Transcript
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The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
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All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages.
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Listener discretion is advised.
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I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
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And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
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And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases.
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And missing person cases.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
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I'm Ali.
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And I'm Eli.
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We are on episode 85.
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Episode 85 this week.
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I believe this is a missing person case, right?
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Yes, it is.
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And I just want to kind of mention this at the beginning that this may be kind of a shorter
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podcast as there wasn't as much information about this case as I normally like to bring
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to the podcast.
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But it felt really important that we talk about this case and kind of get into it.
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All right.
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I think on that note, we should just jump right in.
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Let's do it.
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Today, we are covering the missing person case of Elyssa Vasquez.
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And this takes place in January of 2003 in Clarkston, Georgia.
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But first, a little bit about Elyssa.
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Elyssa, she also went by Lisa and Lili.
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She's 12 years old in 2003.
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She would be 34 years old today.
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Elyssa's mother, Sharon, shared that her daughter had been diagnosed with ADHD.
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Elyssa had had troubles at her last school who were not equipped to handle her learning
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differences.
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But Sharon was cautiously optimistic that a new school that Elyssa was enrolled in,
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Clarkston, Georgia, would be able to understand what she needed and create academic goals
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for her, something that she was working at home on too.
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Elyssa was a ham from a young age.
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Her mother, Sharon, says, quote, she loved making people laugh and was very goofy and
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fun.
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She loved to dance and learn about music, end quote.
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Even though it was still a little more than a month away, Elyssa was planning her 13th
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birthday party.
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She wanted to have a dance party.
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Elyssa was an energetic young woman with a big, wide grin.
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In 2003, she was 5'1", 117 pounds with dark hair and hazel eyes.
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And now a timeline of events.
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On Thursday, January 29, 2003, this is Elyssa’s first day at her new school.
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Not only was she nervous about starting a new school year, but she also needed to navigate
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her way to her new school using the public transit system.
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Sharon, at this time, was on bed rest and Elyssa’s father was unable to drive her
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to school that morning.
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Her mother, Sharon, says, quote, at first I was worried and scared because I had to
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send her on a bus.
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Not a school bus, it was a public MARTA bus, end quote.
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And the MARTA bus system is the Atlantic public transit system.
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So Elyssa headed off to school.
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The MARTA bus stop was not too far from her home and it would drop her off right in front
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of her school.
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She was wearing a blue ski jacket with a white stripe down the center, blue jeans, and white
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sneakers.
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Throughout the morning, Sharon had a bad feeling and kept finding her mind wandering back to
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Elyssa.
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But when Elyssa called her mom at lunch, Sharon started to relax.
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Sharon says, quote, she called me during lunch to tell me how happy she was at her new school.
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Everything was fine.
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She was excited.
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She even asked me if I could style her hair like the other girls when she returned home,
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end quote.
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She wanted her hair braided like Alicia Keys.
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At the end of the school day, according to investigators, a security guard from the school
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confirmed that Elyssa and other students got on the MARTA bus that afternoon.
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Elyssa's father and brother went to meet her at the bus stop to walk her home and hear
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about her first day.
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However, Elyssa never got off of the bus.
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And no one riding the bus could remember Elyssa getting off the bus at any point.
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It's as if she vanished into thin air.
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Elyssa’s family called the police, who almost immediately classify her as a runaway.
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It's hard for me to say what was and wasn't done in regards to Elyssa’s disappearance.
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I could not locate any newspaper articles or local news reports mentioning her at the
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time.
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It's unclear if police ever launched an official search for her or if it was just her family
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trying to do it on their own.
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Based off of everything, I do think it really was just her family looking for her.
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It's easy for me to think about this young woman of color in the South and that her case
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would be ignored by police.
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And I'm not saying that isn't playing a role here.
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But I wanted to talk about how unique of a community Clarkston, Georgia is.
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Clarkston, Georgia boasts that they are the Ellis Island of the South.
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Starting in the 1990s, Clarkston was identified as an ideal place to resettle newcomers.
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It was close enough to Atlanta to still use the public transportation system, but far
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enough away that rental prices were reasonable.
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According to the town's website, today, half of the city's residents are foreign-born
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with over 60 countries represented.
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So while Elyssa and her family were new to the school system, it seems as if the city
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was set up to help out and accommodate folks that are new.
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However, looking through the Clarkston, Georgia police Facebook, none of the comments have
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anything nice to say.
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And I know that it's Facebook and that it's social media and anyone can post anything.
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But they also have never posted about Elyssa’s case either on their Facebook, which is something
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that we do see quite often with police departments.
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Kind of getting back to the timeline now.
