Lashaya Stine

On the night of July 14, 2016, a sixteen-year-old girl in Aurora, Colorado told her mother goodnight. She then went to her room and went out the window. She was picked up on surveillance video near a bus stop in the 1600 block of North Peoria Street. But Lashaya Stine never made it home.

Police wrote Lashaya off as a runaway at first, but she wasn’t a troubled kid. She was an honors student. She wanted to be a nurse, and had just been selected for an internship at the University of Colorado Hospital. She even had a job interview scheduled the next morning. She had no reason to leave and had taken nothing with her. As investigators dug into Lashaya, the evidence began to show that whatever happened to her that night, she hadn’t planned on staying gone.

If you have any information about Lashaya's disappearance, please contact the Aurora Police Department at (303) 627-3100, the Aurora Police Crimes Against Children Tip Line at (303) 739-6164, or Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at (720) 913-7867. You can remain anonymous. There is a combined reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to her whereabouts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: dark cast network, indie pods with a dark side.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the night of July 14th, 2016, a 16-year-old girl in Aurora Colorado told her mother good night.

[SPEAKER_00]: She then went to her room and went out the window.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was picked up on surveillance video near a bus stop in the 1600 block of North Pioria Street.

[SPEAKER_00]: But La Shea Stein never made it home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Police wrote a Shia office a runaway at first, but she wasn't a troubled kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was an honor student.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted to be a nurse and had just been selected for an internship at the University of Colorado Hospital.

[SPEAKER_00]: She even had a job interview scheduled for the next morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: She had no reason to leave and had taken nothing with her.

[SPEAKER_00]: As investigators dug until she is case, the evidence began to show that whatever happened to her that night, she had implanted on staying gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for the past 10 years, that's exactly what she's done.

[SPEAKER_00]: When a person goes missing, there's a special kind of pain in the not knowing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to tell the stories of those who never came home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today, I want to tell you the story of Lushia Stein.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Conan Gallagher.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Ethan Flick.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is, and then they were gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back, everyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once again, I'm Kona.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Ethan.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with a husband and wife team behind this podcast, each week I'd tell you the story of an unsolved missing person's case.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ethan doesn't know anything about the case going into the episode and is here to provide his reactions and questions in real time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully asking some of the same ones you have at home.

[SPEAKER_00]: So right off the bat, I want to apologize.

[SPEAKER_00]: I lost my voice for the last couple of days.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is pretty much back, but as we recorded that intro, I realized it's not quite at 100%.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's definitely not at 100, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully it's close enough that you guys will be okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't really want to delay, you know, a new episode for a week because of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to drink a lot of water and just hopefully get through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this case just passed its 10-year mark.

[SPEAKER_00]: July 15th of this year, 10 years, and if you go looking for big anniversary writeups, there aren't on.

[SPEAKER_00]: The most recent substantial piece of local reporting I could find was the nine-year story last summer.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a case I dropped out of the public view pretty quickly, but...

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to a new documentary series that was just released about a week or so before this recording, we have new information that really put this case into a whole new light for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: And shout out to web sluts because I was on the web sluts forum about this case.

[SPEAKER_00]: just seeing if there was anything that I had missed and sadly there doesn't seem to have been.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then somebody posted about this documentary that was getting ready to air, so I would have known about it otherwise, because I didn't heard about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: So luckily the timing was very fortuitous and I was able to watch it before I finished writing this episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was going to get into all of that, but it's called somebody knows something and you can stream it on Hulu or free form.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it goes originally on free form and then on Hulu.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, I will talk a little bit more about it, including the host later on.

[SPEAKER_00]: But before we get into all that, we've had a few folks join us over on Patreon, so I'd like to take a moment to give them a shout out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you too, Haley, Kim H, Lori, and Amanda F. We really

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you all so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a reminder, if you'd like to get our episodes ad-free and sometimes early, you can join us over on Patreon at any level, starting at just $2 a month.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll also get a free copy of the ebook that I wrote.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, before we start, I have one more thing to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was on YouTube yesterday, which is not our primary home.

[SPEAKER_00]: So for those of you who are listening to this on YouTube, like I put those on there mainly for Google search results at this point, but we are primarily, I mean we're an audio podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's primarily Apple podcast or Spotify or whatever, but I was on there yesterday and so I went through some comments which I hadn't done in a while and it was not great.

