Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Vanished in the Valley: Young women gone missing in Los Angeles

Episode Date: January 25, 2017

(UPDATE: Laura Stacy was found alive hours after we posted this podcast! Details in next episode. ) Maricela Garcia and Laura Lynne Stacy didn’t know each other, but the young women share a common fate — both have gone missing in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in recent days. Garcia disappeared just blocks from where another Valley woman was found half-nude and bound after a four-hour-long kidnapping ordeal a day later. Nancy Grace and Alan Duke discuss the mysteries. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Friends and family are desperately searching for 26-year-old Maricela Garcia. I'm really terrified. I don't even know what to think. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. She's like, I'll be right back, Sarah. I'm just going to go outside to smoke a cigarette. And when I came out, she wasn't there. She tried calling. No answer and her phone was dead. So I was like, okay, let's not overreact. I stood in the rain by her car for like, I don't even know, I lost track of time, probably over 30, 40 minutes

waiting for her and she didn't come back. It is odd that she's walked away, but we're still investigating it and what I am saying is that there's no evidence of foul play that we've determined at this time. She would never leave me alone, like I was her younger sister. There's no way. I see her every day. She doesn't just wander off by herself. Two young women have gone missing. And no, I'm not talking about the so-called Sherry Papini copycats. I've already told you about three other women, including Amy, Stacy, Rojan Kemp. All three of those are unsolved, although Amy's may have been an accidental death.

Not sure about that. I'm not talking about those three women that go missing in the wake of Sherry Papini's disappearance. I'm not talking about the Van Nuys woman that was found thrown out of an SUV half naked and now has disappeared. I'm talking about another woman. Another woman is missing.

And apparently one of these missing women's family is having to go door to door themselves trying to find surveillance video. Marciela Garcia is just 26 years old. She disappeared while shopping at a Goodwill store in Reseda. Now listen, don't cast her, don't throw her in any particular pot to stew because she was at a Goodwill. Just a couple of weeks ago, my children had to dress up for a project at school. We went shopping at Goodwill. Okay, mock me if you wish. So she told her sister she was going outside to have a cigarette.

She never returned. Now, I can tell you in all the years I have prosecuted and investigated cases, actually about 10,000 in the 10 years that I was a violent crimes prosecutor, plus all the cases I haven't counted when I was covering them. You don't go shopping with your sister, step outside to have a cigarette, and then never come back. Now, this is why the family is upset. They say the LAPD, and I sure don't want to grab a tiger by the tail because you

can't hold on and you can't let go. But the family of Marcella Garcia is saying they insist on calling her voluntarily missing because they couldn't find a sign of struggle. They did, however, find her broken necklace near a dumpster after a dog led them there. That's not good. Ah, just Monday, another woman goes missing. We are taking calls today. Hey, everybody, welcome. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace and joining me, investigative reporter Alan Duke. Alan, before we get sidetracked about why is Sherry Papini telling the truth or not, I mean, we can go round and round about with that all day long, but I want to talk to you about this spate of women missing and why police are calling it voluntary disappearance. Because if my necklace that I'm wearing at the time I step outside for

a cigarette is broken by a dumpster, I wouldn't do that voluntarily. Help me. There are a lot of reasons to believe that it wasn't voluntary missing. I talked with a family spokesman and got some details. Well, let's listen to that right now. Today, the family went around gathering security video and talking to the detectives and trying to get a little more investigation done. Isn't that normally something that the police would do, going around looking for security camera video? Why is the family doing that? The police have indicated that since there was no physical evidence of an abduction at her car, that they don't feel that there has been a crime committed and they don't see the need to

pull any security footage. This was January the 12th, a Thursday, a rainy day in Los Angeles, and it was in the evening, right? 7.22 p.m. Which is dark in Los Angeles in January. Absolutely. And Maricela was out shopping with her sister. Correct. Tell me about that. Maricela had spent the day with Sarah. They had been hanging out doing girl things. Maricela had made a couple deliveries for her job. She's a delivery driver for Postmates. They were on their way home. Sarah said, you know what? I've got a decades party this weekend. I need to see if Goodwill has some supplies. They didn't know where the nearest Goodwill was. They, like I said, were not in

their neighborhood. So Maricela put in Goodwill to her GPS and it took them to the Goodwill there on Sherman Way. She lives in Tarzana, which is about what, six or seven miles away from Reseda, something like that. So she normally wouldn't have been in this the area of this goodwill store in recita california according to correct according to sarah they had never been to that area before that makes it even odder that she would disappear at that location right any pre-arranged anything right so she was shopping at the goodwill for a decades party sort of some throwback clothes right right exactly and she decided to go out to smoke a cigarette and she left her younger sister sarah inside that's right what happened after that sarah maybe 15 20 minutes later um maricela had not come back in sarah went out

