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The Unsolved Disappearance of Postal Worker Kierra Coles · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: On October two, twenty eighteen, a twenty six year old
0:03
postal worker named Kiera Coles called in sick to her
0:07
job on the South Side of Chicago, but instead of
0:11
staying in bed, she put on her rigid, highly recognizable
0:14
official United States Postal Service uniform.
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Speaker 2: Anyway, Yeah, which is so strange.
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Speaker 1: It's totally bizarre. She walked out the front door of
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her apartment, stepped into the daylight of her neighborhood, and
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effectively vanished off the face of the earth. God, completely gone.
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And I want you to hold onto that bizarre contradiction
0:32
because it is the thread we're going to pull on today. Absolutely,
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take a look at the calendar. It is March twelfth,
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twenty twenty six. We are standing over seven and a
0:42
half years removed from that crisp October morning.
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Speaker 2: Seven and a half years.
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Speaker 1: Right for you and me, seven and a half years
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is a lifetime. Careers change, cities change entirely, new families begin.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so much happens in that time.
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Speaker 1: But for Kira's family, time is frozen. Because Kira wasn't
0:59
just a postal worker. She was three months pregnant, standing
1:02
on the absolute threshold of everything she'd ever wanted when
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a dark, silent void simply swallowed.
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Speaker 2: Her hole, and that uniform anomally you just mentioned. It's
1:11
the perfect place to start because it really dictates the
1:15
entire analytical framework of this deep dive. We are not
1:19
here to just redo a police blodder.
1:20
Speaker 1: Definitely not a.
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Speaker 2: Timeline of events simply tells you what time a clock ticked.
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You know, we were working off a comprehensive investigative report
1:29
titled the Vanishing of Kira Coles seven Years of.
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Speaker 1: Silence, and there's so much in that report.
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Speaker 2: There really is. These sources, which include deeply reconstructed police timelines,
1:40
union official statements, family interviews, and like minute by minute
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breakdowns of CCTV surveillance footage. They force us to ask,
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why why.
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Speaker 1: Do human beings act in ways that completely defy their
1:52
own established baselines? Right?
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Speaker 2: Exactly? What are the actual mechanics of a police investigation
1:57
when a person disappears in a dense urban environment, yet
2:00
leaves behind this trailing mess of physical and digital contradiction.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We're going to forensically examine a
2:06
single day that is fractured by the illusion of normalcy.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks normal but it's not not at all.
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Speaker 1: We are going to deconstruct the highly anomalous, frankly baffling
2:17
behaviors of a person of interest, right, and we're going
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to look at the statistical and cultural realities of missing
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persons in urban America, specifically how a family and a
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community have absolutely refused to let the city of Chicago
2:32
forget this case. They've been so resilient, unbelievably resilient. Yeah,
2:36
but before we can pressure test any theories about a disappearance,
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we have to establish the architecture of the life that
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was interrupted.
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Speaker 2: We have to know who she was exactly.
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Speaker 1: Who was kier Coles in twenty eighteen. If you read
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through the source material, the picture that emerges of this
2:50
twenty six year old is someone who is not just
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drifting through life.
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Speaker 2: Now. She was building something.
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Speaker 1: She was actively intentionally designing it. She loved makeup, she
2:58
loved documenting her world through five photography. She loved dancing.
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Speaker 2: She sounded so vibrant, she really did.
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Speaker 1: But the defining pillar of her existence, the thing every
3:07
single source agrees on, was her family. Her family was
3:11
her gravitational center.
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Speaker 2: And from a forensic standpoint, that concept of a gravitational
3:16
center is the foundation of what homicide detectives and behavioral
3:20
analysts call victimology bactimology. Yeah, when law enforcement, specifically detectives
3:26
like Chicago Police homicide lieutenant Will Smullar open a case
3:30
like this, they don't immediately start hunting for a villain.
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Speaker 1: They start with the victim exactly.
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Speaker 2: They start by studying the victim. Victimology is the exhaustive,
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granular analysis of a person's.
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Speaker 1: Life, like their daily habits right.
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Speaker 2: Their daily routines, their financial footprint, their psychological state. They're
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risk factors. You are basically building a behavioral baseline to
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determine what constitutes a deviation.
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Speaker 1: And Kira's baseline was well, in the words of investigators,
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incredibly stable stage. She was an upstanding citizen. She had
4:02
no known enemies.
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Speaker 2: Crucially, analysts look at banking records for signs of financial desperation,
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you know, hidden debts, sudden large transfers, gambling issues.
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Speaker 1: Rights, this stuff people hide.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Kira had none of that, and most importantly, she
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had zero history of going off the grid, which is huge.
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It is when you synthesize all of that data, the
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hypothesis of a voluntary, intentional disappearance just crumbles.
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Speaker 1: It just doesn't fit.
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Speaker 2: It doesn't. Human beings with strong social anchors and forward
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momentum simply do not walk away from their own lives
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without triggering digital or financial trip wires.
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Speaker 1: I want to push back on that slightly, just playing
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Devil's advocate for the listener.
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Speaker 2: Here, Sure, go ahead.
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Speaker 1: We hear stories all the time about people who seem
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perfectly happy on the outside but are secretly buckling under
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pressure and they just decide to start.
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Speaker 2: Over, right, the overwhelmed runaway theory, Yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: Couldn't a twenty six year old just get overwhelmed and
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walk away?
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Speaker 2: I mean, it's a common trope, but it requires a
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mechanism for survival that leaves a trace. Starting over requires capital.
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Speaker 1: You need money to live, exactly.
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Speaker 2: It requires a new identity or at least accessing existing
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funds from new locations. It requires breaking all emotional tires,
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which is psychologically excruciating for someone described as family oriented.
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Speaker 1: Oh for sure.
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Speaker 2: Furthermore, the timing actively works against that theory here. People
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who are planning to abandon their lives typically show a
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deterioration in their current responsibilities.
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Speaker 1: Like they start slipping up at work.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they stop showing up to work, They withdraw socially,
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they stopped planning for the future. Kiara was doing the
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exact opposite.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us to the two massive milestone she had
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just hit. Let's think about this like a postal route.
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Speaker 2: Okay, I like that analogy, right.
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Speaker 1: A letter carrier builds a loop. It's stable, it's predictable,
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it's a routine you rely on. Kiera had just established
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a brand new loop in her life, a huge massive
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She had just been hired as a letter carrier for
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the United States Post She was only about three months
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into the job, but the sources emphasize how incredibly proud
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she was of that uniform.
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Speaker 2: She worked hard for it.
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Speaker 1: And let's be real about what a federal job like
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that represents, especially on the South side of Chicago. It
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is not a gig economy side hustle.
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Speaker 2: No, it's a career.
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Speaker 1: It is a career. It's a pension, it's federal benefits,
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it's a guaranteed middle class stability. Her colleagues and the
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National Association of Letter Carriers noted how seriously she took
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that responsibility, which.
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Speaker 2: Means giving that up voluntarily makes zero economic sense.
