GAYLE PALMER Part 3 of 7: Damage Control

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1:10This episode contains disturbing content, including discussions of child abuse. Please take care while listening. On May 1st, 1990, Michelle Sutton left Pleasanton, California, for St. George, Utah, in order to attend Summit Quest. Nine days later, on May 10th, the Suttons were informed that Michelle had died. In shock, they prepared for her funeral. This is Michelle's older sister, Christina. My mom, she is the strongest person I know. And she led me to help dress my sister for burial, putting Birkenstocks on my sister's feet and dressing her hair and putting clothes on, you know. The Suttons had two funerals for Michelle, one in Pleasanton on May 14, 1990, and a second funeral in Calusa on May 16th.

2:05Michelle was buried in the peach dress that had been made for her to wear to Christina's wedding. When you look back on that time, you just feel like there were just angels surrounding the house. Because how in the world did we make it through that time? The funeral was mostly a blur to Christina. But she does remember one thing. Gail Palmer was there. I know that after the funeral, supposedly, according to dear Gail Palmer, I spoke with her after the funeral. Christina says supposedly because the conversation was so brief that she didn't give it much thought at the time. She told me that Gail approached her right after the service.

2:49I think we were loading Michelle's body into the back of the hearse. or we were watching it be loaded up or something in the back of the hearse. Christina had never met Gail before, and she remembers Gail talking about Michelle's death, saying things like, it's so sad. Christina told me that it came off to her as if Gail was giving her condolences without taking any responsibility. She said Gail was very careful with her words. And Christina, she responded just like she would have to any adult at that time in her life. She was polite. I said something like, oh, it's okay. We understand or something along that line.

3:34And then she used it as a quote for her benefit. It was like one of those moments where you're brushing somebody off, you know, like, oh, yeah, okay. You know, it was a totally just thoughtless, flippant moment for me. And she's going to use that as a quote. I'm sorry. I didn't know I was on the record. According to Christina, Gail later told a local news outlet that she had spoken with a member of the family at Michelle's funeral. She said the family was completely understanding and did not blame Summit Quest for Michelle's death. Christina said that her parents were really upset by this. They felt like Gail took advantage of Christina, approaching her at a vulnerable moment and then using that conversation to make herself look better.

4:25To Christina, it was a moment that revealed Gail's true colors. Interesting that she approached you at that time. Exactly. Or that she was even at the funeral. Well, I don't think my parents had known much about how Michelle had died at that time. At this point, the Suttons did not have a lot of information about Michelle's death. The Mojave County Sheriff's Department opened an investigation, but that would take months. And while the investigation was active, the Suttons would be told very little. But Gail Palmer would waste no time in trying to control the narrative. From Cast Media, this is The Opportunist.

5:07This is Season 7, Episode 3. Gail Palmer, Damage Control. I'm Hannah Smith.

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7:27In the weeks following Michelle's death, Kathy moved forward with her life without really moving at all, as if she were stuck in a bad dream. A lot of it was in a fog. I got notifications from school that my children being late going to school, I would be reprimanded for that and need to get your kids to school on time. I was like, give me a break here. I'm trying to hold on and doing my best. Kathy began piecing together, little by little, that perhaps what Gail Palmer had told her about Michelle wasn't true. Gail maintained that Michelle had been totally fine one minute, and the next, she collapsed in the desert.

8:06Gail also said that right before Michelle died, she communicated with her counselor that she wanted to die. First of all, when Michelle died, we were told by the program that Lance Ferrara, one of the counselors, had given her a priesthood blessing, and he said that she wanted to go. So we're hearing that. And then Gail said she had a tear in her eye. And this was all their way of convincing us that it was Michelle wished to die. But Gail was not with Michelle when she died. Michelle was in a group out in the desert with two counselors, Ruth Young and Lance Fawerta, along with four other adolescents.

8:47You were in those initial stages of grieving, probably still a lot of shock, you know. But to hear her say something like Michelle was given a priesthood blessing and then had decided to kind of go on to the afterlife, what did you think of that? Was that comforting to you? Was it confusing? How did you feel about that? I didn't know what to think because at the time we were told that Michelle died, I was just in total confusion. We were waiting for an autopsy result. We were waiting for the detectives report. At the same time, we're talking to Gail Palmer and hearing her version of everything.

