The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
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I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Solkuwski.
And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases.
Hello everyone and welcome back.
Welcome back everyone.
I'm your host, Ali.
And I'm your co-host, Eli.
And this is Cold and Missing.
All right, Al what do you have for us this week?
So we are on episode 49 and we're on a missing person case this week.
All right.
Would you like to jump in?
Yeah, let's do it.
Great.
So just as a content warning at the top, this case does involve a young person.
Today we are going to be talking about the missing persons case of Equilla Hodrick.
And this takes place in August of 1985 in the Bronx in New York City.
But first a little bit about Equilla.
Equilla is eight years old in 1985.
She was born August 19th, 1976 and she would be 46 years old today.
She was born and raised in the Bronx and was a true child of New York City.
Equilla lived on Briggs Avenue near 194th Street.
This is close to Poe Park and Fordham University.
Equilla's block was actually featured on a 1983 CBS documentary called Our Block.
And I'll link in the show notes where you can watch this to get a sense of what it was
like to live on Briggs Avenue in the 80s.
It's a really interesting piece that's a quick watch and shows a lot of the places
that we'll talk about in today's episode.
Equilla was tall for her age, standing at 4 foot 11 inches.
She had a light complexion, black hair and hazel eyes.
She has a gap between her two front teeth and a small scar under her right eye.
Her family describes her as smart and caring, a little girl with the world ahead of her.
And now a timeline of events.
Monday August 12th, 1985.
It's a hot August day and people are outside on the street.
It was still about 90 degrees at 6.30 p.m. when Equilla and her mother were sitting outside
on the front steps.
Equilla was one week away from her ninth birthday and she is dressed for the summer heat, wearing
a red and white shirt, blue denim cutoffs and tennis shoes.
Equilla's mother Terona Hodrick, but she goes by Terry, is eight months pregnant at
this time.
Terry and Equilla have a strong mother-daughter relationship and Equilla would often help
take care of her mother as her pregnancy advanced.
As they sat on the stoop, some of Terry's friends stopped by to talk.
You remember how it was when you were that age and your mom would stop to talk to her
friends?
It was not interesting.
But something interesting did catch Equilla's attention.
The Mr. Softy Ice Cream Truck.
Equilla interrupts her mother's conversation to ask for some money to buy an ice cream.
Terry says no.
She had already given Equilla some money earlier that day.
Terry turns around to keep talking to her friends while an undeterred Equilla takes
off down Briggs Avenue towards East 194th Street.
The ice cream truck had parked around the corner on 194th.
Terry could not chase after Equilla being eight months pregnant, so she watched her
run down Briggs Avenue, but she was not worried.
Equilla always came back and she was in her neighborhood.
This was her block.
Terry stayed on the porch, watching the corner, waiting for Equilla to return, but she never
came running back up the street.
As the night continued on, Terry's niece told her that she saw Equilla playing arcade
games down at the game room at the end of the street.
As it got even later, though, Terry knew something was wrong and that Equilla would have been
back by now, so she called the police.
Detective Frankie McDonald got the call that night and immediately the NYPD take it seriously.
Detective McDonald, from the jump, believes that Equilla has been abducted due to her
age and the circumstances.
Detective Frankie McDonald later reflected on this case, saying, quote, It was a heart-wrenching
case.
The mother was a genuine victim, and this was a legitimate missing child.
Many times in these cases, another family member was involved.
Not in this one.
End quote.
It's unclear when exactly the following events take place.
Equilla's case was not really covered in the media.
We'll talk more about that later.
But what we do know is that the NYPD set up a temporary headquarters inside the Hodricks
home for two weeks following her disappearance.
They were able to track down the ice cream truck driver who was in the area the night
Equilla disappeared.
He did not remember seeing Equilla or her buying any ice cream from him.
Police are never able to confirm the sighting of Equilla at the game room.
Investigators also start searching apartment buildings in the surrounding blocks for Equilla.
Police use scent dogs and they even launch a helicopter searching for any sign of the
little girl, but they come up empty again and again.
Later that same week, on Friday, August 16th, 1985, police are continuing their search for
Equilla and scent dogs picked up her scent and led investigators to train tracks near
her home.
Specifically, the dogs led investigators to a hole in the fence surrounding the train
tracks.
Police have learned from folks in the neighborhood that people experiencing houselessness often
camped out in the tunnel near this area.
Detective McDonald and his partner asked permission from Metro North to stop the train so they
could search the tracks for any signs of Equilla.
Police were told that this was impossible.
So Detective McDonald asked who could make it possible.
