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In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared. I found out what happened to all of them, except one. A woman known as Dia, whose estate is worth millions of dollars. I'm Lucy Sheriff. Over the past four years, I've spoken with Dia's family and friends, and I've discovered that everyone has a different version of events.
Hear the story on Where's Dear? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics, including violence, abuse, and murder.
My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice. Today, I'm discussing the disappearance of 15-year-old Jontell Johnson from Newark, Delaware.
By the time Jontel turned 15 years old in September 2009, she knew what she wanted to do with her life. She was a very driven young woman with goals of becoming a hairstylist and salon owner. Not long after she turned 15, Jontel found out she was pregnant.
This only made her even more determined to reach her goals, and she was well on her way to making them before she disappeared on February 3rd, 2010. Unfortunately, the mainstream media didn't really cover her case, and the Johnson family has been desperate for media coverage. So, this is the case of Jontel Johnson.
My daughter, her name is Jantel. She's been missing for quite a few years now. Thank you. Just more awareness, just trying to get it out where people can see her because it's been so long now. Part of us is missing.
Jontel Danielle Johnson was born on September 8, 1994, to parents Kima and Prentice. She's the youngest of three children, Janelle, Prentice Jr., then Jontel. As a baby, Jontel had big, squishy cheeks. Apparently, she looked just like a little puffball, so her mom started calling her Puff. This nickname stuck with her for life.
By the time she was a teen, Jontel's friends called her Jay, but at home she was still Puff. Jontel's sister told investigative reporter Claudia Rivero that Jontel is, quote, funny, feisty, and full of love for her family. In 2009, Jontel celebrated her 15th birthday.
According to her family, she was a normal teenager. She loved to sing, dance, and play pranks. Jontel was also always busy styling someone's hair. Her own, her mother's, her sister's, whoever's hair she could get her hands on.
She already knew that she wanted to be a hairstylist when she got older. Her mom told Dateline that Jontel had a plan to achieve her goals. First, she would attend beauty school. Then, she would go to business school to learn how to own and operate her own salon. Not long after Jontel turned 15, she received some news that would change her life forever. She was pregnant. Luckily, it seems her family was extremely supportive throughout her pregnancy.
Fast forward to February 3rd, 2010. Jontel is now five months pregnant, and she's really looking forward to an upcoming appointment where she would find out her baby's gender. The day started like any normal Wednesday for the Johnson family. Kimo went to work in Philadelphia, while Jontel and her brother went to school at Glasgow High School in Newark.
Now, in my research, I found that there are conflicting reports on if Jontel actually went into her high school that day. Detective Roberto Herrera says Jontel never made it inside the school that day because she cut class with a friend. But pretty much every other source I found says that she did attend a few classes. Unfortunately, there are so few sources available for this case, I can't say for sure exactly what that morning looked like for her. But here's what we know.
Just after noon, Jontel calls her mom to say that she's going home early because she doesn't feel well. Jontel then walks home to the Autumn Park Apartments on Winter Haven Drive. This is less than a mile away from the school.
Around 1 p.m., Jontel speaks to her mother on the phone. During their conversation, they talk about how Jontel still planned to go to church that evening with her family. The plan was that after her brother finished up at school, he would swing by the apartment and pick Jontel up. They would then go meet their mom at their church in Philadelphia.
After these plans were solidified, Jontel asked her mom to call her back later to wake her up, so that way she could be ready to go when her brother got there. Around 2.30 or 3, Kima calls Jontel to wake her up, but there was no answer. At this point, no one's panicking. Kima doesn't think much of it. She figures Jontel is asleep, or maybe she went back to school. When Jontel's brother, Apprentice Jr., gets home, he finds the front door unlocked.
Now, he does think this is weird, but there was no sign of forced entry, so he goes inside. When he really starts looking around the apartment, he notices that Jontel's glasses, her new purse, and her winter coat were all still there, but Jontel and her cell phone were nowhere to be found. Her mother, Kima, later told Dateline that it was obvious Jontel had arrived home that afternoon. She had made herself some food and taken a nap.
