MISSING: The Mishawaka Girls

Nic Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, she’s just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she’s been working since high school, a job she only has because her boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years—since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace. On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver’s door was open and her purse was untouched in the seat next to it. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. But with so little for the police to go on, both cases eventually went cold. Nic wants nothing more than to move on from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into Nic’s life and offers her something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

  Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. Now, listen, there is not a lot of information that has been shared yet in the story I'm about to tell you, which is why it's gonna be so brief. But what we do have points to a perpetrator's bizarre and unsettling MO. And I think I know exactly where we can find the answers. This is the story of Jules Connor and Casey Monroe.

• 0:58Ashley Flowers?

  It's 3 a.m. on August 4th, 2012, when Jenna Connor wakes up alone at the home she shares with her sister, Jules. Now, when she went to get a glass of water, she was surprised to see the door to Jules' room open and an empty bed inside. Because even though Jules worked a late shift at the dive bar, this place called Harry's over in South Bend, Indiana, that night, like, she would normally be home by like 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, so it's weird that it's 3:00 and she's not. And at first, Jenna tried just calling her a few times. Like, she knew that Jules' car was pretty unreliable, though, you know, she would've thought that if something had happened, like, she would've expected to see a missed call from Jules at some point, like, if she got stranded, you know? But you just never know, so she's trying to call her.

• 1:42Ashley Flowers?

  When call after call went unanswered, anxiety began to build in Jenna until she physically just couldn't sit still and wait anymore. Like, she had to go looking for her sister. Now she tried Harry's, but it was long past closed. There weren't even any cars in the lot when she got there, which at first brought a little bit of relief. Like, maybe she was being a dramatic older sister. Like, if Jules left in her car, maybe she had just gone over to a friend's, or who knows? And she felt better, but there was still something sitting in the back of her mind. Like, what if? What if she was on the side of the road somewhere? Jenna hadn't passed her car anywhere on the road as she had driven to Harry's from their place, but she knew that there was more than one way to get there.

• 2:25Ashley Flowers?

  So to quiet that last little whisper in her mind, she told herself she would just go home. One other route that she knew her sister might sometimes take. She wasn't gonna find anything, right? Like, that's what she's telling herself, but it would help her sleep. She hoped she wouldn't find anything. But as the couple of shopping strips faded into cornfields and tree lines and the streetlights disappeared, her headlights hit on something that made all of her fear come roaring back till it was like ringing in her ears. It was Jules' car on the side of the road with the driver's side door open. And when she gets a closer look, she sees her sister's phone, wallet, money. Everything is sitting on the passenger seat,

• 3:09Ashley Flowers?

  but Jules is nowhere to be found.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  And you said this was a road she probably would have taken before.

• 3:16Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, this is a pretty common route between where the bar was in South Bend and their house in Osceola. And like, they grew up in Mishawaka, right in the middle of the two.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can like, close my eyes and picture the road you're talking about. Like, it's the kind of road that you know like the back of your head if you grew up there.

• 3:31Ashley Flowers?

  Right. Now, even though Jenna goes to police and even though the circumstances are fishy as hell, her sister's disappearance doesn't quite get the urgency she knows it deserves. Even the media won't really pick up Jules' story. But everyone takes notice when just two weeks later, another young woman from Mishawaka goes missing, and there are eerie parallels to when Jules disappeared. So this is on August 17th. 19-year-old Casey Monroe's car is found abandoned by a family who are on a road trip, and her car is found exactly the same way as Jules. Driver's side door open, all her personal belongings on the passenger seat. The only difference is her car is found up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• 4:16Ashley Flowers?

  And her family says she didn't really know anyone up there. She didn't have any reason to be going up there the day that she went missing. And when the media picks up on this second disappearance, like, they're quick to connect the cases, dubbing them "The Missing Mishawaka Girls", since both were from Mishawaka. And even though police have that same inclination, the thing is, they can't find any connection between the two young women other than where they grew up as kids and then how they disappeared. There doesn't seem to be any overlaps, so the cases end up getting worked separately by two different agencies. They're not working together. And so, years end up going by without them ever identifying a suspect in either case, much less proving that they're connected.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  And in that time, no other cases like this, like, cropped up? Like, it's just these two?

• 5:03Ashley Flowers?

  As far as the police departments are concerned, yes. So, maybe whoever took them died or got caught for something else and was in jail or prison, whatever. And by 2019, each family had resigned themselves to a bitter truth. Jules and Casey were probably dead, and whoever killed them probably got away with murder. But that wasn't an ending that Jenna could accept. She believed in her heart of hearts that there had to be a thread that police had missed, something that connected Jules and Casey. And if only she could find that, she could find who killed them. Now, she knew that no one knew Jules like her,

• 5:44Ashley Flowers?

  which meant that she needed to get to the one person who knew Casey better than anyone else in the world. Her younger sister, Nick. And what they uncovered together sets off a chain of events that completely changes their lives forever. The thing is, I can't tell you what they found here.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Cue Crime Junkies immediately hating you.

• 6:07Ashley Flowers?

  I know, only for a minute, I hope. Because what I just gave you, you guys, is not a real case, but the start of the plot to my new mystery thriller novel, The Missing Half, which after the longest wait of my life, is now available wherever books are sold. So please don't hate me. You now have hours more content coming your way. I promise.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  I finished the advanced reader last fall in like one sitting. Dare I say, Ashley, it's better than all good people here.

• 6:38Ashley Flowers?

  I honestly think it might be. I really think Crime Junkies are going to love this book. Again, The Missing Half has officially hit stores as of May 6. You can be the first to solve the mystery by shopping at your local bookstore or at the link in the show notes. And you can also read the full description there, so please go check it out. I cannot wait for you to read this one. Enjoy, Crime Junkies.