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A troubled marriage leads to divorce and a bitter custody battle, with two young children caught in the middle. In 2011 Julia Birukova and her two children, 4-year-old Maile and 2-year-old Sky were living in an apartment in Redmond, Washington. On November 6, 2011, Julia and her children were up early. Sky was sick, and she needed to take him to the hospital. She bundled the children into her brother’s car that she was borrowing, and headed to the Overlake Medical Center. But they never arrived.

According to Julia, the car ran out of gas on the way. She left Sky strapped in his car seat as she and Maile went to go get help, but when she returned, her son was gone. Sky’s father, Solomon Metalwala was immediately suspicious of his estranged wife’s story, as were Bellevue Police. However, it’s been over a decade since Sky was last seen, and there have been no arrests in his case, or answers as to what happened to the little boy on that November morning.

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No new episode this week, so in celebration of the release of The Tortured Poet's Department, Taylor Swift's new album, and the song, "Florida," we're re-releasing the episode on Richard Hoagland, the Indianapolis family man who walked away from his wife and kids in 1993 and decided to re-invent himself in-- you guessed it-- Florida.

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Richard Hoagland was a successful family man who lived with his wife and two sons in a suburb outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. On February 10, 1993, he called his wife from work and told her he was sick and heading to the emergency room. He never came home again. For over 23 years, his wife Linda and their two sons wondered about his fate. But in 2016, a bizarre story emerged that proved Richard Hoagland wasn’t who they or anyone else thought he was.

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On December 17, 2022, 19-year-old Kadin Black had dinner with the family he was staying with, the Foust Family. Their son, Ethan, was one of Kadin’s best friends, and the family had taken him in after Kadin had a fight with his father.

Though Kadin wasn’t living at his father’s house, he had plans the next day to go over and exercise his dogs. But Kadin never showed up. When Kadin’s father, Maurice, couldn’t get in touch with him, he called the Fousts. The father, Chris Foust, said that Kadin was probably still asleep. By Tuesday, the teenager was still gone.

The months that followed brought an investigation with frustratingly few clues. Did Kadin decide to vanish without a trace? Or was his disappearance at the hands of someone else?

GoFundMe for a private investigator in Kadin Black's case

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2022 was a rough year for Kadin Black. The popular high school athlete had moved from Pennsylvania to Maryland with his mother, but had recently moved back to his father’s house in Pennsylvania so that he could be closer to his friends. The move, however, came with its own set of challenges. Fights at school led to him being expelled, and a fight with his father led to an arrest, a psychiatric hold, and needing to find a new place to live. Thankfully, the family of one of his childhood friends, the Fousts, agreed to take him in.

The arrangement seemed to work out for everyone, and the Foust family, especially the father, Chris, helped Kadin get back on track. But then in December 2022, Kadin mysteriously vanished. It took several days for his parents to find out that their son was missing, and when they did, there were questions surrounding when he was last seen.

In modern missing persons cases, there are usually plenty of theories to be found on social media, and Kadin’s case is certainly no exception. Did the young man leave on his own to avoid his upcoming trial? Did he harm himself? Did the Foust family, who graciously took him in, actually have something to do with his disappearance? We’ll be talking about all of this and more, as we dig into the story of Kadin Black.

GoFundMe for a private investigator in Kadin Black's case

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When 17-year-old Brianna Maitland didn’t make it home after her shift as a dishwasher at The Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, Vermont, it took nearly a week before police started an investigation. While Brianna was initially dismissed as a troubled runaway, her family knew that something much worse had happened to her.

Tips began pouring in, along with the rumors that you typically find in small towns. But one rumor in particular seemed to have some weight: that Brianna was being held against her will in a nearby farmhouse. This tip led to a police raid, but while arrests were made, Brianna remained missing. Was this tip a dead end, or, could it still hold some clues even 20 years later?


The Hunt for Brianna Maitland: The Relentless Pursuit of Answers to One of Vermont’s Biggest Mysteries

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It’s one of the most perplexing missing persons cases in Vermont’s history. On March 19, 2004, 17-year-old Brianna Maitland finished her shift as a dishwasher at the Black Lantern Inn, in Montgomery, Vermont. It was already after 11 pm, and Brianna told co-workers she needed to get home to get some sleep before her shift at a different restaurant the next morning. She only made it about a mile before something horrible happened.

It was several days before people in Brianna’s life realized she was missing, even though her crashed and abandoned vehicle was found the morning after she was last seen. Despite this, police initially wrote Brianna off as a troubled runaway, though her family immediately knew that something much darker was behind their daughter’s vanishing.

20 years later, despite intense investigations, hundreds of tips, and even more rumors, Brianna Maitland has yet to be found. But police believe that there are people in that sleepy Vermont town who know exactly what happened to the teenager.

The Hunt for Brianna Maitland: The Relentless Pursuit of Answers to One of Vermont’s Biggest Mysteries

Buy the ebook! - And Then They Were Gone: True Stories of Those Who Went Missing and Never Came Home
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For a full list of our sources, please visit our blog