A legal secretary disappears after having dreams of being abducted.

Missing:

Gender: Female
DOB: 1962
Height: 5’4”
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown
Remarks: Last seen 8/4/81

CASE DETAILS

In 1980, 20-year-old Cindy Anderson of Toledo, Ohio, was plagued by a series of frightening dreams. In one episode, the acquaintance she lets in the door betrays her trust. Cindy’s sister, Christine Savidge, heard her sister talking about the dreams:

“One morning while I was getting ready for work, I overheard Cindy talking to my mother. I do believe that the dreams could’ve been a premonition of fears that Cindy actually had in her subconscious at the time.”

On August 4, 1981, Cindy went to work as usual. She was employed as a legal secretary and, in the mornings, usually worked in the office alone. She kept the door locked at all times. A buzzer had even been installed at her desk so that she could alert the shop next door if there was trouble.

One day, at noon, Jim Rabbitt and Jay Feldstein, two of the lawyers, arrived back at their office after a meeting. According to Jim Rabbitt:

“Jay and I came back from downtown, got to the door and the lights were on, the door was locked. We unlocked the door, went inside, yelled for Cindy and there was no answer. I started to look around out front. Cindy, when she would leave, would place the phones on hold and that wasn’t done either.”

Jim Rabbitt said that Cindy had left her romance novel open to the only violent scene in the book, where the heroine is abducted at knifepoint:

“It wasn’t until really looking at the book, particularly reading the passage in the novel, that I had a sickening feeling that something was wrong.”

Cindy was never seen again. There was no body, no farewell letter, no hint where she had gone, or why she had disappeared. Were Cindy’s dreams premonitions of a terrible fate? Or, were they just a coincidence?

Cindy was raised in a strict religious environment. Her family, boyfriend, and most of her social circle were all devout Christian fundamentalists. Cindy’s father, Michael Anderson:

“She was a very quiet, obedient type of a girl. She never made waves with either myself or her mother. And she had lots of friends. She was the type of daughter that you just enjoy, I mean, just a beautiful young girl.”

Cindy’s sister had no idea why she might leave on her own:

“At the time of Cindy’s disappearance, there were no circumstances in her life that any of us were aware of that would’ve caused her to have run away. She was looking forward to quitting her job in two weeks and going to a Bible college that she would attend with her boyfriend. She was very excited about it.”

Cindy’s dad said he noticed a change in his daughter’s behavior:

“Just before she disappeared however, she was becoming like a debutante. She was spending a lot of time on her face and herself and she’d skip breakfast for this reason. And that may be part of the problem.”

The day Cindy vanished, the police immediately began a search for clues. Cindy’s car keys and purse were missing. But the office was undisturbed, and according to Toledo Police Det. William Adams, there were no signs of a struggle:

“Her car was parked in front of the law office. Her bank account, which had a nice substantial amount of money, was never touched. Her social security number has never shown up under any other work place. It’s a complete mystery how and why Cindy disappeared.”

Larry Mullins was a client of the law office where Cindy worked:

“The day before Cynthia Anderson disappeared, I had been in the law offices to pay off a legal fee. She got a phone call. She kind of reacted like maybe it was obscene or something and hung up real quick. And the look on her face, still, I can picture it today. She was scared. She was honestly and sincerely scared. It gives me shivers to think of the look on her face. I went home and I called the police department and asked them to do a drive-by and check on her. Something scared the hell out of her, in my opinion.”

In September, 1981, a month after Cindy vanished, another strange phone call gave police a new lead. According to Det. Adams, a woman called to report that Cindy was being held in the basement of a white house:

“She said that she was scared and she was talking in low whispers. She kept saying she had to go. I kept begging her to stay on the line, give me more information, give me an exact address, something that we could act on. A short while later, she again called. The lady mentioned that there were two houses side by side owned by the same family, and that the family was out of town. But their son was home and he was the party that was holding Cindy in the basement. We did check street after street on the north end to see if we could find two houses side by side. There’s many, but you can’t find any positive location to the house.”

Michael Anderson has wondered if his daughter isn’t living somewhere with amnesia:

“If she herself is out there, we want her to know we love her and we certainly want her to come back, whatever the case may be. The door is open, we certainly want anybody and everybody that can possibly help in this situation to do so.”

After Cindy’s disappearance, a local grand jury indicted nine people for drug trafficking. Some suspect that Cindy knew one of them, and she was killed after she overheard incriminating comments. No charges were ever filed.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season two with Robert Stack and season four with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A freighter disappears with nine people on board after leaving Miami for Haiti.

Missing:

Gender:Female
Height: 5’2”
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown

CASE DETAILS

In January, 1989, Falcon jets from the United States Coast Guard searched the Old Bahama Channel in the Caribbean for an 82-foot freighter called the Freedon. The ship was on its way to Haiti but had been reported missing. On board were seven Haitian crewmembers, a young sea captain, and a 23-year old American journalism student named Lisa Bishop. Lisa’s mother, Linda Bishop, said that Lisa had called her to say goodbye on the morning of her departure:

“I could feel something was wrong. Mother’s intuition, I guess you could call it. Lisa was to call me when she arrived. And that call never came.”

Lisa wanted to write an article about the contrasts between the wealth of America and the economic devastation of Haiti. Her voyage on the Freedon was the chance of a lifetime, even though it meant leaving behind her boyfriend of three years, Paul Cornwell:

“We had a long discussion the night before she left, that she had to make her own decisions in life, that I couldn’t follow her and take care of her wherever she went.”

Somewhere between Miami and Haiti, the Freedon simply vanished. No one has any idea what happened or why. People have suggested everything from pirates, to smugglers, and even the mysterious Bermuda Triangle.

Lisa’s voyage began when she met a 28-year old German national named Florian Meyer Bourch at a nightclub owned by her boyfriend. Florian was a marine mechanic and sea captain who had sailed throughout the Caribbean. According to Linda Bishop:

“From what I’ve learned about him, Florian is a drifter, and he sponges off of people. Freeloads.”

A year after their first meeting, Florian told Lisa of an upcoming voyage from Miami to Haiti. He invited her to join him. Paul was upset when Lisa told him that she planned to sail to Haiti with Florian:

“I didn’t trust him with Lisa. Of course, I was concerned about Florian, you know, being a young guy. And she tried to tell me there was nothing to worry about, there was nothing romantic. I tried to discourage her as her parents tried to discourage her from going.”

Lisa’s father, Bill Bishop, said there was no talking Lisa out of it:

“I expressed my feelings about it, that I didn’t want her to go or anything, and Lisa was a very headstrong girl when she made up her mind to do something.”

On the morning of December 17 th , 1988, at 2:30 in the afternoon, tugboats eased the Freedon through the Miami River on its way out to sea. The Freedon’s planned route would take the ship 600 miles past the coast of Cuba to Gonaives, a small port on the western coast of Haiti. There were no storms and no distress calls, but the Freedon never arrived. When Lisa didn’t call on Christmas Day, her family became concerned. Lt. Cdr. Jeff Karonis was with the U.S. Coast Guard:

“The relatives of the people on board kept calling us, asking us for information. We kept in touch with the port authorities in the various ports in the Caribbean area, and likewise, down in Haiti. We sent several search and rescue flights in the most commonly traveled areas in the Old Bahama Channel, which is the area between the United States and Haiti. Still, it was unsuccessful.”

Linda Bishop and her husband traveled to Miami:

“We came to Miami hoping to maybe get some answers from some of Florian’s friends or just find anything we could. We were desperate.”

Finally, Lisa’s parents received a promising lead. An underwater salvager named Bob Nyberg said that he had seen the ship two weeks after it was supposed to have disappeared:

“I remembered that while I was working in Grand Cayman in January of that year, there’d been a boat that came in. We were working underwater, directly in the harbor area where the ships pulled up and tied up. When I heard the ship coming in, we came up, and as I was coming out of the water, we looked back and noticed that the name was Freedon. F-R-E-E-D-O-N. And I made a statement to my friend, that those guys need their freedom, they can’t even spell the word. They were there for some time that afternoon. The next morning the boat was gone.”

Nyberg saw the Freedon in Georgetown Harbor on Grand Cayman Island, over 500 miles from Haiti. It was the kind of news Linda Bishop had been hoping for:

“The fact that the ship was spotted, and that it had not gone down, brought me hope that Lisa was alive and had to be held against her will in order for her not to contact us.”

Lisa’s boyfriend, Paul Cornwell, and Bob Nyberg went to Grand Cayman to pursue the lead. They met a number of witnesses who claimed to have seen Florian around the same time that Nyberg spotted the Freedon. Apparently, Florian was not alone during his mysterious visit to Grand Cayman. Some saw him with a short man with black hair.

Paul returned to Atlanta and questioned a woman who had been storing Florian’s personal belongings. There he found a picture of the man seen with Florian in Grand Cayman. The woman said his name was Phillipe. Paul later found out that it was actually Phillipe who had chartered the Freedon.

“The girl told me that he mentioned that he was involved in a large scale smuggling thing, and that something had gone wrong, and that they had gotten involved in something too deep that Lisa didn’t know about and couldn’t handle it. I feel that if Florian is out there, eventually, I’ll find out about it, and I’ll locate him.”

Authorities believe that Florian Meyer Bourch is the key to the Freedon’s disappearance.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season three with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A young beauty queen mysteriously vanishes.

Tami Lynn Leppert

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 2/5/65 Height: 5’4” Weight: 103 lbs. Eyes: Hazel Hair: Blonde Remarks: Last seen 7/6/83

CASE DETAILS

Tami Lynn Leppert was an uncommonly beautiful child. She entered her first beauty contest when she was just four years old. By the age of 16, she had already competed in more than 300 beauty contests and had taken home 280 crowns. Her mother, Linda Curtis, a theatrical and modeling agent, guided Tami’s career:

“I was constantly busy running her around to where she had to go and what she had to do. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching her excel because she always went for the best that she could go for, the highest level.”

Wing Flannagan was a close family friend. He and Tami were like brother and sister:

“She would bend over and kiss me on the cheek and I couldn’t quite ever get it completely off. It was rather embarrassing to walk around with this mark. I think actually I learned to wear it proudly after a while because it was almost a status symbol.”

In July of 1982, Tami landed a part in the teen exploitation film, “Spring Break”. When the movie completed filming, Tami went un-chaperoned to a weekend party. She came back a different person. According to Wing, Tami’s behavior began to take on paranoid overtones:

“Sometimes I’d ask her, what was on her mind, if anything was bothering her. And she’d usually change the subject or she’d say oh, nothing you know and then try to laugh it off.”

According to her mother, Linda, she even thought someone was trying to kill her:

“Then she said Mom, what would you say if I told you somebody was trying to kill me. I just took a deep breath, and I said, do you think somebody’s trying to kill you, Tami? She said, yes.”

A steady retreat into isolation soon followed for Tami. Linda and Wing had no way of ascertaining which of Tami’s fears were real and which were paranoid delusions. After two weeks of virtual seclusion, Tami Lynn was offered a small part in the big budget Al Pacino film, “Scarface,” which began shooting in Miami in March of 1983. She stayed with a family friend, Walter Liebowitz. According to Walter, all went well until the fourth day of filming:

“I received a call from the casting director to tell me that Tami had a breakdown on the set. They said that it was a scene where someone was supposed to be shot and had artificial blood spurt out. And they said when Tami was watching the scene, she started crying hysterically and it got so bad that they had to take her to a trailer. She was in a tremendous state of fear, anxiety… What it was that caused this great fear in her I don’t know. When I spoke with Tami’s mother, I told her that she should take Tami to a doctor and also take her to the police to find out of the problem was psychological or if there was some basis in fact that someone was actually trying to kill her and get to the bottom of it.”

Tami Lynn quit the film and went back home. At her mother’s insistence, Tami did talk to the local sheriff, but apparently never mentioned that she felt her life was in danger. Even with her family, Tami’s paranoia ran rampant. According to Wing, Tami was now convinced that someone was trying to poison her:

“There were good days and there were bad days. There were days when she was almost normal. And there were other days when she was real edgy.”

Then on July 1 st , Tami finally snapped. She began smashing all the windows in her house and started attacking Wing. It was at that moment that Linda knew something was seriously wrong with her daughter:

“I handled that incident, but I didn’t know if I was going to be able to handle the next one.”

Tami’s mother checked her into a mental health center for a complete physical and psychiatric evaluation. Doctors found no evidence of drug or alcohol use. After 72 hours of observation, Tami was released. The following day, Tami and a friend drove to the local beach, when according to Detective Jim Skragg of the Cocoa Beach, Florida Police Department, they started to argue:

“This friend picked her up at her home and they drove to the beach. And we talked to him. And he basically stated that they’d become involved in a verbal argument. She had requested that he let her out near the glass bank in Cocoa Beach and he complied.”

Tami’s friend said he dropped her off about five miles from her house. She was barefoot and carried no purse. According to Detective Skragg, it was the last time Tami Lynn would be seen alive:

“She disappeared without a trace. We talked to some of her close friends. They felt strongly that Tami was having problems at home and… she wanted to leave home.”

Tami Lynn Leppert is five feet four inches tall, and at the time of her disappearance, weighed 103 pounds. She has blonde hair and hazel eyes.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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An autistic man who walked away from a group home leaves clues that he is still alive.

