, windowless shipping container.

Oh, I was going to ask if there was a U-Haul or storage container.

It was like, you know what I'm talking about? The big...

Yeah.

So she had no windows, it was dark, there was no fresh air, and he would constantly blare loud music. She had a security camera fixed on her at all times. And he demanded she call him master.

Oh my God.

Initially, he used a stun gun to subdue her.

Then, whenever she wrote that letter, so that was actually the second letter that she wrote. So the first letter she wrote, and when he turned his back, she used her fingernail to write like help and kidnapped in it. But he discovered it.

So then he punished her and then made her rewrite the letter. So after that happened, he was like, we're going to try something new. And he put a bark collar on her.

Oh my God. And the first time she said, as you said, initially, he would use a stun gun on her leg until she would scream. And then the screaming would cause the bark collar to go off.

But for the most, and then he did, if you don't yell and you aren't loud, then you won't be shocked. He would let her watch press conferences so she could see how distraught her family was and mentally torture her.

Although that doesn't feel like mental torture. For me, I thought that'd give me hope. Like, oh my gosh, my mom is out there looking for me.

Actually feels like counterintuitive, which is what she said, it gave her hope. And she's like, they're looking for me. So then he was getting a little stressed about all the press.

So that's why he said, you should write this letter. Let's make it look like you left her out free will. Again, she's here for months.

There is no sign of her. And again, she said that like the sexual assaults continued over the entire nine months, like nearly. But the physical abuse kind of started to taper off because she figured out how to manipulate him.

Oh, wow. So on March 17th, 2014, a woman accidentally hit a car about 30 miles outside of Conway. And the driver of that vehicle, of the vehicle that she hit, was Nate Kibbe.

So he got out of the vehicle and he began to beat her.

Beat the lady who hit him?

Yes, with like the butt of his gun. He was arrested. And he's like a real like vocal libertarian.

He had a lot of guns and he was very into gun rights. And so as part of this whole he was no hard. She was like, they're like, you need to turn over your guns.

We need to confiscate your weapons. The police were like, this is going to be a real battle. Like this guy's going to fight us on getting our guns back.

And they said, it's really weird because all of a sudden he just calls the police station himself days before he was required to turn them over and said, OK, you guys can come on out and get my guns. And they're like, why is he being so helpful?

Right.

So they want them snooping.

Bingo.

Find her.

They come out and they said when they went to his home outside of Conway to retrieve the weapons, they noted a large shipping container in the woods behind his house. And they said, that's really weird. What's going on back there?

Yeah.

And Nate said, the court orders for my weapons.

That's it. I don't have to talk to you about anything else. You have no right to know what's back there.

Here are the weapons and you need to go. Which and he was, I mean, he was right. Like everyone's like, you can question things, but how were the police supposed to know what was happening?

So in that shipping container was Abby Hernandez. Wow. He would leave her chained up for days, and he had installed straws so she could drink while he would leave her chained up.

Yeah.

So this whole thing, it sounds like with the police being like, what's up with that shipping container, got him a little bit spooked.

Right.

And so he came in and told Abby she knew too much.

He blindfolded her and put her back in the car and they drove around for a while. She got dropped to get on a mattress in a room and... A different room.

Different room. And what we know now is that this was just a separate room in the same bunker, but she thought she had been relocated. Right.

In this room, it was all wired. There were wires all over. And he was like, if you try to leave, these wires will trip, this room will blow up.

Wow, he's crazy. She just said, this is around the time, around this March thing, and then the police coming and him kind of losing his mind. She's like, I figured out I could manipulate.

I'm like, if I just like listen to him rant and like reassured him, he would, and she's like, and I would just do whatever he wanted to do. And she's like, and again, he was still assaulting her, but like the physical violence decreased.

Right. Wow.

And then he eventually let her see his face, because up to this point, he'd been wearing like a Halloween mask. Oh, wow. She would talk to him.

He said that she was like a daughter to him, which is not staying.

Yes.

And he would give her books to, like she said, he would like lecture her about his political views, and she would like engage in these conversations with them, and then he would like give her books to read.

And she's 13.

She's 13. Well, no, she's 14.

Yeah.

And some of these books were like very political and crazy. But he gave her a cookbook to read, and he was like, I thought we could like cook together.

