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All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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Hi everybody! Welcome to Cold and Missing. I'm your host, Ali.
I am your co-host, Eli.
And welcome! This is our first episode.
This has been a brainchild of mine for a very long time, but I'm very excited to be bringing it to life.
So no matter when you're listening to this, thank you so much for being here and being interested in this work.
Here at Cold and Missing, we want to cover exclusively cold cases and missing person cases.
So no solved crime. We're not going to be digging up skeletons, so to speak, of the past.
We want to focus on unsolved, unresolved cases and try to bring peace to people and try to generate new tips and keep these stories in people's minds.
A lot of these you may have never heard of.
Trying to focus on small town crime, people that maybe don't get a lot of media coverage.
We probably will not be covering Jon Bonet Ramsey here, but we're going to be covering a lot of smaller cases, interesting cases,
that deserve just as much attention as any of the other big unsolved cold cases or missing person cases out there.
Eli and I, we live in Chicago.
And I am from this area and Eli is from Michigan.
Do they know that I'm your husband?
Oh, no, we didn't mention that.
Well, I'm I'm the husband.
He's my hubby.
So just some like stats about cold cases that I was able to kind of dig up.
And these are all kind of current as of 2021.
Currently, there are over 21000 missing person cases.
And those are just what's recorded out there.
That's what's reported.
We know that 21000, 21000 over 21000 of just missing, just missing persons, people.
And again, these are just like reported cases.
So, you know, there are a lot of instances where police maybe don't want to take a missing person report where they maybe drop the ball.
So these are just reported in the system cases.
So we know that there's more people missing out there than these over 21000.
And something that I found sad and interesting, 40 percent of those cases are over 20 years old.
So 40 percent, like for over 20 years, there's just been no resolution, no ending, just this unanswered question of like, where is my loved one?
And that's really sad.
Like people deserve to know where their loved ones are.
Even if they have passed on, they deserve to know that without doubt.
Do you think that that statistic exists because of the time period that the crimes were murders or kidnappings?
Like because of the time period that they happened in?
Yeah, I think that age does play into it a little bit.
You know, for so long, like missing kids were just considered runaways.
You know, like they they wouldn't take reports for, you know, a missing child in the 70s if they thought the kid was like a bad kid and would run away.
You know, like so I think that does play into this is how.
Because being a missing being a missing person, it's not a crime.
Right. Like and if you're over 18, you're allowed to just go without telling anybody.
So it is sometimes difficult for police to walk that line of like letting somebody have their freedom of like you're allowed to get up and disappear if you really want to.
Like you're allowed to do that, but also you're leaving behind people who are worried about you and.
Don't they just deserve to know that like you're OK?
And then the top 10 states for missing people are California, Texas, Alaska, Arizona, New York, Washington, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Michigan.
Michigan, Michigan. No.
Yeah, I felt what I found interesting is outside of Oklahoma and Tennessee, all the other states are like kind of on the border of like Canada or Mexico or like on the ocean.
You know what I mean? Like they it's like easy exits from the United States.
I kind of thought that all of those states are like coastal.
Yeah. In one way or another.
Right. With the exception of Oklahoma and Tennessee.
But then the top 10 cities for missing this is just for missing people are Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Dallas, San Francisco, McAllen, Texas.
So a lot of California and Texas like states that stay warm.
Yeah. Yeah. Oklahoma City, Miami, Memphis and Detroit.
That rounds out the top 10.
I thought McAllen, Texas was kind of interesting, though, because I didn't recognize the name of that town off the top of my head.
So it's interesting that this town is in the top 10 cities of missing people.
So that's kind of why cold and missing is created.
In my professional life, I'm a researcher, and when I come home, I like to relax, kick back and read old newspaper articles about missing people and cold cases.
Relax. That's how I relax.
So I just I really want to be part of the solution and keeping and half the battle is just keeping people's names in the media and keeping their names out there.
So this is just like my one small part.
And like all this research that I do on my own does no good.
Just like sitting in my head and in my notebooks, like I should put it out there because they're like somebody listening out there knows something for one of these cases that we're going to touch on.
They might know the person that's missing.
They might know something about the cold case.
And it's been years. And now, you know, circumstances have changed and maybe they can talk now.
And this is just a reminder that these people are not forgotten and it's not going away.
Like we're going to report every week on a new cold case or a new missing person.
And we're going to just try to get some answers for people.
So we are going to be learning about Alma Mendez.
And this is a cold case that happened in 2007 in the city of Chicago Heights, which is in Cook County, which is Chicago's county.
So it's very close to Chicago.
It's about 30 miles from downtown Chicago.
Very kind of middle lower class.
The census of 2010 had like the median income as like forty three thousand.
