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July 14, 2025 • 16 mins

In this episode we revisit a previous case I covered....the case of Amy Baumgartner, a 39 year old mother of 3 who vanished from a rural farm town in Illinois. Amy's family is still waiting for answers as to what happened to her, but the local and state police don't seem to be doing much to help get those answers..........

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Episode Transcript

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(00:01):
Hello everyone. Welcome back to The Victim's
Voice. I'm your host, Lorelei.
In this week's episode, we are going to talk about a case that
I've covered in the past. It's the case of Amy Falton
Baumgartner, a missing woman from Carrollton, IL.
I have kept in contact with Amy's mom, Linda over the last
two years and each year on or around Amy's birthday, I have

(00:24):
put out a new updated episode. This case hasn't garnered the
attention that it deserves in the media and law enforcement
doesn't seem to want to put in the effort to solve it.
Amy deserves justice and people need to hear her story.
So if you would please like and share this episode, it will help
to get Amy's name out there and her story known, which can help

(00:45):
the family get the answers that they so desperately need.
With that being said, let's go ahead and jump into Amy's case.
Amy Fulton Baumgartner was born July 14th, 1984 to Larry and
Linda Baumgartner. They had three children and Amy
was the only girl. She had a brother that was eight

(01:06):
years younger and one that was three years older whom she was
very close to. Linda and Larry raised their
kids in the town of Carrollton. Carrollton is a small farming
community in Illinois, just 45 minutes from St.
Louis, MO and just 30 minutes from where I live currently.
At the 2023 census, the town hada whopping 2394 people.

(01:32):
My wife, Brandy, grew up in Carrollton and she said it was
one of those small towns where everyone knew everyone and knew
all of their business as well. But it was also a town where
everyone felt safe. Kids played outside and rode
their bikes around town. People left their doors
unlocked, and on Friday nights teenagers would go to the
football games and then hang outat the town square or go to a

(01:55):
party in a cornfield. It was like any other small town
in America. But this also meant that they
had their share of drug problems.
Things like meth and heroin seemed to run rampant in these
small towns, and Carrollton and the neighboring towns were no
different. As a child, Linda described Amy

(02:15):
as being rambunctious and definitely not a girly girl.
She loved anything that had to do with the outdoors.
She also loved all holidays because it meant spending time
with her family. Growing up and into adulthood,
Amy was especially close to her Grandma Edwards.
Their favorite thing to do together was to play Yahtzee.

(02:37):
Amy got married shortly after graduating from high school and
had three children, two boys anda girl, just like her parents.
Amy loved her kids more than anything, but she wasn't the mom
that she knew she could be and that she wanted to be because
she had been struggling with addiction from the time her
children were young all the way until they were adults and had

(02:58):
kids of their own. Because of Amy's problems, she
had a granddaughter that she hadnever seen.
Because of this, Amy wanted to turn her life around.
She told her mom in April of 2023 that she was done with the
drug scene and wanted to be the best mom and grandmother that
she could be. But she never got this chance
because just three months later,Amy vanished.

(03:23):
Linda last talked to Amy on July7th, 2023.
She remembers this very well because it was her and Larry's
45th wedding anniversary. According to Amy's boyfriend, he
and Amy got into a fight on July12th, so he stepped out for a
few minutes. When he came back, Amy was gone.

(03:43):
He reported her missing that day.
However, he didn't tell Larry and Linda that Amy was missing,
at least not at that point, which is a huge red flag.
Linda tried to get a hold of Amyaround the 11th.
She continued to keep trying to get a hold of her daughter for
the next few days. She wanted to wish her a happy
birthday on the 14th, but never could get a hold of her, which

(04:05):
she thought was odd. Finally, on July 17th, Amy's
boyfriend told them that their daughter had been reported
missing 5 days earlier. Linda feels like the only reason
he told her at all was because she had been persistently trying
to get a hold of her daughter and he knew eventually Linda and
Larry were going to question himabout Amy's whereabouts and why

(04:28):
she wasn't answering their phonecalls.
Linda never went more than a week without talking to Amy.
Also, most people don't have phone numbers memorized these
days because they don't have to,they just save them in their
cell phones. But that wasn't Amy.
She had the phone numbers of herclose family and friends
memorized and if she was able toget to a phone, she would be

