Ep.1: Misty is Missing

You open the fridge, there's nothing there.

So, what's it gonna be?

Greasy pizza?

Sad drive-through burgers?

Dish by Blue Apron is for nights like that.

These are the pre-made meals of your dreams.

At least 20 grams of protein, no artificial flavors or colors, no chopping, no cleanup, no guilt.

Keep the flavor.

Ditch the subscription.

Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20.

Terms and conditions apply.

Visit blueapron.com/slash terms for more.

Picture yourself alone in the middle of nowhere, and there's somebody following you.

He went on his way, we so thought, and then we went on ours.

But in reality, he really followed us up there.

On Deadly Nightmares, the true crime podcast from ID, listen to real stories of ordinary people stalked by serial killers and attackers.

Please,

we're not gonna die.

Listen to Deadly Nightmares on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On September 17th, 1992, a 14-year-old girl named Misty Copsey went to the Washington State Fair with her best friend.

By 10 p.m.,

she had vanished into thin air.

Never to be seen again.

More than 30 years later, no one knows what happened to Misty that night.

From ID and Arc Media, I'm Sarah Kalen, and this is Who Took Misty Copsey.

Every fall since the year 1900, the Washington State Fair roars to life in Puyallup, Washington.

Puyallop sits 10 miles southeast of Tacoma.

In the other direction lie thousands of acres of dense forest and mountains, with Mount Rainier looming on the horizon, the whole region resting under its watchful eye.

During the fair, the city of about 40,000 swells to many times that size as kids, families, and visitors from all over flock to the area.

When Diana Smith drops off her 14-year-old daughter, Misty, and Misty's best friend, Trina, at the fair's gates on a Thursday afternoon in September, 1992, it feels like any other night.

Misty and Trina are giddy with excitement, two young teenagers getting their first taste of independence.

This is the first time Diana let them go somewhere like this without her or another adult.

Diana told the story in a news segment.

I told her she wasn't going to go because I was a caregiver and I took care of an elderly lady all night long and I wouldn't be able to pick her up.

Her and her friend Trina got on the phone and figured out the bus routes and the times and stuff.

And she said, Mom, I'm 14, I'm responsible.

You know, let me go.

And I said,

okay.

I said, I'll let you go.

You better get that bus home.

And I said,

last thing I said to her when I dropped her off, I said, Misty, I love you.

She goes, I love you, mommy.

I said, and if you screw up,

I said, You won't do anything like this again.

She said, I know, mom.

Okay, bye.

And she was walking away.

She just looked so

little and vulnerable and stuff.

I just,

oh, God.

Just like,

I just felt like something was going to happen.

I didn't, you know, I wanted to grab her and I should have.

Diana starts up her car to head to her job as an overnight caregiver and takes one last look at Misty as she walks into the fairgrounds.

Misty is wearing a pair of Diana's stonewashed jeans.

They're baggy on her, just the look she's going for.

Hours later, around 8:45 p.m., Diana gets a call at work.

It's from Misty.

She says she's missed the bus home.

Diana is upset.

Misty, always a responsible, well-behaved kid, had promised to catch the bus.

She knew Diana took care of an elderly patient with Alzheimer's and could not leave to pick her up.

Diana and Misty lived in a town called Spanaway, about 11 miles from the fair, much too far for Misty to walk home.

As the minutes tick by, the last of twilight fades into darkness.

Misty tells Diana she can get a ride home with a friend, an 18-year-old named Ruben Schmidt.

Here again is Diana describing this moment.

I told her I didn't want her to ride with him to call grandma or somebody else and call me back and let me know how she was going to get home.

She said, okay, mom.

And I said, promise.

She said, I promise.

And I never heard from her again.

Diana tells Misty to call her back and let her know for sure that she has a ride home.

Misty promises that she'll call.

Diana waits by the phone.

An hour passes, then two.

But Misty never calls.

Diana tells herself that Misty must have gotten a ride home and forgotten to call.

She calls their house, but no one answers.

Diana tells herself that when she gets home in the morning, she'll find Misty asleep in her bed.

She's sure of it.

Diana's shift ends early the next morning.

She heads straight home, hoping that, like most days, she'll see Misty before Misty leaves for school.

Years later, in a news report, Diana describes that day.

