She Goes by Jane: A True Crime Podcast

On October 26, 1944, Gertrude "Tommy" Tompkins Silver took off from Mines Field in Los Angeles in a P-51 Mustang on what should have been a routine ferry flight. She never arrived. Gertrude was one of the pioneering Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), the civilian women who flew military aircraft during World War II so male pilots could be sent overseas. She was also the only WASP to disappear...

On May 26, 1970, twenty-six-year-old Ilonka Cann vanished from the rural Pennsylvania farmhouse she shared with her husband and fifteen-month-old son. The day before, she had spoken with her parents in Ohio and talked about coming home for a visit that summer. She never made that trip. In the weeks and months that followed, investigators searched fields, ponds, and woodlots surrounding the isolate...

On November 2, 1945, fourteen-year-old Thora Chamberlain left school in Campbell, California, expecting to attend a football game that evening. Her friends saved her a seat. Thora never arrived. Witnesses later reported seeing her speaking with a man dressed as a serviceman before getting into his vehicle. Within weeks, investigators focused on Thomas McMonigle, a local laborer with a history of v...

Most people assume that unidentified persons' cases are actively investigated, that somewhere, someone is still working to restore a name to the dead. But the reality is often far more complicated. This week, She Goes by Jane presents a special interview with author and former FBI agent Katherine Schweit about her new book, Women Who Talk to the Dead: The True Story of 200 Forgotten Murder Victims...

In January 1967, Lois Williams and her 17-year-old daughter Karen disappeared from their apartment on East 21st Street in Indianapolis, Indiana. Inside, everything appeared untouched: coats hanging in the closet, a lamp left burning, and Karen’s schoolbook still open where she had been studying the night before. Neither woman was ever seen again. Years later, investigators would begin to suspect l...

In June 1975, investigators followed serial killer Richard Marquette into the woods near Oregon’s Clackamas River. There, buried beneath the soil of a popular campground, they uncovered the remains of an unidentified woman—a victim Marquette reportedly claimed no one would ever look for. More than fifty years later, she is still known only as Clackamas County Jane Doe. In this episode, we examine...

Patricia Weeks, Cynthia Jabour, and Carol Ann Riley disappeared years apart after ending relationships with the same man: Robert Weeks, whose case would later be featured on Unsolved Mysteries. In 1979, Patricia Weeks vanished from Las Vegas shortly after divorcing Robert Weeks and gaining custody of their four children. More than a decade later, Arizona real estate agent Cynthia Jabour disappeare...

When Toni Bachman disappeared from White Bear Township, Minnesota in April 1997, investigators initially faced uncertainty. Some believed she may have left on her own. But as police searched the family home, disturbing evidence began to emerge—evidence that challenged the idea that Toni had simply walked away. In Part 2 of this two-part series, we follow the investigation into Toni Bachman’s disap...

In 1997, as the internet connected strangers across state lines, Minnesota-native Toni Bachman formed a close bond with a man in West Virginia. Friends say she was thinking seriously about change. About leaving. About building a future that looked different from the life she had. Then she disappeared. At first, there were questions no one could answer. Did Toni leave her marriage behind? Did she r...

An unidentified woman found living in Honolulu in 2004 remains without a name—exploring the rare and overlooked reality of living Jane Doe cases in the U.S. In 2004, an unidentified woman was found living in a beach park in Honolulu, Hawaii—alive, but unable to say who she was. Known as the Honolulu Jane Doe, she was diagnosed with dementia and schizophrenia, leaving her without a name, a history,...

If you grew up in the 1980s, you may have seen Tammy Lynn Leppert without ever knowing her name. A model, aspiring actress, and rising presence in Hollywood, Tammy appeared in films like Scarface and Spring Break . With her striking look and growing momentum, 1983 was supposed to be the year everything changed. Instead, it became the year she disappeared. On July 6, 1983, Tammy left her home, tell...

In this update episode, we return to the Texas Killing Fields—specifically the 25-acre stretch of land off Calder Road in League City, Texas, where four women were found murdered over the course of years: Heide Fye, Laura Miller, Audrey Cook, and Donna Prudhomme. For decades, their cases remained unsolved. Investigators pursued multiple leads and named several persons of interest, but one name con...

