Ep.8: Mine Hunting

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Previously, on who took Misty Copsey.

He was creepy, very sketch. I never felt comfortable with him.
He was very creepy. If it was just a serial killer picked up, they would have just dumped the body.

What's the sense of going to such detail to hide it? I knew that this had been gotten into because it was kind of sitting up in the rafters. I was kind of wondering what was in this.

And it had been taken down and opened up and was completely empty. This family needs closure.

That's not fair to them that they have no closure and that her mom died without knowing what happened to her baby.

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

On my first trip to Washington, I met with a lot of witnesses and sources who might know something about the disappearance of Misty Copsey, including some who I can't name or include for safety reasons.

There were many intense emotional moments from those conversations, but there's one that has been playing on a loop in my mind ever since I got home.

It's a moment with Misty's best friend Trina, who went to the fair with Misty in September 1992.

My producer, Tessa, and I asked Trina what she thinks happened that night. Can it be truthful? Yeah, please.

Based on your instincts, if you had to guess, what do you think happened to Misty after you parted ways?

Ruben Schmidt killed her.

Ruben Schmidt came down and picked her up. and took her to grandma's house.
Grandma's house is right next to the clothing, within 10 miles. Ruben Schmidt doesn't remember what happened that night.

Bullshit.

I hate him.

He did it. No doubt in my mind.

None.

I'm shaking.

She's up there somewhere at grandma's house or something close to that.

I told Trina that I'd made contact contact with the people who now own that farm. Trina started to cry, but she was also smiling.

Her reaction shows the complexity of her feelings around Misty's disappearance.

She's there! And I'm so grateful that you know the people that own the farm. She's there somewhere.
That's a big farm.

But I'm so happy that you just said that.

That makes me feel better.

It's very unfortunate that Diana's not here.

She tried so hard and nobody would listen to her.

I'm just glad that Diana's now with her daughter.

A few months have passed since my first trip, but my determination hasn't faded. If anything, it's grown stronger, more urgent every day.
I'm frequently in touch with Misty's brother Colton.

I so badly want to get answers for him and indirectly for his mother Diana.

I have several reasons for suspecting that Ruben Schmidt may have been involved in Misty's disappearance.

And if so, I have several reasons for thinking he disposed of Misty's remains at the Schmidt family farm.

For one, there are the glaring red flags in Ruben's story about his whereabouts that night, or stories.

Sean Robinson reviewed the police case file and he reported that at first Ruben told Puallet Police that he drove there the next day.

In a later interview, he said that he blacked out and quote woke up there the next day.

But in both versions, he said he had blacked out and couldn't remember how or why he ended up there.

Right.

There's also the fact that a pair of jeans, socks, and underwear I believe to be Misty's were found way down Highway 410 in a ditch on the side of the road, almost as if they'd been tossed from a passing car, not far from the Schmidt farm.

Kuala PD knew all of this.

The original investigators drove Rubin out to the farm at one point, but then seemingly stopped pursuing him as a suspect based on polygraph testing that was questionable at best.

Captain Jason Visnaw also knew all this. He's the Pualip PD detective who reinvestigated Misty's case in response to Sean Robinson's reporting in the late 2000s.

It piqued Captain Visnaw's interest enough to lead a two-day full grid search of the Schmidt family property with cadaver dogs and search and rescue teams.

He told me that they searched about 45 acres of land, but I think there's more to be be searched. I've learned that in 1992, the Schmidt owned about 10 more acres.

There are also mine shafts in close proximity to their property. A person dumping a body likely doesn't care about property lines.
Why wasn't the surrounding area searched?

Then, there are a few things I've learned in my investigation that I'm not sure previous investigators knew about.

There's the Facebook post by someone using the alias Halim Khan, who I now believe to be Ruben's nephew Derek.

He wrote that his mother, Ruben's sister Julie, helped Ruben hide out at his grandmother's farm after Misty's disappearance.

I've tracked down a possible address for him and I plan to knock on his door when I'm back in Washington.

Then, there's the information I got from the woman I'm calling Jane, who I met with at a diner.

She told me that a member of the Schmidt family told her that Ruben showed up at the farm late the night of Misty's disappearance, acting suspicious, maybe covered in dirt.

