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Speaker 3: I'm just a guy who grew up in DC saw
Speaker 3: a lot of things. I wanted to make a difference.
Speaker 3: I wanted to do better. I wanted to help families.
Speaker 3: How I know how I feel to be out there,
Speaker 3: you know, searching for your loved one. It's heartbreaking, especially
Speaker 3: when the little girls go missing and Daddy looking for him,
Speaker 3: and you know, Mama looking for him, and you know
Speaker 3: they feel like the police ain't doing nothing. You know,
Speaker 3: what are y'all doing? Because they don't see anything. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: The homicide detectives termed the cases, the Little Girl cases.
Speaker 3: This child was laying on the side of the road.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't go no way. I would tell him my house.
Speaker 3: Those first five murderers should have been a huge warning
Speaker 3: bell for the police.
Speaker 1: We just want to know what happened.
Speaker 4: This person must have saw that.
Speaker 1: They were thinking that maybe it's just one person, and
Speaker 1: he says, they need to know.
Speaker 4: This is me.
Speaker 3: I thought that they would catch him.
Speaker 5: I thought it was just a matter of time.
Speaker 1: I'm Celeste Headley and this is Freeway Phantom. In the
Speaker 1: early stages of our Freeway Phantom investigation, we consulted Henderson,
Speaker 1: long of DC's Missing Voice. Henderson helped us understand the
Speaker 1: systemic and regional issues that affected the Freeway Phantom investigations
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and current cases of missing and
Speaker 1: murdered children.
Speaker 3: The foundation never changes with any kind of investigative work
Speaker 3: through roots of it and what it's about, the core
Speaker 3: stuff never still, It'll never changed.
Speaker 1: As a DC native with deep roots in the community
Speaker 1: and years spent building relationships, Henderson is an invaluable source
Speaker 1: of support and expertise for the families who are searching
Speaker 1: for answers or coping with loss. For this bonus episode,
Speaker 1: we dig into his story to learn more about what
Speaker 1: led him to the work he does today and the
Speaker 1: hard fought battle for change in DC's justice system.
Speaker 3: Basically, what I do is I work right alongside with
Speaker 3: the lead detective that's working to find a missing person
Speaker 3: here in DC. I'm actually going behind him or sometimes
Speaker 3: ahead of him, to interview witnesses, to do self owned traces,
Speaker 3: to do surveillance, to take fingerprints and DNA and all
Speaker 3: this kind of stuff to make sure it's submitted.
Speaker 4: It's very rewarding.
Speaker 3: Whatever the case may be, whatever we're looking for, that's
Speaker 3: our number one objective is to stay on that track
Speaker 3: to look for missing people. So what I'm learning about
Speaker 3: investigating cases, you have to have a certain character to
Speaker 3: do this work because it can.
Speaker 4: Be very frustrating.
Speaker 3: You have to kiss a little bit of behind sometime
Speaker 3: to get the information you want.
Speaker 1: Henderson's nonprofit works on missing persons cases in Washington, DC,
Speaker 1: and he often acts as a liaison between the Metropolitan
Speaker 1: Police and black communities. The work is hard. It's taken
Speaker 1: years of emotional and physical labor to establish the trust
Speaker 1: Henderson now enjoys, but this work is personal it's directly
Speaker 1: connected to his upbringing DC and tragedies within his family.
Speaker 3: I was born in nineteen sixty eight open southeast Washington,
Speaker 3: d C. The Warding sector of Washington, d C. We
Speaker 3: all lived in a like a little one bedroom apartment with.
Speaker 4: My grandmother, my mother's mother, and my father got.
Speaker 3: A good job and we moved over to ward Fire,
Speaker 3: which is another northeast sector of DC, and that's where
Speaker 3: I grew up. My father still lives in the same house.
Speaker 3: As a kid, I grew up in the crack era
Speaker 3: of d C. I grew up here where crackhead came
Speaker 3: into our communities in the eighties and the.
Speaker 4: Late seventies is when it was starting.
Speaker 3: So as a kid, I got a chance to kind
Speaker 3: of see all that at a low level.