Whatever happened after that, we don't know. Her family calls the school and Jontel's friends to see if anyone has heard from her, but none of them had. Jontel's sister told Claudia Rivero that she knew something was wrong when her sister didn't answer her calls or texts. Her sister always picked up for her. It's worth noting that Jontel had run away once before, but she returned home very quickly. And this time, Jontel hadn't taken any of her things.
When Jontel wasn't home by 10 p.m., they knew that something was wrong. She hadn't just run away this time. So her mom filed a missing persons report with the New Castle County Police Department.
According to the Newark Post, police used an automated alert system, a child is missing, to notify the surrounding communities that they were looking for Jontel. At this point, she was labeled an endangered runaway. Officers canvassed the neighborhood, but no one recalled seeing Jontel talking to anyone or getting into any type of vehicle.
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This episode of Voices for Justice is sponsored by June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery game, and you step into the role of June Parker and search for hidden clues to uncover the mystery of her sister's murder. Basically, you engage your observation skills to quickly uncover key pieces of information that lead to chapters of mystery, danger, and romance.
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At this point, there was no sign of 15-year-old, 5-month-pregnant Jontell Johnson anywhere. No one had seen or heard from her since the phone call with her mom around 1 p.m. According to reporting by Claudia Rivero, not long after her disappearance, a spokesperson for the police told the media, "...right now it doesn't look good. Most times people will call someone, and she hasn't." Jontell's disappearance barely got any media coverage.
When you search newspapers.com for any archival stories about Jontel, almost nothing comes up. Just a handful of short blurbs about her being missing. Claudia Rivero wrote on her website, ClaudiaRiveroTV.com, quote, Jontel's case serves as an example of how when a black or brown person is missing, there isn't always an urgency to cover their case. One of the only people to cover Jontel's case was Claudia. She worked for a Philadelphia news station at the time.
Meanwhile, the investigation continued. During a search of the Johnson family apartment, investigators found a receipt for a purchase at a nearby grocery store from 12.31 p.m.,
When investigators go to the grocery store to review any surveillance footage, they find that Jontel was shopping by herself while talking on the phone. Not a lot happens in this video, she basically buys some candy using self-checkout and leaves the store. Of course, this leads investigators to try to figure out who she was talking to on the phone, so they pull Jontel's phone records.
They find that the last activity on her cell phone happened at 1.38 p.m. on the day of her disappearance when Jontel received an incoming phone call. The call only lasted a few minutes. When investigators traced the call, they found that it was made from a burner phone and unfortunately couldn't be traced back to anyone.
Even though we don't know who made this call, it is really important to investigators, because it helps narrow down the timeline of when Jontel went missing. We know that her mom Kima called Jontel around 2.30 or 3 to wake her up for church, so that leaves about a one to one and a half hour window of time for Jontel to go missing.
Kima told Dateline that she thinks whoever called Jontel at 1.38pm asked her to go for a drive and talk. And that's why she left the apartment without her glasses, purse, or coat. Kima said Jontel, quote, had the intention of returning, but something prevented her from doing so. Now, the Johnson family says they have an idea of who the caller might be. They believe it was the man Jontel said was the father of her unborn child.
We don't know much about this man. The police have never even named him publicly. What we do know comes from Claudia Rivero. She reported that at the time 15-year-old Jontel got pregnant, the father of her baby was 11 years older than her, so about 26 years old.
After Jontel told her family this, her sister Janelle asked for more details. She wanted to know why Jontel was involved with a much older man. And Jontel said that he actually lied to her about his true age when they first met. And as I imagine a lot of big sisters would, Janelle presses for more information. She wants to know if he knew about the baby. Jontel says yeah, he did know about the baby, and he was not excited.
Not only was he not excited, he wanted her to get an abortion because he was worried about the truth of his age coming out and that he'd be sent to prison, as he should have. In the state of Delaware, the age of consent is 18 years old, but 16 and 17-year-olds can consent to intercourse if the other partner is younger than 30.
