Chapter 3: Missing, Not Lost

And I said, I'm beginning to think I don't know if Bethany was real. Was she real or is she somebody I was making up? Right? So I called the Obin County Hospital where Bethany was born in New City, and I was talking to the woman and it was like, I need to know if my daughter is real. Can you send me a copy of the versonarticulately? I need to see her footprints. And I remember how to mail to my job, and I opened them when they came in and I was just like, I called Laurie and I was like, oh my god, this is proof Bethany is real. She is real, she was here. This is missing in Hushtown Season two, Bethany Markowski, Welcome back Bethany's Brigade to Chapter three. Bethany Missing, not lost. Throughout this episode, we're going to share stories, interviews, and memories about Bethany from those who knew her and loved her best, her sisters, cousins, ants, and of course, her mom, Johnny Carter. Bethany may be missing for twenty five years now, but her legacy, her love, and her purpose has never been lost. Together with her family, we hope to bring you along the journey to all that is Bethany through the eyes of all who vowed to find her, and the impact her disappearance has made on them all. Bethany's loved ones had just eleven short years with her, and the trauma they've endured the last twenty five years has greatly impacted their memories. But through it all, they refuse to stop telling the world about the girl that Bethany was to them. Sometimes you can't turn you can't turn the feelings off or even down. They're just there and they're going to come out, no matter how hard you fight back the tears or the anger or whatever emotion that you're feeling at that time. And it's so you just don't know what emotion you're going to get when you start talking come a aut it either. I mean there's days I look at Bethanye's picture and she's smiling, and I'll look at her and I'll smile right back at her, and those days I'll look at it, the same picture and it rips my heart out and I just can't really look at it. I'm your host, Jules. Hey, guys, let's go. M we start about when she was born. Actually, can you go back to like pregnancy. Yeah, yes, I do. I remember finding out. I cried so yeah, it was. It was a scary time. I didn't really want to be pregnant, not by Larry, but I was and happy about it. According to the National Domestic Abuse Hotland website the hotlane dot org, quote, abusive relationships are extremely complex situations and it takes a lot of courage to leave. Abuse is about power and control. When a survivor leaves their abusive relationship, they threaten the power and control their partner has established over the survivor's agency. This often causes the partner to retaliate in harmful ways. As a result, leaving is often the most dangerous period of time for survivors of abuse end quote. Unfortunately, many victims of domestic abuse are blamed, Well, why didn't you leave? Why would you stay? How could you allow your daughter in that environment? Johnny, She's a victim too, and she was doing the best she could. She was in a constant state of fear of retaliation. To put it bluntly, she was afraid that leaving Larry with Bethany would cause Bethany to be harmed, or she'd never get to see Bethany again. And if Johnny and Bethany were separated, how could she protect Bethany. She could take it, she would take it, and if she did, then maybe he wouldn't turn on Bethany. She was never going to leave her daughter. When Bethany was born February first, nineteen ninety, Johnny instantly fell in love her dark hair and blue green eyes that sparkled. She was loved deeply by her siblings. Bethany is the youngest of five. She has two siblings from Larry's former marriage to a woman named Sheila, Jenny and Daniel, and two on Johnny's side, Emily and Kyle. Bethany was born February first, nineteen ninety. Beautiful baby girl and silly, funny, sweet kid. I remember when she was little. She always she would bring me a ponytail holder and wan her hair put on top of her head and called her a water spountain. She had this. You could tell her to make a ugly face, and there's pictures of it. She would make an ugly face. Just very sweet, silly, funny, loved everybody, loved everybody. We had some neighbors that was an elderly couple, so Bethany would get off the school bus when she got older and stop at their house and check on and make sure that they were okay. The other voices you may hear throughout Johnny's interviews are her sister aunt Laurie, her sister Tommy, and their best friend Diane. We all sat together one evening and they took turns telling about Bethany. Sometimes they finish each other's sentences, sometimes they correct each other, and sometimes they all talk at once. Their sisterly bond is beautiful, and their