He’s a popular fraternity brother with a big heart a highly talented a natural leader he’s very dedicated when he wanted to do something he did it a laps in judgment trips him up but he soon gets himself back on track he seemed like he was doing really well in school
He was keeping up with school work until day he heads to campus and never returns it’s as if when that bus pulled away he vanished a cryptic note is his only explanation said my family’s given me a lot of opportunities that I just didn’t take advantage of his puzzling Secrets
Leave detectives and his loved ones baffled we think there’s somebody out there that can help us figure out what’s going on I don’t care why he left where he’s been I just want him to come [Applause] [Applause] Home Tuesday night April 19th 2016 18-year-old College sophomore James Martin Roberts who goes by Martin meets with friends at a favorite appalachin State University hangout the Klondike Cafe it was a pretty busy night um pretty usual for Klondike I mean packed that you can still walk around but it’s
Pretty hard you’re probably going to get your fees stepped on or something Martin and his fraternity brother have come for the klondike’s Big Draw my group of friends we wanted to go to to play trivia and so I texted Martin I was wondering if he was going to be
There according to Martin’s friend Holly he’s true deform that night he would always just say funny things and just he’ always be the guy that everybody wanted to hang out with I was just so mesmerized by Martin always like had such a huge crush on him that I didn’t even realize anything else
Was going On the son of parents who are divorced and estranged from each other Martin first enrolled at appalachin State University in Boon North Carolina almost a year and a half earlier he was really set on going to Appalachian State and when that that acceptance came in he was really excited
About it nestled in the foothills of the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains the school’s Vibe is unique the laid-back atmosphere I think it suits him his very first semester he’d been invited to pledge of fraternity on campus ta Kappa Epsilon known as te for short he knew people there already and they
Were invited to the Frat parties and immediately he was selected I know that he’s someone who thrives when he’s around his friends he wanted an opportunity to make friends quickly and that was the best way to do it I think he liked the Brotherhood he had always played Sports and had his
Team and the fraternity was kind of the same thing even as a child in Kernersville North Carolina Martin was a natural athlete playing soccer playing baseball playing football he just he always loved Sports as the brown haired blue-eyed Dynamo got older he excelled on the soccer field he liked to compete he
Liked to play he liked to play to win Martin was pure hustle pure work and he did it calmly and quiet wildly all time he could walk off the field and be relaxed comfortable fun loving respectful kind caring he’s got a big heart people would look up to him and it
Made him feel really good about himself in high school he was voted captain of his soccer team yet by the time he graduated he was ready for a change Martin was very very focused on something that interested him business finance things of that nature were something that he had said all along he
Thought he had an interest in academically Martin set his sights on app State’s business school he was smart he’s very dedicated when he wanted to do something he did it Wednesday night April 20th the day after Martin was at the kondik cafe his father John Roberts who lives two hours
Away has been expecting a call from Martin we were making plans for the you know coming weeks and for the summer and for next semester we were talking about the classes he was in and the grades that he had at that time two days earlier Martin told his dad he’d soon
Have his first paycheck from his new dishwashing job at the Daniel Boone Inn all right talk to thek he was going to call me back Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest and talk about much money he made but according to Martin’s friends and family his phone
Was his Achilles heel he was just a not a great like texting Communicator phone Communicator I feel like multiple times he always had a broken phone he refused to put it in a case ever would not put it in a case so by the next day Martin’s father still
Hasn’t heard from his son he tries reaching him yet again with no luck seemed a little bit strange since he was so definite that he was going to call me Back that same morning Martin is actually at his apartment getting ready to start his day he chats with his roommates over breakfast they all said that they saw him in passing on Thursday Martin tells them he’s heading to the library took a water bottle and he put it in his
Backpack and he he left probably about 10:30 that morning easy around lunchtime Martin’s cousin who also attends App State runs into him on campus it was a complete chance meeting she had uh forgotten something for her class the two have barely seen each other this semester they walked together to the nearby Apple
CART bus stop the free bus service students and Boon residents use to get around town they had a conversation for 10 or 15 minutes and upbeat Martin tells her about his plans for next semester and that he’s on his way to his fraternity house Now when the bus comes she gets on and the cousins go there their separate ways he started walking down the street and she didn’t think anything of it this brief casual meeting will soon take on far greater significance than his cousin ever imagined it really was some kind of
Coincidence if you believe in that kind of thing that they happened to meet up at that time at that place and it would be the last time that we’ve seen or heard from him at 4:00 that afternoon two of Martin’s close friends and frat brothers stopped by his apartment to see
Him Martin hey Martin man you okay the day before he’d abruptly dropped out of their fraternity chat group he was the Freshman pledge class leader of that group of those people reached out to Martin wanted to know why but Martin is not in his room and he’s no longer
Responding to the texts from his friends by Friday morning Martin’s father is increasingly worried about his son it’s been for and Lord for the apartment complex I said are you going to go by there anytime today this morning I need to check on Martin the apartment manager started
Calling the roommates and saying hey can you go in his room see if he’s there see if you can figure out what’s going on Martin’s roommate knocks on his closed door Martin and they didn’t know if he was in the room or gone Martin’s not inside but on his desk there’s a
Note reading it his roommate immediately realizes something is very [Applause] wrong Friday morning April 22nd 2016 a roommate of college sophomore Martin Roberts has made an alarming Discovery in his room the roommate called me read me the note over the telephone and I knew I had to get up there
ASAP just dropped everything at work got home as quick as I could got my wife Abby and we headed to Boon as fast as we could get there the roommate’s second call is to the Boon police department they contacted the police and said we need to report this young man Missing when detective Kevin Wilson arrives at the apartment he read Martin’s letter the note is so personal Martin’s parents have made only parts of it public it was a note that Martin left stating that he was leaving I think it’s said to the folks that I
Won’t see and he said my family’s given me a lot of opportunities that I just didn’t take advantage of he was disappointed at himself I think he felt like a failure it’s really Sad but it didn’t really say where he was going or what he was doing it doesn’t say this is a suicide note and I’m going to hurt myself nor does it say this is not a suicide note and I’m going to go away so when I saw
It I thought this is not going to be good um it’s going to be a difficult case Martin has also left important possessions behind his laptop his iPad his phone and his wallet I think it could be seen as the ultimate withdrawal Boon police reach Martin’s half immediately got on the phone with
My mom and let her know what was going on I left work went and got her and we went to Boon all the way up there I kept thinking he just went off with a couple of his friends and forgot to tell somebody he’s going to turn
Up according ing to Martin’s father and stepmother the 19-year-old had expressed disappointment in himself before 8 months earlier after a great freshman year Martin had just returned to Appalachian State as a sophomore his very first night back he ran into trouble he went up for the sole purpose of attending this fraternity
Party he was a social drinker so I don’t think he was addicted to alcohol in any sort of way he drank with his friends who unfortunately drank a lot he made the decision to drive after he had had you know apparently too much to drink then 18 Martin pulled right out
In front of appstate campus police they stopped him and then that evolved into a driving while impaired citation Martin was taken into custody that night I get a call from him everything it’s like 2 a.m. 3:00 a.m. maybe and he tells me I need to come
Pick him up because he’s in jail and he got a DWI Martin’s girlfriend Kayla lived almost a 100 miles away from map State I don’t know why he didn’t pick somebody closer I think that calling his parents was definitely out of the question at that point he was nervous and scared and
Didn’t want to disappoint them Kayla says she drove 2 hours to Boon that night to help Martin when I arrived he was out as soon as I got there he threw money at me as in like gas money he was like I’m sorry you came all the way up
Here for nothing exhausted and emotional Kayla says they wound up fighting don’t I was like I can’t do this I deserve a little bit better um someone who doesn’t just considerer himself in decisions that he makes Caleb that night Martin lost his driver’s license and his girlfriend 24 hours pass before Martin
Got up the courage to call his father and stepmother put it on speaker when he told us he had got a DUI and said he needed to come home that the situation he was in was not good for him and he needed some time away from
Him that same day they brought him back home to Kernersville North Carolina we first thought maybe he was just going to come home for the weekend uh or maybe even began to say I think I want to take a semester off I’d like to get away from the fraternity life Martin
Officially withdrew from appstate while home a friend of his family heard he was looking for work and I said well I’m going be open up my uh store that semester so he’s going to be one of my first hirers according to R Miller Martin thrived at
His new job in the restaurant much like he had playing soccer he’s a rare kid you see a kid that young that mature uh be able to handle business the consistency that he showed on the field is exactly what he showed when he started working for me Martin even put
His business education to work to boost the restaurant’s bottom line the job helped repair his bruised self-esteem Martin did you know exaggerate some but he said that rich wanted to scrim him for management after Martin took a full semester off he returned to college in January of
2016 he was ready to get not to be living with us again but according to his father Martin wanted to handle his education differently this time he was not living on campus in a dorm like he did his first year he was living in an apartment with three other fraternity Brothers he
Seemed like he was doing well well in school he was keeping up with school work I think he was glad to be back uh with his friends um but we didn’t talk as much after he went back now just 4 months later Martin’s family and friends have been blindsided by his sudden
Disappearance during the 2-hour drive his father calls Martin’s cousin who’s on the appstate campus she was the one that said we ran into each other yesterday as a matter of fact at Martin’s father’s request she rushes to Martin’s apartment while talking with his roommates inconsistencies emerge they thought Martin was headed to
The library Thursday morning which isn’t where his cousin ran into him Martin told her he was headed to the house where his teak fraternity Brothers hang out if he were to go to the Teak House he would have made a right Andross the street in
The te house would be right up here but police find no evidence Martin arrived there were people that were at the house that day around that time and they said he he didn’t come by today we didn’t see him at all trying to determine where Martin went detective Wilson contacts the
City’s apple cart bus service there is video on the cart transit buses we poured over video that night we were actually able after several hours to find him on video walking away from the bus [Applause] Stop April 23rd 2016 college student Martin Roberts was reported missing 15 hours earlier by his roommates his cousin was the last person to see him as they parted at a campus bus stop now police have just spotted him on video taken by bus security cameras it’s
Kind of griny but uh it’s clear enough to tell that it’s Martin the front camera clearly shows him starting to walk away the side camera you can see him through the glass and then the back camera catches him as he’s walking away Martin’s on foot and heading toward a busy intersection he’s
Right on the edge of Campus so the detective is hoping the video will reveal which direction he takes he’s on that video that last frame for approximately 17 seconds and he’s right at a street corner he looks One Direction and looks the other direction and then they don’t see him anymore as
If when that bus pulled away he Vanished hoping for leads on which way Martin headed boom police tried to access his phone but without his passcode it’s sealed tight as a drum but the unique thing to Apple products is if you haven’t opened your emails or phone calls or text messages they’ll actually are visible on that phone A lot of M text and missed phone calls investigators follow up on every missed call and text as a result the news quickly spreads that Martin can’t be found it was just like the worst feeling you could ever have your heart just drops police begin scrutinizing Martin’s interactions before he went missing
Thursday trying to understand his frame of mind a fraternity brother tells police that 48 hours before Martin disappeared he’d driven him to get a haircut they actually took him to the bank because he had to go to the bank to withdraw cash money when Martin returned according to his roommates he’d also bought
Groceries he had a small refrigerator in his bedroom and when we were there could have taken the food with him when he left Martin’s high school girlfriend Kayla tells police that in her case she’d grown concerned about Martin 3 days earlier when he withdrew from a high school chat group she sent him a text saying what are you doing do you not want to talk to me anymore in particular
She didn’t know that that very night Martin also withdrew from his fraternity chat group and then he started started saying things that made me question if he was okay it was things like no one can help me at this point there’s nobody I can talk to the next day Martin went missing it’s
Unbelievably alarming but uh you know we don’t know we don’t know what’s going to happen until until it happens then boom police are told about a possible sighting of Martin just an hour and a half after he left his cousin at the bus stop we had a young lady come forward who
Stated that she had seen him walk in uh in an area not too far from town she knew who Martin was I think she described the like an unusual or a particular gate that she hey I know that’s Martin Roberts the exact location flry Fork Road between winklers Creek and pain Branch
Roads from there it’s possible Martin may have been headed to a nearby Recreation a area called Trout Lake it is a well visited area by college students it’s easy to get to and there’s water there there’s walking trails you can hike in the mountains there police
Learn that Martin has been to Trout Lake before perhaps he’d packed some food for a hike and something happened to him here in the densely forested foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains the day after Martin was reported missing North Carolina State Highway Patrol provides a specially equipped helicopter to conduct a
Nighttime search for Martin in the area of the sighting they have what’s called a Ford looking infrared radar if you’re walking in an area or if there’s an animal in the area they give off a lot more heat than the surrounding ground if Martin’s somewhere in the woods the
Sensors would see him plain as day but the infrared search yields nothing as investigators piece together details about Martin from his friends and family a pattern begins to emerge they discover he’d been selectively revealing or hiding details about himself for months before he went missing after coming back
To college his friends started to notice that they were who sometimes would say I was with my cousin well but we talked to his cousin he only has one cousin in Boon and she says I haven’t seen him we don’t hang out together Martin also hid something much
Bigger from his roommates and his mother and sister that he wasn’t even attending appalachin State this semester we thought he was back enrolled in appalachin he was now enrolled in our local Community College we wanted to take classes online I think it’s four or five classes at the community college
Investigators get Martin’s academic records from the community college there’s another Revelation he was doing fine he wasn’t failing anything but he just decided to stop going it had been nearly a month since Martin had logged on to any online courses he was you know telling me about
His grades and his classes and extra credit and things like that and he had quit going that’s not all Martin had been hiding we called the places that he was telling his family members he worked at and they said we we have applications um I was actually able to find applications
To all the places he’s talking about but he never got hired at the time I thought man he is he’s working himself to death you know now I know different but you know wish I have known then but we didn’t know he was being mysterious or untruthful or
Hiding something from from just about everybody Martin’s mother and sister say he even lied to them about his DWI he told them he’d been ticketed while walking home he said that he was stopped by the police and for drunken disorderly I said well you know um you learn your lesson least you weren’t
