June 19, 2025 • 41 mins
Right now in true crime: Karen Read verdict, Diddy trial, BK trial update, Travis Decker on the run still.
In 1986 in a Gallup, New Mexico nine-year-old Anthonette Cayedito was abducted from her house in the middle of the night. Her case still remains unsolved today snd she remains missing. While many people still believe Anthonette is still alive, There are a lot of conspiracies about what possibly could’ve happened to her. We are going to unravel it all in this episode.
Sources for episode:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Anthonette_Cayedito
https://www.crimewatchers.net/threads/anthonette-cayedito-missing-from-gallup-nm-6-april-1986-age-9.3150/
https://unsolved.com/gallery/anthonette-cayedito/
Beyond The Case:
https://youtu.be/5Y-D5piYY_E?si=OS_izbWXqrWwEfjK
https://youtu.be/gM6QLUNLmKw?si=vGqPrZrNI-Gt8fE8
https://youtu.be/nZsbLEiWI74?si=mvEpBYobpWBmvTQA
In 1986 in a Gallup, New Mexico nine-year-old Anthonette Cayedito was abducted from her house in the middle of the night. Her case still remains unsolved today snd she remains missing. While many people still believe Anthonette is still alive, There are a lot of conspiracies about what possibly could’ve happened to her. We are going to unravel it all in this episode.
Sources for episode:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Anthonette_Cayedito
https://www.crimewatchers.net/threads/anthonette-cayedito-missing-from-gallup-nm-6-april-1986-age-9.3150/
https://unsolved.com/gallery/anthonette-cayedito/
Beyond The Case:
https://youtu.be/5Y-D5piYY_E?si=OS_izbWXqrWwEfjK
https://youtu.be/gM6QLUNLmKw?si=vGqPrZrNI-Gt8fE8
https://youtu.be/nZsbLEiWI74?si=mvEpBYobpWBmvTQA
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All witnesses, suspects, and persons of interest are considered innocent
until proven guilty in a court of law. Welcome to
Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now
on true crime, and then together we are going to
work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Poppy killed Mommy was the first thing my little sister
said to me after her father murdered our mother. My
mom had gotten off the phone at nine fifty three
pm on July eighth, nineteen ninety three, after making plans
to leave him. By one forty am, a nine to
one one call was placed asking for help. Three hours
and forty seven minutes. That's how fast a woman can
(00:36):
go from planning her escape to being gone. Her death
was ruled a homicide. The man who killed her admitted
that he might have shot her. My sister, just three
years old, told police more than a dozen times Poppy
killed Mommy, but the Yavapai County Attorney said there wasn't
enough evidence to prosecute. Seventy five percent of women murdered
by an intimate partner are killed while they're trying to leave.
(00:59):
My mom became part of that statistic. This is the
story they buried. Listen to Poppy killed Mommy and hear
what they refuse to see.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime.
It's Kylie. We are going to get into right now
in true crime. We have a few trial updates and
happenings to discuss. So first thing is first big news.
The day that I'm recording this, Karen Reid was found
not guilty for the murder of her boyfriend John O'Keefe.
(01:32):
She was found guilty of basically a dui and sentenced
to one year of probation, which, for all the things
that that woman has been put through, one year of probation,
we will freaking take it. I am a huge believer
in Karen's in a sense because a lot of the
(01:52):
witnesses the defense brought up said there was zero evidence
that John was even hit by a car, and I
stand firmly on that hill. I will die on that hill.
But there's obviously more to this. Obviously something happened to John.
He was killed that night, and I don't know that
there will ever be justice because the investigation was not
(02:14):
handled properly and they were way too busy trying to
cover their tracks, then investigate it in a proper manner.
And it's scary to me that somebody can be thrust
into literally being on trial for murder like murder. It
is a big deal to take somebody to court two
(02:35):
separate times on murder charges when you don't really have
a leg to stand on. Karen had to give up
her job, her home, a lot of her life to
try to fight these charges, just like every single person
would do if they were ever wrongfully convicted of a
murder charge. And yeah, you can argue all you want
(02:57):
that she was intoxicated. She didn't really know what happened,
but neither did any of those other people in that
home that night, because they were all drinking and they
were all driving home. And Karen is not a Boston
Police officer, unlike all the other people that were in
the house that night. So that is really all I
have to say about it. I have been following this
one since probably like mid first trial, because I'll be
(03:20):
honest with you, during the first trial, I didn't really
know what I thought. But it's obvious that there was
some really shady behavior going on here from law enforcement allegedly,
in my opinion, is it even alleged they collected evidence
in red solo cups. I don't think it's alleged anymore.
But this second trial has been my literal life for
(03:42):
the last couple of months, so I was super glad
to hear that she was found not guilty on all
but one of the charges, and that was the OUI charge.
But that is the update on that for now. Now
we are going to switch gears to the Diddy trial.
I haven't really talked much more about it, but there
have been a couple of things this week that have happened.
(04:02):
There has been some text messages released between Ditty and KK,
who is Diddy's personal assistant, was Didty's personal assistant, and
that whole dynamic is very, very very interesting. I do
feel like the prosecution has done a really good job
at proving Diddy did some really horrific things, and all
(04:25):
of the evidence seems to me to be there as
far as the racketeering and the trafficking and all of that.
So it's going to be interesting to see what goes
down as far as that. I know we still have
a ways to go. But there was a juror that
was dismissed this week and they also canceled court on
Wednesday because a juror had vertigo, which I can attest.
(04:47):
Vertigo is not fun, so they canceled court for that reason.
I know court is not in session on Thursday because
of Juneteenth, and then I guess court will be back
in session on Friday. I'm not really sure. I guess
depends on the jurors status, but I will continue to
keep you guys updated on that front. Okay, I want
(05:08):
to talk about Brian Coberger because there was a hearing
scheduled for today and basically, Brian's team is asking for
the trial to be pushed back because they need time
to get their lives together and they're talking about the
dateline leak and going through all of that evidence and
(05:28):
having time to make sure that they have all of
their ducks in a row. Essentially, they have been trying
to push this trial back with every opportunity they get,
and I understand that is their job, but you have
to eventually go to trial. So the judge said he's
going to look at everything and he could change his mind,
but as of right now, Brian Coberger is going to
(05:51):
trial in August and this is going to be such
a big case. I don't even know how I'm going
to process it, how I'm going to get through it.
It's going to be such an emotional toll. I can't
imagine what it's going to be like for the families
who have been waiting so long to get justice for
(06:12):
their sweet kids that were so innocently taken in their
home in Idaho. It's going to be very interesting to
see what transpires here. But I hope and pray the
judge does the right thing. He has been very, very fair,
so I do think that the trial is going to
go on as expected. All right, Last thing I want
to talk about is Travis Decker, the dad who is
(06:33):
accused of killing his three daughters, is still on the run.
When I recorded last week, I fully thought that they
were on his tail. I thought that they were going
to have captured him and we would have some type
of update by now. But we are still searching for
Travis Decker, and authorities have released some different photos of
(06:57):
how he might look now he has likely changed his appearance.
God knows where this man is. Honestly, remember I said
that he is retired military, so he has a lot
of experience in living off of the grid and surviving
and different like survivor tactics. He knows what he's doing,
(07:19):
even though he might not be in a great mental
state right now. He is going to be able to
evade authorities as long as he needs. And I don't
know how this is going to turn out. I really
really don't, but I think it's so important that they
find him, so I hope that he will be found soon,
but I'm going to continue to keep you guys updated
(07:42):
on this one. I am at a loss that he
hasn't been found yet, and I think maybe he might
have gone to Canada because he had been searching for
jobs in Canada, how to escape to Canada, all of
that kind of stuff. So it's going to be interesting
when he is found to see where exactly he went,
where he's been, how he's been surviving, if he's been
(08:06):
just completely off the grid, or if he's been out
and about. I don't know. I don't know where this
one's going to go, but I will keep you guys
updated as I hear more. All Right, that is all
that I can take for this week. It has been
a crazy week, crazy month, crazy year with all of
these trials, trying to keep everything straight. But we are
(08:26):
going to go ahead and get into today's episode, which
is another wild ride of a rabbit hole. So I
will go ahead and get into that story now. Okay,
So for today's episode, I decided that I wanted to
cover one of the cases that I've recently posted for
my Unsolved Sunday spotlight on Instagram and Facebook, and that
(08:47):
is going to be the unsolved disappearance of Antonette Catadido.