And she's flipping through it, and she sees a handwritten name on the inside of the cookbook, and it was Nate Kibbe.

Wow.

And she's like, that's how she figured out what his name was. Wow.

I have chills.

Yeah. She's so smart.

And then as part of his like, I hate the government, there was at this time in New England, like a counterfeit money scam going on. I guess it was like a big issue in New England time.

And he decided to get into counterfeit money as a way to just like say, F the government.

Right.

Oh my god, he's so crazy.

And he got her to help him make the counterfeit money. And she's like, again, I would just do whatever he wanted me to do. So he's like, you want to, okay, I'll help you make your counterfeit money.

Right.

At this point, again, as he's sort of starting to ease up on her, he starts hiring sex workers.

Wow.

And at least one, but the most popular one we're going to talk about claims like they didn't even have sex.

He like hired her. And again, I don't know if this is just a story she's telling, whatever, but that like, he just wanted to like talk.

Oh, that's believable.

But like, yeah, so it's like a weird dude.

Yeah.

What a creepy man.

Yeah, he's so creepy.

And so he hired these workers on the internet. And while he didn't use his full name, his email contained his full name, Nathaniel Kibbe. Oh my God.

So these prostitutes don't know who he is.

She's dumb.

She's like so dumb.

They can figure it out. So he pays 27 year old Lauren Monday, who was a prostitute, with $350 bills, and she went to Walmart and tried to make a purchase. And the Walmart cashier was like, the police have already been called.

This isn't real money. And so she calls Nate and she just goes off on him. She's like, I have given your information to the police.

I told them your email address. I know that your car was damaged from that previous collision. I told them what car you drive and that it's damaged.

You better clean up your operation because the police are gonna search your property soon.

Oh, my God. What a bad bee, but yeah, she gets a couple for being a prostitute.

I don't think so.

Also, I mean, good for her, but also like because this is what prompts him to let her go, right?

You're done.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like they could have found her.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I mean, they were going to.

So according to Abby, Nate came into the storage container and was ranting and nervous before handing her a bag with her clothes that she had worn that first day. Wow. And told her to get dressed.

He put her in a car and dropped her off at the same spot that he had kidnapped her from before driving away.

Oh, my God.

So the theory is that he released her because, as you mentioned, Kait, like, he knew the cops were coming. He also was three days away from his trial for that previous assault. Yes.

And so people. He ended up only paying a fine and agreeing to no contact. But one of the theories is, like, that he thought he might have just gone to jail.

Like, they're going to have this hearing. He's going to be arrested on the spot and go to jail, and then Abby's just going to be in this... Oh, yeah...

. barge container, and no one's going to know where she is. So those are the theories, like, that's what prompted him to do this, like, fear of the parties and this.

Yeah. Wow.

And he, like, in his twisted way, he was like, well, I don't want her to die.

I guess he bonded with her for the last nine months. Yeah. She had been...

That is so hanging out with her.

That is literally disturbing.

Either way, he dropped her off, and she walked home, and she just walked into the front room and called to her mom. This was July 20th, and she refused to talk.

I mean, she's traumatized, but like...

So it was nine months or 284 days that she was in captivity. God, that's terrible. So again, despite the joy of being home, she refused to tell anyone where she had been.

So again, she's not talking, so no one even knows. This guy goes about his court date, they don't pay the fine, no one knows anything about this guy.

And one of the thoughts is like, well, if they had all this information about him, counterfeit, why hadn't they showed up to his house like the prostitute said was gonna happen?

But I guess again, there was a huge issue at the time and there was a much bigger counterfeit.

They weren't focused on other things.

Yeah, well they were like, do we really think this guy is behind this massive counterfeit? No, he's just making a couple bucks in his basement. So they weren't really on top of things as far as showing up and discovering him.

Eventually, she talked to police and she said her captor was a heavy set man with a dark complexion and Massachusetts accent and he was somewhere between 5'5 and 5'8. She initially provided a sketch to the police.

She knew his name.

But didn't share his name or location. Well, so this is what he actually looks like.

Wall-eyed.

Okay. And then here's the sketch she gave.

I think that's pretty close.

Well, but the thought is about, she said he was heavy set and 5'5.

Yeah, whatever he looks like.