This ends up going up and up and up the chain to the vice president of Metro North, who
did have sympathy for Equilla's case.
He agreed to slow down the trains to 35 miles per hour so the police could safely search
and he agreed to let them search for 30 minutes.
Once police were inside, they weren't going to be forced out.
So they took three hours to search the tracks and talk with the folks who live down there.
They ended up talking with around 12 people along the tracks.
One guy they talked to stood out to them.
He appeared to be in a very emotional state and had a bunch of dolls in his possession.
Police brought him in for further questioning, but after a few hours it was clear he was
innocent.
However, the delay in the trains brought Equilla's disappearance to the news for the first time.
Newspapers and local news covered the story because people were upset that they had been
delayed during the Friday evening rush hour.
At one point, a reporter for Channel 2 asked Detective McDonald whose decision it was to
slow down the trains, to which he responded, quote, nobody made that decision.
We made the decision to search for a missing child.
What is your story?
That an eight-year-old is missing?
Or that a few assholes from Westchester came home to a cold dinner?
I don't have anything more to say to you.
End quote.
In the fall of 1985, so this is a few months now that Equilla has been missing, there was
a block party happening on East 194th Street.
This is the street Equilla turned onto from Briggs Avenue.
City Councilman Fernando Ferrer thanked the block for their help in searching for Equilla
and to keep looking.
Detective Frankie McDonald also showed up to the party to thank the community and to
give the neighborhood a phone number where they could call in tips.
As Detective McDonald was leaving the area, a woman was digging through the trash and
yelled out to him, quote, you're never going to find that little girl alive.
She's buried up in Yonkers.
End quote.
Detective McDonald doesn't engage with this woman, but when he gets back to his car, it
hits him.
An ex-boyfriend of Terry's lived in Yonkers.
Detective McDonald circles back to try to find the woman, but she's gone.
He'll try to locate this woman for weeks, but he will never be able to find her again.
Terry had dated this man for a short time, but he was into drugs and Terry did not want
that around herself or Equilla, so she broke it off.
The day Equilla went missing, it's reported that the ex-boyfriend was in the Bronx.
It's said that he was running around without a shirt on on Ho Avenue, which is about a
20 minute drive from Equilla's home on Briggs Avenue.
Later that night, he was seen driving around the Bronx with his roommate from Yonkers in
a red car.
Detective McDonald will bring the ex-boyfriend in for questioning many times, as Detective
McDonald believed he was involved, but the ex-boyfriend maintained that he was innocent
and had nothing to do with it.
In 1986, so this would be the next year after Equilla had gone missing, police still had
no leads.
Later that year, Equilla's case would appear on Missing.
Have you seen this person?
This was a show that was a precursor to Unsolved Mysteries.
Some tips are called in as a result of the show, but they don't pan out.
In 1987, so two years now Equilla has been missing, Detective Frankie McDonald decides
to retire from the NYPD after 20 years on the force.
He spent the last two years of his career working on Equilla's case.
Before he officially turns his badge in, he goes through Equilla's case file, which at
this point weighed 25 pounds from all the work he had done on the case.
He went to go tell Terry himself that he was retiring, and she sighed and said, well, that's
the end of that.
Reflecting back on it, Frankie McDonald said, quote, she was right.
After I left, there wasn't much more to be done.
Although every effort was made by the police department to find her daughter, everything
that could have been done was done.
We tried.
We really tried.
End quote.
Frankie McDonald also acknowledges that Equilla did not get the same media coverage as other
missing children around this time, such as Etan Patz.
Just to give a quick synopsis, Aton went missing in 1979 and was a famous case out of New York
City.
Etan was six at the time, and he had convinced his mother to let him walk to the bus stop
by himself for the first time in Soho, Manhattan.
The walk was two blocks, and somewhere in those two blocks, he disappeared.
Eton's case had very intense media coverage, and a whole task force was created to try
to locate the missing boy.
By comparison, Equilla's case only had two detectives working on it and was not covered
by the media until the train delays.
Eton's case was closed when Pedro Hernandez was found guilty of kidnapping and felony
murder in regards to Etan.
Equilla's mother, Terry, did believe that the police did everything they could to find
her daughter.
She was very close with Detective Frankie McDonald and ended up naming her son after him.
She says, quote, I thought the police did all they could to find my child.
They worked hard, especially Frankie McDonald.
They searched every apartment building around here from Valentine Avenue to Webster.
They really looked for Equilla, and for that I am grateful.
End quote.
And then the case truly goes cold for the rest of the 80s and into the 90s.
In 2001, Equilla's case is reopened by a cold case squad in the missing persons unit.