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Elyssa’s story will drop from the media altogether and her case will go cold.
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The only updates I could find come from her family on Facebook asking for others to come
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forward if they know anything and to continuously pray for her.
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That is until 2023.
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In 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age-progressed
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photo and did an interview with Elyssa’s mother, Sharon, which is where a lot of the
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details about her case come from.
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Elyssa’s family has never given up hope that one day they will be reunited with her
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and they have vowed to not stop searching until they find answers as to what happened
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to their beloved.
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The family begs, quote, if anyone knows anything, no matter how small, please call.
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Living with no answers is the worst thing to live with.
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Our family is big on love and we just love and miss her, end quote.
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Her case is no longer classified as a runaway, but rather an endangered missing child, which
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is what it should have been all along in my opinion.
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So with that, if you know anything about the disappearance of Elyssa Vasquez in January
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of 2003 or her whereabouts today, please call the DeKalb County Police at 404-294-2519.
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And the sources for the timeline today come from the National Center for Missing and Exploited
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Children, People.com, the family's Facebook page for Elyssa, and the City of Clarkston
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government website.
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So that is the case of Elyssa Vasquez.
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This one was difficult to listen to.
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I think cold cases and missing person cases involving children are always, at least for
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me, more difficult to engage with just because of, I mean, they're kids, you know, and I
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just, I have so many questions, you know.
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My initial thought when I was hearing about you describe her personality, especially the,
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she was a ham, it reminded me of, well, our nieces and nephews, you know, and I don't
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know, her spirit, it sounds so bright and very quickly it felt like it was just extinguished
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with what happened.
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Not that we know what happened, but extinguished in that she, you know, she seemed to disappear
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into thin air, I think is what you said.
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So yeah, I, my heart also really goes out to her mother and probably, and her dad.
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My heart really goes out to her parents.
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I'm sure that they have a lot of feelings about that day.
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Yeah, I'm interested in knowing if there were cameras on the bus and just more, if there
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were any specifics of the accounts of her, you know, getting out and off the bus, both
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to and from school and where she had called from.
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Yeah, I just, I have kind of a list of questions, so if you want to, we can just get into it.
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Yeah, her case was really shocking to me.
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That was kind of the first reaction I had where I was kind of just shocked by the lack
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of information for this very young girl who went missing.
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What doesn't feel like too long ago, 2003, I know it's been over 20 years now, but to
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me that still feels very recent.
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But one of the first questions I had, kind of the same as you, was did that bus have
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cameras?
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So, in 2003, I'm trying to think back, like, it feels like my school buses kind of had
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like some camera system in them.
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So I don't think it is out of the question to think that there would have been cameras
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on that bus.
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And then that kind of just brings me back to the first question of what was actually
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done in this investigation?
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What did police do for her and for her family to try to help bring her home?
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I mean, there was a severe lapse in judgment in the decision to make her a runaway.
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Make it like that.
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Yeah, when you said that, I was just like, God damn it.
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She was so excited to be going.
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Years before, she had spoken to her mother about how she was excited to be there.
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You know?
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Like it just doesn't, that decision doesn't make any sense to me.
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I feel like from there, choosing to label it as that, didn't, you know, light a fire
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under their asses to look for her.
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Unless I'm mistaken.
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That's the thing.
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I don't really know if you are.
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I could find no newspaper articles, no local news covering her case at all.
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And that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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Maybe it's just not available on the internet.
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Maybe it's, you know, in a physical archive as opposed to a digital archive.
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But I would be very curious to know what got the police to a runaway because I think technically
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speaking to label a child as a runaway, that there has to be some indication that they
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left on their own accord.
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So I think that's kind of a loose definition of runaway jurisdiction, state to state, jurisdiction
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to jurisdiction.
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But as we've seen on this podcast, sometimes that information isn't there and children
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are still labeled as a runaway, even though there is no indication that they left on their
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own accord or wanted to leave or anything.
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And that feels like what happened here is that there really was nothing that we know
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of or that her mother seems to know of that would indicate that Elyssa was planning to
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run away, planning to not come home.
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Like you said, she called her mom.
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She was excited about the new school that she had just started that day.
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And she was excited to come home and like do her hair to show up to school the next
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day.
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You know, like that seems to have been her intention for that day.
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I also just wonder about her getting on the bus to begin with.
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That does seem to be like kind of the one witness we have in this case is that a security
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guard saw her and other students get on the bus.
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But because she was so new, I think that can kind of work in two ways.
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One, she's new to the school, so she would very much stand out in someone's mind as,
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you know, a new girl waiting for the bus.
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Like, oh, yes, that is a new student.
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That is remarkable.
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Or I think that could work against her where nobody really knows what she looks like.