We know that he was younger than 30, and we know that Jontel was only 15. Now she's pregnant. There's visible proof of a statutory rape. I do also think it's important to mention that, according to what I could find about abortion laws in Delaware at the time, at five months pregnant, Jontel was approaching the cutoff to terminate her pregnancy. The Johnson family does believe Jontel's decision to keep her baby could have been a motive for this man to do something to her.
Her sister Janelle told Claudia Rivero, quote, I believe he called her and said he wanted to talk to her about the baby, and it was his way of getting her in the car, and his way of going on with his plan, whatever his plan was. But I do not think his plan was for her to return.
The Johnson family says they have evidence that this man was the 1.38pm caller. Kima told Dateline that a few days after Jontel disappeared, her phone pinged near the house of the man's mother. However, investigators have never confirmed this ping exists. They've only confirmed that Jontel did talk to this man on the day of her disappearance.
Following Jontel's disappearance, the Johnson family reached out to him and asked if he knew where Jontel was. When he didn't have an answer, they put up flyers in his neighborhood, knocked on doors, and reached out to his family. Sadly, none of this led to any answers. Investigators also tried speaking with him, but he told them he didn't want to talk.
As far as I could find, as of this recording, he continues to be uncooperative. Investigators have said that they hope to speak with him again in the future.
The last update we really have on him comes from 2013, three years after Jontel went missing. Court records show that this man was arrested for domestic violence, including the mother of one of his children. We don't know a ton about this, basically just that he was facing five years in prison, but he ended up negotiating a plea deal and only got two years of probation.
It's important to note that investigators have explored other leads. While looking through Jontel's phone records, they noticed that prior to her disappearance, she was in contact with two other men besides the father of her child. Both of these men were much older than her. According to detectives, one of the men met with police several times and was really helpful to the investigation, but the other man has not been cooperative.
Once investigators found out that Jontel had been in contact with three much older men, they updated her missing persons poster to include the phrase, she may be in the company of an adult male. They may still be in the local area, or they may travel to Williamton, Delaware or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Just go to the App Store or Google Play Store and download the free Ibotta app to start earning cash back and use code CRIME. That's I-B-O-T-T-A in the Google Play Store or App Store, and use code CRIME. As these things go, months turn into years, and there was no sign of Jontel anywhere. And with two of the three potential suspects refusing to talk, the investigation into her case slowed way down.
In 2014, the New Castle County Police told the media that there had been no new leads, so they distributed flyers in the area where Jontel went missing in hopes that that would bring in more tips. Investigators did receive a few calls, but none led to any solid leads. Four years later, in 2018, Robert Herrera, a detective for the New Castle County Police Department, took over the Missing Persons Division.
That year, Jontel's case was added to the department's cold case website, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children revealed a new age progression image of what Jontel might look like at that time, which was now 23 years old. At the end of 2019, the police department put up a billboard in Delaware, and they included Jontel's picture and information on a deck of playing cards, which were then distributed in Delaware prisons.
Detective Herrera said that they got a good lead from this, but he couldn't go into detail. In February 2021, Jontel's case was featured on Dateline. The Newcastle County Police said that there are no new leads, but Jontel's case is still actively being investigated.
As of this recording, investigators say that they don't have any suspects, but Detective Herrera has been very clear that none of the men Jontel talked to on the day of her disappearance have been ruled out.
So what happened to Jontel Johnson? While it seems clear that the evidence is stacked against the father of her child, there are other possibilities. Homicide is the leading cause of death of pregnant people in the United States. Jontel may have been abducted and harmed by a stranger. In fact, a little over a month before Jontel went missing, a man tried to abduct a young pregnant woman in Newark, Delaware, the same city Jontel lived in.
CBS 3 reported that on December 31, 2009, a 20-year-old pregnant woman was walking along Wellington Drive when a car slowed down and stopped next to her. The male driver asked if she wanted a ride, but the woman kept walking. The man then exited the vehicle, grabbed her from behind, and dragged her across the road. Thankfully, another car approached and the man let the woman go. Then he fled the scene.
