October 10, 2025 • 12 mins
Host Vanessa Tyler takes a look at violence against Black women and the recent rise in missing Black women cases. Vanessa speaks with Natalie Wilson - Co-founder and COO of the Black And Missing Foundation Inc (BAMFI) about how they are helping to rectify the racial disparities in media coverage when it comes to missing Black people in America.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
He took a young beautiful girl, took the snuff out,
took a life away.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
From a black woman dies like trash.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Through my daughter in a garbage bag.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And another black woman is discovered, dismembered, stuffed in a
suitcase and left in a wooded area behind an apartment building.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I came over and I got out of the car
and I approached it and I said, oh my god,
it stinks here and the flies.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Two recent cases of black women gone but never forgotten
in black.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Land and now as a brown person, he just feel
so invisible.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Where we're from, brothers and sisters. I welcome you to
this joyful day and we celebrate freedom where we are.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I know someone heard something.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And where we're going, We the people means all the people.
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your host Vanessa Tyler.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
And she was just she was really sweet girl. She's
always always smiling, you know, she was always happy.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
They called her Kia. Thirty one year old Sakiah Jones
was the young mother of a four year old son.
Her body was found on Long Island in New York,
rotting and stuffed in a suitcase. Of course, her mother's
heart breaks.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Nobody do her no lack. She was a human being,
just like everybody know.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Ronald Schroeder, a white man who lived in the apartment
building in Huntington Station, nearby where the dismembered body was dumped,
was just arrested. Zakiah Jones, one of five siblings and
a young mother, was reported missing for three weeks before
she was found decaying in luggage.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I didn't appreciate how being your throwne out there, and
I'm gonna make sure whoever did this get hell of
a capital then.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Also horrendous, just this past July, yas me and William So,
thirty one year old black woman stuffed in a sleeping
bag and dragged along a Manhattan's sidewalk to a pile
of trash and dumped. Police id'd the suspect as a
black man, career criminal, Chad Irish and get this, he
allegedly did this while riding in his motorized wheelchair. The
(02:14):
video is so bizarre you have to Google to see it,
and with cameras everywhere in New York City, police had
his image and the obvious life size bag being dragged
behind his wheelchair. Even New York City Mayor Eric Adams
couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
How in him, Maine, you're dragging down the block somebody's daughter.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
What the mayor said next was too late for suspect
Chad Irish.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
You know, he should be lucky that the police guide
him before that community.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Didn't quite work out that way, because the community did
get to him. Just as police went to make an arrest.
Cops had him strapped to a gurney, rolling him out
of the building through a gauntlet of residents and friends
who couldn't hell but deliver a dose of street justice.
They punched, pulled, cursed, and called him a murderer, which
(03:07):
is exactly among the charges he now faces.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
He took a young beautiful girl, took the snuff out,
took a life away from a do my daughter in
a garbage bag, and so the whole community was upset
because she didn't deserve.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
That's he's come, blood curdling and straight up evil. The
two recent murders seem especially cruel, but black women are
being murdered in numbers more than the cases making the headlines.
Knowing that firsthand is Natalie Wilson, the co founder of
the Black and Missing Foundation. Natalie, welcome, Thank you so
(03:45):
much for having me. Are these kind of cases increasing?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Sadly they are. We are seeing an increase in brutal
cases of you know, women that are missing, and what
we are working towards and advocating for is more awareness
around this issue and of course getting law enforcement to
take these cases seriously. You know the pims and pedophiles
(04:12):
and understand that black women when they typically go missing,
no one is going to look for them, and if
they are found, their penalty will not be as harsh.
And we get that information from a study that was
done by the Urban League, So we have to do
a better job with these cases when someone is reported missing.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Of course, your organization, the Black and Missing Foundation, has
as its mission to shine light on cases like these.
Are these cases getting any more police urgency?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
We have come a long way as an organization as
and as a community, but we have a lot more
work to do. What we're finding is that typically when
a young girl or woman of color is reported missing,
they're classified as a runaway. So if you're classified as
a runaway, you do not receive the Amber alert or
(05:09):
any type of media coverage at all, or even law
enforcement resources. So we have a lot more work to do.
