The Girlfriends S2/Bonus 3 - The Girlfriends’ Guide to: Finding a Missing Person

This is an iHeart podcast.

Every day has a to-do list, but adding Enjoy Belveda to yours can help you knock out the rest of it.

Belveda breakfast biscuits are a tasty and convenient breakfast option when paired with low-fat yogurt and fruit that provides steady energy all morning.

While Belveeta Energy snack bites give you the perfect mid-morning refuel, best part, they both taste great.

So make the most out of your morning with a bite of Belveeta.

Pick up a pack of Velveeta at your local store today.

Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new.

Show me all the things PDFs can do.

Do your work with ease and speed.

PDF spaces is all you need.

Do hours of research in an instant.

With key insights from an AI assistant.

Pick a template with a click.

Now your Prezo looks super slick.

Close that deal, yeah, you won.

Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Now you can do that, do that, with Acrobat.

Now you can do that, do that with the all-new Acrobat.

It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio.

What if your drive was fueled with more?

Shell V Power Nitro Plus Premium Gasoline gives you more protection, more power, and more performance with every drive across the Bay Area.

Shell V Power Nitro Plus 93 delivers improved performance and responsiveness.

Shell V Power Nitro Plus Premium Gasoline get more performance with every drive.

Compared to lower action fuels and gasoline-directed injection engine fuel injectors, actual effects and benefits may vary according to vehicle type, driving conditions, and driving style.

Heather is a nurse practitioner from United Healthcare.

We meet patients wherever they live.

During a house call, she found Jack had an issue.

Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high.

It was 217 over 110.

So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.

He had had a stamp placed in his heart, preventing a massive heart attack.

If it wasn't for my guardian angels, I wouldn't be here.

Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare.com.

Benefits, features, and/or devices vary by plan area, limitation, and exclusions apply.

Novel

Hey, I'm Anna Sinfield, and I'm back with another episode of The Girlfriend's Guide, where I use expert interviews, real-life experiences, and research to show you how to fight crime and keep your girlfriends safe.

Today, we're focusing on the over 600,000 people who go missing every year in the United States, not to mention the troubling 170,000 here in the UK.

No one is really taught what to do if someone you know goes missing.

Until now.

From the teens at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, you're listening to The Girlfriend's Guide, Episode 2: Finding a Missing Person.

On a Facebook group called Missing Black Persons, I saw a

woman was looking for her sister who's been missing for 42 years.

This is Real Montero.

He's a citizen sleuth from New York, and he attempts to track down missing people and identify deceased people all across North America.

She was 16 years old, missing from Harlem,

and

just seeing the pictures of her sister,

like you automatically know, like, all right, this is, this is my new obsession.

Like, and it's not an obsession in a creepy way.

It's an obsession in, I have to do whatever I can because

you're instantly compelled to help.

So I reached out to the admin of missing black persons and they're just phenomenal.

And I also reached out to the sister, this young woman, her name is Stacey Reddish, 16 years old when she went missing.

I was just so compelled by her, by the story, by the infuriating lack of attention by NYPD

in the 80s.

When the family reported Stacy missing the very first night, they said, well, she's probably with her boyfriend.

She'll come back.

They didn't like that answer.

They went home.

They put missing persons, flyers out all over Harlem.

They went looking for her everywhere.

They went back to the police station the next day.

They were refused.

She said, well, she'll come home eventually.

You know, runaways always do.

And this is the rubber stamping of,

in a way, prejudices.

She's a runaway, whatever.

But just the refusal of the police departments to do anything to find Stacy, and she's 16 years old.

That's a minor.

Granted, it's Harlem in the 80s, which is in and of itself a terrible statement.

But there just wasn't support.

There wasn't care.

There wasn't enough

educated law enforcement officers to know what to do other than she'll come back.

Well, she didn't.

Earlier this summer, 42 years later, the family tried to go back and report her.

They wanted to know what happened.

You said 42 years ago, she'll come back.

She hasn't, so we want to know.

And they told her at the precinct, well, we can't do anything here at the precinct.

Go back to the place you last saw her and call 911.