9:22And she said that Michelle had dropped dead without warning and that she saw paradise and she decided to go. Those were her exact words. But then they got the results of Michelle's autopsy. On May 11th, 1990, an autopsy was performed on Michelle's body by Dr. Eugene S. Rosenville in Kingman, Arizona. Even though Summit Quest was based in Utah, the group had wandered across the border into Arizona, and that's where Michelle died. So the autopsy was performed in Arizona. The official cause of death was found to be dehydration secondary to exposure to the elements. The autopsy report called Gail's account of Michelle's death into question.

10:07A death by dehydration doesn't line up with Gail's story that Michelle died quickly without any warning signs. Then, on May 13, 1990, four days after Michelle died, the LA Times published an article about her death. In the article, Detective Dale Lent stated that, based on interviews with other people at Summit Quest, the day Michelle died, she had complained that she was dizzy, and then she collapsed and died. This article, on top of the autopsy results, started to paint a different picture of Michelle's final day alive. Was she showing signs of distress that day? Did she receive medical care?

10:46There were still so many unanswered questions. There were people out there who could offer Kathy Sutton answers about what happened to her daughter, mainly the people who were there with Michelle. But the Suttons couldn't get to those people. Michelle's counselors, Ruth and Lance, were still working for Summit Quest. In fact, they had both been promoted. They weren't going to talk to Kathy. There were the four other teenagers who were in the program with Michelle. But Kathy couldn't talk to them either because they were still out there, isolated in the desert, completing the 63-day Summit Quest program.

11:23None of them had been allowed to leave to attend Michelle's funeral, not even Michelle's friend Andrea, who had joined Summit Quest around the same time as Michelle. But of course, Gail Palmer was at the funeral. We wanted the kids there. We wanted Andrea there. We didn't understand why she was coming to the funeral and the children were not allowed to. That kind of made us angry because we felt like, you know, they should be there, especially Andrea, her best friend. And did you ask Gail about that? I don't recall. I just like to say, I was so in the grieving process. And then on May 18th, one week after the autopsy was done, the Suttons received a letter from Gail Palmer.

12:06Kathy showed me the letter when I met her. It opens, Dear Kathy and Bob, our grief is with you at this most unfortunate time. It is especially difficult knowing the questions we all have. Here's Kathy reading part of the letter. Kathy and Bob, we love you so much and admire your tender sacrifice, which will bless the lives of everyone who has been touched by this tragedy in your lives. Tender sacrifice. That is how Gail described Michelle's death. In the letter, she suggests that they should do a second autopsy so they can find out the true cause of death. Gail wouldn't accept that she died of dehydration.

12:46Most of the time, it was Kathy who spoke with me. It was Kathy who kept filing cabinets filled with old newspaper articles and paperwork about Michelle's death. But when the topic of Michelle's autopsy came up, she went and found her husband, Bob. She wanted Bob to tell this part of the story. My name is Robert Sutton, and I'm the father of eight children and one of my daughters, Michelle, who we lost back in 1990. We sent her to a program that was supposed to build her self-esteem, and unfortunately, we got the program from word of mouth through the family, and they talked about how great this woman was, Gail Palmer, and it was the slickest marketing campaign I've ever seen in my life.

13:35After Michelle's first funeral in Pleasanton, and before the second one in Calusa, where Michelle would be buried, Bob said he got a concerned call from the funeral home. Gail Palmer had been contacting them. She wanted to send someone to the funeral home to collect a sample from Michelle's body. And she said, what we'd like to do is I have a doctor, and I can have him come and take a piece of her heart. They had already contacted the mortuary to see if they could do it. Supposedly, Gail told the funeral home that Michelle died because her heart gave out. And she was sure that Michelle had a pre-existing heart condition, and she wanted to test for it.