And he's actually very tall and very thin.

Oh, yeah.

But the eyes are kind of similar. Similar? I don't know.

I don't... The story is that they didn't match up because she was trying to throw the police off. Okay.

So, well, why is the question, right? So apparently her mom took her out to lunch, and this is now July 27th. A week has gone by, and she's like, you got to just tell us what you know.

Abby did confide in her mother. She gave him the information she had. She said she was kidnapped by Nate Kibbe from Gorham, New Hampshire.

She learned his name when again he gifted her a book, and she saw his name inside the cover. He had also given her a ruler with the initials NEK written on it.

She told detectives that he had a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence, and a leopard print blanket on the bed. And the police actually remembered this from a previous visit to his home, and so they were able to identify him.

Oh my gosh.

She then correctly picked him out of a photo line up. So again, why did it take her so long to come forward? Fear of him?

Fear of him. He had said that he would kill her family, her pets, and any police that came for him. Oh my God.

If she told him. If she told. It took time for her family to kind of encourage her, and as her mom was like, he's not gonna get to us, he's not gonna get to the animals, and the police can take care of themselves.

It's gonna be fine. She told the FBI, they went to his house. He answered the door with a pistol in his hand, but upon seeing law enforcement, he surrendered without any shots fired.

Wow.

Nathaniel Gibby was arrested for felony kidnapping, and he was then charged with, I believe, 183 counts.

Wow. I think I saw numbers anywhere from like 183 to 205. I think they presented 205 charges to the grand jury, and then I think he actually faced 183 charges.

But regardless, he initially pled not guilty. The state spent three years building a case against him. Not guilty.

Finally, one month before the trial, he made a deal and pled guilty to seven felony charges, including kidnapping, sexual assault, witness tampering, and criminal threatening, in exchange for a sentence of 45 to 90 years. Wow. So who was this guy?

He had had a previous record that included assault and went back 16 years. He worked as a machinist and he had a long-term girlfriend named Angel. Can you imagine being this guy's girlfriend?

No. Who had allegedly left him just before the kidnapping. And again, of note, he is 6'3 and slender, not 5'5 and overweight.

But again, she said that before he released her, he had her practice like fake descriptions, like, are you going to tell the police I look like? And does not have a dark complexion.

No.

Pretty pale. So Abby has since become an advocate for survivors and shared her story to raise awareness. She graduated high school and became a hairdresser.

She produced the Lifetime Movie Network movie about her life and has become a mother herself. But most impressively, she faced him in court at his sentencing saying, I appreciate my freedom because of you. I enjoy and appreciate life because of you.

And I never look at sunshine the same way. Some people might call you a monster, but I've always looked at you as human. And I want you to know that even though life became a lot harder after that, I still forgive you.

Ugh.

I would not.

Wow.

But she's like, that's actually what got me through the whole thing is like, I had to see him as like a human being and like, empathize with him and like, talk to him.

Because that was the only way to get through it until like, that's how she, yeah, that's how she outsmart, that's how she manipulated.

This was a conspiracy theory for a while, but I think we can all rest assured now that she was not, she did not have a fake boyfriend or a boyfriend. She did not have someone helping her.

She had this guy she had never met before, pick her up on the way home, and just hold her hostage for nine months. Not really, I mean, you guys believe her story, right?

She plead guilty, so we don't really have to discuss, I guess, if you believe it or not.

No, that's so sad, that's so crazy.

Baby.

Yeah.

Again, to have all of this, to be 13 and to have all of this ability to rank, even though she got caught, trying to leave messages to her mother and the code.

I would not have been spotted off to do any of that.

No, I would not have been, or not either. I wonder if she watched thrillers or something. I don't know.

Gave her these ideas.

Okay.

She's resourceful.

You want to know, was he watching her? Did he pick her?

It sounds like he definitely planned, but they think that as far as who his actual victim was, it was just random, convenient. So he went out that day looking to pick someone up, and she got in his car.

Oh my gosh.

So anyway, thank you to the New Hampshire crowd for recommending that.

Again, I was a little more true-crimey than conspiracy theory-ish, but I do feel bad for this girl that when she first came home, everyone just, she had been through this horrific trauma, and everyone just said, again, people were calling the family

death threats and stuff. Your daughter lied, and we have been looking for nine months for her and all this money that's been invested and all these resources and all that time she was being abused. Yeah, that is sad. You guys have any other thoughts?

