The Deck

Our card this week is Jonathan Garcia-Valladares, the 7 of Diamonds from Arizona. Being a 13-year-old kid can be tough, to say the least. But it seemed as if Jonathan Garcia-Valladares had it figured out. He was an overachieving student. He was a chess player. And on a crisp fall day in 2010, Jonathan was trying to get in shape for the football team, a sport he’d just joined. But on that day, his...

Our card this week is Robert Gene Jones, the 10 of Diamonds from Louisiana.  Robert was known as a quiet man who stayed out of trouble, so when he was found shot to death in his home one morning in the winter of 2002, police were initially stumped when it came to both motive and culprit. That might’ve been because Robert was never the intended target in what’s now become a mystery that investigato...

Maurice – or Melissa, as they sometimes introduced themselves – was 22 when they were shot and killed in Phoenix, Arizona. They were just starting to build a name for themselves as a performer, making it to the regional final for American Idol and acting in dozens of local productions, including The Wiz, Westside Story, and Alice in Wonderland. But the curtain fell too soon… According to friends a...

Our card this week is Roger "Unkle Rog" McCall, the 2 of Spades from New York.  If you lived in the Rochester area back in the day, you might recognize the smooth voice of “Unkle Rog.” As a late-night radio host and DJ at WCMF for almost 30 years, perhaps he kept you company past midnight, maybe helped you stay awake during a third shift. By 52, Roger had already survived a terminal cancer diagnos...

Our card this week is Blanca Acevedo, the 7 of Clubs from Arizona.  In June 2010, 50-year-old Blanca Acevedo was navigating a life of quiet chaos when she was found murdered in a building set aflame. The brutal case of overkill quickly went cold for the detectives on the case… But could a letter found on Blanca’s bedside table have held the key to finding her killer all along? It’s one of several...

Our card this week is Luther Meshell, the 9 of Hearts from Louisiana.  On a mild spring night in 1991, Luther’s teenage son found him lying dead on his bedroom floor next to his overturned wheelchair and a knife. With a locked door and no signs of forced entry, police believe his killer could have been someone he knew and trusted… but when they zoom out, investigators notice a series of other crim...

Our card this week is Carmen "CJ" DeLuca, the Wild Card from Connecticut.  When a man stopped to get gas in the middle of the night in 1985, he had no idea he was walking into the scene of a murder. The 23-year-old gas station attendant, Carmen “CJ” DeLuca, had been shot to death for seemingly no reason. But with no witnesses and no clear motive, police had no idea who killed him. He was a good gu...

Our cards this week are Michael Adams, Lachelle Powell, Michael Royal, and Jennifer Leasure, the 9, 10, Jack, and Queen of Hearts from New York.  In the dead of winter, a fire consumed a home in Rochester, New York — but what firefighters discovered inside wasn’t an accident. Four bodies, bound, shot, and left in a scene so brutal it stunned even experienced detectives. Nearly a decade later, with...

Our card this week is Sharon Glover, the 6 of Spades from Louisiana.  Early on November 14, 1993, just two weeks before Thanksgiving, Sharon Glover was found viciously stabbed to death on a rural backroad in northwest Louisiana. Rumors led Sharon’s family to believe the killer was someone close to them. But detectives are now releasing new information in this case for the first time, and they beli...

Our card this week is George Jares, the 6 of Clubs from Wisconsin.  From the outside, 43-year-old George was a family man: a former greeting card salesman turned restaurant owner who loved his kids, the outdoors, and working hard. But after George was shot three times and left for dead in his restaurant’s parking lot, details of his life began to emerge that painted a rather different picture... A...

Our card this week is Owachige Osceola, the 8 of Diamonds from Oklahoma. Recently divorced and living on her own in a new city, 27-year-old Owachige Osceola’s life was in a season of transition before she was killed in the bedroom of her Norman, Oklahoma apartment in September 2013. While the medical examiner who performed her autopsy concluded her cause and manner of death were “undetermined,” a...

Our card this week is Sandra Ann Burris, the 5 of Spades from Louisiana.  On a hot summer night in 2005, Sandra Burris and her best friend went clubbing in their small Louisiana town. The night started out like any other, but the friends went separate ways later in the evening, and sometime after that, Sandra vanished—and there’s been no trace of her since.  As the 20th anniversary of Sandra’s dis...