Speaker 4: You know, just from my eyes seeing it.
Speaker 3: I never was involved in it, never got involved with
Speaker 3: nothing like that as far as no homicides or nothing,
Speaker 3: but I saw it.
Speaker 4: I saw my friends get involved growing up.
Speaker 3: I saw a lot of my friends who are dead
Speaker 3: now or most of them are incarcerated.
Speaker 4: I just saw a lot of death here in DC.
Speaker 3: I would be quite frankly, quite honest with if he
Speaker 3: was a lot of violence here in DC trying to
Speaker 3: control the drug trade. Everybody wanted to get a piece
Speaker 3: of it, and as a result, we saw a rise
Speaker 3: in homicides. As a kid growing up, I got a
Speaker 3: chance to lose loved ones. I'm probably a seven time loser.
Speaker 3: I've lost seven or eight people to homicide. And when
Speaker 3: I tell you I seen violence, I saw it with
Speaker 3: my own eyes. I lost my kid, my oldest son,
Speaker 3: his mother was murdered by a fifteen year old back
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety two, ninety three. I know about death's
Speaker 3: firsthand and violent crimes. I know how I feel for
Speaker 3: the community to have information on your homeside, but won't
Speaker 3: nobody come forward. So as a person, this kind of
Speaker 3: motivated me to do the work I'm doing.
Speaker 4: And also being in the military.
Speaker 1: Growing up surrounded by violence, Henderson wasn't always sure he
Speaker 1: would make it out. He thanks his father for emphasizing
Speaker 1: the importance of structure and discipline.
Speaker 4: He was tough.
Speaker 3: My father was really tough, and he laid the law
Speaker 3: down in the house immediately after high school. After graduating,
Speaker 3: you know, my father told me I had to get out.
Speaker 3: I had to either go to work or I had
Speaker 3: to go to school, and I didn't really want to
Speaker 3: go to college. So I went to the military and
Speaker 3: I did about seven years, and I came back home.
Speaker 3: I got a chance to work with different people and
Speaker 3: meet different people and see the goodness in people, because
Speaker 3: most people are good people, you know.
Speaker 4: For the most part.
Speaker 3: My main aspect of my story was the core was
Speaker 3: my father and my grandmother. They were at the core
Speaker 3: of me growing up because you know, sometimes you need
Speaker 3: a man to tell a man how to be a man,
Speaker 3: and so my father was probably the biggest example that
Speaker 3: I had growing up and the reason why I was
Speaker 3: able to make the decisions that I made.
Speaker 1: Henderson decided he wanted to be that kind of example
Speaker 1: for his community too. He eventually established DC's Missing Voice,
Speaker 1: with a focus on finding missing and exploited persons, another
Speaker 1: issue that hits painfully close to home. In nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: his aunt Aileen went missing.
Speaker 3: My aunt was last seeing September fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Family couldn't reach her, you know, they kept calling her
Speaker 3: and calling her and calling her with no answer.
Speaker 5: So we called.
Speaker 3: We got the rental office to do a wellness check,
Speaker 3: and when we got to the apartment, my little cousin
Speaker 3: was there in the apartment alone, Drone and his baby
Speaker 3: Sea because he was a baby at the time and
Speaker 3: he was draped in He had been there for a
Speaker 3: couple of hours, and you know, my family knew something
Speaker 3: was wrong. We called the police, and the police got
Speaker 3: involved to no avail research, search and search. And at
Speaker 3: the time, we weren't where we are now with missing persons.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety nine, we didn't have social media like
Speaker 3: we have social media now.
Speaker 4: We didn't have some of the tools we have now.
Speaker 3: My family was they just thought that the police was
Speaker 3: gonna take care of it.
Speaker 4: The police. You know, the police got you to rely
Speaker 4: on the police.
Speaker 3: Come to find out a lot of things probably could
Speaker 3: have been done better by the police department. They never
Speaker 3: asked him for DNA, never asked. All this time, my
Speaker 3: family told me, look, don't talk about this normal. We're
Speaker 3: not getting no answers. Just don't talk about it. It
Speaker 3: was just so painful.