Which is infuriating.

Even me repeating that makes me want to bang my head because it's so

wrong.

What?

So you call 911 and say, I'd like to report a missing person.

They went missing 42 years ago.

Yeah, so they went back to the original location.

They made the attempt to do that.

There happened to be a police officer at that location for something else, whatever, or he was just passing by.

And

he chuckled and said, This is 42 years ago.

There's nothing they can do.

So, what can be done to help a family like like Stacey's?

And what should you do if your loved one goes missing today?

That's after the break.

Tired of spills and stains on your sofa?

WashableSofas.com has your back, featuring the Anibay Collection, the only designer sofa that's machine-washable inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.

That's right, sofas started just $699.

Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant and changeable slip covers made with performance fabrics.

Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.

Check out washablesofas.com and get up to 60% off your Anibay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund.

No return shipping or restocking fees.

Every penny back.

Upgrade now at washable sofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

What happens when Delta Airlines sends four creators around the world to find out what is the true power of travel?

I think it helped me sort of like get grounded.

I think I unlocked some like childhood dream.

Turn my stress into excitement.

Take that gratitude from those experiences into your daily life.

That's why Jimma Speg, host of The Psychology of Your 20s, sat down with Dr.

Henry Ting, Delta's chief health and wellness officer, an instrumental voice behind this travel experiment.

I love that the drain trip versus, you know, the around the corner trip both had very similar mental and social perks and benefits.

Oh, yeah, very much so.

On both trips, their emotional well-being and social well-being went through the roof.

Find out more about how travel can support well-being on this special episode of the Psychology of Your 20s, presented by Delta.

Fly and live better.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Tired of doing the dinner dash?

Walmart delivers delicious, low-cost recipes with just a few clicks in the app.

Who knew?

Get crowd pleasers like creamy Tuscan chicken and easy beef and broccoli delivered in the time it usually takes you just to plan dinner.

And if you don't love our produce, contact us for a full refund.

Goodbye, dinner Drama.

Hello, dinner at your door in as fast as an hour.

Find it all in the recipe hub.

The Walmart you thought you knew is now new.

Subject to availability, fees and restrictions apply.

This is Jonas Knox from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe, and on Fox One, now you can stream your favorite live sports so you can be there live for the biggest moments.

That means NFL Sundays, college football games, NASCAR, MLB postseason, and more.

With Fox One, you'll get it all live.

Edge of your seat plays, jaw-dropping, high-octane moments, and that feeling like you're right there in the action.

Fox One, we live for live, streaming now.

As an investigator, missing person cases is a big puzzle.

This is Captain Urbanski.

He spent years working as a detective in the New Jersey Missing Persons Unit.

When local police departments and agencies reached a dead end on their missing persons cases, Urbansky was the guy they'd call.

I think missing person cases are harder than any type of homicide because why I say that is a homicide, you have evidence.

It could be a bullet, a knife, interviews, witnesses.

Now think about a missing person that goes, boom, goes vanishes.

What do you have?

What could you bring into it to find your answers?

Now I go to a missing person's house and saying, hey, Susan Brown woke up and she's gone.

That's it.

Just think about that, gone.

No evidence, no nothing.

You have no witnesses.

You have no DNA.

You have nothing like that.

Things have changed a bit since Urbanski first started out back in 1995.

But the basic advice for the first 24 hours are the same.

If you believe a missing person is in danger, report them missing right away.

This opens up resources to the family and the sooner you get help, the better.

You do not have to wait 24 hours to report them missing anymore.

That's old news and if anybody tells you that that's the case, it's rubbish.

Next, while the memory is fresh, make a note of everything you know.

Call all friends, co-workers, neighbours, family.

Anyone who may also know something about their whereabouts or mental state.

Look for any notes or other clues and ring around local hospitals.

It's not unusual for the police or authorities to still tell you that you need to wait 24 hours to see if the person turns up, especially if they don't don't deem them vulnerable.

But you know your loved one best.

If the police won't help you, post on social media, attempt to drum up interest from the press, that's people like me, hand out flyers and keep pestering the authorities to set up a profile on their national databases for missing people.