Gordon Page Jr.

Missing: Gender: Male DOB: 4/15/63 Height: 6’3” Weight: 175 lbs. Eyes: Blue Hair: Red Defining Characteristics: Tan birthmark on the side of his torso; when crossing streets, he turns eyes, but will not turn head Remarks: Last seen 5/91

CASE DETAILS

Gordon Page, Jr. or “Gordie,” was born autistic, but his father, Gordon Sr., said it wasn’t until much later in his life that he was diagnosed:

“I guess maybe when he was real young, we thought something was wrong, but we didn’t know what. He didn’t walk like other kids and run like other kids. As he got older, you know, he’d just sit there and look around and didn’t even move.”

However, according to Gordon Sr., Gordie showed a great propensity for memorization, especially when it came to baseball:

“I would say he probably had twenty five or thirty thousand baseball cards. He knew the names of every player, all the statistics of the cards, and he would just sit there and memorize them.”

Gordie’s mother, Linda, says Gordy didn’t realize he was slower than the other kids until he reached junior high:

“His peers started getting ahead of him. And when he needed to go into a special ed room, it bothered him. He had a hard time in 11th and 12th grade because he couldn’t keep up with everybody who was passing him by.”

Gordie graduated from a Grand Rapids, Michigan high school in June of 1981. He was ready for his first job. His father helped him apply at a local grocery store:

“He said, ‘Dad, I got the job. I start Monday. Isn’t that great?’ And it made me feel so happy. And I dropped him off at work in the morning. And it made me feel proud as a father to see him working and to see him happy.

But soon, the store manager said that Gordie was having trouble talking to the customers.

His father’s coaching wasn’t enough. It just didn’t work out at the grocery store.

Linda and Gordon were worried about their son’s future. They asked a social worker to evaluate him. He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. It was recommended that he start living in a group home. Gordon Sr. said they decided to give it a try:

“We went to visit a group home and the lady said he can’t stay there until he goes to see if he needs to be stabilized on medication in the hospital. So we did that. We finally agreed. And the doctor there put him on Ritalin and Valium. And Gordon wasn’t Gordon after that.”

Eventually, Gordie was accepted by a well-regarded group home. There, his medication was adjusted and he started to feel better. In September of 1989, with Gordie in good hands, his parents felt they could finally relocate to Florida as they long planned. Gordie stayed behind in Michigan.

For several months, things went well. But one day while heavily medicated, Gordie stole a truck that was left running in the driveway of the home. According to Detective Chet Bush, Jr. of the Kent County Sheriff’s Department, Gordie was involved in a hit-and-run accident:

“We interviewed the lady who was the victim in the accident. She gave us a description which fit Gordon. Our officers then received another call, a call from one of our elementary schools that a person fitting Gordon Page’s description was at this elementary school wanting to teach a class. So we responded there and at that time, picked up Mr. Gordon Page.”

Gordie was sent to a county hospital. There, psychiatric social worker Bill Arnold evaluated him:

“He was brought in with a label of schizophrenia. People that are schizophrenic will, with medication, over a couple weeks, start to clear up in their thinking, and their behavior will come in line, and they start getting back more to normal. With Gordon, that didn’t work.”

After several months of intensive therapy, Bill realized that Gordie was not schizophrenic; he was autistic:

“Once we got him off all those medications and started treating him as possibly an autistic, and working on training and just giving him some respect, he was a totally different individual.”

The Pages found a different group home in Grand Rapids, one that specialized in autism.

On May 22, 1991, Gordon Sr. shared an emotional goodbye with his son:

“We kind of stood there and talked and we hugged and talked a little bit more and then we walked over to the van. And I said, ‘Everything’s going to work out.'”

As his father started to drive away, Gordie broke away from the orderlies and began pounding on the van:

“It’s very painful, now in retrospect. I wish I’d allowed him just to get in, crawl back, and just driven him home to Florida. But you don’t think of those things, and we didn’t know what we were going to be facing in the future.”

Four days after his father left, Gordie disappeared. An eyewitness reported seeing Gordie hitchhiking toward Interstate 96. A search of the area turned up no leads and Gordie has not been seen since. Linda Page says she and Gordon Sr. just want Gordie back:

“We’ll never stop looking for Gordie, because we love him. We’ve always been a close family. He would know that we want him back.”

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season three with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A mother searches for her daughter who may be suffering from drug-induced delusions.

Star Palumbo

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 3/29/75 Height: 5’4” Weight: 125 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Defining Characteristics: Birthmark on the right side of her neck, her ears are triple pierced Remarks: Last seen 4/26/00

CASE DETAILS

In the early morning of April 26, 2000, a young woman was spotted wandering in a restricted area of the Reno, Nevada, airport. She appeared disoriented and frightened. When an airport police officer was called in, he found her hiding behind a truck.

She said her name was Star Palumbo, and she claimed she was trying to find her younger sister, who was running loose on the tarmac. The airport police officer felt that Star’s story might not be true. But, according to Barry DeBoor of the Reno/Tahoe Airport Police, the officer also believed that she had no criminal reason for being out on the runway:

“He had no idea why she was out there. She could give no logical explanation. But instead of arresting her, he decided to release her.”

Star was dropped off near a hotel. The next day, an illegally parked car was discovered at the airport. Barry DeBoor ran a check on the license plate:

“The registered owner came back to Star Palumbo. It appeared to be loaded with all her personal possessions.”

In the car were Star’s cell phone, her purse, and $600 in cash. But other items caused more concern. There were copies of three e-mails sent to the White House. It seemed Star felt the government was trying to murder her. Police also found a morbid drawing that depicts a woman bound and gagged. And finally, they found two books on how to change one’s identity. According to Reno Police Detective David Jenkins, Star never showed up to claim her car:

“There are two very likely possibilities. The first is that she is suffering from some type of either organically caused or drug-induced psychosis and is a sick woman and doesn’t know who or where she is. And the second possibility is that she’s been the victim of a serious crime and has either been murdered or she can’t contact her friends and family.”

There was a time when Star Palumbo was once full of hope and promise. But authorities believe that she fell into a world of dangerous and addictive drugs that threatened to end her life. Star’s mother, Gail, is convinced Star is alive and may one day come home:

“Star lived a very happy childhood. She’s very dependable and she’s a very trusting person. She’s a very happy person, sociable person, and I guess she trusted people too much.”

One year before she disappeared, Star left her home in Arizona and moved to Reno. It was here, Det. Jenkins believes, that her life took a tragic turn:

“In this particular case, Star seems to have fallen in with a very bad crowd and had been involved with methamphetamine at a level that could only be disastrous.”

Star worked as a cashier at a pawnshop, but according to her friends, her drug habit cost more than she made. Det. Jenkins said police believe she began to look for other ways to make money:

“There is an indication that Star had been dabbling in prostitution. In her phone books, there were references to a number of men. We really don’t have a good feeling for the extent of the relationships with a number of those men. However, certainly, prostitution is a high-risk occupation and one of the factors that causes us concern about what has befallen Star.”

Star lived with her grandmother and called her mother every week. Gail Palumbo says
in her final phone call, Star sounded anxious and paranoid:

“She said that she felt somebody was following her and when she talked on the phone, she thought maybe the phones were tapped and somebody was listening. And she mentioned how something was going on and she was afraid for her life. And she wouldn’t discuss it any more than that.”

According to her mother, Star wanted to turn her life around. She talked about flying home to Tucson and starting over. But Gail Palumbo has not heard from her daughter since that call.

Star’s parents began a massive search. Star’s picture was posted throughout the state of Nevada. Det. Jenkins spoke to a casino owner, Linda Fields, who claimed to have seen Star in her Elko, Nevada, casino in December 2000, eight months after she disappeared:

“Miss Fields described seeing a young woman who had come into the bar one evening, had looked frightened, was alone, and that the young woman had volunteered to her that her name was Star and that she was being chased or was trying to escape from a pimp.”

Linda says that Star became extremely upset when she saw a man looking at her through the bar window. Star quickly left with another young woman. There have been no additional sightings.

The disappearance of Star Palumbo is still an open investigation.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season twelve with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season four with Robert Stack and in season three with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A security guard disappears after his car is torched in an arson fire.

Curtis Pishon

Missing: Gender: Male DOB: 7/11/59 Height: 5’9” Weight: 165 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Graying brown Remarks: Last seen 7/5/00

CASE DETAILS

For 10 years, Curtis Pishon cherished his career as a police officer. Then he was stricken with multiple sclerosis, a painful muscular disorder that severely limited his mobility. The disease progressed to the point where Curtis could no longer fire his gun accurately. He had no choice but to turn in his badge. His brother, Mark Pishon, believed this devastated Curtis:

“His personality changed. He became sort of quieter. And I don’t think even up to the time of his disappearance he really knew what he was gonna do the rest of his life.”

According to his family, Curtis became depressed and withdrawn. But when he got a job as a factory security guard in Seabrook, New Hampshire, his self-esteem slowly returned.

On the night of July 5, 2000, everything seemed normal. Curtis was already well into his shift when at 1:42 AM, he called Seabrook firefighters complaining that his car was on fire. Jeff Brown, a Deputy Chief at the Seabrook Fire Department, was on call that night:

“He pretty much said that he saw a bunch of smoke… went to find a fire extinguisher and… put the fire out. One fire extinguisher is not going to have much effect. We did notice that he did try to put out the fire. But I don’t have any idea, or gut feeling–how the fire started or–or why the case ended up the way it did.”

After interviewing Curtis, Deputy Chief Brown found him to be very accepting that his car had been torched. This was puzzling to his brother Mark because Curtis had the odd habit of using his car to store what he treasured most:

“I would think that if he had seen his car on fire with his belongings in it that he would have been very upset. I would think he would have been almost in tears and in shame and I can’t believe he was quiet, timid.”

After the fire was extinguished, the factory’s security supervisor checked on Curtis. He appeared to be alright. Then 20 minutes later, at 3:45 AM, a factory worker noticed that Curtis was missing. An exhaustive search of the factory and the surrounding area turned up nothing. Curtis’ brother, Nicolas Pishon Jr., immediately suspected the worst:

“Our very first thought about what happened to Curt was that he could have taken his own life … Suicide was a possibility with somebody in Curtis’ condition, with MS. He had lost a job that he wanted all his life…”

Curtis had recently purchased a 9-millimeter gun from his father, so suicide seemed like a likely theory. However, police found no trace of the gun in his car or apartment.

Investigators next focused on the possibility that Curtis had a mental breakdown. They believed Curtis accidentally started the fire, and then became so despondent over losing his prize possessions, that he simply walked away. Nicholas Pishon disagreed with that theory:

“There is absolutely no way that Curtis would have, or even could have, wandered off by himself under these circumstances. Curtis was a smoker. Smokers don’t leave cigarettes. You don’t… go anywhere without your cigarettes. It doesn’t happen. So he didn’t just walk off.”

It was also possible that Curtis called for a taxi or hitched a ride on a truck leaving the factory. But investigators discovered that no cabs or company trucks left the plant during his shift. That left a disturbing possibility for investigators–Curtis Pishon was abducted or even worse, murdered. While exploring the possibility of foul play, investigators found that a door and two vending machines inside the factory where Curtis worked were damaged during his shift. But no one knows who caused the damage. For Nicholas Pishon, any possibility that his brother is alive has faded:

“My best guess is that somebody abducted him and did him in and disposed of the body in such a way that it hasn’t shown up yet… I think if he was alive he would have reached out already, and he never would have put us through this… I miss my brother. I miss Curtis. I was his best friend. And I miss him. I miss him very much.”

The case remains unsolved but Curtis’ family and friends hope he will someday be found.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eleven with Robert Stack and in season three with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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Did a devoted mother of two simply abandon her family?

Charlotte Pollis

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 7/4/65 Height: 5’7” Weight: 300 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Remarks: Last seen 3/12/94

CASE DETAILS

On March 12, 1994, Paul Pollis’s wife, Charlotte, vanished from their home in Girard, Ohio.   Paul maintained his innocence throughout, but Charlotte’s mother, Charlotte Nagi, was convinced that Paul knew exactly what happened to her daughter:

“I think Paul got angry and he struck her and he couldn’t stop himself.   I think Paul killed my daughter.”

Did Paul Pollis get away with murder?   Police cannot say because there is a lack of evidence to prove a crime was even committed.   Until solid leads develop, Paul Pollis will very likely remain locked in an ugly dispute with his wife’s family, over just what happened to Charlotte the day she vanished.

About the only thing everyone agreed on was that Charlotte was sick the day before she disappeared. That night, Paul’s parents looked after the couple’s two children while Paul took Charlotte to the hospital.   She had an acute ear infection marked by pain and dizziness.   After Paul’s parents left, Charlotte phoned her mother:

“She said, I’ll talk to you in the morning and at 1:25 AM. I had hung up the phone from her.   That’s the last I ever spoke to her. At ten to 9:00 on Saturday morning, I called the house to check on my daughter… and Paul answered the phone.”

According to Paul, the last time he saw Charlotte was shortly after that phone call:

“I think it was about 11:00 o’clock.   I took the kids out to do errands for the afternoon and I told her just stay in bed and relax, I’ll bring the medication that you need back, just stay in bed, take it easy.”