[SPEAKER_00]: But one was really mean, but inadvertently complimentary to you to me to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: That never happens.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a negative comment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember like the whole thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they're like, and no way Ethan doesn't know about these cases.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just based on the questions he's asking and the things that he's saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think they're like actually saying like you're you sound smart.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm back and did way sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, yeah, no real shit you

[SPEAKER_01]: Now believe it or not, I don't know anything about any of these cases.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I think like they were, you know, it was a negative comment, but they inadvertently complimented you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thanks, and fuck you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so now, let's get into this story of Lashia Stein.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lashia and Nace Stein was born on February 8, 2000 in Colorado to Sabrina Jones.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lashia is one of six kids, but the only girl.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lashia's mother, Sabrina, has been a vocal advocate for her daughter over the years, but the fact of the matter is that Lashia's case hasn't really gotten a lot of attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because of that, I know only basic things about like what she has kind of life growing up.

[SPEAKER_00]: From what we do know, she was a bright talented girl who's supposed to do great things in life, but then somewhere along the way, it all went wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: In 2016, Lasheo was an honor student at George Washington High School in Aurora, Colorado.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her plans were to go to this school to become a nurse.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, these were just far away plans.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lasheo was already working on meeting her goals and had just been selected for an internship at the University of Colorado Hospital that was supposed to start toward the end of the summer.

[SPEAKER_00]: According to her mother, that internship also,

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it wasn't like a full summer internship or anything like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of a shorter period, but it seems like it was a really big deal for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even though she was just going to her junior year, Elixia was already planning for college.

[SPEAKER_00]: She also already knew that she wanted to stick close to home.

[SPEAKER_00]: She liked the idea of one of the schools on the Eurasia campus in downtown Denver, and she and her mom had talked about her living in a dorm.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her mother told CBS for that LaShia wanted to have the whole college experience and that included living on campus even though Aurora is a suburb of Denver.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the type of teenager LaShia was.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bright, focused, and ready to take on her future.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was the kid who seemed to be doing things right.

[SPEAKER_00]: She had no history-furning away, no history of trouble with the police, like nothing like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, on July 15, she even had a job interview scheduled a firehouse sub at 11 a.m.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what made the event to that day so shocking.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the night of Thursday, July 14, Sabrina and LaShia stayed up late watching movies together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Around 2 a.m., they finished, said goodnight to each other, and went to bed.

[SPEAKER_00]: As Lishia was heading to a room, she saw that two of her brothers were still awake.

[SPEAKER_00]: She came out of a room to tell them to be quiet or she was going to tell their mom.

[SPEAKER_00]: They went to bed and Lishia went to her room.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, she didn't go to sleep.

[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, Lishia dressed in jeans and white, long-sleeved shirt, let the house through a bedroom window.

[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't take much with her just her phone.

[SPEAKER_00]: She left her wallet, phone charger, and all of her other belongings behind.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, she has snuck out, but it didn't seem as though she plans on being gone for long.

[SPEAKER_00]: Reports say that she even left her window open, presumably so she could get back in easily.

[SPEAKER_00]: At G23 AM, a surveillance camera picture up near a bus stop in the 1600 block of North Peoria, Street.

[SPEAKER_00]: She is walking by herself.

[SPEAKER_00]: The tape shows her crossing the deserted street before going off camera.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now that area of Aurora, Peoria and Montvue just north of Colfax is a busy commercial corridor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's not remote and it's also not the best part of town.

[SPEAKER_00]: People were kind of out and about, not like huge crowds or anything, but it wasn't a completely deserted area either.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her mother's reaction to seeing that footage was to say that it was very out of character for her daughter.

[SPEAKER_00]: She told Fox 31, quote, Just to know she's out here walking these streets that time in the morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't see that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Especially in the middle of the night on Colfax and Pioria in Montview, it's just not like her to do such a thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And quote,

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's exactly what she did, and initially nobody knew why.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next morning, the family went to wake her up, and she wasn't there.

