And Then They Were Gone

On May 15, 2026, news broke that Gretchen Fleming's remains had been positively identified. That same day, it was also announced that Preston Pierce had been arrested on charges related to her murder. This story is developing, so this week we have a mini update on the charges and what is happening next on the case.

What follows is our original episode on Gretchen Fleming from February 23, 2024.

After dealing with a breakup and the sudden loss of her mother, Gretchen Fleming found herself back in her hometown of Parkersburg, West Virginia. She was staying with family as...

On the night of February 2, 2006, Ali Gilmore came home from a late shift, got into bed, and started reading a prenatal book. She was four months pregnant. Ali had a complicated life: an estranged husband and a boyfriend. Did one of them lure her out of her home that night?

The Tallahassee Police Department has called this the largest case file it has ever accumulated. There have been twenty years of interviews, searches, billboards, and vigils. Yet still no answers.

If you have any information regarding Dwight Aldrige or the case, please call the Tallahassee...

On the night of February 7, 2018, 23-year-old Khadijah Britton was at a friend's house in Covelo, California. Just eight days earlier, she had escaped from her boyfriend's home after he assaulted her, causing serious injuries. Khadijah reported the attack to police, but she was scared of what he would do to her if she followed through. That night, he showed up with a gun. 

Witnesses reported that she was forced into the back of a black Mercedes sedan, and Khadijah Britton was never seen again. Her alleged abductor, Negie Fallis IV, was arrested and charged with attempted murder a...

On the night of March 7, 2021, 41-year-old Sarm Heslop had dinner with her boyfriend on the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands. It was a relaxed evening at a local bar, and afterwards, they took a short dinghy ride back to the 47-foot catamaran they lived on together, and went to bed. But by sunrise, Sarm was gone.

Her phone, wallet and passport were still on the boat, but she was not. And the man who was the last person to see her refused to talk. To this day, Ryan Bane maintains that Sarm must...

In 2015, 19-year-old Kately Akens was visiting her family in Spotsylvania, Virginia and celebrating her new nephew. On December 5, she was supposed to board a flight back home to her fiancee in Arizona, but she never made it to the airport. 

A suspect quickly emerged in her case, but police were never able to find enough evidence to make an arrest. Then, in April 2026, 10 years after she failed to board that plane, The Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office announced that they had arrested Katelin’s ex-stepfather, James Branton. Though Katelin was named as a victim, the arrest wasn’t related...

This episode was originally released in 2022. Update episode can be found right above this one (Released 5/1/26).

In 2015, 19-year-old Katelin Akens was getting ready to start a new life. The teenager fell in love, and left her small Virginia town to move across the country to Arizona with her fiancee. She was living her life and making changes, but when her sister gave birth to a son that December, Katelin immediately flew home to meet her new nephew. The trip was a short one, only about four days. She had a plane ticket back to Arizona on December 5...

On the morning of October 14, 2003, 23-year-old Felipe Santos was heading to work at a concrete and masonry company in North Naples, Florida. He was riding with two of his brothers when his white Ford Tempo collided with another car on Immokalee Road. It was a minor fender-bender, and no one was hurt. What happened next would depend on who you ask. But after that morning, Felipe was never seen again. 

Three months later, on January 12, 2004, 27-year-old Terrance Williams kissed his mother goodbye, handed her some gas money, and said, "I'll see you later, momma." He drove his w...

On the morning of April 15, 2005, a well-respected district attorney in central Pennsylvania took a day off work, climbed into his beloved red Mini Cooper, and called his girlfriend to tell her he was going for a drive. That was the last anyone heard from him.

Ray Gricar had spent twenty years prosecuting murderers and rapists in Centre County, Pennsylvania, and was on the cusp of retirement. What made him leave his house that day, and did he know that he was never coming home? Now, over twenty years later, Ray Gricar remains missing, and the questions just...

