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When police hit dead ends, grieving families sometimes refuse to give up. Join us as we explore the most astonishing cases where loved ones uncovered clues, identified suspects, and helped bring justice to victims. From social media sleuthing to secret recordings and dogged private investigations, these stories prove that persistence can change everything.
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00:00I think you're asking me, have I dealt with it?
00:04I think it's something I still do.
00:06Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're exploring the most remarkable times
00:10when a victim's family took matters into their own hands
00:14and played a vital role in finding the culprit or solving the crime.
00:18I put my hand right under the dirty bones.
00:21Dad, we got you.
00:23We got you, Dad. We found you.
00:26Danny Schneider Jr.
00:27Where are you, son?
00:28Right here.
00:30Going on the plane up from you.
00:32That's his football.
00:34My son was a really good-natured, compassionate kid.
00:38In 1999, Dan Schneider Sr. and Annie received the worst news parents could get.
00:43Their son Danny was murdered in New Orleans, Louisiana,
00:46as he was purchasing illegal substances.
00:49I want to do a show of reality of what families go through.
00:52This cemetery is filled with a lot of young people
00:54that have died from this opiate epidemic.
00:57With Dan believing the police weren't interested in solving the case due to what Danny was buying,
01:02he took matters into his own hands.
01:03Walking the New Orleans streets, the pharmacist spoke to potential witnesses.
01:08Dan's persistence paid off as one person identified teenager Jeffrey Hall as Danny's killer.
01:13In 2000, Hall was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
01:16That took someone's life, you know, and it's like, damn.
01:20However, Dan wasn't done, as the opioid epidemic piqued his interest.
01:25He was able to discover Dr. Jacqueline Clegett's illegal activities of handing out strong painkillers,
01:30leading to her being struck off.
01:32That was probably the most difficult day of my life.
01:36Blaise Bernstein.
01:37Is it still hard to believe that Blaise is gone?
01:40It took a while for it to set in.
01:44But I'm at peace with it.
01:47Maybe that's all that we were supposed to have.
01:49In 2019, Blaise was set to return to the University of Pennsylvania
01:53after staying with his family in California.
01:55However, when the family couldn't get hold of him after several hours,
01:58a frantic search began.
02:00Well, it was just so highly unusual.
02:01He wanted to spend time with us.
02:03I just kept texting and calling him and leaving messages all day.
02:07Where had he been?
02:09We didn't know.
02:09His sister Bo and Mother Jean searched Blaise's online activity,
02:13soon discovering he'd sent his address to a Snapchat account belonging to Samuel Woodward,
02:17who'd gone to high school with Blaise.
02:19Blaise's father Gideon contacted Woodward and asked him to call.
02:23When he did, Bo recorded the conversation that brought up even more questions.
02:26The person at fault for this should have been in this room today.
02:31He is guilty of disrupting a path of a brilliant future for Blaise.
02:35The police soon got involved.
02:36Sadly, they discovered Blaise's body.
02:39The investigation found that Woodward, who had ties to far-right groups,
02:43killed Blaise as a hate crime.
02:44In 2024, Woodward was sentenced to life imprisonment.
02:48Now with the verdict in hand, we believe that justice has been served
02:52and that Blaise's memory will be honored through this outcome.
02:56Crystal Theobald.
02:56In 2006, Crystal was driving with her boyfriend, Juan Potlin,
03:00and her brother, Justin, in Riverside, California.
03:03However, believing the trio was part of the MD-17 gang,
03:06their rivals, the Vario 5150, opened fire.
03:10While Justin was unhurt and Juan was wounded, Crystal was killed.
03:14With the police struggling to find those responsible,
03:17Crystal's mom, Belinda Lane, visited the social media site MySpace.
03:20I knew nothing about the social media.
03:24I wasn't on the MySpace.
03:26She said, how do you do it?
03:28I said, I can do it all.
03:29Don't worry.
03:30With the help of her niece, they created several fake accounts and contacted suspects.
03:35Using details from their conversations,
03:37Belinda was able to tip off the police about their whereabouts.
03:40That's when I gave, uh, the detective, uh, the MySpace.
03:46I handed over the passwords and the MySpace to keep myself in check.
03:51This led to eight people being sentenced for their involvement,
03:55including Julio Cesar Heredia, who was sentenced to life in 2011,
03:59and William Sotelo, who received 22 years in prison in 2020.
04:03Eleven people, including gunman Julio Heredia, were eventually arrested
04:07and convicted on an array of charges related to Theobald's death.
