Reported missing on May 15, Susan Jacobson would be the longest, most arduous case on which Dorothy had worked; a case in which not only her own stamina, but also the grim perseverance of the young parents, Bill and Ellen Jacobson, would be pushed to an inhuman threshold.
Ellen Jacobson and her younger sister, June, were born on Staten Island of Scottish parents; both women had fair complexions and short, light brown hair. Ellen, thirty-seven, worked hard as the mother of seven children, whose ages spanned from one year to sixteen. No one ever felt unwelcome in Bill and Ellen's house, no matter how busy or chaotic the movements of their large family might be, because the parents worked closely and lovingly to keep their home open to strangers and friends.
When Bob and Dorothy got to the three-story Jacobson house, located on a corner in Staten Island, Dorothy felt an immediate kinship for the tall, energetic but nervous woman who greeted them. Dorothy could see the tear-stained eyes behind the tinted wire-framed glasses. After two weeks of constant vigilance and searching for her daughter, desperation was ingrained in Ellen's smile.
Dorothy gave the woman a hug - a gesture of deeply felt sympathy, for Dorothy, in her own mind, already knew that Ellen Jacobson's daughter had been murdered.
"Where's the coffee?" Dorothy asked as soon as the upstairs door closed behind them and they stood in the bright, small kitchen and dining area. Ellen Jacobson anxiously poured coffee all around.
"I'm sorry my husband isn't here," she said. "The reporter from the newspaper said I should call you right away, so I didn't have time to wait for Bill. He's out with friends looking for Susan. He doesn't usually give up till just before the sun goes down. There must be twenty people out there looking today."
Dorothy sat at the table and pulled out a note pad and pen. She began writing.
"I see 'MAR.' What is it? Do you know?" Dorothy asked Ellen.
"Can't imagine. Is it part of someone's name?" Ellen wondered.
"No, I don't think it's part of anything. I just see three letters, 'MAR,' and nothing else."
Dorothy wrote down the number '2562' and showed it to Ellen.
"Mean anything?" Dorothy probed.
"It's Susan's birthday," Ellen said, sounding slightly incredulous.
Dorothy wrote down "405-408," and again presented it to Ellen. The mother stopped for a moment to think finally said that if the numbers were related to the birth day, then 4:05 would have been the correct time of Susan' birth.
"Good," Dorothy said. "I'm getting a lot of strong feel ings, which I will describe to you first, and then, see if you can place them," Dorothy instructed her. "When I'm done I'll ask you things about the case and the investigation."
Ellen grimaced at the word "investigation," but before she could say anything, Dorothy went on with her vision
"I have a very good picture of an area related to Susan," Dorothy told Ellen. "I see twin bridges in the distance, but one of the bridges isn't for cars. The area is like a swamp There's an abandoned car near the place where I see 'MAR.' I also see two sets of dual church steeples and two huge smokestacks. The 'MAR' will help us pinpoint where to begin. That's what we've got to find first."
Ellen's mind reeled with the facts. She was too frightened to fully comprehend anything Dorothy was saying. She knew that there were plenty of bridges and church steeples around the island, but her husband would be better equipped to help the psychic. He had already taken three weeks off from his work at Citibank in Manhattan to search for his second oldest daughter.
"Where're the police?" Dorothy asked suddenly.
Ellen shuddered at the question. Gus Doyle, June's boyfriend, had run an investigation of his own. Doyle, a tall, boisterous Irishman, worked as an insurance investigator and was fully schooled in the language of investigative procedures.
In addition to family and friends, help in the search for Susan had been provided by members of a citizens-band radio club, cabdrivers, and bus drivers. But in two weeks there had still been little investigation done by the police as far as Bill and Ellen were concerned.
When Ellen had phoned the Staten Island police at 9:00 P.M. on Saturday, May 15, the answering policeman had been unsympathetic to her plight.
"A fourteen-year-old girl who is only missing three hours after dinner isn't missing at all," the man said. "She's out screwing around with friends."
"We've talked to all her friends," Ellen persisted. "Nobody has seen her since early this afternoon. I know she hasn't run away."
"That's what they all say," the officer exclaimed. "Okay, lady, relax. I'll have someone by your place in an hour to take down the facts." He hung up abruptly.
Someone did come. An officer appeared more than an hour later, asked very few questions, none of which had to do with Susan's physical description, and left. The next day Ellen was told by a detective on the phone that if Susan had not shown up by Monday, the case would be turned over to the Missing Persons Bureau, whose offices were in Manhattan.
For the next week, the Jacobsons heard nothing from the Missing Persons Bureau, and only briefly from the local police. On the seventh day they were informed by phone that they had to obtain a PINS (Persons in Need of Supervision) warrant, which Bill Jacobson did, spending an entire day in court to obtain it. But the PINS warrant merely emphasized, the fact that the officials felt Susan had run away.
On the twelfth day after Susan's disappearance, Patricia, the oldest of the seven children, was sitting on the shady corner in front of her house when suddenly, a man in a business suit grabbed her arm and announced that he had "found" her.
"Found who?" Patricia screamed as she wrenched her arm free.
