MISSING: Runaway Train Kids

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Speaker 1 Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And this week, we're going to do something a little bit different.

Speaker 1 You already got your full-length episode on Monday, but February 3rd was National Missing Persons Day.

Speaker 1 And so one story didn't feel like enough for the thousands upon thousands of people still missing in the United States.

Speaker 1 According to Namis, at the time of this recording, they have over 24,000 active missing persons cases in their database.

Speaker 1 And while we can't cover all of them, we wanted to release these mini-episodes to highlight some missing people, some whose cases have almost no information on them.

Speaker 1 And we're going to be doing this across multiple audio chuck shows. And the cases we've chosen are actually all tied together in a certain way.
They're all from a music video from back in 1993.

Speaker 1 You might remember the song.

Speaker 1 Now, what I didn't know until recently was that the band's Soul Asylum actually featured pictures of missing kids in their video for Runaway Train.

Speaker 1 Alongside the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they featured a total of 36 missing kids. Now, 21 of those cases were resolved because of that video.

Speaker 1 Several had sadder endings where the children were determined to be deceased, but there were at least still answers.

Speaker 1 However, we found out that there are still some children from that original list of 36 that haven't been found, even all these years later.

Speaker 1 And we wanted to bring you those stories, no matter how much information there was, or more accurately wasn't there for us to work with.

Speaker 1 So today, here on Crime Junkie, Britt and I are going to take turns telling you about seven of those still missing kids right here on this episode.

Speaker 1 Then be sure to tune in to the deck on Wednesday and then Dark Down East on Thursday for episodes on those shows about two other cases from the videos.

Speaker 1 But this story, our first story, is the story of Byron Page.

Speaker 1 Byron's story starts on January 29th, 1992, when his mom Jetty gets home after work. She's expecting her 17-year-old son to be there, but she's surprised to find their home empty.

Speaker 1 From what I can tell, it doesn't sound like she goes into full panic mode. Rather, she calls one of Byron's friends, likely just hoping he's hanging out with them.

Speaker 1 And that friend says, yeah, I did see Byron earlier that day. He was at a bus stop there in Los Angeles, where they live.
From what he tells Byron's mom, it sounds like they chatted briefly.

Speaker 1 And then the friend tells Jetty that Byron had mentioned he was going to go to a music and video store in West Hollywood, which is about 20 miles away.

Speaker 1 All of this hadn't seemed too strange to the friend because Byron made this trip a lot and he didn't have a driver's license yet. So public transportation was the way he got around.
But by 7 p.m.

Speaker 1 that evening, both of Byron's parents were worried. Their son, even if he was going to go to the music and video store or wherever he was going to go with friends, was always home by then.

Speaker 1 And not only was he not home, he still hadn't made any kind of contact to say that he had had run into trouble or he was hanging out with a friend or he was going to be late for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 So at this point, they're worried enough that they call the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department that same day to report him missing.

Speaker 1 But despite Byron being a minor, the police aren't nearly as concerned as they are.

Speaker 1 According to reporting for CNN by Philip Rosenbaum and Nancy Grace, which was our primary source for this episode, Jetty is getting the distinct impression that if Byron were younger, that they would be jumping to try and find him and bring him home.

Speaker 1 But like I said, he's not a little kid. He's 17.
He's applying to colleges. So to the police, it's not an emergency.
But his parents know that he is not the kind of man to just run off.

Speaker 1 He has so much going for him. He plays soccer at school.
He's on the honor roll. He has a perfect attendance record.
He even got a great score on the PSAT and he was an aspiring writer.

Speaker 1 He actually wrote reviews of comic books, which he loves reading. One of his reviews, he even sent to a magazine.

Speaker 1 And while it wasn't published, the rejection letter was even encouraging to him, made him want to continue writing.

Speaker 1 And listen, to be fair, all of that doesn't mean he didn't want to leave home or was maybe silently struggling with his mental health, but he had never once mentioned wanting to leave.

Speaker 1 And as far as I can tell, he didn't have a reason to. And listen, Even if he did leave willingly, you would think he would have taken something with him.

Speaker 1 His clothes, money that he had saved up, those comic books he loved so much, but everything he had was still there in his room.

Speaker 1 Despite all of this, the police tell his terrified parents that they can't do anything for 24 hours.

Speaker 1 So they're left to spend the early morning hours of January 30th on their own, driving up and down the streets of LA searching for their son. They don't find him.

Speaker 1 So they decide to make flyers that include his photo and some key information. They call more of his friends, but none of his friends have any information.
And so the days start to pass.

Speaker 1 I can't find anything about the police investigation into his disappearance, if there even is one.

Speaker 1 I know someone, either police or his family, go to the music and video store to see if he made it there that day, but none of the employees remember seeing him.

Speaker 1 And I can't find anything about surveillance footage, but it being the early 90s, it's far before the days of security cameras in every single store or corner or home.

Speaker 1 So his family continues to try and search, but if they find any leads, it has never been reported on.

Speaker 1 In that CNN article, his mom talks about how painful it was to go to his high school and to have to clean out his locker and how they started getting college acceptance letters in the mail from schools that he had applied to, schools that he would never get to attend.

Speaker 1 The painful days started to slowly slip into painful weeks, which turned into months. The fall semester starts, which should have been the start of Byron's college career, but he's not there to go.

Speaker 1 And then the new year comes and goes with no sign of the young man who had his whole future ahead of him.

Speaker 1 It was 1993 when Soul Asylum releases their song Runaway Train, where Byron got featured along with other missing children.

Speaker 1 And while the song did generate additional media coverage for some cases, from what I can tell, it didn't do much for Byron.

Speaker 1 After 1993, the next update I can find is from 2010, when Byron is added to the Namus database by a Los Angeles County detective after a request for an interview for that CNN article I keep referencing.

Speaker 2 But after that, that's it.

Speaker 1 A few blogs cover Byron's disappearance, but nothing substantial comes of the coverage. That CNN article states that there are a few sightings over the years, but they don't lead to anything.

Speaker 1 And to this day, Byron remains missing. He is not thought to be a runaway, but I can't find anything about what his family or police believe did happen to him.
Today, Byron would be 49.

Speaker 1 At the time of his disappearance, he was 5'8 ⁇ , wearing black pants, a blue and white jacket, and a blue baseball cap. We'll have an age-progress picture of him on the blog post for this episode.

Speaker 1 If you have any information about his disappearance, you can contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500.

Speaker 1 Don't forget to stick around. We have six more cases today.
Britt is up next to tell you about the disappearance of Kimberly Doss. That's right now.

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Speaker 2 Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Britt.
On March 24th, 1980, a woman named Linda gets a call from her 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly, saying she wants to come home.

Speaker 2 You see, Linda had moved to Houston, Texas from Davenport, Iowa after a divorce from Kimberly's dad. But Kimberly and her sister were still going back and forth between their parents' homes.

Speaker 2 On one of those trips to Davenport to see her dad, Kimberly met a guy named Dallas, and they ended up in a relationship. And Kimberly didn't want to stay in Houston anymore.

Speaker 2 She wanted to be close to Dallas. So earlier that year, Kimberly went back to Davenport.
But instead of staying with her dad, she moved in with Dallas and his family. Linda knew his family.

Speaker 2 They lived on the same street as Kimberly's grandparents. So when she found out where Kimberly was, she let it slide.

Speaker 2 Kimberly seemed safe and happy, and they were talking regularly, so Linda didn't want to push.

Speaker 2 But then, out of the blue, Kimberly calls Linda asking for a bus ticket back to Houston, and she wants to leave immediately.

Speaker 2 Linda's probably so relieved to hear Kimberly wants to come home, so she doesn't ask a ton of questions. She just buys the ticket.

Speaker 2 The bus has a layover in Chicago, and Kimberly tells her mom she met a girl named Kathy either at the bus station or on the bus and plans to stay at her place instead of waiting at the station overnight.