I tried to reach that family member, who I'm also not naming for privacy reasons. Suffice to say, this person doesn't seem to want to talk to me.
At least, not directly or by name.

Just days after I returned returned from Washington in January, Misty's brother Colton received a surprising Facebook message.

The message comes from an account using the first name Melissa, but this seems to be an alias. The message reads, quote, have the investigator find Julie Schmidt to get information about Ruben.

It may help to find Thomas Schmidt, the brother of Ruben's dad, who lived with Fred and Vera Schmidt. Maybe he can help with locations on the property.
End quote.

The person writing the message notes, in parentheses, that Julie Schmidt is Ruben's sister and that Thomas Schmidt lives in a care facility. Now that's interesting.

In another message, Melissa tells Colton, quote, I want to help you. I am heartbroken that your mom did not get closure.
I hope you understand that I'm not able to put myself in harm's way.

I believe that she may be on the property. There are mining shafts on the bottom of the property where you drive in by the bridge.

The water is to the right and the shafts to the left covered with vegetation. The kids were never allowed to play there because they were open shafts covered with vegetation.

Like I wrote, Butch may be willing to provide property details to help with possible locations on the property and he lived there when she disappeared. Slash Ruben showed up there.
End quote.

I'm sorry, mineshafts?

I figure out that Butch is Ruben's uncle Tom, a brother of Ruben's dad. He had two brothers, Tom and Don.

Again, the person who sent this anonymous tip said that Uncle Tom lived on the Schmidt farm in September 1992.

I search for and find property records confirming this. I've heard that Ruben's uncle Don lived there as well, but I have not been able to verify this with any official records.

Regardless, the idea that at least one of Ruben's uncles lived on the farm gives me even more reason to focus on that land, especially the mines surrounding the farm.

Who would know this land better than someone who had not only grown up there, but was living there at the time of the events?

The Puyallup Police searched about 45 acres of this land back in 2010 and 2011, but as far as I know, they did not search the mines.

Given the tips I've received about specific locations on the property and the potential that Ruben's uncles lived near those areas, I'm concerned that the Puyallup Police search may have missed critical areas, maybe even the most critical areas.

At the suggestion of my mentor, Dr. Ann Burgess, I've reached out to a forensic anthropologist named Marion Davidson.

She's a professor at Loyola University, a forensic anthropologist and a forensic archaeologist. I know her a bit through my cold case consulting work with Dr.
Burgess.

When I tell her about the mission, Marion is instantly on board. We set a date and book our flights.

We're going mind-hunting.

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On a perfectly crisp, clear morning in April 2025, I am back in Washington. This time with forensic anthropologist Marion Davidson in tow.

We're driving down the SeaTac Strip straight to the Schmidt family farm.

For this first day, I mainly want to walk the old Schmidt family farm and surrounding area with Marion so that she can get an idea of the landscape, the soil, the layout of the farm versus adjacent properties.

And of course, start laying eyes on where these mines are supposed to be hidden among the heavy growth forest, rushing creek, and steep rocky hillsides.

I'm very excited about the potential value of a trip like this, but it has all come together really quickly. From the airport, Marion and I drive right to the farm.

The busy highway gives way to a two-lane road. We pass a few working farms and then reach the small road that leads to the farm.

I slow down as we approach the driveway, remembering it's a sharp right turn onto gravel.

All right, so this is the farm. Okay.

I have all new people for you.

Aaron and Lindsay, the current landowners, are waiting for us outside. We make introductions, then Marion gets right down to business.
We've got two days. There is no time to waste.

I want to see the mine.

Same.

Marion and I have been doing quite a bit of research on the property, and we've discussed discussed the tips I've received.

In Marion's experience, any kind of overgrown mine could definitely be a dumping spot, for one very simple reason. Why dig if you don't have to dig?

Digging is hard work.

Even a shallow grave is backbreaking, time-consuming labor under the best of circumstances, and messy.

Contrary to what movies might lead us to believe, if someone's trying to quickly and discreetly get rid of a body, it's a hell of a lot easier to use some kind of pre-existing hiding spot than to dig a fresh grave.

