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Redeem your 50% off now at rosettastone.com slash crimejunkie. Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is a testament to a love so deep and profound that it exists almost outside of time itself. And that's the love of a parent for their child. This is the story of Kristen Modafferi.
Your college years are supposed to be a time of exploration, a time to push the boundaries a little, hopefully safely, a time to find yourself, especially back in the 90s when without tech, your world could feel really small until you got to leave home for the first time.
And in 1997, nothing, and I mean nothing, was going to stop Kristen Modafferi from doing just that. She just finished her freshman year at North Carolina State University, where she's one of 25 people in her class on a full ride as a Park Scholar.
So girl's a smart cookie, like skipped a grade and scored a 1570 out of 1600 on the SAT is kind of smart. And she's also brave and bold and adventurous, one of those people who wants to experience as much of life as she possibly can. So when it's time for her to plan her summer, it's no surprise that she's like dreaming really big. She wanted to push herself even farther outside of her bubble.
College had been a good first step, but NC State is still just a few hours from home. And like besides, her big sister Allison is a student there too. So she wanted something for herself. She wanted to spend the summer clear across the country in the Bay Area. The plan was for her to get a job, take photography courses at UC Berkeley, and she would explore the Bay Area in her free time. But when she pitched this idea to her parents, her mom Debbie was a little freaked out. I mean, after all, she'd be going on her own.
But eventually, Kristen and her dad, Bob, were able to get Debbie on board. So on June 1st, 1997, her 18th birthday, she kissed her parents and her three sisters goodbye, boarded a plane, and headed west for her big San Francisco summer.
When she got there, she rented a room with four male housemates across the bay in Oakland, and she picked up a couple of part-time jobs almost as soon as she got there. She had one which was this weekday gig at a coffee shop called Spinelli's, and a weekend one at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. And since classes weren't going to start until June 24th, she had managed to get a whole lot of exploring in during those first three weeks.
And the whole time, like she's calling home frequently, telling her family all about everything that she's been up to, everything she's seen and done. So it's a little unusual when June 24th passes without a call. I mean, big day, right? School's starting. Normally, that's the kind of thing she would want to update them on.
But still, it's easy enough to write off, like class has just started. No big deal. Maybe she's adjusting to her new schedule. And eventually, her dad Bob figures he's just going to call her. I mean, the phone works two ways after all. So he dials the landline number for the house that she's staying in. But when no one answers, Bob is forced to leave a message. Nothing panicky, just like, hey, it's us. Like, give us a call. Hope you're having the time of your life. But don't forget about us little people.
When his office phone rings one morning soon after, he probably expects to hear Kristen's cheerful voice on the other end. But that's not what happens. Instead, it's one of Kristen's housemates named Griffin. And what Griffin says sends chills down Bob's spine. Matt Birkbeck reports for Reader's Digest that there's no small talk. He cuts right to the chase and says, quote, I don't know how to tell you this. Your daughter's missing.
Griffin says that none of the housemates have seen Kristen in three days. At first, they just figured she was at a friend's or something. But after hearing Bob's voicemail, they started to worry. So they actually called the Oakland police and reported her missing. And then Griffin called Bob. Now, Bob and Debbie are on the first available flight out to San Francisco that Friday, the 27th. And when they land, they don't even drop their stuff off at a hotel. They just go straight to the Oakland Police Department to figure out what has happened so far and what they can do to help find their daughter.
But the urgency that they feel isn't shared in the slightest by the desk officer, who just kind of shrugs, points out the time, a little after four, and says that they're going to have to come back Monday because the investigators assigned to Kristen's missing persons file are already gone for the weekend. But, you know, even that, they shouldn't really worry because—
missing kids aren't really a nine-to-five job. Isn't that strange? Like, no nights or weekends. What? And Oakland isn't some, like, one-stoplight town. It's not like there's one detective on the force. I think it's wild. But they go on to say, like, listen, she's technically not a kid. She's 18. She's out here for her big adventure. Like, we see this all the time. She probably left on her own either to run away, maybe just out having too much fun. But she'll turn up. And
And this practically knocks the wind out of Bob and Debbie, who know that that can't be true. I mean, for one, she has no reason to run away. I mean, she's been living the dream and loving every minute of it. But more than that, she wouldn't put her family through something like this. Not Bob and Debbie, not her sisters, not if she could help it. So without any help over the weekend hours, they spend the next few days doing the only thing they can think to do and are capable of doing on their own.
They hit the streets to try and find someone, anyone who might have seen or interacted with their daughter. And knowing that that's not going to be enough, they also hire a PI, this retired FBI agent named Graham Desverine. Now, nothing comes of their weekend searches. So come Monday morning, they head straight back to Oakland PD, where this time they're able to convince the lead investigator, this guy named Officer Patrick Mahaney, that whatever this is, it is definitely not a runaway situation.
