89. Disappearances Caught on Camera
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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Well, it's officially the holidays. I feel like it's been a while since we've recorded. It kind of has because we, the last week of November, we were celebrating my birthday so we didn't record that week. Oh, we recorded two. Yeah, so we kind of stacked up there. So it has been a minute. Did you notice how Peyton didn't say Thanksgiving but she said her birthday?

Because it was my birthday. What's Thanksgiving? Exactly. Just kidding. That's funny. Garrett, is your red solo cup just sitting in our set? No. Okay. Can they see it? Probably. I don't know. All right. My 10 seconds? Yep. I'm hopping right into my 10 seconds. Okay, do it. Honestly, I don't really have anything super interesting for everybody. I'm sorry. But...

Oh, wait, there is a couple of things. One, Peyton's first surprise is not here yet. She asked me every single day. In fact, yesterday she said, you didn't get me anything, did you? It's like what he did to his little sibling when he said, oh, I got you something. And then just waited for her to forget about it. I did that for like three years. Yeah. Hey, Miley. Poor Miley. Poor Miley. But I feel like that's what you're doing to me. That's so funny. No, but I did get her something. It's not here yet, but it'll be here. I hope soon.

There's actually one person I told. There's only one person that knows. You're not going to tell me who? She's probably listening to this right now. And she knows who she is. Nope. Not Sydney. Second is there was a second surprise. But I can't tell you yet. I didn't know this. Yes. She's just finding this out right now. Guys, and I really don't think either are a puppy. I really don't think it because I've been saying it every day. And every day he just looks at me and says, it's not a puppy. You guys will all find out, though. Okay. Well, I'm excited. Yeah.

So that will be my 10 seconds this week. Other than that, hanging out, it's getting colder. I'm playing pickleball, golf. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm trying to be more fun and cool, but whatever. You are fun and cool. No, other than that, that's it. So... No, we watch Selling Sunset. Yes.

You know, I don't care. Judge me all you want. Selling Sunset is a good show. You need to watch it. So good. Gary and I scream at the TV when we watch Selling Sunset. We do. I was like, we should live stream this because I think people would think it was hilarious and they'd love it. They would have to be thinking exactly what we're thinking. I think it's my guilty pleasure. I love Selling Sunset.

Okay, well, our case sources this week, there is a lot of them. So I'm going to list them all specifically in our episode notes and then just kind of group them here. So medium.com, a couple YouTube videos, one by Aeon Video and then the other by Crim. Some Wikipedia pages, another YouTube video by Dennis Romero, darktells.blog, foxnews.com, and then a couple Facebook pages. Facebook pages? Yeah, you'll see why. Okay.

All right. So as you guys know, we cover a plethora of true crime cases on this podcast. Murders, abductions, disappearances, etc. And while simultaneously telling both all of you and Garrett these stories, there is always one question that Garrett is obsessed with. Do you know what that is? Where are the

The cameras. And I know Garrett loves it. And we as true crime fanatics love it when a good security camera comes in and solves these cases. That was not scripted by the way.

Anyways, keep going. - Everyone knows you love the cameras. So when the video footage answers all of the questions we had, like in the cases of Yingying and Colleen Ritzer. In fact, according to Matthew P.J. Ashby, security camera footage statistically significantly increases the chance of a crime being solved for most crime types. But there are times when camera video footage is found in a case

And instead of helping, it leads to further questions, further mystery. And today we are going to discuss several mysterious disappearances, people's last known moments that were captured by security cameras, but the footage led to more questions instead of answers. Footage that leaves everyone truly wondering, WTF?

All right. So the first case we're going to talk about is a case where camera footage just led to more questions. And this case might be considered a popular one. But Garrett has never heard this story, I'm assuring you guys. So if you have, you can hear Garrett's innocent reaction as someone who hasn't seen such bizarre and eerie footage when it comes to a true crime case. Okay. This case is that of Elisa Lam.