Speaker 2 Linda says, okay, and waits for the call that Kimberly's made it safely to Chicago. But that call never comes.
That's when Linda knows something is wrong.

Speaker 2 Kimberly always checks in with her, and her worst nightmare becomes reality the next day when Kimberly doesn't get off the bus in Houston. Linda doesn't waste any time.

Speaker 2 She calls Houston PD to report Kimberly missing, but they won't take the report because apparently Kimberly has never made it to Houston.

Speaker 2 They say it's not their jurisdiction and Linda needs to report her missing in Davenport. So Linda calls Davenport PD since that's where Kimberly left from, but they won't take the report either.

Speaker 2 Since Kimberly intended to leave Davenport on her bus, Davenport insists it's Houston's case because she never made it there.

Speaker 2 The two departments are bouncing her back and forth, so Linda takes matters into her own hands.

Speaker 2 She writes to every police department along Kimberly's bus route with her description, asking for any information they might have about her daughter.

Speaker 2 She even travels to Chicago herself, just in case Kimberly made it that far. Chicago police aren't able to take a report either.

Speaker 2 There's no evidence that Kimberly was ever there, but they do listen to Linda and take her seriously.

Speaker 2 They try to help by driving her to places that they would check for missing girls, but no sign of Kimberly.

Speaker 2 For two two years, there's no word from Kimberly, and at this point, her family is fearing the worst.

Speaker 2 That's two years that Davenport and Houston police continue to argue over who's responsible for Kimberly's case.

Speaker 2 Finally, in 1982, Davenport PD tells Linda they'll take the report if she moves back to Iowa. So she does, no hesitation.

Speaker 2 She packs up her life, moves, and Kimberly is officially reported missing on September 1st, 1982.

Speaker 2 Now, you might be wondering why Kimberly's dad couldn't report her missing if he was living in Davenport or Dallas's family.

Speaker 2 And the family advocate we spoke with explained that Kimberly's dad wasn't very involved by that point, and we couldn't get in touch with him ourselves, and we couldn't get in touch with Dallas's living family members either to confirm whether or not they raised any flags.

Speaker 2 So, most sources report Kimberly's missing date two years after she actually went missing. Even worse, the missing person's report is filled with errors.

Speaker 2 They list Kimberly as being 16, not 14, which is how old she actually was when she vanished. And they mark her as a runaway, even though she was literally on her way back to her mom.

Speaker 2 That's the information that ended up in official databases. And that's what we had when we told her story the first time.

Speaker 2 So at the time she's officially reported missing, any investigation is already two years behind. And it's not exactly an aggressive investigation.

Speaker 2 According to the family advocate, there's no interviews with the people closest to Kimberly, no tracking down the bus drivers who worked her route, no follow-up on finding this girl named Kathy.

Speaker 2 And Davenport PD denied our FOIA request. So the full scope of their investigation, we just don't know.

Speaker 2 They did, however, fill Kimberly's family advocates FOIA recently, but when they sent her some of the files, they told her that anything from 1980 to 1991 was handwritten and may have been stored somewhere that wasn't easy to access.

Speaker 2 So it's hard to tell what, if anything, was found from that time. But even after filing the report, Linda keeps pushing on her own.

Speaker 2 By late 1984, she hires a private investigator, and for a minute, it feels like her hard work might finally be paying off when the PI hears about a potential sighting of Kimberly halfway across the country.

Speaker 2 After reaching out to the newly formed National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Linda's PI ends up connecting with a guy named Don, who runs a youth nonprofit in LA called Thursday's Child.

Speaker 2 According to Don, not only is he working closely with Nick Mick, he's seen hundreds of kids come through his shelter.

Speaker 2 And when he hears Kimberly's description from the PI, it reminds him of a girl he'd met in Hollywood about a year earlier. This girl went by Kimberly Gardner.

Speaker 2 She was being trafficked, had a gap in her front teeth like Kimberly Doss, and told Don she didn't want to do sex work anymore. But she left before he could get more information.

Speaker 2 Still, he saw her a few more times and couldn't shake the feeling that she was the daughter Linda's looking for.

Speaker 2 When Linda sends Don photos of Kimberly, he tells her without hesitation that he believes they look enough alike to be the same person. But there are some things that don't quite add up.

Speaker 2 This girl is taller, about 5'6, while Kimberly was 5'2 at the time she went missing, and she has blonde hair, not brown. And she gave a completely different birth date.

Speaker 2 But at this point, Linda hasn't seen a photo of this Kimberly Kimberly Gardner yet.

Speaker 2 So on December 21st, 1984, her family reported the sighting to police and asks Davenport PD to follow up on the lead with police in LA.

Speaker 2 But when a detective calls LAPD to try to get a mugshot of Kimberly Gardner, they say they're months behind on logging those and just say they'll call if they find anything.

Speaker 2 In the meantime, an FBI agent on Kimberly's case who's also working this lead makes things even more confusing.

Speaker 2 He tells the Davenport PD detective that Kimberly's dad said someone on his side of the family had given Kimberly money to leave town, and that Kimberly might have been pregnant or had already had a baby when she left.

Speaker 2 So the family just wants to meet the child, not bring Kimberly home. But here's the thing.

Speaker 2 When Kimberly's sister followed up on that story years later, her stepmom said she and Kimberly's dad had no idea what the FBI agent was talking about.

Speaker 2 They never said that, and they didn't believe it was true. Still, that story, the idea that Kimberly ran away maybe because of a pregnancy, seems to stick in an investigators' mind from that point on.

Speaker 2 And it probably influences how seriously they take this Hollywood sighting. Months pass.
Linda waits and waits, and no mugshot ever comes from LA.

Speaker 2 So on October 30th, 1985, almost a full year after the sighting was reported, Linda checks in with LAPD herself.

Speaker 2 And LAPD says there were two girls named Kimberly Gardner arrested around the same time, and one of them could be who she's looking for.

Speaker 2 And actually, they do have photos of that girl, even though the case files mention that they previously told Davenport that they didn't. But LAPD can't send them to her directly.

Speaker 2 So Linda's frustrations are boiling over into rage. And the next day, Linda calls Davenport PD to tell them exactly what she thinks about their investigation.

Speaker 2 Somehow, two weeks later, Davenport PD finally shows Kimberly's local family members some photos of the girl in LA that they've managed to get their hands on.

Speaker 2 They claim both Kimberly's dad and aunt ID the girl as their Kimberly.

Speaker 2 Then in January 1986, Davenport PD sends Linda the photos in the mail and claim in their reports that she makes a positive ID too.

Speaker 2 But according to the family advocate, Linda never believed that girl was her daughter. The photo she got wasn't a mugshot.
It was a blurry snapshot taken at night.

Speaker 2 And she said even then it didn't look like Kimberly. But police are convinced that Kimberly Gardner is Kimberly Doss.

Speaker 2 So they never enter Kimberly into the adult missing person system and essentially stop actively investigating, even though they still check out a few leads that come in from the public.

Speaker 2 But that doesn't stop Linda. In 1991, she walks into the police station with a new composite sketch and asks why Kimberly couldn't be added back into the NCIC as a missing person.

Speaker 2 Likely because of of this, a few months later, a sergeant finds the woman who's been going by Kimberly Gardner. Her real name is Shannon.

Speaker 2 And she remembers being asked if she was Kimberly Doss years earlier and said, no, then and no now. The sergeant noted that in his report.

Speaker 2 But two years later, in 1993, another officer looks at the files and just

Speaker 2 decides that Shannon is Kimberly after all, because just because she says she isn't Kimberly doesn't mean it's true. No new evidence, just a gut feeling without any real confirmation.

Speaker 2 So he cancels the runaway report and closes the case, since in his mind, Kimberly's found safe. So they stop looking for leads.

