Missing Persons, Advocacy, and Ethics in True Crime with Charlie Shunick

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Fire Eyes Media, Hi, friends. Before we get into today's episode,
I'd like to share a little story. Back in October
twenty twenty four, I virtually attended the Cold Case Symposium,
an event that brings together families of unsolved, missing and
homicide cases from around the country. The symposium offers families

(00:26):
a safe space to share their loved one stories and
connect with experts, advocates, and law enforcement. One of the
presenters was Charlie Shunick, the founder of the Resource Association
for Missing People. Charlie is extremely passionate about helping families
due to her own experience of losing her sister Mickey

(00:49):
in twenty twelve. When I Tell You, Charlie's presentation moved me.
I was literally in tears by the end of it,
not because of anything particular that she said, but because
of the emotion behind her words. Charlie spoke of the
negative impact that true crime content has had on her

(01:11):
life and the importance of ethical storytelling. I knew then
that I wanted to talk to her and was so
beyond excited when she agreed.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Charlie wears many hats. Not only is she the founder
of the Resource Association of Missing Persons, but she also
owns Shunik Missing Persons, a consulting company where she provides
guidance to families and law enforcement. When she's not helping families,
she's busy being an Associate professor and Biotechnology director at

(01:42):
Delgado Community College in New Orleans. Charlie does cool things
like maintain a body farm of animals and create forensics courses.
Her personal experience, professional knowledge, and advocacy work are seriously
inspiringly shared parts of her personal story, how she helps families,

(02:03):
and her thoughts on true crime and why the push
for ethical storytelling is so important. We hope you enjoy
the conversation as much as we did.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Before we get into the episode. Please take a minute
to leave us a five star rating and review wherever
you listen. It really does help us grow and give
us the opportunity to talk to more amazing advocates in
the true crime community. You can also follow us on
Instagram and TikTok at Weird true Crime. Until next time,

(02:32):
stay safe and make good choices.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Bye.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Can you tell me more about your career as an
Assistant professor of Biology and Biotechnology director.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Sure, so, I've been at Delgado Community College in New
Orleans for a decade.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Now.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
I just made ten years in August, which I always
just I couldn't believe it, you know, because I actually
took this job thinking I would do that part time.
I started as an adjunct, which were people that aren't
familiar with that. It just means you're kind of a
part time professor, thinking that it would be like an
easy thing to do, teach adults about their bodies and stuff.

(03:25):
And now I'm an associate professor. I've been there for
ten years. It's my full time job, and it's really
helped me maintain my nonprofit because we don't have a
lot of funding. I need a career to pay for
this stuff, you know. So in my career at school,
I just got my third promotion. So that is the

(03:46):
associate where the associate professor comes from. And I was
hired to primarily teach a natomane physiology, so I teach
mostly pre nursing students and people going into healthcare about
our bid and how they work and what we're made
up of. And then about six and a half seven
years ago now I was appointed to become the Biotechnology Director,

(04:11):
which is an umbrella program called this Science Laboratory Technology program.
Because my dean and assistant dean might hear this, we
are changing the name of the program to Biotechnology and
Chemical Technology. It's a long story why, but yeah, I've
been doing that for at least six and a half
years now, and my job there is to sort of

(04:34):
just recruit students, throw events, make community partnerships and national partnerships,
and just make sure that the teachers and students are happy.
A lot has changed since I first came into that position,
and now I have a laboratory manager and a laboratory
coordinator that do everything in the actual lab space because

(04:56):
that's definitely not my background. And it's been really awesome
because within biotech, I've been able to develop a bunch
of forensic courses that my students can take as electives.
So I do basically a lot of different biology sciences
all the time, like every day is what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
That's awesome. What are the forensic courses that.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
You created so have I currently am offering four courses.
I have a forensic biology lecture and laboratory and that's
kind of like fingerprinting errology, which is looking at different
bodily fluids DNA extraction, purification, profiling, toxicology, and everyone loves
the blood spatter and bloodstained analysis the most. And in

(05:41):
the lecture we also get into death and decomposition pretty intimately,
so like that's where biology is, and the other courses
are forensic anthropology lecture and laboratory as well, and there
we learn how to profile human skeletal remains. I also
have like a miniature body farm for animals, which is

(06:01):
called a forensic research facility, where I teach my students
how to identify burials, recover remains, profile the remains, and
compare them to like human and animal. So it's really
fun and cool. My human remains are either very very
old models and now there's a company called bone Clones
that three D prints from actual remains like acrylic models

(06:25):
that we utilize because human remains are precious, and of course,
so we have too much of that.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Do you have like a plot of land or something
close to the school where you have the body farm
for the animals.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
It's on campus around one of our buildings. There's four
kind of not abandoned but non utilized plots of land,
and so I originally had it on a different piece
of land that has been rejuvenated into sort of like
an outdoor space for professors to take breaks. So now
I've moved to the other side of the building that's

(07:02):
a little bit more isolated. The biggest issue is because
it's so close to buildings when things are actively decomposing,
there's obviously an odor. And some of my colleagues don't
like that. And they all think I'm so weird, I
tell you what, but they're like, you're the dead animal lady,
you know. But we've moved it to a place that

(07:22):
I think will be a little bit better. People don't
walk by it that space very much. So yeah, I
have a little plot of land and I have like
all of my outdoor equipment and my boots and my
shovels and like a cart that I take out there
and I bury stuff and leave things out. We built
these kind of cages so that scavengers can't get to them,

(07:43):
you know, because I learned from the two forensic research
facilities in Texas where they have the body farms, how
to do all this. So I've been trained appropriately on
what I'm doing. That's learn stuff all the time, because
of course you make miss but.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Of course I'm sure and things are always changing. There's
new developments all the time.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
So I'm yes, well and I was fortunately years ago
now donated a black bear by Wildlife and Fisheries, which
they are highly regulated in Louisiana, so you have to
get special permission to have anything related to a black bear.
And what I learned is that crows, I think we

(08:27):
have crows here, they can actually pick up bear limbs
and carry them. So I was finding partial remains like
all over the place, which is when we realized we
did need to make these cages. But the bear arm
probably weighed forty pounds, so I was just shocked.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, I guess, I mean crows are bigger than you think.
Crows are pretty big and scary, so that actually you
led me into another question was where do you get
the animals for the farm?

Speaker 3 (08:58):
So because I work to school, this is such a
big benefit for like meant much of the work that
I do with the nonprofit, but I was able to
partner with Wildlife and Fisheries. And then a lot of
my students from other courses have donated a lot of
their disease pets to me. So I have someone's childhood horse,
someone's childhood goat someone's turtle and then of course roadkill.

(09:22):
I only collect things ethically, I guess as ethic as
ethically as it can be. So so I have people
that will tell me when they see like a wild
boar or I got a cat one time that was hit. Yeah,
that someone gave me. It's pretty sad because I really
love animals, But this is how you learned, so I

(09:44):
try to like justify it. I guess that way.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
I mean, you can look at it like you're respecting
them right by wanting to learn more about about them
and the whole process. And it's not like you're treating
them badly. You're using them as a learning tool. And
then they go back into the earth.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Then, well, I keep them after they're done decomposing. I
have a map, so if I've buried them, i'd go
and dig them. Well, my students did most of them up, honestly,
But I go and dig up the rest or collect
the surface remains and clean them up, and I keep
them so I have them in a storage space at school. Yeah,

(10:25):
and some of the bones look really similar to ours,
which is why I needed the animals in the first place,
Like the bear their handbones, like their metacorporals look so
similar to ours, and so I needed them because if
you found that in the woods, you might think that
that was a human hand, and it's actually bear interesting
and there's just like a very small difference, so and

(10:47):
even the length anyway, Yeah, I actually, yeah, use some
of the bones in class because we do have a
human versus animal comparison. And if you aren't familiar, it
sounds silly, but people DM me and email me and
text me all the time with pictures of bones that
they find and they say, is this human? So I
can't imagine what professionals get, you know, and I'm like,

(11:08):
that is not human. But one time it was human.
It was the mandible and I was like, you need
to call the police, and they did.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Oh wow. So that kind of leads me into the
next question about can you explain more about your training
in forensic science, because that's very interesting to me about
how how would you even look at a picture and
be able to be like, oh, yeah, that's human versus
that's it's not.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yes, And what I'll say first is this is an
area I'm still learning in and I'm definitely not an expert,
but I teach about the human skeleton, like in multiple classes,
and especially in this anthropology course. So probably about eight
years ago, I was pulled into a meeting to see
if I was interested in teaching a course on oh

(12:00):
what did we call it? A field techniques course. And
because of my nonprofit, this is why they pull me in,
because we train people on how to do civilian foot
searches and I learned how to do that from Texas
Equisearch when they came in to look for my sister Mickey,
and so we kind of tell them how to do

