Alone Time —Talina Zar E1

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The early days of the COVID pandemic were scary.

The mayor today calling the spread unpredictable and worrisome.

This morning, a grim new prediction.

Nearly 300,000 deaths in the U.S.

before the new year.

People come in, they get intubated, they die, the cycle repeats.

But also, with some distance, the things we did to cope with our fear were pretty weird.

Remember disinfecting our groceries, hoarding toilet paper, burning our mattresses?

I didn't do that, but I heard about a woman who did because she thought it was contaminated with COVID.

I remember holding my breath when I walked past another person

on a secluded lake in the middle of winter with masks on.

I'd left New York for rural Pennsylvania with my boyfriend to ride out the worst of COVID.

We packed for a weekend and stayed for two months.

I ended up marrying the man too.

We have a baby now.

Looking back, what sticks with me the most about that time is that queasy feeling that everyone I encountered, the Amazon driver, the checkout lady at the grocery store, was a potential suspect, someone who could unwittingly kill me and my family just by breathing.

COVID isolation severed even the strongest connections.

made it easy to hide behind a mask or behind closed doors.

And this changed our collective psyche, made us do things we probably wouldn't have otherwise.

Things we were forced into, or things we'd always wanted to do and never had the opportunity.

It certainly changed the trajectory of Jess Trevino's life.

I was scared.

You know, like most of the world, I didn't know what was going to happen or how deadly the virus was, or we didn't know very much, right?

One day in April 2020, Jess is in her kitchen, newly unemployed because, you know, COVID, and she's trying to take her mind off the chaos of the pandemic.

She's attempting to replicate the latest food trend she sees online, a two-layered drink called Dalgona Coffee.

I was making that whipped coffee that you'd seen go viral during COVID.

I'm obsessed with coffee, obsessed.

It's a terrible obsession.

I drink probably two pots a day plus espresso.

It's nuts.

But I was making this coffee and I'm scrolling on Facebook and I see this post.

And I was like, this sounds insane.

The post is by a woman in Oklahoma who contracted coronavirus and announced she would not be seeking medical care.

Something about her post stops Jess's cold.

Here's a recreation of parts of the post.

Hey, everyone.

I'm on day nine of this virus and I am pretty sure it has reached my lungs.

Feeling a little raspy and tight.

I made the decision at the onset that if it got bad enough I would not go to the hospital.

Those of you who know me well know I have DNR orders in my health directive and I'm not gonna let anyone intubate me.

So I've made arrangements to spend some quality alone time at one of my favorite hideaways at one of my favorite lakes and I've booked it for the remainder of this week.

Didn't feel up to driving, so I hired a ride.

I'm almost there.

Please respect my privacy and give me my alone time on the lake.

I haven't been chatting with some of you or calling you back.

I didn't want to be talked out of this plan.

After I post this, I am turning off my phone for exactly this reason.

I'll catch up with everyone on the other side.

Jess reads closer.

The woman's name is Talina Zar.

She is 53 years old.

It seems that no one has heard from Talina since her post a few weeks ago.

Jess squints at Talina's profile picture, a smiling selfie taken in the car, her blue green eyes twinkling.

and tries to understand why a person would make such a decision.

Why would someone with COVID leave their friends and family and go off alone instead of seeking help?

And where did she go?

Jess will spend the next four years searching for the answer.

Sometimes when I tell this story, they're like, you're making this up, but nobody has an imagination like this.

You couldn't make this story up.

There's a hundred little twists and turns that every time you go down a different road, it's another, what the fuck is this?

Why is this happening?

I I mean,

initially, when I told you, did you believe me?

From iHeart Podcasts, I'm Melissa Geltson, and this is what happened to Talina Czar.

Episode 1, Alone Time.

My name is Jess Trevino.

I'm a really nosy person, so that's how I got caught up in all this.

My mom said I've always been nosy my whole life.

She said, you've always just wanted to know everything about everything.

So if I didn't know something, I'd be poking around trying to figure it out.