Speaker 2 Linda doesn't hear much from police after this, but in late 1993, she reaches out to them about something she learned from Kimberly's cousin Wendy. Something important that they may have missed.

Speaker 2 And Wendy actually brought this information to police earlier that year. She told them that back on March 23rd, 1980, the day before Kimberly called her mom, she saw Kimberly and Dallas drive by.

Speaker 2 Kimberly flipped her off. They had been in some kind of argument recently.
And Wendy yelled at Dallas to pull over so she could talk to Kimberly.

Speaker 2 He did and stepped out of his truck to talk to Wendy while Kimberly stayed inside. Then he got back in and drove back with Kimberly to his house, which was just down the road.

Speaker 2 A little while later, Wendy saw Kimberly leave Dallas' house and get into another car, a green two-door. That was the last time Wendy ever saw Kimberly, but she recognized the car.

Speaker 2 It belonged to a guy that she and Kimberly went to school with named Cecil.

Speaker 2 Even though he was a few years older than her, 17, Wendy had grown up with him and had always got a bad vibe because he did things that made her uncomfortable, like pants her and try to kiss her.

Speaker 2 When Wendy learned Kimberly had gone missing, she suspected that Cecil had something to do with it. So she went to their mutual friend, we're going to call him Fred, to ask him if he knew anything.

Speaker 2 And while we couldn't speak to Wendy, she died in 2019, we spoke to the friend of theirs, Fred, who was actually in Cecil's car that day.

Speaker 2 He said they happened to run into Kimberly, picked her up, drove around. Fred had to be back at his foster home by 3 p.m., so Cecil dropped him off and drove off with Kimberly.

Speaker 2 Fred told us that when he asked Cecil what happened, Cecil told him Kimberly left the next morning on foot without her coat. And that didn't make sense.
It was a cold march in Iowa.

Speaker 2 He even remembers there's still being snow on the ground. So why would she walk off without her coat?

Speaker 2 Fred and Wendy both believe that Kimberly never made it out of town. And they may have been right because there's never been a confirmed sighting of her at any bus station, even in Davenport.

Speaker 2 Police never found her mystery friend Kathy either. So no one's even sure exactly where Kimberly made that call to her mom from.

Speaker 2 But according to Fred, police never even interviewed Cecil, who, by the way, built up a long criminal record starting in 1985, including charges of sex abuse, assault, domestic violence, and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Speaker 2 Nine charges would have been on his record by the end of 93, the year Wendy and Linda went to police with this tip.

Speaker 2 But any information police could have gotten from Cecil died with him earlier this year.

Speaker 2 Also, this is a side note, we don't know if police ever questioned Dallas, even though as far as anyone knows, he and his family threw out her things after she failed to come back to their house.

Speaker 2 I mean, if police did question him, nothing came of it. And then Dallas died in 2011.
And on the 14th anniversary of Kimberly's disappearance, March 24th, 1994, Davenport PD reviews the case.

Speaker 2 and again decides that the woman calling herself Kimberly Gardner is their Kimberly. So the case stays closed.

Speaker 2 And the next time Linda gets any kind of update on Kimberly's case is January 12th, 1999, when she gets a sympathy card in the mail from a nonprofit organization that focuses on finding missing and exploited kids.

Speaker 2 A card in memory of Kimberly.

Speaker 2 The nonprofit puts Linda in touch with the Houston Coroner's Office, and they tell her that in 1989, Kimberly's body was found in Sugarland, Texas, and has recently been identified using dental records.

Speaker 2 But no one told Linda about this. Devastated, she once again calls Davenport PD and asks why she wasn't notified of her daughter's death.

Speaker 2 But the officer she speaks to doesn't know anything about this. And like most conversations she's had, it goes nowhere.

Speaker 2 After a week of getting passed around, Linda's finally shown a photo of the girl whose body had been found in Texas. And she immediately says, this isn't Kimberly.

Speaker 2 Turns out that girl had used Kimberly's name as an alias. It was all a mix-up.
But Davenport was told about this positive ID three months before Linda got the sympathy card in the mail.

Speaker 2 Before sending it, the nonprofit called to ask if Davenport would notify Kimberly's family, and the sergeant who took the call said, Maybe a detective who worked Kimberly's case was still around, and maybe they could do the notification.

Speaker 2 Then he wrote,

Speaker 2 This report concludes my involvement in this matter, end quote. It's unclear if he even passed that message on.

Speaker 2 And even if he did, Davenport couldn't get their act together this one time to notify Linda that as far as they knew, her daughter was dead.

Speaker 2 But because of this, they do learn that there aren't any dental records uploaded into NCIC for Kimberly, so they submit them in 2000.

Speaker 2 In 2004, police reach out to Linda when another set of remains are found in Texas.

Speaker 2 This time, she gives DNA samples, and while the remains aren't a match for Kimberly, the DNA goes into the NCIC system too.

Speaker 2 For a while, that's where the case stands for Linda, just waiting to get a match.

Speaker 2 Until October 14th, 2019, when a Davenport PD officer assigned to review Kimberly's case reaches out to meet with her and Kimberly's sister because he wants to show them a photo.

Speaker 2 It's of Shannon or Kimberly Gardner. But Linda and Kimberly's sister both said again, that is not Kimberly.
Never has been, never will be.

Speaker 2 And in 2021, that DNA file confirms once and for all that Kimberly Gardner is not Kimberly Doss. So for all those years, that false ID, the one that kept this case closed, was wrong.

Speaker 2 Then in 2023, Kimberly's sister posts a missing flyer in a Facebook group, which connects her and Linda with the woman who eventually becomes their family advocate and FOIA's Davenport PD for the case files.

Speaker 2 When they receive those files, they see clearly how this idea police had of Kimberly being a runaway without anyone actually taking the time to corroborate sightings or leads, it killed any real investigation from the very beginning.

Speaker 2 Police latched on to a false narrative and got tunnel vision on it.

Speaker 2 But now that a new detective on the case has worked with the family to separate fact from fiction, the family is working on correcting that false narrative everywhere it still appears, which is exactly what I hope this episode was able to continue to do.

Speaker 2 Kimberly went missing 45 years ago this year. She has a family who loves her and has never stopped looking for her.

Speaker 2 And their advocate told us that even after all the time that's passed and the missed opportunities, they're still optimistic about where the investigation stands today.

Speaker 2 And they want to be clear that it's not more of the same. The new detective on the case has been thorough and empathetic and communicative.

Speaker 2 And they believe that she's all in on solving this case for real this time.

Speaker 2 So if you or anyone you know has any information about the disappearance of Kimberly Doss, please contact the Davenport PD at 563-326-7979 or call Crimestoppers of the Quad Cities at 309-762-9500 to leave an anonymous tip.

Speaker 2 And don't forget to stick around. Ashley's going to tell you about the disappearance of Patrick Sean Betts right now.

Speaker 1 When Barbara Betts woke up early the morning of Thursday, January 21st, 1988 at her home in Upland, California, she knew something was wrong.

Speaker 1 Her son, Patrick Sean Betts, who went by his middle name Sean, wasn't there. Now, he'd been with the family at a local pizza joint the night before.

Speaker 1 He'd been playing arcade games in the restaurant with the owner's kid. And before they even got to eat, Sean asked his mom if he could attend a local high school basketball game.

Speaker 1 She said yes, and he left with a friend. And listen, right up front, we don't know if that friend he left with was the owner's kid or if he left with a different friend.

Speaker 1 But either way, Barbara had meant to wait up until he got home, but you know,

Speaker 1 happens. It's exhausting being an adult and a parent.
And she'd fallen asleep instead. But as she's looking around now that she's woken up, it seemed like Sean never made it home.

Speaker 1 His bed clearly hadn't been slept in, and all his stuff was there, but he was nowhere to be found. Barbara and her husband, Dennis, who's Sean's dad, made a report to the Upland Police Department.