For her part, Marion's been digging into the types of mines in this area. No pun intended.
She hasn't worked a case like this one before.

In preparing to fly out here, she did extensive research and spoke with colleagues all over the world who had excavated mines for clandestine graves before so that she knew how to prepare and what to expect.

From there, she researched the mines specific to Western Washington, the types, the sizes, the protocols for excavating. She is a research scientist in every sense of the term.

And though she has questions that can't really be answered until we're on the ground, She tells me that she's starting to get a handle on what it might take.

I am relying on her expertise completely. So now it's my turn to ask questions.

What kind of mines exist in this part of Washington? What are we looking for?

Most of the mines out here were for coal. There are other things that can be mined, but I said most of them were for coal.
And most of the entrances looked huge.

Big enough for teams of people to walk into them. Now, this is just Marion's general research on the area.
The tips I received talked about mine shafts, specifically the kind a person could fall into.

Maybe we're looking for a combination?

We start walking. From what I've been told about specific mines that may have been close to the farm and accessible in 1992, we need to head closer to the creek.

It's down a steep hill bordering the edge of the original property.

We walk along the road for about five minutes, curving to the left, then to the right as we work our way down. We're shrouded by enormous tall trees on both sides.

This is the kind of forest I've always imagined covering large swaths of the Pacific Northwest.

When we arrive in the general area referenced in the anonymous tips, we're staring up at a hillside, so high and steep it damn near feels like a small mountain.

We're definitely in the right place, but how can this be?

How could anyone, even two people, successfully navigate this evergreen and thick brush-covered terrain straight uphill in the dead of night, carrying a body?

Very helpfully, Aaron, the homeowner, actually found an old map of the mines.

He found this from 1932.

These are the mines.

And this is not a road. He thinks this is like the tunnel.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like underground.
So this is the bridge. That is the mine.
Wow.

Side note: I'm definitely recruiting Aaron to my investigative team. As I'm looking over the map, Marion's already gearing up.

This overlay map is showing a spot just southeast of us that actually has a small flat area we can get to without too much difficulty. We think, anyway.

And that appears to be the spot where a mine entrance was once semi-exposed.

So this is the ridge. It's literally like right up there.
I want to walk up there. Okay.

We start climbing.

It's not as steep as the other spot, but it is still completely overgrown and it's difficult to get good footing.

The terrain is tough. Luckily, and uncharacteristically, it hasn't rained at all in the previous few days, so it's not really muddy.

But balance is still tricky because the brush is so thick I can't actually see the ground I'm trying to get a foothold on.

At a certain point, it's just too hard to navigate at my height and without the right boots and gloves. Marion keeps going on her own.

Like it should be literally like right there.

Marion is better equipped and she makes it to the flat spot we're interested in.

But even so, she too is concerned about taking a wrong step when she can't see the earth under her feet through all the thick growth and plant debris.

After all, the entire reason we're looking here is that we believe there are mines with obscured openings that one could easily drop or drag something or fall into.

She's moving pretty hesitantly and I can't blame her one bit.

Marion eventually comes back down, panting.

No luck. So all of the old coal mine photos are like, the entrances were like as big as a shed.
They were huge. Yeah, because they would go into

fully teams of people would go into them. Yeah, so now I'm just really curious because I can't.

I thought we were going to look up there and be like, mine entrances. And it's not.

It's frustrating that we've come all this way and can't even find the mines, much less any evidence that might be in them. But I'm not nearly giving up.

I've also called in a favor with a local drone operator who has agreed to help out the next day. I mean, it's going to be hard for the drone guy.
There's a lot of trees.

But to have him go up there and see if it looks like, is there another way to access it? Can we get up there without just straight up climbing through this shit?

For now, we head back to Aaron and Lindsay's property. We drink water, get some food, and start considering our next move.
Marion asks Aaron about the property.

What did this plot of land look like when they bought it? That's when he mentions something offhand.

There's a large evergreen kind of bush that I think was right about in line with those trees, and the septic tank sat right behind it.

The septic tank?

The Schmitz septic tank?

Aaron says, yes, there was an old septic tank on the property when he and his wife bought it.

