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Every state has its ghost — a case that refuses to close. Join us as we explore the most haunting missing persons cases across America, from Sherry Lynn Marler's mysterious vanishing in Alabama to the baffling triple disappearance known as The Springfield Three in Missouri. These stories will leave you searching for answers.
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00:00She said, Wesley is coming home one day, and then you will all say he will come home.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:08And today, we're looking at the most famous missing persons case in each American state, as this is part one.
00:15We'll be doing the first 25 states in alphabetical order, from Alabama to Missouri.
00:20The 13-year-old girl disappeared from her home back in 1992.
00:32Alabama, Sherry Lynn Marler.
00:34A dollar for a soda was all it took for 12-year-old Sherry Lynn Marler to slip away.
00:40On June 6, 1984, the young girl's stepfather gave her $1 to buy a soda at a nearby gas station
00:47while he ran errands.
00:48She never returned.
00:50As months passed, strange tips trickled in.
00:53Witnesses across the Deep South reported spotting the young girl at various truck stops, and she was usually seen with
00:59a husky middle-aged man.
01:01Despite these haunting sightings, law enforcement could never track her down.
01:05Today, Marler's heartbroken family still searches for answers.
01:09Who really took Sherry?
01:11Unfortunately, we may never know.
01:14This dark, enduring mystery continues to haunt the state of Alabama, leaving a desperate plea for closure.
01:25Alaska, Thomas Hale Boggs and Nick Begich.
01:29The freezing Alaskan wilderness swallowed a twin-engine plane in October 1972.
01:34On board were U.S. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and Congressman Nick Begich,
01:39both of whom were campaigning right before a crucial election.
01:42When their flight vanished, it triggered the largest search-and-rescue operation in United States history at the time.
01:48Military aircraft scoured the unforgiving terrain for 39 agonizing days.
01:54No wreckage.
01:55No debris.
01:56Nothing.
01:57With no hint of their survival, Congress eventually declared the missing politicians dead the following December.
02:02This unprecedented tragedy forced immediate changes in aviation safety,
02:07legally mandating emergency locator transmitters in all civilian aircraft.
02:11Yet, despite this sweeping legacy, the final resting place of Boggs and Begich remains one of America's greatest mysteries.
02:25Arizona, Mikkel Biggs.
02:27To the news at 930, for 19 years now, Mikkel Biggs' disappearance from her Mesa neighborhood has remained a mystery.
02:35The cheerful jingle of an ice cream truck became the backdrop of a nightmare.
02:40On January 2, 1999, 11-year-old Mikkel Biggs waited eagerly near the ice cream truck while her sister Kimber
02:47ran inside for just a moment.
02:49When she returned just 90 seconds later, Mikkel was gone.
02:53Her bicycle lay abandoned in the streets, its wheels still spinning, and loose change was scattered across the pavements.
03:00The swift disappearance prompted aggressive neighborhood sweeps and interrogations, and the chilling scene captured national media attention.
03:08Unfortunately, nothing came of it.
03:11Even decades later, Mikkel's case remains an open investigation for Arizona law enforcement.
03:16Her family refuses to give up hope, fighting tirelessly for the bright young girl who vanished while waiting for her
03:22older sister.
03:24Whoever took her was probably, you know, still moving around the corner.
03:28Even though now to this day I know it wasn't my fault, I do feel a bit of that, like,
03:34what-if situation.
03:36What if I hadn't left?
03:37You know, what would be the scenario now if I had stayed out there with her or if I had
03:42just made her come in with me?
03:49Arkansas, Morgan Nick.
03:51Today does mark the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of Morgan Nick,
03:55a tragedy that forever changed how Arkansas responds to missing children.
04:00A lively Little League baseball game in Alma turned tragic on June 9, 1995.
04:06Six-year-old Morgan Nick was playing with friends just yards from her mother,
04:10but witnesses later recalled a creepy man in a red truck watching the children.
04:14Moments later, Morgan was gone.
04:17Her friends later said that they briefly left her alone and returned to the bleachers without her,
04:21as she needed to get sand out of her shoes.
