On Sunday morning, August 12, 1984, thirteen-year-old Eugene Wade Martin left his home in Des Moines, Iowa, to deliver the Sunday paper. He was five days away from his fourteenth birthday. He was saving money for the fair and a bicycle.

But somewhere along the way, Eugene's paper route stopped.

His newspapers were found. But Eugene was gone.

Less than two years earlier, another Des Moines Register carrier, Johnny Gosch, had vanished from his own Sunday morning route. So when Eugene disappeared, the fear in Des Moines shifted. What had once seemed like an ordinary childhood job now felt exposed, vulnerable, and dangerous.

In this episode of SEQUESTERED, we trace the morning Eugene disappeared, the witnesses who may have seen him speaking with an unknown man, the flood of tips that followed, and the massive search that covered neighborhoods, riverbanks, wooded areas, and nearly seventy square miles. We also look at what Eugene's disappearance did to his family; the phone calls, the license plates, the Apple II computer filled with names, and the long vigil of parents who never stopped looking.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Eugene Wade Martin, please contact the Des Moines Police Department at 515-283-4811, the FBI Iowa office at 515-223-4278, or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST / 1-800-843-5678. NCMEC case number: 601815. Official contact details are listed by NCMEC, and Eugene is also listed with the Iowa Missing Person Information Clearinghouse.

Photos, source material, and additional case information are available at sequesteredpod.com.

On the first day of summer break in 1983, 12-year-old Ann Gotlib rides her bike home through the parking lot of Bashford Manor Mall in Louisville, Kentuky, then vanishes.

Her bicycle is later found outside a department store.

But Ann is gone.

In the days that follow, witnesses report seeing a man dragging a young girl near a field and drainage ditch not far from the mall. Police release a composite sketch. Search teams comb through woods, creeks, and shoulder-high grass. And investigators begin chasing a case built almost entirely on fragments.

A goodbye in a parking lot.

A possible sighting inside the mall.

A mysterious phone call.

A hitchhiker story that briefly changes everything.

And decades later, a dead man publicly named by police as the prime suspect.

In this episode, Sara Reid retraces the disappearance of Ann Gotlib, a bright 12-year-old daughter of Soviet Jewish immigrants whose case became part of a national shift in how America responds to missing children.

But more than 40 years later, Ann has still never been found.

Jennifer Marteliz was seven years old when she disappeared while walking home from school in Tampa, Florida, on November 15, 1982. She was only blocks from home. Witnesses later described seeing Jennifer upset near a crossing guard and possibly near a rust-colored car shortly before she vanished. What should have been an ordinary walk home became one of Florida's most haunting unsolved child disappearance cases.

In Episode 3 of SEQUESTERED Season Four, Sara Reid reconstructs Jennifer's final known moments through witness accounts, search records, media reporting, and the growing fractures inside the investigation itself. As police and volunteers searched neighborhoods, drainage pipes, vacant lots, and wooded areas across Tampa, the case slowly became defined by uncertainty: conflicting sightings, theories that never fully fit, and a timeline that seemed impossibly small for a child to disappear without a trace.

More than forty years later, Jennifer Marteliz has never been found. And the few minutes between school and home still remain unexplained.

On May 4, 2026, Jason Chen returned to Hamilton County Criminal Court in Chattanooga, Tennessee, asking for a new trial in the murder case of Jasmine Pace.

Chen's defense argued that issues from the original trial warranted another chance to make his case, including questions about evidence, the search of Chen's apartment, and the presence of Jasmine's family members in the courtroom. Judge Boyd Patterson denied the motion, stating that the arguments had already been litigated and that the court would rely on the same conclusions previously reached.

For Sara Reid, Juror Number 11 in the original trial, this update is not just a legal development. It is a return to the courtroom, the evidence, the verdict, and the weight of what the jury was asked to decide.

In this bonus episode of SEQUESTERED, Sara walks through the latest ruling, what it means for the conviction and sentence, and why Jasmine Pace remains at the center of this story.

The verdict stands. The sentence remains in place. And Jasmine is not forgotten.

In September of 1981, the Oklahoma State Fair was in full swing; bright lights, crowded walkways, and the kind of place where parents felt safe letting their kids roam free. That's where 13-year-old friends Charlotte Kinsey and Cinda Pallett were last seen. After being offered what seemed like a harmless job unloading stuffed animals, the girls left the fairgrounds with a man they didn't know. They even called home to tell their parents about the job, and were told to call back later to arrange a ride. That call never came. What followed was a nationwide search, a critical witness account that extended their final known movements beyond the fairgrounds, and a suspect investigators believed had done this before. But despite mounting evidence, a chilling pattern, and years of investigation, the case would collapse in court. More than four decades later, Charlotte and Cinda have never been found. And the man many believe responsible was never convicted of their murders. This is the disappearance of Charlotte Kinsey and Cinda Pallett.