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Speaker 1: Exactly why throw that away?
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Speaker 2: Well, the professional stability of that federal job was the
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scaffolding for the second, arguably much more profound milestone. She
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was three months pregnant.
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Speaker 1: Three months. That's such a specific time, it really is.
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Speaker 2: The three month mark is a critical psychological and biological
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threshold in any pregnancy. It typically marks the end of
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the first trimester, right.
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Speaker 1: When things feel a bit safer.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, from a medical standpoint, the risk of misca marriage
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drops exponentially. From a psychological standpoint, this is the exact
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moment when the abstract concept of having a baby crystallizes
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into a very concrete reality.
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Speaker 1: Like it's really happening exactly.
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Speaker 2: This is when women generally begin to share the news widely.
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The nesting instinct kicks in the future becomes a physical space.
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Speaker 1: You need to prepare, and the sorts of show. She
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was in full nesting mode. Her due date was spring
7:24
of twenty nineteen.
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Speaker 2: She was getting ready, she really was.
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Speaker 1: She was spending her time shopping for baby supplies. Her mother,
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Karen Phillips, recalled these hour long, joyous phone calls where
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Kiera was just agonizing over nursery themes and baby clothes.
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Speaker 2: Oh, that's so sweet it is.
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Speaker 1: She told her mom she was overwhelmed with all the options,
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but in that excited expectant way, she was anchoring herself
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to the future.
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Speaker 2: Anchoring is the precise word there. When you are consulting
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your mother on baby clothes, your cognitive focus is projected
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entirely into the future of that specific physical.
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Speaker 1: Environment, looking for an escape patch. Not at all.
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Speaker 2: A voluntary disappearance would require her to instantly sever the
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career she just secured, abandoned the family she spoke to daily,
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and entirely destabilize the environment for her unborn child. It's
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just too much to buy into, way too much. Behavioral
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analysts look for congruency. The behavior she was exhibiting in
8:19
early October were one hundred percent congruent with someone who
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intended to be present for the birth of her child
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in the.
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Speaker 1: Spring, and her physical environment is just as important as
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her psychological one. She lived on the eighty one hundred
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block of South Bournon Avenue in the Chatham.
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Speaker 2: Neighborhood, a very specific kind of neighborhood.
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Speaker 1: Yes, for those unfamiliar with Chicago's geography, The sources describe
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Chatham as this historically resilient working class, tight knit South
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Side community. It's not anonymous exactly. We're talking about tree
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lined streets, classic Chicago bungalows, and a culture where people
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sit on their porches. It is an established neighborhood where
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neighbors actually.
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Speaker 2: Know each otherography of Chadam presents a massive logistical hurdle
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for the concept of a quiet.
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Speaker 1: Disappearance because everyone is watching.
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Speaker 2: Right. This is a densely populated urban grid. There are
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literal eyes everywhere, not to mention the digital eyes of
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doorbell cameras, traffic cams, and storefront surveillance.
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Speaker 1: It's almost impossible to hide exactly.
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Speaker 2: Vanishing from an isolated rural cabin is one thing. Evaporating
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from the eighty one hundred block of South Vernon Avenue
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without a single eyewitness reporting a struggle, an abduction, or
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a disturbance is incredibly difficult, which.
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Speaker 1: Means it couldn't have been a loud struggle on the street, right.
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Speaker 2: It forces investigators to deduce that whatever happened to Kira
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was either highly concealed, occurred indoors, or was facilitated by
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someone she trusted.
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Speaker 1: Completely, someone who wouldn't make her scream.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, someone whose presence wouldn't cause her to react defensively
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and draw attention.
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Speaker 1: That sets the stage for the day the loop was broken.
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We have to deconstruct October two, twenty eighteen.
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Speaker 2: Let's do it.
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Speaker 1: When you lay the events of this day out chronologically,
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it feels like watching three different movies spliced together.
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Speaker 2: It really is a mess of contradictions.
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Speaker 1: It is a masterclass in forensic contradiction. Yeah, and it
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starts with the anomaly we mentioned at the very top
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of the deep dive. Let's look at the morning.
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Speaker 2: The sick calls.
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Speaker 1: Yes, the very first data point we have is that
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Kia officially called in sick to the post office. Okay,
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she's three months pregnant. Morning sickness is a very real,
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very valid reason to call out of a physical labor job.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely valid.
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Speaker 1: But then the timeline fractures. Surveillance video from her apartment
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building captures her leaving her residence. She is active, she
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is seen on camera earlier carrying groceries. She's out and about,
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and most baffling of all, she is fully dressed in
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her official United States Postal Service uniform.
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Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the cognitive dissonance of that sequence
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it's staggering for an investigator.
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Speaker 1: Why wear the uniform.
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Speaker 2: Let's break down the psychology of it. A federal postal
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uniform is not athleisure ware.
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Speaker 1: No, it's stiff uniform.
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Speaker 2: Right. It is rigid, It has specific components, and it
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clearly broadcasts your identity and your intended destination.
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Speaker 1: To the world. Everyone knows you're the mail carrier exactly.
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Speaker 2: When you call in sick to a physically demanding job,
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the universal human behavior is to stay in comfortable clothing
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to recover. You do not don a professional uniform unless
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that uniform serves a specific functional purpose for the actions
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you're about to take.
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Speaker 1: But could she have just been running an errand where
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she wanted people to think she was on the clock,
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Or maybe she needed to pick up a paycheck from
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the depot but didn't want to work a route.
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Speaker 2: Well, the paycheck theory is plausible in some industries, but
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USPS utilizes direct deposit heavily.
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Speaker 1: Oh, that's true.
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Speaker 2: And even if she needed to go to the depot,
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calling in sick and then showing up in uniform to
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grab a check invites unwanted questions from supervisors.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, they'd be like, if you're well enough to be
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in uniform here. Why aren't you on your route?
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Speaker 2: Exactly? It invites friction. We have to look at the
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uniform as.
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Speaker 1: A prop a prop Wow?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Was she trying to project an image of routine
12:02
to someone who might have been watching her apartment?
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Speaker 1: That's creepy, it is.
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Speaker 2: Or and this is a much darker line of inquiry,
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was she meeting someone who she specifically told she had
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to work that day?
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Speaker 1: Oh? Wow? So she was using it as an alibi?
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Speaker 2: Right? She could have been using the uniform as a
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visual alibi to leave the house without arousing the suspicion
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of whoever she was interacting with.
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Speaker 1: And Mac Julian, a union official for the letter carriers,
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introduced an even more disturbing variable to this whole morning puzzle.
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Speaker 2: What did he say?
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Speaker 1: He publicly questioned whether it was actually Kiera who made
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that sick call in the first place.
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Speaker 2: Okay, If a third party made that call to clear
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her schedule without her knowledge, and she put her uniform
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on genuinely believing she was heading to work, that completely
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changes the forensic.
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Speaker 1: Landscape because it means she was tricked, right.
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Speaker 2: It implies a high degree of premeditation, interception, and control
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by someone else from the moment the sun came up.