nurturing hearts are contagious. They banter back and forth. We pause every now and then because one of them has made a joke that's hard to recover from. Johnny recalls fondly how Bethany as a toddler was always into some thing and up to something. That Bethany was very, very very busy. Here's sister Jenny. She was everything to me. We used to have lived beside the church in Sadonia, and we used to get a sheet, and I used to make us some mayonnaise and cracker sandwiches and cootlaid or water, and we'd go down to the church parking lot and sit under the tree and have picnics together. Me, me and my brother used to tie up to the chair and just you know, we used to do what siblings do. We were eight years apart, so I watched her a lot. She was just She hung out with me and my friends a lot. She was just everything to me. How would you describe her her personality to everyone who's never met Bethany if you had to, kind of just paint a big picture of Okay, Bethany's coming, get ready, this is what she's like. She was shot at first, talkative. We both have that problem, goofy, and we both bit our nails. We both bit our nails down to nothing. She was just fun to be around. She had her whole life ahead. Ever, I don't know she was so young. She was just so young. So many times in these interviews about Bethany, her loved one will finish talking, but they're not done speaking. You can almost feel their memories in the yeir hanging there, playing like a projector screen in front of us. The quiet isn't still, it's moving pictures filled with a recipe of nostalgia and grief. Here's Emily, Bethany's older sister, Johnny's daughter. She was so sweet, so funny, and she had like these little beanie moon eyes when she smiled, and she would laugh, and I remember her little Kokahontas room and she would sing and just the sweetest. She has been the most part happy considering like what kind of life she must have lived. You know, I was only there for a short period of time, you know, every other week, and so I'm sure things were a lot different whenever all of the other kids were out of the house. And it was just them beth Any's siblings on her mom's I didn't live with Johnny full time. Emily remembers when Larry and Johnny were together and all the children would be at the house for weekend visits. So when my mom and dad separated, all lived with my mom for a little bit of kindergarten, and then I ended up moving and with my dad. So I only went to my mom and their house every other weekend for the most part. There were other time frames where it would be a large larger gap between me going. I will say that their house was a lot different from what I was used to at my dad's house. I just had my own room, a TV, a phone, and I just kind of do whatever I wanted to do. But at their house, we had to get up at like the crack of dawn, all like five of us kids had to be outside all day long and then come in like at the end of the day. It was really weird, like you can only come in to eat or go to the bathroom. Really strange, but that was what it was like. I just spent every other weekend. There, Bethany's sister on Larry's side. Again, Jenny recalls the heat and being forced to stay outside. He used to make us sit outside in the summer if he's so hot outside, and we'd be laying on the porch like dogs, and you know, at night time. I remember when they lived in Woodland Mills, he would put it back then it was just the air conditioning unit, not like a central heat in air, and it was in the living room, and he would we would sleep in the bedroom, beth and he was still in diapers, and me and my brother and her would sleep on the bedroom floor when I was there on the weekend, and he put towels underneath the doors to keep the air in the living room where him and Johnny slept. I remember we had a box fan and the window would be up and it would be so hot. We just take off our clothes and be just like in a T shirt and panties or underwear or whatever in that room, and it would be so hot. Bens Andy would just be in a diaper and we'd just be laying there. I'd be laying there at night, just like rocking her butt like this, like patting her butt, rocking her with her in her bottle. And I'm sure Larry would make Johnny stay in the living room and we would sneak out of the bedroom and like just try to not to fall asleep in the hallway so he'd wake up in the morning and zeus. So we'd try to like sneak out the door into the hall and get some air and then not fall asleep there to be back in the bedroom. Here's EMILYE. Do you mind going into why you were living with your dad primarily because I know a lot of people listening will obviously think that's not the norm to live primarily with your father. Are you open to going into that? Sure? I mean I wanted to and they let