So like very blue collar, very working class and relatively small,
like a population of thirty thousand.
October 28th, 2007, we find ourselves at Sauk Trail Woods, which is a nature preserve within Chicago Heights.
And Alma Mendez is 38 years old.
She's a mother of three.
She works as an office manager for a dental office in a nearby town.
Her friends describe her as a girly girl, always put together, quiet and kind, a very sweet laugh,
a wonderful friend and mother.
And at the time of her murder, she was just a few weeks shy of becoming a grandmother.
Her first grandchild was born just a few weeks after her murder.
So she I know she was like really in this like beautiful time of her life.
Like she has these three beautiful children and then she was about to become a grandmother.
Yeah. And she's just nobody had like a bad thing to say about her.
She was just described as being very sweet.
So on October 28th of 2007, Alma drove to the Sauk Trail Woods to take her daily jog.
So there's a jogging path there that's like three point five miles.
That's like a five K, right? Yeah.
So like a full like path.
And she had been jogging here every day for 10 years is what people say.
So she is incredibly fit, in my opinion, to be able to like go to the woods every day and jog,
essentially like a five K every day for 10 years.
Like that's incredible.
And it should be noted that on October 28th, she was jogging in the afternoon,
but that was like outside of her routine.
Her routine was she went to the woods in the morning to do her jog.
But like on this day, the day that she went missing, she went jogging in the afternoon.
Do we know why?
We don't know why.
Nobody has mentioned anything about why this change in her routine.
So Alma was last heard from between one thirty and two o'clock p.m.
She made two phone calls on her way to the trail.
So the first phone call was to her sister, Jessie.
And they talked until about one twenty p.m.
And so according to her sister, Jessie, everything was normal and there was no abrupt ending.
She wasn't like hurried off the phone or anything.
And her sister actually ended the call because she had some visitors at her home.
Her sister tried to call her back 30 minutes later.
So this would be around one fifty ish, but she never answered.
Her sister was not worried at the time because she knew she was on her way to take her daily
jog.
So she didn't think it was weird that she that Alma didn't pick up her phone.
Wait, so the sister knew that she would be jogging in the afternoon on this day.
Yeah.
So that was established that she was calling her sister.
Her sister knew she was on her way to a jog.
So that's why she didn't find it weird that she didn't pick up when she tried to call
back because she was like she's jogging.
You know, do we know why she didn't jog that morning?
No.
No, we don't know.
So then after she hangs up with her sister, Alma calls her friend Star Garcia and Star
is a very close family friend, but Star didn't pick up and a voicemail was left.
According to Star in the voicemail, Alma said she had quote something important to ask,
but nothing else unusual was said and she didn't indicate what she had to ask.
So she didn't know.
So we don't know what she wanted to ask Star.
And Star also said that she sounded normal and wasn't hurried off the phone.
So it's not like there was an abrupt ending to the voicemail.
There was just the question or the statement that she had something important to ask her
and then that's it.
And that's the last time that anybody hears from her is this voicemail that's left because
remember her sister calls back at 150, but she doesn't pick up.
So at this point, we know that she makes it to the woods.
We know that she makes it to stock trail.
How do you know that because of the cell phone?
Well there were witnesses because this is a pretty popular path.
And so she was last seen in her blue jogging suit, jogging on the bike trail or on the
jogging trail.
So witnesses saw her on the path jogging.
So later that night, so this is around six o'clock on October 28th, Alma was not returning
her son's phone calls, which was very unusual.
Like if her children called, she always got back.
That seems to be the norm.
So around six, he calls his aunt Alma's sister.
This is not the sister she talked to earlier.
This is her other sister Maria.
So her son calls Maria and asks her if, you know, do you know where my mom is?
Can you look for her?
And so they go to stock trail because they know that she was jogging and they find her
car there.
It's at the nature preserved and the car was locked.
There was nothing strange on the inside of the car, the outside of the car.
Just reported at this time.
So Maria and her husband.
So can I ask a question?
Was it normal for her to drive to this trail?
Yeah.
Okay.
From my understanding, it seems like it would be normal.
And while Chicago Heights is, you know, really close to Chicago, it is more suburban.
So like you would drive from place to place as opposed to like walk like you would here.
So Maria and her husband, Alma's sister and brother in law, they decide to drive the jogging
trail in their car to see if like she was hurt.
Like did she fall, hurt her ankle, pass out, you know, did something happen?
So they drive the path, the jogging path in their car, calling out her name.
You know, they're going slowly because cars aren't supposed to be on there.
It's a jogging path.
And they don't find her.
They don't see her.
They don't see any sign of her.
So by 8 p.m. that night, they filed a missing persons report.
And police and dozens of family members searched the preserve all night.
