Song of the Chimney Sweep Page 3
Introducing: Season 2 of the Tabs and Blanks Podcast.
This season: The Chimney Sweep.
From Open Mouth Productions, the story of dry counties, wet Sundays, and the mysterious disappearance of a local woman named Betty Van Disson.
We’ll hear the words of Betty’s husband Randell Van Disson, from his one and only police interview:
(*soundbite*) “…I have told everything I know, which is nothing. And yet here I sit. My wife is gone. My life is gone. My business. My family. Gone. All gone…”
We’ll talk to the lead investigator Billie John Whitaker:
(*soundbite*) “…She didn’t just up and disappear, I can tell you that. What I can tell you is somebody damned-well knows what happened, and I tell you what, I still believe we coulda put all this to rest if Randell had allowed us to search the property…”
Our investigation takes us down asphalt roads and dirt lanes, over boggy coastal marshland and deep scrub forest, to hear from the people who knew and loved Betty:
(*soundbite*) “…She was a good boss, you know. A nice lady. She would do anything for anybody. She didn’t deserve nothing like this. She is truly missed…”
(*soundbite*) “Somebody’s gotta know something. We just want to let her rest. Rest in peace. Finally. She deserves that, doesn’t she?”
Betty Van Disson and her husband Randell ran a roadside motel on Highway 17 in northeast Florida. Randell also had a small side business as an expert chimney sweep, a business he took over from his father. On September 3, 2001, Betty told her husband Randell she was going to visit her mother, an invalid who lived across the Highway 17 bridge, the picturesque blue bridge that connects north Florida with south Georgia. It crosses over the St. Mary’s River, a blackwater that meanders along forming the border between the two states. This was nothing new. Betty visited her mother often, bringing groceries, returning library books and picking up new ones, helping with her bath, and setting her hair in rollers. Betty and her mother appear to have been very close.
And so on that day, when she headed out, her husband Randell Van Disson may not have thought much of it. On the days when Betty was away helping her mother, the motel’s front desk and the liquor store were both run by their one employee, a young woman named Heather. It was a Monday, the day after their traditionally busiest day of the week, but frankly, things hadn’t been busy at the Maryview Motor Inn and Liquors for quite a while. He expected Betty would be back by evening, as usual.
Here at the border of north Florida and south Georgia, the highway frontage of the Van Disson’s property used to be the main north-south interstate thoroughfare. Then Interstate 95 was completed, funneling business from the roadside hotels, Florida souvenir shops, and farm stands that had relied on the excitement and curiosity of tourists and travelers thrilled to have just passed that bright green and orange ‘Welcome To Florida’ sign.
But there was a reason for some folks to keep using Highway 17 even after the convenient new interstate was completed through Jacksonville: the quiet two-lane road led to the nearest legal liquor sales available to residents of the adjacent dry county in Georgia, just over that bridge.
No body was ever found, nor was any other trace of evidence to explain what happened to Betty.
(*soundbite*) “…Randell refused to cooperate. Let me ask you something: How does that look? Hmm? What does that say? If she was your sister, your cousin, your friend—what would you think?…”
I’m Melody Hinterson. And this is Season 2 of the Tabs and Blanks Podcast:
“The Chimney Sweep.”
Tabs and Blanks
Podcast
Transcript
Season 2, Episode 1: “Duuu-val!”
Welcome back for Season Two! I’m your host, Melody Hinterson, and thanks for tuning in for Season Two. We’re adding something new this season that we’re pretty excited about. Each week when we release a new episode, you can also head to the website where you will be able to download a professional, annotated transcript of that episode. This will serve as an additional resource for our hearing- impaired fans, and also we think it’s pretty cool that at the end, you’ll basically have the whole season in manuscript format! Read additional interview transcripts, too, as the season progresses by clicking the ‘Transcripts’ tab. You can access all that, and also download all episodes of this podcast, on our website Open Mouth Media dot com. You’ll find any documents mentioned in the broadcast under the ‘Evidence’ tab. All the resources are fully integrated so you can switch back and forth between reading and listening, depending on your location or preferences.