me. Apparently. Never it was time to go to court for custody, I don't think my mom was allowed to show up, so my dad got custody. This is correct per Johnny's recollection. Here's Johnny. When I left and moved to Union City, Tennessee, and I had an apartment and I was getting a divorce from my husband, I had custody of both of the kids, or you know, he got every weekend or every the weekend, I can't remember. And then when Larry and I got together, Max's husband got tired of picking the kids up and me having a black eye, or the kids saying, you know, we had to go outside and we could hear mama screaming, and so he took me to court for full custody of the kids, thank god. And so the court date came and I wasn't allowed to get out of bed that day. It really wouldn't have mattered if I'd have been able to get out of bed. I didn't have a car, I didn't have a way to go there. Larry had already sold my car. I was totally one hundred per dependent on him. But again, it was the best thing for my kids. Did it devastate me? Absolutely? I wanted my kids. I love my kids, and we didn't have a relationship for years. You know, Emily was twelve. She called to talk to me one day, and you know, Larry answered the phone, and he was telling her, you know, she don't need you, She's got Bethany and all this stuff. And Emily said, kiss my ass. And I was not allowed to see my kids for the next five years until he decided it was okay for Bethany to call and talk to Emily. Here's Emily's right collection. I was in sixth grade, going into seventh grade, and I wanted to try it for cheerleading, and my mom and Larry were supposed to have health insurance on me. So I called and Larry answered the phone. And I don't know if you just maybe they just didn't have health insurance on me or something. I have no idea, but I guess he got pissed and he said to me, you don't need your mom because you have your stepmom. I'm not going to say her name, but he said, because you have your stepmom, which I'd never ever said before. And he said so, and your mom doesn't need you because she has Bethany. Period. I did not talk to or see any of them until several months before Bethany came up missing. She called me on my parents' landline and was just like, hey, this is Bethany, So we're like okay, and she came and spent the weekend at my dad and step mom's house a few weeks later, I guess it was. And then we just went and did like I don't know, shopping and stuff like that, and then they came and picked her up and that was the last time I. Ever saw Johnny remembers that last visit Emily had with Bethany as well. Emily called me I lost costin to my kids and which was the best thing in the world that could have happened to them. And Larry would say, do you want to do you want to call your kids? And if I said yeah, then he would be like, why do you want to call them? They hate you, they don't have nothing to do with you. And if I said no, then what kind of parent are? You don't even want to talk to your kids. So there was no right answer at all, and he would do the same thing, you know, to Bethany, do you want to call your sister? And Emily and she would just look over me. But one day, out of the blue, He looked at Bethany and said, you want to call Emily, and Bethany, you looked at me, and she just kind of sugar her head. Yeah, he said, we'll call her. He called her and talked. Bethany called Emily and talked to her, and then I talked to her. And. Emily asked Bethany could she come and spend the weekend and Larry said yes, and she went and spent the weekend with Emily and her dad. Soon after that visit, Emily's little sister, Bethany would never be seen again. Johnny carries a lot of guilt about this time in Emily's life. She didn't understand she was just a kid, you know, she was twelve years old, or she was younger than that, and she didn't have a mom. For the first date, she had her dad, which she did an amazing job. And that's the guilt that I have to live with. You know, both Bethany's life and Bethany's disappearance, I simultaneously shaped everyone's life who loves her. I mean mistakes every single day, every day, and I'll own up to him. I will say on record, I lost my freaking mind. I was thirty eight years old, and I started drinking and I became pretty much an alcoholic. And I went to after Bethany had been missing for like ten years and I had done warm myself and my family out, I finally went and talk to a psychiatrists. And you know, one of the first things he told me, you know, we needed you need sleep. Yeah, I said, you know, the only time I sleep is when I'm drunk, and I passed out. And he said, well, that's that's not sleep, that's not sleep. And you know, he put me on Ambien and Xenex and adderall and all kinds of medication. And I took that stuff for like two or three