Late in the evening of September 13, 2010, 19-year-old Samantha Clarke was dressed in her pajamas and watching TV with her younger brother in their Orange, Virginia home. But after receiving a call, she told her brother she was going out and would be back in the morning. Samantha left her home, and has never been seen again.

Police had few clues to work with, but did zero in on a person of interest almost immediately. However, a lack of evidence made the case go cold. Then, 3 years later, another teenager disappeared just miles away, and police were certain...

On Thursday, September 22, 2022, a 25-year-old woman left her apartment building in Salinas, California. She looked like anyone else going to work that morning. But she wasn’t wearing the right clothes, and she wasn’t leaving at the right time. Arelie Garcia never made it to her job that morning.

Later that same day, her car was found more than an hour away, with her phone, keys, and wallet left behind. When police arrived, there was no indication of anything. Not foul play, not self-harm, and not a voluntary disappearance. Just a car that was miles away from w...

Disappearing is something “all boys do at the age of 16.” That’s what police told Valerie Nettles when she discovered her 16-year-old son, Damien, hadn’t come home the night before. The teenager had been at a party with friends on November 2, 1996, but missed his midnight curfew, and couldn’t be found the next day. The Nettles family was frantic, but police treated Damien as a runaway. 

This early misstep, one that we see so often in missing persons cases, meant that potential witnesses were missed, evidence was lost, and now, nearly thirty years on, no concrete answers hav...

On September 12, 1987, 50-year-old Dale Kerstetter clocked into his overnight security shift at Corning Glassworks in Bradford, Pennsylvania. It was supposed to be an ordinary night at a place he’d worked for years, but by the time morning came, Dale was gone– and so was over $250,000 in platinum. 

Now, almost forty years later, Dale has never been found, and what happened that night remains a subject of debate. Was Dale the victim of a robbery? Was he forced to help? Or, was he involved… and then double-crossed?

If you have information about Dale Kerstetter’s disappear...

Fiona Pender was seven months pregnant and ready for her baby. On August 22, 1996, she went shopping for baby clothes with her mother and brother. It was a period of joy and nesting for the 25-year-old hairdresser and part-time model. According to her partner, John Thompson, Fiona was asleep the next morning when he left for work. He kissed her goodbye, left their flat on Church Street in Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland, and never saw her again. 

When friends and family couldn’t reach Fiona that day or the next, they panicked. There was no reason for Fiona to...

On September 21, 2015, 26-year-old Asha Kreimer was having breakfast with her boyfriend and her childhood friend in Point Arena, California. She got up to use the bathroom, and never returned. Her sudden disappearance would have been strange enough, but it was the culmination of four days of sleepless nights, a refusal to eat, and delusional thoughts.

While many people believed that Asha may have decided to end her own life, her mother, Jeannie, started looking for her daughter and has never stopped. While she hasn’t found Asha after 10 years of searching, strong tips have given her reason to...

“I’m going to be there one day, Mom.” That’s what Joe Pichler told his mom as a child when they were watching The Academy Awards together. While many kids have said something like that, Joe actively worked to make his dreams come true. A role in a local commercial led to gigs in TV and movies, and his star was on the rise. After returning to his hometown of Bremerton, Washington to finish high school, Joe was making plans to return to Hollywood and pick up where he left off. But in the early morning hours of January...

On February 13, 1996, eight-year-old Debbie Sassen left her elementary school in Düsseldorf, Germany after a morning swimming lesson. She was heading home for lunch, but she never arrived. In the span of a 900-meter walk through her quiet neighborhood, Debbie vanished without a trace. 

For the next 30 years, her family was torn apart and left to wonder what happened to the bright, bubbly little girl who everyone loved. While the case has remained unsolved for decades, recent developments mean that we may be closer to answers than ever before.

 If you have any information on Deb...

On December 13, 2009, Steven Koecher disappeared after parking his car in an upscale neighborhood in Henderson, Nevada. Steven had no known associates in Henderson, so no one knew why the 30-year-old drove there that day. Was he there for a meeting? A job? No one in the neighborhood admitted to knowing him, or to having plans to meet with a young man that day.

