Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Kristen Modafferi Pt. One
Transcript
- 0:29Welcome back to The Pathwent Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
- 0:33Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. June twenty third, nineteen
- 0:39ninety seven, San Francisco, California. After completing her shift at a coffee
- 0:45shop at the Crocker Galleria, eighteen year old Christian Motifery vanishes without a trace,
- 0:51even though coworkers report seeing Christian with a blonde woman, she's never identified,
- 0:57and bloodhounds track Christians sent to the edge of the Pacific Ocean at Land's
- 1:00End, over six miles away. Weeks later, a man named John o'numa
- 1:04phones in a fake tip in which he falsely accuses two women of murdering Kristin.
- 1:11But even though Numa does a number of suspicious things and multiple women accuse
- 1:15him of abuse, no conclusive evidence ties him to Christian's disappearance. After that,
- 1:22the Path Went Chile. So today we're going to be covering an unsolved
- 1:26case involving a missing university student, the nineteen ninety seven disappearance of Kristin Modafery.
- 1:32At the time of her disappearance, Kristin Modaferi was a student at North
- 1:36Carolina State University, but decided to relocate to the San Francisco Bay area for
- 1:41the summer in order to take some classes at the University of California, Berkeley.
- 1:46She got herself a job at a mall coffee shop, but went missing
- 1:49after leaving at the end of her ship one afternoon, though some of Kristen's
- 1:53co workers would report seeing her in the company of an unidentified blonde woman.
- 1:57The case would take an una expected turn weeks later, when a man named
- 2:01John O'numa phoned in an anonymous tip, falsely implicating two women in Kristen's disappearance.
- 2:08While he attempted to write off the whole thing as a stupid prank,
- 2:12suspicion mounted that Onuma might have been personally involved in what happened to Kristin,
- 2:16particularly since there were numerous women who accused Onuma of abuse, and he would
- 2:22reportedly use other women in order to lure his victims to him. But no
- 2:25conclusive evidence has ever implicated Onuma, and this is one of those frustrating cold
- 2:30cases in which there are a lot of different pieces of the puzzle, but
- 2:35they just don't quite fit together. Some of the information you'll hear today was
- 2:38sourced from the website find Kristin dot com, which is run by a man
- 2:44named Dennis Mann, who lived in Kristin's hometown of Charlotte at the time she
- 2:47went missing before he volunteered to assist with the search effort, and he remains
- 2:53a major advocate for twenty seven years later. Mann also released his own multi
- 2:58episode podcasts about this taste titled Fine Kristen, and has made every effort to
- 3:02piece together what happened to her, but we still don't have any definitive answers.
- 3:07This is what's so horrifying about this case. It's a young eighteen year
- 3:12old who's enrolled in college and she's so ambitious over in North Carolina. She
- 3:16wants to go to Berkeley for the summer and take some more courses, and
- 3:21in order to accomplish that, she gets this job at the mall. So
- 3:24she's seen with a woman at her coffee shop before she leaves for the night,
- 3:30and then all of a sudden, there's this phone call by a man
- 3:32who kind of shifts the investigation. As you're describing it, I thought,
- 3:37well, wait a minute, her coworkers described her being with this woman.
- 3:40Then you have John who's calling in this tip that ends up causing a big
- 3:45stir in the investigation. But then, Robin, you just said he actually
- 3:49used other women to help lure abuse victims to him, And my heart just
- 3:53sank because even if this blonde woman she was sided with was someone involved,
- 4:00John could still be the main perpetrator in the case. Or it's very possible
- 4:05the woman could be unrelated to the case, or the woman acted alone.
- 4:10So it opens up a whole host of possible answers of was this woman even
- 4:15involved and was she actually working for John? Yeah, there are so many
- 4:19possibilities here because, as we're going to talk about, John Ouma did have
- 4:24a girlfriend at that time who may know more than she's letting on. But
- 4:28this woman was not a blonde, but of course that doesn't preclude the possibility
- 4:31of her being in disguise or possibly wearing a blonde wig. So opinions aren't
- 4:36divided. Some people think that John Onuma is guilty and cause Kristen's disappearance,
- 4:43but at the other hand, he may just be like a prick who decided
- 4:46to phone in a false tip and completely complicated the investigation so that the focus
- 4:50has never left him. So there is just no real evidence pointing to any
- 4:55one conclusion. All we know for certain is that Kristen is gone and is
- 4:59not and found for twenty seven years. It speaks volumes for her character that
- 5:03she has someone back home who says, you know, twenty some odd years
- 5:08later, I'm still fighting for justice for her, that she was that important,
- 5:12that she was that loved, and that it was so important to that
- 5:15community to say, we have to have answers for someone who's one of ours.
- 5:18Even though she was in California at the time, what happened to her,
- 5:21one of our children went missing. Our story begins in California in nineteen
- 5:30ninety seven, and our central figure is eighteen year old Kristin Motiferi. Originally
- 5:34born in Danbury, Connecticut, to parents Bob and Debbie Modiferi. Kristin was
- 5:40the second of their four daughters, and the family would relocate to Charlotte,
- 5:44North Carolina. After receiving a four year scholarship to North Carolina State University and
- 5:49completing her freshman year as an industrial design major, Kristin decided to make a
- 5:56temporary move to the San Francisco Bay Area in order to take a summer photography
- 6:00course at the University of California, Berkeley, which would count towards her credits
- 6:04at NC State. She is the Internet to find a rented room at a
- 6:10Victorian house located on Jane Avenue in Oakland, which she would share with four
- 6:15male roommates, and Kristin officially arrived and moved in on June first, which
- 6:20happened to be her eighteenth birthday. In order to support herself, Kristin found
- 6:26a job working the morning shift at Spinelli's coffee shop in the Crocker Galleria mall,
- 6:30located in San Francisco's Financial District, and she was also planning to work
- 6:34part time on weekends in a coffee shop at the San Francisco Museum of Modern
- 6:40Art. At around three p m. On the afternoon of June twenty third,
- 6:44the day before her photography course was scheduled to start, Kristin completed her
- 6:48shift at Spinelle's and asked her co workers for recommendations of places to visit,
- 6:55even though she said she'd already been there. Kristin briefly mentioned the possibility of
- 7:00traveling to Ocean Beach, located in lands End Park next to the Pacific Ocean
- 7:05but after leaving Spinelle's, Kristin never returned to her residence in Oakland that night
- 7:11and was not heard from again. She did not attend her first photography class
- 7:15at Berkeley the following morning, and never returned to Spinelle's, even though she
- 7:19left behind an unclaimed four hundred dollars paycheck. Based on her character, it's
- 7:25pretty clear that this was not a voluntary exit because she had just planned too
- 7:30much. She had worked too hard to try to get out to California.
- 7:33She had these jobs arranged, and she's about to start courses, which seems
- 7:38to be her priority right now in life, to get that industrial design degree,
- 7:43to make sure she's financing her whole dream out in California. In my
- 7:47heart, I want to know, I'm assuming the roommates were all ruled out.