We want to do away with that term, you know, runaway,
and we also want to humanize these missing individuals. They're
not promiscuous, they're not criminals. They are our daughters, our sisters,
valuable members of our community, and we need to do
(05:32):
a better job in protecting them.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
These women were daughters, mothers, even big sisters, like in
the case of Yasmine Williams, whose little sister must learn
to live with just a memory.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
You're the best and I love her so much. Why
she could have stayed a.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Little longer heard because I just wanted to.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Grow up with her. So tragic. Natalie Wilson of the
Black and Missing Foundation has fought for more media attention
on these cases. We know the missing White women's is real,
but are things changing?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Well, we have seen one an upticking cases, and because
we have been advocating or missing individuals, we are able
to get more local and national media coverage. But there's
still times when we reach out or I personally reach
out to media outlets and we're not getting that coverage.
(06:23):
And we understand that many media platforms are now you know,
they're decreasing, they're laying off so they don't may not
have the personnel to tell these stories, so we have
to find a way to keep these stories in the forefront.
And that's why we also utilize social media because we
don't have to wait on any news cycles, So we
(06:46):
don't have to wait for the five or six o'clock news.
We can get this information out instantaneously to the public
because we need our community to be engaged and not
turn a blind eye to the issue. But if they're
not aware that this issue exists, then they're not vigilant.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
This is not the time to pull back. The numbers
of black women, black people missing in general are off
the chart, especially over the last year.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
We have seen a two hundred percent increase in the
number of cases reported in our database, and many of
them are women of color or black women. According to
the FBI database from last year, there were more than
one hundred thousand black women reported missing. Again, this is
(07:32):
reported missing. We don't know how many returned home, and
we don't know how many weren't reported missing because they
are afraid for whatever reason. And again, we just have to,
you know, continue to do our part. We cannot turn
a blind eye to this issue because you don't know
(07:55):
the person that's missing. We hear from you know, the
community quite a bit. Well, how do we know this
missing individual, this person is truly missing. Well, we thoroughly
vet and we worked with law enforcement to verify that
the individual is missing before we post it on or
upload it to our platform as well as social media.
(08:15):
So again, we have to humanize the missing individual, and
I think that's the missing piece. The community, you know,
isn't taking the issue seriously. They're thinking that sex trafficking
is happening abroad. You know, it's happening in our communities
to our neighbors, and we have to do a better
job in protecting those that are most vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Leaving grieving families crying for justice. Everything to me, it's
my baby. She was an angel. She was a light
and she's and the light is gonna always shine. Wilson up.
The Black and Missing Foundation hopes no family has to
go through this, but if someone is missing, called the
police and act fast.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
The first step, as you mentioned, is to contact law
enforcement to report what your loved one missing. Please contact
the Black and Missing Foundation because we create a flyer
for the family so that they can distribute on social
media and within their network. What we're finding is that
many times families will put their contact information on the
(09:17):
flyers and they're being scammed. They're receiving ransom and crank calls.
So we have a flyer in place and we're sharing
it with the media that's local and national media as
well as on social media to get the community engaged,
and it has been very successful in finding missing individuals.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
There is also a podcast where the Black and Missing
Foundation highlights cases where the public may be able to help.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
We cannot do this work alone. We need the community
to be involved to share the information because it only
takes one person with information to help find and bring
a missing person home. And of course we need financial
support to have he keep the organization going and providing
resources for families that are desperately searching for their missing
(10:07):
loved ones.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
And of course you keep those families highlighted on your
own podcast. Do you want to talk a little about that? Absolutely,
we have heard, you know, feedback from families. They're like,
we just want the community or someone to know that
our loved one is missing. So we took that and
we created a podcast so that the families and those
(10:29):
that are involved with the case can hear first hand
about that missing individual, So please listen to a podcast.
We talk about a number of reasons why people go
missing and cases. We talk about dementia. That's our latest podcast.
It's around dementia. There's so many seniors, six out of
(10:50):
ten seniors ten to wander away, and I know many
of us have aging parents or grandparents and we want
to keep them safe. We talk about sex traffic thinking.
A huge issue.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
That we're seeing in our community. Why people are going
missing is because of mental health challenges. And we have
cases that we are featuring on our podcast about mental
health and missing. So we are taking a holistic approach
and again the key here is educating our community about
(11:22):
these issues so that we can change behavior and be
more mindful and empathetic and sympathetic to these families that
are desperately searching for their missing loved ones.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
The podcast is Untold Stories, Black and Missing. Find it
on Black and Missing podcast dot com or anywhere you
get your podcasts. Also visit Black and missinginc dot com
for more information.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
We always say is that a missing person is a
homicide waiting to happen, and we don't want that to happen.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Natalie Wilson of the Black and Missing Foundation. Thank you
for what you do.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
And thank you so much, Vanessa for being a champion
of the work that we do. You're always there as
a friend of the organization and helping us to highlight
this issue and cases that desperately need those second eyes.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I'm Vanessa Tyler. Join me next time on black Land,
Like and subscribe. A new episode drops every Friday.