04:24The subsequent search gripped the entire state and fundamentally changed how Arkansas handles missing children.
04:30Her heartbreaking disappearance inspired the Morgan Nick Foundation,
04:33and the state named its Amber Alert System in her honor.
04:37Investigators have chased thousands of tips over the decades, yet Morgan remains missing.
04:43As you can see behind me, the dome is lit pink in her honor.
04:47That's Morgan's favorite color.
04:48The color represents hope as the search for Morgan continues, even today.
04:53And although Morgan would be 36 years old today, her mother tells me she's forever six in her heart.
05:05California, Kristen Smarts.
05:06Paul Flores, the classmate of Kristen Smart, accused of killing her in 1996.
05:14The jury just came back with a guilty verdict for him.
05:18This 19-year-old Cal Poly student was walking back from a Kappa Chi fraternity party on the early morning
05:24of May 25, 1996,
05:25when she disappeared.
05:27She was last seen with a man named Paul Flores.
05:30Tragically, campus security delayed calling actual law enforcement for days,
05:35believing she had simply gone on an unannounced vacation.
05:38Unfortunately, this fatal administrative error allowed crucial physical evidence to disappear.
05:44Kristen's case sparked outrage and directly inspired the Kristen Smart Campus Security Act,
05:49forcing colleges to report missing students as soon as possible.
05:52Fast forward to 2022, when Paul Flores was finally convicted of her murder and handed a heavy prison sentence.
06:00While justice was technically served, Kristen's remains have still never been found,
06:05leaving a painful void for her family.
06:08Well, Marley, through his attorney, Paul Flores told the Smart family that he did not know where Kristen's body is.
06:20Colorado, Christopher Abeyta.
06:22Nearly 40 years after a baby vanished in southern Colorado,
06:26potential new evidence could bring hope for his family.
06:29Snatched directly from his own crib in July 1986,
06:33seven-month-old Christopher Abeyta disappeared in the dead of night.
06:36His parents were sleeping just feet away in their Colorado Springs home.
06:40The family had left their front door unlocked,
06:42and a stealthy kidnapper bypassed the parents entirely,
06:46taking the infant without making a sound.
06:48The brazen crime immediately garnered heavy national media coverage.
06:51Detectives dug deep into the lives of family members and local suspects,
06:56believing that someone close to Christopher had taken him for personal reasons.
07:00But they found no concrete answers.
07:03It stands as one of the most high-profile and baffling unsolved infant abductions in American history.
07:09She says on the day of her brother's kidnapping,
07:12her father gave Colorado Springs police the name of someone who they thought was stalking the family.
07:17But Alvis says officers never interviewed them.
07:26Connecticut's Billy Smolenski Jr.
07:28When Billy Smolenski vanished in 2004, billboards flooded Connecticut highways.
07:35Smolenski has never been found.
07:37But now his case is leading to a new law that could make it easier to find missing adults.
07:42Leaving his beloved dog behind in his truck,
07:45Billy Smolenski vanished from Waterbury in August 2004.
07:49When his worried family tried to report him missing,
07:52they hit a wall of annoying bureaucracy.
07:54Police told them to wait,
07:56initially refusing to take the disappearance seriously,
07:59as Billy was 31 years old and was assumed to have voluntarily disappeared.
08:03Frustrated but determined,
08:05his family plastered countless flyers across the state.
08:08Their fierce advocacy changed history,
08:11directly leading to the creation of Billy's law.
08:13This crucial federal legislation bridges the gap between missing persons databases
08:17and unidentified remains networks,
08:20revolutionizing how agencies share information.
08:23Sadly, the man who inspired this nationwide reform remains lost.
08:28Each year, 600,000 people are reported missing in the U.S.,
08:33while 4,400 bodies go unidentified.
08:37Now Billy's law will potentially match them up.
08:46Delaware, Nefetiri Trader
08:48Many of the abductions on this list were quiet affairs.
08:51This was not.