Speaker 1 And I can only imagine that they were relieved when an officer showed up to check things out and hopefully start trying to track Sean down.

Speaker 1 But that relief, if there was any, was fleeting because the responding officer officer was unbothered by Sean's absence. He told them not to worry about it.

Speaker 1 Sean was clearly a runaway and the kid was going to have to eat at some point, right? He'd be back soon as those hunger pains kicked in. The officer was sure of it.

Speaker 1 But the Betses were adamant that Sean wasn't a runaway. But when they mentioned his upcoming juvenile court hearing, the officer was pretty much like, yep, my work here is done.

Speaker 1 Because to him, Sean was just another kid who didn't want to to face the consequences of his actions. So he took off.
To the officer, he wasn't the first and he wasn't going to be the last.

Speaker 1 But this juvenile court thing wasn't really a huge deal, at least not to Sean and his family.

Speaker 1 It was over a schoolyard tussle that presumably got broken up by a school resource officer on a power trip. And Sean hadn't been stressed about it.

Speaker 1 And they tried to explain that to the officer, but he'd already heard all he needed to hear. His mind was made up.

Speaker 1 And listen, this is like like not an okay response to any missing persons report, let alone a missing person's report about a minor.

Speaker 1 But I'm sure some of you kind of anticipated that this is going to be the response, right? Like this was the 80s. Things were different then.

Speaker 1 A missing teen was almost always categorized as a runaway at first. We've seen it so many times.
But here is what you probably didn't see coming. Sean wasn't a teen.
Sean wasn't even a tween.

Speaker 1 Sean was a little boy, one who quite quite literally still fell asleep with his blankie each night, which for the record was in his room where he left it. Point being, he was an 11-year-old child.

Speaker 1 That tussle he had gotten into took place at his elementary school. But the Upland PD was steadfast in their stance.

Speaker 1 According to a video put out by the YouTube account Crimehound, whose host did original reporting on this case, even the bizarre call that Sean's school received the morning he was reported missing didn't change their minds.

Speaker 1 Now, this call had come in before anyone even knew Sean was missing, and it was from a woman claiming to be his grandma.

Speaker 1 She told the school that she's calling to let them know Sean wouldn't be attending anymore, like ever, because he was moving to Washington to live with her.

Speaker 1 Now, the family swears up and down they had nothing to do with the call. For one thing, Sean's grandma didn't even live in Washington anymore.

Speaker 1 She had lived in Washington, but she'd moved to California recently. But even besides that, the point of the call was to make the school think that nothing was wrong when Sean didn't show up that day.

Speaker 1 But that's not what his family wanted anyone to think. They were convinced that something very, very wrong had happened and they wanted everyone to know it.

Speaker 1 And brief spoiler alert, guys, that call remains a total mystery to this day. Feeling pretty much abandoned by UPD, Sean's family mobilized to get word of his disappearance out.

Speaker 1 They knocked on doors, they conducted searches, posted flyers everywhere they could. They even got Walmart to display a whole bulletin board with pictures of Sean.

Speaker 1 Basically all the things you would expect from a police department in this situation. They also went to local media, or at least they tried to, but the media wouldn't touch Sean's case.

Speaker 1 To them, police had classified Sean as a runaway, and so There was nothing newsworthy about that.

Speaker 1 The family was still intent on finding Sean though, and they were able to gather a little bit of information about his movements the night he went missing.

Speaker 1 First, they found out that the game Sean had wanted to go to that night was actually an away game, which I don't think Sean actually knew. So him and his friend had come back to the pizza place.

Speaker 1 The owner of the pizza joint said that Sean had been there until around 9 p.m.

Speaker 2 when he left alone to walk home.

Speaker 1 The family then found a woman who worked near the pizza place and she said that she'd seen Sean that night, but he wasn't alone. He was walking with a teenage boy late that evening.

Speaker 1 Now, I don't know if this sighting was before or after Sean supposedly left at nine. Everything about the timing of that sighting is a little vague.

Speaker 1 And another open-ended question is the age of the owner's son that Sean had been hanging out with. Could he have been the older boy that Sean was seen with? I have no idea.

Speaker 1 Now, about four months after Sean's disappearance, UPD suddenly took an interest in the case.

Speaker 1 What sparked the interest is anyone's guess, but a detective came out to look around, ask a few questions of the family. And it was around this time that UPD took a person of interest into custody.

Speaker 2 Great news, right?

Speaker 1 Well, not so fast, because that person of interest was Sean's 15-year-old brother, who was, by all accounts, already devastated by his little brother's disappearance.

Speaker 1 How he became a person of interest is unclear. What is clear is that when the police chief took him to the station for questioning, no one bothered to inform his parents.

Speaker 1 It wasn't until five hours into his interrogation that his parents figured out where he was. By the time they got there, he'd already been given and failed a polygraph.

Speaker 1 And from the lobby, the family could hear investigators yelling at him in an interrogation room. I'm picturing Fist pounding, demanding a confession, which, by the way, he gave.

Speaker 1 He confessed because he was told it was the only way he would get to go home. But the confession was bogus.

Speaker 1 Sean's brother had a rock-solid alibi that placed him six or seven hours away in San Francisco the night Sean went missing.

Speaker 1 And not with just like a witness, he was on a stage in front of a crowd playing a live show with his band. He had a venue full of concert goers to back him up, but the damage was done.

Speaker 1 And the whole encounter was so traumatizing for him.

Speaker 1 If the relationship between the Betses and UPD was bad after that, it only got worse in 1991 when investigators stormed their house at daybreak one morning to conduct a raid.

Speaker 1 This was supposedly in response to an anonymous tip saying that Sean was buried under their house, but 14 or 15 hours of searching, cadaver dogs and all, turned up absolutely nothing.

Speaker 1 Once again, the case went cold. The family was thrilled when the music video featuring Sean and 35 other missing kids came out in 1993, and it brought welcomed attention and focus to Sean's case.

Speaker 1 Around this time, his picture also started being placed on milk cartons across the country as part of the National Child Safety Council's Missing Children milk carton program.

Speaker 1 But if any tips surfaced as a result, they didn't bring Sean home. Tragically, Sean's dad, Dennis, died in 2009 without ever knowing what happened to his son.

Speaker 1 As the years passed, the FBI eventually disseminated an age-progressed image of Sean to show what he'd look like at the ages of 32, 38, 42, and 45.

Speaker 1 Those have been featured everywhere, from the California Attorney General's missing person site to sites for advocacy organizations such as the Charlie Project and Namos.

Speaker 1 But the case remained ice cold all the way up until December of 2021. That's when a man named Stephen Ondik presented Sean's case at an upland city council meeting.

Speaker 1 And he did this as just like a concerned citizen, one of us crime junkies.

Speaker 1 And as luck would have it, it, the current police chief was in attendance and he ordered his investigators to re-examine Sean's case.

Speaker 1 According to reporting by Steve Scazillo over the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, interviews with potential witnesses began that same month.

Speaker 1 Upland Police Lieutenant Anthony Cabayan was quoted as saying, we are taking a different approach, giving a fresh set of eyes to the entire case.

Speaker 1 In February of 2022, Lieutenant Cabayan and Detective Stephen Wino met with Barbara and other family members, seemingly in an effort to repair the long-damaged relationship between the family and UPD.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't just a perfunctory meet and greet either. The meeting lasted two full hours.
But whatever the intent was, Barbara didn't walk away feeling very reassured.

Speaker 1 Because Steve Scizillo reported, this time for Mercury News, that they mostly asked her questions about Dennis and her sons.

Speaker 1 He quotes her in that reporting as saying, they weren't trying to show us the things they looked into. I didn't feel any better when I left.

Speaker 1 Sean's family has suspicions about what happened that night, and their suspicions mostly revolve around the pizza joint Sean had been hanging out at.

Speaker 1 Following Sean's disappearance, the owner and his family suddenly closed up shop and left town, which struck the Betses as suspicious.