(12:22):
it because families will do a lot of things and
as long as they get police permission, you know, it's
something you can do. Get a group of people together,
you go look. So they're like, do you want to
teach this course? It's already developed, and I was like, yeah,
I'll probably have to learn a little bit more. So
I started with online training with various groups, and then
the people who I had partnered with for various reasons

(12:45):
left my school, so I ended up being the only
person in my division that was doing any forensics. So
after that, they were like, we want to build a
couple courses. Are you willing to do this? And again
for people that are unfamiliar with this. Creating a course
is not easy. It takes at least a year. And

(13:05):
I did everything with open educational resources, not using a textbook,
just because of the nature of the types of topics,
there's not a textbook that really includes everything that's at
a college level. And I said, yeah, that sounds great,
because selfishly, I was like, this is really going to
help me with my nonprofit and the work I do,

(13:25):
you know, on missing person cases. So they started sending
me off first to sam Houston State University in Texas
in Huntsville. I go there. I've been there a lot,
they know me, and I went to Texas State University
as well. I believe the director is Danny Prescott. He's amazing.
He does a lot of anthropology. And now I've gotten

(13:48):
training at many other schools, Like just last summer, I
was in New York at a school getting trained in
more physical forensic science. And I've probably had at this
point about ten trainings, which means you're gone at this
place for four to five days and it's like eight

(14:10):
to five you're just learning how to do these different techniques,
getting the history, you get tested. You know, it's like
it's like a training that police officers take as well.
And from that, I've been able to just develop all
of these courses. So I'm really good at fingerprinting and
DNA profiling, extraction all that. That's where I learned how

(14:33):
to do bloodstained analysis toxicology. Now I'm looking at footprints
and tire treads and all kinds of stuff we don't
I'm building a class on that stuff right now, but
I don't know when we're going to offer it, so
I'll probably get more training this year, to be perfectly
honest with you, And I'm doing this also so that
if I leave or when I leave, I'll have all

(14:55):
this material to give to whoever decides to take over
this role from me. So it's like anything we see
on television. In the realm of forensic science. It doesn't
work like that at all. This is a boring, tedious,
extremely time consuming process, like every single field of forensics.

(15:17):
And like you know, I really love CSI and bones
and all that. I used to watch it a lot.
People don't have the roles that you see on TV.
There's and maybe in smaller parishes and counties you might
see someone who does a little bit of everything, and
cops and like crime scene investigators do have skill sets

(15:37):
where they can do a little bit of everything, but
they're not going to go back and do all of
the analysis at the lab. You know, this is a
huge team of people and it takes a really long
time to do these things. So that's what has been
probably the most beneficial thing, because my family had the
privilege of having a really high profile case, you know,

(15:58):
when we found Mickey had her DNA done and the
faces lab and baton rouge and everything within a few days,
and many of the families that I work with have
to wait months or years for things to come back,
and now I can kind of talk to them about
why that is. So it's just been invaluable to learn it,

(16:20):
and also amazing to teach students about these processes and
how to approach them ethically, and just like thinking about
the type of things that they consume and learn from
in the media. It's been great.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Your point about these kinds of jobs and this the
process it takes to get information from these types of
things not being anything like what you see in the media.
It's so true because to your point, you have one
person who does one thing, you have another person who
does one other thing. And it's the process you know,

(17:01):
that takes time and effort and care to make sure
that you're using what you have correctly without damaging it
or ruining, you know, ruining it, so you're end up
not getting what it is that you're looking for exactly.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
And you know, as an aside, some of the fields
are they pay well. Other positions don't pay well at all.
And like, for example, at least in New Orleans, the
crime scene investigators are on around the clock call, and
their salaries aren't that great. You know, they're not terrible,
but they're not great for being on round the clock call,

(17:43):
you know. So I don't think that people really recognize
how much work goes into it. And then like as
another example, the DNA unit at the State Crime Lab
in Baton Rouge, they have five different units within that
and so they have teams of different people that are
working on cases constantly doing different things with the DNA,

(18:07):
and so even on a rush job, you might be
able to turn around in about twenty four to forty
eight hours, you know, and that's if they prioritize that
over all the other cases that they're working on. And
another thing that I'd like to mention so that people
are aware. They don't know what cases they're working on.
And even like the CSIS because they let me do

(18:28):
a ride along at the crime lab and stuff here.
They I don't want to say they don't care, because
they some things really impact them. But they can't care
because if they got invested in everything that they were
recovering evidence from, they wouldn't be able to do the job.
So they detach from these things. They don't look into it.

(18:49):
It's just their job. It's just the job that they do.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
That's a really good point, and I think that's something
to keep in mind when you look at and investing.
Sometimes in the way that police are investigators are handling
it because like you said, they can't get too involved
or they it would probably you know, they'd probably drown.
Like if you're if you get so emotionally attached to

(19:14):
every every case, you wouldn't able to do it.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
And some of the police, like many of the police officers,
I know, there are certain cases that they do you know,
you can't help Like it's the same for me, and
I'm sure it's the same for you. There's certain things
that you just can't help but get impacted by But
of course if we allowed that to happen each time,
we wouldn't be able to do this job at all.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
No, not at all. And so having that information and
how it's helped you teach students, how does that also
translate to your advocacy work. Having that does it allow
you to give families a better understanding of what the
timeline is going to be for those things? What kind
of questions does it help you answer?

Speaker 3 (20:01):
The biggest thing I don't even know because I was
trying to explain this when I was speaking at the
Cold Case Symposium. To us, our family member is our
top priority. And of course, as soon as you call
the police and file that report, you think they're going

(20:22):
to start working on it immediately and use every resource
available to find my loved one because they're so important
to me. And when that doesn't happen, that cognitive dissonance
or that misunderstanding creates so much resentment and so much
anger in people. And we even experience this out, you know,

(20:44):
on top of all the things that we had going
in our favor, you know, And so when things start
to happen, it's so nice to be able to explain,
you know, expect this amount of time for this to happen.
Hopefully we get it back sooner, but it might take
this amount of time. And then you also meet families

(21:07):
that have had more cold cases where they have this
one thing that hasn't been done yet, and then you
can say, well, this is what they can do with it.
Let's find out how much it costs and figure out
how much money we need to raise so that the
police department can pay for it. You know, but you're
able to sort of put them at ease to a

(21:27):
certain extent because we know that if they've sent this
piece of evidence off for DNA analysis, that we should
get that information back within about let's say six weeks
to maybe two months. Now. The issue is when it
takes longer than that, it becomes really challenging to keep

(21:49):
the peace or like maintain a good relationship between the
family members and the law enforcement, because there's blame that
starts to happen, which is totally understandable. But I would
love to say that things happen in a certain timeline
that you would expect for all families, but of course
that's not the case, and times sometimes things don't happen

(22:10):
at all, and then when that happens, That's what I've
been experiencing more now that I've been working on more
long term or cool missing person cases. It's so frustrating
and all you can really do is just start politely,
persistently arguing with law enforcement and media about stuff until

(22:33):
it gets done.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
To add another question to that, have you found any
specific reason for why a certain test might take longer
sometimes than it's supposed to. Are you ever given an
explanation or any sort of reasoning or is it just
it got caught up?

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, it's money and resources because like, and I can
only use the example from my own experiences, but like
the DNA lab in Baton Rouge might be working on
fifteen to twenty cases a day, which is a lot,
you know, and so if we suddenly wanted them to

(23:19):
do let's say twenty one cases that day, it's just
that timeline. The other thing now because DNA and I
guess I'm using that as an example because it's such
a hot topic with the new SNIP testing. It's not
really new, but the new type of profiling that they're doing.
That's only independent forensic companies that are doing that, and

(23:39):
law enforcement often does not have the funds they should.
You know, we could talk about that, but they don't
have the funding that it costs to pay for that
testing to be done. And I find personally that law
enforcement has a hard time sometimes expressing those things to
a family. They won't give them the direct aim answer

(24:00):
of that. Instead they kind of I don't want to
say the word excuses, but they have all these other
excuses and stuff, and it's like, just tell them that
you can't afford it, because then if you give them
a number of cost, we'll raise the money. It might
take two years, but we'll do a go fundme, we'll
do crowdsourcing, we'll raise the money. The public does care

(24:21):
about solving cases obviously, you know, look at true crime,
and it's either a resource or a funding issue. And
then occasionally there are certain officers or people involved that
simply don't seem to care or don't want to work

(24:43):
with a certain family for whatever personal reason. And that's
where I don't understand. You know, it's a lot harder
to then keep things moving with that type of situation.
But I will say it's pretty uncommon that that occurs,
but it does happen. I have multiple cases I'm working