Now, we could do a whole season just on this story, so there will be details that go unsaid because we don't have that kind of time. But please discuss any theories or details on our social media channels with respect to the victim. All right, so this footage takes place at a hotel, and it's called the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Now, the Cecil Hotel became notorious in LA with a haunting and lengthy past. It has a history of suicides and is actually housed more than one serial killer during its time.

Wow.

Which I knew Garrett would love that detail. That's crazy. That's 20s. Yeah. Only five years after it opened, though, the United States entered the Great Depression. And so the hotel began its descent from

Skid Row began growing right outside its front doors. And in 2011, the Cecil Hotel was rebranded as Stay on Main because by that point, so many deaths and darkness had overcome this budget and long-term stay hotel. So they were like, we, like they were constantly trying to like

renew it, revive it, fix it, but no matter what, it's plagued. So by 2013, Elisa Lam, a Canadian student whose parents were immigrants from Hong Kong, decided to take a trip to California. She was very active on her blog turned Tumblr account about her dreams and her mental illness.

She had actually dropped out of school after a relapse in her depression. She had been trying to go to college. It just wasn't working out. Lisa was actually diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression, but a lot of people didn't know this detail until just barely like two years ago. Think about thinking about this case from everyone's point of view before you knew that she was actually diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. And she was actually on four medications at the time.

But this trip to California was supposed to be the start of her traveling adventures, the things she'd always wanted. Like she was like, I'm going to take a break from college and I'm going to go do this. So after making her way through San Diego on January 26th, Elisa arrived in LA and after two days, she checked into the Cecil Hotel. And like I said, this can be a long-term hotel. So many people lived here for short periods of time, like month, two months, and

Elisa was initially assigned to a shared room at the hotel, but her roommates actually ended up complaining about odd behavior from her. And so she was moved to her own room only two days into her stay.

During her travels, Elisa had been in contact with her parents in British Columbia every single day. But on February 1st, 2013, the day that Elisa was supposed to actually check out of the Cecil Hotel and leave for Santa Cruz, her parents never heard from her and so they called the LAPD. After calling the LAPD, her parents flew out once they realized that Elisa was missing after no one could locate her in LA.

And during all of this, like, oh, she's missing. Where is she? She's not at the hotel. A bookstore near the hotel actually said that she, the worker said she saw Elisa the day that she went missing, that she had come into the bookstore. She was outgoing and friendly. She was buying gifts to send back to her family. So police searched the hotel once they realized that she's like actually missing. They send in scent dogs from the basement to the rooftop of the hotel, but they find nothing.

And they obviously didn't search all 700 rooms, but they did search some and Alisa's which looked untouched. A week after Alisa had been missing, her family was posting flyers with her image online and throughout the neighborhood. But the problem is Skid Row is very transient with heavy, heavy drug use. So it was really hard to track Alisa's movements or who had seen her.

Or if she might even be on the street currently, but there are so many people who live on the streets within Skid Row that they can't find her. Two weeks after the disappearance and nothing to show in the investigation, LAPD publicly released the security camera footage from the last known sighting of Elisa in the hotel. Weird. I wonder why they publicly released it.

And this is a big part of this case for me too, but I'm going to talk about that after you've seen the footage. Okay. So the footage was from February 1st. So the, like basically the last time her parents had heard from her. And these are the last known moments of Elisa Lam. Okay.

No one has seen her since this security footage. And now if you are not watching on YouTube, you need to go watch the short two minute video if you haven't already seen it. This footage alone has a grip on the true crime community and the world in general. We'll post it on Instagram as well. Yeah, this footage is the reason that this case is so well known. It's actually the reason that there is a Netflix original docuseries covering this case.

And I will warn you, this footage can be disturbing to some viewers once you know the context and that she ends up missing after you see what happens in this video. My gosh, did she get taken by like aliens or something? I'm going to show you the video now. Okay. Okay, so Garrett just watched the footage, but before he goes into what he thinks, I'm actually going to explain like the eeriest parts for those who are listening and don't have time right now to go watch it.