According to Paul, he buckled the kids into their car seats and headed off for a day of errands.   There were stops at the pharmacy, the laundromat, and a scrap yard, then burgers at a fast food restaurant, and finally a couple of hours spent looking at houses for sale.   However, Paul’s account of that day is disputed by several people.   One of those people was Charlotte’s mother.   She claimed that she called the house several times before 11:00, when Paul said he was still at home:

“I called at 10:00, I called at 10 after 10:00, I called at 20 after 10:00.   I just kept calling… I thought something’s not right.   No answering machine, nobody answering the phone, nothing.   And I thought… why is nobody answering?”

Paul said he returned home with the children at around 4:00 PM, but Charlotte wasn’t there.   At that time, he had no concerns for her safety:

“I figured that she was feeling better and had gone out.   Put the kids up to finish their nap in bed and just watched TV and finished cleaning the house.   About 7:30 I noticed her purse up on the cabinets and my wife doesn’t go anywhere without her purse.   I can’t believe that she would’ve left without it.   So I started calling around to see if she’d gone out with anybody.”

When Charlotte’s family learned that she was missing, they rushed to the house.   After talking to Paul, Charlotte’s sister, Amriah Nagi, decided to take a look outside.   She noticed two sets of footprints in the snow that stretched from a side door towards a small shed:

“The doors were bulging pretty much out of the shed.   They just had like a regular padlock on it and it kind of bothered me the way the shed was because the doors weren’t flush against it.   So I’d gone into the house and I had asked Paul for the keys.”

According to Charlotte’s mother, Paul then became very angry:

“He said the shed has nothing to do with Charlotte and I’m not giving you the keys and she’d asked him repeatedly for these keys to the shed and he got angrier and angrier.”

Amriah believed the pair of footprints in the snow suggested that Paul had help:

“I looked at Paul’s shoe prints and they were the same footprints that were in the snow.   And the other footprints were fairly large with a shoe boot who I can suspect would’ve been his father’s but they you know, I can’t be definite on that.”

To prove his innocence, Paul agreed to take a polygraph test.   He made an appointment for Tuesday, three days after his wife disappeared.   But Paul did not show up.   He wasn’t at home either and left a note on his dresser which read, “I love my wife and would never do anything to harm her intentionally.”   For three months, Paul stayed out of sight.   Then one day, he reappeared with an explanation:

“I had a lot of mental anguish I was going through.   And I wanted some time alone.   People were driving in front of the house non-stop.   They didn’t come by to give me a hug or pat on the back and say we’re with you.   They just came by to look.”

Charlotte Nagi Pollis was last seen in March of 1994.   According to the police, Paul Pollis remains the only suspect in the case.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eight with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A writer disappears while writing a novel about another man’s disappearance.

Keith Reinhard

Missing: Gender: Male DOB: 9/5/39 Height: 6’2” Weight: 210 lbs. Eyes: Blue

CASE DETAILS

The tiny village of Silver Plume, Colorado–population 200–lies in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. On September 7, 1987, Tom Young closed up his bookshop on Main Street, and along with his dog, Gus, disappeared. Nine months later, a new resident of Silver Plume, Keith Reinhard, opened an antique shop at exactly the same location. On August 7, 1988, Keith closed up his shop for the day. Less than two hours later, Keith Reinhard also disappeared. There were just too many coincidences. Keith Reinhard and Tom Young both rented the same store. They both left town promising to return. Strangest of all, Keith was writing a book about Tom’s disappearance, when he too suddenly vanished.

Keith Reinhart moved to Silver Plume from Chicago with three goals: to get in shape by mountain climbing, to overcome his fear of heights, and to begin writing a novel. During his sabbatical, Keith wanted to try running an antique shop geared toward summer tourists. If it was successful, he hoped he and his wife could relocate there permanently. Keith’s old friend, Ted Parker, ran a café in Silver Plume at the time of Keith’s disappearance:

“Keith Reinhard and I grew up across the street from one another. And we’d known each other about 40 years. I would say that our relationship was similar to that of brothers. Keith was apprehensive and excited about turning 50. He was here to finish out the last of his 40s in the way that he dreamed of.”

Nine months earlier, Keith’s antique shop had been a bookstore. Tom Young, the man who mysteriously disappeared with his dog, had run the store for about a year. Tom had told people he was taking a vacation to Europe. Three weeks went by before anyone became suspicious about his absence. Keith Reinhard became obsessed by the unexplained disappearance and began talking to everyone in Silver Plume who had known Tom. Eventually, Keith decided to base his novel on Tom Young. When he began to write, he created a character named Guy Gypsum, a composite of himself and Tom. According to his daughter, Tiffany, sometimes it seemed hard for Keith to tell the difference between fact and fiction:

“Writers like to live the story they’re writing about, get a feel of it so it’s easier for them to write about it. Maybe my father, it’s always possible, wanted to feel what it’s like to disappear so he could write about it.”

On July 31, 1988, ten months after Tom Young disappeared, two hunters found the remains of Tom and his dog in the mountains near Silver Plume. Each had died from a bullet wound to the head. Dave Dauenhaur of the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Department, was one of the first investigators to arrive on the scene:

“They were up there exploring some territory for the bow hunting season which was coming up and they found his remains. Also found at the scene was a revolver. In subsequent investigation, we found out that Tom had purchased a gun, approximately four days before he was last known to be in Silver Plume. The Tom Young case is closed and it has been ruled a suicide, both by the coroner’s office and by the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Department.”

One week after Tom’s body was found, Keith walked through Silver Plume telling everyone he saw that he was going to climb to the top of nearby Pendleton Mountain. One of his stops was Ted Parker’s café:

“He was in the café and told me he was going to make it to the top of the mountain. If I don’t come back, call on the rescue and he said that in jest, I felt. I have this picture of him pointing to the mountain and saying goodbye. That was the last time I saw him.”

Keith was last seen walking toward Pendleton Mountain at 4:30 in the afternoon, far too late in the day to begin a difficult six-hour hike. That night, Keith Reinhard did not return..The next day, helicopters were called to search the mountain. On the ground, more than 125 men and a dozen trained dogs combed the difficult terrain for seven days.

Charley Shimanski headed the Alpine Rescue Team:

“The Reinhard search was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. This haystack is 3,000 vertical feet of 60 degree slope. This was about as difficult a search terrain as we cover. We were at a real disadvantage because Keith went into the mountains wearing no more than blue jeans and a flannel shirt and tennis shoes. He had no backpack. He had no equipment. A typical subject of a search will leave lots of clues for us to trace. Keith didn’t leave many clues. He didn’t have many with him to leave behind.”

In thirty years of operation, the Colorado Alpine Rescue Teams had found every single person they searched for. However, they discovered no trace of Keith Reinhard. Some have concluded that Keith Reinhard and Tom Young were murdered, noting that both men rented the same space to run their shops. Perhaps, they both came across information someone didn’t want them to know.

Another theory is that Keith planned his own disappearance. However, Carolyn Reinhard disagreed with that theory:

“I don’t think that Keith would be the type of person to walk away from his whole entire life and leave it behind him. He loved the people in his life. He loved keeping in touch with them. And I don’t think he could’ve left them all behind him.”

Some of Keith Reinhard’s friends recall that he was fascinated by the idea of visiting West Virginia. Also, Keith attended a party the night before he disappeared. Witnesses say he spent a good deal of time talking to a woman named Greta or Gretchen, who is probably from Denver. Police would like to talk to her. They hope she can remember something he said that would yield a clue to his whereabouts, if indeed he is still alive.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season two with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A college student, inspired by Jack Kerouac, leaves on a cross-country trip and never returns.

Leah Roberts

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 7/23/7 Height: 5’6” Weight: 130 lbs. Eyes: Blue Hair: Sandy blonde Defining Characteristics: She has a beauty mark on her right upper lip and a surgical scar on her right hip Remarks: Last seen 3/00

CASE DETAILS

In March of 2000, two people jogging on Mount Baker in Washington State noticed a piece of clothing dangling from a tree branch. When they investigated, they found that an SUV had plunged over a steep embankment. There were no signs of anyone, or any indication that someone had been injured. A passport, money, and some clothing were found inside the car.

Police traced the jeep to missing 23-year-old college student, Leah Roberts. Nine days earlier, Leah had left her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, without telling anyone where she was going. Suzie Smith was a friend of Leah’s:

“Leah is just a very awesome person. Everybody that meets her likes her. Very personable, great smile. But, you know, she was kind of private also. Definitely.”

When Leah was in her early 20s, her mother died unexpectedly. Then Leah was in a near-fatal car accident, and, finally, after a long illness, her father died. Leah’s brother, Heath, thinks these events deeply affected his sister:

“I think that all of those things together had the cumulative effect of making Leah even more introspective and probably more aware that, although she didn’t know what she wanted to do, I think she was unhappy that she wasn’t achieving it.”

Leah found comfort in the writings of Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation author who wrote about the free-spirited road trips he took across America. Leah’s favorite was called The Dharma Bums. It’s a story that encourages the reader to leave behind the materialism of modern life. Part of that book takes place at a forest fire lookout on Desolation Peak, near Mount Baker in Washington State. Another of Leah’s friends, Jeannine Quiller, confirmed that Leah had mentioned the location to her:

“From the last conversation that we had, we were talking about Dharma Bums and about how Kerouac was up on Desolation Peak, just taking in all the beauty around him.”

It appears that Leah Roberts secretly decided to turn her dream into a reality. Just three months before she was to graduate from college, she packed up most of her cherished belongings and her cat Bea, and took off for Desolation Peak, 3,000 miles across the country.

Leah’s family and friends filed a missing persons report and checked bank records for any activity on her account. She had made several cash withdrawals, tracing a route towards the West Coast. It took her only three days to get to Oregon. Leah’s sister Kara decided to see what she could find at her sister’s house. On Leah’s dresser, Kara discovered a cryptic note:

“Leah’s note said, ‘I’m not suicidal. I’m the opposite. Remember Jack Kerouac,” and that might be part of her trip.’

Five days later, Leah’s SUV was discovered in Mount Baker National Forest near Desolation Peak. But Leah was nowhere to be found. Authorities estimate that the car was traveling about 40 miles per hour when it plunged over the embankment. Sgt. Kevin McFadden of the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office said that the driver was most likely injured:

“With the speed that the vehicle was traveling and the amount of damage to the vehicle, you would anticipate some type of injury to the person inside. At least some type of evidence to indicate contact damage, that the person had been inside the vehicle.”

But there was no blood inside the SUV or in the surrounding area. Sgt. McFadden said that investigators wondered if Leah had even been in the car when it went over the edge:

“There’s nothing to indicate the wheel was tied and that it was pushed off the road. We couldn’t find any marks on the back that indicated anybody had pushed it to where it was. If you had somebody driving the vehicle and they jumped out, you would have taken your life into your own hands trying to jump out of the vehicle at that speed.”

To make things even more confusing, blankets had been placed in the car’s shattered windows. To Sgt. McFadden, it appeared that someone used it as a shelter after the accident:

“We brought in dogs, we brought in search and rescue, and did a complete grid search up and down the road. But they weren’t able to find any indication that anybody had left that vehicle.”

The SUV was carefully examined at a police garage. It was full of Leah’s personal belongings: a large amount of cash, an empty cat carrier, and Leah’s mother’s diamond engagement ring. Leah’s roommate, Nicole Bennett, remembered the ring:

“As long as I’ve known Leah, she has worn her mother’s engagement ring. It was her most prized possession. And when we discovered that the ring had been found in the car, it was definitely, for me, a bad sign.”

There are several theories about the disappearance of Leah Roberts. According to Sgt. McFadden, she could have caught a ride with the wrong person after the accident.

“You can’t rule out foul play when you don’t see somebody for over a year, but there’s no evidence to indicate that that has happened. We did process the vehicle for your typical evidence, hairs and fibers and blood, but there was nothing to indicate that happened.”

She could be living somewhere with no memory of who she is or where she came from.

Or, perhaps Leah Roberts was inspired by her favorite author, Jack Kerouac, and left her former life behind in one final, dramatic gesture. Leah’s sister doesn’t think so:

“I can understand Leah’s needing to get away and find some peace within herself, but considering the loss that our family’s experienced, it’s difficult for me to think that she would leave us open for another loss like this.”

One week after Leah’s car was found, a man called police to report that his wife had just seen Leah at a gas station 30 miles from Seattle. He didn’t give his name, but said Leah appeared confused and disoriented. Before police could get more information, the caller hung up.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eleven with Robert Stack and in season four with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A newborn is kidnapped from a hospital three days after her birth.

Marlene Santana

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 10/18/85 Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Defining Characteristics: Born with a medical condition that makes her feet appear somewhat “C” shaped when viewed from the bottom

CASE DETAILS

Every October 18 th , Francesca and Tomas Santana commemorate their daughter, Marlene’s birthday. But every October 18 th is also a time of sorrow for the Santana family because Marlene has been missing since 1985. But in the beginning, all that mattered to Francesca was having a beautiful, healthy baby:

“When my baby was born she was pretty. She was very beautiful. She was the most beautiful baby in the nursery.”