Investigators go back and re-interview everyone from the original case file.
Terry had recently moved out of the Bronx and into Manhattan, but she still kept her
phone number listed in the phone book so Equilla could find her.
Terry believes that Equilla was still alive at this time.
She says, quote, I still be praying that she will come home.
I know in my heart that she's alive because I can feel her.
You know how it is with a mother and her child.
You can feel them.
She's out there.
I know she's not underground, not my baby.
End quote.
However, Detective McDonald had a different opinion on the case.
He says, quote, I hate to upset the mother, but I don't think she's alive.
Equilla was very savvy for an eight-year-old.
She knew her phone number.
She was smart and street smart.
She would have reached out to the mother.
She wasn't a troubled child and she had a good relationship with her mother.
If she could have called, she would have.
End quote.
And that is the last update we have for Equilla.
Her case is still open with the cold case missing person unit, and they have released
an Aged Progress photo that will be on our website and on our Instagram.
And the photo is Equilla at age 46.
So they believe this is what she would look like today.
So if you know anything about the disappearance of Equilla Hodrick in August of 1985, please
call the NYPD Missing Person Unit at 212-694-7781.
And the sources for the timeline today come from the Mount Vernon Argus, the Newark Advocate,
Morning Centennial, Lansing State Journal, the Delaware Gazette, the Palm Beach Post,
Daily News, Merced Sunstar, NY Press, Medium.com, the book My Father's Gun by Brian McDonald,
and the CBS documentary, Our Block.
So that is the case of Equilla Hodrick.
Thank you for bringing it to the podcast.
I think my first reaction slash question, the strongest one in my mind for you was,
why do you think there was just a complete drop off of tension and energy?
I think what played into this is something that we've talked about before, where Equilla
was a young black girl from the Bronx, and it did not generate any media coverage until
the train delays happened.
And even after that, whenever I was searching for her in old newspaper archives, I didn't
come across a lot, but then I realized that they were misspelling her name.
So the newspaper misspelled her first and last name.
That's so disrespectful.
Yeah.
So after I found the way that the newspapers were spelling it for some time, you know,
I was able to find a couple more articles, but there was just not as an intense media
coverage as, for example, Etan
They projected his picture into Times Square when he went missing, but none of that happened
with Equilla.
But Detective Frankie McDonald was on her case, and he was a very dedicated police officer
and was very dedicated to this case.
Yeah, like, protect and serve, like taking an oath.
Like, I guess I see it as like something very, very serious.
So like, yeah, I'm like, good for you, man.
You did your job.
That's like what they all should do, in my opinion.
Frankie McDonald is honestly, and, you know, I didn't read into everything in his career,
but from everything I could find, he was a really outstanding cop.
He had been shot at several times throughout his career, but he himself never once fired
his weapon.
So he was all about the de-escalation, all about doing the right work.
An incredibly like, disciplined and balanced, like, officer.
I mean, at least to me.
Yeah, everything that was kind of within the police's power, or within his power, at least,
like he couldn't create a task force.
Like he didn't have the authority to do that.
But, you know, launching the helicopter, getting the sent dogs out, setting up a temporary
headquarters inside of their home.
Like everything that was within his power for this case, he did.
And equal as mother, Terry is very appreciative of him specifically.
I mean, there's no greater honor than like naming your kid after somebody, and her son
is named after him.
Could you go back and just cover again those critical moments where she disappeared?
My brain is grasping at them like when you wake up from a dream and you're trying to
remember.
Yeah.
So it's around 630 in the evening.
Okay.
Equilla and her mother are sitting outside on their front steps, the stoop in New York
City, and Terry's friends stop by or they're walking by and Terry...
Remind me of the date again?
Thank you.
Sorry for interrupting.
So it's August 12th, 1985.
Yeah, I was like, it's summertime.
It's summertime.
I had that right.
Yeah.
It's summertime.
There's a lot of people out.
It is hot.
It's around 90 degrees.
And at this moment, Equilla hears the ice cream truck.
So she interrupts her mother's conversation, asks for some money.
Terry says no, she already gave her some money earlier that day.
So Equilla runs off down the street.
She's going to try to get some ice cream anyway.
But Terry is eight months pregnant, so she can't chase after her.
And Terry wasn't worried because she was like, Equilla always comes back.
This is her city.
This is her block.
The kids play outside all the time.
That documentary I mentioned, like you'll see kids playing outside on the sidewalks
in the street.
And it is the section that Equilla lived on.
So it really is a true slice of life for Briggs Avenue.