The Tabs and Blanks Podcast is a production of Open Mouth Media, Melinda Hinterson, Producer, and Dorian Santos, Sound Engineer.
(*soundbite*) “Duuuuvaaal”
Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s not really known for much, but that’s because it’s a city with an identity crisis. I grew up here; it’s my town. It has its problems. People hate its name. Progress sometimes gets buried in a quagmire murky as any Florida swamp. But hey, it’s home.
This city was also the home of the subject of this season’s investigation. Betty Van Disson lived and worked here her whole life–until she disappeared without a trace. Her case remains unsolved and mostly unknown. I’ve lived here all my life, and I had never heard of it until Betty’s cousin Nora left a comment on our listeners’ discussion board last season. Someone had posted a comment about the pain of losing someone you care about, and how it’s compounded when you just don’t know what happened to them. Nora had replied, “My cousin Betty disappeared in 2001, and we never found out what happened to her.” Well, we think it’s time someone looked for her. The community owes her that much.
Some folks are aware that southern rock was born here in Jacksonville, as The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Molly Hatchet all got their start here, and paved the way for others, too. We claim the great and legendary Ray Charles, even if he did leave town for distant Seattle specifically to get as far away from here as possible. Ouch.
Deep down, we know there must have been a good reason for that.
If there’s a local food we can claim, it has to be Mayport Shrimp, since we’d also like credit for our role in modernizing the shrimping industry, thank you very much. Then there’s the Maxwell House roasting plant that makes the whole city smell like a giant coffee house whenever work is in full swing. The Camel Rider sandwich is a local delicacy as well, owning to the large and vibrant Arab American community.
Lately, one of the city’s biggest claims to fame is the frequent name drops by the lovable Jason in NBC’s hit show The Good Place. His blind devotion to this city, and especially to the local football team the Jaguars, may be what most people think of when they hear the name ‘Jacksonville.’
Comedian Katt Williams chose Jacksonville for the recording of his Netflix special Great America, and he spends a good twenty minutes telling us about ourselves. To our faces. And we laughed. It’s hilarious because it’s all true. We get it. There’s something unique about this place.
As the old saying goes—and it’s especially true here—”It must be something in the water.”
We appreciate the shout outs, don’t get me wrong. But there is so much more to Jacksonville, to this place with the problematic name.
There’s the north-flowing river, of course—the St. Johns River. One of the first things folks may tell you when you land up here is that Jacksonville boasts the only river IN THE WORLD that flows north. That, of course, is absolutely not true, there being several others in North America alone. Nonetheless, the little nugget spread like kudzu and became local lore. Like many closely-held beliefs here in the ‘River City,’ people tend to resist loosening their grip even in the face of new evidence.
‘River City’ is only one of the city’s nicknames. There’s also ‘The Bold New City of the South’—often
truncated to the zippier ‘Bold City.’ We even have an outstanding local brewery by that name. The town is sometimes called ‘The Gateway To Florida,’ even as many wish it could be more than a pit stop along the way to somewhere sexier, like Miami, or with more characters (I’m looking at you, Orlando, with all your fancy theme parks and whatnot. Although a deep dive into Jacksonville’s history reveals some real characters of another sort!). Some like to refer to the town as Florida’s ‘First Coast,’ which has always been my personal favorite.
Sometimes we don’t know who we should be as a city, and so sometimes the desire to claim an identity means we simply resort to mass exclamations, like at the stadium on Jaguars game day when people of all colors and social status join in glorious, harmonious chants of our county’s name. ‘Duuuu-vaaal!’ we shout as one, unconcerned or unaware of whose name it is we’re chanting. In those moments, it doesn’t matter. In those moments, we own it, together.