There are some contradicting reports, but it seems that it went as late as like 5 a.m.
So they were there all night in this nature preserve searching.
So police also brought dogs in that night and they began searching with dogs around
10 o'clock on Saturday night.
Were the dogs looking for, were they just following like her scent?
Yeah.
Or were they looking for like a body, a dead body, I guess.
From the newspaper reports I read, it seems like they were looking for her.
They weren't.
They didn't have cadaver dogs like they weren't specified as cadaver dogs.
They were just like search and rescue dogs.
So at this point, I would think that they're still looking for her.
Someone who is alive.
Yeah.
And maybe hurt because the nature preserve is really big.
This like jogging path that like kind of goes around a lake is just.
Is it Texas?
No, this is in Illinois, Chicago.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
So it's just like the jogging path is just one small section of it.
So they were expanding to the entire nature preserve looking for her.
So then this is Sunday, October 29th.
You know, they basically searched through the night, but the search officially begins
again at 7 a.m. at daybreak on Sunday morning and went all day.
So police brought dogs again to search and they also utilized a helicopter over the preserve.
And the family continued to organize and search for her through the night and there was still
no sign of her.
So now we're getting into Monday, I believe.
This is October 30th.
Yeah, because she went missing Saturday.
Yeah.
Sunday was the morning search.
OK, Monday.
So now we're on Monday.
The search started at daybreak again and this is the day they find her body.
So around 2 p.m., they found her body floating in the northeast corner of the pond.
And she was found floating just yards from the jogging path.
So she was about 15 feet from the bank from the bank of the trail and then 20 feet from
the jogging path.
Well, she do.
Do we know if she was face up or face down?
We don't.
Her friends were the first to see her.
They just started shouting, it's her, it's her.
And in a panic, the searchers were trying to like fish her out with branches before
the police were able to like step in and, you know, process her body because they wanted
to get her out of the water.
Obviously, it's horrifying.
But, you know, the police had to like go in and photograph and do, you know, all the procedural
evidence stuff.
So they started panicking.
And she was fully clothed and still wearing the blue jogging suit that she was last seen
in.
So we're going to get into like kind of some of the autopsy results and some of the things
that I've kind of pieced together.
So since it's a cold case, we don't know all the details.
Obviously, the police keep some things close to the chest.
So that way, you know, when they have a suspect, they have some information that like, you
know, only the killer would know.
So not every detail is out there.
But since this happened in 2007, in reading through every newspaper article, every online
article I could find, there are some pieces of information that have kind of been dropped
through the years.
So we're going to start in 2007 and then kind of move to more current with information.
So her autopsy results revealed that she had multiple blunt trauma injuries to the head.
And newspapers say the attack was brutal.
Like it's quoted as using the word brutal.
So like it was bad.
Like what really happened.
So someone like really hurt her.
Yes.
Before they presumably killed her.
Yes.
So she had those multiple blunt force traumas to the head and then her throat was cut several
times.
And there were no signs of sexual assault.
So that's all the information that came out in 2007.
In 2008, police asked the public for any information on a small two door truck last seen around
the time of her disappearance.
Witnesses saw the truck on the trail, which was highly unusual because like I mentioned
before, it's a jogging trail and vehicles aren't allowed on there.
So it was, yeah, it's like driving a vehicle like on the beach.
It looks and is out of place.
Totally.
Yes.
So a year after her death, police asked for information about this, you know, small gray
truck.
And then in 2011, her sisters were interviewed and her sisters revealed that she was actually
ran over first according to that detectives and then her throat cut and then placed in
the water.
So somebody drove their truck onto the path, ran over her, which I don't know if that is
like causing the trauma to the head.
Is that just like, is it just like a simple case of like a hit and run?
See, and then they covered it up.
That's what I thought.
But her throat was slashed several times.
Yeah.
But if they're panicking and I don't know.
I don't know if you panic.
That's also, yeah, that's also I know this is a problematic word, but that's like that's
crazy behavior to.
Yeah.
Like it's it's one thing to like accidentally drive your truck onto a jogging path, you
know, like whoops.
Sure.
Like maybe it happens, right?
Like it can happen.
It's another thing to maybe then go speeding around.
You know, you're keep going to keep going to hit somebody and then panic.
So you cut their throat a couple of times like, yeah, it's like maybe.
But like that just seems so brutal.
Like yeah, to quote, you know, what the newspaper article said, like it's brutal.
Like if she was ran over and then somebody cut her throat and then put her in the water,
like that's it's fucked up.
You know, like that's fucked up.
It sounds like I don't mean like a crime of passion, but like intentional in in the way
that like someone knew that the person who did this knew her.
Yeah.
Or they're just like, you know, like a deranged murderer or serial killer.
But that only did this once.