(25:04):
on right now with no law enforcement cooperation at all.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Have you have you ever gotten any reasoning or just
like from your own investigating figured out why it is
that those law enforcement officers might have an issue with
that family.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
So my primary disadvantage is that I advise family members,
and so all the information I have comes from them.
Very rarely have I spoken with a detective or officer
or a DA or anybody involved on behalf of a family.
And in fact, I just did something. I just sent
a scathing email to a mayor c seing the DA

(25:47):
in it, just earlier on Monday. But the family members
tell me that they believe that they have just one
way or another, pissed off the primary detective or officer
on the case, and under certain circumstances, I can see
why they have pissed them off because of the things

(26:10):
that they've put out publicly and stuff, and I'm like,
we need to walk this back and go and repair
this relationship, which usually does work to a certain degree,
but sometimes people just don't get along. And unfortunately, it
seems like certain officers or detectives or whatever, certain law
enforcement officials take it personally or what I actually think

(26:35):
is the issue, and I am making an assumption is
they really don't have anything else that they can do,
and they just simply don't know how to express that
to the family members.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
It's got to be hard from their perspective to be like, hey,
I'm out of options right now. That's not something I'm
sure anybody wants to say to a family that's looking
for answers. Yeah, And.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
You know, that's why the family's role is so important,
because our role or goal is to keep our loved
one out there because one person has a piece of
information that'll crack the case open. But I think it's
more of a communication issue, honestly, with law enforcement and
families or loved ones, and not just because they don't
care or they don't like the family. Like, I can't

(27:23):
imagine how hard it must be to be working on
a case and do everything you can and come up
with nothing and have these people depending on you and
then go like sometimes it happens with me, and then
go to them and say, I don't I have nothing
else that I can do. Sorry, you know, like it's
probably painful for them.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Have you ever been put in that situation as an
advocate working with families.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
So I had a family that reached out to me,
just a couple like two weeks ago, and they said
that their loved one's been missing for two years, I believe,
And it's in the same state I'm fighting with the
state right now, and the police have done nothing, the
media won't cover the case, all this kind of stuff.
But the family says that they refuse to work with

(28:08):
law enforcement, and I said, I understand where you're coming from,
but you have to work with law enforcement. You have
to work with police. And I know that some families
don't want to hear that, and I totally understand why.
But search and rescue is not going to look for someone.
Dog teams won't come in. Even media won't sometimes cover

(28:31):
a case if police aren't involved in it. And that's
just that's just a harsh reality. You know, you have
to have a relationship with law enforcement in these situations.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, you're right, I'm I've been talking to a family
who has an unsolved murder. I think I mentioned this
the last time you spoke know who did it, But
law enforcement has been very sketchy and not helpful for
a very long time. And they have a group of
volunteers that want to help him with the case, but

(29:05):
law enforcement is unwilling to cooperate with them at all.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
I'm hitting the same issue with two different families in
the same state, from this similar area. So when that
kind of thing happens, because this is the first time,
to be perfectly honest with you, where a group of
media and law enforcement absolutely refused to do anything, and
the families pushing, pushing, pushing, They've gotten a lot of traction.

(29:34):
Even Dateline NBC covered the case, and still the I
can't get a media person to even make a Facebook
post about this missing individual, and law enforcement did, I
will say, an amazing foot search looking for this missing
person in the area he disappeared from. I think two
or three days after he went missing. I think it

(29:54):
was two days, but it could have been three. But
they've never looked again. They won't bring in search and
rescue who were for free alongside with law enforcement. And
that's where I really this has never happened before. I
don't know what the problem is. I have no idea.
For six months now, I said, it's Darryl Johnson, Yeah, yes,
so yeah, I mean we've been the New Mexico State Police.

(30:18):
And I will say the foot search they did, because
the family sent me the map and everything, it was
really extensive. But it was just after he disappeared, and
it's like, why haven't we looked for him again or
allowed people to. Someone brought up the fact that it
could be tribal owned land, but I've met and I
don't know the people from the tribal areas there or

(30:40):
anything about this area, but people from other tribal communities
I've met are more than willing to allow you know,
other law enforcement agencies and when necessary, and or do
their own searching. So I just I have no idea
what's going on there. That's right, weren't missing in a

(31:00):
state park. I'm just I don't understand.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
And that's national land, right, I mean, it's I think
so even like the family can't organize like a foot search, No,
they have people that would go and law enforcement will
let them.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
They've said no. I mean that's what the family has
told me, and I believe them.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
So, so if if somebody, if a group like that,
does want to organize a foot search, law enforcement has
to approve it. They can't just go do it.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Well, yeah, I mean you you know, you can get arrested,
I believe. But also if you do a foot search
on your own and you trespass and get shot, well yeah,
or whatever, or you tamper with evidence on accident, it's
really bad. You know. People mean well, but they don't
always know what they're doing. And you also don't want

(31:57):
to know what evidence is because we don't really know
that case and we don't have any idea what the
police are already aware of. When we were doing foot
searches for Mickey, it was always after the police had
already looked through an area. Texas Equisearch would then go
and search, and then after they were like, okay, civilian
foot searchers, If you guys want to go outside of
what we did, go ahead. But the police were aware

(32:20):
that we were doing it, and if it was on
private property, the landowner had to give mission, right.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah. There's there's a guy who was a Texas State
student who's been missing for four years now and there
are private property owners around where he went missing that
refused to let them search their property. And I just
don't it doesn't make any sense to me, Like, what's

(32:47):
the harm in letting people search, what are you afraid of?

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Doesn't Yeah, I I haven't come across the situation like that,
but I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
It just makes you have like ten million other questions.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
And of course, like when we're looking for a deceased individual,
because of scavengers, they're not going to be around for
that long and the remains get scattered pretty quickly, so
you're only going to find you know, partial remains, And
like time really is of the utmost necessity with these situations,

(33:32):
and yeah, I don't know, some people just really need
their own privacy, or maybe they're doing things that they
don't want people to know about, you know, like who knows.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, that's just really sad because you're keeping the family
from getting answers. And in the area that he went missing,
there's tons of wild hogs and everything.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
So that's what a lot of people don't understand about
these situations with missing or cold case homicides, Like those
little what ifs in the back of your head, that
is what ruins your life. And until you know that
land has been searched or they've done this one thing,
you're gonna it's the only you like hyper focus on it.

(34:17):
It's like becomes your only mission, and even if it
yields nothing, like, as long as it's been done, you
can then go to sleep at night. But until it's done,
you're just you can't get over it.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Oh, which is completely understandable. And then that kind of
is a good lead into the next question is can
you share a little bit about your experience as a
person with a missing family member and what was helpful
and what wasn't.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
You know, Mickey's case was so unique in some ways
because well, like every other HEADH profile case, you see,
it was a real mystery, and the police, you know,
and FBI and everybody interviewed us pretty thoroughly, and pretty
quickly they realiz that this was not some twenty something

(35:04):
twenty one year old who just decided to like disappear
or ghost us for a little while, Like clearly something happened,
and so they took us seriously right from the get
go pretty much, which was a huge advantage that we
had because then getting them to allow search and rescue
and dog teams and helicopters and all these other things
to happen, it was so beneficial. But of course, like

(35:27):
one example that I can tell you because this was
like such a painful life lesson for me to learn.
When Mickey was missing. Someone I knew from middle school
or maybe high school, was at one of the headquarters
where we were having the public come and like learn
how to do foot searches and buy T shirts to what.

(35:48):
I don't know what we were doing at that point,
you know, it was maybe like a weekend. Someone I
went to maybe high school with, let's say, came with
her mom or grandma or aunt, I don't know, a
family member who is a medium, a psychic medium, saying
that Mickey was abducted in a case of mistaken identity

(36:09):
and was bound and gagged in an abandoned shack and
they gave me a precise location and that they had
left her there and that she didn't have much longer.
And I freaked out. And this is right after the
FBI had come in, So like our police, the FBI,

(36:31):
the US marshals were all in this room together having
a meeting about whatever. I don't know, and we weren't
supposed to go, you know, we weren't supposed to go
in there. I like, through the door open, I'm like,
Mickey's at a shack in this exact location we have
to go, and we sent a helicopter there that day.
Luckily we had community donations because in twenty twelve, to

(36:53):
get a helicopter was ten thousand dollars, So we paid
this person ten thousand dollars. Our lead detective went and
they searched this area and she was not there, and
of course in retrospect, of course she wasn't. You know,
but like those what is and those little ideas and
stuff torture you. They torture you and you'll basically do

(37:21):
anything at that point that of desperation when you hear
these things to try to find your loved one. So
I mean, how did you feel?