And as soon as he rules out that theory in his own mind, he and Sergeant Bradley, the other investigator assigned to the case, hit the ground running. They interview her housemates, obviously, who tell them what they'd already told Bob and Debbie by that point, that they haven't seen Kristen since she left for work on the 23rd. And since that would have been a weekday, they knew she was headed to her job at the coffee shop, Spinelli's.
So police go there to talk to her co-workers and they say, yes, she did show up for work on the 23rd. She was there for her whole shift. Everything seemed fine. And she left when the shift ended at 3 p.m. But luckily, something she said or really asked for during her shift gave police their next breadcrumb. Because apparently her co-workers said that that day she'd been asking around for directions to a park on the shoreline called Land's End.
And this Land's End connection only gets stronger when investigators bring out scent dogs to try and trace Kristen's scent from Spinelli's since they know for sure that she was there. And the dogs go right from the coffee shop to this bus stop, the very stop that you would go to to catch a bus to Land's End.
So they head out toward Land's End and the dogs pick up Kristen Scent right back up where Officer Mahaney takes them out to like the beach nearby. And they follow it past the ruins of this giant bathhouse from the 1890s, then on to the cliff house, which sits on, you guessed it, a giant oceanside cliff.
But Officer Mahaney's stomach drops when the dogs lose the scent near the cliff house, right at what reporting in the Charlotte Observer calls a, quote, rocky vista overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
And this is concerning to him because he knows that the beauty of this place can be deceiving. In that same article, he used the word treacherous to describe it, saying that, quote, people fall off into the ocean every year. Was Kristen a strong swimmer? I mean, I think so, but this isn't the kind of situation where you can really swim your way out of. I mean, what happens is that a rogue wave will come out of nowhere and just literally sweep you away, sometimes to be found on shore later, sometimes never to be found. In describing this...
It doesn't feel like this is in the middle of nowhere, right? Like, wouldn't someone have seen something like that happen in the middle of the afternoon? So, yeah, that's the thing. They should have because you're right. This area is super popular with tourists. But if that's what happened, no one seems to have seen a thing because there aren't any reports of anyone falling in over the last couple of days.
And as hard as they try, they can't find any witnesses who even saw Kristen there, much less saw her fall in. So if there aren't even witnesses to her sightseeing, isn't it still possible she fell in without someone seeing? I mean, it's possible, but it feels a little bit like a stretch because I guess in my mind, I'm thinking like a solo person just kind of walking around sightseeing. Like that wouldn't draw attention. Like I don't think it necessarily like precludes her having been there. Mm-hmm.
So like I don't think anyone not seeing her is mind-blowing. But like if someone would have fallen in like that would have drawn attention I think. So I think it's just more proof that that didn't happen. Okay but then why does her scent stop there? No one knows.
I mean, maybe she followed the exact same path back down the cliff to the bus station and went somewhere else. Like, I don't know if that's how it works or what, or if they have an explanation. But all they can do is keep looking and keep talking to the few people who knew Kristen. And the list out there was short since she'd just gotten there less than a month ago. But police are desperate for a lead. Was there anyone she met recently? Anyone she didn't get along with?
So they go back to her housemates again, trying to get as much insight as they can into her life in the Bay Area. And while they don't identify anyone who'd want to hurt her, they do say that her open, bubbly personality may have gotten her into trouble. Like she was assuming the best of everyone to the point that someone could have taken advantage of that.
Like, for example, the housemates say that she was known to catch rides with strangers. And when she missed the last train back to Oakland after a concert one night, she, with her glass always half full, was just like, no big deal, I'm just going to catch a few Z's on this bench at the station. And the guy she was with was like, uh, that's, like, not really an option here. It's a pretty bad idea. So why don't you just, like, sleep on my brother's couch instead? And so in that instant, she did, even though she really didn't even know that guy. She had just met him that night.
And she had gotten home safe and sound the next day, and whoever this guy is, he's ruled out as a suspect. But it left investigators wondering how many other similar encounters Kristen had had. And how on earth were they going to find those people?
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The best answer to everyone felt like just getting her face out there. Have as many people as possible know that she's missing and see who comes forward. So for the next two weeks, Bob and Debbie practically move in at Kinko's, where they print out missing person flyers right and left. And they even tap local media to get her picture out on TV as well.
But those two weeks passed without any real breaks in the case, and Debbie and Bob are faced with this awful reality. They're going to have to leave California without their daughter.
I mean, they've got three other kids to worry about. Allison, who's 20, but also a 15-year-old, a 7-year-old. And the impression I get is that Allison has kind of been holding down the fort while they've been gone. So, like, they have to make this unbearable tradeoff between being on one coast looking for their daughter or being at home across the country for their other three kids.
Bob tells Erin Lee Martin with the Charlotte Observer, quote, if we felt like we were closing in on finding her, we certainly wouldn't have come home. And Debbie adds, we just didn't know what else we could do. So they make the difficult decision to leave. But just two days after they did, Oakland PD gets a tip that actually might be the key to finding Kristen.