Speaker 1: When Aileen went missing in the nineties, the federally funded
Speaker 1: databased National Missing and Unidentified Person System or NEMUS had
Speaker 1: not yet been established, and the Combined DNA Index System
Speaker 1: or CODIS was brand new. Henderson uses both systems in
Speaker 1: his work today. He says that had they been available
Speaker 1: earlier on, it could have saved his family years of
Speaker 1: pain and uncertainty.
Speaker 3: We had three unidentified remains found here in DC, and
Speaker 3: we just knew one of them probably was a Leen
Speaker 3: because it was in the same street that she would frequent.
Speaker 3: I told my family, you know, we got to get
Speaker 3: our DNA and if we're going to have approved that
Speaker 3: that's her and get some kind of closure. Well, in
Speaker 3: the process when we put our DNA in, we got
Speaker 3: a hit on a body that was found in two thousand,
Speaker 3: So she had been in the Moore from two thousand
Speaker 3: to twenty and nineteen before she was identified. Now we
Speaker 3: tell you about good detective work. My detective took a
Speaker 3: shot in the dog. He had remains up there at
Speaker 3: the Maryland Corton office. They kind of fit the same description,
Speaker 3: the height of her. He asked them test those bones.
Speaker 3: Went and test the bones. It turned up snake that
Speaker 3: was her. So my family went through a lot of
Speaker 3: heartache because we didn't know about all the different technology
Speaker 3: that was available and what we should be using to
Speaker 3: solve her case.
Speaker 4: And they quite frankly didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 4: They didn't even want This.
Speaker 3: Wound was so deep and so painful, it was still
Speaker 3: wide open, but we just ignored it. We still wanted answers.
Speaker 3: We still we was the more desperate for the answers.
Speaker 3: So they had to go ahead, and they went on
Speaker 3: and they put their DNA in. They got a match,
Speaker 3: and then we convinced the sun drone to put his
Speaker 3: in and that was a real match. Then they were
Speaker 3: positive that it was her, and that's how we got
Speaker 3: the answers.
Speaker 1: Even though Henderson found an answer to his ant's mystery,
Speaker 1: his personal tragedies didn't end there. His niece went missing
Speaker 1: around twenty twelve, and at that point Henderson was fed
Speaker 1: up with the cycle of searching and waiting for answers.
Speaker 1: He decided to get involved with the investigation.
Speaker 4: I had a niece twelve years old.
Speaker 3: She kept running away from home, and you know, the
Speaker 3: police were working on it, and you know, they got
Speaker 3: eighty million kids that's missing. So I was out there
Speaker 3: on the ground talking with dope dealers. What was going
Speaker 3: through my head was that this is what the police
Speaker 3: go through, and they probably go through it worse than
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. She was missing off and on. She
Speaker 3: got I say, about three or four years. She's twenty
Speaker 3: one now, she got four kids. But the trauma that
Speaker 3: she went through, the domestic violence, you know, leaving names out,
Speaker 3: the domestic violence and all that stuff that she went through,
Speaker 3: you know, did they suffer?
Speaker 4: They suffer it changing.
Speaker 1: After this, his mission was clear.
Speaker 4: Looking for her.
Speaker 3: Is what got me involved in is I saw how
Speaker 3: hard it was for investigators to acquire and get information,
Speaker 3: to get information that they need to solve these cases.
Speaker 3: And it really drove me to do more and to
Speaker 3: want to do more to assist them. So I realized
Speaker 3: I had to learn more about the logistics of investigating cases,
Speaker 3: and I had to know you got to know what
Speaker 3: you're doing because sometimes you really can mess up a
Speaker 3: case unintentionally. So I had to learn. I had to
Speaker 3: I had to ask a lot of questions from sworn
Speaker 3: law enforcement officers that are investigators and sit down with them,
Speaker 3: talk with them.
Speaker 4: I had to my own study, and I had to
Speaker 4: go through various courses.
Speaker 3: To learn how to do this in a professional man
Speaker 3: and not just as a citizen.
Speaker 1: Henderson began working part time as a trace investigator. He
Speaker 1: now offers his services to families at no cost.