In 1978, a series of disappearances and murders terrified Morgan City, Louisiana.  Sixteen-year-old Mary Rodermund vanished after leaving home to run a simple errand. Hours later, her parents received a phone call—it was her kidnapper. He forced Mary onto the phone, where she told her parents she was okay.  It would be the last time anyone ever heard from her. Weeks later, nineteen-year-old Bridge...

In June 1975, 20-year-old Leslee Larson disappeared while mushroom hunting with her husband near Little Prickly Pear Creek in Wolf Creek, Montana. He told investigators she slipped into the swollen water and drowned—a tragic accident in a fast-moving river. But from the beginning, there were questions. Years later, after his third wife died in another supposed accident while hiking along the cliff...

On August 16, 1983, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Miller left her home in Idaho Springs for a routine morning jog. It was something she did often—a way to stay in shape for basketball, a moment of independence in a small mountain community. But that morning, Elizabeth never came home. Witnesses reported seeing Elizabeth speaking with a man in a pickup truck. Days earlier, a man matching that descrip...

On June 14, 1985, Charlotte Lysdale, a widow living in Pine River, Minnesota, drove to her former home on Lower Hay Lake to meet the man buying the property from her. She was last seen arriving between 6:10 and 6:20 p.m. The buyer, Jerome Bye, later said he paid Lysdale thousands of dollars during the meeting and that she handed over the deed to the property. He told investigators she left a coupl...

In July 1980, the body of a young pregnant woman was discovered in the parking lot of Westlake High School in Westlake, California. She had been brutally raped, strangled, and stabbed. Investigators quickly realized she had been killed somewhere else and left behind—but they had no idea who she was. For decades, she was known only as Ventura County Jane Doe. In 2015, DNA evidence linked her murder...

In February 2022, 32-year-old Irene Gakwa vanished from Gillette, Wyoming. A nursing student who had moved from Kenya to pursue her dreams, Irene was deeply connected to her family—speaking with them almost every day. Then the calls suddenly stopped. Strange text messages appeared, written in a way that didn’t sound like her. Her accounts were deleted. Her phone was deactivated. She was never hear...

It’s 1946. Twenty-four year old Lola Celli is visiting her parents in Grandview Heights, Ohio when she decides to take a bus into Columbus to buy some nylons. But her neighbors don’t report seeing her on the morning bus nor is there any record of her making a purchase at the store she planned to visit. Is it possible that something happened to Lola in the two blocks between her parents’ home and t...

When 32-year-old Yeda “Dede” Rosenthal failed to show up for work in February 1991, her coworkers immediately knew something was wrong. Dede was a dedicated behavioral management specialist at the Elwyn Institute, known for her commitment to supporting autistic clients. A welfare check at her Cherry Hill, New Jersey apartment revealed troubling signs: an unlocked door, untouched newspapers, person...

On Valentine’s Day in 1991, a young woman is seen hitchhiking along US 1 in the Florida Keys. The next morning, a pair of windsurfers find her body in a densely wooded area. She’d been beaten to death before being strangled with her own bikini top. For years this young woman was known only as Valentine Doe, named for the last day she was seen alive. But investigators never give up on her case, uti...

On the night of April 1–2, 2018, Camisha Hollis vanished from her Omaha home after a violent argument with her longtime partner, Marvin L. Young III. Her three daughters woke the next morning to find their mother gone, her car and phone missing, and the house silent but for troubling signs of what had occurred. Investigators discovered blood at the home, spent shell casings, and evidence of forced...

The 1983 disappearance of Ann Gotlib, a 12-year-old girl who vanished from outside a Louisville, Kentucky mall, has long been considered one of the city’s most troubling cold cases. In Part 2, the focus shifts from the search for Ann to the investigative failures that may have prevented her case from ever being solved. Years after Ann disappeared, a new confession surfaces in a Kentucky prison yar...

In June 1983, 12-year-old Ann Gotlib vanished from outside Bashford Manor Mall in Louisville, Kentucky. Ann was a gifted pianist, writer, and recent immigrant whose family had fled the Soviet Union seeking a better life for her. What should have been an ordinary afternoon ended in one of Kentucky’s most haunting unsolved missing child cases. As Ann’s disappearance gripped the city, her case became...

Fourteen-year-old Coral Hall made one last desperate call to a friend from a pay phone in Flint, Michigan on September 22, 1998—the day after her birthday. Just hours earlier, she had gone to the state Department of Human Services to report the abuse happening at home. But by the time help arrived, Coral was gone. For years, police believed she was a runaway. But beneath the surface was a history...