Kona Gallagher Kona Gallagher

Leigh Occhi - Part 1

On the morning of August 27, 1992, 13-year-old Leigh Occhi was home alone in Tupelo, Mississippi. Less than an hour later, her mother returned to find blood on the walls and her daughter gone. Thirty-four years later, there's still no arrest — but there are names that have never been ruled out.

"Her favorite blanket was crumpled up on the floor and I was very scared."

That's what Vickie Felton told CNN about the moment she walked through her own home and realized her 13-year-old daughter was gone. It had been less than an hour. And in the 34 years since, no one has ever been arrested.

Listen to Part 1

A Storm, an Empty House, and a Phone That No One Answered

On the morning of August 27, 1992, the remnants of Hurricane Andrew were pushing through Tupelo, Mississippi. Inside a small house on Honey Locust Drive, 13-year-old Leigh Occhi was home alone, still in her nightgown, getting ready for an open house at her middle school later that day.

Her mother, Vickie, left for work a little before 8 a.m. Once she got to the office and learned the storm was closing in, she called home to check on Leigh — using a code the two of them had, two rings and a hang-up, so Leigh would know it was safe to pick up.

There was no answer. She called again. Still nothing.

So Vickie got in her car and made the mile-and-a-half drive home. She'd been gone less than an hour. When she arrived, the garage door was open — and the automatic garage light, which turns off after five minutes, was still on. Whatever had happened, it had happened only minutes before she pulled into the driveway.

Leigh was gone.

What Vickie Found Inside

Inside the house, Vickie found blood smeared on the wall. She went room to room, calling for her daughter, but the home was empty.

She called police at about 9 a.m. What investigators found when they arrived was a scene that has haunted this case for over three decades. Fresh, still-wet blood stains marked the walls, the carpet, and the bathroom countertop. Blood and hair were found stuck to a door frame — evidence, investigators believed, that Leigh's head had struck it, possibly more than once.

Leigh's nightgown was later found bloodstained in a laundry basket, along with a bloodstained bra. Based on how the blood had dripped down onto the fabric, investigators believed the injury had been to her head.

And in the bathroom, someone had tried to clean up. But no rag or towel was ever found in the house. Whoever cleaned up took the evidence of that cleanup with them.

The Missing Outfit, the Missing Glasses

There was no sign of forced entry. Both of Leigh's parents were certain of one thing: she wouldn't have opened the door to a stranger.

At some point during the attack, Leigh either changed clothes or was undressed and redressed by someone else. A brand-new outfit — including a bra and underwear she'd received for her birthday just the week before — was missing from the house. So were her glasses, and a sleeping bag she always kept in her room.

Bloodhounds were brought in, but Hurricane Andrew's remnants made tracking nearly impossible. Organized searches of the surrounding woods turned up nothing. DNA testing was still in its infancy in 1992, so all investigators could rely on was blood typing — and every sample from the scene matched Leigh's type.

The Envelope From Booneville

Eight days after Leigh disappeared, a McDonald's employee about 30 miles north of Tupelo, in Booneville, Mississippi, reported seeing a girl who looked like Leigh at the drive-through. The tip led nowhere. It was another child.

Then, five days after that — thirteen days after Leigh vanished — an envelope arrived at the house on Honey Locust Drive. It was addressed to Leigh's stepfather, with both his name and the street name misspelled. It carried six stamps, twice the postage needed, and was postmarked from Booneville.

Inside were Leigh's missing glasses. But there was no note. There was no ransom demand. Just the glasses, with no explanation.

The FBI took over forensic analysis, sending the envelope straight to Quantico. Handwriting analysis went nowhere. There were no fingerprints. The stamps had been moistened with water rather than saliva, closing off any hope of recovering DNA.

The lead detective on the case, Bart Aguirre, later said he believed the glasses were a deliberate distraction — that a genuine kidnapper would have asked for something in return. He would later tell CNN that envelope was the last real clue this case ever produced.