I figured when I got home, she'd be there, thinking she's in trouble.

And when I opened the door and no one was there, my heart just dropped.

I just knew.

I just knew.

Misty's room is untouched from how she had left it the day before.

Diana starts making calls.

Diana calls 911.

According to a local newspaper report, the dispatcher tells her this sounds like a case of a runaway.

Call back if she's still missing in 30 days.

30 days.

The dispatcher says nothing can be done for 30 days.

Luckily, Diana doesn't listen to the dispatcher.

She calls the Pierce County Sheriff's Office, which handles runaway cases for the county.

The person who takes the call tells Diana that the 911 dispatcher had been mistaken, that there is no reason to wait 30 days, and that this is not standard protocol.

Diana files a missing persons report with the Pierce County Sheriff's Office.

The timestamp on the report is 1.42 p.m., according to a local newspaper.

She calls Trina, Misty's best friend, who was with her at the fair.

There's no answer.

Trina is at school, so Diana leaves a frantic message on the answering machine.

Years later, Diana would have a hard time remembering who else she called.

She may have called Misty's school and Trina's school.

She calls Ruben, the friend Misty had said she could call for a ride.

He says Misty called, but he didn't have enough gas to go pick her up.

Diana's last resort, the person who was going to potentially pick up Misty, didn't.

Misty's best friend who was with her hasn't gotten in touch with Diana.

Everything she tries leads to a dead end.

Diana goes to Trina's and leaves a note.

Finally, at the end of the school day, Trina calls back.

The last time she saw Misty, Misty was at a bus stop, hoping to catch a later bus home.

Again, Diana calls Ruben.

This time, Ruben's roommate picks up, and the roommate has a different story.

Yes, he says Ruben did go to pick up Misty.

Diana calls again later.

Ruben answers.

He says his roommate was confused, that he did leave the house, but only to go to a party.

It wasn't to pick up Misty, and he didn't pick her up.

A person from the Sheriff's Department speaks with Diana and assigns a deputy to the case.

Days pass with no sign of Misty.

Diana's 14-year-old daughter is still missing.

Six days in, Diana calls and files a report with the Puyallup Police Department.

Diana also tracks down a bus driver.

She shows him a photo of Misty, who at 14 years old was already 5'9 inches tall with shoulder-length blonde hair.

He says he's seen her.

He tells Diana that around 9.20 p.m.

last Thursday night, a tall blonde girl had asked him about the next bus to Spanaway.

The driver says he told the girl that there were no more buses to Spanaway that night.

He started to tell her to take a bus to Tacoma and transfer to another route, but the girl wasn't interested.

She started walking away before he finished explaining the route.

To this day, That bus driver is the last known person to see Misty Copsy alive.

Detectives never found Misty's remains or any evidence to any suspect.

It's been almost 20 years since a teen girl got the okay to go to the Puyallik Fair, but she never came back.

32 years, that's how long it's been since 14-year-old Misty Copsey disappeared while attending the Washington State Fair.

I first entered law enforcement in 1998, eventually settling in as a patrol officer with a department in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.

I left uniform and cruiser police work in 2011 to pursue a master's degree in criminal behavior with a concentration on serial predation.

But in 1992, I was a teenager, just a few years older than Misty.

So much of what I've read and heard about her could just as easily have been about me or countless other teenage girls in the late 80s and early 90s.

I've heard that the night of the fair, Misty was in those stonewashed jeans of Diana's and had paired them with a baggy blue sweatshirt and oversized bunchy blue socks.

I know those types of socks.

I had those socks.

I've heard her favorite music that year was all vanilla ice and nukits on the block.

Same, Misty.

Same.

So when I first heard about Misty's case more than five years ago, I couldn't get her story out of my head, nor could I stop thinking about her mom.

Here's how Diana described Misty in an episode of a show called Crime Stoppers.

She got great, great grades, mostly A's,

into sports.

She loved baseball, volleyball.

She broke both of her arms one time playing volleyball.

Diana told Misty's story at every opportunity.

Here she is again in several news clips.

She walked across the street.

She had my pair of jeans and they were baggy on her.

I told her if something goes wrong, I wouldn't let her do anything like that again.

This was agonizing,

not knowing where she was.

She needs to come home.

She's been gone 24 years.