A local news station had gotten an anonymous call about Kristen, which they immediately passed along to the Oakland PD. The man on the other end of the line said that she was killed by two women who dumped her body under a wooden bridge in Marin County, which is like an hour or two north of San Francisco. I have all the questions. Does he say why she was killed? Where this bridge was? Who these women were? How he knows any of this?
All of the above, actually. So he claims that the three women, so Kristen and these other two, were caught up in some sort of love triangle. Or maybe like Kristen rebuffed their advances. But the gist being that someone rejected someone and Kristen was killed as a result. And then as far as where, he says that the bridge is near Point Reyes. But that's as specific as he gets or as specific as has been reported. Because that's what I found from Burbeck's reporting in Reader's Digest.
But he does get specific on names, just not his name, but he gives the full names of these other two women. And when Officer Mahaney tracks these two women down, to say that they're flabbergasted would be an understatement. Because they're like, we've never even met Kristen, and we definitely didn't do anything to hurt her. So it doesn't take long for him to kind of suss out that this tip is starting to feel a bit bogus.
which if I had to put my money on it, he probably might have suspected all along.
But that's not to say that he dismissed this whole bridge thing altogether. I mean, again, he at least went and talked to these women. He's got to be thinking like, OK, maybe there's some truth to this, even if it's not the full truth. You know, like why would someone point the finger at these two women at all? So while he's talking to them, he's like, OK, listen, look, someone wants to cause problems for you. Any idea who that might be? Do you have enemies? Anyone with a grudge? Basically, whose list are you on? Exactly. Exactly.
And the women both come up with the same name, John Onuma. See, John's got a girlfriend named Jill Lampo who worked with the women at the YMCA. And for some reason, he is convinced that these two women have plotted to get his girlfriend Jill fired. And basically, he's had it out for them ever since. So maybe this John guy was their caller.
And that's the first thing they ask him when they go straight to confront him about this. And at first, he denies any involvement with Kristen, with even the anonymous call. But eventually, he fesses up that, yeah, he did make the call out of spite.
But he doesn't know Kristen or anything. He, like, knew about her disappearance and basically just decided to fuck with these women. But he adds, even though he doesn't know anything, he might be able to help them solve Kristen's case. Mm-hmm. I bet he can. Go on. Well, I wish I could, except for there is no reporting on what he means by that. What?
Yeah, it's really strange. Like, both the Charlotte Observer and the San Francisco Examiner reference him saying this, like, in their reporting. But it's just this, like, offhanded mention, and then they, like, move on. So I don't know. I mean, I assume that investigators, like, looked into it, but maybe they didn't make anything of it. I don't know.
I just know that after this, they weren't done with John. Like, it was at least suspicious whether they knew what it meant or not. And I know they weren't done with him because, A, I know they go looking at wooden bridges. I don't know where exactly or when this happened, but Officer Mahaney coordinates to have every last wooden bridge in the county looked at, but
The unhelpful fact is given flooding and animal activity, etc., like they'd have to be like really damn lucky to find any trace of Kristen, even if she was dumped at one of them. And their luck just isn't that good. Nothing has ever been reported as being found in those searches.
But the other thing they do at this time is they start digging into John's background to see if he's got any skeletons in his closet. But as sus as John may be, which, by the way, is like super sus, it's still early days and they don't want to get tunnel vision.
So even while they're investigating him, kind of on the down low, they're still running down all of the leads that are coming in. And there are more than just a few, mostly about possible sightings of Kristen everywhere, not just like in the Bay Area, but from Texas to Canada. But every time they run those down or look into him, they lead nowhere.
And meanwhile, her parents are working as hard as ever to get her name and her picture in front of as many people as possible. By mid-October, they've already appeared on Hard Copy and America's Most Wanted. And Debbie's even a guest on a talk show featuring a psychic who agrees to work with them on Kristen's case.
And they're not like true believers or anything. Like they know it's a Hail Mary. But if a psychic is what it takes to find their daughter, like so be it. They'd meet with the Wizard of Freaking Oz if he could offer help. But spoiler alert, whether it's wizards or psychics, they never end up being the all-powerful, all-seeing force. It's always just a man behind the curtain. But sometimes a human man can help in his own human way.
Because around this time, October of 97, Kristen's parents are approached by a guy named Dennis Mann. Dennis lives there in Charlotte, North Carolina, where her family lives. He's this perfect stranger, mind you. But he tells them that he wants to move to San Francisco and look for Kristen full-time, forever.
for free if they give him their blessing. Who does this guy work for? Well, like, if you're asking, like, police or anything, like, no one. He's kind of this, like, jack-of-all-trades as far as I can put together. Like, I know at one point he was a supervisor at a local Charlotte shelter for the unhoused. Like, that's what he was doing when he approaches Kristen's parents. And I know he's got some sort of delivery business, but, like,
He's no experience with missing people or investigations. He's going to have to, like, learn that stuff on the fly. I mean, how hard could it possibly be? And listen, let's just say it. The offer is odd. Yeah. Like, I don't see this every, I don't think I've ever seen this in any other case. But he swears up and down his intentions are good. He says he's got some money saved up and he just wants to help.