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Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
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Speaker 2: I would mean the mechanism of her disappearance was already
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in motion before she even stepped out the door.
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Speaker 1: So the morning is this tense, contradictory puzzle. But then
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the narrative completely shifts, gears into the afternoon. It gets
13:13
so normal, and the afternoon is terrifying, precisely because of
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how mundane it is. The illusion of normalcy takes over completely.
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Kier is out shopping, doing regular errands. Yeah, she gets
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on the phone with her mother, Karen Phillips. Karen knows
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the subtle inflections of her daughter's voice better than anyone
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on earth.
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Speaker 2: A mother always knows, always.
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Speaker 1: And Karen reports that this phone call was totally upbeat.
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There is no rushed whispering, she isn't speaking in code,
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there is zero indication of distress.
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Speaker 2: They're just chatting.
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Speaker 1: They spend the call doing exactly what we talked about,
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planning the nursery, obsessing over baby preparations.
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Speaker 2: The forensic linguistics of that phone call are a crucial.
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Speaker 1: Anchor point, really how so.
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Speaker 2: Well in situations involving coercion, domestic threat, or stalking victims
14:00
often subconsciously leak their distress to trusted.
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Speaker 1: Family members like they sound tense.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they might be short tempered, evasive, or overly agreeable
14:09
just to get off the phone quickly.
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Speaker 1: But Kiera wasn't like that at all. No.
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Speaker 2: The fact that Kiera engaged in a lengthy, enthusiastic conversation
14:17
about long term planning strongly indicates that as of that afternoon,
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she did not perceive herself to be in any immediate danger.
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Speaker 1: She felt totally safe.
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Speaker 2: Her internal trajectory was still locked onto the spring of
14:27
twenty nineteen. This tells investigators that the event which caused
14:30
her disappearance was likely sudden, unanticipated, and occurred later that evening.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us to the evening departure. The sun goes
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down and the surveillance cameras around her Chatham apartment pick
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up the thread again.
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Speaker 2: Okay, what do they show?
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Speaker 1: We see Kiera leaving her building, but she's not alone
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this time. She is accompanied by a man that her
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mother later identifies as Joshua Simmons, who went by josh
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the Boyfriend Right. He was her boyfriend at the time
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and the presumed father of the unborn child. The footage
15:01
shows them walking out to Kira's car. Kiera gets into
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the driver's seat, Simmons gets into the passenger side, and
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she drives them away.
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Speaker 2: We need to analyze the geometry and the physics of
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that departure. Notice who is in.
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Speaker 1: The driver's seat here is driving?
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Speaker 2: Yes, Kiera is in physical control of the two ton machine.
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She controls the locks, the steering wheel, and the destination.
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Speaker 1: So she isn't being kidnapped at this point, right.
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Speaker 2: She is not being forced into the trunk or physically
15:26
strong armed into the passenger side. This is what we
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call a consensual departure. She wanted to go, She was
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willing to leave her safe zone, her apartment, and she
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was willing to transport both of them. It establishes a
15:38
baseline of voluntary movement and a parent trust right up
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until the sequence of events that investigators refer to as
15:44
the critical hour.
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Speaker 1: The critical hour. Here's where it gets really interesting. This
15:49
is where the entire seven and a half year nightmare
15:52
is compressed into a window of just over sixty minutes.
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Speaker 2: It all happened so fast.
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Speaker 1: We're talking about the time frame from ten point four
16:00
three pm to roughly eleven point four to five pm
16:02
on October two. Let's deconstruct the beginning of that hour.
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Speaker 2: Okay, take me to ten point four to three.
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Speaker 1: At exactly ten four to three pm, Kire is captured
16:10
on security video inside of twenty four hour Walgreens at
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eighty six hundred South Cottage Grove Avenue.
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Speaker 2: And this is it the footage the police released later, right, Yeah.
16:18
Speaker 1: They released it to the public in twenty twenty two
16:20
to try and jog memories. The footage is clear. She
16:23
walks in alone, approaches the ATM, and initiates.
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Speaker 2: A cash withdrawal, just a standard ATM run, but.
16:29
Speaker 1: She doesn't just do it once. She runs her card,
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gets cash, and then runs her card a second time.
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She pulls out a total of four hundred.
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Speaker 2: Dollars four hundred dollars.
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Speaker 1: Three minutes later she exits the store. These frames of
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video are believed to be the absolute last confirmed sightings
16:43
of Cure Coles alive.
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Speaker 2: Let's bring in some forensic accounting principles to analyze this
16:48
ATM footage, because the behavioral anomalies are screaming at us.
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Speaker 1: Here what stands out to you?
16:53
Speaker 2: First, Let's look at the raw number four hundred dollars
16:57
in an economic context of twenty eighteen. For a twenty six
17:00
year old who just started a new job and is
17:03
actively saving money for a baby, four hundred dollars is
17:06
a highly significant amount of liquid cash to pull out
17:09
at nearly eleven o'clock on a Tuesday night.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't just grab four hundred bucks for a
17:13
late night snack exactly.
17:15
Speaker 2: Furthermore, her victimology profile, compiled from family interviews explicitly states
17:20
that Kiera was a cautious spender.
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Speaker 1: She was saving for the nursery, right, She was a saver.
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Speaker 2: She was not prone to impulsive financial decisions. So the
17:28
first question a forensic accountant asks is what sudden, urgent
17:32
event necessitates a four hundred dollars cash injection late at night?
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Speaker 1: And the mechanics of the withdrawal itself are weird? Why
17:41
two separate transactions to get to four hundred? Why not
17:44
just punch in four zero zero?
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Speaker 2: That detail is critical. ATMs typically have per transaction limits
17:51
imposed by the bank or the machine operator.
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Speaker 1: Like a cap to stop thieves.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, often two hundred or three hundred dollars to mitigate fraud.
17:59
If you need a total that exceeds that single swipe limit,
18:02
you are forced to run the cart a second time,
18:05
incurring a second fee, and.
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Speaker 1: Nobody wants to pay doubatmfees unless they have to.
18:09
Speaker 2: Precisely, this behavioral data point suggests she didn't just need
18:13
some walking around money. She needed a very specific, larger amount,
18:18
or she was actively attempting to drain the daily maximum
18:21
the machine would authorize.
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Speaker 1: When you watch that footage, it is impossible not to
18:25
wonder what is happening just outside the frame.
18:27
Speaker 2: Of that camera, because she's alone on the tape right.
18:30
Speaker 1: The Walgreens might be brightly lit, but the parking lot
18:33
is dark. Was she coerced into going in there with
18:36
someone sitting in the passenger seat of our car demanding
18:38
she max out her daily limit. It's a very real possibility,
18:42
But let's play fair and look at the alternative. Could
18:45
she simply have been trying to help someone she cared
18:48
about who is in a sudden desperate bind.
18:51
Speaker 2: Like a friend in trouble.
18:53
Speaker 1: You know, a friend calls and says, my car broke down.
18:55
The tow truck only takes cash, or I need to
18:57
pay off a debt tonight.