(04:49):
able to call someone. Linda reached out to everyone
that she thought Amy might call if she needed something or was
in trouble, but no one had heardfrom her.
Amy not only disappeared, but she disappeared without taking
her phone, her purse, or her medications.
Linda says that Amy was known tohave seizures and one of the

(05:10):
medications that she took was tohelp stop them, so she would
have never willingly left that medication behind.
Even though her disappearance was highly suspicious, the
Carrollton Police Department andthe Greene County Sheriff's
Department didn't seem to want to get involved in finding Amy.
This often happens when an adultis reported missing because law

(05:33):
enforcement says that they have a right to disappear.
But this is bullshit in my opinion.
They don't know the person who is missing and what their
routines and habits are, but thefamily does, and they know if
the person would be likely to disappear without telling anyone
and leave all of their importantitems behind.

(05:54):
Amy's problems with addiction could also be a reason that law
enforcement seemed to blow off the missing persons report.
But not everyone who has an addiction disappears without
their belongings and without telling someone.
An addiction doesn't automatically mean that you're
going to run off. Her past mistakes don't make her
less important than anyone else and shouldn't be considered.

(06:17):
And whether she is looked for ornot, if someone reports their
loved 1 missing to the police, then disappearing is obviously
out of character for them and itshould be looked into
immediately. We all know that the 1st 24 to
48 hours are the most critical in a missing person's case.
In Amy's case, the Illinois State Police took over three

(06:37):
weeks after she was reported missing Because they became
involved so late in the game andnothing had been done by local
and county law enforcement, critical evidence had been lost.
The state police put together search parties, but those took
another month to get together, so obviously any evidence would
be gone or destroyed by then. During one of the few searches

(07:01):
that was done by law enforcement, they brought in
cadaver dogs and told the familythat they got a hit, but then
told them that it turned out to be nothing.
They also did a foot search at the boyfriend's property where
Amy had disappeared from, but nothing was found during that
search either. All in all, the state police
spent about a week in the area looking for Amy or clues to what

(07:24):
could have happened to her. The community wanted to help
Amy's family search for her, butwhen Linda asked law enforcement
about having search parties consisting of volunteers from
the community, they were told that they weren't allowed to do
that. They basically were told that
they had to step back and do nothing and hope that law

(07:44):
enforcement stepped up and did their job.
Linda got back most of Amy's belongings from the boyfriend.
This guy had the nerve to come and dump Amy's things on Larry
and Linda's lawn. All of her clothes, shoes,
personal items, along with her purse and medications.
Everything but Amy's phone. You would think that law

(08:06):
enforcement would have taken thephone right after Amy was
reported missing and looked through it to see if there was
any evidence of where she might be, but they didn't.
Linda once again had to do theirjob for them.
She was able to talk Amy's boyfriend into giving her the
phone, which she in turn gave tothe state police.
They looked through it, said there was nothing relevant on

(08:29):
it, and gave it back to the boyfriend.
First of all, shouldn't it have gone back to Amy's mother since
it was her daughter's property? And why did they just look
through it? They should have done a thorough
search by getting a subpoena forthe phone carrier and checking
the phone records and maybe looking to see if anything had
been deleted from the phone since it had been in the

(08:51):
boyfriend's possession. On October 14th, 2023, a vigil
was held for Amy in front of theGreene County Courthouse. 75
friends, family, and community members attended and showed
their support in finding Amy. Matthew Hamby, a close family
friend, spoke at the event. After a prayer was said, Amy's

(09:14):
children released two dozen purple balloons in honor of
their mother, whose favorite color was purple.
Candles were then lit and everyone was asked to give 317
seconds of silence in honor of the 317 open missing persons
cases in Illinois at that time. Months went by without Linda

(09:36):
hearing anything from law enforcement.
If she had a question, information, or just wanted to
know if anything new had surfaced, she had to call them.
They never called her. Whenever she did call them, the
conversation always took a negative turn.
If she gave them information that she had come across, they
would tell her not to believe anything she heard.

(09:56):
Linda, at that point had pretty much given up on law enforcement
helping to find her daughter. Then earlier this year, a new
lead came in. Someone reached out to Linda and
told her that they actually had seen Amy on July 13th of 2023,
the day after her boyfriend lastsaw her.

(10:18):
This person said she was in a truck with one of their family
members. The person she was allegedly
seen with in the truck is not a good person and is known to be
dangerous. Even if this is true, the family
believes that the boyfriend still knows what happened and
that these people are all linked.