He took a young beautiful girl, took the snuff out,
took a life away.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
From a black woman dies like trash.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Through my daughter in a garbage bag.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And another black woman is discovered, dismembered, stuffed in a
suitcase and left in a wooded area behind an apartment building.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I came over and I got out of the car
and I approached it and I said, oh my god,
it stinks here and the flies.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Two recent cases of black women gone but never forgotten
in black.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Land and now as a brown person, he just feel
so invisible.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Where we're from, brothers and sisters. I welcome you to
this joyful day and we celebrate freedom where we are.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I know someone heard something.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And where we're going, We the people means all the people.
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your host Vanessa Tyler.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
And she was just she was really sweet girl. She's
always always smiling, you know, she was always happy.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
They called her Kia. Thirty one year old Sakiah Jones
was the young mother of a four year old son.
Her body was found on Long Island in New York,
rotting and stuffed in a suitcase. Of course, her mother's
heart breaks.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Nobody do her no lack. She was a human being,
just like everybody know.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Ronald Schroeder, a white man who lived in the apartment
building in Huntington Station, nearby where the dismembered body was dumped,
was just arrested. Zakiah Jones, one of five siblings and
a young mother, was reported missing for three weeks before
she was found decaying in luggage.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I didn't appreciate how being your throwne out there, and
I'm gonna make sure whoever did this get hell of
a capital then.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Also horrendous, just this past July, yas me and William So,
thirty one year old black woman stuffed in a sleeping
bag and dragged along a Manhattan's sidewalk to a pile
of trash and dumped. Police id'd the suspect as a
black man, career criminal, Chad Irish and get this, he
allegedly did this while riding in his motorized wheelchair. The
(02:14):
video is so bizarre you have to Google to see it,
and with cameras everywhere in New York City, police had
his image and the obvious life size bag being dragged
behind his wheelchair. Even New York City Mayor Eric Adams
couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
How in him, Maine, you're dragging down the block somebody's daughter.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
What the mayor said next was too late for suspect
Chad Irish.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
You know, he should be lucky that the police guide
him before that community.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Didn't quite work out that way, because the community did
get to him. Just as police went to make an arrest.
Cops had him strapped to a gurney, rolling him out
of the building through a gauntlet of residents and friends
who couldn't hell but deliver a dose of street justice.
They punched, pulled, cursed, and called him a murderer, which
(03:07):
is exactly among the charges he now faces.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
He took a young beautiful girl, took the snuff out,
took a life away from a do my daughter in
a garbage bag, and so the whole community was upset
because she didn't deserve.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
That's he's come, blood curdling and straight up evil. The
two recent murders seem especially cruel, but black women are
being murdered in numbers more than the cases making the headlines.
Knowing that firsthand is Natalie Wilson, the co founder of
the Black and Missing Foundation. Natalie, welcome, Thank you so
(03:45):
much for having me. Are these kind of cases increasing?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Sadly they are. We are seeing an increase in brutal
cases of you know, women that are missing, and what
we are working towards and advocating for is more awareness
around this issue and of course getting law enforcement to
take these cases seriously. You know the pims and pedophiles
(04:12):
and understand that black women when they typically go missing,
no one is going to look for them, and if
they are found, their penalty will not be as harsh.
And we get that information from a study that was
done by the Urban League, So we have to do
a better job with these cases when someone is reported missing.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Of course, your organization, the Black and Missing Foundation, has
as its mission to shine light on cases like these.
Are these cases getting any more police urgency?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
We have come a long way as an organization as
and as a community, but we have a lot more
work to do. What we're finding is that typically when
a young girl or woman of color is reported missing,
they're classified as a runaway. So if you're classified as
a runaway, you do not receive the Amber alert or
(05:09):
any type of media coverage at all, or even law
enforcement resources. So we have a lot more work to do.
We want to do away with that term, you know, runaway,
and we also want to humanize these missing individuals. They're
not promiscuous, they're not criminals. They are our daughters, our sisters,
valuable members of our community, and we need to do
(05:32):
a better job in protecting them.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
These women were daughters, mothers, even big sisters, like in
the case of Yasmine Williams, whose little sister must learn
to live with just a memory.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
You're the best and I love her so much. Why
she could have stayed a.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Little longer heard because I just wanted to.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Grow up with her. So tragic. Natalie Wilson of the
Black and Missing Foundation has fought for more media attention
on these cases. We know the missing White women's is real,
but are things changing?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Well, we have seen one an upticking cases, and because
we have been advocating or missing individuals, we are able
to get more local and national media coverage. But there's
still times when we reach out or I personally reach
out to media outlets and we're not getting that coverage.