It's not a very endearing thing about me, but it is who I am.

It took took me like 40 years to like me, so I'm just going to embrace it.

Jess's life can be divided into two parts.

Before she read Talina's Facebook post and after.

My whole life has been consumed by this since 2020.

I've spent four years of my life on her.

Jess emailed me in 2023, asking me to look into the disappearance of her friend, Talina Zar.

She'd come across the earlier seasons of this podcast.

What happened to Sandy Beale?

What happened to Libby Caswell?

I remember that I couldn't stop listening.

I'd listen to it when I was going to bed.

And then when I got up in the morning, and I'd listen to it throughout the day.

And you were so honest about everything in it.

Like you seem both sides, right?

So I was like, I'm going to reach out to her.

Like maybe she'll tell a story and she can get both sides, you know?

Jess and I emailed back and forth a little bit and had a few phone calls.

I learned she was using a loose definition of the word friend when she first reached out to me.

She hadn't met Talina.

But from what I was able to understand about Talina and Jess's multi-year investigation into her life, I was convinced I needed to learn more.

And so I flew to Minnesota to meet with Jess in person.

Jess lives in an old farmhouse surrounded by cornfields about a 50-minute drive from Minneapolis.

Hey, we are just about three minutes away, passing some some more cornfields.

No grocery stores, no gas stations, nothing.

I think it's maybe this house.

Welcome, we are a greeting party.

Yes.

I wanted to be out here when you guys came in because he's just kind of like, okay, am I going to the right place?

I'm not.

That one was perfect.

Hi, I'm Melissa.

Hi, Jocelyn.

Jocelyn.

Nice to meet you.

So, okay, heads up.

The two dogs that are out are going to bark at you.

Okay, hey, hey, she's big, but she doesn't.

Jess doesn't grow vegetables or raise farm animals, but her walls are dotted with signs like farm sweet farm and farmhouse-ish.

Jess does have a lot of pets.

Three dogs, two cats, and a lot of kids, and about a dozen wall clocks that chime at different times of the day.

And well, there's a lot going on.

I'm 41.

I am

an events planner, hospitality director for Minnesota Horse and Hunt.

Jess was born and raised in Minnesota and has spent most of her life working in bars and restaurants.

She had her first child when she was 17.

I was a dumb teenager.

I did a lot of stuff that, I mean, nothing criminal, but just stupid.

The minute I found out I was pregnant, I decided I cannot screw this up.

And went on to have three more.

What have we got over here?

We got some family photos.

We do.

So the tall one, this is Riley, he's my son, he's 23.

This is Ty, he's 21.

Maddie, 17, and Jocelyn, 14.

That's my husband and myself.

Jess had wanted to be a writer, she told me, but becoming a young mom meant she wasn't able to finish high school.

Eventually, she got her GED and took some college-level writing classes before ultimately getting a more practical degree in business.

Since then, Jess has worked in various capacities in the hospitality industry.

from bartending to large event planning.

She likes the work, but it's not her calling.

calling.

I feel like the only thing I've ever done that's been really, really good is raise my kids.

While she's giving me a tour of her home, I notice her bookshelf is crammed with true crime stories, old and new.

My husband makes fun of me.

I am, and it sounds really bad, but let me explain.

I'm obsessed with serial killers, and I mean obsessed.

I don't know what my problem is.

It all comes from wanting to know how their brain works, not like obsessed with, oh, I love murder, but I love trying to figure out why and who and

what was going through their brain.

What makes you want to kill somebody?

Jess tells me her fascination with crime started when she was still a kid.

She remembers following the Menendez brothers case on TV and watching O.J.

Simpson's Bronco racing down the expressway in real time.

But the first true crime story that completely enthralled her was that of Eileen Warnos, who killed at least seven men between 1989 and 1990 and has been dubbed America's first female serial killer.

Eileen Warnos was a huge one for me.

I thought she was fascinating.

I felt like she was very much a victim and tried to understand where she was coming from.