14:19The funeral home did not give Gail access to Michelle's body. Instead, they called the Suttons. I was really distraught with that because the idea of her heart being gone, and a friend of ours was a homicide detective. And he said, why in the world would you let them have a piece of her heart? He said, we have the best pathologist right here in Oakland. There's a great pathologist. So we ended up going back to the funeral home and saying, OK, we're going to have you transport her to Oakland. There was also the strange issue of how Michelle's body looked. She was covered in bruises and scratches.

15:00so much so that the funeral home found it unusual enough to document it with photographs. The Suttons did not let Gail have Michelle's heart, but they did send Michelle's body to a pathologist in Oakland to have a second autopsy performed. And then they buried Michelle in Calusa and waited for the results to come back from the second autopsy.

15:32Subscribe to Cast Plus to listen to all episodes of Season 7 of The Opportunist ad-free now at castmedia.com slash castplus. You can follow, rate, and review The Opportunist on Apple Podcasts. It really does make a difference. So thank you.

15:57Kathy Sutton felt deeply unsettled. She wanted to know what happened to her daughter Michelle, but none of the answers she'd been given made sense or brought her peace of mind. Unless you've lost a child, it's hard to understand because I've never experienced a whole heart hurt. Your whole heart hurts, and it's just a pain you can't describe. It's just something you feel. Things got so bad for Kathy, she says, at times she had suicidal thoughts. I was in a state of shock and denial. Didn't know about the grieving process. I do now. But initially, shock took over in the beginning. And me wanting to go, too.

16:41I wanted to be with Michelle. I just remember the pills there on my dresser, tranquilizers, and I would hug and rock her picture. I wanted to take them.

16:57Because you're there when they're born. And I felt resentful that I wasn't there when she left. And I wanted to hug and embrace her. But I didn't take the pills. I have seven other children. And I mean, you know, reality came to me that I can't do that.

17:19Kathy would get her answers eventually. But first, something else happened. And it changed the way that people talked about Michelle's death. On June 27th, 1990, only six weeks after Michelle died, another teenager died out in the desert. This time in Challenger. Challenger is the wilderness therapy program run by Steve Cartesano, the program that John, Tamira, and Philip, who we spoke with in episode two, all attended. It's the same program where Gail Palmer worked before starting Summit Quest. Kristen Chase was exhausted and underfed. She kept saying she felt like dying. The counselors pushed her to continue until death was her only salvation.

18:0616-year-old Kristen Chase was only at Challenger for three days. She was taken on a four-and-a-half-mile hike during the hottest part of the day. She complained of feeling dizzy and having a headache, but she was ignored. And then she collapsed and died. Here is Kristen's mother, Sharon Fuqua, being interviewed on The Liza Show. Well, I was in shock. And when they first called, the sheriff's office said, hold on just a moment. Mr. Cartesano wants to talk to you. This is the head of the camp. Steve Cardesano, yes, was the head of Challenger. And my first thought was she ran away. I knew she wouldn't want to go to this program.

18:51And we did have the escort service come to pick her up. And so my first thought was she ran away. And they told me she died. Based on Kristen Chase's autopsy, she died of exertional heat stroke. There were reports that she had been denied water, had complained of feeling ill, and had been ignored and ridiculed by her counselors. When Kathy heard that yet another teenager had died in the desert in a very similar program, she was devastated. It hurt just as much as it did when Michelle died. It was like, oh no, here we go again. Another one has died. Why is that? To outsiders, Michelle Sutton's death sounded like this sad, terrible story, but perhaps one that could be written off as an anomaly.

19:42When Kristen Chase died, six weeks later, it started to feel like a pattern. News outlets jumped on the story, asking, are these wilderness therapy programs torturing children? Are they marching kids across the desert until they die? What's a parent to do if he's tried everything and the child continues on the path of self-destruction? Well, some parents are turning their kids over to a bizarre survival course designed to straighten out Problem Children, a controversial wilderness program that costs parents up to$20 ,000 and may cost their kids a lot more. After Kristen Chase died, there was a media frenzy.

