What happened to Rebekah? (Part 1 of 2)

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We used to watch Dateline and 2020 and all those shows and I'd go, how in the world did somebody go missing? How does that happen?

And then here I found myself living it.

Welcome to The Knife. I'm Patia Eaton.

This week, we have part one of a two-part series. Part two will air next week. Today, I'm speaking with Angela Mastrovito, the mother of Rebecca Barsotti. In the summer of 2021, Rebecca went missing in the small town of Superior, Montana. a place she'd only briefly returned to at the request of her estranged husband, David Barsotti. Rebecca's mother, Angela, tells us about her daughter, Rebecca, her life, and the events leading up to her strange disappearance. For Angela, the search for Rebecca that followed would leave more questions than answers.

What really happened to Rebecca? Let's get into the interview.

Hi, Angela.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Certainly.

I really appreciate the opportunity, Pasha, to be able to share awareness about Rebecca's story and about Rebecca's legacy and getting the information out there.

So I want to start just back at the beginning. If you could tell us a little bit about yourself.

A little bit about myself.

I'm almost 70 years young and I am a wife and and a mom and a grandma. I myself was one of five siblings growing up. I lived in a blended family. My parents were divorced and used to go back and forth between mom's house and dad's house. I did grow up with what they would today call abuse. I mean, there was fighting and hollering and throwing objects and all kinds of stuff and taking my age into consideration.

At that point in time, people did not talk about this.

And you didn't even know what was normal and what was abnormal because no one spoke of it.

Right.

So I went into my adulthood with no real concept of what a normal relationship looked like. I... I've been married three times. The first one was emotionally abusive. The second one also emotionally abusive. And now I have a really good man. So I'm very thankful.

During her first marriage, Angela gave birth to her son, Antonio. But the marriage ended and when Antonio, or Tony, was two, Angela remarried. But her second husband also became abusive, especially to her son, Tony.

This was the.

Early 1980s, and they were living in rural Virginia. Angela asked for help from local organizations, churches, and school counselors, but the help that she needed never came. So she and Tony found other ways to survive.

It was at a time where you would go for help and no one would help you.

The police would come and say, you look like a great family, work it out.

Was there physical abuse then?

Yeah, there was excessive spanking and there was abuse there. Tony and I went to counseling and basically we were told how to learn all the warning signs. Don't put yourself in a corner. Make sure you're out of the house as often as you can be. So that was pretty much how we lived our life. We slept at home, but we didn't stay at home. And You know, when I had been trying to find ways to leave, and then when I found out I was pregnant, it was like, oh shit, what do I do now?

I just took it as a.

Sign that, you know, Rebecca was going to be my gift from God and that things were going to work out. Rebecca was and is my gift from God. When I was pregnant with her, I used to sit and sing to her even before she was born. So when she was in the womb. And I would sing a song after we chose her name. I would sing the song Rebecca Grace Rose is a gift from God. And I would sing that over and over and over to her.

And unlike her brother who took like 20 some hours in labor, Rebecca was just like, I'm here and I'm here now and I'm not waiting. She was born on December 28th, 1987, in the middle of a wicked snowstorm, an ice storm. And she just wasn't going to wait. She arrived and she arrived screaming her lungs off and demanding attention from the world.

Exactly what you want and what you hope for.

Yes, yes.

She truly brought a lot of joy into our life. She and Tony, her brother, were bonded right from the get-go.

Rebecca and Tony had a special relationship, but even growing up in the same household, their childhoods were starkly different. Rebecca's father, who was Tony's stepdad, was never abusive to Rebecca, but was consistently abusive to Tony. Asking a survivor of domestic violence, why didn't you just leave? It shifts the blame from abuser to victim. It's an oversimplification of the control that an abuser can have over someone and the added danger that statistically comes with leaving. Angela and her family lived in a small town. They had very little money.

And as Tony and Rebecca got older, Angela went so far as to seek out women's shelters, but none would take Angela, Rebecca, and her son, because at the time, Tony was over 10 years old. He would have had to go into foster care, and understandably, she wasn't going to let that happen. Angela kept the children busy and out of the house. For Tony, there were sports and extracurriculars.