- 7:51To have an eighteen year old little girl from North Carolina fly cross country
- 7:56and live in a home with four guys that she didn't really know. How
- 8:00were they ruled out pretty quickly? Yeah, we're going to talk more about
- 8:03the roommates as we go along, but they have never been considered to be
- 8:07suspects, And it might seem unusual that like an eighteen year old girl who
- 8:11was away from home for the first time, would move in with four other
- 8:15guys that she didn't even know, but by the sounds of it, because
- 8:18Christian was so active and was would go get up early to go to work
- 8:22and spent a lot of time sight seeing in San Francisco, these roommates really
- 8:26didn't see her all that often because she would come home late at night and
- 8:30then wake up next morning to do it all over again. So they didn't
- 8:33really cross pass all that much. But there has never been any red flags
- 8:37to indicate that they were involved in Kristen's disappearance. Good it doesn't seem like
- 8:41she even got home that night, because from the sounds of it, she
- 8:43had plans to, like you said, be sight seeing and to go out
- 8:48and about. She seems like one of those kids that once she started school,
- 8:50she'd be at the library anyway, hanging out, you know, doing
- 8:54her schoolwork and making sure the investment she made to make that trip to California
- 8:58actually paid off. So just make sure they were all ruled out in case
- 9:01there had been a problem at home. Silly question, what exactly is industrial
- 9:07design? Let me look, Yeah, I'm not even sure either, Okay,
- 9:13I'm glad I'm not the only one. I was thinking an interior design,
- 9:16but me too. And then I'm like, what does she design the
- 9:18interiors of industrial buildings? Because an architect would. Let's see it says,
- 9:24an industrial designer actually develops concepts for manufactured goods such as cars, home appliances,
- 9:30and toys. So they combine art, business, and engineering to make
- 9:33everyday products for everyday use. Very cool, Very cool. I got a
- 9:39toy designer. How fun would that be? So none of Kristen's roommates became
- 9:45concerned enough to reporter missing, as they figured she was probably staying with someone,
- 9:48but her father, Bob, left a voicemail at the residence. When
- 9:52one of the roommates returned Bob's call and informed him that no one had seen
- 9:56or heard from Kristen in three days, Bob and his wife, Debbie,
- 10:00hopped on the first available flight to San Francisco, and Christian's roommates finally reported
- 10:05her missing to the Oakland Police Department. By the time police launched an investigation,
- 10:09one week had passed since Kristen's disappearance, but the Mada Fairies remained in
- 10:13the Bay Area performing their own search for their daughter, handing out missing persons
- 10:18flyers, and hiring the services of a private investigator. An intriguing lead was
- 10:24provided by two of Kristen's co workers, who reported seeing her with a young
- 10:28blond woman on the second floor of the Crocker Galleria about forty five minutes after
- 10:33her final shift at Spinelli's ended. According to those who worked with her,
- 10:37it was uncharacteristic for Kristin to hang around the mall for a long period of
- 10:41time following her shifts, as she had spent the previous three weeks leaving as
- 10:46quickly as possible in order to explore the city. Even though a public plea
- 10:50was sent out for this blond woman to come forward, she never did and
- 10:54she could not be identified. I can tell kind of the dynamic just from
- 10:58the description you gave of the roommates with the parents. How incredible that these
- 11:03are guys that live with her. She's only been there a couple of weeks,
- 11:07and when the parents are calling to check on her, one of the
- 11:09roommates has the decency responsibility to call mom and dad back and instantly can tell
- 11:16how serious this is because they're thinking, eighteen year old girl, we don't
- 11:20see her a lot. She's eighteen out at college, like she's probably hanging
- 11:24out with people and doing her own thing. But as soon as her parents
- 11:28voiced something's wrong and that they're boarding a flight to get out to San Francisco
- 11:33to check on her, they go into action as well to help mom and
- 11:37dad. So it sounds like they report her missing while mom and dad are
- 11:39on their way, and it's the police who drag their feet a couple of
- 11:43days. I'm assuming that's because she's eighteen, right, and there's no sign
- 11:48quote end quote that something wrong had happened to her. Oh yeah, we're
- 11:54going to talk about this. But this was caused a lot of red tape
- 11:56because Kristin legally became an adult only weeks before she went missing. That's when
- 12:01she turned eighteen, So of course there's still feelings that she's an adult.
- 12:05She could take off if she wanted to, so she didn't get the same
- 12:09urgency as if she was a kid or a teenager who had gone missing.
- 12:13But yeah, some people have been suspicious of the roommates for not reporting her
- 12:18missing immediately, but they operated on different schedules, like they would go in
- 12:22and out of the house, they would barely see Kristin. So as far
- 12:24as they know, there's nothing suspicious about the fact that they hadn't seen her
- 12:28because they're not aware that she isn't showing up for her shifts at work or
- 12:31her classes at college. And like you said, once they found out from
- 12:35once they heard from her father and found out that they hadn't heard from Kristin,
- 12:39that's when they realized, okay, something is wrong and they finally took
- 12:43action. I think it'd be very different had you said their arrangement was like,
- 12:48hey, Wednesday night's game nights with roommates or Thursday night we all cooked
- 12:52together and she just didn't bother to show up, but we didn't pay any
- 12:54attention to it. Or she always called and checked in on her way back
- 12:58to tell us you'll leave the door online, and she didn't call. They
- 13:01didn't have that dynamic. This was a living situation that was convenient for all
- 13:05of them. And so after hearing what you said, I think they acted
- 13:11absolutely appropriately. There's nothing to worry about until mom and dad say, guys,
- 13:16this is out of her behavior, and they say, tell us what
- 13:16to do, And it sounds like they went straight into action to help the
- 13:20parent. It's so it's such a perilous situation when you have a missing person
- 13:26and you aren't necessarily close with roommates in the sense that, like you said,
- 13:31you're seeing them every day, or you have these routines that you're sticking
- 13:35to. You're like ships passing in the night. So we've seen cases where
- 13:39people were deceased murdered in their apartment, like in their room, and their
- 13:46roommates were just going about their business and they didn't discover them for a great
- 13:50amount of time later, or that they were missing, and it took days
- 13:54to actually figure that out, for everyone to come together and be like,
- 13:58oh, because it's not just Kristin likely in the situation who's passing. These
- 14:03four other guys are likely working, going to school, doing all of the
- 14:07things, and so it's going to take all of them coming together to go
- 14:11like, dude, when did you last see Kristen And then they all figure
- 14:13out that this is a problem. So it's fortunate that they actually got together
- 14:18and were able to provide her parents with that information because Debbie and Bob I
- 14:24feel for them. They probably were really scared having Kristin leave home live with
- 14:28all of these guys, and they're worried about the things that could happen to
- 14:31her. And then before she can even start this photography course, she goes
- 14:37missing. It's just so heartbreaking. Investigators decided to use a police bloodhound who
- 14:43picked up Christen sent from a pillowcase at her residence and later wound up tracking
- 14:48the scent from Spinelli's to the number thirty eight bus stop on Geary Street,
- 14:54located just a few blocks away from the Galleria. Now, this particular bus
- 14:58route t west and ended at Sutro Heights Park, located at Land's End,
- 15:05over six miles away, and when Kristin had mentioned the possibility of traveling to
- 15:09Land's End and revisiting Ocean Beach following her shift, her coworkers told her that
- 15:15the quickest way to get there was taking the number thirty eight bus on Geary
- 15:18Street. This prompted police to drive the bloodhound a Land's End and it picked
- 15:24up Christian scent beneath the Cliff House, a historic restaurant located near Ocean Beach,
- 15:31and tracked it to a tunnel which was part of the Sutro Bath ruins.