Just have her home so I could go be with her and comfort her.

That means the world to me.

That would be, you know,

all I could ask.

I know there's a few people that know what happened that night.

And this is their perfect opportunity to unburden themselves and call in anonymously and tell what happened so we can bring Misty home.

Diana worked tirelessly to find her daughter, or to at least find out what happened to her, for 28 years, right up until the day she died.

In 2020, Diana passed away in her sleep.

No one in local law enforcement, as far as I can tell, really took her seriously.

And when she died, Diana's son, Colton Smith, would carry the torch, vowing to not let the search for the truth end before someone at long last takes their family tragedy seriously and runs a proper investigation.

In January 2025, I spoke with Colton Smith.

Picture yourself alone in the middle of nowhere, and there's somebody following you.

He went on his way, we so thought, and then we went on ours.

But in reality, he really followed us up there.

On Deadly Nightmares, the true crime podcast from ID, listen to real stories of ordinary people stalked by serial killers and attackers.

Listen to Deadly Nightmares on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I always try to start any case I work by talking to the victim's family and loved ones.

With cold cases in particular, there is an inherent risk of ripping open wounds covered over with only the thinnest layer of scar tissue.

No matter how hard I try or how long I stick with it, I can never promise a case will definitely be solved.

So before I start really digging into it, I want to make sure they know what's involved and what it might take.

In this case, I know of two close relatives of Misty's, her father, Paul Copse, who goes by Buck, and her half-brother, Colton Smith.

Diana and Misty's dad separated when Misty was still a baby.

In everything I've read and heard about the case, it seemed that Buck asked the investigators years ago to respect his privacy, to update him only if there was a major development.

Misty's brother Colton seemed to have more actively carried the torch after Diana passed away.

I reached out to Colton on Facebook in late 2024 and heard back just a few days later.

He was clearly cautious about saying too much, but did say that he'd be happy to have at least one conversation on the phone or over Zoom.

When we had our first in-depth talk in early January 2025, he gave me a significantly clearer understanding of the case, his mom's efforts to solve it, and how Diana was treated along the way.

You know, for years, my mom felt like people thought she was crazy.

Colton is 27, but he seems wise and mature far beyond his years.

Professionally, this holds true as well.

He heads up a whole team of logistics and fulfillment crew for a major grocery chain.

He was born several years after Misty's disappearance, so he didn't know his sister personally.

But her memory loomed large over his childhood as his mother, Diana, continued her fight to find out what happened to Misty.

I mean, every time she would even talk to the Puyall Police Department, it was like, you guys think I'm crazy and I'm not crazy.

And to grow up with that and then have her explain everything to me, it's like, you're making so much sense.

I don't understand how you're being perceived this way, but you can see it.

It's true.

Reading about the case, you can see that investigators treated Diana like she was overreacting or even lying from day one.

From the moment she arrived home, the morning after Misty went to the fair, all of Diana's instincts told her that something had gone terribly wrong.

Misty wouldn't just take off into the night.

Diana knew it.

She insisted that she and her daughter had a great relationship.

Police insisted Misty had run away.

And that would go on for months, years even.

A battle began between Diana and the local police officers who, for reasons I can't yet understand,

seemed completely unwilling to consider the possibility that Misty was anything other than a runaway.

This all started with that very first phone call in which the 911 dispatcher told Diana the police couldn't take action on Misty's disappearance for 30 days, which, as I expressed to Colton, strikes me as utterly insane.

I wasn't a cop yet in 1992, but I would go through my first academy just six years later.

And I did not believe that was true even then.

I've since asked some of the people I know who were in law enforcement at the time in departments from different parts of the country, and every single one of them said the same thing.

No way.

It just wasn't possible that it was a real policy.

The thing that boggles the mind is, okay, but even if they're a runaway, this is still a child in danger.

You have to go find them.

Yeah, 100%.

Yep.

I mean, I went into law enforcement in 98, and certainly everything I was was trained from jump was a missing child.

There's no 24 hours, there's no five minutes.

It becomes all hands on deck immediately, regardless of the circumstances, and it remains that way until a child is located.

Like,

I truly, I don't understand.

It's difficult to nail down numbers on teen disappearances in any window of time, but especially during this era we're focused on here.

