Susan Walsh

Around noon on July 16, 1996, a 36-year-old writer named Susan Walsh told her family that she was going to run out to the pay phone down the block and make a call. She left behind her purse. She left behind her beeper. She left behind her medication and even her cigarettes.

No one ever saw her again. 

Susan wasn’t just anyone who vanished. She was a journalist who wrote about things like the Russian mob’s grip on the go-go bars where she herself had danced, and the strange world of people in New York City who called themselves vampires. So when she disappeared, there was no shortage of lurid headlines and theories. Maybe she got too close to the wrong story. Maybe it was the vampires. Maybe it was someone much closer to home.

30 years later, we still don’t know which of those, if any, is true.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Susan Walsh, please contact the Nutley Police Department at (973) 284-4940. 

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[SPEAKER_00]: dark cast network, indie pods with a dark side.

[SPEAKER_01]: Around noon on July 16, 1996, a 36-year-old writer named Susan Walsh told her family that she was going to run out to the payphone down the block and make a call.

[SPEAKER_01]: She left behind her purse, she left behind her medication and even her cigarettes.

[SPEAKER_01]: No one ever saw her again.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan wasn't just anyone who vanished, she was a journalist who wrote about things like the Russian mob's grip on the go-go bars where she herself danced, and the strange world of people in New York City who called themselves vampires.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when she disappeared, there was no shortage of lurid headlines and theories.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe she got too close to the wrong story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it was the vampires.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it was someone much closer to home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thirty years later, we still don't know which of those if any is true.

[SPEAKER_01]: When a person goes missing, there's a special kind of pain and the not knowing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to tell the stories of those who never came home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Today, I want to tell you the story of Susan Walsh.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Conan Gallagher.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Ethan Flick.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is, and then they were gone.

[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back, everyone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us once again.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Kona.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Ethan.

[SPEAKER_01]: And where the husband of wife team behind this podcast, each week I tell you the story of an unsolved missing person's case.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ethan doesn't know anything about the case going into the episode and is here to provide his reactions and questions in real time, hopefully asking some of the same ones you have at home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I haven't really told you anything about this case, but I've been complaining about how hard this episode was to write.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: I did.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the one thing I told you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I said this story is so hard to rate, it has vampires in it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I just had a really hard time getting a handle on it, and listen, I obviously don't want to make a light of what is undeniably a tragic story, but when I was writing this, I felt like I was in the middle of one of the Stefan sketches from SNL.

[SPEAKER_01]: because the story has everything, strippers, the Russian mob, vampires, a connection to the eagles.

[SPEAKER_02]: What, really?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing about Susan Walsh's life was simple, so it stands to reason that nothing about her disappearance was either.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let's get into the story of Susan Walsh.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan Wallace was born Susan Merchant on February 18, 1960 to Martha Young in Floyd Merchant.

[SPEAKER_01]: She grew up in New Jersey in Totoa in Wayne.

[SPEAKER_01]: She had what sounds like a pretty typical middle-class childhood.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her mother was a teacher and her father was an engineer.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, Susan's parents divorced when she was a child.

[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds as though Floyd later remarried as Susan also has two younger half-brothers.

[SPEAKER_01]: From a young age, Susan News she wanted to be a writer, specifically she wanted to be a poet.

[SPEAKER_01]: After graduating from Pasek Valley Regional High School in 1978, she attended William Patterson University, where she studied English and writing and worked on the college paper.

[SPEAKER_01]: People who knew Susan and College said that she was incredibly smart, beautiful, and outgoing.

[SPEAKER_01]: A personality fit well with reporting because she was the type of person that people wanted to talk to.

[SPEAKER_01]: They also said that she loved attention and had a flair for the dramatic.

[SPEAKER_01]: The timeline of the early 80s is a little unclear in Susan's life.

[SPEAKER_01]: As I mentioned, she graduated high school in 1978.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, if she had gone directly to college and finished in four years, she would have graduated in 82.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, she didn't earn her degree until 84.

[SPEAKER_01]: During those six years between high school and the end of college, she had a lot going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan was earning her degree and falling in love with journalism, but she was also looking for adventure and other ways to make money.

[SPEAKER_01]: Toward the end of her college career, she started working as a gogo dancer.

[SPEAKER_01]: She even invited her editor, friends, and some professors to a peep show on 42nd Street in Manhattan where she was working.

[SPEAKER_02]: She invited her professors.

[SPEAKER_01]: Apparently.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Around this time, Susan's drinking also became a problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: She attended an alcohol rehabilitation program and, according to one source that I read, it was there where she met her future husband.

[SPEAKER_01]: Though I do want to say I did only read that in one source, so I'm not 100% sure that they met in rehab.

[SPEAKER_01]: It could have been.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or just while she was going to rehab.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or like, right around that time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: In either case, in 1984, Susan got sober, graduated from college, and married a man named Mark Walsh.

[SPEAKER_01]: She also got pregnant, their son David was born in 1985.

