In the 1980s, dozens of women disappeared from San Diego, California. One of them was 26-year-old Cynthia Maine.

Cynthia was a daughter, sister, mother, and woman trying to survive addiction while working along El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego’s notorious red light district. By 1986, she was rebuilding her life. She had found work as a waitress, but she was also serving as a police informant. Just months before she vanished, she had allegedly begun an affair with one of her police contacts.

Late in February, she told her family she was going to watch a movie.

She never came home.

As investigators searched for Cynthia, few realized they were witnessing the beginning of one of the largest unsolved series of murders and disappearances in California history.

In the first episode of this three-part investigation, we examine Cynthia's disappearance alongside the murder of her friend Donna Gentile. Together, their stories reveal a hidden world of vice squads, confidential informants, police corruption, and the extraordinary risks faced by women living on the margins of San Diego in the mid-1980s.

This series asks how so many women could disappear from one city and why so many of their cases remain unsolved decades later.

📍 San Diego, California | February 1986

📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Aimee Baker.

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On October 26, 1944, Gertrude "Tommy" Tompkins Silver took off from Mines Field in Los Angeles in a P-51 Mustang on what should have been a routine ferry flight.

She never arrived.

Gertrude was one of the pioneering Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), the civilian women who flew military aircraft during World War II so male pilots could be sent overseas. She was also the only WASP to disappear during the war whose aircraft has never been recovered.

In this episode, we explore Gertrude's extraordinary life, from a childhood marked by a debilitating stutter and an unlikely love of goats to world travel, flight, and a quiet wartime marriage just weeks before she vanished.

More than eighty years later, the fate of Gertrude Tompkins Silver remains one of the last great mysteries of the WASPs.

In this episode we talk about women in aviation, World War II history, and the enduring search for one remarkable pilot who never came home.

📍 Los Angeles, California | October 26, 1944

📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Aimee Baker.

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On May 26, 1970, twenty-six-year-old Ilonka Cann vanished from the rural Pennsylvania farmhouse she shared with her husband and fifteen-month-old son.

The day before, she had spoken with her parents in Ohio and talked about coming home for a visit that summer.

She never made that trip.

In the weeks and months that followed, investigators searched fields, ponds, and woodlots surrounding the isolated property where Ilonka was last believed to have been seen. Her family spent decades searching for answers as the case slowly faded from public memory.

More than fifty years later, renewed interest in Ilonka's disappearance led to new searches, a coroner's inquest, and testimony that cast the events of May 1970 in a very different light.

In 2024, a coroner's jury concluded that Ilonka Cann died by homicide at the hands of another person.

This episode examines the disappearance of Ilonka Cann, the decades-long search for answers, and what it means when official recognition arrives generations after a woman goes missing.

📍 Huntington Mills, Pennsylvania | May 26, 1970

📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Aimee Baker.

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On November 2, 1945, fourteen-year-old Thora Chamberlain left school in Campbell, California, expecting to attend a football game that evening.

Her friends saved her a seat.

Thora never arrived.

Witnesses later reported seeing her speaking with a man dressed as a serviceman before getting into his vehicle. Within weeks, investigators focused on Thomas McMonigle, a local laborer with a history of violence. Over the course of the investigation, McMonigle gave multiple confessions, led authorities to key pieces of evidence, and was ultimately convicted of Thora's murder.

But investigators never found the one thing that mattered most.

Thora herself.

More than eighty years later, Thora Chamberlain remains one of California's earliest no-body homicide victims. Her body has never been recovered.

In this episode, we examine the disappearance of Thora Chamberlain, the investigation that followed, and the evidence that secured a conviction despite the absence of a body.

This is a story about loss, memory, and the empty seat left behind when a child never comes home.

📍 Campbell, California | November 2, 1945

📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Aimee Baker.

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Most people assume that unidentified persons' cases are actively investigated, that somewhere, someone is still working to restore a name to the dead.

But the reality is often far more complicated.

This week, She Goes by Jane presents a special interview with author and former FBI agent Katherine Schweit about her new book, Women Who Talk to the Dead: The True Story of 200 Forgotten Murder Victims and the Relentless Pursuit of Justice by an FBI Agent and a Detroit Police Detective.

Together, we discuss the unidentified dead of Detroit, the challenges of solving decades-old cases, and the investigators who refuse to let victims disappear into forgotten file boxes and evidence rooms. We also explore media neglect, institutional barriers, and the quiet, persistent work required to restore names and histories to those who have been lost.

At the end of the episode, actress Mary Lynn Rajskub reads Aimée Baker's poem "Detroit, and Other Sorrows," a meditation on memory, absence, and the lives that remain even when names are forgotten.

Because every unidentified person was once known. And every name returned is a story reclaimed.

📍 Detroit, Michigan | 1950s-Present

📖 Featuring an original poem written in honor of one of Detroit’s formerly unidentified Jane Does read by Mary Lynn Rajskub.

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More about Katherine Schweit:
Katherine Schweit is an author, attorney, former Chicago prosecutor, and career Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who helped jail bank robbers, kidnappers, and domestic terrorists, while working daily with local police investigating and responding to mass casualty and active shooter incidents. A native of Detroit, Ms. Schweit earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University. She earned a law degree at DePaul University and joined the Cook County prosecutor’s office as an assistant state’s attorney.

