Re-Release: Bianca Piper

This episode originally aired in 2024

When 13-year-old Bianca Piper got into an argument with her mother, Shannon Tanner, over doing the dishes, Shannon put her in the car, drove her a mile up the road, and told her to walk home. While this may seem like an odd form of punishment, it was actually something that had been recommended by Bianca’s therapist. But on March 10, 2005, Bianca never made it home. 

Investigators in Foley, Missouri performed an extensive search but uncovered almost no clues regarding the missing girl. Over the years, they’ve investigated many theories, including the possibility of Bianca’s disappearance being related to those of other children in Lincoln County. Was Bianca abducted by a stranger, or was the reason behind her disappearance closer to home?

Anyone with information regarding Bianca Piper’s disappearance is urged to submit a tip through the Lincoln County Sheriff’s website or through their tipline at 636-462-6513.

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[SPEAKER_00]: dark cast network.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the dark side of podcasting.

[SPEAKER_02]: When 13-year-old Bianca Piper got into an argument with her mother, Shane and Tanner, overdoing the dishes, Shane and put her in the car, drove her a mile up the road and told her to walk home.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this may seem like an odd form of punishment.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was actually something that had been recommended by Bianca's therapist.

[SPEAKER_02]: But on March 10, 2005, Bianca never made it home.

[SPEAKER_02]: Investigators and fully Missouri performed an extensive search, but uncovered almost no clues regarding the missing girl.

[SPEAKER_02]: Over the years, they've investigated many theories, including the possibility of Bianca's disappearance being related to those of other children in Lincoln County.

[SPEAKER_02]: Was Bianca abducted by a stranger or was the reason behind her disappearance closer to home?

[SPEAKER_02]: When a person goes missing, there's a special kind of pain in the not knowing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to tell you the stories of those who never came home.

[SPEAKER_02]: Today, I want to tell you the story of Bianca Piper.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Kona Gallagher.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Ethan Flick.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is, and then they were gone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back everyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for joining us once again, I'm Kona and I'm Ethan.

[SPEAKER_02]: And where the husband and wife team behind this podcast, each week I tell you the story of an unsolved missing person's case.

[SPEAKER_02]: Ethan doesn't know anything about the case going into the episode and he's here to provide his reactions and questions in real time, hopefully asking some of the same ones you have at home.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this is kind of an odd case that I came across randomly on line one day.

[SPEAKER_02]: And after researching it, it really makes me think about coincidences in cases like these.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do certain family dynamics lead to victimization, or are different events that happen within a family all connected?

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get into the story of Bianca Piper.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca Noel Piper was born on December 26, 1991 in Missouri to Shannon Tanner in David Piper.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca is the youngest of three girls, and she was still a baby when her parents divorced in 1993.

[SPEAKER_02]: After the divorce, David moved about two hours away to Frederick Town, Missouri, to take a job as a truck driver, while Bianca and her older sisters Tiffany and Amber remained with their mother in fully Missouri.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca faced mental health struggles from a young age and began attending therapy when she was only four years old.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca was eventually diagnosed with ADHD and severe bipolar disorder.

[SPEAKER_02]: Her conditions caused her to have mood swings, anxiety attacks, and issues with anger and self-control.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca was also intellectually disabled and at the time of her disappearance when she was 13, she was said to have the mental capacity of a second grader.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca attended Windfield Middle School where her teacher says she was artistic.

[SPEAKER_02]: She liked the color purple and horses and Barbies and just things that any little girl likes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca missed a good amount of school, however.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now this has been attributed to her psychiatric illnesses, but I've never seen any specific reasoning for it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I'm just I'm trying to think of like a reason specifically, I mean, unless it was like therapy related.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like why should be this a lot of school because they've never mentioned that she was like hospitalized or, you know, anything like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not really sure what was going on there.

[SPEAKER_02]: In October 2004, the household dynamic changed when Shannon's boyfriend Jim Felt moved in.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know much about Jim's relationship with Shannon's daughter, so I'm not sure if this was a positive or negative change for Bianca.

[SPEAKER_02]: Though I will say that future events point more toward the possibility of this being negative, but we'll get into that later.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, it sounds like at this point Amber Bianca's oldest sister was no longer in the house.