[SPEAKER_01]: In those early days, Susan was able to find work as a technical writer.

[SPEAKER_01]: According to her father, Floyd shed a talent for taking complex subjects and breaking them down.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Susan's life could have gone on like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: She absolutely loved being a mother and David quickly became her entire world.

[SPEAKER_01]: She could have had it all, a husband, a child, and the writing career that she dreamed of.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that wasn't to be.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan and Mark's marriage began to sour, not long after David's birth, and the couple eventually separated.

[SPEAKER_01]: They remained estranged for years, though never officially divorced.

[SPEAKER_01]: The pair was described as having a love-hate relationship.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan couldn't be with Mark, but he was also the only person she really trusted with David.

[SPEAKER_01]: Conversely, Mark felt that he needed to remain close to Susan because he didn't completely trust her to take care of their son on her own.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything behind that or just I think just what was him?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, no, because she was sober.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I think it was more just she's a little bit flighty and, you know, she's a freelance writer and a reporter specifically.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think also her schedule was a little bit all over the place to and, you know, she.

[SPEAKER_01]: There just wasn't a ton of stability that she couldn't necessarily offer on her own.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, like, he just wanted to remain close, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's this dynamic that let the family move into a three-level building together in Nutley, New Jersey about a half-hour west of Manhattan.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan had a one-bedroom apartment while Mark rented the basement unit, and David just kind of went back and forth between the two.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now there's a lot of talk in the media about Neppo babies, but Susan and Mark's story proves that it doesn't always work out.

[SPEAKER_01]: The pair always struggled financially.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan was trying to make it as a writer and Mark was trying to make it as a musician.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, their financial difficulties is one of the reasons, according to Susan, that she never divorced Mark.

[SPEAKER_01]: She said she couldn't afford the $3,000 that it would cost.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is all despite the fact that Mark's brother is Joe Walsh from the Eagles.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was wondering if that's, if that was the connection.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, it really doesn't have anything to do with the story.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just so weird.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is very weird.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: After a season of Mark's split, she struggled along as a freelance writer.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of her gigs was writing for the village voice, which at the time was one of the most respected alternative papers in the country.

[SPEAKER_01]: One day as she was toiling away at home, she noticed a sign at the strip club across the street.

[SPEAKER_01]: It promised $200 a night for dancers, which is about what she would make in a week freelancing for different newspapers.

[SPEAKER_01]: She decided to go back into the scene and become a writer slash dancer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan made the combo work for her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her beat at the village voice essentially became the world she already knew from the inside, the sex industry.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that inside access led her to a genuinely big story.

[SPEAKER_01]: A few summers before her disappearance she reported on the way Russian organized crime out of Brighton Beach had moved into the go-go and strip club scene in New Jersey, allegedly forcing young immigrant women to dance.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was basically a human trafficking operation.

[SPEAKER_01]: And being a dancer, she was able to get access that an ordinary reporter never could have gotten because she'd worked in the club herself.

[SPEAKER_01]: While working at the club's definitely benefited Susan's writing career in addition to giving her extra money,

[SPEAKER_01]: It eventually began to take a toll on her mental health.

[SPEAKER_01]: Despite the fact that she was dancing at several clubs, she still couldn't keep up with her bills.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her finances had gotten so bad that her home phone had been shut off for non-payment.

[SPEAKER_02]: OK.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to ask about the, needing to run down the street to use a pay fund.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: On a radio show interview, she did just weeks before her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan talked about her disillusionment with dancing, saying, quote, At first, the vibe was harsh and compelling.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're on the stage and you get attention.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like Daddy loves me.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I stayed in it for far too many years.

[SPEAKER_01]: And boy, what a high price I had to pay.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lure, and it's very hard to leave once you get into that swing.

[SPEAKER_01]: End quote.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her editor, village voice, James Ridgeway echoed these sentiments telling reporters, quote, Susan would say that she was like an addict and the whole sex business was kind of like an addiction and she was trying to break this addiction and quote.

[SPEAKER_01]: Addiction was, unfortunately, a recurring theme in Susan's life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan had long dealt with bipolar disorder, but in 1995, she decided to go off of her medication.

[SPEAKER_01]: She had a therapist who prescribed her Xanax, and she started abusing that.

[SPEAKER_01]: She also relapsed on alcohol after 11 and a half years of sobriety.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a long time.

[SPEAKER_01]: So tough.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like so scary.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yes, as you started drinking and abusing Zanix with, yeah, had some really bad quality bad side effects.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, including from what people who knew her said like holostations.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was also getting sick all the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the days leading up to her disappearance, her friends described her as downcast in frail.

[SPEAKER_01]: She had fevers and stomach ulcers and have even gone to the hospital a few times.

[SPEAKER_01]: While Susan appeared to be in a personal downward spiral in the summer of 1996, her career was on an upward trajectory.

[SPEAKER_01]: She had worked as a research consultant on a book called Red Light, which was written by James Ridgeway and Village Voice Photographer Sylvia Plachi.