Because for some reason, what he knows of Kristen's disappearance has just really affected him. So a bit strange, sure. But it seems like he's one of those do-gooders, always just on the lookout for the next righteous cause. And I don't know how you're taking this, but I do not mean this in a negative way at all. Like when this guy finds a cause, dude is all in.
Like in the early 90s, he even walked across the country to raise money for a homeless shelter that he wanted to open. He walked for nine months straight, covering 3,000 miles. And I think he's just one of those people. Like I think there are some people in the world who can hear a bad thing and be like, wow, that sucks. And then there's other people who feel bad.
Like a very deep weight when they hear that same bad thing, a weight that's like, I have to do something. A responsibility. Yeah. If not me, then who? Yeah. So this guy's kind of like the Glinda the Good Witch to John's Wicked Witch of the West, if we're still talking as. Basically, yeah. You've got these two men who have inserted themselves into the investigation, but in very different ways for very different reasons. Yeah.
And Dennis even gives Kristen's parents references, and before long, they are fully on board. One more set of boots on the ground couldn't hurt, especially when they can't be on the other side of the country themselves. So Dennis closes his business, packs up his van, and heads west, spending the next six months living in that van, catching a shower at a cheap gym when he can, handing out as many business cards about Kristen's disappearance as he can, and following up on every lead that he gets.
And he calls or emails the Modaferries daily with updates. So how do investigators feel about this arrangement? I'm not sure what their initial gut reaction is, but I actually think they're good with it, at least eventually. Because Debbie says that they even pass along some leads to Dennis for him to look into. And the PI that they had hired sings his praises, telling Diane Suhetka with the Charlotte Observer, quote,
He has a heart as big as all outdoors. He's just different. And Debbie echoes that, saying, Which, man, the more I do this, the more I realize...
In like 90% of cases, it's how good are the investigators and how much support does a case have. But even in this case, with a PI, with a dentist basically out there full time, and Officer Mahaney still running the official investigation, the year draws to a close.
And I can't imagine how hard that is for Kristen's family. Like, I know that technically, again, the end of the year is just one day leading into the next like any other. But it's just this reminder that with each passing minute, every day and month and year, they just keep getting further and further away from Kristen. But no one is letting her be forgotten.
In January of 98, her fellow Park scholars at NC State come up with a clever idea to keep her name in the spotlight. They hand out 25,000 yellow ribbons before a basketball game that's going to be aired on ESPN. The players can't wear them. It's against NCAA rules. But the coaches can, and so can the fans.
So they're thinking, let's get so many yellow ribbons out there that the commentators have to mention them. Maybe they'll even broadcast Kristen's picture. And to be honest, I'm not sure if this worked, but I know that Alison Modafferi addressed the crowd from the court at halftime. So you've got to think that ESPN said something.
And while the Modafferi family is as busy as ever in North Carolina, back in the Bay Area, investigators still have John on the brain. And given what they've been uncovering, they've got good reason for that. Like, they find out that he likes to meet women via personal ads in the classifieds. And when they're able to track some of these women down, they make some disturbing allegations. Wait,
What was happening between, like, week two where they get this John tip and all these months later? Dude, I don't know. I was in circles over that because, promise you, John doesn't even appear in the reporting until 1999. There is just...
nothing explaining why they sat on this guy for so long. Okay, because I was like, I'm glad we know about Dennis and when he entered the picture, but if this stuff is going on in the background, I kind of want to know about it. Like, what the heck? Yeah, but here we are. So they track down some of these women, and maybe that's what took them all this time. I mean, this is the 90s. I don't know. But when they find them, the women have harrowing stories, stories of torture and sexual assault.
Like he would allegedly hold these women captive, sexually assault them, deprive them of sleep, and physically abuse them, like burn them even. Diane Suhetka even writes that John threatened the life of one woman who tried to escape his apartment. He said to her, quote, you know I'm going to have to kill you. I can't let you go. Now you know what happened to Kristen Modaferri.
Now, that alone would have been enough to make Debbie and Bob's stomachs drop. But it was actually something that they'd found in Kristen's room back when she first went missing that made them fear that John's words were completely true. In the days after Kristen's disappearance, her parents found something in her room that maybe didn't seem all that significant at the time.
It was a personal ad that had run in the classifieds the week of June 11th, 1997. Brett, I'm going to have you read this for us.
Friends, female seeking friends to share activities who enjoy music, photography, working out, walks, coffee, or simply exploring the Bay Area. Interested? Call me. Now, there are some conflicting reports about the timeline of this whole thing. But Matt Birkbeck reports that Officer Mahaney doesn't find out about the ad until months after Kristen disappeared.