A number of studies have been done, and there are some interesting statistics separating out true runaways from what are known as, quote, missing, lost, or discarded.

They are also compared to data on the number of kids abducted by family members.

And of course, we do ultimately end up with numbers of young children and teens who are victims of homicide.

if their remains are eventually recovered.

But when attempting to understand how often kids were classified by police as runaways, but later determined to have been abducted or murdered, we have only anecdotal evidence, the terrible stories that made the headlines.

Thankfully, in Misty's case, the County Sheriff's Department corrected this 30 days nonsense.

The person who took the call also took a report from Diana and then advised her to file a missing person report with the Pualla Police Department because Misty was last seen in Puala.

The Sheriff's Department assigned a deputy who often handled runaway cases.

The deputy reached out to Misty's friend Trina and said something along the lines of, if you hear from her, let us know.

You won't get in trouble.

Six days after Misty's disappearance, Diana calls and files the report with the Puallop Police Department.

I don't know why she waited six days, but we know she was following her own leads during that time, calling Trina, Ruben, and anyone else who she thought might know something.

Once she files the report with the Puyallup PD, Diana keeps calling, begging for help.

According to a local newspaper, Pierce County reaches out to Puyallup PD with the following personal note, quote,

This is one of those just don't feel right reports.

There is nothing here that points positively to foul play.

It just don't feel right.

It's been a week and nobody has heard from the girl.

Mom is contacting the media complaining that the cops aren't doing anything.

End quote.

Mom is complaining with good reason.

With every minute that passes, memories start to fade.

And the more likely it is that evidence can be hidden or destroyed, disappear permanently.

Puallop assigns a detective, but things don't move any more quickly than they had beforehand.

Luckily, Colton tells me, Diana refuses to sit back and do nothing.

She waits a couple days, starts to do her own investigation.

She goes down to the fair.

She asks everybody she can, have you seen Misty?

She somehow finds the bus driver.

The bus driver.

The last known person to see Misty alive.

Remember, it wasn't a police officer who tracked down that bus driver.

It was Diana.

I got to tell you what, man, the moms are always literally the best detectives I've ever met.

I agree.

Colton tells me that a few years ago, Puyallup PD released an age progression photo showing what Misty would look like as an adult.

Diana was still alive at that point, and Colton remembers that she was furious.

After 25 years, the police were still suggesting that Misty was simply a runaway.

A woman now in her 40s, living under a fake identity somewhere else.

I asked them, why are we still labeling her a missing person?

After I understand there's no remains, but why can't we bump this up to like a nobody homicide?

I mean, it's pretty evident she's not coming back.

But the police said they couldn't reclassify the case.

Since your mom passed, how communicative have they been with you?

Here and there.

They didn't reach out to me.

I want to say for the first two years.

And then actually the tribe that we're a part of, Cowlitz Indian tribe.

Wait, what's the tribe?

Cowlets.

This is a part of Misty's story I hadn't heard before, in large part because Misty presents very Caucasian.

with blonde curls, blue eyes, and fair skin.

But Colton tells me that he, Misty, and Diana are all members of the Cowlets Indian tribe in western Washington.

I don't know if that got much recognition in the original case, but in recent years, the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls has gained a lot of awareness, especially in areas out west.

Some states have started designating significant resources to unsolved cases of missing and murdered Native American women, cases that have historically been overlooked or even outright dismissed.

Today, Washington is one of those states.

The tribe wanted her to be labeled as both Caucasian and Native American.

And they explained it to me, hey, you know, we've got people from Washington State Patrol that can help, and we can use these resources because she is Native American.

Would you be interested in that?

And I said, absolutely.

Anything helps, you know.

The police's response?

Well, we don't want to label her Native American because it could be misleading if we find her.

You know, we can't label her as both Caucasian and Native American.

We can't.

Yeah, exactly.

I reached out to PPD to confirm, and they insisted that they had worked with the tribe and thought labeling her Native American may have made it harder to identify her because of her Caucasian looks.

I also found a 2022 report on Washington missing and murdered indigenous women and people, And it includes Misty.

So at some point, this was updated.

Still, for now, all Colton can hope is that Puallet PD will somehow stumble into an answer.

But based on his experience with the PPD detective he's been talking to, a guy named Ken Lewis, Colton's not holding his breath.