to the car thinking maricela was in the car and she wasn't there so sarah waited by the car maybe 15 minutes or so and And keep in mind, it's dark and it's rainy. And by this time, Sarah's phone is dead. So she has no way to call anybody. And when she had waited there for 15 or 20 minutes, she started worrying and she began looking. She went into the 99 cent store. She went into Payless. She went into, there's a church also right there at the end of the strip mall. She went into the church where two women said that Maricela had been there. How did they know Maricela? How would they have known her, that she had been in there? She had described her. Sarah had described Maricela to them. Have you seen my sister? This is what she looks like. Right. So

this lady in the church said that someone like that had been in there. Correct. And they asked Sarah, was your sister sick? And Sarah said, no, what do you mean? And they said she had come in, but when she left, she looked panicked. She looked scared and upset. And she had gone out the side door into a back parking lot. Sarah, of course, went out there, and Maricela was not there. Sarah continued looking around. She went across the street to the 7-Eleven. And also, actually, let me backtrack a little bit more. When she was still

in front of Goodwill and the 99 cent store, two men approached Sarah and Sarah said they were very, she got a bad vibe from them. She thought they were creepy. One of them asked her what time it was and then made the comment, oh, is your phone dead? And she just thought that was odd. Anyway, so she went over to the 7-Eleven. She was feeling spooked. It's not a very good neighborhood, especially at night for a young, pretty, single girl, and waited at the 7-Eleven where she could keep an eye on, you know, the church and the strip plaza from there, and waited there until she had called a ride, until her ride got there. And she went home and told her family, and they went back out and stayed for hours looking for Maricela. Her car, her purse, everything was still there.

Maricela had her keys and her phone, and that was it. What happened the numerous times, I'm sure, that Sarah tried to call Maricela, her sister, on the cell phone? Well, Sarah's phone was dead. But obviously when she got in contact with her family, the phone was going straight to voicemail. So she has been missing now going on two weeks. What have the police done? They came out and looked over the car, and I mean looked over the car, and there were no signs of a struggle, no signs of an abduction, and they took a missing report and

listed her as voluntary missing. Why would they say voluntary missing? Because she is a grown woman, and there was no blood. There was no keys on the ground. There was no indication that she had been abducted, despite the fact she left her baby sister, her little sister there, alone in the dark in a sketchy part of town, locked out of a car with no phone. And she has no history of ever doing anything like this before. You mentioned that the family is out doing the police work essentially right now.

Absolutely. They are. We did a search on Saturday. We went over every inch of ground within at least a good mile radius. We talked to business owners. We talked to everybody we could, homeless people. We talked to business owners. We talked to everybody we could, homeless people. We talked to store managers, store owners. And, you know, of course, it's a word gets around. Everybody knew Maricela was missing. There was a number of business owners

that were asking, why haven't the police asked us for our footage? Why haven't the police been here asking questions? They haven't heard from the police. Maybe at least knowing that this is going on, they'll preserve it so that when the police do ask for it, it'll be available. Right. They were willing to make it available to the family. And that's what Maricela's dad spent all day doing, was going back to where we spent Saturday doing the same things we were doing, talking to the business owners and hanging flyers and talking to the homeless people. And he was at the police station trying to get them to do anything. We had a canine team out there on Saturday. It also indicated where Maricela had been. Some items were found that were the family identified as hers. Of course, the police have not

confirmed that yet. They came out and they took the items and that's it. We showed them where the dogs said she had gone and what the dogs had indicated. It seemed that she was hiding in places. By her movements, indicated that she was possibly being chased or followed. We've asked for security footage that could say that that's what happened or that's not what happened.

The items that were found, I understand there was a necklace that the family says belonged to her? Yeah, it was a black fabric choker. If you could imagine having something around your neck, and if someone reached out and ripped it off your neck, is how it looked. It was ripped on both ends. The stone was not there.

That was found immediately behind the dumpster where the dogs said they lost her scent. This was January the 12th, a Thursday afternoon. I remember that day. It was raining in L.A., which is rare. It's been raining a lot lately, though. But the very next day, a really odd thing happened just a very few blocks away. Just down the street from the Sherman Oaks location

where Maricela was last seen, a Van Nuys woman was apparently released by who she says were her kidnappers. This happened about, well, less than 24 hours later, just a handful of blocks away. It was within our search radius, yes. But that was dealt with by a different department of the LAPD. It was the Van Nuys headquarters instead of the West Valley headquarters. Who knows if they were even in touch with each other? Yeah, we don't believe so. You don't even think that the two investigations, the two investigators even connected on that? Wow. No, we brought it to their attention.