[SPEAKER_02]: Um, as later, New Super Articles would only mention one sister living with Bianca.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're sure you're like an adult now 18.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so basically aged out of the house for lack of a better way to describe it?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but there may be more to that as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: According to Bianca's other sister Tiffany, March 10, 2005 seems like a pretty normal evening.

[SPEAKER_02]: The family had dinner and the girls started their chores, but on this night Bianca decided that she didn't want to do her chores.

[SPEAKER_02]: Shannon wanted her to wash the dishes, but Bianca apparently refused.

[SPEAKER_02]: They got into an argument which led to Bianca having a full meltdown.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is when Shannon decided to use a new technique that Bianca's therapist had recommended.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm I'm really like anxious to get into this as soon as you said it in the opening.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, what the actual F like really that's that's a technique that a therapist would recommend like send this 13 year olds.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, drive this 13 year old girl.

[SPEAKER_01]: A mile up the road and tell her to walk home.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: According to Shannon, Bianca's therapist suggested that when they find themselves in a situation like this, that they should remove Bianca from it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Shannon was supposed to do this by driving Bianca to another location and letting her walk home by herself.

[SPEAKER_02]: This was supposed to give Bianca the space and time she needed to cool down.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so the theory I'm I'm all for right, like it makes it like moving yourself from the situation makes having time to cool down like yes, that's very normal.

[SPEAKER_01]: where I, the practicality of this is where I have the issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you have a 13 year old girl who has ADHD bipolar disorder and has the mental capacity of essentially a seven year old.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you're going to drive her a mile up the road and tell her to walk home by herself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, do you not see the problems with that, you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, I mean, it did confuse a lot of people for sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this is like new advice that they had gotten and they'd only tried it once, but when they had tried it, which I think was the night before, like the Wednesday.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is a Thursday that this happened.

[SPEAKER_02]: It totally worked.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when they first tried it, she drove Bianca like a half a mile away and had her walk home.

[SPEAKER_02]: and Bianca did and she was in a better mood when she returned and she was like oh that was easy like I can walk a half mile no problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so Shannon said that Bianca requested to be dropped off further away next time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not questioning the fact that her mom did it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her mom did it on the advice of a therapist.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm questioning again, the practicality of the therapist telling her mom drive this girl away from the house and let her walk home alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know, it's, yeah, I don't care what time the day was.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, okay, she's a 13 or well, I mean, that's not even like, you know, even a 13 year old, I mean, I guess, I mean, kind of see it, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because like 13 year olds, like go from the bus to walk home from school, they'll go to 7 11, you know, get us back.

[SPEAKER_01]: But with the mental capacity of a seven year old is, and her other known issues, that's where I have the problem with the taking her, removing her, or taking her away, any distance in having her walk home by herself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, by herself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the other practical solution would have been, like just I under the advice is good.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that sound like removing her from the volatile situation or situation that's getting her spun up.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it may not have been as something as simple as like sending her to a different room.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, the house from what I understand was small, so maybe they're just kind of on top of each other and they're just like wasn't a good way to do that within the home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, I'm not a therapist, but it just seems.

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe maybe this is a knee jerk reaction because she ended up going missing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we are looking at it with that knowledge.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: At the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, a March 10 that when Bianca had this afternoon or meltdown, Shannon decided to try it again, because it had already worked once, you know, it seemed to diffuse the situation.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she put Bianca in the car and drove her about a mile up on Macintosh Road, which is the road on which they lived.

[SPEAKER_02]: This area fully is pretty rural and surrounded by trees.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if you Google Earth this area around their house, there's Macintosh Road and then it's just trees on either side of the road and houses every so often.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's pretty much it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she drove her up about a mile.

[SPEAKER_02]: Again, it's not like she like made a lot of turns and you know, took her to some confusing place.

[SPEAKER_02]: She dropped Bianca off on a bridge over a creek, gave her flashlight and said she'd see her at home.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this was around 15 p.m.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it was going to be getting dark soon.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca should have made the walk back in about 20 minutes, but when 20 minutes passed, there is no sign of her.

[SPEAKER_02]: 30 minutes passed, then 45, nothing.