The current detective on her case, it almost seems like he's so open-minded, he's closed-minded.

It's got to be some mystery suspect that's out there lurking in the shadows somewhere.

It couldn't be anybody she knew.

It's got to be a deathbed confession.

It's got to be, I mean, these are all things he's told me.

And it's just like, I don't think it's that complicated.

I don't either.

I mean, statistically, overwhelmingly, people are unfortunately killed by people they know, you know?

And while Western Washington in the 80s and 90s did seem to have its own flavor of offenders that were running rampant, and that absolutely can't be ruled out.

I think both things can be true.

According to the Department of Justice, a significant number, 54%

of all homicide victims are killed by someone they know.

A friend, a lover, a neighbor, a co-worker.

But when we isolate the victim pool to women and girls, the figures jump jump dramatically.

Nearly 90% of women and girls killed in the United States are murdered by someone they knew.

This makes it that much more important to really get to know a victim, to understand what her everyday life looked like, and who the people in it were.

But there is another factor that would be impossible to ignore in the context of Misty's disappearance and likely death.

The time and the location combine to paint us a blurry, rain-soaked image of a special breed of monster.

One devouring its prey in the Pacific Northwest of the 80s and 90s with a staggering rate of what can only be called success.

The sheer number of unapprehended offenders committing rape and murder in this area, specifically those targeting little girls, teens, and young women, made it a uniquely dangerous time to be Misty Copsey alone on that September night.

Of course, two things can be true at the same time.

Someone she knew and trusted could also have been one of these monsters, hiding in plain sight, while at the same time lurking in the fog and the evergreens.

With what I've learned from Colton already, I think there's a lot I can do to start unraveling the knots in Misty's case.

I don't think it's impossible.

I think it's probably the hardest one I've tackled in a while.

Well, without remains or a scene.

And of course, like everybody else, just from my cursory looks, I have some thoughts.

I have like my instincts go one way, but I'm always very open to those instincts being completely wrong.

Now that I've spoken with Colton and he has given his blessing to me in taking on his sister's case.

I want to get a grip on what's been reported in the case so far.

I believe every cold case should be reinvestigated from square one.

I dive in as though no one has ever worked it before.

But knowing what the early days looked like, what has and hasn't been done in previous iterations of the investigation, is still helpful in establishing a baseline.

Whenever I take on a new case, I like to keep an open mind.

To that end, the first thing I need to examine is the possibility that Misty was a runaway, if for no other reason than to put it to bed once and for all.

I mean, the police were clearly convinced that Misty had taken off deliberately and on her own.

My question is,

why?

This case is different from any other I've worked in the last six years.

I don't have access to the police's case files.

Unlike my cases in Mobile, Alabama, and Baxter Springs, Kansas, I don't have an existing relationship with any local detectives or sheriffs.

I've reached out to Puallet PD and I'm going to work on them.

I hope I can get them to at least talk to me.

But for now, I'm working only with what's out in the public record.

Fortunately, in 2009, a local reporter named Sean Robinson published a very thorough account of this case for Tacoma's News Tribune.

It paints a detailed picture of the case and even of Misty and Diana's life.

In May 1992, Misty and Diana moved from a trailer park in Pualla to a duplex in nearby Spanaway.

Diana had separated from Misty's father when Misty was a baby, and though Misty still saw her dad regularly, she lived with Diana.

By all accounts, Misty and Diana had a great relationship.

They were super close.

Misty was in eighth grade, and though she was very popular, she was known as a bit of a goody two-shoes.

She didn't smoke or drink, and she definitely didn't have sex.

She was a class clown, too.

And like most of the rest of us in the early 90s, she loved 90210.

Among her teen heartthrob posters was, of course, Jason Priestley.

I myself was more of a Dylan girl than a Brandon, but I certainly recognize and respect the impulse.

Everything I've read makes it sound like Misty was a pretty happy, well-adjusted 14-year-old.

Absolutely nothing fits the profile of a kid likely to pack up and take off without telling anyone, anyone, never returning, or ever even making contact again.

Here's the most generous explanation I can come up with for the police's insistence that Misty was a runaway.

According to Sean Robinson's reporting, something slightly odd, or at least oddly coincidental, had happened about a month before Misty disappeared.