08:5333-year-old Nefetiri Trader was violently attacked in her own driveway
08:57and forced into her silver Acura by an unidentified man.
09:00A neighbor witnessed the horrific kidnapping,
09:03but the mysterious man sped away into the darkness before anyone could intervene.
09:07Unfortunately, the panicked neighbor failed to call the police right away.
09:11Neither Nefetiri nor her vehicle have been spotted since that terrible night.
09:15The sudden disappearance remains a highly publicized, open investigation in Delaware,
09:20and her heartbroken mother continually pleads for the public to come forward with any knowledge.
09:25As for now, the chilling mystery stays open,
09:28with locals desperately waiting for any sign of Nefetiri or her car.
09:38Florida, Jennifer Kessie.
09:40The following morning, Jennifer left her Orlando condo for work and never arrived.
09:45The 24-year-old disappeared without a trace,
09:48setting off one of Central Florida's most haunting mysteries.
09:5124-year-old Jennifer Kessie failed to show up for work on the morning of January 4, 2006,
09:56and her spotless car was later discovered abandoned miles from her Orlando condo.
10:02It's creepy enough, but this baffling case is infamous for its deeply frustrating security footage.
10:09A camera captured a phantom suspect parking Kessie's missing vehicle and walking away,
10:14yet the suspect's face was perfectly obscured by a metal fence post in every single frame of the video.
10:20Experts consider it some of the unluckiest security footage in criminal history.
10:24Investigators exhaustively searched nearby lakes, dense woods, and local construction sites,
10:30but turned up empty-handed every single time.
10:33Kessie remains missing to this day,
10:35a frustrating reality that might have been avoided if those posts were installed just a few inches to the right.
10:41Lucky is criminal alive to have footage parking her car, backing out, parking it meticulously,
10:52wiping the car down, 32 seconds, and he walks away.
11:02Georgia, Tara Grinstead.
11:05Someone in Osceola told me there's this perception of absolute safety in small towns like that.
11:11People didn't lock their doors in Osceola.
11:13That all changed quickly.
11:15What happened there was something no one could have imagined.
11:19A beloved high school teacher and former beauty queen,
11:22Tara Grinstead vanished from her Osceola home in October 2005.
11:25Her sudden disappearance quickly became the largest case in the history of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
11:31Detectives found a strange latex glove with male DNA in her front yard,
11:36but the trail went ice cold for over a decade.
11:39It took the hit podcast Up and Vanish to finally break the silence,
11:43with the show generating a tidal wave of new and renewed public interest.
11:47The increased pressure finally led to the arrest of two former students of the school.
11:52Ryan Dukes and Bo Dukes were implicated in her murder,
11:55admitting that they had burned her body in a remote orchard.
11:58Tragically, her physical remains were never successfully recovered.
12:03He jimmied the door and broke in.
12:06Didn't think anybody was home.
12:07I was looking for money,
12:10and Ryan Dukes went on to tell investigators that she surprised him,
12:17and he accidentally killed her.
12:23Hawaii, Peter Kemma Jr.
12:26A plea deal in a Hilo courtroom today may finally answer a 20-year-old question.
12:32Where is Peter Boy Kemma?
12:35Known affectionately as Peter Boy,
12:37this 6-year-old's 1997 disappearance exposed horrific flaws in Hawaii's child welfare system.
12:43His abusive parents claimed they gave him to a family friend on the Big Island,
12:47but investigators quickly realized this woman did not actually exist.
12:52The public instantly suspected foul play,
12:55sparking massive local protests demanding justice for the boy.
12:58The tragic saga haunted the island community for two agonizing decades.
13:03Finally, his father confessed that Peter Boy died of septic shock stemming from a severe arm injury,
13:09and that he had threw the child's body into the ocean.
13:12This dark closure ended Hawaii's most notorious missing child mystery,
13:16but it also ensured that his body would never be found and given a proper burial.
13:22Joe, prosecutors tell us this plea deal still does not guarantee
13:26that they'll be able to find Peter Boy's remains,
13:28but there are conditions in place that give them some confidence
13:32and finally bring some resolution for the family.
