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Chapter 1: What happened to Katie Beers in December 1992?
In December 1992, a story hit the headlines that the US public could scarcely believe. A nine-year-old girl celebrating her birthday at a neon-lit kids' fun park vanished into thin air. Panic swept through the state at the prospect of a child snatcher on the loose on Long Island. But soon it would become clear just how truly deep and dark this story really was.
Because that little girl, Katie Beers, would be found alive. Somehow having survived, being chained up in a secret underground dungeon and locked in a coffin, enduring daily rapes at the hands of her abductor, a man she knew. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And this is Red Handed. And this is the incredible story of Katie Beers, the girl in the wall.
One of genuinely the most shocking survival stories that we've come across.
It's nice when they survive sometimes, isn't it?
I know, I was like... A little present for ourselves. Should we put that in the intro? I was like, fuck yes, because how this girl survives is genuinely unbelievable. Well, let's find out. Let's do it.
On the 28th of December 1992, Katie Marie Beers was on the brink of turning 10. A big age with huge responsibilities. Double digits, baby. Double digeroonies. And she had solemnly announced a couple of days earlier that she wanted her Sunday name, Catherine, iced on her birthday cake because it sounded more grown up. What in the hell is a Sunday name? I thought you would be able to tell me.
I thought that was some sort of like Christian thing. Is it like a church name?
That would be your confirmation name. I don't know. I've never heard of a Sunday name. I don't know. Let's look it up. I thought you would know what that meant. I think it's just what her actual name is and not shortened to Katie. Is that what Sunday name means?
I don't know. Well, when I Google Sunday name, it just is telling me the meaning of the name Sunday. As in like you name your child Sunday and it means day of the sun.
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Chapter 2: How did John Esposito become a suspect in Katie's disappearance?
I remember a very similar situation. She wanted Izzy iced on a birthday cake one year and I wouldn't do it. Because I refuse. Why is that my problem? I'm unbearable. You get your Sunday name.
Yeah, exactly.
I've been at lunch with her mates and stuff. They'll be like, you can call her Izzy. And I was like, I know, I won't. No, don't do it. So maybe we've all learned something. Anyway, before Katie slash Sunday Catherine officially blew out the candles on the 30th of December, there was surely time. One last child-friendly treat.
Mm-hmm.
And the Beers family friend, 43-year-old contractor John Esposito, had just the thing.
Is it bad that every time we say his name in this, I think of... Desposito.
Yeah, me too. The whole time. Script.
Just reading, writing, tweaking. I'm just like, John Desposito.
Anyway.
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Chapter 3: What were the living conditions in the bunker where Katie was held?
People don't like to get involved.
No, people don't like to get involved. And it reminds me of that case here from, like, a couple of years ago of Sara Sharif, that little girl who got beaten to death by her father and her stepmother. People now, after she died, neighbours were like, oh, yeah, we were always really concerned. We heard really weird noises. She always looked really this, that and the other and...
Yeah, you're like, why didn't you say anything? But I don't know. I don't know. It's just one of those things, like you said, people don't want to get involved.
Katie rarely attended school, and in the fourth grade, her guardians yanked her out of class for good, citing the recurring head lice as the reason she couldn't keep going in. School was the one place that Katie ever felt safe. Not that life there had been easy...
With that particular flavour of cruelty that kids are so capable of, her peers taunted Katie with nicknames like Dirty Katie and Cockroach Kid. And at just nine years old, with her long and pretty hair now hacked short thanks to the headlight, she slipped through the cracks of the system.
The only person who could re-enrol Katie in school was her biological mum, Marilyn, who was using the fact that the little girl was out of education whilst in Linda's care as a bargaining chip in their ongoing custody battle.
It's definitely a reoccurring theme throughout this episode that none of the adults in Katie's life do what's right for her. They do what's going to serve them. Because Marilyn isn't like, okay, I'm fighting to get my daughter back in my care and in my custody.
I know she's fallen out of school while she's in Linda's care, but instead of making her go back to school and I'm the only one who could do it, she's like, oh, that plays really well for me in the court cases. Yeah.
And while Child Protective Services were well aware of Katie and her so-called family, they totally failed to step in and help her, which is their only job. Visits to Sal and Linda's house were met with hostility and slammed doors, and the social workers didn't seem to make much effort to follow up on Katie's case.
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Chapter 4: How did Katie manage to survive her captivity?
Yeah, because one of the things I was surprised about with this case is it's a very, like, remarkable story at the end because, as we said, Katie survives. But the media frenzy starts way before that. The media frenzy starts almost as soon as Katie disappears. I was surprised because she isn't from an affluent hometown. She's, you know, very much from like an impoverished community.
I was surprised that the media was so interested in her story so young. She's an adorable little girl and I'm sure that did help. But I think in a way, this was kind of like a Jerry Springer disappearance. I see. There's a lot.
There's a feeling I have that this was very much linked to like poverty porn of looking in at this case from outside, like across the US and be like, oh, look at all these horrible, grubby people in Katie's life. Which one of them did it? Like Shadow Matthews. Yeah, absolutely. And like... We'll get into, like, kind of how the TV stations continued to, like, ramp up this narrative.