For Rebecca, there were horses.

Rebecca's passion had always been horses.

And although she tried many, many different things throughout her childhood, the horses is what she loved. Rebecca got lessons and learned how to ride and helped on the farm with baling hay and things like that in exchange for the opportunity to ride.

Riding horses can be really expensive. And Angela didn't have the money to pay for Rebecca's lessons, so together, she and Rebecca worked doing chores at the barn in exchange for time for Rebecca to ride. Rebecca was used to working, and she could talk to anyone, so as she got older, she got jobs waiting tables and became more involved in her local church. Rebecca went on mission trips that allowed her the opportunity to see more of the country, and soon she was ready to think about leaving her small hometown of Partlow, Virginia.

So Rebecca had taken some missions trips through church and had gone to different areas. One was Denver, Colorado. She went to do some street ministry in inner city, things like that. In 2006, her grandfather died and she was very, very close to her grandfather.

It really hit her hard.

And even though she really didn't share it with me at the time, it was a little bit later, like a year later that she said, you know, she just came home from work one day and she said, the world's too big to stay in part low.

I'm leaving.

And I'm like, what? You know, that just totally floored me. And I'm looking at her and I go, well, where are you going? And at first she was like, I don't know. I'll think someplace, probably out west. And she goes, I really liked it out West.

And I said, okay.

And so then she would come home and say, a girlfriend and I are going to drive across country. And I don't know if you ever heard of Alicia Scholl Walter, but she was a young woman that went missing in Virginia about two hours from our home. And I just, I looked at Rebecca and I said, I.

Don't think so. Two girls travel across country by themselves. That's not safe.

So she would come home with a different story and a different idea on a regular basis. And then finally she came home and she said, the dishwasher is going to ride across country with me.

And I was like, she's going to go. I mean, I'm not going to be able to stop.

Her, right?

The dishwasher is literally the dishwasher that Rebecca worked with at the restaurant where she waited tables.

And his name is Jeff.

Neither Rebecca or Jeff or their families had the money to send them off on a cross-country road trip. So they spent the summer raising funds and making sure one of them had a car that was safe to drive.

And his family and Rebecca's family, we pulled so many things together to have so many yard sales for these two young kids to be able to make it across country, right? So it was a long process, but they did it. They left and they drove across country and they stopped at all of the state parks and played frisbee disc golf all along the way. That was where they stayed was at the national parks and the state parks. And so it was about 2007 and they broke down in Cody, Wyoming and.

Needed a car park.

Between the two families, we got some money to them and they got their car fixed and they continued on. Both of them were very idealistic. They thought they were going to go to San Diego. Idaho and become snowboard instructors. But they got to Sandpoint in September, the end of September of that year, before snowfall, right? And so this is a community that's very dependent on the tourists and the snow season. And so the local people told them, you know, I think you'd be happier in Missoula, Montana.

There's a university there. So there's more kids your age. So they backtracked and ended up in Missoula. They both went their separate ways. I'm going to say... Within a year or two, Rebecca knew that that was where she wanted to be.

She loved the outdoors. She loved the river. She loved the mountains.

She loved the big sky, which is actually, you know, part of what Montana is known by.

She just loved the whole atmosphere.

Rebecca and Angela spoke on the phone when they could, but sometimes their respective work schedules and the time difference made it difficult to sync up. Angela missed Rebecca and, like any mother, worried about her making a new life for herself so far away from home. But overall, Rebecca seemed happy and excited about her future. In 2013, after nearly six years in Missoula, Rebecca met a man named David Barsotti, and she was excited about him.

So she said that she was dating somebody and that they met at the river and that she really liked him. He traveled a lot for his job. It sounded like one of those things where somebody came in and swept you off your feet.

What did you hear about their relationship from her?

I mean, at that point in time, everything was wonderful. The biggest thing was that he would have assignments scheduled. quote unquote, where he would be gone for six weeks and then come home for a week or two and then gone for six weeks and come home for a week or two. At one point in time, he was working in the oil industry in.

One of the Dakotas.

Was he older than Rebecca?

Yeah, he's older than Rebecca.