So it starts with Elisa entering on an elevator, overly casual, like almost like she's acting. She kind of just walks in like, like just like, I don't know. It's just so normal. And she presses on a row of buttons, like all four or five of them. So that's when you're like, okay, what's she doing? Cause she's clicking more than one floor. And then she backs into the corner of the elevator with her face facing the door, waiting for the doors to close, which isn't that strange. I go to the corner of an elevator when I get in.

But for some weird and mysterious reason that defies logic, which Garrett pointed out very quickly, the doors to the elevator don't close. They're just open. They're just sitting there open. And I mean, this is like...

We're talking two minutes of footage where these doors don't ever attempt to close. Yes, but she's also going in and out. And so, you know, when you go. But you know how normally like they try to close and then it's like, oh, something's there. That doesn't even happen. They don't even like try to close. Anyway, so this footage is just so, so trippy. But Elisa tentatively then like randomly tiptoes to the open elevator door. And I mean tiptoes.

And then she manically jumps with one foot out of the door. Her back foot is still in the elevator and she's standing in a lunge and her front foot is outside of the elevator, her body leaning forward out of the elevator as well.

She frantically looks from side to side down the hallways of the hotel and then randomly just eerily jumps back into the elevator meeting her back foot into the middle of the elevator. And for me, this is the part in the footage where you're just like, something's wrong. Like something's obviously wrong. She stands in the center of the elevator, holding her hands clasped in front of her. Like nothing happened. Like she didn't just randomly like jump out of the elevator and look around and

Then she backs into another corner in the elevator. And at this point watching, it seems as if she's hiding from someone. Like you can tell that she's uncomfortable. She's trying to hide herself. And I have to point out at this point that the elevator doors have still not attempted to close. They're just sitting open. She waits for a while.

And then she tiptoes back over to the open elevator entrance. Now, I don't know how else to explain this next part without describing her as kind of like trying not to step on certain parts of the floor for fear it will like set off a trap. Like, you know, in those movies where in order to get the treasure at the end of the cave, you have to do some like dance maneuver through the cave. Yeah, I was going to say it looked like she was dancing and then she was.

Like waving her hands in weird emotions. Right. So that's what she's doing. Like meanwhile, acting like there is maybe someone outside of the elevator that she's scared of. I don't know, but it's like she's square dancing all in the entrance of the elevator. I don't know how else to explain it. You guys, you need to go watch this. I mean, Peyton's explaining it well, but if you get time, please.

please go check out our social medias because this, that was insane. - Yeah. - I think I was so mind blown watching it, I didn't even know how to react. - Yeah, so she stands outside the elevator for a moment, she goes back in and she represses all of the buttons, the doors still don't close and then she walks back out and stands outside the elevator again. You can still see her though, she's right by the doors.

And it's while outside the elevator that she appears to be talking to someone dramatically with her hands. And this is what Garrett was talking about. But there's no one there that we can see, but she's moving her hands around and it's very eerie for sure. She's kind of rolling her hands, counting her fingers almost, almost like she's like hand painting or finger painting. And like you said, it looks like she's talking to somebody. Yeah, but there's no one there that we can see. There's no one visibly there.

Yeah. She walks out of the camera frame and then the freaking doors still don't close until after what looks like. OK, so I don't know if you notice this, but did you see the frame glitching?

No, but that doesn't really get to me as much just because cameras glitch. Okay. So that was happening the whole time, by the way, the frame kind of glitches the whole time she leaves. And then finally the doors close, but that was two minutes of footage of her doing this. The door's not closing. And then the last minute of the video that the police released, remember publicly is just the elevator making its way to all of the floors that she pressed. So to me, when you asked why,

why would they release this publicly? I'm kind of like, okay, because maybe it does seem a little personal. Like she's obviously not, there's something wrong. And so to me, it's a little weird in that sense, but also why have a minute of footage of just the, no, there's no person, just the elevator going up and down.

I can't stop thinking about this footage. That's how everyone who's seen this footage knows exactly how you feel right now. I have so many different ideas and maybe I'll wait for you to start telling a little more, but I guess I'll say my initial thoughts. And then as you keep explaining it, I can go back. Yeah. But my initial thoughts are there's

There's something wrong that maybe she's on some sort of drugs. It looks like she's talking to things that are not there. Correct. So that's kind of my initial reaction. And I guess we'll see where this takes us.