Three days later, on the 21 st of October, Francesca was preparing to take her baby home when she met a woman outside the Brooklyn hospital’s nursery:

“When I was looking at my baby in the nursery, I saw a woman in the window that told me that my baby was the most quiet one, the prettiest one, and I was glad that she told me that, because I thought she liked my baby.”

A few hours later, at 9:00 PM, Francesca checked out of the hospital. According to Francesca, her two sisters-in-law came to take her home:

“When we were going downstairs, a woman came to me, the same woman that I saw in the nursery. She told me she was waiting for me all day.”

According to Francesca, the woman then pulled out a gun and pointed it at the baby:

“She told us to walk or she was going to blow up the head. And, we walked.”

They walked over six blocks at gunpoint. Finally, they stopped near a deserted junkyard. At first, Francesca thought that they were being robbed. The woman demanded that Francesca give her the baby, then got in a car driven by an accomplice and drove off. Francesca was in a state of shock:

“When she took the baby… I didn’t know what to do. I was crying, I tried to stop the car and… nobody helped us.”

Francesca went to the police and detectives were assigned to the case. She was able to describe the car that had driven away with Marlene. It was a white 1976 Chevy Malibu, with red lettering on its door. At the hospital, police tried to gather descriptions of the mysterious woman. Some believed that she was not a professional criminal, but rather, an emotionally unstable woman unable to have a child of her own. Based on eyewitness descriptions, a composite of the abductor was created. She was white with Hispanic features and no accent. Her hair was dyed reddish blonde, and at the time she appeared to be in her late 20s.

Today, the Santana family is still searching for their missing daughter. She has brown hair and brown eyes and was born with a medical condition that makes her feet appear somewhat “C” shaped when viewed from the bottom. She may celebrate her birthday around Halloween and may have been put up for an illegal adoption in late 1985 or 1986.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season three with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A young woman vanishes from a college campus.

Kristin Smart

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 2/20/77 Height: 6’1” Weight: 145 to 160 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Dark blonde Remarks: Last seen 5/25/96. There is currently a $75,000 reward being offered.

CASE DETAILS

Eighteen year-old April Gregory and 19 year-old Kristin Smart never met. They were enrolled at different universities on opposite ends of the country. Yet within the same five hour period, they were both vanished with no warning and no explanation.

April Gregory took her schoolwork at Syracuse University very seriously. When she finished her freshman year, she immediately enrolled in the summer session. At 11:45 P.M., on May 24, 1996, April’s brother, Lamar, dropped her off at her dorm:

“I helped her with her bags to the front of the dormitory and that was the last I saw her.”

April walked up the steps, entered the doors under the watchful eyes of dorm officials, and went to her seventh floor room, then was never seen again. A short time later, police searched April’s room. They discovered that when she disappeared, she hadn’t finished unpacking. And in the closet, only one clue: her work uniform was missing. But April never arrived at work. April’s father, Herman, knew it could only be bad news:

“Rarely did she miss work. Very rarely. I just knew something bad had happened to my baby.”

At almost the same moment that April Gregory disappeared, another young woman mysteriously vanished 3,000 miles away. Nineteen year-old Kristin Smart was a freshman at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo. About the time April should’ve been heading to work in New York, Kristin was returning to her dorm after a party. She wasn’t alone. Nineteen-year old Paul Flores was also a freshman at Cal Poly. He had offered to walk Kristin home after the party. An eyewitness saw Paul and Kristin on a street corner. Paul told police that Kristin went to her dorm, and he crossed the street to his. Denise Smart is Kristen’s mother:

“Kristin phoned home every Sunday religiously. And when that Sunday passed, and she hadn’t phoned, I knew something was wrong.”

Police and volunteers searched the campus for Kristin, but they didn’t find a clue. Then cadaver search dogs were taken through the dorms. According to Det. Sgt. Peter R. Bayer of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s office, the dogs earned their pay:

“Those dogs hit on this room, room 128, at the Cal Poly campus, and specifically came into this room and hit on this mattress and the corner of this mattress. This room was occupied by, coincidentally, the male subject that was last seen with Kristin Smart on the day she became a missing person.”

That male subject was Paul Flores. Det. Bayer said that authorities became suspicious of Flores’ statement that he and Kristin had gone home separately:

“He says he continued into his dorm, which is up the hill, and she left and went up between the two dorms to her own dorm. However, we believe that, based on what we’ve learned from the search dogs, she actually continued into his dorm with him.”

Kristen’s mother Denise has not given up hope of finding Kristen alive. But she’s not optimistic:

“As any parent can imagine, the longer that it goes on, the dimmer the light. And we can only hope.”

April Gregory’s father is haunted by his daughter’s disappearance:

“There’s a neighbor girl that resembles April a lot, and I’d be in the kitchen sometimes when she’d walk by the house. My heart would just flutter ’cause I’d be missing my April, and I’d be so disappointed that it’s not her. Everything brings April to my mind. I don’t cry as much as I used to. But the pain is still there. I really, really miss our daughter.”

Update:

In November of 1997, more than a year after she vanished, April Gregory’s former boyfriend was charged with her murder. Police claim that Terrance Evans killed April after an argument, dismembered her body, and then hid part of it in his house. The jury convicted Evans of second-degree murder. He is serving 25 years to life in prison.

In April of 2021, Paul Flores was arrested in connection with Kristin Smart’s disappearance, booked for a single charge of murder. His father, Reuben Flores, has also been arrested on a single charge of being an accessory after the fact. On October 18th, 2022, Paul Flores was found guilty of murder in the first degree. His father, Ruben Flores, was found not guilty. In March of 2023, Paul Flores was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder of Kristin Smart.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season nine with Robert Stack and in season four with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

When a housewife vanishes, left behind is is a forged note and all of her possessions.

Pamela Page

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 1/18/57 Height: 5’8” Weight: 200 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Red Defining Characteristics: Has two moles on the front of her neck and a mole near her nose

CASE DETAILS

Peoria, Arizona, is a comfortable suburb just outside Phoenix. Pam and Rob Page moved here in 1977, and by all accounts, their marriage was solid. On July 22nd, 1989, Rob came home to an empty house and a letter from Pam. Pam wrote that she had left town with a woman named Sarah, and that she had been planning this for a long while. Rob claimed he was embarrassed because he thought his wife had left him for a woman. He did not notify Pam’s family in Arkansas that she was gone. Four days later, however, Pam’s oldest sister, Trena, happened to call. She was surprised to learn of Pam’s disappearance:

“It seemed out of character for her not to let anyone know where she was. But I didn’t think about that at first. I just had one thing on my mind, getting word to somebody that she was missing.”

Pam’s father, Willie Frisby, asked to see the letter, and Rob faxed him a copy. Willie was immediately distressed:

“When I received that faxed letter, I knew that something was very wrong. For one thing, I looked at the signature. I had birthday cards and letters from Pam, and the signature wasn’t her signature.”

Rob told Pam’s family that a missing person’s report had already been filed. But when one of Pam’s sisters called the local police, she discovered that they had never even heard of the case.

Detectives began their investigation by questioning Rob Page. He told them that on the day of Pam’s disappearance, he had gone to several auto parts stores. At one, his truck would not start. Rob said he called home and got no answer, so he phoned for a taxi. Rob told police that he never went into the house, only the garage. He got a part for his truck and rode his bike back to the store. When the truck finally started, he drove home and that’s when he found the letter. In it, Pam stated that she had taken all of their money, $60,000 in cash, out of the safe at the video store. Rob said he went to the store and confirmed that the cash was gone.

The letter also said that Pam had left the couple’s Corvette at a local doughnut shop. Rob claimed he found it the next day. Soon, police began to question the details of Rob’s story. None of the employees at the last auto parts store remembered Rob, or anyone else, asking about an ignition switch. There was another problem with Rob’s story. Rob had said his truck, which was very distinctive, was parked at the store for nearly four hours that afternoon. But none of the employees ever recalled seeing the truck in front of the store or anyone working on it.

Finally, three weeks after Pam disappeared, the Arizona state crime lab confirmed that the signature on the letter was almost certainly not Pam’s. Det. Sgt. Doug Hildebrandt questioned Rob on the issue:

“Mr. Page refused to believe me and was adamant that his wife had in fact signed the letter. After continuing to question Mr. Page about the signature on the letter, he admitted to me that he in fact, did sign that letter.”

It was a stunning turnaround, enough to make Rob Page a suspect. Suddenly, he began to tell a completely different story. Now, Rob insisted that he had actually found the letter in the family computer a few days before Pam disappeared, stating that she would be leaving him. He also claimed that he confronted his wife on the discovery. According to Rob’s new story, a few days after the confrontation, he came home to find the house a mess. Rob told police that most of Pam’s clothes were gone, along with the family pictures and one of their dogs. Pam’s credit cards and house keys were on the kitchen table, but Rob couldn’t find her driver’s license.

Rob claims that after making these discoveries, he decided to act. He went downstairs and added four sentences to the letter in the computer, printed it out, and signed Pam’s name. He then drove her Corvette to the doughnut shop, went to the pay phone across the street, and called a taxi. Det. Hildebrandt:

“Mr. Page stated that he fabricated some of the things he did because no one would ever believe him that his wife had in fact left him, had he not done this. Due to Mr. Page’s inconsistent statements and the suspicious circumstances surrounding the disappearance of his wife, he was offered a polygraph examination on several occasions to eliminate him as a suspect in his wife’s disappearance. He declined the polygraph on each occasion that it was offered.”

Despite the suspicions about Rob Page, police found no evidence that he had done anything wrong except change his story. No charges were filed and the investigation ground to a halt.

As a last resort, Pam’s sister, Jimmie Rice, consulted Carol Pate, a psychic in Little Rock, Arkansas. Pate had worked with the Little Rock police for ten years. Working only from a photo of Pam, the psychic said that she saw Pam with a man in what appeared to be Pam’s house. The two were arguing.Carol claims she saw the man knock Pam to the floor and suffocate her with a pillow. Another female came and assisted him in placing her in the trunk. She said the two drove somewhere, and that she saw the name Coolidge and the numbers 2-4-1. She then saw a gray factory near a railroad. Finally, the man pulled over, removed the body, and began to dig.

Jana Thorson, an Arizona newspaper reporter covering Pam’s disappearance, followed up the clues. She found a gray factory building near some railroad tracks in Peoria. Nearby she found a sign with the numbers 2-4-1. A route that ran from Bob and Pam’s house to the home of a friend passed both these sites and ended at a street named Coolidge.

But there is no way to evaluate Carol Pate’s information until it’s known whether Pam Page met with foul play, or chose to disappear. As for Rob Page, he still insists that his wife is alive.

Rob Page has since divorced his missing wife. Police say he is no longer a suspect in the case, but they still have no idea what happened to Pam Page.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A six year-old disappears from a little league game.

Morgan Nick

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 9/12/88 Eyes: Blue Hair: Blonde Remarks: Morgan would now be in her early 20s.

Composite of the man seen talking to Morgan

Suspect: Gender: Male Height: 6’ Weight: 180 lbs.

CASE DETAILS

On a July night in 1995, Colleen Nick of Alma, Arkansas, took her six-year-old daughter, Morgan, to a little league baseball game:

“We’d made the choice to go, just Morgan and I, just to have girls’ night out, and it was just such a warm, close, fun night.”

During the game, two local girls asked Morgan to play with them. Colleen at first said no, but Morgan pleaded with her mother:

“Finally, against my better judgment, I told her that she could go and play, and she threw her arms around my neck and gave me a big hug. We could see them very clearly, and the last time that I turned to look, Morgan was running back and forth playing.”

But when the game ended, the two girls returned to the field without Morgan. They said they last saw her getting sand out of her shoes near a car. Colleen Nick:

“I went over to the car, looked around the outside of the car, opened the doors, looked inside the car, thinking she had gotten in. Even at one point, looked under the car, just thinking she has to be here somewhere. Within a couple of minutes, all of the people and most of the cars were gone and it was very clear that Morgan wasn’t there.”

When one of the coaches questioned the two girls, they remembered seeing a man whom they described as “creepy” talking to Morgan out in the field. Police were called and arrived six minutes later. But they found no trace of Morgan. The media was alerted and flyers were posted. Weeks stretched into months, and finally years, with no sign of Morgan Nick. Colleen still has trouble coming to terms with the tragedy:

“It’s the worst terror that any parent can ever feel. There’s such a sense of it not being real, somehow. It does not seem possible that your child could be missing, that someone could have taken your child.”

Colleen turned her personal tragedy into a public crusade. She established the Morgan Nick Foundation, a non-profit organization that assists families with missing children.
The service Colleen provides has not detracted from her primary goal: to find her own daughter:

“I believe and I hope every single day that I get up, that today is the day that Morgan comes home. And every night when I go to bed and she’s not back yet, I know that I’m one day closer to getting her back.”

 

UPDATE: The Alma Police Department released photos of a truck that was seen at the ballpark that day. The truck, pictured to the left, remains unidentified. The police note the unique details of the truck and camper shell, such as the extended gap between the cab and camper, the window configuration on the camper, and the wrap around taillight. If you know who owned or operated this truck, please submit a tip here, or contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.

