Latest / Crime Night / The Daylight Disappearance of Ilene Misheloff

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The Daylight Disappearance of Ilene Misheloff · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When you think of a true horror story, it almost
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: always starts in a dark, isolated place.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Right, like a creepy cabin in the woods or something.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. A deserted highway at midnight, a storm rolling in.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: But the most terrifying stories, they don't start in the dark.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: No, they really don't.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: They happen in broad daylight, right in the middle of
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: a place that looks exactly like your neighborhood. So I
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: want you to picture Dublin, California. It's January of 1989.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: And this is a town of just, what, 24,000 people?
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It is the absolute definition of safe suburbia.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: It's the kind of place where elementary school kids are
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: walking home alone, you know, playing outside until the streetlights
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: flicker on.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yep, completely idyllic.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Teenagers are just tying up landline phones for hours, trying
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: to decide what to wear to the school dance, blasting
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Paula Abdul or Phil Collins from their boomboxes. I mean,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: it is a perfectly normal Monday afternoon.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: And into this completely normal picture... Step's 13-year-old Eileen Mishloff.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She's walking her standard, incredibly busy route home from school.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: She's wearing a charcoal gray esprit sweater, a pink and
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: gray striped skirt, and slip-on kets. She's got her flute
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: case in one hand and a blue backpack slung over
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: her shoulder.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Such a specific, vivid image of a 1980s middle schooler.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: It really is. And it's a route she takes all
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the time. She's surrounded by traffic, houses, and people just
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: going about their day. And then, in broad daylight, on
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: this totally ordinary Monday, she simply vanishes.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: She slips completely into the cracks of this safe American suburb,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: just leaving virtually no trace.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's Deep Dive. Our mission today is to
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: reconstruct this really haunting timeline using decades of police reports,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: local newspaper archives, and some recent investigative retrospectives.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: We're going to analyze the terrifying string of Bay Area
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: kidnappings That formed the backdrop of this mystery, right?
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And we're going to dissect this single baffling physical
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: clue left behind. Because what happened to Eileen Mishloff isn't
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: just a tragedy. It's a masterclass in how a microscopic
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: detail can change an entire investigation.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And to understand the weight of that puzzle, we
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: first have to establish exactly who Eileen was. Because, you know,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: she wasn't a runaway. Right.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: There was zero history of rebellion or running off.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: None.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: None.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: She was a straight-A student with a deeply tight-knit family.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Her mom, Maddie, her dad, Michael, her older brother, Robert,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: and her twin brother, Brian.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: A twin. I mean, that detail alone just amplifies the
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: emotional stakes of all this. The bond there is so specific.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: It really is. And she was also remarkably empathetic for
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: a teenager. There's the story her friend Liz tells from
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: their 8th grade science class.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, the frog dissection story.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that. Classic gross-out rite of passage. So Liz's lab
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: partner was playing pranks, making the dead frog jump onto
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: her desk, simulating the heartbeat.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, gross. Middle schoolers are the worst.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: They really are. And Liz was just incredibly squeamish, absolutely terrified.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So Eileen sees this happening from all the way across
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: the room, walks over, and immediately steps in.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She told Liz, next time, we'll be partners. I
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: won't do that to you.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: You know, that's just a great glimpse into her character.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, we all remember, I think, the trauma of
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: 1980s junior high science class. But, you know, to have
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the maturity at 13 to step up and shield a
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: friend like that, it's just, you know, that shows a
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: lot of empathy.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Definitely. And she applied that same dedication to her passions, too.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, Eileen was a competitive figure skater. Right.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: We are talking 30 hours a week on the ice
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: at Dublin, Iceland.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was actually sharing the rink with future legends
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: like Christy Yamaguchi.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Which is wild. But it also meant her daily life
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: was incredibly regimented. So let's trace her final known movements
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: on that Monday, January 30th.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, so because of her intense skating schedule, she had
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: a special arrangement with her middle school. Instead of taking
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: a normal P.E. class, she was allowed to leave school
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: early at 2.30 p.m. to go to practice.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Right. So she walks out the doors, heads down Amador
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Valley Boulevard, and stops at an AM-PM convenience store to
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: buy a snack.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: She used a $ 5 bill she'd just gotten from a
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: friend who owed her money.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: We know she walked out of that AM-PM. And then
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: there is one final sighting. She's seen on the center
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: median strip of Santa Ramon and Amador Valley Boulevard.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: And this is less than a mile from the convenience.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Store, right? Yeah, and just over a mile from her house.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: The time is somewhere between 2.50 and 3.10 p.m.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: That is the absolute last time anyone can definitively say
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: they saw Eileen Mishaloff.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I have to pause here, though, and just look at
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the logic of this schedule. We have a 13-year-old training
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: 30 hours a week. Her life is as meticulously planned
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: by adults as an Olympic athlete's.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So if she is under this strict adult monitored regimen,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: why is she walking alone along a busy highway overpass
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: in the first place? It feels like a massive gap
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: in supervision.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Well, it was actually a scheduled gap. It comes down
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: to a unique arrangement specifically for Mondays and Thursdays.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, how so?