You probably saw some of the coverage of the Van Nuys woman who disappeared just for four hours, thankfully, and there were comparisons of that case with Sherry Papini, which you're familiar with. You told me at one point that you think that there are similarities between Maricela Garcia and Sherry Papini. How would you see that? I think Maricela was beautiful. I think she was young. I think she had aspirations maybe to be a model. I think she was just very vulnerable and she was a perfect target that night. So there are a lot of reasons to believe that this lady, and we're talking about Maricela Garcia, was kidnapped. This was just like three blocks away from where this other Van Nuys woman was released bound and half naked just 24 hours later. And it's also disturbing to find out that apparently the detectives on each case

weren't even aware of the other case. Okay, that's bad. I want to tell you something. Now, look, I get being a public servant when you have a crush of cases. I mean, Alan, I remember trying a case, and it was a hard one, too. It was a homicide. It was a murder. And I didn't go back to my office in the district attorney's office for almost three weeks because I was in court trying the case.

I would just go straight into the courtroom every morning instead of taking the extra 20 minutes to stop by my office and do what? Check calls? I could do that remote. I would go straight to the courtroom. And at the end of the day, it could be 8 or 9 o'clock, I'd leave the courtroom and go straight to my car. So for like three weeks, I wasn't in my office. I came back in my office.

Still sitting there was a carton of milk I had bought and some Krispy Kreme donuts sitting on the desk that I had bought before I started the trial. And I walked out of my office and never went back in there and on my desk were two boxes of new cases. Okay, so what I'm saying is they're at LAPD are swamped. So I'm not crazy upset that one detective didn't know that down the hall another detective had a missing person. Do I like it? No, I don't like it. But do I understand why it happened? Yeah.

You got to start investigating before you connect the dots to another missing person. I know it sounds obvious to me and you on the outside looking in, but it ain't always that easy, Alan, when you're dealing with 300, 400 active cases. All right? In their defense. Again, I don't like it. But what I do, what I am angry about is that she, Marciela Garcia, just 26, is being described as voluntary missing because her mother has made an emotional plea to LAPD. And she says her daughter's necklace was ripped off her neck.

It was a choker, and there was a smashed cell phone found as well. She says the evidence, quote, that choker in your evidence room, that was her favorite thing to wear. I swear she would sleep and shower in it if she could. Now, to me, uh-uh. This is not voluntary, Alan. I agree with this, and I've spoken with the family. They are so happy that you're talking about this.

They think that that is going to help their case of putting some pressure on the LAPD. Alan, Alan, Alan, before we pat ourselves on the back, there's more. There's more. Catch this. She leaves her BMW and her purse behind. Who leaves a BMW and your purse behind? And your sister. Nobody.

And your sister. Nobody. I mean, okay, I hear myself. I am on the outside looking in. I hear myself starting to get crazy and yell, but time's a wasting. This girl is not voluntary missing. That's not, and that is the title they put on it. I know it's voluntarily missing incorrect grammar, but she has been dubbed voluntary missing. Okay what else do we know? Like you going to the Goodwill to search for a costume for a party that's why she was there she lives in Tarzana her sister says that she wanted to she was going to a decades party and

she wanted some vintage clothing and that's why she was there she had never been to the store. What's that? What's a decades party? You dress like the 80s or the 70s, something like that. So she went to Goodwill in order to find a costume. That's what a lot of people do. But the point is, she'd never been to this Goodwill store before. I have, by the way. I've done that. And she disappeared from that neighborhood that she's never been in before.

So it's not like she knew the area. Listen to what else i know about this laurie wells who is a canine handler she is the president of a non-profit search dogs 24 7 she went out and searched the area on saturday with her uh leopard dog her cat a catahoula leopard dog named katrina now katrina the dog is a scent-specific training dog. She's handed an article of clothing that belongs to the missing person. And she can follow that scent through crowds, wilderness, parking lots. So she goes out there with Katrina at the Goodwill. The dog wanted to go to a nearby supermarket where a cigarette was found in the back.

The same brand Marcella smokes. Then to a church. She became very animated near the church and wanted to go inside. Now, what does that mean? A woman, two women said they saw a woman matching the description near the church looking upset at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church.