13:44We're looking for you, son, and we will find you,
13:46and we love you more than anything in the world.
13:48If somebody has him, please don't hurt him.
13:52Just bring him home safely.
13:53A rural family camping trip turned into a nightmare
13:56when two-year-old Dior Coons vanished on July 10, 2015.
14:00The terrifying disappearance happened in the rugged mountains of Ledor and with four adults present.
14:05The story got immediately suspicious when his parents, great-grandfather and family,
14:10and a family friend all gave wildly conflicting stories to local detectives.
14:15A massive operation immediately scoured the dangerous Idaho wilderness,
14:18with search teams using the likes of tracking dogs and helicopters,
14:22yet they found no trace of the missing toddler.
14:25The confusing investigation placed heavy scrutiny on the adults at the campsite,
14:29but despite relentless interrogations and intense public pressure,
14:33nobody has ever been officially charged with a crime.
14:36What's the address of your emergency?
14:39I'm actually camping in Redworth.
14:42My two-year-old son, we can't find him.
14:51Illinois. Diamond and Tianda Bradley.
14:55The next day, I told Tianda,
14:57I'm going to work.
14:59After that, we go camping.
15:02Don't open the door for nobody.
15:04Returning home from work in 2001,
15:06a Chicago mother found her Southside apartment eerily empty.
15:09Her children, three-year-old Diamond and ten-year-old Tianda, were gone.
15:13A mysterious note left behind claimed that the girls were visiting a nearby playground.
15:18However, nobody at the park reported seeing them.
15:20Their heartbreaking disappearance sparked an unprecedented local search effort,
15:24morphing into one of Chicago's most deeply felt mysteries.
15:28The community rallied, plastering the girls' faces on flyers across the city,
15:32and law enforcement chased countless dead-end leads, spanning the entire country.
15:37Unfortunately, the trail quickly went cold and remains cold to this day.
15:42The devastated family continues to hold annual vigils to keep the spotlight on the missing sisters.
15:48So, we went by the lake, you know, over there and everything, you know, searching and asking,
15:54you know, haven't you seen two little girls, you know, they're like, no, no.
16:04Indiana. Lauren was part of a wild party scene, and that in some way or another, drugs and students using
16:13drugs led to her demise.
16:15Disappearing on the early morning of June 3, 2011, Lauren Spearer became a cautionary tale of unchecked college nightlife.
16:23The 20-year-old Indiana University student vanished in Bloomington after a heavy night of drinking,
16:28leaving a friend's apartment barefoot and without her phone.
16:31Her case drew fierce national media coverage, generating thousands of anonymous tips regarding her whereabouts.
16:37Eager student volunteers in law enforcement scoured the surrounding campus area for weeks,
16:42and several men who were with her that night were investigated, but nobody was ever charged.
16:48The frustrating case remains an intensely agonizing mystery,
16:52and Lauren's family continues their tireless fight for justice and answers.
16:56He had heard that she was at a party, had a bad reaction to ecstasy, died.
17:02They panicked and moved her to the Ohio River.
17:05They're 18, 19, 20 years old.
17:07The last thing they want is the Bloomington police to come in, find drugs, and a dead co-ed.
17:18Iowa, Johnny Gosch.
17:20Good evening, I'm Steve Carlin.
17:22And I'm Stacey Horst.
17:23And we're at the corner of 42nd Street and Marquart Lane in West Des Moines,
17:27the exact location of where 12-year-old Johnny Gosch was last seen alive.
17:3112-year-old Johnny Gosch was delivering newspapers on the morning of September 5th, 1982,
17:37when he famously disappeared.
17:39He left behind one critical clue, his abandoned red wagon, full of undelivered papers.
17:46Young Johnny's tragic disappearance profoundly shifted the very fabrics of American culture.
17:51He became one of the first missing children featured on milk cartons,
17:54revolutionizing how the public spotted abducted kids,
17:58and his desperate mother transformed into a national safety advocate.