[SPEAKER_02]: When she had been gone for about an hour, Shannon and Jim got into the car and drove back up to where Shannon had dropped Bianca off.

[SPEAKER_02]: But they didn't see her anywhere on the route.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, they just went up the one road.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, like if she was still on her way home, just walking like real slow, you know, they would have passed her.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: They searched the entire area for a while, but didn't find any trace of the 13 year old.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they returned home and Shannon called police to report her daughter missing at around 820 PM.

[SPEAKER_02]: Police immediately took Bianca's disappearance seriously.

[SPEAKER_02]: In addition to her intellectual disability, if she's out for a long period of time without her medication, she would reportedly become disoriented and potentially suffer from hallucinations.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: So typically, you know, even if it's an adult who's missing, you know, if there are intellectual disability, if there's like medication involved, that's usually what will get police really going quickly on a missing person's case.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so in this case, we had all of that plus she was only 13.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they took it seriously, but, you know, they didn't even get called until 820.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there really wasn't a whole lot that they could do that night.

[SPEAKER_02]: They obviously looked around for her and interviewed everybody.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the search really kicked off the next morning.

[SPEAKER_02]: On March 11, police brought out helicopters and executed a ground search with about 100 people on foot and horseback.

[SPEAKER_02]: At around 5 p.m., police set up a series of checkpoints near Bianca's house and where she was last seen, and hopes that a motorist had seen something the night before.

[SPEAKER_02]: No one had, and at around 630 they called off the search for the night.

[SPEAKER_02]: The weather was supposed to begin to dip into the thirties, and Bianca was only wearing jeans in a hoodie when Shannon dropped her off.

[SPEAKER_02]: Lincoln County Sheriff Dan Torres told reporters that he was worried for her safety in the event that she was lost out in the woods somewhere.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is basically what investigators thought had happened, that Bianca simply got lost in her way home the night before.

[SPEAKER_02]: They didn't suspect foul play because, and this is according to an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, there had been any sightings and they had heard no reports that she had been abducted.

[SPEAKER_02]: as the search went on nearby firefighters volunteer to assist.

[SPEAKER_02]: Many of them went door to door interviewing neighbors and asking permission to search out buildings.

[SPEAKER_02]: None of the neighbors reported same Bianca on Thursday night though.

[SPEAKER_02]: With that said, as I mentioned, it's a rural area and the houses are spaced pretty far apart.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is also 2005, so it's before doorbell cameras, so it's not super surprising that there weren't any witnesses that spotted her that evening.

[SPEAKER_02]: As you can imagine, Shannon received a good amount of backlash about her decision to let her daughter walk home on her own.

[SPEAKER_02]: But she maintained that she had made the decision on the advice of Bianca's doctor.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I also want to be clear that I was not bashing Shannon for doing that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it just seems like not the most logical or safe thing for a therapist to tell Shannon to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I was saying.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: But nevertheless, when no sign of Bianca was recovered in the first several days of the search, police started looking closer to home.

[SPEAKER_02]: The complete lack of clues meant that police started looking away from the theory that Bianca had simply gotten lost.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's when they started to take a harder look at Shannon and Jim.

[SPEAKER_02]: They had both of them take a polygraph test, which they apparently passed.

[SPEAKER_02]: They also interviewed Bianca's father, David Piper, but, like I said, he lived two hours away, and was determined not to have been anywhere near fully when Bianca disappeared.

[SPEAKER_02]: What I find interesting is that police officially cleared all three of the adults early on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Typically, in a disappearance like this, the line you usually hear is that no one is cleared until the person is found.

[SPEAKER_02]: When people are cleared this quickly, it's usually because there's strong evidence of a stranger abduction.

[SPEAKER_02]: So take the Morgan Dick case, for instance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Witnesses saw her getting pulled into a random red truck.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or the other way of clearing them is that one of them having a strong ally by.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like her father living several hours away.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, not being anywhere near the area.

[SPEAKER_01]: Probably on a truck route.