20:22Everyone wanted to know about these supposed torture camps in Utah marching teens to their deaths. Gail Palmer was suddenly in the spotlight, and she went on the defensive. She told the Daily Spectrum newspaper that, quote, responsibility for these youths lies on the parents, on the program coordinators, and on the state. She told the newspaper what Kathy had told her about Michelle's struggles during those initial 21 phone calls, that Michelle had tried drugs and ran away from home. She painted Michelle as a rebellious, drug-addicted teen who entered Summit Quest as a last resort. She even said that it was possible that Michelle had smuggled cocaine into the program.

21:07Maybe that's why she died. Every fire that she lit, whether it be go to the media, to the newspapers, it wasn't enough that Michelle died. She wanted to then say that she smuggled in cocaine and died of an overdose. So they also said that there was some cyanide in her autopsy report. So they're trying to stick with this idea that she smuggled in cocaine and she died of an overdose. and were like, what do we have to do? Summit Quest searched kids upon arrival. There is no way that Michelle could have brought cocaine into the program. Besides, Michelle had never done cocaine. That wasn't one of the drugs that she experimented with.

21:47But it was clear that Gail was in damage control mode. If she had wanted to distance herself from the controversy surrounding Challenger, the death of Kristen Chase made that impossible. Kristen Chase and Michelle Sutton were the two girls who died in wilderness therapy programs in Utah in the summer of 1990. Their names were now forever linked. And therefore, so were the names Steve Cardesano and Gil Palmer. Steve Cardesano was interviewed on The Geraldo Show and questioned about Kristen Chase's death. Was your Challenger Foundation responsible for the death of Kristen Chase? No, we weren't. Kristen was with us, but she had not started the program.

22:32I think it's important for people to understand that the day that Kristen, the third day she'd arrived, she hiked a little bit more than the length of Central Park over a nine-hour period. She'd gone four and a half miles, had many breaks. The autopsy says that she was not dehydrated, and she collapsed. Both Summit Quest and Challenger claimed that there had been no warning signs, that both young women were completely fine until they weren't, that they collapsed suddenly and died. When I heard Steve Cartesano writing off Kristen Chase's death by saying that she hadn't even officially started the program yet, I couldn't help but think about my interview with Philip.

23:12The staff just was not prepared to deal with, you know, kids in the desert. They didn't understand basic physiology. Certainly no one gave us advice on how much water we were to drink. We heard from Philip last episode. He attended Challenger at age 14 in 1990, and he told me a story that is eerily similar to Kristen Chase's. Just like Kristen, Philip got dehydrated before he even started Challenger, when he was in what they called holding. The first couple of days out in the desert meant to help kids acclimate. The first day of holding, they went on a pretty easy three to four mile hike, more of a long walk, really.

23:51I didn't drink any water. I don't think I even actually filled up my water bottles. I was used to being in Cleveland and riding my bike all day. I thought I was in plenty good shape to go for a walk. Didn't work out that way. We basically just hiked down into a canyon and looked around a little bit, and that was it. We went back up to camp. Philip was physically fit. He ran cross-country back in Cleveland. But this was the desert in June. And after that three to four-mile hike, he was badly sunburned and feeling sick. Challenger had confiscated all of the items that he brought with him, just as they had with John McMahon.

24:25So all Philip had was what Challenger gave him, one set of clothes and a few survival items. A hat was not on that list. Neither was sunscreen. My scalp burned, my whole head burned. And I actually got very, very, very, very badly dehydrated that very first day to the point where I was throwing up a bright green bile. Over the course of the day, my condition just continued to deteriorate to the point where I felt sick. And I tried to eat some of the rations that they had given us, and I just, you know, started throwing them up. The Bureau of Land Management Utah suggests that anyone hiking in the desert consume between one and two gallons of water per day.

25:05They also warn against hiking in the hottest, sunniest parts of the day. But Challenger didn't take any of those precautions. And within one day, within one three to four mile hike, Philip was sicker than he had ever been before. And he was scared. He asked the staff for help. He said they could see that he was vomiting, but they didn't help him. I was accused of faking it, which I don't know how you fake that. I can't imagine how you would fake that. I think it's important to note that the counselors were not trained medical professionals. They were often young adults being paid minimum wage.