According to a newspaper report from the Time, on August 24th, 1992, Diana and Misty got into an argument.

Diana went out.

When she came back, Misty didn't seem to be there.

I asked Colton about this.

He said that Misty was home, but Diana didn't see her.

He added that their mom suffered from pretty severe anxiety.

In her panic, she had filed the missing persons report.

After filing the report, Diana found Misty safe and sound in her bedroom.

Colton told me that Diana had been too embarrassed to call the police and revoke her missing persons report.

So when Diana calls the police again a month later, that previous so-called runaway report is still showing up in their system.

Here's the thing with these runaway reports I don't understand.

If the police were never notified it was a false alarm and the report remained on file, then that means they also

never once followed up or attempted to locate the child.

The missing child.

And yet when she goes missing again, they blame the mother for not following up previously.

But what were they doing?

How were they working to bring this girl home safely?

Doesn't seem like they were, as far as I can tell.

So that means we're left with Misty's last reported sighting, the bus driver, who told her there were no more buses to Spanaway around 9.20 p.m.

At least, that was Misty's last confirmed sighting.

There actually was another person who claimed to see Misty the night of her disappearance.

A few months after Misty's disappearance, another possibility arises when Diana goes on a local call-in tv show to see if they can generate any tips

we're talking about the unsolved case of misty copsia during the show a woman calls in hi hi um

the woman never gives a last name but She claims that on the night Misty disappeared, she saw a girl matching Misty's description around 10 p.m.

outside a 7-Eleven on Puyallup's main thoroughfare, Meridian Avenue, almost directly across from the fairgrounds and just 300 yards from the on-ramp to a major state highway.

She just looked totally distressed, you know, like she was in trouble.

She looked like she was crying.

In the footage from the network, we see Diana as she was in those first few months after Misty vanished.

Her hair is sandy blonde, big curls, big big feathered bangs.

She's put together beautifully in a crisp white top, light colored jeans, bright white sneakers to go with her blouse.

You can see how mother and daughter both loved the fashion of the day, and though she's seated, you can also see where Misty got her height.

Diana sits up tall, her long legs crossed at the knees.

We also see Diana's face close up as the caller is speaking.

She is calm, but clearly focused on every word this mysterious Tammy is sharing, as though Diana knows this will be her only chance.

Unfortunately, it is her only chance.

Producers try to keep the caller on the line, but the line disconnects before Tammy speaks to police or gives her contact information.

It's very difficult to determine what, if anything, should be done with tips tips like these.

Singular, anonymous, no way of verifying or dismissing their authenticity.

The caller sounds sincere.

There's nothing to grab hold of that might lead me to believe it's a prank or even a misdirect.

But my skepticism of eyewitness accounts of anything holds me back from just straightforwardly accepting this information as a building block for the investigation.

If I can get on the ground, if I can see the 7-Eleven, see the highways and the bus stops, see the entrance to the fairgrounds, maybe I can begin to piece together a picture of what that window of time might have looked like and what might have happened to Misty there on Meridian.

There's another thing that stands out to me from the News Tribune series.

Some excerpts from Diana's journal that she gave Sean Robinson permission to publish.

In an entry from 1996, she writes, I was cleaning an apartment.

It was evening.

I got done cleaning the bathroom and turned the corner to go to the living room.

It was pretty dark, but I saw someone sitting on the couch.

As soon as I saw her, I knew it was misty.

She opened her arms and said, Mommy.

I grabbed her and just held her forever.

In another entry, grief.

I never thought the pain would go away or get any less.

And when it started to lessen, I felt overwhelming guilt as if I were a cold, uncaring person, a really bad mother, as if I were being untrue to Misty's memory.

To keep getting by in this mortal life, I had to put that memory in a very special spot in my soul and hold it dear.

Because it's not supposed to stay foremost while I am still living.

It needs to to be kept in that special spot to be protected.

I love you, Misty.

Mom.

Reading these entries, these deeply personal thoughts of Diana's, doesn't bring me a lot of actionable information or give me leads to chase down.

But it drives home something else I've learned.

This sort of intimate, up-close view of the very specific kind of pain and loss felt by loved ones who have never been given an answer, an explanation, or even any real hope of an end to their suffering.

This brings with it a unique responsibility borne by the investigators, a commitment that doesn't just end when it gets hard or when other distractions come along.