 

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season twelve with Robert Stack and in season eight with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A young housewife mysteriously disappears from a small Nebraska town.

Christi Jo Nichols

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 9/6/65 Height: 5’9” Weight: 120 lbs. Eyes: Green Hair: Brown Remarks: Last seen 12/11/87

CASE DETAILS

The town of Gothenberg is located in the heart of Nebraska’s farm belt. There’s a strong sense of community among its 3,500 inhabitants, and when a neighbor is in trouble, it becomes everybody’s business. On December 11, 1987, a housewife named Christi Nichols vanished. Almost immediately, suspicion centered on Christi’s husband, Mark Nichols. Mark denies any involvement in Christi’s disappearance:

“People in small towns, they talk a lot. And a lot of these rumors tend to get pretty vicious. There’s been a couple rumors that I chopped her up and put her in garbage bags and buried her at the dump. That’s one of the first ones I heard, and that one really got to me, because I guess they were actually up there digging around.”

It was in Gothenberg that Christi married Mark Nichols. She was 19 years-old and soon to be the mother of two toddlers. According to Christi’s mother, Connie Stanley, the children became the focus of her daughter’s life:

“Christi never felt she accomplished anything until she had her children and there was something she could look at and say, ‘Hey, I did this pretty well. Nobody can do this any better.’ She was just so proud of her children. I would’ve never thought that Christi   would run away. She would’ve never left her children.”

Ten days before she disappeared, Christi had gone to a local hospital after being injured in a fight with Mark. As Mark recalls:

“The only bad fight I can remember is when I was trying to get her to stay home from going out, and she was getting so upset at me that she started to try to hit and kick me. And that’s when she burned the side of my neck with a cigarette she was holding. I tossed her onto the waterbed and she landed wrong and it twisted her thumb up underneath her.”

Christi was treated by Dr. Carol Severeid Shackleton, who had seen her several times before:

“I saw Christi on the Friday after Thanksgiving. She came to the emergency room complaining of a sore thumb. She was acting like a scared rabbit, if you will. She’s never been one for great eye contact or been very verbal. She obviously wasn’t telling me everything, either.”

Christi told her cousin, Debra Fredrickson, that she had been abused by Mark:

“Christi showed me a bruise on her side and it really scared me. I told her she needed to go get help from somebody and I asked her how it had happened. She said she and Mark had gotten into an argument and he had thrown her around. She just acted like it wasn’t a big deal, like it was something that happened a lot.”

Mark Nichols:

“As far as a violent argument, there seemed to be a lot of rumors going around that I was always beatin’ up on her.   That’s just totally wrong.”

On December 9, 1987, two days before she disappeared, Christi went to a divorce attorney. She didn’t want Mark to find out, so she found an out-of-town lawyer named Claude Berreckman:

“We do a lot of divorce work. We’ve handled hundreds of divorces. But she had to rank up in the top five of being very distressed and upset and nervous and needing help. And when she explained certain abuses that she had been subjected to, we decided to make some telephone calls to call the authorities and report certain crimes that had taken place. I can say that the day that Christi was in my office on December 9th, she was not panic stricken to the point where she would run or leave, and in fact, she had made an appointment to come back to my office.”

The next day, Christi and Mark went Christmas shopping with their children. This was the last afternoon she spent with her family. Mark recalled the day:

“I felt real uncomfortable the day before she left because I felt a lot of anger coming from her.”

However, that evening they hired a babysitter and went out to the local bar where Christi worked. Diane Janssen was their babysitter:

“When I babysat the night that she disappeared, I was surprised that the both of them were going out, because I knew they weren’t getting along.”

Mark Nichols:

“When we were at the bar, things seemed to be going real well. I felt there was a good attitude and a lot of laughing and carrying on.”

Mark says he and Christi left the bar around midnight and stopped at an all-night convenience store. According to Diane Janssen, Mark arrived home between 12:30 and 1:00 in the morning. Diane was doing her homework in front of the television and didn’t remember seeing Christi. According to Mark Nichols:

“I was about five or six yards behind her when she reached the door. And she walked by the living room where the babysitter, was back towards the kids’ bedroom and went into the main bathroom.”

Diane Janssen:

“It seemed strange because Mark paid me with cash when Christi usually paid me with a check. It was unusual for Mark to pay me. I really can’t believe that I didn’t see her because I would’ve heard footsteps.   And I would’ve heard her go into the bathroom because I was there between 5 and 10 minutes, so I would’ve been able to hear Christi somehow. But I didn’t hear or see Christi.”

According to Mark, Christi went to bed immediately after the babysitter left. He claims the last time he saw her was at 2 A.M. when he went to sleep beside her:

“And that’s the last thing I remember ’til my kids woke me up the next morning and the first thing I noticed was she wasn’t in the bed.”

Mark says he searched the house and noticed Christi had taken a suitcase full of belongings with her. But both family cars were still sitting in the front yard. At 9:30 in the morning, Mark received a phone call from Christi’s mother, who lived 100 miles away. Even though he knew his wife was gone, Mark told her mother that Christi was still in bed asleep. Mark explains:

“I didn’t want to worry her at the time because I didn’t know where she was. So I told her that she was still in bed sleeping ’cause I didn’t think she felt real good.”

At 11:30 A.M., Mark took his children over to Christi’s grandmother’s house and asked if she could take care of them so he could search for his wife. Violet Williams is Christi’s grandmother:

“He never asked if Christi was at my house or if I’d seen Christi. He just said that Christi was missing and he acted like he was shook up.”

Mark Nichols:

“I spent approximately two hours just riding around town trying to spot her, maybe coming out of a store, or I drove some residential streets where we knew some people.”

Officer Terry Ahrens of the Nebraska State Patrol:

“When we checked out Mark’s story about driving around looking for Christi, and we could find nobody in the city of Gothenburg that had seen him driving around.”

At 1:37 P.M., Mark filed a missing persons report with the police department. During the investigation, it was discovered that Mark moved out of the house the day after Christi disappeared. A few weeks later, he boxed up all of her clothes and sold both of their cars.

In March of 1988, three months after she vanished, Christi’s suitcase was discovered in a roadside rest area 30 miles west of Gothenburg. Officer Terry Ahrens found it surprising that the contents exactly matched the detailed list of missing items Mark had given police when Christi first disappeared:

“It appeared to everybody present that the suitcase had been placed there, instead of just thrown out. The items were neatly lying around. It was like the person who put them there wanted them to be found. If my wife had left me, I wouldn’t be able to look through the closet and tell you what she had taken. I probably would be able to tell you, maybe, what suitcase she had taken. But he had listed items of clothing right down the line that he knew she had taken.”

The area surrounding Gothenburg was searched extensively. No other trace of Christi Nichols has ever been found. And no one has ever been charged in the case, though it still remains open. To this day, Mark Nichols claims no knowledge of what happened to his wife:

“I’d have never done anything to hurt my wife. That’s just the person I am.     A lot of people think I’m a violent person. I’m not a violent person. I want very much for Christi to come home. But if for some reason she doesn’t want to come home, you know, Christi, at least call somebody, you know, let us know where you are, whether you’re all right.”

Until Christi returns, Mark Nichols will remain under a cloud of suspicion.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season one with Robert Stack in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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What happened to the lost crew of the “Sarah Joe”?

The five friends set out for a day of fishing

A jaw bone was found 10 years later

CASE DETAILS

On February 11th, 1979, in the town of Hana on the Hawaiian island of Maui, five local men left their small village to go pleasure fishing on a 17-foot Boston whaler named the ‘Sarah Joe’. The men, Benjamin Kalama, Ralph Malaiakini, Scott Moorman, Patrick Woesner, and Peter Hanchett, were all experienced fisherman. They left around 10 in the morning. It was a clear day and the weather was calm. But in the early afternoon, the winds suddenly changed direction, the sign of a pending storm. Peter’s father, John Hanchett Sr., grew concerned:

“I told Dave we better get down the coast to see if we could spot those boys and wave them in.”

As the storm grew, John and a friend went in search of the Sarah Joe:

“By this time it was really blowing a gale. And the rain was beginning to come down and it was storming. We went out of Hana Harbor about a half a mile and then down the coast, and I still didn’t see any sign of the boys. The oceans were fierce; I’ve never seen it get that rough.”

The next day, John continued the search with the help of marine biologist John Naughton. Their search that day would prove fruitless. Nobody else had reported seeing the Sarah Joe. The following day, the Coast Guard joined the search. But, according to Capt. Jim Cushman of the U.S. Coast Guard, they really didn’t know where to look:

“The initial place where we started searching was very ill-defined, because we weren’t really sure exactly where the Sarah Joe had gone fishing. So it encompassed a relatively large area, initially that first day, and then the area got bigger and bigger and bigger. When the search was finally suspended five days later, we had searched 73,000 square miles.”

Over the next few weeks, the Hana residents combed the local beaches, looking for any sign of the missing Boston whaler. When no trace was found, their loved ones eventually gave up all hope.

Then, ten years later, on September 9th, 1988, an incredible coincidence suddenly led to a major break in the case. Two thousand miles west of Hawaii in the Marshall Islands, John Naughton, the very same marine biologist who had searched for the Sarah Joe a decade earlier, was on a wildlife expedition. On a deserted atoll called Taongi, he spotted a small boat. John and his crew went onshore to inspect the wreckage:

“On the boat, there were still a few letters and numbers from the registration number, and immediately I saw that it started with an ‘HA’, which indicates that the boat was registered in the Hawaiian Islands.”

About 60 yards away, John and his crew came upon another startling discovery, a shallow grave:

“When we got up there we could see immediately that there was a human jaw bone protruding out of the pile of rocks. At that time, we had no way of knowing that the gravesite was associated with the wrecked whaler.”

After finding no sign of anyone else on the island, the men contacted the Coast Guard. They ran a check of the registration number and made a positive ID: it was the Sarah Joe.

The grave was excavated and parts of a human skeleton were uncovered. Dental records identified the remains as Scott Moorman, one of the five missing men. Capt. Cushman explains a strange clue also found buried with the skeleton:

“It was a sheaf of paper, and I’d say a book, except it was not bound. Probably three inches by three inches by maybe 3/4 of an inch thick. But between each one of these pieces of paper, there was a very small square piece of tin foil material. We have not been able to determine who placed that there or, what purpose it serves.”

Experts say that the Sarah Joe could have drifted 2,000 miles to the Marshall Islands. If so, it would have arrived in about three months. But according to the brother of one of the missing men, a U.S. government survey of Taongi a full six years after the men disappeared found no trace of the Sarah Joe. If this is true, where was the boat in the time between its disappearance and the government survey? Who buried Scott Moorman? And what is the significance of the pad of paper found in the grave?

These unanswered questions have left some wondering if any of the other men might still be alive.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season two with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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An Indiana woman vanishes three weeks before her wedding.

Marilyn “Niqui” McCown

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 1/6/73 Height: 5’2” Weight: 115 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Defining Characteristics: Small scar on right side of face, small scar over left eye

CASE DETAILS

On July 22, 2001, 28-year-old Marilyn “Niqui” McCown of Richmond, Indiana, stormed into her mother’s kitchen. She was upset over two “creepy” men who had harassed her at the laundromat. Niqui’s mother, Barbara McCown:

“I laughed at first, because she was such a pretty girl, I just thought that some man was making a play. I said, ‘Niqui just calm down,’ because she really was really upset.”

Niqui may have been upset, but police believe she returned to the Laundromat anyway. No one knows for sure, because on that day, Niqui disappeared. Police had trouble believing that Niqui would take off when her wedding was just three weeks away. They suspected foul play, but without a body and with no apparent motive, they had nothing to go on.

The day she disappeared, Niqui set off to do the laundry, while her fiancé, Bobby Webster, met his best man to be fitted for their tuxedos. Michelle McCown-Luster is Niqui’s sister:

“She spent so much money on this wedding. She wanted it to be the perfect wedding. She wanted her face to be perfect, her hair to be perfect, her body to be perfect.”

But Niqui’s wedding was not to be. Police believed that if Niqui returned to the laundromat, she may have been confronted, if not abducted, by the two strangers.

On Monday, July 23, the day after Niqui’s disappearance, Bobby Webster contacted Richmond Police to report that his fiancé was missing:

“Filling out all the information on that missing person’s report was very difficult. You never really think in your wildest imagination you’ll be in such a situation until it really happens. It was very confusing.”

Shortly after Niqui disappeared, Bobby began acting very strangely. Instead of postponing the wedding, he cancelled it entirely, demanding a full refund from the reception hall. Next, Bobby tried to return his wedding band for cash. But the manager refused. Niqui had paid for the ring and her name was on the receipt. Allegedly, the argument nearly turned violent and Bobby had to be escorted from the store. Bobby says the reason for his behavior was that he needed the money to help pay for Niqui’s search:

“I was to the point where it was like, this wedding doesn’t matter. Niqui’s wellbeing is what matters right now.”

But detectives weren’t convinced. They asked Bobby to take a polygraph. At first, he refused, but later he agreed. According to Richmond, Indiana, Police Sergeant Bradley Berner:

“One of the questions that was asked to Mr. Webster was, ‘Did you have anything to do with the disappearance of Niqui McCown?’ He says, ‘No,’ and the needle about jumped off the chart. So not only did he fail, he failed miserably.”