Antonette disappeared from her home in Gallup, New Mexico, in
April of nineteen eighty six. There is a lot of
information on the Internet about her case and her disappearance.
There's a lot of rumors, there's a lot of speculation.
(09:08):
We're going to go over the facts, what we know,
what we have learned over the years. There have been
numerous different sightings of her over the years, and we're
going to try to break all of this down. There
is definitely a lot to this case, there's a lot
to the story, so we're going to do everything we
can to try to figure it all out and break
(09:28):
it all down. She was only nine years old when
she disappeared, and still to this day, she remains a
missing person. Let's go ahead and dive into her story.
Antonette Christine Cadadido was born on December twenty fifth of
nineteen seventy six to her parents, Teresa Penny Catadido and
Larry Estrata, who worked as a carpenter. Her parents would
(09:52):
soon separate, and Antonette was raised with her half sisters, Wendy,
who was five and Sadie who was seven, by their
Penny in Gallup, New Mexico. I'm going to talk a
lot about Penny during this episode, So Penny is Antonette's mother.
Those that knew and loved Antonette knew her by the
nickname Squirrel. She is described as friendly, caring, and dependable.
(10:16):
She was very much a natural caretaker and would often
help with her younger sisters. Even at nine years old,
she would often help cook meals for her younger sisters.
Her dad described her as nine going on fifteen. Her
youngest sister would later go on to describe her as
having a care giver's heart. She enjoyed Michael Jackson and
Ronnie Milsap music. She was a fourth grade student at
(10:38):
Lincoln Elementary School and was dedicated to her studies and
very much enjoyed sports. And physical fitness. She even won
an award in her fourth grade year for presidential fitness.
She is described as well behaved and always on her
best behavior at school. At the time of her disappearance,
Antonette was living at two to four Arnold Circle, number
(10:59):
nine in Gallup, New Mexico, with her mom and her
two half sisters. So we're now going to talk about Penny,
Antonette's mom. Penny was thirty three years old and she
would often spend the nights out at different bars, hanging
out with friends into the early hours of the morning.
A lot of the times there would be a babysitter
(11:19):
that would be there to look after the girls, and
then sometimes there wouldn't be a babysitter and Antonette would
be in charge of caring for her two younger sisters.
So when everyone describes her as nine going on fifteen
and being a natural caretaker, it makes a lot of
sense as to why she's described like that, because she
almost had to be. She really didn't have a choice.
(11:42):
She was left in charge of her two sisters. So
Penny going out and about was pretty common, and that's
exactly what happened on the evening of Saturday, April fifth
of nineteen eighty six. Penny had made plans to go
out that night with friends to talk of the Town,
which was a popular bar in the area. That evening,
(12:02):
the girls would be watched by a babysitter. Now, I'm
not really sure if this was a babysitter that Penny
used all the time for the girls, if it was
this person's first time watching the girls. I'm not really
sure of the circumstances surrounding this particular sitter, but I
would imagine this person has been questioned at length. So
Penny goes out, does her thing. The sitter is at
(12:25):
the house, and Penny arrived home shortly after midnight, and
the babysitter went home. Now, on this particular night, Penny
said that she let her daughter stay up a little
bit later, and that she spent the next three hours
talking and playing cards with Antonette until about three am,
while the other two girls had drifted off to sleep.
(12:47):
In an interview many many many years later, Sadie said
that despite them all having their own rooms, they all
always wanted to sleep in their mother's room, and that
night was no different. They were all sleeping in their
mom's room, so there was allegedly two different knocks on
the door that night, The first one nobody answered and
the second one was answered by Antonette, and from that
(13:10):
it was assumed that she was abducted by whoever was
at the door. According to Antonette's mom, Penny, the next morning,
she woke up at seven am and went to get
the girls ready for Bible study, and Antonette was nowhere
to be found. She ended up checking the house. She
checked in with neighbors to see if maybe she was
at a neighbor's house, but there was no sign of Antonette.
(13:34):
There was also a search party going on for somebody
in the neighborhood who was missing a dog, so Penny
naturally thought that Antonette could have been involved in looking
for the dog. But again she was unable to find
any lead of where Antonette could be, so Penny went
ahead and called the police. There was a massive three
(13:55):
day search around Gallop looking for anything that could tie
them back to where Antonette may be. They brought in ATVs,
they brought in dogs, and the dogs were unable to
pick up Antonette set Unfortunately, it wasn't until four days
after Antonette disappeared that officers went and actually performed an
official search at the home where Antonette went missing from. Now,
(14:18):
there were no signs of any type of force entry,
There were no signs of any type of a struggle.
Investigators talked to pretty much everyone, the family, the people
who were there. There was other family members that were questioned.
And in the midst of these other people being questioned,
there was a couple of people that had been brought
(14:40):
up in interview regarding Penny, and these names eventually would
be brought up by Penny because they were offered up
by another family member, and then Penny went ahead and
brought them up. So there were two people she brought up.
A man named Emiliano Gardella, who went by the nickname E.
(15:00):
Now Emo is a man I'm assuming who knew Penny,
might have been friends with Penny, and he had given
Antonette flowers on three separate occasions leading up to her abduction.
Now I don't know if he was a family friend,
how familiar he was with the family, but he did
(15:20):
give Antonette flowers on three separate occasions, and Sadie later
would recall him being there that day prior to Penny
going out that night and said that he had brought
Antonette two roses, and at one point he had put
Antonette on his lap, which is just weird behavior unless
you're a father figure or a family member. That is
(15:44):
awkward behavior for a grown man to be doing that
with a nine year old girl. So there's definitely some
weird vibes going on in my opinion with Emo. Now,
the next name that Penny gave up was the name
of a man named Ron Perry. So Ron was a
friend of Pennies and he had been out with her
(16:05):
that night at the bar and they had allegedly gotten
into some type of argument. So when she had left
and come home, he kind of came back around and
had knocked on their door that night around three thirty am,
and also knocked on the window, but nobody answered. That
was the knock that was allegedly ignored. So he went
(16:29):
ahead and went to a friend's home that was close
by and spent the night there, and that story was
checked out and it was corroborated by the friend that
he stayed with. So that very much explains the knock
that came on the door, the first knock that came
on the door, but who knocked second? Who was the
second knock and why did Antonette answer that knock versus
(16:53):
ignoring the first one. Antonette was a very careful girl,
a very careful child, and there would be no way
that she would answer the door to somebody in the
middle of the night that she didn't know. So detectives
again are very much trying to piece together everything that
they have. They talk to different neighbors and there were
a few different neighbor accounts that said it was not
(17:15):
super uncommon for a lot of different people to come
and go at all hours of the night from the home.
So this very much opens up the pool of people
who could have abducted Antonette, and it makes it even
harder to try and pinpoint who was there that night,
why they were there, if they were there for the
sole purpose of abducting and kidnapping Antonette. So a whole
(17:39):
year passes by and there is little to go on
in the disappearance of Antonette, that is until a phone
call comes in on the afternoon of April twelfth of
nineteen eighty seven. Now, this phone call was placed to
the Gallop Police Department, which is a very specific phone
number that typically wouldn't be any number that you would
(18:01):
be able to memorize or a number that you would
just know off the top of your head. But this
phone call came in and I am going to play
that now and then we're going to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Albuquerque.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Okay, So that was the phone call, and it is wild.
When I first heard it, it very much chilled me
to my core, and that's kind of the whole reason
I decided I wanted to kind of dig into this
case a little bit more so. Whoever made this phone
call identifies herself as Antonette Catadido, and she says that
(18:54):
she's in Albuquerque, and then you can hear somebody comes
in the background and they say who said you could
use the phone? And then there's an obvious type of
scuffle and they're screaming, and then the phone disconnects. So
that call was unable to be traced, and it ended
up obviously the person ended up hanging up. So they
(19:16):
did play this call for Penny, and Penny very much
believes that this was her daughter. She said she knows
her daughter's voice the way that she said her name,
and the call is the way that Antonette said her name,
and she said that that was eight thousand percent Antonette.