Speaker 1 (37:35):
How did you feel after the fact? Were you were
you mad? Was it frustration? Was it kind of like disbelief,
like how could this woman come in here and say this?

Speaker 3 (37:46):
And well it was so early on that I was
obviously really upset that we wasted time and resources, and
I mean I lost it, like I was not best
self in front of all of these people. But I'm
sure they understand. But I just stopped listening to And

(38:08):
there's like a bunch of blogs where psychics and mediums
and stuff will go and put information in like web
Sluice as an example, but there's other blogs too, and
I was still reading them, but I didn't believe anything
they said. And I remember actually like once we actually
found Mickey and her like her remains, I went back
and looked at what they were saying. None of them

(38:28):
were correct. We actually hired a very famous psychic and
we sent her some of Mickey's things to see if
she could find her because we were desperate and we
paid her a lot of money. She was wrong, so
you know, we quickly learned. Like, but I will say
one thing that I do want to put out there.

(38:48):
The police had like at least hourly detective and our
police group did follow up on all of the predictions
or likelairvoyant things, because they said, sometimes people will pretend
that they have psychic abilities or that they are mediums,
but they actually just have information and they don't want

(39:10):
to be involved. So they've followed up on every single
lead that they got, whether it was from like someone
who is clairvoyant or not.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
I never thought about that, but that's true, Like I
know something, but I don't want to admit that I
know it because of X my reason or whatever. So
I'm just going to say it's this.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, So no hate to the clairvoyants out there, but
I do tell family members to proceed with caution and
to beware of them because they do sometimes take advantage
of vulnerable people and they can be very expensive.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Obviously, that was something not helpful and the investigation. What
was helpful as a person with the missing loved one?
What was helpful to you during that time? Where there
are people or groups or certain actions that police took
that was comforting or beneficial in that time.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
So again, like we were so lucky. We had leads
taking care of different groups of people that were showing
up to help us look for Mickey every day. And like,
for example, when people would come into the different headquarters,
there was a group of ladies that would greet them
and take their name and make sure that people that

(40:34):
were doing civilian foot searches were getting power aid and
medical care, EMTs and stuff. Would come and take care
of people that were getting stung by bees and heat
exhaustion and stuff. The community was donating lots of food
and money to beverages to like these individuals as well.
Then we had a search and rescue team who was
helping train civilian foot searchers when Texas Equisearch was going

(40:58):
and coming and stuff like that. And they were all
ex military or active military. And then we had a
social media team which was mostly like a few of
my friends and a lot of Mickey's friends who are
my friends of course now, but they were doing all
of the online stuff. They actually banned me from getting
on Facebook after a while because it was driving me insane.

(41:19):
And then on top of that, the police were highly communicative. Now,
obviously they weren't telling us anything that was going on,
but they pretended like they were at least and then
maybe they did. They were pretending that they were falling off.
But every single thing that we would tell them about
and they would communicate about it, remember that we asked

(41:39):
about it, and then give me some feedback. And it
wasn't just the lead detective, it was other officers, the
public information officer, and they were telling us when they
were going to be speaking to the media and what
they were going to be telling the media. And they
would advise us when they found certain information that they
knew would get leaked to the media, what to prepare

(42:01):
for and what we should say about it. To like
best protect Mickey's safety and our safety. So, like they
were just amazing. We couldn't have had a better group
of law enforcement officials.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Why do you think it is that.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
They had no choice? It was very high profile and
all the attention, all the attention was not But also
I do think you know, Lafayette, South Louisiana, we had
like I just made a TikTok about this because of
the Bourbon terrorist attack. But like, yeah, we fight and
we have different politics and religions and all this stuff,

(42:38):
but when stuff goes down, we always support each other.
We always come out and help each other. And you know,
they cared about us. They cared about Mickey, so they
wanted to find her and figure out what happened.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Was she found because of a lead or was it
just searches that have been done then they finally found her.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
So it was crazy because like Mickey's case was so
high profile that the police had to establish a tip
line just for her case. And then of course people
were sending and maybe my parents were getting a bunch
of dms and stuff. I don't know. At the time,
Facebook was the major player. Twitter and Instagram existed, but

(43:21):
it wasn't really like Facebook was for missing persons, and
a lot of the tips that the police got were
actually coming to my DMS on Facebook, and I was like,
send this to the police, send this to the police,
and it was like I was getting thousands of stuff
every like things every day. But the things that actually
like brought the police to figure out who Brandon Laverne was.

(43:43):
And what happened was he left his license at a
car dealership buying the exact same type of truck that
they were looking for. And the woman actually DM me
and she goes, this really shady guy covered in wounds
just came in and he left his life license and
she sent me a picture of his license. But of
course that was like the fifth person that's someone had

(44:05):
name that Dana. I was like, please immediately give this
to the police, you know, make sure you call the
tip line. Please don't tell anyone else about it, the
same like thing you tell to every single person. And
then they found the burned out truck in Houston. It
had taken a little bit for them to figure it out,
but once they saw the license, they realized that that
was the truck. And then the because of the physical

(44:29):
altercation that Mickey and Brandon got into. She had stabbed
him in the hand to the point where he couldn't
use it. He needed like a pretty big surgery on it.
So he came out to New Orleans and the nurse
thought it was pretty shady. She's like, what happened. He goes, Oh,
someone tried to rob me at a gas station and
he got me with the knife. But he was like,
Mickey really messed him up, you know. And so she

(44:52):
called the police here and they called the Lafayette police
about this person as well. And then the fourth thing
is his Brandon's fiance at the time. I think she
was his fiance, his girlfriend at least her dad was
in a blog called Tiger Droppings, which is a big
blog for LSU, saying that he knows that Brandon Laverne

(45:14):
killed Mickey because apparently Brandon was talking to him about
how bad human blood smelled or something and needed to
clean his truck. And of course at the time, all
these different things, it's like, Okay, yeah, everyone has all
this stuff. But apparently the police had kind of targeted
him as a main suspect on like week one or

(45:37):
two because they had the CCTV footage of his truck
and his license plate, but they couldn't, like because of
where it happened in a neighborhood, there was no cameras,
but they did see his truck following her from the
main road, so it was like five big pieces of
evidence that was like, we know that you did, like
you intervened with Mickey Schuenick's life, so you know where

(46:00):
is she? And he was trying to play domb blah
blah blah. They're like, we literally don't need a body.
We know that you murdered her, so like, why don't
you just like tell us where where she is or
you'll get the death penalty, And so he took the
plea deal and showed them where she was.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Well, I'm glad. I'm glad for that at least because
there are some pieces of garbage out there that wouldn't
even well.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
And then the other benefit is that he also admitted
to the murder of Lisa Pate, so her family had
been waiting on that for just years. So it was
really nice to be able to get conclusions for both
of those cases. And I will be honest, when we
first found Mickey, I was just so mad because I

(46:46):
was like, I would have rather she's just still missing
and I didn't know that she was dead. But now
that lasted for like, honestly about three months, and then
I realized how lucky we were to have found her.
Because she was still missing, I would not be here.
I would still be looking for her, and.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
You would be, you know, dealing with the ambiguous loss
of not knowing what happened. I understand why you felt
that way, though.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
Oh I was pissed, of course. And then of course
the media circus with all of it. As soon as
that information got released, all they wanted was for us
to say something because we had been so compliant with
speaking with them, and I was just like, can you
guys just give us twenty four hours to alert the
friends and family members before you start like using this

(47:34):
to profit off of, you know, like go away. I
understand where they were coming from too.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
I mean, they're trying to do their jobs at the
same time, show a little empathy for this family who
just got the worst news they could ever receive, and
give them some time to process that before you're asking
them to say something to you. If with the motivation
to begin advocating for other families. Were there specific aspects
about me Key's case that inspired you to do that?

Speaker 3 (48:03):
What I think? And like, me and my therapist talk
about this a lot. I think because I'm a scientist
and I had gained all of this knowledge about how
these things work. Although it was a big I don't
know if the word I'm looking for is ignorant, because
I assumed all cases would work the same way Mickey's did.

(48:25):
But getting all these resources and connections and learning how
to sort of work the game that is, like the
media and working with law enforcement and the public and stuff,
I had gained so much insight and knowledge that it
was just natural to be like, oh, how do I
take this and like make it more rigorous and tell

(48:46):
people how to take the same steps. And so you know,
if people hadn't started asking me how I did stuff,
would I have done this? Probably not? Because I'm like
one of my best friends has Missed Australia, the Missed
Foundation in Australia. So she had just started her website

(49:08):
and I like helped her write a very very small
portion of one part of it, and I was like, well,
Lauren has an organization. There's all these other great organizations
that exist in the United States, mostly for children, but
still or search and rescue. But then a lot of
people started asking me for help, and I just started
helping them. But then I was like, well, I'm in
graduate school, and like, do I even really know what

(49:31):
I'm talking about?