He is, I want to say five years older.

Did you have any sort of feeling about their relationship?

She didn't really, you know, elaborate on him a lot. And we never did get the opportunity to meet him. So we went out in 2008. And then Jerry and I went out in 2013. And David was in an oil field somewhere. So we didn't get to meet him. She would just say, you know, he likes the outdoors. He likes to do what I like to do. We share a lot of the same interests. Yeah. She wouldn't truly like go beyond that in elaboration.

If you're wondering how is it possible that Angela never met David in person, there's a simple answer.

Money and time.

Trips from Virginia to Montana were thousands of dollars between hotels, flights and time off work. Angela told me she saved money with the hopes of making a trip every five years. But she and Rebecca still spoke regularly by phone, and Rebecca's brother Tony was able to make his own trips out to visit her. Then in 2015, Rebecca and David got married. David had initially promised Rebecca this big wedding, but that big wedding never happened.

And then this big, huge wedding turned into a day at the chapel. With a $ 75 imitation, a cheap imitation, right?

What did she think they were going to be doing?

Well, she thought it was going to be on a farm and horseback because those were the things she loved.

And then it wasn't.

And how often did you and Rebecca speak on the phone?

Well, before her and David got married, we would speak quite a bit. When I say quite a bit, for us, I mean, we were probably speaking once a week. Once she got married, that all changed. In fact, after she got married, I didn't hear from her for three weeks. And I thought, okay, honeymoon, you know. But then I finally reached out after the third week. I emailed her and I said, are you okay?

A few days later, Rebecca calls her mom and tells Angela she's okay. She's just been working a lot and things have been a little rocky with David. One thing Rebecca and David seem to be going back and forth about is health insurance. They were married, and David, who told Rebecca that he was a veteran, would not put Rebecca on his health insurance. Rebecca voiced some frustration with this, but ultimately trusted David when he said that he simply couldn't do it. It was out of his hands. Angela, however, had a hard time with this. Angela's husband, Jerry, was a veteran himself, and Angela knew this didn't make sense.

Rebecca would say, well, David's a veteran, but Rebecca would be without health insurance. And I would say, Rebecca, if David's a veteran, now that you're married, you can have CHAMPUS or TRICARE, whatever they called it then. And she goes, oh, no, it's not that way. It's not that kind. And I said...

It is that way and it is that kind. You just need the marriage certificate and David needs to go with you to the closest VA office and get you signed up. And he never did that. He never did that. I kept telling Rebecca, I said, it doesn't matter that you weren't married to him because he professed to have been a disabled veteran. And she would often tell me, that's not how it works out here on a lot of things. You know, and I would just shake my head and go, we're in the 21st century.

Angela had reservations with David and the stories he told about his life, but she treaded lightly. Angela never wanted Rebecca to feel judged or like she couldn't come to her with how she was feeling. And regardless of his past, these days David was also working in an oil field and seemed to travel a lot. It all seemed to be wearing on Rebecca, so finally she did decide to make a trip home. Angela thought maybe Rebecca would share more with her in person.

She came home in 2016, like end of summer, first part of fall. All she would tell me was things weren't working out. That's all she would say.

So would you ask her to elaborate or how would those conversations play out?

I would, you know, ask her, you know, is there anything you want to tell me is, you know, and she goes, it's just not working out. She goes, we're just not getting along right now. And then after she stayed here for a month with us and David would call her sometimes several times a day. She finally relented to go home. You know, I told her, I said, you've always got a place to come back to. Yeah.

You know, if you need to. She never did elaborate. But then after she left, she had.

Told her brother that David had shot the TV while she was watching it one day.

With a gun.

With a gun. Yeah.

And she had already left. And I'm like, well, what do I do with this information now?

You know?

Although Angela had never met David in person, they spoke fairly often by phone. David called a lot and seemed to want to connect with Angela. He called her mom, but some of their conversations left Angela with an uneasy feeling about the man her daughter had married.

Oh, he used to call all the time. So David was a charmer. David was a storyteller. He could wrap you into a scene of a play and have you believe pretty much anything he said.

Did it feel like, oh, my son-in-law wants to get to know me?