A Devastating Case of Mistaken Identity

Fourteen months after Leigh disappeared, a farmer discovered a human skull in a ditch near a soybean field in Monroe County. Dental records led the coroner to positively identify it as Leigh.

Days later, that identification was retracted. The examiner's office had been working from outdated records. The skull actually belonged to a 27-year-old woman named Pollyanna Sue Keith, who had gone missing from a neighboring county seven months later.

For Leigh's family, it was a false hope raised and then taken away within days.

The People Closest to Leigh

Leigh's stepfather, Barney Yarborough, had separated from Vickie about a month before Leigh disappeared and was no longer living in the home. He passed a polygraph and had what investigators have described as an airtight alibi. He died of cancer in 1996, at just 34 years old.

Leigh's father, Donald Occhi, was stationed in Virginia at the time and didn't learn his daughter was missing until the following day — and even then, he says Vickie initially told him only that Leigh had run away, with no mention of blood or a crime scene. He passed a polygraph and was ruled out as a suspect. He spent about a month in Tupelo searching fields and woods until his leave ran out. His theory has never wavered: that someone attacked his daughter inside that house, and that she never left Tupelo.

He's also said that while he searched, multiple locals quietly pulled him aside and told him to look closer at Leigh's mother.

Where This Leaves Us

Vickie Felton has never been charged, and has never been officially named a suspect. She has always maintained she had nothing to do with her daughter's disappearance. But she failed a police polygraph — and two more administered later by the FBI. In 2017, on the 25th anniversary of Leigh's disappearance, Bart Aguirre — by then the police chief — told a reporter he still considered her a person of interest, telling them there were still too many unanswered questions about her actions that morning.

But Vickie herself has spent decades pointing at someone else entirely — a man named Oscar McKinley Kearns, known to those who knew him as Mike.

That's where Part 2 of Leigh's story picks up.

Listen to Part 1

Don't miss Part 2, where we follow the investigation down a very different path.

Missing Person: Leigh Marine Occhi

Leigh Occhi has been missing from Tupelo, Mississippi since August 27, 1992. She is a white female with blonde hair and hazel eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she was 13 years old, 4'10", and approximately 95 pounds. She has a strawberry birthmark at the base of her skull, small scratch scars on her right leg, and pierced ears. She would be 46 years old today.

If you have any information about Leigh's disappearance, please contact the Tupelo Police Department at (662) 841-6491, or Crime Stoppers of Northeast Mississippi at 1-800-773-TIPS.

Sources:

Photos:

Videos:

Read More
Kona Gallagher Kona Gallagher

Anthonette Cayedito

In the early hours of April 6, 1986, someone knocked on the door of a home in Gallup, New Mexico. Nine-year-old Anthonette Cayedito answered it. She has never been seen again. A year later, a terrified girl called police and gave her name — before the line went dead.

"Who said you could use the phone?"

Those are the words a police dispatcher in Gallup, New Mexico heard shouted in the background of a 40-second phone call in 1987. Before that, a small girl's voice had given her name — twice — and said she was in Albuquerque.

Then came a scuffle. There was a scream, and then the line went dead.

The name she gave was Anthonette Cayedito. At the time of that 911 call, she had been missing for a year.

Listen to the Full Episode

A Knock in the Night

Anthonette was nine years old, a fourth-grader at Lincoln Elementary who lived with her mother Penny and her two younger sisters in Gallup, New Mexico. Her family called her "Squirrel,” and she helped her mom take care of her sisters.

On the night of April 5, 1986, Penny had been out with friends. She came home around midnight and sent the babysitter home. She last saw Anthonette around 3 a.m. When Penny got up at 7 a.m. to wake her daughters for Bible school, Anthonette wasn't in the house.