- 15:35After that, the dog lost the scent and since the location was near
- 15:39a rocky, windswept cliff next to the shoreline. There was speculation the Christian
- 15:45could have fallen into the Pacific Ocean and drowned before her body was swept away.
- 15:50However, Christian's family was skeptical of this explanation because the Sutro Baths had
- 15:56a lot of tourist activity and no one reported seeing or hearing anything unusual on
- 16:00the day she vanished. In addition, Kristin had told her roommates that she
- 16:06went to a summer Solstice party at Ocean Beach on the evening of June twenty
- 16:10first, two days before she went missing. Kristin also apparently said she went
- 16:15to a party with two women, but they were never identified. While the
- 16:19authorities were unable to find anyone else who attended this party or could confirm that
- 16:25the party even took place, they could not discount the possibility that the bloodhound
- 16:30only picked up Kristen sent near Ocean Beach because she went to that location on
- 16:34the twenty first but never actually went there on the twenty third. Fun side
- 16:41fact, when I went to San Francisco for a criminology conference, I ate
- 16:45a the cliff house and visited the Sutra Bass. It was amazing good,
- 16:48it was really amazing. So I know exactly where she was that night where
- 16:52they found her scent. It is a very busy area. It's a beach
- 16:56area. But I think if she was at that tourist location, there would
- 17:02have been somebody who would be paying attention or would have noticed something out of
- 17:06sorts. It's very very possible that, yes, she had been there,
- 17:11but the date is incorrect of when she was there. That's the problem with
- 17:15things like a bloodhound or saying like well, you know there's DNA here.
- 17:19Yes, But if her scent or if some piece of evidence is found there
- 17:25and she had ever been there, then it makes sense that these bloodhounds would
- 17:30smell her scent, and she had confirmed that with some of her roommates.
- 17:33So oh, it's very confusing. Likely she was on this adventure during the
- 17:40day as well, because remember she gets off her shift, she does the
- 17:44morning shift at the coffee shop, and so I don't see her going out
- 17:47to the beach and drowning during the day, unless people assumed she was out
- 17:52there till midnight or one am, when you wouldn't have the same kind of
- 17:56tourist level and population out there. But yeah, I tend to believe that
- 18:02if she said she was out there on the twenty first, it's very possible
- 18:04those bloodhounds were saying she's been here, but it doesn't prove she was there
- 18:08the twenty third. So from your recollection of going there, would you say
- 18:14that it was crowded a lot of the time and that it would be very
- 18:15unlikely for someone to fall off without anyone seeing anything. So okay, So
- 18:21the cliff house is up high obviously on the cliff, and the Sutra baths
- 18:23are down further. So if she was going to the Sutra bath area,
- 18:27I don't feel like there would have been as many places to fall, but
- 18:32I mean there there could have been. If she was there during the day,
- 18:36it would have been too much traffic. Had she been there towards dusk
- 18:38and at the in the evening, yes, of course there's a chance something
- 18:41could have happened without a bunch of people being around. But had she been
- 18:45there during daylight, I think that there would have been too many people to
- 18:48not recognize something odd going on. Kristen's parents, Bob and Debbie, decided
- 18:55to search through her personal possessions inside her rented room in Oakland and came across
- 18:59a cop be of the weekly alternative newspaper, the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
- 19:03This particular issue was for the week of June the eleventh to the seventeenth,
- 19:07and it featured a personal ad which had been circled and read quote friends female
- 19:12seeking friends to share activities. Who enjoy music, photography, working out,
- 19:18walks, coffee, or simply the beach, exploring the Bay area interested call
- 19:22me end quote. Unfortunately, the backlog of The Bay Guardian's computer records for
- 19:27personal ads had already been deleted by this point, so it could not be
- 19:32determined if Kristen had answered this personal ad or placed it herself, or if
- 19:36it even had any relevance at all to her disappearance. However, since the
- 19:40person who wrote the ad had similar hobbies to Kristin, her parents believed she
- 19:45might have written it. That's what I thought. As soon as you read
- 19:48the ad, I went, is this her? She? It seems like
- 19:52it is. It's a very similar to just to remember, she's there for
- 19:53photography. She goes out to the beach and likes to explore, and she
- 19:59w at a coffee shop. Now these are not unlikely hobbies when you live
- 20:03in San Francisco, but it is something that makes you think would an eighteen
- 20:08year old posts this when she lives with four guys, she hasn't started classes,
- 20:15and the only people she's really interacting with are her co workers. It
- 20:18seems likely that she could have said, I'm going to turn to the San
- 20:22Francisco Bay Guardian and see if there's any other young people who want to hang
- 20:26out and other girls that want to get together and hang out. And it
- 20:30seems like Kristen actually was finding some people to socialize with. These two women
- 20:37who invited her to this summer Solstice party if it occurred, the woman who
- 20:42she ran into at the mall. So it makes you wonder how did she
- 20:48meet them, Who were these people, what were their backgrounds? But no
- 20:52one knows. Back in the prehistoric days before the Internet, when you would
- 20:56actually have to put a physical ad in a physical newspaper in order to meet
- 21:00people, it must sound so wild to anyone who's like gen Z right,
- 21:06the idea of somebody actually putting a personal ad in a physical paper to meet
- 21:11somebody, rather than like using some kind of app to either find her own
- 21:15magic partner or a friend. It's wild. Yeah, you used to actually
- 21:18have to talk to people and seek people and reach out. But yeah,
- 21:22this is a printed ad that she would have had to put out if it's
- 21:26her saying help, I need a friend. And what's scary is if she
- 21:32had placed that ad and if her personal information had ever been shared, it
- 21:37does open her up to a lot of people who or seeking ulterior motives or
- 21:41said, let's trick her by meeting her under the guise of being a friend,
- 21:45but then we can take advantage of her dangerous like Craigslist could be dangerous.
- 21:51Oh my gosh, yes, I remember Craigslist being the hot thing.