Yeah, get to know me.

And then, you know, like, oh, he's just trying to get to know us and find out who we are and stuff like that. And then as time went on, they would get really like crazy conversations, like, He'd talk about it was time to kill his dog because his dog was too old and he was going to wrap it up in an Indian ceremonial cloth and send it down the river.

And I'm like, who does this? There would be things he would say that I would just get.

Off the phone and go tell Jerry. I said, Who says these things? And he would be always very boastful about military escapades. I don't know what to call them, but different things that he said he achieved in the military or different things he said he did.

And Jerry's been over to Iraq twice. And Jerry said, you know, when you're over there, you don't come back and talk about it like that. Yeah.

But David would like expound on it and boast about it. You know, and I just never understood that.

So 2016 is when Rebecca flies out, spends a month at home, says we're not getting along. But ultimately, after many, many phone calls from David, she decides to return to Montana and return to their relationship.

Yeah.

Did you hear from her often after that? Or what did your communication look like with her and David once she returned to Missoula?

So it gradually just got further and further apart.

We would talk about that.

We would say, well, it's been a long time since I talked to you, Rebecca. And we'd talk about her schedule, my schedule, how they just didn't jive.

And so over the course of those conversations, did you ask her at all about... how things were going with David? And what did she tell you?

Yeah, I really didn't have to ask because after Rebecca returned back to Montana and to the marriage, there was always a tumultuous call. At first, it was like every four months and then it became every three months. And the three month calls, you could almost like bank on like clockwork. David kicked me out of the house. We had another fight. I don't know where to go or what to do. In 17 and 18, they were always on the move.

I never had a permanent address for them.

And looking back now, before Rebecca and David got married, Rebecca could be counted on.

She had a strong work ethic.

She would show up on the schedule, be there, do her job. But after her and David got married, there was a lot of interference with her ability to be at work. on the scheduled days and to do a good job while she was there. So after her and David got married, it wasn't that her work ethic changed. It was that the interference to her ability to be a dependable employee changed.

And so did she lose her job?

Yeah, David would show up at work to watch her as she interacted with the customers and the clients.

The managers didn't like that, obviously. Right.

And so they would tell Rebecca, look, either he's got to stop coming here or you have to quit. So she tried everything. She even tried scrubbing toilets. She thought she could do house cleaning and she could still be at David's beck and call. If she had to leave the house to go home to help him with something, then she could do that. And it just got weird, more weird and more weird. So she had to quit that.

After five tumultuous years of marriage, things were getting steadily worse. David suffered an accident at work, one that left him reliant on full-time care. And in the state of Montana, you can hire a family member who will be compensated in this role.

David had rolled a truck in the oil field. He had gotten drunk and rolled a truck in the oil field. And so he was out on workman's comp disability. I mean, Rebecca was his first caregiver. She was awarded caregiver status to David a year before they moved into their home. But that put her under David's thumb 24 and 7 with no relief. And then they bought the house together in Superior in 2020.

So in 2020, they buy.

A home together and.

You're hearing from her less or more at that point?

Actually, within a couple months after they bought the home, Rebecca called me and said, I think we're splitting up. Up until that point, it would be, David kicked me out. I don't know what to do. She would sometimes say, I don't know if this is going to work out.

Would she ever give you a reason that, and not that there's a good reason for it, but a justifiable reason, but You know, I think if someone called me and said, my husband kicked me out, I think I would say, why?

What happened?

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, that would come up in our conversation, but she would always avoid it. After they bought the house in 2020, when she called and said, what do we do with the house? I did suggest to Rebecca, walk away. There will be another house in your future. Just walk away. This isn't worth, if you're scared, if you feel unsafe, this isn't worth a house.

Right.

And her words to me were that she would let the judge decide. Rebecca fully believed that the judicial system of Montana was going to protect her. It's been my experience that she would have never had a chance.

Angela knew Rebecca was ready to leave David. But Rebecca also felt strongly that she should get her fair share of the house that they had purchased together. She'd been paying toward the mortgage every month on a humble salary, and she didn't want to give that up and knew David probably wasn't going to sell the house and amicably split the proceeds. On a phone call with Rebecca, Angela implored Rebecca to leave anyway, to worry about the money later.