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It's not an actual time code. It's all messed up and no one, not the hotel or police can tell us why they said it was just messed up. Second, the video looks glitchy the whole time,

like we were talking about, but some people think it looks like it's cutting and coming together. But obviously no one from police have clarified if this footage is edited. Some people think it might be edited because to save, like if, if when the video was going up and down, like there were other people, they didn't want to release their, you know, their identity or whatever.

And lastly, like Garrett said, something is wrong in this footage. Whether someone was tormenting Elisa externally or internally, she is not okay. And it's pretty obvious which is why this footage was so devastating and mysterious when it was released. This footage literally goes viral

The day it's released and many theories begin popping up. Was she being haunted? Like this hotel is known for being haunted. It's known for like a ton of people taking their lives, a ton of murders. So was she being haunted? Was someone attacking her?

Was she on drugs or was she having a psychotic break? These are all the theories that come up and they continue looking for her, the family and everyone, the police, but nothing really comes of it. Everyone's more just like, once again, they get security footage and now they're even more confused about what happened to her. But during this frenzy, guests at the hotel begin complaining of low water pressure. Some even claiming the water was black and tasted weird.

So on the morning of February 19th, Santiago Lopez, a hotel maintenance worker, made his way up to the roof where the access door is locked to all guests. You have to have a certain key to get up there. And he checked the four 1,000-gallon water tanks that sit on the roof of this hotel. And it was during this search that he saw through what he says was an open hatch that

Elisa Lam's decomposing body lying face up in one of the water tanks on top of the hotel. Just sitting in the water tank? And they've been looking for her and all of a sudden they find her. So this devastating discovery, considering the fact that police had searched the roof with dogs just days after the disappearance, does not sit well with the public. Is there cameras on the roof? Like where's the other cameras? No cameras on the roof. Not enough cameras.

Not only was the missing student still at the hotel when they'd been looking for her, people were literally drinking and brushing their teeth with water containing her decomposing body. Oh my gosh. So it was a really bad look for the hotel and the police, like just not a good scenario. The LA coroner issued that the cause of death was accidental drowning with bipolar disorder as a significant factor.

So he basically said that she took her life accidentally while having a psychotic break. That's what he concludes. Elisa Lam had been found naked with her clothing floating in the water with her as if she had undressed once in the water, her watch and room key were also with her. There was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault, or intentional suicide. A very small dosage of her prescription medication was found in her toxicology report and

along with a very small trace of alcohol, but no other drugs were found in her system. And when I say her medication, like a small dose, people assume that she either was not taking the required amount or was trying to get off of her medication at the time. Has anyone in her family ever said that she's had any sort of psychotic breakdowns before? So her family said she struggled with mental illness, but that she never showed signs of like a psychotic break or signs of

contemplating suicide so that she had never like spoken to them about being suicidal. And she was not on drugs like ecstasy at the time of the video footage and her death. If in her toxicology report, there were no drugs in her system. How do you, how do you commit suicide in a water tank? Right? So maybe though she was on drugs that had broken down in her system during the time that she was floating in the tank. Um,

So I guess we won't know for sure because I guess there is a chance that they could have left her system during that time. The issue with the manner of death is that it was nearly impossible for Elisa to number one, get on the roof as a hotel guest because that door is locked unless an employee left the door propped open or opened it for her.

And if she had tried to force the door open, an alarm would have triggered. She could have taken the fire escape from like the window to the roof, but that is a very dangerous method. And people are like, this would have been very complicated for her to do. But they did note in like the investigation that the scent dogs did lose her scent near her window.

So maybe she climbed out of her window and got on the fire escape, but most people are like, that's a very hard way for her to get up there. Okay. It's rumored that two of the lids to the water tanks were open. So she could have, you know, climbed in the water tanks, but the hotel said, no, they were closed. Okay.