18:59
Speaker 2: The sudden ultra theory is a valid hypothesis to test.
19:03
But when you layer that financial deviation over the timeline
19:06
of what happens just minutes later, the probability shifts heavily
19:10
toward coercion or high stress.
19:13
Speaker 1: Manipulation because of what happens next.
19:15
Speaker 2: Right if she were simply helping a friend pay for
19:17
a tow truck, she would logically return home afterward. The
19:20
sudden deviation from her cautious financial baseline late at night
19:24
immediately preceding her total vanishing strongly suggests that this money
19:28
was inextricably linked to the catalyst of her disappearance.
19:31
Speaker 1: So the money in her going missing are connected.
19:33
Speaker 2: Almost certainly, she was either securing funds for someone else
19:37
under circumstances that rapidly devolved into a fatal encounter, or
19:41
she was being robbed of her available liquid assets.
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Speaker 1: That brings us to the end of the critical hour
19:47
and to the piece of surveillance footage that I think
19:50
is the most chilling element of this.
19:51
Speaker 2: Entire case, the parking footage.
19:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometime before eleven four five pm, so we were
19:57
talking less than an hour after s she leaves the
20:00
Walgreens with the cast surveillance cameras pick up Kiara's car.
20:03
Speaker 2: Again, but not where you'd expect.
20:05
Speaker 1: No, it's not back at her apartment, and it's not
20:07
at the Walgreens. The car is seen pulling up and
20:10
parking in another area nearby. The camera rolls as the
20:14
car comes to a stop. We wait for the doors
20:17
to open, and then and then only the passenger side
20:20
door opens. The man we saw earlier, Joshua Simmons, who
20:24
got into the passenger side at her apartment, exits the vehicle.
20:27
He shuts the passenger door, okay, and then nothing happens.
20:31
We watch the driver's side door. No one gets out.
20:33
Kara does not exit the vehicle.
20:34
Speaker 2: She doesn't get out at all.
20:35
Speaker 1: Simmons simply walks away from Kiara's car, strolls down the
20:38
block to where his own personal vehicle had been park overnight,
20:41
gets in and drives away.
20:43
Speaker 2: We need to spend some time on the physical forensics
20:46
of this specific moment because it is the lynchpin of
20:49
the police theory of foul play.
20:51
Speaker 1: It's just so bizarre to watch, it is.
20:53
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Speeler used a very specific, highly technical phrase to
20:58
describe what investigators believe there are watching on that camera.
21:01
He stated that the individual was likely staging the seat.
21:04
Speaker 1: Staging the seat, I want to make sure the listener
21:06
really understands what staging the seat implies, because the physical
21:10
mechanics of it are horrifying when you map it out
21:12
in your head.
21:13
Speaker 2: They really are. Staging is a conscious, calculated act of
21:16
forensic deception. It is post offense.
21:19
Speaker 1: Behavior, trying to get cover your tracks.
21:21
Speaker 2: Yes, when investigators say someone is staging the seat, they
21:25
mean the perpetrator is attempting to author a false visual
21:28
narrative for any potential witnesses or surveillance cameras they suspect
21:32
might be watching. Right, Think about the physical geometry of
21:35
a car's interior. If Simmons was the one actually driving
21:39
Kira's car back to that neighborhood, but he intentionally slid
21:43
his body over the center console to exit out of
21:45
the passenger door, he is putting on.
21:47
Speaker 1: A performance, a performance for the camera exactly.
21:50
Speaker 2: He is intentionally creating the visual illusion that the driver, Kira,
21:55
is still sitting in the driver's seat, or perhaps that
21:58
Kiera drove the car there, parked it and simply walked
22:02
away into the shadows off camera.
22:04
Speaker 1: He's trying to separate himself from the driver's seat.
22:06
Speaker 2: It is a physical lie designed to sever his visible,
22:10
undeniable connection to the operation of that.
22:12
Speaker 1: Vehicle, because if he just opened the driver's side door
22:15
and stepped out, the camera would prove unequivocally that he
22:19
was the last person driving her car, and that's.
22:21
Speaker 2: A huge problem for her.
22:23
Speaker 1: And if he's the last person driving, the immediate question
22:25
is where did you leave Kier?
22:27
Speaker 2: Precisely by sliding out the passenger side, he's hiding a
22:30
grim reality, a reality where Kiera is likely no longer
22:34
in the vehicle at all, having been left somewhere else
22:37
in that dark forty five minute window after the ATM.
22:40
Speaker 1: Or even worse, yeah, or.
22:42
Speaker 2: Even more distressingly, a reality where she is physically incapacitated
22:46
inside the vehicle, slumped below the window line, out of
22:49
view of the camera, and he is abandoning the scene.
22:52
Speaker 1: God, just the thought of that is sickening.
22:55
Speaker 2: It is Staging requires high level cognitive function, acquires an
23:00
awareness of investigative techniques and a desire for self preservation.
23:05
Speaker 1: You have to be thinking clearly.
23:06
Speaker 2: Right, an innocent boyfriend who just got dropped off by
23:09
his girlfriend after a late night drive doesn't perform acrobatic
23:12
maneuvers to slide over a gearshift and exit a passenger
23:16
door of a car he was driving.
23:17
Speaker 1: No, they just open the door next to the steering
23:19
wheel and get out.
23:20
Speaker 2: Exactly. The staging of the seat is an action taken
23:23
by someone desperately trying to obscure who was last in
23:27
control of Kiara's fate.
23:28
Speaker 1: That critical hour seals the timeline of Kira's life, but
23:32
the bizarre, baffling behavior from the person of interest bleeds
23:36
right into the next morning. It doesn't stop, not at all.
23:39
The sun comes up on October three, twenty eighteen, Kia
23:43
is supposedly missing. She hasn't shown up to work, her
23:45
mother hasn't heard from her. And what happens?
23:48
Speaker 2: He comes back.
23:49
Speaker 1: The same man, Joshua Simmons returns in the neighborhood. He
23:53
walks right back to Kiara's car, which is exactly where
23:55
he abandoned it the night before. He gets in, starts
23:58
it up, and moves the car closer to Kira's apartment building.
24:02
Speaker 2: He literally drives it back.
24:03
Speaker 1: Then he physically uses a key or some form of
24:06
access to go inside her residence. He stays inside for
24:10
a period of time, and when he emerges, he is
24:13
caring what police reports to describe as unknown items.
24:15
Speaker 2: Unknown item.
24:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, he packs these items away, gets back into his
24:19
own car, and drives off. Now I have to ask,
24:23
if police have him on video entering her apartment when
24:26
she's missing and removing items, why couldn't they at least
24:30
charge him with burglary or tampering with evidence right then
24:33
and there.
24:33
Speaker 2: That is a very common point of frustration for the public.
24:37
But it comes down to the strict legal thresholds of
24:39
property and shared access. How so, well, if Simmons was
24:42
Kure's boyfriend and the presumed father of her child, he
24:46
likely had established documented access to the apartment, like a
24:49
key she gave him, or perhaps he routinely stayed there.