[SPEAKER_01]: He said he was truck drivers.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he probably was potentially even further away exactly two hours.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so that makes that strong.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like it get why they cleared him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, within the first week,

[SPEAKER_02]: but to clear Jim and Shannon was surprising to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: In a March 15th, 2005 article in the Springfield newsletter, Lincoln County Sheriff's Lieutenant Rick Carroll told reporters that nothing they had uncovered in the investigation up to that point indicated an abduction or foul play of any kind.

[SPEAKER_02]: He also said that nothing could be ruled out, however, including that Bianca had simply run away.

[SPEAKER_02]: Shannon didn't seem to believe that her daughter decided to leave, but did tell reporters that she was concerned that Bianca could have either gotten into a car willingly or had been forced in.

[SPEAKER_02]: Either way, she said that she felt her daughter was, quote, not near us, and quote.

[SPEAKER_02]: At that time, five days after Bianca's disappearance, they still had about 200 people out searching for her.

[SPEAKER_02]: These searchers traversed difficult terrain, including caves and swampy areas near

[SPEAKER_02]: These search has continued for the next couple days, but after covering 270 square miles in a week, and finding no trace of Bianca, police announced that the search would be scaled back, though several detectives would remain on her case.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I think that that makes sense, you know, yes, she's a 13 year old girl, but like, like, how far would you have gotten on foot without them finding any trace of her?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like not the flashlight or, you know, clothing anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I could potentially see, you know, now knowing that if she's offered medication, she could have hallucinations.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, in theory, it makes a lot of sense that maybe she was starting to have some hallucinations or got, it's hard to say that she got lost along the way home because it was just one road, but, you know, she still could have wandered into the woods, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then, for again, for those searchers to not find anything after searching such a large area,

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where it makes sense to me at that point to kind of scale back the search.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and apparently I've read in one of the sources, the 270 square miles that they covered, that's half the size of the entire county.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, she's not getting that far.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, no new clues emerged, and by March 28th, police were just confused.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sheriff Dan Torres told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that he was confounded by the lack of clues or witnesses, saying, quote, that's the most puzzling part.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a big stretch of road, and yeah, it doesn't have a lot of traffic, but there's enough that you would think somebody saw something and quote.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I mean, that is a good point because it is 615 when she was dropped off.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's rush hour, basically, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, you would think people are coming home from work.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're, you know, going to the store, coming back from the store, going to dinner.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, doing any number of things, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're not talking to a, you would think that a normal commuter, who was stopped the next day at that at the check point.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's true points would have seen her.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am curious and probably safe to assume that they investigated this or looked into it, but sex offenders in the area.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we'll get into other people that they looked at later.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think they did do the like the basic sex offender search early on.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you said that firemen were not can door to door.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: The sheriff said that they had 10 detectives working on the case 12 to 15 hours a day, and that they weren't any further than they had been on day one.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because of this, he had to scale down the number of detectives to two, but said that they were still checking every lead even those from psychics.

[SPEAKER_02]: He also said that they wanted to get the FBI to review the case just to see if they could come up with something that they had missed.

[SPEAKER_02]: The case went pretty quiet for the next month until police were called back to Bianca's house for a domestic incident.

[SPEAKER_02]: Jim and Shannon had apparently gotten into a physical altercation at their home in May of 2005.

[SPEAKER_02]: Police came and Shannon filed a complaint against Jim.

[SPEAKER_02]: Shannon later withdrew it, though, in the couple reconciled.

[SPEAKER_02]: Police involved in Bianca's search said that they were confident the incident was unrelated to her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yeah, I'm not excusing it, but it could have been stress-related, sure around, you know, the fact that her daughter went missing.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, it is concerning.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah, it's certainly not a good sign, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Lieutenant Rick Harrell spoke to reporters again, and admitted that the case had basically broken down to nothing, but said that quote, we haven't been able to rule anything out.

[SPEAKER_02]: But they did roll the parents out in the first few days of the investigation.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like literally less than a week into it, which makes me wonder how extensive the search was of their property in their house.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was not able to find any specific information on that in any of the newspaper articles, just the search in general, which did seem very extensive.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I'm not saying that Shannon or Jim necessarily had any involvement, but it does strike me as strange that they clear them so quickly in a case with so few clues.

[SPEAKER_02]: Especially, since a few months later in July, more disturbing news would come out of the home on McIntosh Road.

