The disappearance of Jamie Grissim
Rope. It’s the first image we’re given—and the metaphor that runs through the entire story. In the opening episode of Stolen Voices of Dole Valley, we meet Norma Jean Countryman, a 15-year-old girl abducted in the summer of 1974. She’s bound with coarse rope, gagged, and strung between two trees like a human hammock in the forests of southern Washington.
Norma is left there by a stranger. Her life depends on what she’s willing to do to survive. With her jaw clamped around the gag, she begins to chew. One strand breaks. Then another. Then another. It’s a painful, desperate escape—but she makes it out alive.
That’s only the beginning. Norma tells police everything. The blue van. The man. The weapon. The ropes. But she’s not believed. They question her entire story. They say she’s troubled. Maybe even lying. Her report is ignored—and with that, the serial predator who kidnapped her is allowed to roam free.
This episode introduces not just Norma’s harrowing story of survival, but the first glimpse into a decades-long pattern of dismissal, neglect, and failure by law enforcement. Through archival audio and interviews with Norma—then and now—listeners begin to understand how a system meant to protect the vulnerable can often do the opposite.
Her rope may have broken that day, but the psychological bind has lasted for decades.
Stolen Voices of Dole Valley begins here—with one girl, one rope, and a truth no one wanted to hear.
But to understand the depths of this case we have to go back to the beginning, with the disappearance of 16-year-old Jamie Grissim. Hear her story in episode 1.