24:52
Speaker 1: So he's technically allowed to be there.
24:53
Speaker 2: In the eyes of the law. Entering an apartment you
24:55
have permission to access is not breaking and.
24:58
Speaker 1: Entering even if she's missing.
25:00
Speaker 2: Even if she's missing. As for the unknown items and
25:03
a potential tampering charge, the burden of proof is incredibly high.
25:07
You have to prove what those items were, and you
25:10
have to prove he removed them with the specific provable
25:13
intent to hinder a felony investigation.
25:16
Speaker 1: Which is hard if they're in a bag exactly if.
25:18
Speaker 2: He simply claims I went in to grab my own
25:21
clothes or I was grabbing my gaming console, and the
25:23
police cannot definitively prove otherwise because the items were in
25:27
a duffel bag or obscured from the camera, a tampering
25:30
charge will never survive a preliminary hearing.
25:33
Speaker 1: So the law protects is right to go in there.
25:35
But let's look at the psychology of it. Why move
25:38
the car? Why return to the scene the morning after
25:41
a traumatic event?
25:42
Speaker 2: Returning to the scene is a well documented phenomenon in
25:44
criminal psychology, and it usually serves one of two purposes,
25:48
scene manipulation or narrative control.
25:50
Speaker 1: Narrative control like telling a story right.
25:53
Speaker 2: Moving the car closer to her apartment is a continuation
25:55
of the staging we saw the night before. By parking
25:58
the car near her home is a ttempting to paint
26:00
a superficial picture of normalcy for the neighbors.
26:03
Speaker 1: And her family, making it look like she came back.
26:06
Speaker 2: The visual messages look her cars parked at her house,
26:08
She must have come home. She must be sleeping or
26:11
just hanging out. Inside.
26:12
Speaker 1: It's stalling.
26:13
Speaker 2: It is a stalling tactic. It's designed to delay the panic,
26:17
delay the family calling the police, and buy time. If
26:20
the car was left blocks away, parked haphazardly where he
26:23
dumped it at midnight, a neighbor might notice it out
26:26
of place and call it in much faster.
26:29
Speaker 1: That makes a chilling amount of sense. What about the
26:31
stuff he took?
26:32
Speaker 2: As for removing the unknown items, we have to deduce
26:35
the motive based on the timeline. Was he removing physical
26:39
evidence that could link him to a crime scene inside.
26:41
Speaker 1: The apartment, like cleaning up?
26:43
Speaker 2: Maybe? Was he removing a weapon he had stashed there previously?
26:47
Was he removing financial documents related to the four hundred
26:50
dollars oh true? Or was he taking Kira's personal items
26:53
like clothes or a toothbrush to set the stage for
26:56
a false narrative that she had packed a bag and
26:58
run away voluntarily.
27:00
Speaker 1: But that false narrative of her running away totally implodes
27:04
when you look at what he.
27:05
Speaker 2: Left behind, Yes, the car contents.
27:07
Speaker 1: On October four, Kiera's mother, Karen realizes she hasn't had
27:13
her daily call with Kia. Two days of silence is
27:16
a blaring siren for this family. Karen officially files missing
27:20
person's report as she should has the Chicago police move in.
27:24
They locate Kiara's car right where Simmons had moved it,
27:27
and when they process the interior of that vehicle, the
27:30
findings are just devastating because they completely shatter any illusion
27:34
of a voluntary disappearance. What did they find inside the car?
27:38
Police find Kiera's cell phone, They find her purse, and
27:41
they find her packed lunch. Wow, there are no signs
27:45
of a struggle in the car. Crime scene technicians process
27:48
the apartment. No blood, no signs of forced entry, no
27:51
violence detected, but there is a packed lunch sitting in
27:54
an abandoned car.
27:55
Speaker 2: From an evidentiary standpoint, the cell phone is the most
27:58
critical immediate asset for law enforcement. We live in a
28:01
digital age.
28:02
Speaker 1: You don't leave your phone.
28:03
Speaker 2: Nobody leaves their phone. Leaving a smartphone behind severs a
28:06
person's connection to their banking, their social network, their maps,
28:09
their entire modern survival.
28:11
Speaker 1: Toolcase, as your whole life.
28:13
Speaker 2: Furthermore, police use cell phones to trace the final movements
28:16
of a victim, even if the phone is sitting in
28:19
the car. Investigators will pull the historical cell site location information.
28:23
You know, the pings off local cell towers to see
28:26
where that phone traveled during that critical hour the night before.
28:29
Speaker 1: Oh so they can map the route.
28:30
Speaker 2: Yes, but you are entirely correct to focus on the
28:33
lunch because the lunch speaks to the psychology of the victim.
28:36
Speaker 1: It's so sad.
28:37
Speaker 2: In the specific lexicon of missing persons investigations, a packed
28:41
lunch left behind is what analysts might refer to as
28:44
a stock watch, like.
28:46
Speaker 1: An old war detective movies where the train crashes and
28:49
the victim's pocket watch shatters, freezing the exact time of
28:52
the impact.
28:53
Speaker 2: Exactly that concept, but applied to human behavior, A packed
28:57
lunch freezes a moment of intention.
28:59
Speaker 1: It is.
29:00
Speaker 2: It's a physical artifact of a mundane routine.
29:02
Speaker 1: She made that food to eat the next day.
29:04
Speaker 2: When Kiera stood in her kitchen making that lunch, she
29:07
was explicitly demonstrating her intention to go to work the
29:10
next day. She intended to eat that food. It proves
29:14
that she was actively planning to live out.
29:15
Speaker 1: Her tomorrow and someone took her tomorrow away.
29:18
Speaker 2: The fact that the lunch never made it to the
29:20
postal depot and was left rotting a staged vehicle is
29:24
a stark, tragic indicator that her intended timeline was abruptly
29:28
and likely violently interrupted. It is one of the strongest
29:33
circumstantial indicators of foul play you.
29:35
Speaker 1: Can find, and the Chicago Police Department recognized the gravity
29:38
of that stuck watch immediately. I want to highlight this
29:41
because we often hear these infuriating stories where families report
29:44
a loved one missing and the police brush them off.
29:47
Speaker 2: We hear it all the time.
29:48
Speaker 1: They say, she's an adult, adults are allowed to disappear.
29:51
Wait forty eight hours, Maybe she just needed a break.
29:54
Speaker 2: The bureaucratic friction.
29:55
Speaker 1: Yes, that bureaucratic friction did not happen here. Despite the
29:59
fact that there was no physical body, no blood evidence,
30:02
and no obvious MESSI crime scene, the Chicago Police Department
30:06
elevated Kira Cole's disappearance from a standard missing person classification
30:10
to a full blown homicide investigation with incredible speed.
30:14
Speaker 2: That's very rare.
30:15
Speaker 1: They didn't wait. They launched massive grid searches. They subpoened
30:19
her digital footprint, her social media accounts, her bank records,
30:23
and they proved definitively that her digital life flatlined after
30:27
October two there were absolutely zero signs of a planned departure.