And so when he finally does, Kristen's parents, like they tell them that this ad that they find sounds a lot like Kristen. Like all the hobbies that are listed, those were her hobbies. And she had complained to her mom that making friends out there was harder than she'd expected. So when the San Francisco Bay Guardian ran a promotion offering free personal ads, they're like, that's totally something Kristen might have jumped on. Like, where's the Bumble BFF when you need it?
And so you can probably see where this is going. Yeah, I mean, John's red flags have red flags, but I don't understand why they can't for sure link it back to Kristen. Like, wouldn't there be a phone number with the ad? Like, how else would people be able to contact her? I know. So the way that personal ads worked was
at least in this instance, is that each poster was given their own voicemail box or like this individual access code to this voicemail system. So basically the ad would list some generic number that people could call and leave a voicemail at and then only the poster had access and could decide whether or not to follow up. Like you're not giving your home line or something like that, if that makes sense. So it's like giving a PO box versus your home address. Yeah. So this is what I'm saying. They can't prove that it was Kristen. Right.
But, you know, they find this ad in her room. It sounds a lot like her. They think it's her. Now, could this ad thing be a coincidence? It could. Stranger things have happened. What they need to do is figure out if it was even Kristen's ad in the first place. Except, like I said, they can't.
When investigators contact the paper, the paper's like, oh, shoot, like, bad news. We actually don't have the computer files anymore. We deleted them. Like, our bad. Got to free up space on the hard drive. Like, the floppy disk. How 1990s of them. I know. So they don't know. But knowing it sounded like Kristen, knowing it's in her room, knowing that we have John that's responding to and posting his own personal ads...
John is looking like a bad dude that is looking pretty good for this crime. Like, there's no question about that.
So investigators get a search warrant. And at this point, his red flags have red flags, which have red flags. Because in John's apartment, they find traces of blood. Although there's no reporting on where they find it or how they find it. And I'm not going to bury the lead on this. Like when they send it off for testing, it's not human blood. Although their theory on where the blood came from is
is actually quite awful. Basically, they think that he hurt an ex's cat after a fight or something. Just when this guy, like, you think he can't get worse. I know, I know. This comes up. But it's actually what they find that belongs to Jill that really has me spiraling. According to an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, we're talking like season seven, like the reboots by Dennis Farina here. Got it. Not the OG. Not the OG, yeah. Investigators find Jill's diary.
But go figure, some pages are gone, torn out. Do you want to guess when those pages were from? Obviously from when Kristen disappeared. Obviously. And investigators are like, yo, Jill, what the, where'd these pages go? And she tells them that John tore the pages out. Why would he do that?
According to Officer Mahaney, Jill said, quote, some of the stuff that was in there could come back to hurt him, end quote. Okay. Which, hello, Captain Avi is here, like, what kind of stuff?
And in my mind, I'm like, Jill, you wrote the entries. You should know what was in them, like, even if they're missing. But I can't find anything about whether she's pressed on it, whether she says she doesn't remember. Because, like, if you're saying the stuff that was written could hurt him, then don't you know what stuff it was? Yes? No? Yeah, then what did you write? Nothing. There's nothing reported out there. Oh, my God. And so the one-year anniversary of Kristen's disappearance approaches.
But it doesn't seem like investigators are any closer to making a move. There is a brief flash of hope when the Charlotte Observer publishes a report titled Police Have Possible Suspect in Kristen Modafferi Case. And that's published on June 18th. But Officer Mahaney shoots that down the next day, telling Don Wotapka in reporting for the News & Observer that at best, all he's got is some circumstantial evidence and a person of interest.
And although investigators haven't named him at this point, the person of interest he's referring to is obviously John. But they never make a move to arrest him. By July of 1998, the Modaferries are on their fifth trip out to California, and they arrange for a full-page ad in a local newspaper around the same time.
They also more than double the reward that they're offering to $25,000. And then they double it again in November, even taking out a loan to cover it. And they arranged for 20 billboards to go up in the Bay Area as well. Now, in either the winter of 98-99 or the early spring of 99, investigators decide it's high time to bring John in for another heart-to-heart. But when they try and find him, they can't. He left the Bay Area and moved somewhere else.
So they spend the next few months just trying to find this guy. But it's not until America's Most Wanted features Kristen's case again in May of 99 that an acquaintance catches the episode and finally tips them off that John is in Hawaii. The San Francisco Examiner reports that same month that Officer Mahaney convinces him to come back to California for a lie detector test. But I have no clue if that happens or even what the results are.
Like, there's some suggestion that he sits for a polygraph with his own hand-chosen examiner, but, like, is that confirmed? Is the examiner credible? What are the results? I don't know. I know he claims to have passed a polygraph, but I'm not exactly taking this guy at his word and, like,
Mums the word for investigators. Well, and also, like, you know, polygraphs. Polygraphs, I know. So another grueling 18 months passes. But in November of 2000, something kind of amazing happens. But I actually need to back up just a little bit for it to make sense. So going all the way back to those first few weeks after Kristen's disappearance, Kristen's parents had reached out to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, better known as NCMEC.