[SPEAKER_01]: That radio show appearance that Susan made was to promote the book.

[SPEAKER_01]: Through Susan's work on Red Light, Ridgeway also helped her make connections, and Susan was consulting on three different documentaries about sex work.

[SPEAKER_01]: The publication of Red Light was a big deal for Susan, and though her editor was trying to help her get more opportunities, it was starting to become difficult.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her growing hatred of the club she spent her nights in and the men who patronized them was beginning to come through in her writing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Another editor who hired her as a freelance writer said that she was, quote, two unstable to work as a staff writer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Quote, she talked about stabbing men in the eyes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her words scared me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And quotes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so she was, it was getting dark, basically.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of her last biggest assignments that James Ridgeway gave her for the village voice was about vampires.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I was waiting for this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the mid-90s, there was a genuine sub-culture New York of people who identified as vampires.

[SPEAKER_02]: When did interview with vampire come out?

[SPEAKER_02]: So is it a few correlation to that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Probably.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, it was club kids and golf's in the downtown scene, but some of them engaged in consensual blood drinking rituals.

[SPEAKER_02]: Gross.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the story came about because blood bags were going missing from one of the hospitals.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so like the rumor was that there were like vampire hospital employees who are stealing blood to use in like the clubs basically.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that was like part of what Susan was investigating as well as like just the whole vampire thing in general.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: but the ones who engaged in the blood drinking was only a small subset of the subculture.

[SPEAKER_01]: Most of New York City's vampires just enjoy dressing in Goth clothes and wearing makeup, like no one was turning into a bath.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Susan started researching vampire clubs and she reportedly got drawn into it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like the allure was of the subculture was pulling her into it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: She even started dating one of the so-called vampires, which in general is a pretty big journalistic no-no, like you can't just be researching a story and start like sleeping with your interviews subjects.

[SPEAKER_02]: I guess that makes sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a journalist.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: She ended up writing a piece about the whole scene for the village voice, but the paper refused to run it because Ridgeway felt her writing had become too personal and wasn't objective.

[SPEAKER_01]: But once Susan disappeared, the media would take all of these pieces of her, the writing, the stripping, the Russian mob, the vampires, and run with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But despite all of this sensationalism, the actual events of July 16, 1996, the day Susan disappeared, are pretty been all.

[SPEAKER_01]: That afternoon, Susan and Mark were both home in their respective apartments, with 11-year-old David, who was sick.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan dropped David with Mark and said she was heading to a pee phone about a half-a-block away to make a call, because as you pointed out, her phone had been shut off for an on-payment.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why wouldn't Mark just let her use his phone?

[SPEAKER_01]: I've read a couple of different things.

[SPEAKER_01]: One is that like Mark was being petty and didn't want her to use his phone.

[SPEAKER_01]: And another is that maybe she just, when I privacy with her call.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's fair.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, either way, a baby was right down the street, so it didn't matter too much.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, according to the nutley detective who later commanded the case, Steven Rogers, no one actually saw her leave the house and no one saw her on the phone.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this is pretty much what the story has been for the past 30 years.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just have to take a step back here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: The detective's name was Steven Rogers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, Captain America.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Just with all of the weirdness of story, I definitely had to point that out.

[SPEAKER_01]: The evidence back at her apartment does back the story up to an extent.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan left basically everything behind.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her beeper, purse, money, and medication.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that makes sense of all she was doing was going down the street to make a phone call.

[SPEAKER_01]: Though she did also refer cigarettes behind, which I find odd, because Susan was a chain smoker.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like if you were going to be phone to make a phone call, you would bring your cigarettes with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: but she didn't.

[SPEAKER_02]: Unless she had one already with Intermouth.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and, you know, it could have been something like that, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe she left a pack behind, but had another pack in her pocket, you know, like anything it could have been.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Susan stepped out of her apartment, presumably with change for the pay phone, and then just vanished.

[SPEAKER_01]: According to News reports, it was Mark Hurst range to husband who reported Susan missing to police the next day on June 17th.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the early news reports are kind of all over the place in terms of what could have happened to her?

[SPEAKER_01]: The first one I was able to find came attendees later in the star ledger.

[SPEAKER_01]: In it, the reporter says that detectives don't have evidence of foul play, but her mother was interviewed and said that not contacting her son for nine days was completely insane and out of character for Susan.

[SPEAKER_01]: James Ridgeway and another friend she didn't want to be identified throughout their theories

[SPEAKER_01]: The friend said that Susan had then depressed, but that suicide was off the table because of her son.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, they believed that there were any number of people out there who would want to hurt Susan.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, right away, the Rush Mafia.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah, that's the biggest one right there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not the vampires because the vampire story didn't actually like get run, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which is so funny because like the newspapers who wrote about the vampire ankle kind of left that part out.