So there's a lot to unpack here. Let's say that
(19:37):
Antonette was abducted and a year later is alive somewhere
being held against her will, and at this point she's
now ten years old, a whole year older than when
she was abducted, and she gets the opportunity to sneak
a phone call, and instead of calling nine to one one,
which is a number everybody knows it's only three numbers,
(19:59):
she calls the Gallop Police Department. It just doesn't make
a lot of sense that she would have the Gallop
Police Department number memorized and be able to make that
phone call if she was in a type of situation
where she was rushed for time trying to sneakily call.
It's just very very intriguing. I initially when I heard
(20:22):
the call, I really did think that that has to
be her. I mean, who else would it be. And
then when they played the call for Penny, she said
that sounds just like her. But I feel like there's
more things that we have to question and make sure
that it's valid and make sure that it wasn't just
somebody playing a Cole joke, because unfortunately, we live in
(20:45):
a society where people get pleasure out of intimidating people
that have gone missing or trying to mislead investigators for
one reason or another. And it has never been confirmed
that the person on the other end of this line
was Antonette, And I honestly don't know what my thoughts
are on the matter, because maybe she did remember the
(21:06):
Galla Police Department phone number and call that number for
one reason or another. But it's also possible that there's
more to it and maybe that is an Antinette on
the other end of the phone line. There's also people
that speculate that Penny stage that phone call, and that's
a whole different story for a different day. We're going
to get into all of that. But I really don't
(21:30):
know what I think about this phone call. And unfortunately,
like I said, the phone call was too short to
be traced, so they don't know exactly where the call
came in from. But we're going to go ahead and
circle back to that phone call in a bit so
Interestingly enough, three years after Antonette disappeared, her twenty five
(21:51):
year old aunt, who is named Luisa Estrada, the sister
of Larry, her father. She also went missing in September
of nineteen eighty nine from Gallup. I don't really know
the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, but she was found alive
in Mexico a month later and was returned home. But
there has been a lot of people that speculated and
(22:12):
thought that these two cases could have possibly been related.
And I think that the reason that some people speculate
this is because Larry was allegedly involved in some type
of drugs, trafficking drugs, selling drugs, and it only makes
sense that people would think that Antonette's disappearance could have
been related to this, and then to have somebody else
(22:34):
from the family go missing, it just kind of makes
sense as to why people kind of have that thought
in their minds. However, we don't have anything definitive to
say that these two cases were in fact, in any way,
shape or form related. Four years later, in nineteen ninety one,
another tip came in, and this tip came in from
(22:55):
eight hundred and eighty miles away from a waitress at
a restaurant in Carson City. So this waitress had been
waiting on a table while at her job, and there
was a teenage girl at the table, matching Antonette's description.
And she was in the company of a couple who
she described as very unkempt. She said that the girl
(23:16):
would continuously knock her utensils onto the floor, and from
what the waitress thought, she thought that she was maybe
seeking attention from the waitress, So the waitress would bend down,
pick up the utensils, put them back on the table,
and the teenage girl would grab the waitress's hand and
squeeze it, kind of like she was calling out for help.
(23:38):
The couple and the girl would later leave, and when
the waitress went over to clean the table, she found
a napkin that was placed under a plate, and it
had two messages on it. One said help me and
the other said call the police. So that, to me
is a very interesting story. Regardless of if this was
(23:59):
Antonia or not, I do feel like whoever this girl
was was likely in trouble. And we don't know the
circumstances of what was going on with the couple she
was with, if she had been taken, if that was
their child, We really don't know. But investigators found this
interesting and they decided to kind of circle back again
(24:22):
and talk to Wendy, who at the time of Antonette's
disappearance was only five years old. This is Antonette's youngest sister,
so now at the time that they were interviewing her,
she's now ten years old. So they interview her and
she finally gave an account of what she remembers happening
that night. She said she remembers hearing the second knock,
(24:45):
and she said she was kind of standing a little
bit behind Antonette, and Antonette had asked who was at
the door, and the person at the door identified himself
as Uncle Joe. From there, Antonette opened the door and
she was grabbed by two men and she started kicking
and screaming, and they forced her into a brown van. Now,
(25:07):
Wendy said she didn't recognize the men, but she also
didn't get a great look at their faces. And she
said the reason that she didn't say anything is because
after Antonette's abduction, her mom was really, really sad, and
she didn't want to upset her more. And she also
didn't think that anybody would believe her account of what
(25:30):
happened that night. And she was also five, So having
a five year old tried to recall what they saw
that night has to be so terrifying for them, and
she's already dealing with the fact that her sister was taken,
and I'm sure she was scared, and she was only five. Again,
you can't really expect a five year old to come
(25:50):
in with all of the details about what happened, because
she was probably just as confused as anyone was about
the situation. So this, this whole statement really leads us
to think that whoever was at the door either had
a personal connection to the family or was a relative,
or at least knew that Antonette did in fact have
(26:11):
an uncle, Joe. So Joe was married to Penny's sister,
and his alibi checks out. He has a rock solid
alibi for that night, and he had never ever in
this whole investigation, been looked at as a suspect. But
investigators do believe that whoever took her knew the family
and was familiar with them, because everyone says there isn't
(26:34):
any way that Antonette would have entered the door to
somebody she didn't know or trust, especially at that early
hour of the morning. So here's where things get a
little interesting. Penny had been interviewed several times over the years,
and at this point it's nineteen ninety four, they interview
(26:55):
her again and it's at this point that Penny brings
up that there was a second knock, and she said
that she heard a knock between three thirty am and
four thirty am. I think she said go ahead and
answer the door, and around thirty minutes later she ended
up getting up because Antonette never came back. And she
(27:17):
said at this point in time, it was just getting
light out and that is when she realized Antonette was missing. Now,
this story is vastly different from what she told them initially,
because initially she told them she got up at seven am,
she was not able to find Antonette when she was
getting the girls ready for Bible study. So there's a
(27:38):
lot going on here. There is a lot of changing stories,
a lot of discrepancies Pennies account of things. It just
doesn't make sense. So let's recap this. Sadie, Antonette's sister,
said she heard the first knock. Wendy, Antonette's other sister,
said she heard the second knock and then Antonette answered
(28:01):
the door. Penny talks about the second knock and tells
Antonette to answer the door. Antonette answers the door and
she never comes back. None of this makes any sense
to me. I do believe Sadie and Wendy. I believe
that Wendy did witness what she says she witnessed, and
she was obviously concerned about bringing it up initially because
(28:24):
of everything that was going on. She was probably really
scared and she really didn't know what was going to happen,
what had happened to her sister. And I believe her
account is accurate and true. And I really don't know
about Penny's account because her stories differ so much from
(28:44):
her initial report of waking up and not being able
to find Antonette at seven am. So none of this
makes sense what actually happened. And why would you tell
your daughter at between three thirty and four thirty in
the morning to open the door and just let her
(29:05):
open the door. She was only nine years old. That
really doesn't make sense to me unless you knew who
was coming over and who was at that door. So
over the years, there were other eyewitness reports that people
thought that they had saw Antonette, and I'm gonna just
go through all of those right now. In April of
nineteen eighty six, there is a witness that reported that
(29:26):
they saw Antonette in San Antonio, and he says he
saw a girl who looked Spanish in a pink dress
and she was there with a blondhaired woman and they
were standing on the side of the road. Again, this
is an unconfirmed sighting. Whether or not this was Antonette,
we do not know. There was another unconfirmed sighting in
April of nineteen eighty six. There was a woman who
(29:49):
claims she saw a brown truck at a gas station
and as the truck passed by her, she thought she
heard a voice screaming, help me, help me. And they
thought that this could have been Antonette, and given that
she was allegedly placed into a brown vehicle this kind
of dust track. But again it's unconfirmed whether or not
this was Antonette or not. There is another sighting of
(30:11):
Antonette in June of nineteen eighty six at a bus
depot that was located in El Paso, Texas. This person
thought that he saw Antonette in the presence of two
Hispanic men, and he said the girl was wearing a
pink dress, white shoes, and had a birthmark on her cheek,
which is similar to a birthmark that Antonette had. And
then finally, in November of nineteen eighty nine, there was
(30:35):
a man in Missouri who said he thought he saw
a girl that looked like Antonette. She was at a
truck stop in Waynesfield, and he said he immediately recognized
the girl from the missing person's flyer and said that
she was in jeans, a dirty T shirt, and a
red band that had a large watch. And he said
that she was acting like she was afraid of people
(30:56):
and kind of like she was being punished for something. So, again,
all of these reports have not been confirmed to have
been actual sightings of Antonette, but they're interesting nonetheless and
worth mentioning because you never truly know if these were Antonette,
if she had been taken by somebody, if she had
been sold into a trafficking type of situation. We really
(31:20):
don't know the circumstances surrounding why she was abducted and
by who. In December of nineteen ninety two, Antonette's story
was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and it yielded one hundred
and twenty different phone calls, but none of those tips
led any closer to figuring out what had happened to Antonette. Okay,
so this is a very interesting story and when I
(31:42):
first started researching this case, I really didn't think that
this was the direction that this whole thing was going
to go in. But later on, in nineteen ninety four
Dorian talks with the FBI, Penny said that she was
involved in Antonette's adduction and even asked, quote, what if
me and Emo did this, would we both go to prison?