They were trying to see if they could help in some way. Like, they have tons of resources at their disposal. I mean, one of which at the time, they were, like, known for these huge direct mailing campaigns, which could reach more mailboxes and eyes than they could even dream of.
But back then, to their devastation, Nick Mick couldn't do anything for them because Kristen was 18. I mean, barely. Literally like 22, 23 days into being 18, but who's counting? And I mean, let that sink in. I mean, she was just three weeks too old to qualify for their help.
But there was truly nothing they could do about it because NCMEC is federally funded and the charter isn't ambiguous. They can only help in cases involving minors, which was super discouraging to Kristen's family, especially once they realized that there actually weren't any similar organizations for missing adults. And for most people in their situation, that might have been where it would end. But Bob and Debbie aren't most people.
So at the same time that they're flying back and forth across the country on the regular trying to, you know, find their missing daughter, they were also organizing and collecting signatures and raising absolute hell. And it worked.
Because in November of 2000, President Clinton signs Kristen's Law into effect, which officially establishes and funds the National Center for Missing Adults. But while that organization would hopefully go on to help a ton of other families, it didn't help Kristen's. Because for the next 11 and a half years, there is no resolution in her case. But remember our old friend Dennis Mann?
Well, he's not in San Francisco anymore, or at least not full time, but he's never given up on Kristen. He's still searching for that one piece of evidence that could crack the case wide open. And in June of 2012, he just might have found it. Or rather, it might just have found him.
Now, everything I'm about to say comes from either Dennis's podcast, which you can find on Spotify. It's called Find Kristen, all one word. Or it comes from his website, which is findkristin.com. But according to Dennis, he is just minding his own business one day when he sees this email come through. He doesn't recognize the sender, but that's like 50% of anyone's inbox these days. So click, open, scan through. And what pops out immediately is
A familiar name. Jill. So the email is from, follow me here, if you're not paying attention, now's the time to hone in. The email is from Jill's uncle's wife. So aunt? So TBD, maybe. I don't know the family dynamics, but that's not important. Point being, this person didn't know Jill or even of her.
Apparently, the uncle wasn't around when Jill was growing up, but somehow they had like reconnected as adults, the uncle and Jill. But the wife hadn't really known that until this one day when her husband gets a call from Jill. And Jill's saying strange things, things that kind of start to worry him. To him, she sounds unwell, like she's going through a mental health crisis or something.
According to Dennis, this conversation went on for hours, like four, like literally number four hours. And once the uncle realizes that something's not right, he starts taking notes about like what she's saying. And when he hangs up, he tells his wife that Jill had said something really concerning. Back when she lived in the Bay Area, she dated a quote unquote, very controlling man who, and I'm going to quote the uncle's notes here.
Quote, convinced her to assist in an unspeakable kidnap and murder. End quote. Now, the uncle, when he got this call, wants like absolutely nothing to do with this. I mean, to be fair, there's no suggestion he ever heard of Kristen Modaferri or her case.
All he knows is that this is not a tree that he wants to go barking up. He'd like to just tuck those notes into the junk drawer and forget about them altogether. Thank you very much. But, like I said, the wife's never heard of this niece. So she's like, you know, I have questions. Like, shit, like he might not want to know more, but like, I do. Yeah, me too. I know. I'm junkie. I see you. Yeah.
Yeah, so this is what's wild. She Googles Jill's name, again, this niche she'd never heard of, only to see that, like, holy effing hell, Jill very well might be connected to an unsolved disappearance, a likely kidnap and murder in San Francisco involving her abusive POS boyfriend at the time.
And you want to know the best part? The wife sends Dennis copies of the notes. Now, we're obviously going to link out to those in the show notes. They are admittedly not the most legible, but we're talking about copies of a copy here. And if you, like, really pull out your monocles or your magnifying glasses, you can see the words there, plain as day. But Britt, this is where things get frustrating. I don't know what happens next. What do you mean? Well, I assume Dennis passed the notes along to investigators.
But there hasn't been an official statement from investigators about this or any kind of reporting outside of Dennis's own publications on this. So that is worth noting as you're kind of vetting this information for yourself. What do her parents say about it? You know, I'm not sure that they've ever addressed this incident specifically before.
But I do know for sure that they thought John and Jill were hiding something. I mean, how could you not think that? Right. But I mean, that's it. This is where we are. She's never been found and no one's ever been charged. Well, no to both of those. But they're actually, it's not it. So there were a few more interesting things that happened in the last decade.
And I mean, like, brief things that popped up on the radar. So, like, I know Robert Durst somehow gets thrown into the mix as a potential person of interest, but that theory turns out to be every bit as ridiculous as it sounds, so I'm not even going to waste your time.