30:32
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, we really
30:35
need to contextualize how rare that rapid escalation is within
30:38
the mechanics of a major city police department.
30:41
Speaker 1: Because they're usually so overwhelmed.
30:43
Speaker 2: Exactly, bureaucracies inherently resist elevating missing adult cases to homicides
30:48
without a body. Homicide units in cities like Chicago are
30:51
historically overwhelmed with active smoking gun cases.
30:55
Speaker 1: Cases with actual crime scenes.
30:57
Speaker 2: Right to bypass the standard waiting periods and reality homicide
31:00
detectives and forensic resources to a nobody case means the
31:04
circumstantial evidence was overwhelmingly convincing.
31:06
Speaker 1: They knew immediately.
31:07
Speaker 2: Season detectives like Lieutenant Speilar looked at the totality of
31:10
the circumstances. The stage vehicle geometry, the abandoned cell phone,
31:15
the uncharacteristic late night ATM withdrawal, the sudden digital silence,
31:19
and the frozen intention of the packed lunch.
31:22
Speaker 1: It all added up.
31:23
Speaker 2: They built a circumstantial wall that pointed unequivocally to murder.
31:27
Speaker 1: And when homicide detectives build a wall like that, their
31:31
immediate next step is to figure out who is standing
31:33
on the other side of it, the suspect. The investigative
31:36
focus narrowed with absolute laser precision onto the man sitting
31:40
in the passenger seat on the surveillance video, Joshua Summons.
31:45
Speaker 2: The person of interest.
31:46
Speaker 1: The police publicly named him a person of interest. Let's
31:49
review the facts regarding him. He was the boyfriend, He
31:52
was the presumed father of the baby. He was the
31:55
last person scene with her right. He was the person
31:58
captured on video staging her car. And he was the
32:01
person who used his established access to enter her apartment
32:04
and remove unknown items the morning after she vanished.
32:07
Speaker 2: And we must look at how he responded to the
32:09
pressure of.
32:10
Speaker 1: That focus, because he didn't exactly help them.
32:12
Speaker 2: No. When investigators brought Simmons in for initial questioning, his
32:16
narrative of the events of October two was reportedly riddled
32:20
with inconsistencies.
32:21
Speaker 1: He kept changing his story.
32:23
Speaker 2: He could not provide a straight, verifiable timeline of where
32:26
they went after leaving the apartment, what specifically occurred after
32:30
the Walgreens atm withdrawal, or why he was captured on
32:34
video returning her car and entering her home without her
32:37
the next day.
32:38
Speaker 1: Which is incredibly suspicious.
32:40
Speaker 2: In behavioral analysis, inconsistent statements under police pressure are a
32:44
classic indicator of deception. As the investigative pressure mounted, Simmons
32:49
reportedly ceased cooperating with detectives entirely.
32:53
Speaker 1: He just stopped talking.
32:54
Speaker 2: He invoked his constitutional rights to remain silent and seek counsel,
32:58
and shortly after kier disappearance, he packed his belongings and
33:02
moved out of the state of Illinois.
33:04
Speaker 1: Now this is the part of a deep dive where
33:05
I know the listener is screaming at their device. Oh,
33:08
I know, because the public looks at this and says,
33:11
we have the Walgreens video. We have the video of
33:14
him staging the car. We have the video of his
33:16
bizarre morning after behavior.
33:18
Speaker 2: It's all on tape.
33:19
Speaker 1: We have a mountain of inconsistent statements, and we have
33:22
a guy who literally skips down. How on Earth seven
33:26
and a half years later, has this person of interest
33:29
never been charged with a crime. Why hasn't a prosecutor
33:32
locked him up.
33:33
Speaker 2: This is where we have to separate the concept of
33:35
knowing from the legal threshold of proving, and it is
33:38
one of the most frustrating realities of the American justice.
33:41
Speaker 1: System knowing versus proving.
33:44
Speaker 2: Yes, law enforcement can be ninety nine percent certain someone
33:47
is responsible for a crime, but a state's attorney has
33:50
to be able to prove it in a court of
33:52
law beyond a reasonable doubt to twelve jurors, and that's
33:56
high bar. In a case like this, prosecutors are dealing
33:59
with what is known as a nobody homicide. In criminal law,
34:03
there is a concept called corpus delicti, which translates to
34:07
the body of the crime.
34:08
Speaker 1: So you need the body to prove the murder.
34:10
Speaker 2: Historically, yes, you needed the physical body to prove a
34:13
murder actually occurred. Today, you can prosecute without a body,
34:17
but the hurdle is astronomically.
34:19
Speaker 1: High because without a body, you are missing the most
34:22
fundamental pieces of the puzzle.
34:23
Speaker 2: Precisely, without Kia's remains, the medical examiner cannot establish a
34:28
definitive cause of death. You cannot definitively prove how she died.
34:32
Speaker 1: You can't even say for sure it was a murder exactly.
34:34
Speaker 2: You cannot prove where she died because you don't have
34:37
a primary crime scene covered in forensic evidence. And most importantly,
34:41
you cannot scientifically link the suspect to the physical act
34:45
of murder with DNA fingerprints on a weapon or trace evidence.
34:49
Speaker 1: So what do they actually have.
34:50
Speaker 2: All the prosecution has is strange behavioral video, a bizarre timeline,
34:55
and a man who lied to the police. But lying
34:58
of the police is not. Staging a car is highly suspicious,
35:02
but a skilled defense attorney will argue alternative theories all
35:06
day long.
35:07
Speaker 1: Wait, how does it defense attorneys spin staging a car
35:11
and fleeing the state as innocent behavior.
35:13
Speaker 2: A defense attorney will look at the jury and say,
35:15
ladies and gentlemen, my client is a young man who panicked.
35:18
Maybe Kira had a medical emergency and he got scared.
35:21
Speaker 1: Wow.
35:22
Speaker 2: Or maybe she was involved in something illegal at that
35:24
Walgreens and told him to drive her car home and
35:27
leave her out of it.
35:28
Speaker 1: Just making up scenarios.
35:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, he lied to the police, but people lied
35:33
to the police out of fear every day. Fleeing the
35:36
state isn't an admission of murder. It's the reaction of
35:39
an innocent black man terrified of being framed by the
35:42
Chicago Police Department.
35:43
Speaker 1: That's a powerful argument for a jury to hear.
35:46
Speaker 2: And furthermore, we are operating in the era of the
35:48
CSI effect. Modern juries have been conditioned by decades of
35:52
television procedurals to expect definitive scientific proof.
35:56
Speaker 1: They want DNA and GPS tracking.
35:58
Speaker 2: Right DNA HI define video of the crime itself. When
36:02
you bring them a case built purely on circumstantial anomalies
36:05
and missing lunches, juries often hesitate to convict someone of murder, and.
36:09
Speaker 1: The prosecutor only gets one shot.
36:11
Speaker 2: Right Yes. For the state's attorney, the risk is monumental.