[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, they would.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like one did mention it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't one of the articles.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, maybe she got kidnapped by vampires.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're just like, hey, this is what was going on in her life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that was, you know, one of the ones where James Richway was interviewed and he's like, yeah, she was working on this

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, and even if they had run it, what would be the motivation?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because, you know, it's not like those in their secrets.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the mafia had a legitimate reason to not like her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ridgeway was a little more circumspect about the possibility of people being after Susan though.

[SPEAKER_01]: He said that she'd become paranoid due to her illness, by which I believe he means her bipolar disorder.

[SPEAKER_01]: He said that she often talked about how the mob was after her, or she was being stalked by club patrons.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, both of which are reasonable, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we talked about the mob, but like exotic dancers get stalked by club patrons.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think pretty often.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I think that's fairly common to have a creep at the club who thinks that, you know, because you gave them a lap dance who you're secretly in love with them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Two days before she disappeared, Susan and other dancers were interviewed by producer Jill Morley for her documentary stripped.

[SPEAKER_01]: During the interview, Susan's Pager went off, and she said, quote, oh, that must be my stalker, and quote.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, how'd the stalker get her number?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, she didn't say who it was, and we'll get into more of the people in Susan's life, but it was probably somebody she had a previous relationship with, like somebody who would have had her number.

[SPEAKER_02]: Gotcha.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Jill said that when they were interviewing like Susan's

[SPEAKER_01]: It's important to talk about Susan's state of mind in the days and weeks leading up to her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whether the danger was real or imagined, Susan had become genuinely fearful.

[SPEAKER_01]: She believed she was being watched and followed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her father, Floyd Merchant, said that the last time he saw her, she was terrified that someone was going to have her killed.

[SPEAKER_01]: She reportedly told people there were two contracts that on her life, and she was, in his words, quote, coming apart at the seams, and quote, her brother Arthur says that a few weeks before she's in vanished, he received a rambling disjointed phone call from her, where she talked about being in Las Vegas and helping the FBI or CIA with a case, and then she said she wanted to go watch Rosanne.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I don't know, I mean, that's about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I have no idea if she was ever in Vegas.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's, that's crazy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now there are a few ways to look at all this though.

[SPEAKER_01]: One is that Susan had bipolar disorder.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was off for medication.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was abusing Xanax, drinking again after over a decade of being sober, and in the middle of a genuine mental health crisis.

[SPEAKER_01]: the other possibility is that she was actually in danger.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because remember just because your paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan had very real problems with several people and was known to put herself in dangerous situations, which we'll get more into in a bit.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what I do want to say at this point is the biggest through line in every article that has been written about Susan over the past three decades, is that no one who knew her, whether it's co-workers, family, friends, none of them believe

[SPEAKER_01]: Every single person in her life who has been interviewed even though once you didn't really have, like, super great things to say about her, said that she would never have done that to David.

[SPEAKER_01]: As for the investigation itself, police and their prosecutors office jumped on Susan's case quickly, but they did really get very far.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was, after all, an adult with what the world saw as a chaotic lifestyle, there was sex work, drug use, mental illness, and I think fairly or not, all of that colored house seriously her disappearance was treated at the start.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her own family has set as much.

[SPEAKER_01]: Her brother Arthur has said that he believed Susan's dancing discredited her with police and detracted from the investigation.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we talk about this constantly when the missing person doesn't fit the perfect victim mold, that urgency just doesn't there in the same way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even when they're a beautiful white woman who's connected to one of the biggest rock bands in America.

[SPEAKER_01]: No.

[SPEAKER_01]: The first few articles I found on this story did include investigators who spoke directly to reporters just vague information from unnamed sources.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what I mean by that is like the lead detective at the very beginning wasn't giving statements to the press.

[SPEAKER_01]: But these reporters were talking to somebody within the police department and getting like basic information about the case.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we don't know what whose number was the last number on her page.

[SPEAKER_01]: nothing like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because that, I mean, to me, that would be where you would start.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So because we are just kind of getting this vague information at the beginning, reporters started just talking to people in Susan's life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so everybody just started throwing out theories.

[SPEAKER_01]: In a July 29 article, a friend said that she thought Susan had been kidnapped by one or more of her stalkers.

[SPEAKER_01]: By August 2, unnamed sources within the Nutley Police Department and the prosecutors office said they were treating her disappearance as a homicide.

[SPEAKER_02]: that's a jump.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, very early too.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we're talking two weeks after she's reported missing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right, with no evidence.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and what I'm saying in place, really interesting is that August 2nd article is the only article I've ever read where they've said that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I'll talk about some of the later detectives and like what they kind of think, but yeah, it's weird because they did come out and say so quickly they're treating it as a homicide, and then like dropped that, like never said that again.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think it was a mistake that they said that?

[SPEAKER_01]: It could have been.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do think it's really interesting that the Essex County Prosecutors Office got involved so quickly, though, because we've had cases where the prosecutors office investigators have been involved in, you know, searching for a missing person or whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the first one that, at least that we've covered, where that's happened so quickly.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't really know what the reasoning is for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: If, you know, maybe they did think there was like a mafia angle or, you know, something bigger going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they were treating it as like an abduction and a homicide.