- 21:56On July tenth, two and a half weeks after Kristen went missing, the
- 22:00case would take a disturbing turn when an anonymous male caller phoned the newsroom assignment
- 22:06manager at San Francisco's a b C affiliate k g O t V. The
- 22:11caller claimed that two women from the local y MCA had abducted and murdered Christen
- 22:17over a lesbian love triangle gone wrong, and hid her remains beneath the bridge
- 22:22in the Point Reya's area of Marin County. While investigators looked into this lead,
- 22:26but were unable to find eddy remains or evidence at this location, and
- 22:32when they tracked down these two women at the y m c A, they
- 22:36both denied any knowledge or involvement in Christian's disappearance and were ruled out as suspects.
- 22:42However, when the women were asked if they knew any one who held
- 22:45a grudge against them and might have been compelled to falsely implicate them in a
- 22:49murder, they both named a thirty six year old man named John or Numa,
- 22:55who worked about a mile away from the Crocker Galleria. The two women
- 22:59had both worked alongside on Numa's girlfriend, Jill Lampo, but did not get
- 23:03along with her, and since Sonuma believed they were conspiring to get her fired,
- 23:07he responded by threatening and harassing them for it. When investigators questioned Onuma,
- 23:14he initially denied being the anonymous caller, but eventually admitted he did phone
- 23:18in the tip because he was intentionally trying to cause problems for the two women.
- 23:23As revenge, He decided to falsely accuse them of murder after hearing about
- 23:29Christian Modiferi's disappearance in the media, but maintained that he had no prior knowledge
- 23:33of the case. In spite of the numa's suspicious actions, there was no
- 23:38evidence to implicate him, and he eventually left San Francisco. Here's what's so
- 23:44ridiculous is that these two women so easily could look at each other and say,
- 23:49who would have done something like this? Oh, John would have done
- 23:53something like this. He's actually threatened to take us down and destroy our lives
- 23:57because of Jill, and so it's really bizarre to think of how twisted this
- 24:04individual is that in order to protect his girlfriend, he's going around threatening these
- 24:10other women to a point that when they're questioned by police, they say,
- 24:14I know who did this, John, And when they go to John,
- 24:17eventually he says that yes, he made this call, but it was only
- 24:19to destroy these women's lives. He's really doing a lot of things here.
- 24:26He's destroying at the time, their character for murder and for their sexual orientation.
- 24:33This is San Francisco, so way more accepting, but twenty seven years
- 24:37ago, these are two women who are being accused of being lesbians and may
- 24:41not be accepted by everybody, especially law enforcement. So it's possible that he
- 24:48was trying to tear down their character in multiple ways, right, that they
- 24:52would not only abuse this woman, that there's these two lesbians in this love
- 24:56triangle, and then they kill her and dispose of her. What a dramatic
- 25:02turn because they didn't like your girlfriend and might have been trying to get her
- 25:07fired from work. It seems ridiculously escalated. And the other part of me,
- 25:14though, thinks, if this guy has nothing to do with Kristen's disappearance,
- 25:18and it truly is all about Jill, how messed up that his call
- 25:25would focus all these resources and attention towards an investigation down this path. And
- 25:30then what if it's nothing. What if John has nothing to do with it?
- 25:33What if these two women had nothing to do with it, And there's
- 25:37a totally different lead that the police could have missed because they were spending so
- 25:41much time on this guy's ridiculous phone call to law enforcement. Oh yeah,
- 25:48Like, regardless of whether or not John Onnuma was actually complicit in that Kristen's
- 25:52disappearance, it's indisputable that he is a major douchebag for even doing this in
- 25:56the first place, and he is a very troubling individual. And we'll talk
- 26:00more about this later. But when he gave his story to the news affiliate,
- 26:04he didn't just flat out say, oh, these two women I know
- 26:07murdered Kristan Mataferi, Like, he gave a detailed layout of how they did
- 26:11it and what they did. And it just seems so weird to me that
- 26:15he would give such details about a case that he supposedly had no knowledge of,
- 26:21just as some sort of weird prank. So that's why, even though
- 26:25like this happened something like twenty seven years ago, people are still suspicious of
- 26:29John o'neuma to this day and think that he didn't just do this as some
- 26:33sort of prank. He knows something about the case and maybe projecting because he
- 26:37was the one who murdered Kristen. And do we even know if these women
- 26:41were out as gay, because it's just just an extra layer of like bottom
- 26:47tier human behavior to put a tip out there with their names, and this
- 26:52suggests as a lesbian love triangle. If these women aren't out of the closet
- 26:56like that could be a real problem for them, both in their employment and
- 27:00in their personal lives given the time period. Well, thank you, the
- 27:03police were very protective of the women, like their names and nothing about their
- 27:07personal lives was released publicly. All they really said is that they were ruled
- 27:11out as suspects. So I really don't know if they were actually gay or
- 27:15lesbian. And this could have been just a sort of detail that no Numa
- 27:18decided to add to the story. But yes, you're right, if it
- 27:22was that way and they were being outed by them, then that just adds
- 27:26a whole other element of sleaziness to this whole situation. And what's wild is
- 27:30this man thirty six years old. This is not a twenty four year old
- 27:34trying to get revenge on someone at thirty six. If your girlfriend is not
- 27:40getting along with people at work, it's one of those things. You help
- 27:44her personally, You give her some tips of how to professionally deal with it,
- 27:47you help her get a different job, You let it go like you
- 27:52act professionally, and you say, this is the best we can do here,
- 27:55Maybe we need to get you out of the situation, and you leave
- 27:57at thirty six. I feel like this whole ruse and call to police it
- 28:03really shows some kind of like immaturity at the best, but mental health issues
- 28:08of someone who would go this far to get back at somebody because of your
- 28:12girlfriend's work situation. There's a slight misogynistic bent too, when you have men
- 28:18getting involved in women's business and you see it like the most clearly. I
- 28:23don't know if either of you watch like reality TV or housewives when you see
- 28:29a situation where you got the men jumping in trying to, like, you
- 28:33know, defend their wives, but they look very anti women when they start
- 28:37going out a woman rather than letting the women handle it themselves. Is just
- 28:42never a good look. Here, he is at forty six, like you
- 28:45said, intervening when he should just be supporting her and be a shoulder for
- 28:49her to cry on if she's having issues, maybe give her suggestions of how
- 28:53she could move forward in a positive way. But like, what is he
- 28:57doing involving himself at some thing like a sixteen year old kid would do?
- 29:02Oh exactly. And I know that Jill Lampo was in her twenties at that
- 29:06point. She was considerably younger than Onuma, So he definitely comes across as
- 29:11a major predator. However, in May of nineteen ninety nine, Kristen's case
- 29:15was featured on America's Most Wanted and it was announced that authorities wanted to locate
- 29:21John Onuma for further questioning. During the preceding two years, a number of
- 29:25women had come forward to accuse Ouma of abusing them or stealing their money,
- 29:30and three of them agreed to be interviewed on The America's Most Wanted episode.