Speaker 1 (49:32):
You know?

Speaker 3 (49:34):
So then I sort of realized that I needed to
really start a business and make it more rigorous, and
get some people on a team, and really start figuring
out how this world works for all cases, not just
high profile ones.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Okay, So it wasn't like you experienced this and it
kind of inspired you to advocate and help others. It
was more other people were experiencing things and coming to
you for advice on how to help, and you were like, oh, okay,
I actually can help because I have experienced Maybe I
should take that and use it to help other people.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah, And like I learned, I'm an excellent resource, you know.
Like it's just and I did start working on a
case while Mickey was still missing. It was a young
lady who went missing in Lafayette Parish about a month
before Mickey, and she is still missing. Her name's Kyosha Felix.
She is a black woman who was believed to be

(50:33):
domesticly trafficked. And one of the things that happened with
her case is something you see time and time again.
My sister's case came in very high profile missing white
woman syndrome took over with the media. Kyosha kind of
vanished from the public eye, and her family wasn't as

(50:54):
willing to communicate with police and media, and so it
really just took a dive and someone from her campaign
reach out to me. So I started sharing her information
because I hadn't even heard of it. I had never
paid attention to missing people before Mickey went missing, of
course not yeah, and so you know, I was helping
them a little bit. I didn't really know what I
was doing. I figured, we have this big platform. Of

(51:15):
course people are going to care, and they do, but
it's not the same. And then like more and more,
people just kept saying, how'd you do this, how'd you
contact these people? How did search and rescue come in
any how'd you raise funds? Whatever? And so I just
started working with families, not really realizing what was going

(51:36):
to be happening later in my life.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
How did you like, what were your thoughts at that time?
Because obviously you're still trying to process your own loss
while helping other people. Did that help you in your grief?
Was it kind of a distraction or was it a
way to kind of take that grief in that loss

(52:00):
and turn it into something beneficial.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
It's a complicated thing to answer because Mickey was missing,
like Mickey was missing and murdered and everything in between
my first and second year of my master's degree. So
like literally I think the day that the final trial
was that like sentenced Brandon, I believe was my first
day of my second year of graduate school and I

(52:27):
just went back to school. My parents were like you
should and I was like, I guess I may as
well get a degree because I'm gonna have to pay
bills eventually. I didn't want to. And if I'm honest,
I don't remember anything from that whole last year. I
mean I do, you know, but not a lot because
I had the trauma was just but luckily, like and
I wish Laurena O'Keefe was here. I met this girl,
Lauren O'Keeffe. Her brother was missing at the time, Daniel Dan,

(52:52):
and his case was very high profile in Australia because
of her efforts and so I had someone just like me,
and having someone I could identify with, I think is
one of the only reasons I was able to sort
of move on a little bit. But I don't think
I processed what happened. And for like a couple years,

(53:16):
I didn't go like I was grieving, but I didn't
really understand like all the other things that had happened.
For several years, even like when we were doing Dayline NBC,
I was still in Dallas. They interviewed me there, and
I'm not understanding the fact that like millions and millions
of people around the world have been you know what

(53:38):
I mean. Like, even still, I think I'm processing that.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
So it's such a it's such a surreal idea to
wrap your head around that this very personal thing happened
to you and millions of people know about it, because
it's like, this is my life and all of these
other people know about it, And it almost feels a
little safer not thinking about that. I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
Well, and Mickey and I look so similar at the time,
you know, I'm so happy to not be platinum blond anymore,
because like I was being recognized everywhere, and because this
impacted people so personally, and I don't still really know
exactly what it is about Mickey specifically that people identify
with so much, but they do. People would just come

(54:31):
up and talk to me openly about it, and you know,
maybe it would be a day where I finally just
didn't wake up in a greef cycle. I'd be like,
I have to you know, which that still happens, so
you know, now I'm still just trying to accept the
fact that this whole thing is going to be a
part of my life forever. But uh, it was really tough.

(54:53):
But I had such a great support system and even
in Dallas, some people that I had just barely gotten
a know before this all happened, we're like comeing and
taking care of me, and you know, just people are
so kind, and my teachers were really my professors were
so good, nice to me.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Good, They're like, you're going through it, It's fine.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
I don't know if I should have maybe made a's
my last year of graduate school, but like in gradate school,
you make a's or you basically b's like an f
you know, So like I just it was a crazy time.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Oh are you still friends with any of those people
from that time?

Speaker 3 (55:33):
Oh yeah, pretty much all of them. And I met
some really lovely people from the internet. Like one of
my best friends lives in Ohio. Her name's Bailey, and
I was in her and her husband's wedding and it
was the second time we'd ever met in person. Oh,
I was like sleeping in a tent with all their
friends that are like, how do y'all know each other?
I was like I was on the internet. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
It's good when you can take a step back and
see the the positive or like the good and humanity
when you're going through something like that, because so many
people are just vultures and they just want and want
and want. But then there are people that just care
and they're like, you know, I'm here, I don't need

(56:14):
anything from you, but if you need something, and that's
that's what you need more than anything when you're going
through something like that.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
And like one of my grad school friends, she just
texted me the other day because I I am a
big gardener and she has an orchid that bloomed and
she's like, and I was like, oh my god, I'm thinking,
where would I be without some of these people that
just kind of picked me up. Off the ground, you know,
like so, and it's really hard to be that vulnerable

(56:42):
and to allow people to take care of you. It is,
and then the guilt that you have after because you
can never repay people for the things that they did
for you. I can never repay these people, and I
don't think they I try to express it to them
when it comes up, like how much they like helped me,
but they'll never understand.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
No, they won't. But you know that they don't want
anything in return for that. I know. It's not like
you know, it's not like they did it for their
own benefit.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
And of course when they have things or they have
gofundmes or whatever, I try to donate, but it's like,
this is the least I can. But it's you know,
and I can never repay the public, or my community
or anybody for how many things they've done for my family.
So maybe that's another reason I started doing this as well.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
It could be it's just giving back, you know, which
is wonderful. I have so much respect for the people
that can come out on the other side of that
and want to continue to give to others and help
others because it would be so easy to just sink

(57:55):
in on yourself. It takes so much more strength to
come out out of something like that and still like
want to give and care and have so much empathy
for other people.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
And don't get me wrong, because I have two friends
that are huge advocates that we all three have lived experience.
You know, we are crazy people. We are just not
normal people. And I don't know exactly what it is,
but all three of us have something in common, but

(58:30):
I can't pinpoint exactly what it is. We're all very
type A. We all will just rather do it than
have other like wait on other people to do it.
But like, there's something that's in the pit of your
like core existence that allows you to just do it
because and I can totally understand why some people can't.
And I don't think that a lot of people should

(58:52):
be doing this because you take on a lot of
trauma and if you can't handle it, it will ruin you,
you know. But I'm glad that there's a handful of
us that are like have whatever it is that's inside
of us that can do it because it's so valuable
for the community. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Absolutely, Can you explain how Resource Association for Missing people
helps families.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
So yeah, so Resource Association for Missing People, long name,
but we also go by ARI. Missing People are RAMP
and I think a family that I've been supporting, Darryl
Johnson's family said it best, like we basically advise family members.
The thing about this is that, like, if I'm gonna

(59:40):
support I couldn't even tell you how many cases I'm
working on right now, dozens. If I'm going to support
dozens and dozens of cases, what I can't do is
be there every day. But of course we can communicate
every day. They text me and call me often and
email me and send me DMS and stuff. But like
we advise family members based on the circumstances in which

(01:00:02):
they believe their loved one went missing. We help them
get social media's running, We help them write press releases,
we help them get media attention. If they need to
do fundraising, we teach them how to do that. I
talk to them about what they should or should not
be saying on the media and the public to basically
avoid being sued, to avoid creating drama within their own

(01:00:23):
families or with law enforcement. We repair relationships with the community,
the media and law enforcement for them. We help them
connect with search and rescue dog teams. I mean, anything
you can think of. It just really depends on the situation,
and we try to make sure that they're doing what's
best for the missing person, because sometimes we want to

(01:00:46):
do things, and I'm saying this as someone who lived
this for we want to do what might be best
for us, but that might not always be what's best
for the loved one who's missing. So we just act
as an advisory board or we apply them with resources
for their case.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
That's an interesting point. Can you give me an example
of something that might be good for you as a
family member, but not necessarily for the missing person.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Like openly talking crap about you know, a reporter or
an officer or something like that. It's just like I
did that actually because this one media station was kept
threatening to assume me for libel, and so I just
called them out publicly. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have,
but I still we still don't get along with me

(01:01:34):
in that group, you know. So like that made me
feel better for a second. But of course, if Micky
had still been living and all this stuff was happening,
it did like the community started paying attention to that
drama instead of thinking about Mickey and so, like, you
just sometimes have to put your ego aside and say,
I am a pillar of peace and I'm only going

(01:01:59):
to do it's best for my missing loved one. And
so another thing that we do for these families is
we let them vent to us. We let them tell
us every conspiracy theory, every little thing that they have
those ideas about, and just talk through it with them
and say, well, why don't we do this and see,
you know what we find out about it. So and
of course I have techie girls on my board and

(01:02:20):
stuff that can uncover lots of information on the Internet.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
That's awesome. So how does Shunik Missing Persons differ from RAMP?