36:15
In the US, the principle of double jeopardy applies if
36:18
the prosecutor takes Simmons to trial with the circumstantial evidence
36:21
and loses. If the jury finds him not guilty, he
36:24
can never be tried for Kierra's murder again, never even
36:28
if they find her body the very next day with
36:30
his DNA all over it. He walks free forever. Prosecutors
36:34
only get one shot, so they wait, They wait for
36:37
the puzzle piece that locks it all in.
36:39
Speaker 1: And while the slow gears of the legal system grind
36:42
to a halt and wait, Kiera's family is forced to
36:46
live in an unrelenting, waking nightmare.
36:49
Speaker 2: It's unbearable.
36:50
Speaker 1: We need to shift our focus from the forensic data
36:53
to the emotional blast radius of this deep dive. Because
36:57
Kiir is not just a data point on a timeline,
37:00
She is a person. I keep returning to the quote
37:02
from her mother, Karen Phillips. She said, when I woke
37:05
up that morning and still hadn't gotten a call from her,
37:08
I knew something was wrong. The intuition, that mother's intuition
37:11
cut through all the staging in the stalling tactics immediately,
37:15
And Karen hasn't stopped fighting since that very first morning.
37:17
Speaker 2: She really hasn't.
37:19
Speaker 1: For seven and a half years, this family has waged
37:21
an absolute war of attrition against the city's tendency to forget.
37:25
They are out in the streets passing out flyers.
37:27
Speaker 2: They're constantly active.
37:28
Speaker 1: They organize massive press conferences every single year. They held
37:34
a major one on Kia's thirty first birthday. They held
37:37
another one in September twenty twenty five, which would have
37:39
been her thirty third birthday. They refuse to let Carrie
37:42
become just another cold case file.
37:44
Speaker 2: The psychological endurance required to maintain that level of ferocious
37:48
public advocacy is staggering when you consider the trauma there enduring.
37:53
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
37:54
Speaker 2: Psychologists refer to this specific type of grief as a
37:57
biguous loss. It is the trauma of a life, one
38:00
vanishing without a trace. There is no closure, no funeral, right,
38:04
there's no funeral to mournat. There is no finality. The
38:07
brain cannot process the loss because the possibility of return,
38:10
however infinitesimally small, remains open.
38:13
Speaker 1: And in Kia's case, that trauma is compounded exponentially by
38:17
the pregnancy. Oh absolutely, think about Joseph Coles, Kira's father.
38:20
He stood in front of a bank of news cameras
38:22
in twenty nineteen and just broke down weeping, saying, I
38:26
just want my baby to come home, along with my
38:27
grandbaby that I never got to meet. He is grieving
38:30
two entire generations simultaneously.
38:32
Speaker 2: That is just heartbreaking.
38:34
Speaker 1: And consider the psychological torture of the calendar. Kiera's due
38:38
date was the spring of twenty nineteen. In a normal timeline,
38:42
a due date is a day of immense joy, celebration,
38:45
and new life. His happy day for Karen and Joseph
38:49
that spring day arrived, passed in complete, agonizing silence, and
38:54
became just another marker of profound absence.
38:56
Speaker 2: It is genuinely unbearable to even imagine sitting with that
39:00
kind of pain. But what is truly incredible is how
39:03
they channeled that ambiguous loss into concrete action.
39:06
Speaker 1: They mobilized the neighborhood.
39:07
Speaker 2: Yes, and how the South Side community rallied around them.
39:10
They didn't just quietly tape up a few faded posters
39:13
on telephone polls. They built a financial.
39:16
Speaker 1: War chest, a huge one.
39:18
Speaker 2: Today, there is a sixty eight thousand dollars reward for
39:21
information leading to an arrest and conviction in this case.
39:24
That money was funded by the US Postal Inspection Service
39:27
because she was a federal employee, but it was also
39:29
heavily funded by the family's own savings and sheer community donations.
39:33
Speaker 1: Sixty eight grand is a lot of money.
39:35
Speaker 2: It is one of the largest standing rewards for a
39:37
missing person case in Chicago in recent memory.
39:40
Speaker 1: And they forced the media ecosystem to pay attention. They
39:44
got local news powerhouses like ABC seven, Fox thirty two,
39:48
and CDs Chicago to cover the anniversaries. They elevated it
39:51
to national outlets like ABC News. It's been featured on
39:54
massive true crime podcasts like True Crime Garage and Deep
39:58
dive documentaries on investigation discovery.
40:00
Speaker 2: We have to contextualize why the family had to fight
40:03
so fiercely and so publicly for that media oxygen.
40:07
Speaker 1: Because the media doesn't always care. Right.
40:09
Speaker 2: Kira's case certainly highlights the systemic vulnerability of postal workers
40:13
who walk urban routes alone carrying valuable federal property, which
40:17
is why the Postal Inspection Service remains engaged. Sure, But
40:20
on a much broader sociological level, Kira's disappearance collided with
40:24
a deeply troubling historical pattern regarding missing black women and
40:28
girls in Chicago and across the United States.
40:30
Speaker 1: It's a known issue.
40:31
Speaker 2: Historically, missing persons cases involving women of color have received
40:35
disproportionately less sustained media coverage, fewer primetime broadcasts, and subsequently
40:41
fewer investigative resources compared to cases involving young, middle class
40:45
white women. Media critics and sociologists often refer to this
40:48
disparity as missing white women syndrome.
40:52
Speaker 1: Right, It's the stark reality that the system will mobilize
40:56
a national media circus for certain demographics, while marginalized communities
41:01
have to fight tooth and nail just to get a local.
41:04
Speaker 2: News segment, it's completely unfair.
41:06
Speaker 1: Kira's family understood that. Implicitly. They knew that if they
41:09
didn't scream her name from the rooftops, the bureaucratic machine
41:13
might quietly let her case fade into the background noise
41:17
of Chicago's crime.
41:18
Speaker 2: Statistics, which is why they marched.
41:20
Speaker 1: They participated heavily in the twenty twenty two We Walk
41:23
for Her March in Chicago, an event specifically designed to
41:26
raise awareness for the disproportionate number of missing black women
41:30
in the city.
41:30
Speaker 2: They were very active.
41:31
Speaker 1: They aggressively leveraged the media, orchestrated the annual press conferences,
41:36
and built that massive sixty eight thousand dollars reward to
41:39
actively fight against that historical erasure. They demanded equal visibility
41:44
for Kiera.
41:44
Speaker 2: And their relentless pressure is the primary reason this investigation
41:48
remains classified as active.
41:49
Speaker 1: Today because they won't let it go cold.
41:51
Speaker 2: Exactly. The Chicago Police Department knows the public, the postal union,
41:55
and the media are watching. The community's response dictates where
41:59
the case stands right now in twenty twenty six, which.
42:03
Speaker 1: Brings us to the present moment. Let's reiterate the day
42:05
one more time. It is March twenty twenty six. We
42:08
are seven and a half years removed from the blinking
42:10
lights of that Walgreens atm. Seven and a half years,
42:13
the case is officially open, the case is active, but
42:17
the central haunting questions remain totally unanswered.