months, and I just couldn't do it anymore. It noned me too much. I couldn't it sounds weird. I couldn't feel the pain, and I needed the pain. Johnny would spend the next ten years volunteering for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, helping other families of missing children. She poured herself into advocacy and activism. She knew how isolating it felt to be in their shoes, and she knew she could help them through her grief and her pain and everything she had learned by taking it one day out of time. So I started volunteering for the National Serphramasius for Children with a group called Team Hope. And I did that for I think about ten years, and it, Oh, it probably sounds crazy. It made me feel like I was doing something I wasn't looking for my daughter. I mean I still wasn't. And I took breaks. I did. I took I had to mentally and physically take breaks. But I was trying to help other parents because I didn't have I had my family, and I didn't have anybody really that had ever been through it. And once I did, once I talked to somebody that had a missing child, then I wasn't ashamed to speak the truth. I wasn't ashamed to tell them all of my crazy thoughts. That you're kind of embarrassed to your family. You don't want to feel like they're worried for you or anything like that. And I feel like if I know I did help one person because she became a Team Hope volunteer and she got her son back, that it made me made me feel good, made me feel like I did something good out of all this bad that happened to Bethany. I feel like it gave me a purpose. Yeah, when you're searching for answers at this stage, we searching for Bethany or are we searching for answers about what happened for Bethany? Is there a difference and what. Direction you've been going and now depends on the day. If Bethany was here with her family today, what would she be like? Would she have competed in sports like she wanted to do. Would she have been involved with animals horses specifically? Would she live near Johnny in Middle Tennessee or in East Tennessee near her sister Jenny and brothers Daniel and Kyle. Or would she have traveled the world and been a free spirit exploring the wonders of what this beautiful world would have had to offer her. Trauma rewires brains. It can be cruel and erase memories, making them foggy or replay the worst ones. Bethany was with their family for just eleven years, but she's been missing for twenty five years. But Bethany was never lost, she was never forgotten, she was never dismissed, but she is missing. Each day her family misses her so much so that what they do day in and day out is shaped by the absence of Bethany. You'll continue to hear stories about Bethany throughout the season, and you'll come to know her throughout her actions, reactions, words, hopes, and dreams. Bethany loved her family, and it's the same family that will never never allow Bethany's memory to become lost. No matter how exhausted, defeated, worn out, or hopeless they may feel at times, their love for Bethany carries them on their mission to find Bethany. Leanne Murkowski next time on Missing in Hushtown. As it got closer to her going back that week prior, she seemed one. I don't think she felt good. She seemed like she had a little bit of fear. I think she was coming down with something. But too she was going around to everybody in the house, you know, even the kids, and saying, you know what if Daddy didn't bring me back. So I felt like she knew something was going on, that he had done threatened her or done something because she didn't want to go and Johnny's, you know, the night before, she's trying to help her pack her bag, and she was like, well, do you want to take this? And she was like even that typical kid thing. No, I don't want that. I don't like that. I don't like so she and she's like, you have to pack. She said why she didn't want to go, and she's like, she said, you have to go. She said, if you. Don't go, I'm breaking the law, you know, and they'll they'll then they'll take you from me, and then I won't you know, then I want to you know. She was like, well, what if he doesn't bring me back? She said, he has to. He has to bring you back. He doesn't bring you back, we'll come and get you and he'll never see you again. And that was and she said she regrets that so much that she made her. Go missing in Hushtown. Season two is executive produced in partnership by Fireeyes Media LLC's Jules Thorpe and Johen Rivera, as well as mom Cast Productions Rachel Holloway and Heather Northcraft. The script is written by Jules Thorpe and edited by Heather Northcraft. Project lead is Rachel Holloway and master editing and audio production is done by John Rivera. Jules Thorpe is your host. Fireeyes media mom Haspard raising voices while raising kids.