(32:06):
She then admitted she and Emo put together a plan
prior to Antonette being abducted, and she had told Emo
that she wanted to know what was going to happen,
how what was going to happen, but Emo told her
she was better off not knowing, But she did admit
knowing who was going to come and who was going
to be taking her daughter. At least this is what
(32:28):
she told the FBI allegedly, and I guess it's really
not even alleged at this point, because there is a
whole transcript of her conversation with the FBI what she
told them, and I don't believe that this was ever
made public until after the fact. But despite this, they
were never able to bring any charges against Emo or
(32:50):
against Penny, and I'm really unsure as to why that was,
because it sounds like she admitted it, which is just
so wild to me. But they very much do believe
that Penny had something to do with her daughter's disappearance,
or at least knowledge of who was involved who took
her all of that. They also do say that Penny
(33:13):
failed a polygraph test, But I'm going to be the
first one to admit I don't think polygraph tests are
necessarily an admission of guilt or innocence, because I know
if you were to question me on anything, no matter
how innocent I was, if you're hooking me up to
a polygraph test, I'm probably going to fail because I'm
a very anxious human and I don't do well under pressure.
(33:37):
So let's get back to the story. If you remember,
this emo person was the person that had allegedly brought
Antonette Flowers three prior times leading up to her disappearance,
which is just really bizarre behavior for an adult male
to be acting like this towards a child, And I
really don't even know what to think about this in
(33:59):
the grand scheme of things, if he was the person
that was involved in her abduction, especially thinking that her
mom could have had inside knowledge as to what happened
to her and have been involved in the planning of it.
It all just really blows my mind. Unfortunately, Penny passed
(34:20):
away in April of nineteen ninety nine in Arizona. She
had liverserhosis along with different cardiac issues and passed away
at the age of forty six. Prior to her death,
the FBI wanted another interview with her. They wanted to
interview her on her deathbed to see if she would
confess to anything, but unfortunately they arrived too late and
(34:42):
she had already passed away upon their arrival. In a
twenty sixteen interview that the Albuquerque Journal did with Wendy,
who was the youngest sister of Antonette, she talked about
all of the different struggles her and her family went
through following Antonette's disappearance, and she said it really broke
their whole family apart. She said, unfortunately, as she got older,
(35:05):
she had turned to drugs and alcohol to try and
cope with the horrible situation that her family had been
put in. Wendy said in two thousand and seven she
finally turned her life around. She went to rehab. She
got her life back on track the best way that
she could, and she still holds out hope that her
sister is out there and that her sister is safe,
(35:26):
and she said that she really will have a hard
time accepting that her sister is dead and will need
proof of that to ever accept it. In June of
twenty twenty two, Sadie gave an interview to KOATV, and
she said that it's very difficult to not have closure
in her sister's case, to not know what happened to
her sister, and that they often think about Antonette, wondering
(35:49):
how she is, what she's doing, what kind of life
she's living in, hopes that she knows that her sisters
are always here for her. And I honestly can't imagine
that these girls had an easy upbringing. Following Antonette's disappearance
and abduction, I'm sure it has to weigh so heavily
on them every single day what happened to her. They
probably replayed the actions of what led up to her disappearance,
(36:12):
and then there's all the rumors and speculation and finger
pointing that happens. I imagine it had to be really
really hard on all of them. So that is kind
of where I was going to leave the episode, But
I wanted to see if there was any updates, because
that last little bit of information was from twenty twenty two,
so I wanted to see if there was anything else
(36:33):
going on. So I started looking for more information and
I wanted to see if there was a more recent update.
And I happened upon a YouTube channel that I'm going
to link below in the show notes, and it is
a YouTube channel called Christina Gutierra's TV. And Christina, along
with a retired detective who is now a private investigator,
(36:55):
really dig into Antonette's disappearance. They sit down with Sadie
and they go through everything. They go into detail about
the alleged confession from Penny, and there's a lot of
good information in these videos. I'm gonna link two of
the videos below, and I highly suggest if you want
a little more insighted info, go watch those videos. They
(37:16):
have a whole series on Antonette. It is long, it
is complicated, there is a lot of information, and there's
so much I mean, I could probably do a multiple
part series on Antonette's case alone because there is so
much information. There was a girl that came forward that
believed that she could have been Antonette, and they talked
(37:39):
with her. They ended up bringing her in and they
ended up doing a DNA test and comparing it with
the DNA of antonette sisters, and it was confirmed that
this girl was in fact not Antonette. The DNA was
not a match, but this woman very much still believes
that she's Antonette and it just became this whole thing.
(37:59):
You can go watch that episode on the YouTube channel.
And then there was another episode that they did of
a woman who allegedly thought that she spotted Antonette in
a restaurant. So this sighting was recent in August of
twenty twenty three, and this restaurant was an Albuquerque I'm
going to link the episode as well below for you guys,
(38:21):
because there's a lot of information going on here. But
this woman very much thinks that she saw Antonette in
this restaurant. She snapped a picture of this person. They
were with a woman, and she said she knew this
girl was Antonette because she had grown up in the
same town as Antonette. She grew up in Gallup. She
(38:43):
was familiar with her and she knew that that is
who she saw. So you can watch that whole episode.
I'm going to link up below so you can see
everything that they talked about because it's really intriguing. If
nothing else, this woman seems like she has some really
valid points as to why she thinks that this was Antonette.
So I truly do think that a lot of the
(39:06):
secrets in this case died with Penny, and I very
much do think that there's a possibility that Antonette is
still out there and maybe she was sold into some
type of trafficking situation, maybe there was some drug stuff involved.
There are so many different possibilities here, and there's just
(39:27):
so much that's involved. I feel like I could go
on and on and on. But there are likely still
people out there that know something about what happened to Antonette,
have some type of knowledge about what happened, and those
are the people that we really have to hope grow
a conscience and decide that they're going to finally tell
what they know about her disappearance, because her sisters deserve
(39:51):
to know. They deserve to have that closure. They were
only five and seven when she was abducted, and they
deserve to know what happened to their sister. If she
still is out there, they deserve to be able to
have that relationship with her. And I can't even imagine
if Antonette is still out there, what her life has
(40:11):
been like, what she's experienced over the years. I do
believe that she is alive, and I wasn't really sure
that I was going to come to that conclusion when
I first took on this case and first started digging in.