The dog went to the back of the church and then to the back of an office building where there were security cameras and told the family, in case they're able to view footage, it could help them. So this volunteer leaves the family with more clues to work on than the police did. Now, you know, I don't like trashing the police because I feel very akin to law enforcement, but I'm really upset about this. The Van Nuys case, actually, that was in a different building than the other detectives. This was Van Nuys versus Valley View, and they're actually a few miles apart. So that might explain

why the detectives weren't talking to each other in that period. But this is what's frustrating. I talked with a family spokesman last night, and she said that the father spent yesterday going from store to store trying to gather the surveillance video, and that the stores were being cooperative. Wait, who went door to door? The father. Why is the family having to do it? Because the police aren't doing it because they said it's voluntary missing.

Now, this could change real soon because I also found out yesterday that the missing persons unit of the LAPD has taken over the case. But that is a brand new development. So we'll see what happens. You know, another thing the mother said that she was, quote, fiercely protective of her little sister and would never have left her there alone to fend for herself at night. I would never leave my sister. And she says, find out why my daughter's scent ended at a dumpster in the far corner of a dark parking lot where no one would have gone by themselves. But most of all, please find my daughter. That's what the

mother says. I'm very distraught about this. So do we know a tip line? Call the LAPD Missing Persons Unit at 213-996-1800. 213-996-1800. She's just gorgeous. She looks like she's about 18. The mom says, my gorgeous, talented, tenderhearted daughter is reduced to one word, case. She says, I'm so lost without my Marcella. You know, the other night after we did the story about the Van Nuys woman, I had a horrible, horrible dream. I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning thinking that Lucy, my daughter, was missing. God help me.

I didn't even say the words. And I got up and looked at her and covered her up with blankets again. And I was up the rest of the night. Now, that was just me, and I had my daughter and son asleep in bed like they were supposed to be but what about this mother begging begging for help just just hurts my heart this scares me as well as you know I have a an adult daughter gorgeous

in in this same area she's gorgeous and and there was another thing that we found out about yesterday, Nancy, that increased my fear, and that is the case of Laura Lynn Stacy. And this is brand new. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Laura Lynn Stacy, she is from Denver, Colorado. She moved here, I guess, to seek her fame, like so many beautiful young ladies do. Phil, let's see when you say here. You're right there in LA, right?

Here in Los Angeles. Yes. Well, this is just right down the road from me. All of these, I'm right in the middle of this. This is what's really scaring me personally, Nancy. 28 years old, Laura Lynn Stacey disappeared on Sunday, last seen near Bar and Boulevard. Now, this is, for anyone who's ever been a tourist here, is near Universal City Studios. Universal Studios, you know, with the Harry Potter theme and all of that, and it's right down the street from Warner Brothers Studio, very popular area in the valley, on the valley side of Hollywood Hills. She has not been seen since then. She was living with a roommate in the Burbank area, valley side of Hollywood Hills, she has not been seen since then. She was living with a roommate in the Burbank area, which is near that area.

Her mother tells us that her cell phone was found about 30 miles away in Santa Clarita, which is an area about 30 miles to the north. So that is the latest. Like these other ladies from Sherry Papini to Marcella Garcia, you look at a picture of Laura Lynn Stacy and you think you might be looking at a model. I mean, she is a beauty queen. That is one of the common things about these missing women. All women are beautiful, but these women are like Hollywood beautiful. You know, I'm looking at both of them, and they are, and they're so young. What's the proximity between Marcella's disappearance and Laura Lynn's?

It's the difference between Universal City and Reseda, about eight miles, right across the valley. And it's a very simple drive between the two. I want to talk to you about what more we know regarding Laura Lynn. Now, authorities are confirming that the vehicle discovered Tuesday night in Lancaster is the car of a 28-year-old woman that we're talking about that goes missing near Toluca Lake. It's Laura Lynn Stacy that Alan Duke is describing. As he said, she just moved from Colorado to California. And she's last seen around Barham Boulevard. Now, that's just two blocks of forest lawn drive. Is that where the famous cemetery is, forest lawn?

It's not the one where Michael Jackson is buried, but it's the one where Debbie Reynolds and, of course, her daughter were recently buried. But a ton of stars are buried there. And I'm bringing that up because it's a highly traveled tourist and traffic area, but nobody saw anything. I mean, you know, when you go to L.A., you see those sightseeing buses going around. They go there. It's that popular.

And people go and walk through there. They find stars, graves, or monuments. And long story short, this is a very highly traveled area is my point. So how did she go missing from an area where there are tons of people around? Her cell phone is found in a puddle at a Santa Clarita Park 30 miles from her apartment. Now, the person who found the phone texted her parents about 5 o'clock in the morning. And the parents' statement just breaks my heart. The mom says, it doesn't feel real, like a horrible nightmare I want to wake up from.