Driving but Martin was behind the that night I was shocked I always thought we had the relationship that he could just talk to me about anything it just seems like he was trying his best to give out this picture to people that everything’s okay I’m doing fine uh when in actuality
He wasn’t doing fine at [Applause] all 19-year-old Martin Roberts has been missing from Boon North Carolina for 5 days in that time police have uncovered a trail of disengaging from his networks and his friends and and being so deceptive about things was very unusual it was not how he was
Everything that happened was pointing to his he was actually miserable and it wasn’t work tired it wasn’t School tired burnt out whatever he was just miserable or depressed or something Martin’s cryptic note now makes more sense to investigators they think he’d been telling people what he imagined they
Wanted to hear about him it seems to me that Martin was very much trying to keep keep up the facade that everything was going great for him in his note he alluded to being tired of that of tired of his life not living up to Expectations but police have no idea what Martin’s intentions were they look for clues in his possessions starting with his wallet as a result of his DWI Martin no longer longer had a valid driver’s license they take your driver’s license away from you physically his father says Martin did get a state issued ID
Card it’s now gone his original ID was not in that room we youum it somewhere else or or on his person Martin didn’t take his bank card with him his parents had said you know he’s going to have a certain debit card and this is this is what bank gets through
When police check Martin’s banking history there were no large withdrawals or suspicious purchases before he went missing there’s been no more activity and still hasn’t been any activity at all this time Boon police also find something unexpected Martin Left Behind Some anti-depressant appeals that uh Martin was not
Prescribed there there were quite a few of them I don’t know of any time that he has been treated for depression it’s not something that we see being bought and sold between students here police are never able to determine how Martin got the anti-depressants or why he had them in the first
Place 5 days after he went missing two more possible sightings of Martin are reported to police one near Trout Lake the other winklers Creek Road both bolstering the likelihood of the original sighting hour and a half after he’ left the bus stop in that same general area uh around the
Same time frame and so uh for us that seemed to act check other modes of transportation Martin could have used to go in different directions the best we can tell he didn’t take a bus he didn’t take a cab he didn’t take uh you know one of these app based
Companies unless Martin hitched a ride this leads police back to Square One the theory he was traveling on foot he definitely had the ability to hike and he was very active um had a lot of endurance and could do anything that he put his mind to but those who know
Martin best question if he’d ever attempt anything more ambitious than a day hike he’s a go outside and sweat for five minutes come inside and take a shower type person he just didn’t have a lot of experience probably hadn’t been camping five times in his Life in the bus security video Martin certainly wasn’t dressed for a long journey I only had on with some cheap tennis shoes and not even what I describe as a backpack even so investigators consider the possibility Martin might have wandered into the hundreds of miles of wilderness surrounding Boon perhaps attempting to
Connect to the nearby appalachin Trail we received a couple things said hey there was a kid out here definitely didn’t belong out here but it wasn’t him so like completely different Martin’s Family suggests another possible destination we’ve always been a beach family we’ve always gone at least once
If not two or three times a season to the beach a family favorite is Ocean Isle Beach North Carolina 280 mi from Boone it’s just outside Myrtle Beach he’s yeah definitely a beach kind of person if so Martin’s two distinctive tattoos might stand out there on his
Left forearm he’s got an homage to appalachin State it’s kind of a a blended view of mountains which is definitely reflective of Boom on his right rib cage Martin has a tattoo of a lyric from Bob Marley’s song Zion train don’t gain the world and lose your soul wisdom is better than silver
Or gold over the next 2 months sightings of young men matching Martin’s description pop up along Coastal North and South Carolina but after investigation none turn out to be him a into their investigation Boon police have followed numerous leads trying to Lo we have these time periods where we
Don’t know where Martin was police find no answers in Martin’s digital footprint extracted from his laptop I would say I’ve went through 12,000 emails and actually read them and and tried to figure out what what’s he doing As an investigative Hail Mary Boon’s chief of police appeals to the community for anything they may know about Martin when he was off the radar it’s almost an open letter to the public hey if you’ve got information about this good or bad or whatever you know here’s the chief’s office line you
Call me the appeal elicits no responses I’ve been doing this job uh 20 plus years and I’ve never had any case where you put a fraction of this amount of work into it and you get nothing back then after 4 months worth of dead ends detective Wilson receives an
Unexpected call from a coroner 350 M away in Indiana who’s investigating some unidentified human remains they had found from what I understood the lower portion of a leg the foot but it was in a shoe not just any shoe a gray New Balance sneaker the same kind of sneaker
Martin was wearing when he went missing so that corner said that you guys are the first thing that popped up so I just called you would there be a reason he came [Applause] Here 19-year-old Martin Roberts has been missing for 4 months but a coroner in Indiana has just recovered human remains that potentially could be his Boon’s detective Wilson quickly discovers the sneaker found in Indiana is a size and a half larger than what Martin wears yet there’s only one definitive
Way to know if it’s Martin’s we had actually done parental DNA testing I had gone and met with his father and birth mother to do DNA samples the coroner said we’re going to send our stuff off and obviously if there’s a match you guys are going to get that neither one of them ended up being a
Match in June of 2016 Boon police investigate another potentially har we’re looking you know we’re looking for that with three reported citings of Martin near Trout Lake immediately after he went missing police focus on that area and specifically in the water those bodies of water you know it’s not un
Common for folks to use those as a mean mechanism to to commit suicide or to harm themselves extensive water searches are conducted of both trout lake and the nearby Boon Reservoir are the North Carolina estate Vier of Investigation they have a few dog teams of um hrd dogs human remains detection
Most folks know them as caber dogs the dogs are trained on the odor of human decomposition the gases are actually lighter than the water so they’re going to rise to the surface and so what we’re looking for when we’re doing the searches of the water is for the dogs to
Do exactly the same thing as they do on the ground is to alert us when they smell those gases their searches also use sonar technology and divers to scan the bottoms of the lake and Reservoir afterward the dogs scour the land surrounding both bodies of water the searches yield
Nothing there was nothing uh no change of behavior on the days that we searched for uh Martin in the water areas no animation nothing gave us any indication that there was anything there [Applause] Boon police Circle back to try to understand Martin’s behavior and what he’d been silently struggling with
Before he went missing the did a search warrant to the college because they have a Counseling Center that that offers free counseling to the students laws protecting patient confidentiality make mental health records difficult to access even for law enforcement did he have something type of um ment illness
Happening did he have an addiction was he having problems with his sexuality or you know some type of identity issue or or or or whatever we never saw any signs or or never been any discussion or communication that he was having any issues with uh sexuality or gender
Identity and we’ve always told him if you have any problem you can tell us about it in our interview with his friends which are our greatest source of information nobody can give us any information about any of that being a problem but Martin’s friends tell police
They had noticed a marked change in him when he returned to school in January of 2016 he was less about always having fun and going and doing things with them there’d be times where he wanted to be alone I would have never known that he was struggling with anything he hit it
Well adap state months pass and Boon police explore a host of theories for other places Martin could have gone they also enlist outside help to scrutinize his case we brought in experts in the field hand them the case File and see in two days and just let them just go through
It with fresh eyes and try to point out anything that we didn’t do well enough or didn’t do it all or anything that they can come up with Martin’s Family holds tight to the hope that investigators can find him they’re offering a reward for up to $10,000 for information on Martin we
Think there’s somebody out there that knows something that can help us figure out what’s going on Martin’s father and stepmother have set up a Facebook page called help find Martin Roberts toen the visibility of their cherished missing son just also to try to communicate directly with Martin
How much we love him and we miss him and we want him back we just want to know you’re okay nearly 2 years have passed since the day Martin disappeared leaving behind troubling questions I have no clue what it was impacting him I just feel so bad I didn’t see
It the one thing that we know for sure is we don’t know anything for sure but somebody does in August of 2017 Martin would have turned 21 for his family the pain of his absence is excruciating the plan had always been that Martin was going to walk me down the
Aisle after I got engaged I asked him he said yeah the day that I went and picked out my wedding dangerous he said I can’t wait for the wedding say but after Martin disappeared she had to decide if she would proceed and he wasn’t there we want to get him back home and
Be a part of the family again I don’t care why he left where he’s been I just want him to come home if you have any information about James Martin Roberts or his disappearance you can confidentially contact the Boon police department at 82828 6900 or High Country crime Stompers at 828 268
6959 Margaret haaken mackenro disappeared on Tuesday October 10th 2006 when a person disappears without a trace often the most critical information is hidden in their actions and words from the days before they vanished Margaret mro’s last known whereabouts May hold the clues to what happened to her Margaret haaken mackenro has always
Been a fighter when you met Margaret you never forgot her just a force to be reckoned with as a volunteer firefighter she became a local hero when she saved a woman’s life at the risk of her own that was kind of Margaret she was a firefighter she became a soldier she
Kind of liked action but she is also known to have an explosive temper she was very strong willed she bumped heads with a lot of people one fall day the young mother three disappears without a trace the only thing that was missing from the house was a black Army duffel
Bag and approximately $111,000 in cash did Margaret leave to make a new life every way we went in the investigation kind of took us in a different direction or did her fighting Spirit goat someone into Foul Play after she went missing I sat down and I said something really bad [Applause] [Applause] Happened as 20 9-year-old Margaret haaken mackenro dances and pounds her way around the boxing ring she grimaces not only from the effort to keep hitting her instructor’s glove but from the pain that’s throbbing in her legs she suffers from a chronic knee condition she was supposed to have
Surgery on her knees in fact she was going to have it done the following week at only 5′ 2 in tall and less than 110 lb Margaret is Tiny But incredibly strong an athlete and an army veteran Margaret has trained herself to stand up and fight for what she believes in
Whether in a gym boxing ring or her everyday life her friend Lisa Gia con remembers first meeting Margaret 13 years ago she’s a forced to be reckon with but in a good way Margaret was a tomboy very tough firefighter you know in the army tank mechanic but that was the marar that
Everybody saw I’ll never forget walking in her house and she’s sitting on the couch you could smell that there’s a roast in the oven and she’s knitting and I’m like uh who’s this sh haakan remember first recognizing the force of their new daughter’s personality they brought her home from Mississippi where
They adopted her when she was 7 weeks old as the plane was landing at Newark Airport she let out a yell and it was a long time before she stopped yelling she she was a wonderful little girl but she had a mind of her own and she had a very quick strong volatile
Temper but she also deep down had a heart of cold when she was five the family expanded the hakin adopted three more daughters Margaret was the Tomboy of the group we got Christina and Adrian and then the next year we got bethan so we went from 1 to four in a
Year Margaret was admitted to a gifted and talented program in Brooklyn but when she was seven the family moved to Warren New Jersey and she lost interest in school she just didn’t quite adjust she was a free spirit she couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a
Time she often sought Escape up a tree her love of school was such that I had to climb a tree to get her out of the tree to bring her to school we all knew Margaret as a good kid fun k kid um a lot of spunk Pizzaz
Not a Troublesome youth but um we always knew where she was the feisty and active Margaret first drew the attention of local cops in her early teens Lieutenant Bobby Glenn remembers Margaret from the days when he was a 20-year-old rookie on patrol my patrol car got egged on Mischief Night
One Halloween many many years ago um she was found walking in the area uh can never prove that it was her but deep down inside I know it was Margaret Margaret grew up to be a non-nonsense type of woman her strong will had a positive side that at one point made her
A hero in 1999 when she was 21 Margaret became a fully trained and qualified volunteer firefighter for the Washington Valley Fire Department one of only three female firefighters in the Warren area she gave it her All she didn’t care if it was a blaze if it was inside a building she was going in and she was a great firefighter the guys had no problem going in that fire with a woman they knew Margaret hadn’t covered and they covered her Too when Hurricane Floyd struck that same year she saved a woman swept from a bridge by a flooding stream Margaret actually was able to save uh one of the people by jumping into the river and uh tying the woman up with her suspenders from her fire gear and and waiting there
For several hours until she was pulled to safely and you can’t swim but Margaret never thought of that Margaret thought about saving people that was Margaret he received an award for Valor but her impetuous nature could also alienate people when her temper unraveled her Fury was Unleashed on
Friends and family Margaret was not a person who would take any sass but she could give it she was also someone who could be mad at you at one moment in time and then give you a shirt off her back the next we had problems we bumped
Heads she bumped heads with a lot of people though her closest friends and family accept her temper as part of her nature it WS havoc on other relationships it broke up her engagement to the father of her first child Sarah Margaret and the father of Sarah were
Very close to getting married and then there was disagreement and that was that after September 11th Margaret left Sarah with her parents and enlisted in the Army where she was trained as a tank mechanic she seemed productive and happy she enjoyed the Army much better than we
Thought you know the discipline of boot camp we never thought she’ survive she survived and thrived she enjoyed it she seemed to find a little niche almost like the uh volunteer fight Department in Washington Valley she kind of found a home in both places but after 2 years Margaret
Received a medical discharge and came home in 2004 she began living with another volunteer Fireman Tim macro the couple had a daughter Emily and when Margaret got pregnant again they got married Melissa was born prematurely in 2006 and spent weeks in the hospital when she came home Margaret was very
Over protective the baby was in the room with her if at all possible at all times it was all about making sure that the baby was well Margaret is able to channel her fiery Spirit when it comes to being a mother by Fall baby Melissa is getting stronger and Margaret has given up
Firefighting to stay home with her and her older sisters Emily 20 months and Sarah age Nine on Columbus Day Afternoon Margaret visits her father the last time I saw Margaret I was at home she was ansy but it’s hard to tell her normal Dominion with ancy she asks him to take her to an orthopedic surgeon for a procedure on her knees the following week she asked
Me if uh I would take her and uh bring her home and I said sure no problem called her husband and begins angrily pacing the floor getting more and more worked up finally she hangs up on him and she said something to the effect of I’m going to divorce my bleeping husband
She was very agitated Patrick haaken dismisses the Outburst as just a typical spur of Margaret’s temper early that evening Margaret’s mother eileene gets a call from her daughter asking if she can bring bring the children and stay at her parents house later she calls again she called
That night and said no she wasn’t going to come that night she’d be over the next day but then she didn’t make it the next day either the last time Eileen hakin speaks to her daughter before she Disappears coming up Margaret’s temper gets a workout and police are called if she’s mad and she’s fighting with you she’s going to scream she’s going to yell she might strike you and I know that that was the kind of argument that they had had on Monday the day after Margaret haaken mackenro and her husband Tim have a vicious argument her mother eileene is expecting her daughter to come by with her children for an indefinite stay but Margaret never calls or shows up on Tuesday at the time eileene isn’t alarmed we just figured that she had calmed down