[SPEAKER_00]: They called her phone and looked around the neighborhood, but when they didn't have any luck, they called her friends, nobody said they had seen her.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was reported missing that same day, Friday, July 15, 2016.

[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, run away.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Please didn't take it seriously.

[SPEAKER_00]: They wrote her office a runaway and from everything I've seen, they didn't really start their investigation into her disappearance until a week later.

[SPEAKER_00]: week a week and you know that might not be like a hundred percent true, but like it didn't hit the media for a full week.

[SPEAKER_00]: So while it may have started a little bit before that, it doesn't sound like it started in earnest for an entire week.

[SPEAKER_00]: After wasting a week waiting for a responsible girl to come back on her own, abruptly say they responded seriously.

[SPEAKER_00]: Within a few weeks, Chief Nick Metz was in front of cameras calling it a top priority, and saying his department had received information that gave them, quote, greater concern for her safety and quotes.

[SPEAKER_01]: So now, now it's a concern, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Not the fact that she's, you know, hasn't come home for a week.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: made a 16 year old girl being gone for a week regardless of whether she was a runaway or not.

[SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't like make you think that she might be in danger.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, it was kind of irritating.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, like I said, we're going to get into the documentary later in the episode, but in the documentary, the detectives.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there are two detectives who are interviewed.

[SPEAKER_00]: One who had just been put on the case on like 2022 or something and one who kind of worked on it from the beginning.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, well, you know, we get a ton of reports like this in a row, which, you know, I'm sure is true.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's like, you know, and most of the time it's like, okay, a teenager.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to the house, like, okay, let's just wait for them to come home.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe there are other friends and they'll be back later that afternoon, which, okay, sure fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like that afternoon is very different from a week later.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, sure, give them a little bit of time to come, but like that week is not right even several days yeah exactly like now all of your evidence is gone and who knows where she could be right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Aurora police also wasn't giving a lot of details about the information that they received.

[SPEAKER_00]: Chief Med said, quote, we have received information that is causing us to be a much greater concern for her safety.

[SPEAKER_00]: We get runaway reports all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something happened in the information we got here.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a little bit different and quote.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like super big.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it would be another four years before the public finally got a hint as to what he was talking about and a decade before we got details.

[SPEAKER_00]: Back in 2016 though, was she as family seemed to believe that she was still out there alive somewhere and was likely being held against her will.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first article I was able to find on was she has disappeared into from July 22nd.

[SPEAKER_00]: In it, Sabrina says, quote, I just feel like something is wrong and I feel like she wants to come home and someone is either talking or out of it or they're not allowing her to.

[SPEAKER_00]: In quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: She then went on to appeal directly to her daughter, quote, I'm not mad at you, I'm just scared.

[SPEAKER_00]: And to at least call me to let me know you're all right."

[SPEAKER_00]: And quote, Aura police brought in multiple agencies, including search and rescue teams in order to look for La Sheia, volunteers posted flyers and an emergency response team canvas the area near Piora Street and East Montview Boulevard.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's where that surveillance footage is from.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, didn't you say that she left her house with her cell phone?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they were, you know, working on her cell phone as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't publicizing a lot of that at the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's probably what let them to get that initial surveillance footage because they weren't picking her locations.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Settings of LaShare began coming into police and the family almost immediately.

[SPEAKER_00]: On July 23rd, a witness reported seeing a girl who might have been LaShare at a bus stop in the 1600 block of North Pioria.

[SPEAKER_00]: Officers responded, but by the time they got there, she was gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sabrina has said recently that they were inundated with people telling them that LaShare had been taken and was being trafficked by a local drug dealer.

[SPEAKER_04]: Hmm.

[SPEAKER_00]: The family says that they visited CD motels where Oshia had supposedly been seen, but all the tips had come a few days later, and so by the time they got there, Oshia and the people supposedly holding her were gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: But because this information kept on coming in, it seems as though Oshia's family interestingly helped the belief that she was out there somewhere, just unable to make it home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't imagine how, you know, because the whole situation's like literally your worst nightmare, and then to have this feeling of your close and your just missing or you just can't quite get to her, it's just a torture that is on a completely other level.

[SPEAKER_00]: Publicly, Lashia's case went cold pretty quickly and the media coverage began to dwindle after a few weeks.

