at the airport. british undercover cops and fbi would be watching ann s every move as she pretended to enter the arrivals hall just off a flight from the states. robert had suggested a coffee shop just past customs where they could meet. you guys have got to be a little bit nervous backstage here, right? you re always nervous backstage. the next day kim s mom emerged in the arrivals area just as scripted. robert was there. her daughter wasn t. i walked up to him and i said, robert, and he said, oh, how are you? we hugged. and then i said, oh, where s kim? and he told me she was in the car park. this is a wrinkle in the plan. so i made an excuse, a long trip, i need to use the restroom. so i went into the restroom, pulled out the cell phone, called the agents and said, kim is in the car park. i don t know where. and they said okay, go, go, go. ann went with robert to the parking lot, with no idea what would happen next. so i got up to the car and kim jumped out. we hugged,
the fbi said, you can t do that because we can t go to france and arrest him. you ve got to get him back to the uk. anyway, the reason i called, is that i ve never been to heathrow before, so while we were scripting against him, he had a script for kimberly about how to get money from her parents. i don t know where to begin. i told you about the exam. yep. basically we have to tell them at the end of the day today that we have the money, because i have to give it to them tomorrow. so it was a battle of wills and a battle of scripts. ann was insistent that robert and her daughter come to london to get the money. so they finally agreed that, yes, they would come to pick me up in the uk. but we didn t know if it would be just robert, just kim, kim and robert, a third party or nobody. a no-show. a no-show. and so it was a nervous and very uncertain ann hodgins who set out from phoenix on her own secret agent-style mission. i was almost physically sick.
that s all i could put my hands on. and i don t have any more money than that, john. that wiped me out. so the reason they re calling home to the states is to get money. yes. we knew if we didn t capitalize on that break that we may not hear from kimberly again for a long time. after the fbi and british police determined that freegard and kim had traveled to france, out of their jurisdiction, they set up a plan that kim s schoolteacher mom would execute. you had to learn how to become something of a little spy yourself. well, i guess i did, yes. i hadn t thought of it that way. back home in phoenix, ann s instructions were to use the sporadic phone calls to lure robert and her daughter back to england. hi, ann, how are you doing? a plan was set with tempting bait. kim s mom would give them a check for $20,000 but only if she could deliver it herself in london. she was even given a script by the fbi to deal with curveballs as when robert cleverly suggested that kim s mom fly
i was so afraid. i was afraid for my daughter. i was afraid. i knew that if this didn t work, it was all over. we d never get her back. were you worried about blowing this, not being able to pull it off? oh, yes, oh, absolutely. and before the mission started it was nearly stalled. ann hodgins, schoolteacher by day, arrived to the airport on time to catch her transatlantic flight, but she was greeted with a problem all too common to most of us. to this nervous mother, it seemed like a matter of life and death. i m on this flight and the agent is saying, no, you re not. exactly. and i was trying to be calm. but by then i m almost in a panic, because i have to be on that flight. i have to be. if i m not on that flight, this isn t going to work. did you have the fbi agents with you. oh, no. working on the rough spots. i was on my own. i was in contact with them on the phone and trust me, i did call them, yes, i called them immediately and i ll admit i wasn t calm at that p