You know, she was a prostitute and she had a really hard life growing up, really hard life.

She was molested and raped, you know, from the time she was a child.

So that I got super interested.

And then I started looking at the Green River killer and the Zodiac killer and just deep dived into all the serial killers.

I find them fascinating.

Jess became an avid reader of crime novels.

She Devoured in Cold Blood by Truman Capote, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, worked her way through the back catalog of true crime icon and rule.

The story she liked the best dealt with big, complicated questions of justice, punishment, and fairness.

What's right and what's wrong, and where those lines become blurry.

As a reporter who's dedicated my life to these topics, I can relate.

Later, around 2017, after crime podcasts exploded onto the scene, Jess got into those too.

I listened to a ton of podcasts.

I started with crime junkies

and then I went to Morbid.

I'd listened to Dateline if I'd missed an episode on TV.

I found you recently, obviously.

For Jess, part of the thrill of all this was discussing the cases with others on social media.

I just would join the pages after I'd listened to a podcast wanting to know, like, let's discuss this and, like, hey, what'd you think of this?

What do you think of that?

So, you were an active participant, not just a lurker.

Correct.

You'll notice that about me.

I don't lurk.

I'm out there.

I'm an action kind of girl.

All those hours reading about true crime, listening to true crime, discussing true crime, provided Jess with a master class on how not to get murdered.

She knows, never go to a second location.

Always trust your instincts.

You're much more likely to be killed by someone you know than a stranger.

If you can run, run.

It also taught her some real-world skills on how to investigate cases, the same type of skills I use in my reporting.

In between bartending shifts and putting the kids to bed, Jess learned how to do a background check, how to trace people's internet footprints, how to track down old criminal records, and dig up archival news coverage.

I just love to know, like, how point A got to point F, trying to follow all the dots in between.

I know that people get a lot of shit online about being, you know, internet tough guys and internet armchair detectives, but we're in a digital age.

Maybe 30 years ago, you needed the boots on the ground and be there, but this is the way that it's happening now, I feel like.

A lot of stuff is solved literally on the internet.

It's on the internet on a Facebook fan page for Crime Junkies where Jess first sees Talina Zar's post about having COVID and choosing to go off into the wilderness alone rather than go to the hospital.

Please respect my privacy and give me my alone time on the lake.

A friend of Talina's named Nicole had uploaded screenshots of Talina's post to the group in an attempt to solicit help.

I asked Jess to read some of Nicole's plea.

Hi junkies.

Since April 7th, my dear friend has been missing.

She left this post and we haven't heard from her since.

The information we have doesn't make sense.

I've spent every day and night going over them.

Out of desperation, I thought I would post here and see what you all think.

My friend lives in a very small town near Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The police would not investigate this because of the post.

She would not make people worry for this long.

She just wouldn't.

And if she died from this virus, where is her body?

Am I being paranoid?

What can I do to locate her?

I can't sleep and I can't really grieve or have any hope after this time.

Anyone,

anyone have any ideas on what to do?

Thanks in advance.

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This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.

Are there two sides to every story?

Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in the girlfriend on Prime, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything you think you know.

Laura has the dream job, the perfect husband, and a son she'd die for.

But when her beloved Daniel brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.

Is Cherry the sweet, innocent girl she appears to be?

Or is there something more manipulative beneath the surface?

And how far will a mother go to protect her son?

Also starring Lori Davidson, The Girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems.

And everyone has something to hide.

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I just didn't feel like she would leave that many people worried about her.

This is Nicole Carr.

She's the author of the post asking for help finding Talina.

It wouldn't be strange for her to go off because if she was sick, she wouldn't have wanted to make anyone else sick.

But for her to just leave people with no way of contacting her and knowing if she was alive or dead was strange to me.

Nicole knew Talina's habits because she was one of her best friends.

They'd been close since they met in 2010.

It was love at first, get together.

She was the kind of friend that you could call at 3 a.m.,

knowing that she would answer with equal part concern and humor to cheer you up.