Speaker 4: You don't want any money. This is all pro bona
Speaker 4: work I did, and all the materials and stuff.
Speaker 3: Some of the stuff is from the police department, some
Speaker 3: of us from But you do all this out of
Speaker 3: your own pocket, because you know what it's like. I
Speaker 3: don't really want to work by contract because I don't
Speaker 3: want to charge no family to look for a missing
Speaker 3: person unless they're rich taking pay. But nobody is test
Speaker 3: driving me. I'm doing this without funding.
Speaker 1: Part of his work includes running platforms to publicize cases
Speaker 1: in DC.
Speaker 4: Platforms are important when they come to missing people.
Speaker 3: I have DC's Missing Boys and Missing Exploit the East
Speaker 3: of the River Missing Exploit the East of the River
Speaker 3: gives focus to East of the River residents where they
Speaker 3: can just focus on they missing people because they hit
Speaker 3: me up and they told me, look, we getting tired
Speaker 3: of hearing about all these missing people. It's happened all
Speaker 3: over here when we got the highest number of missing
Speaker 3: people east of the River. So I created that page
Speaker 3: to get more eyes on the street in that area.
Speaker 3: The more eyes you have, the more you can get
Speaker 3: that call. Then now DC's missing voice is all of
Speaker 3: the missing people in DC. When you talk about an
Speaker 3: investigative tool. We're in the modern world now in this
Speaker 3: Internet is something It can be very powerful when you're
Speaker 3: doing these public inquiries, when you're asking the public. The
Speaker 3: Metropolitan Police Department is seeking the public's assistance locating so
Speaker 3: and so, so and so. Eighty million people may see
Speaker 3: that it's now a public inquirer and we get a
Speaker 3: lot of tips. We have a lot of tips that
Speaker 3: we follow up on. That's why we have For the
Speaker 3: main reason, that's to promote and to publicize and to
Speaker 3: give MPD a greater reach in terms of audience to
Speaker 3: their missing people in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: As we've talked about throughout the season, an investigation has
Speaker 1: many moving parts. It's complicated and constantly moving, like a
Speaker 1: clockwork mechanism. Details can get lost or overlooked. Henderson wanted
Speaker 1: to get the best training he could to make sure
Speaker 1: he was on top of his game.
Speaker 3: A god named that name is Palmer and Great Britain
Speaker 3: created a professional course for regular people to go through
Speaker 3: to learn how to operate within the private sector to
Speaker 3: do trace investigation.
Speaker 4: All the necessary paperwork that you need to fill out.
Speaker 3: Like if you're my client, I need to know what
Speaker 3: paperwork is fill out, because that's what separate the regular
Speaker 3: citizen from the private professional investigator. He has documentation, meaning
Speaker 3: he has an intake for him, he has a contract.
Speaker 3: He knows all the legal considerations when he's doing surveillance,
Speaker 3: so he doesn't violate anybody's constitutional rights. If you out
Speaker 3: to investigating the case, and let's just say it's a
Speaker 3: case that this criminal malice involved, if you know the
Speaker 3: aspects of the law, you can protect that data from
Speaker 3: being disqualified and thrown out.
Speaker 4: If you know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: You know, so certain things you have to know in
Speaker 3: terms of the legal considerations.
Speaker 4: And these are just some of the things you learn.
Speaker 3: How to promptly interview people, what questions to ask, you know,
Speaker 3: the theory behind an interview. For example, when you go
Speaker 3: into before you even go on the door, you got
Speaker 3: to have an objective. You got if you want a confession,
Speaker 3: if you want to just build some rapport with him
Speaker 3: and hit him up.
Speaker 4: Back up again.
Speaker 3: Knowing all this before you go in, it's a part
Speaker 3: of your preparation to be an investigator. You know, there's
Speaker 3: certain principles that we operate off of. You know, before
Speaker 3: we go in, we've tried to learn all these different
Speaker 3: things before we go and start formally interviewing people.
Speaker 1: Much of Henderson's work as a trace investigator involves gathering
Speaker 1: information and he's had to hone his skills in interviewing
Speaker 1: and note taking, even organizing data.