So this has been a source of issue because they were very heavy to remove. It would have been very hard for her to remove those herself. And the hotel's like, no, they were all on. Other people are like, no, there were two that were open. Like it could have just been the hotel covering for themselves. Yes. There were also no fixed access to the water tanks.

So hotel workers, when they would go into these water tanks, when Santiago, who discovered her, went up to discover her, they had to use ladders. Like there was no way to climb on top of these water tanks without a ladder. - Oh, like bringing a portable ladder. Oh, so there was no ladder attached to the water tank? - That's what they said. They said that they would have to use ladders to look into the water, to be able to get up there and get into the water.

Ooh, interesting. People also argued that the autopsy findings were, you know, suspicious because they had a lack of detail and her phone was never found, which is a little weird if it was of her own will because who took it? Where'd it go? You know what I mean? According to medium.com, the disappearance shows eerie similarities to that of the 2005 film Dark Waters, which

which I've never seen, but the movie is based on the short story Floating Water, where a mother and her daughter find dark water leaking from their bedroom ceiling, and eventually the mother finds out that there had previously been a missing girl living in the room above theirs who accidentally drowned in the hotel's water tank. How is it even possible? I don't know.

Elisa's case is technically closed, but most people are very unhappy with the theory that she could have somehow maneuvered her way onto the roof, climbed into the tank without a ladder, maybe or maybe not got the lid off and dropped into the tank all while somehow ridding her phone and just earlier that day happily buying books at a bookstore for her family back home.

It just doesn't make sense to me that she would take her life by jumping in a water tank. That seems super suspicious to me. At least on purpose, right? Correct. So she did seem scared, however, and paranoid in the video footage that you watched. So she might have jumped in the water tank to hide from whatever was tormenting her. I feel like in the footage it

Clearly looks like she's trying to hide or get away. She's clearly unwell. Maybe she jumped in trying to hide only to realize that there wasn't a way to climb back out. So she took her clothes off because she was struggling. She wanted to lessen her weight. That's where I'm ending the story. There's a whole bunch more details because we're going to... Oh, we're stopping there? It's not. The case is closed.

There's no answers to this case. It's an, I mean, it's an unsolved, solved mystery. So that's it? Yeah. That's all you're giving me? That's all I'm giving you. Cause we got to move on. We got more stories, but this is just our first case of mysterious footage, but I will say she was very open about her mental health. I think mental illness is something that we don't clearly understand. And I think it is something that could have led to this outcome. So, um,

When I piece things together, I don't know. I'm not going to take a stance on it because I clearly don't know. Something suspicious is going on in my books. I also think that there might be ghosts in that hotel, okay? Something crazy is going on. But like Peyton said, I'm sure there's a ton of theories, so let's go to the next one. So our next case actually takes place in June of 2014.

28-year-old Lars Smetank is a German traveler visiting the Golden Sands Resort in Varna, Bulgaria. He is actually on holiday with his friends. Lars and his friends had actually arrived in Varna on June 30th, 2014. They were hanging out, partying, doing what you do on vacation with your friends. But a week into the vacation, while drinking with his friends at the bar, Lars got into a fight.

He was a fan of a certain team and some rival fans were at the same bar. So, you know, sports and trash talk and it resulted in a bar fight. After the fight broke up, Lars actually stormed out of the bar alone to cool off. But once gone, his friends were unable to find him for the rest of the night. But

But the next morning, Lars surprised his friends by showing back up to their resort room. And he told them that he had been beaten all night by the four men from the bar or that those men had hired someone else to beat him up. It kind of depends on which friend you talk to. But either way, the premise of the story is that the fight extended far beyond the bar when these men had exacted more brutality onto Lars.

Lars and his friends decided to find a doctor to take a look at Lars because he had been beaten up and they needed to assess his injuries. They were supposed to leave for home soon and so they wanted to make sure he was okay before they left.