More about Mary Lynn Rajskub:
Mary Lynn Rajskub is a comedian, actress and writer, best known for playing ‘Chloe’ on the Fox drama 24 and ‘Gail the Snail’ from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

This spring, Mary Lynn will co-star in the Netflix series, North of North, and she premiered her second hour-long stand-up special, Mary Lynn Rajskub: Road Gig, on YouTube in December. Her book, FAME-ISH: My Life At The Edge Of Stardom, is a comedic look at Mary Lynn’s awkward and endearing missteps on the road to becoming fame-ish.

In January 1967, Lois Williams and her 17-year-old daughter Karen disappeared from their apartment on East 21st Street in Indianapolis, Indiana. Inside, everything appeared untouched: coats hanging in the closet, a lamp left burning, and Karen’s schoolbook still open where she had been studying the night before.

Neither woman was ever seen again.

Years later, investigators would begin to suspect local service station owner Melvin Chelcie Carr — a man accused of violence against women and girls spanning decades, including rape, coercion, kidnapping, and sexual assault. After Carr’s shocking death in 1977 alongside the bodies of three murder victims, authorities reopened older disappearances connected to him, including the case of Lois and Karen Williams.

Police excavated Carr’s garage and backyard searching for evidence. They never found Lois or Karen.

In this episode, we examine the disappearance of Lois and Karen Williams alongside the disturbing pattern of violence surrounding Melvin Chelcie Carr, a man some investigators feared may have been responsible for far more crimes than were ever proven.

More importantly, we remember Lois and Karen themselves: a mother and daughter whose lives were interrupted, whose absence was deeply felt, and whose story deserves to be told with care.

This episode contains discussions of sexual violence, coercion, violence against women and children, and suspected serial violence.

📍 Indianapolis, Indiana | January 25, 1967

📖 Featuring an original poem written in her honor, read by Megan Storm, host of the podcast A Simpler Time.

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More about Megan Storm: Megan is the creator and host of A Simpler Time True Crime, a podcast that revisits unsolved cases from decades past and challenges the idea that a simpler time was necessarily a safer one. Through thorough research and a victim and survivor-centered approach, Megan explores forgotten mysteries, overlooked victims, and the lasting impact these cases have on families and communities.

Her interest in true crime began long before she ever picked up a microphone. Growing up, Megan spent evenings watching true crime shows with her mom while her dad worked night shifts, an experience that sparked a lifelong fascination with criminal investigations, unsolved mysteries, and the pursuit of justice.

One of Megan's favorite parts of podcasting is partnering with victims' families, survivors, and advocates to help tell stories with care and accuracy. She is passionate about amplifying voices that might otherwise go unheard and working alongside those closest to a case to support their shared goal of keeping stories alive and answers within reach.

In addition to hosting the podcast, Megan has spent more than 15 years working in human services leadership. Her background in advocacy, investigation, and problem-solving informs her approach to storytelling, helping her examine cases with both curiosity and compassion.

When she's not researching a case, Megan can usually be found training for a race, trying a new recipe, planning her next trip, cheering on Buffalo sports teams, or driving her two kids from one activity to the next.

In June 1975, investigators followed serial killer Richard Marquette into the woods near Oregon’s Clackamas River. There, buried beneath the soil of a popular campground, they uncovered the remains of an unidentified woman—a victim Marquette reportedly claimed no one would ever look for.
More than fifty years later, she is still known only as Clackamas County Jane Doe.
In this episode, we examine women whose lives were taken by Richard Marquette, one of Oregon’s lesser-known serial killers, who was once added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List after the murder of 23-year-old mother Joan Caudle. We also examine the story of Betty Wilson, a woman who traveled across the country hoping to build a safer life before becoming one of Marquette’s victims.
But at the center of this story is the unidentified woman buried near the Clackamas River in 1975—a woman whose name, family, and history remain unknown.
This episode explores violence against women, institutional failures, parole decisions, unidentified homicide victims, and what it means for a woman to remain unnamed for more than half a century.

📍 Oregon | 1961-1975

📖 Featuring an original poem written in their honor, read and written by our host, Aimee Baker

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Patricia Weeks, Cynthia Jabour, and Carol Ann Riley disappeared years apart after ending relationships with the same man: Robert Weeks, whose case would later be featured on Unsolved Mysteries.

In 1979, Patricia Weeks vanished from Las Vegas shortly after divorcing Robert Weeks and gaining custody of their four children. More than a decade later, Arizona real estate agent Cynthia Jabour disappeared after telling friends she planned to leave him as well. Then, in 1986, it happened again. Nurse Carola Ann Riley went missing after trying to end her relationship with Robert.

Their cases shared disturbing similarities: planned dinner dates, abandoned vehicles, missing personal belongings, and a man who repeatedly claimed the women had disappeared on their own.

Their stories are about coercive control, violence against women, and what it means when justice arrives long after someone is gone.

If you have information related to these cases, please contact the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department at (702) 828-2907.

📍 Las Vegas, Nevada | 1968 and 1980

📖 Featuring an original poem written in their honor, read by Ruby Wilde and Melissa Mae, hosts of the Bloody Besties podcast.

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More about Ruby Wilde and Melissa Mae:
Bloody Besties is your true crime podcast with best friends who have known each other since elementary school.

Hosts are Forensic Scientist Ruby Wilde presenting little known cases to Melissa Mae, the daughter of police officers and true crime addict who will be the one to bring you fun facts about our episode.