Speaker 4: You can't just jump out.
Speaker 3: And these are some of the things you learn when
Speaker 3: you go through this certification.
Speaker 4: How to document your paperwork.
Speaker 3: You know, how to make sure it's in order, how
Speaker 3: to write up a report to submit the law enforcement.
Speaker 3: What's the fabric of it, What would that sworn officer
Speaker 3: need to have? What is he looking for? You're supposed
Speaker 3: to know the basic stuff so there's something useful when
Speaker 3: it comes in. And all this going through this certification,
Speaker 3: and it's an international certification, meaning all the trades investigators
Speaker 3: got together and they started compowering methods and stuff like
Speaker 3: that for the guy who may not be working in
Speaker 3: law enforcementer who may want to go into the private sector.
Speaker 3: He can understand how to do it and they can't
Speaker 3: with a manual. You know, you have online tutoring, you
Speaker 3: can call it. You can ask questions. Your gold mine
Speaker 3: when you're any investigator, it's staying in contact with senior investigators.
Speaker 3: I've learned that you want to call them, you want
Speaker 3: to say, hey, I got this, and they usually not
Speaker 3: going to give you the answer, but they'll point you
Speaker 3: in the right direction. They'll help you. They've been there before,
Speaker 3: they've already done it. Your case ain't the first case
Speaker 3: under the sun.
Speaker 1: He got into this work because of his passion for
Speaker 1: service and its emotional work. But after a decade of experience,
Speaker 1: there's also a familiar pattern to the job.
Speaker 3: Well, I might get off from work, I might get
Speaker 3: a call, and I might go and through a general
Speaker 3: intake with a family.
Speaker 4: It may be over the internet, it might be over
Speaker 4: the phone.
Speaker 3: They'll throw me some known locations with the person frequent
Speaker 3: We'll go there with sept surveillance because we're all creatures
Speaker 3: a habit, and we may head out. I might do
Speaker 3: some reverse phone checks.
Speaker 4: They may be.
Speaker 3: Getting calls from their loved one from a given number,
Speaker 3: and they may want me to find out what's the location,
Speaker 3: where are they at? So we'll go and try to
Speaker 3: figure out where they are. We'll use social media to
Speaker 3: look at the background or where they took a picture at,
Speaker 3: and we'll try to figure out where they are. Where
Speaker 3: they may be hanging out at a lot of my
Speaker 3: work involves surveillance because you got the lead detective to
Speaker 3: sworn law enforce an officer.
Speaker 4: He's lived doing the heavy lifting in the office. I
Speaker 4: might go out.
Speaker 3: There day to day and I might just be sitting
Speaker 3: at a location and our positivety I didn' this in person.
Speaker 4: They never see me or know anything about I'm there.
Speaker 3: I call nine one one MPD Patrol services come contact
Speaker 3: the missing person either they'll bring them back in if
Speaker 3: they're under eighteen. If they're over eighteen, they'll notify the
Speaker 3: family the missing person has been located. So a lot
Speaker 3: of it is surveillance and and light investigating work.
Speaker 1: Henderson took us on a ride along through his patrol routine.
Speaker 1: My producer Jamie and I sat in his SUV as
Speaker 1: Henderson drove around the neighborhoods doing standard surveillance.
Speaker 4: So we're just gonna ride there and you know, you guys.
Speaker 5: Can take a look.
Speaker 3: This is every day what you're gonna see every single day,
Speaker 3: sun up the sundown. This is what's going on in
Speaker 3: the community, and it's perpetuating.
Speaker 5: Our most severe cases are.
Speaker 1: Henderson. Long says, the tasks can become routine, but every
Speaker 1: case is different. There are abductions like the case of
Speaker 1: Relitia Rudd, an eight year old girl who went missing
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, and runaways like Henderson's niece. On our
Speaker 1: ride along, he talked about other cases he's worked on.
Speaker 3: Right now, we at nineteenth and Benning Road. Between nineteenth
Speaker 3: and Benning Road and fifteenth in Benning Road, it's kind
Speaker 3: of like an area where we have a lot of
Speaker 3: missing persons that we find.
