From: Trent.McAllister@vipprotection.com
To: MikeReynolds@etainmanagement.com
CC: Seraphina Bell’s Management Team
Date: October 4, 3:45 p.m.
Subject: Next Steps
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Well, I called it, didn’t I?
I told you and the team months ago that I had a weird feeling about this woman. Thank god we didn’t pass these letters on to Seraphina. I know she’s felt the need to review every single piece of fan mail that comes in, and she would not have reacted well to this.
Mike, as Seraphina’s manager, you are certainly the one who makes the final call, but as of right now my advice is to hold off on law enforcement. That would be a PR nightmare. Even a hint that Seraphina had any involvement in the attack on Kara Hogan would irrevocably damage her career.
The good news is, over the last few weeks, as these letters became a bit more worrisome, I went ahead and conducted a background check. Most of what we have in these letters is true:
The woman’s name is Jennifer Smith. She is forty-four years old. Never married.
She lives by herself in a trailer in Gleason, California, which is about three hours south of LA.
She works at a regional grocery store chain, Weaver Brothers Market, as a cashier, and has worked there for the past five years.
Her credit score is 425. She appears to be drowning in credit card debt.
She did in fact grow up in foster care and does not appear to have any close family ties.
Here’s where her account starts to break down though: she actually had two children from two different fathers. There was a girl and a boy, two years apart. When the younger child, the boy, was three years old, he died in an accident. Child Protective Services got involved and took the daughter—then five years old—away. Jennifer was charged with manslaughter, child endangerment, and neglect, but the CPS caseworkers and police made some mistakes in their investigations, and those charges were ultimately dropped. However, Jennifer never got back custody of her daughter. It doesn’t appear that she ever tried.
Jennifer has three DUIs on her record, and her driver’s license has been revoked. (A copy of the DL is attached, as well as some screenshots from her Facebook page, which doesn’t appear to have been updated in over a year.)
I also had our investigators try to dig up that Dateline story Jennifer referenced in one of her letters, about the man manipulating the DNA test. They’ve reviewed every single Dateline episode that ever aired, and that specific story does not appear to exist.
I intend to take care of this ASAP. Due to the sensitive nature of this situation, I am taking on the assignment myself. I will observe Jennifer for two or three days to gauge whether or not she is an actual threat.
If there are no objections from the rest of the team, I will leave for Gleason later this evening and update the team periodically over the next couple of days.
Sincerely,
Trent McAllister
Head of VIP Protection