Bobby denies that he failed the test. He claims neither he nor his lawyer ever saw the results.

Niqui was gone for three months before detectives got their first break in the case. On November 5, 2001, her SUV was found at a large apartment complex in Dayton, Ohio, 45 minutes east of her home in Indiana. Police believed it had been there for weeks. The door lock was punched-out, the ignition had been hot-wired, and the stereo was missing. Michelle had hopes that the car would lead to her sister:

“We kept being told by the police, ‘We’ve got to locate this truck. It’s a big piece of the puzzle.’ And when they located it, it was a little relief that now they can find Niqui.”

Sergeant Berner believed an important clue was left in Niqui’s SUV: her neatly folded laundry:

“The clothes looked like they had come just from the laundromat. They were neatly folded and did not have the appearance that someone had gone through any of the items.”

If Niqui had been abducted from the laundromat, why would her clothes be neatly folded in the back seat of her SUV? And who drove her car from Richmond to Dayton? Then police were surprised to discover that Niqui had an ex-boyfriend who lived in the same apartment complex where her SUV was found. But after further investigation, he passed a lie detector test and had a solid alibi. It was another dead-end.

However, police later discovered that Niqui made a phone call to a co-worker who lived about a mile from where her SUV was found in Dayton. They talked about beauty products and the friend told Niqui she could purchase the items she was looking for in Dayton.

Police began to wonder if something had happened to Niqui in Richmond, Indiana, in Ohio, or somewhere in-between. Police believed her SUV might have been left in Ohio to distract attention from Richmond. That theory lead police back to Bobby Webster and his strange behavior after Niqui disappeared. Niqui’s sister, Tammie Hughes, has trouble believing Bobby had anything to do with her Niqui’s disappearance:

“I love Bobby to death. And there’s no way he could do this. He’d have to be the devil himself to be able to walk around here and still see us face to face. I mean, everybody has their limits.”

Niqui’s mother, however, isn’t so sure:

“As a wise old woman once told me, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.’ So I stuck with him like glue because I figured if Bobby did do this, or if he knew anybody did do it, he would come to me.”

Police continue to follow up on other possible leads, while also keeping a close eye on Bobby Webster.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eleven with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A possible amnesia victim has been sighted more than 100 times.

Patricia Meehan

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 11/1/51 Height: 5’3” Weight: 117 lbs. Eyes: Green/gray Hair: Strawberry blonde Defining Characteristics: Freckles, fair complexion Remarks: Last seen 4/20/89

CASE DETAILS

On April 20, 1989, on a dark country road near Circle, Montana, a woman driving on the wrong side of the road almost hit a car head-on. Another driver, Carol Heitz, witnessed the near miss, and then was hit by the same car. Carol emerged from the wreckage dazed, but not seriously injured. Then a woman appeared out of the darkness. Carol realized it was the woman who hit her:

“She just stared. She never said anything, she just stared at me. I will never forget her.”

The driver of the first car, Peggy Bueller, returned to help and saw the silent woman:

“As I looked out across the accident, I noticed someone on the other side of the fence, standing there like a spectator, not like it had happened to her.”

The silent woman walked away from the accident scene and vanished into the night. Police traced the car to its owner, 38-year-old Patricia Meehan, and began to search for her. Over the next five days, they looked on land and from the air, but found no trace of Patricia.

There were two theories as to how Patricia left the area. She may have stowed away on a hay truck that was seen about half a mile from the accident. Or, she simply hitched a ride.

At least one hundred people have reported seeing Patricia Meehan since she vanished. Patricia has made no attempt to contact her family or friends. Authorities believe she may be suffering from amnesia.

Just before the accident, those who knew her well, including her mother, Dolly Meehan, noticed that Patricia seemed depressed and withdrawn:

“She was, I guess, taking in her own life, what had she accomplished. I think she missed having children because I think she realized she really loved them.”

After Patricia disappeared, her family found a roll of undeveloped film still in her camera. It contained a haunting self-portrait. Psychologist Don La Plante speculated on Patricia’s mental health:

“It appears that Patricia was experiencing a very difficult time in her life and was involved in a rather dramatic accident, which may have involved a head injury. The combination of these factors may have caused amnesia. She does not know who she is, has lost memories of the past, and is out searching for herself throughout the country.”

Patricia was spotted dozens of times between Montana and Seattle, mainly at truck stops. But in every case, she had hitchhiked out of the area by the time authorities arrived.

Waitress Barb Ruff confirmed one sighting of Patricia in Bozeman, Montana, in May of 1989, just a few miles from her home:

“Patty came in the door and wanted to be sat quickly and served quickly. She told me, ‘I’m in a hurry.’ And I said, ‘Well, we do breakfast in 10 minutes. You’ll be out very quickly.’ And then I said to her, ‘You must have to be back to work at nine?’ It was about 8:30. She said, ‘No, I’m just going shopping.’ I couldn’t understand why it was so important for her to be there right at 9 o’clock to go shopping. She was in such a huge hurry.”

Another waitress, Brenda Clements, also noticed that Patricia was acting strangely:

“What stood out in my mind was that she seemed really disorientated, and really spacey. I heard her talking to herself. She sat at that table for an hour and a half more just looking out the window, watching people walk by. That’s when I walked up to her and asked her, ‘You okay?’ I was wondering if there was anything I could do, because she seemed so lost. I felt like she didn’t know where she was or who she was.”

Although years have passed with no word from Patricia, her father and the rest of her family still hold out hope that she may one day find her way home:

“More than anything else in the world, I want her back with us. And we would then know that she was safe. Not knowing who she is taking a ride from, that’s my biggest worry. I just pray day in and day out that she’s with some good people.”

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season two with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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What really happened to the lost crew of the Casie Nicole?

Nathan & his crew abandoned ship

CASE DETAILS

On April 12, 1990, four commercial fishermen prepared to embark on a seven day expedition in the Atlantic. The Captain was 23-year-old Billy Joe Neesmith. The crew included his brother, Nathan, his nephew, Keith Wilkes, and a friend, Franklin Brantley. In the late afternoon, they set off on the Casie Nicole, a snapper boat, owned by a man named Doug Tyson. The boat had recently spent five weeks in dry dock for maintenance. Nathan Neesmith was at the helm:

“I guess it was somewhere around 3:30, 4:00 in the morning… it was still dark. I had got up and was operating the boat and the boat just seemed to be sluggish you know, like it wanted to bust through the waves, kind of like a submarine or something. It didn’t want to ride over the waves. So I told my brother, he was laying in the bunk, I woke him up. I said something’s wrong with the boat.”

Nathan then took his brother to the control panel. It was there that they noticed the Casie Nicole was riding unusually deep in the water. They then checked the bow where the other crew members were sleeping. What Nathan saw surprised him:

“When we turned on the light, we noticed there was water about a foot deep down in the bunks where they were at.”

To make matters worse, the boat’s pumps were inoperable. In order to prevent the boat from sinking, Nathan and his crew had to bail the water out with buckets:

“And we got in a line and started passing the bucket and trying to bail the boat out. In the mean time, we took the life raft out. It was a two-man life raft. We’d been hollering “Mayday” on the radio. We had Billy Joe on it, working it. Never got anywhere with that. And the engine finally stalled.”

All power on the Casie Nicole was lost. The radio was useless. Nathan and his crew had no choice but to abandon ship:

“Life raft was kind of rotten. It had a hole on the side of it, up on the top. We don’t really know what happened there. But we do know that it had a hole in it about the size of a quarter.”

By sunrise, the life raft was sinking fast. Then, salvation came floating by… it was the hatch cover from the Casie Nicole. The four men tied the raft to the hatch cover and climbed aboard. Then, Nathan saw the hull of the Casie Nicole in the distance:

“It looked like it was maybe three or four miles from us. I said I don’t know what kind of chance we got, but at least maybe one of us can make it to the boat and get some kind of help. Well that’s what I struck out to do. And they started hollering no, no, no, you come back. If we separate up, we going to be split up and ain’t no telling what can go wrong.”

Without heeding the warnings of his fellow crewman, Nathan swam to the stern of the sunken boat:

“I just kept swimming and kept swimming. I swam from oh about 9 o’clock that morning and just before dark that afternoon, I got to where I thought… the boat was. I drank so much salt water trying to swim in it. And I was just real weak.”

As darkness fell, Nathan lost sight of his companions. He spent a long harrowing night clinging to the hull of the Casie Nicole. But the next morning, a freighter passed within three miles of Nathan:

“Looked like it made about four stops, maybe five stops. And each time it would stop or circle. And it was in the direction where my other mates were, so I figured that maybe it had stopped to pick them up.”

The freighter continued its odd movement for nearly three hours, then disappeared. For two and a half days, Nathan drifted and prayed that the Casie Nicole would stay afloat. Suddenly, a large wood and Styrofoam bait box broke loose from the boat’s deck and popped to the surface:

“And I swam over to it. I got to the front of it, and bless God, the whole front was out. I mean it was just like a boat to me. It was really hot, I mean I was getting real sunburnt. My skin was turning real, real red and I was real close to dead. And I remember saying, ‘God please let me go home to my wife and kids.’”

At 10 AM on April 15, 1990, Nathan Neesmith was finally rescued, twenty miles off the coast of Georgia. He had been adrift without food or water for four days. But despite a large-scale search, the other fishermen were never found by the coast guard. Still, Nathan and his family never gave up hope.

Then, one day Nathan’s sister Oneda received a curious phone call. According to Oneda, the male caller spoke Spanish and seemed unable to understand English:

“All this person would keep saying was repeating our phone number and saying our name and that’s all. And you know, we just kept saying hello, hello and it was just cut off, static cut off.”

That same day, an unusual call also came into the home of Doug Tyson, owner of the ill-fated Casie Nicole. Once again, the caller was a man. And according to Tyson, the only English words he knew were Doug’s name and telephone number:

“We didn’t say anything about the call when we got it… after that, about six weeks, we were down visiting with the Neesmith family. And they started telling us about their call. And after they got through I asked how long ago was this… They thought back a minute and said about six weeks. I looked at my wife, she looked at me and… I said yeah.”

Over the next year, five more calls came in—three to Oneda and two to the Tysons. Finally, on March 6, 1991, Oneda received a call in which the caller spoke a single sentence in English:

“Very simple words, just said I’m bringing him home. That was it.”

After only a brief moment, the connection was lost. There have been no calls since.

What really happened to the lost crewmen of the Casie Nicole? Officially, Billy Joe Neesmith, Keith Wilkes, and Franklin Brantley are presumed dead. Unofficially, there is reason to hope that they may still be alive.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season four with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A college student spending the summer in San Francisco vanishes without a trace.

Kristen Modafferi

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 6/1/79 Height: 5’8” Weight: 140 lb. Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Defining Characteristics: Facial dimples Remarks: Last seen 6/23/97

CASE DETAILS

Eighteen-year-old Kristen Modafferi was a college honor student from North Carolina spending her summer in San Francisco. On Monday, June 23rd, 1997, she arrived for work at the Crocker Galleria mall. She had taken a job at a coffee shop to pay for a photography course at U.C. Berkeley. Griffin Cherry was her close friend:

“She wanted to come to the big city and find some excitement. But it seemed to be coupled with a naiveté, not a real understanding of how the big city works.”

At the end of her shift, Kristen left the coffee shop and was never seen again. From the start, authorities were frustrated by intriguing clues that went nowhere and a trail that led directly into the ocean.

The day after Kristen vanished, her parents flew immediately to San Francisco. Kristen’s father Bob Modafferi:

“When we found out that she had disappeared, we were just shocked. We couldn’t eat. We barely spoke. We just were even having trouble breathing. “

Kristin’s mother, Debbie Modafferi, was determined to find her daughter:

“When you are faced with a situation like this, you really don’t know how strong you can be. You either crawl in a hole and die and give up, or you can fight. There was no choice for us; we were going to fight for our daughter.”

As in many missing person’s cases, police had few leads to work with. One of the first pieces of the puzzle was identifying a blonde woman seen with Kristin the day she disappeared. Forty-five minutes after Kristin’s shift ended, a man who worked with her noticed them at the mall together. Officer Patrick Mahanay of the Oakland Police Department learned that this was out of character for Kristen:

“He thought that was kind of strange because she never really stuck around after work. As soon as she checked out, she would be gone.”

Kristen’s father was determined to find the identity of the blonde woman:

“They were hanging out together, talking together, definitely with each other. And so we’ve made a lot of effort to try to get the blonde woman to come forward, identify herself. We appealed a number of times through the media, but we’ve never got a response.”

Police used a bloodhound to try to retrace Kristen’s route the day that she vanished. The dog immediately located her trail, but police weren’t sure if this was a route Kristen took the day she disappeared, or some other day. The dog then led them to Geary Street, heading toward Land’s End Beach. Kristen’s co-workers had said that on the day she vanished, she talked about visiting Land’s End Beach. Officer Patrick Mahanay followed the bloodhound to the trail’s end:

“We got down to the beach area and came to a point where the trail seemed to have stopped. That’s a very treacherous part of the San Francisco waterline. Numerous people each year are washed off the rocks and are never seen again, so it was a distinct possibility that she had in fact fallen into the ocean.”