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And if police just gave a description to somebody, it's like, oh, yeah, I saw a girl like that
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get on the bus.
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But maybe it wasn't Elyssa.
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Maybe it was somebody else.
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So again, that brings me back to the cameras.
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Can we ever confirm that she was on the bus to begin with?
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Just lots of questions.
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But I have to assume that she did make it to school that day.
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I would think that would come up before now if she hadn't.
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We do know that she called her mom, and from that phone call, it sounded like she was at
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school.
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So with everything we know, I think she made it to school that day.
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But I don't know if she ever made it on the bus for sure.
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There doesn't seem to be anything really strong putting her on the bus besides a witness statement,
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which we do know that eyewitnesses can be unreliable.
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So again, I'd love to see a security camera from the school or from the public bus.
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I have to think it existed, and police were maybe just slow on asking for it, and the
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tape got erased.
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I don't know that for sure.
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That's all speculation.
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But you can't help but speculate when there's so little in this case.
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Yeah.
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There's lots of various rabbit holes you can go down and conclusions you can draw when
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your mind is left to its own devices.
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And we don't have to get into the specifics of this, but my…
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I graduated high school in the early aughts.
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My school buses definitely did not have cameras on them.
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It wasn't until I moved to a bigger city later than the early 2000s and learned that
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city buses had cameras on them.
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So I will say that I guess it's possible that there weren't cameras at that time.
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I do think that that could be a possibility.
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I guess I'm hopeful that because it was the public transit as opposed to the school
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buses that they would have the camera system on there.
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But again, maybe Atlanta wasn't running the most up-to-date buses on the route.
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So maybe some buses did have cameras and maybe this specific route just didn't have it
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or this specific bus on that day.
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Maybe it does exist and we have no idea.
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But it's really frustrating to think that there could have been a lot of evidence there
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and a lot of clues as to what happened to Elyssa that maybe we're just lost due to
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carelessness or not doing due diligence on the part of the police.
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Yeah, the fact that it is a city bus that's timed and follows a specific route, there's
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a possibility for a moment in time for a lot of eyes, i.e. a lot of witnesses to be on
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her during that time.
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The possibility of getting interviews or witness statements from possible passengers, you know,
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like maybe that work was done and we just don't know.
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But again, like I'd love to just know, I'd love to see any sort of movement in this case.
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I think bringing it up here today, even though in the beginning, you know, it felt like we
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had a lack of information.
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And us having this conversation will hopefully spark more conversations about her and get
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this family some answers.
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Absolutely.
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And the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they did release an age progress
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photo last year.
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So we'll be putting that on our Instagram so that way folks can see it and see potentially
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what she could look like today.
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We'll be posting a lot of pictures of Elyssa as well.
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Her family has put a lot of pictures out there.
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So hopefully somebody recognizes her, it jogs a memory.
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You know, maybe some of the kids she met that day at school have stories or have information
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that they can bring forward.
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Anything, just any piece of information could really help this family and help bring Elyssa
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home.
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Yeah, 100%.
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I mean, those kids, even though they met her that one day, those are a lot of kids that
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are in, you know, like their 30s now.
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So those people, hopefully a lot of them are around and alive and well and like might remember
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something from that day that sticks out to them.
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Let's hope that, you know, this sparks some movement in Elyssa’s case.
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Again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Elyssa in January of 2003, please call
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the DeKalb County Police at 404-294-2519.
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And again, we will be putting that age progress photo as well as photos from Elyssa when she
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was 12 years old, the time she went missing.
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We'll be putting that on our Instagram so that way you can see it, you can share it
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in your communities and we just get Elyssa's case out there and get more people talking
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about her and more people kind of demanding to know what happened to her.
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Just that pressure alone can like open up a case and police can begin investigating again.
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So this is the work.
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We're all doing it here together.
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So thank you for being here.
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Thank you for following us on Instagram.
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If you're not doing that, join us over there.
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We have great conversations in the comments.
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Thank you to all who have been commenting.
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It's so nice to see familiar faces start to pop up week after week.
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Like that's really cool.
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We're so happy you're here.
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If you could take a minute and just rate and review us on your podcast app.
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Again, that's super helpful for people to find this story and this podcast.
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So again, that's doing the work that's advocating.
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If you or someone you love is hard of hearing, you can find transcripts to all of our podcasts
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at coldandmissing.com.
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You'll find a backlog of all our other episodes and there's transcripts for all of them.
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So head over there.
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But that is all I have for this week.
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Thank you so much for listening to Cold and Missing.
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I'm your host, Allie.
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And I'm your co-host, Eli.
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Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.
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Stay safe, y'all.