In the US that's called Namus.

The good news is, according to research, 87% of missing UK adults are found within the first two days, and only 1% are missing for longer than a month.

But what about that final percentage?

Well, then you might need to start looking at specialist websites.

You have websites like Charlie Projects, like the Doe Network, you know, people out there that actually have an interest in missing persons' world.

And I'll actually get on those sites and look at people's cases and read a narrative on it and kind of get me interested and call the police department and start to get the reports and review it.

It's something I use to help me solve my case.

So essentially, while it's important to keep all avenues open, after a while you have to consider the fact that your missing person has died.

This means their body could have been found already, but nobody knows who they are.

If you're in the States, you should be able to find a relevant listing on the National Unidentified Body Database, Namus, which we've mentioned before, or some of the other websites Herbansky mentioned.

But keep your options wide.

If they have sadly sadly died, you won't know where or when their body was discovered.

They may have gone missing in Arkansas in 2017, but their body could have been discovered in Tennessee in 2022.

But then you can run into difficulties.

Like if it's been years and your loved one didn't die soon after going missing, There's every chance they're going to look different in recent pictures to how you remember them.

You got to keep all these things in mind when you're reviewing and looking at pictures even from back then.

So, but your features, your face, your cheeks, your facial features, that don't change.

I mean, you can gain weight, you can lose weight, you could grow your hair a little longer, but you can kind of get the sense that it has some type of relativity.

Once you start looking into your case as a potential doe case, there's also a few important things you can do to help others make the connection.

Like having relatives submit their DNA to the namers database.

That way, genealogists or detectives can can also make possible matches that really helped out the missing persons world they unidentified a missing persons world see in new jersey they have what they call patricia's law and i'll explain to you real quick what patricia's law is patricia viola went missing up in bergen county and what happened was he went to report his wife missing and they wouldn't take a missing persons report this was back when the police would say you had to wait 24 hours Now it became law.

So if you came in, you make a missing person report.

You got to take that report.

And you have to do DNA within 30 days.

and that's where namus comes in because namus needs family reference samples so if there's an unidentified or if you have a missing persons you get mom and dad's side and you put those family reference samples into namus

verbansky's most important advice is to not lose hope that eventually you will get answers

If my daughter went missing, I got two daughters, and if they went missing or something, I would never give up on it.

After the break, we'll hear what Raul Montero did when he stumbled across Stacey Reddish's 42-year-old missing persons case.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washable sofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

What happens when Delta Airlines sends four creators around the world to find out what is the true power of travel?

I think it helped me sort of like get grounded.

I think I unlocked some like childhood dream.

Turn my stress into excitement.

Take that gratitude from those experiences into your daily life.

That's why Jimma Speg, host of the Psychology of Your 20s, sat down with Dr.

Henry Ting, Delta's chief health and wellness officer, an instrumental voice behind this travel experiment.

I love that the dream trip versus, you know, the around the corner trip both have very similar mental and social perks and benefits.

Oh, yeah, very much so.

On both trips, their emotional well-being and social well-being went through the roof.

Find out more about how travel can support well-being on this special episode of the Psychology of Your 20s, presented by Delta.

Fly and live better.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Tired of doing the dinner dash?

Walmart delivers delicious, low-cost recipes with just a few clicks in the app.

Who knew?

Get crowd pleasers like creamy Tuscan chicken and easy beef and broccoli delivered in the time it usually takes you just to plan dinner.

And if you don't love our produce, contact us for a full refund.

Goodbye, dinner drama.

Hello, dinner at your door in as fast as an hour.

Find it all in the recipe hub.

The Walmart you thought you knew is now new.

Subject to availability, fees and restrictions apply.

This is Jonas Knox from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe, and on Fox One.

Now you can stream your favorite live sports so you can be there live for the biggest moments.

That means NFL Sundays, college football games, NASCAR, MLB postseason, and more.

With Fox One, you'll get it all live: edge of your seat plays, jaw-dropping, high-octane moments, and that feeling like you're right there in the action.