But I do believe that she is still out there somewhere,
and she might not even know who she is or
the background of who she is, and have any recollection
(40:35):
of being abducted. I am going to be posting some
childhood pictures of Antonette as well as some age progress
photos of Antonette because those are so important to getting
her face out there to maybe somebody will recognize her
and realize that she could in fact be a missing
girl from nineteen eighty six. So you're going to leave
(40:57):
it at that. I'm going to link all of those
UTAH videos below. Do your own research on this one,
because it is a rabbit hole if I ever found one,
and I really liked that YouTube channel. I've watched all
of the videos on Antonette. There's a lot. So they're
continuously investigating her case. They are really at the forefront
of it, and I think if there is a break
(41:19):
in this case. It's a million percent going to be
because of their hard work and dedication to figuring out
the truth and figuring out what happened. So I want
to thank you guys so much for joining me on
this super wild ride. I had no idea that it
was going to be such a rabbit hole when I
first dug into it, but I appreciate you as always.
(41:39):
Thank you for listening, and I will see you next
week for a brand new case, and I hope you
have a great weekend. By
All witnesses, suspects, and persons of interest are considered innocent
until proven guilty in a court of law. Welcome to
Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now
on true crime, and then together we are going to
work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Poppy killed Mommy was the first thing my little sister
said to me after her father murdered our mother. My
mom had gotten off the phone at nine fifty three
pm on July eighth, nineteen ninety three, after making plans
to leave him. By one forty am, a nine to
one one call was placed asking for help. Three hours
and forty seven minutes. That's how fast a woman can
(00:36):
go from planning her escape to being gone. Her death
was ruled a homicide. The man who killed her admitted
that he might have shot her. My sister, just three
years old, told police more than a dozen times Poppy
killed Mommy, but the Yavapai County Attorney said there wasn't
enough evidence to prosecute. Seventy five percent of women murdered
by an intimate partner are killed while they're trying to leave.
(00:59):
My mom became part of that statistic. This is the
story they buried. Listen to Poppy killed Mommy and hear
what they refuse to see.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime.
It's Kylie. We are going to get into right now
in true crime. We have a few trial updates and
happenings to discuss. So first thing is first big news.
The day that I'm recording this, Karen Reid was found
not guilty for the murder of her boyfriend John O'Keefe.
(01:32):
She was found guilty of basically a dui and sentenced
to one year of probation, which, for all the things
that that woman has been put through, one year of probation,
we will freaking take it. I am a huge believer
in Karen's in a sense because a lot of the
(01:52):
witnesses the defense brought up said there was zero evidence
that John was even hit by a car, and I
stand firmly on that hill. I will die on that hill.
But there's obviously more to this. Obviously something happened to John.
He was killed that night, and I don't know that
there will ever be justice because the investigation was not
(02:14):
handled properly and they were way too busy trying to
cover their tracks, then investigate it in a proper manner.
And it's scary to me that somebody can be thrust
into literally being on trial for murder like murder. It
is a big deal to take somebody to court two
(02:35):
separate times on murder charges when you don't really have
a leg to stand on. Karen had to give up
her job, her home, a lot of her life to
try to fight these charges, just like every single person
would do if they were ever wrongfully convicted of a
murder charge. And yeah, you can argue all you want
(02:57):
that she was intoxicated. She didn't really know what happened,
but neither did any of those other people in that
home that night, because they were all drinking and they
were all driving home. And Karen is not a Boston
Police officer, unlike all the other people that were in
the house that night. So that is really all I
have to say about it. I have been following this
one since probably like mid first trial, because I'll be
(03:20):
honest with you, during the first trial, I didn't really
know what I thought. But it's obvious that there was
some really shady behavior going on here from law enforcement allegedly,
in my opinion, is it even alleged they collected evidence
in red solo cups. I don't think it's alleged anymore.
But this second trial has been my literal life for
(03:42):
the last couple of months, so I was super glad
to hear that she was found not guilty on all
but one of the charges, and that was the OUI charge.
But that is the update on that for now. Now
we are going to switch gears to the Diddy trial.
I haven't really talked much more about it, but there
have been a couple of things this week that have happened.
(04:02):
There has been some text messages released between Ditty and KK,
who is Diddy's personal assistant, was Didty's personal assistant, and
that whole dynamic is very, very very interesting. I do
feel like the prosecution has done a really good job
at proving Diddy did some really horrific things, and all
(04:25):
of the evidence seems to me to be there as
far as the racketeering and the trafficking and all of that.
So it's going to be interesting to see what goes
down as far as that. I know we still have
a ways to go. But there was a juror that
was dismissed this week and they also canceled court on
Wednesday because a juror had vertigo, which I can attest.
(04:47):
Vertigo is not fun, so they canceled court for that reason.
I know court is not in session on Thursday because
of Juneteenth, and then I guess court will be back
in session on Friday. I'm not really sure. I guess
depends on the jurors status, but I will continue to
keep you guys updated on that front. Okay, I want
(05:08):
to talk about Brian Coberger because there was a hearing
scheduled for today and basically, Brian's team is asking for
the trial to be pushed back because they need time
to get their lives together and they're talking about the
dateline leak and going through all of that evidence and
(05:28):
having time to make sure that they have all of
their ducks in a row. Essentially, they have been trying
to push this trial back with every opportunity they get,
and I understand that is their job, but you have
to eventually go to trial. So the judge said he's
going to look at everything and he could change his mind,
but as of right now, Brian Coberger is going to
(05:51):
trial in August and this is going to be such
a big case. I don't even know how I'm going
to process it, how I'm going to get through it.
It's going to be such an emotional toll. I can't
imagine what it's going to be like for the families
who have been waiting so long to get justice for
(06:12):
their sweet kids that were so innocently taken in their
home in Idaho. It's going to be very interesting to
see what transpires here. But I hope and pray the
judge does the right thing. He has been very, very fair,
so I do think that the trial is going to
go on as expected. All right, Last thing I want
to talk about is Travis Decker, the dad who is
(06:33):
accused of killing his three daughters, is still on the run.
When I recorded last week, I fully thought that they
were on his tail. I thought that they were going
to have captured him and we would have some type
of update by now. But we are still searching for
Travis Decker, and authorities have released some different photos of
(06:57):
how he might look now he has likely changed his appearance.
God knows where this man is. Honestly, remember I said
that he is retired military, so he has a lot
of experience in living off of the grid and surviving
and different like survivor tactics. He knows what he's doing,
(07:19):
even though he might not be in a great mental
state right now. He is going to be able to
evade authorities as long as he needs. And I don't
know how this is going to turn out. I really
really don't, but I think it's so important that they
find him, so I hope that he will be found soon,
but I'm going to continue to keep you guys updated
(07:42):
on this one. I am at a loss that he
hasn't been found yet, and I think maybe he might
have gone to Canada because he had been searching for
jobs in Canada, how to escape to Canada, all of
that kind of stuff. So it's going to be interesting
when he is found to see where exactly he went,
where he's been, how he's been surviving, if he's been
(08:06):
just completely off the grid, or if he's been out
and about. I don't know. I don't know where this
one's going to go, but I will keep you guys
updated as I hear more. All Right, that is all
that I can take for this week. It has been
a crazy week, crazy month, crazy year with all of
these trials, trying to keep everything straight. But we are
(08:26):
going to go ahead and get into today's episode, which
is another wild ride of a rabbit hole. So I
will go ahead and get into that story now. Okay,
So for today's episode, I decided that I wanted to
cover one of the cases that I've recently posted for
my Unsolved Sunday spotlight on Instagram and Facebook, and that
(08:47):
is going to be the unsolved disappearance of Antonette Catadido.
Antonette disappeared from her home in Gallup, New Mexico, in
April of nineteen eighty six. There is a lot of
information on the Internet about her case and her disappearance.
There's a lot of rumors, there's a lot of speculation.
(09:08):
We're going to go over the facts, what we know,
what we have learned over the years. There have been
numerous different sightings of her over the years, and we're
going to try to break all of this down. There
is definitely a lot to this case, there's a lot
to the story, so we're going to do everything we
can to try to figure it all out and break
(09:28):
it all down. She was only nine years old when
she disappeared, and still to this day, she remains a
missing person. Let's go ahead and dive into her story.