Right here was a about eight foot by five foot by five foot concrete tank with a concrete about two foot in diameter lid that sat on top. but it was not secured in any way.

And then when we did the process process of building our house, I had somebody fill it with gravel.

There's companies that will come and pump out all the sewage and stuff.

We figured since this was going to be our drain field anyways, and it had been sitting vacant for 10 years or whatever, we just filled it in with gravel and then covered dirt on top of it.

The potential significance of this strikes me immediately. And the more Aaron describes, the more important I think it becomes.

It is a dark and upsetting thing to contemplate, but it is also a reality that human remains being disposed of, hidden away in literally the last place anyone would go looking, happens more than we would like to believe.

As Aaron is describing the location of the tank, the ease of access, and the fact that it had not been cleaned out, it is clear to me that we must, at a minimum, exclude this defunct cement box just below the surface of the earth, mere steps from the Schmidt family farmhouse's front door.

My dad and I were commenting on how easy it was to lift this lid off. And we were like, oh, don't fall in there because it was, I mean, it was definitely big enough for multiple people.

What does that mean to you? It means I want to dig it up.

Quick research tells us that human bones will not fully decompose in a septic tank, even after 30 years.

So if Misty's body was dumped inside of this tank, evidence of her remains may still exist there. Answering this question means getting to the bottom of the old tank.

I ask about first trying GPR, ground-penetrating radar, technology that sends radio waves into the ground.

Waves then bounce off anomalies in the soil and can show disturbances or items underground without having to dig. The only issue with GPR is it's not really ground truth unless you dig it up.

It'll show differences and consistencies in the ground or like anomalies, but you can't really know for sure what that is unless until you dig it up.

In other words, even if the GPR shows anomalies, we'd still need to dig it up to see if those anomalies are bones.

It wouldn't be super difficult to do a couple test pits here and see if we can find the outline of the septic tank itself.

Just as I'm starting to imagine Aaron and Lindsay's beautiful yard riddled with test pits, Aaron seems to read my mind. We're planning on doing some landscaping later in June.

So if it was something where you said, okay, we have to dig a giant hole here, it's not the end of the world because we're going to be bringing in some topsoil and other stuff over this later this year.

Better now than June is what you're saying.

I'm genuinely taken aback by how willing Aaron and Lindsay are to support this search, whatever it looks like. It's a kindness we are incredibly lucky to have encountered.

And so with Aaron's blessing, we start digging. I'm just trying to get the topsoil off because once you do that, everything else is so much easier.
I just want the topsoil to be able to do it.

Do you remember how deep it went down? I mean, it was at surface level, but when they filled it in, they did have excavators out here, so it would have been very easy to

put excess stuff on top.

We're looking for any sign of gravel, a sign that we've hit on the old septic tank.

And just really want to make sure that that is not

because it was a rock, you know what I mean?

Before we go too far in

a direction for no reason.

We dig for more than an hour with no sign of gravel. We're not hitting nothing.

Yeah.

Here's some gravel here.

Yes! In the ground! Gravel! Gravel.

That was not on the surface. Aaron strikes gold.
And by gold, I do mean a septic tank.

All of this is gravel.

I want to be as realistic as possible here. I'm not hacking away at the ground, covered in dirt, expecting that at any moment we'll find Misty.

But I also cannot ignore the most basic facts in homicides. Most victims are killed by someone they knew, and most killers want to be rid of the remains as quickly as possible.

This math means that we must eliminate the most readily accessible spots connected to the most obvious individual before doing anything farther afield.

If Ruben did this, and if Misty was dumped somewhere on the farm, I don't know it's here in the septic tank. But it will have to be eliminated at some point, so it might as well be right now.

As Marion starts trenching out the area, Aaron asks me a question about Ruben. Do you happen to know if Ken Schmidt is one of his uncles?

Interesting question, but no. I tell Aaron that according to my research, Ken Schmidt was Ruben's father.
He died in 1987 when Ruben was a young teenager.

Because the old truck case kind of a thing that was rifled through in that very first break-in has the name Ken Schmidt. Ken Schmidt on it.
Yeah, I saw that.