Fox One, we live for live streaming now.

So let's catch up.

Raul Montero recently stumbled across a post on Facebook from the family of Stacey Reddish, who went missing 42 years ago.

The police didn't appear to care about the case back in the 80s, and when Stacey's family tried to report her as missing again decades later, they claimed that the police refused to take any action.

When I read that in the Facebook group, I went into like war mode

because it's just not done that way.

It's just wrong to do that.

You have to take a police report.

So when I finally got in contact with her sister and she shared all that with me, like I was enraged and

I got information about Stacy.

I said, tell me what you can about Stacy because

there's a path forward to getting her a missing persons report.

And once she has that missing persons report, then she could be on Namos and then she can have much more exposure, but then more resources open up and because she's a minor she can get on the National Center for Missing and Endangered Children where the resources become exponential but we couldn't do any of that without a police report meanwhile as I got information about Stacey her life her physical characteristics the map was tugging at me

The map is an online resource Raul has created.

We've put a link in the description.

He's populated it with every missing person's case and every unidentified body in New York.

He includes things like key characteristics, locations, photos, that sort of thing.

It means you can see really obvious links between cases in things like time, location, appearance, because it's blindingly obvious when two markers on a map, one for missing and one for an unidentified body, seemingly sit on top of each other.

So, when Raul hears about Stacey, his mind starts racing.

I know know who she is.

It has to be.

Absolutely has to be this unidentified Jane Doe.

Why are you so convinced?

So a couple of things.

So person goes missing, let's just say January 1st, 2023.

And then let's say June 1st, 2023, an unidentified body is found.

The PMI, which is post-mortal interval, which will tell you basically how long they believe that body's been out there or deceased.

And so, January 1, June 1, PMI is a six-month interval.

Then you get to physical characteristics, the height, the estimated weight.

Six months, there's probably no discernible characteristics like eyes or anything like that, but it's possible.

So then there's eye color, hair, hair will last for much longer.

Even after death, hair will still grow a little bit, but it's more scientifically measurable.

So if it's 10 inches when they're found, it could have been 8 inches when this person died.

So it's little clues like that.

So that's what Raul started doing with Stacy's case.

He begins comparing the characteristics of the Jane Doe on his map with details he'd learned from Stacy's family.

But the smoking gun for Raul was a necklace that this Jane Doe was wearing.

The pendant was a single letter, the same initial as Stacy's boyfriend.

Everything just seems to add up.

That to me is a bigger lean towards confirmation.

So things like that, I get very assured.

And then there's, for me, it's like a hunch, like you feel it, like you know it.

But as much as Raul has a track record in solving cases, he needs to work in tandem with law enforcement to actually close them.

So he passes his findings on to the cold case unit handling Stacy's case.

And then he just has to wait.

But as I'm recording this in July of 2024, Stacy's case is still unsolved.

If the cold case detectives buy Rawl's theory, they should be able to take DNA samples from Stacy's relatives and compare them to the Doe's.

And we know Stacy's relatives are keen.

But none of that's happened, and you have to wonder why.

Maybe it's because they've found some other reason why the cases can't be linked.

Like either Stacy or the Doe are actually part of an active investigation.

Or, and this feels more likely to me, maybe the police just aren't prioritising Stacy's case.

Stacy's family say at the time of her disappearance, the police refused to take the missing person's report.

They suggested she was just a runaway.

According to research by attorney Jada Moss, black children are more likely to be labeled as runaways than their missing white counterparts.

If children are categorized as runaways rather than potential victims of abduction, they do not qualify for the AMBA Alert System, which is America's missing broadcast emergency response.

It sends out things like text messages, broadcasts on TV and radio, and uses highway signs to alert the public about a missing child who may have been abducted.

The system has helped over 1,200 children be found since its launch in 1996.

But so-called runaway children don't benefit from this service if they've never been categorised as possible abductees.

When you get far enough down the rabbit hole of missing persons, you do see depressing patterns.

Black women, Indigenous women, sex workers, drug addicts, the elderly, and marginalised.

It's no wonder Raul gets obsessed.