Speaker 1 And actually, they didn't just leave town, they actually left the country.

Speaker 1 But the family's concerns aside, Lieutenant Cabayan says there's no evidence suggesting that that family was involved in any way.

Speaker 1 And even if their move had something to do with Sean's disappearance, which is 100% speculation, I don't think we can assume it was because they were involved necessarily in Sean's disappearance.

Speaker 1 I mean, this was the late 80s, and they were a family of immigrants, and they owned the last place this young white boy was known to be before disappearing.

Speaker 1 It's totally possible that they feared becoming scapegoats in his disappearance or the targets of community vigilantes. While looking into Sean's case, there was another thing that gave me pause.

Speaker 1 Another case of a little boy from Upland who met a tragic end. His name was Jason Matthew Lee, and he was nine years old when he went missing on July 29th of 1989.

Speaker 1 Jason lived in Upland with his grandpa, Jerry Yeager, who last saw him that evening leaving the house to go for a bike ride. But Jason didn't come home that night.

Speaker 1 And on August 4th, his battered body was found at the bottom of a cliff in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Speaker 1 Witnesses would later report having seen him at a video arcade and a bowling alley playing arcade games with some teenagers. An autopsy determined that he'd consumed alcohol before his death.

Speaker 1 And almost immediately, suspicion in his case fell on four local teenagers who were all promptly arrested.

Speaker 1 But prosecutors felt like there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge the boys and all four were eventually released. They were never charged.

Speaker 1 And like Sean's case, Jason's case remains unsolved to this day. Now, as far as I can tell, the cases were never officially linked.

Speaker 1 But the similarities to me, like down to the suspected involvement of teenage boys and each victim last playing at some kind of arcade or at least arcade games, for me, it's too stinking much to just ignore.

Speaker 1 But it seems like everyone else has. At that city council meeting back in 2021, Sean's mom also spoke, saying, quote, it's been almost 34 years.
I need some closure.

Speaker 1 His father died not knowing what happened to him. His grandmother died not knowing what happened to him.

Speaker 1 I need help from anybody that knows anything or can assist in finding out what happened to my son. An 11-year-old child just doesn't get up and vanish, end quote.

Speaker 1 So that's where you come in, crime junkies. It was one crime junkie, whether they knew it or not, who jumped started an ice-cold case.
So maybe it will be one of you who sees it to resolution.

Speaker 1 Sean would be 47 years old today. When he went missing, he was four foot seven inches tall with brown hair and green eyes.
He was last seen wearing a gray shirt, gray pants, and white shoes.

Speaker 1 If you have any information about the disappearance of Sean Betts from Upland, California in 1988, or the murder of Jason Matthew Lee, which is still unsolved, please contact the Upland Police Department at at 909-946-7624.

Speaker 1 Or you can contact Crime Stoppers at 800-222 TIPS. Britt has another case that was featured in the runaway train video to tell you about next: the disappearance of Wilda May Benoit.

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Speaker 2 I want to preface this short story with a little bit of a disclaimer. Even though we normally say there's limited information, we usually have at least a couple solid news stories to work off of.

Speaker 2 This is the first one where there is truly next to nothing out there. One repeatable report and then some Facebook comments.

Speaker 2 So I'm going to make it very clear what is reported as fact and what is being said in comments online and by whom.

Speaker 2 The whole point of the series is to cover the cases we normally can't, and maybe this will get the right people talking again. I know a lot of reporters listen to the show as well.

Speaker 2 So if you're local to Louisiana, there's a lot of room here for a crime junkie willing to roll up their sleeves and a family who needs a ton of help.

Speaker 2 14-year-old Wilda May was living with her aunt and uncle at their house in Creole, Louisiana in July of 1992.

Speaker 2 So That's naturally where she was taken on July 23rd when she was given the all-clear from the hospital staff after being treated for a shoulder injury.

Speaker 2 And FYI, there's not a whole lot of detail out there about this hospital visit.

Speaker 2 A Reddit post on her disappearance says she'd undergone shoulder surgery, but most other online forums seem to just reference an injury.

Speaker 2 And the one piece of actual reporting we have doesn't mention a hospital visit at all.

Speaker 2 And that feels like a big detail to me because Someone who's healing from surgery is gonna be a heck of a lot more vulnerable and a heck of a lot less mobile than someone who just had a few x-rays done, was given some pain meds, and sent on her way.

Speaker 2 So already, that's a big question mark for me. Jade Morrow reports for KPLC-TV that Wilda May was last seen by her uncle that evening in her bedroom at his house.

Speaker 2 And here again, there is a discrepancy in what she was last seen wearing.

Speaker 2 Some less official sources suggest she was still in the hospital gown, but That reporting by Jade Morrow states that she was last seen wearing, quote, black and white shorts with a green long-sleeve shirt that had a navy blue design on the bottom of the shirt.

Speaker 2 Either way, when the uncle woke up the next morning, Wildemay wasn't there. But that didn't feel like a super big cause for concern.
He just assumed she'd gone to work with his wife, her aunt.

Speaker 2 And that must have been the thing she did sometimes because no one seemed to find this explanation questionable at all.

Speaker 2 It wasn't until later in the day, presumably when the aunt came home from work, that anyone realized that Wildemay was gone and her aunt and uncle reported her missing.

Speaker 2 Right away, authorities seemed to assume that she was a runaway and their suspicions were only solidified when some jewelry and clothing were determined to be missing from her bedroom.

Speaker 2 But from day one, her mom, Brenda Smith, has pushed back on this assumption. She says in that same reporting for KPLC-TV that, quote, they thought she ran away and I said she was scared of the dark.

Speaker 2 isn't no way she ran away. She had to leave with someone because she wasn't going to leave by herself.

Speaker 2 And as frustrating as it is to say, that's about where the official reporting on this case ends, which isn't to say information on her disappearance totally dead ends there.

Speaker 2 Enter social media, where family members continue to do what they can to bring attention to her case.

Speaker 2 And obviously, that means the information we have isn't coming from news outlets or primary sources as we normally would use. But I think it provides important context nonetheless.

Speaker 2 And with nothing else even out there online or in newspaper archives, getting anything out about Will Demay seems important.

Speaker 2 For example, a user on Web Sleuths who identifies herself as Will Demay's cousin, Sarah Benoit, gives us a tiny bit more insight into why authorities clung so tightly to the runaway theory in the first place.

Speaker 2 And brace yourselves, because it is underwhelming.

Speaker 2 According to Sarah, it all boiled down to an unnamed friend of Will Demay's mentioning to someone, possibly authorities at some time, presumably early on, that she may have gone to Florida.

Speaker 2 Why, Florida? Your guess is honestly as good as mine. I can't find anything suggesting she had any connections there.
And Sarah says she had no family there to run to.

Speaker 2 She does mention Wildemay's quote-unquote older boyfriend. So maybe Wildemay ran off with him to Florida or to anywhere really, except there's a catch.

Speaker 2 The boyfriend didn't leave town around the time Wildemay disappeared, so he couldn't have run off with her. Now, that's not the only reference to this boyfriend that pops up in online forums.

Speaker 2 When KPLC-TV posted the story I referenced earlier on their Facebook page, it sparked a lot of debate in the comment section.

Speaker 2 Of particular interest is a back and forth between one woman named Hope Benoit, who says she's Wildemay's younger sister, and another woman named Shaila Cherie Henderson, who says she's Wildemay and Hope's cousin.

Speaker 2 and the daughter of the aunt and uncle Wildemay was living with when she went missing.

Speaker 2 And here we get a little peek into just how Wildemay got that shoulder injury that landed her in the hospital before her disappearance. According to Shila, it wasn't just any old shoulder injury.

Speaker 2 Her claim is that it was a domestic violence injury at the hands of her boyfriend. What spurred Shila to jump into the conversation in the first place was a comment left by Hope.