Alan, I remember after my fiance was murdered, that's how I felt. I'd wake up in the morning, and at first I wouldn't realize that it was real. And then like within seconds, it would hit me. This is real. It happened. And the mom says it feels6-1800. 213-996-1800. Let me ask you, Alan, what are police telling you? Have they told you anything about Laura Lynn's disappearance? Just yesterday, they put out the release asking, you know, with her description and the circumstances, but they're not saying a whole lot. Now, there are two police agencies involved. There's the one up in Santa Clarita Valley, the Sheriff's Department, and there's the LAPD here closer in the Hollywood Hills area.

But this is just a brand-new case just starting yesterday. You know, I'm looking at Laurel and Stacey. Laura Lynn Stacy, her car was a 2005 black Acura TL with Colorado license plate, 59-7W-WOMEN-F-FRANK-D-DOG. It was found 30 miles away, her cell phone in a puddle closer to where she was last seen. That says to me that she may have been carjacked right there where her cell phone was found or abducted right there where her cell phone was found and she or her body is somewhere between the cell phone and the car. Just analyzing what I know and And also, didn't she go missing? Was it a Sunday evening?

It was Sunday evening, and it was Monday morning that the mom got the cell phone text. You know what? It just makes me want to go get the children and lock them in the room forever. Well, don't send them out here to Hollywood. Not right now. Well, don't worry about that, okay? You don't need to worry about that.

And we're not even going to go to Harry Potter land out there. We'll go in Florida for Pete's sake, although, you know, Florida has a high crime rate too. But I don't think there's any criminals hiding out in, what is it, the Crooked Broomstick or the, what's the name of the little, anyway, we've, you know, long story short, no, we're not not going out there i'm not taking the twins out there uh-uh so i'm still concerned about why they're calling marciela garcia's disappearance voluntary missing when they say that the other girl laura lynn stacy they're sending out pictures of her and acting like she's missing, which I think she is.

So I'm just showing you a dichotomy there, which is disturbing. It's the LAPD, but it's two different, two different precincts, if you will. Did you give me the tip line for Marcella? I got the tip line out for Laura Lynn,

two, one, three, nine, nine, six, 1800. Still hoping for word on the kidnapped Van Nuys woman.

And still no word on the truth regarding Sherry Papini. Although I think I know the truth. We'll find out. Guys, we are taking your calls. The number is, hit them with the number, Alan. 909-49-CRIME. It's 24-7. Call anytime.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Don't make me drive off the road texting and driving, okay? Don't say a word in a phone number, okay? If you say a word like crime in a phone number, please, Alan, please follow that up with a numeric interpretation so I don't run off the road trying to dial it. Okay. Don't tell Oprah I'm dialing numbers when I'm driving for Pete's sake. 909-49-CRIME, which is C-R-I-M-E.

Just a second. 2743. So all together now, 909492743. Correct? 27463. Ooh, 27463. Okay, there we have it. 909, just say the whole thing at once, please. 909-49-27463. Okay. All right. I think maybe I liked it better when you actually said the word crime, but let's take a call. Let's take

our call right now. I want to hear this. Hi, Nancy. This is Laura from Kansas City, Kansas, and we have a friend that's been missing. Her name is Toni Anderson. It's been all over the news here. She's 20 years old. She's been missing for about a week, and we're just devastated, and we haven't gotten any leads. I would just like to know if you could please share her missing person flyer on one of your shows. It would be a great help to get the word out. We don't want to give up, and we still are actively trying to find her. Laura is referring to a young lady who disappeared over a week ago, still missing. It's Toni Anderson.

I wrote the article myself for her disappearance on our website. Toni's just 20 years old, and she was last spotted early, early in the morning, leaving a quick trip in North Kansas, Missouri. She was seen driving a black 2014 Ford Focus. The Black Ford Focus has Kansas plates 989G Georgia A-Alpha X, as in X-ray. 989G A-X. Now, she had worked all night, was getting off work, and stopped at the quick trip. She's 5'5". She weighs just 120 pounds, blonde hair, green eyes. She is a student.

Investigators have followed leads as far as Wichita and still have not found her. Now we've got a tip line. It's 816-474-TIPS. 816-474-TIPS. And I'm going to actually look that up for you. Tips is 8477. 8477. 816-474-8477. She is a missing UMKC student. And you can go to hashtag bring Tony home, T-O-N-I. Her parents are begging for the public's help. Tony Anderson missing. 816-474-TIPS. Laura, thank you for calling us. Everyone, you can reach us at our call-in number. And if you go to crimeonline.com,

we have an email and a number there as well that you can leave information or report cases. Please help us fight crime. Guys, our thoughts and our prayers with all these young ladies and their families as the minutes tick by. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.