Her kitchen was her happy place, and she always had the aroma of something simmering or cooking or frying.

And if not, she was planning something to simmer, cooker, cook, or fry.

Sharing a meal with her was really like being wrapped up in love.

She lived with her heart wide open, and

you couldn't help but just feel lucky that she was in your life.

Nicole and Talina's friendship had always been long distance.

They'd never lived in the same state at the same time.

But they found ways to connect both online and in person.

We did text a lot and talked on the phone and then also

through Facebook a lot sharing memes,

trying to make each other laugh.

In February 2020, Talina went to Tennessee to visit Nicole at her home.

She came and spent three days with me.

We, of course, cooked and played video games and watched TV and talked and cried and laughed.

And we really had a great visit.

And it was right before they asked everybody, you know, to go home and stay.

Talina left and immediately the friends started planning their next visit.

This time, Talina would host Nicole at her house in Wagner, Oklahoma.

But COVID got too big too quickly.

She wanted me to come visit her,

and I really wasn't comfortable in traveling at that point.

All of my family, we have

stuff wrong with us.

You know, they were really concerned about people like us having COVID.

So I declined the offer.

And, you know, I'll never know

what would have happened if I'd gone.

As the COVID pandemic took over everybody's lives, the friends continued to communicate as they normally did: texting, keeping up with each other's social media.

And it was on Facebook where Nicole saw that her friend wasn't feeling well.

First, it was a post on Sunday, March 29th, about a migraine.

Day two of a bad migraine, taking more meds and turning down my phone volume so I can sleep.

I'll catch up with everyone later.

Migraines were a fairly regular occurrence for Talina, so Nicole didn't think much of it.

But a day later, on Monday, March 30th, she saw a post about Talina's headache worsening.

My weekend migraine developed into a fever last night, and it is currently hovering around 100.5.

I'm surfacing long enough to go to the bathroom and get a drink, then it is back to sleep.

All I want to do is sleep.

Send your well wishes and energy, but please don't expect a response.

I called my doctor and was told to stay in bed and stay hydrated and self-medicate and call back or go to the ER if my temp reaches 102.

I think Oklahoma's medical system is stretched thin right now.

Everyone stay safe, healthy, and please practice social distancing.

If you don't live with someone, don't visit them.

Nicole texted Talina a few times, checking up on her, but didn't hear back.

A week went by, and then on April 7th, came Telena's cryptic post: Hey, everyone, I'm on day nine of this virus.

I've made arrangements to spend some quality alone time.

After I post this, I am turning off my phone.

Talina would occasionally, about once a year, go on a sabbatical where she didn't talk to anybody and she was pretty strict about it.

She would let everybody know, if I don't answer my phone, this is why.

And I'm just going to go off somewhere for a couple of days and be with myself.

It was just a spiritual time for her to get herself together and kind of reconnect with herself.

She's a very giving person, so I think people that give to a lot of people need that little bit of downtime.

Nicole knew that her friend prized her solitude, but after a few days without hearing from Talina, she had a feeling that something wasn't right.

At the time, I was laid off from work, so I didn't have that much to preoccupy myself with.

I wasn't leaving the house because of COVID.

Every morning, I would wake up and check Facebook and check the phone and text her and call her and I didn't hear anything.

Nicole was in lockdown in Tennessee, hundreds of miles away from Tolina's home in Wagner, Oklahoma.

Feeling antsy, Nicole started reaching out to Tolina's friends, some of them also in far-flung states, others in the same town as Talina.

I kept just kind of asking everybody, Anyone else think this is strange?

And everybody's like, no, no, this is, you know, this is Telena, this is how she acts.

You know, that experiment where they show people that are in a room and there's smoke coming out of the grate and nobody does anything because they're, they're all kind of looking around to see if someone else is going to do something.

That was where we were.

People were just worrying in their own space.

We're all just waiting for someone else to do something or for word from, you know, Telena.

But the more time that went on, it just didn't, her story didn't make sense.

Nicole wasn't sure what to do, but she felt compelled to at least do something.