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Most days, her mom drove her directly to the rink.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: But on these two days, Eileen had to walk home
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: from school first. Her skating coaches, Michael and Peggy Tamras,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: were supposed to pick her up from her house and
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: drive her to the rink for her lesson.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, so she was just walking home to wait for
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: her ride. Exactly.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: But that gap is where the timeline completely falls apart,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: which brings us to the missed handoff.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Right. That afternoon, it was supposed to be Michael Tamaris
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: who picked Eileen up at her house. But Michael, well,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: he forgets.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, according to the established timeline, he doesn't even go
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: to the house. At around 4.30 p.m., which is two
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: hours after she got out of school, he casually mentions
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: to his wife Peggy that he forgot to get Eileen.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Two hours later.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, two hours later. So Peggy drives over to the
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Mishalov house. She knocks on the door. Eileen's older brother, Robert,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: answers and says, She's not here. I haven't seen her.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Let me guess. She assumes there's just a scheduling mix-up
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and goes right back to the rink.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: She goes right back to the rink. No alarms are sounded.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: God, the creeping dread here is suffocating. You have a
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: missing child, and the adults are just brushing it off
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: as a miscommunication.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: The atmosphere doesn't shift until 6.10 p.m. That is the
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: turning point. Maddie, Eileen's mother, arrives at the rink after
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: work to pick up her daughter. She walks in, looks around,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: and Eileen isn't there.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: You can practically hear the ambient noise of the ice
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: rink just cut out in that moment. I mean, Maddie
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: must have known instantly that something was horribly wrong.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: She calls the police immediately. And what happens next is
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: just a visceral reaction from the entire town. Night is falling.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Dublin police dispatch nearly every single one of their 27
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: officers to hit the streets.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: The entire force.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Almost all of them. And Maddie and Michael take to
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: the streets themselves. They are running through the dark with flashlights,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: screaming Eileen's name into the night.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Just absolutely desperate.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: They kept screaming and searching until their flashlight batteries literally
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: died in their hands.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Now, think about how you would react if a teenager
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: didn't show up for a few hours. Usually, police will say,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: you know, she lost track of time. She went to
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: a friend's house. Let's wait 24 hours before we panic.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Right, the standard waiting period.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: But here, 27 officers hit the streets instantly. Total explosive panic.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Why did they skip the usual waiting period?
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Because of the terrifying context of the time. The San
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Francisco Bay Area was already in the grip of a
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: localized epidemic of child abductions.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Ah, right.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: It wasn't an isolated fear.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Not at all.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Just seven months earlier, in June of 1988, seven-year-old Amber
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Swartz-Garcia was jumping rope in her front yard and just vanished.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: From her own yard? Yes.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: And then in November of 1988, nine-year-old Michaela Gurecht was
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: snatched in broad daylight outside a grocery store while riding
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: scooters with a friend. People actually saw it happen.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: So put yourself in the shoes of a parent in
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the Bay Area in 1989. You aren't thinking your kid
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: is rebelling or hanging out at the mall. You're thinking
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: they are the next target.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When Eileen went missing, the community didn't think she
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: was a runaway. They thought she was the terrifying third strike.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Which explains why the investigation scaled up so incredibly fast. Yes.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: The FBI was brought in within days. The community printed 70,000 flyers.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: But the strategy behind those flyers is fascinating. They specifically
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: targeted orthodontists.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Because Eileen had braces. Right. It's such a brilliantly pragmatic move.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, if someone took her, eventually those braces would
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: need to be adjusted or removed by a professional.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: It really shows the level of strategic thinking right out
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the gate. By Friday, police brought in three tracking dogs.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: They started them at three different points along Eileen's route,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: keeping them separated so they wouldn't mimic each other's behavior.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: One dog lost the scent, one made it to the
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: convenience store, but the third dog tracked the scent and
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: came to a dead stop at an apartment complex about
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: 50 yards west of the 680 overpass.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Leading to immediate action, of course. Warrants are served, they
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: tear through the dumpsters at this complex, and they find
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. So let's break down the
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: logic of that dog search because I see a massive
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: flaw here. Eileen walked this exact path every single Monday
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: and Thursday. How do investigators know that dog was tracking
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: her terrified footsteps from Monday afternoon and not just smelling
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: her totally normal routine footsteps from the Thursday before?