(10:39):
Linda immediately notified law enforcement of this new
information, but once again, they didn't seem to take it
seriously. So as of now, nothing has come
of it and this seems to be a common reoccurrence.
In this case, everything is delayed by law enforcement.
The searches were delayed. Any tips they get?

(11:00):
They don't act on right away andby the time they do, it's too
late. Any information Linda comes
across and gives to them, they blow off.
Why won't they take Amy's case seriously?
And why wouldn't the police release the information of the
case to the media so that Amy's name and face could be put out
there so that people would be looking for her?

(11:21):
Is this another situation of small town good old boy cops who
are hiding something or just don't want to do their jobs?
And if that's the case, why won't the state police step up
and do more? Why won't they call other
agencies in to help if they are at a dead end?
People don't vanish. Something happened to Amy and

(11:41):
there are people who know what happened.
Whenever Linda and her family hang the Flyers they've made
with Amy's picture and information on them, they are
taken down as fast as they were put up, and then they put some
more up and they're taken down again.
This shows that someone is worried and wants everyone to
forget about Amy, but that will never happen.

(12:01):
One of the theories Linda has isthat because Amy wanted out of
the drug scene and was working on her sobriety, people involved
in the drug scene were worried that she knew too much and that
she might talk. Rumors run rampant in small
towns like Carrollton and there have been a lot of rumors when
it comes to what happened to Amy.

(12:22):
Rumors that Amy's family, including her children, have to
hear on a daily basis. Linda wants people to ask her if
there is anything new happening in the investigation.
She wants people to talk if theyknow something and to keep Amy's
name out there. But the rumors have to stop
because all that does is hurt the family.

(12:42):
They already have to wonder every day what happened to Amy.
They don't need people putting invalid and untrue scenarios in
their heads. Amy is not the only person that
has gone missing from around that area under similar
circumstances. Caleb Atoli, who is also 39 at
the time that she went missing, disappeared six months before

(13:04):
Amy did. On January 8th of 2023, she
disappeared from a residence on Little Pyosol Rd. in a small
rural town called Dao, which is 20 miles from Carrollton.
She also allegedly walked away after a fight with her boyfriend
and was never seen again. Kayla wasn't actually reported

(13:26):
missing. Her boyfriend was caught
trespassing in a neighbor's yardin the early morning hours of
the 9th, and they called the police.
He told law enforcement that he was looking for his girlfriend.
That's how the police learned Kayla was missing.
Like Amy, Kayla also had medicalconditions that required
medication that was left behind along with all of her personal

(13:50):
belongings. Kayla went missing from Jersey
County, whereas Amy went missingfrom Greene County.
Jersey County asked farmers to check their fields when it came
time to plow as they thought they might find Kayla's body,
and also asked hunters to keep an eye out for women's clothing
or personal belongings. Linda says that Greene County

(14:11):
didn't even give Amy that consideration.
There have also been many searches for Kayla that
consisted of drone usage and searching an area ponds along
with several media coverages including articles being run in
the newspapers of neighboring towns, none of which was done
for Amy. Kayla also had a past that

(14:33):
included substance abuse, but like Amy, she was looking
forward to a future of sobriety.However, there has been talk
from people in the area that both girls, although they were
never seen together, had frequented a house that is known
for some shady shit. Is that just a coincidence or
could this household answers that could lead to the

(14:54):
whereabouts of Amy and Kayla? As of now, the police haven't
looked into anyone in that housethat we know of.
Kayla was 53 and 110 lbs. She has several tattoos with the
noticeable ones on her neck and her hand.
At the time of her disappearance, she had blonde
hair with dark blonde roots. Amy could be using the last

(15:18):
names of Baumgartner, Fulton, orDixon.
She is five foot and 140 lbs. She has a facial tattoo and a
tattoo on her neck that says only God can judge me.
At the time of her disappearance, her hair was dyed
black but is naturally a blondish brown color.
I will post pictures of both girls on the Victim's Voice

(15:40):
Facebook page and on the Victim's Voice web page.
And that's all we know right now.
If any new information comes up I will be sure to let everyone
know and if anyone has a case they would like to recommend for
me to cover, you can go to thevictimsvoice.org and fill out
the case request form. And until next week, stay safe

(16:04):
and peace out.
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