“Bear Brook” Bloodline Pt 1&2

The podcast “Bear Brook” continues to surprise me. For my final blog post, I listened to episodes Bloodline (PART 1) and Bloodline (PART 2). Again, more advances are made in this complicated case. Jason Moon begins Bloodline (PART 1) by explaining how the story is in reverse order. This was interesting to me because in my last blog post, I had thought about the order in which Moon tells this story. He then jumps back to the 80’s and plays “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds. This song stood out to me during the first episode when it was played because of its popular use in movies but hearing it a second time, immediately brought my mind back to the very first Bear Brook episode that I’d listened to. The song is interrupted, though, by eerie music. The songs play simultaneously for awhile before the upbeat Simple Minds song fades out leaving only the eerie introduction song. 

In 1986, Gordan Jenson arrived at an RV park with a young girl named Lisa. The Deckers, a family living nearby, befriended Gordan and his daughter. After awhile, they noticed that Lisa was very thin, didn’t have any toys and was crammed into a very small living space. Red flags start to go off in their heads. Gordan would complain about how hard it was to raise Lisa, and cry when he talked about his wife passing away. The Deckers told Gordan about their daughter’s infertility and Gordan offered Lisa to them. They took Lisa to meet their daughter and when they got back to the RV park, Gordan was gone. Lisa went into foster care as the police dug for more information on Gordan Jenson. As they dug deeper and deeper, they found more and more fake names and information. Creepy music takes over the podcast, lingers, cuts out, and then a name is revealed. Curtis Kimball. Curtis Kimball and Gordan Jenson are revealed to be the same person but the biggest turn of events is that “Lisa” is not, in fact, his daughter. It is theorized that he probably picked her up somewhere and used her as a sex slave. This began the search for who “Lisa” was and where she came from.

The episode then flashes forward. It’s revealed that Gordan died in jail in 2010, leaving no way to get more information out of him — it’s clear he didn’t share any information with anyone else either. Breaks in the case are made when Detective Headly takes over. He investigates many different facets and finds many dead ends. He never gives up, though. Overall, something I have learned in listening to this podcast is nothing would ever be solved without drive to continue; getting discouraged isn’t an option. Detective Headly and “Lisa” work together to find new ways to connect her DNA to extended relatives. There’s almost a montage moment when Moon introduces all the different ways DNA can be obtained and used. Clips from movies and/or TV shows are placed in the episode where he references various types of DNA testing. I found that this is effective because it makes you pay attention to things more by catching your attention and giving you a new voice to listen to. The sound quality of the clips is different than the sound quality when Moon narrates so it’s obvious that he’s sampling from other art forms. The rest of the episode explores different DNA venues and at the end, concludes by identifying “Lisa” as Dawn Beaudin. Another cliffhanger… 

Bloodline (PART 2) starts with a press conference in January 2017. This, again, made me consider the chronological order of events. Moon fills the listener in on Eunsoon and “Lisa” in the podcast before the time he actually finds out about them. This press conference is where all of his knowledge on the case comes from, yet, he gives the listener this information in more of a chronological sense, despite flashing back to the 1980’s again in the last episode. It’d be challenging to always give information in a chronological order in mystery cases like this because new information is constantly being discovered. Throughout this episode, the listener learns that Dawn’s mother, Denise Beaudin, went missing at the same time that she did and that the child who wasn’t related to the other people in the barrels, is fathered by Gordan Jenson. The police are able to tie Gordan Jenson to the blue barrel victims found in Bear Brook by the end of the episode but aren’t yet able to identify the victims. 

Overall this podcast has had many ups and downs; a lot of new information is discovered but a lot of dead ends are reached, too. This podcast has made me more aware of the intricacies of solving a complicated case. Jason Moon does a good job of connecting the episodes through the same overall structure (him narrating, others interjecting with interviews, and periodic film clips) and moving in chronological order. The podcast is easy to follow, interesting, and I can’t even begin to imagine the time that it took to create. I plan on listening to a few more episodes to uncover more details and to keep up with new advancements. 

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