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
I really made Shunik Missing Person so that I can
start teaching family members further away about like just how
to do missing person campaigns. So I started making YouTube
videos and then I started making tiktoks and all this stuff.
And I didn't want the nonprofit to get sued in
the event that I misspoke or you know whatever. And

(01:02:52):
then I did I'm not going to lie. In the
back of my head, I said, if I get enough traction,
I'm going to start talking about true crime and the
impact it's out on my life, and just the media
in general, and the way that they treat survivors, co victims,
living victims, whatever you want to call us, and even
the deceased victims of violent crime. And I did get
enough traction, so I started talking about that and that

(01:03:15):
I figured that eventually I might get sued for libel
or slander. So shooting missing persons is a different LLC.
It's not a nonprofit. It's just a business. And one
day I will be doing consulting work with law enforcement.
I have consulting law enforcement. They haven't paid me yet,
but they will pay me one day, I'm putting, I'm
manifesting that. So it's a consulting business and an educational

(01:03:39):
business where I basically am teaching and also just trying
to get people to hire me, you know, to be
an expert or consult on cases or situations that they're
working on. So one is a resource completely for family
members for free. The other one, I mean, I'll do
it for free because it's a public service, but eventually,

(01:04:01):
hopefully is like an actual business that will be running itself.
But not yet.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Do you ever see yourself using that platform to educate
other people in the true crime space on how to
maybe talk with family members or handle cases like that.
For those that want to advocate.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
Work with me, I would love that. I personally believe
that the true crime entities that I have the most
issue with would just never have that conversation with me publicly.
Even when I've emailed them to request that they take
down material they've made about my life or Mickey or anything.

(01:04:45):
It's either met with silence or like an okay, or
they clap back at me and tell me off. So
you know, there's like that hard line. There's ethical true
crime and there's unethical true crime. The unethical side does
not care, and I don't think they want to have
those conversations until we have to force their hand for it.

(01:05:07):
They make a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
Do you have you had any thoughts on how their
hands can be forced to face that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Law or a huge public outrage and outcry.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Which is going to be hard to accomplish when it's
so popular.

Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
I will say, since kind of going like semi viral
on TikTok with some of my discussions on this, so
many people I get really three things. So many people
have said, I had no idea that y'a weren't involved
in the making of this. Why wouldn't they ask you
guys or talk to you all about this case time
and money probably, or they just literally don't care or

(01:05:50):
even probably think about us at all. And then the
other two things people say is they do the same
thing to me, or they say, wow, I wish that
they would do this for me. I can't believe you're complaining.
My question is, if there's so many people out there
that want this type of attention, why aren't they using
their time and resources on those cases?

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
Because they're not high profile enough.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
My sister's case makes people lots of money, you know.
That's why they tell it over and over and over again.
They know it's going to get clicks and likes, they
know it's going to get engagement. They put it behind
pay walls and stuff. It's because they want to make
money off of for murder and they're not thinking about
it that way, But why else would they do it?

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
As somebody on this side of it who makes content
and knows people who make content, and I'm not this
is just a side note. Other're thinking about it that
way for sure. It's like, this is high profile, and
we know it's going to get the downloads, which means
more ad money, you know, so or people signing up

(01:06:58):
for Patreon or whatever so they can hear it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
It's just think about how much more money they could
make if they actually interviewed us and got some stuff
that wasn't ever released to the media. You know, there's
lots of stuff that the public has no idea about
what I tell to them. I don't know, maybe if
they were kind, but yeah, all they're doing is regurgitating

(01:07:24):
articles that are and shows that have already been created.
So I just really don't see the benefit to covering
close cases. I mean, except they're just they are just
making money.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
Absolutely, And that leads me to the next thing. Can
you share more about your personal experience with true crime
media and content creators.

Speaker 3 (01:07:46):
The last thing I would have thought twelve years ago
is that I would still have people hounding us and
doing this type of thing. With Mickey's case, it's like
numerous times a year, so like probably every other month
still someone's making something and then some individual that's heard

(01:08:08):
or watched or seen whatever this thing is will come
and contact me to give me their you know, condolences
and stuff, not realizing and sometimes they realize it's been
a long time and they're being kind. But that's how
I find out about these things that have been created.
And it's like, do you know what it's like to
just have a good week or a good day and

(01:08:31):
then to open up your email or your social medias
and have people talking about the fact that some other
group has made this hour long story about your life
without even talking to you about it, and then you
learn that they're making like hundreds of thousands of dollars
millions of dollars a year with this entity. So that's
I call it murder for profit because they're they're profiting

(01:08:53):
off of murder without permission. It's a gross invasion of privacy,
not to mention, and it re victimizes and re traumatizes
not just me and my family, but all of my
friends and Mickey's friends as well. They were there with
us through the whole thing, and all of the volunteers
and my entire community. They do this to us over
and over and over again. And it's like, if your

(01:09:16):
true crime podcast wants to cover Mickey's story, how many
others do you think have already covered it. If you
just google her name, you'll find thousands of podcast YouTube's,
TV shows, whatever. And if we're not speaking in it,
we weren't involved. And it's just I did not know
that this existed. I don't think it existed in this
way until twenty sixteen ish. But it's been a nightmare.

(01:09:39):
I mean, I can't go two or three months without
having to have some type of negative conflict with some
group that decides to use Mickey's story for their advantage
and personal gain.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Do you ever listen to any of that? Nope, I
don't believe you.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
I know it happened.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
Yeah, I lived it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
I know, And one of my friends do consume true crime,
although I do think I've changed their perspective on who
they get their information from. But like, one of my
friends was a big supporter of this group that I
got into a fight with around March of this last year,
and she's the person that told me, and she said
she listened to the episode and it was really nice,

(01:10:20):
but she was shocked that they did it. And that's
the nail in the coffin for her where she realized
these people don't give a shit about the family members
or friends of these victims, and she was shocked and
she was crying because she knew I was going to
be infuriated, and I was, and I immediately went after them.
But it's just like, I have no way to stop this.

(01:10:45):
I just talked with a lawyer on Monday, hoping that
he would be able to help me figure out how
to get posthumous pr rights for victims. And you can't
copyright people's names. And I was even looking into the
Parkland thing. Could I take LaVerne's name? And basically the
answer is no. And so that means for the rest
of my life, I'm going to have to put up

(01:11:05):
with and accept the fact that people are going to
keep making content about Mickey and me can't tell her
story without me and my family and her friends and
my friends and my community and all the law enforcement
officials everyone I know. But also then I'm gonna have
to go and get into conflict with them, because every
time I learn about it, I ask them to take

(01:11:26):
it down, even these little like thirteen year old TikTokers
making content. I asked them to remove the video. I
know that sounds ridiculous, but take that stuff down. What
are you doing? And like the women who do their
makeup while they're telling these crime stories, like are I
don't I don't understand.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
No, you have every right to be frustrated, and you
have every right to ask them to take it down
because it's your sister and it's your life, and like
you said, they can't tell her story without talking about you,
and you should be able to say hey, like, I
don't want you talking about me without my knowledge or
say so or approval.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
And the public seems to think that we get some
type of financial kickback or like my nonprofit does or something.
The only money I've ever been paid by any group
was five hundred dollars which was a donation to my
nonprofit from a UK media group because I said, I'm
not going to do this interview unless you donate to
my nonprofit and that's the last interview I did. And

(01:12:34):
like about Mickey's story.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
How long ago was that?

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
Oh? God, probably twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen. Okay, it
was a long time ago.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
I don't blame you, like you said, it's been talked
about forever. Is what else is there to say about it?

Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
Concentrate on some other victims, man, like they need the support.
I just I'll never well, I mean, I do understand,
because they're making money off of it, but you can
make money off of cases that are still open, and
you can help so many people you know, like you understand,
of course, but some of these other groups are literally

(01:13:11):
just parasitic entities that are there to make money. And
people think that by consuming this content that they're helping
us somehow, and I hate to break it to the public,
y'all aren't helping us. This does not help me heal,
It doesn't help Mickey's legacy, It doesn't help my family
feel better. It makes us feel worse.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
It's abusive, and speaking of that, have you ever because
obviously for obvious reasons, you don't listen to it, have
you ever heard from other people any of these podcasts
or media outlets say anything negative about you or your
family members that have put you in negative light, about

(01:13:54):
things that aren't true or just aren't relevant, or you know,
dug up other things about your family just to put
it out there.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
To be fair, with my family, there's not a lot
to dig up, just because, like you know, my parents
are like my dad's from the Midwest, and my mom's
just like a very calm, chill person. But like, of
course they've said things that aren't real or true. So
when you're going through a high profile case, because the

(01:14:26):
internet existed as it does now, then you hear it all.
Then I heard every terrible, awful negative thing that anyone
could say about me or my family or my sister.
And so now when people are saying stuff, I mean,
I don't it doesn't bother me. I really don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
And we'll leave the we'll leave the podcast names out.
But you talk before about the big one you went after.
I don't know that I would have the nerve to
do that, but like when you've been dealing with it
for as long as you have, you're I'm like, okay, man.
So that brings me to the presentation that you did
at the Cold Case Symposium. You talked about how the

(01:15:06):
focus should be on families still searching for answers and
not salvet cases. Can you share more about your thoughts
on that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
The thing about solved cases is all the information that's
available to the public is it exists, and some families
do still want their solved cases out there. But those
are families who are quite literally dming and emailing these
groups asking if they'll cover their loved ones case, and

(01:15:33):
many of the families that I have met who have
been covered in the same way Mickey has been, we
just desperately want them to stop covering it. Every single
time they decide to cover Mickey's case or another high
profile case, they're choosing not to cover a case that
actually needs that support. Because the purpose of true crime
and the purpose of advocacy and what we're doing is

(01:15:56):
to shine a light on cases that need attention, and
my sister's case doesn't need any attention. We solved it.
We have so many things in her honor, there's nothing
else to get out of it. And then there's cases
where they just want one minute of attention, they're desperate
for it, and they can't get anyone to even do

(01:16:18):
a Facebook post about it. So it's like, why are
we continue outside? I know why again, it's because of money,
But what is the purpose in telling Mickey's story over
and over again? What is it gaining or bringing to
anyone's life. It's like, when I was in this heated
debate with this one podcast, a bunch of people were saying, well,

(01:16:40):
I never heard of Mickey's case until their story came out,
I said, okay, what did that do for your life?
My life or Mickey's nothing? Because it's a solved case,
we already know what happened. We don't need and people
will also pass this office saying, well, you know, this
is how we learn how to protect ourselves and no
offense to them. But what woman doesn't know that if

(01:17:03):
you're out late at night on a bicycle or doing whatever,
that we're at risk for harm. Everybody knows that. You know,
there was nothing unique that we learned from Mickey's case.
I think detectives and law enforcement officials could because our
police were so great. But like, the public is gaining
nothing from continue to hear this story, you know, and

(01:17:27):
then we have these families that they're fighting through.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
There.

Speaker 3 (01:17:34):
You know, any hurdle you can think of, anything that
can block attention or support is what they're facing at
every single turn. And people don't consider this to be
newsworthy or story worthy. And a lot of people don't
want to tell cases that are still open and unsolved
because there's not a conclusion. You don't know who is

(01:17:56):
in your audience that is familiar with this situation, and
it's a great disservice to our community in general and
our nation when they choose not to tell those stories.
If these groups really want to help people, then they
would only tell unsolved stories and the stories of families
that are asking them for help.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Yeah, and that makes me think of another question is sometimes,
I mean, you can you can get in contact with
families in a lot of situations. Sometimes you can't. How
do you feel about an unsolved case being shared when
the family hasn't been contacted.

Speaker 3 (01:18:36):
There's always exceptions, you know, it's like is the family
because someone brought up this point, they're like, well, what
if the families involved? If the family might be involved,
how do you know that for sure? You know where
are we getting this evidence from? It's not hearsay, like
you need the evidence if you think that the family
might be involved in someone's disappearance. That's a situation. There's

(01:18:58):
like a case right now, is it Seth Rogers?

Speaker 1 (01:19:03):
Oh, Sebastian Rogers.

Speaker 3 (01:19:04):
Sebastian Rogers, thank you? Where maybe like that's still news
though that's part of the news cycle. The media is
still covering his case. That's a different situation. Usually, if
you can't get in touch with a family member it's
because they don't want to communicate with you, you know,
even sometimes like I actually stopped reaching out to family

(01:19:25):
members when they have a missing loved one because I
can't even get their attention because they're getting flooded with
messages and emails and stuff. So I have to find
someone who knows them and have them connect us, because
otherwise it's impossible. So if you're not hearing from family members,
it's either because they are flooded with stuff or because
they don't want to be involved or talk about it.

(01:19:48):
And if family members aren't responding onto the next one.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
You know absolutely, So in your opinion, do you think
the best the best course of action is to only
cover a case if the family A responds and says, yes,
I want to be interviewed or involved, or B responds
and says, yeah, you can tell the story if you

(01:20:15):
use this content, you.

Speaker 3 (01:20:18):
Know, yeah, within reason. And you know, y'all are also
a media source. And so sometimes if the family gives
you parameters, but there's something you really want to include,
you might have to have that hard conversation with them.
But like that's where you're getting a real story from,

(01:20:39):
because otherwise you're just going to keep telling the same
things and spects and details over and over again, and
what does that really do? You know, you may have
an audience that maybe certain media entities aren't reaching, but
it's like we need to broaden that perspective a little bit,
because most of the families I work with have a

(01:21:00):
lot of information that the public doesn't have, and they
are more than willing to share it, you know, and
the stuff that they know is safe to share. So
the hard line is permission. And what I will say
I think that could also be ethical is if the
law enforcement officials working on the case also want to

(01:21:20):
talk about it. I always say, like, if our detectives
want to go and do a story, that's their prerogative.
They were as involved in this case as we were,
you know. But if there's not permission from someone that
was intimately involved in this situation, then the story should
not be told. Yeah, if it's a cold case where
all the family members are deceased from a long time ago,

(01:21:42):
maybe that's different, especially if remains are recovered or something.
But otherwise, all that we're doing is abusing people.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
Especially if all you're doing is just speculating, right. I
think there's also a difference between fact finding and saying
these are the facts of the case, this is who
this victim is, this is what happened to them, and
this is the information we're looking for, versus sitting there
and speculating on who this person was. What were they
doing in their personal time, Like the victim blaming and

(01:22:14):
the speculating and the sitting there talking about the what
if and what could be? Is I think where it
becomes a problem, right because you don't know. You weren't there,
you're not a detective, you're not a private investigator that's
involved in the case. You don't know all the details.
And by sitting there just you know, speculating and extrapolating

(01:22:40):
this content, you're just putting information out there that's not
right or true, and you're adding to the problem.

Speaker 3 (01:22:49):
And many of the higher profile true crime creators do
that and then unfortunately their audience believes them and then
they start spreading misinformation and of course, based on like
the higher profile cases you see, they expect that the
police will jump at this and like look into it
and do all this stuff, and all they're really doing

(01:23:10):
is creating this and misinformation and also bogging down the
law enforcement agencies with more information that's not related to
the case. The thing that people need to keep in
mind is that the information you have is the stuff
that was safe to release to the public. And because
most of these cases are still open or ongoing, we
don't have even fifty percent of the information because we're

(01:23:33):
not supposed to. We're not investigating this case. It's not
our role in crime. We are public And I think
people are starting to misconstrue the fact that we do
have a right to information. But it's because of our
safety or like being able to know that our community
is safe, or that the police are taking this seriously.

(01:23:54):
Outside of that, we don't have a right to information
about any victim or any case period. And then you
see people go and share crime scene photos and all
of these files that get released to the public and stuff.
How much more disrespectful and disgusting can you be? I

(01:24:16):
will never understand what. And then it's like after the
terrorist attack, people are sharing all the video of the
victims on the street. It's like their loved ones, their
loved ones are going to see it, and they're also
going to see every single comment underneath that video, and
they're like, we need to we're too desensitized to this.
People need to see it so we know what's going on. No, no,

(01:24:38):
we don't. There's no need for the public to be
privy to that. I don't understand why legally they can
even have access to these images and videos and stuff.
I don't think they realize the harm that they're causing
to these cases, not just the families, the actual criminal case.