[SPEAKER_00]: But behind the scenes, Aurora police were still working.

[SPEAKER_00]: They just weren't telling the public anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, at this point, they aside from pinging the location of the phone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, they got her phone record.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Got her text messages.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Did she have a computer in the room?

[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, they pulled any information from the computer, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this was 10 years ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: So any kind of DMs, chats, anything like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, they have all of that information

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe that's the information that they have that makes them think that our safety is at risk.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so they did, like I said, they just didn't talk about it at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they did do all of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they interviewed people.

[SPEAKER_00]: They interviewed people close to her, and I think they found out a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: But by the time the first year of the investigation had passed, all we really had was a reward that was up to 4,000 in January 2017, and was raised to 6,000 at the one year mark.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today, it stands at 15,000 and is pulled between or a PD, Metro Denver crime stoppers, and the FBI.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we didn't have any like tangible information.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, basically, what I've just given you is what we had in the first year.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the first anniversary in July 2017, Aurora police posted a video of Lashia's relatives pleading with her to come home and pleading with anyone holding her to let her go.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Lashia's big brother.

[SPEAKER_03]: I can't believe it's been a whole year since she's been missing.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of hard to believe.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm a continue to do what I'm doing.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love you so much.

[SPEAKER_03]: I just want you to come home where you belong with your family.

[SPEAKER_03]: we all gonna keep prayer for you to share.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love you.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna share as a second order's brother.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's real hard on me to even try to go through my day because it's without you and it's been a year and it's crazy.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wake up every day just asking God, why?

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what I did.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, I blame myself every day.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know we didn't always have the greatest relationship of the share, but,

[SPEAKER_02]: I love you so much and I just hope I pray that you come home or find a way to hop come home, be strong whatever situation that you're in just be strong and come home.

[SPEAKER_04]: Baby girl, this money.

[SPEAKER_04]: I never thought in a million years that I would have to go a whole year without seeing your face, your smile, hearing your laugh, whatever situation period just know that we're waiting for you and we're looking for you and we will stop, we will stop, I promise you that until we get you back home.

[SPEAKER_04]: I need you to be strong, I'm going to pray for you every second of the day and if someone is holding you either physically or mentally, I command you the name of Jesus and that by baby go.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was pretty emotional.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was a year later at that point and, you know, I let you listen to it and watch the video, but everybody was crying.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was just a very raw plea, you know, to Wushia who they absolutely hoped was out there and could hear it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Denver's seven reported at the time that dozens of officers had worked the case and that the last workable lead was still that August 2016 surveillance video.

[SPEAKER_00]: One year in and the best evidence they apparently had was eight seconds of a girl walking past a bus stop.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they have to have more than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but we didn't find out about it until this freaking documentary came out.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I am going to go through this chronologically a bit more so that you can get an idea of what we as the public have been told about this case.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then I'm going to get into the new information that was just released from that documentary.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, as I mentioned in the intro, there's a new show on Hulu called somebody knows something.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's hosted by Kara Robinson Chamberlain who is a victim advocate and former law enforcement officer.

[SPEAKER_00]: She also escaped a serial killer after being held captive for about 18 hours.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the second episode was on LaShia, and she interviewed several detectives with the Aurora Police Department, and they gave her information that had never been made public before, and to me it put everything that we thought we knew into a whole new light.

[SPEAKER_00]: Before that, unfortunately, we need to talk about the extortion case.

[SPEAKER_00]: In September 2018, a 23-year-old woman in Sacramento, California, named Rosari Young, was arrested by the FBI on federal charges, including inner-state transmission of a threat to injure with intent to extort and interstate transmission of a threat to injure.

[SPEAKER_00]: She had been texting

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she had also made similar claims to the family Evelisha Yomen who was reported missing in 2017.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fox 31 published portions of the exchange and it's absolutely heartbreaking to see how deprived people can be.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here's part of what was texted.

[SPEAKER_00]: Young, will she as safe and well taken care of?

[SPEAKER_00]: Sabrina, where is she?

[SPEAKER_00]: Please, I miss my daughter so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: I cry every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sabrina, please.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sabrina, I will die without her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sabrina, we love her so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: Young, Lashia owe me for losing my blank.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can pay me back or she can work for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if she try and run off, he doesn't get what he deserves.