As the investigation went on, bank records revealed a series of bizarre road trips that Steven had taken in the days leading up to his disappearance; trips that he had told no one he...

On December 13, 2009, security cameras in Henderson, Nevada captured a man parking his white Chevy Cavalier at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Sun City Anthem neighborhood. He stepped out with something tucked under his arm, and walked purposefully down the sidewalk. He never came back. Two days later, the car was still there, but 30-year-old Steven Koecher was nowhere to be found. In the days and weeks that followed, Steven’s family learned of a series of odd, long-distance road trips he had taken in the days before he vanished. 

As they began to investigate, police wer...

When 19-year-old Brittney Wood disappeared on May 30 2012, from Mobile, Alabama, it looked at first like so many stories we’ve heard before: a young woman vanished, and her family launched a desperate search, but there was no trace of her. But almost immediately, it became clear that this case was different. Because Brittney’s disappearance wasn’t the only police investigation into her family. In fact, months before Brittney vanished, detectives had already begun to uncover something far more disturbing than anyone could have imagined.

As her family’s secrets began to come to the surface, detectives had to a...

On May 30, 2012, a 19-year-old single mother from Mobile, Alabama went to visit her uncle and then vanished without a trace. What no one could predict was that Brittney Wood’s disappearance would soon crack open one of the most shocking family secrets in Alabama’s history. As investigators searched for Brittney, a multi-generational child sex abuse ring within her own family was brought to light. Now, more than a decade later, Brittney Wood’s fate remains unknown, even as many of her relatives have been convicted of horrific crimes against children. 

If you have any information regarding the dis...

On March 29, 1989, a young mother met some new friends to go shopping. She had planned on leaving her children with her sister-in-law for the afternoon, but when they arrived, the women told her that she should bring her six-week-old baby, Andre, along. Monique Rivera agreed, and went back inside to get her youngest son. That was the last time Monique and Andre were seen alive. 

While the ensuing investigation uncovered devastating answers, so many more questions remain: who were the two women who came to Monique’s Brookln, New York apartment that day? Was what happened related to...

It was the beginning of the Martin Luther King Junior holiday weekend in Wilmington, North Carolina, and 30-year-old Ebonee Spears was not doing well. Ebonee, who had been diagnosed with Lupus the year before, had seemingly been having negative reactions to her medication. The bright, friendly mother of one was acting disoriented and paranoid. Things got so bad, that her parents contemplated having her involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital.

The next evening, January 15, 2016, Ebonee told her parents she wasn’t coming over for a planned dinner. That night, when her boyfriend arrived at her home, Ebonee wa...

Every parent has done it. We’re out with our kids having a good time, and keeping an eye on them. We turn our heads for a second to order food or answer a question. We turn around, and our kids are still there, enjoying themselves. But deep down, we all have the same fear: we’ll look back and our child will be gone. On January 23, 1999, Theresa English lived every parent’s worst nightmare. That evening, she was with a dozen family members at a bowling alley, and her two-year-old daughter, Teekah Lewis was happily playing a car racing...

On a crisp winter day in 1910, a 25-year-old New York socialite left her family’s Upper East Side home to buy a new evening gown, and vanished without a trace. Over a century later, Dorothy Arnold’s disappearance remains one of New York’s greatest unsolved mysteries and its oldest missing persons case. Over the decades, there have been many theories about Dorothy’s fate; everything from secret elopements and amnesia to botched surgeries and buried bodies. But despite widespread publicity, Dorothy has never been found. Did something tragic happen to her on that cold December day, or did Dorothy...