"Susan Jacobson," the man announced.
"You're crazy, mister. We may look alike, but I'm not Susan," the angry teen-ager snarled.
The man who had approached Patricia was a detective from the Missing Persons Bureau. After mistaking Patricia for Susan, he proceeded upstairs to introduce himself to the parents. The man sat with Bill and Ellen around their dining table for fifteen minutes, during which time he told them "everything possible would be done" to find Susan, but that "nine times out of ten these cases are runaways." He also asked some questions. He had heard Susan had a boyfriend: was he around?
Dempsey Hawkins was always around, usually on the corner in front of the Jacobsons' house with the other neighborhood kids. Ellen told the investigator that he might find him there now.
The man requested a copy of Susan's dental chart, for possible future identification. Ellen gave him a flier of which Bill had made two thousand copies to be distributed all over Staten Island. That flier, with Susan's photograph on it, and the dental chart were the only things the parents saw go into their daughter's file.
The investigator did locate Dempsey on the street. A strapping, wiry-haired mulatto, Dempsey Hawkins glared at the fortyish man mistrustfully, as he glared at all the world. Born out of wedlock, Dempsey lived with his British mother and his sister in the Port Richmond neighborhood. Dempsey's life had been difficult, at best. He had grown up neither black nor white and had learned that taking the offense was a stronger position, ultimately, than defense. Confronting people, he presented a solid, sometimes stony facade. At sixteen Dempsey was already a thinking man, scrutinizing the world from behind his glasses.
The detective introduced himself and asked the boy if he believed Susan had any reason to run away.
"No, sir," Dempsey responded.
Dempsey stood in the evening shadows and coolly told the man he had no idea what had happened to Susan. On the Saturday morning of her disappearance he had seen her taking care of the two youngest Jacobson children. The detective commended the boy for helping out in the search and advised that he alone had disability to play both sides of the street in order to obtain information.
"Know what I mean?" the investigator said, handing Dempsey his card.
"Both sides of the street," Dempsey repeated, smiling to himself.
That completed the on
ly official interrogation of Dempsey. According to the family, in the next twenty-two months the Missing Persons Bureau called on the Jacob-sons' only once: to retrieve Susan's dental chart.
Dorothy rose out of her seat like an angry phoenix coming to life.
"Come on, we've got work to do. We're going to the police department," she commanded.
The three got into Bob Allison's car. Driving to the station, down Jewett Avenue through Richmond Terrace, Ellen told Bob to make a right at a fork in the road.
"No," Dorothy said. "If we go the other way, to the left, we'll be heading in the correct direction. I get a very strong scent of oil. Very strong, as if I were in a barrel of oil."
Ellen thought nothing of the oil scent, as the entire area was surrounded by oil-producing companies and container companies. The police station was in the opposite direction, toward the Statue of Liberty, so Dorothy made a mental note of the direction and the trio proceeded to the station.
Carrying a red satchel, Dorothy followed Ellen and Bob into the Police Department where the nervous mother introduced herself to the patrolman on duty as the mother of Susan Jacobson, a missing child. No one knew what she was talking about. Then Dorothy asked to see one of the detectives.
The patrolman explained that if the case was being handled by missing persons, they could not interfere with the investigation. At that time the shift changed, and Dorothy caught two unsuspecting detectives walking in for duty.
She cornered them and briefly introduced herself, pulling out two large scrapbooks of affidavits and articles from cases she had resolved. Reluctantly they escorted her into an office where, behind closed doors, away from Ellen's ears, she told the two men that the case belonged in homicide, not missing persons. She told them that Susan Jacobson was not missing, she was dead, and that she had been murdered by someone who had known her for some time.
Seeing the policemen were skeptical, Dorothy began telling the officers details about other cases they were working on. She specifically talked about a man who was missing and who would be found in three days by the beach, or on something called "Beach," in an area known as Old Town. She predicted that the body would be found in the trunk of a large abandoned black car, like a Lincoln, with license plates that did not belong to the car. The car, she added, would not readily appear to have been abandoned.
The men agreed to go out with Dorothy, but their skepticism was a barrier to real cooperation. They drove around Staten Island for thirty minutes.
"We need facts, not psychics," the police told the Jacobsons, a response that would haunt the parents.
That evening Bill Jacobson listened to everything Dorothy said. Her descriptions seemed to fit various places he had visited in the past weeks.
Dorothy left the Jacobsons" house that evening sharing their sadness and frustration. She wondered whether, if the Jacobsons had been wealthy or if Susan had been the daughter of a policeman, they would have received different treatment.
Three days after Dorothy's first visit, the newspapers reported that a man's body had been found in an abandoned black Lincoln on Beach Street in the neighborhood known as New Dorp, a section of the island once known as Old Town. The dead man was "believed to be a New Jersey fisherman involved in organized crime narcotic trafficking."
The following week, on June 8, an article appeared on the front page of the Staten Island Advance announcing that the New Jersey psychic was working on the Jacobson case and that she had accurately predicted the discovery of the fisherman's body the week before. This illicited no response from the police.