And whatever they had been arguing about it was over and everything was kind of back to normal it was not unusual for Mar to change her mind on something or calm down if she was upset so that we had no real reason to think anything had happened what the hakin don’t know is
That the fight between Margaret and her husband Tim mackenro the previous afternoon had been a protracted one verging on violence Margaret was the type of person if she’s mad and she’s fighting with you she’s going to scream she’s going to yell she might strike you
And I know that that was the kind of argument that they had had on Monday the altercation was serious enough that Margaret’s cell phone was broken and Tim mackenro called police Margaret stocked off to her parents house furious with her husband [Applause] Margaret’s husband Tim mackenro had called our headquarters to report that
He was involved in a verbal dispute um with Margaret um sometime in the early afternoon two of our officers responded to the Scene the officers were met in the driveway by mackenro who discounted the fight as just a marital disagreement and said his wife had left left resume Patrol uh a report wasn’t even filed on the incident Margaret’s friend Lisa says that later that Monday evening a very distressed Margaret calls her from the
Firehouse she had told me about a fight that had happened at the house that she had walked out she wasn’t going to fight anymore I said well you know what it’s getting late I said go home I said are you okay she said I’m fine I’m just
Angry and she was screaming and yelling on the Phone the next next morning Margaret calls Lisa again the phone rang and it was Margaret she gave me this wicked evil laugh and I said oh no what did you do according to Lisa Margaret announces that she has gone on strike for that morning she says her husband claims she
Does nothing all day so she decided to leave it to him to tend to the kids and take the two older ones to school and daycare Lisa isn’t surprised by her friend’s provocative actions and makes plans to go shopping with Margaret later that afternoon it was a few minutes before 9:00 and she
Says I got to go I’m like why she goes Tim just ped it got to go I’m like all right I’ll talk to you in a few she’s like talking if your B click and that was the last phone call was the last time I heard from her that was the last
Time that anybody other than Margaret’s husband reports having any contact with her Whatsoever that afternoon no according to Margaret’s husband Tim he is at a landscaping job when he gets a call from her she tells him they are out of baby formula and asks him to run out and get some and bring it home he does so arriving about
1:30 he quickly leaves again to run some errands when he returns around 3:00 the house feels strangely empty he calls for his wife but gets no response he looks in all the rooms and he found their youngest child alone in a crib and no sign to Margaret when Lisa doesn’t hear from
Margaret about shopping that afternoon she just thinks that Margaret got busy I honestly didn’t think anything of it figuring you know maybe the baby was fussy maybe she wasn’t feeling well you know there’s plans and when you have babies they change all the time The next day Lisa says she gets a call from Tim’s mother asking her if she has seen Margaret she tells Lisa that Margaret has apparently run off Lisa is stunned and dismayed she asks Tim’s mother some key questions the phone was broken the day before and the argument
That they had had that the car was there well I said what would she take I don’t know but don’t tell Tim I called you I’m like why well Tim doesn’t want anybody to know I said Margaret’s gone you will Tim doesn’t want anybody to know it was just it was just so
Weird Lisa can’t believe Margaret would go off and leave the baby alone in the house with no one to take care of her it didn’t make any sense you know if they called and said Margaret’s gone Melissa’s gone Emily’s gone Sarah’s gone I’d be like she’s got a cool off I
Didn’t believe that she walked off and left Melissa Melissa was an infant Margaret did not leave her house and leave this baby it isn’t until Thursday afternoon that Tim mackenro call police to report his wife missing 48 Hours have gone by and no one knows where Margaret
Is or what may have happened to her coming up the search is on for the missing mom and theories of about what happened to Margaret multiply either a she took off and wasn’t coming back or B she was a victim of Foul Play When Margaret pakin mackenro disappeared from her home on Tuesday October 10th 2006 her husband Tim initially did not call police he stated that he’ spoke to a couple friends in reference to her disappearance and they said well the police aren’t going to do anything for 24 hours anyway so um wait
To report her missing um he also says that we all know Margaret you know she has a habit of leaving for a day or two to cool down after an argument and that she will be back Tim talked to me about it he says you know she’s got to cool off she’s
Left before it is true that Margaret has a history of going off to cool down dating from when she was a teenager at 15 she ran away from home after a fight with her parents she said all right I’ll leave and she left she
Was gone for about a week 10 days or so what she was doing was uh hitching rides up and down the East Coast with truckers one of the truckers called us and let us know he had her and he brought her Home when she was younger uh she’d leave for a day or two before going into the army um she left for an extended period of time but once she had her children we’ve never had any reports of her ever leaving them unattended after Tim mackenro reports are missing on Thursday October 12th
Police don’t search for Margaret right away we kind of may have accepted it as May having known her for you know almost 20 years I assume that she’d be back in a couple days we did have some problems with the fact it was reported it was a couple of days
Later but as the weekend comes and goes with without any word or sighting of Margaret investigators begin thinking that certain things don’t add up on Monday October 16th 6 days after Margaret disappeared Lieutenant Bobby Glenn opens an intensive investigation Into The Disappearance detectives call Margaret’s mother eileene to ask if her parents
Know where she is at this point the Haans still have no idea their daughter is missing although Eileen has been trying to to reach Margaret since Tuesday I didn’t get an answer on the cell phone and I called the house on Sunday and I was told that Margaret
Wasn’t there and I just said I called and I got an okay Tim never told the Hagans that she had been missing and that she had been reported to police and then Monday the police called and that’s the first time we found out that she was missing we didn’t know she
Was was gone and and no one called and told us so we found out from the police department it was very upsetting to say the [Applause] least when police asked to search his house Tim mackenro is cooperative he allowed a forensic search of his house he allowed forensic search of her
Computer but remember by the time we got back to the house to search was probably about five or six days when you start an investigation behind unfortunately you’re playing catchup that’s not a place you really want to be despite the passage of time there are still signs of the fight between
Margaret and her husband that took place the day before she disappeared during that argument he alleges that her cell phone was broken there was uh a cell phone broken cell phone still in the garbage a lot of garbage in the in the can seems like normally would have thrown it out
Sergeant Lewis Deo is an investigator with the Somerset County prosecutor his office was called into the investigation 6 days after Margaret hanak and mackenro went missing he says Tim mackenro told investigators that the phone wasn’t all Margaret threw at him he came up and started saying she threw a knife at me
That kind of thing thought it was kind of strange he left all the stuff laying around like he was waiting to explain it macro was asked why he hadn’t told the officers who responded to his domestic dispute call about the violence he doesn’t tell the responding officers
That she threw a knife he doesn’t say that he didn’t want to tell the responding officers that because he didn’t want Margaret to get in trouble investigators are often suspicious of the spouse of a missing person and the domestic dispute call the day before Margaret disappeared adds to their
Concerns in a case like this the husband or spouse is always looked at first a lot of things don’t add up on what he says he doesn’t like to answer really any probing questions about the case from everything that any of the investigators told me at the time he
Just didn’t seem upset enough it just didn’t seem that that urgency that you think would be with a with a baby in the house and other young children involved in a situation but there is no record of any previous police visits to the home and
Tim seems to believe his wife has up and left him as days pass investigators are increasingly troubled that Margaret a devoted mother of three hasn’t at least gotten in touch with her family things just started to build on each other those were some of the cers that just didn’t seem to to
Fit investigators notice that most of Margaret’s possessions are still in her home her broken cell phone credit cards and new car have all been left behind it didn’t appear that she really took anything we went through her belongings one of the things that seemed to be
Missing was an Army duffel bag that she had from her time in the military she needed knee braces those were still in the house didn’t appear that much of any type of clothing was missing Tim tells investigators his wife had threatened to kill herself during their argument the day before she
Disappeared other friends and family members say Margaret may have been struggling emotionally after the birth of Melissa officers speculate that a severe case of postpartum depression could have overwhelmed Margaret and caused her to take her own life we had received information from people that we interviewed that she possibly suffering from postpartum
Depression I had narrowed down search areas places that she had frequented uh when she grew up places that I was familiar with that I knew that she hadd like to go the searches begin on October 19th more than a week after Margaret disappeared they start in areas around her home and
Expand over the next few days as hundreds of volunteers join the search through Warren Township there were so many firefighters on that search the town just bonded together it was let’s find Margaret the areas that we focused on was an abandoned Quarry um located off a
Towatch Hollow Road which is is uh in the area of her residence another area was Tom’s Brook it was an area that she like is the same Brook she rescued a woman from during Hurricane Floyd 7 years earlier Searchers find no trace of Margaret I never viewed Margaret as being a Candidate For Suicide just I don’t think she would ever kill herself investigators discount suicide in Margaret’s disappearance but they’re still in the dark as to what did Happen as the investigation progressed forward it seemed more that there was a possibility that either a she took off and wasn’t coming back or maybe she was a victim of Foul Play coming up police recover a potential clue to Margaret’s disappearance they showed Tim maen R the shirt and he
Positively identified it as one that belonged to Margaret get more disappeared online at investigationdiscovery.com vakin mackenro disappears from her Warren New Jersey home leaving her infant daughter alone in her crib investigators have several theories about what may have happened to her one theory that Margaret simply walked out seems to be backed up with some surprising information from her husband
Tim mackenro tells authorities that a large sum of cash in the thousands of dollars is missing from the house he believe she took the money took off on him he’s a landscaper they deal with cash but it seemed kind of strange that nothing else was missing but some money and a duffel
Bag while police are suspicious of Margaret’s husband they have no evidence that he is responsible for her disappearance they delve into Margaret’s past when she was 18 Margaret hired a detective to locate her biological parents and met both of them had she decided to reconnect with them again but when investigators make
Contact her birth parents tell police they don’t know where she is and there are more puzzling aspects to the case invest tigators learn that Margaret may have another identity her birth name was sherard Hy and she would use that name for like things like Facebook or stuff where she didn’t want
People to know really that it was her police is description of Margaret and the clothes her husband said she was wearing when he last saw her checked pajama pants an army sweatshirt and white Nikes it says she is possibly carrying a large black duffel bag and
She might be going by by the name Sherwood on the bulletin there’s maybe an Alias detectives dig into Margaret’s relationships looking for anything suspicious they turn their attention to the father of her first child Sarah Margaret had been locked in a bitter custody dispute with him she won full custody of Sarah just days before she disappeared he was investigated and his
Time was accounted for that thing the day that she goes missing so he’s been ruled out generally as anyone who may have any knowledge of her disappearance but police don’t believe a stranger abducted Margaret from her home there is no sign of a Breakin and Margaret was clearly capable of
Protecting herself from an attack everybody says she’s a fighter fiery I don’t think she’s going to go down there’s going to be a brawl she’s she was a soldier firefighter she’s got a little baby there to protect if anybody did try to abduct her there would have been evidence of
That person’s blood somewhere because nobody would be able to just quietly come and grab [Applause] Her early on Thanksgiving morning 5 weeks after Margaret went missing there is another strange turn of events a cop on his way to work in a neighboring Township spies a white male acting suspiciously at the side of a road not far from Margaret’s home he believes he saw a suspicious male
Standing behind a guard rail it’s a dead zone so he could not make a phone call to our headquarters to report it later he notifies the Warren Police Department a dispatcher sends out a patrol but the man is gone two officers searched the area and find an army t-shirt lying on the
Pavement those two officers then recovered that shirt uh then took it to the Mac Andro residents where they showed Tim mackenro the the shirt and he positively identified it as being one of the t-shirts that belong to Marg we was submitted to the uh New Jersey State Police lab for trace
Evidence or any DNA or anything like that but nothing uh was ever found on it so it kind of went nowhere I did not have any hope that that was going to lead to to anything that area was searched repeatedly um this t-shirt was found on the paved portion of the
Roadway there’s no way that numerous Searchers police officers would have missed that t-shirt it didn’t look like it had been laying out very long didn’t make any sense why would somebody throw that out there unless it was a red herring or something my personal opinion is that some investigators are stumped by now
Now they have exhausted most Avenues supporting the theory that Margaret left on her own did she hook up with somebody from the Army did she just need to get away for a while did she go back to any sort of military life she had a lot of
Issues going on with her health with her knees was she seeking different treatment and just wanted Time by herself to do that so all those Avenues were covered we e any type of credit cards that were issued to her for any activity which resulted in nothing we had checked
Nationwide all databases for her name and also her birth name Sherwood Haley showed nothing all along investigators have also been considering the possibility of Foul Play I think every minute or day that went by more and more of us said to ourselves this isn’t right and started the question whether there wasn’t you
Know some misdeed in this that that led to her disappearance most of her friends and family are convinced that Margaret would never abandon her children they say motherhood changed her M was a very good mother she cared tremendously for her children and just look to pieces and I I think she would
Be here if she could we don’t believe in the slightest that she abandoned her children cuz I feel that Margaret being adopted child had that feeling of Abandonment and I’m quite sure she wouldn’t want her kids to ever have that feeling she knew that anything she
Needed I would have taken the baby her mom would have taken the baby she would have never walked off with her left in the house Now there is no evidence that Margaret was seeing someone on the side so police focused their attention on her strained relationship with with her husband Margaret was um fiery kind of woman wasn’t actually afraid to throw a punch now and then or a kick we’ heard that the relationship between her and her
Husband became violent at different times I knew that they had their differences but I didn’t realize she said it on Monday that there was something more to it because all she kept repeating is I want divorce I’m done I’m done I’m out of here I want a divorce her friend Lisa confronts
Margaret’s husband on the telephone with a scenario she imagines may have happened I was so frustrated and angry at that point I said to him you know what Tim I can see it all is this what do you mean I you’re fighting with her she’s still angry from the day before
She’s screaming in your face she’s probably kicking you you get so angry what happens I said did you shove her does she hit her head what happened what do you do detectives notice that mackenro keeps changing his story about the amount of of cash he says went missing with his
Wife over time he ended up telling people different denominations of of money that was taken I think one was 6,000 9,000 11,000 was the original we were never uh really able to prove that the money even existed or was missing from the house and to some investigators mro’s attitude toward his wife’s disappearance
Continues to seem strange he seemed a little agitated but not distraught he wasn’t you know and run oh my God where’s my wife or anything like that he doesn’t seem to be all that concerned where she’s at I haven’t personally seen him upset he hasn’t reached out to the
