Jenny Spellman
Appearances
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
I said, hey, we have somebody here. I have their license plates, but they stole the shark. And they all just laughed. They took the license plate number. They laughed some more. You could hear laughing in the background. And then they said, OK, we'll be in touch. And three days later, they weren't in touch.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
So I reached out to my friend at the police department in San Antonio and had him kind of talk to his superior officers. And that's when they actually started getting some traction on the case. As soon as the cops got more involved, that's when the media circus began. I was taking calls until about three in the morning. It was insane.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
It was absolutely out of body. I spent the first two weeks that I was there, like not only learning my job, but also fielding as many interview requests as possible, you know, get all the publicity we could. And I understand like it's, you know, any publicity is good publicity for them.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Actually, if you want to know a secret, she was given that name on that day. For the media. I'm sorry to ruin your world. She had another name, but Jamie just didn't know what it was and she just threw out Miss Helen.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
So I rushed over there because I wanted to be a part of it, and Jamie came as well and brought equipment for bringing her back. An officer showed up, and then two or three other police cars showed up, and then they went and knocked on the door. We were made to wait in the driveway.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
They walked in, they walked through the living room, looked at some of the fish tanks in the living room, and then the man that stole the shark volunteered that it was in the garage. So they opened the garage door.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
They had a filefish and three or four bonnet head sharks, little babies.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
I was absolutely elated to see that she was still alive and kicking. I was kind of proud of her.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
I have driven 15 hours from San Antonio, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia, just to go see the whale sharks in the aquarium there. They're absolutely amazing. I'm fortunate enough to live about four hours from there now, so I go see them on the regular basis.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
I think he has a problem with stealing. I think he's kind of addicted to it. Based on his prior record, he had a long rap sheet with stolen cars, all kinds of stuff like that.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
My name is Jenny Spellman. I was a general manager at the San Antonio Aquarium.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
We opened up the facility. We put cash in the registers. We made sure all the staff showed up. We had a morning meeting just like every morning, kind of introducing myself to the staff I hadn't met yet.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
They showed me how to unlock the doors, how to reset the alarm code, showed me where the bathrooms were, and how to get money to the bank. I'd done some training for two days, and then day three, this happens.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
And at some point in the early morning, there was a truck that parked in a towway zone. It was this big red truck right by the gift shop, which is where people exited from. So I also was trying to track down the owner of that. We had announcements go out over the PA, trying to get the owner of the truck to move it. But I got busy and kind of forgot about that.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
So I went up to the office to have lunch and there was a call over our radio station. A guest was exiting the cold water area with their stroller leaking water.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
I walked up the stairs. I kind of followed the trail of leaking water out into the parking lot. And there we have that truck that was parked in the towway zone by the gift shop exit. It was an older style red pickup truck. There were two men standing there. There was a woman with a baby. So I went up to the taller man and I said, hey, I need to look and see what's in your truck.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
It's really suspicious that you guys are leaking water coming out of an aquarium.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
He said his girlfriend had spilled some water into the stroller, and that's why it was leaking. But he didn't have an empty cup, and that was a lot of water for it to be leaking, just a cup. So if you would please allow me to look through your stroller and see what's going on. And they said absolutely not.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
They're bigger men. I'm not going to get in a physical altercation with somebody over searching their car.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
And I thought it was incredibly suspicious that she was not staying with them, especially since he said that his baby was sick. And why would you walk down the road along the side of a highway with nothing around except like car dealerships when you have a sick baby and not get in the air-conditioned car?
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
I went back to my office. I called the former GM to figure out how to use the security equipment because I had absolutely no idea how to get passwords. So I went back and watched the security cameras.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
I thought maybe he had sold like a starfish or something, something really easy, something kind of portable. You can just throw in a little bucket or whatever. But once they examined the video, we realized that he wasn't in the starfish tank. He was in the shark tank.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Yeah, we saw exactly what happened. Stirring up the sharks to get them real excited and pulling a nut out of his pants, reaching down, scooping one up, and then hurriedly walking over to one of our back rooms and disappearing with that.