The Lake of Lost Girls

This brief interlude displays an image from a social media livestream by “True Crime Live” (243). The text indicates the account is broadcasting live from Southern State University, walking “in the footsteps of missing girls, Tammy, Phoebe, Meghan, and Jessica” (243). The livestream shows 70,500 viewers are watching the broadcast.

In mid-April 1999, Jessica Fadley’s life is unraveling. Daisy barely speaks to her since being questioned by police about her missing ID card. Then Jess receives a call from Dr. Daniels confirming their off-campus meeting plans to see each other just prior to Lindsey’s birthday party. Though inwardly conflicted, Jess agrees, feeling she owes the professor for tutoring her.

After the call, Daisy confronts Jess about her involvement with Dr. Daniels, warning about his history with the other missing women. She expresses growing distrust of Jess due to her inexplicable absences, late-night calls to her father, failing grades, and excessive drinking. Feeling isolated, Jess leaves the dorm and encounters Ryan. As they walk together, Jess’s father arrives unexpectedly in Cara’s minivan. When Jess approaches him, Ben reveals that police have questioned him about Meghan Lambert after receiving a tip, accusing Jess of causing his troubles: “If I go down, Jess, you go down, too” (250). Their argument escalates until Ben slaps Jess. Ryan intervenes, threatening Ben, who leaves after apologizing. Though Ryan asks what happened, Jess only admits that her father is cheating on her mother.

Stella and Rachel have invited on Erica Stead, who was in Pi Gamma Delta at Southern State University and claims to have been close friends with Jess. Erica states that Jess was sleeping with her married professor, the same one involved with the other missing girls. She characterizes Jess as “out of control” (254), claiming she was on academic probation, kicked out of her sorority, and cheating on her boyfriend.

When the hosts mention that they thought Jess was a good student, Erica contradicts this, calling her a “hot mess” who would have been expelled had she not disappeared. Erica presents herself as extremely close to both Jess (“She was a literal sister to me” [254]) and Phoebe (“We had so much in common” [254]), and the podcast hosts accept Erica’s statements without challenge.

Continuing her conversation with Lindsey, Daisy explains that Ryan told her that when he drove to the Fadley house, he saw Jess arguing with an older man. Ryan then dropped his keys, and while he was searching for them, both Jess and the man vanished, leaving Jess’s car trunk open. Daisy reveals that Ryan was connected to all four missing women: He was Jess’s boyfriend, had dated Phoebe, and had slept with both Tammy and Meghan. She also mentions her missing ID card, which mysteriously reappeared after police questioned her, with Jess claiming Ryan had returned it after finding it outside his dorm and denying that she had ever borrowed it. Before leaving to recant her false alibi, Daisy describes visiting the Fadley house once in hopes of seeing Lindsey. Instead, she witnessed Ben sitting alone in his Mustang in the garage, apparently crying as music played. This odd behavior left her disturbed enough that she never returned.

Lindsey leaves, unnerved by the revelations, particularly about her father. She wakes up early the next morning, and as she sits in the kitchen, pondering how much of her childhood was a lie, she hears a noise in the garage. She goes to investigate, noting the cleaning supplies her father used to mask the smell of an animal that once died in the eaves. Apprehensive, she opens the trunk of the Mustang but finds nothing. At that moment, however, the tarp covering the paddleboat slips. Lindsey approaches only to hear her father warning her not to touch it, his expression “terrified.”

Stella and Rachel address criticism about their interview with Erica Stead. They acknowledge receiving “several emails from acquaintances of both Erica and Jess who claim that many of the things Erica said during her interview were blatantly false” (269). The hosts apologize for not properly vetting Erica, stating, “We are so sorry we didn’t vet her better. But, we’re human, and in the rush to get the scoop, we let you all down. […] we let Jessica down” (270).

Nevertheless, they note that some of Erica’s information was accurate: Jess had been expelled from her sorority and had broken up with her boyfriend the day she disappeared. The hosts pivot to discussing new angles in the case, shifting focus from the professor to “the other men in Jessica’s life” (270), particularly noting that her “hottie boyfriend” had connections to all four missing women. They tease that their upcoming finale will contain significant revelations about the case.

On April 23, 1999—the day of Lindsey’s birthday party—Jess receives an official letter of academic suspension. She packs to return home for the weekend, contemplating the disastrous state of her life. She feels trapped between her sense of obligation to Dr. Daniels and her growing revulsion toward men like him.

As she leaves her dorm room, Jess encounters Ryan, who wants to know why Jess has been skipping dates. He also questions why she wants to go home, given her strained relationship with her father, which leads Jess to tell him to leave, worried about how much she has confided in Ryan. Instead, they continue their argument outside the dormitory, where Ryan demands to know if Jess is seeing Dr. Daniels. Jess denies this but breaks up with Ryan, telling him, “You don’t even know me” (275), though internally she’s heartbroken. Ryan is devastated and confused, asking what he did wrong and insisting he loves her but finally warning her that she’ll “regret” this decision.

After Ryan leaves, Jess calls Dr. Daniels to cancel their meeting, threatening to expose his predatory behavior to his wife. He variously tries to intimidate and cajole her, telling her he can resolve the issue of her suspension. Finally, he flatly demands her address. She hangs up but still feels the walls closing in, grabbing her bag and leaving campus in mounting desperation.