A few days before the trip, Aaron had sent me a picture of the empty wooden toolbox after the break-in.

When I spoke with Aaron and Lindsay on my last trip, they had told me about a series of break-ins at the property shortly after they bought it, but before they'd moved there.

Most of them seemed like run-of-the-mill burglaries, but the first one was different.

It was very soon after Aaron and Lindsay had bought the property. They barely even started work on tearing down the old house to build their new one.
We were bringing all of our stuff out here.

We're like, we're going to get started on this building project. And so, yeah, we had thousands of dollars worth of tools sitting out here.
None of that was taken.

The only thing that seemed to be disturbed was this roughly five-foot-long truck bed toolbox. Aaron could tell instantly that it had been rifled through.

Because it was kind of sitting up in the rafters of the barn. They took it out of the rafters and onto the floor and it was sitting open.

The fact that they went into the barn and opened up this red truck box kind of a thing seems very odd. Very odd indeed.
Especially a new detail that Aaron just mentioned.

One I should have clocked when he sent me the photo, but I missed it in the flurry of preparing for this trip and fielding all the anonymous tips. The toolbox was red.

Misty's jeans were found with red paint chips on them.

Could this be where those paint chips came from? Sean Robinson reported that police and state lab officials determined the chips were likely nail polish.

But that was years ago, and we don't have the paint chips to examine. It's possible that testing with newer technology might yield different results.

I also asked Trina about red nail polish and whether she recalls Misty wearing red nail polish. She says pretty unequivocally that Misty did not.

What if these paint chips were actually paint from a toolbox? What if Misty's body was in the truck bed for transportation or her clothes were at some point stuffed into that big red wooden toolbox.

When I was looking at it the other day, just

disturbing it briefly, there was these little tiny red flecks of paint that chipped off into my hand.

Damn it, I hate being on the outside. Of course, there's a strong chance the state officials are correct, that the chips are indeed nail polish.

But what if that was a mistake, given the huge advancements in forensic technology over the last decade or two? This is something the PPD can potentially act on. Now,

Puyallup Police could do a paint sample comparison. As Erin and I are discussing this, Marion continues uncovering the edges of the septic tank.

Eventually, after more than four hours of digging, we can see the full outline.

It's getting late in the afternoon, and this seems like a good stopping point for the day. Having uncovered the tank, we're feeling hopeful that we can get into it tomorrow.

We'll be back bright and early. Marion, we'll keep digging, quite literally.

I'll be digging too, in another way, trying to see if I can find Ruben's uncle, Tom Schmidt, or Ruben's nephew, Derek.

I'm determined to dig deeper into the mystery of Ruben's actions and the potential that an uncle was with Ruben on the night that Misty disappeared.

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The next morning, Marion and I head to the farm. It's a long day of digging.

I've joined her in the dirt and rocks now, and as daylight turns to dusk, we're about three-quarters of the way into the septic tank.

The manhole-size opening is now fully exposed, and much of the dirt has been removed.

Marion and I can both fully stand inside the tank, but there's nothing gross, just lots of dirt and very large rocks. This is not an easy task.

We take turns in the tank, filling a five-gallon bucket with earth, heaving it up to the other one above ground for emptying, and then filling again.

The tank is deeper than we anticipated, which only makes me that much more certain that it would have been a place to hide a body.

We dig for more than eight hours. We remove loads and loads of dirt from the septic tank, trying our best to get to the bottom.

Eventually, muscles aching and light dwindling, we call it for the night.

On our drive back to Tacoma, I hear from our researcher. She says that Ruben's uncle Tom is living about 15 minutes from the farm in the nearby logging town of Enumclaw.

The next day, I drop Marion at the farm and I go to see what else I can find out about Reuben and his potential actions on the night that Misty disappeared.

My first stop is his Uncle Tom's apartment. To my utter surprise, Tom opens the door.
Well, open is a generous term. He cracks the door just enough to hear what I have to say.

and we talk through that crack for about 15 minutes. The conversation doesn't do anything at all to convince me of Ruben's innocence, nor does it confirm any involvement.

Tom does, however, tell me that his brother Don, the uncle who owned an orange pickup truck, is dead. A researcher confirms that Don died in 2021.