And so one night out of desperation, I just, you know, I listened to this little podcast.

I had no idea how popular it was.

I just knew that I liked listening to it.

And so I thought I would go on there and see if anybody else thought it was strange.

So I typed out a little message and posted it, went to sleep, and I woke up to thousands of replies.

Some of them were were from my friends, people I actually knew that I didn't know also listened to this podcast.

And then some of them were from strangers.

And none of them were strange than Jess.

It sounded fishy.

You've read the post, right?

It sounded really weird.

Making her whipped coffee in Minnesota, Jess sees Nicole's plea for help, and her immediate response is bullshit.

The way Nicole explained it in the post was very weird.

And then, obviously, I'm bored.

It's COVID and I can't go anywhere or do anything.

So I creep on Nicole's Facebook and see that she has another friend who's missing as well.

And I was like, there's no way.

You know, two people who just up and disappeared.

So I called her out on it.

I called her a liar.

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This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.

Are there two two sides to every story?

Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in the girlfriend on Prime, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything you think you know.

Laura has the dream job, the perfect husband, and a son she'd die for.

But when her beloved Daniel brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.

Is Cherry the sweet, innocent girl she appears to be?

Or is there something more manipulative beneath the surface?

And how far will a mother go to protect her son?

Also starring Lori Davidson, The Girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems.

And everyone has something to hide.

Don't miss the girlfriend, streaming now exclusively on Prime.

Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.

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Nicole had turned to the internet for help looking for her missing friend, and now she was being accused of lying or worse, being involved in Talina's disappearance herself.

I had a friend that her niece had also shown up missing in Georgia.

And I didn't really know the niece, but if someone you know is missing someone they love, you share it.

So I had shared that.

And I guess Jess had gone back and looked at my history.

And she kind of thought that maybe I was the one responsible and had no qualm in telling me so.

She said that she was going to be my worst nightmare.

I messaged Nicole on Facebook and I said, hey, you sound like you're lying.

Like, how many missing people can you know, right?

Nicole is taken aback by Jess's aggressive messages, but instead of just ignoring this internet stranger, she engages.

She offers to connect Jess on a call with some of Talina's friends in Oklahoma who can verify Nicole's story.

And Jess, she backs down pretty quick.

She called me back and she said, I wanted to apologize.

And, you know, I appreciate that so much about her, that she was just so ready to apologize.

Nicole accepts her apology and almost immediately, their hostile encounter transforms into the start of a real friendship.

Nicole will post on my Facebook, so happy you became my beautiful nightmare.

I love you.

Nicole sees a tenacity in Jess.

that could be helpful in finding Telina and the two of them start working together that day.

I have to say Jess is a force to be reckoned with.

She's a woman of unwavering determination and that intensity can catch you off guard.

She was unwilling to let anyone or anything get in her way.

It made us a very good pair because she could be very direct and very not cold, but just determined.

And I have a more gentle, kind approach to people.

She made me feel like I could help and we could figure it out.

We could solve what happened.

You know, we could fix it, maybe, or at least catch the person that did it.

Jess is not the only internet stranger activated by Nicole's post about her missing friend.

It gets hundreds of comments from people all over the U.S.

Most of them are just there to stir the pot, instigate fights, entertain themselves.

But some of them seem to actually want to find out the truth.

Jess corrals a select few into a private group.

There's Rosie, who, like Jess, is also a mom in her mid-30s.

She and her husband own a welding business in Ohio.

I commented on the post, this doesn't sound good.

You know, you need to contact the police.

I had a woman reach out to me named named Jess via Facebook Messenger.

And

in the nutshell, she was basically like, hey, this sounds really weird to me.

You and I kind of sound like we have the same vibe about her needing to contact the police.

Do you want to talk about this?

I don't know what it was that made me say yes, other than I was intrigued.

And I thought, well, What could the harm be?