So Terry sees Equilla run down the street.
She sees her turn the corner on 194th.
That's where the ice cream truck was parked.
And that's the last time that Terry sees her child.
And as the evening goes on, Terry's niece says she sees Equilla down at the game hall,
the game room.
There's a lot of different names for it that it goes by.
Like also goes by like the numbers hole, I think.
So there's a lot of names for this space.
It's a kid arcade, right?
No, it's not.
It's not an arcade like we think of it, like a Chuck E. Cheese or something like that.
There were a couple kid games, but then there was also like some illegal gambling that happened
there maybe.
It was just like, all right, you went down there to play numbers.
Like there was a lotto.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's actually a question that I have because police were never able to confirm
that sighting.
But since it was Terry's niece, that's Equilla's cousin, I have to think that if she saw Equilla,
she did see her that because that's family.
You're not going to mistake her for somebody else.
You know, you know, you know, your family.
But there's also a part of me that thinks or that wonders, like, did the niece just
say this to like play Kate, Terry and just be like, oh, I saw her.
She was playing an arcade game.
She's fine.
Don't worry.
Yeah.
But I tend to lean towards that, you know, as things progressed and it was clear that
Equilla was missing, that the niece probably would have said, I didn't actually see her.
So I think Equilla was seen playing an arcade game at some point that evening.
OK, I think that's where I'm at for now.
I mostly just like, I'm eager to, you know, do my own like a little bit of just information
digging.
I'm glad we got to learn about who she was.
Yeah, I just I'm like, the systems at play and the systemic racism and systemic so many
things that that's like all that it is like why not all as in it's something small, but
it's like this lack of like very basic human understanding of like different experiences
and like you can see the cracks in the in the pavement of it all.
And it's sad.
It's just sad.
And I know I say it often on here, but I think it's a space to echo it in because like it's
really true that like there's absolutely no reason that like these cases shouldn't be
solved.
There's too much technological advancement in the world and like, yeah, I do agree with
you about the advances in technology.
But I think a problem that happens with a lot of missing person cases, especially old
ones, there's just no evidence to test.
There was nothing collected at the time besides interviews.
I know.
And even if it was just like so mishandled, but I I've always known of evidence, you know,
there was a time where like the people had to make the conscious like switch of like,
oh, wait, this could potentially be years easier, you know, like, I'm sure, like revolutionary
for those folks at the time.
But yeah, it's easy for me to get frustrated.
Yeah, but there is still hope.
A case was closed in 2017 officially with, you know, a ruling.
It would be great if somebody came forward and confessed to what happened and was just
able to provide the family with some answers.
That would be great.
We would love to see Equilla alive and well and just coming home.
That's always the hope and the dream.
Yeah, it's interesting.
And this is just like me looking at myself and how I observed true crime.
This is definitely one of those cases where like I didn't really fill in the blanks after
she turned the corner.
Like my brain was like, I can't, you know, like, and because there was like really nothing,
my brain just wouldn't tell me the rest of the story because it's still holding on to
especially knowing his case.
I'm like, come forward.
Like, come on.
Right?
Someone, someone knows something.
You think you think so?
That's I guess that's what I'm asking.
Yeah, this case you think so?
Yeah, I mean, I don't think Aquila happened onto an accident by herself that would have
like caused her an injury where she couldn't get home.
You know, I don't I don't think that happened.
In this case, I think someone purposefully stopped her from coming home again.
I think she was abducted.
Yeah.
Well, moving forward, at least with us on the podcast, I am looking forward to creating
those graphics so like folks can see, you know, what she looks like the age progression
photos, missing person poster.
Yeah.
All that will be on our, our Instagram.
Again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Aquila Hodrick in August of 1985, please
call the NYPD missing person unit at 212-694-7781.
And one way you can help not only this case, but all the other cases that we cover get
out to the public consciousness is if you rate and review us in whatever podcast app
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If you're an Apple, if you leave us a written review, it really helps the algorithm machine
get us to the top and let's other people find this podcast, find this case, find these stories.
So just by doing that, y'all are helping the mission of this podcast.
Yeah.
We'll have pictures of Equilla and the age progress photo up on Instagram with the beautiful
graphics that Eli makes.
Thank you, hun.
And they'll also be on our website, cold and missing.com where we have transcripts readily
available if you are hard of hearing or if you know someone who is hard of hearing or
deaf and want them to get in on this podcast community, you can go ahead and share our
website with them.
Thanks for joining us on cold and missing.
I'm Allie and I'm Eli.
Have a great week and stay safe, y'all.
Stay safe, y'all.