That leaves me with the so-called Haleem Khan, who wrote Facebook posts about Ruben's sister helping Ruben cover up his involvement in Misty's disappearance.

Again, I believe this is Ruben's nephew, Derek, and I found a possible address for him in Washington. I have a street address for an apartment complex, but no specific apartment number.

I drive over to the apartment complex, hoping a receptionist or property manager will have more specific information.

I hit another dead end. I speak with someone who works for the property management company.
She will not confirm or deny any resident addresses.

I leave a note with my name and number and ask that she pass it on if any such resident lives on this property.

This is one of the most challenging aspects of cold casework, especially when attempting to solve a case from afar. I have limited time on the ground.

I need everyone to happen to be home on the day I happen to show up. And more often than not, they're not.

It's frustrating. I also try the phone numbers listed publicly and ask local authorities to try to make contact.
I have no luck, at least not today.

Still, the day is not entirely lost. As I start to drive back to the farm, my cell phone buzzes.
A new text message.

It's Marion telling me she has definitely reached the muck at the base of the septic tank. By the time I pull down the driveway, she's packed up, standing next to a massive pile of dirt.

She can conclusively state there are no human remains in the tank.

It's disappointing, of course, but we both agree that it was crucial to know for sure so we can turn our focus to the mines.

Our drone operator got some very useful footage, which, along with the tips, the maps, and the areas Marion walked on foot, will allow her to compile a comprehensive report on where future searches should be conducted.

We've narrowed it down to a handful of specific locations, and this can be of real use to the people with the resources and the right equipment.

Marion promises to send her report by the end of the month.

We will take it as far as we possibly can from the outside, and then we hope that the police responsible for this case will be receptive to all we've uncovered in the past four months.

Until then, there's another person I want to see while I'm in town, Misty's brother Colton. I want to tell him where I am in my investigation at this stage.

Colton invites me over to his apartment to chat.

I tell him about the search over the last few days, about my conversation with Jane.

She gave us a lot of really good information. And I tell him about Derek, aka Haleem Khan.
And we're trying to get that person to chat as well.

I tell Colton about the mysterious uncle, how I've been able to definitively eliminate Clint Garrison, Ruben's older half-brother, who was in prison in September 1992.

His half-brothers, Mark and Eric Garrison, can't be as definitively eliminated, but it does seem that the people who said an uncle was involved would have known Mark and Eric were Ruben's older brothers, and therefore would not have referred to either of them as uncles.

That leaves either Don or Tom.

And so it definitely felt like this is probably, you know, the shortest distance between two points in this case.

Colton tells me he's been bothered by the question of the uncle for years. It was something that had also dogged his mother, Diana.
Which uncle was Reuben with that night?

I knew about the Garrison family. I had been stuck on the Clint Garrison idea.
Yeah, I couldn't place a name to that other person.

So I had that same dilemma that my mom had of which one is it? Who is it? Yeah. So if we're going to get closer to a more definitive answer, I think that's the biggest puzzle piece that's not there.

At least we're closer to answering that question. I mean, essentially what we have are people who have been sitting in plain sight the whole time.

Colton is listening intently, but doesn't seem surprised by this, that the cops would have overlooked witnesses and potential suspects who were sitting right under their noses for 30 years.

I explained to Colton that Marion and I are each drafting comprehensive reports of our respective work on the case, and that as soon as it's all ready to go, I'll ask PPD to sit down for a meeting.

I feel like if we get information that I'm like, no, this is solid information,

I will share it with the police. That's my responsibility.
What they do with that information after that is totally on them because they're the only ones who can actually move the case forward. Yeah.

Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.

Colton thanks me for the answers I've gotten so far and the ones I'm still pursuing. I promise that my work is not done.
That my cases remain my cases until they are solved, no matter what.

I've worked many cold cases. They all share one thing in common.
Even with answers, it is never really over for the loved ones left behind.

In Misty's case, Colton and his family know this better than anyone. On this second trip to Washington, Colton says there's one more person he thinks I should talk to, his and Misty's cousin, Jenna.