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe that's why the raw secures office.

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

[SPEAKER_02]: That would make sense though.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, around this time, August 2nd, that the media warned about the whole vampire angle and just started to run with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The headline of this particular story is hunt for vanished dancer leads to blood drinkers.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: An unnamed official confirmed that the vampire angle was one avenue that detectives were looking into.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, but again, it's also something that they would want to look into, you know, like it was something that was going on and she was dating one of the guys so like that very much seems like a legitimate investigative.

[SPEAKER_01]: path.

[SPEAKER_01]: At that point, two and a half weeks into the investigation, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Police also visited the club she worked at and interviewed management and other dancers.

[SPEAKER_01]: They spoke with Mark her strange husband and her current boyfriend, a 21-year-old self-proclaimed vampire named Christian Papo.

[SPEAKER_01]: He had just moved in with Susan about a month before her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, he was living there.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was living there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh.

[SPEAKER_01]: What I find so interesting about Susan's case, though, isn't the mobsters or the vampires?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's how it doesn't seem to follow the same script that we see so often.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've covered well over 200 cases on the show, and when we hear that the estranged husband says that his wife left the house took nothing with her and then just mysteriously vanished.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's one direction that story usually goes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yes, listen, Mark Story does have problems mainly the lack of corroboration.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in this case, there are so many other things that could have happened to Susan.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if she did meet with Thou play, there are several other people who could have been involved.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let's take a look at some of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: As I said earlier, Susan and Mark had a love hate relationship, but I haven't seen any reports of violence or anything like that within their marriage.

[SPEAKER_01]: They both loved their son and he was home sick on the day Susan disappeared.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if something happened to Susan and Mark's apartment that day, it would have been in front of their 11-year-old son.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right, who's old enough that would, you know, he would remember it, he would probably report it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like he's not a toddler, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: He's very aware of what's going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: Upstairs in Susan's apartment, her boyfriend was also home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christian was 21 years old, making him 15 years younger than Susan.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know a whole lot about him other than the vampire thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was interviewed for Susan's episode of the series never seen again, so like he's not in hiding or anything like that, but he doesn't have much of an internet presence.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says that he was asleep on the couch when Susan left that afternoon and has no idea what happened to her that day.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, Susan's friends have said that his story has changed a little bit over the years.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like he said he was asleep and then he said he was half asleep and it won't want he said he like said a few words to Susan before she left.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just kind of things like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: but those weren't the only men in Susan's life.

[SPEAKER_01]: In 1991, Susan started working as a freelance writer for the pornographic magazine Screw.

[SPEAKER_01]: One night, she was at an SNM club working on a story for the magazine when she meant Screw's publisher, Al Goldstein.

[SPEAKER_01]: Goldstein was married at the time and reportedly had mob connections.

[SPEAKER_01]: but the two started seeing each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're on again-off again relationship lasted for the next four years until about six weeks before her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, Christian moved in about four weeks prior to her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Suspect.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's a lot of overlap going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Goldstein spoke with a herald news and said that in 1996, Susan was in a bad place.

[SPEAKER_01]: Quote, she was descending.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would try to help her, but you can't save a drowning woman who doesn't want to be saved."

[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, Susan's village voice editor James Ridgeway basically forced her into counseling at one point because he was so concerned about her mental well-being.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now sometime during the whole Al-Goldstein situation, she also started dating Billy Walker, a clerical assistant at Screw.

[SPEAKER_01]: They met at a gogo club in Newark, New Jersey that he was managing at the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: They started dating and even lived together for about a year, but he moved

[SPEAKER_01]: In May 1996, about two months before she vanished, the two had what Walker characterized as a, quote, bitter disagreements, and she took out an order of protection against him.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, another suspect.

[SPEAKER_01]: Billy Walker told all of this to the Jersey Journal on August 9th, about three weeks after

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he had an appointment.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he said he was meeting with him like the next day or whatever, but she has an active order of protection out on this man.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why wouldn't he be one of your one of the first people you talked to?

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Three weeks.

[SPEAKER_01]: This man had a Ben interviewed.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he's just that like given interviews

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's that's crazy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this whole thing about the police not really looking into Walker that hard at the beginning never sat right with Christian Susan's boyfriend.

[SPEAKER_01]: According to him, Billy Walker wasn't just a guy who worked at a magazine.

[SPEAKER_01]: He had a pretty substantial cocaine addiction and had run a biker gang.

[SPEAKER_01]: Billy also claimed to have mob ties, and at some point allegedly wrote a confession, in which he said he had chopped up bodies for the Mafia.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, the story is wild.

[SPEAKER_01]: More importantly, he had been calling Susan read lentlessly in the weeks leading up to her disappearance and left threatening messages on her answering machine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christian had an entire cassette tape of them.