But I absolutely think it was ingrained in that sort of classist element to it.
Yeah. The police were drowning in possible suspects. And the media, as usual, didn't really help. The major players all swiftly lawyered up and began pointing fingers at each other over Katie's disappearance. and the local TV stations gleefully lined up to give them all the airtime they wanted.
And the raging custody battle between Linda and Marilyn in particular really muddied the waters when it came to accusations flying around in the media. Sal Illegare insisted that he never molested Katie, and that Marilyn was just making false allegations in a desperate bid to regain custody of her child, which sadly didn't seem completely out of the realms of possibility.
Yeah, it really feels like it was hitting at that peak moment in the 90s where we were all watching like outrage chat shows like Maury and Jerry Springer. Was Jerry Springer a bit earlier than that? I don't know. I feel like I've lost track of like time. But you know what I mean? That sort of overly sensationalized battle. And this has it all.
Custody battles, sexual abuse allegations, parental alienation, a missing child. It's just the dream scenario for these media outlets. Yeah.
So as the days passed, the media frenzy raged on, with Linda and Marilyn busy locking horns in a fierce battle of the mums, both tearfully showing off handwritten notes and drawings of love hearts that Katie had supposedly scrawled for each of them, with both claiming that Katie loved her the most and wanted to live with her.
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Chapter 5: What led to Katie's eventual rescue from the bunker?
John told Katie that this was her home now, and for the next 17 days, it was. Katie's new living conditions were like something out of an actual horror movie Halloween nightmare. She slept inside the box, in nothing but 101 Dalmatians 90, and just a thin blanket and a tiny pillow.
In the corner of what we called the larger chamber, there was a disconnected toilet that had been filled with a black bin bag for Katie to use. And while somehow, I do not know how she managed this, but Katie had actually managed to find and hide from John a spare key to the coffin that she was locked in.
She somehow managed to get her hands on that and she hides it in her blanket, which did give her access to the larger room at any time, even when John was out of the house. But, and this just shows you how intelligent Katie is at just 10 years old, barely 10. She's nine when she's abducted. Her birthday hasn't happened yet.
Because she knows that even though she lets herself out of that coffin box and into the larger chamber, she doesn't use the toilet when he's not there. Because she knows that if she does, he'll come back and realize that she's somehow getting out.
So she would actually soil herself in her coffin space, which obviously filled her, as she talks about in her own book that she's written since, an intense feeling of shame and absolutely just adding layer upon layer upon layer to the nightmarish situation that she's already in. But I really marveled at that, thinking about how she logically thought about how to survive in this situation.
She's faced with a toilet in front of her because she's managed to get herself out of the box, but she knows not to use it and still continues to soil herself in the box because she doesn't want him to know what she's doing.
Bizarrely, amidst all that squalor, John had put in some touches to make the bunker feel more like a home for Katie. like a little TV that had been mounted at the end of her coffin bed. As well as the endless music videos on MTV, Katie also spent hours watching the news coverage of her own disappearance.
And each time she saw her mum Marilyn and her brother John sobbing to the cameras for her to come home, she kissed their faces on the screen. There was also a CCTV and baby monitor system set up in the bunker, which provided its own form of torture for Katie. because she could literally see and hear the police just metres above her head whenever they visited John's house.
But they had no idea she was there, just feet below them. John had totally soundproofed the bunker, so Katie's screams went unheard.
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Chapter 6: What were the reactions of the media and the public after Katie's rescue?
John seemed desperate for the little girl's approval, even giving her $500 in cash every other day to stash under her pillow as a part of a strange promise that he'd made to her that she'd grow up to be rich and happy in his care. Because John didn't seem to see Katie as his captive. He saw her as his future wife.
It was a sickening courtship ritual that John forced upon Katie, desperately trying to get her to buy into the fantasy that he had built in his twisted mind. And this is a classic grooming strategy used by paedophiles, who try to justify their abuse as them actually being in love with their victims. But Katie knew that this was John's weakness. and she could use it to her advantage.
So Katie played along with his game where she needed to, while also slipping in little questions to try and destabilise John. She would ask him, for example, how would he keep her a secret forever? How would they raise their kids together in this bunker? How was she supposed to get an education and learn skills for this fairytale life they were going to have together?
Bit by bit, Katie burrowed her way into John's head, planting seeds of doubt and nudging him towards the outcome she wanted, him letting her go. But as John's confidence began to crumble, one day he alarmingly confided in Katie that he was planning to take his own life. He promised that he would leave a note explaining where Katie was, but how could she trust Katie?
the same man who had kidnapped and abused her for days. Katie faced the terrifying prospect of being stuck down there forever, with the only key locked inside a dead man's house. It forced her to walk a very perilous tightrope, keeping John just unbalanced enough to consider letting her go free without pushing him over the edge to the point that he took his own life.
For over two weeks, it was a constant game of push and pull. But would it be enough to negotiate Katie's freedom?