Antonette Christine Cadadido was born on December twenty fifth of
nineteen seventy six to her parents, Teresa Penny Catadido and
Larry Estrata, who worked as a carpenter. Her parents would
(09:52):
soon separate, and Antonette was raised with her half sisters, Wendy,
who was five and Sadie who was seven, by their
Penny in Gallup, New Mexico. I'm going to talk a
lot about Penny during this episode, So Penny is Antonette's mother.
Those that knew and loved Antonette knew her by the
nickname Squirrel. She is described as friendly, caring, and dependable.
(10:16):
She was very much a natural caretaker and would often
help with her younger sisters. Even at nine years old,
she would often help cook meals for her younger sisters.
Her dad described her as nine going on fifteen. Her
youngest sister would later go on to describe her as
having a care giver's heart. She enjoyed Michael Jackson and
Ronnie Milsap music. She was a fourth grade student at
(10:38):
Lincoln Elementary School and was dedicated to her studies and
very much enjoyed sports. And physical fitness. She even won
an award in her fourth grade year for presidential fitness.
She is described as well behaved and always on her
best behavior at school. At the time of her disappearance,
Antonette was living at two to four Arnold Circle, number
(10:59):
nine in Gallup, New Mexico, with her mom and her
two half sisters. So we're now going to talk about Penny,
Antonette's mom. Penny was thirty three years old and she
would often spend the nights out at different bars, hanging
out with friends into the early hours of the morning.
A lot of the times there would be a babysitter
(11:19):
that would be there to look after the girls, and
then sometimes there wouldn't be a babysitter and Antonette would
be in charge of caring for her two younger sisters.
So when everyone describes her as nine going on fifteen
and being a natural caretaker, it makes a lot of
sense as to why she's described like that, because she
almost had to be. She really didn't have a choice.
(11:42):
She was left in charge of her two sisters. So
Penny going out and about was pretty common, and that's
exactly what happened on the evening of Saturday, April fifth
of nineteen eighty six. Penny had made plans to go
out that night with friends to talk of the Town,
which was a popular bar in the area. That evening,
(12:02):
the girls would be watched by a babysitter. Now, I'm
not really sure if this was a babysitter that Penny
used all the time for the girls, if it was
this person's first time watching the girls. I'm not really
sure of the circumstances surrounding this particular sitter, but I
would imagine this person has been questioned at length. So
Penny goes out, does her thing. The sitter is at
(12:25):
the house, and Penny arrived home shortly after midnight, and
the babysitter went home. Now, on this particular night, Penny
said that she let her daughter stay up a little
bit later, and that she spent the next three hours
talking and playing cards with Antonette until about three am,
while the other two girls had drifted off to sleep.
(12:47):
In an interview many many many years later, Sadie said
that despite them all having their own rooms, they all
always wanted to sleep in their mother's room, and that
night was no different. They were all sleeping in their
mom's room, so there was allegedly two different knocks on
the door that night, The first one nobody answered and
the second one was answered by Antonette, and from that
(13:10):
it was assumed that she was abducted by whoever was
at the door. According to Antonette's mom, Penny, the next morning,
she woke up at seven am and went to get
the girls ready for Bible study, and Antonette was nowhere
to be found. She ended up checking the house. She
checked in with neighbors to see if maybe she was
at a neighbor's house, but there was no sign of Antonette.
(13:34):
There was also a search party going on for somebody
in the neighborhood who was missing a dog, so Penny
naturally thought that Antonette could have been involved in looking
for the dog. But again she was unable to find
any lead of where Antonette could be, so Penny went
ahead and called the police. There was a massive three
(13:55):
day search around Gallop looking for anything that could tie
them back to where Antonette may be. They brought in ATVs,
they brought in dogs, and the dogs were unable to
pick up Antonette set Unfortunately, it wasn't until four days
after Antonette disappeared that officers went and actually performed an
official search at the home where Antonette went missing from. Now,
(14:18):
there were no signs of any type of force entry,
There were no signs of any type of a struggle.
Investigators talked to pretty much everyone, the family, the people
who were there. There was other family members that were questioned.
And in the midst of these other people being questioned,
there was a couple of people that had been brought
(14:40):
up in interview regarding Penny, and these names eventually would
be brought up by Penny because they were offered up
by another family member, and then Penny went ahead and
brought them up. So there were two people she brought up.
A man named Emiliano Gardella, who went by the nickname E.
(15:00):
Now Emo is a man I'm assuming who knew Penny,
might have been friends with Penny, and he had given
Antonette flowers on three separate occasions leading up to her abduction.
Now I don't know if he was a family friend,
how familiar he was with the family, but he did
(15:20):
give Antonette flowers on three separate occasions, and Sadie later
would recall him being there that day prior to Penny
going out that night and said that he had brought
Antonette two roses, and at one point he had put
Antonette on his lap, which is just weird behavior unless
you're a father figure or a family member. That is
(15:44):
awkward behavior for a grown man to be doing that
with a nine year old girl. So there's definitely some
weird vibes going on in my opinion with Emo. Now,
the next name that Penny gave up was the name
of a man named Ron Perry. So Ron was a
friend of Pennies and he had been out with her
(16:05):
that night at the bar and they had allegedly gotten
into some type of argument. So when she had left
and come home, he kind of came back around and
had knocked on their door that night around three thirty am,
and also knocked on the window, but nobody answered. That
was the knock that was allegedly ignored. So he went
(16:29):
ahead and went to a friend's home that was close
by and spent the night there, and that story was
checked out and it was corroborated by the friend that
he stayed with. So that very much explains the knock
that came on the door, the first knock that came
on the door, but who knocked second? Who was the
second knock and why did Antonette answer that knock versus
(16:53):
ignoring the first one. Antonette was a very careful girl,
a very careful child, and there would be no way
that she would answer the door to somebody in the
middle of the night that she didn't know. So detectives
again are very much trying to piece together everything that
they have. They talk to different neighbors and there were
a few different neighbor accounts that said it was not
(17:15):
super uncommon for a lot of different people to come
and go at all hours of the night from the home.
So this very much opens up the pool of people
who could have abducted Antonette, and it makes it even
harder to try and pinpoint who was there that night,
why they were there, if they were there for the
sole purpose of abducting and kidnapping Antonette. So a whole
(17:39):
year passes by and there is little to go on
in the disappearance of Antonette, that is until a phone
call comes in on the afternoon of April twelfth of
nineteen eighty seven. Now, this phone call was placed to
the Gallop Police Department, which is a very specific phone
number that typically wouldn't be any number that you would
(18:01):
be able to memorize or a number that you would
just know off the top of your head. But this
phone call came in and I am going to play
that now and then we're going to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Albuquerque.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Okay, So that was the phone call, and it is wild.
When I first heard it, it very much chilled me
to my core, and that's kind of the whole reason
I decided I wanted to kind of dig into this
case a little bit more so. Whoever made this phone
call identifies herself as Antonette Catadido, and she says that
(18:54):
she's in Albuquerque, and then you can hear somebody comes
in the background and they say who said you could
use the phone? And then there's an obvious type of
scuffle and they're screaming, and then the phone disconnects. So
that call was unable to be traced, and it ended
up obviously the person ended up hanging up. So they
(19:16):
did play this call for Penny, and Penny very much
believes that this was her daughter. She said she knows
her daughter's voice the way that she said her name,
and the call is the way that Antonette said her name,
and she said that that was eight thousand percent Antonette.
So there's a lot to unpack here. Let's say that
(19:37):
Antonette was abducted and a year later is alive somewhere
being held against her will, and at this point she's
now ten years old, a whole year older than when
she was abducted, and she gets the opportunity to sneak
a phone call, and instead of calling nine to one one,
which is a number everybody knows it's only three numbers,
(19:59):
she calls the Gallop Police Department. It just doesn't make
a lot of sense that she would have the Gallop
Police Department number memorized and be able to make that
phone call if she was in a type of situation
where she was rushed for time trying to sneakily call.