Speaker 2 Like Shila, Hope hints at foul play, but she points the finger in a different direction. I'm just going to read the entire comment here.
She says, quote, let's clear the air.

Speaker 2 My aunt was never a suspect. She lives with the fact every day for 30 years that she did not check on my sister before she left for work that morning.

Speaker 2 But I'm sorry to say, my uncle knows more than he's saying. It's time for the truth.

Speaker 2 Now, I want to be really clear that this one Facebook comment seems to be the sum total of any public allegations against Wilde May's uncle.

Speaker 2 And Hope doesn't give an explanation about why her uncle would have wanted to harm Wilde May.

Speaker 2 There are also no additional claims against Wilde May's boyfriend other than Facebook comments, which could be put up by anyone if they wanted to create a fake profile, though the profiles being used do seem to have a long history with documented activity going back at least as far as 2012.

Speaker 2 When Shila chimes in to defend her dad, Hope acknowledges that she's working with limited information. She says, quote, I was only 10 when she went missing.

Speaker 2 I only know what was said, but I truly feel like your dad knows more than what was told.

Speaker 2 And this leads me to the last theory put forward online, this time by someone claiming to be a former schoolmate and neighbor.

Speaker 2 This person uses the handle ap underscore Troy on web sluice, and they point out that the area Wildemay disappeared from is both rural and potentially perilous.

Speaker 2 I mean, we're talking about southwest Louisiana here after all, and the area is surrounded by marshland.

Speaker 2 According to this user, if Wildemay had wandered outside under the influence of the medications she was on, it wouldn't be unthinkable that she could have encountered dangerous wildlife like a coyote or an alligator.

Speaker 2 The user goes on to say, quote, a lot of us who knew her in school still wonder about her and hope she did run away and is living happy somewhere.

Speaker 2 But honestly, the more years that go by, most of us tend to believe she wandered off in the night while on the pain meds from her surgery and had something bad happen to her.

Speaker 2 And I can't help but think that even if she didn't wander outside disoriented from the meds, If she was lured out there or if she was taken out there by force, I mean, the predator-rich environment could still explain why she's never been found.

Speaker 2 So now I turn it over to you, crime junkies.

Speaker 2 If you have any information about the disappearance of Wilde May Benoit on July 23rd, 1992, please reach out to the Cameron Parish Sheriff's Office at 337-775-5111.

Speaker 2 And now back to Ashley, who's going to tell you about the disappearance of Dwayne Fochman next.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to start out this episode with what we know, which, like I said, isn't much. Dwayne Fochman was 15 years old when he went missing from Lincoln City, Oregon on July 22nd, 1986.

Speaker 1 The circumstances surrounding his disappearance haven't been reported on. So where he was going, who he was with, his home life, those are all mysteries to me.

Speaker 1 In fact, the first real reporting I can find on his disappearance comes from an article in People from 2019, 33 years after he vanished. And the article doesn't even focus on him.

Speaker 1 It is a list of the still missing kids featured in the runaway train music video by Soul Asylum, a list that we used when identifying the stories that we would talk about across all of our shows and episodes.

Speaker 1 If there was any reporting at the time, our research team couldn't find it.

Speaker 1 Although, I doubt there was really any reporting at the time, because according to a Facebook post made by For the Missing Pacific Northwest, Duane is thought to have left home on his own, at least at first.

Speaker 1 But now he's classified as endangered missing by the Doe Network. No one has seen or heard from him since that day in July of 1986.

Speaker 1 And from what I can tell, it looks like foul play is suspected in his disappearance. And that is literally all we could find.
at least from official sources.

Speaker 1 So that's when we dove into the comment section and forums to see if we could dredge up anything there.

Speaker 1 And we did find a few comments from people claiming to be related to Dwayne in some way, and they added a few more details to his story.

Speaker 1 Now, listen, there's no way to verify these comments are being truthful. Anyone can say anything online.
So take everything I'm about to say with several grains of salt.

Speaker 1 I hope that one day we can dive deeper into his story and do our own original reporting, but true to the format of the original music video, we wanted to focus on getting the the word out as quick as we could once I learned about these cases.

Speaker 1 So if anyone listening knew Dwayne or honestly, any of the people we have or are going to highlight in these short episodes and you want more coverage, please reach out to us.

Speaker 1 That being said, the first comment that caught my eye was from someone claiming to be married to Dwayne's cousin.

Speaker 1 In a 2010 comment on a Web Sluths forum, they said Dwayne was seen getting into a red Corvette on Highway 101.

Speaker 1 And this is why police believed he was a runaway at the time. But the commenter said that never sat right with Duane's family, especially his father.
It just didn't make sense.

Speaker 1 If Dwayne was a runaway, you'd think he would have picked up his paycheck that day or even taken some more money that he had at home, or at the very least, taken his cigarettes, because according to this person, he was a heavy smoker.

Speaker 1 But all of these things were left behind. Now, again, I can't confirm any of that, but Highway 101 is a major highway that runs along the west coast from Washington to California.

Speaker 1 So if he really did get get into a car on that highway, whoever he was with could have easily taken him anywhere. Another commenter on Web Sleuths claimed to be Dwayne's third cousin.

Speaker 1 And in 2020, they said that Duane's father died in 2012, never knowing what happened to his son.

Speaker 1 They also asked for help figuring out where Dwayne's DNA was uploaded because apparently his DNA was uploaded to some database. This user just didn't know where.

Speaker 1 Now, it seems like they ended up finding it because someone with the same username posted on Reddit that they had gotten some help and found out some more information that hadn't previously been published, like the fact that Dwayne was an only child, his mother had passed away when he was young, and his father had a minor criminal history, although they didn't go into detail.

Speaker 1 They theorized it was possible Dwayne had left to escape an unhappy home life, but if we are to believe he truly left his paycheck and didn't have a car, that doesn't totally add up.

Speaker 1 And that detail about the paycheck is echoed in that same Reddit thread by another person claiming to be a relative of Dwayne too.

Speaker 1 This person claimed that the authorities never looked for Duane in part because he didn't come from a wealthy family.

Speaker 1 And while I can't verify that, we've seen how families' wealth and status can play a huge role in how seriously their cases are taken time and time again.

Speaker 1 So combine that with the automatic assumption that some investigators make that all teens are runaways, and it's no wonder Dwayne's disappearance was never solved. Dwayne would be 52 years old today.

Speaker 1 He was 5'5 with brown hair and eyes. His profile on Namis states that a finger on his right hand was disabled and one of his ears may have been pierced.

Speaker 1 He was last seen wearing blue jeans and a black jacket. And while his first name is spelt D-U-A-N-E,

Speaker 1 he may have also spelled it D-W-A-Y-N-E.

Speaker 1 If you have any information about Dwayne's disappearance, you can contact the Lincoln City Police Department. at 541-994-3636.

Speaker 1 Up next, Britt is going to tell you about the disappearance of Martha Dunn. You can listen to that right now.

Speaker 2 By all accounts, in September of 1990, 15-year-old Martha Wes Dunn was struggling.

Speaker 2 When her parents came to pick her up on the 4th from a relative's house in Oklahoma, where she'd been staying, she was visibly upset.

Speaker 2 She did not want to go home with them to Dangerfield, Texas, and she didn't hide it. But school year was about to start and she didn't have a choice.

Speaker 2 And sure, find me the teenage girl who hasn't argued with her parents about something like this. It's such an easy thing to forget as adults just how hard it is to be a teenager.

Speaker 2 But it seems like Martha's problems may be extended beyond the run-of-the-mill teenage angst.

Speaker 2 According to reporting by Krista Wood for local outlet KETK, she was quote-unquote heavily involved with drugs when she went missing.

Speaker 2 When they made it back to Texas that day, everyone was accounted for, if not thrilled to be there. When her parents reported her missing around 5 a.m.