Warren Police Department to provide us with any further information into her disappearance however one key element in macro’s story about his movements s day is confirmed police have a receipt showing he bought baby formula at the approximate time he told them the formula he brought home to his wife the
Last time he says he saw her we do have a receipt from baby formula and I’m I’m not going to go much more into that but um some of his his story does check out mackenro continues to tell police that he believes his wife has left voluntarily and that he has
Nothing to do with her going missing on the one-year anniversary of Margaret’s disappearance family members hold a prayer service at their local Catholic Church in the church Memorial Garden is a statue of an Angel and an eternal flame the hakin keep lit as a symbol of hope for her return but those
Hopes are fading closure is becoming more apparent to us that it’s going to be she’s a victim of Foul Play and that’s not something you want to entertain coming up with the investigation at a standstill local authorities reach out to the FBI and the case heats up
Again we figured let’s maybe get some fresh eyes on it see what [Applause] happens the strange disappearance of young mother Margaret haaken mackenro remains a mystery to investigators for 4 years occasional tips and sightings come in but lead nowhere some people thought that they saw her on Alaska uh some other people said they saw her at a shopping mall it’s it’s kind of getting
Like Elvis and she’s seen all over the place but nowhere he knows she can’t be she was riding a um golf cart from a distance I sore that it was Mar in my heart even even No way could have have been but I swore it was not it wasn’t [Applause] but Margaret’s oldest daughter Sarah now 13 has been living with the hakins since her mother disappeared Sarah and her mother used to share birthday rituals like smearing frosting on each other’s faces happy
Traditions that are now only memories I think Sarah keeps a lot inside and a lot goes on in her mind that’s not really coming out I think she misses her other probably as much as she did when she disappeared the case frustrates law enforcement in 2011 after several years
Off the case Sergeant Deo comes back as a Cold Case Investigator he and the Somerset County prosecutor call in the FBI we figured let’s maybe get some fresh eyes on it and see what happens soon they come up with a new approach to prevent prospective Witnesses from comparing notes FBI
Agents accompanied by local investigators call on Tim mackenro and all the other principles in the case at exactly the same time we didn’t want anybody jump in the gun so we had it time down to the minute they knocked on Tim mro’s Door everybody else started interviewing their
Prospective person it was like a huge trap sprung at one time as a result Margaret’s husband Tim was named a person of interest it was on the Internet by 12:30 that Tim was named a person of interest and it was just a sigh of relief it was about
Time Tim Mao was always a person of interest from the beginning but in talking with the agents from the FBI waren PD and our prut we decided it was it was time to name him as a person of interest in his wife’s disappearance over the years he’s just
Not been that Cooperative in the investigation both of Margaret’s parents and her friend Lisa have taken and passed polygraph tests but Tim mackenro has not agreed to take one despite repeated requests for him to do so he has repeatedly turned us down he we had
Set that up and even offered to pay for half at the last minute he declined that polygraph I don’t know if he’s ever had an excuse on why he won’t he just backs out of him at the same time agents are re-interviewing mackenro and others another ground search for Margaret is
Launched but nothing is found War Township is 20 square miles um we have over 100 miles a road in it but there’s still some large chunks of land that are undeveloped a good portion of the town has been checked Tim mackenro has not been charged with any crime he did not return
Repeated calls to be interviewed for this program he continues to maintain his innocence to the police invest ators say their new initiative has reopened a dialogue with Margaret’s husband we have been in contact again with Ma androe on a more uh regular basis he hadn’t contacted the police department or
Prosecutor’s office for quite some time but now he’s called a few times so that’s been a plus that came out of bringing the FBI in members of the Warren Police Department have known Margaret since she was a teenager and social ized with her when she was a firefighter they take a
Very personal interest in her case I hope that tomorrow Margaret walks through the door and tells everybody she’s okay deep down in my heart I don’t believe that’s going to happen I believe she is a victim of Foul Play I would hope that at some point we find her
Remains to bring closure to the family Margaret would not have left them and just disappear three little kids don’t have an answer as to where their mother went I can only imagine how that can be we have a luxury in our County that we don’t have these kind of things
Happen all the time so we have time to work on them so this case isn’t going to be put away we’re going to do it can to try to find her whatever that may Bring Patrick and eileene hatkins tend to their daughter’s Memorial and each year on the anniversary of her disappearance family and friends put up silver ribbons with Margaret’s picture on them in the hopes it might spark a lead that will help find her we we hope somehow to not let her memory disappear
We would love to be able to give her a Christian burial that would be important to us the loss of the best friend she used to talk to every day still haunts Lisa gone I want a body to bury to put a headstone on so that Sarah as well as
The other two girls know that Mommy didn’t leave I do not believe that Margaret walked away mommies don’t Leave Dia Abrams disappeared on June 6th 2020 no one knows what happened to DIA she’s missing she’s disappeared she left her phone her driver’s license all of her credit cards and a large sum of money behind does it make sense her family is desperate for answers we’ll do
A search immediately of the rants maybe she had gone on a hike maybe she got injured would she have ran away because she had so much on her plate she was cutting her kids out of her will they had been basically disowned children were money hungry and Dio said would have disappeared retraces
Dia’s last known steps but Keith Harper had a whole lot to gain by di going missing who is this guy was their I’ll play here I’m worried I I think he’s got connections with mob people I mean he was the last one to see her when we kept
Thinking could he have really hurt her you don’t kill people you love you kill people that you don’t love I feel like I failed her it’s the not knowing drives me crazy the more people who know Dia’s Story the greater the chance of bringing her home share on social media ABS my name is Diana and I’m a friend and neighbor of Dia Abrams in Garner Valley California on June 6th of 2020 Dia Abrams disappeared from her Bonita Vista anch in Garner Valley California Dia and I first met through a mutual friend and from that our friendship grew we I first met Dia
Abrams in either 2010 or 2011 and throughout the years it seemed like we ended up rescuing each other all the time I had a really bad accident she took care of me she had a really gnarly back surgery and I took care of her Diana Dia and myself we became good friends after That I can only describe Dia with one word and that word is firecracker she had a presence about her her Pride and Joy were her animals if there was a dog on the side of the road she’d find a home for It Dia came out to this area Mountain Center area in the mid to late ’90s her Ranch is one of the most beautiful areas that you’ll see Dia owns three properties in the Mountain Center area one home was located on a 5 acre parcel in Garner Valley another another residence was the
Bonita Vista Ranch which consisted of 116 acres and then another rided between the Garner Valley house and the Bonita Vista Ranch I’m Jenny Kushner and I was a reporter and photographer for the ID wild Town CER newspaper and when the went missing it was probably the biggest story that I had worked
On I had is a small Mountain Community in the mountains above Palm Springs and it sits surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest it’s a small population it’s about 4,000 people and everybody definitely knows everybody it’s a very tight before she moved to Mountain Center Dia married clim
Abrams he was a wealthy real estate developer out of the San Diego area Dia and clim separated when she moved to Mountain Center and he passed away in 2019 DIA has two children their son Clinton and her daughter crisara crisara is a couple years older than
Clinton I know that Dia loved her kids I do but I remember her telling me that she was disappointed in her children in that they could not make time for her they for their their mother just because of how her children made her feel I think she wanted an
Emotional partner and then Harper came along my name is Keith Harper I was born and raised in a little town in Southern Idaho then I went into Private Industry a recreational outfitting business out of Durango Silverton uray Colorado I met Dia in a dating site and uh we had a 4-year
Relationship when I looked at her I said gosh you are a country girl and she said why do you say that and I said because you have hay in your hair and she looked in the mirror and she said you know I fed the horses before I came I am so
Sorry and I said no that just proves to me who you are I knew we had something special connected I knew she needed help on the ranch and I offered to come and actually work for her and I fell deeply in love with Her Dia had told me at one point that Harper had had a a criminal past but that he was not a criminal came around I thought it was a good thing because it was help for Dia but but it was never really a romantic thing there was no
Affection between the two uh usually if you are involved in a relationship you hold their hand or smile at them a certain way uh or put your arm around them uh when you’re sitting in a chair it was lacking any type of physical emotion or activity with one
Another so I didn’t know if they were dating or not and she goes well yeah he is he’s more than a friend and that was it that’s all I knew we were leaving for Colorado after the weekend we’ve had some great trips where we went and it all has to do with nature
And she was an Enthusiast about that anyway that was our plan she had packed we were packed and I said I’m going to go out and mow the metal I had stopped at around 2:00 had lunch with Dia she said have you got a minute I need I need to talk
With you and I said Dia it’s going to take me till dark to get the metal done I’m I’m not that far into it I need to get it done and she said oh okay me cuz she felt it was fairly significant I kind of discouraged that I
Wish I hadn’t done I may have learned things about what she knew that she was willing to share at that moment and I never get to do that chance again I went back to mowing by times I got things squared away and came into the house it was approximately 7:00 so right at
Dark and I went upstairs and I found her phone plugged in and no DEA her purse was sitting there and I thought that’s pricey and take her purse here somewhere I was surprised that she wasn’t there but she had talked about going down to the lower horse ranch and
Uh uh going out and exercising the horses so I thought maybe that’s what she does she should be back shortly it was almost 12:30 by the time I had finished any searching of the property when I hadn’t found her I called the highway patrolman and expressed a concern concern and he just
Said you know nothing by morning then get concerned and so I didn’t sleep much that night I contacted the highway patrolman in the morning he he told me Sunday morning June 7th I received a phone call from Julie and she asked me has Harper called you I said no why
Would Harper call me so I call Harper I said what’s going on goes did Dia spend the night with you I said no well I can’t find her I said what do you mean he goes well she was here Saturday I saw her at lunch I asked if he checked the Garner
Valley house he said yes she’s not there so I said okay I’m coming over we’ll do a search immediately of the ranch you know my concern was where she was and what was going on with her maybe she had gone on a hike maybe she’ got injured and so all that’s going through
My mind so we called everyone we could think of to come help and search the property we all went to the B Vista Ranch and met with Harper her truck is here her keys to the truck are here her purse is here her cell phone is here so things were not adding
Up night there was no sign of her it was getting dark so we all decided to go home and start fresh early the next morning like at 6:00 a.m. I started calling the police Monday morning called Monday afternoon and all the way up until they finally showed up on Monday
Night I said you know we’ve done an initial search of the property and uh I said you know I was planning on leaving on Sunday I have some business to take place in Colorado on Monday Harper said I stance I’m on probation and I have to go back I can’t
Be here for more than a certain amount of days before I have to leave and then I have to go check in in with my my probation officer so I have to go check in with them I didn’t know what for and I said well do you think that’s such a good
Idea but I used to be a probation officer I know if I had a probationer called me and said hey look my girlfriend is missing I don’t think it’s a good idea if I leave the probation officer I’m sure would say it was okay to do so this sheriff’s office said they would
Be shutting Colorado so I left on Monday June 8th of 2020 Harper left the state the community definitely had some red flags on why he would do that there was no real answers on why he left by that time DIA son Clinton showed up one of the neighbors had called him
To say hey your mom’s missing I remember Clinton just kind of hanging out in the front he never went searching he never asked questions was just kind of hanging out with the crowd almost like he was searching for pity or something I never met Clinton as being so smart that he was
Scary I remember once di looked me straight in the eye and said if anything ever happens to me my son Clinton did it Dia loved her children but she did not get to see them very often she said they want to do their own thing she said she was hurt a lot by the inattention she got from them she said they weren’t always exactly kind she ended up doing
The reaching out it wasn’t the other way around and in 10 years I never met Clinton I thought that was pretty Odd she told me she had a constant conf I never ever heard Clinton call her mom it was always Dia as if he was talking down to her and I remember being very angry about that and I said you cannot continue to let him talk to you that way
She was disappointed because from what I understood from DIA was that the children were money hungry when Dia’s husband clam was alive the two of them had an arrangement that he would pay for the bills at the ranch then when she got absolutely nothing from that will she realized she had to do
Something so that belonged to the deceased clim Abrams from her her children the estate is suspected to be worth about $15 to $30 million she said she was upset about having to go through the lawsuit with her kids and she didn’t like fighting with them she was just disappointed in
Them I’m Matt Owens I’m a lawyer I’m a partner with the law firm in San Diego California I handle disputes involving trusts in the states and I represent Dia’s children Dia it was seeking to throw out or invalidate her prenuptial agreement that Dia had with clim her hus because just
Like any other trustee would have had to do the same thing in order to protect and honor what clim had stated he wanted in the trust document Dia’s children were going to be fine regardless of who won or lost that lawsuit that Dia had filed there was no
Potential outcome in that case where Dia’s kids got nothing from Clem’s trust it was just a a dispute over how much Dia was going to get during her lifetime and some other nuances but her kids were going to be fine regardless of the outcome of that case the lawsuit for CLM Abram’s estate
I understand from away her truck as it was in Clem’s trust that was the heaviest thing on her mind before her disappearance was they’re going to take my truck what am I going to do they wouldn’t even give me a ride home like what am I supposed to do
I can’t have transportation why do they need my truck the truck belonged to Clem’s trust and so if you’re Trustee of Clem’s trust and there’s an asset out there that belongs to the Clen Abrams trust you kind of have to go get it I don’t think
That there was any sort of desire to fight over um I think it was like a 2006 board truck right like I don’t I don’t think truste needing to go collect an asset that belong to the trust that was the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak when they were
Trying to take the truck away di stated that she was cutting her kids out of her will the reason for that is why would you want to help people who were not willing to help you while was in the middle of this court battle fighting for that estate
She still had control over the three properties in the ID wild area Dia Abrams owned those three properties a completely separate time you know about March I think it was she had texted me and asked me would you mind being uh the executive in my will I’m think thinking this woman has
At least 20 more years cuz she’s in great shape mentally just all there and it’s not going to be a thing so I said sure no problem she texted back I’m trying to get Keith Harper to say yes to being executive as well Dia changed her trust and that the
Children weren’t to be allowed on she states their names and she says I leave you my love which is worth more than anything else I have Dia changed her trust about two weeks I think it was technically 15 days before she went missing she did not reach out to her kids in that
Intervening 15 days and say hey I updated my trust just want to let you know okay she did that basically in secrecy I found it highly suspicious Dia she feared extremely that her son would do something negative to her a lot of the times she would Express her concern for
Her efforts to control me and to shut me out of these fathers and Trust so many things run through your head but as far as I was concerned he still had something to do with it not himself personally I don’t think he would ever touch his mom that way or hurt his mom