[SPEAKER_02]: At the beginning of July 2005, police were called to the home once again for domestic disturbance.

[SPEAKER_02]: This one wasn't between Shannon and Jim however.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was between Shannon and her older daughter Tiffany.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: When police arrived, Shannon was actually on top of Tiffany holding her face to the ground.

[SPEAKER_02]: When officers intervened, Tiffany claimed that her mother had punched her in the face

[SPEAKER_02]: and officers did observe that Tiffany had a large bump on her forehead.

[SPEAKER_02]: Tiffany also claimed that Shannon had threatened to tie her up and walk her in her bedroom.

[SPEAKER_02]: Shannon claimed that the altercation had started because Tiffany had stopped taking her medication for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and she had thrown a glass dish at Shannon.

[SPEAKER_02]: She said that she was simply trying

[SPEAKER_02]: So that, you could kind of see, right, because the wind deputies came in, you know, Shannon was on top of Tiffany, and like, so you could see like, okay, yeah, she was trying to restrain her, keep her from hurting anyone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it almost seems plausible.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then where did Tiffany get the bump on her head?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, because it does seem like the whole thing about Shannon hitting her with the curling iron was likely true.

[SPEAKER_02]: But even more than that, when deputies went to arrest Shannon, cause, you know, they're gonna arrest her regardless, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: She apparently shoved one of them and then grabbed a piece of broken glass.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.

[SPEAKER_02]: And like one after them, and they had to taste her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so it's looking as though Shannon might have some anger issues.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it seems like there's a lot going on there.

[SPEAKER_02]: DEPIDs were able to restrain Shannon, a restaurant, and she was booked on a charge of domestic assault and later released after posting a $25,000 bond.

[SPEAKER_02]: As months passed, Shannon was still holding out hope that her daughter would return.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca's father David, however, was more pessimistic.

[SPEAKER_02]: In September, he told reporters that he was certain his daughter wouldn't have run away or voluntarily gotten into a car with a stranger.

[SPEAKER_02]: He told reporters, quote, I feel like she's no longer with us, but I want people to keep looking for her or her body so we can get some kind of closure and quote.

[SPEAKER_02]: The family held a vigil near where she was last seen and released 13 purple balloons.

[SPEAKER_02]: Shannon said, quote, if Bianca's anywhere where she can get this message, we want her to know that we love her, we miss her, and we want her to come home and quote.

[SPEAKER_02]: March 10, 2006, marked one year since Bianca was last seen.

[SPEAKER_02]: By this point, police were convinced that Bianca was the victim of foul play, saying that if she was taken, it was likely by a local resident, simply because the odds of a random traveling psychopath encountering Bianca on that small country road were pretty slim.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I would agree with that her being there was completely unpredictable season.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no way that anybody was like casing her thinking, okay, now's my chance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's not like she was coming home from the bus or anything routine like that at all.

[SPEAKER_02]: but despite media attention and being featured on America's most wanted, the investigation still hadn't progressed.

[SPEAKER_02]: In the year, that's the first year that she was missing, and especially after her story aired on America's most wanted, they had a lot of sightings called in, but those were all proven to be other people.

[SPEAKER_02]: But everything looked like it was about to change in January, 2007.

[SPEAKER_02]: That month, two kidnapped boys were rescued, in Lincoln County, the same county where Bianca disappeared.

[SPEAKER_02]: William Ben-Oneby and Sean Hornbeck were found.

[SPEAKER_02]: Ben had only been missing for a few days, but Sean Hornbeck had been missing for four years.

[SPEAKER_01]: What?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whoa.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: They were found in the apartment of Michael Devlin, a local pizza rea manager.

[SPEAKER_01]: In an apartment.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Four years in an apartment.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And apparently like they weren't just like locked up in the apartment because like people had seen them out in the neighborhood.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't make the connection.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was crazy.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so the interview, the interview devil in Sposk, because he had worked at that pizza rea for like 25 years.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she's boss, given any of you, he's like, yeah, he's a great employee.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I know issues with them.