And of course, anytime there is a missing person, you're going to find the name Israel Keys. Because of course there's an Israel Keys camping out. It should always be on your bingo card. Though, to be fair, this one does have a decent reason. So after Keys was arrested, there was a list of NamUs profiles or pictures or something on his computer. So basically like missing people, more than 40 of them. And according to what Josh Hallmark says on his podcast, True Crime Bullshit,
in a specific episode about Kristen. She was one of the people on that list. Now, if Josh's theory about the list is right, her being on there doesn't necessarily mean that Keys was connected. Like, some people on the list are, some aren't. He thinks that sometimes Keys would look up cases similar to the ones he actually did, or maybe he was just infatuated with missing persons cases. Either way, Kristen has never been linked to Keys officially more than just that.
But then there's this other rabbit hole that I found pretty interesting. In June of 2015, Dennis introduces Kristen's parents to a PI that he knows with a cadaver dog. And they ask the current owner of the house Kristen was living at if perhaps Buster, this puppy, could have just a little, like, sniffer or two. And the owner agrees, and Buster actually alerts in the basement for human decomposition, which...
could be a major like holy moment. But the PI, retired Detective Paul Dosti, cautions against jumping to conclusions. According to reporting by Dedrick Russell, he says, quote, "'We don't know if that's Kristen. There are other explanations.'"
He goes on to list cremation, ashes, indigenous burial sites as possibilities. Now, I know the Oakland PD does at least bring in ground-penetrating radar, but that reveals nothing other than some very hard-to-shovel soil and clay.
And then this is where things get a little complicated. Okay, so in 2017 comes this guy named Dr. Arpad Vass. And I don't know if you remember him from a zillion years ago, our Brandi Hall episode. I do. Because it was... That name brings a lot back. Because it was wild. It was wild. So same thing going on here. Dr. Vass developed this specific tech that is supposed to detect what ABC7 News refers to as, quote,
Human decomposition chemicals. And as we talked about in that episode, and we're going to link out to it in the show notes, it is worth a revisit. This device, what it says is like basically can detect samples with ties to specific DNA profiles. So where a sniffer dog is like just decomp, I think this thing is saying like, oh, specific decomp.
And whether this thing is a revolutionary advancements in forensic or pure snake oil science is still very TBD. Right. But using this device, Dr. Vass says he finds human DNA in the places where the dogs detected decomp. They think it's from blood that matches DNA samples from Kristen's parents. Wait, what blood? Yeah, that's the question. What blood?
Oakland PD didn't see any blood when they were there doing their GPR or digging. But according to reporting by Bill Moffitt for SFGate, Dr. Vass says his technology can detect, quote, a chemical signature indicating human blood.
So, basically, the police are like, listen, we're happy to hear you out. Send us the samples, and we're going to need some details on your process so we can verify your results. Like, you know, we just need to, like, take more than your word for it. Vet our sources, yeah. Yeah, except Dr. Vass isn't giving up his secrets. He says he has to protect his proprietary technology.
So an Oakland PD spokeswoman says in a 2018 email, quote, End quote.
Dr. Vass and Dosti claim that this is total BS, that they absolutely have the technology. They say it's not even that complicated or advanced. But the Oakland PD sticks to their guns and no one is budging. So those test results never get confirmed by anyone but Dr. Vass himself. And listen, I don't want to dive too deep into this theory, but I am going to give a few details because at this point, this is when like a divide develops.
So you have Officer Mahaney and Dennis who think one thing. You have Dosti and Dr. Vass who think another. And then you have the FBI. And then I'll get to them in a second. Basically, the PI and Dr. Vass think that maybe Kristen did make it back to Oakland that day in 1997, which in theory could potentially implicate the four men that she was living with.
Those four men have no connection to John or Jill, and the investigators never really consider them serious persons of interest. Has there ever been any follow-up on those guys, though? Like, where are they now? Have they gotten into any trouble? Honestly, I'm not sure. I know Officer Mahaney felt like they were super cooperative and forthright during the initial investigation. And Dennis has spoken to three of four, and he felt like mostly kind of the same way. And he also points something out that feels important in the context of the housemates —
It's not like Kristen joined this, like, group of four longtime besties when she moved out to that house in Oakland. Like, they were all just renting rooms that happened to be in the same house. Like, that was their entire connection to one another. Except for two of them. Two of them were brothers. But for the most part, it was just this house-sharing arrangement.
So in my personal opinion, like any theory that they've all been keeping this dirty shared secret for the past 27 years, it's like it's more of a stretch, right? Like they have no obligation to do that for each other. Right. But maybe there was a threat that was close to home.
You see, unbeknownst to investigators on Kristen's case for the first year of the investigation, the house directly next door to hers operated as some sort of transitional housing for criminal offenders. And as far as I can tell, and I could be wrong, information is scarce, but
It might have been used for juvenile offenders, which isn't to say that you have to be a legal adult to be dangerous. But a house full of wayward teens seems a lot less threatening than like a house full of adult offenders. I don't know. But either way, like I was saying, there's a divide. Officer Mahaney doesn't buy any of this theory. Neither does Dennis. They still seem pretty certain that all roads lead back to John Onuma.