Physically but he knew people that could or would just based on Dia’s statements do you said once St um I’m worried I said I think he’s got connections with mob people and in my mind I’m like I don’t want to hear this because that’s dangerous and it’s ridiculous I mean
It’s just ridiculous to make that sort of allegation against him Clinton has absolutely no ties with any sort of Mafia organized crime crime whatever you want to call it once the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department we’re done on Wednesday they called Di’s kids and said we’re done with the investigation you can go into
The property even though we continuously told them do not call the kids Dia said that she did not want the children to ever go into her house she was adamant about that she goes do not let my children in the house all they care about are the things in the house house
What they can take what they can sell spoke to Di’s attorney and he obtained a copy of the power of attorney and a copy of the trust I remember Clinton coming up it felt like stand up at the okay Corral Clinton gets out of the truck the lawyer
Comes out of another car he walks up and Diana’s got the papers in hand and I said uh-uh I said here’s the paperwork from the attorney Dia named me an Harper as executive to her Will Harper left the property and I have our attorney here’s a document that says that I’m acting on
Dia’s behalf and I made a promise to her that I would we didn’t realize at the time it was about to get so much worse it’s only been 5 days since he has been missing but there is a lot of miscommunication and conflict when it comes to who actually owns the Estate Harper’s left the state at this point and Diana is on the property so she’s asked Clinton to leave and there’s still some debate over the issue of the truck I said you can’t leave with her property Dia hasn’t been gone long what if she came back we need to find
Her there was really no emotion coming from planton if my mom was missing I’d be yelling and screaming going where the heck is she and that’s when he said that the truck was part of his father’s trust and that he’s taking it who does that it wasn’t worth anything it’s not like Dia
Didn’t have assets right I mean she had three properties if she really needed a truck is it really that big of a deal for her to get a different vehicle I mean I I don’t understand what the to that as one instance where they’re trying to spin it and make Clinton look
Like he was about to you know do harm to their Mother so there’s obviously a lot of legal and financial conflict going on but it’s unclear how any of this kind of shows anything about why she disappeared there really hasn’t been any evidence to show that there was any foul play in the first place the next morning we went out on
Our ATVs to search for Dia Dia she’s missing she’s disappeared so you start having a lot of thoughts run through your mind like okay okay what else could have happened would she have ran away because she had so much on her plate like no she wouldn’t have ran away because she left
Her dog she left all of her other animals she left her phone her driver’s license all of her credit cards and a large sum of money behind doesn’t make sense then we started thinking foul play Diana and I we started to put together scenarios in our minds and what
They would have have to gain specific actions that they would take or not take in the pursuit of finding Dia weeks are going by and D is still missing but the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department isn’t commenting on the case at all over time Harper seemed to be more interested
And the property and the ranch that he was in finding Dia I realized I didn’t know anything about in Harper’s personality I didn’t know anything about his personal life I didn’t know him at all foke the more I realized some of the things that he was saying didn’t make
Sense I mean he was the last one to see her when we kept thinking could he have could he have really hurt her eth Harper this is not someone as far as far as we could tell who had any sort of significant wealth after she goes missing all of a sudden Harper finds
Himself in a great situation he’s living on this 115 acre ranch his whole life changes that’s a big deal for someone in his situation and then you contrast that with what do the kids have to gain from DIA going missing very little they’re still going to be provided for under any scenario missing
There is a lot of attention about me I’m the primary suspect cuz I’m the boyfriend what about the ranch did you kill her because you wanted the ranch God no you know I’ve worked on a ranch ranching does not make money I know how to make money I’m here because I love the
Girl when somebody asked me did you kill her I’ve had that question ask and I said honestly you don’t kill people you love you kill people that you don’t Love and learned some things that were pretty shocking to us he had been convicted of sexual assault against two women in Colorado so Mr Harper ran some sort of business where he would take people around on a snowmobile based on the court records he took these two women out on a snowmobile
Tour they alleged that he groped both of them and the authorities got involved and he was arrested and ultimately convicted of sexual assault in connection with that event that’s what required him to be registered as a sex offender he was sentenced to 12 months in jail for that conviction I believe he
Served just short of N9 months I have this only conviction basically I have I was wrongly accused of that allegation it it’s blown out a perspective but uh I will tell you that I was not guilty of that charge there’s not much more I will say on
That one of the things you definitely want to look at in that type of case is the nature of the relationship between Dia and the person who’s now benefiting under the trust document so Harper who is this Keith Harper guy was there Foul Play Here did something nefarious
Happen you begin to wonder over and over again the reason the fingers are being pointed because it’s pointed away for where they should look Dia Abrams was last seen June 6th 2020 if you have any information please contact the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department at 951 955 2400 a few months after possibly
Happened to DIA and I know that the police were looking at Harper because he’s the obvious suspect I didn’t want to believe it was Harper I didn’t want to believe it was their son Clinton to this point I don’t know where to cast suspicions to us he
Was Harper it was not really ruled out per se but we don’t know him I grew very fond of Dia and loved that girl I can understand their concern as our boyfriend husbands boyfriends are often ones they look at and most of the time they’re the ones involved in the situation so I
Understood on March 16th of 2021 Dia’s kids made a surprising move in court so they filed a probate petition asking to remove Diana feder and Keith Harper as Trustees of the estate so the petition um is saying that they think that Harper could be a suspect in this disappearance of Dia
Abrams we were trying to get Keith Harper and Diana feder out of that position as truste we wanted him out they’re not qualified to service trustee Harper been breaching fiduciary duties meaning he had done things that U were wrong under the law that were they’re trying to point the finger I mean you
Just can’t come in and just demand that the trust be changed you have to have reasons why that change should occur we’ve learned that Harper started Renning out multiple structures on that ranch on Airbnb weddings all sorts of things that generated income he was depositing into his personal bank
Account so not in the name of DS trust which you know any trust lawyer will tell you you cannot do if you’re a trustee and you’re receiving rental income from a trust property you have to put that money in a trust bank account meaning a bank account that’s set up in
The name of vs trust the money to fight it uh or hire an attorney so I’m removing myself as Trustee of the estate Diana walked away from the case so she agreed not to seek to serve in any fiduciary role so Dia’s body hasn’t been found and really there’s no evidence that anything
Even happened to her except that she’s missing so a lot of finger pointing of he said she said but at the end of the day she’s still missing so at this point there’s been no Persons of Interest that have have been released by the riv as far as evidence or suspects or
Anything but Harper has a lot of things kind of working against him there’s definitely a lot of speculation on whether he’s a suspect or not I mean the community is definitely unsure it did really seem like he wanted to prove his innocence and kind of clear his Name at that point it’s nearly a year has come in past so I contact Kelly Snider with a group out of Phoenix that comes in calls the FindMe organization the FindMe group work with law enforcement to try to connect families with their and intuitive resources when conventional methods of
Searching for people maybe doesn’t turn up any clues it’s not really uncommon to try some unconventional methods like like psychics he works with approximately 100 psychics that helps you know make some predictions about these missing people cases even though you know Keith Harper might be sort of
Grasping its draws um you know it’s not not surprising that he would you know try any methods he could to help find her when I talked to Kelly and I said hey I I’ve lost a girlfriend she’s been gone almost a year now I need your help
Is studied uh d case we’re going to help you find her so as a result of that Kelly spent 6 weeks on the investigation by the time he comes out he basically says that he found her where she was Kelly said the body’s location was placed in Lake Hammond I remember calling the detective that the sheriff’s office I said you know you do have a dive team he GRE that goes on for about 20 minutes they go out approximately 40 yards you can see the bubbles where they go out then uh when they had found nothing I
Contacted Kelly I was a little frustrated on why they had not found anything under his recommendation I was pretty confident that they would but uh she was not found Then so at the end of the day’s body wasn’t found in lake himt and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department really didn’t um want to disclose any information about any evidence that might have been found so people and so they claim they’re only accurate about 30 to 35% of the time
I have to be clear I can’t say that Keith Harper did it right I don’t have that information I don’t have personal knowledge of that all I can say is that his behavior after she went missing is highly suspect and his history before she went missing is highly
Suspect but we did achieve through the settlement agreement I was working with uh Dia’s attorney he said you know what my recommendation is you have a compromise with them them that you divide the property 50/50 and and let the pieces fall I agreed with that the court in their ruling basically
Agreed to divide the property 50/50 with her children if any one of us are found to be guilty they are to receive nothing until such time as the 5-year Mark is passed or if the is located and determined to be dead as a result of that that’s where
We’re currently in the status of determining what the status is and what the ruling of the Court really means but at least the main litigations in this matter I don’t see how he could make a different decision at this time to be if you know anything and you see what’s
Going on here what this poor lady had to go through please help we’re looking for information from anyone who might know what happened to to DIA you have information about some sort of Val play where someone perhaps abducted her or even worse that’s the type of information we’re looking for do
You know the whereabouts of where her remains might be if that’s the situation um those are the types of things that we’re looking for Clinton wants a reward post it cuz he wants people to come forward with information as to what happened to DIA so if anyone comes forward with information leading $100,000 Reward I want this to be over I I want to have some kind of conclusion um I think we’re close enough now that uh her case will move forward I’m very hopeful with that it’s interesting I don’t think youve really evaluate how important a relationship is until you lose
It and once you have lost it then you realize how significant that relationship was if I could see de again I would just give her a big hug and cry and just be so happy to see her and then I’d be like darn you for disappearing like that darn it darn it
I would just oh I would just want to say everything’s going to be okay but if she’s not here and she’s in heaven I know that someday I’ll see her there and I know I’ll see her again and that gives me Comfort this missing person’s case was unusual and it continued to get more unusual I’m like we need to get up there because this is just not like Devonte I believe that this area is known for Cults in KKK underworld fighting I’m thinking every moment where’s my
Baby she’s at the center of a love triangle Brandy was crazy about the guy but it’s taking a toll she got a little upset it was kind of showing one of the customers said she was scared of someone hours later Brandy is gone it’s like she picked up herself cell phone
Her house keys and she just vanished is she a missing person is this actually a crime now could recent Clues finally solve this decade long mystery instead of trying to focus on who did it I tried to focus on finding her I remember these shoes this is the biggest break they’ve
Had in this case in years she couldn’t have just disappeared somebody has to [Applause] [Applause] Know It’s nearly 2:30 in the afternoon Friday May 20th 2005 North Charleston South Carolina Alex this is just a little diner in North Charleston mainly for locals one of the waitresses 32-year-old Brandy Hannah is about to leave for the day Brandy had requested the weekend off
Brandy was about to get a ride with a customer to take her home and and she called her mother she didn’t want to leave without seeing her mother bry’s mom is the manager at Alex’s today she’s also bry’s relief she had plans you know for the afternoon so
She couldn’t wait for me to get there Brandy needs her mother’s help with her new cell phone she wanted me to set up her voicemail so I told her I will be there shortly and then we’ll do it then her mother had bought her a new cell
Phone so they could talk um more often the restaurant is located in the southern end of North Charleston well North Charleston is a kind of the sister city to Charleston it’s about 100,000 people there are parts of North Charleston that are great parts of North Charleston they’re not very
Good bry’s only been working here about 3 months but she’s been waitressing half her life she began at age 16 I would try to get her to away tables to earn money for school cloth and all Randy was a very pretty shy sweet girl but she was so shy back then she tried
To avoid the customers so she’d hide in the kitchen and do things back there no no I can’t go out there I think eventually Brandy HIIT her stride and by the time she started working at Alex’s hanging back was a distant memory once she would get on that waitress floor it
Was like she just you know little personality came out very friendly outgoing apparently Brandy was very very popular there she brought business she was that good the minute Donna arrives Brandy has her set up her voicemail on her new phone cuz I even teased her and I said
Well Brandy I’m going to put on your phone this is bry’s Mommy you want to talk to her call her Brandy’s still self-conscious about the sound of her own voice so that’s the greeting she uses you know we laughed about it but in the meantime Brandy is still using her
Old prepaid cell phone I didn’t want her running out of minutes and something happened and not be able to call and so that’s when I told her I will get you this phone for my peace of mind Donna has worked at Alex’s for almost 30 years when Brandy joined her there it
Was more than just a job we really enjoyed that just seeing each other being together laughing cutting up Donna wanted her in her life more Donna was very young when she gave birth to Brandy she is my firstborn my only daughter Brandy spent part of her childhood living with extended
Family she was a bit of a tomboy growing up she even enrolled in RC in high school ultimately she decided to become a waitress like her mom and revel in her many interests she could make something that you know the normal person would find ordinary into something super fantastic
And fun she was very creative one of the things she liked to do was sketch on the back of her ticket book so she liked to draw she was a really good artist since Brandy came to work at Alex’s she and her mother have become closer than ever
They were friends and mothers and daughters grow up and that’s the best partment they can do that before walking out the door that Friday afternoon Brandy grabs an iced tea to go and says goodbye it was 3 3:00 Friday when she left I remember cuz Andy
Came and picked her up Andy ragnell um would often give her a ride home from work he was a retired law enforcement officer he would drive people around just to make extra money but her apartment was a little too far to walk a few minutes later they P up to
Bry’s apartment he told me that he could let her out of the car waited till she got inside safely before he pulled away he said the last thing she said to him was I’ll see you Monday bry’s North Charleston neighborhood is called chakur Cherokee you just don’t want your young
Daughter living in a neighborhood that is known for you know crime and drugs but at this point in her life it’s what Brandy can afford a nice apartment in a not so nice part of town her life had changed a tremendous amount in the past
Year she’d been seeing a guy for 6 years and had just stopped seeing him and had a new boyfriend she gave up her house and a lot of her belongings for him Brandy and her new love just moved into the apartment a month and a half earlier
Brandy was crazy about the guy she seemed happier I mean she seemed like you know this is what she wanted but then according to Donna bry’s new boyfriend walked out on her without warning Brandy was absolutely distraught she was heartbroken why would you move her into this area and let her be alone
Which was my biggest fear yet Brandy decided she wanted to stay in the apartment alone to give herself time to figure out what she wanted after Brandy gets home that Friday she spends the afternoon in her apartment Brandy is a home Budd a lot like me get home and you’re settled