Speaker 5: In this area, there's.
Speaker 3: A lot of drugs, a lot of heroin. I don't
Speaker 3: know whether you guys know about K two and PCP.
Speaker 3: K two is a drug that's killing a lot of people.
Speaker 3: When I know you hite know about PCP, it makes
Speaker 3: you hallucinate, and so it's a lot of the usage
Speaker 3: of that he drug kid, and that's prompting some of
Speaker 3: the missing person's cases. It's prompting some of the violent
Speaker 3: assaults cause sometime they think things are happening that are
Speaker 3: not happening, cause they're hallucinating. Just the fact that they're
Speaker 3: out here unsupervised. It's a big can of worms.
Speaker 4: You never know.
Speaker 5: Snake eyes.
Speaker 3: He could turn up snake eyes and we find a
Speaker 3: young person either in jail or dead. I had another
Speaker 3: missing person's case, Dominique Franklin. He was murdered, he was missing,
Speaker 3: and he was located. He went before the judge, and
Speaker 3: judged gave him some orders to do something. He said,
Speaker 3: screw the judge and screw everybody, and walked off, And
Speaker 3: the day later.
Speaker 4: He was found dead, shot in the head.
Speaker 3: He left on his own, nobody targeting him, but in
Speaker 3: the end he still wound up losing.
Speaker 5: And he was sixteen.
Speaker 3: So Dominique Franklin is another case that I kind of
Speaker 3: worked in the end of it, last part of it,
Speaker 3: I kind of got involved with it a little bit.
Speaker 4: But missing persons can lead to anything.
Speaker 3: It could turn up them getting arrested for something for
Speaker 3: the rest of their life, or them losing their life
Speaker 3: or taking somebody else's life.
Speaker 1: The discrepancy between the number of cases and the resources
Speaker 1: available to solve them mean many slip through the cracks.
Speaker 1: In episode ten, we talked about Relisia Rudd. She was
Speaker 1: missing for weeks before her case received any media attention,
Speaker 1: and she has still not been found. Henderson says publicity
Speaker 1: can bring children home safely, keeping.
Speaker 5: The cases out there and the public's eye, educating them.
Speaker 3: About it, that's what really expired and put the pressure
Speaker 3: on the police to do something them. Families have to
Speaker 3: pressure the police, you know, they have to continue to
Speaker 3: press the police and anybody who can help publicize their case.
Speaker 5: That's what keep your case alive.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, that's what keep these cases alive.
Speaker 3: That's why we the way we all with relaship us
Speaker 3: because we don't want the community to go to sleep
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 4: People will forget about the start of them.
Speaker 3: You don't say nothing, you don't keep making noise about it,
Speaker 3: they'll forget.
Speaker 5: They will forget.
Speaker 1: There's a big question that hangs over Henderson's work. What
Speaker 1: issues in the community are contributing to the more than
Speaker 1: two thousand cases of missing children each year in DC?
Speaker 1: Why do so many cases slip through the cracks, and
Speaker 1: how can we begin to solve the socioeconomic issues at play.
Speaker 3: You do have people who've become victim of their circumstance,
Speaker 3: whatever's around them. That there's drugs, if it was domestic
Speaker 3: violence in the home, if it was poverty in general,
Speaker 3: because poverty is our motivating factor here when we start
Speaker 3: talking about these issues. The mayor of Washington, DC formed
Speaker 3: a task force and we was examining and we started
Speaker 3: looking at missing persons, and we started looking at solutions,
Speaker 3: and we couldn't find a cookie cutter one fits all
Speaker 3: because we've realized, man, you talking about a great, big
Speaker 3: social issue. The family structure is the number one pre
Speaker 3: person and what drives that generational wealth gaps shoot, domestic
Speaker 3: violence in the home. Maybe the new boyfriend is touching
Speaker 3: the daughter, or maybe the new boyfriend is hitting the mother,
Speaker 3: or maybe.
Speaker 4: It's lack of affordable houses.
Speaker 3: We got eighty people living in one home, somebody going out.