[SPEAKER_02]: But when Ben Ongby was abducted just like a couple of days before this,

[SPEAKER_02]: there apparently were witnesses and like they described the vehicle that he had gotten pulled into and the owner was like, hmm, that looks like like old devils, like trucker band.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the owner, his boss was suspicious and called the the tip end to police.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: But in police are about to follow up on it, but then they actually spotted the vehicle on their own and yeah,

[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the shocking discovery made investigators look into Devlin to see if he could be really into other cases.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Bianca's was, you know, number one on their mind, of course, because this is like way after, you know, police had said that, oh, it's probably a local resident who did this.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then holy shit, a local resident turns out to literally have two kids in his apartment.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they looked into him for Bianca's disappearance, but there's also the case of Arlin Henderson who had gone missing from Lincoln County while writing his bike all the way back in 1991.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this was apparently very close to the circumstances and what Sean was abducted.

[SPEAKER_02]: So police thought like they could be cracking another case.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, though, these connect children were all young her boys, it still gave Bianca's investigation a new line of inquiry, you know, to go down after just going nowhere for months, basically.

[SPEAKER_02]: A task force was created in order to try to uncover any other possible crimes committed by Devlin.

[SPEAKER_02]: But unfortunately, police couldn't end up linking into anything else, and the task force was dissolved in October of that year.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's unlikely that he would have switched his M.O.

[SPEAKER_01]: or his type of victim.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, but not unheard of.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, not definitely worth exploring, looking at you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Especially because they had nothing else at that point, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it really did seem like they were going to get something, but at the very least, they rescued these two boys, which is amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it could also them for that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: A few other local sex offenders and criminals were investigated in relation to Bianca's case.

[SPEAKER_02]: So again, that's kind of what we were talking about before the sex offenders.

[SPEAKER_02]: There were some who had like abducted and or murdered other children in the area who had been caught and so they looked at these people in relation to Bianca, but just couldn't get any connection.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Bianca's case remained at a standstill for the next several years, and, you know, mostly dropped out of the public eye, like there'd be the occasional article on an anniversary or something like that, but you really stopped hearing about Bianca, then, in 2012, Bianca's family was back in the news for an extremely disturbing reason.

[SPEAKER_02]: In 2012, Bianca's older sister, Tiffany Piper, the one who had the altercation with her mother, was arrested for sex trafficking.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whoa.

[SPEAKER_02]: Tiffany, who was around 22 at the time of her arrest, admitted to selling two high school girls for sex.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.

[SPEAKER_02]: She said that she recruited these girls and placed online ads in viting men to have sex with them

[SPEAKER_01]: Holy shit.

[SPEAKER_02]: Tiffany pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

[SPEAKER_02]: But here's why I think this is really important.

[SPEAKER_02]: Tiffany didn't just wake up one morning and decide to start a sex trafficking business.

[SPEAKER_01]: It came out during her court proceedings that Tiffany herself had been a victim of sex trafficking.

[SPEAKER_02]: Years earlier, ads popped up online that someone else had placed offering up Tiffany for

[SPEAKER_02]: whomever victimized Tiffany wasn't arrested, though, because she refused to tell police who it was.

[SPEAKER_02]: St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lomar told reporters quote, that's what makes it difficult in this case.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a spectrum in these cases where someone can go from victim to perpetrator, and that's what we have in this case.

[SPEAKER_02]: At some point, she was no longer a victim in this case, because she perpetrated the same crimes that were perpetrated upon her end quote.

[SPEAKER_02]: This came from an article in Fox 2 now, and they called this whole thing, quote, a tragic coincidence.

[SPEAKER_02]: But was it?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is it a tragic coincidence that Bianca and Tiffany lived in a home in which there seemed to be some level of abuse?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then Bianca goes missing and Tiffany gets sex trafficked?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is it a coincidence or is it indicative of something much darker going on in this family?

[SPEAKER_02]: One thing that struck me when researching the story is Bianca's description on her Charlie Project page.

[SPEAKER_02]: It says that she has scars on her arms and legs and a scar on her abdomen.

[SPEAKER_02]: And obviously there could be any number of reasons for these scars, including accidents or even self-harm.

[SPEAKER_02]: But reading about Shannon's arrest for assaulting Tiffany also made me wonder about the full extent of the abuse

[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know much about Bianca's other sister Amber, but she has had her share of run-ins with the police as well, many of which are drug-related.