Stay safe, don't get into strangers' cars, teach your kids safety precautions.

Do not talk to strangers.

What do the car junkies say?

Be weird, be rude, stay alive.

Yeah, for real, be rude.

Yeah, bark at men.

That is Colleen's self-defense.

It works. When have you barked at a man?

It worked.

It struck Colleen in the city of DC.

Really?

Yeah, I can't believe that, have I?

Guys, just a reminder, don't forget to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages at 3SchemeQueens. That's the number three SchemeQueens, all one word. We're also on Reddit, same username.

If you want to check out our website, go to 3schemequeens.com, and you can find links to our social media accounts, our Buzzsprout page, all of our episodes, additional content, and our contact page, where you can engage with us and share any updates

on the topics that we have discussed. Let us know how we're doing and what you want to hear next. There are also opportunities to financially support us, with links to buy us a cup of coffee and links to our merch store.

As always, if you choose not to financially support us, we appreciate the follows, the downloads, the listens, the likes. Kait, what should the people do?

Yeah, so what you need to do is take out your phone and text three people that you think might get into somebody's car that they don't know.

And then you need to send them this story so that they will be smart and be weird and be rude and bark at men. And then share this with your friends and family. Leave us a comment.

Leave us a five-star review. Share us on your Instagram or your social media network and interact with us on our social medias. And yeah, Megan.

You know, the holidays are coming up.

Yeah.

So maybe you go to Thanksgiving in a couple weeks and your family is bickering about politics and the state of the world, and you can just lighten things up and be like, you want to hear a story about a girl who got kidnapped?

Or just maybe not this story, right? But maybe, I don't know.

It's been true crime burr.

You feel like I'm sitting across from my grandmother and I be like, can you pass the gravy? Also, do you want to hear about how octopuses can abuse you?

Let's stop, and I'll get behind the fact that dolphins are the real enemy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dolphins have opposable penises. Just drop that.

Yeah, it might drop.

Also, one of the octopus's tentacles is its penis, and it goes in the other octopus's ear.

Yeah.

I feel like the facts you could drop.

Yeah.

You know?

And they can expel other sperm.

And you know, somebody like, I don't want this sperm.

Sperm packets.

You know, what's the best way to get your angry uncle who's going off on a political tangent to stop? Talk about corpus penis. Jen Hill run away.

Just say, enough guys.

Birds aren't real.

Yeah, birds aren't real. And we can talk about that.

All right.

I could talk about any of this for hours. And this entire episode, I've been like, I want to learn more about how the post office works. And I've refrained from seeing so many follow-up questions.

We've got Birdman.

Birdman is going to join us for a few episodes. And he probably could tell you, this just feels like something he would know.

It does feel like that.

He'll tell you all about the postal system.

Because the way I envision, which could be an episode, the way I envision the post office is like back rooms. Have you heard conspiracy about back rooms? About how like, have you seen the movie Us?

Us is all about how like, there's like a world beneath the ground where like there's rooms upon rooms upon rooms.

I can't, no, I can't.

So like, that's what I envision the post office is like. So I would love Birdman to teach me about the post office. I would listen to that.

I gave him a whole bunch of things.

I said, just as a spoiler alert, guys, for what's to come.

We have a guest.

I said, please research and brief us on the relations between the USSR and Japan specifically as it pertains to fishing rights.

Right.

Please research the IRA and the relationship with Britain.

Right.

And what did he send us today?

The sovereign citizen conspiracy.

Yeah. This is all third man.

And then I'll say also while you're at it, can you please research the postal system?

Yeah.

Yeah. And we will all talk about that on a future episode.

I would love to hear him tell me about it. Because I would love to be a male woman.

I don't know. I think about this guy. In my area, they're all on foot.

Yeah.

And they should, as they should.

When it's like 100 degrees out there, I just am like this poor man.

No. I would like to be a seasonal male woman, where I only work during the winter time, delivering Christmas gifts. That's who Santa really is.

The mailman.

For every single time I see them delivering packages, I think to myself, this is Santa.

That's who Santa is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, guys. Thanks for joining us. We will see you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.