Kristen’s father, Bob, doubts this theory:

“We really don’t believe that’s what happened to Kristen. It’s a very tourist-oriented area, so there are always people around. If she had fallen into the water, somebody would have seen something.”

But if Kristen didn’t drown, what happened to her? Seventeen days after she vanished, a man called a local news station and claimed Kristen had been murdered. Bill Magee, the assignment editor at KGO-TV, received the call:

“He went into a very long description of who he said killed her and he told me that there were two women, and he named them. He said that Kristen had been killed as a result of a lesbian love affair that went wrong.”

Detectives tracked down the two women named by the caller, but determined they didn’t know Kristen and had nothing to do with her disappearance. The police asked if the women knew anyone who might hold a grudge against them and falsely implicate them in the case. Both women named the same person, a man named Ryan.

Ryan told police the two women were his girlfriend’s employers, and that they had been harassing his girlfriend at work. He said he phoned in the false tip in an effort to get back at them. But the police suspected there was more to Ryan’s story. Upon investigation, they found allegations that he had abused women in the past. Their next move was to see if he had any connections to Kristen. Police then learned that Ryan met women mostly through personal ads. Earlier, they had found an ad in Kristen’s apartment they think she might have placed. Bob Modafferi:

“If you read it, it sounds like it could be Kristen. It’s all the kind of things she was interested in, like photography, walking the city, music. It was all the kind of things that Kristen was there to do.”

Another clue was found at the home of Ryan’s girlfriend. Her diary was missing several pages covering the same time period Kristen had been in San Francisco. She told police that Ryan had torn out the pages. Det. Patrick Mahanay found this unusual:

“We asked her, ‘Why is this diary the way it is?’ And she said that some of the stuff that was in there could come back to hurt Ryan.”

Still, police say they have no clear evidence that Ryan was involved in Kristen’s disappearance. Ryan claims he passed a polygraph test given by a reputable expert:

“I never met Kristen. I never saw her. There’s absolutely no connection to Kristen and I in any way. And what I did was wrong. I wish I’d never made that call.”

Police have completely cleared Ryan as a suspect. With no new leads, the case is now back at square one.

Update:

A search of the home where Kristen briefly lived revealed the presence of human remains on the property. It is too early to know if they belong to Kristen. We will bring you more information as this story develops.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eleven with Robert Stack and in season seven with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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How does a woman vanish from a busy Nevada casino?

Jean Moore

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 7/23/32 Height: 5’2” Weight: 125 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown

CASE DETAILS

Al Henderson and Jean Moore seemed like the typical couple in love. But they spent more than a typical amount of time getting to know each other. According to Al, it took him 20 years to finally propose to Jean:

“She was very happy and we were making plans for the wedding. She got more excited about it with each passing day.”

However, Jean’s daughter, Connie Christie, wasn’t nearly as happy about the engagement:

“The longer I knew him the less genuine he seemed. I know he said that he loved her many times, but he also had a habit of putting her down in front of other people. And to me, that just didn’t sound like love.”

Jean’s son, Joe Hamilton, said he even tried to get his mother to end the relationship:

“When your mother asks you to be nice to somebody who they like, you go along with it, but I still tried to talk my mom out of being around the guy.”

On April 6, 1992 , a few months after the proposal, Jean and Al left Apple Valley, California, for a vacation in Laughlin, Nevada — a scaled down version of Las Vegas. A few days later, Al reported Jean missing. No one has seen or heard from her since.

According to Al, it was April 9, the morning they were going to check out of their hotel, when Jean said she wanted to play her lucky slot machine one last time. Al said that he dropped her off at a side entrance of a nearby casino, then went to find a parking place:

“When I did not find one, then I returned to the valet parking.”

According to Al, he told the valet he was going to give Jean the ticket and that she would pick up the car later. Al said he went inside the casino, found Jean, and gave her the ticket:

“Our plan was that we would meet back at our hotel room at a quarter of 12.”

Al claims he left Jean in the casino at around 9:30 in the morning. Once outside, he planned to take a taxi back to the hotel:

“There was no cab there. So after waiting a couple of minutes and a cab didn’t come, I thought, well, it would be nice, I could go play the slots with her a little bit.”

But Al said he found somebody else playing Jean’s favorite slot machine:

“I felt, well, because someone was there playing it, she may have decided to go shopping, or some other thing. From a quarter of 10 to 10:15, I played the machine that she liked, hoping that she would come back and I would be able to get up and just say, ‘Here’s your machine, have fun.'”

When Jean didn’t show up, Al said he checked out of their hotel around noon and returned to the casino to look for her:

“When I saw that the car was right where it had been left, and spoke to the valet, nobody had brought a ticket for the car, then I began to become alarmed.”

Al says he thoroughly searched the lobby, the shops, and the gaming area, but he could not find Jean. Over the next few days, he distributed thousands of flyers in the Laughlin area. Despite a $25,000 reward, no one called. Al said he began to think that Jean must have met with foul play:

“After a certain amount of time, I had to figure that something terrible has happened.”

Jean’s children thought the same thing. Connie said she’s convinced that Al Henderson knows more than he’s telling:

“The more we find out about what supposedly happened, as compared to what can be verified, the less I’m inclined to believe that he’s telling in the full truth.”

Jean’s son, Joe, has claimed that Al’s story kept changing:

“In my opinion, Al has not said everything that had happened. And the reason I say that is because, number one, the story has changed a couple of times.”

Al originally told police that he dropped Jean off in front of the casino and gave her the valet ticket there. But during his interview with Unsolved Mysteries, Al said that he left Jean at a side entrance and gave her the ticket inside the casino.

Police knew surveillance cameras monitored every square inch of the casino 24 hours a day. It was time to verify Al Henderson’s story. Al had said that a valet parked his Cadillac and that he entered the casino a little after 9:00. Surveillance tapes confirmed this. Beyond this point, Henderson’s story and the surveillance footage don’t match up.

One tape shows two views of the area where he says he gave Jean the valet ticket and where they supposedly walked around. Det. Thomas Ball with the Las Vegas Municipal Police Department, Laughlin Substation, scrutinized the tapes:

“I have reviewed four of those tapes of the areas that Mr. Henderson said they were in. In the tapes that I have reviewed, we did not see Jeannie on any of those tapes.”

Al offered no explanation:

“I can’t really comment on that. I can only tell you what happened. I accept no responsibility for what their tapes show or don’t show because I am not an expert in that field. I can just tell you what happened.”

Al also said he had played Jean’s favorite slot machine while he waited for her. According to Det. Ball:

“In examining the tapes for the time frame Al gave us — 9:45 to approximately 10:15 – the machine that he told security was her favorite machine, we do not see Al playing that machine.”

Al insisted that he was at the machine during the stated time:

“Well, the response to that is that he was evidently looking at the tape of the wrong machine.”

Det. Ball said he’s sure he viewed the correct tape:

“I have checked with the surveillance personnel for the hotel and they have advised me that this is the group of machines that Al Henderson told the security personnel was Jeannie’s favorite machine.”

Investigators began to wonder if Jean had been in Laughlin at all. According to Det. Ball, eventually the police found a waitress who had served Al and Jean on the day they arrived:

“Other than the coffee shop, we have nobody seeing Jeannie in the Laughlin area.”

So where was Jean Moore between the Monday sighting and Thursday, when she supposedly disappeared? A few weeks later, a witness came forward with a possible answer. A friend of Jean’s claimed she saw the couple 150 miles away from Laughlin. They were at a gas station in their hometown of Apple Valley, the day before Jean was reported missing. Det. Ball spoke to the witness:

“The witness remembered the time because they were in route to a school function … at that time, and pinpointed the time and date.”

Al claimed there are phone records to prove that both he and Jean were in Laughlin at that date and time:

“I’ve provided several people with copies of my telephone log from Call USA, showing that I made a call from Laughlin to the Victorville area at a little bit after three on that day. I had another call, I think it was at 6:59, on that day. So you’ve got less than four hours. And it’s physically impossible, even if all you did is drive from Laughlin and turn around and go back, you can’t do it in less than six hours.”

Phone records verify that calls were made from Laughlin on April 8. Also, Al’s bookkeeper, Geraldine Fender, said both Al and Jean called her from Laughlin that same Wednesday evening:

“We discussed various things and then he said, ‘Well, just a minute, Jeannie wants to say hi, too.’ So Jeannie got on the phone and she was just happier than happy could be ’cause she had run into a stroke of luck on one of the poker machines.”

Jean Moore was reported missing less than 24 hours later.

Through it all, Al Henderson has been adamant that he wants nothing more than to see his fiancé again:

“Unequivocally, I had nothing to do with the disappearance of Jean Moore. I had offered the $25,000 reward. I think that my net worth has gone down from around two and a half million to one million. If I could get her back, I’d give the whole one million. I would do anything to get her back.”

Jean Moore’s disappearance has no explanation. How could a woman simply vanish from a crowded casino in broad daylight?

The family says they won’t stop searching until they find the answer.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A witness disappears three days before he is scheduled to testify against a car thief ring leader.

Oliver Munson

Munson purchased a Datsun 240Z

CASE DETAILS

In January of 1983, school teacher Oliver Munson of Baltimore, Maryland, bought a used, but classic, Datsun 240Z. He had no idea that the seller, Dennis Watson, was the leader of a sophisticated car theft ring. Oliver’s new car had been stolen just three months earlier.

Watson owned a garage and used it as a cover for his “chop shop,” a place where stolen cars were dismantled and sold for parts, or simply resold with fake papers. Authorities had been quietly investigating Watson for weeks. On March 16, 1983, they moved in for a raid. Police discovered illegal titles, partially dismantled autos, and stolen vehicle I.D. tags. According to Det. Philip Goodwin of the Baltimore Police Department, one of the names that appeared in the confiscated records was “Oliver Munson.”

Police asked Oliver to testify in court against Watson. Det. Goodwin said Oliver was nervous about it, but agreed, knowing that he really had no choice. A year passed before the trial began. On February 16, 1984, three days before Oliver was to appear in court, he left for work as usual. He was never seen again. Patrick Cisna was a co-worker of Oliver’s:

“Oliver would rarely miss school, and on that particular Monday, when he didn’t arrive, some of the staff and the kids started to worry that this was not a usual practice for Oliver, and that maybe something was wrong with him.”

Oliver’s brother, James, was also worried. He went to Oliver’s house to look for him:

“I just thought maybe that he was sick and I didn’t know if he was unconscious in the house.. I didn’t know.”

Oliver was nowhere to be found. Three days later, his car was discovered just a few blocks from his home. One tire was flat. School papers and a sack lunch were on the front seat, but there was no evidence to suggest what had happened to Oliver. Det. Goodwin:

“At that time, I felt that there was something wrong. Then the decision was made here that we were looking at a kidnapping or a homicide.”

Dennis Watson became a prime suspect. During an investigation, police discovered that two other witnesses scheduled to testify against Watson in previous trials had also died under mysterious circumstances.

Ten years earlier in 1973, a man named Clinton Glenn had burned to death in a car registered to Watson. Glenn was scheduled to testify against Watson in an armed robbery trial the very next day. Based on the testimony of another witness, Watson was indicted for Glenn’s murder. However, this new witness suddenly died of a “suspicious” drug overdose, and the murder charges were dropped.

And now, Oliver Munson was missing. But with no evidence to implicate Watson, the investigation stalled. Then, police heard from a man named Hilton Solomon. Hilton’s car had been stolen just hours before Oliver disappeared. Inside the car, Hilton found a hat that would later be identified as similar to one owned by Oliver Munson. Det. Goodwin said other evidence was also found in the car:

“Hilton Solomon took his car home after it was released by Baltimore City and decided to clean the car. While he was cleaning, he found several receipts from a video store. On these receipts was the name Oliver Munson. When we went down to look at the car, we looked underneath the seat, and right by the track of the right hand front seat I found a spent cartridge case.”

Red smudges were also found on one of the receipts and tests revealed that the stains were human blood, type “O” positive. Authorities believe this was proof that Oliver had been murdered. But with no records showing his blood type, and no other hard evidence, the official investigation reached a dead end.

Oliver’s disappearance had no apparent effect on the outcome of Watson’s car theft trial. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years in prison. He was paroled in 1989, after serving half his term. However, Oliver Munson has never been found.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Robert Stack and in season four with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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When a pregnant woman and her six-year-old child mysteriously disappear, her husband becomes the prime suspect.

Missing: Cecilia Newball Gender: Female DOB: 11/20/61 Height: 4’11” to 5’ Weight: 94 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Black Remarks: Last seen 9/20/94

Rene Perez, Jr.

Missing: Rene Perez Jr. Gender: Male DOB: 2/16/88 Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown

CASE DETAILS

After a passionate two-year courtship, Alfredo Newball and Cecilia Amaya got married. Cecilia’s son from a previous marriage, Rene Perez, was the ring bearer at their wedding. The couple started their new life together in Chatsworth, California, and almost immediately, Cecilia became pregnant.