18:01The case has spawned countless wild conspiracy theories over the decades,
18:06with many suspecting that an organized kidnapping ring was responsible.
18:10But despite the milk cartons, and despite the endless investigations and supposed sightings,
18:15Johnny's true fate remains unknown.
18:17That was September 5th, 1982.
18:20Forty years later, Johnny Gosch is still missing.
18:24The case remains unsolved.
18:32Kansas. Randy Leach.
18:34Alberta's son hasn't been at the kitchen table since he disappeared in 1988.
18:39But the hope that he'll someday return remains a constant conversation.
18:43A wild pre-graduation bonfire in the rural town of Linwood
18:47ended in a baffling double disappearance in 1988.
18:5117-year-old Randy Leach vanished from the party that night, and so did his vehicle.
18:55He was driving his mother's gray Dodge sedan,
18:58but neither the teenager nor the large family vehicle have ever been found.
19:02Wild rumors quickly swirled around the terrified local community.
19:05Some locals claimed that satanic cults were operating in the area,
19:08while others believed that Randy witnessed a dangerous drug deal gone wrong
19:12and was silenced.
19:14Police dragged nearby rivers and searched local fields,
19:17hoping to find some evidence of either Leach or his vehicle, but with no success.
19:22It remains the most frustrating cold case in the state of Kansas.
19:26Another theory is Randy and the car ended up in Stranger Creek,
19:29but police searched the creek and parts of the Kansas River and didn't find anything.
19:34Over the years, the Leaches had teams search the waterways by boat and underwater.
19:38People they knew took up their airplanes to get aerial views.
19:41Each time, they came up empty.
19:49Kentucky, Crystal Rogers.
19:51Heartbreak that's hard to believe.
19:53Losing a daughter and husband to murder and losing a grandson to the legal system.
19:58Sherry Ballard sat down with us after three men were found guilty of killing her daughter, Crystal Rogers.
20:03But she tells us her fight for justice is far from over.
20:08An abandoned car with a flat tire found in the Bluegrass Parkway sparked a sprawling murder mystery in 2015.
20:14Its owner, 35-year-old Crystal Rogers, was gone.
20:18Yet all her personal belongings were still sitting inside the vehicle.
20:21Her disappearance is heavily intertwined with a string of other local unsolved murders.
20:26For example, her own father was shot and killed by a sniper while preparing for a hunting trip.
20:32Needless to say, the incredibly complex case drew intense FBI involvements.
20:37Justice was finally served in 2025, when Rogers' ex-boyfriend, Brooks Houck, was convicted of murder.
20:44Two accomplices, Joseph Lawson and Lawson's father, Steve, were both convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence.
20:51While justice was served, no trace of Rogers has ever been found.
20:57It took eight years for three people to be arrested.
21:01Brooks Houck, Steve Lawson, and Joseph Lawson.
21:04She waited 10 years to get to trial to finally hear these words.
21:10We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder.
21:18Louisiana, Wesley Dale Morgan.
21:21A toddler's sudden disappearance almost 24 years ago still has investigators scratching their heads.
21:28But as the anniversary gets closer, the child's aunt says she's ready for someone to come forward.
21:34A quick trip inside to make a sandwich cost Ruby Harvard everything in 1981.
21:39By the time she returned from making the food, her two-year-old son, Wesley Dale Morgan,
21:44had vanished from the front porch of his rural Clinton home.
21:48The chilling case has endured decades of bizarre twists.
21:51At one point, a convicted serial killer named Tommy Lynn Sells confessed to murdering the child.
21:57However, this confession was eventually dismissed by the police for being unreliable.
22:02The heartbreaking disappearance remains a haunting cornerstone of Louisiana's cold case files.
22:07His mother has never stopped searching for her precious boy.
22:10Holding on to the belief that Wesley is still alive and out there somewhere, albeit now a grown man.
22:17Former Baton Rouge officer Richard Sobers says he spent thousands of dollars on a billboard, bumper stickers, and bracelets.
22:24It's 24 years, and they haven't solved this yet, so why not pull out all the stops?