After the visit, the doctor concluded that Lars had a cracked jaw and a ruptured eardrum. Oh, geez. The doctor prescribed him antibiotics and advised Lars to not fly that day with the rest of his friends because the pressure from the plane would not do anything good for his ruptured eardrum. And so he told Lars to hill up for a couple days in a hotel, let his friends, you know, fly home, and then he can fly home after his friends.

And although not wanting to leave their friend, Lars assured them that he was fine. So they all checked out of the resort and his friends left for the airport while Lars checked into Hotel Color Varna for one night to try and rest his ear before he leaves. And it was at this hotel that Lars started to behave in a way that stood out to other guests and his family. He began acting paranoid that the four men from the bar were still after him.

He actually hid in an elevator for an extended period of time and then eventually left the hotel around midnight. He returned hours later, but the front desk didn't know where he had gone and he didn't tell anybody. During this time, he called his mother and in a hushed voice told her that there were some men following him wanting to know what drugs he got from the doctor and he felt like, you know, they were targeting him and he was scared and that she needed to go cancel all of his credit cards.

What? Yes. And so she's worried about him because he's obviously acting strange. But despite all of this, the next day, Lars made his way to the Varna airport to try and catch a flight back home. So it seems like everything's fine. Yeah. So at the airport, he met with another doctor to try and figure out if his ear was healed enough to board a plane home.

And it was while the doctor was examining Lars that a man who was working on construction at the airport walked up, interrupted the doctor and Lars to ask something. Wait, so the doctor was at the airport? Yeah, there's like an airport doctor. They have those still. Like if someone gets hurt...

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So as you saw, suddenly Lars did stand up and literally flee the room with the doctor. Guys, he took off. Yeah. So in the footage, you can clearly see Lars calmly enter the airport with his bags, right? He's calm. He's walking. Everything seems normal. He gets directions to the doctor. And then as if out of the blue, Lars comes full on sprinting out of the doctors and through the airport. Huh, Garrett? Yeah.

He took off. He came sprinting and then he just kept running. It just didn't stop. Oh, he's running Usain Bolt without his bags through the airport to the exit. Like he's beelining to the exit. Do you know how far he went from the airport? Yeah. So once he exits the front doors, it's almost like he doesn't know where he's running to. He stops and then immediately shifts direction, sprinting to the left and

He kind of slows to a walk, but a rushed walk as he makes his way to the outskirts of the airport by foot. And because we don't know the layout of the airport, it's hard to make out. But people who do know the layout say that one of the last times in the footage, at the very end of the security footage, you can see Lars. He's literally scaling a fence and hopping over it.

and then continues running into the forest line, never to be seen again. That's literally the last

footage anyone has of Lars and the last time anyone has ever seen him or talked to him. What in the world? And it was of him leaving his bags in the airport, taking off by foot, literally scaling fences into the forest in a place he doesn't even know. This isn't his like... The only thing I think that could have happened is those guys showed up at the airport. It freaked him out. So he ran, but... No one's chasing him. One, no one's chasing you. And two...

You're in an airport. Like, you're in a safe space. Well, and according to the doctor, the construction worker walked in. It wasn't, like, they were alone in a room. It wasn't, like... But was the construction worker one of those guys that he...

Nobody knows. All of a sudden spooked, got up and went sprinting out of the room, leaving his bags there. What the heck? That's insane. Never to be seen again. Okay. On to the next one. So the next case we will discuss today, the next mysterious footage case is that of Jennifer Kessie. Jennifer was born on May 20th, 1981.

She graduated from Vivian Gaither High School in Tampa, Florida, and attended the University of Central Florida in Orlando to get her finance degree. Jennifer was working as a finance major and had actually just bought a condo home in Orlando.

In January of 2006, Jennifer went on vacation with her boyfriend to the Virgin Islands. She returned to Orlando on Sunday, January 22nd and stayed the night at her boyfriend's home instead of like going straight from the airport to her home. The next morning she woke up, that's Monday, January 23rd, and she drove straight from her boyfriend's home to work.