I was bored because of COVID and I was like sure and then four girls kind of joined the group and we just sort of started armchair detectiving this situation and i was like this is this is crazy this is brittany younger than the others she's in her early 20s and works at a bank in arkansas Brittany's eager to jump in and help because she too feels drawn to Talina's story.

It seemed like she was like a really sweet person and she was really easy to like.

It didn't seem like anyone had

any hatred towards her.

She seemed like a nice person that everyone loved.

When there's mysteries to stuff, there's some people that just have to know

why and how.

And I'm definitely one of those people.

I have all the questions all the time.

And so, organically, cosmically, this group of online sleuths comes together and forms a new Facebook page called Find Talinazar.

Nicole in Tennessee, Jess in Minnesota, Rosie in Ohio, Brittany in Arkansas, and more joining by the hour.

These women are strangers, thrust together by their desire to solve the mystery of what happened to Talina.

Here's Jess, the ringleader.

We ended up staying up until like four o'clock in the morning that first night, talking to each other via Facebook Messenger and then starting little side messages like, oh, this person's this, or

it was almost high school-esque, to be honest with you, just kind of like being a little bit bitchy about

who is saying what and what we believe.

The online sleuths, even from that first night, are exhilarated.

They're energized for the first time since the pandemic slowed the world down and made their lives very small.

Suddenly, they have a distraction and a purpose.

It kind of felt like I was living out one of like my fantasy dreams of being a detective.

It kind of gave me something to do and something else to think about rather than what's going to happen to the world.

We just wanted to help this person, help Talina and find her.

Like where was she?

In those early hours, as this new group of friends start to gel, the online sleuths return to Talina's post.

I made the

So those of you who know it just felt a little off.

It felt

weird.

The post itself is odd.

I didn't want to be talked out of this plan.

But so are the comments left by Talina's friends.

It was just really strange.

And her friends' reactions to it also felt like they were concerned, but people were afraid to kind of pull the trigger and, you know, get something going about trying to find out where their friend was.

Jess is judging these people.

To her, they are, at best, bad friends.

At worst, potential suspects.

Like, friends of hers all kind of saying, well, we wish you well and we love you and we respect your privacy.

And I'm like, what in the hell?

What do you mean?

This woman's basically saying she's going to go kill herself in the woods.

And you guys are like, okay, see you later.

Have fun.

If that was my friend, I would be flipping over rocks trying to find her.

I'd call the National Guard.

I would be out there.

I would not be sitting there wishing her well on her journey.

And so Jess, Rosie, Brittany, and Nicole, they get busy from afar.

There were a lot of secrets that were very hard to find, and no one wanted to talk about anything.

Day and night, they research online and talk to anyone who will pick up the phone.

I probably spent 12, 14 hours on my phone or computer a day talking to people, cold calling strangers.

They trust no one.

They're not telling us the truth.

Like they're lying.

There's no truth to what these people are saying.

Don't believe them.

And what they uncover shocks them to their core.

Rarely do people just drop off the face of the earth and disappear.

This season on what happened to Tolina Czar.

How in the world can somebody even contemplate doing something bad?

How evil can one person really be?

She's always willing to help somebody and that was her downfall as well as one of her greatest strengths.

When I read the details, I collapsed.

I would agree that I have never had a case involving these kinds of details.

And I was like,

literally not very polite of me.

What the hell are you people into?

What is going on here?

This little group of women that came together to look for Talina will always have my heart.

I just had to know, how did this happen?

What Happened to Talina Zar is a production of iHeart podcasts.

It's written, reported, and hosted by me, Melissa Jeltson, with writing and story editing by Lauren Hansen.

Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch.

For iHeart podcasts, executive producers are Jason English and Carl Cadel.

Fact-checking by Savannah Hughley.

Zoe Denkla is our associate producer.

Jeremy Thal is our editor.

Original music by Aaron Kaufman with additional music by Jeremy Thal.

Episodes are mixed and mastered by Carl Cadel.

Voice acting by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry, Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica, and Molly Maslin.

Our logo is designed by Ido Moore.

Thanks so much for listening.

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