Capture The Queen

She's Young, She's A Con, And She Is Evading Law Enforcement

(CBS)  We don’t know what Esther was really up to in Chicago, where she lived or how she made money. We do know that she kept in touch with Bita, and kept clinging to her college dreams.

"So she started studying for the SAT exam," Bita recalls. Bita believes that Esther did in fact take the exam.

The bizarre strategy of honest study and dishonest scheming paid off in 2004. Esther, as Brooke Henson, fulfilled her childhood dream by enrolling at the elite Harvard University -- its extension school, at least.

But after a single semester at Harvard, Esther outwitted another Ivy League university, conning her way into Columbia University's School of General Studies. Esther studied psychology and criminology, and briefly held a student job in the alumni office.

"Apparently she was in data processing. And she had access to every single alumni record," Ramban says.

"This was the classic wolf in the henhouse," Van Sant remarks.

"I think she’s the Tasmanian devil in the henhouse," Rambam says,

But aside from that job, or the imaginary chess winnings, Rambam discovered how Esther was really getting her cash: student loan fraud. That money, obtained with Brooke Henson's identity, bankrolled Esther's lifestyle in Manhattan.

"Is she paying back any of that money?" Van Sant asks.

"I don’t think she’s paid back a penny of it," Rambam says. "Esther Reed should go to jail. She needs to be locked up."

Fraudulent student loans, identity thefts, phony Social Security numbers. Could Esther be attempting something more sinister?

Rummaging through the leftovers of Esther's life as Brooke Henson, Columbia student, Steve Rambam struck gold. "This is Brooke Henson's certified birth certificate," he explains.

In 2005, Esther allegedly tricked South Carolina officials into mailing her that birth certificate. Rambam learned Esther then went to Vermont, where anyone can get a new driver's license in just one day.

"We know that she went to Vermont and got a Brooke Henson driver's license there, using the address of literally an empty field," Rambam explains.

Rambam thinks his target may also have been devising her next strategy, creating yet another identity. But when he visited the local courthouse, Rambam found no record of a name change. Esther stayed one move ahead.

But if Esther is hard to track in the real world, she's left a clearer trail in cyberspace. Rambam finds eBay purchases Esther made, a possible user identity on an online chess site, and a number of accounts with dating services.

Esther's page on the social networking site Facebook, created under the name Brooke Henson, lists a special friend from West Point, Kyle Brengel.

Who is he?

"Military academy candidate, military academy graduate," Rambam explains. "This is, again, somebody who, should he choose, probably can rise to the very top of the military."

Rambam obtained hundreds of pages of Internet messages between the two, written during Esther’s time at Columbia. The correspondence includes an intriguing exchange, where Esther tells her West Point friend that she'd love to be James Bond, and that being a spy would be a dream job.

Bita visited Esther in New York on July 4th, 2005. While the real Brooke Henson’s family was marking the sixth anniversary of her disappearance, the fake Brooke Henson was out on the town.

"We had a great time. And then we also took a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty," Bita remembers. "She didn’t like taking pictures, so I really had to talk her into even getting these pictures with me."

But Esther was much less shy in her exchanges with Brengel. In fact she’d begun making peculiar requests. "Things that they're working on in school, projects, which would be writing battle plans, things like that," Det. Campbell explains.

In one exchange, Esther wanted to know details about a training briefing for a military science class Brengel was taking. For Campbell, it all pointed to something far more serious than mere identity theft.

"So you're wondering if she's, potentially, a spy?" Van Sant asks.

"I mean that's a possibility, pretty good possibility," the detective replies.