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Well, they don't. That is the fundamental limitation of scent
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: tracking in a case like this. To understand why dogs
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: fail here, you have to understand how scent actually works.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for us.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: So humans shed about 40,000 skin cells a minute.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's a lot.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these skin wraps fall off us like microscopic snow,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: creating a scent pool wherever we go. If Eileen walked
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: that path twice a week, the area was heavily saturated
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: with her skin rafts.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Ah, so the trail is just permanently there.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Scent dogs are incredible at finding a trail, but
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: they cannot read a timestamp. They don't know if a
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: skin raft is four hours old or four days old.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: It's a frustrating dead end created by your own routine.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, her everyday life masked the crime scene.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: And unfortunately, the limitations of forensic technology would plague this
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: case for decades. Actually, if we fast forward all the
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: way to 2025.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Just recently.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just recently. A tip comes in from a woman
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: who recalled something horrific from her neighborhood back in 1989.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: She remembered hearing chains rattling and a young girl screaming
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: a word that sounded like help.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: That's chilling. Investigators obviously take that seriously.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: They did. They brought human remains detection dogs to the
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: property the tipster identified, and one of the dogs alerted
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: to a scent. They got a warrant and brought in
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Ground Penetrating Radar, or GPR.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Let me guess. They dug up the yard and realized
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: they were chasing ghosts again. Precisely.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: GPR works by sending high-frequency radio waves into the ground.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: When those waves hit an anomaly, like a buried pipe
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: or rock or disturbed soil, they bounce back.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: It paints a picture of what's beneath the surface.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Right. But just like the scent dogs in 1989, GPR
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: cannot distinguish context. The soil might have been disturbed in 1989,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: or it might have been an old trash pit from 1910.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: The radar showed no relevant abnormalities.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: So the dogs were inconclusive in 89, and the tech
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: was inconclusive in 2025. Investigators needed tangible, physical evidence from
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the day she vanished.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, desperately.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And four days after she disappeared, a deputy is out
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: on patrol, retracing Eileen's route. He's in a secluded parking
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: lot behind Mait Memorial Park. And there... Sitting right on
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the ground, he finds a single house key attached to
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: a Spud's McKenzie keychain.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: The Bud Light dog mascot. Such a very specific, distinct
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: piece of 1980s pop culture.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly. They test the key. It opens the Mishlaw's front door.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: It was hers.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: It was hers. But here is the detail that completely
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: upends the narrative. Eileen's older brother, Robert, alongside police officers,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: had painstakingly searched that exact path over the previous four days.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: They had checked the drainage systems, the creeks, the bushes.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They scoured that specific parking lot, and they found nothing.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Then on day four, there it is.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Sitting in plain sight.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: This isn't a dropped clue. It didn't fall out of
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: her pocket during a struggle on Monday. This is a taunt.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: It's like an arsonist standing in the crowd watching the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: firemen put out the fire. It's not just about committing
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the crime. It's about controlling the narrative of the aftermath.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: If the keys weren't there on Tuesday... but they magically
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: appear on Thursday. The abductor planted them.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: And if you unpack the chilling psychological profile that implies,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: it changes the entire landscape of the investigation.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Well, it means this wasn't a crime of opportunity by
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: a drifter passing through on the highway. The perpetrator stayed
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: in Dublin. They watched the search parties. They watched Eileen's
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: brother desperately looking for her.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: The perpetrator isn't a shadow on the highway. They are
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a neighbor. They are local.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Yes. they purposely walked back into an active search grid
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: to plant that keychain, specifically to send the police on
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: a wild goose chase into the park. It is highly calculated,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: deeply sadistic, and as you said, it points to someone local.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: And since the planted keychain tells us the abductor likely
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: knew her route and was watching the search, police immediately
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: pivot away from stranger danger. They look at the people
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: holding the compass to her schedule, her coaches, Michael and
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Peggy Tamras.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: And the coach's behavior in the immediate aftermath threw a
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: lot of fuel on that fire.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Remember, a massive manhunt is underway for a child they
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: were supposed to pick up. But Michael and Peggy decide
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: to keep their pre-existing plans.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Wait, what?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: That very night, they go to a skating event in Berkeley.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: And then they leave for a multi-day ski trip near
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Lake Tahoe.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Think about that. You are the adult responsible for this child.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: The child vanishes on your watch. Your instinct should be
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: to panic and help search.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: You'd think so.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: How do you just pack your ski boots and hit
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the slopes while helicopters are shining spotlights on the town?