And I told her, I said, when your dad and I split up, I actually gave him the greater portion of the house because I wanted out so bad.

Yeah.

I said, you know, most adults would start at 50-50. Well, that, for lack of a better word, that pissed David off.

He was beyond mad. He was listening in the background. He was listening in the background.

I see.

And he was hot.

Yes.

Just beyond hot.

In fact, here was somebody who would call me once or twice a week just to quote unquote chit chat and everything stopped.

David was furious that Angela had encouraged Rebecca to leave the marriage. He no longer called. And while Rebecca was still reaching out to her mother, it was clear that things between she and David were more tense than ever.

And then... December 2020. So December 31st, 2020. I hadn't heard from David since June because that's when all this transpired. And the text message said, hey, mom, I know we've had our differences this year, but I hope you have a really great 2021.

And I hope it's good to you.

What did you respond?

I mean, I said, oh, well, thank you very much. You know, I mean, I hadn't heard from him since June, right? How do you respond to that?

Yeah.

Little did I know what was going to transpire that year, but it was almost like for me, it was premeditated. He knew what was going to happen that year.

In 2021, Rebecca started getting back in touch more often. She thought of returning home to Virginia to escape David, but Rebecca made her living in the service industry and Montana was wide open despite COVID. The town that her family lived in back in Virginia was not.

And I told her, I said, you can come home.

You won't be able to get a serving job because they only have cooks in the restaurant and people are ordering by Uber and DoorDash, you know. And I said, so you can deliver food, but you're not going to be able to serve it.

And she goes, oh, we're wide open here.

And then in 2021, so you have January and February, Rebecca's calling, upset, concerned, things might not be working out. I think we're splitting up. I'd let a couple of days go by and I'd call her back. And I said, what's going on? We're going to try to work it out. She was caught up in those promises. So David says he's going to work on it. He says he's going to stop drinking. He says he's going to stop doing this.

You know, she was caught up in those promises that lead nowhere except to give false hope in a relationship. Then in March, on March 9th, she called and she said, I filed domestic violence charges against David. So that was March 9th, 2021.

Did you ask her what happened?

I did. I specifically asked her, Rebecca, what happened? And all she told me was, I can't take it anymore. That was all she would ever tell me.

Was she able to go somewhere that she knew she would be safe after she filed those charges?

Rebecca stayed in the house. David was removed.

He was supposed to be in jail for three days, but I think he got out on bond, but he was not allowed to go back to the house. So he stayed in a hotel in town for a month because Rebecca had filed domestic violence charges on the 9th and either on the 10th or 11th. The very next day court was open. She filed a standing order of no contact, which has no teeth. So a standing order of contact just makes people mad. It has no teeth.

And if they break it, law enforcement typically has.

More important things to do. So they don't enforce it.

Mm hmm.

Especially in Mineral County. I mean, there's four deputies.

The personal family matter assault charge filed on March 9th, 2021, had come after phone calls to local law enforcement about domestic disputes between Rebecca and David. Even with the standing order of no contact, the town of Superior, Montana, where they lived, it has less than a thousand residents. Rebecca had a feeling that it would be nearly impossible to avoid David, and she had little faith that the no contact order would be enforced. She wanted to come home, and she almost did. But Rebecca had a dog that she loved dearly, a Belgian Malinois named Cerberus. She couldn't bear the thought of leaving Cerberus or flying him in cargo under the plane.

Oddly enough, Cerberus is a Greek mythology figure that means keeper of many secrets. And she loved that dog. She wasn't going to leave him. In fact, David at one point had threatened to kill the dog.

She told you that?

Yes. She sent me a text message that she had received. The text message said, he's threatened to kill me, kill my dog, burn the house down.

Oh, so he threatened to kill her at the same time.

Yeah.

So. He said that he was going to kill Rebecca, kill her dog, burn the house down, and drive her truck into the river.

What did it feel like as her mother to know that this person was so close to her in her life, threatening her this way?

I was overcome with anger. I was overcome with.