[SPEAKER_00]: You get police involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll never see her again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sabrina, what does she owe?

[SPEAKER_00]: Sabrina, tell us how much please.

[SPEAKER_00]: Young, she owes over $2,000, but we can work something out to get her back home.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm tired of hearing her crying.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just can't imagine torturing the mother of a missing child in hopes of getting $2,000.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully Sabrina didn't send her any money.

[SPEAKER_00]: She took the information to police and Rosario Young was later arrested.

[SPEAKER_00]: She of course had nothing to do with Lashia's disappearance and had no idea where she was.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, the reason why she only asked for $2,000 and it seemed negotiable is because you know, a scammer thinks that if it's a small amount of money, that somebody like that is just going to pay it.

[SPEAKER_01]: If it's, if it's some sort of large amount of money, then like, obviously,

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if you go to Sabrina Jones, a single mother of sex and asked for a million dollars, like she's not going to be able to do it regardless.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And not that she probably had $2,000 lying around.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not trying to say that's an insignificant amount of money.

[SPEAKER_01]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying it's insignificant in the grand scheme of being willing to literally torture a person.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Rosario young was later arrested, and she was eventually sentenced to 70 months in prison to be followed by a 36-month term of

[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, that's not the only time someone has tried to scam Sabrina.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's apparently been approached several times by people who offered information in exchange for cash or gift cards, and not a bit of course let anywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next big move in the case came in 2020.

[SPEAKER_00]: On November 10th of that year, Aurora Police and FBI agents arrived at a house at 2200 Wancing Street, which is less than a mile from where a wasshaya was last seen, armed with a search warrant.

[SPEAKER_00]: They brought cadaver dogs, jack cameras, and concrete saws.

[SPEAKER_00]: They brought heavy equipment that an APD spokesperson said the department didn't even own.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were there for three days, and they were focusing on the basement.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, police said that a tip brought them there, and that was she a new the person renting the home at the time she disappeared.

[SPEAKER_00]: But back in 2016, they didn't have enough probable cause for search warrant and the family didn't give them permission.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the thing, they had suspicions about this house and the people who were living in it back at the very beginning of the investigation, but they couldn't act on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we're assuming that this is a new occupant of the house and then they did give the police permission.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so four years later in 2020, the family who was renting it was gone and the owner of the home gave police permission to do the search.

[SPEAKER_00]: In 2025, Officer Matthew Longshore spoke with the nine news about the search saying, quote, the house was the families of somebody that we believed was involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: They vacated and the owner of that house actually let us go into the basement.

[SPEAKER_00]: We dug up a good portion of the basement, hoping to find some sort of clues to help lead us to information on where she is, where she might be.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're never going to give up on this case, in quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, unfortunately, they found nothing, no evidence of LaShia in that house, but it raised the question, who was living there in 2016.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unless she is episode of somebody knows something, the police, finally, finally, answer that question.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was LaShia's ex-boyfriend.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, why couldn't they let that information out earlier?

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess because he was a minor and they didn't have probable cause to do anything so they just didn't want to like smear his name, the family's name, through the mud.

[SPEAKER_01]: I guess we're supposed to assume that they talked to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they did and they they talk about this in the document.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's more is the police confirmed that who Oshia was going to meet when she's

[SPEAKER_00]: According to Sabrina, who also appeared in the documentary, will share, have been dating a boy her age for a few months prior to her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sabrina met him once and was not impressed.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't really speak much and didn't seem very polite to Sabrina, and she didn't want to share hanging out with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Sabrina was very focused on Lashia's education.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Lashia, like I said, was an honor student got great grades, but she was even worried about Lashia getting a job.

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, I said, she had a job interview schedule, but she was even hesitant to let her do that because she didn't want it to interfere with schoolwork.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Sabrina's like, okay, if you think you can do this and you know, handle it and handle school, it's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know it's typical teenage stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted her own spending money and getting a job as how she's going to do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the point is that, you know, Sabrina was very focused on L. She is education and like didn't want her running around with like some guy who, you know, kind of seemed like a loser to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: At some point prior to her disappearance, L. She had told her mom that she had stopped seeing the boy and Sabrina believed her because

[SPEAKER_00]: but that apparently wasn't quite the case.

