Their Deaths Still Haunt Me - But Their Stories Vanished From The Internet

I’ve been carrying Sandra and Holly’s photographs in my phone for the last seven years. I will never forget their stories. But history might. 

An investigative series I wrote on the suspicious and similar circumstances surrounding each young woman’s death suddenly disappeared from the digital news landscape.

The loss of digital news is increasingly common.

I’m about to delve into stories involving death and suicide. Don’t keep reading if this upsets you. Please call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org either for yourself or if you are worried about a loved one who may need crisis support.

I’ll start with Sandra Stevens. In 2014, she ended her life.

Unless, she didn’t.

Her boyfriend was at the house they shared at the time of her death and gave conflicting reports of what just occurred.

Sandra’s family didn’t buy the story of her death. It’s common for friends and family to doubt a loved one’s death by suicide.

The situation stands out because the man who had been dating Sandra when she died was dating a woman named Holly Sjostrom three years prior, in 2011. That same boyfriend was nearby, as in Sandra’s case, when Holly was found dead. In each case, the boyfriend called 911 and said he had found his girlfriend dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He lamented his fate -- losing two girlfriends the same way -- across social media, at accounts he has since deleted.

Both women had loving, supportive families. Holly left behind a young son. 

The victims’ families found one another after Sandra died and started sharing their numerous doubts and suspicions, along with the similarities between their daughters’ deaths. Sandra’s sister even collected evidence and took it to detectives. During that meeting, one detective scrolled through his cell while she spoke. 

Both families are convinced to this day that the boyfriend killed both women. I reported on their rogue investigation and the questions they raised about the integrity of police work in both cases, spending two years looking into the story and vetting it with outside experts before we published a series called “Suspicious Suicides” in print and online at The Oklahoman.

The boyfriend, who had a history of stalking behavior and a trail of restraining orders against him from other former girlfriends, was never charged with a crime. For that reason, we did not name him. He left Oklahoma, last I heard.

I left news in 2017, the year the series was published, moving to Washington, D.C. for a career pivot to communications.

Sandy and Holly stayed with me. I carry their photos because the greater story is unsettled in my mind. I wanted to keep digging, but I had to go. Were there other women from his past who had died, whose stories I never uncovered, I wondered. Have other women mysteriously died around this man since 2017?

I discovered the series is no longer online because I’ve been taking stock of my past work while I begin a new professional chapter.

Some of the later pieces wrapping up the series are available, as are pieces of related content, and I’ll paste some of them below. 

But, the original five-part series is gone from the digital space.

That matters. The story was more than a regurgitation of sad, violent events. It carried information about a type of domestic violence called coercive control, a strategy abusers use to dominate their intimate partners. 

Characteristics include isolation, financial abuse, threats, and manipulation. I found it striking to learn how much of this type of abuse takes place in the digital spaces between couples. An expert told me these tactics were at play in both relationships that ended with the deaths of the young women. 

In the years since the stories ran, at least seven states have passed laws defining coercive control as a form of domestic violence. In Massachusetts, for example, an abuser would violate a protective order against them by using coercive control tactics defined under the law.

That Holly and Sandy’s stories have disappeared from the online world of news robs future generations of the opportunity to push for policy changes like these, which could fuel further momentum and save lives. 

That can’t happen if news stories keep disappearing. 

I bring this up in the context of a communications newsletter for a few reasons.

First, while there have been a patchwork of efforts, no one has figured out how to preserve digital news. Investigations like mine evaporate without notice all the time. The Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital archive of the Internet, seems like the best solution we have, but it isn’t comprehensive. Journalists working today should not rely on it. 

Creating pdfs and saving the documents to flash drive in addition to a preferred cloud seems like an OK solution for individual reporters looking to preserve their professional work. 

Reporting often fuels advocacy work and can bring a cause to the attention of funders.

Communicators should not be surprised when links in board reports or websites to outside sources like press become roads to nowhere. Preserving media pieces that can demonstrate impact to funders and cause-driven constituencies is probably a good idea here, too.

I’d love to hear more from people in terms of how their organizations are thinking – or not – about this issue. 

Publishers and editors should reach out to the various organizations working to solve the issue from a more comprehensive archival standpoint. I found the overview in the Columbia Journalism Review with lots more detail, where I also learned that storage is not the same thing as archive. I’ll share links in the comments for those interested in learning more.

The story of Sandy and Holly’s lives and questioned deaths now live in a box of newspapers in my attic – I think.

I e-mailed the new editor of The Oklahoman to see if the paper would prioritize republishing the digital series. The stories may have been lost during an ownership transfer in recent years. 

In the meantime, my work to chase down prior digital work and refresh my own online presence in light of a career shift continues.

I’m an optimistic realist holding tight to the idea that our world can be a better, kinder place. But if our work to get there disappears, future generations won’t be able to keep pulling the threads.

Related

Read How to report responsibly on firearm suicide, by the Association of Health Care Journalists.