That night around 6 p.m., she left work and called her dad on the phone while driving home. And then after getting home and winding down, Jennifer called her boyfriend from her home around 10 p.m. for a goodnight call. The next morning, Tuesday, January 24th, around 7.30, Jennifer left for work again. It was between 8 and 9 a.m. that morning that Jennifer's boyfriend began to grow confused as he waited for Jennifer to call or at least text him. Jennifer's boyfriend was

Jennifer almost always called or texted her boyfriend while on her way to work. That is when they usually said their good morning. But when neither came, her boyfriend tried to call her, but his call went directly to voicemail. He chalked it up to the fact that she had mentioned that she had an important meeting that morning at work. So maybe she had just forgot to call him and then turned her phone off.

Throughout the day, he continues to try and get a hold of her, but to no avail. And while Jennifer's boyfriend is struggling to get a hold of her, her workplace is frustrated, then worried when Jennifer fails to show up for work at all that day. Her employer decides to call her parents and alert them about Jennifer's absence and ask, you know, just check in, make sure she's okay. Was she sick? Why hadn't she shown up?

but jennifer's parents also hadn't heard from her since she called her dad the night before they had no idea where she was either so around 11 a.m they called jennifer's boyfriend to see if he knew where she was they said hey she didn't show up for work is she with you do you know where she is

but we all know that he was worried all on his own already about her. So with nobody able to locate Jennifer or get a hold of her, her parents begin the drive from Tampa to Orlando, obviously now very alarmed. They're just going to go check in at her home, make sure everything's okay.

At 3 p.m., Jennifer's parents and her brother arrive at the condo, and they discover evidence that leads them to believe that Jennifer had been there that morning, but her car is missing out of the parking lot. They decide to call the police, but Jennifer is an adult whose car is missing, so they tell her parents, like, they can't do much until more time has passed. Like, she's an adult, and her car is missing, so she could be anywhere. Okay.

At 5:00 PM that night, Jennifer's friends and family began hanging up missing person flyers and spreading the news. They're like, nope, something is wrong. She wouldn't do this. And with the attention spreading for Jennifer, police decided to send a detective out to her home and begin questioning and investigating.

they discovered that there was no sign of forced entry or struggle in her apartment. So their first conclusion is that if she is really missing and has met foul play, it most likely happened on her way from her front door to her car when she was heading for work, not inside the house.

Police, family, and friends spend the whole next day searching, questioning, and worried about Jennifer. But nothing really comes of it. But the next day, Thursday, January 26th, two days since Jennifer went missing, around 8.10 a.m., a tenant from a nearby housing complex, literally that's only 1.2 miles away from Jennifer's home, is watching the news.

They see Jennifer's picture and hear about the missing person and her missing car. And it's then that the tenant realizes something. They think that Jennifer's missing car is literally parked right outside their apartment in the parking lot of the complex. It's only a mile away. Weird. They call police and explain, well, I don't know, but it's the same description. And the car's been sitting here for a couple of days. No one's

come to it, it hasn't moved. So police obviously head over to the complex and they confirm that the car is in fact Jennifer's 2004 missing Chevy Malibu. It had been parked in a nearby parking lot. It's at the parking lot when police realized that there are cameras that if working would have seen this car pull in. And so this is where our eerie security footage comes into play for this case. You don't think it's her? No way.

What do you guys think? - Let me explain it to them. So when police watch the security footage, they scroll back and discover that the car was parked back on Tuesday, January 24th, the day that she went missing.

And although the camera is far away at first, you can clearly see the car drive in and park in the parking lot at 12 p.m. That would have been during the time that her parents were driving from Tampa to Orlando to check on her. Her car is being parked in a parking lot a mile away from her home.

The car pulls in, it parks, and then you can see someone get out of the driver's seat and close the door. They turn away from the car and they begin slowly walking away, making their way out of the parking lot, walking all the way across like the parking lot. You can see it on the camera. It's very far away. So it's impossible to make out any characteristics.

besides the fact that someone... And I don't think it's her. Just, yes. That's my opinion. Garrett doesn't think it's her. Someone just parked her car in a parking lot near her home while her parents were trying to find her. This person is obviously involved in whatever happened. No questions asked. Why would they have her car? Why would they be parking it, right? There's no way. There's no way that was her, what I just saw. I mean, obviously...