[SPEAKER_02]: I thought her phone was cut off, so it was before that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it, yeah, it was like a few weeks, I guess, before that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know exactly when her phone got cut off.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, Christian said that the harassment from Billy had gotten so bad that Susan came up with a plan to have him killed.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: She told Christian that she knew mobsters who came into one of the clubs she danced at a

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't sound like the best plan.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, no.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's certainly not.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: In 2006, Christian told the New York Post, quote, I told her, don't do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They might kill Billy, but they'll kill you, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't listen and quote.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's another man who I've only seen mentioned in one article, but he could give a huge hint into what actually happened to Susan that day.

[SPEAKER_01]: According to that very first July 26 article in the Star Ledger, in the month prior to her disappearance, Susan had started working with a man named Don Bud.

[SPEAKER_01]: Bud was a booking agent for strip clubs in the area and got her jobs at places like the Shake Her Lounge in Dinellen and the spotlight in Manville.

[SPEAKER_01]: Crucially, the day of her disappearance, July 16th, Bud says that he received a voice mail from Susan, who said that she really needed work and would dance for tips if necessary.

[SPEAKER_01]: He never ended up connecting with her that day.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I don't have the exact time of that phone call, but could that have been the call Susan left the house to make that day?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

[SPEAKER_01]: If Susan was desperate for money or more desperate than usual, could that have led to whatever happened to her on July 16th?

[SPEAKER_01]: There's one element of the coverage over the years that could be nothing, but could potentially relate to this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, most accounts say that Susan left the house that afternoon she's the pay phone.

[SPEAKER_01]: But some articles say that she left the house and said that she was meeting someone, but would be back in about a half an hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: When I was kind of researching this, I generally dismiss the meeting someone's story as just mystery boarding, which happens very frequently in cases like this, mainly because she didn't take anything with her.

[SPEAKER_02]: right well yeah that and you know her boyfriend was asleep allegedly yeah and then why would it only be in certain articles and not all of them because the only person that that would have known that would have been her estranged husband yeah Andrewson and David because I read one article just one that said she told David she was going

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't I don't know if I believe that well exactly that's what I mean that's why I kind of dismissed it and because she didn't take anything Whether so like going out to make a phone call made a lot more sense than going out to meet someone right but what if it was both

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan could have made a few calls that day.

[SPEAKER_01]: She could have called her booker to see if she could work and get some quick cash, you know, leave that message.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when she couldn't reach him, she could have called someone else.

[SPEAKER_01]: That call could have been for money, drugs, basically anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan was seemingly desperate that day and there are rumors also that she had begun to accept money for sex.

[SPEAKER_01]: Though if she did end up meeting someone while she was out, I still find it odd that she left everything behind.

[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of articles have alluded to the fact that her drug use, leading up to her disappearance, went beyond just to be using Xanx.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there are a few things, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So like, let's say her original plan was to call her book or try to get a job so she can get some cash.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: That didn't work.

[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't there.

[SPEAKER_01]: She'll have to message.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then she's thinking, okay, now what?

[SPEAKER_01]: So what if it's, okay, what's another way I can get some cash soon, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: She calls somebody.

[SPEAKER_01]: He comes and meets her.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's thinking it's just going to be something quick and she doesn't need to have all her stuff with her right?

[SPEAKER_01]: She does what she's going to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: She gets the money goes back home.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then something happens.

[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, what if it was drugs?

[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, call somebody.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, come meet me real quick.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the plan was get high.

[SPEAKER_01]: Go right back home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, you don't need to take all your stuff with you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but if it was drugs, she would need to have money.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, so I mean, it could be a combination of drugs and sex, you know, yeah, drugs instead of cash, basically.

[SPEAKER_01]: One theory that has been kicked around over the years is that, you know, if it was something that had to do with drugs, like maybe she went out was putting in coming back, but she owed deed, something long those lines.

[SPEAKER_02]: But if she, oh, deed, then she'd be on the street somewhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, but not if she was like with somebody, you know, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like if she was in a car or something along those lines, or at somebody's house or whatever, maybe something happened, they panicked and got rid of her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Others believe that she simply left voluntarily or in her paranoid state went into hiding.

[SPEAKER_02]: I guess, I mean, that's a possibility, but it seems kind of far fetched.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, I think 30 years later, it's a lot more far-fetched than it was in, you know, the first couple weeks or whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because there were after all several reported sightings of Susan, the most credible of which was by her good friend, Melissa Heinz.

[SPEAKER_01]: Melissa said that about a month after Susan went missing, she saw her friend getting into the back of a limo.

[SPEAKER_01]: Melissa got the license plate number of the limo, gave it to police, and they were able to track it down.

[SPEAKER_01]: They spoke with the driver and showed him photographs of Susan.

[SPEAKER_01]: He said that he was pretty sure she had been in his limo before, but he wasn't 100% certain.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I don't know the situation with this limo.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if it was a for a higher car, or if it was like privately owned.

[SPEAKER_01]: So because of that, we don't know the context of like why she would have been in that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like does this limo belong to a selfie a member?

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it just a limo that takes people to the airport?