It's just very very intriguing. I initially when I heard
(20:22):
the call, I really did think that that has to
be her. I mean, who else would it be. And
then when they played the call for Penny, she said
that sounds just like her. But I feel like there's
more things that we have to question and make sure
that it's valid and make sure that it wasn't just
somebody playing a Cole joke, because unfortunately, we live in
(20:45):
a society where people get pleasure out of intimidating people
that have gone missing or trying to mislead investigators for
one reason or another. And it has never been confirmed
that the person on the other end of this line
was Antonette, And I honestly don't know what my thoughts
are on the matter, because maybe she did remember the
(21:06):
Galla Police Department phone number and call that number for
one reason or another. But it's also possible that there's
more to it and maybe that is an Antinette on
the other end of the phone line. There's also people
that speculate that Penny stage that phone call, and that's
a whole different story for a different day. We're going
to get into all of that. But I really don't
(21:30):
know what I think about this phone call. And unfortunately,
like I said, the phone call was too short to
be traced, so they don't know exactly where the call
came in from. But we're going to go ahead and
circle back to that phone call in a bit so
Interestingly enough, three years after Antonette disappeared, her twenty five
(21:51):
year old aunt, who is named Luisa Estrada, the sister
of Larry, her father. She also went missing in September
of nineteen eighty nine from Gallup. I don't really know
the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, but she was found alive
in Mexico a month later and was returned home. But
there has been a lot of people that speculated and
(22:12):
thought that these two cases could have possibly been related.
And I think that the reason that some people speculate
this is because Larry was allegedly involved in some type
of drugs, trafficking drugs, selling drugs, and it only makes
sense that people would think that Antonette's disappearance could have
been related to this, and then to have somebody else
(22:34):
from the family go missing, it just kind of makes
sense as to why people kind of have that thought
in their minds. However, we don't have anything definitive to
say that these two cases were in fact, in any way,
shape or form related. Four years later, in nineteen ninety one,
another tip came in, and this tip came in from
(22:55):
eight hundred and eighty miles away from a waitress at
a restaurant in Carson City. So this waitress had been
waiting on a table while at her job, and there
was a teenage girl at the table, matching Antonette's description.
And she was in the company of a couple who
she described as very unkempt. She said that the girl
(23:16):
would continuously knock her utensils onto the floor, and from
what the waitress thought, she thought that she was maybe
seeking attention from the waitress, So the waitress would bend down,
pick up the utensils, put them back on the table,
and the teenage girl would grab the waitress's hand and
squeeze it, kind of like she was calling out for help.
(23:38):
The couple and the girl would later leave, and when
the waitress went over to clean the table, she found
a napkin that was placed under a plate, and it
had two messages on it. One said help me and
the other said call the police. So that, to me
is a very interesting story. Regardless of if this was
(23:59):
Antonia or not, I do feel like whoever this girl
was was likely in trouble. And we don't know the
circumstances of what was going on with the couple she
was with, if she had been taken, if that was
their child, We really don't know. But investigators found this
interesting and they decided to kind of circle back again
(24:22):
and talk to Wendy, who at the time of Antonette's
disappearance was only five years old. This is Antonette's youngest sister,
so now at the time that they were interviewing her,
she's now ten years old. So they interview her and
she finally gave an account of what she remembers happening
that night. She said she remembers hearing the second knock,
(24:45):
and she said she was kind of standing a little
bit behind Antonette, and Antonette had asked who was at
the door, and the person at the door identified himself
as Uncle Joe. From there, Antonette opened the door and
she was grabbed by two men and she started kicking
and screaming, and they forced her into a brown van. Now,
(25:07):
Wendy said she didn't recognize the men, but she also
didn't get a great look at their faces. And she
said the reason that she didn't say anything is because
after Antonette's abduction, her mom was really, really sad, and
she didn't want to upset her more. And she also
didn't think that anybody would believe her account of what
(25:30):
happened that night. And she was also five, So having
a five year old tried to recall what they saw
that night has to be so terrifying for them, and
she's already dealing with the fact that her sister was taken,
and I'm sure she was scared, and she was only five. Again,
you can't really expect a five year old to come
(25:50):
in with all of the details about what happened, because
she was probably just as confused as anyone was about
the situation. So this, this whole statement really leads us
to think that whoever was at the door either had
a personal connection to the family or was a relative,
or at least knew that Antonette did in fact have
(26:11):
an uncle, Joe. So Joe was married to Penny's sister,
and his alibi checks out. He has a rock solid
alibi for that night, and he had never ever in
this whole investigation, been looked at as a suspect. But
investigators do believe that whoever took her knew the family
and was familiar with them, because everyone says there isn't
(26:34):
any way that Antonette would have entered the door to
somebody she didn't know or trust, especially at that early
hour of the morning. So here's where things get a
little interesting. Penny had been interviewed several times over the years,
and at this point it's nineteen ninety four, they interview
(26:55):
her again and it's at this point that Penny brings
up that there was a second knock, and she said
that she heard a knock between three thirty am and
four thirty am. I think she said go ahead and
answer the door, and around thirty minutes later she ended
up getting up because Antonette never came back. And she
(27:17):
said at this point in time, it was just getting
light out and that is when she realized Antonette was missing. Now,
this story is vastly different from what she told them initially,
because initially she told them she got up at seven am,
she was not able to find Antonette when she was
getting the girls ready for Bible study. So there's a
(27:38):
lot going on here. There is a lot of changing stories,
a lot of discrepancies Pennies account of things. It just
doesn't make sense. So let's recap this. Sadie, Antonette's sister,
said she heard the first knock. Wendy, Antonette's other sister,
said she heard the second knock and then Antonette answered
(28:01):
the door. Penny talks about the second knock and tells
Antonette to answer the door. Antonette answers the door and
she never comes back. None of this makes any sense
to me. I do believe Sadie and Wendy. I believe
that Wendy did witness what she says she witnessed, and
she was obviously concerned about bringing it up initially because
(28:24):
of everything that was going on. She was probably really
scared and she really didn't know what was going to happen,
what had happened to her sister. And I believe her
account is accurate and true. And I really don't know
about Penny's account because her stories differ so much from
(28:44):
her initial report of waking up and not being able
to find Antonette at seven am. So none of this
makes sense what actually happened. And why would you tell
your daughter at between three thirty and four thirty in
the morning to open the door and just let her
(29:05):
open the door. She was only nine years old. That
really doesn't make sense to me unless you knew who
was coming over and who was at that door. So
over the years, there were other eyewitness reports that people
thought that they had saw Antonette, and I'm gonna just
go through all of those right now. In April of
nineteen eighty six, there is a witness that reported that
(29:26):
they saw Antonette in San Antonio, and he says he
saw a girl who looked Spanish in a pink dress
and she was there with a blondhaired woman and they
were standing on the side of the road. Again, this
is an unconfirmed sighting. Whether or not this was Antonette,
we do not know. There was another unconfirmed sighting in
April of nineteen eighty six. There was a woman who
(29:49):
claims she saw a brown truck at a gas station
and as the truck passed by her, she thought she
heard a voice screaming, help me, help me. And they
thought that this could have been Antonette, and given that
she was allegedly placed into a brown vehicle this kind
of dust track. But again it's unconfirmed whether or not
this was Antonette or not. There is another sighting of
(30:11):
Antonette in June of nineteen eighty six at a bus
depot that was located in El Paso, Texas. This person
thought that he saw Antonette in the presence of two
Hispanic men, and he said the girl was wearing a
pink dress, white shoes, and had a birthmark on her cheek,
which is similar to a birthmark that Antonette had. And
then finally, in November of nineteen eighty nine, there was
(30:35):
a man in Missouri who said he thought he saw
a girl that looked like Antonette. She was at a
truck stop in Waynesfield, and he said he immediately recognized
the girl from the missing person's flyer and said that
she was in jeans, a dirty T shirt, and a
red band that had a large watch. And he said
that she was acting like she was afraid of people
(30:56):
and kind of like she was being punished for something. So, again,
all of these reports have not been confirmed to have
been actual sightings of Antonette, but they're interesting nonetheless and
worth mentioning because you never truly know if these were Antonette,
if she had been taken by somebody, if she had
been sold into a trafficking type of situation. We really
(31:20):
don't know the circumstances surrounding why she was abducted and
by who. In December of nineteen ninety two, Antonette's story
was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and it yielded one hundred
and twenty different phone calls, but none of those tips
led any closer to figuring out what had happened to Antonette. Okay,
so this is a very interesting story and when I
(31:42):
first started researching this case, I really didn't think that
this was the direction that this whole thing was going
to go in. But later on, in nineteen ninety four
Dorian talks with the FBI, Penny said that she was
involved in Antonette's adduction and even asked, quote, what if
me and Emo did this, would we both go to prison?