Our card this week is Marjorie "Christy" Luna, the 4 of Spades from Florida. From the outside, Greenacres seemed like a picture-perfect place to grow up, with a park, school, and corner store stocked with sugary sweets and arcade games all within walking distance. For Christy Luna and her friends, weekends were spent roaming the neighborhood and playing outside barefoot. But this storybook communi...

Our card this week is Lisa Staes, the Jack of Diamonds from Wisconsin.  In the winter of 1976, Lisa Staes was trying to figure out what exactly she wanted to do with her life. Like so many 20-year-olds, she’d just moved out of her parents’ house and started classes at a community college. She was embracing her independence as a young adult.  But no one ever got to see how Lisa’s life would unfold....

Our card this week is Donna Martin, the 8 of Hearts from Florida.  Donna Martin was stabbed and killed in her own home in south Florida back in 1999. And police believed that the man who may have killed her was the very same man who had turned Boca Raton into a hunting ground. But police have been unable to pin Donna’s murder on him. That suspect even went to prison for other crimes, but now he’s...

Our card this week is Robert "Bob" Christian, the 4 of Spades from Wisconsin.  In the Fall of 1977, Bob was just weeks into his freshman year at UW-Madison. He was a math whiz with a knack for computers and a big heart. At 18-years-old, there was no telling how far he’d go. But no one ever expected to be asking the question… Where did he go? Yet here we are almost half a century later, with that b...

Our card this week is Gwendell Greenblatt, the 6 of Diamonds from Florida. If you’ve ever been alone and felt like you might be in trouble, maybe you called someone… made it known you were on the phone… made it clear someone else was listening. But chatting on her cell while walking up to her apartment in sunny South Florida during broad daylight, Gwen couldn’t have sensed her life was in danger....

Our card this week is Kyle Seidel, the 5 of Diamonds from Connecticut.  Kyle Seidel was a 34-year-old dad to three young kids when he went to pick up Chinese takeout the Friday night before Christmas in 2012. His wife expected him to be gone for only about 20 minutes… but Kyle never came home again. A violent encounter on his way to the restaurant cut his life short. For 12 years, Kyle’s family ha...

Our card this week is George Kirkland, Asia Norman, and Lindsay Foster Hurr, the 2 of Clubs from Mississippi. When George, Asia, and Lindsay were all fatally shot in the same house on a stormy Mississippi night in 2019, nobody in the area heard or saw anything. But in the days after the attack, rumors and conspiracy theories went wild. And more than five years later… detectives are still working t...

Our card this week is Sharon Jones, the 10 of Spades from Florida.  The last known people to see Sharon Jones alive around Thanksgiving weekend in 1987 have something in common. They all attended the same apartment party. And when the young woman showed up dead several days later…stories started swirling about what actually went down that night. More than 37 years later, her family’s still hearing...

Our card this week is Dashaun “Dae Dae” Lawson, the King of Hearts from Connecticut. Dashaun “Dae Dae” Lawson was 26-years-old when he was fatally shot outside his mother’s apartment in the Hockanum Park apartment complex in East Hartford, Connecticut. Dae Dae was killed  just a few days before Christmas in 2017 and  left behind three children, all under the age of five. His family and the detecti...

Our card this week is Susan "Susie" Poupart, the 7 of Spades from Wisconsin.  When 29-year-old Susie went to a house party on her reservation, surrounded by friends and so close to home, she should’ve been safe. But when the mother of two left the party in a car with some younger men, things took a turn for the worse.  Susie never made it home, and six months later, her remains were found in a nea...

Our card this week is Tessie Temores, the 10 if Diamonds from Mississippi.  When 37-year-old Tessie went more than a month without contacting any of her six children, her mom had a sinking feeling that something was wrong. Her loved ones never thought over five years would go by without hearing from her. But here they are ... still in the same stagnant spot. Still wondering what really happened......

Our card this week is Carole Clement, the Ace of Hearts from Florida.  When a beloved mother and grandmother is found stabbed to death inside her own home in an affluent seaside community, detectives are immediately suspicious of her soon-to-be ex-husband. But when his alibi seemed to check out, they were compelled to look at less obvious alternatives. Was this a murder-for-hire plot, or could the...

Our card this week is Jefferson "Jeff" West, the King of Diamonds from Mississippi.  On July 2nd 2018, Jeff West, a 46-year-old father of four, got into an argument with his mom in the backyard of her house. In the heat of the moment, he apparently stormed off into the woods surrounding her property… and has never been seen again.  If you know anything about the mysterious disappearance of Jeff We...