I wonder, though: What does that say about a city? What does it mean about us, the fact that we’ve seen a need to come up with so many nicknames? A statue of our city’s namesake stands in the middle of a roundabout in a major thoroughfare downtown—President Andrew Jackson seated atop a powerfully rearing horse. One is obliged to circle it to reach all points downtown on the north side of the St. Johns River. Every so often, someone defaces it, posting a reminder that Jackson was a slave owner or of his role in the Indian Resettlement Act that led to the Trail of Tears and the deaths of thousands of Native Americans.
So maybe that’s a reason for the nicknames. Some folks opine that at least ‘Jacksonville’ is better than the town’s rather unimaginative original name, according to local lore, of ‘Cowford.’ Other folks strongly beg to differ.
Lately, Jacksonville has been making moves toward claiming its place as the birthplace of southern rock, with bands like the aforementioned Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers having formed here and played in local venues before breaking out into worldwide stardom. The humble childhood home of Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant now boasts a shiny new historical marker, as does the ‘Green House’ in historic Riverside where both he and the Allmans lived at different times. Country music superstar Tim McGraw is claimed as a hometown boy, as is legendary R & B musician Ray Charles, who attended Florida School for the Deaf and Blind just south of here and later lived and played backup piano for a while in the historic and storied LaVilla area.
I hear there are plans in the works for a real music museum—right here in River City! Die hard music fans already make Jacksonville a stop on their way to somewhere more exciting, plugging obscure local haunts like the location of the former West Tavern into their GPS and tooling out to the Westside just to see the place that may have inspired Skynyrd’s hit ‘Gimme Three Steps.’ And although it has gone through many changes over the years, the annual Jacksonville Jazz Festival is still a cool event that draws fans and musicians from around the world.
Betty was part of this town. She was one of us. And she went missing. Authorities are no closer today to finding out what happened to her than they were when she disappeared almost two decades ago. That’s not okay. We’re going to do something about that.
“The Chimney Sweep” is a production of Open Mouth Productions. Sound engineering by Dorian Santos and lighting by Kina Narvaez. I’m Melody Hinterson. Thank you for joining us today, and please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Tabs and Blanks
Podcast
Transcript
Season 2, Episode 2: Legend Tripping
There are folks out there who just love to search, like me and the rest of the team here at the Tabs and Blanks Podcast. We look for the stories of people who’ve been lost and forgotten, then we pursue those stories through the layers of mystery. Sometimes that takes us to some… well, let’s just call them ‘interesting’… and sometimes dangerous places. But we do this with the goal of finding out the truth and bringing justice, or at least some sense of closure, for the stories of the missing and for the heartbroken families they leave behind. When I read Betty’s cousin Nora’s comment on our discussion board last season, it felt as though it spoke directly to me, right to my heart. And once I looked into her disappearance and the subsequent investigation, and once I learned how little had been done to look for her, I felt a certain responsibility to follow Betty’s story as far as it might lead. That is what brings us to the last place Betty was known to have been—the motel, now abandoned and run-down, which she ran with her husband Randell.
However, there are people who trek across towns, across the country, and sometimes around the world, to find the most remote, abandoned places they can for the sole purpose of experiencing the eerie and the strange. Welcome to the world of Legend Tripping.
Legend Trippers seek the places others avoid, hoping to capture the worst of it on their phones and their cameras and take it all home to experience again, or to share on YouTube, or in blogs frequented by the like-minded: Ooh, look where we went. People used to live here. Like this. Can you imagine?
They shiver and revel in the creepy and grotesque: here you see where someone left behind a kitchen full of cereal and canned spaghetti, now eaten-through by rats and rusted by years of exposure to the elements. Why did they leave like this? Who were these people? It gives them a thrill to think about it, to imagine the sad lives that played out in these former living places, offices, shops. They get a sense that those people are still there, watching as they intrude on the ghosts of past lives.
I get it. I’m an investigative journalist, after all. I know from whence the fascination springs.