When someone goes missing, time doesn’t stop — but the world often moves on. For families, every day without answers becomes a kind of waiting room, where hope and grief exist side by side. We’ve covered hundreds of cases on this podcast, and we try to offer follow ups whenever we can, because the person’s story doesn’t end when our episode does. This week, we’re revisiting four cases that we’ve previously covered: Chance Englebert, Mary Johnson, Sage Smith, and Trudy Appleby, because in 2025, each of these cases saw significant developments. Some brought long-awaited answers, while others b...

On this day in 1988, 34-year-old Joan Yarbrough Bernal was supposed to be hitting the road with her husband and children for a holiday trip from Joliet, Illinois, to Texas. Instead, she vanished without a trace—and was never seen again.

Her husband, Gilbert “Gil” Bernal, has long claimed that Joan walked away from her life during the road trip. But Joan’s children and investigators believe the truth is much darker—and that Joan may never have made it out of Joliet.

In this episode, we trace Joan’s story: her life as a devoted mother of fi...

On December 11, 1994, 4-year-old D’Wan Sims, went with his mother Dwanna Harris to do some Christmas shopping at the Wonderland Mall in Livonia, Michigan. According to Dwanna, they arrived around 1:45 PM and entered through the Target store at the mall. D’Wan followed his mother around the mall until one horrible moment when Dwanna realized her son was no longer by her side.

A massive search ensued, but there was no sign of the little boy. As the investigation intensified, Livonia police began to wonder, “was D’Wan ever at the mall in the first place?” Now, over thirt...

In this special episode of 'And Then They Were Gone', Kona and Ethan return to a case they’ve been following for years, the disappearance and murder of Shane Donahue, to break down everything that unfolded inside the courtroom during the trial of Tim Hickerson.

Kona attended the trial in person, witnessing each day of testimony, every witness, and the prosecution’s strategy as they laid out their case against the man accused of taking Shane’s life. This episode walks listeners through how prosecutors presented their evidence, how witnesses held up under cross-examination, and what key moment...

On Thanksgiving Day 2010, three brothers—Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner Skelton—vanished from their father’s home in Morenci, Michigan. For nearly 15 years, their disappearance remained unsolved.

In 2025, just days before John Skelton was set to be released from prison, he was charged with their murders. This episode explores the heartbreaking timeline, the false leads, and the long-awaited charges in a case that gripped a community for over a decade.

Subscribe to Day by Day: True Crime Stories

Buy the ebook! - And Then They Were Gone: True Stories of Those Who Went Missing and Nev...

On November 24, 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper boarded a flight from Portland to Seattle, handed a flight attendant a note claiming he had a bomb, and calmly hijacked the plane. After collecting a $200,000 ransom and four parachutes, he jumped from the Boeing 727 into the night sky—and was never seen again.

Known to the public as D.B. Cooper due to a media error, his identity remains a mystery. In this episode, we walk through the timeline of the hijacking, the FBI’s decades-long investigation, and the clues that continue to puzzle investigators and amateur sleuths...

On October 30, 2025, Fruitland Police arrested Stacey Wondra in connection with the disappearance of Michael Joseph “Monkey” Vaughan, who vanished from his Idaho neighborhood on July 27, 2021.

In this episode, we break down the major developments in the case, including a detailed look at the probable cause affidavits for both Sarah and Stacey Wondra. We discuss what investigators now believe happened the day Michael disappeared, how the evidence has evolved, and what this new arrest could mean for Michael’s family and the ongoing search for answers.

Subscribe to Day by Day: True Crime Stories

Buy th...

This episode originally aired on November 20, 2022

On July 27, 2021, 5-year-old Michael Vaughan’s father went to go check on Michael’s younger sister and order a pizza. He was out of the room for 15 or 20 minutes, but when he came back, his little boy was gone. Police in Fruitland, Idaho, along with other agencies, launched a massive search, but no trace of the boy was found. Over a year and a half went by, until seemingly out of nowhere an arrest was made. Who was arrested, and what does this person have to say about what happened to Mich...