I'm not an expert, but that did not look like her. I don't think it did either. But police then track the person walking and they find another camera. And I think this camera is like from a front door. That's what I'm assuming. So a residential area. And this time the camera is closer and you can like spot the person walking. So when they get a hold of the footage, they know they will finally have a face to release to the public in this case. A person of interest. A suspect. But there's zero face in that. But the camera...

that captured the person the second time is shot in still frames. So it's kind of skippy because it's basically just takes like a picture every two seconds or whatever. So the angle of this footage is from behind a fence. The camera is pointing at the road and the sidewalk where the suspect is walking. So you can see the person walking behind the iron fence that's like probably fencing off the home. The problem is that once police watch the footage like Garrett just did, they can't believe their eyes.

The three images that shows the person of interest are of no help. I mean, you can see what they're wearing. You can see their shoes. It's a very clear image, but each still picture, the person's face is obstructed behind a fence post. Like literally what are the chances that the snapshots are taken at the only time that the person is behind those two thicker posts? What, um, does she have longer hair?

Yes. So there's no way that was her then because the person that they captured. You can't really see the head. Short hair. Yes. I mean, it doesn't look like they have hair, but also it is behind a fence post. There's no way guys. The face is concealed. The head is basically concealed. You can't see it. Basically this iron fence is like skinny irons and then like the thick posts. That's like the, I don't know, probably the structure or whatever. And each time that person is walking, its head is behind one of those thicker posts. So you can see the body, but

but each time it snaps, its head is concealed. - And that was it? - Well, so police are basically stunned at this point because they now have two different videos of this person of interest

with no leads. The suspect is described as the luckiest person of interest ever. They were captured on two cameras, but hidden the whole entire time. The FBI was called in to try and help, and they determined from the footage that the person was 5'3 or 5'5. They couldn't determine a possible gender from the footage. So I personally think that it looks like a male, but I'm not sure. Like I said, you can't see the face, but the boots,

I also feel like it looks like they might be wearing a jumpsuit. So to me, I don't know. It just, the outfit looks more masculine than feminine to me, but I don't know. I wear, I wear very masculine outfits sometimes too. So I don't know. The police searched her car and found that it was wiped down only collecting a latent print and a small DNA fiber. Her cell phone, iPod keys, purse, briefcase, as well as her are missing. Um,

Using scent dogs, the dogs traced a distinct scent from Jennifer's car back the way the person on the video footage walked and all the way to Jennifer's apartment.

So police believe that the person dropped the car like we saw and then walked on foot passing that house like we saw the mile back to Jennifer's apartment. Weird. So everyone in her life has been interviewed, but everyone has also been cleared. The FBI now have custody over this case. But once again, the video footage does not help us solve it. That's crazy. It's because the video footage sucked. Like how do we have...

footage of people's last moments. Like literally all three of those people were the last time they were ever, I mean, well not really her because we don't know if that's her or not, but footage that should help us solve a case. Like we said, like it's inevitable. If you have footage, we've seen so many cases that are solved by footage, but these ones just make it more of a mystery. So these cases were just three of many disappearances that have been caught on camera, but remain unsolved or unsolved, but solved.

We will cover more of these in the future, obviously. But until then, if you know anything about these disappearances that could help solve the case, please contact authorities because there is still so much information missing in almost all of these. Those are the mysterious disappearances caught on camera. What's sad is they're just gone, too. Right? The last moments we ever see. That's horrible. They're just gone. And I think there's something to like, you know, sometimes people do want to disappear. For all we know, Jennifer could have set that up or any of them. Well, not Elisa, but...

either of those could have set it up and, you know, willingly chose to disappear, but there's still a family out there looking for them. She's weird. Yeah. All right. Thank you everyone for listening. I do want to remind you that if you want to check out our Patreon and help support the show, you can find that at patreon.com slash murder with my husband. And we will see you guys next week with another episode. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.