The Deck

Nearly 26 years after the eight-year-old vanished from his second-floor apartment in Clearwater, Florida, his whereabouts remain a mystery. Zachary’s case is Florida’s longest-running AMBER Alert. It is also a story we covered on Crime Junkie more than seven years ago. In this episode of The Deck, we’re taking a fresh look at the evidence, including the 911 call Zachary’s mother made in the early morning hours of September 11 to report him missing. Could there have been clues that were missed? And could statements made by Zachary’s mother early on shed new light on a cold-case investigation that has stumped both detectives and Crime Junkies alike?

For more than three decades, the question of who killed 26-year-old Mary Kathleen Rodriguez has hung over the town of West Odessa, Texas. Known as Kathleen to those who loved her, the live-in nanny was found brutally beaten to death inside the home of the couple she worked for. Although the case has changed hands from one detective to another, the original facts of the case remain the same. There was no sign of forced entry, meaning Kathleen almost certainly knew whoever came to the door that night. And the one person who could have been on the other side of that door is still at large.

Thirteen-year-old Ilene Misheloff normally walked the same path home from school most days. And on January 30, 1989, all signs indicate she took that same route… and ALMOST made it home. But something… or someone intervened. And somehow, with all the traffic and houses that lined her route, no one saw the moment that Ilene Misheloff disappeared. In a case with so many leads and tips, investigators all these years later are left with one physical piece of evidence and a million questions… some of which they’re hoping you might be able to answer.

It was Memorial Day weekend in 2010, and hot as hades in North Carolina, when 22-year-old Terrance “Konomi” Plummer Junior was found murdered in a crime so brutal—and so deliberate—that it stayed with everyone who touched the case—especially Lt. Jeff Locklear. What began as another homicide investigation became the one case he could never shake—his White Whale. More than a decade later, the answer would come from something investigators had possessed all along. And information they never knew existed—finally solving Plummer's murder and giving Locklear something he'd spent years chasing: closure.