04:10But Sotelo, the accused driver of the vehicle used in the shooting,
04:14fled to Mexico and evaded authorities until last Friday.
04:17Chris Farmer and Petta Frampton.
04:19In 1978, Chris and Petta, a couple from Manchester, England,
04:23were traveling when the duo stopped contacting their families.
04:26Unfortunately, the couple's bodies were found in Guatemala.
04:29The couple's families in Manchester received the terrible news
04:32that their bodies had been found drowned, bound,
04:35and tied to engine parts off the coast of Guatemala.
04:39A letter from Petta detailed that she and Chris were taking a boat trip in Belize
04:42with an American, Silas Boston, and his two sons.
04:46With the skipper were two sons, ages,
04:48and she even gave the ages, the names,
04:51Russell and Vince Boston,
04:53and the skipper, Silas Dwayne Boston.
04:56Yet, after questioning by the police,
04:58Boston was released, and the case went cold.
05:01In 2015, Chris's sister Penny messaged Boston and his family on Facebook.
05:05So we gathered the information that the Farmer family provided to us,
05:09and also the information from the retired detective.
05:12Put it all together, and then I contacted Interpol.
05:15When she didn't hear anything, Penny went to the police,
05:18who confirmed the case had been reopened,
05:20and that the sons had claimed they'd witnessed Boston kill the couple.
05:23In 2016, Boston was charged with the murders,
05:26but he died the following year before the trial.
05:28That was it. That was the end.
05:31They were not coming back.
05:32Texan teenager.
05:33We begin with a teen who is home safe with her family
05:36after she was kidnapped while walking her dog Christmas Day.
05:40On Christmas Day in 2025,
05:43a family in Porter, Texas,
05:44was expecting their teenage daughter to return shortly as she was walking her dog.
05:48However, panic ensued when the walk was taking far longer than usual.
05:52Her father remembered the parental controls installed on her cell phone.
05:55Parental controls is what officials say the girl's family used to track her phone.
05:59That information later led the girl's father to a secluded,
06:02partially wooded area in Harris County.
06:04He tracked her location to a secluded, wooded area only a couple of miles from their home.
06:09When he arrived, he found his daughter and her dog inside a vehicle.
06:13Next to them was their alleged abductor, Giovanni Rosales Espinoza.
06:17Now this is 23-year-old Giovanni Rosales Espinoza.
06:20He is the man accused of allegedly threatening their 15-year-old daughter at knife point
06:25while she was out walking her dog.
06:27The father managed to help his daughter and her dog escape.
06:30He then contacted the police and provided details,
06:33leading to Espinoza being tracked down and arrested.
06:35This is one of the ways that smartphones and technologies serve a positive purpose.
06:43Judith Johnson.
06:44My mom had been stabbed in her home
06:49and that Brooke was saying that Clarence did it.
06:53In 1998, Brooke Sutton was with her grandmother Judith Johnson in Barberton, Ohio,
06:57when a man broke in and attacked, taking Judith's life.
07:01Brooke seemingly put the blame on Judith's son-in-law, Clarence Elkins.
07:05In 1999, he received two life sentences.
07:08However, Judith's daughter and Clarence's wife, Melinda, refused to believe it.
07:12As well as hiring a private investigator and paying for her own DNA tests,
07:16they discovered that Tanya Brasile, Judith's neighbor,
07:19from whom Brooke sought help, had a partner, Earl Mann,
07:22who had a history of similar crimes.
07:24His case was helped when his niece recanted her statements
07:28and new evidence surfaced that pointed to another possible suspect.
07:32Thanks to being in the same jail, Clarence collected Mann's cigarette butt
07:35and his DNA matched the evidence in Judith's murder.
07:39In 2005, Clarence was released,
07:41followed by Mann being sentenced to 55 years in 2008.
07:45Yeah, really didn't...
07:51like a weight's been lifted off of my back.
07:55Lee Porter.
07:56Plastering missing posters all over the Centennial State.
07:59Now desperate, they turned to the public to plea for Lee's return.
08:03In 2014, Lee vanished from her home in Westminster, Colorado.
08:07Lee's mother, Renee, examined her daughter's phone logs.
08:09A number belonging to Christopher Wade,
08:11who'd gone to high school with Lee and was studying criminology,
08:15popped up regularly.
08:16While the police interviewed him, he didn't admit anything.
08:19However, Lee's brother, Max, had a different idea.
08:22He contacted Wade and met up with him,
08:24bringing his friend Eric along.