It can feel like he's the only person in the world outside of family and friends who wants to help, which means Raul has to take the wins where he can.

It's closure for me in some part, you know, because

I know that this Jane Doe is resolved.

She'll still stay at Jane Doe right now because the process, the investigative process, the genetic comparison process is

long and drawn out.

But in my case,

I can move beyond this Jane Doe and this missing person.

What I do now is I stay very close to the family because

getting them to share intimate parts of their loved ones' life or to relive things that they haven't even remembered in 30, 40 years can be very emotional for them.

And I think that's part of my intuition: I take on a lot of these people's emotions, and it's not the same.

I haven't lost somebody in those methods, and I keep that awareness, but I take some of that with me, and that becomes part of me, which is in a way the closure because I have their sorrow and their their confusion and their angst over everything and I have this unidentified that nobody's looking for and I say that grandly because I'm sure that there are but you know in my case I believe that I'm the only one for some of them and I'm very focused on bringing that together and in my mind I have a certain sense of closure

That's the end of the girlfriend's guide to finding a missing person.

I hope that it was useful, but even even more, I hope you never need to use this information.

This series isn't meant to overinflate the risk of horrible things happening in your lives.

The reality is it's incredibly rare that anyone goes missing at all, let alone for more than a couple of days.

So I hope this hasn't made you panic or worry.

But I do believe in DIY resources and the fact that we never know when we're going to need them, or maybe somebody we love is.

I guess what I'm saying is I believe we're better off kicking doors down together.

But you knew that already because that's kind of the girlfriend's mantra.

If you do end up with an ongoing case, there are support groups that you can find online and in your area.

Not only will they be able to really understand what you're going through, but they'll have tips and contacts of their own that are specific to where the case happened.

Those sort of tips are gold dust.

Finally, remember it can often be hardest on the people left behind.

So put your own mask on first.

It will help you in the long run.

Until next time, hold your girlfriends tight.

The Girlfriend's Guide is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.

For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

This episode is produced and hosted by me, Anna Sinfield.

Our assistant producer is Madeleine Parr.

And we've had some fantastic additional production by Lee Meyer, Leona Hamid, and Zayana Youssef.

Max O'Brien is our executive producer.

Production management from Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolfe.

Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander.

Music supervision by me, Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander.

Original music composed and performed by Louisa Gerstein and produced by Louisa Gerstein and you guessed it, Nicholas Alexander.

The series' artwork was designed by Christina Limcool.

Story development by me, Anna Sinfield.

Willard Foxton is creative director.

And our executive producers at iHeart are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor.

Special thanks to Ali Cantor, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carly Frankel and the whole team at WME.

got you.

I you

I've got you

Time for a sofa upgrade?

Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices, with sofas starting at $699.

Anibay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.

Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Liquid simply slides right off.

Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Don't compromise quality for price.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no-risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Ah, smart water alkaline with antioxidant.

Pure, crisp taste, perfectly refreshing.

Whoa, that is refreshing.

And a 9.5 plus pH.

For those who move, those who push further, those with...

A taste for taste.

Exactly.

I did take a spin class today after work.

Look at you.

Restoring like a pro.

I mean, I also sat down halfway through.

Eh, close enough.

Smartwater alkaline with antioxidant.

For those with a taste for taste, grab yours today.

What happens when Delta Airlines sends four creators around the world to find out what is the true power of travel?

I love that both trips have very similar mental and social perks.

Very much so.

On both trips, their emotional well-being and social well-being went through the roof.

Find out more about how travel can support well-being on this special episode of The Psychology of Your 20s, presented by Delta.

Fly and live better.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

My favorite thing about ship since I signed up for Target Circle 360, no price markups when I order same-day delivery from tons of local stores.

Only a handful of alcohol retailers and items don't count.

I won't lie, I've had too much fun being like, markups on groceries, not in my fridge, markups on pet food, not for my DOG, markups on tools, electronics, home goods, meds, not in my house.

Anyway, it's awesome.

Order now at shipped.com/slash 360 terms apply.

This is an iHeart podcast.