PODCAST · society
Nobody's Property
by Emily Kathleen Cooke
November 4, 1971Jennifer Rose Cooke, a girl from California, just turned 18, goes missing in a frigid forest in West Germany. She has been hitchhiking. First she caught a ride with a trucker, then with a West German soldier. Maybe she was trying to visit a young professor she had met on the boat over from New York. On that trip, he had heard her say she might throw herself overboard.April 28, 1972Another girl, just turned three, lives with her parents in a house in Laurel Canyon that lets the California rain in. Her biggest fear is of the brown snails in the garden; she will not cross the brick path if one is there. It is her father's twenty-sixth birthday; on this day his sister Jenny's remains are found. Officially, she died of exposure, although a murder investigation is begun and the file remains permanently open.
Episodes
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What I Saw in California Episode 05: Two Walks
Summer 2003: I walk past the Balboa park BART station, here in the south-central outskirts of San Francisco. This place is not on the maps of the city that you see in the Travel pages or in guidebooks; usually it gets cut off just below the Mission. This is the las stop before Daly City. It is a...
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What I Saw in California Episode 04: Atascadero
My instinct, mid-stream in the molasses flow of late-afternoon San Francisco traffic, was to just keep moving. This was getting us nowhere. Mom sat beside me listlessly looking out the car window while I steered us around and around, trying to make out the logic of this neighborhood: a tangle of...
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What I Saw in California Episode 03: Thunderbird
I measure the imported rice, squeeze the plum tomatoes and chop them, chop the flat-leaf parsley and rosemary from the garden, the garlic, the onion. I grate the cheese and dice the celery, drizzle olive oil into a heavy casserole, eyeballing the measure. In go the garlic and celery. Dinner will…
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What I Saw in California Episode 02: Domestic Water
Up at Pulgas Ridge Megadog and I walk the Cordilleras Trail past the multiple-addiction rehab center tucked at the edge of San Francisco Water Department land. This open space, reserved for hikers and their dogs, is flanked by the rehab on one side and the county mental health services on the...
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What I Saw in California Episode 01: Sweet Marie
It doesn’t help that I have PMS on the day my chicken dies. I find her in the backyard coop, one wing drooping out of the nest, her head lolling. I have always told myself that if illness struck my tiny flock of two I would face it with the pragmatic detachment of a farmer, letting nature take…
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Nobody's Property Episode 15: Rose
Three o’clock in the afternoon, and Shirley, of Shawnee Memorials, just across Harrison Avenue from Fairview Cemetery, was not taking any shit off my dad. We had come here at my urging; Dad had mentioned that he still needed to order a stone to mark the plot where Jenny’s and Edith’s remains were...
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Nobody's Property Episode 14: Stupid
The sound of pistons pumping, a lawn-mower pulse and wheeze, comes up behind her, and she looks over her shoulder to see the VW coming up fast: black and chrome, some of the shine worn off and anyway looking duller in this flat November light. She keeps her thumbs hooked under the leather of her...
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Nobody's Property Episode 13: Terminal Burrowing
"I serve with the German Armed Forces. My garrison is Hardheim, where I am stationed at Carl-Schurz-Kaserne. At present, I attend the Bundeswehrfachschule in Tauberbischofsheim. "On Friday, 5 November 1971, I was driving in my VW...from Tauberbischofsheim to Hardheim between 12.20 and 12.30...
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Nobody's Property Episode 12: What I Know
Terminal burrowing can be identified in reports of hypothermia deaths, but has only recently been given a name. It is a behavior pattern observed in the last stages of hypothermia whereby the afflicted will enter small, enclosed spaces, such as wardrobes, cupboards, and closets. Outdoors, the...
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Sequoiacast Episode 03: Senseless
She's six years old All she sees are dirty walls around her Men coming in and out the front door She wants to run cry and yell But there is nobody there to help She sees many different faces Touching them in all the wrong places Hearing the door open and close She follows him because she is the…
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Sequoiacast Episode 02: Free
According to the nonprofit California Against Slavery, seventy percent of slaves worldwide are now women; fifty percent are children. Human trafficking is now tied with weapons sales, and second only to the drug trade, in terms of profitability in the illicit global marketplace. What surprised me...
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Sequoiacast Episode 01: Papers
On Wednesday, May 19, 2010, I sat down with Marcela, Donaciano, Anet, Rocio, and Maria to discuss Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the widely protested new law requiring proof of citizenship or resident status on demand from peace officers or other government agents in that state. What emerged was a...