22:36Maine, Ayla Reynolds.
22:38Ayla Reynolds was last seen by her father, Justin DiPietro, and after very little progress in the case,
22:44her mother, Trista Reynolds, is now going public.
22:4720-month-old Ayla Reynolds disappeared from her father's Maine house on December 17, 2011.
22:53It seemed like a brazen crime, but police quickly ruled out a random abduction
22:58after discovering large amounts of Ayla's blood inside the basement of the house.
23:03The grotesque find instantly escalated the case into the largest criminal investigation in Maine's history.
23:09Law enforcement officers relentlessly searched frozen rivers and dense local woods for the girl,
23:14but to no success. A judge officially declared the missing toddler legally dead in 2017,
23:20prompting her devastated mother to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the father.
23:24Despite the overwhelming circumstantial evidence against him,
23:28he has never been charged with her tragic disappearance.
23:31Justin maintains that the child was abducted during the middle of the night.
23:35When he woke up in the morning, baby's gone.
23:38But police say absolutely there is no evidence of an abduction.
23:47Maryland, the Lyons sisters.
23:5042 years ago, the Lyons sisters, 10- and 12-year-olds, told their mom
23:55they were walking to a nearby mall in Montgomery County.
23:58They never returned.
23:59Now, as Mike Shue reports, a convicted sex offender has entered a plea in the decades-old cold case.
24:04A simple walk to the Wheaton Plaza Mall shattered the illusion of suburban safety in March 1975.
24:11That's when sisters Catherine and Sheila Lyon vanished without a trace.
24:16Witnesses reported seeing a sketchy man with a tape recorder bothering the sisters.
24:20But these reports didn't lead anywhere, and the trail went frustratingly cold for exactly four decades.
24:26Finally, a relentless detective connected a convicted criminal to the notorious crime.
24:31Lloyd Welch, who had a long and disgusting history with crimes involving children,
24:35was officially indicted and convicted of murdering the girls in 2017.
24:40While justice was technically served in courts, their innocent bodies remain missing,
24:45and the horrible trauma lingers heavily in the quiet community to this day.
24:50Welch most likely will die in prison.
24:52He's 60 years old.
24:54He was sentenced to 48 more years in jail.
25:02Massachusetts, Joan Risch.
25:05Off he goes, and the clock is ticking.
25:10Meticulously stage your crime scene with just enough mistakes to raise the specter of doubt.
25:17Back in 1961, Joan Risch vanished from her wealthy Lincoln suburban home.
25:21She left behind a horrifying crime scene.
25:24The kitchen walls were heavily smeared with blood, and a clear trail led from the house to the driveway,
25:30implying that she had been taken away.
25:32To make matters worse, it was Risch's four-year-old daughter who found the house in this state
25:37after returning from a playdate.
25:39But then came the major plot twist straight out of Gone Girl.
25:43Investigators quickly found that Joan had recently checked out several library books about murders and
25:47missing persons, many of which detailed elaborate ways to stage a disappearance.
25:52Did she fake her own bloody murder to escape her life, or was she actually attacked?
25:57The fascinating case remains a legendary unsolved mystery in New England True Crime.
26:02You need to clean. Poorly, like he would. Clean and bleed. Bleed and clean.
26:09And leave a little something behind. A fire in July.
26:19Michigan, Jimmy Hoffa.
26:22The house.
26:36This isn't just the most popular missing persons case in Michigan.
26:40It's probably the most popular missing persons case in American lore.
26:45Jimmy Hoffa, the incredibly powerful Teamsters Union leader who had powerful ties to the Mafia,
26:50disappeared from a restaurant parking lot in 1975.
26:53His vanishing defined the FBI's massive battle against organized crime for an entire generation.
26:59Most people assume that he was murdered by the Mafia, but no one knows just what happened,
27:04and stories of his final resting place are legendary.
27:07Some claim he was buried under Giant Stadium, while others think he was given concrete shoes and thrown into the
27:13lake.
27:13In reality, it's very likely that his body was incinerated.