A tweet from Ten Seconds to Vanish, posted at 10:17 pm on April 4, 2023, announces that the final episode is approaching and asks followers, “Who do you think did it? The teacher? The boyfriend? The North Carolina Boogie Man? Sound off in the comments!” followed by hashtags “#justice #tensecondstovanish #podcast #finalepisode” (278).

In the present day, Lindsey’s father frantically pulls her away from the tarp-covered paddleboat in the garage. Distraught, Ben collapses against his beloved Mustang, confessing, “She was everything to me” (280), referring to Jess. Lindsey demands to know what happened—and what role her father played in it—but her father is evasive, saying that Jess was “very mixed-up” and that she responded with intense anger when she discovered his own mistakes, which he attributes to having “needs—like all men” (282).

Interspersed throughout their conversation are flashbacks from Jess’s perspective. As she arrived home on the day of Lindsey’s party, she greeted her sister and mother, who questioned Jess’s new distance from Ben and scolded Jess when she claimed to have lost the ring Ben gave her. When Jess saw Dr. Daniels pulling up near the house, she went outside, saying she needed to fetch a present for Lindsey from her car.

Back in the present, Ryan arrives at the house, pounding on the door. Lindsey lets him in and witnesses a hostile confrontation between him and her father. Ryan accuses Ben of having affairs with girls Jess’s age and blames him for changing Jess: “Your relationship twisted her up inside. She became someone else” (286). Ben seems confused at first but then recognizes Ryan as Jess’s boyfriend. Ryan then describes what happened the night Jess disappeared, shown in flashback: After their breakup, an intoxicated Ryan drove to the Fadley house. From his car, he observed Jess arguing with an older man by her car. When Ryan briefly looked down after dropping his keys, both Jess and the man vanished, though her car trunk remained open. After waiting and seeing no sign of Jess, he drove away, fearing he looked like “some freaky stalker” (289), and later passed out in his dorm.

In the present day, Ryan completes his account of the night Jess disappeared, expressing profound guilt for not checking on her: “I should have gone over as soon as I saw her” (290). Lindsey processes this information, realizing Ryan didn’t harm her sister.

The narrative alternates between the present-day confrontation and flashbacks to April 23, 1999, showing Jess’s perspective as Dr. Daniels arrived at the Fadley home in his red Mazda Miata. Jess confronted him outside, rejecting his advances and threatening to expose his predatory behavior. Dr. Daniels warned her that no one would listen to her story before driving away. Jess then encountered her father in the garage, where he voiced his suspicions that she was sleeping with Dr. Daniels to upset him. Despite her anger toward him, they shared an emotional moment where she embraced him, crying.

In the present, Ben’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic as Ryan and Lindsey discuss the possibility that Dr. Daniels murdered Jess; he heard her argument with Dr. Daniels and says that Jess “was a mess” and that “a teacher swooped in and scrambled her head” (294). As Ben begins to break down completely, blaming himself for failing to protect Jess, Lindsey realizes she’s approaching the devastating truth about what happened to Jess.

Ben’s perspective from April 23, 1999, reveals his inner thoughts as he held Jess in the garage. He acknowledged his inappropriate desires for younger women while still claiming to love his family. As their embrace ended, Jess stated, “This is all your fault” (302), and accused him of abandoning his family. As she grew more upset, she began to explain that she only wanted “them” to “see reason.” Ben was familiar with this line of argument, having heard it after each murder Jess committed: Tammy, Phoebe, and Meghan.

Jess used Daisy’s ID card to lure Tammy from the computer lab, bludgeoning her with a pipe when Tammy refused to stop seeing Dr. Daniels. Months later, she strangled Phoebe for similar reasons; she later targeted Meghan specifically because of her relationship with Ben. Each time, Jess called Ben to confess what she’d done, and he himself helped dispose of Phoebe and Meghan’s bodies in Doll’s Eye Lake.

In the present, Ben admits to Lindsey and Ryan that he ultimately strangled Jess that night to stop her from killing again: “I had to protect her from herself. I had to protect Cara. And Lindsey. I had to protect every other woman that she saw as a threat” (303). A flashback shows Ben wrapping Jess’s body in plastic, hiding it in the paddleboat in the garage, and maintaining the deception for 24 years.

The chapter concludes with Lindsey examining her sister’s skeletal remains in the boat. Ryan calls the police while Ben begs Lindsey to protect Jess’s memory: “I didn’t want anyone to know what she’d done. It was better for her to be missing than a monster” (306). Despite her horror at the revelations, Lindsey agrees to keep her sister’s crimes secret, promising, “No one will ever know” (307).

In this final podcast episode, Stella and Rachel discuss recent developments in the case, reporting that Benjamin Fadley has been arrested and confessed to murdering all four women, with Jess’s remains found in the paddleboat in his garage. The hosts speculate that Ben had “a thing for the too young and very gorgeous” and killed Jess to silence her (310).

The hosts mention that Lindsey turned her father in and plans to move to New York for a hotel management position, while Cara has filed for divorce and is selling the house. They report that Dr. Daniels had his retirement funds frozen by the university and that his wife left him, while Ryan McKay has written a Pulitzer-nominated series on the case. The hosts reflect on their coverage, acknowledging criticism for “making light of the disappearances” and promise to be more respectful in future episodes (309). The podcast concludes by announcing that their next season will focus on another cold case, Jenny Malone’s 1954 murder.