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Nobody's Property Episode 11: Tourist Information
In Tübingen the houses sit along the River Neckar like nineteenth-century ladies on lounge chairs with flowing skirts and big hats: they look comfortable and bourgeois and unassailable. Like most of Germany. From the bridge over the river you can see a tower, painted yellow now, where the poet...
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Nobody's Property Episode 10: Rasthaus Schwarz
Charles had given us maps and a police report when we visited him in Oklahoma City. He pulled out one map, of Hardheim and its surroundings, and pointed. “This is where Jennifer was…uh…murdered,” he told us. At the time, I wondered if his hesitancy over the word indicated uncertainty. But later I...
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Nobody's Property Episode 09: Free Drinks
We had our money out to pay the Lufthansa flight attendant for our drinks—my no-name red wine and Dad’s Glenlivet—and when she moved on without even looking at the fold of bills in Dad’s hand we were practically giddy. Free drinks! It made being stuck in a metal and plastic capsule for eleven…
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Nobody's Property Episode 08: Civilized Tribe
“I’ve been thinking about a trip to Germany,” my father says on the phone one day. “I’m thinking I need to start thinking about Jenny in a new way.” I’ve been thinking that too. And my father: the first thirty years of our time together are over; what are the next thirty going to be like? What…
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Nobody's Property Episode 07: The Plot
Do you think you are free to live your life? We try to tell ourselves that the worst won’t happen, that we can leave the doors of our lives unlocked and the crazies won’t come through them, or if they do we can talk them down. We search the papers for the reasons behind the senseless murder—the...
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Nobody's Property Episode 06: Evidence
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry Go to sleepy little baby. When you wake, you will find All the pretty little horses. Dapples and grays, pintos and bays All the pretty little horses. Way down yonder, in the meadow, Poor little baby, crying “mama”. Birds and the butterflys flutter ‘round his eyes. Poor...
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Nobody's Property Episode 05: Living on the Remains
A few years ago, my father told me the story of how my Aunt Jenny's remains were shipped back to be put into different ground. Dad called me from Oklahoma to describe how my grandmother Edith stood by while workers dug up the urn from under the small brass marker that barely wrinkled the surface…
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Nobody's Property Episode 04: Base Line
After my father stopped living with Mom and me, he spent his nights in his woodshop, in the lemon packing house that my grandfather Charles owned. The remains of the citrus groves still grew all around us in Claremont, and an old guy sold wooden crates of local lemons off the loading dock of the...
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Nobody's Property Episode 03: My Mother's Egg
For a few years while I was growing up, a book called How to Do Your Own Divorce sat undisturbed on a bookshelf by our living-room fireplace. It just sat there, its paper spine facing out, between Passages and Last Things. This was in Southern California, on an alluvial fan of the San Gabriels…
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Nobody's Property Episode 02: Chaparral
When I was two years old, my parents and I lived for a while in a cottage up Laurel Canyon. There is a picture of me from this time: I'm wearing toddler-sized cowgirl buckskins, my red hair is in high pigtails poking out each side of my head, I'm smiling, and I'm holding a toothbrush. Remember,...
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Nobody's Property Episode 01: Tiny Dancer
I’m on the middle road from San Francisco to L.A., the 101, doing seventy behind a Chevy Chevelle past open-bed trucks hauling vegetables and buses hauling field workers, twin port-a-potties towed behind them. I noticed the Chevelle pulling out from the center divider outside Salinas—the gray…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
November 4, 1971Jennifer Rose Cooke, a girl from California, just turned 18, goes missing in a frigid forest in West Germany. She has been hitchhiking. First she caught a ride with a trucker, then with a West German soldier. Maybe she was trying to visit a young professor she had met on the boat over from New York. On that trip, he had heard her say she might throw herself overboard.April 28, 1972Another girl, just turned three, lives with her parents in a house in Laurel Canyon that lets the California rain in. Her biggest fear is of the brown snails in the garden; she will not cross the brick path if one is there. It is her father's twenty-sixth birthday; on this day his sister Jenny's remains are found. Officially, she died of exposure, although a murder investigation is begun and the file remains permanently open.
HOSTED BY
Emily Kathleen Cooke
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Nobody's Property have?
Nobody's Property currently has 23 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Nobody's Property about?
November 4, 1971Jennifer Rose Cooke, a girl from California, just turned 18, goes missing in a frigid forest in West Germany. She has been hitchhiking. First she caught a ride with a trucker, then with a West German soldier. Maybe she was trying to visit a young professor she had met on the boat...
How often does Nobody's Property release new episodes?
Nobody's Property has 23 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Nobody's Property?
You can listen to Nobody's Property on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Nobody's Property?
Nobody's Property is created and hosted by Emily Kathleen Cooke.
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