- 29:33One of these women referred to Onuma as a quote unquote human vampire who sucks
- 29:38the life out of you, and the victims accused him of such horrific acts
- 29:42as holding them against their will as a sex slave, and beating and torturing
- 29:47them with such methods as burning their hands with cigarettes. These women said that
- 29:51they did not report these incidents at the time because they feared retaliation from Onuma,
- 29:56and one of them claimed that she was abused by him shortly after Kristen
- 30:00went missing and heard him say quote, you know, I'm going to have
- 30:03to kill you. I can't let you go now. You know what happened
- 30:07to kristin Modaferi end quote. Only a few days after The America's Most Wanted
- 30:11episode aired, it was announced that a viewer tip had helped authorities locate Onnuma
- 30:17in his native Hawaii, and he agreed to fly to California to meet up
- 30:19with the investigators on Kristen's case and take a light detector test. It's unclear
- 30:26if this ever took place, but no. Numa has never been charged in
- 30:29connection to any of these allegations of abuse against him. Anuma's victims claimed that
- 30:34he originally met them through personal ads and newspapers, and would sometimes use other
- 30:38women, including his girlfriend Jill Lampo, to Lua's victims to him. This
- 30:45detail is particularly interesting when you consider the personal ad found in Kristin's room and
- 30:49the sighting of her with the unidentified blonde woman before she went missing. But
- 30:55it must be clarified that Jill Lampo is a brunette, so the only way
- 30:59she could be the woman seen with Kristen is if she had dyed her hair
- 31:03or wore a blonde wig that day. So do you know, Robin,
- 31:07how many of these women that come forward were there were the police taking their
- 31:12claims seriously? Did they believe that these women truly were abused and tortured the
- 31:21way that they described by John, Because that really does put him in a
- 31:25different category. Like I said, at the best, he was showing signs
- 31:29of being immature, but at the worst. There really seems to be a
- 31:33big flaw in the kind of human he is just from the claims, but
- 31:37now to think that there's women backing up that he was physically and sexually abusive
- 31:42emotionally abusive. If the police are validating those claims, it does put him
- 31:48in a different light towards Christen's disappearance. I think the police did take them
- 31:52seriously because these women were interviewed on America's Most Wanted and I don't think the
- 31:56police would have let them do that unless they believe their claim re credible.
- 32:00But I think at this time they pretty much figured this is nothing more than
- 32:04he said, she said, So we don't actually have any evidence to prosecute
- 32:07him other than their word, because as far as I can tell, he
- 32:10has never faced any criminal charges for any of this. But it does sound
- 32:15like law enforcement does believe that these women's accounts are true. I mean,
- 32:20that's a lot of smoke, having that many women come forward for there to
- 32:22be no fire one thousand percent, And it is scary to think there was
- 32:27a public ad where she's asking people to come meet her. It intensifies the
- 32:31situation when you think Kristen could have placed a physical ad asking people to contact
- 32:37her to hang out. Because if you are a predator or you're someone who
- 32:40likes to manipulate and abuse people, that's a perfect opportunity to go through the
- 32:45newspaper and say, here's a woman seeking companionship and friendship in a new city.
- 32:52She's letting people know that she isn't familiar right, she's exploring, and
- 32:58it opens her up to someone who's a predator saying I want to hurt this
- 33:01individual. It's a very vulnerable, perfect candidate, someone begging, someone begging
- 33:06for social companionship and attention. So oh, it really does put John in
- 33:12a different perspective hearing that those women came forward against him. When investigators performed
- 33:19a search of the apartment that Lampo and Numa had been sharing and found Lampo's
- 33:22day planner, they noticed that some pages from June nineteen ninety seven were missing.
- 33:29This would have corresponded with the time period when Christian disappeared, and Lampo
- 33:34claimed that a Numa tore the pages out because he believed there was material in
- 33:37there that could come back to hurt him. In June of two thousand and
- 33:42one, Christian's case would be featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and
- 33:46while Onuma agreed to participate, the show only referred to him by his first
- 33:51name, and his interview was filmed in silhouette in order to conceal his face,
- 33:55and his voice was digitally altered. Ouma any involvement in Christian's disappearance and
- 34:02acknowledged that he made a big mistake by phoning in a fake tip before apologizing
- 34:07to the Modifery family. He also claimed that he passed a polygraph test given
- 34:13by a reputable expert. At some point, Numa wound up being evicted from
- 34:17the house where he was living in Hawaii, and shortly thereafter, a briefcase
- 34:22containing a number of articles about Christian's case was found inside the attic. Okay,
- 34:28so clearly he's obsessed with the case in general, whether or not he's
- 34:31the one who actually kidnapped or harmed Kristen. He has a briefcase that has
- 34:38a number of articles about her disappearance in it. That's odd. I can't
- 34:44remember a single case that someone who's not an investigator or someone associated with the
- 34:50case. I can't think of why you'd sit there and collect newspaper articles about
- 34:53a given disappeared young lady. He also intertwined himself so deeply. Not only
- 35:00is he collecting the newspaper ads or articles, but he's also making this phone
- 35:05call saying he knows what happened to her and getting himself in her twined that
- 35:07way, and he talks about passing a polygraph test. Is this done by
- 35:13law enforcement? And did he? I haven't seen any corroboration about this.
- 35:16We only have Ouma's word from his interview where he said I passed a polygraph
- 35:21test, and he just said given by a reputable expert. But law enforcement
- 35:24never confirmed or denied that. Yeah, I don't see that happening. I
- 35:29think law enforcement would have come forward and said, listen, he passed a
- 35:32light detector test, we need to kind of widen our scope and look somewhere
- 35:36else. But he's saying he just passed it by some reputable expert. And
- 35:40who the heck knows who that is? According to him, I mean the
- 35:44way he talks and has this fantasy life that he leads it could be his
- 35:47girlfriend, who knows. But the briefcase with the number of articles and him
- 35:52tearing out those pages because there's something that quote could come back and harm him.
- 35:57What else, what did you write in your date planner? And why
- 36:00are you collecting those articles if you had nothing to do with the case.
- 36:05What would have implicated you in your day planner? Yep, just seems like
- 36:08too much of a coincidence that it happens to correspond with the time period when
- 36:13Kristen went missing, and there's multiple layers to it. It's all of those
- 36:16things added up. It's in him saying, oh, I thought I'd actually
- 36:20get caught, I'd be implicated with those two pages of my day planner or
- 36:22whatever. Like John, You're he's a mess. And think who compiles a
- 36:28whole briefcase of articles about a case when you had nothing to do with it.