27:17Either way, we'll likely never know for sure.
27:29It was no more complicated than that.
27:38Minnesota, Brandon Swanson.
27:40First of all, I want to ask you, Ms. Swanson, you were on the phone with your son,
27:43a large part of those early hours when you were trying to find him, and he was trying to find
27:48you.
27:50He wasn't hurt at all, right?
27:51I mean, the car went into a ditch, but he seemed to be okay.
27:5519-year-old Brandon Swanson called his parents for a ride home after crashing his car into a ditch.
28:00At the time, he was walking through some dark fields and guiding his parents to his location.
28:05But suddenly, he yelled an expletive, and the call went completely dead.
28:09A search later found his abandoned car, but there were no signs of Brandon anywhere.
28:14Unfortunately, police initially delayed their search because he was a legal adult,
28:19heating up valuable time that could have led to a result.
28:21This frustrating inaction directly led to the passage of Brandon's Law,
28:25which requires Minnesota police to immediately take missing adult reports seriously.
28:30But it was too late for Brandon, and his true fate in those dark, rural fields remains a chilling, unsolved
28:37mystery to this day.
28:38We didn't immediately hang up the phone.
28:40We, you know, we called his name.
28:41We tried to, you know, thinking that he still had the phone, that it was very near him, that he
28:47could pick it up.
28:48We'd hear our voice, and we called out to him several times, and we realized, you know, he's not there.
29:01Mississippi, Lee Ochi.
29:03Local forensic anthropologist says investigators still believe Lee Ochi's body is buried on the property where she used to live.
29:12Ochi vanished in 1992 from her home in Tupelo.
29:15The teen was declared legally dead last year.
29:18In the terribly sad case of Lee Ochi, Hurricane Andrew provided the perfect cover for a brutal murder.
29:24The 13-year-old vanished from her Tupelo home in 1992 after her mother left for work.
29:29Upon returning, she found the house in a state of horror, with blood smeared on the walls and large pools
29:35sitting on the floor.
29:36The terror only escalated weeks later when Lee's bloody glasses were mailed directly to the home.
29:41The chilling package completely terrified the local town and baffled investigators, blending a terrifying personal angle to the disappearance.
29:49Why take Ochi?
29:50And why taunt the family with their glasses?
29:52Disturbingly, suspicion has heavily surrounded her mother over the long decades, with police questioning her and even subjecting her to
30:00a polygram, which she failed.
30:03However, no formal charges have ever been filed.
30:06Now, Dr. Goliath says his equipment and cadaver dogs could help find Lee Ochi's body.
30:12Tupelo police have not closed the case, even though Ochi was declared legally dead last October.
30:23Missouri, the Springfield Three.
30:25Early the next morning, Susie's best friend, Nygale, calls to find out when they're leaving for the water park.
30:31I got the answering machine.
30:33I left her a message.
30:34I hung up and laid back down and waited for her to call me back.
30:38Capping off the first half of our list isn't one disappearance, but three, known as the Springfield Three.
30:45The missing persons are Cheryl Levitt, her daughter Susie Streeter, and Susie's friend, Stacey McCall.
30:51The two teenage girls were sleeping over at Levitt's house, but come the morning, all three were gone.
30:57However, their purses and personal belongings were still inside the house, and the family dog was found highly agitated, which
31:04strongly suggests that they were taken or left against their will.
31:08The house itself was undisturbed, the only sign of a struggle being a broken porch line.
31:13The terrifying case remains a massive unsolved mystery in Missouri history, with police and locals left chasing rumors.
31:20Nobody has ever been arrested, and the three women have yet to be found.
31:25I can't even imagine what the conversations must be like with the families when you do talk to them, that
31:31you just can't seem to give them answers.
31:35I would love nothing more to be able to show up at their doorstep and say, we figured it out.
31:41Do you think you have the answers?
31:43Let us know in the comments below.
31:44There we go.
31:47We're on this one.
31:48We're on this one.
31:49In a minute.
31:50We'll see you soon.
31:50Hello.
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