[SPEAKER_01]: that lead unfortunately ended up going nowhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: Police investigated this and other sightings and Susan's father also hired a private investigator.

[SPEAKER_01]: But ultimately, there was very little physical evidence and the case went cold.

[SPEAKER_01]: no one has ever been arrested or charged.

[SPEAKER_01]: Over the years, various not only detectives have worked at, including Stephen Rogers, who we mentioned earlier, and later, a detective named John Rhine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Interestingly, Rhine seems to be one of the people who believe Susan just walked away.

[SPEAKER_01]: He went on record years later, saying he personally believes Susan is alive and chose to leave.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's why, you know, again, it was so interesting to me when I read that article from 10 days in saying that police are treating it as a homicide, when 10 years in the lead detective is like, no, I think he's out there.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, yeah, I mean, it's, well, not a consistent one, not a consistent one, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: The case received a new round of attention in 2006 on the 10 year anniversary.

[SPEAKER_01]: At that time, some new information was released.

[SPEAKER_01]: We learned that one of Susan's friends had gone by her apartment around the time that she went missing.

[SPEAKER_01]: She says that when she was there, the window fans had been removed and the windows were all shut.

[SPEAKER_01]: That struck her as odd because it was July and Susan's apartment didn't have air conditioning.

[SPEAKER_01]: She said that she got such an ominous feeling that she left.

[SPEAKER_01]: And later, when police looked at Susan's deep book that she was known to carry everywhere when she was working, the entire month of July 1996 had been torn out of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: To this day, nobody knows who removed those pages, or why.

[SPEAKER_01]: Police also told reporters that they were taking a second look at Mark Walsh, Susan's estranged husband.

[SPEAKER_01]: He and David had led quiet lives in the decades since Susan was last seen, but police never let go of the feeling that, as the last person known to see her, he could have had some involvement.

[SPEAKER_01]: After ten years, you might still be there honestly, yeah, but much like he did in 1996 in 2006, he refused to allow police to do a forensic search.

[SPEAKER_01]: Police also told the New York Post that they were seeking permission to use

[SPEAKER_01]: The plan was to scour a reservoir behind Mark Walsh's dance house in nearby Montcoyre, New Jersey.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lieutenant Stephen Rogers told the post, quote, looking at this with a fresh set of eyes reveals a set of facts that's very troubling.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm confident we'll get to the bottom of this, and quote.

[SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the case.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure if they were ever able to do those sonar searches, but 2006 didn't bring any new answers in Susan's case, and it went dormant once again.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I just said I have a hard time believing that Mark did anything given that their 11 year old son was home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, unless he somehow convinced David to keep the secret, I guess, neither one is ever spoken publicly about Susan.

[SPEAKER_01]: David's always refused to do interviews, so I just don't know much about him, but yeah, I mean, I agree with you though that it does seem unlikely.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I don't know distance-wise or their apartments are from each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he was right below her.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the boy from...

[SPEAKER_01]: It was three unit buildings, so it's like one apartment per floor.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know who lived on the top floor.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the boyfriend was in her apartment, so and, you know, he hasn't said that he heard anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, and he's the one who, for the past 30 years has been saying he thinks it's Billy Walker.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not Mark.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just I don't it's easy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, obviously, that should be your first suspect.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your first go to would be the estranged husband, but again, with the 11 year old there, boyfriend upstairs, neither one of them saying anything about Mark doing anything.

[SPEAKER_02]: It just, it seems, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like it doesn't, it doesn't match up.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, it doesn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, unless they were like in on it together, which seems insane.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, Christian at the time was 21.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like he was a kid.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I try to get a little bit more information on him.

[SPEAKER_01]: I only found a few things.

[SPEAKER_01]: I found something from around 2019, where he was posting all these flyers in Brooklyn, where I think he was living at the time, about how one of his friends was trying to drive him to suicide, and I think scammed him out of some money, or scammed somebody else out of some money, I don't know, there was a Reddit thread about it, and then a year prior to all of this, I believe he's from Staten Island, he was in the local Staten Island paper for helping save a turtle.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, like that's all I've got in this guy and he has a LinkedIn page that has nothing on it except a current position as volunteer crime fighter Okay, so that's what I know about this dude.

[SPEAKER_02]: All right

[SPEAKER_01]: When Susan first disappeared, he asked not to be named, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because like, he, this, I think this whole thing, like, really freaked him out, as you can imagine.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, 21 years old.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and he said in one of the articles, he's like, Susan was my first girlfriend.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then she goes missing and there's Russian mobsters and like an estranged husband and and all of this stuff going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then in 2006, he spoke to the post, talked about those voicemails that Billy Walker had been leaving.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then in 2023 or whenever that episode of Never seen a game came out, he was interviewed and still have the tape and was still talking about how he thinks it was Billy Walker.

[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know if the police ever did interview him.

[SPEAKER_02]: Billy.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, they did.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they did.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because, again, Billy said he was scheduled to meet with them.