When he was asked in 2023 where he thinks Kristen's remains are, Officer Mahaney told Andrew Chammings and Katie Dowd for SFG, quote, I'd say she was dumped off a bridge in Marin County, end quote. Marin County, where John claimed her body had been dumped all those years ago.
But interestingly, a 2017 ABC7 article states that the FBI has cleared John and Jill as persons of interest and they have closed their case on Kristen. The reporter for that article, Katie Udis, actually reached out to John for her piece. And he admitted to calling the initial tip in way back when but says that he regrets it.
He told her, quote, I put the attention on me when I shouldn't have, and I screwed up. I took the focus off of the investigation, end quote. But, and I feel like this is an important but, quote,
A spokesperson for the FBI put out a statement in 2023 indicating that they didn't see anything suggesting that Kristen actually met with foul play at all. Which seems to be a page that literally no one else is on. I was going to say, I didn't even realize that was like a page in the book.
the book we were reading. Right. And I don't know if... I don't have enough information about what the FBI means by that. I don't know if they go to the scent, right? Like the dog's tractor scent to the cliff. Did she fall off the cliff? Is that what they believe? And that's why they're saying no foul play? Or are they suggesting... Or do they believe that she walked away? Like...
They don't say any of that. They just say that there's no foul play at all. So not only did they like write off persons of interest, they're like, there's no persons of interest. There's no reason for a person of interest. Yeah. And again, don't get it twisted like FBI saying that, but I don't think that's what local police are saying. What does her family think? Well, I don't know if they subscribe to any one theory. I mean, that's hard to do when your loved one is missing. Like,
At least the people that I've talked to who have a missing loved one, it's like every day you could feel differently. Like, because anything and everything seems possible when you don't know what actually happened. So that's kind of where Kristen's case stands today. Her dad, Bob, died in 2022 from leukemia. And maybe there are answers after death. I like to think so. Debbie says that as she was saying her goodbye, she asked him to give Kristen hugs from herself and from Kristen's sister's.
If you know anything about the disappearance of Kristen Modafferi from the Bay Area in June of 1997, please pass your information along to the Oakland Police Department Missing Persons Unit. They can be reached at 510-238-3641.
You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. We're going to be back next week with a brand new episode. But if you want to stick around for a couple of minutes, we've got some good news for you.
All right, crime junkies, let's lighten things up a little bit. Yeah. We've got another tried and true good segment for you this month. Thank goodness, too. I know, I know. I could use a little good this month. Yeah, and like always, this story is amazing, but the timing within it is just, it's really something.
No way.
Shut up. The initial statement was that they had an official notification for me and my thoughts instantly went to the worst case scenario, that something had happened to someone in my family. So I was emotionally revved up. And then he started to talk about how they had a signed document by me saying I would appear in court on a certain date. Shut up. And that I had missed the court appearance.
They said they were calling on behalf of a judge and that there was now a misdemeanor charge in my name for failure to appear. Obviously, I never signed anything and had no knowledge of what they were talking about. This is a big deal to anyone, but particularly to me because my professional license is affected by any non-traffic charge.
However, I had finished your scam episode just 30 seconds prior. So even though I was freaking out, I told them to please repeat their name and I'd be coming in person with my uncle, who is a lawyer. This is true. He's actually a retired lawyer. He went on about how I didn't need a lawyer, but X and Y were happening. But I maintained that I would come in person.
And then he said that if I would not follow the instructions on the phone, he needed me to verbally repeat some statement with my information saying I wouldn't proceed. I told him I would not give any personal information over the phone, but wanted his name and I am coming in person. He then started getting flustered and putting me on hold, presumably to readjust the script. But I held to the statement that I needed his name and would come in person.
I offered to call back through the non-emergency line. He kept trying to push for additional personal information, but I ultimately... I'm sure he did. ...hung up when he kept putting me on hold. He immediately called back, and I told him that he had 30 seconds to tell me his name and where I should come in person, for which he had no answer. So I hung up again and declined the subsequent three or four calls. I cannot believe the timing. If I hadn't heard this episode when I did...
I think I would have been so flustered by everything in the phone call that I would have at least provided a lot more at the minimum. It's absolutely terrifying to receive a notification call, quote, from the police. And even as a well-educated, longstanding crime junkie, I was panicking. Your episode saved my personal information and possibly my bank account.
I...
I literally have full body chills. The timing. That is freaking unbelievable. That has to feel like you're in a movie. Like it's made up, right? Like you're listening to this episode on scams. Yeah. And then someone tries to scam you 30 seconds later. You couldn't convince me like I wasn't on my own version of the Truman Show. Surely. Is it all about me?
Oh, man, that is really stinking cool. Like, again, my hope, obviously, was that we help a person or two with that episode. I didn't think it would happen that fast. That quickly is unbelievable. Also, I love to know that we're blowing up their spot. These people are going to need a new scam. Yeah. That's amazing. Oh, love it. Crime Junkie is an Audiochuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?