As far as I could find, it appears that this man has never been caught. The next theory is that Jontel could have run away. While the police initially put weight into this idea, in my opinion, that does seem very unlikely. Jontel didn't take anything with her when she left her home, so that indicates to me that she didn't plan on being gone long.
Plus, she was really looking forward to her appointment to find out the baby's gender. And of course, we have to talk about the feasibility of a 15-year-old being able to run away, stay away, and never be found. It just doesn't seem very likely.
Unfortunately, this is all we basically know about Jontel's case. No other surveillance video was found. The caller has never been officially identified. And although the police are being really tight-lipped about this case, I have to assume that there was no other indication that she used her social security number, her cell phone again, nothing.
It seems that Jontel's case is in the same position that so many other cases are. They're just waiting for tips to come in. Which brings me right to our call to action. The Johnson family is not giving up hope that one day they'll know what happened to Jontel. They believe she's still out there, and it's only a matter of time before she's found. Investigators know Jontel's case can be solved.
They just need the right people to come forward with the right tips. And those tips are a lot easier to come by if Jontel's case gets a little more media attention. Jontel was 15 and pregnant. How her case is not getting more media attention, how it's never gotten more media attention, blows my mind. And I know I say this all the time, but please share her story. Share this episode. Share her poster.
As a reminder, Jontel Danielle Johnson, nicknamed "Jay" and "Puff" was last seen on February 3rd, 2010. She was 15 years old and 5 months pregnant at the time. She had brown braided hair and was last seen wearing a short black ski jacket with fur around the hood. Jontel is black with brown eyes, 5 foot 2 inches tall and weighed about 120 pounds when she went missing.
Today, she would be 28 years old, and her baby would be 12. If you have information about Jontel's case, please contact Detective Roberto Herrera at 302-395-2784. You can also call Crime Stoppers at 800-TIP-3333. But as always, thank you, I love you, and I'll talk to you next time.
Voices for Justice is hosted and produced by me, Sarah Turney, and is a Voices for Justice media original.
This episode contains writing and research assistance by Haley Gray. Claudia Rivero's coverage of Jontel's case was invaluable to us in making this episode. If you love what we do here, please don't forget to follow, rate, and review the show in your podcast player. It's an easy and free way to help us and help more people find these cases in need of justice. You can also support what we do here on Patreon.
at patreon.com slash voices for justice. And for even more content, check out my other podcast, Disappearances, only on Spotify. Welcome to the secret after show. Um, please take a moment, and I know I already put this in the call to action, but please share Jontel's case.
I really wish there was more information out there so that I could make a longer episode for you guys. It's just so limited, and again, Claudia Rivero seems to be one of the only people who's really picked up this story.
Also, I have to apologize again. I feel like my voice is just continuing to go out. But let's get into at least one update here. That update is in the case of missing 6-year-old Michael Vaughn from Fruitland, Idaho. I covered Michael's case back in July, around the one-year anniversary of him going missing. Earlier this month, so November 2022, there was a search in a backyard related to his case.
This is the home of Sarah Wondra, who lives with her partner, Stacy Wondra. Sarah Wondra was arrested over this past weekend in connection to Vaughn's possible death, and she was charged with failure to report a death. This comes from KTVB7. This is again another very new update. We don't have a ton more information, but we do know that police say she has not been cooperative.
They also say that they don't believe that she's the only person who knows something about what happened to Michael. Right now, it appears that the yard is still being processed. Now, the street where Michael lived is actually blocked off right now to prevent media and to prevent people from speaking with the family. That is about all we know right now.
So I just want to say again, if anybody has a tip about Michael Vaughn, you can submit that to Crimestoppers at 208-343-2677, or you can email findmichael at fruitland.org.
Other than that, I would like to remind you guys that Giving Tuesday is coming up on the 29th of November. And of course, I would love to remind you about Season of Justice. It's a non-profit I'm on the board of. Our mission is to help families and law enforcement with cold cases. Basically, for law enforcement, we provide funding for testing. And we've had some good results. We've actually solved a few cases.
