In February 2019, a young couple from the Cincinnati, Ohio area left their baby with his grandparents and made the two-and-a-half-hour drive up to Central Ohio to spend the night at the Hilton Hotel at Easton Town Center, a luxury shopping mall in Columbus. They were Tyler Davis and his wife, Brittany, whose birthday was the next day. But what started out as a fun evening with another local friend, turned into a nightmare. Around 3 am, after they were all dropped off at their hotel, Tyler became confused and a little belligerent, and wandered off in a drunken stupor...and seemingly vanished into thin air. He was never seen or heard from again...In July of 2003, an alleged drug deal was going down in an apartment in Columbus, adjacent to The Ohio State University's main campus. A man by the name of Vernon Spence visited the apartment of Aaron Grexa, a soon-to-be OSU student, hoping to buy marijuana. Spence decided he didn't like the quality of the weed and left. But one night later, he returned, with two other men and forced his way inside the apartment. Their intent was robbery: weed, pills, cash...but Spence's intentions went horribly awry. The next day, a third roommate returned from a night away and encountered the gruesome sight. Three innocent, young people, two roommates and a girlfriend, who was a student at OSU, murdered in cold blood. This is the disappearance of Tyler Davis and the murders of Aaron Grexa, Eric Hlass and Kayla Hurst. Show Notes: https://www.wnewsj.com/news/188391/clinton-county-man-missing-nearly-3-years-declared-deceased-by-courthttps://open.spotify.com/episode/5P0nf2barp7gmKuaPAHA9ghttps://www.thelantern.com/2005/05/murder-of-osu-shooting-victim-still-hard-on-family/https://casetext.com/case/state-v-spence-9Smells Like HumansLike spending time with funny friends talking about curious human behavior. Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Barbara Cotton was born on November 10th, 1965 in Tayoga, North Dakota. She had 9 brothers and sisters and a hard life. Her family was poor and her father abused many family members. When her mother finally divorced her father in 1973, she took Barb and two siblings and moved to Williston, North Dakota. There, Barb went to High School, partied some, had a bussing job at a local restaurant, The Country Kitchen, and saved money for a place of her own.

But on the night of April 11th, 1981, Barb disappeared. She was last seen by her mother when she visited her place of work with a 21-year-old male friend named Stacy Wardner. Stacy was the last person to see Barb that night as she walked three blocks toward home. But no body was ever found, and the investgation would lead authorities down a winding path, with plenty of suspects, one of them being Barb's own brother.

Show Notes:

https://wondery.com/shows/the-vanished-podcast/episode/5623-barbara-cotton-part-1-a-lost-girl/

After the sudden and tragic death of his wife, Margaret in 2006, Ireland native Jason Corbett needed a nanny for his two children, Jack, 3 and Sarah, 12 weeks. Along came Molly Martens, a Montessori school teacher from the United States. Molly had a bubbly personality and was great with kids, so, soon, she was hired and the Corbett's started to heal.

But Molly was not who they thought she was. She had mental issues, and had been committed to a psychiatric hospital on more than one occasion. Despite all of this, Jason and Molly married in Tennessee in 2010. They then moved to North Carolina in the states. Everything wasn't great, but at least they were a functioning family. Until August of 2015 when Molly's mom and dad showed up for a visit, unannounced. By the wee hours of the next morning, Jason Corbett was dead, killed at the hands of Molly Martens and her father, Tom.

Show Notes:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/my-brother-jason-tracey-corbett-lynch/1128593449

When Florida native Jake Nolan was 14 years old, he started showing signs of mental illness and depression. By the age of 17, he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and had tried to kill himself. Because of this, his mother sent him to live with his second cousin, Dr. Pamela Buchbinder, in New York City. Pamela was a psychiatrist, could help Jake, prescribe him medicine, and, in turn, Jake would help out with Pamela's son, four-year-old Caulder.

Everything was going well until November of 2012, when Pamela became obsessed with the idea of having her son's father, Dr. Michael Weiss, another psychiatrist, killed. Pamela manipulated and groomed Jake until Jake was ready to kill for her. So on November 12, Pamela outfitted Jake with some fake school forms to sign, a hand-drawn map, a sledgehammer and a knife and ordered him to go torture and kill her ex-boyfriend. What came next, no one saw coming.

Show Notes:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6411610/

In January of 1998, a 911 dispatcher in Las Cruces, New Mexico, received a call from a student at nearby New Mexico State University. The student was calling to say that she had not seen her roommate, Carly Martinez in over a day. The night before Carly had gone out with a man named Jesse Avalos to a roller skating rink and was later joined by Avalos' friend Jason Desnoyer. The three had left the roller skating rink together, and Carly disappeared. It took police over two months to find Carly's body, and by then, the two men had been arrested and charged with her murder.