Yeah, which doesn't really track.
So in 2008, police felt very confident that the case would be closed soon.
So that was 2008.
And we are now in the year 2022 and the case is still open.
So it has not been closed.
And it is known that Alma had been under stress in the weeks leading up to her murder.
So her mother had suffered a brain aneurysm months before, so she was actively taking
care of her mother.
And then this is a very interesting fact.
She had separated from her husband of 19 years, three weeks before her death.
Wow, that's that's very interesting.
Has he been questioned?
Is he a person of interest?
Is that no?
So he was never publicly named a person of interest, but his alibi was reported in the
newspaper and it's his alibi is that he was with his family all day.
So it's a solid alibi.
Yes, I.
I mean, is there like evidently?
That's the thing.
We don't know.
And I don't think we will know unless this person is brought to justice.
Because you know, like a family can lie for you.
And you know, that is something that has happened in the past.
I don't know that it's happening here.
But it obviously is interesting that after 19 years together, you know, this separation
happens and then we have this very what feels like personal crime of, you know, being run
over and your throat slashed and then being put into the water.
Yeah.
That was interesting to me.
And the fact that the police felt confident in 2008 that it would be solved unless they
were just like, you know, singing to the crowd to appease them.
It makes me think that maybe they have somebody, but maybe just don't have all the evidence
to really bring the case yet.
You know?
Yeah.
Something that has definitely put me on a watch list, something that I Googled was how
long does it take a dead body to float, essentially?
And I actually learned about these like really cool, like retired folks.
Their name is Jean and Sandy Ralston.
And they...
Jean and Sandy.
Basically what they do, they are like the premier underwater body rescue people in the
nation.
Like they get called in by police departments, this like retired couple, they just like go
in their little motor home and they don't charge anything for their services.
Like missing people or people who have drowned where their families haven't been able to
recover their body will like ask them to come and look for their loved ones or to like look
in a lake.
And they don't charge for their services, they only charge for like their travel fees
just for them to get there.
But they were experts at finding drowning victims.
And then the FBI actually called them in for their first homicide because like their reputation
was so well known for finding these drowning victims.
The FBI was like, come work with us.
So the case that the FBI called them in on was like some kidnappings that they thought
might be like linked to like Russian mafia.
But basically these bodies were assumed to be at the bottom of this lake.
And Jean and Sandy, they actually found the first body on their own because they got up
to search before everybody else.
So like they got there and they're like, let's get to work and like just went out on their
own and found the first body that like the FBI had been looking for for weeks.
So like they were just out there before breakfast and they were like, we got it.
Jean and Sandy.
But in reading about them, I learned that after death, the body fills with gases as
the body breaks down.
And it's mostly in the stomach and chest creating a balloon effect.
So it takes between two to three days for a body that has been put in the water or for
a drowning victim to resurface naturally, you know, using this, the gases, you know,
if it's winter time and the water's especially cold, it could take five to seven days for
the body to come up.
But overall, it's two to three days.
And that would track for Alma, you know, for her dying on October 28, that day that she
went missing, going for her daily jog.
It makes sense that her body was then found two days later, almost 48 hours, you know,
it seems like her body came up around 2pm that day that they found it, which would have
been almost 42 hours after she was last seen at the jogging trail.
But that is all we have for Alma.
She is considered a cold case.
It doesn't appear that there's a detective actively on it.
When I went to go see like, you know, if anybody has any tips or knows anything about this
when I went to go try to find the detective's information to include here, it just sent
me to like an online form to like fill out tips.
But the Cook County non-emergency number is 847-635-1188.
If you know something about what happened to Alma, her children, her grandchildren,
they all deserve to have answers and to know what happened to her.
And she deserves to have justice and for somebody to answer for what they did to her.
Like she deserves that.
She was a good person.
She was a good mother.
Even if you're a shit person, like, yeah, everybody deserves to be like recognized in
passing.
Yes.
And like if somebody, you know, intervened and did something to like make you pass before
your natural time, then like everyone deserves an answer for that.
Everyone, like everyone should have to say, I did that.
You know, like somebody has to own up and like explain their actions.
Like that, you know, that's that's what needs to happen here.
Can we give them the number one more time?
Yes.
So the non-emergency number for Cook County is 847-635-1188.
And the sources used for today's podcast, they come from the Chicago Tribune, the South
Town Star, the Times, CBS News.com and the Cook County Sheriff Department website.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Again, it means the world that you're here, that you're listening, that you're interested.
I hope you found it as interesting as I did in researching it.
And hopefully together we can bring almost some justice.
If you like what you heard here, you can follow us on Instagram at Cold and Missing.
And please like and subscribe.
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the closer we get to justice.
So thank you so much for being here.
Have a great rest of your week.