Bachelor contestant Bekah ended up on the missing persons list in Humboldt County, California, in November after she finished filming the reality series, and was still on the list all the way up until January. How did that happen? She told her story to Juliet Litman on the latest episode of Bachelor Party.
“So funny, because so many people were like, ‘What a great publicity stunt,’” Martinez began. “And I’m like, ‘I could not dream up this kind of publicity stunt if I tried. If this was a publicity stunt, somebody needs to be getting paid a lot of money, because this is genius.’”
The story begins with Martinez going to a “weed farm” with one of her friends after she finished filming the show. But Martinez didn’t have cell service in that area, and was communicating with her mom via a friend’s cellphone. The trouble began when that friend got kicked off the farm.
“She got kicked off, she was basically like, ‘Come with me,’” Martinez said. “And I was like … ‘I also don’t want to leave with you, because you’re difficult to be around.’ Because I’d been with her like a week at that time. And then she got really mad that I didn’t want to leave with her. ... So when she left, I tried to text my mom off of somebody else’s phone that had service, but I guess the text didn’t go through. So now, this girl who [got] kicked off the farm is the one who has contact with my mother.”
Martinez continued:
“So my mom texts her, like, ‘Hey, how’s Bekah doing?’ And she makes up this lie and says, like, ‘The owners of the farm are meth heads who threatened me with knives and I had to leave Bekah behind.’ … My mom thought that I was getting held hostage by meth heads with knives.”
It was Martinez’s mom who reported her missing. And it goes without saying that Martinez is no longer friends with the girl who misled her mom.
“It’s evil really because, like, my parents are thinking that I’m possibly dead,” Martinez said. “They don’t know where I am in Humboldt County. That’s so scary. … So that’s why my mom filed the report. Obviously I’m at the farm not knowing that this girl is telling my family that.”
Martinez tried calling the police to clear things up, but the calls went to voicemail. It took a while before her name was finally removed from the missing persons list.
“I didn’t know I was still on the list until February when they called and they were like, ‘So I’m guessing you’re not missing,’” she said.
Listen to the full podcast here. This transcript has been edited and condensed.