On August 31st, 2003, a couple out doing target practice shooting in the desert near Las Cruces, came upon the horrifying sight of a woman who was half naked, face down and deceased. Her killer had tried to burn her body, but had been unsuccessful. The body was that of Katie Sepich, a New Mexico State University grad student. Police first looked at her boyfriend, but he was ruled out. It would take years before they were able to bring her killer to justice, after a manhunt that spanned multiple crimes and took investigators thousands of miles away, and all the way up to the Great State of Wisconsin.

Show Notes:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1248040/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11673738/

February 13, 2001 started out like any other day for the Viola family. Patricia Viola got her two kids ready for school, and her husband, Jim, went to work. At around 8:30 am, Patricia set off on foot for her volunteer librarian position at the local school. Patricia, who went by Pat, had lost her license for a few months because of a seizure disorder that had flared up. At around 9 am, the burglar alarm was tripped at the house. Police came and checked the windows and doors and nothing seemed amiss. The alarm company shut it off.

Patricia Viola returned home at 11:40, waved to a mailman and called her mother. At 1:11 pm, she reset the alarm and left...and was never heard from or seen again. A years-long search ensued with no leads, save for a cryptic message she told her best friend the night before. Could she have met with foul play or hurt herself somehow? Did she disappear on purpose? Where had Patricia gone and how had she seemingly vanished into thin air?

Show Notes:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2083494/

On January 19th of 2001, a man named Andrew Patti was relaxing in his vacation home in Vermont, just over the New Hampshire border, a little past 10 pm, with his son, Andy when he heard a knock on the door. Before him stood two teenage boys who asked if they could come inside and use the phone, since their car needed a jump. Sensing something was off, Andrew said no, but that he would call someone for them and shut the door. When he went upstairs, he grabbed the phone, and, smartly, his gun. It was then that he realized the boys had cut his phone lines. Not wanting to go back outside, he held his son and his gun until the wee morning hours when the boys finally left.

The boys were Robert Tulloch, 17, and Jim Parker, 16, from Chelsea, New Hampshire. The boys were misfits who decided to leave town and start careers as assasins in Australia. To do so, they needed $10,000. To get the money, they decided they needed to rob houses in which wealthy inhabitants lived. They also wanted to kill said inhabitants, simply for the thrill of it. Their plan failed with Andrew Patti, so they tried the house of well-liked and renowned German professors at Dartmouth, Half and Suzanne Zantop. And on the morning of Saturday, January 27t, 2001, they put their devastating and murderous plan into action.

Show Notes:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/604620.Judgment_Ridge

Brookey Lee West was born in June of 1953 to LeRoy and Christine Smith. Her parents were drug addicts and frequently left her and her younger brother, Travis, alone at home for days on end with no food to eat. When Brookey was seven years old, her mother attempted to kill an ex-boyfriend in a fit of rage with a shotgun at a bar, and subsequently went to prison. Brookey graduated High School and enrolled in the army, but, as soon as Christine was released, moved in once again with her mother.

The mother and daughter duo shoplifted and attended AA meetings meant for Indigenous people in order to meet men. Brookey did and met a man named Howard Simon St. John. Not long after that, Brookey kicked her mother out, and Howard moved in. But their relationship with rife with fighting and substance abuse. She and he also committed insurance fraud together. But, it wasn't until 1994, when both Howard and Christine Smith ended up dead, that anyone would come to know just how criminal and evil Brookey Lee West really was.

Show Notes:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20386870/

In 2012, Dave Kroupa was just a normal guy living in Omaha, Nebraska. Dave was recently single, after breaking up with the mother of his two children, and was casually dating on the online dating forum, Plenty of Fish. It was on there that he met Liz Golyar. Liz and Dave dated for awhile, until Dave found someone he was more interested in; a woman named Cari Farver.
Cari was twice divorced, had a son and worked as a computer programmer at West Corporation. But after she and Dave had only dated for about three weeks, Liz Golyar inserted herself back into Dave's life. And then, on November 7th, 2012, Cari Farver disappeared from Dave's apartment after spending the night.
What would follow for the next months and years was an absolutely insane tale of Liz Golyar's catfishing, manipulation, jealousy and rage, ultimately resulting in the fact that Cari Farver was dead, and had been murdered in cold blood.

Show Notes:


https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Web-Cyberstalker-Obsession-Twisting/dp/0806539976

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7466836/

On Monday, July 8th, 2013, a man named Cameron Frederickson was concerned. His usually reliable and on-time employee, 25-year-old Cody Johnson had not shown up to work that day. Frederickson went to Johnson's house in Kalispbell, Montana, and let himself into his garage. There, he found his friend's cell phone lying on a table, which was also out of the ordinary.
Cody Johnson had just gotten married one week before, at the end of June. His bride was Jordan Johnson and Cody's friends and family were not big fans of hers. A search ensued for Cody, and Jordan led police and searchgoers up to the hiking cliffs where Cody never would have gone because of his fear of heights. But there he was, lying dead at the bottom of the highest cliff. Clearly, Jordan was their primary suspect, but why would this young and very Christian newly-married woman kill her husband?

Show Notes:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10337328/