[SPEAKER_00]: According to APD, LaShia had contacted the boy and had asked him to meet her at a middle school that was about a mile away from her house.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this matches up with their surveillance video that's been released.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's more, police said they had an additional video of LaShia from that night that shows her meeting someone, assumed to be the boyfriend.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you can't exactly tell that it's him on the video, but like it matches up with everything that he said, so there's no reason to think that it wasn't him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it like it generally matches his description, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: But unfortunately, the video doesn't show either one of them leaving.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, police did confirm that they interviewed the boyfriend and his parents during the initial investigation and learned that was Shayah had told him that she needed to meet so she could tell him something.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said that they ended up meeting at the school around 2.30 a.m., which again lines up with the video that we already had, and the video that they had it from the middle school.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he says that he was already annoyed because he had been waiting there since around 2.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she got there and was like, okay, you know, what's talk?

[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted him to sit down so they could have this conversation, but he didn't want to.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was like agitated, he was annoyed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he says that he ultimately left before she could tell him what she wanted to tell him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he never saw her again.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, metal by it.

[SPEAKER_00]: As for what, Lisea wanted to tell him we don't know because he said she never got to it and she isn't here.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there were a few more interesting parts to this.

[SPEAKER_00]: When detectives interviewed the boyfriend, they observed scratches on his arm.

[SPEAKER_00]: They asked him about it, and he had been a they were from La Shea, but he said that he got them because she grabbed his arm to make him sit down.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I mean,

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a touch far fetched, I mean, if somebody is grabbing your arm to help make you sit down, you don't get defensive wounds.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and because he was a minor and you know, all of that they really didn't have like a lot of probable cause, you know, I'm sure it wasn't like.

[SPEAKER_00]: And adult where you be like, okay, we'll remove your shirt, like let's check your whole body, you know, so that was just all that they observed was this these scratches on the one arm.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, who knows if there was more.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, but I mean, even I can I can see if this interview had taken place the next day, the book could potentially be red marks from, you know, her grabbing onto them saying sit down.

[SPEAKER_01]: But remember, the police didn't really do anything for several days to a week later.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, for the scratches to still be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's those are defensive ones.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's you must've been really wanting him to sit down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the other interesting bit of information that I'm guessing the police got from the interview with the parents is that the boy's father apparently did not approve of him dating.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, shea.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, Sabrina didn't approve of it either.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like that's not a big deal in and of itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the reason he didn't approve is because LaShee is black.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now mind you, the boy's father is also black.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he married a white woman and apparently wanted his son to follow that path.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's just kind of strange.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as for what the news was, it looks like everyone's mind went to the same place yours probably did.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was Cheo was pregnant.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's not that you didn't even think about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't even cross my name.

[SPEAKER_00]: You wanted to meet him in a playground at two in the morning and said something really important to say to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, but I, you know, I guess that one person that commented was wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: letter of my mind immediately went.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now Sabrina says that she believes her daughter was still menstruating up to her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, that might be a weird thing like, why would a mother know that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, La Shea was the only other female in that house.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, they shared bathrooms, like, if she was still shopping for tampons or whatever, La Shea, like, you know,

[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, so maybe LaShare wasn't pregnant.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe she was, I mean, we truly just don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: But detectives brought up an interesting point, which is even if she wasn't, that doesn't mean that she couldn't have told him that she was.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they didn't just think this for no reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: The detective said that La Shea and this boy had kind of like a weird relationship.

[SPEAKER_00]: And at some point, he had told La Shea that he had cancer, even though he didn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they're like, well, maybe La Shea told him that she was pregnant in order to real-hit back in, or I mean, whatever it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there are more reasons.

[SPEAKER_00]: Police were looking sideways at this entire family.

[SPEAKER_00]: Soon after Leshia's disappearance, the father was observed taking large chunks of concrete out of the house.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the information that led to the 2020 police search.

[SPEAKER_00]: Police thought that Leshia may have been killed either around the middle school or back at the house or, you know, however it happened and then was ultimately buried in the basement.

[SPEAKER_00]: According to APD, film records show that he didn't make it back to the house in the early morning hours of June 15th.

