On Labour Day weekend in 2020, Chelsea Poorman, a 24-year-old Cree woman from Kawacatoose First Nation, walked out of a friend’s apartment in downtown Vancouver. At 12:57 a.m. she told her sister on the phone that she’d met “a new bae.” It was the last time her family heard her voice.

Chelsea walked with a limp from a 2014 accident and couldn’t go far without her leg brace.

Yet in April 2022, her remains were found under a blanket behind a vacant mansion in Shaughnessy, about six kilometres away. Parts of her remains were missing, and the cause of death was undetermined. Police ruled her death not suspicious.

In this episode, we follow Chelsea’s family through a ten-day wait for a public alert and a nineteen-month search they largely carried themselves. We look at the questions the official story doesn’t answer and the investigations into how her case was handled, which are still unresolved. And we look at why her family, and Indigenous leaders across Canada, refuse to accept that no one knows what happened.

If you have information about Chelsea Poorman, contact the Vancouver Police Department’s Major Crime Section at 604-717-2500.

To see the sources we used to create this episode read more about this case, visit our website at vanishedvoicespodcast.com, or click here.

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We refuse to let these voices vanish.

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Six days before she disappeared, Hyun Jong "Cindy" Song posted a short poem to her Penn State web page. She called it "under construction."

Cindy left Seoul as a teenager to build a life in America. By fall 2001 she was months from graduating, working multiple jobs, and dreaming of a career in graphic design. On Halloween night she went dancing with friends in a costume she made herself. Somewhere between 3:30 and 4 a.m. on November 1st, a friend dropped her off at her apartment complex outside State College, Pennsylvania. Cindy made it inside. That's the last thing anyone knows for certain.

In this episode we follow the days before anyone official stepped into her apartment. We cover a police department with no body and no crime scene, and a mother who flew in from Seoul and couldn't speak to investigators without a translator. We also cover the students, led by the Penn State Black Caucus, who refused to let her case go quiet.

Then come the leads: a sighting in Philadelphia's Chinatown, a taxi passenger who was never publicly identified, and an informant who tied Cindy to a man with bodies buried in his yard. Investigators have never been able to prove or disprove that last claim.

Cindy would be 46 today. If you have any information about her disappearance, please contact the Ferguson Township Police Department at (814) 237-1172.

To see the sources we used to create this episode read more about this case, visit our website at vanishedvoicespodcast.com, or click here.

Follow @VanishedVoicesPod on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, and please if you enjoy Vanished Voices, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

We refuse to let these voices vanish.

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On April 17, 2019, Prisma Denisse Peralta Reyes dropped her six-year-old son off with his babysitter and went to work, planning to pick him up at 7:30 like always. By that evening she had argued with a coworker, fought with an ex over lunch, and spent hours alone at a Dallas bar.

Around 6 p.m. she slipped into her ex-boyfriend's apartment garage in Old East Dallas, confused and crying, calling everyone she knew. Then her phone went silent.

Prisma was born in Veracruz, Mexico. She arrived in Texas speaking only a few words of English and finished high school a year early. She became a paralegal while raising her son as a teen mom, and she served in the National Guard.

Police searched every floor, every door, and every elevator shaft of that building. They cleared everyone she called that day. They still can't say how she left, or whether she did.

In this episode, we follow Prisma's last day hour by hour, go through what investigators found and the theories that remain, and share how her family is still fighting for answers for her son.

If you have any information about Prisma's disappearance, please contact the Mesquite Police Department at 972-285-6336 (case #19038244). Anonymous tips: North Texas Crime Stoppers, 1-877-373-TIPS (8477).

To see the sources we used to create this episode read more about this case, visit our website at vanishedvoicespodcast.com, or click here.

Follow @VanishedVoicesPod on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, and please if you enjoy Vanished Voices, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

We refuse to let these voices vanish.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.