[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, it's hard to tell from the records, but she could have actually been incarcerated at the time of Bianca's disappearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: As around that time, she was facing multiple charges, including assault, property damage, and passing bad checks.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, obviously, there was violence in the home and now we know that more than likely sexual abuse occurring in the home, not necessarily, you know, somebody being the perpetrator of the actual sex acts, but they were sex trafficking one.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, but we don't know if that was within the home or not.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, a lot of people who end up in situations, it's, you know, it's a boyfriend, it's, you know, somebody, somebody like that, like it's not necessarily coming from within the home.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's, but it's a possibility.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a possibility.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, so we have that information now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or younger sister goes missing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, strong possibility that maybe somebody in the house was sex trafficking Bianca too, and something went wrong.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, all theory and speculation at this point, but it definitely doesn't look good.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, and we talked about this off mic because like I really got upset about it, and so I stopped recording, but I mean, I do want to say how infuriating it is that, you know, I was reading the article about Tiffany getting sentenced.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they're just like, oh yeah, and by the way, she was just sex trafficker self years before and it's like, okay, but they just dropped it, like, you know, she wouldn't say who it was, which a lot of victims don't want a fucking talk about.

[SPEAKER_02]: who their abusers are and everybody just dropped it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody seemingly looked into it further, especially because there wasn't a trial because she did plead guilty, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, we don't know if like her her current sex trafficking operation because she did have a co-dependent a man.

[SPEAKER_02]: we don't know if like he was involved in what happened to Tiffany, if he somebody that Tiffany herself recruited to help her with this.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, but what it seems like is that nobody dug in deeper to see how this all started and is this something bigger that's going on in

[SPEAKER_02]: They just put Tiffany and Jail and called it a day.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they just think that that's the end of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm sure there's a much larger network to this.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just she was a victim of sex trafficking.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know who that person is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, she's a perpetrator of sex trafficking.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's completely isolated and like we got we got her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're done.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, this is there's probably a network involved with this and yeah, I understand she didn't want to admit to who sex traffic terror, but maybe you press her a little bit more on that than her just being like, I'm not going to say anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to plead guilty.

[SPEAKER_01]: let's move on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but that seems to be what happened.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, it could truly, and that's what I was talking about in the intro, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: When I was talking about like coincidences, like it truly could be unrelated to anything that happened with Bianca.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think it's connected.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really do.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying it was somebody in the house, but maybe maybe Tiffany and Bianca were both involved with whoever it was.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it just impuriates me that like, it doesn't seem and I could be wrong because obviously, look, I'm looking at news articles, you know, whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have the inside investigative information.

[SPEAKER_02]: All I know is what they've decided to make public.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't get any indication that the sheriff's department went down this route in relation to Bianca to see if this could have been in any way connected to Bianca's disappearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think a lot of that is because it happened seven years later, she was sent in nine years later,

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, to me, that doesn't mean that they're not related, but just because a family has separate legal issues doesn't necessarily mean that they made a 13 year old disappear.

[SPEAKER_02]: For her part, Shannon has been active in the 19 years since her youngest daughter's disappearance, working to keep media attention on her daughter's case.

[SPEAKER_02]: She eventually moved to St. Charles, Missouri, and still decorates her home with photos and momentos of her lost daughter.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, one suspicion that people have is whether or not Shannon's initial story is true.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did this argument over the dishes even happen?

[SPEAKER_02]: And did she actually drop Bianca off near that bridge on March 10th, 2005?

[SPEAKER_02]: Unlike other cases that we've covered in which a parent or guardian reports a child missing and then it's found that no one had actually seen the child in the days, weeks, or even months leading up to the report, that's not the case with Bianca.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her father David Piper said that he had spoken to his daughter on the phone that very day.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we also don't have any reports of her missing school in the days leading up to this, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, we do have reports of her missing school frequently, but nothing that says, oh yeah, also she wasn't in school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, nothing like that, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So it appears that whatever happened to Bianca did, in fact, happen on March 10th.

[SPEAKER_02]: In 2018, Tiffany had been released from prison after serving a small portion of her eight-year sentence.