I've been wanting to speak with Jenna. Colton had told me that she and Misty were very close.
She wasn't available the first time I was out here, but she is now.

We get in the car to drive over to Jenna's. Along the way, Colton tells me that our work together has already helped him start to see a way forward.
I've never really, like, thought about like,

I guess, ending the story. Like, it's never really occurred to me.
It just kind of seems like, well, we're just going to keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing.

And then it's like, the idea of it came to me the other day. It's like the first time I've ever really thought about like, what if we like find her and like this is like over?

When Colton told Jenna what I'm doing, she said she'd really like the chance to talk about Misty. Misty as a person, as a girl, not just as a victim.

And Colton says he'd like to know what Jenna remembers too.

Obviously, I didn't get to know my sister, and it would be kind of nice to know how she was.

I couldn't agree more.

Misty,

she was my favorite cousin. We're three years apart, so I was 11 when she disappeared.
She was 14.

Sorry. I am a little sensitive, so I apologize.

Misty

was really awesome. I looked up to her so much.
My mom would tease me. I idolized her because she was really confident and she's good at sports.
She was really good in her academics.

And I struggle with all those things.

And I just thought she was the coolest. Jenna remembers visiting their grandparents together as kids.

We used to go out back and there was like a little creek that ran through and we thought it was fun to like build little bridges and jump across.

And my grandma had a spare room with like an old antique radio and we would just jam out in there and she loved music and so did I. So we would sing and just any song she liked, I liked.

And she was a huge new kids on the block fan and we'd talk about who was the cute ones. And like I said, I idolized her.
She was so cool. And she was tall and I've always been short.

So I just would like, be like, she's so cool. Like the height made it even cooler, you know.

When the time came that she, of her disappearance, she was in that phase where I wasn't so cool anymore. So I would do anything just to get her attention.
And I wanted her to come over.

And my mom had to gently be like, well, she's a teenager now, Jenna. And, you know, she loves you, but just kind of chill because I wanted to hang with her.

I ask about that time period when Misty went missing. What Jenna remembers.
She says that that she feels she's blocked out a lot of the details, which is very common with trauma.

Plus, she was only 11 years old at the time. But she does have vague memories of that time period in the immediate aftermath.
I remember...

frantically making flyers and going out and handing flyers out. We went to a mall and we were handing flyers out, talking to people, hanging them up on all the poles and things around town.

It was just frantic. I remember frantic.
This is before social media and this is before you had cell phones.

So it's, you know, you're like driving to each other's houses and driving together to places. And, you know, this is just crazy.

Jenna was in fifth grade, too young to be part of the adults' conversations, but old enough that everyone in her class knew what had happened. Everybody at school knew what had happened.

And I did have a classmate. He was my friend.
So I don't know if it was intentional or if he really thought this, but he came up one day, Jenna, oh my gosh, I found your cousin.

And I remember like the anxiety level going through the day. I wanted to call my parents.
I wanted to know what was going on.

And then when I got home and I said it to my mom, I think she was like, What are you talking about? You know, and had to do the letdown conversation of that's not true.

And then I was really hurt and upset. So that was pretty upsetting.

Even at 11 years old, Jenna could see how Misty's disappearance affected her aunt Diana, Misty's mom. Jenna's dad was Diana's brother.

I do remember my aunt urgently wanting help and not being able to get that because she kept being told she's a runaway and she kept urging them to listen to her and wanting people to listen, wanting the police department to listen, and they just wouldn't.

Through my investigation, I've come to understand how much this impacted Diana, but I've always wondered, how did the rest of the family react to this treatment? Everyone was like pissed off.

Like my dad was super pissed and, you know, they were looking on their own. My aunt, my dad would go out.
My aunt would go out with different people.

Like there was a lot of looking on our end, but not, you know,

in the timeframe where nothing was being done.

The timeframe when the police insisted over and over, despite all the evidence, that Misty was simply a runaway. It's infuriating.
I get the idea if you're not somebody related or you don't know.

I get where your mind goes there. But we knew Misty.
She loved being at her mom's. She loved being with her mom.
And she wouldn't have ran away. They were really close.