On September 20, 1994, with her due date only two weeks away, Cecilia sat down to write thank you notes for gifts from her baby shower. That day, as Alfredo left for work, he says he hesitated at the door for just a moment:

“Her being pregnant, she looked so beautiful and I went back and kissed her again. I left her sitting inside the apartment writing the thank you notes. And that was the last time that I saw my wife.”

Alfredo worked as a nurse’s assistant in a hospital and retirement home. Two-and-a-half-hours into his shift, he phoned Cecilia:

“I just had some kind of very weird feeling that something was wrong. But she never answered the phone, and for some reason, I thought she could be visiting with some friends or be at my mom’s.”

Alfredo called several times throughout the evening. Concerned, he left work early. As he approached the apartment, he noticed that Cecilia’s car was parked on the street, instead of in the building’s secured lot. He rushed into their apartment in search of his wife and stepson. Inside, there were no signs of a break-in or struggle, but there were no signs of Cecilia and Rene either.

In the Jeep, Alfredo says he found a generic store-bought good-bye card. It was signed simply, “Cecilia.” Cecilia’s wedding and engagement rings had been left on the passenger seat. Shocked, Alfredo thought his wife had left him:

“The relationship was always good. We never had any problems or fights. Why would she do something like this? Not to leave me a note like that and to leave the wedding rings. It was very confusing to me.”

Alfredo phoned the one person he thought might know where she was, her closest friend at work, Kevin Annabel. It was this phone call that first cast suspicion on Alfredo. When Kevin answered the call, Alfredo questioned whether Cecilia was there:

“And I was like, ‘Al, she’s not here, and you’re really starting to scare me.’ And he was unusually calm. If it were me, I would be screaming at the person I thought where my wife was. But I was more nervous and excited than he was.”

Alfredo said he remained calm because he thought his wife would return to him:

“I felt like she needed to be away for a few days or something, I don’t know. It was very strange, but I believed that she was coming back soon.”

The day after Cecilia disappeared, the police called Alfredo. They had been contacted by one of Cecilia’s relatives. Det. Alex Valadez of the Los Angeles Police Department took on the missing person’s case and found Alfredo’s conduct on the phone strange:

“Mr. Newball didn’t appear to be that concerned. And here he has an eight-and-a-half-month pregnant wife and a six year-old stepson that, according to everyone including Mr. Newball, all got along fine. Mr. Newball just didn’t appear to be the grieving soon-to-be new father.”

Three days later, suspicion increased when Alfredo received a letter postmarked in nearby Van Nuys, California. Inside the envelope was a card identical to the one Alfredo had found in Cecilia’s car. There was also a typewritten note from Cecilia explaining that she had gone to Honduras with another man, a doctor named Arturo. The note said that she had fallen in love with Arturo nine months earlier, and it was possible he was the father of her unborn child. Alfredo’s first impression was that his wife had indeed left him:

“But then, after reviewing the letter several times, some parts don’t sound like Cecilia. It doesn’t strike me as Cecilia at all.”

Kevin Annabel also found the letter out of character:

“I would say she was almost obsessed with Al. And when you’re that in love with a person, you don’t just meet a doctor and say, ‘Well, I think I’m going to Honduras. Let me just write my husband a note.’ That doesn’t happen.”

After examining the letter and speaking with her friends and family, Det. Valadez was convinced that the letter was not from Cecilia:

“Whoever typed this letter knew more about Alfredo’s side of the family rather than knowing very much about Cecilia’s side of the family. My best guess on this is that Cecilia’s disappearance is not by her will. I believe there’s a third party involved in this.”

In fact, six months before she disappeared, Cecilia received an odd phone call from a still unidentified woman, who may have been that third party. Cecilia told her friend Cammy Giacomi about it:

“She had gotten a call that a woman had a videotape of Al kissing another woman at a baby shower. The woman wanted Cecilia to see the tape and Cecilia had agreed to see it.”

The woman said she would phone again to arrange a meeting. But that call never came, and the matter was apparently forgotten. Then, just a few weeks before Cecilia disappeared, she got another mysterious call. This one was from a woman who claimed to work with Alfredo. Again, Cecilia confided in her friend, Cammy:

“A woman had called and said that they were going to give Al a baby shower at work. She said that she had some baby furniture and she wanted Cecilia to pick out a piece of that furniture but to keep it a secret because the shower was going to be a surprise.”

Police later learned that the call had not been made by Alfredo’s co-worker and that a baby shower had not been planned. But by then, it was too late. According to Cammy, Cecilia disappeared the same day she was supposed to meet with the lady who called about the baby shower. Det. Valadez is convinced that this is not a coincidence and still questions Alfredo’s behavior:

“It appears that someone is trying to lure her away from safety, away from her family, away from her friends, trying to get her alone. It’s my opinion that Mr. Newball is not telling me everything that he knows. As far as Cecilia’s disappearance, he may not have been there when she disappeared, but it’s my opinion that he knows something now.”

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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Was a college student abducted after a Halloween party?

Cindy Song

Missing: Gender: Female DOB: 2/25/80 Height: 5’ Weight: 110 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Black Defining Characteristics: Pierced ears and navel Remarks: Last seen 11/1/01

CASE DETAILS

Cindy Song grew up in South Korea but left in 1995 to live with her aunt and uncle in Virginia. Cindy was enjoying every minute of her new found freedom in America. But on Halloween, 2001, Cindy Song’s dream was apparently shattered. It was a Wednesday, the perfect excuse for students to party on a school night. Cindy and two of her girlfriends, Stacy Paik and Lisa Kim, showed up at their favorite haunt dressed in costumes-ready to drink and dance the night away. According to Lisa, Cindy wore a rabbit outfit:

“She had bunny ears and a tail that she had bought. It was a very cute outfit. It wasn’t like a sexy outfit. It was a very cute outfit. That was her thing, she was very cute. She liked to look cute.”

The girls partied until 2 AM. Afterwards, they stopped at a friend’s to play video games for a few hours and arrived home at 4 AM. Stacy waved goodbye to her friend and drove off. She never saw Cindy enter her apartment and has not seen her since. Unfortunately, neither has anyone else.

Brian Sprinkle was a detective for the Ferguson Township Police Department at the time of Cindy’s disappearance:

“We have no body, we have no crime scene, and we have no actual crime. So it’s been very frustrating without any of those pieces of the puzzle. And because of that it seems like she just vanished in thin air.”

Cindy Song was known to have an independent streak and liked to be spontaneous. But she was also hard-working and responsible. She was an art major at Penn State University and she achieved good grades and held down two jobs. Friends say running off on a whim was not something Cindy would do.

A search of Cindy’s apartment a few days after her disappearance showed no sign of any struggle. But according to Cindy’s friend, Stacy Paik, there were some interesting clues:

“We found her eyelashes on the counter, because she was wearing fake eyelashes. So we knew that she must have at least come in and taken those off. And her backpack was in her room as well, which she had been carrying earlier. So we knew that she at least came in and dropped that off.”

Another clue was that Cindy’s cell phone was still in her bag. Her friends noted that she never went anywhere without it. But according to Detective Sprinkle, Cindy’s bunny costume was nowhere to be found:

“We know that whenever she left the apartment she was wearing the clothes she had on that night. We also know that her purse, her pocketbook, or whatever she had with her that evening that contained her driver’s license and credit cards were with her, too, because we could not locate those in the apartment.”

Did Cindy leave her apartment later that same night? Detective Sprinkle checked her phone records, but there were no calls in or out. He then checked her credit cards and email:

“There was no activity on her credit cards. And there were no e-mails or any activity on her e-mail accounts that gave us any clue as to her disappearance.”

In early November, police and volunteers searched a wooded area near Penn State University. But there was no trace of Cindy Song. She had apparently vanished, leaving detectives with nothing to go on but hunches and theories.

So what did happen to Cindy Song that Halloween night? It seems Cindy left her apartment voluntarily, locking the door from the outside. Police wondered where she might go at 4 AM. Friends said it wasn’t unusual for Cindy to run out to a nearby 24 hour market late at night.

Then, a few days after Cindy Song disappeared, a chilling scene reportedly unfolded in Philadelphia’s Chinatown district–nearly 200 miles from Cindy’s apartment. A woman matching Cindy’s description was seen crying and yelling for help. Later, the eyewitness came forward with a description of the alleged abductor. A police artist created a composite drawing of a man with olive to light-brown complexion and medium length hair. He is not a suspect, but police would like to question him.

On Halloween night, 2001, 23-year-old Cindy Song partied into the wee hours of the night then went home to her apartment. And although she has not been seen or heard from since, her friends and family are confident that she’ll return home alive.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season twelve with Robert Stack and in season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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Is a cult responsible for a respected English professor’s disappearance?

Charles Southern disappeared

Missing: Gender: Male DOB: 7/25/48 Height: 6’2” Weight: 180 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Defining Characteristics: He may have a full beard

CASE DETAILS

In a haunting video message to his family, Don Hoffman revealed he had terminal cancer–a diagnosis he said was confirmed by three different doctors. Then, just hours after making the video, Don took his own life. An autopsy, however, found no trace of cancer. On the videotape, Don Hoffman said goodbye to five different family members. But there was no farewell to the heir to Hoffman’s estate–his second wife Terri, founder of a spiritual movement known as Conscious Development of Body, Mind, and Soul.

Terri Hoffman is at the center of what some might call a “circle of death.” The victims include Mary Levinson–drug overdose; David and Glenda Goodman–shot to death, probable double suicide; Jill Bounds–beaten to death; Sandy Cleaver–drove off a cliff in broad daylight; Sandy’s 14-year-old daughter Devereaux–drowned.

Eleven untimely deaths… eleven people with a direct or indirect link to Terri Hoffman. Now some believe a 12 th name should be added to this somber list–Charles Southern, Jr., a respected English professor. Southern mysteriously disappeared and his family now believes it may be no coincidence that he was a disciple of Terri Hoffman.

Peace, harmony, and enlightenment. Hoffman offered all this and more to Charles Southern and the others who joined her group, Conscious Development. Peter Muth was a former member who belonged to Hoffman’s sect for more than a decade:

“Part of the belief system Terri taught us was that death was really just another state of consciousness, and it wasn’t a bad thing. It wasn’t anything to fear. We also learned that the dark forces out in the universe had a name. They were the black lords, black overlords. They worked for Satan. The group we worked with was the White Brotherhood, who are good, benevolent characters. They’re on God’s side. The good guys.”

In Chicago, Charles joined a local branch of Conscious Development. Charles was assistant chairman of the English department at a local junior college. Joining Hoffman’s group was his most recent foray in an ongoing search for spiritual truth, an odyssey that had taken him to India and Africa. Charles rose quickly in Hoffman’s organization. He was soon teaching classes and leading meditation sessions. Eventually, he was invited to Terri Hoffman’s home in Dallas. By then, Terri Hoffman had begun to portray herself as a target of attack by the so-called Black Lords. During special meditation sessions, Hoffman exhorted her trusted inner circle to erect “a psychic shield around her.” Peter Muth says he saw Charles at one of these meetings:

“Now, her inner core group for fighting the battles lives in a kind of constant state of fear, because we’re always under attack from black magicians who supposedly could kill us, who could drive us insane. And as the years went by, you saw people in your group actually start to show signs of the strain, show signs of mental and emotional problems”

According to his sister, Cheryle, Charles was one of those who apparently collapsed under the pressure:

“We found Charles wandering on the street carrying a newspaper, stating, ‘I lived for art.’ We got him in the car and took him to Michael Reese hospital for examination, stating that he might be suicidal, and he also seemed to be reciting something in a strange language over and over and over again.”

After his release from the hospital, Charles stayed active in the group, but eventually became disillusioned with Hoffman. As Christmas neared, he made plans for a trip to India. In the days before he was supposed to leave, his mother, Ingerborg Southern, got a feeling that something was very wrong:

“I told him that I was disturbed and I felt that I should come to Chicago. And he said no, you don’t need to come to Chicago, because I’m perfectly all right, and I will be leaving for India in three days. So he assured me that everything was all right. And with that assurance, I didn’t go.”

That was the last time she spoke to her son. After two weeks and no word from their son, Charles’ father became worried:

“We, of course, wondered why we didn’t hear from him. But he had traveled so much and so often to so many parts of the world, I wasn’t overly concerned until he was overdue.”

Charles’ parents drove the 300 miles from Cincinnati. When they broke into their son’s house, a nagging concern for his well being turned to outright fear. Placed on a ceremonial stool from Africa were Charles’ winter dress hat and his coat, neatly folded inside out. Only later would his family learn that this was a Nigerian tribal symbol of death. Charles’ parents also discovered two barely legible notes–apparently his last will and testament. One said in part, “I came under a bad influence, and I was trying to fight it myself.” Terri Hoffman was mentioned twice and named executor of his estate. Over a 12-year period, two of Hoffman’s four husbands, her only son, six followers, and two people related to or employed by a follower came to an unnatural end. Causes of death: one murder, four fatal accidents, and six suicides.

In over half of these cases, Hoffman was named heir or beneficiary. She was designated to receive over a half a million dollars in cash, plus hundreds of thousands more in real estate, fine art, and jewelry. But authorities have not directly linked her to any of the deaths. Charles Southern is still missing. He is 6’2″ tall, weighs 180 pounds, and may have a full beard.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season nine with Robert Stack and in season seven with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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