Trying to figure out how do you protect a 33-year-old woman who has the right to make her own decisions and has her own autonomy? Yeah.

And how do you protect her from Virginia to Montana?

Yeah, you can't because as a 33-year-old of sound mind, maybe of a broken heart and a broken spirit, but of a sound mind, you can't tell another adult what to do and how to do it. You can let them know you're there. You can be there for them. You can offer assistance in whatever form that they'll accept.

But you can't even make them accept the assistance. And I said, okay, that's fine. But if you change your mind, let me know. I mean, literally, I would send Rebecca a couple hundred dollars every week because every apartment application required a $ 50 deposit. So I just kept sending her money so she could apply at different places to live with the dog. She finally found a place and signed a lease.

On April 1st.

Angela sent me a video that Rebecca had taken, a tour of her new home, a new beginning.

Sink, oven, and.

Then a little living room. But all new windows in Montana.

That is huge.

And I'll probably end up frosting this for privacy, even though you.

Can see the mountains kind of from my porch.

This was April of 2021. Rebecca found a job waiting tables at a local brewery. She worked 12 to 18-hour shifts, as many as they would give her. She rented her own place, which even had a small outdoor space for Cerberus. And shortly after that, she landed another job, a better job, serving at an upscale restaurant in town. It was better hours for better money, and they loved her there. She also applied to begin taking a paralegal course at a local college. Rebecca was finding her footing again, separating herself from David. Did she seem happier when you would speak with her on the phone?

Yes. Yes, she did. She seemed much happier. Still afraid. Still afraid of David.

But to your knowledge, in those conversations, was David kind of leaving her alone?

No, David was like, he would text me and he would say, ask Rebecca if she wants this. And, you know, I'd asked Rebecca, I said, Rebecca, he's asking if you want this, that it belongs to. She goes, I don't want anything. I don't want anything. She goes, he has to stop. And then one time she texted me because they were on the same phone bill. And it was like $ 300 and Rebecca didn't have $ 300 and half of it was David's. So she said, please ask David to pay this because I, you know, are part of it.

And I'm like, do you have a CVA? And she did have a CVA, a crime victim advocate. And I said, can you talk to her about what you're supposed to do with bills that are in both of your names? And can she guide you since Montana is so different, you know, and she would never. I think when you're going through that and now that I've gone through Rebecca's process of missing and and all that, you're just trying to survive every day. You don't have the capacity to think beyond survival to how else can you handle this?

I know that she would reach out to her CVA on occasion, but Rebecca always said, I don't want to bother her.

Rebecca loved spending free time with her dog, Cerberus, out enjoying the nature in Montana. And since it was now into summer, they often went to a place called Council Grove Park in Missoula County. It's a quiet and serene place on a river. But on July 2nd, 2021, during a trip to Council Grove, Rebecca had an eerie feeling like she was being watched. And then a rock flew in their direction.

And then another.

And Rebecca was there giving Cerberus some free time in the water. You know, walking him and playing with him and stuff. And someone threw a rock at Cerberus. More than one. And Rebecca got mad about it. Went back to her car. There was one other vehicle in the parking lot, a van. Rebecca's windshield was cracked on her van, so somebody had maybe thrown a rock at her car to break her windshield.

Rebecca didn't know if she should immediately suspect David, but of course it was on her mind. She'd been keeping her distance from him, but David had been insisting that she come by to pick up her remaining belongings, something Rebecca never felt safe doing, and so she didn't. But finally, Rebecca did agree to meet David's new caregiver in a public location, and she would collect her belongings there. She hoped it would be one less thing for David to contact her about.

So the purpose of the meeting was for Rebecca to retrieve items that she really didn't want. There were several text messages, do you want these, do you want these, do you want these, on her phone. And she said, no, no, no. And then finally, she relented and said, I'm sure she just relented because, you know what, you're not going to stop bothering me until I get them.

So they made.

Arrangements to meet, her and Bevan made arrangements to meet at Town Pump in Superior, Montana.

