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

Transcript

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

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Get checked for TB before starting.

Speaker 10 Increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like TB or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal.

Speaker 10 Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough. had a vaccine or planned to, or if IBD symptoms develop or worsen.

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Speaker 1 Novel.

Speaker 1 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 girlfriend safe.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 No one is really taught what to do if someone you know goes missing. Until now.

Speaker 1 From the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, you're listening to The Girlfriend's Guide, Episode 2, Finding a Missing Person.

Speaker 26 On a Facebook group called Missing Black Persons, I saw a

Speaker 26 woman was looking for her sister who's been missing for 42 years.

Speaker 1 This is Ral 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.

Speaker 26 She was 16 years old, missing from Harlem. And

Speaker 26 just seeing the pictures of her sister,

Speaker 26 I think you automatically know, like, all right, this is my new obsession. Like, and it's not an obsession in a creepy way.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And I also reached out to the sister, this young woman, her name is Stacey Reddish, 16 years old when she went missing.

Speaker 26 I was just so compelled by her, by the story, by the infuriating lack of attention by NYPD

Speaker 26 in the 80s.

Speaker 26 When the family reported Stacy missing the very first night, they said, well, she's probably with her boyfriend. She'll come back.

Speaker 26 They didn't like that answer. They went home.
They put missing persons, flyers out all over Harlem.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And this is the rubber stamping of,

Speaker 26 in a way, prejudices. She's a runaway, whatever.

Speaker 26 But just the refusal of the police departments to do anything to find Stacey, 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.

Speaker 26 But there just wasn't support, there wasn't care, there wasn't enough

Speaker 26 educated law enforcement officers to know what to do other than she'll come back.

Speaker 6 Well, she didn't.

Speaker 26 Earlier this summer, 42 years later, the family tried to go back and report her. They wanted to know what happened.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Go back to the place you last saw her and call 911, 911,

Speaker 26 which is infuriating. Even me repeating that makes me want to bang my head because it's so

Speaker 6 wrong.

Speaker 1 What? So you call 911 and say, I'd like to report a missing person, they went missing 42 years ago.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 26 he chuckled and said, This is 42 years ago, there's nothing they can do.

Speaker 1 So, what can be done to help a family like Stacey's? And what should you do if your loved one goes missing today?

Speaker 1 That's after the break.

Speaker 28 Incoming with the old gays. It's Jessie, Bill, Robert, and Mick with a special bonus episode of Silver Linings with the Old Gays.

Speaker 28 No matter what time of year it is, we know it's important to uplift the spirit of pride, which is relatively easy when Palm Springs celebrates in November.

Speaker 29 The first pride I went to, it made me feel like I was really part of something.

Speaker 29 People being so joyous in the streets and being themselves.

Speaker 31 We've really come a long way and I realized I am standing on the shoulders of so many millions of queer people who sacrificed their lives for what we have today.

Speaker 28 Silver Linings with the Old Days is brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Viv Healthcare. Listen on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultural Esas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultural Esis with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can. Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online.

Speaker 3 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in? So your kids are always protected. online.

Speaker 8 Xfinity, imagine that.

Speaker 12 Book?

Speaker 14 Dream?

Speaker 25 Hey, I'm Frank and I have hydrodonitis superativa, HS. Before starting Cosentics, I was so uncomfortable with my symptoms, like not being able to sleep on white sheets or wear white clothes.

Speaker 25 Now I can appreciate the little things.

Speaker 10 Cosentix secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe hydridonitis superativa, HS. Don't use if allergic to Cosentics.

Speaker 10 Increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like TB or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal.

Speaker 10 Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or planned to, or if IBD symptoms develop or worsen.

Speaker 25 You're stronger than HS. Ask your dermatologist about Cosentix.

Speaker 27 As an investigator, missing person cases is a big puzzle.

Speaker 1 This is Captain Orbansky. He spent years working as a detective in the New Jersey Missing Persons Unit.

Speaker 1 When local police departments and agencies reached a a dead end on their missing persons cases, Ubansky was the guy they'd call.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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?

Speaker 27 Now, I go to a missing person's house and say, hey, Susan Brown, walk up and she's gone. That's it.
Just think about that. Gone.
No evidence, no nothing.

Speaker 27 You have no witnesses, you have no DNA, you have nothing like that.

Speaker 1 Things have changed a bit since Urbansky first started out back in 1995. But the basic advice for the first 24 hours are the same.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Especially if they don't deem them vulnerable. But you know your loved one best.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 In the US, that's called Namus.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Well, then you might need to start looking at specialist websites.

Speaker 27 You have websites like Charlie Projects, like the Doe Network, you know, people out there that actually have an interest in missing persons' world.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 It's something I use to help me solve my case.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 This means their body could have been found already, but nobody knows who they are.

Speaker 1 If you're in the States, you should be able to find a relevant listing on the National Unidentified Body Database, Namos, which we've mentioned before, or some of the other websites Herbansky mentioned.

Speaker 1 But keep your options wide. If they have sadly died, you won't know where or when their body was discovered.

Speaker 1 They may have gone missing in Arkansas in 2017, but their body could have been discovered in Tennessee in 2022.