Eighteen-year-old model and actress Tammy Lynn Leppert walked away from a car near Cocoa Beach’s Glass Bank on July 6, 1983—and vanished. Weeks earlier, the once-outgoing pageant star told family she’d “seen something awful” and feared someone was going to kill her. In this episode, we trace her life and rising career, the sudden shift to paranoia, the last confirmed moments at the beach, the investigative missteps, and the leading theories that have shadowed this case for more than four decades.

If you have information about the July 6, 1983 disappearance of Tammy Lynn Leppert (Rockledge/Cocoa Beach, FL):

In the days following the 1980 presidential election, 44-year-old political fundraiser Nancy Marleine Snow returned home to Maryland — and vanished.

A multilingual world traveler and political professional, Nancy had spent the fall working on a Senate campaign in St. Louis. On November 4, she flew to Baltimore, attended an election party, and the next morning, was picked up by a man she trusted — her housesitter, Paul T. Collins III. That was the last confirmed time she was seen alive.

Days later, Collins told police that Nancy had met a mysterious man called “Captain Jay,” who offered her a job crewin...

Please enjoy this Halloween Special brought to you at the stroke of midnight by the Podcasts of The Darkcast Network:

Rainbow Crimes, The Final Trace, Missing in the PNW, The Book of the Dead, Mountain Murders, Mythical True Crime, Pod of Terror, Famous Last Words, Murder in the PNW, Day By Day: True Crime Stories, A Hateful Homicide, Rogue Darkness, Tragedy With A View and The Bell Witch Podcast.

Happy Halloween!

Subscribe to Day by Day: True Crime Stories

Buy the ebook! - And Then They Were Gone: True Stories of T...

On August 13, 2012, 36-year-old Leyla Mastova McCullagh was at her Leesburg, Virginia home with her four-year-old son. But after that, she vanished. In the days that followed, her phone went silent and her credit cards and bank account showed no activity. Friends and coworkers grew alarmed when Leyla didn’t show up for work and failed to contact anyone. The devoted mother had simply gone quiet– something those close to her insisted would never happen voluntarily.

They reported her missing multiple times to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, desperate to get authorities involved. But what started as a miss...

We’ve all heard of people who have used children as pawns in a divorce. Maybe they’re fighting on visitation or child support payments because they don’t want to give their soon-to-be ex what they want. But in some extreme cases, the animosity and need for control can be destructive. Charles Vosseler needed to be in charge. He needed to decide where his two sons, 3-year-old CJ, and 2-year-old Billy, were at all times. So when it was clear that his marriage to his wife, Ruth, wasn’t working out, Charles hatched a plan.

On October...

In this bonus episode, we're not talking about a missing person. Instead, Ethan and Kona are sitting down to discuss how she got arrested in front of their house on June 11, 2025. What started off as an evening at home with family turned into her getting thrown into the back of a cop car, two court dates, and a formal complaint against a Loudoun County Sheriff's Deputy.

You'll hear the whole story, including how the Sheriff's Office may be using a county statute in order to intimidate members of the community who have interactions with their deputies. This...

On August 7, 1988, Chicago sportswriter turned aspiring novelist Keith Reinhard locked up his antique shop and set out for the same mountain he’d spent the summer writing about. Keith told friends he’d be back by nightfall… but he never returned. What’s even more chilling, was that he wasn’t the first person to disappear from the small mining town of Silver Plume, Colorado. Just under a year earlier, a bookstore owner named Tom Young had similarly locked up his store and set off, only to seemingly vanish into thin air.

Two vanishings, one old mining town. What...

This episode explores the unsolved disappearance of Walther Reinhard, a retired Marine who went missing in Yosemite National Park in 2002. Despite extensive search efforts, no trace of him was ever found, leaving a haunting mystery for his family and the authorities.

Subscribe to Day by Day: True Crime Stories

Buy the ebook! - And Then They Were Gone: True Stories of Those Who Went Missing and Never Came Home

Submit a case

Find us everywhere

Get episodes early and ad-free on Patreon

Merch store