(01:24:59):
It's like when we look at the case with Gabby
Batito or the Idaho four or even Mickey's case. We
almost had to move it out of my own parish
because of the you know, high profileness of it and
how invested people were. But like, they're harming these victims
that have already been victimized, victimized and just because they're

(01:25:20):
making stuff up, and they're really hurting the criminal investigation
because they get so involved. And it's like, I don't
know what needs to happen. I don't know what the
answer is, but there has to be something, because it's
getting to a point where they're starting to have direct

(01:25:40):
impact on the way that the criminal justice system pursues cases.
Absolutely no, and it spurs things that are not sensical.
But we start to believe that they might be, and
you know, you dedicate all this time and resources to
those what ifs, and it has no weight at all,
but it drives you crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
Yeah, of course. And at the end of the day,
you're harming the victim or the missing person and the family,
and so you're not causing any good. You're not helping anybody.
You're just hurting the people that are actually involved in
the case and then spreading disinformation to the millions of
people that are listening to say these things. And this

(01:26:23):
is just like exacerbates the problem.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
I mean, I learned a long time ago not to
make any assumptions I do. You know, I kind of
usually fall in line with what family members believe. But
most missing people are found safe, and when they're doomsday
and stuff, it's like, well, we're probably going to find
them safe. And if we don't, you know, let's just
do what we're supposed to do and see what comes out.

(01:26:47):
And don't expect to hear a lot of information from
the police. Let's play our role and let them do
their role and get make sure that they get evidence
and information. Outside of that, you know, speculation and assumption
are fiction.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
So to your point, how what is the percentage of
the cases you would say that you're involved in where
the person is found.

Speaker 3 (01:27:14):
Oh, I mean, so one of my goals for this
year is to start keeping track of each case that
I get, you know, if I just had to do
a rough estimation like ninety seven percent or something, or
found safe. It's like the cases where people aren't found safe,
they conclude usually within a timeframe of about six months,

(01:27:36):
and then once we're past that three month mark, honestly,
like it gets a lot more challenging. But you know,
the cases I've been on for a couple of years
or months now or whatever, it's because something bad happened
to them, and that makes it unusual. So you know, yeah,
most missing people are found safe, even sometimes months later.
But even if they're not safe, we usually do find them.

(01:28:00):
I had a couple of years ago, I randomly got
two cases back to back where one girl and one man,
like their moms, were missing, and they had been missing
for a while. Both of these women were found deceeased
in their vehicles and they had been in these different
parking lots for months, just deceased and decomposing, and no

(01:28:20):
one noticed. You know, So like it's really sad that
that happened. And one was missing for about three months,
the other about six, but like we did locate them.
So it's very uncommon to have a case where the
person is missing and whether they are alive or dead,
that you don't find them at all, which is why

(01:28:41):
that does make news or is more I guess interesting
to people.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting because see, as an outsider I had,
I didn't realize that in most of the cases that
people are found because that's that's not the information that
people share.

Speaker 3 (01:28:57):
A lot more emails and message does that say oh
my god, we found them, thank you. Like even yesterday,
I think at eight am, someone messaged me and said,
this is my loved one. This is very out of character,
and I didn't see it, and later I saw it
maybe around two in the afternoon. He was already found
safe and getting care. So, like that's a lot more common.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
That's so refreshing.

Speaker 3 (01:29:21):
Yeah, that's why this job, like this job isn't so
bad because most of the endings of my stories are
actually very happy.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
That's good, but not always.

Speaker 3 (01:29:31):
Yeah, So in.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):
Those situations where someone is gone for just a short
period of time, is there any sort of commonality there
for why they go missing or where they huh.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):
A lot of you know, runaways is common. I could
talk I could talk about that for like a whole
hour because I hate the term runaway. I talked about
that at the Cold Case Symposium. It decreases public care
or mental health breaks or addiction. Is very common for
people to just kind of disappear for a while. Suicide, yeah, yeah,

(01:30:12):
but other and sometimes accidents in desolate areas, like isolated areas.

Speaker 1 (01:30:19):
Okay, or like areas where there's a lot of bodies
of water.

Speaker 3 (01:30:23):
I've heard, yes, and around here. Unfortunately, if someone's missing
with their vehicle, we're getting search and rescue engaged pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
Yeah, yeah, it is. Is that usually the case in
those types of situations.

Speaker 3 (01:30:40):
Yeah, That's why it's so important to try to hop
on it quickly, because if you look at the security
and CCTV footage, you can literally trap the vehicle moving
through the area. And if you know that they went
near the lake or the river or over some of
the water and stuff, and then their vehicle doesn't come
out on the other side, it's likely that they went

(01:31:02):
off somehow, you know. But I honestly haven't gotten a
case like that in a couple of years, luckily, so
oh good.

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
I was wondering how common it was for things like
that to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:31:14):
I've worked on a lot of cases like that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
That's really sad. See here that stuff's not common because
where's the water. But yeah, I'm sure in areas like that,
it's way more common. We've covered a couple of cases
like cold, like old, old cases like that with loved ones,
or like a couple who've gone missing for months and
it was because they had an accident and fell into
a body of water, which is just devastating.

Speaker 3 (01:31:40):
It is, and I can't speak for those families, but
at least you know what happened and have recovered them.
You know, it's that not knowing that's worse than anything. Absolutely,
Once you at least locate them, you can start to
heal and recover and accept what happened. But yeah, I

(01:32:00):
mean it sucks, it's it's terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):
So this is a different topic or a different question,
but do you feel that being in therapy and being
able to talk through that, has that helped you kind
of not get consumed by the cases that you that
you help with or are there are there certain ones
that are harder than others.

Speaker 3 (01:32:26):
Yeah, you know, I don't get consumed by most cases,
even when I get to know the families really well,
because the families are doing a great job and they're
listening to my advice and making the best decisions for themselves,
and so it's more like I'm teaching them kind of.
But of course some cases are all consuming and impactful,

(01:32:46):
but it's for such different reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:32:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:32:52):
There's really only been like three cases that have really
impacted me so and one is just because, like the
two of them, it's because I got so close with
the family, and a different one, a toddler was abducted
and I was thinking, there's no way that you know,
she's going to be fine. Someone just but she was

(01:33:15):
abducted and murdered by a neighbor and found in a
trash can. And that one that was a lot that
was in like twenty thirteen, like right after I started
doing this. That was devastating because I really didn't think
that we were going to find her deceased, but we did,
so oh my gosh, it was really sad. But otherwise,
I mean, most of them aren't so impactful. But a

(01:33:36):
lot of cases are cut and dry and not like
mysterious or like involving a lot of other people or
someone who's intervened with their life, you know what I mean.
So it's kind of like it's usually some other cause
of the missingness, which.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
Makes it a little less like amost yeah, taxing, Yeah,
that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:33:57):
And therefore we usually find them. So some of these
cases I've been on for a while, like for a
couple of years now, they impact me, but in different ways.
It's like they're loved ones, like we're friends, I guess,
you know, like we kind of rely on each other
for support. So it's it's just a little different, yeah,
of course.

Speaker 1 (01:34:17):
And then if there is anybody out there who's in need,
what's the best way to contact you or reach out?

Speaker 3 (01:34:25):
I will say traditionally most people have just found me
or like my nonprofit or now shooting missing persons and
just DMed me. But we've been getting most of our
requests now through the website are a Missing people dot Org.
But you know, you can text the cell phone number
that we have, email, dm phone call, put in a

(01:34:47):
request through the website. Any of those work great, you
know for anyone out there that is in need of
like advisor guidance. Some of us that our advocates may
have actually reached out to y'all and you're not seeing
those messages. So don't be afraid to reach out to
any of us, you know. If I don't have the
space to like do something, I have two other people

(01:35:08):
that will work on a case that are trained and
they have like had similar experiences, you know, And there's
lots of groups that will support you. Even search and
rescue organizations do have resources that they'll direct you to,
like mine or like Project Cold Case or something, you know,
So you sometimes might have to reach out to people.

(01:35:29):
And I know it doesn't seem like that's the way
it works, but that's how it works.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
Yeah, because if they're not reaching out to say, hey,
we need help with this, people don't necessarily know that
there's somebody out there that's looking for.

Speaker 3 (01:35:45):
And I tried, you know, I used to like email,
dmor whatever, but people don't see it because it gets
in spam or they just get hundreds and hundreds of messages.
So like it falls on death fears now. I just
as soon as I see someone sharing something, I'm like,
if you know, this family or anyone that they are
related to, and they need support, have them reach out

(01:36:05):
to me and it does tend to work.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):
Do you have any last thoughts that you want to share.

Speaker 3 (01:36:10):
Keep in mind most missing people are found safe. If
you are someone who's been struggling with a cold case
or a long term missing person case, there's always the
hope that we will locate them. And if you need
support or anyone to talk to, I'll always be here
for you. Guys, You're not alone.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Missing Persons, Advocacy, and Ethics in True Crime with Charlie Shunick

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

All Episodes

Missing Persons, Advocacy, and Ethics in True Crime with Charlie Shunick

Dateline NBC