Speaker 1 But then you can run into difficulties.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 27 You got to keep all these things in mind when you're reviewing and looking at pictures even from back then.

Speaker 27 But your features, your face, your cheeks, your facial features, that don't change.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like having relatives submit their DNA to the nameless database. That way, genealogists or detectives can also make possible matches.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 And I'll explain to you real quick what Patricia's Law is. Patricia Viola went missing up in Bergen County.

Speaker 27 And what happened was he went to report his wife missing and they wouldn't take a missing person report.

Speaker 1 This was back when the police would say you had to wait 24 hours.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 And that's where Namus comes in because Namus needs family reference samples.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 1 Labansky's most important advice is to not lose hope that eventually you will get answers.

Speaker 27 If my daughter went missing, I got two daughters and if they went missing or something, I would never give up on it.

Speaker 1 After the break, we'll hear what Raul Montero did when he stumbled across Stacey Redish's 42-year-old missing persons case.

Speaker 28 Incoming with the old gays, it's Jessé, Bill, Robert, and Mick with a special bonus episode of Silver Linings with the Old Gays.

Speaker 28 No matter what time of year it is, we know it's important to uplift the spirit of Pride, which is relatively easy when Palm Springs celebrates in November.

Speaker 29 The first Pride I went to, it made me feel like I was really part of something.

Speaker 29 People being so joyous in the streets and being themselves.

Speaker 31 We've really come a long way, and I realized I am standing on the shoulders of so many millions of queer people who sacrificed their lives for what we have today.

Speaker 28 Silver Linings with the old days is brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Viv Healthcare. Listen on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Esses with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can. Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post post online.

Speaker 3 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in? So your kids are always protected online.

Speaker 8 Xfinity, imagine that.

Speaker 12 Book?

Speaker 14 Dream?

Speaker 25 Hey, I'm Frank and I have Hydro Donitas Superativa, HS. Before starting Cosentics, I was so uncomfortable with my symptoms, like not being able to sleep on white sheets or wear white clothes.

Speaker 25 Now I can appreciate the little things.

Speaker 10 Cosentix secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe hydridonitis superativa, HS. Don't use if allergic to Cosentix.

Speaker 10 Increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. like TB or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections.
Some are fatal.

Speaker 10 Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or planned to, or if IBD symptoms develop or worsen.

Speaker 25 You're stronger than H is. Ask your dermatologist about COSENTIX.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 26 When I read that in the Facebook group, I went into like war mode

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And once she has that missing persons report, then she could be on Names and then she can have much more exposure, but then more resources open up.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Meanwhile, as I got information about Stacy, her life, her physical characteristics, the map was tugging at me.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He includes things like key characteristics, locations, photos, that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So, when Raul hears about Stacey, his mind starts racing.

Speaker 26 I know who she is. It has to be.

Speaker 26 Absolutely has to be this unidentified Jane Doe.

Speaker 1 Why are you so convinced?

Speaker 26 So, a couple of things. So, person goes missing, let's just say January 1st, 2023,

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And so January 1, June 1, PMI is a six-month interval. Then you get to physical characteristics, the height, the estimated weight.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 So it's little clues like that.

Speaker 1 So that's what Raul started doing with Stacey's case. He begins comparing the characteristics of the Jane Doe on his map with details he'd learned from Stacy's family.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 26 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...

Speaker 26 Like a hunch, like you feel it, like you know it.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But none of that's happened. And you have to wonder wonder why.
Maybe it's because they've found some other reason why the cases can't be linked.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 According to research by attorney Jada Moss, black children are more likely to be labeled as runaways than their missing white counterparts.

Speaker 1 If children are categorised as runaways rather than potential victims of abduction, they do not qualify for the AMBAR alert system, which is America's missing broadcast emergency response.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The system has helped over 1200 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 26 It's closure for me in some part, you know, because I know that this Jane Doe is resolved.

Speaker 26 She'll still stay at Jane Doe right now because the process, the investigative process, the genetic comparison process is

Speaker 26 long and drawn out. But in my case,

Speaker 26 I can move beyond this Jane Doe and this missing person. What I do now is I stay very close to the family because

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And I think that's part of my intuition is that I take on a lot of these people's emotions and it's not the same. I haven't lost somebody in those methods.

Speaker 26 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 confusion and their angst over everything.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And I'm very focused on bringing that together. And in my mind, I have a certain sense of

Speaker 1 That's the end of The Girlfriend's Guide to Finding a Missing Person. I hope that it was useful, but even more, I hope you never need to use this information.

Speaker 1 This series isn't meant to overinflate the risk of horrible things happening in your lives.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If you do end up with an ongoing case, there are support groups that you can find online and in your area.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Those sort of tips are gold dust.

Speaker 1 Finally, 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.

Speaker 1 Until next time, hold your girlfriends tight.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Our assistant producer is Madeleine Parr, and we've had some fantastic additional production by Lee Meyer, Leona Hamid, and Zayana Yousaf. Max O'Brien is our executive producer.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Story development by me, Anna Sinfield. Willard Foxton is creative director.
And our executive producers at iHeart are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor.

Speaker 1 Special thanks to Ali Cantor, Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carly Frankel and the whole team at WME.

Speaker 1 I've got you

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