Penny searched the house, and when she didn’t find her daughter, she went door to door. But no one in the neighborhood had seen her. Neighbors joined the search, and in the days that followed police combed the surrounding foothills and brought in the FBI. Despite three days of searching, no trace of Anthonette was found. There was no physical evidence at the scene, and no sign of a struggle. Anthonette had simply been in her home one moment and gone the next. She ostensibly left only wearing her pink nightgown. Even her shoes had been left behind.

What Her Sister Remembered

Years later, investigators re-interviewed Anthonette's younger sister Wendy, who had been five years old the night Anthonette disappeared. Wendy told them she remembered a knock at the door around 3:30 a.m. She said Anthonette asked who was there, and a voice on the other side answered that it was her Uncle Joe.

Anthonette opened the door.

Wendy told the detectives that two men grabbed Anthonette, and that her sister was kicking and screaming as they carried her out.

The Sightings

In the years that followed, hundreds of tips came in from across the Southwest, but two stuck out.

The first was the 1987 911 call. Penny listened to the 40-second recording over and over and said she was certain the voice was her daughter's. The call was too short to trace.

The second came four years later, when a waitress in Carson City, Nevada reported serving a girl in her early teens seated with an unkempt-looking couple. The girl kept dropping her fork. Each time the waitress bent to retrieve it, the girl squeezed her hand. After they left, the waitress found a note hidden under the girl's plate.

It read: Help me! Call police.

Nothing ever came of it.

Forty Years Later

The Gallup Police Department, the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety, and the FBI have all continued to appeal for information. The FBI has released age-progressed images and issued outreach materials in both Navajo and English. Anthonette's sisters have spoken publicly about the decades of grief that followed, and about their refusal to give up.

In our full episode, we walk through the night she vanished, the phone call, the sightings, and the questions that have surrounded this case for four decades. This case is solvable, and key players involved are still alive.

Listen to the Full Episode

Missing Person: Anthonette Christine Cayedito

Anthonette Cayedito has been missing from Gallup, New Mexico since April 6, 1986. She is a biracial (Native American and White) female of Navajo and Italian descent with brown hair and brown eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she was 9 years old, 4'7" and 55 pounds. She was last seen wearing a pink nightgown. She wore glasses and was known to wear a silver chain with a small turquoise cross pendant. She has freckles, pierced ears, a scar on her knee and lip, and moles on her back, right cheek, nose, hands, and right ankle.

If you have information, contact the FBI Albuquerque Field Office at (505) 889-1300, submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov, or contact the Gallup Police Department.

Sources:

Photos:

Videos:

Read More
Kona Gallagher Kona Gallagher

Susan Walsh

On July 16, 1996, journalist and former exotic dancer Susan Walsh told her estranged husband she'd be back in half an hour. She was never seen again. What followed was a case involving the Russian mob, an underground vampire subculture, a missing calendar page, and a mystery that remains unsolved 30 years later.

"No, I do have a stalker."

Susan Walsh said those words in an interview just two days before she vanished. Her beeper had gone off mid-conversation, and she'd laughed it off at first — must be my stalker — before turning serious and admitting it wasn't a joke.

Two days later, the 36-year-old journalist walked out of her Nutley, New Jersey apartment to use a payphone. She never came back.

Listen to the Full Episode

The Reporter Who Went Undercover in Her Own Life

Susan Walsh wasn't an easy person to sum up in a headline, though plenty of outlets tried. She was a freelance journalist who wrote for The Village Voice. She was also, for years, an exotic dancer — a job she'd used to fund her writing and her education, and one that eventually became the subject she wrote about.

Her most explosive piece exposed the exploitation of young immigrant women inside New York strip clubs with alleged ties to the Russian mob. She had also spent months investigating New York City's underground vampire subculture, and had worked as the primary researcher on a book about the sex industry. A German documentary crew and the BBC were both developing projects around her reporting.

The work had made her enemies. She told her father she believed there were contracts out on her life, and she'd started drinking again after over eleven years of sobriety.

The Last Half Hour

On July 16, 1996, Susan left her 11-year-old son with her estranged husband, Mark. She told Mark she was stepping out to use a payphone and she'd be back in about thirty minutes.