08:25Christopher, for the first time, admits right here,
08:29far from the windowless interrogation room,
08:32under the lattice of a gazebo,
08:33in front of Lee's brother,
08:35that he killed the teenager in trouble.
08:37While secretly recording the conversation,
08:40Max got Wade to confess to killing Lee,
08:42claiming it was self-defense.
08:44Furious, Max attacked Wade,
08:46before Eric pulled him off the killer.
08:48The duo then got Wade to confess to a 911 operator.
08:52In 2015, he was sentenced to 48 years in jail.
08:55Sadly, Lee's remains still haven't been found.
08:57It was more important to us that he go away for life.
09:00Lee's mom still wears this photo of her daughter around her neck,
09:03and says the hardest part is not knowing where Lee is.
09:06I'm having the most difficult time living with that.
09:09The Gilgo Four.
09:10All four women were women murdered wrapped in burlap.
09:14They were eventually identified as Melissa Barthelemy,
09:16Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainerd-Barnes,
09:19and Amber Lynn Costello.
09:20And they were not the only ones.
09:22After Shannon Gilbert vanished in 2010,
09:24the pleas from her mother Mary led the police
09:26to not only find Shannon's body in Long Island, New York,
09:29near the Gilgo Beach area,
09:31but also the remains of several others.
09:33While Shannon's death has been disputed as murder,
09:36four of the victims,
09:37Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainerd-Barnes,
09:40Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello,
09:42known as the Gilgo Four, were identified.
09:45The victim's family members investigated the crime
09:47and shared information between themselves.
09:49With their help, this led the police to Rex Hewerman,
09:52who has been charged with the murders of the Gilgo Four
09:54and three others.
09:56Nikki says what she found most disturbing
09:58is that Hewerman himself brought up those bodies
10:01bound in burlap by Gilgo Beach.
10:04Sadly, Mary was killed by her own daughter Sarah in 2016
10:07when she was undergoing a schizophrenic episode.
10:10A great sigh of relief.
10:12Myself, after being on this case for 12 years
10:15and investigating this case relentlessly,
10:18and as well, the victim's families.
10:21Karen Alejandra Salinas Rodriguez
10:23In 2012, Karen was kidnapped in San Fernando, Mexico,
10:27by the Zetas cartel.
10:28Despite her family paying the ransom,
10:30Karen's remains were found in 2014.
10:33Infuriated that those responsible
10:34hadn't been brought to justice,
10:36and lacking support from the authorities,
10:38Karen's mother Miriam went on a crusade.
10:55She used disguises to interview possible connections
10:58and track down those responsible.
10:59Over three years, Miriam successfully caught 10 people
11:03responsible for her daughter's murder
11:04and got them sent to jail.
11:06Alongside being a human rights activist,
11:08she also founded a local group
11:10to help other families
11:11who'd had members kidnapped by cartels.
11:14However, in 2017,
11:15Miriam was fatally shot outside her home in San Fernando.
11:18Afterward, her son Luis took over running the local group.
11:21Her daughter and her son
11:23continue to fight in her memory.
11:27Her son Luis now looks after the collective she set up.
11:31Elizabeth Smart
11:32In June 2002,
11:34a man broke into the Smart household in Salt Lake City.
11:36He then abducted teenager Elizabeth
11:38from the bedroom she shared with her younger sister,
11:41Mary Catherine,
11:41who pretended to be asleep.
11:43I finally worked up enough courage
11:45to tell my parents Elizabeth was gone.
11:49The man had come in and taken her.
11:51For months, the culprit remained undiscovered
11:53despite Mary's description.
11:55Yet by October,
11:56she had an epiphany
11:57when she remembered the kidnapper
11:58had the same voice as Emmanuel,
12:00a man whom the Smarts
12:01had briefly hired to work on the house.
12:03After meeting with a sketch artist,
12:05a profile of Emmanuel was released,
12:07leading to his family recognizing him as Brian Mitchell.
12:10She's my hero.
12:11She saved me.
12:13Had she not remembered who had kidnapped me?
12:17Who's to say that I would be here today?
12:19In March 2003,
12:21Mitchell was arrested with his accomplice,
12:23Wanda Barzee,
12:23and Elizabeth was returned home.
12:26Following Barzee's 15-year sentence in 2009,
12:29Mitchell received two life terms in 2011.
12:31When Elizabeth came home,
12:33it was a joyous time.
12:35It was also difficult
12:37trying to get back to a normal state.
12:41But what is a normal state?
12:43Certainly we did a lot of things together.
12:46Are there any other times
12:47when a victim's family helped solve the case
12:49that we missed?
12:50Let us know below.
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