Speaker 2 two mornings later, the morning of the 6th, they said the last time they'd seen her was a little bit before 2:30 the afternoon before.

Speaker 2 And it's not totally clear how this was known, but ultimately it might not matter.

Speaker 2 But Elon Green reports for Mel magazine that she spoke to her boyfriend, 17-year-old Eric Owens, who also lived in Dangerfield that night around 10.

Speaker 2 And we rely heavily on Elon's reporting for this episode, just FYI. It's one of the limited pieces of reporting out there on this case.

Speaker 2 Either way, I don't think it would have been Eric who confirmed that call because he was missing too. But investigators do seem confident that the call did occur.

Speaker 2 And for once, it seems like the authorities and the family were kind of on the same page about what likely had happened. Martha and Eric had probably run away together.

Speaker 2 Considering that she'd just been fighting with her parents about coming home to Texas the day before she was reported missing, it wasn't necessarily an illogical conclusion.

Speaker 2 There were even a few known places they might have headed. One possibility thrown around was that they went to Hayworth, Oklahoma, where Eric's aunt lived, or possibly Kansas, where his mom lived.

Speaker 2 But according to Chief Deputy Robbie Gray with the Morris County Sheriff's Office, both those possibilities were looked into and discredited.

Speaker 2 And this is where things got weird, at least to me, because just a few weeks later on September 30th, Martha's dad contacted investigators with some strange information.

Speaker 2 He said he'd received a call from a quote unquote friend in Durant, Oklahoma, and this friend reported seeing Martha and Eric there.

Speaker 2 The friend claimed that they weren't in the best shape, quote, dirty and hungry are the words he supposedly used to describe them.

Speaker 2 So being a good pal, the friend told Martha's dad that he'd helped clean them up, gotten them some food, and

Speaker 2 That's all. That's where the lead ended.
Chief Deputy Ray said it was looked into, but nothing came of it.

Speaker 2 And like, I have all the questions here because what are the odds that a dude in Durant, Oklahoma recognized these two teenage runaways from 150 miles away in Dangerfield, Texas, who presumably didn't want to be recognized, right?

Speaker 2 And he just so happened to have one of their dads on speed dial.

Speaker 2 I mean, okay, I'm being a little bit hyperbolic and sarcastic about the speed dial part, but I mean, really, he at least knew his number and knew to call him, but he waited until he wasn't with them to phone it in.

Speaker 2 And I don't know, maybe I'm over here connecting dots that just shouldn't be connected, but Martha's dad eventually put forward another bizarre theory that makes me feel even weirder about this phone call story.

Speaker 2 Remember how I said that Martha was heavily into drugs? Well, that was apparently something she shared with Eric, or at least with Eric, it might have gone deeper than mere use.

Speaker 2 It's possible that he was like in the Oklahoma drug trade, which if true, could have had him crossing paths with some pretty shady people.

Speaker 2 So Martha's dad suggested to investigators that maybe Martha and Eric had been kidnapped by drug dealers from two separate locations, possibly on two separate days, for ransom.

Speaker 2 The fact that there was no ransom note must have just been an oversight on the part of the abductors.

Speaker 2 In his reporting for Mel magazine, Elon Green asked Chief Deputy Gray if there was any evidence that Martha and Eric might have met foul play.

Speaker 2 And his answer is interesting. He says, quote, no, not really.
The reason why is if you knew her parents, they were kind of strange. They were different.
I'll put it that way.

Speaker 2 When this happened, you would have actually thought, okay, yeah, she's trying to get out from underneath them. But if that's true, what about Eric?

Speaker 2 Not much is known about his home life, so maybe he was okay walking away too.

Speaker 2 But what if Martha didn't just walk away? This is where you enter the online forum territory, but there is someone on the Unsolved Mystery subreddit who claims to have been neighbors of the Duns.

Speaker 2 And this person has a wild theory about Martha being buried on the family property and a story about being shown blood at the house, which turned out to be animal.

Speaker 2 But remember, you can claim to be just about anyone and say just about anything online. I'm not trying to call anyone out as a liar.

Speaker 2 I just think it's really important that we be discerning of the information we take in online.

Speaker 2 All these years later, Martha and Eric's whereabouts remain a mystery, and it's not clear that Texas even considers Eric a missing person.

Speaker 2 Though he's got profiles on both Nick Nick and the Charlie Project, he's not included in Texas's Missing Persons Clearinghouse, which is an official database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety, though Martha is.

Speaker 2 Similarly, the website for the Northeast Texas area Crime Stoppers lists only two missing persons from the area, Martha and a guy named Clinton Eugene Thompson.

Speaker 2 Thankfully, that's not to say no one is looking.

Speaker 2 Annette Lawless reports for Cake News, an outlet in Kansas, that at least as of January of 2020, the Augusta Department of Public Safety in Kansas was actively trying to locate Eric based on the fact that that's where his mom lived at the time.

Speaker 2 And that's pretty much where things stand today.

Speaker 2 So, Crime Junkies, if you have any information about the 1990 disappearance of Martha West Dunn and Eric Owens, please contact the Morris County Sheriff's Office at 903-645-2232 or the Augusta Department of Public Safety at 316-775-4500.

Speaker 2 Up next is our seventh and final case we're highlighting on Crime Junkie, and that is the disappearance of Christopher Kersey. Ashley's going to tell you his story right now.

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Speaker 1 When Alona Kersey got home from work at around 3 p.m. on April 20th, 1990, she expected her son to be there.

Speaker 1 17-year-old Christopher Kersey, or Chris, had stayed home from school that day with a headache, so she was surprised to find the house empty and the family Dodge caravan missing.

Speaker 1 Now, she wasn't too concerned right away, though, because laying on the kitchen table was a note in Chris's handwriting. It said, quote, mom, something important came up and feeling somewhat better.

Speaker 1 Back by six, unless I get lost. Love Chris.

Speaker 1 He underlined the words get lost, which Alona thought was supposed to be a joke.

Speaker 1 Chris was known to get lost outside of their neighborhood because he hadn't been driving for very long, so she wasn't all that worried.

Speaker 1 even though she didn't know what could have come up or where he went. But there was one thing that struck her as a little odd.
Their dog had been let off its leash.

Speaker 1 Now, I don't know if this was an outside dog or an inside dog, but it was normally leashed during the day.

Speaker 1 The dog being unleashed wasn't that big of a deal, though, so she went about the rest of her day as normal. But 6 p.m.
came and went, and then seven and then eight. And by 10 p.m., Alona was worried.

Speaker 1 Chris still wasn't home and he hadn't called to check in or tell his mom where he was. So that's when Alona called her sister who lived nearby to see if she had seen or heard from Chris.

Speaker 1 But all the sources I've read imply that she hadn't. With a sense of panic rising in her gut, Alona called her husband Jim, who was out of town on a work trip to fill him in on what was going on.

Speaker 1 And he got so worried that he drove home right then, arriving just around midnight. Now, I can't find anything explaining why they got so worried immediately.

Speaker 1 But in an interview for the Pioneer Press slash twincities.com, Jim states that Chris wasn't one to just go go off the grid like this.

Speaker 1 He wasn't a kid who played hookie, he did well in school, so leaving without telling anyone where he was going and then just not showing back up was way out of character.

Speaker 1 Despite his parents being worried out of their minds, the police there in Egan, Minnesota weren't.

Speaker 1 Alona called them to report Chris missing, but got the same response we have heard over and over again. especially in these highlight episodes.

Speaker 1 It hadn't been 24 hours, so Chris wasn't considered a missing person.

Speaker 1 According to Lisa Rosemore's article for the Grand Rapids Herald Review, he was reported as a runaway, but that just didn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 Sure, he had the family's van, but his clothes and personal belongings were all still at the house. So if he'd been planning to run away, you'd think he would have taken something with him.

