And Then They Were Gone

Asha Degree was a bright, talented, happy 9-year-old living with her parents and brother in Shelby, North Carolina. She was an excellent student and the star of her basketball team. Surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, there was no shortage of love in Asha’s life. But in the early morning hours of February 14, 2000, Asha took her backpack that she had packed with several changes of clothes and slipped out of her house.

Several motorists later reported seeing her walking alone in a rainstorm at around 4 am. Where was Asha Degree going? What or who made her le...

On January 29, 1992, Byron Page was getting ready to go to college and take his driver’s exam. He had already been accepted into several schools, with more acceptance letters on the way. That afternoon, the 17-year-old decided to take the bus to his favorite movie and music store in West Hollywood, California. He never made it.

Despite being a promising student with no issues in his personal life, Byron’s case garnered very little attention in a city transfixed by the Rodney King trial. After a short investigation, police believed that he had met with foul play, but his...

Today’s story is one about intimate partner violence. According to her family, friends, and police and court records, Mamta Kafle’s husband, Naresh Bhatt, was abusing her. He hid her documents, destroyed her phone, threatened to give their baby to social services, and physically abused her. Throughout it all, Mamta remained a kind, caring friend and a mother whose baby was her entire world. But then, sometime between July 29 and July 30, 2024, she disappeared. Now, her husband is sitting in jail awaiting trial on the charge of concealing a dead body. We first covered Mamta’s case, which is local to us...

On November 20, 1987, Louis and Susan Zaharias had an argument. By this point, fights weren’t uncommon for the couple, who had been married for six years. Susan was a stay-at-home mom with two small children who was feeling isolated while her husband worked long hours far away. But this day was different. Susan was acting paranoid, and not like herself. After a violent altercation, Louis left the home to give his wife some space. When he returned a few hours later, she and their children were gone.

What began that day was a journey that has completely changed th...

On August 2, 2024, Manassas Park Police visited the Virginia home that Mamta Kafle shared with her husband, Naresh Bhatt. They were there to perform a welfare check because Mamta didn’t show up to work at UVA Health Prince William Medical Center on August 1, and her colleagues were concerned.

Naresh allegedly told police that Mamta had disappeared before, and that he didn’t want to file a missing persons report. Three days later, on August 5, Naresh reported his wife missing, but Manassas Park Police didn’t make this public until August 8. Since then, the community has banded together to do gro...

Introducing…World of Secrets: The Apartheid Killer

Introducing a NEW investigation from the BBC’s World of Secrets podcast: The Apartheid Killer. All the victims were black and the youngest was just 12 years old. Some relatives are still searching for the graves. They were killed during a three-year bloodbath in the 1980s, in the South African city of East London – by one person. He killed so many, he lost count. It has been 30 years since the white supremacist apartheid regime crumbled. The unresolved trauma of this time has cast a long shadow across a nation. In piecin...

Disappearances can happen in an instant. On April 19, 2016, 16-year-old Tyler Christensen went on a jog. He wanted to get a short run in on his way to a youth group meeting. But Tyler never arrived. After Tyler’s family realized that he was gone, they assumed something terrible must have happened to him. After all, he was a happy kid, living in Edmonds, Washington with a loving family and seemingly no issues. But as the investigation got underway, police began to believe that maybe this disappearance wasn’t as quick as it seemed. That perhaps Tyler himself had been planning it f...

It was a scene straight out of an action movie: specifically The Bourne Identity. On September 16, 2008, the captain of a Staten Island Ferry saw a woman floating face down in the Hudson River, near the Statue of Liberty. Horrified and thinking they found a dead body, two deckhands jumped in a rescue boat and went to her. When they reached the woman, one picked her up by her ankles, while another picked her up by her shoulders. To everyone’s shock, the woman took a gasp of air and started crying. This is how Hannah Upp was found after she we...

On August 1, 2018, 28-year-old Samantha Sayers was ready for an adventure. An experienced hiker, Sam decided to drive two hours away from her Seattle home and tackle Vesper’s Peak. The hike was supposed to only be a day trip, so when darkness fell with no word from Samantha, her boyfriend, Kevin Dare grew concerned.

Worried that she was injured, he drove out to the trail. But instead of his girlfriend, he found only her empty car. What happened next was the largest search and rescue operation in Washington State history. When Samantha wasn’t found quickly, rumors began to s...

Though our podcast focuses on unsolved missing persons cases, over the course of the last four years, we’ve seen movement on many of the cases we’ve covered, including some resolutions. This week, we’re going to revisit a few of the missing people whose stories we’ve told on this podcast and give you updates on what’s going on in their cases today.

In this episode, we're updating you on the stories of William Tyrrell, Irene Gakwa, and Chance Englebert.

Original Episodes:

William Tyrrell Part 1
William Tyrrell Part 2
Irene Gakwa