(06:23):
And we understand that many media platforms are now you know,
they're decreasing, they're laying off so they don't may not
have the personnel to tell these stories, so we have
to find a way to keep these stories in the forefront.
And that's why we also utilize social media because we
don't have to wait on any news cycles, So we
(06:46):
don't have to wait for the five or six o'clock news.
We can get this information out instantaneously to the public
because we need our community to be engaged and not
turn a blind eye to the issue. But if they're
not aware that this issue exists, then they're not vigilant.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
This is not the time to pull back. The numbers
of black women, black people missing in general are off
the chart, especially over the last year.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
We have seen a two hundred percent increase in the
number of cases reported in our database, and many of
them are women of color or black women. According to
the FBI database from last year, there were more than
one hundred thousand black women reported missing. Again, this is
(07:32):
reported missing. We don't know how many returned home, and
we don't know how many weren't reported missing because they
are afraid for whatever reason. And again, we just have to,
you know, continue to do our part. We cannot turn
a blind eye to this issue because you don't know
(07:55):
the person that's missing. We hear from you know, the
community quite a bit. Well, how do we know this
missing individual, this person is truly missing. Well, we thoroughly
vet and we worked with law enforcement to verify that
the individual is missing before we post it on or
upload it to our platform as well as social media.
(08:15):
So again, we have to humanize the missing individual, and
I think that's the missing piece. The community, you know,
isn't taking the issue seriously. They're thinking that sex trafficking
is happening abroad. You know, it's happening in our communities
to our neighbors, and we have to do a better
job in protecting those that are most vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Leaving grieving families crying for justice. Everything to me, it's
my baby. She was an angel. She was a light
and she's and the light is gonna always shine. Wilson up.
The Black and Missing Foundation hopes no family has to
go through this, but if someone is missing, called the
police and act fast.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
The first step, as you mentioned, is to contact law
enforcement to report what your loved one missing. Please contact
the Black and Missing Foundation because we create a flyer
for the family so that they can distribute on social
media and within their network. What we're finding is that
many times families will put their contact information on the
(09:17):
flyers and they're being scammed. They're receiving ransom and crank calls.
So we have a flyer in place and we're sharing
it with the media that's local and national media as
well as on social media to get the community engaged,
and it has been very successful in finding missing individuals.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
There is also a podcast where the Black and Missing
Foundation highlights cases where the public may be able to help.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
We cannot do this work alone. We need the community
to be involved to share the information because it only
takes one person with information to help find and bring
a missing person home. And of course we need financial
support to have he keep the organization going and providing
resources for families that are desperately searching for their missing
(10:07):
loved ones.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
And of course you keep those families highlighted on your
own podcast. Do you want to talk a little about that? Absolutely,
we have heard, you know, feedback from families. They're like,
we just want the community or someone to know that
our loved one is missing. So we took that and
we created a podcast so that the families and those
(10:29):
that are involved with the case can hear first hand
about that missing individual, So please listen to a podcast.
We talk about a number of reasons why people go
missing and cases. We talk about dementia. That's our latest podcast.
It's around dementia. There's so many seniors, six out of
(10:50):
ten seniors ten to wander away, and I know many
of us have aging parents or grandparents and we want
to keep them safe. We talk about sex traffic thinking.
A huge issue.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
That we're seeing in our community. Why people are going
missing is because of mental health challenges. And we have
cases that we are featuring on our podcast about mental
health and missing. So we are taking a holistic approach
and again the key here is educating our community about
(11:22):
these issues so that we can change behavior and be
more mindful and empathetic and sympathetic to these families that
are desperately searching for their missing loved ones.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
The podcast is Untold Stories, Black and Missing. Find it
on Black and Missing podcast dot com or anywhere you
get your podcasts. Also visit Black and missinginc dot com
for more information.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
We always say is that a missing person is a
homicide waiting to happen, and we don't want that to happen.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Natalie Wilson of the Black and Missing Foundation. Thank you
for what you do.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
And thank you so much, Vanessa for being a champion
of the work that we do. You're always there as
a friend of the organization and helping us to highlight
this issue and cases that desperately need those second eyes.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I'm Vanessa Tyler. Join me next time on black Land,
Like and subscribe. A new episode drops every Friday.
Host
Vanessa Tyler
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