Speaker 4: Of there, and us as the kids. It's a lot
Speaker 4: of stress. You know.
Speaker 3: We don't have a lot of hardcore solutions and real
Speaker 3: outreach in terms of services for mental health.
Speaker 4: You know, so you see.
Speaker 3: Crazy cases you get out here like Micha Rudd, and
Speaker 3: you start wondering, how could the mama do this?
Speaker 4: Now when you look.
Speaker 1: At the family, Henderson says, sometimes kids run away from
Speaker 1: home because something drives them away, domestic violence, poverty, drug use.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're lured away by predators like the freeway phantom.
Speaker 1: But he says, no matter the reason why they left home,
Speaker 1: all missing persons cases need to be treated with the
Speaker 1: same level of seriousness.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's a lot of coercion, you know, Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: a lot of dynamics within the person walking out the
Speaker 3: door on their own, just because they left on their own.
Speaker 4: I got another case for you.
Speaker 3: Jolie Musa from Virginia voluntarily walked out of her home
Speaker 3: to go meet a young man and never return. Now,
Speaker 3: just because she voluntarily left, we don't need to down
Speaker 3: play her case and think that she's a runaway, see
Speaker 3: because at that point, when you do that, a lot
Speaker 3: of action is to be taken. Isn't taken. Now have
Speaker 3: we started looking for her sooner? Could we have found
Speaker 3: her alive and maybe saved her.
Speaker 4: We'll never know.
Speaker 1: One solution begins at home. It's staying in touch with
Speaker 1: our communities.
Speaker 3: When someone goes missing, especially a child, is chaos. You
Speaker 3: don't know how to put your left shoe on from
Speaker 3: the right. Use some things you think you will remember,
Speaker 3: you won't remember. We should know our patterns, our loved
Speaker 3: ones patterns. We should check up on them. You know,
Speaker 3: we shouldn't be so distant. And you know the technology
Speaker 3: now on the phones and everybody email, and you know,
Speaker 3: you got to give people a call and see, you know,
Speaker 3: just how they're doing. I got the oldest sister and
Speaker 3: you know, she called me and let me know she home,
Speaker 3: you know, and stuff like that. So we got to
Speaker 3: check on each other. We have to take care of
Speaker 3: each other communities and our families. This is important because
Speaker 3: we have some cases where the missing person wasn't reported
Speaker 3: missing for oh, they were last seen one year ago,
Speaker 3: by the families being so estranged. Times of the essence
Speaker 3: and the missing person's case, getting that report in and
Speaker 3: getting the investigation going early to trace going.
Speaker 1: When we attended one of Henderson's community outreach events in
Speaker 1: Southeast DC, he laid out the Metropolitan Police Department's five
Speaker 1: steps to prepare you in the event your loved one
Speaker 1: goes missing.
Speaker 3: The biggest problem we're having in the District of Columbia
Speaker 3: they not being reported in a timely manner.
Speaker 5: So much time elapsed.
Speaker 3: The case of Karan Jones, it was two days the
Speaker 3: dumpster was going on to China. So I mean that's
Speaker 3: the first step, is just reporting them.
Speaker 1: In episode nine, we mentioned the case of Kayan Jones,
Speaker 1: a two month old whose mother confessed that she rolled
Speaker 1: over on Kon and he stopped breathing. She later placed
Speaker 1: his body in a dumpster. Kayon's remains were sadly never recovered.
Speaker 3: What we're trying to do is trying to get people
Speaker 3: to understand call for help, call the police, because seeing
Speaker 3: after the medical examiner that came out and examined his
Speaker 3: body and realized there was no trauma to the body.
Speaker 3: Everything job that we had just been an accident, but
Speaker 3: by him being thrown into a dumpster, and they never
Speaker 3: been able to find him to do any kind of
Speaker 3: examination or determine anything with any kind of medical certainty.
Speaker 5: Uh, it just looks suspicious.
Speaker 3: And then you give us eighty ninety different stories and
Speaker 3: we don't.
Speaker 5: Know what what to believe.