Believing the police would do nothing with Dorothy's description of the pertinent area, Bill Jacobson continued to investigate on his own. Along with Gus Doyle and Bill's close friend, Dale Williams, Bill spent three days on the southern part of the island looking for the "MAR" Dorothy had described. On an island full of marine-related businesses, "MAR" would be three very common letters. But Dorothy's confidence and sympathy had lifted the spirits of the desperate parents. Bill Jacobson felt he would find everything Dorothy saw. By the time Dorothy returned the following weekend, the men had come up with a couple of possibilities.
Bill Jacobson invited the Staten Island reporter Janice Kabel to join them on the search with Dorothy. Although an invitation had been extended to the Missing Persons Bureau as well, no one from the Bureau showed up. So, the search party consisted of the parents, Dorothy, Dale Williams, and the reporter.
First the group went to a little wooded area near North Street, a street Dorothy had seen as important, and also near the water. As they walked down a dirt road in the summer heat, they looked through the trees and spotted an old trailer. The name on the van, which was partially blocked by the trees, began with "MAR." As they approached the van, however, the "MAR" became part of MARGOLIN Brothers. Dorothy walked around the area for a while, checking the van and the surrounding shrubbery, and finally said she picked up no feelings from it. Perhaps, she said, they would return to the spot at another time. She wanted to see the other location first.
In Mariner's Harbor they walked along a road, skirting rubbish piles, and into a dense area of vegetation where flies and mosquitoes buzzed around them mercilessly. In the distance tall cranes moved slowly in the air, looking like prehistoric creatures. They lifted their loads as if the tons of metal were weightless.
The area, known during World War I as Downey's Shipyard, had been used as docks for merchant ships. Huge concrete slabs, partially covered with plants and graffiti, and deep, dark caverns, which once had served as storage and water retainers, also gave the area the atmosphere of a spot once inhabited by an ancient civilization.
On a large concrete corner jutting out of the earth some fifteen feet, Bill pointed out red painted letters, probably the handiwork of kids leaving their mark. The letters spelled "MAR."
"This is it!" Dorothy's excitement was evident. Not thirty feet away from the slab was an abandoned junked car. "I know we're in the right place. I feel it all over me."
Looking south over a long concrete dividing wall, the group could see the Bayonne Bridge and a train bridge spanning the bay. Across the water in New Jersey, two sets of dual steeples pointed heavenward.
But everywhere the earth was full of deep trenches and dark, forbidding holes, many containing dank water where insects were breeding in the summer heat. Dorothy shook her head, realizing the work involved in searching the underground network.
"You've got to get the police down here with bloodhounds and rowboats," Dorothy told them. "You must have their cooperation to get this investigation off the ground. I'm not a cop. I can point out where a person might be, but I can't go any further. That wouldn't stand up well in a courtroom," she advised Bill. "Your daughter is connected with this area and it's up to the police to find her."
The small, anxious man was overwhelmingly frustrated. Everytime he had turned to the police, he had encountered a blank wall. Only Dorothy's work had lifted his spirits. Only Dorothy continued to drive to Staten Island and spend time looking for their daughter. Dorothy would listen to their plight at any time, offering whatever solace and support she could.
But Ellen and Bill gave the information to the police, anyway. They were told, again, that the police "needed facts, not psychics." Moreover the police said they simply did not have the manpower to do the searching needed to cover the area Dorothy had pinpointed.
That evening, after the newspaper reporter had gone, Dorothy sat on Susan's bed with Ellen, feeling Susan's jewelry and thumbing through some photographs of the Jacobson children from a report Susan had done for school on her family life.
Dorothy looked at the photo of the attractive girl. Susan wore her long, light brown hair parted down the middle, framing her warm smile. She wore blue-tinted, wire-framed glasses, like her mother's, over her blue eyes.
Ellen sighed from exhaustion and sadness. Sitting quietly in Susan's room, she reflected on her daughter.
"She is so stubborn, sometimes," E
llen told Dorothy. "At nine months she was walking because she couldn't figure out how to crawl. She's smart, too. Almost straight A's in school."
The two mothers smiled.
"Stubbornness is in her planets," Dorothy said. "Ellen, I feel Susan had a bad time this last year. Is that right?"
Not exactly sure what Dorothy meant, Ellen asked her why she felt that way.
"Susan spent a lot of time with her boyfriend, didn't she?" Dorothy asked.
"I guess so." Ellen shrugged, not sure she wanted to pursue the sensitive subject. "We didn't really know how much time they were spending together," she said hesitantly. She wondered what Dorothy could be seeing. After all, Dorothy had not met Dempsey, yet.
"I feel they were doing a lot more than holding hands together," Dorothy continued, not sure how to pursue her feelings without offending the mother. But Ellen knew what the psychic was seeing.
"You're right, Dorothy, they were doing more than holding hands. Susan got pregnant and had to have an abortion last January." Tears streamed from the mother's eyes as she remembered the day the previous December, when she had found Susan in the bathroom, nauseated. Having had seven children, Ellen's subconscious suspicion was that her daughter was suffering from morning sickness. Unfortunately she had been correct.
Dorothy Allison - A Psychic Story Page 20