In April 1980, fourteen-year-old Laureen Rahn vanished from her home in Manchester, New Hampshire.

There were no signs of a struggle. No witnesses. No clear explanation for how a teenager could disappear from a third-floor apartment in the middle of the night.

In the hours that followed, investigators were left with only a handful of details - a friend asleep inside, an open back door, and a timeline that stopped at the moment Laureen moved from her bed to the couch.

Months later, a series of phone calls would surface, pulling the case thousands of miles away from New Hampshire…and raising questions that have never been answered.

In Episode 1 of SEQUESTERED Season 4, Sara Reid reconstructs the final known hours of Laureen's disappearance; and the quiet, unresolved mystery at the center of a case that remains open more than four decades later.

Missing Persons Cases of the 1980's

The 1980s felt wide open.

Kids rode their bikes for miles without anyone worrying. The rule was simple: be home when the streetlights came on.

It was the decade of roller rinks and mall food courts… Cassette tapes and bedroom posters… Whitney Houston and Bon Jovi blasting from the radio.

Life moved at a different pace. A little unsupervised. A little innocent.

But beneath that nostalgia sits a quieter truth.

Because during those same ordinary nights and routines…people disappeared.

In the 1980s, a missing person could vanish into silence. There were no cell phones to trace, no digital footprints, no nationwide alerts instantly broadcasting a face across the country. When someone went missing, investigators often had little more than witness memories, a few scattered clues, and time slipping away.

And for many families, the answers never came.

This season of SEQUESTERED returns to that era to examine ten haunting missing-person cases from the 1980s - lives interrupted in moments that should have been ordinary.

Each episode revisits the last known movements of someone who vanished, the investigations that followed, and the questions that remain decades later. Through time-capsule storytelling and immersive soundscapes, we step back into the streets, neighborhoods, and moments where these disappearances began.

Because even after all these years, the silence around these cases still echoes.

And sometimes, the smallest detail remembered decades later can change everything.

If someone out there knows what happened…this might be the moment they speak up.

SEQUESTERED Season 4 explores ten disappearances from the 1980s - ten stories that refuse to be forgotten.

Subscribe now to follow the season and hear new episodes as they release. Apple Podcast subscribers receive episodes early and ad-free.

We're excited to share a preview of a new podcast we think you'd enjoy: Mind Games

What if you could hypnotize yourself into a better you? Or…. secretly hypnotize others into giving you anything you want? That's the promise of NLP. Mind Games is an investigation into the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology that has quietly shaped industries, institutions, and belief systems around the world. Part science experiment, part investigation, part true crime thriller, Mind Games tells the story of NLP and its crazy cast of disciples, including the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune, took it to Fortune 500 boardrooms, and whose gruesome murder trial did little to stop its rise.

Find Mind Games on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

New episodes out Tuesdays. LISTEN HERE

STAY TUNED FOR SEASON FOUR OF SEQUESTERED

We're sharing a preview of Valley of Shadows, a new true crime podcast that digs into a nearly 30-year old secret buried in the California desert. On June 11, 1998, Los Angeles

County Sheriff's Deputy Jon Aujay set out for a run in California's Devil's Punchbowl park, and never came back. Aujay has yet to be found. The Sheriff's Department rules Aujay's disappearance a suicide, but friends, family, and fellow deputies insist the story doesn't add up. Instead, they believe Aujay may have stumbled into the Mojave Desert's criminal underworld - where outlaw biker gangs crank out methamphetamine and local cops operate on both sides of the law. Through exclusive interviews, revealing wiretaps, and buried police files, journalists Hayley Fox and Betsy Shepherd explore one of Southern California's most mysterious missing person cases. In Valley of Shadows, they ask: What is the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department hiding? Find Valley of Shadows wherever you get podcasts.

In this bonus episode, Sara and Andrea return to the story of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans to reflect on the questions that still remain — the ones that linger long after the DNA match and the headlines. Drawing from listener messages, they revisit the cyclist attack that first brought Darrell David Rice to investigators' attention, the terrain surrounding Julie and Lollie's hidden campsite, the delays that shaped the early search, and the haunting gaps the evidence could never fill.

They also explore parallels to other cases, including the Colonial Parkway murders, and consider what this season reveals about safety, wilderness, and the reality of moving through the world with vigilance.

Finally, Sara and Andrea share the story behind the season's music and how they discovered trumpet player Andrew Golden, whose evocative arrangement of "Shenandoah" became the emotional backbone of Season 3.