But I want to be clear: this is not what we are doing here. We are not ‘legend tripping.’ We are not here at the former Maryview Motor Inn and Liquors, in the decrepit remains of Betty and Randell Van Disson’s life, for thrills. Our goal is to take all the information that’s out there about this case and finally gather it all together in one place, and then to present it to the public in a cohesive manner, for the first time, in the hopes that someone out there will remember something that can help fit the pieces together. Maybe someone never came forward before because they didn’t even know that what they knew might be a clue.
To get here, going north on I-95 from Jacksonville, you’d never know that Highway 17 used to be the main road into northeast Florida. The freeway barrels over the old roadway with barely a passing glance. Blink and you miss it.
We make our way down a covered path along a row of motel rooms. You get the feeling that the end of this business enterprise wasn’t a let’s-sit-down-and-discuss-the-situation decision. There’s no plan, no rhyme or reason to the up-and-left nature of this place’s condition. Furniture leans rotting in the humidity, curtains dangle shredded and moldy, alarm clocks sit ready to wake the rats and raccoons who have made these rooms their homes. It’s an uncanny scene.
We try to step into one room, the first one we’ve found with a floor that hasn’t completely given way to the dirt below. There is a sodden mattress, sunken in the middle, sliding off its rails. A dull brass headboard displays its fine collection of intricate spiderwebs, like dreamcatchers. A lone suit jacket droops on a rusty DeLuxe dry-cleaning hanger dangling from the knob of the drunken bathroom door. Some resourceful creature has built a nest in the bathroom sink.
We look into the other rooms, but they are obviously not safe to enter. Ceiling fans dangle from wires. Broken window glass glints dully from the panes and from the ground. One room has a small scraggly tree growing through the gaping hole in the floor.
Across the motel parking lot is the former All-Right Souvenir and Liquor Store. This is the spot where visitors from over the border would end up when they turned right off the highway onto the property and then made another right. Right to the All-Right. Clever. There’s a shed near the edge of the clearing, locked up with a heavy chain and padlock, and a thickly forested area beyond. We walk the property
line, dense with swordlike palmetto bushes, ropelike vines, pine trees and oaks taking up every inch of space they can claim. There is no way into, or out of, this forest.
Old wiring for the busted out neon signs hangs from the motel lobby windows. The faded blue front door still has a sign in its window, clinging to the glass by yellowing cellophane tape:
“Welcome to Florida! We have what you need to make your trip All-Right!”
We know that Betty’s father was from South Carolina, so I wonder if the haint-blue front door was meant to keep the ghosts away. The atmosphere here, a feeling of sudden desertion after a time-stopping tragedy, seems to prove it didn’t work. If you believe in ghosts, then you would believe they’re around every corner of this desolate property.
Believe it or not, a similar scene lies just up the road from here, at another motel, the scene of the disappearance of another woman—Nellie Olfort. We’ll talk more about that woman and her tragic case in a future episode, but for now I’ll just say: the similarities are hard to ignore. There are notable differences, of course, the biggest one being that Nellie’s case was eventually solved.
And now we want to tell you about this week’s sponsor, Branches DNA…
(*soundbite*) Voice of host Melody Hinterson: There was smoke reported in the vicinity of the property, never confirmed, but Randell wouldn’t actually let you on the property to search. That doesn’t help your case, am I right?
This week we speak with the police investigator on the case all those years ago when Betty Van Disson was finally reported missing.
Today’s episode features some of my conversation with former Jacksonville Sheriff’s Officer Detective William Whitaker, known as Billy John. He was the detective who took the lead on Betty Van Disson’s case. I put it that way, saying he ‘took the lead’ rather than calling him the ‘lead detective,’ because that is actually what happened. When an investigation had trouble taking off due to Randell’s lack of cooperation and a lack of evidence, Detective Billy John took it upon himself to find out everything he could about the Van Dissons—Randell in particular—the Maryview Motor Inn, and the circumstances surrounding the last time anyone saw Betty.