I'm keenly aware that Diana Smith never felt her daughter's case was treated with that kind of devotion.

She may have been right at times.

In fact, it seems pretty clear that there was nothing but callous disregard in the beginning.

And she may have been mistaken at points in the process, as there are times in the history of this case that some detectives took the case to heart, tried to treat it accordingly, and have never really let it go.

But I'm in it now, for the long haul, whatever that looks like.

And so with Colton's blessing, I make another call to the person who first told me about Misty Copsy.

I mean, the problem with this is she could be anywhere and you don't have anything.

You have a bunch of weirdos, but you know, there's bottom feeders all over that area.

A million years ago, you told me about the Misty Copsey.

I call Cloyd Steiger in December 2024, right as I start on the case.

Cloyd's a retired Seattle homicide detective who reviewed the case a few years back for the Attorney General's office.

I first met Cloyd years back through a colleague who was working on a Ted Bundy project.

She'd been in touch with him, and when I told her I was interested in examining cases from the 80s and 90s in the Pacific Northwest, she connected me with Cloyd.

The first time we spoke, he pointed me to Misty's case, saying he thought I might be able to bring some much-needed fresh eyes to it.

You know, it's kind of funny you mentioned it because I just got called from a friend of mine at the Attorney General's office last week.

Hey, what do you know about the Misty Copsy case?

I think you did the thing on it.

Well, that's interesting.

Sounds like there might be some wheels turning on this case in the background.

If so, I'd like to understand why.

And more importantly,

why now?

Just Just a small world, though, because I just got that call and then boom, there you are.

Boom.

There I was.

For now, my main reason for calling Cloyd is to get the lay of the land.

I ask about other cases in the area and if they offer any clues.

Yeah, there was one that was very similar that disappeared from up by the river, which is the opposite side of town from, but Philip's not a big town.

So when I say the opposite side of town, I mean three miles away.

Yeah.

They were looking at that one really hard, too.

Were they?

Yeah.

And then there's others in the region.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel to find serial sexual offenders in Washington.

Oh, it is.

Yeah.

And the other thing is, it's right by Puyallam.

It's very close up to the mountains and the deep forest and stuff.

And you could hide a body very easily.

Okay.

And it may never be found.

I mean, unless a hunter comes across a skeleton or something sometimes.

So we've got, figuratively speaking, a dark forest full of predators.

And we've got, quite literally, a heavily wooded area where it's all too easy to dispose of a body and leave behind very little evidence.

I asked Cloyd if anything stood out to him when he reviewed the case files a few years ago.

Any tips or leads that seem worth pursuing?

Well, there was a report of her being seen getting it, possibly getting into a car down by the fairgrounds.

And

that's the Western Washington State Fair, so it's a big event.

It attracts hundreds of thousands of people.

It's not a little town fair.

During fair season, there's a lot of traffic in that area, a lot of people.

And there were some reports of her possibly getting into a car, and I forgot what the car looked like, but you know, those, you never know those.

It's true, you don't.

But as an investigator, you should run down every remotely credible tip.

Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like the original investigators did.

So this reported sighting of Misty getting into a car, it's unverified, but it's certainly intriguing.

I write it down as a thread to tug on later.

What did the car look like?

Did the person who reported that tip give a description of the driver?

Then Cloyd says something that prompts another line of questions in my head.

It was actually last seen live at the Puyalla police station.

What?

Yeah.

I thought the bus driver saw her.

The bus driver saw her, but he was right.

The stop is right by the police station.

It's right there.

Would it be remotely possible that an officer might have offered her a ride home and we got a Michelle Boucher situation where the copy?

I mean,

anything is possible,

but I don't know.

In the spring of 1980, an 18-year-old Texan girl named Michelle Boucher was traveling the country when she disappeared.

She'd last been spotted walking along an interstate in Minnesota by a state trooper.

Years later, it would come to light that that trooper had picked Michelle up, then raped and tortured her before strangling her to death, all while on duty.

Michelle Boucher is on my mind as Cloyd is speaking.

Mainly, could something similar have happened to Misty?

Cloyd tells me he doesn't suspect it.

The Poland Police Department Department would be incredibly busy during this time.

I mean, they bring all the other regional officers in.