[SPEAKER_01]: They just hadn't interviewed him in the first three weeks.

[SPEAKER_01]: The thing about the Russian mobsters, I guess, I mean exposing a potential human trafficking ring is not great in terms of your personal safety, but that article came out two summers before she disappeared.

[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't something that I came out a day ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, Susan at least told people that seven months prior to her disappearance, they came to her house.

[SPEAKER_02]: the Russian mafia.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, maybe they were still upset.

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it wasn't even about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like maybe it was something else.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because she said that she did no mobsters from the club in Newark where she danced.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if it was the Russian mob, or if it was the regular one, or what?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it could have been kind of unrelated to the article, or the article could have just been a small part of it, or the beginning of it, or whatever it was.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: that's what I'm saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think there are too many suspects because then you go back to Billy Walker who was like unhinged and it's like, all right, you move out in November of 95.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then in May, six months later, you guys have such a bad argument that she gets an order of protection against you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, it's like what's the incremental steps to get there now I did read something from Christian so it sounds like listen, I mean, you know, given all the overlapping in the dates, it doesn't sound like any of these were really monogamous relationships right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because it sounds like she might have gone back and started sleeping with Billy Walker again, kind of during this period.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was also seeing Christian.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because Christian said something along the lines of like, she just couldn't get away from him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, she kept on going back to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the drugs also might have come from that too, so there might have been a drug angle there, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So then, if you also take him at face value about him having mob connections and chopping a body's for the mob, I mean, if he's chopping a body's for mob, then he has experience in getting rid of bodies.

[SPEAKER_01]: But is any of that true, you know?

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, or all of these people talking

[SPEAKER_02]: they all could have been making up having mob connections.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or they all could have had them like, I, I just don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: In 2020, seasons half-brother Arthur Merchant sued the Nutley Police Department to get access to the case file arguing that it really wasn't an open case since they haven't done anything with it in years.

[SPEAKER_01]: Families make this argument a lot, and it generally doesn't work, but in this case it did.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in 2022 a judge actually agreed with them, ruling that the department was quote, not actively investigating this matter.

[SPEAKER_01]: End quote.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think a big reason is because a lot of it was in the file that he was trying to get access to was the information that was from the private investigator that their father hired and then turned over to the police.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So his argument was like, this isn't actually from the police.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was given to the police.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I should be able to see it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Susan's father died in 2013 without ever finding out what happened to his daughter and he gave interviews over the years.

[SPEAKER_01]: It ate him up.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like it was obviously as horrible as you would think it was.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, same with her mother.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think you know Arthur who's like they had the same dad.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you know it's her half-brother, he's the one who is trying to just do something with this

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, like I said, he got all that information a few years ago, but I just haven't heard much about it since then.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now it's 2026, and this episode is actually going to error on the day after the 30th anniversary of Susan Walsh's disappearance.

[SPEAKER_01]: Three decades in, it doesn't appear

[SPEAKER_01]: It probably wasn't vampires or the Russian mob, but beyond that, pretty much everything and everyone else is still on the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan Walsh has had a lot of sensational headlines attached to her name, but beyond all of the sensationalism, she was a brilliant researcher, a fearless writer and a devoted mother.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was a real person with hopes and dreams who was halfway through her master's degree at NYU and was looking to make her mark on the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: As of now, Susan Walsh is still listed as missing and no remains have ever been recovered.

[SPEAKER_01]: She should be a grandmother.

[SPEAKER_01]: She should still be writing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe she would finally get to be the poet she wanted to be when she was a kid.

[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, she's a name attached to a set of lured headlines that never came close to capturing who she actually was.

[SPEAKER_01]: A mother, a genuinely gifted and brave writer, and a woman who told everyone she'd be right back.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan Walsh has been missing from Nutley New Jersey since July 16, 1996.

[SPEAKER_01]: She is a white woman with bleach blonde hair and blue eyes with a white complexion, pierced ears and a scar on her right wrist.

[SPEAKER_01]: At the time of her disappearance, she was approximately five foot six inches tall and between 110 and 120 pounds.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was last seen wearing a black tank dress and black sandals into gold ring with a black stone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Susan was 36 when she went missing.

[SPEAKER_01]: She would be 66 today.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you have any information about the disappearance of Susan Walsh, please contact the Nutley Police Department at 973-284-4940.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can see all the sources for this episode all with photos and videos at our website and then they were gone.com.

[SPEAKER_02]: and be sure to follow us on social, and then we're gone pod on Facebook and at ATTWG pod on Instagram and TikTok.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you like what we're doing, please subscribe and consider leaving a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts for Spotify.

[SPEAKER_02]: It will help new listeners find us.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the more people it will 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_02]: See you next week.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then they were gone as hosted by Cona Gallagher and Ethan Flick, a research writing and editing is done by me, Cona Gallagher.

[SPEAKER_01]: The music is the stork by Katza, additional music is provided by Kai Engel, and then they were gone is a little monster production.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, you could go it!