According to her friends and family Brandy doesn’t like to go to Club clubs or drink when she’s not exhausted from work she socializes with a tight circle of friends at home she had said she was tired that day so I I just assumed she went home and took a nap she does spend
Time on her two phones so I talk to her several times she also hears from the man who recently left her Zeke Langford they have a long talk afterward Brandy talks to her mother again she was going to be waiting for Amy to get off work and then they were going
Shopping Amy McAdams is bry’s longtime friend she waitresses at a restaurant where Brandy once worked because Brandy plans to go to the beach the next morning she’s hoping Amy can drive her to get a new swimsuit that night she’s me that um zek might come by she wasn’t
Sure because they were you know talking but Amy’s shift runs unexpectedly late she says she lets Brandy know she’ll be delayed later that evening at Alex’s Restaurant Donna’s dinner rush is almost over and I was looking out a window towards where bry’s apartment was and I just got this God awful feeling that
Something was wrong she calls the new phone she just gave Brandy and I couldn’t get through Donna leaves a message then another I kept trying to call her cuz it was just a strong feeling it was awful but Brandy doesn’t call but Brandy does text her ex-boyfriend Zeke later that night he
Says it’s about their plans to see each other finally bry’s friend Amy pulls up sometime after 10:30 didn’t get an answer Amy notices bry’s apartment is dark except for the flickering light from her TV she tried to call bry’s cell phone her old one and she said she heard it ringing inside and
Assumed Brandy was asleep so she heads home without ever seeing Brandy the events of this night will be Revisited over and over by bry’s friends and loved ones I was expecting her to call me back her mother wanted to hope that Brandy was okay in some part of her head she feared the Worst after Donna parent can’t reach her daughter Brandy Hannah Friday night May 20th 2005 she calls again Saturday morning there’s still no answer I kept trying to tell myself oh she’s just out doing something and at work at Alex’s restaurant that day Donna tells bry’s friend Robin about bry’s silence I was
Just thinking she’s probably upset things aren’t going the way that she wanted with Zeke if Brandy already left for the beach maybe she didn’t take her new phone with her I work day shift I got off that afternoon I went by her apartment because it was daytime bry’s apartment is dark I tried
Calling her phone standing outside her door I couldn’t hear the phone ringing there was absolutely no sound another 24 hours pass Sunday mornings we used to do breakfast meet up at my Mom’s restaurant but this Sunday is different Brandy doesn’t show up told I said I can’t find her I don’t know
Where she is maybe Brandy meant what she said to her ride on Friday afternoon last thing she said to him was I’ll see you Monday now Monday morning is here and it was 7 and I’m oh good they haven’t called me yet cuz she was supposed to me to work
At 700 bry’s mother is hoping no news is good news back in April 200 2005 Brandy chose her apartment on Florida Avenue for its proximity to Alex’s restaurant where she works the neighborhood around her wasn’t great but she wasn’t alone then because she had like she was blissfully
Happy she just seemed like she had everything going good for her the job new relationship was working out everything’s going good but Donna began to wonder when the couple came to her for a loan for the security deposit on the apartment Zeke worked of and on for his
Father’s plumbing company when he moved in to Florida Avenue he was not working you’re trying to move for somewhere that I really disapprove and then now you’re you’re coming to BU money where is is really leaden the answer came a few weeks later when Zeke left Brandy to return to his
Wife and children well Zeke was still married he wasn’t divorced from his wife because of it Brandy was absolutely distru was heartbroken but Brandy still had hope Zeke and his wife had been separated for about a year she just thought he was having a moment weakness
And that he was going to come back to her and they were going to be happy together but she didn’t like the fact that she felt like he wanted her to wait for him that she wasn’t going to play The Other Woman as much as she cared
About him but that’s just not what she wanted by the time 7:20 Monday morning May 23rd Ticks by Donna is just starting to breathe a little easier she knew the restaurant would have called her if Brandy didn’t show up for work word I had no sooner had this thought than my phone went
Off and it’s a uh employee from Alex’s informing Donna that uh Brandy didn’t show up okay this is not like her Brandy was diligent Brandy loved work never missed a day of work Donna contacts the North Charleston Police to report that her daughter is missing with an adult um
You know people say an adult has the right to be missing she was 32 years old and they said she had free will she has a right to disappear and doesn’t have to take calls from her mother or anyone something’s not right here and we were all just like panicking because the
Police wouldn’t do anything as the police have told me if we chase down everybody that called in saying there was an missing adult we wouldn’t do anything else Donna immediately reaches out to Zeke Lankford he’s on a plumbing job that morning and I said look I know you
Have a keyed out of apartment I need to get in there Donna asks him to meet her there but not to go in yet when she pulls up to bry’s apartment Donna says that Zeke walks out he says well I was worried you were going to find something and I didn’t
Want you to walk in and see her body and I’m like what are you talking about despite her everything was orderly no signs of any struggles or anything like that there was still her cup that she had to come Friday from work with glass of tea
There was a blanket on the couch and it looked like maybe she had curled up and everything else was normal and next to her unmade bed her prepaid cell phone is charging on the night stand but the brand new phone Donna gave her is nowhere to be found it’s like she picked
Up her cell phone and her house keys and she just vanished four more days days pass before a North Charleston detective goes to bry’s apartment to investigate I gave him the key I said please do whatever you need to do within an hour he was back I don’t
See any problem I don’t think anyone thought there was any fou play her family fears exactly the opposite that bry’s been abducted or maybe worse as the days drag on with no word from Brandy Donna enlists friend friends and family to begin searching for her he’s asking people from the area you
Know if they seen anything some of them are like oh yeah you know she walks this way all the time we see her all the time what’s going on they plaster bry’s neighborhood with missing Flyers where she lived it was predominantly black and you’ve got this young white girl so of course stick
Out I felt my husband come involved because he was a cop but because Brandy was this E Henry SMY Jr is in charge of North Charleston’s boat unit he knows the area surrounding bry’s apartment well especially the old abandoned navy base and its reputation if you wanted to get
Rid of a body in a very urban city like North Charleston the Navy base is the perfect place to go if any building was abandoned we were in it if it was unlocked we were in it we searched everyone that we found open but her family and friends find no trace of Brandy meanwhile at bry’s apartment complex her landlords learn she’s Mia you know quite honestly I don’t think anybody there really knew Brandy and that she was a good person and in her character because she’d only been living there like a month and a half or so the
End of the month was coming and he told me Point Blank you either pack her stuff and get it out or I will put it in the street and I was like what why do you have to do that so soon you know cuz at some point it’s kind of
A toss of isue a missing person or is this actually a Crime bry’s lease is month to month and her rent is only paid through the end of May so not even 10 days since Donna last saw her daughter she and her sister they find a small can hidden under a table she had received a paycheck that day and
Plus her tips all of that money is inside it if she was going to up and leave don’t you think she would have taken all the money that she had to her name none of her clothing is missing either Brandy had this picture of her
And I she was a baby and it did not matter where she lived that picture went her money was in the apartment all her clothes and that picture and there’s no way she would have just walked away by June 1st 2005 only 10 days since she went missing bry’s apartment is
Vacant the detective never made it a crime scene it’s symbolic of how quickly traces of Brandy are beginning to disappear but two doors away Donna and North Charleston Police Officer hit on the lead I went to the complex here and I met with the young lady bry’s neighbor
Tells him that around 9 or 9:30 the night brand disappeared she saw her get into a truck it was a red truck with a white stripe down the side it had one other feature notable for its shock value it was a Jason mask taped to the grill of the Truck one week has pass since Brandy Hannah vanished from her North Charleston Apartment and I kept thinking you know she’s going to turn up you know she’s going to turn up but she hasn’t shveta Johnson whose apartment is two doors away from bry’s has told police what she witnessed the night Brandy
Disappeared that a white male in a red truck pulled into the parking lot and Randy exited her apartment got into the truck she saw him in the parking lot but she never saw him leave Lieutenant Rick Keys is a friend of Brandy’s family but isn’t officially on her case he took
Sheeta’s statement that day I want to make sure that her L the side from what she was telling she was saying wasn’t obstructed in any way and that she wasn’t confused about what she saw because according to sheta she saw who was behind the wheel the truck Cheta described
Resembles the vehicles of two men in bry’s life Zeke Langford and Ray truck it was a red one both men also work for Zeke’s father’s Plumbing Company the company trucks are distinctive they’re also red with a white stripe but only one truck has the unique hood ornament sheta says she saw it had
Been known that Ray had a hockey mask ajacent mask fixed to the front of his truck before Zeke Ray McAdams was bry’s long-term live-in boyfriend she’ been in a relationship with Ray for six years or so when started working at Alex’s she gave me the impression that she was afraid of
Ray but it hadn’t always been that way he wanted to to marry her and at the time that they got engaged that was what she wanted until reay’s close friend Zeke moved in with them Zeke fell on some hard times um was kind of going through a divorce Ray was looking out
For Zeke as a friend and letting him crash on the couch then Ray discovered that Brandy and Zeke had fallen for each other they were in his of bry’s house and it was only natural that he would feel betrayed he kicked Zeke out I was told that he told Brandy she could stay
But she opted to leave and go with Zeke but apparently Ray didn’t forget Brandy Ray kept trying to convince her that Zeke wasn’t right for her and that she needed to come back to him but even when Ry and Brandy were together Donna didn’t think he was good
For her daughter they were sitting in the restaurant one time and just out of the blue he said I can kill your daughter and get away with it kill her I’m like what are you talking about and that’s when he said I could take her and make her disappear and you’d never
Know he had a problem with Donna I don’t know what it was I took it as he was a man and he was boasting making himself more than he was and I looked at him and told him I said that’s really a crazy thing to tell young lady’s mother now
That Brandy actually has vanished Donna can’t help but wonder about that after sheta Johnson told Lieutenant Keys what she saw he proposed an idea would you be willing to take a ride with me and U tell me if the guy that I talk to is him she said
Sure he had put a Bluetooth in his ear so that she could communicate with him I if I knock on the door and he comes to the door and it’s not him you tell me it’s not him then no I’ll come back to the car we
Leave soon as the door open and and Ray is standing there he was the guy he was definitely the guy she is not just telling me it’s him she’s yelling in my ear to the point I’m afraid he’s going to hear it that I am not 98% sure I am
100% sure that was him but Ry has an alibi for the night Brandy disappeared he says he was at a club called the Plex trying to get a job as a bouncer a friend confed confirms he was with him bry’s other love interest Zeke Langford also has an alibi he kept
Saying he was going to ma her but then he had to work and so he didn’t ma her he’s not in the area he’s allegedly on a job site Zeke’s brother-in-law confirms his story The Detectives question Zeke and they question Ry of course uh both gentlemen um kind of pointed a finger at
One another both said that they had nothing to do with her disappearance at all 2 weeks after Brandy went missing police asked both men to take a polygraph test ray came in roughly about 2 weeks after the fact and uh didn’t have any problems passing the test but
Zeke didn’t take it for two months Zeke although he did pass his polygraph he was U more hesitant to take it at the exact same time another missing person case 1500 M away begins making headlines around the world the search for an American Teenager missing in Aruba is being stepped up
18-year-old Natalie Holloway has been missing since Monday when she failed to return from a high school graduation trip the Alabama natives disappearance is even covered by Charleston’s own Poston Courier there was a lot of coverage for Natalie Holloway and I couldn’t understand because it was very little for Brandy
And as her mother you question it not that I was grudging her but you question why not for much heal Donna writes a letter to the editor of the Post and Courier asking this question and I read that letter and said you know she’s absolutely right why
Haven’t we written a story about this now bry’s disappearance finally becomes front page news in her own Hometown Brandy has blonde hair blue eyes and weighs 115 lb she’s 32 years old outside Alex’s restaurant where Donna works and Brandy used to a banner goes up you could actually see from the
Interstate with bry’s picture on it and you know missing Brandy Hannah and a telephone number to leave tips she couldn’t have just disappeared somebody has to know but the neighborhood’s been quiet I had a lot of context uh and they said we’re not hearing anything Rick we’re not hearing
Anything about her disappearance even after a reward is offered and in these missing person cases you know the longer you go the less likely you are to find anything but while researching his article on Brandy Brian Hicks uncovers new information one of the customers said she’d gotten a
Call and she was scared of someone the call reportedly came in Friday during bry’s shift cuz there was a time where she got a little upset it was kind of showing and I asked her what was going on according to Robin the call had something to do with Zeke’s wife Diana I
Don’t know if the phone call was actually Diana calling her or somebody calling Brandy telling her that Diana had a problem with her could this have had anything to do with bry’s disappearance 3 months after Brandy vanished an official search is conducted dogs are brought in to track bry’s scent
We had items that belong to Brandy that I took with me the search is led by the Q Center for missing persons the North Charleston Police participate with bry’s friends and family and then another person shows up Zeke for my niece was with us and Zeke looked
At her cuz he was really concerned about the dogs and said can the dogs smell her smell anything if she’s covered up afterward Zeke is asked by authorities not to participate again but the search ultimately results in no new leads and because Zeke has a confirmed Alibi for the night Brandy disappeared
Appeared the police have no reason to focus on him 7 months pass before there’s a new and unexpected twist I was shocked I’m thinking oh my God if he had something to do with it I’ll never Know it’s April 2006 almost 11 months since Brandy Hannah disappeared I was at work and the phone rang the caller is the mother of bry’s ex-boyfriend 34-year-old Ray McAdams she has some stunning news her son had passed that morning he had had a fatal heart [Applause]
Attack she didn’t want me to hear it on the news or anything there’s no no way to know if Ry may have treated as a homicide at the time I think the target would have been Ray the ex-boyfriend but the North Charleston Police never did a forensic analysis of Ray’s truck or the
Red and white Langford Plumbing trucks Zeke often drove so it quite possibly could have been either one of them in that [Applause] truck but Ray’s Alibi had a pitch his sister-in-law Amy McAdams bry’s best friend says she dropped off some things for Ray around 9:30 or so Amy was
Married to Ray’s brother at the time but Ry had told police he was at a nearby club then his story was that he went to the Plex that night approximately 8 8:30 and were there all night till 1: or 2 in the morning police never get to the bottom of this
Inconsistency two weeks after ry’s death bry’s Uncle North Charleston officer Henry SMY Jr also passes away from cancer he tried everything to find out what happened to his niece he could never find anything not a sign not a struggle not anything before he died he made a promise to bry’s Mom I
Realized how sick he was just the way he was he looked and everything and he told me he told her when he got to Heaven he would find Brandy he would find out what happened and he would find a way to get back to Her Donna had a long line of detectives who were very serious for a while and uh they would move on and be transferred or give up on the case as you know just another cold case but years pass ass with nothing but false sightings and dead ends I needed help I wanted
Somebody that acted like they cared it’s been six long years since bry’s Banner went up outside Alex’s Restaurant something about her her eyes and the poster stood out it resonates with a member of the North Charleston Police Force with no ties to bry’s case I don’t do missing persons cases but Sergeant
Ron Locker reaches out to Donna I introduce myself told her who I was uh told her I didn’t have any information on the case but I would like to talk to her about it he asks if he can reopen bry’s case and I told him then with her missing you pray for an
