Chapter 22

Transcript of “The Farley Files Podcast Season Two:

Dead Man’s Hollow—The Disappearance of Heather Ryan”

Episode 2: The Pink Pager

Kristy Ryan Kaminski, the youngest of the four Ryan sisters is, in appearance and temperament, the outlier. While Diana and Amy are tall, talkative brunettes, Kristy is a slight, fair-haired woman who listens more than she speaks. From photographs and her sisters’ stories, it seems Heather Ryan resembled her two older sisters. The three oldest Ryan girls inherited their mother’s personality and their father’s coloring and height; Kristy, the reverse.

Eight years younger than Heather, quiet Kristy was the observant one in the Ryan household. She watched and filed away everything her older sisters did and said, especially Heather. By all accounts, young Kristy might’ve been as quiet as a lamb, but she never missed a trick.

Kristy, a systems engineer who constructs crossword puzzles in her free time, lives with her husband, Nick, and their two young sons, Jay and Theo, in a neighborhood just minutes away from the development where her sister Amy lives. The Kaminski family’s schedule is packed with extracurricular activities for the boys and, like any home where both parents work full time, time is tight. She agreed to talk with me at her home while her kids were at baseball practice with their father.

MAISY: Did you listen to Diana’s interview last week, Kristy?

KRISTY: Of course.

MAISY: She said it was almost as though you grew up as an only child because of the difference in age between you and your three older sisters. Was that your experience?

KRISTY: I think that’s right. There was a big gap between us. Diana’s twelve years older than me, and Amy’s a decade older. They were more like aunts than sisters. And then, after Heather disappeared and our mom was so depressed, Diana really became a second mother to me and to Amy, but especially me. So I think the way she characterized it is fair. We weren’t close. I loved them and still do. But we didn’t have much in common, and we had very different family life experiences. We’re closer now, though.

MAISY: But despite the eight years between you and Heather, you knew things about her Diana and Amy didn’t.

KRISTY: Are you talking about the pager?

When I first met with the Ryan sisters to discuss diving into Heather’s disappearance during this season of the podcast, Kristy mentioned that Heather had a pager. This fact was not known to either of her older sisters, both of whom were surprised to learn that Heather had, in defiance of family rules, rented a pager.

MAISY: Yes. How did you learn Heather had a pager, Kristy?

KRISTY: Heather was supposed to stay with me after school until our mom got home from work. The rule was once you were ten, you could stay home alone. But sometimes Heather wanted to meet up with a friend or stay after school for an activity, so she asked if I’d be okay on my own for short periods of time.

MAISY: And you said yes?

KRISTY: That’s right, I’d told her I’d be fine. I mean, when Diana was ten, she wasn’t just staying home alone; she was responsible for an eight-year-old and a six-year-old. So we thought my parents’ rule was pretty dumb. Arbitrary. One day, Heather came back from the mall with this pink pager she’d rented from a kiosk. It was used, and someone had glued a rhinestone sticker in the shape of a capital letter C in one corner. I told her she could cover it up with a different sticker, but she said she liked it. She decided the C stood for ‘clandestine.’ Then she gave me the number and swore me to secrecy. I promised not to tell anyone.

MAISY: And you kept that promise even after she disappeared, didn’t you?

KRISTY: I did.

MAISY: Would you have mentioned the pager if the police had interviewed you?

KRISTY: I’m not sure. But they didn’t talk to me, so I guess we’ll never know.

My producer and I have reviewed the case file, and I can confirm that it does not contain a witness statement from Kristy Kaminski.

MAISY: Do you think they should have?

KRISTY: I don’t know. I mean I understand why they didn’t. I’m sure they thought an eight-year-old wouldn’t know anything. And obviously, they focused mostly on Amy, because she was there the night Heather disappeared. (She pauses.) But I also didn’t volunteer the information.

MAISY: Do you wish you had?

KRISTY: With the benefit of hindsight and the maturity of adulthood, yes. At the time, though, I wanted to believe that Heather had run away. And I thought if she had the pager and I didn’t tell anyone, she and I could stay in touch. I must have paged her number a couple hundred times over the summer, even though I’m sure it was shut off for lack of payment.

MAISY: And she never answered?

KRISTY (quietly): No. No one ever answered.

MAISY: Did anyone besides you ever page her?

KRISTY: Sometimes. We’d be home after school, just the two of us, and then she’d get a page and tell me she had to run out for a bit.

MAISY: Did she ever tell you where she was going?

KRISTY: No. From the way she acted, I assumed it was a boy. She’d get giggly and giddy. She was never gone long when she got paged that way. Sometimes a half an hour, sometimes an hour, but she was always back before Amy got home from her after-school activities.

MAISY: Heather never told you who the boy was? Not even a hint?

KRISTY: No. She never even told me it was a boy. I inferred it by the way she acted and because sometimes her hair would be messed up or her lip gloss would be wiped off when she came home—like she’d been making out with someone. (Kristy pauses here and looks down at her hands.)

MAISY (gently): Is there something else you want to share?

KRISTY: When Heather went missing, I went through her room before the police did. I wanted to see if her diary had any clues. I was deep in my Meg Mackintosh Mystery Series era then. I honestly thought I could solve the mystery of what happened to my sister. I was such a little goofball.

MAISY: Did you find any clues in her diary?

KRISTY: I couldn’t find the diary at all. I’d, well, I’d read it before. It was this white faux leather book with a gold lock and gold script that read ‘My Diary’ on the front. The lock was a joke. I could pop it with a bobby pin—and did, more than once. She kept the diary wedged between the back of her vanity table and the wall, but it wasn’t there.

MAISY: Do you think your parents or one of your other sisters removed it?

KRISTY: No. I know my sisters didn’t because I asked them about it once years later and they didn’t even know she kept a diary, let alone where she hid it. And if it was my mom or dad, they never mentioned it, and we didn’t find it in their things when we cleaned out the house.

MAISY: So as far as you know, Heather’s diary went missing with her.

KRISTY: As far as I know. I don’t know why she’d take it to the party, but I don’t know where else it could have gotten to.

MAISY: What do you think happened to your sister, Kristy?

KRISTY (slowly): I’ve had plenty of time to think about it over the past thirty years. What I hope happened is that she was feeling rebellious and took off, maybe headed somewhere with mountains and snow. She loved to ski. I hope she’s living in a ski town in Vermont or Colorado or somewhere, schussing down the slopes. And I hope she hears this and calls us so I can tell her I still love her and I miss her. That’s what I hope.

Although I asked Kristy what she believed happened to her sister, not what she hoped, it’s clear from her wistful expression that she isn’t prepared to give voice to her darker thoughts.

Thank you for the tips you’ve shared so far. We’re counting on you to help us find out what happened to Heather, so please keep them coming. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you won’t miss the next episode as our investigation continues.