Prey Tell

Somewhere around mile marker 83, near a little town called North Utica, a white Pontiac has pulled onto the shoulder.

It's a 1985 Pontiac T1000 with New Jersey plates. And behind the wheel is a Twenty-one-year-old named Tammy. If everything had gone according to plan, Tammy should have been about five hours from finishing a fifteen-hundred-mile drive, from her family's home in New Jersey out to her college in Iowa.

Somewhere between three-ten and four o'clock that afternoon, more than one driver passing by on I-80 remembers seeing a young woman standing near her disabled car. And parked close by was a tractor-trailer with a faded orange stripe running down the side. The driver was later described consistently: a white man, somewhere between thirty-five and forty, over six feet tall, with dark, bushy hair.

That is the last confirmed sighting of Tammy Zywicki alive.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/murder-of-tammy-zywicki

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This is a tangential part two of Wednesday’s episode on the mysterious death of Bernadette Vander Meer. While there was no trial and conviction in that case, but it raised questions about the horrors of Alpine Divorce.

Alpine divorce goes something like this: a couple go for a hike, often to a high peak, and one spouse falls over the edge. In my reported cases, it's the woman that falls, but not always. Usually, there's no witnesses. And what follows is a sentence that investigators often hear in one form or another: She just slipped. Or, she just fell.

There's a name for this: Alpine divorce. But here's the twist. Depending on who you ask, that phrase means murder, or it means something else entirely. Today, I’m attempting to sort out which, and figure out where Bernadette's story fits, if at all.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/horrors-of-alpine-divorce

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On Tuesday, August 22, 2006, the beautiful singing voice of Bernadette Vander Meer went silent on a ridge in Zion National Park, in Utah. She was twenty-eight years old. And she was there with her husband to celebrate ten years of marriage.

Her husband’s story was simple. She was standing near the edge of a roughly twelve hundred foot cliff edge. He was setting up a photo. He turned away only for a moment, and when he turned back, Bernadette was gone.

Investigators initially ruled the fall an accident. Then, in June 2026, a court document was made public and it told a different story.

Charges were officially filed. Her husband was arrested on a Monday. And by Thursday, the man accused of killing Bernadette Vander Meer was dead.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/bernadette-vander-meer

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On October 19th, 2023, a group of ten people rented kayaks and paddleboards from a small outfitter on the shore. They're not experienced paddlers. They're a yoga group and most of them were strangers to each other just a week earlier. And they’re out for one more excursion before they fly home. Two of the women drift away from the rest of the group, out past where the guides can clearly see them. When the group paddles back to shore that afternoon, one of the two women who went out further doesn't come back to shore.

Her name is Nancy Ng. She's twenty-nine years old. On that day in October, she went out onto the water and was never seen again.

Nancy Ng's case remains classified by U.S. missing persons databases as open and unresolved. No charges have been filed against anyone in connection with her disappearance. The Guatemalan government remains the lead investigative agency, with the FBI continuing to assist. 

If you have any information about what happened to Nancy Ng on October 19th, 2023 in Guatemala, you're asked to contact the Monterey Park Police Department directly at 626-573-1311.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/disappearance-of-nancy-ng

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

Every morning, something like four million vehicles move through São Paulo, Brazil on a highway system called the Rodoanel. Most of the drivers on it have never once heard the name of the man who helped engineer it.

Manfred, the engineer, didn't live to see it finished. He was forty-nine years old. Married for two decades. Father of two. And on the night of October 31st, 2002, in his own home, in a quiet and gated neighborhood on the south side of São Paulo, he was beaten to death while he slept.

His wife, Marísia, who was a psychiatrist was killed in the same room only minutes later.

This story has been sensationalized in media headlines talking about the von Richthofen’s mansion, and a large inheritance that turned this into one of the most obsessively covered criminal cases in Brazilian history. Before I get to any of that, I want you to know who Manfred and Marísia von Richthofen were. Because for over twenty years, almost everything written about this case has been about their daughter. 

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytell.com/episodes/von-richthofen-murders

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

In 2024 a little girl named Joshlin Smith disappeared in South Africa. She was just six years old. As of the recording of this episode, she still hasn't been found.

By the time her case reached trial, it had become one of the most closely watched criminal proceedings in recent South African history. Many people would go on to draw comparisons to Madeleine McCann's disappearance in Portugal (another case where a young child's vanishing gripped an entire country's attention for years). 

Police would soon find out Joshlin’s wasn’t a tragic disappearance, it was human trafficking perpetrated by the people closest to Joshlin.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/kidnapping-and-trafficking-of-joshlin-smith

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

On the morning of September 7th, 1988, a seventeen-year-old boy called 911 from a house on the Long Island Sound and said his parents had been attacked. Within hours, before Martin began to process what had happened to his parents, he was sitting in a police interrogation room, being told, over and over, that he was the one who did it.

This is the story of Seymour and Arlene Tankleff. And it's the story of their son, Martin Tankleff, who lost both of them to a single act of violence in his own home. Then, in a set of horrifying circumstances, he lost the next eighteen years of his own life to a system that decided, almost immediately, that grief and guilt looked the same on a teenager's face. Instead of being known as Martin, he was known as inmate number 90T3844 for nearly two decades.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/wrongful-conviction-of-martin-tankleff

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

This episode covers one of the more haunting missing persons cases in recent California history. It’s a case that took years to be classified as a homicide, and it raises hard questions about what happens when investigators commit to the wrong theory early, and don't let go of it. 

The McStay Family disappeared on February 4th, 2010. Their bodies were eventually found in the Mojave Desert in 2013. The public ran rampant with speculation and wild theories. But the reason for the family’s murder was much closer to home.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/mcstay-family-murders

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

On October 5th, 2004, at just after 11 o’clock at night, a cleaning crew finished up and headed out into the parking lot of the medical office building they were cleaning in Tucson, Arizona. They noticed a car that had been sitting in the parking lot for hours with the engine off and the lights off. 

Inside was David Brian Stidham. Everyone who loved him called him Brian. He was 37-years-old, and less than an hour earlier he was standing in front of a room full of medical students at the University of Arizona teaching them about pediatric eye care.

Today's episode is dark, but this isn't really a story about a murder, a hitman, a stabbing, or even really about the man who ordered the murder. This is a story about what happens when the people whose entire job it is to protect the public fail to do exactly that. Think doctors bound by an oath, and prosecutors bound by the law. 

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/murder-of-brian-stidham

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

Two girls. Two different states. Two families who reported them missing quickly, called every hotline, stood in front of every camera that would point their way, and yet as of the day I'm recording this, neither one has come home.

I usually give you one case per episode. Today, I'm doing something different. I'm giving you two. Not because they're connected. They’re not connected as far as anyone knows. We’re talking different states, different years, and different circumstances. I'm putting them in the same episode because neither one has gotten the coverage they deserve.

The first case is a twenty-one-year-old woman named Heaven Desiree McGee, who disappeared from Stockton, California, in January of 2025. The FBI reportedly believes she's a victim of human trafficking. 

The other case is a thirteen-year-old girl named Ja'Niyah McMichael, who disappeared from Gary, Indiana, in August of 2024. Investigators believe she may be the victim of foul play.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: https://preytellpodcast.com/episodes/disappearance-of-heaven-desiree-mcgee

For a full list of source materials, please visit: https://preytellpodcast.com/episodes/disappearance-of-janiyah-mcmichael

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com