No one saw her use the payphone. No one saw her at all that afternoon, and Susan Walsh was never seen again.

What Went Missing With Her

Over the course of the investigation, investigators discovered that an entire page was missing from Susan's calendar — the page covering the month of July 1996. Someone had removed it, and no one has ever explained who or why.

One of Susan’s friends came forward claiming she'd seen Susan get into a limousine about a month after she vanished. Police followed the lead, but it ultimately went nowhere.

Mark Walsh was never officially named a suspect, but a 2006 report revealed that he had refused to let investigators conduct forensic testing inside the apartment he'd shared with Susan both in 1996 and again in 2006.

Mob, Mental Health, or Something Else Entirely

In the years since Susan disappeared, theories about what happened to her have multiplied endlessly. Dancers in the clubs she'd investigated believed she'd been the target of an organized crime hit in retaliation for her reporting. Others believe her years of substance use, a diagnosed bipolar disorder, and a recent relapse into drinking may point toward something far more tragic and far less sinister than a hit. they believe that she may have taken her own life, or suffered some kind of breakdown that no one around her recognized in time.

And then there's the reason a lot of people have heard about Susan’s case in the first place: in the months before she vanished, Susan had become deeply embedded in an underground community of self-identified vampires in New York City, reporting a story that The Village Voice ultimately declined to run because editors felt she'd lost her objectivity. The tabloids seized on it. "Missing, Presumed Undead," one headline read.

Thirty years later

Susan's friend and fellow dancer-turned-filmmaker, Jill Morley, has spent decades trying to keep this case from disappearing the way Susan did. Morley is developing Seeking Susan, a documentary revisiting the investigation.

Susan's brother, Arthur Merchant, has never accepted the idea that his sister simply walked away. "She did not decide to freaking go off and not be coming back," he told a New Jersey newspaper in 2020.

Susan Walsh has now been missing for 30 years.

In our full episode, we dig into the investigation, the missing calendar page, the limousine, and the tangle of theories — from the criminal to the supernatural — that have surrounded this case since 1996. It's one of the strangest, most layered disappearances we've covered.

Listen to the Full Episode

Missing Person: Susan Walsh

Susan Walsh has been missing from Nutley, New Jersey since July 16, 1996. She is a white female with bleached blonde hair and blue eyes, 5'6" and approximately 110 pounds. She has pierced ears and a scar on her right wrist.

If you have information, contact the Nutley Police Department or the New Jersey State Police.

Sources:

Photos:

Read More
Kona Gallagher Kona Gallagher

The Mysterious Disappearance of Codi Bigsby: Is the Father a Suspect or a Victim?

Codi Bigsby, a 4-year-old boy, was reported missing on January 31, 2022, when his father, Cory, woke up and found his son's bed empty. A search immediately ensued in their Hampton, Virginia neighborhood, but Codi was nowhere to be found. Police took Cory down to the station for questioning, but this interview turned into a brutal interrogation that spanned days and led to Cory being arrested on multiple charges.

In this true crime podcast episode, we delve into the details of the Codi Bigsby case and explore the question on everyone's mind: is Cory a suspect or a victim? The police believe that he is responsible for his son's disappearance, but does the evidence support this theory? Or has tunnel vision led to a terrified father being left in jail, unable to search for his son, who has yet to be found?

With our trademark attention to detail and insightful analysis, we examine the facts of the case and explore the possible scenarios that could have led to Codi's disappearance. We discuss the impact of the case on the community and the emotional toll it has taken on the Bigsby family and the Hampton community.

So if you're looking for a true crime podcast that goes beyond the headlines and offers an inside look at some of the most fascinating cases in recent history, be sure to tune in to our latest episode. You won't want to miss our discussion of the Codi Bigsby case and the ongoing efforts to find out what happened to this young boy. Listen now on your favorite podcast platform.

Sources:

Photos:

Videos:

Transcript:

Read More