[SPEAKER_00]: They also show that he tried to contact LaShia after that night.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know?

[SPEAKER_01]: What did you get?

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't specify.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, that's one of the things they look at, like when somebody goes missing, they're like, do you try to contact them after they went missing or did you not because you know they're not going to answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but that's not a conclusive either way because if you know that you killed her and she's dead, it creates someone of a virtual alibi.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, you're right.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not conclusive.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, with she has been referred, show that her phone last pinged back near her house at around 5 a.m. before it went all for good.

[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, there's no way of

[SPEAKER_00]: After the 2020 search police said that it was disappointing that they didn't find any evidence of what happened to LaShia, but they also said that that didn't rule anyone out.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what happened to LaShia Stein?

[SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned, police initially classified her as a runaway, but at this point, it doesn't seem as though anyone actually believes she left voluntarily that night.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yes, she left voluntarily.

[SPEAKER_01]: She left the physical house.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but she didn't

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything indicated that she was planning on coming back.

[SPEAKER_00]: She left her wallet, her money, her clothes, and her charger.

[SPEAKER_00]: She had an internship starting in colleges to apply to, and in 10 years, she has never made a peep, even after she turned 18.

[SPEAKER_00]: The main theory that her family seems to have believed over the years is that LaShae was forced into trafficking, and I completely understand why they felt this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had people telling them over and over again that they literally saw Washea being trafficked.

[SPEAKER_00]: They named names.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was also likely that she was moved out of Colorado, which is why the trail went cold so quickly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now police investigated the single it extensively.

[SPEAKER_00]: They even found out that Washea had been communicating online with somebody in California prior to her disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was somebody who likes that he was, you know, a teenage boy and they had this like dirty kind of DM text thing going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the police were like, okay, well, maybe he lured her out to California or whatever and maybe that's what happened to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this is a trafficking thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe the boyfriend's story is what it is, they met, they left,

[SPEAKER_00]: So they ran that down, they figured out who this person actually was, who will show it was talking to, interviewed him, and it turns out it was actually a teenage boy in California.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he had nothing to do with anything like he was a kid, he was in California, he's dating California, and there was no evidence that he was trying to lower

[SPEAKER_01]: wouldn't have expected that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I fully expected you to say that it was, you know, some dudeness 30s.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I know, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just like a 15-year-old kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: The trafficking angle does make sense on the surface, especially at the beginning when the sightings were coming in and police saw that she was communicating with, you know, at least one random person online.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I first began working on this episode and didn't know who she had been meeting that night, because I think it was pretty clear that she was meeting somebody, you know, even with the basic information that, you know, was released in 2016.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like she wasn't just going out at two 30 in the morning for no reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like trafficking was the theory that I was leaning toward.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, it reminded me of one of the very, very first cases that we covered on the show, which is D'Nika Childs, she was the same thing like a really good smart girl who seemed to have a good head on her shoulders, but she met this guy and just like went down this path.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's one who I very much believe was a victim of trafficking.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, could very well still be out there somewhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I thought this case was.

[SPEAKER_00]: But once I realized that she was meeting her teenage ex-boyfriend that night, it just became a lot less likely to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Trafficking usually involves grooming, and there's absolutely no indication that Oshia was involved with anyone prior to her disappearance, who may have also been involved in that world.

[SPEAKER_01]: During the documentary, did police give any indications as far as which way they were leaning?

[SPEAKER_01]: Are they leaning towards trafficking or are they leaning towards the ex-boyfriend?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, obviously in 2020, they wanted to, well, I mean, they wanted to search the house before that, but they did.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, in 2020, they said, you know, this is somebody who we think is involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what the police officer said in the documentary was, like, we have absolutely no evidence of trafficking beyond the tips that came in, you know, like no independent evidence of it, just people saying things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's about as far as they would go on that, which I understand.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I can't rule, you know, publicly rule it out, but it's, you know, it seems unlikely.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and at this point, it doesn't seem like they have much evidence at all against the boyfriend or his family or whatever, so they can't just come out and say like, yeah, we believe he did it, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: But at this point, he's the only lead.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's the best lead I would say, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I will say that when police were going over the surveillance video by the middle school, you know, trying to see either LaShia or the boyfriend or both leaving at any point, they did see two other people on the footage.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were two men and they were both walking by themselves in that general area.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, nothing about that was suspicious other than the fact that it was the middle of the night.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they could have been connected to this, but there's no actual evidence to indicate that they had any involvement.