This meeting takes place on July 20th, 2021. The Town Pump is a gas station and convenience store, and Bevan is Bevan Cook, David's caretaker at the time that this is happening. Text messages revealed this plan that Rebecca had made with Bevan, and a grainy security camera photo did show what looked like people meeting up in an adjacent parking lot, but the quality of the footage is so bad that it's really impossible to confirm if it was Rebecca.

But if it was, it's the last footage that exists of her. Because in less than a week, Angela's life and the lives of so many that love Rebecca were turned upside down in a tornado of grief and confusion. something Angela described to me as a pain so deep you forget to breathe.

So July 20th, I have the grandkids here.

Get them in bed.

I'm in bed right after they're in bed because I'm exhausted. And after I'd gone to bed, David had sent a text message stating that Rebecca was missing. I woke up to that text message the next day. And the text message proceeded to say, hey, And he still called me mom. Then he goes, hey, mom, I need to let you know Rebecca's missing. And I'm tired of all this. The police came to my door looking for her. And she probably had a boyfriend or didn't call back her CBA.

It was everybody else. Nothing about, I hope she's not missing. I hope this isn't true. Nothing about, I still love Rebecca and only want the best for her. It was all about him. Other than the fact that Rebecca was missing, it was all about him. My next move was to call and text Rebecca.

Yeah.

That was my next move. After I got that, I just kind of went into shock mode. I remember that I called Rebecca, called Rebecca, called Rebecca. I remember I texted her, texted her, texted her. I said, David, David texted and said, you're missing. Please text me back, you know, or I'd call her. And then I'm thinking, well, it's five o'clock here. It's three o'clock there. She's probably asleep.

And that's why she's not answering. Right. Then when it got to be about seven o'clock here, eight o'clock here, I called Tony, my son. And I said, when was the last time you talked to Rebecca? And he goes, about a week ago. And I'm like, okay, if you call her, will she answer? And he goes, yeah, she always does. So I said, well, I need you to call and text her because I can't get ahold of her.

And I told him why.

And the day just unfolded.

I mean, we still tried to make it as quote unquote normal a day as we could for the kids. We had told them that we would take him to an amusement emporium, sports emporium for the day. And so we were trying to still create some kind of a normal day because we didn't know what was going to happen. And Tony and I were on the phone a lot.

And I said, well, her trailer's in Missoula. Call Missoula and ask them to do a welfare check. And so he did. He did that for me. Then Miss Zola couldn't find her trailer.

And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.

So David told me she was missing. And then Mineral County told Tony she was missing. And Tony called.

About four o'clock that day, our time here.

And I just crawled, I just like crashed to the ground.

I just, I couldn't even think straight anymore. I just thought, this can't be happening. You know? I mean, it's every parent's worst nightmare. Yeah.

We used to watch Dateline and 2020 and all those shows, and I'd go, how in the world did somebody go missing? How does that happen? And then here I found myself living it.

Within days, Angela was on a flight to Montana, a place where she knew no one except for her daughter, who was missing... and the man who had threatened to kill her. All she wanted was to find Rebecca and bring her home. But Mineral County had a different view of Rebecca's disappearance, and Angela would soon learn that she would be fighting tooth and nail to get any attention on Rebecca's case. And David would be no help at all.

I mean, the whole week was crazy.

I had told David on Thursday I was coming out because he called, he called, he didn't call my phone. He called Jerry's phone and he never calls Jerry. He always called me and he called Jerry's phone. And we were eating lunch with the boys and with Tylee. And he asked Jerry to step away. And he said that Rebecca didn't ever want me to see her dead. And I, I'm like, that is a crazy call. How does he know she's dead?

You know, number one.

And then it came up that I was coming out and David said, let me handle this.

Don't come out. Let me handle it. And I'm like, I'm her mom. I'm coming out.

This concludes part one of Rebecca's story. Please join us next week for part two. If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it. Our email is thenife at exactlyrightmedia.com. Or you can follow us on Instagram at The Knife Podcast or Blue Sky at The Knife Podcast.

This has been an Exactly Right production. Hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith.

And me, Patia Eaton. Our producers are Tom Breifogel and Alexa Samorosi.

This episode was mixed by Tom Breifogel.

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport. Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

What happened to Rebekah? (Part 1 of 2)

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