- 36:34Do you guys think he could have been compiling those articles to get information
- 36:37when he made those false claims, or do you think it was too soon
- 36:40and he was collecting those articles after the anonymous tip was called in. I
- 36:45don't think Kristen's case got that much coverage when he made his tip, Like
- 36:49she'd only been missing for a few weeks at this point. So I have
- 36:52to think that if he has an entire briefcase, that he had been collecting
- 36:54them over the course of the next several years. If he got a polygraph
- 37:00test from a reputable expert, wouldn't you list who that reputable expert was so
- 37:07that law enforcement or the public could be able to discern, Like you said,
- 37:12as it could have been like his girlfriend, It could have been anybody
- 37:15who were like, oh, yes, reputable expert over here, she administered
- 37:20a polygraph, when really it's like, not actually a polygraph, So why
- 37:23don't we know who this person is or what agency they were from, or
- 37:29what organization. And you would think if he passed it, you'd think if
- 37:31he passed it with that expert, wouldn't the law enforcement give him the same
- 37:36polygraph or give him an exam as well and say, yeah he did,
- 37:38he passed that private one and he passed hours that didn't happen. One would
- 37:42think, I got doctor Nick Riviera to give me this polygraph, don't you
- 37:45believe him? So during the early stages of the investigation, Kristen's parents had
- 37:52attempted to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, but we're told
- 37:58they cannot provide any assistance since uk Kristen was legally an adult when she disappeared
- 38:02even though she had only turned eighteen three weeks earlier. So the case eventually
- 38:07inspired Sue Meyrick, the US representative for North Carolina's ninth Congressional District, to
- 38:14introduce a new bill titled Kristen's Act, which would provide assistance to law enforcement
- 38:19and families of missing adults over the age of seventeen. Kristen's Act would allow
- 38:23for the annual sequestering of one million dollars in support of missing persons organizations,
- 38:29including the National Center for Missing Adults, and it was officially signed into law
- 38:32by President Bill Clinton in October of two thousand. Around this same time period,
- 38:38one of the Madafery family's neighbors in Charlotte, Jones Scanlon Petruski, decided
- 38:44to establish the Christen Foundation, a nonprofit organization which offers financial and informational assistance
- 38:51to the families of missing or endangered adults over the age of eighteen, and
- 38:55the Foundation has provided assistance to hundreds of missing persons case like I mentioned in
- 39:00the intro. A few months after Kristen went missing, another Charlotte resident named
- 39:06Dennis Mann offered to assist the Mauda Fairies by traveling to California and performing his
- 39:10own independent investigation, but will be discussing some of the things he uncovered later
- 39:15on. In June of twenty fifteen, there would be a new development in
- 39:20the case when Paul Dosty, a retired police officer turned private investigator hired by
- 39:25the Mauda Faery family, decided to perform a new search of the house where
- 39:30Kristin had been living in on Jane Avenue in Oakland at the time she disappeared.
- 39:35Dosti would be assisted by cadaver dog named Buster, who had once used
- 39:38his sense of smell to locate the remains of World War Two soldiers who went
- 39:43missing in action. Buster proceeded to pick up a scent that has been described
- 39:47as a quote unquote chemical plume and is associated with human decomposition. The dog
- 39:53barked when it picked something up on a drainage pipe and proceeded to follow it
- 39:58to the basement door at the back of the house. This prompted Paul Dosty
- 40:02to recommend that the Oakland PD excavate a concrete slab in the basement, take
- 40:07soil samples, and reinterview Kristen's former roommates. The police responded by bringing in
- 40:14specialists with ground penetrating radar to perform a search of the basement. But we're
- 40:19not able to turn up anything, and since the basement soil was dense,
- 40:22hard packed clay, it would have been very difficult for anyone to dig it
- 40:27up and bury a body there. Well, that puts a unique element to
- 40:32this case, right, you do have the family friend who comes out and
- 40:36helps. There's got to be this kind of enraged helplessness that the parents feel
- 40:43when for several days the police are saying, you know, she's a grown
- 40:45woman, she's eighteen, she could do what she wants. She'll probably show
- 40:50up soon. And Kristen's parents are very well aware this is not typical behavior
- 40:53by Kristin. She was a very driven young lady and she was really pursuing
- 40:59a dream. Something's wrong. No one helps for several days, which is
- 41:04a problem because the more time that passes, the less evidence we're going to
- 41:07get. The friend comes out and does his own investigation, and then they
- 41:12also hire this man who comes out with cadaver dogs. It gives a lot
- 41:16of promise to Kristen's family, who's saying, look, there's a hit.
- 41:21It's like she might have been hurt in that home. I think that would
- 41:24cast a huge darkness over those four roommates. And yet when the police go
- 41:30out, they're looking at saying, you know, this is a really difficult
- 41:35scenario in location because I don't think a body could have been buried here.
- 41:39So if we're going to dig up the ground, the composition of the ground
- 41:44just doesn't really work for body disposal. Is it possible she could have been
- 41:47hurt there and left somewhere. I think it's possible. But remember the roommates
- 41:52are on board and helping day three of her missing. So to what extent
- 41:58would she be decomposing at that point when the parents are literally flying in to
- 42:01help day three of her missing. Yeah, that's the confusing aspect of this
- 42:07case because we know Kristin was last seen at the Galleria in downtown San Francisco,
- 42:12and she would have needed to travel quite a distance to make it back
- 42:15to her home in Oakland, and there's no evidence that she ever made it
- 42:19there that day, because there are no eyewit sightings of her in Oakland after
- 42:23she left the galleria. And of course that kind of takes suspicious away from
- 42:28John o'numa because he lived in downtown San Francisco. So if he harmed Kristin,
- 42:32why is the scent of her decomposition being found at her house in Oakland?
- 42:37So that's what causes all this confusion with the case. I don't know
- 42:42what to make of these readings and know if the cadaver dogs snipping out kristin
- 42:45scent is reliable. I have to believe that Buster is a very good kidaverdog
- 42:52because he was obviously used to look for the remains of people from World War
- 42:58Two, but they're all So is no standardized protocol with regards to training dogs
- 43:04to be cadaver dogs across the US. It differs from state to state,
- 43:08and so some can be trained on pseudo sense, some are actually trained on
- 43:13decomposition, others can be trained on animal decomposition. It really varies, so
- 43:20it's really tough to know. Maybe a family had lived in this home before,
- 43:23and maybe they had a deceased pet, and if Buster was just taught
- 43:27on decomposition in general and not just specifically human decomposition, maybe he smelled this.
- 43:34He or she smelled the smell of what was a decomposing animal that maybe
- 43:39was in the basement for a period of time before it was buried elsewhere.
