Who's Outside: Shemika Cosey

In this episode of Hunting 4 Answers: On December 28, 2008, 16-year-old Shemika Cosey spent the night at her aunt’s house for a quiet evening of movies. By morning, she was gone. Her coat and purse vanished, the door was left unlocked, and police assumed she had run away. Sixteen years later, Shemika remains missing. Her mother is haunted by unanswered questions, cryptic notebooks, and the fear that someone may have lured her into something far more sinister. Anyone with information about this case should contact the Berkeley Police Department at 314-524-3311 or The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST — that's 1-800-843-5678. 

This is the story of Shemika Cosey. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hunting for Answers is a production of the Black Effect
Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Welcome to Hunting for Answers, a
true crime podcast. I'm your host Hunter, and today we're
highlighting a case that happened back in December two thousand
and eight. A sixteen year old girl spent the night

(00:21):
at her aunt's house in Spanish Lake, just outside of
Saint Louis, Missouri. It was a few days after Christmas,
a time for family and joy, but during the evening
she kept coming in and out of the house. Someone
outside seemed to be vying for her attention. When everyone

(00:46):
woke up the next morning, she was gone. Her coat
and purse were missing, but her overnight bag was still there.
The front door was also cracked open. Police arrived saw
the unlocked door and decided that the young girl had

(01:06):
run away. They never urgently searched for her. That was
over sixteen years ago, and she has never been seen since.
This is the story of Shamika Cozy. Shamika Cozy, known

(01:30):
to family and friends as Mika, was born on October first,
nineteen ninety two. By December two thousand and eight, she
was a typical sixteen year old living in Hazelwood, Missouri,
with her mother, Paula Hill, and two other siblings. She
was the middle child. She stood five feet five inches

(01:51):
tall and weighed between one hundred and thirty five and
one hundred and sixty pounds. She had black hair, brown eyes,
and wore eyeglasses. Her ears were also pierced at the
time of her disappearance. She was last seen wearing a
black long sleeved shirt, a tan old navy jacket, and

(02:13):
blue jeans. Paula remembers her daughter's shy smile. She keeps
boxes of photos, some of Shamika as a little girl
in pigtails, others from high school homecoming. These are the
photos that she wants the world to see, a teenager

(02:34):
full of life and worth fighting for. The last time
Paula saw her daughter was December twenty eighth, two thousand
and eight. It was a normal day, she says. Shamika
had decided to spend the night at her aunt's house
in the six thousand block of nap Here in Berkeley,

(02:54):
just a few miles from home. The cousins watched movies
and eight leftovers from Christmas. It should have been like
any other sleepover, but as the night went on, something changed.
Shamika kept going outside, then coming back in, over and over.

(03:17):
Someone outside was trying to get her attention. Somewhere between
one thirty and eight thirty in the morning on December
twenty ninth, Shamika slipped out of the house. The front
door was left cracked open. Her coat and purse were gone,
but her overnight bag, the one she'd brought to stay

(03:39):
the night at her cousin and aunt's house, was still there.
Most of her belongings were inside. There were no signs
of force entry, no struggle, no note, and in the
winter cold, she left behind most of everything she would
need to survive. When police arrived, they looked around an

(04:03):
open door, a missing teenager and decided that Shamika had
run away. No foot search, no dogs, no investigation of
the area. Her mother, Paula, begged them to take the
case seriously, but she says that the officers dismissed her fears.

(04:27):
Like too many Black families of missing loved ones, she
found herself up against a system that was quick to
label and slow to act. There had been warning signs
before that night. Paula had caught Shamika with a fake ID.
One she'd used to sneak into local clubs. She suspected

(04:50):
she'd been smoking marijuana, and once she saw her getting
into a dark sedan with a much older man, it
worried her. She felt like someone older might have had
a hold on her daughter, someone who might have known
how to manipulate her. When police refused to search, Paula

(05:13):
and her family did it themselves. They walked neighborhoods, handed
out flyers, and knocked on doors. They refused to give up.
When she asked some of Shamika's friends if they knew anything,
their parents wouldn't let them talk. Nobody really wanted to

(05:34):
get involved. Then came a discovery that would change everything.
Family members found Shamika's tan jacket, the same one that
she'd been wearing that night, inside an abandoned house in
Spanish Lake, less than a mile away. The windows were broken,

(05:56):
the floor was covered in dust, but the jacket itself
looked like it had been freshly placed there. Police processed
the scene but found nothing, no DNA, no footprints, no
signs of whom I'd have left it there. The discovery

(06:17):
only deepened the mystery. Years later, Paula found three notebooks
while packing up to move. They were filled with notes
that Shamika had passed to a friend in class, dated
just months before she vanished. Inside, Shamika wrote about a boyfriend,

(06:38):
and she wrote that she might be pregnant. These notebooks
could have been crucial, but Paula never turned them over.
Why didn't they come to my house and search her
room when she went missing? She asked? They didn't care then,
so why should I give them anything now. Major Art

(07:02):
Jackson of the Berkeley Police Department later said those notebooks
could still help the case, but admitted that distrust between
law enforcement and families like Paula's has made cooperation difficult.
Investigators interviewed the boyfriend mentioned in the notes, but he

(07:22):
provided no new information. They also tried to identify the
older man that Paula had seen her daughter with, but
no one ever came forward. Paula believes her daughter left
voluntarily that night, but not forever. She was intending to
come back. She says she was not intending to stay

(07:46):
gone for sixteen years. Her greatest fear is that Shamika
fell victim to human trafficking, lured by someone who possibly
promised her something. The investigation has been frustrated by time
and technology. Shamika didn't have a cell phone, there were

(08:07):
no texts to trace, no social media to follow. It
was two thousand and eight, and a more advanced digital
world has emerged since then. Her friends kept quiet and
police didn't seem to push hard enough. The loss has
haunted Paula through many major life changes. When she moved

(08:31):
from their apartment, she broke down crying when she had
to change her phone number, the only one Shamika knew.
She sobbed in the store. I always wonder, she says,
if she gets away, how will she find me. In
twenty nineteen, more than a decade after Shamika disappeared, police

(08:56):
said new tips were coming in. We're going to follow
up on any and all leads we get, major Jackson
had told ABC News. In December twenty twenty three, the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released a new
age progression image showing what Shamika might look like at

(09:18):
age thirty one. Paula keeps it framed on her wall,
a face she praised someone somewhere will recognize Shamika may
still be in the local area. She was known to
visit East Saint Louis, Illinois, but after sixteen years, the

(09:39):
trail has gone cold. Paula has spoken out to help
other families of the missing. She tells parents not to
wait for police. Those first forty eight hours, she says,
are everything. Jamiica's case underscores a deep seated issue you

(10:00):
and how missing person's cases are handled. Cases like this,
where young black girls are prematurely labeled a run away
and forgotten. Shamiica Cozy deserves the same effort, the same attention,
and the same urgency as any other child or missing person. Today,

(10:25):
Shamiica would be thirty three years old. She's been missing
for more than half her life. Her family still waits
and hopes that one day she will make her way
back home to them. My thoughts and prayers are with
the family and friends of Shamika Cozy. Anyone with information

(10:46):
about the disappearance of Shamika should contact the Berkeley Police
Department or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
You can find their contact information in the description below.
As we close out this episode, remember that sharing Shamika's
story not only brings awareness, it keeps her name in

(11:09):
the public and could help lead her family to her whereabouts.
Don't forget to click the follow button to stay updated
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(11:32):
your thoughts on this case and the comments below. Thank
you so much for joining us on another episode until
next time. Hunting for Answers is a production of the

(11:55):
Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black
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