42:20
Speaker 2: We still don't know the core truths.
42:22
Speaker 1: What exactly happened in the dark sixty minute void between
42:25
the ATM withdrawal and the staging of the car seat
42:28
where the physical remains of Kiera and her baby were.
42:32
Joshua simmons inconsistent statements and his rapid flight from the
42:35
state proof of a guilty conscience, or is there some
42:38
other incredibly bizarre explanation that we aren't seeing.
42:42
Speaker 2: Analyzing the status of a cooling case like this raises
42:44
an important question about human nature and the passage of time.
42:48
What piece of the puzzle is actually missing?
42:50
Speaker 1: Someone knows something.
42:51
Speaker 2: Because the detectives in the Chicago Police Department firmly believe
42:54
they are not hunting a phantom. They believe someone in
42:58
that specific community knows exactly what happened.
43:01
Speaker 1: You can't just hide a car in a body alone
43:04
in a city.
43:04
Speaker 2: A crime of this magnitude involving the movement of vehicles.
43:08
The coordination of staging and the disposal of a body
43:11
in an urban environment rarely happens in a complete vacuum.
43:16
Speaker 1: Someone helped, or someone was told.
43:18
Speaker 2: Someone was confided in during a moment of panic. Someone
43:21
noticed a strange, unexplained change in a friend's behavior, a
43:25
deep scratch on an arm, or the frantic late night
43:28
cleaning of a car trunk in early October twenty eighteen.
43:31
Speaker 1: That's where the money comes in.
43:32
Speaker 2: The purpose of a sixty eight thousand dollars reward is
43:35
not simply to ask the public for a favor. It
43:38
is a psychological tool designed to shatter loyalties over time.
43:41
Speaker 1: Because seven years changes things.
43:43
Speaker 2: Seven years is a very long time in human relationships.
43:46
Marriages end in bitter divorces, friendship sour over money, Allegiances change.
43:51
Speaker 1: The person who covered for you might not like you anymore.
43:54
Speaker 2: The person who kept a dark secret for a friend
43:57
out of loyalty in twenty eighteen might be desperate enough
44:00
to need sixty eight thousand dollars in twenty twenty six.
44:04
Authorities continually emphasize that even the smallest seemingly insignificant detail,
44:10
a rumor, a passing comment, could be the lynch apin
44:13
that brings the whole circumstantial wall down.
44:16
Speaker 1: And that is exactly why we are talking directly to
44:18
you right now. If you are listening to this deep
44:21
dive and you live in Chicago, or you lived on
44:23
the South Side back in twenty eighteen, or you know
44:26
someone who did pay attention.
44:27
Speaker 2: Please listen.
44:28
Speaker 1: This isn't just a true crime story to casually consume
44:31
on your morning commute. This is real life. A family
44:34
is waiting and agonizing limbo.
44:36
Speaker 2: They need closure.
44:37
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know has any information, even
44:40
a rumor you heard years ago that you thought wasn't
44:42
important enough to mention, it needs to be reported. We
44:44
are going to give you the tip lines right now,
44:46
and I want to stress that they are completely anonymous.
44:49
You do not have to give your name.
44:50
Speaker 2: You can stay completely hit.
44:52
Speaker 1: You can go online and submit a tip at CPD
44:54
tip dot com. You can call the Chicago Police Department
44:57
directly at three one two seven four six seven to
45:00
three three zero, or you can call the dedicated tip
45:03
line set up specifically for Kira's case at eight three
45:06
three four zero eight zero zero sixty nine. It is
45:09
never too late to make the call that ends a
45:11
family's nightmare.
45:12
Speaker 2: The US Postal Inspection Service is also actively monitoring tips
45:16
related to Kira. Given her status as a federal employee.
45:19
There are multiple secure avenues to get this information into
45:22
the right hand safely without compromising your own identity.
45:25
Speaker 1: So when we pull back from all of this, when
45:28
we zoom out from the timeline anomalies, the forensic accounting
45:31
of the ATM receipts, the terrifying geometry of the staged car,
45:34
and the frustrating hurdles of the legal system, what is
45:37
the ultimate legacy of this deep dive.
45:38
Speaker 2: It's about Kira.
45:40
Speaker 1: Kira Coles is a daughter. She is a soon to
45:42
be mother. She is a proud postal worker who is
45:44
walking the streets of Chicago actively building her version of
45:47
the American.
45:48
Speaker 2: Drugs she had so much ahead of her.
45:49
Speaker 1: Her story is an undeniable tragedy, but it is also
45:53
a profound testament to love. Her story refuses to end
45:57
in silence because Karen Phillips, Joe of Coals, and an
46:01
entire South Side community simply refused to let the silence win.
46:05
Speaker 2: The resilience of Karen and Joseph is a true engine
46:08
of this entire narrative. They're keeping the investigation breathing through
46:11
sheer force of will.
46:13
Speaker 1: They're holding up the sky for her.
46:14
Speaker 2: Without their constant advocacy, this file might have been boxed
46:18
up and gathered dust in an archive years ago. They
46:21
remind us that behind every missing poster on a telephone
46:23
pole is a universe of grief, but also an unyielding
46:27
capacity for hope.
46:28
Speaker 1: But before we sign off, I want to leave you
46:30
with a final provocative thought. Okay, something to just mull over,
46:33
something that builds on the contradictions we've deconstructed today. We
46:37
have spent so much time in the dark during this
46:39
deep dive, We really have. We've analyzed the dramatic late
46:42
night surveillance footage, you know, the four hundred dollars pulled
46:45
under potentially coercive circumstances, the chilling, calculated staging of the
46:49
car seat at midnight. But what if we are looking
46:52
at the wrong shadows?
46:53
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
46:54
Speaker 1: What if the key to unlocking this entire tragedy isn't
46:58
hidden in the dark of that late night parking job,
47:01
but in the mundane, bright light of that very first morning.
47:05
Speaker 2: You're going back to the uniform, think.
47:07
Speaker 1: Back to the start of October two. Why did Kiera
47:10
Coles put on her highly visible official US Postal Service
47:15
uniform after she had already called in sick to work.
47:17
Speaker 2: It's the biggest anomaly.
47:19
Speaker 1: Was that uniform a disguise she was forced to wear
47:22
to feel a watchful neighbor into thinking everything was normal.
47:25
Was it a subtle message to someone who was monitoring
47:28
her movements or was.
47:29
Speaker 2: She meeting someone?
47:30
Speaker 1: Or was it worn for a scheduled morning meeting with
47:33
someone she trusted implicitly, someone who needed to believe she
47:36
was heading to work that day.
47:37
Speaker 2: That changes the entire timeline.
47:39
Speaker 1: Perhaps the true answer to her vanishing doesn't lie in
47:42
the dark hour where she disappeared from the cameras, but
47:45
in the exact hidden reason she chose what to wear
47:48
that final morning. Think about that