The Asylum That Wasn't What It Seemed

A private investigator, whose name he won't share, was hired by a wealthy client to find her missing sister—let's call her Monica. Monica had been forced into court-ordered treatment at an upscale psychiatric facility called the Waserman Center after a DUI arrest turned up a substantial quantity of illegal drugs. She called her family after her mandatory stay ended, saying she was taking a cab home, but asked to be let out downtown for an errand. She was never seen again.

The police assumed she'd run afoul of her own unsavory contacts. But the sister who hired the investigator had a different suspicion. Monica had sounded strange on the phone—her language "stilted and toneless" where she was usually loud and extroverted. The cab driver told a similar story. Other investigators had turned up nothing concrete, but they'd heard rumors about the Waserman Center: unethical experimental treatments, excessive secrecy, the kind of thing that belonged in the horror stories of early twentieth-century mental hospitals. Yet the center passed every state inspection with flying colors.

The investigator decided to do what no one else would. He got himself committed.

Inside the Waserman Center