Yes. Thank God. On the 13th of January 1993, John Esposito finally cracked. He walked into his lawyer's office and confessed. He said, At first, hearts sank. This grim confession surely meant that Katie was dead. But when John led two officers to the bunker, they were amazed to find her cowering in the corner of her makeshift prison. frightened, dirty, sleep-deprived, but very much alive.
And as for Katie, she could hardly believe that these men were here to save her. In fact, she assumed that John had just brought some of his friends with similar paedophilic inclinations to abuse her. I would probably think that as well. Eventually, though, Katie understood what was actually going on. And while she doesn't remember this now...
Apparently, before she was taken away, she hugged John Esposito and told him that she loved him. Katie's not surprised, though. She had been running in survival mode for so long that she would have said anything she thought she needed to if it meant she stayed safe.
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Chapter 7: How did Katie's life change after her abduction?
All right, I... That's too much. Too much. Thankfully, the hearing judge was not having any of it and the bail for John was set at $1.1 million, which obviously was far more than John Esposito could afford or anyone who knew John Esposito could afford.
And with a potential trial drawing closer, in 1994, there came another horrifying twist. It turned out that John Esposito had actually made audio recordings from the bunker, where Katie could be heard screaming out in terror and begging to be set free. And this one is just too much.
One of the most heartbreaking soundbites was apparently of Katie singing happy birthday to herself on the morning of her 10th birthday. These tapes are not publicly available. And honestly, if you were thinking we're going to play them here, we can't. And I don't fucking want to hear them, to be perfectly honest with you. And Katie feels the same way.
She says she's already been forced to remember so much that she does not need to fill in the gaps with even more buried memories. But back in 1994, there was a real chance of these tapes being played in court if it went to trial. In the end, however, that wasn't necessary. John Esposito ended up taking a plea deal and pleading guilty to first-degree kidnapping.
While he wasn't officially convicted of sexual abuse charges against Katie, the judge confirmed they believed that this had indeed taken place, which aggravated his sentence. On the 27th of July 1994, John Esposito was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, to be served at the notorious Sing Sing Prison in New York.
After keeping Katie as prisoner in his own underground prison, it seemed like a fitting fate.
Sal Inigere was also convicted of two counts of sexual abuse for molesting Katie, along with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Unlike John Esposito, Sal rejected a plea deal and insisted on having his day in court. Crowing to the huddled reporters that he was innocent, he had done nothing wrong. In a particularly cruel twist, a now 11-year-old Katie was forced to testify in court.
Dressed in a pretty pink dress and holding her new therapist, Mary Bromley's hand, Katie bravely and calmly relayed a lifetime of abuse. The whole time. Sal stared at Herman leavenantly, trying to psych her out. But Sal couldn't touch Katie now.
After a jury found Sal guilty of all of the charges, Judge Lefkowitz slammed him as a manipulative and amoral individual who has little insight into his behavior or the consequences of his actions on others. Sal was sentenced to 12 years in prison. and was released in 2006. But his taste of freedom didn't last very long.
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Chapter 8: What are the psychological impacts of Katie's experience?
Katie. Katie. After her dramatic rescue, she was placed in foster care and sent to live with a new family in the affluent area of East Hampton, just an hour and a half away from where she grew up. But the press weren't ready to let their star survivor go just yet. Camera crews parked outside her new school, hoping for a glimpse of Katie, all jostling for that money shot.
Bizarrely, Spaceplex owner Gary Tazalo declared on local TV that he wanted to throw Katie the birthday party she never had and invite all of Long Island. Everyone just wants to cash in on this story. That is grotesque. Yeah. But here's where the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office really did shine. Because they actually made a public statement demanding for Katie to be left alone.
DA James Catterson declared, we as a society must protect this child or our professed love for our own children is just a fraud and our so-called compassion for each other is just a mockery. After the trauma she'd survived, Katie deserved a normal life away from media intrusion. So with more than a hint of disappointment, the journos put down their cameras and stepped away.
And for the next two decades, Katie Beers lived her life out of the spotlight.
Behind closed doors, the custody battle kicked off in full force. once more, between Linda Illegare and Marilyn Beers. Both of them were suddenly TV regulars bickering on daytime talk shows and insisting that Katie should be returned to their care.
Linda even went on the Montel Williams show, dramatically announcing, Katie and I shared a real love, a real home, and real tears to be together forever. Not only does that not make grammatical sense, but with all of the information we have about what Katie endured under Linda's roof, it's a completely laughable take.
It's pretty grotesque how the same people who'd let Katie down so badly were now suddenly so desperate to claim her as their own. But in the end, whatever Linda said made no legal difference. She'd never had any parental rights to Katie, so the courts slammed the door in her face.
As for Marilyn, her temporary loss of custody was eventually made permanent, and the courts decided it was in Katie's best interest to stay with her foster family. And eventually even Marilyn had to begrudgingly admit that that was for the best.
But it wasn't easy for Katie to get her head around the new living arrangements. She was ten years old, confused, scared, and for a while, absolutely not having it. Katie couldn't understand why she'd been ripped away from her mum and brother, as if she were being punished for what had happened to her.
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