Angel he was my angel Sergeant Locker digs deep into Brandy’s case File and reins Original’s case were never investigated case in point the phone call Brandy allegedly received at Alex’s Restaurant the day she disappeared it was in the notes that she was uh very unnerved uneasy I wanted to see if I can
Get the phone records to see if I can get a number of who may have called her but with the time that had elapsed you know cuz I came in 6 years after the fact the records are gone and Not only was Ray mcadam’s Truck never processed for blood or DNA nobody
Seems to know where this red truck went the same is true for the lenford plumbing trucks but there’s one lead the detective does resurrect Donna gave me a call one afternoon and said Hey Ron Cheta is here 6 years earlier by her own account Cheta Johnson was the last person to keep Brandy
Alive and she ided Ray McAdams he was the guy he was definitely the guy as the man who picked up Brandy now Sergeant Locker wants to talk to her he wanted to go back through her story again just like it was new I showed her a couple pictures and she was
Very adamant that Dee now was the one that she saw that evening in the truck picking up Brandy but initially she had ided Ray now Z no hesitation whatsoever Sergeant Locker says he wonders if sheva’s original identification was influenced by the fact that she was taken directly to Ry
Could she have been mistaken Ray was taller than Zeke a little heavier but from a distance especially if they were seated both had the same facial characteristics round face both had the same straggly hair both would have had like slight beards so could have been either one yet Sergeant Locker
Perseveres he also changes tactics instead of trying to focus on who may have been responsible or who did it I kind of tried to focus on finding her first he decides to look for bry’s remains in The Logical spots near her old apartment my theory into her disappearance was that she was
Murdered it brings him back to North Charleston’s Old Navy base a place bry’s family searched repeatedly now it’s both a River Front Park and an industrial area but in 2005 the park was actually being built so that whole area was already dug up on the Northern edge of the Navy base was
An old golf course over the years it slowly been swallowed by salt marsh sits there on the water with a lot of marsh front and it’s filled with back in 2005 the course was crisscrossed by dirt roads they were basically for the golf courts but they’re definitely wide enough for a
Vehicle Sergeant Locker’s investigation widens to include this area I would throw a bunch of old clothes uh go down with a shovel and um start digging just in random areas it almost seems like a wild goose chase until he gets an idea I waited till low tide once the water got
Low enough I walked down um right beyond the cement wall there is where the hold Pier is Locker digs deep into the sand under it I hooked a a metal ring um it was hollowed out in the center kind of like a ring of a 55g drum and when I had
Pulled the shovel the ring came with it and with that came the shoe this is the biggest break they’ve had in this case in years I remember these shoes could this lead to something could we be moving a stamp instead of just standing still In May of 2011 Sergeant Ron Locker breathes New Hope into Brandy hanah’s missing person’s case with his unusual find a woman’s Nike sneaker size 10 and half Brandy was a tall thin female approximately wore a size 10 shoe they’re Nike Cross trainer shoes so you would have to buy them a half size
Bigger or a size bigger the day she worked in Alex’s she was last seen wearing white and blue Nike women’s Cross Trainer shoe and there’s yet another intriguing detail I checked the date code on the tongue of the shoe it was January 28th 5 4 months before Brandy
Went but there’s only one way to know if it’s Brandy’s sneaker bring it back package it send it off to the lab for DNA while waiting for those results Sergeant Locker zeros in on where he found it I wanted to excavate that area to see if um you know there’s any bone
Fragments that we could or any clothing that we could locate so the police actually brought in the state archaeologist and a team of professionals they dug on this site seeing if they could find anything else for 3 Days the team digs and sifts through the title Sands but we weren’t
Able to find anything there once more Donald was left disappointed it’s not until August 2015 4 years later that Sergeant Locker gets a definitive and no human DNA so we cannot confirm that it was hers and we can’t say it wasn’t either but the size
The color the date on the shoe it was all consistent cuz she had just bought these shoes before she disappeared I mean what are the odds of the same size same color same make the date code and in an area that’s so remote where I believe a body was
Disposed of so in my mind it’s hers but can the sneaker somehow tell him more Sergeant Locker has a theory that originates Upstream along the path of the Cooper River’s tidal currents back over that way is going to be the old golf course so I believe her
Body was put on the golf course and then the sneaker would have come down through the inlet wrapped around the island here and made its way down the shoreline and if you keep going down the shoreline it will eventually take you down to where the cement Pier is where I located
It and earlier that summer a cadaver dog search on Old Golf Course yielded a positive hit there as Ron explained it to me they pck up the scand of human remains it’s going to be off to the left over here probably about 100 yard in could Brandy be
There the challenge is the salt marsh it’s impassible any time except low tide during the winter but Sergeant Locker says that won’t stop him we’re going to excavate that area as well when finding some remains right after bry’s Disappearance in 2005 her mother wondered if one or both of her daughter’s ex-boyfriends
Might have had something to do with bry’s disappearance but she’s changed her thinking I became convinced to a degree that Ry really wasn’t involved when I would hold a vial he would come to it I even called Ray one day and I told him I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on
You he was very sad his action showed that whereas Z would talk to me and there was no emotion back in 2005 Langford told the Poston Courier he didn’t know what happened to Brandy he said he suspected Ry knew more than he was telling and he feared the
Worst but to date police have never had conclusive evidence either man was involved the Alex’s restaurant where both Brandy and Donna used to work closed in 2012 former customers often ask about Brandy hoping for an answer that still hasn’t come there’s so much he said she said
Hear see with no real um no real Clues that’s then she’s with God I want for her mother to be able to sleep at night and I always tell I should no don’t give up hope Hope’s all we have maybe one day we’ll find out what happened I still cling to Hope I
Try to tell myself she has Amnesia she doesn’t know who she is but really you know but you don’t you don’t want you never give a hope if you have any information about Brandy Hannah or her disappearance please contact Sergeant Ron locker with the North Charleston Police Department at 843300 8241
Joey Lan offit disappeared on Thursday July 5th 2007 when a person disappears without a trace often the most critical information is hidden in their actions and words from the days before they vanished Joey ly off’s last known whereabouts May hold the clues to what happened to her Joey offet an exhausted mother of
Three kids is struggling with her love life I don’t think that she found somebody that could understand her she and her on and off again boyfriend try forming a family we’ve talked a lot about our relationship and what needed to be worked out but arguments continue
And Joey holds a grudge she told me whenever she’s ready she’ll come to me days pass without calls return and the Myster deepens when tragedy strikes they said there has been an accident and that a body was found still hard to [Applause] [Applause] Believe in the early morning hours of June 2006 7 33-year-old Joey Lin offet and her boyfriend Alexis rushed to the hospital in Deo Pennsylvania it’s a happy emergency though the couple is about to have a baby their second child together she liked the idea of being pregnant having another child together parenting this
New baby is a fresh chapter in their turbulent relationship she was looking forward to moving forward in our relationship their first child is a 2-year-old girl and they each have another child from previous relationships so together they are building what they hope will be a large happy family but Joey’s mother says her
Daughter’s track record with relationships has been Rocky Joey’s looking for acceptance and she was looking for love but when it came to relationships I don’t think that she found somebody that could understand her Joey was naive and easily felt fell in and out of love she was very trusting usually very
Trusting when she would meet someone it was oh I really like him and I think he likes me and we’ve been out to a couple of dates and it might start getting serious but then the argument would start but when Joey met Alexis in the I
Kind of liked him they seem to have a good relationship Joy told me about him that he was uh going to college that uh he was studying psychology and uh very personable person easy to talk to in Joey Alexis felt he had found a strong partner for life she was a good Christian
Girl someone that was settled and shared the same morals and values that I did a couple months after they met Joey her daughter moved in with Alexis she moved from Virginia up to State College she was talking about going to Penn State University but Joey never attended
Penn State or managed to hold on to a job which caused flareups between her and Alexis uh Alexis didn’t have a regular job money’s tight tempers are short so I think they had their fair share of fights Joey moved out but the couple continued to see each other and in 2005
They had their first child together kids love going to the park with her because she would play right along with them and have as good of a time as they did she was almost like a big kid herself although Joey was in her 30s her maturity level was stunted by what her
Mother considered a disability Joey was um in a way handicapped mentally handicapped a psychologist asked me how I thought Joey was in uh mental years I said it’s about 16 and the psychologist said well you’re giving her more credit because I feel that she has the mentality of a
14-year-old she kind of figured if she had a problem if she ignored it it would go away and you know the spontaneous part of her would lead her to do something on the fun side instead of doing maybe what she should have been doing Joey started getting impatient and Restless with her life she began using Alexis’s computer to seek friendships online Alexis had uh let me know that he had intercepted some emails on his computer that really really concerned him about maybe Joey’s State of Mind One email exchange was with a man
In California who was apparently looking for a model to photograph and told Joey she might have the look he wanted and evidently she had sent him a picture of her and as much as I love my daughter my daughter does not have the uh the figure
For a model well that got us all kind of suspicious this is goes back to way I look in shooting pornography concerned about Joey’s stability and the children’s welfare Sher applied for temporary custody without Joey’s knowledge in Fall 2006 Sherry broke the news to Joey with sheriff’s deputies
Present needless to say it didn’t go well she was so angry and so upset she spit and the deputy sheriff saw her and and handcuffed her and took her away and I found out that night that she was pregnant with her third child at Alexis and sher’s urging Joey
Agreed to get counseling to address the behavior that led her into risky online interactions we got it all straightened down and Joey and Alexis are talking about maybe getting married this time I started talking about trying to find her a place to live whether she married or
Not Sher bought Joey a modest house in the small central Pennsylvania burough of Sykesville surrounded by Amish country and 30 minutes away from Alexis’s home in Clearfield she understood why I was doing this to give her and the kids a a one spot permanent place in mid January
2007 Joey and her kids moved into their new home she loved she really fit in she was really doing good but remember she’s caring a baby on the morning of June 3rd 2007 Alexis and Joey make it to the hospital just before Alexis brolan III is
Born their new son brings them closer to reconciliation she was happy again once the baby was born the couple is still living separately but they work together to raise their children I kept our daughter for longer periods I’d have her for a week and swap her back and forth I think that they
Wish want to make a family I mean they’ve already got the children I think that they wanted to see if they could work out their issues but Joey confides in her mother that she has some apprehensions about getting married to Alexis she was wondering if he may have
Had an Altier motive it would give him an edge over getting the the the children and he loves children no doubt in my mind so she was being a little bit more cautious than normal Alexis and Joey take a trip to visit Joey’s family in Maryland and
Virginia she wanted my mom to see um the baby it was the first time I met most of her family outside of her immediate family although Joey is exhausted taking care of her new to her family Joey seems excited about the future she had a engagement ring and she
Was like look you know we’ve set a date now and she said we’re not going to rush in you know we’re going to wait cuz we’re going to save money for this and that they had planned to get married a year later the next day July 1st Joey
And Alexis are about to drive back to Pennsylvania leaving Joey’s oldest daughter to stay with Grandma Sherry for a couple of weeks Sherry says goodbye to Joey and the baby completely unaware that this is the last time she’ll see her daughter before she disappears coming up a disagreement
Threatens to derail Joey and Alexis’s improving relationship unless have really just hit a Nerve on Sunday July 1st 2007 Joey ly offet and her boyfriend Alexis Brolin drive home to central Pennsylvania after visiting Joey’s family in Virginia she had a good time on the trip uh she enjoyed seeing her family I guess it had been a while since she had seen a lot of
Them most of Joey’s relatives got to meet the newest member of the family for the first time Joey’s month old son Alexis III she liked attentions so she got to show him off you know Joey left her oldest daughter in Virginia with her grandmother Sher when they arrive back in
Pennsylvania Joey’s 2-year-old daughter goes to stay with her father Alexis so Joey can focus on the newborn in her own new house Alexis was there offno quite a bit trying to help her on Monday July 2nd Alexis has to spend the day working on a new website for his local internet
Business so he can’t help Joey out but she and her mother Sherry touch base on Monday Joey calls me on a telephone and uh she wants to talk to uh her her daughter and then in the course of our conversation Joey’s telling me I forgot to pack her earplugs she can’t
Take a bath or anything get her hair washed without her ear plugs because she had had ear surgery so Joey said I’ll get them in right Away the next day Alexis helps Joey by doing some grocery shopping and mowing her overgrown lawn but later that night when Joey’s bathing their newborn tension erupts Alexis doesn’t like how Joey is dealing with the task and tells her so she was Bing her son in the sink was
Dirty and I didn’t appreciate that I thought this thing should have been cleaned before she gave him a bath Alexis’s comment Sparks a disagreement she don’t take criticism too well even if someone don’t view it as being too harsh you know even if it’s meant to be
Helpful whenever we left it was not our typical party if he was upset with me Alexis decides to go home aware that Joey’s cold shoulder means it might take her a while to get past his criticism Joey’s mother has seen this Behavior many times before in her own
Relationship with her daughter if we got into a spat or really into it where I was really after her she would shut down literally shut down where she wouldn’t talk to you you could not converse with her you couldn’t rationalize with her and she told me whenever that happens just to give her
Space and time and whenever she’s ready she’ll come to me and discuss whatever the problem was on the 4th of July Alexis and Joey have plans to visit his grandmother and attend a local fireworks display Alexis calls Joey and leaves messages apologizing for their disagreement trying to make
Amends but Joey doesn’t respond I was surprised when she didn’t answer my calls so I figured that you know I must have really just hit a nerve the next day Alexis calls Joey again and leaves another message expressing Regret when he doesn’t hear back from her later in the day Alexis goes to Joey’s house and knocks on the door nobody answers Alexis just figures he’s being snubbed at first I it was because I criticized her Alexis doesn’t have keys to the house he can’t go inside to investigate further so he
Leaves started to get little mad which I think is understandable that same day Joey’s mother Sherry receives the earplugs Joey sent to her oldest daughter it’s dated July 2nd and I was surprised they got there so quick enclosed in the package is a cheery letter from Joey making plans
With her daughter for later that month but like Alexis eared I can’t let it go because the whole point was for Joey to get some rest and I thought you know what I’m not going to be calling her you know and bugging her you know she’ll let her have some
Time on Friday after 3 days of being subjected to the silent treatment Alexis calls Joey to apologize once more mother started thinking something else might have been going on because it usually you know doesn’t take so long for her to get through something and I didn’t really start
Getting worried until the Home Health agency called me and said about her missing her appointment as a single unemployed mother Joey is entitled to state aid the baby’s home health nurse is part of that assistance the nurse tells Alexis she saw Joey’s car parked in front of the
House house and noticed mail piling up at the front Door when she peaked into a window the nurse saw a child seat a diaper bag and a handwritten note on the floor in the living room the nurse says she left her own note and went back to her office Alexis tells the nurse about the argument he and Joey had had several days