Speaker 3: And then you know, you throw a little bit of
Speaker 3: substance abuse in there, and you know, the social things,
Speaker 3: and then you got yeah, man, you got some stuff.
Speaker 1: As for Henderson's future in this line of work, he
Speaker 1: told us he's looking to transition into doing it full time.
Speaker 3: Well, I always had a vision that that d see
Speaker 3: what lead the country and take the leadership role on
Speaker 3: missing persons that it should. We're gonna continue to work
Speaker 3: and work and work and never be complacent about missing
Speaker 3: persons and what more we can do to locate missing
Speaker 3: persons quickly. You know, we can never we can never rest.
Speaker 3: You can never rest on this stuff. There's never a
Speaker 3: situation of complacency. The more you go through it, you
Speaker 3: learn because every case, every single case got a different
Speaker 3: twist in it, which requires certain level of readiness. So
Speaker 3: talking about all these different things and implementing all these
Speaker 3: different tools that we can use, it's so much work
Speaker 3: to be done.
Speaker 4: But I'm hoping that DC will continue on. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: keep pushing.
Speaker 3: Legislators to get legislation going back to initial investigations, obstruction,
Speaker 3: lying to investigators. I think that there should be a
Speaker 3: penalty for that if we find out your line or
Speaker 3: you don't provide correct information. In Washington, d C. There's
Speaker 3: really no penalty for that. Like in Maryland, if your
Speaker 3: child is missing and they under the age of eighteen
Speaker 3: or thirteen, you better be reporting and within twenty four hours.
Speaker 3: If they investigate and they find out you knew and
Speaker 3: as a result of your negligence, the child's suffers trauma,
Speaker 3: call on the felony.
Speaker 4: And here in DC they don't have that.
Speaker 3: So we hope in DC will step it up legislatively
Speaker 3: We hope they'll step it up from a law enforcement perspective,
Speaker 3: and definitely the community community is huge, way bigger than
Speaker 3: law enforcement. Get the community involved and active in the
Speaker 3: use of the technology and the.
Speaker 4: Tools and stuff. Are we cooking with gas? Then that's
Speaker 4: what I'm hoping.
Speaker 1: We want to give special thanks to Henderson Long for
Speaker 1: all his work on the Freeway Phantom case and his
Speaker 1: support of this podcast. He's been instrumental in helping us
Speaker 1: tell the story of these young girls, both from the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and today. Henderson's work in the community is vital.
Speaker 1: His organization, DC's Missing Voice, is an official five oh
Speaker 1: one C three nonprofit. If you want to support the
Speaker 1: work he does, reach out at Henderson dot Long twenty
Speaker 1: two at iCloud dot com, or you can find the
Speaker 1: DC's Missing Voice Facebook page and stay up to date
Speaker 1: on current missing persons cases.
Speaker 2: Freeway Fantom is a production of iHeartRadio, Tenderfoot TV, and
Speaker 2: Black Bar MITZVAH. Our host is Selese Hidley. This episode
Speaker 2: was written and produced by knowe Amy Griffin. The show
Speaker 2: is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright and Celes Hidleytive
Speaker 2: producers on Behalf of iHeartRadio include Matt Frederick and Alex Williams,
Speaker 2: with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 2: Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, with producers
Speaker 2: Jamie Albright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 2: Black Bar Mitzvah include myself, j Ellis and Aaron Bergman,
Speaker 2: with producer Sidney Foos. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright. Artwork
Speaker 2: by Mister Soul two one six, original music by Makeup
Speaker 2: and Vanity Set special Thanks to a team at Uta
Speaker 2: Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group, Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 2: and iHeartMedia, as well as Black Bar Mitzvah have increased
Speaker 2: the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction
Speaker 2: of the person or persons responsible for their freeway fan
Speaker 2: of murders. The previous reward of up to one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand dollars offered by the Metropolitan Police Department
Speaker 2: has been matched. A new total reward of up to
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand dollars is now being offered. If you
Speaker 2: have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the
Speaker 2: Metropolitan Police Department at area code two zero two seven
Speaker 2: two seven nine zero ninety nine. For more information, please
Speaker 2: visit freeway dashfanom dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio
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Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.