On the family member side, we provide funding for advocacy campaigns, whether that's social media ads, it could be billboards, it could be mailed goods, it just depends on the case. So again, if you are looking for somewhere to donate, I would really appreciate if you consider donating to Season of Justice. You can learn more at seasonofjustice.org.
Now, I do have a little update from what I'm doing over here on Voices for Justice. So if you guys haven't noticed, I do actually have a YouTube channel. It's been up for a few years, and I'm at, I think, almost 30,000 subscribers, which...
blows my mind, but I started putting episodes out there. And the goal is to eventually get some scripts up there, some captions for those who are hard of hearing, and also I want to start adding visual elements. Now, if you guys have followed me for a long time, you've known that YouTube, or you know, I should say, you know that I've wanted to get into YouTube for a long time, and it's not just... like, I've
let's be real, I hate being on camera. I don't enjoy it. I just don't like it. It's just not fun for me. But I do think it's a really good way to expand into another platform, if you will, expand into another audience that maybe doesn't know about my podcast or about these cases. So for right now, I've basically been throwing up the episodes with just a really, uh,
simple image. I'm trying to figure out how people do their thumbnails in a way that attracts viewers without being sensational. So you're not going to see me in there with my face on the thumbnail. I don't know if I'll ever do that. I'm really trying not to. It's a whole new world, you guys, from TikTok to Instagram to podcasting and now YouTube. So all these platforms have really different algorithms. I mean,
Podcasting has like no algorithm, but YouTube does. There's discoverability on YouTube and you have to kind of play that game. So I'm trying to find a way to balance playing the algorithm for what it's worth and not sensationalizing these cases.
That also means that like I'm doing things like I have to cut out my big disclaimer at the beginning of the podcast because the second that you say the word murder right away, they essentially like from what I read anyway, I don't know you guys, I'm just reading and trying to learn. But from what I know,
if the YouTube algorithm picks up the word murder right away or any of those like big buzzwords that could be negative, which obviously murder is, they'll actually suppress your video. Like I said, it's a stupid game and I'm trying to learn. But so if you don't see the big disclaimer on YouTube, that's why. I'm playing around with taking it out and seeing if I get more views.
But yeah, if you were looking for a video element to the podcast, I am working on it. Like I said, it's basically just a thumbnail with the audio behind it right now, but I am looking to expand that as I expand the podcast and as I reclaim some more time. And hopefully I'll be on there sooner rather than later actually telling you these stories on video, despite it making me, like I said, extremely uncomfortable, not only
Not only do I not want to be on video, I'm not looking forward to editing my own face. But I feel like I have to play that game. I feel like I have to diversify this podcast, just like I did on TikTok. And TikTok's kind of the same game, right? YouTube and TikTok don't love true crime. And it's not even a matter of monetizing. Like, I could care less if the videos stay monetized. I
I just want to make sure that they're pushing them out to people. And I'm still trying to figure out that game. So please, if you could find it in your hearts, if you guys use YouTube, please go over there and follow me or subscribe to me. I'm still learning. Subscribe to me on YouTube under Sarah Turney.
Very simple. You guys will find some old videos up there. There's some old interviews I used to do. Basically, I used to just throw any video element I ever had up on that YouTube channel. So there is some stuff on there and I'm trying to update it more. So please, please, please go give me a follow over there because I'm just trying to get these cases out to as many people as possible.
Other than that, I think the only other update is Patreon. I started a new series over there called Dark Truth. Last month for October, I covered Halloween candy and the truth behind the Halloween candy panic, I should say. And this month, I'm going to dive deep into Black Friday. Why do we call it Black Friday? Are you getting the deals that you think you're getting? Are they good deals? And everything in between, because there's a lot of controversy there.
But I think that's it. So as always, thank you for tolerating me here in this unedited after show secret moment. You guys, I can't even. Thank you for tolerating me. I love you and I'll talk to you next time.