Earlier after he hangs up with the nurse he goes over the situation in his head he thinks back to when he last said goodbye to Joey her head was down shoulder slumped she wasn’t talking Alexis and Joey’s mom Sherry compare notes about Joey’s Behavior we were both getting very very
Concerned they think Joey might still be upset at Alexis but why wouldn’t she respond to the nurse and she isn’t even calling her oldest daughter who is visiting Sher in Virginia coming up Joey’s loved ones finally realize all the phone calls and notes aren’t reaching her well where in
The hell is she where is [Applause] Joey 33-year-old Joey off it has not been seen or heard from in 3 days not since she and her boyfriend Alexis Brolin had a disagreement Joey isn’t responding to his messages and she also missed a house call with her baby’s home health nurse when the Home Health agency called and
Said she missed her appointment and you know that was strange another odd thing is that Joey’s car is parked at her house but no one answered ERS the front even her mother and oldest daughter in Virginia Alexis says he decided to stop by the house one more
Time Saturday morning on his way to a family reunion Alexis drives past Joey’s house this time her red car isn’t there the doors were locked so I banged on them and looked through the windows and everything but Uh nobody was around the next day Sunday Alexis stops by again and Joey’s car is back he knocks on the door but nobody answers there’s still not a peep from inside the house he can’t even hear the baby crying I tried my cell phone calling her so I could hear the phone
Ringing in the house Alex tells Jo’s mother about his last stop at the house by now she’s extremely worried but where in the hell is she you know where is Joey in spite of their concern neither Alexis nor Joey’s family thinks it’s time to call the police she’s gone off
The grid before and no one wants to overreact she tends to withdraw and just you know won’t answer the phone won’t answer the door you know even if she knows that you know she in there like keep quiet and until she’s ready to I guess be around you
Again after waiting at Joey’s house for almost an hour Alexis decides to leave her another note again apologizing for their fight and asking her to call him for the next two days Alexis and sher’s repeated calls to Joey go unanswered the home health nurse also pays another fruitless visit
The situation has now become very Distressing on the morning of July 11th an entire week has passed since Alexis saw his girlfriend Joey he and the home health nurse meet at Joey’s house to discuss a course of action and the Home Health agency recommended calling the police to have them you know find a way to get in the
House to check on her and make sure everything was okay Alexis has been resisting this days not wanting to set off alarms unnecessarily but as he looks around he sees that m is continuing to pile up at the front door and that inside the house nothing has moved and
Outside something else is happened Joey’s red car is missing again Alexis is now convinced it’s time to get help over a week but the police know something something about Joey that Alexis apparently hasn’t heard coming up alarm Bells the whole floor underneath the front door was [Applause] Burning yet more disappeared online at investigationdiscovery.com [Applause] After waiting 8 days for Joey ly offet to respond to his repeated calls visits and notes her boyfriend Alexis brolan Jr decides to call police and report her missing then the person I spoke to said an officer would be in touch with me shortly and whenever they called they
Asked if I could come down to the station later that day Pennsylvania State Police Trooper David Ray sits down with Alexis to go over the details of Joey’s disappearance he went through chronologically what he did prior to reporting her missing he said he saw the car there on occasions and other times
The car was gone the last time he saw Joey off it was the night of the third after the argument after taking down Alexis’s information Trooper Ray has some news disturbing news Alexis apparently hasn’t heard that Joey’s house had gone up in Flames earlier that [Applause] day when we advised him that the house was in fact on fire his uh next question was as we expected was Joey in the fire in the early morning hours of Thursday July 12th Joey’s Nextdoor neighbors awakened to a loud noise my wife and I was asleep and he got up and
HED out the neighbor’s house is on fire I picked up the phone dial 911 at the Sykesville fire department volunteers scrambled they didn’t have to drive far about three blocks to reach the scene assistant chief ma Zimmerman was one of the first to arrive at Joey’s
House I noticed the the uh Upper Floor was on fire it appeared at the first to be one room when I got out of my vehicle the neighbor was there uh he had told me that nobody was in the house that they were gone for 3 or 4 days the
Firefighters quickly gained access to the house the crew made their way up to the stairs and advanced into the bathroom the main room that was on fire and it was starting to like they had a handle on it but they didn’t I noticed the floor in the
Downstairs was burning which was kind of odd because all the fire was in the upstairs it appeared so when the crew got in the basement they realized that the whole floor underneath the front door was burning up the walls which had burnt clean to the second floor when
They finally got the three alarm Blaze under control firefighters searched the house they did not find Joey but they did come across a disturbing clue possible evidence of the fire’s true origin they found a gas can in an up stair bedroom and the whole thing of having two separate fires in the same
House really drew a lot of Suspicion so we tried not to disturb anything to preserve as much evidence as we could and uh when we knew something wasn’t right we right away called for the fire marshal in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the fire marshal is a state police investigator upon arrival he
Started taking pictures there was still some stuff smoldering in the bathroom a couple of guys they wanted to know we could clean it out just to get rid of the smoke and that’s when they thought that they had found a a uh Animal House pet
Of some sort in the bathtub so we went back in we took a look at it and as we were standing there the fire chief realized that this woman just had had a baby a few months earlier at 10:00 a.m. July 12th the Fire Marshall called the nearby State Police
Station to report the discovery of an infant’s body in the bathtub Alexis Brolin III was dead and more investigators were needed at what was now a crime scene at that time the desk officer was on the fun with the fire marshal they received a call from Alexis brolan he was reporting that Joey
Lyn offet his girlfriend had been missing he gave no indication that he knew of any house being burnt or of any uh child being deceased fast forward to his meeting with police later that day and Alexis Brolin reacts to the terrible news his response was uh what you’d
Expect to see from him he immediately had some concern then we led into the fact that the infant child was found at the scene uh deceased uh he teared up legitimately concerned and uh distraught I don’t know if there’s any way to describe it still hard to believe you
Know Alexis says police polygraphed him and told him he did well he allowed us to assist us you know with basically everything we asked meantime on that fateful day Joey’s mom and sister in Virginia have no idea what’s going on they get a surprise visit it from local police who
Ask them to call authorities in Pennsylvania Sher immediately calls the number when my mom asked him you know where’s my daughter he didn’t really answer but he did say how far away are you how quick can you get here and next thing we know he’s saying it’s a utmost
Emergency that you get here as fast as you can I Panicked I said what the hell is going on and the detectives were told not to tell me anything but they took it upon themselves against orders and they said there has been an accident a fire and that a body was found driving as fast as they can Sher and Loretta get
To Joey’s house at about 9:00 that evening where they meet with detectives and um I’m good this said we’re looking for do you know where she’d be and I said no I got the impression that they were implying that Joey was somehow maybe responsible and I told them there is no
Way if she’s in trouble trust me she would have called me because Joey always did face the consequences Joey wasn’t a coward I couldn’t imagine her s fire to her own house because she loved her house it was a nice little home and she was thrilled to have
It she is a protective mother and she clung to her kids the Pennsylvania State Police eventually conclude the fire was caused by arson set in two spots the bathroom and the basement and using diesel or gas as an accelerate the infant’s remains are positively identified through DNA as Joey and Alexis’s newborn
Son though the cause of death is undetermined It is believed the baby died before the fire began but one question lingers for Alexis could Joey have abandoned her baby and set the fire to cover it up I think everybody assumed postpartum depression or something along those
Lines Alexis told us that she was having some issues with depression to the point where she was on a medication Pharmacy and could not find anything Troopers canvasing Joey’s neighborhood try to pinpoint more accurately the last time she was seen by anyone her boyfriend Alexis Brolin uh saw her last approximately midnight of
July 3rd into the fourth after that she was last seen by a neighbor had saw her walking up the sidewalk pushing a baby stroller neighbor recognized her she was passing by he tried to acknowledge her she didn’t acknowledge Him back um he thought it was odd that he that she
Didn’t acknowledge Him because they have spoke before he didn’t pursue it anymore this sighting was on the afternoon of July 5th but the witness did not recall seeing a baby in the stroller inside Joey’s house investigators find a computer but because the internet had been turned off for a month due to
Non-payment the hard drive offers nothing revealing detectives also find Joey’s purse and her driver’s license but no car keys a large package of raw hamburger meat on Joey’s kitchen table ends up providing the most useful Clues [Applause] yet through anology at the maggots we were able to date back approximately when
That hamburger was put there approximately July 3rd to July 5th um around the time that Joey was last seen by Mr brolan and the last time seen by the neighbor at the scene of the arson emergency workers found a letter that Alexis had left on Joey’s front
Door window the day before the fire it seemed to corroborate everything he told police about his attempts to find her Alexis had left a printed note on the window uh for Joey ultimately telling her that if she did not contact him or the nurse by the next day he was going
To call the police and report her as a missing person through our investigation we were able to cooperate that there were phone calls made by him to her house and we able to find witnesses who did see him travel to the house and actually spoke to him about
Her next police turned their attention to finding Jo Joy’s red Saturn Coupe important because that was Joey’s Only means of transportation through the interviews we were able to conclude that the car was last seen at the house on July 12th at 3:00 a.m. in the morning which was uh very important because uh
The fire was reported at approximately 4:00 a.m. that morning coming up State Police put out an APV for Joey’s car the person involved would had to have intimate knowledge [Applause] oin offit infant son was found dead in her burned out house Pennsylvania State Police execute search warrants on her bank account and phone line they find no activity after Joey was last seen she has no cell phone to track so Troopers scope out places her boyfriend Alexis Brolin thought she might seek
Refuge he had said that she may have been running away from her problems that she may have taken off she was familiar with how the um women’s shelters work that she has used those in the past that she may have gone to one of those but that
Lead comes up empty so the police try tracking down anybody who knew the missing single mother we found that Joey didn’t have a lot of contact with people on a constant level she tend to stay to herself didn’t make any friends in the area it was very difficult finding
Anyone who actually knew her at all since Joey went missing one of the most vexing aspects of the case involves the disappearances and reappearances of her car in fact it was gone so Joey was gone so it was very important to find that car find that car you find her 3
Days after the fire comes the break police have been hoping for on July 15th the State College Police Department called us and advised us to they Joey’s car at the nney Garden Apartments the nitty garden apartment complex is no random location it’s the same complex that Joey moved into with
Alexis Brolin shortly after they met in 2003 we asked them at that point just to observe the vehicle and see who got in and out of the vehicle nobody did nobody touched it veh got near it it was uh very Str change the person involved would had to
Have intimate knowledge of of that location the apartment complex that was found at it was an area that we was both familiar with and an area that I was surprised that they would have found their car at we put hundreds and hundreds of Flyers out with her picture
On almost on every door of that apartment complex no one reports seeing Joey but one resident comes forward to say he saw the red car in the same parking space as much as 3 days before it was discovered by police he believes he saw it on the 12th
Of July but he States definitely saw it on July 13th the car’s movements before it got to the parking lot in State College are a mystery to investigators they scour the vehicle for evidence but after spraying the interior with luminol no blood or bodily fluids that might indicate Foul Play are
Revealed fingerprint were not of any comparable value there was nothing immediately located within the vehicle that would uh show who was the driver of the vehicle in fact Joey’s family and investigators question whether Joey could have been the driver at all Joey barely hit 5 foot one very petite very
Small shy wor size four and a half size five shoot the driver SE position was found back further than what a person of Joey off it St would be able to drive comfortably it doesn’t prove to us that Joey drove the car or did not drive the
Car we’re not sure still her family says they are certain Joey didn’t just drive the car here and walk off they pointed the way the car was parked as proof that Joey could not have been the last person to drive it Joey was a lousy driver I mean lousy Y and I can’t
Picture her backing the car in number one and if she hadn’t backed it in it was so straight in between the lines she didn’t pay much attention to her surroundings she would have just whipped the car in there and been done with it that was not my sister who parked that
Car who took her in this tiny little town that my sister felt safe to live in because of the environment cuz it was was a small tiny in Amish Country for investigators Joey’s trail goes completely cold somewhere between her house and her car at the nitty Garden Apartment
Complex if someone abducted her was it someone she knew or a complete stranger her mother believes it could have been just about anyone Joey knew no dangers she met no strangers every everybody was her friend she was just too free with information she didn’t even see anything
Wrong with picking up a hitchhiker that always scared me this Daye no information has been found to lead us to believe whether Joey left or or met with Foul Play the investigation is active um nobody has been eliminated at this point until we can get better information regarding the
Whereabouts of Joey L off what happened in this fire and what happened to this child everyone is a person of interest police say Joey’s family has been consistently Cooperative Joey’s mother says police have asked them to take polygraphs theyve agreed to do so and are waiting for the tests to be Scheduled Alexis broland says investigators asked him for a second polygraph and told him he in fact denied to take the test in the very beginning Mr BR appeared very Cooperative Gathering From the interviews that other investigators have done with him uh when he was contacted he always got back to
Guys he would answer any questions that guys would ask him but as time went by the cooperation appeared to be less and less Alexis Brolin Jr is not considered a suspect in the arson the death of his child or Joey’s disappearance and he says he has no idea what
Happened something that I rocked my brain trying to figure out all the possibilities of what ifs and uh don’t know still without any suspects Pennsylvania State Police remain committed to providing some form of closure for Joey’s loved ones I can only imagine the pain that the offit family
And Mr broland are going through uh I could not put myself in their shoes uh would want to my son’s gone and no matter what the answers are he’s not coming back uh I tried my best to forget everything when his birthday comes around it it’s a tough part of the Year especially
When the fire and everything Happ so close after his birthday even with this devastating memory and Joey’s disappearance Alexis says he has worked hard to start a new chapter in his life I have moved on uh remarried now my wife has been very supportive she’s been a blessing um whenever I met
Her is pretty much a wreck uh so she’s been good for me and my daughter Alexis’s daughter with Joey is now 6 years old but for Joey’s mother her older sister and her now 13-year-old daughter it’s been impossible to move on with their lives as long as I’ve got
Breath left in my body I’m going to keep looking for Joey if we find her and she’s dead at least we can put uh an end to it and put her to rest right now I don’t care I don’t care in the sense of what happened or
Why what I care about is finding her that’s what I care about for my Niece because I you know I made a promise to for any information that leads them to her somebody out there has to know something and if you’re the one that did it have a backbone and stand up and and if it was an accident you
Know I’ll even help you if you just tell me where she’s At Okas wamos Samos mamam mamam wam s wam
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