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: It looks incredibly callous.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: It looks completely unnatural. And psychologically, when a community is
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: fractured by a trauma like this, they need a scapegoat. Right.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: A defense mechanism against randomness. Exactly.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: It is much easier to blame the coaches who went
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: skiing than to accept that a phantom is snatching kids
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: off the street. But this is where we have to
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: step back and look at the actual human context.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, because there has to be more to this.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: There is. Decades later, Peggy Tamris finally explained why they
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: left for that trip. She was undergoing her third and
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: final attempt at IVF treatment.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Oh. Oh, wow, that changes everything.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Right. You have to view this through the lens of 1989.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: IVF was not common. The success rates were agonizingly low,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: around 10 to 15%.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: And it must have been incredibly expensive.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Thousands of out-of-pocket dollars. It required intense daily hormone injections.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: And the timing of the procedure was dictated down to
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: the literal hour by her medical cycle.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: So they couldn't just postpone it?
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. Furthermore, infertility carried a heavy social
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: stigma back then. People kept it fiercely secret. That ski
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: trip wasn't a vacation. It was a medical imperative that
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: they felt they couldn't talk about.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: It paints their actions not as guilty, but as desperate
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and trapped between two nightmares.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the police understood this once they investigated. They
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: thoroughly interviewed Michael and Peggy. They gave statements by phone.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: They sat down for multiple in-person interviews when they returned.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Did they cooperate fully? Yes.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Peggy even offered to take a polygraph. Detectives have unequivocally
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: stated they do not consider anyone in the Tamras family
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: a suspect.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Okay. So if it wasn't the coaches, who was it?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Did they look at the known serial predators in the area?
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: They looked at David Misch, who was later tied to
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: the murder of Michaela Gorecht. They investigated the notorious speed
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: freak killers who were operating in the broader region.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: But no connection?
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: None. Investigators systematically ruled them out for Eileen's disappearance. There
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: was no physical link. The leads just evaporated into the
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: California sun.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Which leaves the family suspended in time. While the headlines
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: fade and the community moves on, The Michelops were trapped
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: in a haunting picture of unresolved grief.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Two and a half months after Eileen vanished, it was
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: her 13th birthday. Her family bought a cake, brought it home,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and put it in the freezer. They were waiting for
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: her to come home to eat it.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: And they never took another family vacation after January 1989.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: They reasoned that if Eileen somehow managed to escape her
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: captor and make it home, someone had to be there
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: to open the door.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: God, they couldn't bear the thought of her coming back
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to an empty house.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Her twin brother, Brian, articulated something that just stops you
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: in your tracks. People always try to comfort him by saying,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: the hardest part must be not knowing.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Right. You hear that a lot with missing persons cases.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: But he disagrees. He says the hardest part isn't not
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: knowing where she is. The hardest part is knowing that
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: she suffered. Knowing that whatever she went through is far
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: worse than the pain he is enduring.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: It's a profound burden to carry. And it makes the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: moments of false hope feel especially cruel. Definitely. Let's talk
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: about her friend Liz, the one from the frog dissection story.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Fast forward 20 years to 2009. Liz is house-sitting for
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the Mishloff family.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: The family had actually maintained a dedicated phone line, a
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: number that only Eileen knew, set up exclusively in case
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: she ever called.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: And for 20 years, that phone never rang.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Until that night.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: While Liz is alone in the house, the Eileen line
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: starts ringing and ringing. And the timing makes it agonizing
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: because that exact same week, J.C. Dugard, another kidnapped California
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: girl who had been missing for 18 years, had miraculously
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: just been found alive.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: So for one desperate, terrifying night, as that phone rang,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Liz truly believed Eileen was coming home too.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But it was just news reporters.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, reporters calling every unlisted number associated with the family
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: to get a comment on the J.C. Dugard case.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: That is just a brutal twist of fate. And tragically,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that closure never came for her parents. Maddie passed away
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: in 2020.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: And Michael followed in 2024.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: They died without answers. But her friend Liz, she still
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: walks Eileen's route. Even today, nearly 40 years later, she
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: says she still looks into the creeks along the path.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Just in case.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Because for the people left behind, the search doesn't end
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: just because the calendar turns.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: It doesn't. Which brings us back to where we started.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: A safe, ordinary suburb in the daylight. And it leaves
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: you with a chilling thought to mull over.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: When decades pass, when witnesses fade away, and even the
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: parents are gone, does a solitary piece of evidence like
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: a Spud's McKenzie keychain hold a microscopic secret waiting for
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: some future technology to unlock?
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Or is it some darker?
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Right. A permanent mocking monument to a phantom who slipped
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: perfectly into the cracks of a safe American suburb, leaving
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: nothing behind but a key to a door that will
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: never open again.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: It is the kind of detail that keeps investigators awake
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: at night.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And it'll keep you awake tonight, too. Thanks for joining
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: us on this deep dive. Stay safe out there.