From what I remember, she didn't seem to like have that relationship where you feel like you need to lie and not tell your mom things.

Jenna feels like investigators got her Aunt Diana so wrong.

I do feel very angry

because, for one point,

let's just say she was this horrible person. Does that make Misty any less important? It doesn't.
Does it matter?

But to speak on her directly, she was not a horrible person that she was painted out to be. She was wonderful.
And, you know, everyone makes mistakes. I know she has mistakes.

And, you know, there were times where she did drink or whatever. And who wouldn't? I'm sorry.
But if my child was taken, I think I would probably do worse.

And so it just makes me want to scream from the rooftops. This isn't true and just get defensive, but I know then that just makes you look worse.
It's something you can't control.

And it's unfortunate that my aunt Diana had to pass away and

have that on her name when it's unjust. And I'm proud of her for holding her head up high and just keep going like she did.
She's always been just my loving aunt. She was there for everything for me.

She taught me how to drive because it was a little stressful when I was learning with my parents. She was at every prom, send-off, everything for me.
And

I feel like that would be really hard if I were to put myself in her shoes. I always felt, you know, so grateful that she did those things for me.

But really bad that

she didn't get to do them for Misty.

And that just shows you her heart

to be able to do that. And knowing you can't do that with your own daughter.

She was a very loving person

and very strong. For her not to go completely off the deep end, I'm so proud of her.

Because I don't know if, you know, you don't know unless you're in someone's shoes if you could.

manage and she was hanging on by a thread but she did it and she never ever gave up hope about finding what happened to Misty and

I guess that kept her going.

Listening to Jenna, I'm flooded with images of all the things Diana lost when she lost Misty.

Getting to help do Misty's hair for prom,

talking with her about early crushes and comforting her through young heartbreaks. Going to sports games, seeing her off to college, finding out what Misty wanted to do for her career.

An entire future ripped away from her along with her daughter on September 17th, 1992.

Jenna also lost a great deal.

I feel like I was robbed of what would have been one of my best friends, you know, and that's my own selfish feeling outside of all the obvious things like for my aunt and you know Colton and my family.

That's my selfish thing that I think about. My husband's four years older and I just feel like we would have just all been really close, and would she have had kids, and just all the things.

Every dance, every,

you know, getting my driver's license, my wedding, all these things. I just always thought of her and thought this should be her too.

I asked what resolution would look like for her.

My thing really is: I want Colton to be able to

move in his life and have answers. He's young, and this has been so many years and he's wonderful.

He won't ever give up on the fight, but I want him to be able to get those answers that he's been working so hard for.

This makes me feel profoundly sad, but also profoundly hopeful. The tragedy of Misty's case has been hanging over this family for more than three decades.
Colton is an old soul, but he's a young man.

He's 26 with a long life ahead. He shouldn't have to live it mired in this tragedy.

Diana spent years fighting with Puallet police over her daughter's disappearance, and Colton has told me he feels a responsibility to his mother to keep up the fight for answers for as long as it takes.

Obviously, we want this so badly. And not just for Colton, for the whole family, but I look at Colton the most because he is young and he has been doing so much to get the answers and i want that

you know

i believe we are closer to those answers than we have been in years

but we still don't know where misty is i hope with every fiber of my being that if we all keep at it It won't be much longer before we're able to answer the questions. Who took Misty Copsey?

And where did he or they

put her?

And bring the person or persons responsible to justice.

Who Took Misty Copsy is produced by Arc Media for ID. The network executive producer is Meredith Russell.
This series is hosted and written by me, Sarah Kalen.

Our senior audio producer is Danielle Elliott. Our producer is Tessa Ryan.
Executive producers are Zachary Herman, Doreen Razam, and me. Co-producer is Lindsay Agee.
Score is by Travis Bacon.

Sound editing and mixing is by Dean White. Assistant editor is Andrew Salamone.
Audio engineering and editorial feedback provided by Josh Wilcox at Brooklyn Podcasting Studio.

Forensic research and fact-checking provided by Jennifer Leahy. Archival footage courtesy of KCPQ-TV Seattle, Fox Television Stations LLC, Trademark and Copyright 2013.

All rights reserved and curator Tegna King.

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