Speaker 1 However, either one or two days after he went missing, A letter arrived at the Kersey home from Chris. It was mailed from Duluth, which is roughly two and a half hours north of Egan.

Speaker 1 The full contents of the note have never been released as far as I can tell, but I did find a blog post from the Morbid Library by C.J.

Speaker 1 Lynch that states that in this letter, Chris admitted to lying about his headache so that he would be able to take the family car. He said he needed to get away and that he intended to die by suicide.

Speaker 2 And he apologized for the hurt that he caused.

Speaker 1 Now, I can't verify if that's like word for word what the note actually said.

Speaker 1 But regardless of the specific wording, it is confirmed in verified reporting that whatever was written was considered to be a suicide note by authorities.

Speaker 1 In that same interview for the Pioneer Press slash twincities.com, Jim describes how it felt to read that letter.

Speaker 1 He said, quote, I tell you, when people talk about their heart sinking, I used to think that it was some metaphor. It's not.

Speaker 1 You can be so torn up that your heart actually feels like it's it's dropping. It weighs a lot.
It's a moment that I hope never to live through again. ⁇ End quote.

Speaker 1 Even though Jim and Alona hadn't noticed anything off about their son's behavior, they found some evidence that what the note said might have been true.

Speaker 1 Chris's youngest brother found that Jim's shotgun wasn't in the house. And when his parents checked Chris's bank account, they had found that he'd withdrawn $200 after he left their house that day.

Speaker 1 Now, that being said, it didn't appear that Chris had taken any any ammo with him, and Jim didn't think that Chris was familiar enough with the gun to be able to actually use it.

Speaker 1 But that wasn't much of a comfort, especially when two days after he went missing, the family car was found roughly three and a half hours north near Continental Divide Wayside Rest on Highway 38.

Speaker 1 It was left in a wooded area, and inside Chris had left the keys with a note saying that the van was owned by his parents.

Speaker 1 That same day, authorities began a search in the area surrounding where the van was found.

Speaker 1 They brought in a dog and a helicopter to help, and the dog actually did pick up a scent leading to the woods, but then the scent disappeared, and it didn't lead them to Chris or his father's gun or any belongings that he may have had on it.

Speaker 1 But that wasn't the end of things. Because soon after Chris went missing, Jim got a call from someone who claimed to have picked up a hitchhiker from Highway 38 and taken them to Duluth.

Speaker 1 Now, I'm not sure if the caller described the person they picked up and if this person matched Chris's Chris's description or what, but if you remember, Duluth is where Chris's letter was postmarked from, so it could have been him.

Speaker 1 There was no way to tell, though, and it seems like police didn't think this lead was very credible because they continued doing searches in the area around where the van was found instead.

Speaker 1 Now, that call from the person claiming that they picked up a hitchhiker wasn't the only strange call that the Curizzi family received.

Speaker 1 Starting that spring and then continuing for about six months after, they would get random calls from someone who they believed was Chris.

Speaker 2 But the caller never said that, though.

Speaker 1 In fact, the caller never said much of anything. All they could hear on the other end of the line was what sounded like a party.
And when they would speak, whoever was calling would just hang up.

Speaker 1 Now, I know this doesn't really indicate who was on the other end, but Chris's best friend also got these calls, which...

Speaker 1 That's what led them to believe it really was Chris, one of the only people they felt would know both phone numbers.

Speaker 1 The Kerseys tried to work with police to trace where these calls were coming from, but for whatever reason, they were never able to track them.

Speaker 1 And then about six months after they started, the calls just stopped coming in. The leads dried up after that until 1993, when you guessed it.

Speaker 1 Once the Soul Asylum video came out, investigators got a possible lead from someone who claimed that they hung out with Chris in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, presumably after he went missing.

Speaker 1 But that lead fell flat. And then after that, the already chilly case went cold.
Over the following years, Chris's family clung on to hope that he was still out there somewhere.

Speaker 1 But there were no more calls and no one came forward with any information that might lead to his discovery.

Speaker 1 In 2004, the Egan police got a letter from someone in Seattle saying that Chris was, quote, a guardian angel and we should stop looking, end quote.

Speaker 1 But after looking into that, they found that the letter wasn't a viable lead. Almost 10 years later, in 2013, Chris's parents moved to another town in Minnesota.

Speaker 1 They kept their same phone number just in case Chris wanted to call. In 2016, interest was renewed in Chris's case with the discovery of Jacob Wetterling's body.

Speaker 1 We actually did a precedent episode on Jacob's case back in 2022, but in case you missed it, Jacob was 11 years old when he was abducted from St. Joseph, Minnesota in 1989.

Speaker 1 His remains were discovered in September of 2016 in a field about a half hour away from where he was abducted.

Speaker 1 Now, to my knowledge, Jacob's killer was never considered a suspect in Chris's disappearance. And to be clear, there's no indication that foul play was even considered at all, before or after this.

Speaker 1 But with Jacob's case finally being solved after 27 years, there was renewed hope that Chris's could be too. Maybe they could find him or his remains and bring him home.

Speaker 1 So authorities in both Egan, where Chris was from, and Itasca County, where the van was found, encouraged hunters in the area to be on the lookout for anything that might give them a clue as to what happened.

Speaker 1 Specifically, they asked them to keep an eye out for the missing shotgun or a watch that Chris might have been wearing when he vanished.

Speaker 1 It was a plastic swatch watch with black and white stripes, kind of like a zebra. But neither the shotgun nor the watch were ever recovered.

Speaker 1 The last update from Chris's case I could find was from May of 2018 when a search was conducted around Highway 38 where the van was found.

Speaker 1 They went armed with metal detectors in hope of finding that gun, but again, it wasn't found and neither was Chris.

Speaker 1 But his family is still hoping he'll come home or that they'll at least find out what happened to him. If he is still alive today, he would be 50 years old.

Speaker 1 When Chris went missing, he was 5'11 with brown hair and brown eyes.

Speaker 1 He wore glasses and contacts, and when he was last seen, he was wearing jeans, brown boat shoes, a black sweatshirt, and an acid-washed blue denim duster.

Speaker 1 He also may have been wearing that black and white plastic watch.

Speaker 1 Police are interested in speaking to anyone who may have interacted with Chris, or if you happen to find a 1954 to 1956 Mossberg 20 gauge bolt action shotgun in the area surrounding Highway 38, south of Marcel, Minnesota.

Speaker 1 Police would love to hear from you. You can contact the Egan Police Department at 651-675-5700.

Speaker 1 I hope you found these short highlight episodes beneficial.

Speaker 1 If you are a law enforcement agency or a family member of one of the people that we've mentioned in this or any of the highlight episodes and you're looking for more coverage on the case, please reach out.

Speaker 1 We would love to speak with you and see how we can support. You can email us at crimejunkie at audiochuck.com.
That email will be in our show notes.

Speaker 1 And don't forget, there are still two more cases that we're highlighting from the 1993 music video for the song Runaway Train by Soul Asylum.

Speaker 1 You can listen to the full story of Andrea Durham over on the deck this Wednesday. It was her case that actually introduced me to all the others that we're covering across the network.

Speaker 1 And then finally, over on Dark Down East, Kylie will tell you about the disappearance of Jonathan Longo on Thursday.

Speaker 1 You can find all the source material for these highlight episodes on our blog post on the website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. You can also follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.

Speaker 1 And Britt Britt and I will be back on Monday with our regularly scheduled Crime Junkie episode.

Speaker 1 Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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Speaker 1 Have you ever experienced something truly unexplainable?

Speaker 1 A moment that felt almost like a vivid dream, leaving you with a lingering sense of wonder, leaving you questioning everything you thought you knew?

Speaker 1 Perhaps it was a fleeting glimpse of something extraordinary, a chilling whisper in the dead of night, or an undeniable premonition that comes to life.

Speaker 1 I'm Yvette Gentile, and I'm her sister, Rasha Pecaro.

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