The Unlovely Truth

January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Today’s book “I Was The Girl” by author Steven David Lampley is full of heartbreaking stories of Steven’s time working undercover to catch online predators, as well as information on how to keep your children as safe as you can when they are online.  Since the FBI estimates that on any given day there are approximately 750,000 predators online, it’s information you NEED to know.

 

Steven's Website

Buy "I Was The Girl"

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Polly Klaas Foundation

In some true crime stories, the “good guys” turn out to be not so good after all. It’s especially distressing when these “good guys” are members of the clergy. One of my favorite true crime authors, Diane Fanning, serves up a trio of tales about religious leaders that their flocks would have been better off without. They were respected, and even feared by their congregations. Even as the rumors they sought to cover up gained momentum, many couldn't believe what they were hearing could be true. A man who had given his life to serving the Lord just couldn’t have done what they were hearing about…could he?

 

Diane's website

Buy the book

Our hearts all drop when we hear an Amber Alert. That shrill noise coming out of our phone tells us that somewhere, a family is experiencing their greatest nightmare. We check social media, and see the darling face of someone’s precious child. We say a quick prayer that this alert will ensure that this child is found quickly, unharmed. But what if your child went missing and you were told that they didn’t meet the criteria to have an Amber Alert issued? What would you do then?

 

Free Report: The Amber Gap

Mama Bear Toolkit

Tradecraft Bootcamp

Jessica Lundsford, Tori Stafford, and Hailey Dunn are young girls who each went missing from different areas in different years - but they all have one shocking thing in common: their disappearances did not meet the criteria for an Amber Alert to be issued. I didn’t know that the facts surrounding a missing child’s disappearance have to check off the right boxes on a form before that child’s inexplicable absence can be made known to the public with an Amber Alert. One of these innocents finally got her Amber Alert issued nine days after she went missing, which was nine days too late for her. 

 

U.S. Department of Justice Guidelines

Operation Amber   ← CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR FREE COPY OF THE AMBER GAP

Child Abduction Research

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of true crime podcasts out there – so you’ve probably wondered (as I sometimes still do) why I felt the need to start one. As corny as this may sound, I wanted to help people. I love reading books, especially true crime books, so I thought a natural fit for me would be reading even more amazing true crime books and sharing some thoughts about them with my listeners. I thought that as a private investigator, I might be able to help people learn about more than just the crimes themselves. A very wise friend told me that I needed to market to a niche, a small specific audience, to make my podcast stand out among all the noise in the true crime world. She encouraged me to use what was most important to me – my faith – and make that my vehicle to tell these stories. I’m so happy and grateful that she did, because the people I’ve met along the way have taught me some incredible things.

With Christmas right around the corner, we are all very busy, so this week is a mini episode that won’t keep you away from your wrapping, baking, shopping, and all of the other things that make this time of the year so special. I absolutely LOVE the Christmas season. I love seeing everyone’s lights, putting up the decorations, giving presents, and watching people act just a bit kinder at this time of year. But it’s not a happy time for everyone. Long simmering family tensions can quickly escalate, often with tragic results. Christmas of 1993 was that second type of Christmas for the family of Latricia Gail White.

In 1990, three friends worked together to create a crack crime fighting team – a group of professionals who brought expertise from all facets of crime fighting. There were detectives, scientists, psychologists, and even a forensic artist. They named their group after Eugene Francois Vidocq, a French criminal turned crimefighter from the 18th century. The Vidocq Society meets once a month for lunch and cold case discussions. Members come from over a dozen states and multiple foreign countries. The founders were inspired to act on this simple premise: someone had to do something to alleviate the suffering that the bad guys (and girls) were causing. Why not them?

 

https://www.vidocq.org/

https://www.theunlovelytruth.com/

The residents of tiny Chadwicks, New York, were enjoying a few pleasantly warm days just before Halloween in 2015. Lots of decorations were on display around the small town, but not at the red brick building that housed the Word of Life Christian Church. But that wasn't unusual since Halloween isn't really a Christian holiday. What was unusual was how unfriendly the church could be. It didn't welcome outsiders at all. Some neighbors whispered that it was a cult, citing the locked gates, the guard dogs, and the strange chanting they often heard as proof of their suspicions. They didn't really know what went on inside. If they had, maybe Lucas Leonard would still be alive. 

 

For information on separating from a harmful belief system, visit daretodoubt.org

 

You can visit my website, theunlovelytruth.com to sign up for my email list to get news on an upcoming product launch which will help support the podcast and help us reach more people!

Most us of have heard the tragic story of Polly Klaas, the 12-year-old girl from Petaluma, California, who was abducted from her home on October 1st, 1993, and killed by Richard Allen Davis. For over 2 months, thousands of people volunteered to search for her. Popular TV shows like 20/20 and America’s Most Wanted featured details about her case. The World Wide Web was truly becoming worldwide by 1993, and two Petaluma residents came to the police telling them that Polly’s missing child poster could be made digital, an innovation in the handling of missing person’s cases that Time magazine would write a story about, titled, “A High-Tech Dragnet”.  The idea would come to save many missing children, but not Polly. In late November, items connected to Polly were discovered by loggers, and a massive search was launched that included personnel from 24 different agencies. It seemed that Polly’s story was being told all over the world. But if you are like me, you probably haven’t heard the equally tragic story of Georgia Lee Moses. She was also 12, also from Petaluma, and was abducted and murdered in 1997. It’s hard to find much information about Georgia at all. Let’s look at the similarities and the differences between the two cases to see if we can find out why.

 

https://medium.com/yawp/the-sad-story-of-tom-waits-georgia-lee-fe7b695de6d

https://www.petaluma360.com/article/entertainment/remembering-the-victim-of-petalumas-sad-unsolved-murder/?sba=AAS

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Body-Found-Could-Be-Missing-Girl-2806971.php

https://www.gofundme.com/f/JusticeForGeorgiaLeeMoses

https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/ca-georgia-moses-12-petaluma-13-aug-1997.142604/

https://www.stitcher.com/show/black-girl-missing/episode/murdered-georgia-lee-moses-68707355

http://pollyklaas.org/

"Georgia Lee" by Tom Waits

Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel Anna Karenina opens with this sentence: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The family from this week’s book, Silent Sisters by Joanne Lee, has to be one of the unhappiest I’ve ever encountered. Bernadette Quirk didn’t seem to enjoy being a mother at all. It seemed as though she would rather drink and read true crime magazines than provide even basic care or affection for Joanne. Bernadette had another child, Cath, when Joanne was 10, and she left nearly all of Cath’s care to Joanne, and again later when she had her son Chris. When Joanne was in her twenties and her siblings in their teens, they all felt sure that their mother was pregnant again. But time passed, and Bernadette didn’t give birth - that anyone knew of. Years later, when Joanne and Cath were helping their mother move, Cath found the corpse of a baby in a closet. Bernadette had suddenly gone from reading true crime stories to potentially starring in one.