So they're not giving kids rides home because no, they're not giving kids rides home.

This is a double-edged sword.

Of course, what he's saying makes sense, that they're all so busy.

No one would have offered or agreed to give a teenager a ride home.

But the fact that the cops are so busy working the fair could also be seen as just as much an argument that a wolf in sheep's uniform could pounce on just such an opportunity to snatch a trusting girl off the street.

It's worth noting, I have not heard any suggestion of corruption or nefarious activity in the Puyallup Police Department.

There is nothing to suggest this is what happened.

But at this stage, I'm considering all possibilities.

And if it wasn't a cop, the general chaos of this massive state fair and the local police having all their attention turned towards the hundreds of thousands of people flooding the town.

Well, it sure sounds like the perfect opportunity for someone to do so.

There's a couple of people around here that were involved in

child abduction type stuff or suspected.

Some of them sound good for this, but I don't know.

Without a body, it's awfully hard to know anything.

But not impossible.

i asked cloyd about someone who was high on my list of potential suspects reuben schmidt the 18 year old friend who misty called for a ride home that was hinky i mean he could be the guy yeah yeah yeah he was weird and he was a he was a kind of a freakish guy too he was supposedly asleep in the apartment or something i don't remember

cloyd's memory of the details is understandably not 100

it's been years since he reviewed the case, but I've definitely got some leads to pursue.

The call is certainly useful, but at this point, I've done about as much advanced research on Misty's case as I can.

It's time to put boots on the ground.

I tell him I'll be out in the Tacoma area for two weeks in January, and I'd love to take him to dinner to talk more about this case.

Let me know.

I mean, I'll be glad to help you.

I feel certain this will be one of the hardest cases I've ever worked.

For starters, there is so little physical evidence.

Maybe even none at all.

What does exist was found in February 1993 when a group of volunteers joined Misty's mom, Diana, to search along Highway 410, about a half-hour drive from Puallop, deep in the mountains outside the little logging town of Enumclaw.

The search party made a shocking and devastating devastating discovery.

A pair of jeans with socks and underwear stuffed into one of the pant legs.

According to Sean Robinson's reporting, Diana burst into tears, her face contorted in a way everyone struggled to describe.

Staring at the jeans, Diana realized they were her own.

They're the ones Misty borrowed to wear to the fair.

To date, this clothing is the only physical evidence ever recovered in this case.

King County Sheriff's Department officers arrived at the scene by 3.30 p.m.

The light was already fading and the officers decided it would be best to come back the next day with search dogs.

Everyone knew the significance of the location.

A few hundred yards away, the bodies of two teenage girls had been found within the last four years.

murdered and dumped in a small clearing in the woods.

Teenage girls who were last seen in downtown Puyallup, just down the street from where Misty vanished the night of the fair.

Three girls, all about the same age, all disappeared from the same main drag in Puyallup.

Evidence of their disappearance found in the same patch of woods down Highway 410, about 25 miles from town.

This was the dumping ground, the territory of an active killer.

Could Misty have died at the hands of a serial killer?

Coming up on this season of Who Took Misty Copsy.

Western Washington was a veritable killing field for young women.

I don't think people can even wrap their brains around how many

serial rapists and predators were out running around.

It's insane.

It's the biggest case in Puyalla.

A 14-year-old just disappears, never seen again.

And that's a serious case this is a real thing like this is this is my family that we're talking about not just like a tv story or something like that this is real department leadership decided whoa

we need to do something about this she didn't run away something happened to her

the mind-blowing thing to me is that she was with a friend the night she disappeared on September 17th, 1992.

Nobody talked to that friend until February of 1993.

That is the biggest, biggest concern with the original investigation, in my opinion.

He was creepy, very skash.

I never felt comfortable with him.

He was very creepy.

Did he give her a ride?

We do not know.

Did he tell the cops, I drove up to an area that is not that far from where these genes were discovered?

Yes, he did.

Did they polygraph him about his statements about, oh, they've got it wrong.

She's buried six and a half miles away?

Yes, they did.

I swear she said he was all dirty.

He was like covered in dirt, and it was late, and then he went to sleep or something.

And so she's like, I think that girl's here on the property somewhere.

Who Took Misty Copsy is produced by Arc Media for ID.

You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts.

We'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.