[SPEAKER_02]: She had also become a mother of her own.

[SPEAKER_02]: She spoke with NBC-5 reporter Rachel Menetoff on the 13th anniversary of Bianca's disappearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: In this interview, she talked about the things Bianca's missed, like getting her driver's license or going to prom.

[SPEAKER_02]: But she also said something that seemingly corroborated her mother's story about what happened that night.

[SPEAKER_02]: She said, quote, the last thing that I said to her was, thanks a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to have to finish up your chores now.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it seems silly, but still 13 years later, that's what I said last, instead of I love you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, it's possible that Tiffany is covering for her mother, but seeing how the two seemingly had a tumultuous relationship at the time of Bianca's disappearance, it doesn't seem super likely to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Tiffany also admitted to her sex trafficking crimes, which she really be able or want to keep a secret like this for so many years.

[SPEAKER_02]: In 2021, Lincoln County established a new cold case unit, and Bianca's case was at the top of the pile.

[SPEAKER_02]: By this time, Lieutenant Rick Harrell had become sheriff, and he told Lincoln news now that they wanted to get some fresh size on Bianca's case.

[SPEAKER_02]: After its formation, the cold kiss unit got to work and went back to the beginning, to Bianca's former home on Macintosh Road.

[SPEAKER_02]: Investigators returned to the home to perform a new search.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this search included draining the home's septic tank.

[SPEAKER_02]: Lincoln County Sheriff Captain David Hill told reporters in February 2023 that nothing was recovered during the search, but that they were still reviewing contents of the septic tank, saying, quote, is it possible that there's still something in there to find?

[SPEAKER_02]: 100 percent absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: Certain things, they don't decompose every time.

[SPEAKER_02]: DNA is still valid.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have had some

[SPEAKER_02]: It means that they were thinking that they could find bone or something like that in the subject tank, potentially, that belonged to Bianca, and they could make a DNA match.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a company who is talking about his author, MLABS, which has done a lot of

[SPEAKER_02]: like genetic genealogy work and things like that and like really good DNA work and has helped solve a ton of cases over the last several years.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so they went back to the house and during the septic tank looking for DNA evidence.

[SPEAKER_02]: Investigators have never released any further results in the search which took place over a year and a half ago at the time of this recording.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a good chance that nothing was found.

[SPEAKER_02]: However, just the fact that they were going back to the home does seem to indicate that they were looking back into the idea that Bianca's family could be tied to our disappearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because listen, if Michael Devlin or some other random local abducter is the one who got her, there wouldn't be evidence of it in her own septic tank.

[SPEAKER_02]: March 10, 2025, will mark the 20th anniversary of Bianca Piper's disappearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Though few clues have emerged regarding what happened to her, investigators are continuing to keep her case alive.

[SPEAKER_02]: Whether it's solved through newly discovered physical evidence or if someone decides to talk, there's always hope that this can be resolved and Bianca can receive some type of justice.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca Piper has been missing from fully Missouri since March 10, 2005.

[SPEAKER_02]: She is a white female with brown hair and brown eyes.

[SPEAKER_02]: At the time of her disappearance, she was approximately five foot six and 185 pounds.

[SPEAKER_02]: She was last seen wearing a lime-green blouse, a gray-a-didas-hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and white sneakers.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bianca was 13 when she went missing.

[SPEAKER_02]: She would be 32 today.

[SPEAKER_02]: Anyone with information regarding Bianca Piper's disappearance is urged to submit a tip through the Lincoln County Sheriff's website at LCSOMO.gov-submit-a-tip or through their tipline at 6364626513.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can see all the sources for this episode along with photos and videos at our website and then they are gone.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: be sure to follow us on social and then they were gone pod on Facebook and at ATTWG pod on Instagram and TikTok.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It will help you list yours find us.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the more people it listen, the more chances we have of bringing someone home.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll see you here next week for brand new episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: See you next week.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then they were gone as hosted by Kona Gallagher and Ethan Flick, all research writing and editing is done by me, Kona Gallagher.

[SPEAKER_02]: The music is the stork by Ketsa.

[SPEAKER_02]: Additional music is provided by Kai Engel, and then they were gone is a little monster production.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, you good boy!