- 43:44That's what I was wondering. I was wondering what other elements could lead to
- 43:47similar smells, because, like you said, Jeles, depending on how they're
- 43:52trained, there's other organisms that break down, or even bodily fluids that break
- 43:59down, that start to have sense that are similar to the ones they're designed
- 44:02to pick out. I mean, they're picking out things like hydrogen sulfide,
- 44:07disulfied, all kinds of things that they're really smelling for, which is part
- 44:12of human decomposition. But in my head, I'm trying to rack my brain
- 44:15for things that also could have been in that location and not necessarily been a
- 44:20dead body, but perhaps an incident of bodily fluids or something else. Like
- 44:27you said, an animal, and that dog is hitting on accurate chemical decomposition,
- 44:31but maybe not a human being. So it does depend on how this
- 44:36baby was trained, and it depends on his handler and how his response to
- 44:39the dog is performed. It's a very subjective science. It's a magical science
- 44:45because there is an accuracy to it, but it's not perfect. It's human
- 44:50lead and animal driven. So and what if somebody who lived in the home
- 44:55prior had an accident in the basement, because these things can happen, right
- 45:00depending on what type of tools you have down there. Say you cut your
- 45:04hand and a bunch of blood blood somewhere, and then later that is going
- 45:08to have the smell of decomposition. Perhaps, I'm not quite sure if the
- 45:14dog would be able to differentiate from blood and possible tissue that could have come
- 45:17from an injury and the smell of an entire body. Like I'm just not
- 45:22sure what dogs can and cannot smell, and how sophisticated their training is.
- 45:28So there's just a lot of questions here. And like you said, one
- 45:30of the problems is then it takes the heat off of John and really does
- 45:35put it. If it was at her home, you would think it's got
- 45:37to be one of those four roommates. Because there's four guys living in this
- 45:42old Victorian home. It would be odd that this strange person made their way
- 45:45in there at some point in the night and no one you know, here's
- 45:50him or anything like that. To their knowledge. She didn't even make it
- 45:52home, much less someone else being in the house at the time. In
- 45:58February twenty seventeen, doctor R. Pod Voss, a research scientist and forensic
- 46:04anthropologist who specializes in human decomposition, decided to perform his own search of the
- 46:09residence. He used a proprietary device which detects human decomposition chemicals, and it
- 46:15reportedly picked up signals in an area located between Christian's former house and the residence
- 46:22next door. More specifically, it picked up a chemical signature denoting the presence
- 46:28of human blood near a concrete slab at the base of some porch steps at
- 46:32the other residence. Back in nineteen ninety seven, the residents had actually been
- 46:37a halfway house for convicted juvenile offenders who had violated their probation, but neither
- 46:43Christened, her family, or anyone in law enforcement was aware of this at
- 46:46the time, and it was Dennis Mann who originally learned this information while canvassing
- 46:52the neighborhood. When Christian's parents agreed to provide samples of their DNA to doctor
- 46:57Voss for testing, the results were cowartedly matched the DNA that was found within
- 47:01these human decomposition chemicals. Felicia Aysthorpe, the public information officer for the Oakland
- 47:08PD, would later confirm that since doctor Voss was using relatively new technology,
- 47:15the results of his findings would have to be delivered directly to the police for
- 47:19scientific and independent verification. She stated, quote at this time, the information
- 47:25we need from doctor Voss to collect the samples for human decomposition testing has not
- 47:30been forwarded to the department. Additionally, no information regarding the more recent blood
- 47:37testing conducted on the porch has been disclosed to the department end quote. Both
- 47:42doctor Voss and Paul Dosty have denied this and the claim that Oakland PD had
- 47:49enough has enough data about the findings to perform their own search of the site,
- 47:52and they also believed that Christian's body may have been there at some point
- 47:57before it was transported away. Around the twentieth anniversary of Christen's disappearance, KGO
- 48:04TV decided to produce a new segment about the case and managed to track down
- 48:08Jill Lampou, who had long since broken up with John and Numa. They
- 48:14convinced her to do an interview, though she kept her face off camera,
- 48:17and Lampeau continued to deny any involvement, claiming that she had an alibi placing
- 48:22her at a library on the date that Kristin went missing. John and Numa
- 48:28also agreed to provide comment for the segment and continued to deny his own involvement
- 48:32as well, though investigators still consider Oduma to be a person of interest.
- 48:38Sadly, Bob Mordiferi passed away of leukemia during the spring of twenty twenty two
- 48:45without receiving any answers of what would happen to his daughter. So after twenty
- 48:49seven years, there are still no conclusive answers about what actually happened to Christian
- 48:54Modiferi. So I guess you could say the path went chilly. Here's what's
- 49:00so difficult about all these different experts and parties being involved in an investigation from
- 49:05a private perspective. Private experts and people that are hired as private investigators and
- 49:10these kinds of things, they don't have to operate under the same rules as
- 49:15law enforcement or the same standards that our criminal justice system sets for evidence being
- 49:19allowed into the court system. And so I would be just like Kristen's parents,
- 49:23I'd beg any human being with a breath in their lungs that's willing to
- 49:28help me, come help me, and any technology or resource I can pay
- 49:32to have in this investigation. I will pay for it because I need to
- 49:37have answers in her case. But it definitely complicates the case. I think
- 49:42for families, it puts a lot of emotional weight on the investigation for them
- 49:46because they're getting this help from outside experts, and those outside experts don't have
- 49:53to follow the same protocol and don't always watch what they share with the family.
- 50:00So when they're sharing this kind of promising information and saying, I know
- 50:05that her body was here, We've smelled, you know, the dogs smelled
- 50:07her decomposing here, there's DNA that matches, and then the police are saying
- 50:15we can't go off any of this, we don't have enough information to go
- 50:17off of this. There becomes this resentment and emotional distress of saying, why
- 50:22aren't you doing anything for us? But it's such a different ballgame the private
- 50:27individuals working and being hired by the family and working on behalf of the family
- 50:32and an investigator who's trying to make sure they have a flawless case if they
- 50:37have one, And so it's actually heartbreaking because the family gets this information that
- 50:44looks like you have to be able to prove the next steps for us because
- 50:46this expert told us X, Y and Z, and the police often have
- 50:51their hands tied in those situations. So as much as I would be just
- 50:54like her parents and say give me everything that we know and tell me everything,
- 51:00you do have individuals that aren't always as experts as they claim to be,
- 51:06aren't as well versed as they say they are, use technology that may
- 51:09not be reliable, and then other times you get blessed and you have these
- 51:13miracle workers who solve the case for the police. So it's kind of a
- 51:16crapshoot of like, what are you getting when these experts come in and investigate.
- 51:22I know for a fact you're getting a lot of emotional distress because of
- 51:25promises made or information that seems so promising and it goes nowhere. Well,
- 51:31I didn't know this at the time I recorded my original Trail Cold episode,
- 51:35but I've since learned a bit more about Arvid Boss, the one who's finding
- 51:38all this new stuff at the home, and apparently he had once put forward
- 51:43a proposal to search out human remains with the use of a fly with a
- 51:46tracking chips. So I don't know if he's the most scientifically reliable person.