(32:06):
She then admitted she and Emo put together a plan
prior to Antonette being abducted, and she had told Emo
that she wanted to know what was going to happen,
how what was going to happen, but Emo told her
she was better off not knowing, But she did admit
knowing who was going to come and who was going
to be taking her daughter. At least this is what
(32:28):
she told the FBI allegedly, and I guess it's really
not even alleged at this point, because there is a
whole transcript of her conversation with the FBI what she
told them, and I don't believe that this was ever
made public until after the fact. But despite this, they
were never able to bring any charges against Emo or
(32:50):
against Penny, and I'm really unsure as to why that was,
because it sounds like she admitted it, which is just
so wild to me. But they very much do believe
that Penny had something to do with her daughter's disappearance,
or at least knowledge of who was involved who took
her all of that. They also do say that Penny
(33:13):
failed a polygraph test, But I'm going to be the
first one to admit I don't think polygraph tests are
necessarily an admission of guilt or innocence, because I know
if you were to question me on anything, no matter
how innocent I was, if you're hooking me up to
a polygraph test, I'm probably going to fail because I'm
a very anxious human and I don't do well under pressure.
(33:37):
So let's get back to the story. If you remember,
this emo person was the person that had allegedly brought
Antonette Flowers three prior times leading up to her disappearance,
which is just really bizarre behavior for an adult male
to be acting like this towards a child, And I
really don't even know what to think about this in
(33:59):
the grand scheme of things, if he was the person
that was involved in her abduction, especially thinking that her
mom could have had inside knowledge as to what happened
to her and have been involved in the planning of it.
It all just really blows my mind. Unfortunately, Penny passed
(34:20):
away in April of nineteen ninety nine in Arizona. She
had liverserhosis along with different cardiac issues and passed away
at the age of forty six. Prior to her death,
the FBI wanted another interview with her. They wanted to
interview her on her deathbed to see if she would
confess to anything, but unfortunately they arrived too late and
(34:42):
she had already passed away upon their arrival. In a
twenty sixteen interview that the Albuquerque Journal did with Wendy,
who was the youngest sister of Antonette, she talked about
all of the different struggles her and her family went
through following Antonette's disappearance, and she said it really broke
their whole family apart. She said, unfortunately, as she got older,
(35:05):
she had turned to drugs and alcohol to try and
cope with the horrible situation that her family had been
put in. Wendy said in two thousand and seven she
finally turned her life around. She went to rehab. She
got her life back on track the best way that
she could, and she still holds out hope that her
sister is out there and that her sister is safe,
(35:26):
and she said that she really will have a hard
time accepting that her sister is dead and will need
proof of that to ever accept it. In June of
twenty twenty two, Sadie gave an interview to KOATV, and
she said that it's very difficult to not have closure
in her sister's case, to not know what happened to
her sister, and that they often think about Antonette, wondering
(35:49):
how she is, what she's doing, what kind of life
she's living in, hopes that she knows that her sisters
are always here for her. And I honestly can't imagine
that these girls had an easy upbringing. Following Antonette's disappearance
and abduction, I'm sure it has to weigh so heavily
on them every single day what happened to her. They
probably replayed the actions of what led up to her disappearance,
(36:12):
and then there's all the rumors and speculation and finger
pointing that happens. I imagine it had to be really
really hard on all of them. So that is kind
of where I was going to leave the episode, But
I wanted to see if there was any updates, because
that last little bit of information was from twenty twenty two,
so I wanted to see if there was anything else
(36:33):
going on. So I started looking for more information and
I wanted to see if there was a more recent update.
And I happened upon a YouTube channel that I'm going
to link below in the show notes, and it is
a YouTube channel called Christina Gutierra's TV. And Christina, along
with a retired detective who is now a private investigator,
(36:55):
really dig into Antonette's disappearance. They sit down with Sadie
and they go through everything. They go into detail about
the alleged confession from Penny, and there's a lot of
good information in these videos. I'm gonna link two of
the videos below, and I highly suggest if you want
a little more insighted info, go watch those videos. They
(37:16):
have a whole series on Antonette. It is long, it
is complicated, there is a lot of information, and there's
so much I mean, I could probably do a multiple
part series on Antonette's case alone because there is so
much information. There was a girl that came forward that
believed that she could have been Antonette, and they talked
(37:39):
with her. They ended up bringing her in and they
ended up doing a DNA test and comparing it with
the DNA of antonette sisters, and it was confirmed that
this girl was in fact not Antonette. The DNA was
not a match, but this woman very much still believes
that she's Antonette and it just became this whole thing.
(37:59):
You can go watch that episode on the YouTube channel.
And then there was another episode that they did of
a woman who allegedly thought that she spotted Antonette in
a restaurant. So this sighting was recent in August of
twenty twenty three, and this restaurant was an Albuquerque I'm
going to link the episode as well below for you guys,
(38:21):
because there's a lot of information going on here. But
this woman very much thinks that she saw Antonette in
this restaurant. She snapped a picture of this person. They
were with a woman, and she said she knew this
girl was Antonette because she had grown up in the
same town as Antonette. She grew up in Gallup. She
(38:43):
was familiar with her and she knew that that is
who she saw. So you can watch that whole episode.
I'm going to link up below so you can see
everything that they talked about because it's really intriguing. If
nothing else, this woman seems like she has some really
valid points as to why she thinks that this was Antonette.
So I truly do think that a lot of the
(39:06):
secrets in this case died with Penny, and I very
much do think that there's a possibility that Antonette is
still out there and maybe she was sold into some
type of trafficking situation, maybe there was some drug stuff involved.
There are so many different possibilities here, and there's just
(39:27):
so much that's involved. I feel like I could go
on and on and on. But there are likely still
people out there that know something about what happened to Antonette,
have some type of knowledge about what happened, and those
are the people that we really have to hope grow
a conscience and decide that they're going to finally tell
what they know about her disappearance, because her sisters deserve
(39:51):
to know. They deserve to have that closure. They were
only five and seven when she was abducted, and they
deserve to know what happened to their sister. If she
still is out there, they deserve to be able to
have that relationship with her. And I can't even imagine
if Antonette is still out there, what her life has
(40:11):
been like, what she's experienced over the years. I do
believe that she is alive, and I wasn't really sure
that I was going to come to that conclusion when
I first took on this case and first started digging in.
But I do believe that she is still out there somewhere,
and she might not even know who she is or
the background of who she is, and have any recollection
(40:35):
of being abducted. I am going to be posting some
childhood pictures of Antonette as well as some age progress
photos of Antonette because those are so important to getting
her face out there to maybe somebody will recognize her
and realize that she could in fact be a missing
girl from nineteen eighty six. So you're going to leave
(40:57):
it at that. I'm going to link all of those
UTAH videos below. Do your own research on this one,
because it is a rabbit hole if I ever found one,
and I really liked that YouTube channel. I've watched all
of the videos on Antonette. There's a lot. So they're
continuously investigating her case. They are really at the forefront
of it, and I think if there is a break
(41:19):
in this case. It's a million percent going to be
because of their hard work and dedication to figuring out
the truth and figuring out what happened. So I want
to thank you guys so much for joining me on
this super wild ride. I had no idea that it
was going to be such a rabbit hole when I
first dug into it, but I appreciate you as always.
(41:39):
Thank you for listening, and I will see you next
week for a brand new case, and I hope you
have a great weekend. By
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