[SPEAKER_00]: It seems incredibly unlikely to me that Lishad plans to meet her boyfriend and was then abducted and forced into sex trafficking.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: The police agree saying that, like I said, other than the tips they're just isn't any evidence of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: While it is possible, of course, that LaShia did cross paths with the wrong person after her meeting with her ex-boyfriend.

[SPEAKER_00]: It likely wasn't for trafficking purposes.

[SPEAKER_00]: But police don't seem to believe this was a random attack either because, again, they said clearly that they believed someone connected to that house was involved in Las Vegas disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the subtext of that, especially after the 2020 searches, they just simply do not have the evidence.

[SPEAKER_00]: 10 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: Media attention has been relatively sparse, as I mentioned I couldn't even find a 10th anniversary article.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I was so pleased to not only see that she had an episode of somebody knows something, but that it gave new information.

[SPEAKER_00]: Aurora police have not closed this case, and it is still being actively investigated.

[SPEAKER_00]: Officer Longshore told Fox 31 last summer that detectives who've since been promoted several ranks still won't let this case go.

[SPEAKER_00]: He also said that investigators had a recently flown out of state to make contact with someone they thought might be involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm taking that to mean somebody in this kid's family, you know, him or a family member, but, you know, of course speculation on my part, I have no idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now that apparently didn't turn into anything substantial, but they still went, and that is huge in a case like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, it shows activity.

[SPEAKER_00]: It does, and it shows, like, impressive activity that, you know, requires money, which is big in a case that's ten years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: As for Sabrina Jones, she's still doing what she has done since July 2016, which is refused to let her daughter become a statistic.

[SPEAKER_00]: She told Denver 7 in 2024 that what she's afraid of has changed, that she used to dread being told LaShayah was dead, and now what she wants is simply to know.

[SPEAKER_00]: quote, if my baby is not alive, I want to know that."

[SPEAKER_00]: End quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: Back in 2022, she told reporters her simple wish.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's one that a lot of parents have long term missing children share.

[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, more than anything in this world, even if it means the worst I just want to know what happened to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Good or bad?

[SPEAKER_00]: If she's out there living her best life, I want to know about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: If she's under another identity, I just want to know that if my baby is not alive, I want to know that."

[SPEAKER_00]: End quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say I would be 26 now.

[SPEAKER_00]: 26 is old enough to a finishing school.

[SPEAKER_00]: Old enough to work to a few years at that hospital where she was supposed to start an internship the August she disappeared.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's old enough to have moved out, come back, and moved out again.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was so much that Oshia should have done in the past 10 years, but instead, she's just gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: She should be somewhere, and somebody knows where.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lushia Nace Dine has been missing from Aurora Colorado since July 15, 2016.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's the black female with a long black hair that was in corros at the time she disappeared and brown eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of her disappearance, she was approximately five foot six inches tall and 150 pounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: She has a quarter-sized round scar on her chest and pierced ears.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was last seen wearing black stone wash jeans, silver hoop earrings, and a white long sleeve shirt.

[SPEAKER_00]: lasheo was 16 when she went missing.

[SPEAKER_00]: She'll be 26 today.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you have any information about lasheo's disappearance, please contact the Aurora Police Department at 303-627-3100.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can also contact the Aurora Police Crime Secrets Children Tipline at 303-739-6164 or Metro Demer Crime Stoppers at

[SPEAKER_00]: You can remain anonymous.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a combined reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to her whereabouts.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can see all the sources for this episode along with photos and videos that are website and then they were gone.com.

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

[SPEAKER_01]: If you like what we're doing, please subscribe and consider leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

[SPEAKER_01]: It will help new listeners find us.

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

[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll see you here next week for a new episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: See you next week.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then they were gone as hosted by Kona Gallagher and Ethan Flick, our research writing and editing is done by me, Kona Gallagher.

[SPEAKER_00]: 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_01]: Hey, you could go in!