- 51:52So I'm more understanding now about why the police were reluctant to accept his findings
- 51:57and why they would want to find more evidence before they launched a dig at
- 52:00that house. Can you imagine being the mom and dad who are getting that
- 52:06information though, Like someone who says, oh, I'm a private investigator,
- 52:10Oh I'm a you know, a human remains expert, I'm this and that,
- 52:15and then they tell you something so promising, it's got to be just
- 52:21absolutely devastating for them. So it's to me it's a very fine line of
- 52:27you work these cases as literally, like I said, a hero and someone
- 52:30who says, I don't have to walk the same lines as police and I
- 52:32can help solve this case. And then I think you do have people just
- 52:37like you have in psychic realms and all these other things. There's I think,
- 52:39legitimate people with gifts and passions, and then there's people who see it
- 52:44as a way to kind of get attention to notoriety or take advantage of people
- 52:46financially. And so that actually makes me very angry. When I think about
- 52:52the fact that you're talking about flies with microchips, I'm I don't know,
- 52:55very very frustrating, and I just read one more thing about bass he claims
- 53:00to have invented as applying for patents for a DNA frequency scanner device that can
- 53:06find missing persons from the air using a sample of a family member's DNA.
- 53:10Oh boy, very sketchy. Yeah, I mean, these poor people are
- 53:14probably paying him or hanging their hat on every word he says. I think
- 53:20it's cruel and abusive if that, if that really is the case. So
- 53:24Kristin Motaferi's disappearance is a particularly frustrating one because there are a number of intriguing
- 53:30leads, but there are times when they almost seem to contradict one another.
- 53:35For instance, even though we have police bloodhounds tracking kristen scent to the shoreline
- 53:39of the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco, we have a cadaver dog who has
- 53:44detected the scent of human decomposition at the house she was staying at in Oakland,
- 53:49which is several miles in the opposite direction. We have a promising potential
- 53:52suspect named John Numa, who lived only a mile away from Kristen's workplace and
- 53:58has done a number of suspicious and terrible things, yet no direct evidence has
- 54:01ever been found. To prove that he ever met Kristin, let alone cause
- 54:06her disappearance. We also have Onuma's former girlfriend, Jill Lampo, who allegedly
- 54:10helped lure other women to Onuma for him to abuse. Yet the last reported
- 54:15sighting of Kristin places her with an unidentified blonde woman who does not seem to
- 54:21match Lampo's description. So how do you fit all the pieces of the puzzle
- 54:24together? Who is this blonde woman and how does she fit into things?
- 54:29Did Kristin actually travel to the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean If something happened to
- 54:34Kristin there, why is there evidence of a possible crime scene at the house
- 54:37in Oakland? If John o'numa harm Kristin, why would he take her body
- 54:42to that house, especially since he lived in downtown San Francisco. No matter
- 54:46which way you look at it, some of these leads have to be false.
- 54:51But what actually did happen to Kristin? Could her disappearance have been caused
- 54:55by an angle which hasn't even been explored yet. When it comes to Kristen
- 55:00Modeferi as a person, it doesn't sound like anyone had a bad thing to
- 55:04say about her as She was an incredibly bright young woman who excelled in school,
- 55:08which is why she graduated a year earlier than normal and got a four
- 55:13year scholarship at North Carolina State University. She also had no history of ever
- 55:17causing any trouble for her parents, which would probably explain why they allowed her
- 55:22to spend the summer alone in the San Francisco Bay Area even though she was
- 55:27barely eighteen. In other words, it seemed like she had done an awful
- 55:30lot to earn that trust. I also think it says something about Kristen's personality
- 55:36that when she applied for position at Spinelli's coffee shop, the manager found her
- 55:40to be so likable and enthusiastic that he immediately offered her a job, even
- 55:45though they were not even hiring at that time. Krista was technically only in
- 55:50the Bay Area for three weeks before she vanished, but it sounds like her
- 55:52daily routine was working the seven am to three pm shift at Spinelle's and spending
- 55:59the rest of the day explos or in San Francisco before returning to the house
- 56:01in Oakland. The day Kristen went missing was pretty much her last day of
- 56:06freedom before her classes at Berkeley started, so it sounds like she wanted one
- 56:10last adventure after her shift ended, but something happened. When I think about
- 56:16what happened in those last hours, I honestly think in my gut that the
- 56:21hit at the beach was from the twenty first, not the twenty third,
- 56:27That yes, she had been down there, which she had already confirmed with
- 56:30her roommates, and that when she know when they hit down at the beach
- 56:35for her scent, it's because she had in fact been there, just not
- 56:38the night that she went missing. And so for me, I don't really
- 56:44think the hit at the house or the hit at the beach necessarily tie anything
- 56:50to her disappearance. I think the house hit is more or less going to
- 56:53be smoking mirrors and false promises to the family, and I think that the
- 56:59beach hit would be to that earlier party that she went to. So there
- 57:02is a very big possibility that, like you said, John lived in downtown,
- 57:09that she never went to the beach, and she was never at her
- 57:13house the evening that she died. So yes, there's a lot of conflicting
- 57:16information, but when you think about the sources, I tend to discount a
- 57:21lot of the things that were said to have occurred at the house, and
- 57:23with John it's one of those just questions where you say, do you look
- 57:29at all the red flags and lump them together and say it's like a forest
- 57:32fire of facts, or do you have to just look at him as a
- 57:37very disturbed, sick individual that was obsessed with his case. It's very hard
- 57:40to distinguish those but I will tell you those women coming forward that he was
- 57:45an abusive, sexual, sadist type. That's very scary, especially when you
- 57:51couple it with the briefcase full of articles about the case and then ripping the
- 57:55stuff out of the day planner saying that it could get him into trouble.
- 58:00These things are just like huge, huge red flags. I mean, I
- 58:04agree with you, there's just something about all this stuff at the house that
- 58:07just doesn't ring as true to me as John O Numa does. And think
- 58:12about this, he is always willing to have his name in the spotlight.
- 58:16He's always willing to make a statement if you Okay, let's say I was
- 58:21an idiot at thirty six, way too old to be making big like life
- 58:27disasters like this. But if I made this anonymous tip at thirty six and
- 58:30try to destroy these people's lives and sent police on a wild goose chase and
- 58:36I wasn't arrested for something. I might slowly fade away from this case,
- 58:40but John can't. He's constantly Yes, I'll be on Inzlove Mysteries. Yes,
- 58:46I'll interview with the newspaper. Yes, I'll go on this show for
- 58:51the anniversary. All these things that he's saying, like, look at me,
- 58:54look at me. I got a private person hired for a lie detector
- 58:59test. It's it's like he needs the attention and he won't let it go,
- 59:04which a smart person would distance themselves. He has to be part of
- 59:07it. That's very concerning. So I think this would be a good time
- 59:13to bring it into part one. But join us next week as we present
- 59:15part two of our series about the disappearance of Kristen Modaferry. Robin, do
- 59:22you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
- 59:24Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and
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- 1:01:07call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy